I’ve loved The Wedding Present since hearing ‘Kennedy’ in an indie club in Southend in 1990. However, I’ve finally decided that David Gedge never bested ‘Anyone Can Make a Mistake’. It’s perfect, with stupidly fast strumming, plenty of archetypal Gedgeisms, and a signature extended outro with guitars that chime in different ways depending on your mood. Oh and it has Amelia Fletcher out of Heavenly.

Let’s give aliens the sound of Northern heartbreak.

The ‘Complete Motown Singles’ compilations were arranged by year. It was while going through Volume 8 that I first heard the 1968 single ‘Why Them, Why Me’ by Abdullah. You could argue it’s quite a meandering song, without any satisfying climax, but it’s certainly beautiful and definitely needs to be sent into space. Don’t you think he sounds a little like Nina Simone?

Carl Sagan and the rest of the Golden Record team chose three, yes three pieces by J.S. Bach. There were disagreements about this. With only 90 minutes to play with, why clog up finite space with music from just one composer? The counter argument, which won the day, was that it would prove an interesting thought experiment to include two or more pieces created by the same human brain. Plus as the records were sent space-wards without any kind of tracklist, who made the music was essentially an irrelevance. In the end, the Voyager Golden Record went with two pieces by Beethoven, and three by J.S. Bach.

I’m much more concerned that the aliens should have something to dance to. So instead I choose this instrumental by Apollo 100 based on Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’, and featuring Tom Parker on the keys.

I discovered Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson’s ‘Soulshake‘ while working near Record Collector magazine. I say ‘near’, because I was actually editor of Book Collector at the time, but wrote bits and bobs for my magazine’s better-looking, better-selling vinyl sister. When new reissue CDs or LPs came in for review, I could sometimes feed on the soul-funk scraps. It was during one of these feeding sessions that I discovered an LP named Soulshake. I liked the look of the cover and the moment I dropped the needle in the groove of the title track I knew it was the start of a long association with my ears. I also recommend the single ‘Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries‘.

‘Misalliance‘ is a melancholy song for Flanders and Swann. It’s the story of forbidden love between two climbing plants, and it sits right at the top of my GOLDEN PLAYLIST. It appears on both LP recordings of At the Drop of a Hat, but I prefer this one (Parlophone PCS 3001) from the final night of the West End run at the Fortune Theatre in May 1959, because the audience’s laughter falls in a more pleasing way. Aliens won’t know what these two guys are singing about, but I think it’s worth sending anyway, in the hope they figure it out in the end.