Last time you sent me Goat. “Let It Burn”. Which blew my mind. It wasn’t the sort of thing I expected you to be into. It’s a bit fucking hip. But what would I know. It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. Crashing drums, chanting, wah-wah and fuzzbox feedback, it’s like the score to some pagan ritual. Is that what you get up to in Horwood? Have you gone Wiccan? Then you put that Isaac Gracie in there. “Last Words”. That caught me off guard. I was hiking up one of the smaller local mountains. More of a steep hill really, but it’s still a good hour and a half straight up to the top. I’d forgotten my bell, to scare off the bears, so I was playing your mix loud on my phone. Somewhere near the summit that song came on.

“How did I get here, and can I get back…” 

Something so apt, that it stopped me in my tracks. I wondered if you’d chosen it especially for that line, and it felt you were asking me the question. I asked myself and started crying. I don’t know, but every year that passes it seems less likely. 

In return I’m giving you Donovan, “There Is A Mountain”. I heard this at the end of that Danny McBride TV show, “Vice Principals”. The episode had the two lead characters accidentally soaking themselves in liquid acid, and as the credits rolled this complemented the comedy and psychedelics. It has the vibe of cool, mellow trip. The lyrics might smack of total nonsense but they’re a play on Zen Buddhism. About the process of awakening, understanding and accepting the universe. I can see you jiving and miming to its beatnik bongos. It reminds me of that Signor Rossi tune you used to rinse. 

East Village cut “Cubans In The Bluefields” in `88, when we were following all those jangling, indie “shambling”bands. It’s a wonderfully, wordy, uplifting flashback. I don’t know how we missed it. 

“Won’t you sing a song of freedom…”

“Everybody’s Gotta Live” is Arthur “Love” Lee at his most hippy dippy. Kinda uncharacteristically so. But this sums up what you attempted to hammer into me. “Stop thinking, worrying, and make the most of it mate.”

The Faces can always be relied upon for a council estate pub sing-along, and “Ooh La La” is another you can slot next to “Cindy Incidentally” and “As Long As You Tell Him”. Ronnie Lane leads and states the obvious, but there’s nothing wrong with that. “I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger…” To be honest, I’m not sure I would have changed that much. 

I stuck in Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan’s “Ramblin’ Man”, because it reminds me of the Nick Cave  / Bad Seeds schtick we fell for in the ’80s. The Bob Dylan cover, “Long Time Man”, and “Long Black Veil”. Some of that gravel voiced, self-mythologising I, we, used to like to do. A rowdy, drunken, country roller it makes me feel like getting in the car and just going. Anywhere. Somewhere I haven’t been yet. 

Mr. Cave is here himself, appearing to be ad libbing the words to “Babe, I Got You Bad” there and then, on the spot, and I picture you doing this, while strutting about like Nick. Doing a daft little dance. Taking everyone watching, at first by surprise – “What the fuck is he up to?”, them then going with it. Surely a goof, it starts off silly, but in its persistence, its commitment to playing it straight, it shifts into something more sincere. Sound familiar? 

BMX Bandits’ “Serious Drugs” is another song that you could have come up with. Funny on the surface, but scratch that and it’s deeper. “Toy Town medicine don’t make a change…” and boy did I need, and indeed try, some stronger tablets. 

Can you go wrong with a cover? Something new that still has a familiarity, the ability to fuel powerful nostalgia. Jeff Buckley sings The Smiths’ “If they don’t believe us now will they ever believe us…” and it hits – as the kids say – real different when you’re fast approaching 60. There’s a good chance that the answer may well be “No. Never.”

Davila 666’s punk take on The Stones’ “She’s A Rainbow”, “Borrando el Negro”, screamed, shouted, full of “fuck you”, couldn’t care less, makes me feel more alive. Rekindling those sentiments again, of gun the gas. To who knows where. Let’s go! Defiant, it feels triumphant. I like to think that at 17 we would have learnt to sing-along in Spanish. That the lyrics would have worked their way into pick up lines and routines. 

M. Craft turn The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” into a soft, folky, strummed, prettily picked reprise. Perfect for a little remembering, only the good bits. Looking back with rose-tinted specs. 

A friend sent me his cover of “1979”, which sent me searching for the original. I’d heard of, but not heard The Smashing Pumpkins. I don’t think they’re my thing, but this song isn’t typical for them. The B-line and melody is much more New Order or The Cure. Probably playing tribute to the bands, the frontman Billy Corgan, listened to in his teens, since he’s obviously reminiscing, singing to absent school friends, shadows, echoes, faded photos of his old home town. With a John Rotten / Sid Viscous sneer, and a two-fingered salute to a suburbia of blinkered horizons and blinked attitudes, “We don’t even care, as restless as we are…”, it talks to me of all the distance travelled. All the distance we had to put between us and Croydon’s stereotypes. Eventually, each other. The video even features a crew of kids cruising in a beat up motor, “Headlights pointed at the dawn…” 

“We don’t know just where our bones will rest, in dust I guess…”

Did I ever, for a minute, think that I’d end up so far away. 

Another song that’s sadly – ’cos I love this – not typical for the band, is The Invisible’s “Wings”. Forgetting their jazz roots, though it’s there in the tumbling drums, and picking up A.R. Kane’s “dream pop” baton. Its lovelorn whispers looping back to “Lolita”. “Hey, there winky girl…” swapped for “Don’t beat your wings in the hollows of my heart…” Quiet, more controlled, but cathartic all the same. It has me back driving, sodium street lights blurred by rain. Like everything I’m sending you, it’s soaked in the sound of our yesterdays.