NME EXCLUSIVES (2001)

OK not from the FreeEPs era but this one deserves a mention...so here's the pick of the bunch.

Another No One (Live) - Suede

Originally a B side to Suede Mk2's comeback single Trash, this is the only place you'll find this live version, recorded in Los Angeles  in May 1997. The original was also included on Suede's B side compilation Sci Fi Lullabies as well as the recent re-release of the album Coming Up as part of the band's reformation-celebrating reissue extravaganza.

Shotgun - The Charlatans

You can only be that well worn cliche - a 'survivor' - in the music world if you're prepared to move on and try something new but still have a sound you can call your own. This is why the likes of Manic Street Preachers, Primal Scream and indeed The Charlatans are still with us, Northern Uproar are not and why Cast's attempt at Blaxploitation funk failed dismally. Dismissed as Stone Roses copyists at their inception, Tim Burgess et al soon shed the burden of Brown and Baggy and ventured into classic rock territory, something they took a step further by embracing soul and funk sounds, complete with Burgess' new falsetto, on their seventh album Wonderland in 2001 whilst still retaining their indie rock groove. The new sound was most emphasised in this track omitted from the UK version and becoming what British fans loath the most - the Japanese bonus track. The only place to get this without forking out a small fortune was this compilation...until it became a bonus track on their next single A Man Needs To Be Told. The band have moved on since, further albums incorporating reggae, dub and New Order leanings...and they're something of a national indie institution.

Tides Of The Moon (Live) - Mercury Rev

A Mercury Rev Song On Compilation Not From Deserter's Songs Shocker! Mercury Rev took the Deserter's Songs template and took it to new lush, cinematic lengths for their next single All Is Dream. Some found it a bit too sweet but it remains another high watermark for the band. This live version of the album track found its way onto the Dark Is Rising single package. It was recorded live at the 2001 Reading Fesival

Party Hard (Live) - Pulp

Recorded live in Switzerland nearly exactly ten years ago in July 2001, this remains an exclusive 6 minute version of the This Is Hardcore album track and single from 1998. Although a band who refused to stand still musically, no-one could blame Pulp for calling it a day in 2002....huge success followed a torturous 13 year rise to fame, from there followed Jarvis Cocker's meltdown and the dark Hardcore album completely at odds with the more anthemic nature of their breakthrough material. Alienating the kids, their final, hugely undervalued album We Love Life was met with shrugs by the masses and the end was nigh. Nearly ten years later, they're back!  Party Hard reached #29 in 1998.

Fever (Live Acoustic) - Starsailor

This is the only place you'll find this take of Starsailor's top 20 debut single, recorded for Nemone in the Radio 1 Live Lounge. One of the many post-Britpop bands to be hyped and flounder with half a decade, Starsailor are currently on the dreaded "hiatus" after each of their albums has steadily fared worse than the previous one. Despite this, Wigan's second most successful band have had ten Top 40 hits in the UK.

Coming Second (Live) - Elbow

And another live exclusive for Elbow completists, of which there are many after five straight both commercially and critically acclaimed albums. This was featured on their first, Asleep In The Back and was released as the fourth single from the album as a AA side along with the then-new track also called Asleep In The Back which was added to later editions of the parent album. It charted at #19 and remains their joint highest charting single to date along with Fallen Angel and Grounds For Divorce. Oddly, despite being used in every television programme ever made in the last few years and spending 35 weeks in the UK Chart, their most famous record One Day Like This has never made it past #35.

The other tracks on this EP are: Woah! - So Solid Crew, Dreamy Days (Lotek  Bonanza Relick) - Roots Manuva, Rock N Roll Star (Live) - Oasis, Avril 14th - Aphex Twin, New Instrumental (Live) - The Music, Saigin Disco (Live) - ARE Weapons, Ride Wit' Us (Remix) - Kurupt, Shadows Fall - The Coral, Drop The Hate (Laid Remix) - Fatboy Slim, Right Here (Club Mix) - Stanton Warriors

NME: INDEPENDENT AND ALL STILL TAKING LIBERTIES (1998)

1. Dumb - Garbage

Garbage were founded by legendary Nirvana producer Butch Vig and had flame-haired ex Goodbye Mr Mackenzie siren Shirley Manson up front so they were never doomed to failure. This is taken from the band's second #album Version 2.0 which produced 5 top 20 hits.


