Tiffany! On TV again! Yay!

*shuffles in shame*

I suppose one good thing about Christopher Eccelston leaving Doctor Who so early is that it wiped Tony Blair's appearance on a prime-time gameshow off the news. I can't believe that somebody who spends so little time in Parliament is prepared to demean the office of Prime Minister in that way. Or perhaps I can, and I just really don't want to believe.

Two songs today, courtesy of You Send It (found elsewhere on the Internet, BPI fans, and they'll expire within a week). The first is a radio-rip of the new Oasis song, Lyla.

Listen hard, because, at about fifteen seconds in, you can hear my heart break one more time. Almost as much as this week's death of Blue Beetle at the hands of Max Lord, the return of Jason Todd from the dead, and his killing of the Joker. Not a great week for joy in the comic and music worlds, then. For this is staggeringly poor; a turgid, sludgy mess that even the Stereophonics would be hesitant to release. Guitars almost completely obliterated by distortion, a horrific end to the chorus that stops the song dead in its tracks (but sadly, keeps going), and lifeless drumming. And, as it's a post-Morning Glory Oasis record, it sticks in about five unnecessary key changes, and lasts for two minutes after it has warn out its welcome and gone to the toilet in your sink. Never mind the "Paul is Dead Theory", who stole the Noel Gallagher of Live Forever, Listen Up, and The Masterplan, and replaced him with the pod person that remains?

Luckily, things are looking up. In a grime-type way, most surprisingly. Or possibly proving once again, that if a girl is singing, I'll probably like it. But this is wonderful in all the ways that the Oasis record isn't; playful, funny, and inventive. You can dance to it. You can sing along to it. You can giggle at the silly inclusion of door-chimes and playground rhymes. It's never boring. And thank goodness for that. Lady Sovereign, you're awesome…

Wow. This is an impressive article indeed. It starts off badly ('The 80s comeback is upon us! Oh, it's been around since 1998' bit in paragraphs two and three is particularly spectacular), and heads downhill fast as DeRogatis lists his Top Eight reasons why the 1980s sucked. Perhaps, in the spirit of things, we'll take things in order:

1. Over-production

   It'd be wrong to say that there weren't over-produced songs in the 1980s. But of course, you could say the same about any period in pop music; Paul McCartney famously hated Phil Spector's lavish work on Let It Be, and Britney Spears' Hit Me Baby One More Time is Production Gone Wild. It's definitely not exclusive to the 1980s. If you're looking for subtle production from twenty years ago, then how about Trevor Horn's production on ABC's All of My Heart, or New Order's The Perfect Kiss, or anything from Dexy's Don't Stand Me Down album?

   And besides, Born In The U.S.A. is fantastic, and the production sound is a big part of why it's great.

2. Bombast

   Er, okay. Not entirely sure what he's getting at here, but to be honest, I prefer reach-for-the-skies vocals as opposed to Current Indie Band Attempts To Copy Jeff Buckley's Vocals (Badly)…

3. The dearth of social conscience

   Oh, come on. Even granting that the writer is American, and so can be possibly forgiven for not knowing about things like Red Wedge, the campaigns against Clause 28 (reason number 2353 of why I will not vote Conservative), Heaven 17's Fascist Groove Thang, Simple Mind's Belfast Child, the Free Nelson Mandela concert, or the gender politics of the New Romantic movement, two words completely destroy DeRogatis' argument: Live Aid.

4. Sexism

   Because, of course, there was no sexism in the 1960s or 1970s. Oh no. And we've complete purged ourselves of it now. Ho ho.

5. The advent of digital synthesizers


6. The dominance of early drum machines

   New Order. The Art of Noise. Pet Shop Boys. Frankie Goes To Hollywood. I don't need to say much more, except that these are four acts that couldn't exist without 1980s technology, and all four changed pop for the better.

7. The fashions

   I have been known to wear mascara, so I recuse myself from this entry (except to say: Adam Ant! Kevin Rowland! Haircut 100! Okay, strike that last one).

8. MTV

   Yeah. Yeah. Image-over-substance. But at least they played videos back in the 1980s. Also, given that America has never had a unifed radio network like Britain, it was the first time that all of America's youth could experience something similar to Radio 1; a shared playground that spread British bands and hip-hop all over the nation. And for that, MTV can be forgiven for many sins.

There is good in all decades of pop music; a blanket dismissal of ten years simply because you didn't like a few songs is silly.

Part 1 of 12??? Somebody needs to upload that to a torrent server, and quickly…

The Windmill is tiny. It's just a pub really, A small bar section, a few tables, and a little stage. Probably about enough room for fifty people. A cozy venue.

The concert was organised by a London-based magazine, Unpeeled. This had something of an unfortunate side-effect: everybody seems to know each other. Now, going to a concert by yourself is bad enough. Seeing that practically everybody else knows each other - a whole new layer of soul-destruction. Also, the bar doesn't use Coca-Cola to mix vodka and coke, which I find unforgivable (especially when they have bottles RIGHT BEHIND THEM!).

But, after about ten minutes of wishing the ground would swallow me whole, I headed to the stage section, and waited for the bands to come out on stage.

First up, Strange Idols. They were the only English group of the evening, and sadly, they weren't up to much, sounding exactly like any random indie band from Sarah Records (i.e. quite twee, a bit jangly, lots of 'ooh oohs"). But they were pleasant enough, and didn't stay too long, so I can't complain too much.

Sweden then makes an appearance in the form of Speedmarket Avenue, proving that every indie band sounds better when a trumpet is involved. Actually, they weren't bad at all, and the female singer had a lot of fun with the two drunk guys that were in front of me (and to the side, when the alcohol proved too much for them).

Whenever I talk about Saturday Looks Good To Me, I always say that they're "thift store Motown". And I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all. After all, what is a thrift store but a chance to take old things, repackage them, combine them with other things, and make something new, exciting, and unique. That's how I feel about this band.

Fred Thomas, (the Kevin Rowland of the group) is wearing a Factory t-shirt. That's a quick way to my heart. Betty Barnes is dressed in a short yellow dress straight from the 1960s, with red leather go-go boots and a ladder in her tights (and that probably tells you how close I am to the band). They start playing Lift Me Up, and the first two rows of the audience go nuts. I find myself dancing with the girl singer of Speedmarket Avenue, which is a plus point for small gigs, I think (okay, so it was more alongside, but hey, let me have my moment). They mostly play songs from the recent two albums, which is fine by me, because I don't have the first yet. Meet Me By The Water is an transcendent live as it is on record, melting hearts in the first five rows even as the first chords begin to play, then launching into a storming version of Underwater Heart straight afterwards. I want them to play Ultimate Stars, and they do, complete with the Be My Baby drumbeat (when you have something as perfect as that, you might as well use it), and there's fun boy-girl interplay during The Girl's Distracted (eye-covering! Mock slaps!).

It's so much fun. The band plays really well, and they're loving the crowd's excited reactions to them. We get dance moves during Ulitmate Stars! Fred delivers an odd version of Dialtone, telling us that some people think the world will end in 2010 (silly Fred, everybody knows it's 2012), and alters the lyrics to celebrate being in Britain; there's something charming about the way American's say "pint", as if it's some quaint word from a Shakespeare play. They even swap singers with SpeedMarket Avenue at one point. It's a shindig. Or a hootenanny. I can never remember the difference.

It ends with a song that I don't know, but the band says that we should have "a dance party, because that's what we're here for". So we do. I've saved the pint of the other singer of SpeedMarket Avenue, am back dancing with them, and a girl is sweeping a XL-1 digital camera across the audience. Meanwhile, on stage, Betty is sticking her microphone into a saxophone and dancing around. It finally comes to an end; they apologise, so that they've had a wonderful night, perhaps the best of the tour, but there's a curfew and they have to stop. But the bar lets them have one more song: Until The World Stops Spinning, with more Be My Baby steals and more dancing from all concerned.

The embarrassing bit of the evening: they're coming off stage, and I go up to Fred. I first discovered this band two years ago, just before I went to Washington D.C. for a week. While I was away, they played Chapel Hill. And just before I went back this October, they played again. I had been in email contact with him as well; I bought a tour CD, and asked if they were touring Europe soon (that was a year ago). So I went up to him last night, introduced myself, and said how glad I was that they'd made it over. It came out more like "IwasinChapelHillandmissedyoutwicegoodtoseeyouinEurope!" He said that he was glad I finally got to see them, and didn't run away screaming from the mad fan in front of him. So hurrah!

EDIT: The last-but-one song was most likely Girl of Mine, which, having heard it again tonight, makes me realise why I walked down Brixton last night thinking that I had just seen the American equivalent of Dexy's Midnight Runners…

This is not the greatest love song of the 1980s. That title would have to go to Dexy's Midnight Runners, with either their cover of Jackie Wilson Says (I'm In Heaven When You Smile), or This Is What She's Like; two pitch-perfect love songs, one describing the concentrated thrill as a crush walks by, the other an eleven-minute epic that manages to capture an almost indescribable feeling, and does it using no words. And yet you can tell exactly what it means.

This is not the greatest love song of the 1980s, because I don't think New Order were ever capable of writing such a thing. To indulge in a little indulgence, Love Tore Them Apart. But, of course, to say that is to ignore Temptation, which perhaps is the greatest love song of the 1980s; "oh you've got green eyes / oh you've got blue eyes / oh you've got grey eyes" Eight minutes of Factory heaven and the memories of picking up yellow tapers five floors off the ground.

This is not the greatest love song of the 1980s. And that's fine, because, despite the title, it is not a love song. It is, instead, a song for mending a heart. Stitching back together something that no longer works. 12 inches (and it must be twelve; 7", in this case, is an edit too far, a course of antibiotics that you never finish, allowing the infection to grow back) of care.

It begins, with the forming of a beating heart, the drum. But something's wrong; it skips, it jumps. It needs help. Which is where the synth comes in, dancing in and out of the left and right channels, hopping like a butterfly, whispering sweet thoughts to those who will listen to its charms. The drums chime in appreciation, allowing the synth to settle, and play its tune for all to hear.

