Pat Nevin's indie disco!

Published 14:40 10/03/10

Pat Nevin always was a bit nippy, but the former Chelsea and Everton winger turned commentator and pundit will really have to be quick on his feet next Friday, March 19th.

After talking football on Kicking Off, his Radio Five Live Premier League preview show with Colin Murray and Perry Groves, Nevin and his CD collection will head to the King's Cross Social Club, where he's DJing at indie night Scared To Dance.

Glasgow-born Nevin's star rose alongside that of his home city's Postcard Records in the post-punk early 1980s, and once he'd signalled his approval of the label's bands Orange Juice and Josef K - plus music press darlings Joy Division and Echo And The Bunnymen - he became the nation's de facto footballer with decent music taste.

Pat was interviewed in the NME, of which he had to buy two copies each week "because the lads in the dressing room would mess about with one but I'd know I had the other one safe in my bag to read in the team hotel."

He became a friend and confidante of the late John Peel, Radio One's champion of the obscure, and after scoring a goal at Manchester City's Maine Road in 1984, in a Friday night win which virtually clinched promotion for Chelsea (video below), he admits to spending "the night on Piccadilly Station because after the match I went out to the Hacienda, which was a really unpopular club back then. There were about eight people there."

Adds Nevin: "Back then the typical footballer's music would be George Benson, the anththesis of the stuff I liked. But a dressing room is usually a cross-section of society and you'd be surprised by how many players have got very interesting and unusual taste."

Although probably not quite as unusual and interesting as these five tracks, which Nevin will be playing at Scared To Dance next Friday...

Camera Obscura - Swans

Pat says: "Tracyanne Campbell is the best songwriter on the planet, by some distance. They've done four albums, all fabulous. Just before he died, my great friend and hero John Peel and I used to talk about how massive they were going to be and I still think that will happen. It'll only be a while before they become really successful and I have to hate them."

Pink Industry - Don't Let Go

Pat says: "Pink Industry were led by Jayne Casey, who was in the Liverpool band Big In Japan, then Pink Military. I'll be playing the remix by Iain Broudie (who was also in Big In Japan, then the Lightning Seeds and wrote Three Lions with Skinner and Baddiel - ED). I'm playing this mainly because nobody will be able to find it! It's brilliant and really obscure!"

Belle & Sebastian - Another Sunny Day

Pat says: "They're the kings of indie pop. A wee while back I played seven-a-side with Stuart Murdoch from Belle & Sebastian in right midfield and Colin McIntyre from Mull Historical Society in left midfield. Both brilliant players who arguably could have made it professionally.

"Scottish music is having an amazing resurgence at the moment. When I was first playing you had the Postcard bands, the Jesus And Mary Chain, the Cocteau Twins. Now you've got Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura, a load of good other bands. I used to have this argument with Peely quite a lot - I would say that the corridor between Glasgow and Edinburgh had produced better music, per head, than anywhere else on the planet and he would of course argue for the corridor between Manchester and Liverpool."

Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes

Pat says: "It's very modern, very noisy, a bit different to some of the stuff I play. I hear a wee bit of the Mary Chain in there - the same balance of melody and noise."

The Fall - Blindness

Pat says: "Specifically, it has to be the Peel Session version, which is miles ahead of the one on the Fall Heads Roll album. I first saw The Fall in 1982, when they had the Hex Enduction Hour album out, and they keep on producing. They've always had so much going on under the noise, which is a theme of the stuff I tend to like.

"It's not a word I use often, but Mark E Smith is kind of a genius and a bit of a poet as well. He's been doing it so well for so many years, and so many people have tried to copy him."

(Editor's note: For those of you who prefer more stimulating visuals, here are the Fall doing the same song on a Jools Holland show from 2006. Look how amused MES' lovely wife Elena looks when he takes over on keyboards...)