2. Suffocate - Feeder


Starting off life as an acoustic ballad on Feeder's debut album, Polythene, Suffocate was re-recorded and given the full epic strings and all treatment for a stand alone single release in 1998. Despite the heavily commercial sound, the single only crept into the Top 40 at  #37, though had this been released a few years later would  have been in no doubt a Top 10 hit. The single version is included here and was also featured on their Singles compilation.


3. A.M. 180 - Grandaddy


The most well known track on media darlings' Grandaddy's Under The Western Freeway album. One of four singles released from the album, this peaked at #104 in the UK chart. Although they always remained a cult concern, their following album, The Sophtware Slump, would see them attain a degree of commercial success. AM 180 can also be heard in the film 28 Days Later.


4. Red Right Hand - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds


Of all Cave's many tracks spanning the last four decades, this is probably the one everyone knows having been used in a variety of films and television programmes - usually those involving bloody deaths and murder. The track was originally released on Cave's 1994 Top 10 album Let Love In and hit #68 on UK single release the same year.

5. The Dancer - Naomi

Despite supporting Saint Etienne, Beth Orton and, er, Hurricane #1 and coverage in the music weeklies, success wasn't to be for Naomi, who now performs under the name Naomi Phoenix. This was taken from her only album, Liquid.

6. Buddy - Snapper

Indie rock from New Zealand taken from the soundtrack of the film 'Topless Women Talk About Their Lives'. Snapper themselves released two albums in 1992 and 1996.

7. Tonite It Shows - Mercury Rev

Another appearance from Deserter's Songs - V2 rinsed the album dry with 4 single releases in the UK alone and sold on every other magazine covermount. Good job the album is a timeless classic...

8. Derwent River Star - The Paradise Motel

Experimental pop from Australia, this was taken from their second album Flight Paths. Despite disbanding at the turn of the millennium, the band recently reformed

9. Take Me Back - Babybird

Much misunderstood, on release of the ubiquitous You're Gorgeous in 1996, not many people knew that Stephen Jones had released five albums in the year leading up to their  breakthrough containing lo-fi, experimental alternative music. Jones' commercial reign continued for the next couple of years culminating in his 1998 release, There's Something Going On. However, Jones killed off the album by releasing the fiercely uncommercial Bad Old Man as its lead single; by the time two more radio friendly singles had been released, despite them both charting higher, momentum had been lost and Babybird never regained their mainstream popularity. Take Me Back is from that album which peaked at #28 in 1998.  Babybird continue and with royalty cheques pouring in from THAT single and for The F Word, now theme tune to the TV show of the same name, Jones won't care much about not selling many records anymore.

10. Hexagon Eye - Cable

Cable's 1997 single Freeze The Atlantic should have provided them with a big hit after its heavy usage on a Sprite commercial. Instead, the single stalled at #44 and the band eventually split after the release of their second album Sub-Lingual containing this track.

11. The Underdogs- Rialto

Formed from the ashes of Kinky Machine, Rialto were a poor man's Pulp who received considerable promotion and press attention around their eponymous album. On the verge of big things after the Top 40 success of singles Untouchable and Monday Morning 5:19, the record company politics delayed  the album and it stalled at #21 with no further single successes. More albums followed but it was a case of Sales, 519.

12. Search's End - The Wiseguys

Forever ingrained in the public's consciouness thanks to Ooh La La and Start The Commotion from various commercials and movies, Wiseguys also released an album, The Antidote, containing this piece of work.

