The best tracks of 2008, not counting top 50 album cuts
Twenty best of the rest of the albums
Because obviously fifty isn't enough
Absentee - Boy, Did She Teach You Nothing [Myspace]
From Victory Shorts
Adam Donen and The Drought - Five Minute Zeitgeist [Myspace]
From As Our Parents Slowly Turn To Clay (We're not sure what sort of release this got - there may still be copies of the combined CD and poetry book available from Myspace)
Broken Social Scene Presents Brendan Canning - Hit The Wall [YouTube]
From Something For All Of Us
David Holmes – I Heard Wonders [YouTube]
From The Holy Pictures
Duels - The Furies [Myspace]
From The Barbarians Move In
Fujiya & Miyagi – Knickerbocker [YouTube]
From Lightbulbs
The Hot Puppies - Clarinet Town
From Blue Hands
The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement [YouTube]
From The Age Of The Understatement
Lightspeed Champion - Everyone I Know Is Listening To Crunk [live YouTube]
From Falling Off The Lavender Bridge
The Lucksmiths - A Sobering Thought (Just When One Was Needed) [Myspace]
From First Frost
Matt Eaton - Eveybody's Got To Fallen Into Line [Myspace]
From Finish Your Chips
Popular Workshop - Reptilians [Myspace]
From We're Alive And We're Not Alone
Port O’Brien - I Woke Up Today [Myspace]
From All We Could Do Was Sing
School Of Language – Rockist [YouTube]
From Sea From Shore
Silvery - Action Force [Myspace]
From Thunder And Excelsior
Slow Down Tallahassee - The Beautiful Light [Myspace]
From The Beautiful Light
Sons Of Noel & Adrian - Indigo [Myspace]
From Sons of Noel & Adrian
Stereolab - Three Women [Myspace]
From Chemical Chords
Thomas White - The Runaround [Myspace]
From I Dream Of Black (Tom's currently stated releases for 2009: two solo albums, Brakes, more Restlesslist)
The Wedding Present - Palisades [live YouTube]
From El Rey (The back of our head's in that video!)
Debut singles and 2008 breakthroughs
Some, all or none of these twenty selections (clue: not 'all') will be in The Class Of '09 Covermount, posted 3rd January (which is also a significant birthday of ours, but that's not for now)
Cats In Paris - Foxes [Myspace]
Cottonmouth Rocks - Witch Doctor [Myspace]
The Deirdres - Milk Is Politics [YouTube]
Dinosaur Pile-Up - My Rock'n'Roll [Myspace]
Gindrinker - Work It Out [Myspace] (On Spencer McGarry's label - he sent us a copy of his Season's album just before the month started, and we'll be posting about it in January)
Gossamer Albatross - The Ground Will Take Us Down [Myspace]
The Lionheart Brothers - 50 Souls In A Disco Bowl [YouTube]
Lykke Li - Little Bit [YouTube]
Maths Class – Nerves [YouTube]
Minnaars - Essay Essay Essay [Myspace]
MGMT – Time To Pretend [YouTube]
Mumford and Sons - Roll Away Your Stone [Myspace]
Nat Johnson - Dirty Rotten Soul [YouTube]
Post War Years - The Black Morning [YouTube]
Rose Elinor Dougall - Another Version Of Pop Song [Myspace]
Stars And Sons - In The Ocean [YouTube]
Still Flyin' - Good Thing It's A Ghost Town Round Here [YouTube]
Superman Revenge Squad - Idiot Food [Myspace] (Our own idiot rules prevented it, but go to that Myspace and order self-pressed album This Is My Own Personal Way Of Dealing With It All. No, do it now)
This City - Kids With Fireworks [YouTube]
The Voluntary Butler Scheme - Trading Things In [YouTube]
As seen in Weekender
Every weekend we've dug out another quality new band for Myspace Invaders, and here's what we wrote about our twenty favourites not covered elsewhere in this section:
a.genuine.freakshow - Holding Hearts [Myspace]
"Comparisons to more buzzed about fellow travellers Grammatics are inevitable, given the overwhelmed ambitions, achingly vaulting vocals, changing dynamics and prominent cellist, but there's a lot of Mew in the way they aim for the stars this side of post-rock... 'transcendental majesty', while still a horrible phrase when seen written down, is something they're gradually attaining."
The Beep Seals - I Used To Work At The Zoo [Myspace]
"Beach Boys psychedelia that weighs heaviest on the band's sound, although certainly there's a lot of listening to the Flaming Lips' Clouds Taste Metallic behind all this and some Stephen Malkmus, Elephant 6 collective and even Todd Rundgren's hi-fi oddness behind these acid fuzzbombs."
Cats And Cats And Cats - Happiness For Lola [Myspace]
"They're rooted in the post-hardcore influenced danceable mathrock thing that's coming into fashion at the moment where guitars and rhythms collide wildly with each other and tempos change every minute or so but it all coalesces into something overpowering. There's elements which should appeal to those who follow Mew, Youthmovies or Explosions In The Sky, but really they're already forging their own path while barely out of their teens."
Copy Haho - You Are My Coal Mine [Myspace]
"The echoes here are largely of Pavement and Sebadoh with a melodic and very Scot-pop cocksureness... They're already full of twisted pop shapes and they're very much on the right track to big stuff."