Every time I think of you
I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue
It's no problem of mine
But it's a problem I find
Living a life that I can't leave behind
But there's no sense in telling me
The wisdom of the fool won't set you free
But that's the way that it goes
And it's what nobody knows
well every day my confusion grows

Then there's the bridge. The synth just glides over the beat, gleaming in its perfect shimmer, before another synth swoops in to introduce the chorus.

Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I'm waiting for that final moment
You say the words that I can't say

And it's just perfect. How wonderful does the backing sound here? Why does every chord sound as if it's moulded to Sumner's voice? Then the drums and the synth play against each other to head back. Back to the verse. Back to the real world. Back to hurt and suffering and loss and why does it have to continue? The drums clatter, as if something's still not right.

I feel fine and I feel good
I'm feeling like I never should
Whenever I get this way
I just don't know what to say
Why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday
I'm not sure what this could mean
I don't think you're what you seem
I do admit to myself
That if I hurt someone else
Then I'll never see just what we're meant to be

Resuscitation, An extended synth and drum piece. Effects bounce all over the studio walls, simple ideas becoming complex harmonies. Building up, then stripping back down to drums, real mixed with the drum machine. But can you tell the difference? Glitches stop and start. Then, something magical happens.

At 5:32, the song gives up. It accepts failure. And with that, it is cured. With that, it can live.

The song comes to life. The synth sings for us. Primitive Fairlight technology, but the merging of man and technology is complete. The synth, female, of course, sings the chorus for us, heart cured. It then duets with Sumner for a final encore, before it opens the door the outside world.

Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I'm waiting for that final moment
You say the words that I can't say

Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I'm waiting for that final moment
You say the words that I can't say

This is not the greatest love song of the 1980s.

It is a 12" band-aid for the heart.

I've been thinking about Kenickie a lot this week, mainly due to a post on No Rock 'n' Roll Fun which has an article by Emmy-Kate Montrose (which includes the discovery that her real name is Emma Jackson), discussing the fun of being in a band that the record company didn't fully understand. I remember seeing them play at the end of 'Fully Booked' one Sunday, Lauren's face screaming "why are we here?!" as she mimed to "I Would Fix You". And then the Chris Moyles interview, which is the source of my long-held dislike for him. Marie and Emmy-Kate did their best, but he obviously didn't want them there, leading to a few pointed exchanges (and as a tenth-rate clone of Chris Evans, it's not hard to imagine who came off worse). I do remember enjoying most of their print interviews, though, especially the ones where Lauren proclaimed her love for Dennis Skinner, MP. I do wonder if it's more of a UK problem. While Sleater-Kinney, for example, have had their share of "ooh! look! girls playing guitars! how extraordinary!" interviews and articles, it doesn't seem to have affected them as much, perhaps because their record label wasn't trying to make them something they're not (it also helps that the US can support independent record labels; the UK indie scene flourished in the late 70s and early 80s, but died out as the 90s progressed).

Anyway, there's a bigger discussion to be had about Kenickie at a later point this year (after all, it is the tenth anniversary of Catsuit City!), but for now, I'll leave you with a track from one of their sadly-not-available-on-CD Mark Radcliffe sessions, a cover of The Pixies Letter To Memphis. And, in a stroke of luck, some kind soul has put it up on the Internet, so download and enjoy!

Has anybody been to a gig at The Windmill in Brixton before? I'm looking to go to the Saturday Looks Good To Me concert towards the end of February (yay cheap tickets!), and I'd be interested to know what time they close up, so I can get a bus back to Oxford, and then…spend seven hours there until the buses to Bicester start up again. There might be a flaw in this plan somewhere, you know.

(but still! I missed them twice in Chapel Hill, so must go!)

Well, I was going to point you the debut of New Order's new single, Krafty. But it seems that Radio 1 doesn't archive all of its shows anymore. So booooo to them.

Meanwhile, the BBC has apologised for using the Red Hand in Blue Peter.

Hopefully, I'll update sometime in the next few days when I find a copy of Krafty (and also assuming its any good!)

EDIT: Okay, Pete Tong played it tonight. Go here and have a listen (It should take you to straight to the song). It sounds like a subdued Regret to me. Not bad!

Flowers bought for Horse's (from the Happy Mondays) wedding.

I know exactly what you're thinking.

"Ian! What happened if a group of people suddenly burst in, explained that they were desperate and needed you to fill in an hour of music RIGHT NOW?"

Well. Okay. First, I'd check to see if anybody was hiding in my wardrobe. Having established that I'm not in a bad episode of Frasier, I'd pull out Ian's Super Dancing Mix That Doesn't Have Come On Eileen On It For Fear Of People Slapping Him!:

1. ABC — Show Me
2. Gwen Stefani — What You Waiting For (Jacques Lu Cont mix)
3. Section 25 — I Can't Afford To Let You Go
4. The Flirtations — Nothing But A Heartache
5. Annie — Heartbeat
6. The Go! Team — Bottle Rocket
7. Foster Sylvers — Misdemeanour
8. Jackson 5 — I Want You Back (Readymade Mix)
9. The Art of Noise — Close (To The Edit)
10. Rachel Stevens — Some Girls
11. Saint Etienne — The Way I Fell For You
12. Modern English — I'll Melt With You
13. The Distractions — Time Goes By So Slow
14. Electronic — Getting Away With It

There. Now you know! Sleep well, citizens!

Current obsession number one: British girl pop singers of the 1960s. I blame Saint Etienne, of course. Anyway, this is one of my favourites; a stinging indictment against the New Town construction of the 1960s; of houses, and churches, of the final destruction of pre-war Britain and the Empire, and the feeling of being trapped in such a town. As for the song, it sounds exactly like you'd expect a 1960s song to sound - a British version of the Spector wall of sound, with the spectre (ho-ho) of church bells echoing through the chorus. Plus one of the greatest uses of "etc" in history!

there's several hundred brand new houses
and lots of brand new primary schools
etc, etc, etc,etc
la-la-la-la-la (fade>

You don't get better social commentary than that, trust me.

Because I'm a sucker for a combination of 1920s cabaret, Victorian automata, white make-up, and stripey suspenders. Oh, and though I keep going on about it to anybody who'll listen, the bridge part is a lovely metapop sparkle. Go! Watch!

Sorry; the blog has been concentrating on music almost exclusively for the past month. And today's entry is no different. But maybe tomorrow, eh, readers?

Today, I'd just like to point out that my first two album reviews are up at Static Multimedia. I promise not to mention it every time a review goes online, but it's my first published music work. So yay!

These are the nominees for "Best British Song of the Past 25 Years", to be handed out at the Brit Awards later this year:

• Heroes - David Bowie
• We Are The Champions - Queen
• Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
• Night Fever - Bee Gees
• London Calling - The Clash
• Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
• That s Entertainment - The Jam
• I Don't Want To Talk About It - Rod Stewart
• Look of Love - ABC
• Golden Brown - The Stranglers
• True - Spandau Ballet
• Careless Whisper - George Michael
• Holding Back The Years - Simply Red
• Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
• Sacrifice - Elton John
• Unfinished Sympathy - Massive Attack
• Why - Annie Lennox
• Fields of Gold - Sting
• Kiss From A Rose - Seal
• Wonderwall - Oasis
• Angels - Robbie Williams
• Yellow - Coldplay
• Babylon - David Gray
• Leave Right Now - Will Young
• Dry Your Eyes - The Streets

Now, aside from the fact that the first four songs were released in 1977 or 1978, and as such don't actually fall within the last 25 years, the bizarre inclusion of Rod Stewart, and even, if we will, not carping on too much at the suggestion that Will Young has recorded a song that is better than the entire output of New Order, Human League, Soft Cell, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Pulp, Blur, PJ & Duncan, The Spice Girls, The Undertones, Take That, or Dexy's Midnight Runners, one question remains:

When was the last time you heard Why by Annie Lennox?

I mean, really. Wouldn't it have been better to stick Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) on instead? If you really wanted to bulk up the female part of the list, you could have always nominated Kenckie's Come One 2Nite. Well, I can dream, can't I?

There's too much music.

I don't know exactly what led me to this not-very-surprising thought; perhaps a comment on Matt's blog, or perhaps it was this weekend, when I came across a copy of the fantastically-ace Dresden Dolls album sitting on my hard drive, where it had sat for the past four months, unloved and unlistened. As the joy of Girl Anachronism and Coin-Operated Boy filled my ears, I realised: I can never hear everything. At the moment, I'm reacting violently against this cold fact, obtaining a copy of The Magic Numbers' Hymn For Her to work out the exact point in the song where the sun rises and you look into the girl's eyes and go hand-in-hand over the horizon, ready to have a brand-new adventure, which will inevitably involve kissing at some point. At the same time, I'm immersing myself in music that I've never really given much thought about; a set of CDs curated by Saint Etienne has got me all excited about British girl-pop bands of the 1960s, so after dancing in the dawn, I'm hearing tales of heartbreak; of first crushes; of intense jealously for the girl who lives on the corner who gets all the boys. It's just too much. I forget who I am, who I like. What happened to the boy who listened to The Evening Session every night and who thought that (What's The Story) Morning Glory? was the best album ever made? And should I worry that he's no longer around?

A lot of the blame has, like most things, to be placed on the Internet. I can still remember my first attempt to use the net for musical purposes. One day, back in 1998, I joined the Kenickie Mailing List, to keep up with my love for all things Laverne, Montrose and Santiago. Unfortunately, the day I joined was also the day they decided to split up. Even so, it was my first introduction to a music community, and, although I was a bit too quiet on the list, they were very welcoming, and I did get involved (there's a particularly awful piece of writing that I gave to a girl called Kate who was going to assemble a book to give to the band). I have only met one person from the Kenickie mailing list, but they were all a decent sort, if possibly a little obsessed with toast. They're also the first, but not the last, in a whole host of people that I could tell you many things about, but I don't actually know in any sense. I can make Kieron Gillen go into sniffles just by saying "Impactor", but I've never been in the same room with him. This makes me sad (although he probably doesn't feel quite the same way, I imagine).

