In 1994, I went to the Liverpool ABC cinema in Lime Street to kill a couple of hours I had spare. As I took my seat in the empty theatre, little did I know that I was about to be subjected to an amazing rollercoaster of a film. Pulp Fiction hit me like a train. To me, this was a new style of film, a new director to follow and a soundtrack that would fill that period of my life with music. So when Tarantino’s followup was the 1997 film, Jackie Brown, I was hoping that it too would renew the tarnished soundscape of my life.
By this time I was working long hours in Bootle so trips to the cinema seemed like a luxury reserved for films that had to be seen on the big screen like Star Wars. All other films, especially those which we were uncertain about, were relegated to the cheaper hire from the video shop. Despite being a video rental, Jackie Brown didn’t disappoint.
Quite often with music, it’s easy to hope that the blow away of the previous success will continue to fill one’s sails with uplifting wind and it’s sometimes the case that we disregard those works that follow as “not as good as the previous”. Take Air’s Moon Safari or Portishead’s Dummy for example, both are much more successful than their later releases because perhaps, they were seen as groundbreaking.  I think the same is true of film and that a person’s personal perception and appreciation will change depending on their tastes.
That said, the soundtrack to Jackie Brown is as vastly different to Pulp Fiction as a cake is to bread but still holds its own. A lot more soul and country compared to Pulp Fiction‘s surf guitar filled selection but still a really good selection of tracks and, like the film, at a totally different pace.
The soundtrack for the 1993 film In the Name of the Father about the Guildford pub bombings of 1974.
Ghost Box. The stable from where delights such as 
Back in the eighties and nineties, when he wasn’t that wrinkly dude off the talentless shows on a Saturday night, Pete Waterman was a successful record producer. Polluting the airwaves with hideous plastic pop.
[#579]Â 
Finally 
Whether it’s Garth and Wayne singing Bohemian Rhapsody in a car, Robert de Niro in Jackie Brown rocking away to a strip tease to the Supreme’s Baby Love or fish faced Julia Roberts poncing down a New York high street to Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman, this compilation has a selection of songs that everyone born in the last 50 years should be familiar with somehow or other.
A compilation of psychedelic music covering 1966 to 1970.
Another gothic compilation. This time with a sleezy kink feel to the songs. Or so it’s suggested by the albums title. I’ve been more aroused sat at the back of the 81 bus than the music in this 
Another tribute compilation album featuring artists nobody has heard of covering a band people have heard of.
Had I started this project at “G” back in 2012, at this point we would be at Gothic Compilation Vol 342. But rather than shed even more readership, I opted to weed out those compilations and reduced them to  the selection that follows.
Go is one of those films that tried to capture the zeitgeist of the innovation created by Tarrantino’s Pulp Fiction. Three entwined stories about young people involved in a drugs deal.
The soundtrack to Malcolm Maclaren’s Christmas film for Channel 4.
Compilations, it seems, are like buses. You wait for ages then two come along at once.
This is the soundtrack to the classic 1980s blockbusting movie Ghostbusters.
One of the more quirky “albums” in my collection is this compilation, a collection of recordings of the same song by a variety of artists.
I was never a fan of Tom Hank’s lumbering buffoon Forrest Gump. The film was a little too whimsical for my liking but I felt that the soundtrack was well researched and included a good few classic popular songs from the period of history in which the film is set.
A sampler compilation of a variety of European artists which I received for free when buying some forgettable obscure music during the end of my exploration of the European Darkfolk genre.
Stegzy's Music Project 
Later: Later Lounge & Serve Chilled 1 & 2[#660, 661, 662 & 663]
by stegzyIn the year 2000, the internet was fledgling and untrustworthy and magazines were still a thing. While wanting to attract the vast untapped market of the non-sex obsessed laid back single male twenty something professional demographic, some magazine publishers chucked buckets of cash at producing magazines aimed at them.