Everything Everything - DNA Dump [Myspace]
"You'll hear Wild Beasts' machine tooled indie-funk, first album Futureheads call and response harmonies, the wild eyed taut punk-funk of first album Liars and most of all the Cardiacs' sumptuous multi-angled madness.. please welcome another of that increasingly rare creature, an urgent new voice in the boys with angular guitar stakes."
Falling And Laughing - Compilations For Sweden [Myspace]
"So here come the Field Mice, Postcard and Sarah Records namechecks and the wry bedroom diarist lyrics, but there's a strength to the writing that marks them aside from many suddenly on the same stylistic journey."
Hajen - Sharks [Myspace]
"Chan Marshall's last three albums would be a very good comparison to her spare, piano-based despair and soaring, heartfelt vocals, as would Stina Nordenstam and Regina Spektor."
i concur - Build Around Me [Myspace]
"The National's sense of anxiousness/nervous tension, Interpol's brooding am-dram, Broken Social Scene's expansiveness and touches of Explosions In The Sky's glacial post-rock and Johnny Marr circling guitar lines. Never mind potential, they sound like they're almost there already."
Kaputt - Family Tree [Myspace]
"It's the streamlined moments of (Sonic Youth's) early major label days that it's most reminiscent of, given a Peter Hook bassline, the records Interpol had by the studio CD player when they were making Turn On The Bright Lights and working knowledge of Electrelane-style femme-cool motorik. They'll get well under your skin."
The Late Greats - Gareth [Myspace]
"They've found a middle ground between Lamacq-attracting hooks and awkward angularities, having quoted Neutral Milk Hotel and Pavement as influences. They've been around for a few years but still sound like they have room to grow into themselves, and when that happens they'll be unstoppable."
Matthew Saunders - Crown [Myspace]
"His way with matching a folk strum to a direct, sentimental lyric with a kick in the post-Syd Barrett mould overcomes all associated doubts."
Mockingbird, Wish Me Luck - Pictures [Myspace]
"Their being Swedish means you pretty much know what air they're working in already, and it's very much the sound of Jens Lekman embarking on a peaceful - well, obviously peaceful - coup to unseat Stuart Murdoch."
Picture Books In Winter - Horizontally I Am Champion [Myspace]
"Mates with Los Campesinos! and borrowing their tight angle hopeful worldviews and penchant for a prominent violinist, they have that ability to sound quite different from track to track without ever sounding like a compromise of eclecticism.... Other touchstones include Pavement's inscrutability, Cursive's heavy set indie-rock melodrama, the less post-hippiness parts of the indie folk brigade and a hundred other things that we can't quite place."
Project Notion - Castles In The Air [Myspace]
"(They) have a sound that you just cannot reduce to a few words of passing reference without much headscratching. Here goes: it's Youthmovies reduced to three fifths speed and given a half acoustic guitar arrangement, then met by Tori Maries' trip-hop vocals and turning into a far less silky Steely Dan jazz-rock as The Sea And Cake might envision it."
Red Shoe Diaries - Fireflies At Dawn [Myspace]
"You'd fear for this sound in a strong wind, but should you like Swedish indiepop and Felt without actually being Stuart Murdoch they're right up your street."
Stars Of Sunday League - Sailing Ships On The Forth [Myspace]
"There's something about the Scottish accent in singer-songwriter business that makes it sound more honest and touching, we reckon... File next to the Fence collectivists and well inside the interconnected modern folk school of excellence."
Sunset Cinema Club - Hardcore [Myspace]
"File these under melodic post-hardcore, sharing the stop-start tautness of Fugazi, the fat-free funk fuckups of the Minutemen and the funk-punk of Jetplane Landing's Backlash Cop album of last year"
Three Trapped Tigers - 1 [Myspace]
"Free jazz electronica to some, a British Battles to others... they take the drawn out precision of math-rock and compress it into tense, elaborate slabs of build and release-driven intensity, shuttling between full throttle electronica-influenced passages and ambient segments that allow time for the next wave to hit, intricate cross-threading of movements and time signatures forefront."
The Vanguard - The Antidote's Retreat [Myspace]
"Duke Spirit fans should certainly be looking this way, but there's a seam of that peculiarly north-western trait of enormous effects pedal atmospheric guitar sounds and cocksure vocals"
Wet Paint - Save The Whale [Myspace]
"They say it sounds like "PIXIES-DINOSAUR JR-PAVEMENT or other bands that sound a bit like them"; we say more the latter of those three with a streamlined hint of the second, and certainly fitting well next to whichever player from the mid-90s American 'scene' you might wish to play alongside."