Anyway, the Internet. At first, it turned out that it was a good way of getting in touch with people in Singapore that were willing to send you bootleg tapes of early Oasis recording sessions (laugh all you want, but I Can See The Sun is a song that deserved to be on an album or single somewhere), but then came Napster. Somewhere, in the background tcp/ip handshake codes of the Internet, you could hear the sound of terror. That was the Manchester Computing Centre, struggling to take the strain as I took full advantage of a direct connection to the Internet. I attempted to download songs by Godspeed You Black Emperor!, although I eventually gave up and bought Slow Riot For New Art Kanada in Wilmington's CDAlley (And even now, I try to be faithful to that chain, visiting every time I go back to Chapel Hill. The guy who runs the shop is very friendly, and always has a conversation for me when I'm there. Although I haven't had the heart to tell him I don't live there anymore). I downloaded this, I downloaded that. Mostly live tracks by Hole (yes, honestly). But it was useful; whenever somebody recommended a group, I would download a track or two, then the next week I would head off to Piccadilly Records, HMV, or Vinyl Exchange, and come out with the album (it's true; my university grant money didn't go on the usual vices of cigarettes and alcohol. It was lost in the haze of a 3-for-£20 sale in HMV). The best find during my time in Manchester? It would have to be (The Best of) New Order, which I found for £2.99 in the back of WH Smiths when it was still in St. Ann's Square.

I can still remember when I first played Sleater-Kinney's The Hot Rock; the wild sounds of Start Together irritating the occupants of A15 and A13 for many Saturday mornings, I imagine. It was a review in the NME that forced me to buy it; a completely over-the-top piece of writing by Steven Wells that made me think "if it's half as good as he says, it'll be the best thing I've listened to all year." It was twice as good. And I can also remember, in a fit of despair, having been mugged the day before, heading into HMV to buy Spiritualized's Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space, easily the most depressing album of 1997. As I'm writing this, I realise that the NME and the Mark Radcliffe show were probably the two main influences on what I listened to when I was at university. After all, I did send Mark & Lard a CD made up of Records of The Week one Christmas (still not sure why I felt the need to do it, seeing as they probably had copies of them already, but they seemed touched when they talked about it on the radio).

After university, I guess you could say I drifted somewhat. I was locked into what I had discovered at Manchester, and didn't really see the need to branch out into anything new. It wasn't until I went to Chapel Hill that I started looking around again. In the first semester, this was because I didn't have much else to do, sitting timid and alone in my room at night. So I discovered Saint Etienne and Dexy's Midnight Runners (beyond Come On Eileen, natch), and (the rest of) New Order; I found a music board on the Internet that talked about nothing but music. It was to be my downfall. I started ordering CDs by obscure bands on even more obscure record labels, eager to see if Saturday Looks Good To Me's Meet Me By The Water could possibly be as good as they said (it could, and it was), and catching up on the back catalogue of bands that I would have previously ignored (imagine, not hearing Forgotten or Don't Talk To Me About Love by Altered Images? Life would be devalued). I loved music; it kept me going. I danced and tidied up on November 1st 2002 to a combination of New Order's Temptation and the Dexy's version of Jackie Wilson Says, and my love of Ultrasound…heh…it was a very funny moment.

I got back home, still loving music. But a subtle change came over me; I realised I was not John Peel. Nor was I meant to be. I didn't have to run away from the eight-year-old in me that bought Smash Hits every week; Betty Boo was fantastic, and Beyonce's Crazy In Love was just as good. It was not that I had discovered Pop Music while dancing in remote parts of Chapel Hill; it was that I had let it back in.

So now, I'm obtaining pop albums, getting into Annie, Girls Aloud, and the rest, while still finding time for more indie-type bands like Stars, The Dresden Dolls, and The Concretes. But I'm still looking for more; going off to blogs and discovering about J-Pop and Bollywood and Afro-beat, and music made in Amsterdam cafés. I can't listen to all of it. Even though I always beat a path to it in service of a joke, I know nothing about Norwegian Death Metal (I just think it's funny that a country that gave us the word 'fjord' also gave us band who like to set themselves on fire or drive spikes through each other's heads), and I don't think I ever will.

I cannot listen to everything. But when I hear records like Coin-Operated Boy, songs that have moments that make me almost burst with joy, for the bridge that makes you glad to be alive in the here and now, so utterly perfect is the lyric "this bridge was written to make you feel smittener / with my sad picture of girl getting bitterer", only to be followed by a song that begins with "shoulda known / shoulda cared / should have hung around the kitchen in my underwear", I'm glad for the way for the way I approach the music. I will not become an expert, it seems. For what is the point? Somewhere, somebody can recite the FAC number for every Factory release. But I have heard The Distractions sing Time Goes By So Slow, and even if I don't know all of their history, it doesn't make "it falls like tears / of wasted years" any less heartbreaking.

Looking back over the post: there should have been more jokes about Norwegian Death Metal. I am sorry. The next ten tracks to be played on my music player are:

1. Bruce Springsteen — I'm On Fire
2. The Beat — Best Friend
3. Garbage — When I Grow Up
4. Cat Power — Maybe Not
5. The Temptations — Beauty Is Only Skin Deep
6. Life Without Buildings — Sorrow (I could write about the album for years. I'm mostly English. Eyes like lotus leaves. Not even like)
7. The Go! Team — The Ice Storm
8. Manic Street Preachers — Yes
9. Baker Street Philharmonic — The Last One
10. Blink-182 — I Miss You

and of course:

And, in case you were wondering, my top five films of 2004:

1. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
2. Before Sunset
3. The Incredibles
4. Main Hoon Na
5. Collateral

(There are a few films, like Sideways, Finding Neverland, and so on, that I never got around to seeing, unfortunately)

(an honourable mention for The Motorcycle Diaries, if only because I'll always remember watching it!)

And! Music-related things I'm interested in that are coming next year!

• The Johnny Boy album. I know it can't be as good as You Are The Generation…, but I have to believe.
• The Magic Numbers. Supposedly building up a following from spectacular live performances, they currently only have a 7" single out, Hymn For Her (it's very good), but a full album is coming next year
• New albums from Saint Etienne, New Order, The Flaming Lips, and *whisper* Oasis. Yes, yes, I know, but I still hold out hope they'll come good. Despite all the evidence to the contrary.

For those of you going to this concert on New Year's Eve:

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

(my rage is equal opportunity, you see…)

Everybody who is going to this concert on New Year's Eve:

GRRRRRRRR.

That is all.

Come on, did you really think it was going to be anything else? The best song of the year by a distance of approximately here from halfway to Promixa Centauri. This is a song that comes dressed up in heavy mascara and eyeshadow; that gives you a wink from across the dancefloor, and then rips your heart out. The work of Phil Spector is updated and shoved into the 853rd century, not just a Wall of Sound, but a whole World; fireworks and church bells ringing in a New Order.

And those lyrics. Bitterly cynical and British, blaming a generation of apathy and consumerism for the state of the world today, and yet. And yet. This is the song of romantics, of people who want to remake the world anew. They despair at the current state of affairs, and present Hearts of Ice to the world, but their real thoughts are given away in the first line:

"I just can't help believing, though believing sees me cursed"

I could talk about it all day. But it's Christmas Eve, so I'll spare you. Go to their website, watch the video, and get ready to buy the album when it comes out next year.

Annie is from Norway.

Annie is the reason why Pop in 2004 is better than 2003, and why 2005 is looking good already.

Annie knows that Kylie is just chewing gum.

Annie wanted to be on Top of The Pops, just like all pop stars.

Annie is a fool for love.

Annie's Anniemal is the Lexicon of Love of the decade.

Annie begins her album with the words

In the Jungle
It was true
Where all the anniemals could be
sssshhhhhhh!
lets start the record!

Annie ends her album with the heartbreaking My Best Friend. Steal a copy from HMV.

Annie is A.N.N.I.E. — Artificial Networked Neohuman Intended for Exploration.

Annie Needs No Irritating Explanations.

Considering their first album was an instrumental, it was something of a surprise to hear Electrelane bursting with language on The Power Out. The album features songs in French, German and Spanish, but the most powerful track is The Valleys, a hymn delivered by the band with what sounds like a Welsh gospel choir.

It really sounds like a valley. You can envision the small coal mining towns and the vast green spaces, sounds echoing to infinity and back. It's been cropping up on my playlist since I got hold of the prerelease late last year, so it has had some pretty impressive staying power.

Tomorrow's update might be a bit late, as I'm heading to London for a taping of an E4 TV show…

Because no rap song this year comes close to having a lyric like:

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

(and hurrah for The Neptunes, masters of the beat. as well)

A glorious mess, combining half-remembered Sundays dreading the start of Ski Sunday on BBC2 with the style and sass of a New York playground. I've read interviews with the founder member of The Go! Team; he's apparently unhappy with how American Thunder, Lightning, Strike sounds. To which I say: bobbins. Part of what makes this record so great is the unexpected mix of different sounds. Unlike, say, Lemon Jelly, who are quite content to stay noodling in their little Oliver Postgate world, The Go! Team rise above simple nostalgia, creating something new and exciting from battered old C90 cassettes.

I fell in love with this record at precisely thirty-eight seconds after it started. The gradual buildup at the start threatens to give way to a traditional rock ballad, but, at the last second, it turns away and instead heads down the path less travelled; walking on a trail already mapped out by Disco Inferno, but worth further exploration.

As I said last time I talked about this song, it's the way the vocals are hidden beneath the melody that really attracts me to the bulk of the song, how you get snippets of vocals coming through before they get lost in the mix again. The feeling of gazing off into a sunset on a warm evening. Nice thoughts as the temperature goes Arctic.

