The Boy Least Likely To

while we were putting together our own b sides compilation i began thinking about all the other b sides by other groups that i love, so i thought i would make a list of my top ten favourite b sides ever.

10. the go-betweens - karen

the b side of lee remick. i didn't even know this was a b side until recently. i only knew the song because i used to have it on a tape that i got free with an issue of underground magazine when i was about eleven. it was the most amazing tape. it had alex chilton doing no sex on it and belle vue by miaow. i wish i still had that tape. sad the things we lose as we get older.

9. the loves - i know i'm going to heaven when i die

this was the b side to just like bobby d and i think it's just lovely. i wish i had an mp3 version of it so i could put it on my party pod. if only were were touring with someone who used to be in the loves.

8. the stone roses - mersey paradise

a lot of the stone roses b sides were actually good enough to be a sides too so they kind of ruin all the things i love b sides for, but anyway this is my favourite i think, but it was close between this and going down.

7. billy bragg - walk away renee (version)

this is a weird little song in which billy bragg plays an acoustic version of walk away renee by the left banke and speaks over the top of it. it's all about car parks and bus rides, and fun fairs and nose bleeds and it ends with the unforgettable lines "and then one day it happened. she cut her hair and i stopped loving her". perhaps a perfect b side. i never have understood what it means when someone puts the word "version" in brackets after a song title though.

6. sandie shaw - monsieur dupont

ah, my favourite sandie shaw song and it happens to be a b side too. i love the backing vocals that sound like they're being sung by mice.

5. dexy's midnight runners - soon

this was on the other side of the show me seven inch, and it's another song that's perfect for fitting on to the end of mixtapes. it's also the song i'd sing if i ever did an american idol audition, or i might do one more try by george michael. i don't expect either rendition would get me to hollywood, but at least i would have been true to myself. choosing which dexys b side should be on the list was almost impossible too. other ones i must mention are breakin down the walls of heartache off the geno seven inch, let's make this precious, the b side of jackie wilson said and reminisce part one.

4. the field mice - between hello and goodbye

this was on the other side of sarah forty four, september's not so far away. this is one of my favourite songs in the whole world, and we did a worse version of it for the b side to be gentle with me. one particularly exciting day a couple of years ago rob wratten sent us an email telling us how he'd been driving across california listening to the radio and nic harcourt had played our version, and he told us it had been a lovely surprise once he'd realised what it was. and that's the sort of thing that makes being in the boy least likely to so great. we can do rubbish cover versions of other people's songs and then they can write to us and tell us how much they enjoyed hearing them in unexpected places. still haven't heard anything from george michael though.

3. kenickie - lights out in a provincial town

i could have chosen ten b sides all by kenickie, but i thought that would be a bit pointless. so instead i spent the last week trying to decide which of their b sides was my favourite. it could have been girl’s best friend or skateboard song or their version of save your kisses for me or pretty much every other b side they did, but in the end i chose this one. it was the other side of punka when it was reissued, and because i'd already heard the a side one million times i ended up listening to this incessantly. i like the lyrics about needles on beaches and it makes me never want to go to prestatyn again either. if those are the right lyrics which they might not be. i think it’s the only song entirely written by pete gofton, but i might be wrong about that too, and i remember when i first heard it it kind of hinted at the way the next album was going to sound, and as everyone knows that album went on to be the greatest album ever recorded.

2. the mighty wah! - talking blues (the story of the blues part two)

this is really the second half of the a side, and it was on the twelve inch as one whole song, but on the seven inch it was a b side. so it still counts. the a side doesn’t sound complete to me without playing this afterwards. it makes me feel like i can take on the whole world when i hear it. the two halves together are the song i would choose if i could only have one song to listen to for the rest of my life, and any song that manages to quote raoul vaneigem and jack kerouac is always going to be amazing.

1. the smiths - please please please let me get what i want

when i wrote the other day about b sides being songs that weren't good enough to be a sides or included on albums i wasn't being rude about them. it's exactly because b sides are often weird and freaky little reject songs that i like them so much. it's what makes them so special. at one minute and fifty two seconds long this song is far too short to ever be an a side, but it's so small and sweet and simple that you wouldn't want it any other way. it's also perfect if you want to squeeze a song in at the end of one side of a mixtape. although the song i use most for that is girl's best friend by kenickie which is one minute and thirty two seconds long.

x

so. we made a video for a balloon on a broken string too. i remember it was very hot that day, and i had to get up so early in the morning that i shaved too close by mistake and now i don't have a beard in this video. 

A Balloon On A Broken String from The Boy Least Likely To on Vimeo.

so. we made a video for 'every goliath has its david'.