Did we ever go a bundle on these at the time? We're not sure we did
The Accidental - Wolves [Myspace]
Ace Bushy Striptease - Panda Love Unit [Myspace]
Black Francis - The Seus [free mp3 via download.com]
Blakfish - Jeremy Kyle Is A Marked Man [Myspace]
Broadcaster - England [Myspace]
Eagleowl - Blanket [Myspace]
Final Fantasy - Blue Imelda [YouTube]
His Clancyness - Next Year Is Ours [Myspace] (Jonathan Clancy from A Classic Education solo)
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Everything With You [YouTube]
The Scaremongers - Less Is More [Myspace] (And to think Simon Armitage might be poet laureate this time next year)
The Sleeping Years - Islands [Myspace]
Zombie-Zombie - Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free [Myspace]
Everything else we really liked in 2008 but couldn't fit in any of the previous categories
4 Or 5 Magicians – Change The Record [Myspace]
A Classic Education - We Can Always Run To Hawaii [mp3]
Broken Records - Lies [YouTube] (Three cracking singles, but we think this just gets the nod)
Cold War Kids - Something Is Not Right With Me [YouTube]
Crystal Castles - Crimewave [Myspace]
Dananananaykroyd - Pink Sabbath [Myspace]
dEUS - Slow [YouTube]
The Dirty Backbeats - To The Dogs [Myspace] (Class Of '08 candidates, whose last gig was last Saturday)
Does It Offend You, Yeah? - We Are Rockstars [YouTube]
Emmy The Great - We Almost Had A Baby [YouTube]
Fighting With Wire - Everyone Needs A Nemesis [YouTube]
Florence & The Machine – Dog Days [YouTube]
Future Of The Left - The Hope That House Built [Myspace]
Grammatics - The Vague Archive [Myspace]
Guillemots - Kriss Kross [YouTube] (Piss poor album, mind)
Hello Saferide - Anna [YouTube]
Let's Wrestle - Let's Wrestle
Madness – NW5 [Myspace] (So whither The Liberty Of Norton Folgate?)
Make Model – The LSB [YouTube] (And they split too)
The Rosie Taylor Project - A Good Café on George Street [YouTube]
The School - Let It Slip [YouTube]
The Sexual Objects - Here Come The Rubber Cops [label Myspace]
The Shortwave Set – No Social [YouTube]
Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook [DailyMotion]
Sky Larkin - Fossil, I [YouTube]
Slow Club - Let's Fall Back In Love [Myspace]
White Williams - New Violence [Myspace]
Showing posts with label 2008 detritus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 detritus. Show all posts
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
TV an' the radio
TV an' the radio
Your festive fortnight's guide to music broadcasting (radio programming in red), like a music only Christmas Radio Times only with a less smug editor ("yeah, right" - everyone):
SATURDAY 20th
10:25 C4 4Music Top Tunes Of 2008
16:25 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash In San Quentin
The original Granada documentary talking to guards and inmates alongside concert footage, which they then lost for years.
17:30 ITV1 Britannia High Finale
Say you put on a High School Musical cash-in and nobody watched it... Because it was relegated to Sundays and so didn't get the family audience, we suspect, but even so for a big final episode that's not a winning timeslot.
20:00 BBC7 Selected Radiophonic Works
Richard Coles, man of the Communards keyboard turned man of the cloth, presents three hours about the workings and legacy of the Workship, along with several radio classics that used its effects, from The Goons to the enticing sounding Bath Time, and 1971 documentary The Electric Tunesmiths.
20:10 BBC4 Judy, Frank & Dean
Garland, Sinatra and Martin do the lounge do.
20:55 ITV1 For One Night Only
ITV's other great failure tonight has Tom Jones and Myleene Klass presenting and Cerys Matthews singing. Yeah, you remember, she used to sing before all the reality show whoring and the Bannerman unpleasantness.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Thin Lizzy Live & Dangerous
There's a clip on YouTube of the first Top Of The Pops to use Phil Lynott's Yellow Pearl as its theme, and right at the start Sir Jimmy is being his usual self with Lynott sitting right behind him looking embarrassed, and before he gets far Jim turns round, pulls him up and says "Mister Thin Lizzy, thank you for doing our new sig tune!" This is the film of Mister Lizzy and band's 1978 live show.
21:00 NME TV Esser Takeover
Whatever did happen to Liz Neumayr? Her former Ladyfuzz colleague selects an hour's music.
22:00 Sky Arts 1 The Beach Boys: Nashville Sounds
There are certain Beach Boys albums you want to see a full insight into the creative process behind. Stars And Stripes, their 1996 country collaborations album (the last with Brian and Carl Wilson and Al Jardine), is not one of them.
23:00 Radio 2 Bob Harris
Calexico in session.
SUNDAY 21st
12:20 C4 Mobile Act Unsigned
Envy & Other what, sorry?
14:30 Radio 2 Pick Of The Pops
Dale covers 1963 - Beatles 1 and 2, I Only Want To Be With You, I Wanna Be Your Man, Glad All Over, You'll Never Walk Alone and, ooh, The Singing Nun - and 1988, wherein Cliff beats Kylie & Jason to number one and Inner City are carefully ignored. He'll play Loco In Acapulco, though.
16:00 Radio 1 The Chart Show
The all important Christmas number two is revealed.
19:00 4Music Noddy Holder's Big Christmas 50
21:00 NME TV Master Shortie Takeover
The not at all cliche-handled latest in a long line of The Man/Woman Who Will Finally Become The UK's Big Hip-Hop Star candidates selects.
21:30 BBC4 Ten Best Sacred Christmas Classics
Billy Bragg, Kathryn Jenkins and David Soul, together at last, pick their favourite festive theisms.
23:05 FX A Colbert Christmas
Genius Comedy Central O'Reilly satirist makes very untraditional Christmas special with guests Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, Feist, John Legend and Toby Keith.
23:15 TCM Pink Floyd - The Wall
Alan Parker and Roger Waters make existential soup of Dark Side, with Bob Geldof stirring.
