Randomly remembering one of the most successful mistakes I ever made.
Back in the early 90s I heard an unfamiliar – but awesome – song on RTR FM’s letter request program Steregoround. I didn’t know who it was by, but guessed the name based on the lyrics, and included a request to play it again in my weekly correspondence. This got read out as follows…
Host 1: …please play The Mercy Seed by whoever sings it…
All Three hosts: NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEATS!! *dissolve into prolonged laughter*
Host 1: That’s really clever!
Host 2: Either that or this person is a fucking idiot…
I’m a year late to the party but I’m so glad that not only has the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet been identified, but the guys responsible – FEX – are all still around and able to appreciate the love people have been directing at their work for the last 17 years.
For once it’s an internet fairy tale with a happy ending!
Kinf of chilling to think that Darius S. probably captured the only ever time it was played on the radio (likely September 17th 1984) and without that such a fantastic song would have never been remembered at all!
Being the kind of self-righteous snob who doesn’t consume a lot of commercial media it can sometimes happen that absolutely fantastic and hugely successful songs entirely pass me by, only for me to randomly stumble over them well after they’ve been moved into the realm of old.
For instance back in 2023 a YouTube playlist threw up Walk the Moon’s Shut Up and Dance. I’d somehow missed this absolute banger for almost a decade and had to resist the urge to run up to everyone I saw shouting “HAVE YOU HEARD THIS SONG!? YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS SONG!!” when they’d almost certainly heard the song so much back in 2014 that they’d be happy never to be reminded of it again.
Well it’s happened again this week, with a little ditty named Pompeii by a little known British group named Bastille…
Now I wasn’t completely unaware of this track thanks to the legendary Important Videos YouTube playlist which included this gem…
…but it’s still kind of remarkable that such an amazing song has passed me by for (in this case) over a decade!
Did you know that the chant that features throughout the song is actually Latin? And that the line and the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love is a reference to the earthquake of AD 62 that severely damaged Pompeii and Herculaneum 17 years before the eruption that destroyed them? Well I do now, and my life is unmeasurably improved by that fact!
There’s also a Latin version – although the singer (one Heleen Uytterhoeven) appears to have missed the memo about eheu meaning “oh no”, “alas” or “oh crap”. Nonetheless it’s a great cover!
I wonder what hit ancient songs I’ll stumble over next?
Andrew Eldritch pops up in the most unexpected places. From the Wikipedia article on Numbers Stations…
In the British television spy drama Spooks episode “Nuclear Strike”, a Russian sleeper agent is awoken by a numbers station broadcast to detonate a nuclear suitcase bomb in central London. The radio broadcast states in Russian, “2.5.0.0.2.5, Finland Red, Egypt White, It is twice blest, It is twice blest, rain from heaven, rain from heaven.”
After agonising over it for weeks I eventually decided to simply jump in and vote for the first 10 tracks I thought of for the Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs. This worked pretty well, except for the realisation a few days later than I’d left out Wide Open Road – a sin so grievous I expect to be asked to return my Western Australian citizenship at any moment.
In any case, here’s how I went…
Yes, it’s pretty old stuff but I am old and someone has to stand up for the classics.
Here is a clickable list for those who like that kind of thing
(As much as I love Long Loud Hours it probably would have been shuffled out to make room for the Triffids if I’d been thinking straight).
In addition to the Hottest 100 there are a few songs that have really caught my ear lately. First up, Shy Girl by Haute and Freddy. I have no idea who these people are, but they’ve come up with something incredibly 80s sounding in this, the Year of Our Lord 2025, and I’m 100% there for it.
Secondly is this effort by G Flip. I’ve always through G Flip is cool, but their music has never really done that much for me – Disco Cowgirl though grabbed me from the very first time I heard it. The acapella bit followed by the key change at 2:30 is clichéd as hell, but it works so well!!
And finally a surprising blast from the past. I’ve always been a Florence and the Machine fan (not least because Florence Welsh is clearly some kind of ethereal goddess from the realm of the Fae) and I’ve known of Shake it Out ever since it first came out back in 2011, but I’d only ever heard some kind of chopped down radio edit, and never heard it before through headphones. The full version happened to pop up on my playlist at work and it just about blew my eyes out my head! It was like a goddamn spiritual experience! Honestly, you could found a religion on that song! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO!! TAKE ME NOW FLORENCE!!
Ahem. Sorry about that. Suffice to say I quite enjoyed it.
So, it’ll be interesting to see if any of my choices end up in the countdown. Roll on the 26th!
On Monday (Australian time) the Pope died. So did my parent’s dachshund Rudy who managed to make it to 21, which is not just extremely good going for any dog but pretty close to the longest recorded lifespan for any dachshund.
Rudy was a good boy, but what about Pope Francis?
In my personal opinion Francis was one of the better Pontiffs of recent times – keeping in mind that the bar for Papal decency is simultaneously pretty low and disturbingly difficult for so many of them to reach. He made some good statements and implemented some good policies, while not being outstandingly horrible to the Vatican’s usual punching bags. With an institution as ancient, hidebound and prejudiced as the Catholic Church that’s about the best you can hope for.
So now the race is on for a new Pope. Unfortunately the prophecies of Saint Malachy have now run out, so we can no longer have fun speculating on which Cardinal best fits whatever nonsensical aphorism he (or a 16th century forger more likely) scrawled down. The big question is whether a progressive (for the Papacy of course) like Francis will make the cut, or if there’ll be a conservative backlash and we end up with someone only slightly to the left of Attila the Hun. There’s also the increasingly traditional speculation over whether they’ll choose someone from the global south, or go with yet another European.
Time will tell I guess. However the dice fall, as long as they don’t elect anyone named Peter the wider world will probably be alright.
Anyway, here’s the song I always think of whenever a Papal conclave rolls around.