Yes, FHM was a thing but that was more laddish than most men felt comfortable with reading in public, with covers often boardering on the pornographic. Esquire was often too sophisticated – aimed at those confident in their presense and appearance. Empire was just about films and GQ had that metrosexual vibe that just didnt appeal to a lot of heteronormative types. Later bridged the gap – stylish, hip, with a cheeky undertone of implied sauce. It was the reading matter for gents who just wanted to stay in touch with what was cool in the world and how to portray that coolness without looking like a catalogue model or an overtly sculpted waxwork with clearly coded sexuality markers.
I loved Later. It appealed to me. I still have copies of every edition of the magazine mouldering in my loft along. It spoke to men like me and offered a guiding hand in the puzzling world of business, style and culture. It’s sad that the publication ended and more sad that nothing really replaced it. Sadly, it seems, people don’t read magazines the way they did preferring social media, websites, podcasts and Substacks instead
Perhaps the most prized possession from this time of my life along with the magazines themselves, are the free CDs that came with the publications. Two Serve Chilled volumes were released over the lifetime of the magazine, with two Later Lounge volumes.
The CDs were compilations of cool, hip music from across the ages, that would delight and provide the owner with that sense of “Hey I listen to cool hip quality music”. It was the kind of music you could pop on at a dinner party or perhaps after the night out at the club to impress that young lady you had brought back to the pad – stylishly decorated of course thanks to the guidance from the magazine .
Later: The Later Lounge Volume 1 [#660]
Later Lounge Volume 1 latched onto that late nineties/early noughties 60’s revival vibe heralded by the likes of Oceans Eleven, Austin Powers and the remastering of old Michael Caine films. Not a great hit with me, I was far too dirty old goth by this time, but there was some Herbie Hancock, who’s music had already passed my ears on yet another Compilation cassete/CD conversion, the erroneously named Seventies Shit.
If ever I wanted to out hipster Hipster Nick, I’d whack this on, put on a cravat and moan about “bloody beatniks” and now you too can pretend to be a lounge lizard by playing the entire playlist via the magic of Youtube below 🙂
Later: The Later Lounge Volume 2 [#661]
Later Lounge Volume 2 came some months later. I think possibly after Serve Chilled but definately after Later Lounge 1 and Serve Chilled 2. I think by this point Later, as a magazine, had become a little flaky. Not as stylish as it once was, perhaps the chaps in the office had been told there and then that the magazine’s days were numbered. Either way, I felt then that there wasn’t as much thought put into this particular compilation. However, with more mature ears, I can now appreciate fully what sort of vibe they were trying to create.
If you fancied pretending to be some 1970’s caberet club owner with your over priced cigars, chest hair and ladykiller white shoes – you know the kind of way you wouldn’t have dressed to impress in the year 2000 – driving through the rain soaked streets of a cosmopolitan and exotic city like say….Bradford (Detroit being too far away)…in your vinyl roof Ford Cortina Mk1 (1973 Oldsmobiles are too big for UK roads)….then this is the compilation for you.
Later: Serve Chilled Volume 1 [#662]
Serve Chilled Volume 1 became the soundtrack to the early noughties for me. I had multiple copies made to play on my car stereo to accompany long car journeys to and from Yorkshire and I also had it ripped to MP3 when I got my Creative Jukebox 2. I cannot politely express how much I loved this compilation and still do.
A soundtrack to every summer trip to Wales, Brighton, Yorkshire and beyond with Mrs Gnomepants v1.0 who, I hope, reads this and remembers the music as well as I do.
Later: Serve Chilled Volume 2 [#663]
Finally the December 2000 edition carried Volume 2 of the Serve Chilled compilations. Blissful audio earwashes to carry away the winter chills and return memories of warm summers in Ibiza. However I wasn’t an Ibiza kind of youth prefering more sedate trips to Wales over roudy lads weeks away getting STDs, drunk and regrettable tattoos so this just makes me think of driving through Snowdonia.
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1999 2000 Chill out compilations Memories Sleazecore Various Artists