skinslife

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Minotaur Shock – Muesli (Chris sat in teacher’s office)

Skins are good friends with Dave Edwards aka Minotaur Shock. This is taken from his old album Maritime on 4AD. You should keep an eye out for his next release later this year. You should check out his myspace here and thank you to 4AD for letting us license this.

Ben Says: Dinosaur (sic) Shock are a great new band from Bristol. Alex is a cock from Stoke.

Charlie Parr – Track 4 from Rooster/King Earle (Chris and Jal talking)

Legendary bluegrass musician Charlie Parr keeps the energy ticking over here. Buy all of his stuff, move to a wood, start wearing socks with your sandals and grow a beard if only to annoy the perpetually face-hairless Skinslife editor, Toby Welch.

Toby says: Alex is a cock from Stoke...

John Fahey – Yellow Princess (Chris and Josie comedic montage)

Wow Ben Schiffer is funny when you give him two months to sit around watching DVDs to steal jokes for his script. Playing over this montage is Yellow Princess from John Fahey’s 60s period. In the 90s he had a kind of renaissance with musicians like Jim O’Rourke (of Gastr Del Sol, Sonic Youth and many many other bands fame) and Cul De Sac's Glenn Jones, it’s when he produced his best work and i'll try to get it into Skins for you soon.

Beck – The Information (We go to the ads)

The only way I’d ever let Beck on the show without kicking and screaming is if he keeps his Californian Scientoligist mouth firmly shut. Here he does and the random guitar work sees us out to the break to give us a brief respite from Ben’s jokes.

Camera Obscura – Keep It Clean (1st track in club)

Whilst Ben gives us a sly bit of social satire on the state of the perennially easy target of the ‘Emo’ Camera Obscura are playing in the background. They’re one of my favourite indie pop bands and you should buy more of their stuff from Elefant records.

Madder Rose – Ultra Anxiety (Upbeat track)

Woo, the party is beginning to kick in and editor James ‘The Slasher’ Hughes gives us some raucous indie rock from his youth. Then on stage appear...

We need Leads

We Need Leads play indie rock with a touch of Ska, but thankfully not like Less Than Jake. As Ben mentioned above i'm from stoke and have always been kinda jealous of Scousers. They've got a lot more going on for them. More songs of theirs continue whilst we’re in the back of the club. Also check out this link.


Jonathan Richman – When she kisses me (Chris and Jal get it onnnnnn…)

Ben isn’t all about cheap gags at the expense of people he wipes off his shoe as he leaves his west London mansion to get a taxi to Heathrow for his weekly holiday, sometimes he can get all emotional. We use the legendary Jonathan Richman over Ben's touching scene.

Ben Says: This is a lovely song for a lovely moment… Chris and Jal’s first kiss. An interesting fact is that Jonathan Richman was the guy who sang the songs in ‘There’s Something About Mary’. Alex only decided to use this track after I told him that.

Ben Harper - Steal my Kisses

More slightly left-field singer-songwriter-y stuff. There's another singer-songwriter that i know of who makes some excellent stuff. Check it out here.

Luther VanDross - Never Too Much (At the estate agents)

More crap to make Ben’s scene funnier as we laugh at the idea of Luther Vandross being on the radio. Please note how the nobhead estate agent guy dances in time to the music, it please the episode's editor James 'The Slasher' Hughes very much. Also check out the similarities with Trainspotting when Renton moves to London and becomes an estate agent. I can't believe we didn't make more of Ben's reference.

Louis Armstrong – West end Blues (Vaughan takes people round a house)

The music here is used to highlight the contrast between Vaughan (that's his name!!!!) and Chris’ exploits. This is taken from Louis Armstrong’s later vocal period.

Kid Koala – Basin Street Blues (Chris as an estate agent)

Kid Koala may creep scarily close to being part of backpacker hip-hop, but who cares about that this track helps us to juxtapose Chris’ rather awful first attempt in a comedic fashion. Well done Ben!

Dandy Warhols – Shakin (Jal and Chris get it on)

I think it might be the law for TV makers to have to include a Dandy Warhols song at some point. You should check out their wikipedia page here to to see why.