Shut up. These are the best two pop songs produced by a UK act this year. Infused with a New Pop sensibility (the two tribes reference is obviously between the sexes, but also a Frankie Goes To Hollywood name-check), dripping in metafiction overtones (and yes, I almost always fall for that), and backed with jaunty electropop tunes. How could they fail?

In an attempt to claw back some credibility, I must admit that I have no idea what any member of Girls Aloud looks like, let alone their names. Along with Toxic and a song yet to come, we have proof positive that Pop Is Not Dead. It was only kidding.

Vilify me in the comments.

There it sits, lurking in the middle of Universal Audio. It starts with a sad piano. Twenty seconds later, a female voice starts to sing "faces familiar full of regret / I hated this place / And all who came from it". Escape from the city, trying to get away from the scum of Notting Hill, before realising you're just the same as them. The city-virus has infected you, and no matter how far you run, you will always hear the beckoning call of the traffic and look wistfully at the streetlamps spelling out words in languages yet to be discovered.

This is that song. A random walk through the city, coming to terms with your fate, and yes, even embracing it. You can disappear and reappear in amongst the back streets and the end of days, melting into the night with a smile on your face.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=718&e=10&u=/ap/20041210/ap_on_re_us/soldier_s_pay

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041213/ap_on_re_us/soldiers_scrounging

http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=440

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11697828%255E1702,00.html

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041215/ap_on_re_us/marine_columbine

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6712828/

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1266247.htm?fp_news_stor

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/national/16stress.html?oref=login&oref=login

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041215/325/f8mqi.html

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/15/war_funding_request_may_hit_100_billion/

(I know what I said, but I changed my mind)

Firstly, a moment of silence for our former Home Secretary.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I'm sorry, I'm just in a very good mood right now. Who says that you don't get what you want at Christmas? And what a tune to soundtrack this evening of rejoicing; indie geeks channelling Daft Punk and getting their dancing shoes on. Vocoders! Washing-machine effects! It's about going to a city of stars and having a big party! Awesome!

It can be heard: here. Now, go and listen, and dance.

Every music poll needs a token Swedish entry. Give a warm welcome to The Concretes, then, an indie-pop band from Sweden (naturally. Because if they were from Finland, it would mess things up some what). Say Something New does the standard trick of stealing the drum beat from Be My Baby (the poor thing — it's like one of those petrol stations that you hear about; one that gets robbed one day, then the robbers come back the next day, and the next), and combines it with odd, slightly stilted female vocals. Shut up. It's nice, and indie-sounding, and I realise that this probably isn't causing you to rush to Kazaa or HMV to check them out, but every once in a while, it's good to curl up with something that reminds you of five years ago, heading down to Vinyl Exchange and Piccadilly Records on a Thursday morning to get the week's new singles (yes, while most people's grant money went on cigarettes and alcohol, mine went on CDs and concert tickets).

Call And Response's new album got lost behind the back of the huge sofa that is my hard drive. I'm currently listening to Silent Chill, and it's rather good in a Stereolab-type fashion. Please accept my apologies, o slightly-obscure American band, who provided a song that soundtracked November 2002 for me!

I did warn you it was going to get worse. I feel slightly ashamed that I like this, considering I've hated almost everything else that Blink-182 have released, but I do. I am a sucker for the gentle guitar strumming and piano bits at the start, the "we're a rock band and we're doing a ballad, so we're going to need an industrial vat of strings over here!" backing, and I fell for the way the second verse appears to be from a different song entirely; the first was all hopeful, but the next opens with the cry of "Where are you?" and then goes on to talk gibberish about spiders. Like all good pop songs, it knows not to hang around. You get two verses, then it's straight into the breakdown and fade-out. None of this dallying around, coughing and spluttering while waiting for the string section to pack up and go home (Mr. Gallagher, I'm looking in your direction).

Yikes, admitting to liking a Blink-182 song. 2004 has been an odd year…

This is just crazy. High-pitched Japanese female vocals thrown in a blender with bits and pieces of half-remembered TV show themes. Like an injection of corn syrup; the sugar high lasts for hours.

Now, I liked the original version of this, with its Thin Lizzy leanings (or outright theft, if you're going to be less charitable). But this remix by The Avalanches (when, oh when are we going to get a new album?) turns it into something very different; the guitars are jettisoned, instead an African band and choir provide the backing. And it's fabulous; the percussion provides an odd beat, while the backing vocals complement the song well, despite being as removed from a traditional B&S record as Norwegian Death Metal. Not much more to say, really, only that it's a song that you'd never expect them to release, but I'm glad they did…

Yes, I know; it's been sitting on my hard drive for over a year now. But, while it may have first come out last year, there's no denying that 2004 was the year that the Scissor Sisters became Pop's Most Likely To. Who could possibly forget the performance at Glastonbury, with the follow-up interview where Jake left almost nothing to the imagination? Or T in The Park, where he conducted proceedings in nothing but a precarious-looking blanket? The session on Radio 1 where they took the harsh angular sound of Take Me Out and turned it into a lounge lizard classic? How about when they unleashed glitterdammerung upon Brighton? Or the moment, at 3:15am, where you realise that this song would sound fantastic when mixed in Justin Timberlake's Rock Your Body?

They are Fun, they are Sparkly, and hopefully, they will scare the pants off a bit section of Middle America when they appear on Saturday Night Live tomorrow. Even if most of their songs do seem to have a melancholy air about them; I haven't managed to work out just what Laura is going on about, but it seems to involve a hairdresser at some point. I don't really care, though. It's bouncy and brings back Michael Jackson's alternative take on "c'mon". Let a thousand rainbows bloom. Or something.

Steel drums! A boy singing so high you could be forgiven it was a girl! Yes, it's the traditional Indie Guitar group for this year. Not a great year for indie bands, considering that the supposed new discovery was a bunch of guys doing a rather insipid Jeff Buckley impression (and Coldplay have already filled that spot, thank you very much). This, though, is quite nice; lots of the usual swirling guitars, but the aforementioned steel drums give Wanderlust a ethereal feeling, especially when combined with the vocals. It's not a song that is going to change the world, but great for a wistful four minutes.

When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.

God, that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend.
Smiled and said "Yes, I think we've met before"
In that instant it started to pour.

Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Prunchard Plain
All the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name.

This scar is a flak on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in.
Now you're outside me, you see all the beauty
Repent all your sin.

It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard; I'll send you the news
From the house down the road
From real love.

Live through this, and you won't look back
Live through this, and you won't look back
Live through this, and you won't look back.

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted; I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you.
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.

I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.

There are two schools of thought about this single: you either like the first half or the second. If you like the first half, then you smell and people point at you in the street. If you like the second half, then congratulations! You are a right-thinking person who welcomes the return of New Wave in all its arty, angular beauty.

Actually, I quite like both parts; the sadness of "I know I won't be leaving here with you" that ends the first section, how the song just stops and stomps while the band change direction, and of course the glitter-tinged dancing of the second half. Plus! Black shirts! White ties! I'm a sucker for a band with a well-designed image, I'm afraid…

You have to feel sorry for the BBC sometimes; they seem to have bad luck in choosing charity records. Most of the time, they're just dull and inoffensive (e.g. the latest Girls Aloud effort), but every so often, they manage to choose rather inappropriate songs. The Children In Need cover of Perfect Day, with all its heroin allusions, is the classic example, but this year's Sport Relief single has to be the most unlikely charity record ever.

You have to wonder whether anybody listened past the glorious sparkly-sheened Gary Glitter stomp and paid attention to the lyrics. At all. It's the story of a girl desperate for fame, and the things she's willing to do to achieve her dreams (Let's just say that "the champagne makes it taste so much better" is probably the dirtiest line you'll have heard in a Top 40 hit this year, and leave it at that, shall we?). And it doesn't seem to be going well, by the time the song reaches the breakdown:

Hey, Stop You made a promise to make me a star You made a promise I'll get to the top You made a promise to make me a star You made a promise I'll get to the top

There's so much going on in this record; throw-away lines like "he likes to put his own records on", the electro-house backing track, the expert use of "hey!" as backing vocals, and the nagging question of whether Stevens realises that, from a certain point-of-view, the song refers to her, whether during her Simon Fuller days (I've heard stories), or teaming up with hot producer Richard X for this track. Mind you, I wouldn't care if it the song wasn't the classic that it surely is. So congratulations to the BBC for encouraging children to sing about the joys of the casting couch…

"Did you miss me?"

Of course we did. Although we are a little worried about you. Calm down a bit; have a cup of tea now and again. Ignore the idiots who think you're the Yoko Ono of their generation. Look after yourself, and keep coming back every couple of years with another album. Even if half of it turns out to be rubbish, a meta-rock-pop half-stroke of genius like Mono makes it all worthwhile…

A little tired and, to tell the truth, annoyed at the person who just sent almost 150 spam comments to the blog, so this entry will be fairly short.

Because of a very stupid lawsuit (a man called Handsome Dick Manitoba sued for trademark infringement), Manitoba is now known as Caribou. But I'm still calling him Manitoba, because it was a dumb lawsuit. Anyway, this is from his Up In Flames album, and is a splendid piece of twee-dance. Okay, now I have to beat myself with hammers for using the term 'twee-dance'. If you'll excuse me…

*THWACK* *THWACK*

Included here because it's a fun tale of a business man desperately trying to get home, with a sweet twist at the end that makes you go "awwww".

And yes, backing vocals by Lauren Laverne do go a long way in making this song one of my favourites from this year. Shut up. For 2005, I suggest we kidnap her from the Orange Chart Show or whatever it's called, and lock her away in a studio until she records a full-length album.

I do not have a Problem.

