shows // Sweet Sixteen
| episodes | |
|---|---|
| 1st March 2011 Worst Chips Ever listen | |
| 1st March 2011 Jackie Your Body // Datarape listen | |
| 25th February 2011 Benny Boom // Charmicarmicat listen | |
| 24th February 2011 Build and Destroy // Its a Trap! listen | |
Where were you in 95? You probably were either: wearing baggy spliffy jeans listening to Bonkers vol.1, playing red rover in the playground, slamming pogs, crushing on Jordan Catalano from My So Called Life, or just an erectile stirring in your dad’s pocket.
Subcity Radio was just starting out too, broadcasting out of a flat in the West End, trying to provide according to the Station Manager at the time Richard Wilkinson “Decent music radio for anyone who doesn't enjoy listening to the usual chart fodder.”
Shit has changed since those 1 month only broadcast license days of the mid to late-90s, now its all hyperreal timeshifted streaming until the Internet dies. The format of distribution might have changed but we haven’t changed the logo, we also kept the non-profit freeform ethic, and the station’s focus on niche music.
We asked the station’s dreamiest pin ups to submit their teenage rites of passage. Whether it songs they were listening to when they were 16, or just songs about teenager shit like masturbating, booze, making out, girls, boys etc.
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worst chips ever
Sweet Sixteen // 01.03.11 // Worst Chips Ever
Worst Chips Ever // The Portal To The Counterulture
“Punk was the portal to the counterculture. That’s where I belong. That’s where I live. That’s how I got there”. Ian Mackaye is right. He's always fucking right of course, inspirationally, magnetically right. So unutterably correct that I often like to think, just by way of atheistic bet hedging, “What would Mackaye do?” before I ignore Mackaye and do something totally unethical.
Ian Mackaye's bands changed my life. More specifically, the record label that Ian Mackaye founded changed my life. Even more specifically, hardcore, the subcultural ferment that gave rise to all those things, changed my life. If you are currently between the ages of 13 and 19, you are not a teenager, at least not in the sense that I ever understood the term. Instant access to all knowledge ever, free music and socially networked micro-scenes are just yummy, I know. But it's all just there, innit? The postmodern freeplay of signs and meanings, the subversion of the mainstream Mojo humping rock canon with outsider modes, that shit is basically spoon fed to you moptop kiddos these days. Have you seen Altered Zones? Fuck me.
25 year old pensioners like me remember what it was like before all that blah. Mine is the last generation to remember what life was like both before and after the internet. I wasn't a precocious kid but people thought I was. I was just lucky to have a Dad who had a seriously killer record collection. When I asked him if he had been a Mod or a Rocker during the 60's he simply looked at me, all cockeyed and funny like, and said: “Nah son. I was a freak”. Being a freak meant Beefheart and Bunuel and John Fahey and Can. When punk happened he was all over it like a recently divorced woman is Tina Turners later work. Loved it. Real kick up the arse he said.
But Dad carried the scars of the mid twentieth century idealist. Thatchero/Blairism was an abomination that tired him out and now and again he would come over all defeatist. When I told him about this band I had just read about in the NME (uh huh) called Fugazi who refused to sell their records in shops that stocked them for extortionate prices, who only played benefit shows for worthy causes in and around their hometown, who used the same amps and guitars that they had when they were 15, who released everything one hundred percent independently on their own label which they ran themselves, who barely broke even and ploughed all their money back into the collective, who booked tours all by themselves with no promotion, who refused to be put on the front cover of any magazine under corporate ownership, who refused to be interviewed in any other publication alongside adverts for tobacco and alcohol... he just stared at me, blankly. “But all bands sell out in the end.”
Except, of course some bands don’t. Ever. Because you don’t need to. It might well be now easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism, but it doesn’t fucking have to be. I had discovered hardcore. D.I.Y. It didn’t stop me from doing all sorts of ridiculous shit during my teens, questionable, to say the very least, predilections in other areas of musical interest most amusingly. But this is the stuff that still moves me the most from those years, the stuff that opened up another world. Every subsequent musical, personal and political life-changer since I discovered these records has been coloured by them. Free jazz, drone, noise, psyche, dub, avant garde composition, rave... my love of all these things and the reason I play them on my show in all their strident, underground, I'll-opt-out-thanks-very- much glory, is because hardcore led me to them.