00:15 C4 Spectacle: Elvis Costello with Rufus Wainwright
The beloved entertainer's got this series running at the moment where he talks to people he admires about, oh, stuff after an Inside The Actor's Studio fashion, and Channel 4 are throwing them out there over this period. Kate McGarrigle and Bill Frisell turn up too, but mostly it's the pair of them singing and shooting the shit.
MONDAY 22nd
16:00 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash At Montreux
From 1994, so from the American Recordings era and Cash at one with his back catalogue.
16:00 MTV2 Vintage 300
Running over three days and nights.
17:30 4Music Paddy McGuinness' Xmas Dink Dank Do! Top 50
Oh, fuck off.
19:00 Radio 1 The In New Music We Trust Christmas Party
Steve Lamacq and Huw Stephens take good care of the vol-au-vents. Glasvegas, too cool for school, hardly able to see a thing through those shades. Florence And The Machine rushing around, a blur of woodland colours acting up in everyone's face. Friendly Fires, inscrutable, near enough glowing in the dark. Chase & Status in the corner, waiting for the moment to speed up the BPMs. Grime MC Chipmunk pensive, waiting for his chance to rhyme. Golden Silvers, cowering in the corner.
19:00 6 Music Cerys Matthews
She used to be a singer etc.
20:00 Radio 2 Mark Radcliffe & Stuart Maconie
Their songs of the year.
20:00 Sky Arts 1 Ballads Of The Book
We're presuming, although we never knew there was one, this is film of the compilation last year of collaborations between Scottish artists and poets, including Vashti Bunyan (who's from London, but never mind), Idlewild, Emma Pollock, Sons and Daughters, King Creosote, James Yorkston, Norman Blake, Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton.
21:00 BBC4 Comedy Songs: The Pop Years
Now here's an idea for a genre that we can subscribe to - the history of the comedy pop song from Goons via satire, Python and, er, Black Lace to the present day.
21:00 ITV2 Katy Brand's Big Ass Songs 2008
Which we hope doesn't mean this. You can't wait to see her hilariously rewrite Hallelujah, can you?
21:00 Sky1 All Star Don't Forget The Lyrics
With Cerys Ma...alright, we'll stop. But she is an' all, and alongside David Gest to boot.
22:00 Sky Arts 1 The Story Of The Clash
This could be any number of documentaries from recent years, although fiver says cuttings job.
23:00 BBC2 TOTP2
Eight of these throughout the period, taking a random selection of party classics and contemporary sounds.
23:00 BBC4 The Comic Songbook
This seems to be more of a general genre overview, from Noel Coward to Mitch Benn, with the likes of Neil Innes, Michael Palin and Bill Oddie contributing.
23:35 BBC1 BBC One Session: Duffy
01:25 C4 Spectacle: Elvis Costello with Lou Reed and Julian Schnabel
"Elvis introduces Lou "beat poet" style", it says here, as well as that Elvis, Lou and Steve Nieve do Perfect Day. Schnabel is an artist and film director.
TUESDAY 23rd
20:00 Radio 2 Radiohead Live
Well, they were live when they recorded it earlier this year.
19:30 BBC2 TOTP2 Christmas Special
Ninety minutes of everything you'd expect.
20:00 Radio 2 Mark Radcliffe & Stuart Maconie
The Christmas special with, obviously, Noddy Holder, but more enticingly Rachel Unthank and the Winterset singing carols.
20:00 Sky Arts 1 The Soul Of Stax
The history of the best 60s soul label YES IT WAS, with contributions from Isaac Hayes, Booker T, Otis Redding and Rev Jesse Jackson.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Bob Marley Live At The Rainbow
The legendary 1977 Exodus Tour gig that sealed Marley's international status. The Rainbow Theatre is now owned by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. A million jokes write themselves.
22:30 Radio 2 Malcolm McLaren And The Great Jukebox Racket: A Radio Movie
Every so often someone will give McLaren the opportunity to spread his wings over far too great an area in the name of documentary. This to all intents and purposes is an hour about the creation of jukebox culture and the three minute rock'n'roll song. In McLaren's mind it's bound up with mob crime and outlaw culture. But then what isn't?
CHRISTMAS EVE
19:10 BBC3 The Most Annoying Pop Songs...We Hate To Love
That title doesn't even make sense. This will annoy you.
20:00 Radio 2 A Christmas Gift To You: The Phil Spector Christmas Album
Amanda Holden - well, obviously - celebrates the album Spector saw as his lasting legacy, only to release it on the day Kennedy was shot. Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine is among the guests explaining how it transcended even that.
20:00 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash Christmas Special
Let's save Tony Orlando's house! The 1976 special for CBS brings the family and a few friends round to Johnny's Old Hickory Lake home.
22:00 Sky Arts 1 From The Basement
Series 2 of Nigel Godrich's studio based baby comes to TV this month. If you've only just found this out you've missed The Fall, the Stooges Sparks, My Morning Jacket, Gnarls Barkley and CSS among others, but you're just in time for a Radiohead set. More than decent support bill too, Fleet Foxes and Andrew Bird.
23:15 BBC2 TOTP2
00:00 Radio 1 Huw Stephens' Weird And Wonderful Christmas
Basically some old Christmas records he's found. We hope he doesn't try and claim the Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping is an overlooked record.