13. Heavy Transit - Sound 5

Sound 5 were formed from two members of early 90s acid rave pop group Candy Flip who were most famous for their trippy version of Strawberry Fields Forever. Despite tremendous radio play for Sound 5's debut single, the Lightning Seeds-esque Ala Kaboo, the band never caught on and their album No Illicit Dancing sank without trace.

14. Attack - Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Closing track from the punk blues' stalwarts sixth album Acme, released at the height of their mid to late 90s commercial success.

15. The Rhyme - The Strike Boys

The Strike Boys are a German electronic duo who have released four albums, a bunch of 12"s and created a score of remixes over the last 15 years. This is from their debut album Selected Funks. Released a single on Wall Of Sound, The Rhyme reached #179 in the UK chart.

16. Number Cruncher (The Porridge Gun Mix) - The Egg

The one exclusive on this CD is this remix of a track originally available on The Egg's album Travelator. Always an underground electronic band, The Egg scored a surprise Top 3 hit in 2006 when the Tocadisco remix of their track Walking Away was mashed up with David Guetta's Love Don't Let Me Go.

17. Disco Dolly - Space

For a couple of years, Liverpool's Space were one of the UK's biggest bands. Their album Spiders had produced 4 big hits and their second album Tin Planet started off well with two more Top 10 singles and a spot in the Top 3. Then it all suddenly went very pear shaped; the album's popularity was very short lived and guitarist Jamie Murphy soon suffered a very public meltdown. A new single, Diary Of A Wimp,  in 2000, unexpectedly bombed when it only hit #48 and Gut Records refused to release what would have been their third album. Perhaps one of the biggest riches to rags stories in 90s indie, Space never recovered and one neglected album later in 2004, Space were no more. Still, their hits were big enough to warrant sufficient incoming royalties for a while yet...Disco Dolly was featured on the Tin Planet album and actually should have been released as the third single.

NME ANNUAL PROBE VOLUME 2 (1999)

1. Endlessly - Mercury Rev

Tracks and remixes from Deserter's Songs were scattered all over magazine covermounts in 1998/9. It didn't need such hype - Mercury Rev's switch from experimental rock to these lush soundscapes caught the imagination of the public all by itself.

2. Pictures Of Me - Elliott Smith

Smith's perfomance at the 1998 Oscars ceremony catapulted this tortured soul into the public domain giving his 1997 album Either/Or, featuring this track, a new lease of life. Smith was soon signed to Dreamworks and he became one of the biggest cult singer-songwriters in the world. His mysterious death/murder in 2003 has only added to his cult status.

3. Piglet - Arab Strap

Signed to Chemikal Underground, Arab Strap (aka Malcolm Middelton and Aiden Moffatt) were the masters of lo-fi post rock miserabilism at the arse end of the 90s until their split in 2006. Despite threatening to sour the Top 40 singles chart in 1998 with their double A side single Here We Go/Trippy, the single fell short by 8 places. The album, Philophobia, containing Piglet, just made it - at #37 - but they soon descended back into cultdom.

4. Somethin' Hot - The Afghan Whigs

Greg Dulli's soul-rock band Afghan Whigs had been plugging away for ten years when their 1998 album, named 1965, was on target to be 'the big one' after their previous album Black Love had won over the critics and new fans. Despite that album hitting The Top 40, 1965 barely scraped the Top 100 and the singles, of which this was one, disappeared without trace. The fall out of the disappointment of 1965's failure led Dulli to split the band up. Dulli has been active since, with Mark Lanegan in The Gutter Twins and his own The Twilight Singers.

5. Stevie (For Steven S) - Royal Trux

Americsan noise rock band active for 14 years between 1987 and 2001. This was featured on their 1998 album Accelerator.

6. I Never Want To See You Again - Quasi

More American alt-rock. Quasi have released 8 albums since 1996, this being from their fourth, Birds.

7. Won't You Be My Baby, Baby - Leila

Primed for big things at the end of the 90s but still an underground concern, Leila Arab has worked with Bjork and recorded for Rephlex, XL and Warp Records. This was taken from her debut 'Like Weather'.