- Daniel Baker (Worst Chips Ever)
Posted at 02:17, 2nd March 2011
jackie your body // datarape
Sweet Sixteen // 01.03.11 // Jackie Your Body // Datarape
Jackie Your Body // Butt Weans
McDonalds has given us a lot, the double cheese burger, the big tasty and wack hybrids like the mc gangbang, but what its really done is insure white girls aren’t lacking in their booty game. These high fat products have irreversibly changed the Caucasian women’s form - everybody can get back and everyone loves booty, especially Sophie Reilly who presents Jackie Your Body.
When she was 16 she unashamedly loved R&B, didn’t wear Ugg boots, or baggy pajamas outside her house, didn’t shop at Holister, let her palls get changed round her place because their mothers wouldn’t let them wear Interlock Mini Skirts - didn’t judge. A beacon of testicle-shattering awesomeness.
What makes girls like this such teenage wankfest epiphanies isn’t all their swag, but that they might just surprise you with the Aidan Moffat album Songs About Love, because girls like that...they get it! If your a 16 year-old boy and want to find a girl like this: stop masturbating, get a fake ID and start going to clubs and bring some big game, because girls like this are awesome. They might even put Can on a mixtape too.
Datarape // Chez Nous
Older dudes could get bitter, having to endure the barrage of friend requests from school friends who have squirted weans out, having to block them all, then looking at their stupid bodies reject some of their head hair, but you know...some of these guys didn’t turn into their parents immediately after high school, they don’t have to go on summer holidays with the girl they started dating in school, they have more money than you and hey life is still awesome at 24...amiright?
Back when they were young, French house was fucking huge. In the late 90s, the golden Roulé album covers guaranteed some slick soulful house music that although sounded more sophisticated than the Dance Mania records it took something from, it didn’t loose any of its dance floor muscularity. Daft Punk made next level pop music and next level videos, the Daft Punk Essential Selection ‘99 still sounds pretty fresh, taking in more rhythms than their Chicago House heavy Essential Mix ‘97. They lead the way, but their were plenty of others out in France creating some machine funk house music topping charts while HMV was still open.
Posted at 01:22, 2nd March 2011
benny boom // charmicarmicat
Sweet Sixteen // 25.02.11 // Benny Boom // Charmicarmicat
Benny Boom // Who Da Best?
Now running his own collective of DJs and artists, including Point to C, Ruckus Roboticus and S-Type, Benny Boom’s involvement with Subcity goes way back to his teens, now a married, mortgaged adult, he plays in South Africa (and other places where he needs factor 50) and facilitates a lot of winching and grinding for soo many teens on a Thursday night at the Art School.
Since becoming a resident at Subcity’s Hetherington Club Parties back in 2007-08, Ben has been a staple at our parties, returning this year for Who Da Best? This mix is a recording of his set from that night.
Charmicarmicat // Confessions of a Teenage Gabber Fiend
This is a mix of some very filthy club music. Coming out of the Dutch hard house scene, the high tempo, distorted bass drums of Gabber is just the kind of intense music that would scare the dicks off any fey indie brat trying to make it with the goths. This selection is bought to you by Vickie McDonald who “fucking loved gabber at 16!", now playing guitar in Divorce (with releases on Optimo Music, Merok, Milk and Winning Sperm Party) and DJing as part of Wavy Graves, "nowts changed since then....". Her show Charmicarmicat is where to go for sludged out, atonal dissonance and harrowing vociferation.
Posted at 18:30, 26th February 2011
build + destroy // its a trap!
Sweet Sixteen // 24.02.11 // Build and Destroy // Its a Trap!
Build + Destroy // Sony Walkmen
Build and Destroy is a show run by a couple of librarians - well Andrew is a IT Tech at the GSA Library, a different kind of nerd I guess. Since 2004 these squares have been curating a show of electronic jams with recent guests like Point to C and Khee Siong Tian, or some Suburban Base old skool rave show. This mix is what Andrew was bumping on his Sony Walkman back when he was 16.
Its a Trap! // Can't Stop Jerkin'
Presumably spent his teenage years being an Internet tough guy on 4Chan fapping over the latest time stamped tits, ripping new fags cause they can’t triforce and hazzing cheezeburgers. But now he has a Tumblr and makes some sick weekly mixtapes of super-lo-fi digi-bass crunk...y'know before "crunk" became synonymous with American frat dudes bro-ing out to 3OH!3
Check these doubles bitchez!
Posted at 19:53, 24th February 2011