00:00 6 Music 6 Music Plays It Again - John Peel - My Top Ten
From 1984, Peel and Peebles chew various favourite song related fats.
CHRISTMAS DAY
10:00 6 Music Lily Allen
Hardly a prime slot, but when you're gearing back up for a make or break album you take what you're offered. Martin Freeman, Seasick Steve and Mark Ronson are the in no way familiar guests; George Lamb acts the party nuisance.
11:00 Radio 2 Junior Choice
It's not as interesting as you'd imagine.
11:00 5 Live Adrenalin Anthems
Colin Murray plots a course between sporting achievement and anthemry with the aid of Victoria Pendleton, Jermaine Jenas and James Toseland on one side and New Order, Glasvegas and Judge Jules on the other.
14:00 BBC1 Top Of The Pops Christmas Special
Back back back, the greatest festive regular of them all finally returns after a gap of, ooh, one year. Seriously, if the BBC's idea was to make everyone forget the Christmas special's never actually gone away, and they commissioned last year's at about the same distance from broadcast as they did this, they've succeeded in spades. Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates host, which we believe to be the definition of getting back on the horse that threw you.
15:00 6 Music King Of Leon Special
Steve Lamacq helps them talk through the year, in very great detail at low speed.
15:00 MTV2 Queens Speech/Kings' Speech
Yeah, we see. Josh Homme's the former, not Brian May or whoever.
17:00 Radio 2 Mark Lamarr
The traditional proper live Lamarr Radio 2 Christmas afternoon obscurity show.
18:00 6 Music Don Letts' Xmas Reggae Party
For even more festive reggae than above.
19:10 TCM Elvis: That's The Way It Is
The 1970 documentary of Presley's summer in Las Vegas, the glittering beginning of a very long slope down.
20:00 Radio 2 The Best Of The Ken Bruce Sessions
20:00 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash Christmas Special
By 1977 Elvis had died, so Johnny and June rounded up the surviving other members of the Million Dollar Quartet, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, and invited Roy Orbison round too.
00:55 BBC2 TOTP2
BOXING DAY
15:00 6 Music Elbow Special
Guy Garvey affects humility - not difficult for him, true - as he interviews his bandmates and drags out unheard archive material.
17:00 Radio 2 Noel Gallagher's Line Of Enquiry
They did this last year with David Beckham, being guided through questions from listeners with kid gloves by Kate Thornton. You imagine Noel might be less showbizzily amenable.
22:00 BBC4 Quincy Jones: The Many Lives Of Q
Originally shown in June, an extraordinary two hour delve into the life of a man so multi-faceted that not even many of the other interviewees are across it all, from jazz to Sinatra to The Italian Job to Thriller.
20:00 Sky Arts 1 Sinatra: A Song For The FBI
Everyone now knows Sinatra consorted with the Mafia, but it wasn't known until recently that the FBI dossier on his activities, partly about his Communist leanings, spanned 1,275 pages. This is what they found, sensationalised just for you the television audience.
22:00 Sky Indie Quadrophenia
From here, Parklife.
00:00 Radio 2 Mark Lamarr
Another best of the year's sessions deal, but in Lamarr's case they're usually eclectic enough for further investigation.
00:40 BBC2 TOTP2
Westworld! And the Associates with Alan Rankine's Thornton's chocolate guitar. That's not a euphemism, he had a guitar made out of chocolate which he ended up feeding to the audience.
SATURDAY 27th
18:15 Radio 4 Loose Ends
Elbow, Glen Campbell, Sergio Mendes and Mavis Staples among the year's best guests.
19:00 Radio 2 Pacific Ocean Blues - The Life And Death Of Dennis Wilson
Pacific Ocean Blue made the top ten on reissue; Roger Daltrey explains its author's story.
21:00 C4 Bring Back...Fame
No, Justin, no.
21:00 Radio 2 Best Of The Dermot Sessions
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Talk Talk Live In Montreux
The 1986 synthpop version rather than the later minimalist, influential stuff. Well, that wouldn't have gone down well in the Swiss enormohalls.
00:15 BBC2 TOTP2
SUNDAY 28th
14:30 Radio 2 Pick Of The Pops
1969, which means Two Little Boys at number one ahead of Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town, Sugar Sugar and Suspicious Minds, and if he doesn't play either The Liquidator or Roger Whittaker we're writing to Ofcom. Then the somewhat less auspicious 1989, featuring Band Aid II, Jive Bunny, Donald Where's Your Troosers? and Jeff Wayne's Eve Of The War. Electronic's Getting Away With It and De La Soul's The Magic Number will hopefully provide relief.
18:00 Absolute Absolute Xtreme
Had to get them in somewhere - Geoff Lloyd spends four hours introducing us to next year.
22:00 Sky Indie Tenacious D in The Pick Of Destiny
Directed by Liam Lynch. And indeed, whatever.
MONDAY 29th
10:45 C4 Twenty Biggest Selling Singles Of The Last Ten Years
14:00 Radio 2 Michael Jackson: 30 At 50
For the following four days at this time the station celebrates musical institutions that turned fifty this year - Jacko, Madonna, Prince and Motown - by playing their thirty best selling songs alongside interviews and blah. Buy a compilation.