Every Goliath Has Its David from The Boy Least Likely To on Vimeo.

we made another one for 'a balloon on a broken string', but we'll put that up next week. something to look forward to i guess.

x

"we wanted to take the train to the airport, then we wanted to get on a plane and when we arrived we wanted to unpack the summer things and then we wanted to go for a bit of a stroll in the sun."

i was thinking about love and romance this morning, and i remembered this story from the beginning of the year, so i thought it might be nice to share it.

it is the story of two bold and spontaneous lovers leaving behind everything they know and following their dreams to elope in a faraway land.

on new year's eve six year old mika and his five year old sweetheart anna bell secretly packed their suitcases and set off from the german city of hanover to tie the knot under the heat of the african sun.

they decided not to tell their parents because they didn’t think they'd be gone for long, and then left their homes at dawn while their parents were still asleep. they took along mika's seven year old sister, anna lena, as a witness to the wedding.

wearing sunglasses and swimming armbands, and dragging a pink inflatable lilo and wheeling suitcases packed with summer clothes, cuddly toys and a few provisions, they walked a kilometre up the road, boarded a tram to hanover train station and got as far as the express train that would take them to the airport before a suspicious station guard alerted the police.

holger jureczko, a police spokesman, said "what struck us was that the little ones were completely on their own and that they had lots of swimming gear with them," and then went on to describe mika and anna bell as "sweethearts" who had "decided to get married in africa where it is warm, taking with them as a witness mika's sister. mika told the police that he instigated the plan, after having been inspired by a winter holiday with his family in italy.

to allay their disappointment at being caught, hanover police gave them a tour of the police headquarters. brilliant.

anyway, i just thought it was a nice story for this time of year.

i hope you have a happy valentines day

x

i risked taking the train into london this morning. i walked around the west end for a bit and nothing bad seemed to happen to me so i guess i should think myself lucky. i'm quite relieved to be back home again now. i still have quite a few hours to go though, and i've got a party to go to tonight. i don't think i’ll really be safe to relax until midnight.

i suppose if i think about it i am quite superstitious. i don't walk under ladders. i don't put umbrellas up indoors and i try to remember not to put my shoes on the table, especially new ones. i wish on birthday cake candles. i don't walk over three drains in a row, and if i do i have to walk backwards over them again to undo the bad luck. i freak out around mirrors for fear of breaking them. i broke one once when i was about ten, and i think it explains my whole experience of the education system until i went to college. i salute magpies but i never know about black cats, whether it's supposed to be good or bad luck if one crosses your path, so i don't worry about them too much. i don't use matches that have been struck unsuccessfully three times. if i see a penny i pick it up. i throw salt over my shoulder if i spill it. i touch wood whenever i need to. haha, i've never noticed how rude that sounds before. oh well, it is valentines day tomorrow. all in all, now that i've listed them all i think definitely i am superstitious.

weirdly though, i'm not triskaidekaphobic. i've never been that superstitious about the number thirteen. our studio is even number thirteen, and there are thirteen tracks on our new album. although i do apparently suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia, a fear of friday the thirteenth. that's a different thing altogether. and there's one in march and november this year as well. i don't usually leave the house on friday the thirteenth if i can help it, but i've got things to do that have to be done today. oh well. wish me luck.

just seven hours til i'm safe again. touch wood.

x

"I'm trying to balance on an upturned milk crate
as i fumble with my catapult
and my hands are trembling as i try to aim it
every goliath has its david."


it's stopped snowing now and everything has just turned slushy and brown. i hate watching snow melt. it's so depressing. it almost makes me wish it hadn't snowed at all. except i always get excited when it snows. i wonder if people who live in places that have snow all year round still get excited about snow. i suppose maybe not, because i live somewhere where it's often quite overcast and i'm not excited about clouds and light rain. but then snow is a lot more magical and you can make things out of it, but then again i don't suppose you'd want to build snowmen all year round and after a while you'd probably get used to everything being covered in snow. it would probably be more exciting when it melted, because people who live in places that have snow all year round probably forget what pavements and rooftops look like. i don't know, i just wish it snowed more often where i live because everything familiar disappears under it for a few days and it feels like being on holiday in my own village.

so, i should probably mention that we've put a new song up on our myspace page. pitchfork wrote a bit about it and put it up on there yesterday too, which was very kind of them. it's called every goliath has its david, and it's one side of our new single, which is coming out in a couple of weeks. we've made a video for it too and we'll try and post that up somewhere next week. it's a song about fighting, but then most of our songs are.

i hope you like it

x