The worst thing about falling in love with a band is when they release the next album. What you want is to get the feeling you got from hearing that first album again; you want more of the same. Sadly, this just isn't possible. Even if most bands didn't tend to move in new directions with each album, you can never get that feeling back again. It might be better, it might be worse, but it can never be the same as that initial listen. A good example of this is Saturday Looks Good To Me's Every Night. I know that, technically, it's a better album than All Your Summer Songs. but it will never occupy the same place in my heart as their 2003 album. It was a soundtrack for the last few months at UNC; Meet Me By The Water accompanied me to Washnington D.C, Ultimate Stars followed my wanderings around the Pit at 15:20 each weekday, and Last Hour was playing in my head when people started driving away and when I had to say goodbye to eveyone. As much as I like Every Night, it can never be quite as special.

Still, Lift Me Up, my favourite track from their new album, is a wonderful reminder of why I fell for them in the first place. Motown by way of a thrift-store; layers of hand-claps, guitar, horns, and a marvellous organ that sounds as if it has been locked away in a garage for thirty years. And you know I'm a sucker for female singers (quick game for everybody to play at home! Guess how many records in this round-up feature female vocals?), especially ones who sing on indie-pop records. It's bouncy, fun, and features both the threat of shooting down helicopters and the use of the word 'taxidermist'. Quite splendid.

Can't Get You Out Of My Head's evil older sister; That was all about the gentle "na-na-na-na-na" which seemed so innocent when your first heard it, not realising that you'd find yourself repeating it in mixed company over two years later. Toxic is all about the screeching violins, almost atonal, jamming into your head like knives — repellent but yet somehow utterly compelling (almost, if you will, toxic. ahahahaha). Britney's voice is battered, abused, and twisted through a host of different vocal effects, coming out of the speaker in a 441kHz burst of energy; something now, a song that represents what the 21st century can offer. Pop didn't eat itself after all; it decided to feast on the avant-garde instead. Who knew that Cathy Dennis would end up being one of the greatest pop writers of her generation?

Oh, and you can dance to it. Badly, of course, but it's very danceable…

The idea is this: for each day of Advent, I reveal a song that I consider one of the best of the year, and go on about it for ages. Or at least a paragraph. You get to join in by insulting my taste in music, or complimenting it (but I'm guessing more of the former!). If you want, you can offer alternatives as well. It's going to be fun!

No, really, it is.

I've compiled the list (in no particular order), and I have to warn you now: if you were expecting a lot of rap or hip-hop, you're going to be disappointed. Eminem and Usher just missed the top 25…

Following on from last week's announcement of record music sales (still, the BPI insists that suing its customers will make for even better business in the future), and today's release of what is likely to be the biggest single since Candle In The Wind, the BBC has today axed Top of The Pops. Oh, sure, the announcement says that it's a move, but it's going to a new day, a smaller channel, and will undergo a reformatting. After forty years, TOTP is dead.

Top of The Pops began in 1964, broadcasting from a converted church in Manchester. It was commissioned for just six weeks, but was so popular that its run was extended indefinitely. The format was simple; bands would come into the studios, perform their latest record, and the finale of the show was a countdown of the Top 10, before the UK's number one single was played to finish the show. It was presented, by four DJs: Alan Freeman, Pete Murray, David Jacobs, and of course the always-scary Jimmy Saville. In 1967, production moved to London, and the presenting cast was swelled by the DJs of the newly-formed Radio 1 station.

There are many things that TOTP is famous for; the ridiculousness of Pan's People, Nirvana's performance of Smells Like Teen Spirit, Jockey Wilson as the background to the Dexy's performance of Jackie Wilson Says, the KLF appearing as monks with rhino horns attached to their heads, Oasis's woeful attempts at miming, and of course, some classic presenter moments such as these from the John Peel / Kid Jensen era:

Well that was the best song I've heard since...well, tea time. Mind you, I had a late tea.

And that was Bon Jovi - "You Give Music A Bad Name".

In case you're wondering who this funny old bloke is, I'm the one who comes on Radio 1 late at night and plays records made by sulky Belgian art students in basements dying of TB.

And who can forget the fateful day when Mark and Lard were allowed to show their faces on television before the watershed? Children still scream in terror.

In the 1990s, the show began to lose its way somewhat; a misguided attempt to instill a sense of 'real music' saw a ban of mimed performances, which meant that many acts would not appear on the programme (happily, this state of affairs didn't last too long, by 1995 miming was allowed again). The rise of satellite TV its multiple music video channels probably didn't help either. It was moved from its comfortable slot of Thursdays at 7:00pm to Friday at 7:30pm, where it found itself competing against Coronation Street, the most popular TV show in the country. So it wasn't too surprising to see audience figures slide down to 3 million by the start of this year. Also, I think I've talked about it before, but one of the best parts of TOTP was watching it on Thursday and then talking about it with all your friends at school on Friday morning. I certainly remember having fights over The Bangles and Belinda Carlisle on a Friday breaktime.

The BBC spent the past few years tinkering with the format, adding interviews, news, and competitions (but, not, say, moving it to a quieter night), even completely relaunching the show earlier in 2004. But nothing seemed to work. And now it's gone. These things aren't meant to last forever, naturally. But let's have a moment of silence for the death of Top Of The Pops, a few weeks away from the 1000th Number One of the British chart.

Gwen Stefani's latest single, What You Waiting For sounds like a clock to me; a carefully constructed mechanism where everything has been carefully slotted into place to make a bouncy Europop song. This Jacques Lu Cont remix is what happens when the mechanism begins to wind down; the quartz crystal jumps to a different beat than the Universal Time of the original. Large swathes of Electronic's Getting Away With It seem to be pasted over the melody, which is no bad thing either.

This is from her new album as well, and sounds as New Order-y as something very New Order indeed. Not just because Bernard supplies backing vocals, or the sound of the synths that sound as if they've come straight from the Haçienda; even the lyrics sound familiar, with the oft-repeating Barney trick of rhyming 'away' with 'stay' (No-one ever said he was the best lyricist in the world). Oh, and Peter Hook plays the bass. So if you are in any doubt about whether I'm writing a load of rubbish (er… — Ed.), go to 2:40, and listen as the vocals drop away to reveal Hook beneath, if you haven't noticed it already. Oooh, there's a new New Order album out next year. Can you tell I'm excited?

These two songs come from the same night, the always-entertaining WXYC 80s Dance at the Cat's Cradle. Feather boas, legwarmers, and glitter abounded, but here's two songs that I'll remember from back then:

Despite it being over twenty years old, I hadn't heard this until the night itself. Modern English were originally a punk band known as The Lepers, but exposure to Joy Division led to their first album under their new name (1981's Mesh & Lace) becoming a downbeat post-punk gloom piece. Happily for all concerned, they had all bought themselves a big ice-cream by the time 1982 came around, so After The Snow wasn't quite so goth. They still couldn't find any success in the UK, but I'll Melt With You became a huge hit on American radio, even ending up as part of the soundtrack to Valley Girl. The single stalled just outside the American Top 40, but the infectious hooks and glorious "mmm mmm mmm" finale meant that it stayed inside the hearts and minds of young Americans everywhere. So, hurrah for America for loving a song which we didn't! That doesn't entirely let you off the hook for Clay Aiken, but it's a start.

(the version linked above is the 7" remix, which is what I think they actually played at the Cradle, whereas I only have the album version at the moment. The only difference seems to be louder synths on the single)

Strictly speaking, I didn't hear this at the dance, as it's a new song. But! I did hear it on the night itself, when Laura and I were heading out to Wal-Mart at 3am to buy white trainers. What? Anyway, this song came on the radio, and we sat in the parking lot cracking up as it got funnier and funnier. A withering spoken-word attack on the Western World as it is in 2004. Remember the great Obesity Epidemic of 2004, my friends…

I suggested that I might post some songs while I was in Chapel Hill. Naturally, that didn't happen, being caught up in events and everything, but if you will forgive me for being a little late — two songs from the past three weeks!

The new discovery of the holiday; this is Collin and Larsy's current theme song, and a fine one it is too. I'm probably guilty of overusing the word 'haunting', but this is a rather unsettling song, as Kazu Makino comes across as Asami from Takashi Miike's Audition; at any time, only five seconds away from throwing you into a sack and chopping out your tongue. And remember:

Okay, this is cheating a little, because I didn't hear the song until today;. But! On my travels around Chapel Hill's rather excellent selection of record shops, I did come across this new greatest hits collection ('this is their first compilation'? heh, they're almost as bad as New Order for reissuing their songs), and wondered what this song was, so I think it counts. Fascination is from their as-yet-untitled new album, out sometime in 2005, and I'd say it's a throwback to the times of Good Humor. Wry electro-pop dancing in the streets of London, then.

Other songs from Chapel Hill to follow shortly (i.e. Ian decides to get down and drop some fresh cuts on yo-(At this point, we have sedated the author for his own good, as his gyrations to Snoop & the Neptunes' new song were, quite frankly, embarrassing — Ed.))

It was a long, fraught battle, but Fran Healy of Travis stepped over the corpses of Rachel Stevens, Keane, and the Sugababes to lay claim to the "woo" part of Band Aid 20: the song that makes you realise that Sonia and Bother Beyond weren't that bad after all…

This will probably be the lost song posted for a while, unless I come across something really good while I'm in Chapel Hill and Florida (I do have a list of albums to buy, so this is quite likely). Anyway, a song from a while back, bought from Piccadilly Records in the Northern Quarter of Manchester, although its origin lies in the American South:

Final debate tomorrow, remember!

In celebration of the rumour that the BPI is about to go the way of the RIAA and start suing its own customers for fun and profit, here's an old mash-up of a great Saint Etienne track and a speech given at the 2002 Grammy Awards.

like the Twin Towers / falling down like April Showers

Nicky. Nicky. Please. For the love of God and The Holy Bible, please stop. It's getting embarrassing.

This Friday's selections are just the right thing for when an Autumn day is drawing to a close.