19:00 Radio 1 In New Music we Trust
Steve Lamacq does three hours of the year's new music, and the Pigeon Detectives too. Inscrutable, Lammo. Westwood does the same on Tuesday.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out
Stewart Copeland bought a Super-8 camera in 1978 and filmed everything as his band ascended from chancers to enormodomes and eventually fell apart. A bit later, he pieced it together.
23:20 BBC2 TOTP2
The Strokes and the Goodies - together at last!
TUESDAY 30th
22:00 BBC2 All New Shooting Stars
Or you could have new comedy ideas, Vic and Bob. Just a thought. Dizzee Rascal's a guest, anyway.
22:30 Radio 2 The Wonderful Sound Of Woolies
Ah, timing. This is about Woolworths' contribution to music, not the shared memory of buying your first single from there but the "popular music on a budget" they made up until the 70s.
23:30 BBC2 TOTP2
NEW YEAR'S EVE
17:35 BBC1 Top Of The Pops New Year's Eve Special
"The year in music" is the wideranging scope, which allows this to be less new TOTP performances and more festival and one-off occasion film.
19:00 BBC1 Celebrity Mastermind
Featuring Mick Hucknall, Comic Relief Mel & Kim's Mel Smith, St Winifreds School Choir's Sally Lindsay and musical actress and Hollyoaks plant Summer Strallen.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii
Elvis dons the white jumpsuit for the first time and gives 99.9% of the world's stack of impersonators a point to look no further back than. Fact: as it was part of a cancer charity fundraiser, the studio audience were invited to pay what they liked to attend. Don't look so smart now, do you, Radiohead?
22:00 Sky Arts 1 From The Basement
The series prides itself on the clarity of its sound, which we suspect might not be of the utmost when Seasick Steve performs. The Raconteurs and Band of Horses have their own takes on American traditions.
22:55 BBC2 Jools' Annual Hootenanny
That bloke they pay to stand around with a clock over his head fails to see any of Martha and the Vandellas, Dizzee Rascal, Annie Lennox, The Ting Tings, Dave Edmunds, Duffy, Adele, Sam Sparro, The Hold Steady, Kelly Jones, Lily Allen, Jools' Rhythm & Blues Orchestra and Svang, a Finnish harmonica quartet. But of course.
23:15 ITV Elton's New Year Party: Live From The O2 Arena
A somewhat more auspicious setting for a somewhat less auspicious performance. The set's designed by David La Chapelle, for one thing against it.
NEW YEAR'S DAY
12:00 Radio 2 6 On 2: Adam & Joe
There's a few 6 On 2 programmes over the week but this is the only one really worth your while. Only two hours, though.
19:00 Radio 1 New For 2009
On last year's evidence, very little of this five hour show will actually include naming the songs played.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Elvis '68 Comeback Special
Forty years gone back on December 3rd, and Colonel Tom Parker wanted it to be a schmaltzy set of carols. Parker apparently didn't know what it actually was going to entail until rehearsals. Oh, and the director and at least one confidante have claimed Elvis put so much into his performance that his black suit had to be cleaned mid-shoot as during one of the sit-down performances he'd ejaculated. (Sorry.)
FRIDAY 2nd
09:00 Radio 1 10 Hour Takeover
For, we think, the fourth time most of the day is handed over to requests from the entire BBC music library. Great in principle, thousands and thousands of requests for current Super A-listed tracks in practice.
14:00 Radio 2 Rob Brydon's New Year's Resolutions
Do the whole three hours in your Ken Bruce voice, Rob! Go on!
19:00 Radio 2 Motown Record Producers
Smokey Robinson and Holland Dozier Holland help chart the changing sound of the Motor City.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 The Who - The Vegas Job
Here's a weird old story we've only just come across. In October 1999, the golden age of the dot com bubble, a company called Pixelon, promising technological advances in online video streaming, threw a $16m party at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and hired the Who to headline a stellar bill. Shortly afterwards, Pixelon's MD did a runner and it turned out he was a massive fraudster, among other things failing to actually webcast that gig. Obviously, however, had the thing not been professionally filmed someone would have said something earlier, and so we have a document of the greatest hits set, the last officially documented performance of John Entwhistle's life to boot.
21:00 BBC4 Prog At The BBC
22:00 BBC4 Prog Rock Britannia - An Observation In Three Movements
Whey-hey! "The first comprehensive, feature-length documentary about progressive music" says the blurb, which it isn't as they did one a few years ago. As the title of the second programme (the first is a collection of archived performances) suggests it's the first in a three parter, dealing with the genre's birth and ambition. Contributors include Robert Wyatt, Mike Oldfield, Rick Wakeman, Phil Collins and Ian Anderson.
22:30 Sky Arts 1 The Kids Are Alright
From slightly younger days, a document of TV appearances and interviews from The Who's golden age alongside documentary filming and performances from the late 70s, Keith Moon dying just after completion.
Your festive fortnight's guide to music broadcasting (radio programming in red), like a music only Christmas Radio Times only with a less smug editor ("yeah, right" - everyone):
SATURDAY 20th
10:25 C4 4Music Top Tunes Of 2008
16:25 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash In San Quentin
The original Granada documentary talking to guards and inmates alongside concert footage, which they then lost for years.
17:30 ITV1 Britannia High Finale
Say you put on a High School Musical cash-in and nobody watched it... Because it was relegated to Sundays and so didn't get the family audience, we suspect, but even so for a big final episode that's not a winning timeslot.
