Your favourite SEVEN INCHES

[Gregory Torso]

Yeah man, I know, shitty title, boring. What can I do about that? Not much, but here, I love seven inch singles. Who doesn't? Got tons of them, overflowing with them, avalanched in "mini records" that play you one song and then stop and ask you to get up off your arse and turn them over so they can play you another song. Squash them into a box, can never find the one you want to hear, rifling through the flimsy flapping plastic sleeves going "Martha! Martha! Where is that fucking Erectus Monotone promo, have you been moving things around again?!?"

*Seinfeld slap-bass transition*

I was going to start a thread called "Your 7 favourite 7s" but that's a bit much, isn't it, a bit much, asking people to pick seven tiny records and then link them to a low grain bitshit youtube clip without so much as a punctuation mark, so I thought, eh, just start one about seven inch singles you love, people can add theirs: if you dild it, they will cum.

All I ask of this thread - all I ask, not demand, ask* - is that people, write something about a single you love, its A & B sides, what it meant, or still means, doesn't matter what decade or genre or if you think your words are good, it's the feeling, that's what makes an art - a feeling, and sharing that, and then if possible, link to the song, so we can all listen as we read your loving words. Thanks, love you, you're immaculate.



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Yo La Tengo - Shaker (1993)






Yo La Tengo from 1993 - 1997 were untouchable sunshine, untouchable. Three beautiful sucker punches right in the holy solar plexus with Painful, Electr-O-Pura and I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One. Exemplary heartbroken, lop-sided, snowy indie melancholy. An audio triptych of heartbreak.

Shaker came out around the time of Painful, although it wasn't on that album** - it was however, on the soundtrack to Hal Hartley's film Amateur, and what a perfect pairing that was. My teenage years in a snowfall: Hal Hartley, Yo La Tengo, add in the opening titles to My So-Called Life and you can just put me in the deep freeze and scrawl "this one is DONE, by God, he don't want no more in life" in felt tip on the door.

Shaker, the music, is a sloppy, backwards-running, warped, droning weird little song that utterly confused me the first few times I listened to it. I was already in love with the band thanks to this song which still completely destroys and then rebuilds me, but this was just, uh, really weird. Then it clicked, like songs do. And everything melted.
Buying this record also unhappily coincided with my first real taste of what it felt like to be loved, and then not loved. And although the face and feel of that girl are now as far away from me as time can take a thing like that, these two songs still ache. But in a good way, now. A sweet ache that reminds me of what passion feels, felt, like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv2tdZyyRfM

The B-side, For Shame Of Doing Wrong, goes straight for the heart jugular. It's a lonely, drumless Richard Thompson cover, all beautifully and woozily enhanced by my copy of the record being slightly off-pressed. So imagine this with a bit of a quality waltz on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7NtY_IwYLk

Flurries of snow and patches of bad poetry written on minibus routes through the Lincolnshire fens in dead Feb.




<sub>* FUCK YOU, YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD

** Both songs are included on the re-issued, re-mastered three disc version that came out in 2014.</sub>

[Gregory Torso]

Sauna Youth - False Jesii Pt 2 (2013)




Everyone loves Pissed Jeans, don't they? I know I do - both the band and the sensation of urine-soaked Levis. So what could be finer than a cover of one of Pissed Jeans best songs, but done in a bouncy, poppy, polka dot indie girl style? Nothing, is your answer. NOTHING. Not even a crotch flood of denim.
I bought this one on mp3 first, like I thought I was cool and in the future and a rude-boy and a hustler, but then I got a physical sexy copy from Static Shock and now I am smug, basting in my own warm wee wee.
Lovely, lovely, lovely music. Great band. Silly name. Sauna Youth. But we've all got silly names han't we. The B-side says the word "fuck" which is a bit naughty.
The ultimate refuse everything anthem made into something you could dance with your children to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHijpj7Nm_8

For comparison, and just to share a brilliant song and video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BstpFV98mRg

[Gregory Torso]

Gag - Riot!!!!