Ben Says: A couple of months ago, I told Alex that he should check out ‘The Dandy Warhols’, he’d never heard of them and now they are his favourite band. Also, for the record, I told him to use Arcade Fire in ep 4 and you know how everyone likes ‘Come Pick Me Up’ by Ryan Adams at the end of ep3? Well that was my idea too.

David Sylvian and Ryuici Sakamoto – Forbidden Colours (Chris falling asleep and Cassie peeling an apple)

Ex-Japan member David Sylvian teamed up with legendary film composer Ryuichi Sakamoto to create this amazing track. It’s one of my favourite songs of the 80s and was only a matter of time before I got it in somewhere.

Moira Stewart – Top Ten Drinks (Chris is doing well montage)

Moira Stewart make joyous indie pop that was just perfect for this scene. You should definitely buy it from Distraction Records and this.

Ben Says: When Moira Stewart’s not reading the news or double dropping yokes like a mad one, she creates dance tracks like this in her bedroom. I think Alex met her in the chill-out room of The Egg in Kings Cross, so that’s how this ended up in Skins.

Bjork – I see who you are (Cassie speaks to Jal)

This is from Bjork’s massively underwhelming Volta album. I remember being really excited about it; guest spots from Timbaland, Chris Corsano, that dude from Lightning Bolt Brian Chippendale, Konono no. 1 and others basically read like a list of the coolest musicians in the world. Oh well this is one of the better tracks from the otherwise disappointing album.

Fat Segal – Red Lid and Agent Duck (Chris’ Party)

You know how I promised that Fat Segal would write us an indie pop anthem? Well he hasn’t been persuaded to do that yet but he is still churning out party bangers faster than we can keep up with him. you should check the drum roll he uses in one of the tracks, he was very proud of that.

Gogol Bordello – Occurance on Border (Chris nailing Angie)

The episode’s editor James ‘The Slasher’ Hughes has been fallingover himself trying to get Gogol Bordello’s brand of ‘Gypsy Punk’ into the show and he finally got round to it. It’s thankfully not like Dan ‘The Butcher’ Gethic’s obsession with Sigur Ros though.

The Rakes – All Night Disco Party ( Party before we go to the ad break)

An indie party anthem from a few years back. I can almost picture my friend Andy’s skinny limbs badly dancing to this as I type.

King Creosote – Fly by the seat of my pants (Everything’s going wrong montage)

I think Ben Schiffer must have been watching loads of Top Gun and Rocky films whilst he was writing this as I can’t recall another Skins episode so reliant on the classic technique of the montage. All I can say is Rocky 4 has my favourite montages, especially when Rocky's training in the snow, what does everyone else think? Fence Collective chief singer songwriter (not in the twatty Australian gap year student sense) takes us through with a rather amazing track.

Ben Says: This is the perfect soundtrack to the sight of Nic Hoult in Water Wings and a pair of Speedoes. Hopefully on the extras for series 2 you’ll see the deleted scene where Alex stood in for Nic and scared the children stiff with his one gigantic, deformed testicle.

Calexico – Untitled 2 (Tension music for Jal’s meeting with Chris)

I once saw Skins series one veterans A Hawk and A Hackaw support Calexico. A Hawk and A Hacksaw as always were amazing but Calexico weren’t great, they played loads of random alt-country stuff. However if they did more tracks like this I probably would have really liked the gig.

Charlie Parr - Track 4 - Chris gets up off the bench

Guts – The Living is easy – (End Credits Montage)

Guts are on the rather awesome Wax On label, which is run by George Evelyn of Nightmares on Wax fame. This was originally a George Gershwin song but is pretty amazing in its own right.

Ben Says: I’m going to be honest and leave the childish baiting of Alex for a moment and say I’m really pleased with the music that he chose for this episode. Chris is an ancient, strange soul so I think all the bluesy, fingerpicked guitar music suits his off-beat nature perfectly. And it’s all summed up in this absolutely brilliant ending track by Guts. If you don’t like this song, you probably don’t have a soul.