My Summer Burn 2005
Today I posted off my contribution to this year's Summer Burn - a project to get you to send a CD of your favourite summer music to two strangers who have also signed up. A chain letter but with tunes.
I opted to pack a CD full of songs that remind me of summers past, without necessarily being strictly 'summer' music. Years ago I used to have cassette compilation I'd made called "This Is Summer", and then I made a similar compilation called "Step Into Summer" when I migrated to MiniDisc. The Summer Burn was a great excuse to update these into an iTunes playlist.
Some of the tracks are associated with exact summer memories. I first heard one-hit wonder Andreas Johnson's "Glorious" in the toilets at a truck-stop in South Africa, on a journey between Jo'burg and Durban, rushing out to say to my wife "Did you hear that track playing in the bathrooms, you'll love it". The Stone Roses "Something Burning" reminds me of waiting until the Wednesday after 'One Love' was released before I could get it into stock at Note For Note records where I worked, only to find the rep had just bought 7" singles, not the 12" - and that 'One Love' wasn't actually very good - but then my faith being restored by the b-side.
Some of the tracks - The Las, The Lilys, *cough* Haircut 100 *cough* - simply scream youthful summer at me. On the other hand summer can be a pretty miserable time when you are a young thing and everyone seems to have a girlfriend except you*, so there is also a little wistful section featuring the likes of Furniture and China Crisis.
For the sleeve I wanted to try and conjure up that kind of 80's K-Tel vinyl compilation quality, so I broke the seal on the Photoshop Gradient Tool, and remembered how to do drop-shadow on text (first learned making website banners in 1996 fact fans). The background picture is of the rather lovely Djwera Point on Gozo.
Still, I'm not sure how this is going to go down in Maryland and Texas, which is where my two Summer Burn victi-sorry-lucky recipients are based. I did figure that the CDs might end up beyond these shores, so by way of an explanatory footnote I put The Fall's "British People In Hot Weather" as the last track.
Fill green envelopes and send them to ya
On train ride, read Marx tracts
Play walkmans loud behind ya
Demonstrate on Oxford Street
About what the Hell they couldn't tell ya
British people in hot weather
Have a heart-to-heart with your sister
People in shorts drunk before ya
Beached whale in Wapping
His armpit hairs are sprouting
Serpentine ah.... Serpentine grrr...
British people in hot weather
If you'd like a copy of my Summer Burn 2005 CD then just drop me a line at the usual address and I'll stick a copy in the post / drop it on your desk.
* Not that this ever happened to me, this is pure supposition on my part of course.