Six Of The Best – Kris Needs

Six Of The Best is a semi-regular feature that pokes, prods and persuades your favourite bands, bards and barometers of hip opinion to tell us six of the best tracks they’ve ever heard. The tracks could be mainstream million-sellers or they could be obfuscatingly obscure, it doesn’t matter. The only criteria set is that, aye, they must be Six of the Best. Think of it like a mini, groovier version of Desert Island Discs…

Number 6 in a series:

Kris Needs is, amongst many other things, a jammy b’stard. He seemed to fall feet first into the first chaotic strains of punk rock filtering from across the Atlantic, rode the crest of the wave and survived with a headful of stories that would sound so far fetched if you didnt know he had actually been there, seen it and done it all. Twice. He’s also a fantastic music writer. Being one of the first UK writers on the scene, he found himself in the company of yer actual Ramones, Talking Heads and, perhaps most heart-stoppingly of all (for me at least), Blondie. In true Jim’ll Fix It style, if he wasn’t in the dressing room arranging set-lists for Blondie shows, he was being caught in compromising situations with la Harry herself.

He regularly dispatched writings from the trenches of the punk wars in the pages of Zig-Zag magazine, Pete Frame’s (he of Rocks Family Trees fame) slightly proggy publication that Needs transformed into the punk bible when he took charge of it in Year Zero itself (1977, if you need to ask). Writing about the music and the people who made it wasn’t enough for Kris though, and he went all out to live the same life as some of his famous subjects; dancing, dabbling and dicing with death like the best of them. If you can track it down (it’s currently out of print, I think) you can read all about the up(per)s ‘n down(er)s  in Kris’s life in his  excellent book Needs Must.

These days, Kris is perhaps best known as a DJ. He often warmed the crowd up before Primal Scream shows. In fact, it seemed that every time I saw Primal Scream between 191 and 1995, Kris was on the decks.  I was one of many in a boggle-eyed crowd who had my ears and mind blown open by a suitably terrific playlist one memorable Barrowlands gig,  when he mixed Prince (Gett Off! 23 positions in a one night stand!“) into George Clinton’s Atomic Dog (“Hey – that’s the Snoop track!”) into the Stones. And none o’ yer 60s too cool for school Stones or yer Suckin’ in the Seventies Stones at that. No! It was the none-more-80s Undercover Of The Night uber-disco Stones, with the phased ‘n flanged  Keith klang giving us the perfect accompaniment to our night out. I went back home that night and nicked my Dad’s LP, carefully slotting it into the vinyl collection like it had always been there (“….yeah, I’ve always liked Undercover, actually…“)

Kris is very much still DJing. Along with his wife he hosts a weekly show on online radio station Fnoob. Judging by last week’s playlist, he’s still every bit as eclectic too. He also compiles an assortment of achingly cool compilations, including 2 volumes of Dirty Water – The Birth of Punk Attitude – a good beginners guide to essential US garage rock. You’ll pay around £10 each for Volume 1 and Volume 2 from Amazon. Even more impressively, Kris is responsible for a compiling a historical six volumes of the New York music scene. Volume 1 of Watch The Closing Doors: A History of New York’s Musical Melting Pot is released in about a month’s time. As Kris says,

“I first became fascinated with New York City in the 60s through Dylan’s early albums and Phil Spector’s girl group sound spearheaded by the Ronettes, further stoked by anarcho-poets the Fugs and wild side narratives of the Velvet Underground. The 70s saw Latin hot sauce, before the whole CBGBs-fostered punk invasion and the parallel disco explosion plus, it has to be said, gritty TV programmes like Kojak adding fuel to a burning desire to experience New York’s evident buzz for myself. The early 80s erupted in a post-disco boogie wonderland, which couldn’t help spilling into post-punk’s wildly-disparate innovations and the hiphop explosion.”

Now that reads a wee bit like a manifesto for Plain Or Pan if you ask me! You can read more about it here. And I’m sure Kris would love it if you followed that same link and placed a pre-release order for it too. Whatchawaitinfor? Go! Go! Go! While you’re waiting for it to drop through your letterbox, why not indulge yourself with a small selection of Kris’s favourite tracks.

Here’s Kris’s Six Of The Best:

Velvet Underground – Sister Ray
Ultimate speed-thrash gonzo noise-fest.

Jimi Hendrix – Machine Gun
Still jawdroppingly untouchable; his greatest guitar solo.

Rolling Stones – Midnight Rambler
The live version – Jagger at his most satanic, Keith on fire.

The Clash – Train In Vain
Watched Mick sing this and London Calling was finished.

Primal Scream – Jailbird
Reminds me of the most uproariously brilliant year of my life.

Suicide – Dream Baby Dream
Possibly the most gorgeous love song of all time.

Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get Kris Needs’ here.

Bonus Tracks!

Talking of Primal Scream….and DJing….and Jailbird……here‘s Kris‘s own 10 and a half minute (!) Toxic Trio Stay Free mix of Jailbird. It sounds just like you’d expect it to.

Recorded at the Moonlight Club on April 2nd 1980, here‘s Joy Division doing their assault ‘n battery take on Sister Ray, at 7 and a half minutes it’s a mighty 10 minutes shorter than the Velvets’ original.

Coming next in this series –

Six Of the Best from Alan McGee.