20:00 BBC7 Selected Radiophonic Works
Richard Coles, man of the Communards keyboard turned man of the cloth, presents three hours about the workings and legacy of the Workship, along with several radio classics that used its effects, from The Goons to the enticing sounding Bath Time, and 1971 documentary The Electric Tunesmiths.
20:10 BBC4 Judy, Frank & Dean
Garland, Sinatra and Martin do the lounge do.
20:55 ITV1 For One Night Only
ITV's other great failure tonight has Tom Jones and Myleene Klass presenting and Cerys Matthews singing. Yeah, you remember, she used to sing before all the reality show whoring and the Bannerman unpleasantness.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Thin Lizzy Live & Dangerous
There's a clip on YouTube of the first Top Of The Pops to use Phil Lynott's Yellow Pearl as its theme, and right at the start Sir Jimmy is being his usual self with Lynott sitting right behind him looking embarrassed, and before he gets far Jim turns round, pulls him up and says "Mister Thin Lizzy, thank you for doing our new sig tune!" This is the film of Mister Lizzy and band's 1978 live show.
21:00 NME TV Esser Takeover
Whatever did happen to Liz Neumayr? Her former Ladyfuzz colleague selects an hour's music.
22:00 Sky Arts 1 The Beach Boys: Nashville Sounds
There are certain Beach Boys albums you want to see a full insight into the creative process behind. Stars And Stripes, their 1996 country collaborations album (the last with Brian and Carl Wilson and Al Jardine), is not one of them.
23:00 Radio 2 Bob Harris
Calexico in session.
SUNDAY 21st
12:20 C4 Mobile Act Unsigned
Envy & Other what, sorry?
14:30 Radio 2 Pick Of The Pops
Dale covers 1963 - Beatles 1 and 2, I Only Want To Be With You, I Wanna Be Your Man, Glad All Over, You'll Never Walk Alone and, ooh, The Singing Nun - and 1988, wherein Cliff beats Kylie & Jason to number one and Inner City are carefully ignored. He'll play Loco In Acapulco, though.
16:00 Radio 1 The Chart Show
The all important Christmas number two is revealed.
19:00 4Music Noddy Holder's Big Christmas 50
21:00 NME TV Master Shortie Takeover
The not at all cliche-handled latest in a long line of The Man/Woman Who Will Finally Become The UK's Big Hip-Hop Star candidates selects.
21:30 BBC4 Ten Best Sacred Christmas Classics
Billy Bragg, Kathryn Jenkins and David Soul, together at last, pick their favourite festive theisms.
23:05 FX A Colbert Christmas
Genius Comedy Central O'Reilly satirist makes very untraditional Christmas special with guests Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, Feist, John Legend and Toby Keith.
23:15 TCM Pink Floyd - The Wall
Alan Parker and Roger Waters make existential soup of Dark Side, with Bob Geldof stirring.
00:15 C4 Spectacle: Elvis Costello with Rufus Wainwright
The beloved entertainer's got this series running at the moment where he talks to people he admires about, oh, stuff after an Inside The Actor's Studio fashion, and Channel 4 are throwing them out there over this period. Kate McGarrigle and Bill Frisell turn up too, but mostly it's the pair of them singing and shooting the shit.
MONDAY 22nd
16:00 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash At Montreux
From 1994, so from the American Recordings era and Cash at one with his back catalogue.
16:00 MTV2 Vintage 300
Running over three days and nights.
17:30 4Music Paddy McGuinness' Xmas Dink Dank Do! Top 50
Oh, fuck off.
19:00 Radio 1 The In New Music We Trust Christmas Party
Steve Lamacq and Huw Stephens take good care of the vol-au-vents. Glasvegas, too cool for school, hardly able to see a thing through those shades. Florence And The Machine rushing around, a blur of woodland colours acting up in everyone's face. Friendly Fires, inscrutable, near enough glowing in the dark. Chase & Status in the corner, waiting for the moment to speed up the BPMs. Grime MC Chipmunk pensive, waiting for his chance to rhyme. Golden Silvers, cowering in the corner.
19:00 6 Music Cerys Matthews
She used to be a singer etc.
20:00 Radio 2 Mark Radcliffe & Stuart Maconie
Their songs of the year.
20:00 Sky Arts 1 Ballads Of The Book
We're presuming, although we never knew there was one, this is film of the compilation last year of collaborations between Scottish artists and poets, including Vashti Bunyan (who's from London, but never mind), Idlewild, Emma Pollock, Sons and Daughters, King Creosote, James Yorkston, Norman Blake, Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton.
21:00 BBC4 Comedy Songs: The Pop Years
Now here's an idea for a genre that we can subscribe to - the history of the comedy pop song from Goons via satire, Python and, er, Black Lace to the present day.
21:00 ITV2 Katy Brand's Big Ass Songs 2008
Which we hope doesn't mean this. You can't wait to see her hilariously rewrite Hallelujah, can you?
21:00 Sky1 All Star Don't Forget The Lyrics
With Cerys Ma...alright, we'll stop. But she is an' all, and alongside David Gest to boot.
22:00 Sky Arts 1 The Story Of The Clash
This could be any number of documentaries from recent years, although fiver says cuttings job.
23:00 BBC2 TOTP2
Eight of these throughout the period, taking a random selection of party classics and contemporary sounds.