Epic 45 are a UK band, but this song comes recommended via Laura, Chapel Hill and the WXYC radio station (they don't have a UK record deal at the moment). It has one of those guitar parts; gentle and disarming, introspective and star-gazing. The vocals are hidden behind multiple echo effects, a technique stolen from Disco Inferno (but if you're going to steal, you might as well go after the best). It's a song that is trying to express itself, but can't, hiding behind its tricks, offering brief glimpses of its real state of mind.

Another old Factory record. This one is much closer to the traditional Factory sound; not surprising considering that this was produced by Bemusic, or New Order under a pen name. A stripped-down dance tune, with a very simple synth melody (which sounds fantastic, but it's only about five notes), a spaced-out drum beat, and the ever-helpful advice of "once you've left the floor, there ain't no beat no more". It's perfect listening for 1am…

This week! A Scandinavian special!

Two songs, one from Sweden, the other from Norway, both harking back to the magic discontinuity of 1982-3, when New Pop was in ascendence. The Knife is helped by the stilted voice and a jaunty Cyndi Lauper-esque backing track, snarling rage and disappointment bubbling under the surface. Annie, on the other hand, is silky smooth, channelling Trevor Horn and ABC to come up with The Look of Love (Part 23). Annoyingly, Annie's new album, Anniemal (yes, I know. Take it from me — what I heard almost makes up for the criminal pun), keeps on being delayed; it was supposed to be released in the UK this week, but it's now looking likely for early 2005. See if you can get hold of a pre-release copy from the usual file-sharing networks.

Oh, and finally, because nobody demanded it!

There's a new Nirvana box set coming out, featuring over fifty unreleased recordings, rarities, and b-sides. Plus a DVD featuring performances by the band. No word yet as to whether the box will, in fact, be shaped like a heart (I'm so sorry).

If you have iTunes, , this link will take you to a three-minute preview of the new R.E.M. album. I'm reserving judgement until I hear the whole thing.

Nashville finally gets back at rap and hip-hop.

New Order work on Gwen Stefani's new album, and are almost finished mixing the follow-up to 2001's Get Ready.

Problems with iTunes Japan.

For everybody in America: the new Saturday Looks Good To Me album is out now. I have an advance copy and I assure that it's great. Buy it!

Imagine, if you will, that Snoopy and the rest of the cast of Peanuts were moved from their idyllic home of Anytown, USA, and dropped into an 1970s New York Project. Sally and Linus playing double-dutch next to a fire-hydrant, Charlie Brown and Lucy in a game of basketball, and Schroeder's piano replaced by a set of turntables in the park. And the music produced would sound like The Go! Team, a UK band that borrows from Glen Miller as much as Grandmaster Flash.

How to explain? A song jam-packed with joy and excitement, mixing a bubble-gum rap with a homage to children's TV themes that brings to mind the Children's Foundation Films of the 1970s; all oversaturated film stock and riding on the sidewalks (hey, it is New York), mowing past girls playing hopscotch and four squares on an endless summer day. It's the childhood we secretly wished for while watching rain pounding on the windows on a cold August afternoon, wrapped up in three minutes and forty-two seconds of glee. Listen and smile.

The Go! Team's debut album, Thunder, Lightning, Strike is out next week, drawing influences from Bollywood, 1940s swing, and rap. By the end of Junior Kickstart, you will be bouncing around the room…

One day, some mad soul is going to write a complete history of Factory Records (and no, it probably won't be me — I know just enough about the catalogue to realise that anybody to tries to do such a thing will go insane. At which point, they'll be the perfect candidate to work on the history of ZTT Records), and they will discover all sorts of wonderful bands that weren't New Order or Joy Division. Forgotten names such as Section 25, Minny Pops, Stockholm Monsters, and Crispy Ambulance (yes, really). And hopefully, the author will have a soft spot for FAC 12.

As ever, a Peter Saville cover is a hallmark of quality. FAC 12: The Distractions / Time Goes By So Slow may be the greatest 7" single ever released by Factory (Blue Monday was 12" only, remember, and the 7" of Temptation is a pale shadow of the glory of the full-length version). The Distractions were rather out of place in late-70s Manchester; bands borrowing from decades of pop weren't all that welcome in a post-punk world. Joy Division, however, loved them, and The Distractions often found themselves playing support for Factory's biggest band. They provided a contrast to JD's intensity; although their lyrics were no less melancholy, the OMD-like synths and perky guitar gave their songs an upbeat new-wave feel.

Time Goes By So Slow is a tale of lost love touring around the centre of Manchester. And it contains one of the greatest lines in Factory Pop: "But Albert just won't do / I don't need him but you" (referring to Manchester's Albert Square). Plus! It's not often a song discusses petrification! Oh, and how the guitars drop out at 2:00, leaving the song wallowing in lonely synths and the saddest drumbeat you've ever heard, right before the final repeat of the chorus. It's just fantastic.

Doubtless, you'll now be itching to hear this song (unless you're Tom, who heard it last week), so I'll list all the outlets where you can currently purchase a copy:

Factory were never all that reliable about keeping their catalogue in print, and the failure of the company compounded matters somewhat. This song made the jump to CD in 1990 on a compilation called Palatine: The Factory Story/1979-1990, but again, that has been out-of-print for many years now. So, short of tracking down the original 7" and a record player, you can't hear this wonderful record. Unless you know where to look.

I can still remember the first time I heard Le Tigre's Hot Topic. Lauren Laverne was filling in on the Evening Session, and playing live tracks from Hole's glorious 1999 Glastonbury set; I was working on something, perhaps trying to rewrite a grammar so it could be parsed by a LALR(1) parser (it's best not to care, really), when it started playing. I stopped, enthralled by a song listing feministic icons to a bubblegum beat. As I heard the first words "Hot Topic is the way that we rhyme", I knew that I had to add it to my collection. A quick trip to Piccadilly Records later, and I was listening to their eponymous first album. It was everything you could have hoped for; arch-political garage pop that lurched from assaulting Rudy Giuliani's career (My My Metrocard) to the joys of being in a band (Let's Run). Fabulous.

The second album, Feminist Sweepstakes wasn't as good as the first, but still had rather enjoyable songs, in particular LT Tour Theme and Fake French. Three years later, they have signed to Universal Records and are about to release a new album, This Island. This is the new single:

If you put your ears to the speakers and listen closely, you can hear my heart breaking in the first thirty seconds. It's a protest record. About the Iraq war. Well, for a start, it's about two years late to catch that bandwagon. But I can forgive that, truly I can. What I can't forgive is three minutes and thirty seconds of unimaginative sloganeering, a backing track that appears to have died thirty years ago, being played through the use of zombie magic, and the complete lack of, well, any semblance of a song.

That's Le Tigre, making a constitutional monarchy sound more attractive with every passing second…

(to be completely fair, I am hearing that some of the new songs they've been playing live are fantastic. Which makes bobbins like this all the more puzzling.)

I know I've talked about it before, but they brought it up again, so some more thoughts, this time concerning the BPI's latest press release.

Firstly, this is curious:

The British record industry – which invests more in new British musical talent than any other

Now I suppose what they mean here is that they invest in music talent more than another country's industry does in their talent. At least, that's what I hope they mean, because otherwise you do have to wonder about what they're going on about (damn those French labels for not investing in Glaswegian bands!).

I've already mentioned about how the BPI has woken up to this fact rather late (they didn't care when Jimmy Young's songs went public domain, did they?), but the important point, one that is obvious but that I 've never really thought about before, is this: on January 1st 2005, all BMG copies of Elvis Presley's That's All Right will not spontaneously combust. BMG can sell the song for the rest of time, and all others recorded before 31st December 1954. The only thing that will change is that now other people will also be able to sell copies of the same songs. Some will be the usual large labels, but new, smaller labels might spring up, using this cheap product to build up capital so they can invest money back into the industry, helping to reinvigorate today's rather bleak independent label situation. There will be competition. But hey, isn't that what capitalism is all about? There's so many ways to add value to a public domain product, as shown by the continued strong sales for books like Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre, despite the fact that anybody can download them for free. This can be done in many ways, from the simple idea of reducing the price, to including special features with the public domain release (liner notes, extra tracks, videos, etc) thus making the item more attractive, even if it does have a higher price.

Raising the spectre of The Beatles's work going into the public domain is a cheap shot, but — well, all I can say is that I can't wait. The Beatles's back catalogue is a reflection of all that's wrong with the British music industry at the moment; high-priced, awfully-packaged, and woefully produced. Take Abbey Road — the last record made by the band! So much that could be said! And what do you get? A flimsy piece of paper with the titles and copyright information on it. Tremendous. Apart from Let It Bleed…Naked and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, all of the original albums haven't changed since their original 1987 pressing, a pressing well-known to be inferior to the vinyl recordings. So, I can't wait for a Beatles fan to make his or her own version of Please Please Me, creating a superior pressing and writing obsessive liner notes that are infused with a blinding love of I Saw Her Standing There and Love Me Do.

I'm looking forward to posting That's All Right here on January 1st 2005. An important piece of music history will be released freely into our culture, and hopefully more will follow as the years go by.

(By the way, if the BPI is reading — I have permission, from the band themselves, to spread this song far and wide. So that's what I'm doing here.)

Somewhere, what sounds like an out-of-tune version of the lambada plays. Then the song begins: "Win your complaints / Slam the doors and break all the plates" It's an explosion of Phil Spector and Motown tricks; a group of indie kids break into the derelict remains of Detroit, discover the Funk Brothers' old equipment and immediately set to work breaking a million hearts in mono. This is an unmixed, low bit-rate, unfinished song, and it's still one of the best things I've heard all year; a transcendent piece of pop. And this week, of all weeks, I needed to know that music isn't just there to cause me grief.

Thanks for everybody's emails and comments. Some have requested further information. I don't have much, but here you go:

This site is hosted in the US, but the music files were stored on my Linux server at home to save space.

