Trash Radio Manila Episode 13 Part 1: Leftfield Pop

Hello and welcome to Episode 13. Trash Radio Manila, as you may have noticed, is already 3 months old. Yay! Thanks to all of you for sticking it out with us.

Again we are featuring some pop tunes that we wish we could hear on radio. There are just some bands and artists that are not too mainstream, a little off the beaten pop path, and as such not exactly popular. Sometimes it makes you think about keeping your pretty finds to yourself and not sharing them with anyone (sound familiar?) ... and yet when you find yourself back in the arms of some run-in-the-mill pop tunes that could spell auditory death after a couple of spins, you end up wishing that the so-called purveyors of good pop music have heard about the songs that you like at least once in their puny lives.

Case in point is Chumbawamba, a band that in the late 90s became feverishly famous for their song "Tubthumping". It is a known fact that the band started out playing anarcho-punk and that they are self-professed anarchists to this very day, but who would really care about this when you have a very catchy hit that goes something like "I get knocked down, but I get up again; you're never gonna keep me down…"?

Or how about Elliot Smith, this generation's icon of coolness? This man's fan base may have swelled after his death, but until now his extremely personal songs are not exactly what the majority would hear on radio. Too heavy, perhaps.

Or John Otway, an artist who has added elements of comedy to his music which helped him gain a loyal following? Or The Caulfields, a band in the 90s that never got beyond two albums? (How apt that the song included in this playlist is "Where Are They Now?")

Kirsty MacColl, John Watts, and Nick Lowe are all familiar names in the British music scene, but have remained low-key, leaving their craft to speak for themselves. Kirsty is best remembered for her collaborations with Shane McGowan and The Pogues and Billy Bragg, and has unfortunately met her untimely (and highly controversial) death in Mexico in 2000. Strains of Fischer-Z can be heard in John Watts' solo works, which should not come as a surprise since Watts was the band's vocalist/guitarist. Nick Lowe, on the other hand, is known more for his catchy pop ditties like "Cruel To Be Kind", which came out in the late 70s, and continues to make records the way he wants them to be, his latest being "At My Age", released in 2007.

The playlist:

1. CHUMBAWAMBA - "I'm Not Sorry, I was Having Fun"
2. ELLIOT SMITH - "Son of Sam" (Acoustic)
3. JOHN OTWAY - "Green Green Grass of Home"
4. THE CAULFIELDS - "Where Are They Now"
5. KIRSTY MacCOLL - "A New England"
6. JOHN WATTS - "Involuntary Movement"
7. NICK LOWE - "Little Hitler"

Our high bitrate playlist can be downloaded here.

To sum it up, your neighborhood purveyor of good taste who professes to be into leftfield pop may come up to you one day and say "I know these guys. I listen to them", so on and so forth. Just give him his moment; you know better. You're a lot cooler than he is for not divulging what he does not know.

By the way, if you haven't seen Little Hitler yet, go check the photo on the siderail. ;) Til the next segment folks.

Photos courtesy of the artists' respective sites. Except Dante, the leftfield pup :D