Dashing Marbles - Wo Wo Wo (1990)







I am putting these two together because they both appeared on the short-lived, tinfoil-wrapped, wierd as your twisted bollocks, Chicago label BOB (Church of The Sub Genius reference, remember that shit?) records. BOB was something to do with Bobby Conn and a guy called Ross Forster (acording to my sloppy no arse five minute google search), certainly was connected to the Chicago no-wave scene from which Weasel Walter and Skingraft records erghed forth (See and hear also, Scissor Girls, Math, Duotron, et ceratops.).

Those of a certain long arm might remember writing on it, "John Peel plays a song by Cheeze which is a cover of Dancing Queen", and that's another release on BOB.
Anyway, it's all good, and it goes on, in someone's dying circuit.

And if you are listening closely, you might hear something politically relevant.

The Gag song, of about a hundred bands all called Gag, is particularly good, about mafia shakedowns of small businesses and reminds me a bit of Confederacy Of Dunces with Ignatius's hot dog outfit and shot lived job

Gag - The Corner Hot Dog Stand

Dashing Marbles - In The Name Of The Lord

[Pauline Walnuts]

That Crass/Poison Girls one, listened to the Crass side twice as it was so good, and then played the other side and that was ever betterer!

[badaids]

The first seven inches.

[Gregory Torso]

That Crass/Poison Girls one, listened to the Crass side twice as it was so good, and then played the other side and that was ever betterer!

A link, or something else? Please?

[Pauline Walnuts]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpe_1FjQXpQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRMHU02Pq4Q

[NattyDread 2]

I just scored a mates doubler of Lee Moses 'Bad Girl' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lxp7WVXiXU
it's an absolute stormer of a soul belter. Doesn't get much better. The intro straight into the wailing chorus. Man!

This has also been getting an airing-
Eddie & Ernie 'Bullets Don't Have Eyes' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMXkBvSfIhQ Unreleased at the time. Can't imagine why.

[another Mr. Lizard]

Avid 45/7"/single/whatever you want to call 'em collector and purchaser since 1974 here. So pleased that this format never, ever seems to go out of fashion. I've got hundreds, mainly post-punk Peel stuff from the late 70s-mid 80s - a particular fave being 'Production' by the Fakes, dour Scots who somehow encapsulate all of dull human existence into four minutes here, and manage to turn 'plodding' and 'repetitive' and 'grindingly slow' into something thrilling. I wonder if M. Gira and co were aware of this? It's not really Swans-like, but might have given a few ideas...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BA4FMIGv7Ds


My favourite single, in terms of the whole package and aesthetic rather than just the songs, is 'Impatience' by Fastbacks. Powerpop is an odd beast - so easy to get wrong, but the acts who nail it hit musical heaven. It's on SubPop, and for my money is the label's best release; it's in a twin pack with cardboard foldout and records housed in a plastic bag; the records are on coloured vinyl; one is red, one is green; there's a superb Buzzcocks cover version in there somewhere; and the main track, well, goes like this and sometimes I just want to play it all day:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H3o2kppGo7w

[Gregory Torso]

I just scored a mates doubler of Lee Moses 'Bad Girl' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lxp7WVXiXU
it's an absolute stormer of a soul belter. Doesn't get much better. The intro straight into the wailing chorus. Man!

Oh God, thank you, this is fantastic, and a big yes. I know this song from being a fan of Reese McHenry who covered it here with the Spider Bags but hadn't heard the original. What a song.

[Gregory Torso]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpe_1FjQXpQ

Anarchy and poice, love it

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BA4FMIGv7Ds

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H3o2kppGo7w

Fastbacks are great - that video is so 90s I think I spontaneously grew a pair of cargo shorts and a floppy fringe

Great replies so far. Come on don't be shy.

[Neville Chamberlain]

Having trouble coming up with my favourite Shed 7 songs, to be honest.

[SpiderChrist]

The Flaming Ember - Westbound Number 9

First heard on a Peel show sometime in the 80s, then found in The Beat Goes On (a secondhand place above Andy's Records on Burleigh Street, Cambridge) in 1991. Walking back to my bedsit in the warm spring sunshine, anticipating playing it when I got home, I don't think I've ever been happier. What a fucking tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO0v8p6rSTU

Whoever uploaded the video has fannied about with the intro, but that shouldn't affect one's enjoyment.