The tunes that made my year as a DJ (a few of them are from 2007):
Byetone – “Plastic Star” (session), Naim – “Inner Dough” (Rix del Rio remix), Tomcraft – “When I Was Sixteen” (original), Creative Use – “Rummage Through a Sack of Photos”, Muravchix – “Tropical Warrior”, 40 Thieves – “Theme From Nutrider”, Hardfloor – “The Life We Choose” (ERP remix), Sci-Fi Skane – “Tema 2” (original), Da Fresh – “A Night at the Beach” (DJ Fex remix), Cosmo Vitelli – “Converted”, De Signer – “Eyes Lies”, Discodeine – “Ring Mutilation”, Caspa – “Floor Dem”, Torch Song – “Prepare to Energize”, Stanton Warriors – “Club Action” (Mo Bass mix), Downtown Party Network – “Into Your Face”, Kolombo – “Remote”, Freshlovers – “Escape From New York” …
Bonne année, a hunky-dory 2009 to you all. Now, dance this mess around.
Have a go at their name at the great music blog aggregator Hype Machine, and you will probably draw a blank. It has been claimed again and again that they started as a joke, that they were a joke, but the very few songs they made are classic 1977 UK punk, so much void of the standard viciousness and the rest of the formulaic crap of that era.
The Snivelling Shits were formed by two London music journos, headed by the late Giovanni Dadamo and his smart tirades, which challenged the destructive negativity of that movement in the UK. He sang about fornication, bad drugs and chopping the head off a Japanese extreme rightist, all right – but with such an ironical glint, like a bastard Howard Devoto during his Magazine days. Their only record, “Terminal Stupid”/“I Can’t Come”, became Single of the Week in October that year in NME, painfully unbeknownst to the editors that it was their rivals at Sounds who were behind it.
The songs are reissued today on the Damaged Goods album I Can’t Come, which compiles every snivel the group ever taped. The session demos are quite flat, and “Crossroads” is nothing but a blatant copy of Velvet Underground’s “Waiting for the Man”. But if you love the punk greatness of The Damned’s “New Rose”, then so you will love The Snivelling Shits’ ”Bring Me the Head of Yukio Mishima” and their bed of smutty flowers.