8. A Galaxy Of Scars - Third Eye Foundation

A vehicle for dark folk musician Matt Elliott, several albums and remix albums were released under the Third Eye Foundation name until his first album under his own name in 2003. This is from the 1998 album 'You Guys Kill Me'.

9. Roygbiv - Boards Of Canada

The downtempo electronica of BoC's Music Has The Right To Children saw it become one of the huge critical successes of 1998. Acclaimed for their warm, atmospheric, analog soundscapes, the Scottish duo have only released three albums proper on Warp despite releasing a clutch of EPs, an impressive pre-Warp back catalogue and a number of remixes to their name.

10. Concrete Schoolyard - Jurassic 5

Critically acclaimed hip hop group J5 releaseds their eponymous album in 1998 containing this UK Top 40 hit. The group released three more albums before splitting in 2007.

11. Acid Rave (All The Girls Love An) - MDK

MDK's - or Murder Death Kill - Open Transport released in 1998 is an eclectic and heavy electronica album running for 72 minutes and containing 31 tracks. Not easy listening, other tracks include Die, Urgggh and Do You Want To Be Murdered?

12. The Dead Flag Blues (Edit) - Godspeed You Black Emperor!

Massively lauded Canadian experimentalists  actually called Godspeed You! Black Emperor - the exclamation mark used to be in the wrong place. F#A#∞ (or F Sharp A Sharp, Infinity) was originally released in 1997 as a limited edition vinyl only abum. This was then expanded and re-released to worldwide acclaim in 1998. More EPs and two more albums followed before the band split in 2003. They are now back together and are touring in 2011.

Q LIVE FROM GLASTONBURY (2007)

Breaking from tradition with this one as it exceeds the Year 2000 FreeEPs timeframe by a good seven years but there's some genuine rarities on here so here are the cherry picked collector's highlights:

Rescue - Echo & The Bunnymen (Glastonbury 1997)

1997 was the year Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant brought back the Echo & The Bunnymen name after original Bunnyman Les Pattinson joined the ranks of their first reunion band Electrafixion. The reactivated group immediately hit the Top 10 with another enduring classic, Nothing Lasts Forever and the album Evergreen. Rescue was the band's second single and first Top 75 hit, charting at #62 in 1980 and. E&TB, minus Pattinson, are still going strong today.

Down By The Water - PJ Harvey (Glastonbury 1995)

Harvey's 1995 album To Bring You My Love was her first as a fully fledged solo artist, becoming visually more arresting and sonically more adventurous. The unsettling Down By The Water with the now legendary 'Big Fish Little Fish' refrain was the first taster from the album and hit #38 in the chart.

Holes - Mercury Rev (Glastonbury 2002)

Nobody, let alone the band themselves, expected cult, psyechedelic oddballs Mercury Rev to become a major concern; but that they did with 1998's Deserter's Songs, its lush, orchestra-laden tunes soundtracking the last two years of the 1990s. Ironic really, considering Holes' parting shot: "Bands, those funny little plans, that never work quite right".

Young Offender - Pet Shop Boys (Glastonbury 2000)

For PSB completists, of which there are many, this FreeEP is essential as it's the only place to legitimately find this version of Young Offender. The track originally appeared on their 1993 album Very and subsequently remixed by Jam & Spoon; the Trip-O-Matic Fairytale Mix originally appeared on their 1994 single Liberation and included on the limited Pop Art Mix compilation in 2003. Always ready to embrace remixers' interpretations of their own work and utilise them, the Jam & Spoon remix forms the basis of PSB's own live version of Young Offender. In fact, this was the second time they showed their respect for Jam & Spoon - the single version of Very's final single, Yesterday When I Was Mad, also utilised elements of J&S' remix of the track.

The Box - Orbital (Glastonbury 1999)

What Glastonbury compilation would be complete without an appearance from the brother Hartnoll? This version of the #11 hit and In Sides track is also available on their own compilation Live At Glastonbury 1994-2004.