I've checked the logs for both this site and my home machine. There's no access that corresponds with the time that the BPI gave. But there is a spike of activity on both servers from an IP address of 212.111.42.11 around that hour. The user-agent string is "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT; DigExt)". which doesn't seem special in any way, and I can't find any referral data, so I have no clue how they got here. The address doesn't resolve, but SideBit's Locator places it in the UK. The address is now blocked at my firewall, but that's just me being petty rather than a serious attempt at blocking their access.

The moral of the story seems to be: if you're running a music blog, make sure you don't host the files in the UK.

This is a thing of quiet beauty:

That is all.

A special music day today. The first time I've ever posted something of mine! Yes, today, I have been using Garageband to compose this astounding cover of John Cage's 4'33". Prepare to be amazed!

ME! — 4'33"

And, a nice, Oliver Postgate-style jaunt through space, I think, for the second song of the day. Have a good Friday everyone…

Lemon Jelly — Spacewalk

Oh, and the Paul Morley night was great fun!

Just the one song this week. I first heard this a month ago, but missed the DJ announcing who it was. Thankfully, everyone's favourite WXYC DJ, Susie, played it this Wednesday, so I was able to track it down at last.

(how many songs use US state abbreviations, I wonder?)

okay, having just come across this, I feel that I have to post it as well. It's not everyday you find a Gregorian chant version of Heaven Is A Place On Earth, after all…

Not exactly what you want to hear whilst queuing up for a concert. Our fears of being all alone in the venue were quickly overcome by the fear of the drunken blad guy wandering down the street, yelling at us about "South Sex" and AIDS and holding a pint glass in a menacing manner. And Oxford is supposed to be a cultured town…

Luckily, there was something of a run on the tickets, or else the Zodiac grabbed passers-by and gave them free entry, because the hall was fairly well-packed by the time Stellastarr* came on. Support came from Audiothief, a local band from Banbury, and The Subways (who won a chance to appear on the New Band Stage at Glastonbury this year); nothing earth-shattering, but a pleasant enough diversion for two hours.

Stellastarr** then came on, playing most of their album plus a few new songs. I still have trouble defining exactly what they sound like; today I'm going with "Aztec Camera as filtered through 90s grunge projected on a cinema screen", which makes no sense to me, so don't worry if that sounds like gibberish. Anyway, they were good; lots of yelping, a topless drummer wearing Elton John-style glasses (and a black tape star across his right nipple), and lots of rock star poses. I have no idea why they thought it would be a good idea to come to Oxford, but I'm glad they did. A big boo to the girl who stole all the set lists, though. Especially since she stole the Stellastarr* one from under the nose from two girls who had positioned themselves in just the right spot to get it at the end of the set, only to be denied when the other girl swooped in at the end, while everybody else was clapping. If you see someone in green fishnet tights, socks, and handbag, ask her to share next time…

* There should be a moratorium placed on American bands using punctuation marks other than apostrophes. It's all fun and games to begin with, but then you end up with a band like !!!, who are just asking to be taken round back and beaten senseless by members of Compulsive Copy Editors Anonymous. With big, stompy hobnail boots, obviously.

Click on the video link (the second one down)

To celebrate today's release of Fahrenheit 9/11, today's music is all about protest.

Because those no-down dirty liberals are debasing America's morals.

A slightly re-mixed version of an advert currently showing here:

The Pogues — Birmingham Six

A spokesman for the IBA said the song, from the album 'If I Should Fall From Grace With God' , contains "lyrics alleging that some convicted terrorists are not guilty and that Irish people in general are at a disadvantage in British courts of law. "We think these allegations might support, solicit or invite support for an organisation provided by the Home Secretary's notice.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the British Government imposed a broadcast ban preventing the voices of terrorists or people who might represent them from being broadcast on radio or TV. The media got around this ban by hiring voice artists to lip-sync to interviews (if that sounds ridiculous, well it was. I still don't understand why the Government thought that we'd lend the terrorists support if we could hear their voices), but some songs, like this one, fell afoul of the Ban. Incidentally, the convicted terrorists mentioned above were all found not guilty after it was revealed that police fabricated the evidence that led to their convictions.

Bob Dylan — Masters of War

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

Spam is annoying, but I do get a nostalgic glow when I receive a spam email from the Kenickie Yahoo/eGroups mailing list. As you can imagine, we don't have too much to talk about anymore, so the only time I'm reminded of its existence is when somebody sends a message advertising time machines/Russian mail order brides/the possibility of a closed universe. I suppose I should unsubscribe, but it's very low-traffic, and there's always the possibility that it'll spark back into its toast-talking ways one day…

I do have a song for the weekend, but I'll be putting it up tomorrow along with some comments about the new Mark Radcliffe show. I would do it tonight, but I'm feeling a little run-down tonight. Back tomorrow!

This is probably of more interest to those in the Oxford area (although all are welcome if you're willing to fly 4,000 miles for a concert. Now who would do something as silly as that, though?): is anybody interested in seeing Stellastarr* at the Oxford Zodiac at the end of June (the 29th?

The iTunes Music Store has made it across the Atlantic! Unfortunately, discussions with the independent labels have broken down, so you can buy Franz Ferdinand tracks if you have a US credit/debit card, but not if you only have a UK billing address.

I suppose that we have to be thankful that Apple didn't do a 99¢ — 99p conversion when setting prices, but the UK store is still the most expensive of the four. A handy comparison, converting the three different price points into US dollars:

Germany and France both have higher rates of VAT than we do, so I'm at a loss to explain why we have to pay more than anybody else. Mind you, it's a lot cheaper than spending £3 for a ringtone…

In other news, I've finally got around to making the photolog site look like this one, fixing a few other things along the way. The photos now have their own dedicated index page, so you can see all the pictures at once, if you desire. It still looks a little plain, but I think it'll do for now. It looks okay at my end, but due to NTL's transparent proxy nonsense, I can't tell how it looks on the site, so if you see anything that seems weird, let me know.

"Come On England" may in fact be the worst pop travesty of the past thirty years. I have graphs and figures to back me up. How can you possibly get rid of a line like "moved a million hearts in mono"?

Also, if anybody wants to teach Steven Gerrard which direction to kick a football before the next England match, I'm sure people would be most grateful…

The Tindersticks — Can We Start Again?

I woke up this morning feeling the need to listen to Mansun. Not sure why, really. They're not a band I've followed over the years; Richard gave me a copy of 'Attack of The Grey Lantern' for my birthday back in 1997, and I liked it a lot, but I was never impressed with any of their other albums, which seemed a little overblown to my taste.

They also have the dubious distinction of being the first band I saw live at Manchester. Long queues and people dressed in army surplus jackets outside the Academy. They looked so cool and scary to a person who had only been in Manchester for a few weeks and hadn't managed to find anybody who wanted to go with him to a concert. This was a long-running story in Manchester — I went to a lot of concerts, but had problems finding people with similar tastes. There was one concert in the first year that I could have gone with someone, but the band got rather popular in the week between me finding this out and actually going to the ticket office. I then spent another week kicking myself in the head, but I learnt my lesson and, after that, I got to the ticket office well in advance of a concert (I was secretly proud when, for my final Manchester concert, seeing Black Box Recorder, I got ticket 00001. However, the concert was only two weeks away, and I was a little worried that I'd be the only one turning up).

Anyway, Mansun. Still hate Taxloss with a burning passion. But this, this is good:

Mansun — Mansun's Only Love Song

It's Novelty Song Day today. Okay, I may have made that up, I just needed an excuse to put this song up:

Scala On The Rocks — Creep

Because every song sounds better when it's covered by choir-girls, especially when it has swearing for juvenile giggles. Although you do run the risk of ending up with a song that sounds like St. Winifred's School Choir singing "Grandma" (for all Americans - it's exactly as sickly-sweet as it sounds). However, this cover manages to sound rather menacing in parts, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Roy Vedas — Fragments of Life (Latin Version)

Ah, the vocoder. Who knew that one day it would breathe new life into Cher's career? We can thank Homer Dudley for that, although it also helped to encrypt phone calls between FDR and Churchill during WWII, so I suppose "Believe" was an acceptable sacrifice for the defeat of Nazi Germany. Mostly. Anyway, from 1998! The world of yesteryear and the world of tomorrow combine to create a sonic masterpiece that troubled the chart for all of one week!

Next week! Obscure tracks from an album that never existed, trapped in a world it never made!

I think my computer issues are just about over now (to recap: blown motherboard, new motherboard with incompatible memory slots, and a fatal fall to my iBook), so perhaps the weblog will be updated with a little more regularity from now on. No promises, though.

Anyway, here's this week's music selection. This time, it's AN ALL—EIGHTIES—EXTRAVAGANZA!!

Prefab Sprout — Appetite

I'm not quite sure how to explain why I like this. I suspect it has something to do with the female vocal that's keyed to the synthesiser. Or the line "If you steal - be Robin Hood". Or maybe it's this: "Wishes she could call him heartache / But it's not a boy's name." Download it and see what you think.

The Railway Children — Somewhere South

More jingly-jangly pop that owes more than a little to Orange Juice and Aztec Camera, with a dash of New Order thrown in for good measure (the group started out on Factory Records, the record label of Choice, after all).

Current thread at a music board I frequent:

Lauren Laverne smiled at me, which pretty much made my year

"The Internet fans are the scariest." — Lauren Laverne

The UK album chart for last week:

1. Call Off The Search — Katie Melua
2. Feels Like Home — Norah Jones
3. The Jukebox Years — Daniel O'Donnell
4. Twentysomething — Jamie Cullum
5. Just For You — Lionel Richie -Mercury
6. Only You — Harry Connick Jr
7. His Greatest Love Songs — Engelbert Humperdinck
8. Thank You — Jamelia
9. When It Falls — Zero 7
10. Friday's Child — Will Young
11. Ultimate Manilow Barry Manilow

Is this it? Is this what 2004 holds for the music industry? Endless iterations of Terry Wogan-approved jazz-lite singers and repackaged Greatest Hits collections, forming a Julia set of mediocrity? With the advent of the 50-Quid Man, it certainly looks that way (in case you were hoping for solace from the rest of the chart, I must point out that Barry Manilow is number eleven. There's no good news to be found, I'm afraid).