For reference, the other tracks on this CD are: Mr Brightside - The Killers (2005), Matinee - Franz Ferdinand (2004), Everyday I Love You Less And Less - Kaiser Chiefs (2005), A Thousand Trees - Stereophonics (2002), Helicopter - Bloc Party (2005), There Goes The Fear - Doves (2003), Wires - Athlete (2005), Somewhere Only We Know - Keane (2005), Get Thy Bearings - Zero 7 featuring Mozez (2004)

BSE BANGIN' SUMMER EXTRAVAGANZA: SELECT (1999)

1. Prologue To History - Manic Street Preachers

B-Side to the Manics' #1 single If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next and considered by some to be a lost classic. This also featured on the band's 2003 rarities compilation Lipstick Traces.

2. Organ Yn Dy Geg - Super Furry Animals

The first track on SFA's first EP, the spectacularly titled Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerchwryndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (In Space), this was omitted from their B-Side/rarities compilation Out Spaced and was a weclome addition to this freebie for completists who couldn't afford the pricey CD version of the EP.

3. Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp (Chemical Brothers Remix) -Mercury Rev

Relatively laid back remix from the Chems of the closing track on Mercury Rev's critically acclaimed Deserter's Songs album. This featured on the single for the track which peaked at #26.

4. Explode (Remixed) - The Cardigans

Alternative version of a track from the Gran Turismo album. This appeared on the Top 10 single Erase/Rewind.

5. Implement Yeah! - Suede

A homage to Mark E Smith, this was originally intended as a B side to the Filmstar single but subsequently dropped. A live version was released as a fan club only CD in 1997 but this studio version is an exclusive. The only time you'll ever hear Suede do The Fall.

6. She's So Strange - Travis

Taken from the mega-selling album The Man Who.

7. On Days Like Yours - Ben & Jason

This is from the London singer-songwriter duo's mini album Hello. They went their separate ways in 2003 - Ben stayed in the music industry whilst Jason went on to write for Viz

8. C'mon Cincinatti (M. Organs Village Mix) - Delakota

Short-lived indie-dance hybrid formed from the ashes of The Senseless Things. This remix is featured on the C'mon Cincinatti which hit #55 in 1998.

9. New Style - Orbital

Remix featured on the second CD single of Orbital's Top 20 single Style. The track was produced almost completely with a Stylophone hence the title. The original can be found on the Hartnoll brothers' album Middle Of Nowhere.

10. Jumbo (Jedi's Electro Dub Mix) - Underworld

Featured on the first CD single of the #21 single Jumbo, this is one of two mixes by Jedis. The glorious original is on the classic Beaucoup Fish.

11. Burn The Light - Cast

From Scousers' third under-achieving album Magic Hour.

12. Fame Thing - Ultrasound

This also appeared on NME's Spring Offensive compilation featured earlier so obviously this was the track used to lure people to buy their album Everything Picture. Didn't work.

13. (1903-70) - Idlewild

From the CD single to When I Argue I See Shapes, the band's commercial breakthrough. The song is a tribute to artist Mark Rothko, the title being his birth and death dates.

14. Madam, Your Carriage Awaits - Bentley Rhythm Ace

Probably hurrying the Pop Will Eat Itself reunion (see below), BRA's second album, For Your Ears Only, was released to little fanfare and bombed. This is an excerpt.

15. Lefturno - Scott 4

Named after Scott Walker's fourth album, Scott 4 were an indie country-rock band whose album Works Project met with huge critical acclaim in 1999. Commercial success eluded them, this single reaching #181, but they released two more independent albums in 2002 and 2005, the latter under the guise of the Scott 4 Free Rock Orchestra.

16. Raymond's Shop - Stereophonics

B-side to the early single More Life In A Tramp's Vest, released here presumably to show off their rare tracks after huge success with the Performance & Cocktails long player.

17. Paranoid People - 3 Colours Red

From their second album Revolt. Named after what most people did when they listened to 3CR probably.