Surely, though, things have always been this way? Well, not really. Here's the chart from ten years ago, before the big Britpop explosion, during a time when the halcyon sales of the 1980s and 1970s were a distant memory:

1. Music Box — Mariah Carey
2. The Cross Of Changes — Enigma
3. Debut — Bjork
4. Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? — The Cranberries
5. So Close — Dina Carroll
6. Bat Out Of Hell 2: Back Into Hell — Meatloaf
7. Elegant Slumming — M People
8. Tiger Bay — Saint Etienne
9. Ten Summoner's Tales — Sting
10. Under The Pink — Tori Amos

You can see the difference instantly; rock, dance, MOR, indie, and the goth audience all share the honours, instead of the rather bland, samey line-up of today. And yet, in the past ten years, the amount of albums sold has increased considerably since then, to the extent that the single market is now less important than it used to be. It's just that all the excitement and interest seems to have vanished.

Perhaps the singles chart provides a glimmer of hope? Well, it does, but not really. It has much more variety than the album chart, but this is because hardly anybody is buying singles any more. Consider Graham Coxon's new entry this week, "Freakin' Out". With a placing at #37, it looks like a poor showing at first; he's reasonably popular with the indie crowd, and he should have done a little bit better. But this single is a limited edition 7". Only 2500 copies have been made. And yet it still managed to enter the Top 40. The singles chart is not doing well at all.

To make matters worse, the record companies refuse to adjust to this new reality; relatively established names like Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Emma Bunton are under the threat of being dropped from their record labels unless they generate hit singles. But their fanbase no longer buys singles in any significant amount, instead going for the better value album, watching the video on one of the many satellite music channels, or downloading it from the Internet. With the change of who's buying albums, album sales that would have looked respectable a few years back are dwarfed by the big name collections and this month's Radio 2-approved fad. They will find themselves dropped by the end of the year, as the record companies shed bands to save money, decimating the mid-list and concentrating solely on the big names who can guarantee sales.

Most of the independent labels of yesteryear that nurtured new talent are now themselves part of the big companies, and are little more than a storefront to project an image of cool. Perhaps we've reached the end times of pop music. All we have left is nostalgia mining; endless ways of convincing the public to buy a resequenced version of Engelbert Humperdinck's greatest hits.

• The Postal Service — Clark Gable
  This is the reason why this week's music entry is late (see!? Postal Service! Ha ha ha (You're fired. Again. — Ed.)). Probably straying dangerously close to the dreaded emo territory, but this is my new discovery for the week. Americans in London! Writing your past via film! A fun echo effect! And so on.
• Camera Obscura — Lunar Sea
  I've written about this elsewhere, but I thought I'd stick it up so people can actually hear it. If The Postal Service are dangerously emo, then Camera Obscura are Belle & Sebastian after getting high on pixy stix and having their faces painted like tigers. This is from their latest album, Underachievers Please Try Harder, and harkens back to the childish wonderment of Low's Just Like Christmas. Or so it says here.

• Alicia Keys — You Don't Know My Name (Reggae remix)

One of those fun remixes that manages to completely change how a song feels, transforming it from a wintery ballad to a summer smash. Unfortunately, it loses the piano part, but it makes up for that with a big airhorn. Oh yes.

• Sing-Sing — You Don't Know

Starts off like the beginning of a 1980s news programme, and then turns into a lush (ha-ha!) Saint Etienne-type piece. Quite nice. The album I've taken this from The Joy of Sing-Sing, was liberated from the second-hand department of CDAlley in Chapel Hill, for the measly price of $8. Plus, the man on the counter was very nice and friendly; we had a discussion about The Flaming Lips and The Jesus and Mary Chain.

• Joe Henry — Stop

This song ended up becoming Madonna's "Don't Tell Me", but here it is in its original version, a slow and haunting tango. Definitely worth a listen, and thanks again to Laura for bringing it to my attention. Oh, and his website even includes recipes…

This week, we're going back to the late 1980s, and The Field Mice. Jangly guitars forever! Or something.

• The Field Mice — Kiss And Make Up

(yes, I prefer the Saint Etienne version as well. But does it have jangly guitars? NO! And that's the mood I'm in today. Hush, or I'll stick a Prefab Sprout or Aztec Camera track up as well…)

For those of you who remember the God-like Genius that is Empire Records (there can be no bad words said about this film. Okay, you could, but you'd be Mad and Wrong), you might recall a post-punk version of Money (That's What I Want) that gets played in the background of a few scenes. This is not that song. But it is a cover by the same band, so it almost fits. I just wanted an excuse to mention Empire Records…

• The Flying Lizards — Sex Machine

It's not entirely unexpected, but still rather sad to hear that Mark and Lard, mainstays of Radio 1 for the past ten years, are splitting up and moving to Radio 2 and 6 respectively. What will we do without High Tea and Tosspots? Who will ask us if we "Fancy A Brew"? What will happen to Lard's "Waaarp" sanctuary? Will Frogging become a pay-per-view sport only available to Freeview viewers who press red now?

Here's the liner notes for "Reverse Midas Touch", a compilation of their greatest Records of The Week (complete with chart placings so they could see just how much an effect they had on the chart; it wasn't pretty), that I sent to them a few years ago.

Mark and Lard began their afternoon show on October 13th 1997, having help to ease the burden on Radio 1's overworked transmitters by chopping off two million listeners from the Breakfast Show's audience.

The hapless duo stated their intention to perform as well in the afternoon as they did at breakfast, hoping to reduce the next RAJAR audience survey to double figures. They brought all-new (and some well-worn_ quality items to the show; who could forget the blazing originality of the Cheesily Cheerful Chart Challenge, or the staggering genius of "Flick or Trick"?

Who could resist Lard's sultry "Waaarrps", or Mark's slavish devotion to the Radio 1 playlist? Or the spectacular collaboration between Fat Harry White and the London Philharmonic Orchestra? This, and many more radio gems, are not included on this CD.

For this is a CD celebrating the Record of The Week. For anybody in Radio 1's target audience, that's all those bits of noise that the play before 911 comes on, or the latest number one by a Chancer With A Drum Machine Washing On The Right-Hand Side. For everybody else, seeing what the duo had picked for this week's record was worth sitting through the endless Steps/Lolly/insert playlisted song here.

They all had something in common. They sold six copies each.

So, without too much ado, we present "The Hit Parade of an alternate universe." A universe where the Lighthouse Family are indeed locked up in a lighthouse, and Michael Bolton is a failed hairdresser, and where the word "playlist" is verboten.

Listening regularly to the radio again has some benefits; you often get to hear something that you'd never have heard otherwise. Here's Her Space Holiday, with a song that Lauren Laverne played earlier this week on her radio show, "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend". It's like a mixture of The Magnetic Fields with the Primitive Radio Gods and Bran Van 3000…no wait! Come back! Give it a chance!

And, to keep up my indie-obscurity cred, here's a track that you probably won't have heard before, unless you attended a party in Carrboro in October last year. Yes, this is a Bhangra remix of Snap's "The Power". Cower in fear when you discover I have a full CD-R of these things!

I feel bad for only sticking up one MP3 on Friday, so here's another (borrowed from Flux's site, which is great for finding new and old gems). This is a remix of Belle & Sebastian's new single "I'm A Cuckoo", by The Avalanches. It's the first released remix of a B&S song, and it's rather fabulous; it removes the Thin Lizzy-esque guitar lines and replaces them with the sounds of a Sudanese choir. Obviously.

Anyway, have a listen. It's good! (Oh, the jam-packed single is released next Monday, and you can pre-order it here)

• The Avalanches & Belle & Sebastian — I'm A Cuckoo

Just one MP3 this week, although it's a classic (if you're a fan of Ultravox, you may beg to differ. You Are Wrong). Back in 1992, the NME gave away a triple-CD album, "Ruby Trax", which consisted of forty covers by then current bands. It's where the Manics' cover of Suicide Is Painless comes from.

This however, is not the Manics. It's Vic Reeves covering Vienna. Only he's singing about Belgium. Badly. You should hear it at least once in your life…

• Vic Reeves — Vienna

Two songs for the weekend, one old, one new. Oooh.

• Radiohead — Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)
  

  This is a b-side from "Paranoid Android", and harkens back to The Bends, rather than OK Computer; i.e. lots of guitars and less wailing. I know that some of my readers have stated a preference for this type of Radiohead song, so this one's for all of you.

• Divine Comedy — Come Home Billy Bird
  

  Neil Hannon is back with a new album! Yay! This is rumoured to be the first single, to be released sometime in March. I like songs that tell a story, and I like songs that tell a story with a twist in the tale even more. And it has Lauren Laverne on backing vocals. I really can't ask for anything else, can I?

• Billy Bragg — Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards
  

  Well, since getting hold of "Must I Paint You A Picture?", the new three-disc retrospective this week, I've been making my family suffer this, so now it's your turn. Muahahaha!

• Tori Amos - Father Lucifer

Every so often, I pull out "Boys For Pele" and realise that I don't listen to it often enough. Then I forget about it for another six months. Just call me Dory. Anyway, this came up through random playing the other day, and is recommended for the Sgt. Pepper-like flourish that occurs at 1:59.
• Sleater-Kinney - Lions & Tigers

One of the bonus tracks from the limited edition release of "One Beat" from last year (I donated a copy to Schoolkids Records in Chapel Hill this May as I had two). A cute baby song which doesn't make you reach for the volume control.
• Johnny Cash & Joe Strummer — Redemption Song

Is it just me, or is "Johnny Cash — Unearthed" a really inappropriate title for the current box set? Joe Strummer's solo version of this, on the posthumous "Streetcore" album is affecting, but this is something else…

I Do Not Have A Problem

currently playing: Neko Case - Furnace Room Lullaby

Posted by ian at 07:14 PM | Comments (1)