23:00 BBC4 The Comic Songbook
This seems to be more of a general genre overview, from Noel Coward to Mitch Benn, with the likes of Neil Innes, Michael Palin and Bill Oddie contributing.
23:35 BBC1 BBC One Session: Duffy
01:25 C4 Spectacle: Elvis Costello with Lou Reed and Julian Schnabel
"Elvis introduces Lou "beat poet" style", it says here, as well as that Elvis, Lou and Steve Nieve do Perfect Day. Schnabel is an artist and film director.
TUESDAY 23rd
20:00 Radio 2 Radiohead Live
Well, they were live when they recorded it earlier this year.
19:30 BBC2 TOTP2 Christmas Special
Ninety minutes of everything you'd expect.
20:00 Radio 2 Mark Radcliffe & Stuart Maconie
The Christmas special with, obviously, Noddy Holder, but more enticingly Rachel Unthank and the Winterset singing carols.
20:00 Sky Arts 1 The Soul Of Stax
The history of the best 60s soul label YES IT WAS, with contributions from Isaac Hayes, Booker T, Otis Redding and Rev Jesse Jackson.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Bob Marley Live At The Rainbow
The legendary 1977 Exodus Tour gig that sealed Marley's international status. The Rainbow Theatre is now owned by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. A million jokes write themselves.
22:30 Radio 2 Malcolm McLaren And The Great Jukebox Racket: A Radio Movie
Every so often someone will give McLaren the opportunity to spread his wings over far too great an area in the name of documentary. This to all intents and purposes is an hour about the creation of jukebox culture and the three minute rock'n'roll song. In McLaren's mind it's bound up with mob crime and outlaw culture. But then what isn't?
CHRISTMAS EVE
19:10 BBC3 The Most Annoying Pop Songs...We Hate To Love
That title doesn't even make sense. This will annoy you.
20:00 Radio 2 A Christmas Gift To You: The Phil Spector Christmas Album
Amanda Holden - well, obviously - celebrates the album Spector saw as his lasting legacy, only to release it on the day Kennedy was shot. Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine is among the guests explaining how it transcended even that.
20:00 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash Christmas Special
Let's save Tony Orlando's house! The 1976 special for CBS brings the family and a few friends round to Johnny's Old Hickory Lake home.
22:00 Sky Arts 1 From The Basement
Series 2 of Nigel Godrich's studio based baby comes to TV this month. If you've only just found this out you've missed The Fall, the Stooges Sparks, My Morning Jacket, Gnarls Barkley and CSS among others, but you're just in time for a Radiohead set. More than decent support bill too, Fleet Foxes and Andrew Bird.
23:15 BBC2 TOTP2
00:00 Radio 1 Huw Stephens' Weird And Wonderful Christmas
Basically some old Christmas records he's found. We hope he doesn't try and claim the Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping is an overlooked record.
00:00 6 Music 6 Music Plays It Again - John Peel - My Top Ten
From 1984, Peel and Peebles chew various favourite song related fats.
CHRISTMAS DAY
10:00 6 Music Lily Allen
Hardly a prime slot, but when you're gearing back up for a make or break album you take what you're offered. Martin Freeman, Seasick Steve and Mark Ronson are the in no way familiar guests; George Lamb acts the party nuisance.
11:00 Radio 2 Junior Choice
It's not as interesting as you'd imagine.
11:00 5 Live Adrenalin Anthems
Colin Murray plots a course between sporting achievement and anthemry with the aid of Victoria Pendleton, Jermaine Jenas and James Toseland on one side and New Order, Glasvegas and Judge Jules on the other.
14:00 BBC1 Top Of The Pops Christmas Special
Back back back, the greatest festive regular of them all finally returns after a gap of, ooh, one year. Seriously, if the BBC's idea was to make everyone forget the Christmas special's never actually gone away, and they commissioned last year's at about the same distance from broadcast as they did this, they've succeeded in spades. Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates host, which we believe to be the definition of getting back on the horse that threw you.
15:00 6 Music King Of Leon Special
Steve Lamacq helps them talk through the year, in very great detail at low speed.
15:00 MTV2 Queens Speech/Kings' Speech
Yeah, we see. Josh Homme's the former, not Brian May or whoever.
17:00 Radio 2 Mark Lamarr
The traditional proper live Lamarr Radio 2 Christmas afternoon obscurity show.
18:00 6 Music Don Letts' Xmas Reggae Party
For even more festive reggae than above.
19:10 TCM Elvis: That's The Way It Is
The 1970 documentary of Presley's summer in Las Vegas, the glittering beginning of a very long slope down.
20:00 Radio 2 The Best Of The Ken Bruce Sessions
20:00 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash Christmas Special
By 1977 Elvis had died, so Johnny and June rounded up the surviving other members of the Million Dollar Quartet, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, and invited Roy Orbison round too.
00:55 BBC2 TOTP2
BOXING DAY
15:00 6 Music Elbow Special
Guy Garvey affects humility - not difficult for him, true - as he interviews his bandmates and drags out unheard archive material.
17:00 Radio 2 Noel Gallagher's Line Of Enquiry
They did this last year with David Beckham, being guided through questions from listeners with kid gloves by Kate Thornton. You imagine Noel might be less showbizzily amenable.
22:00 BBC4 Quincy Jones: The Many Lives Of Q
Originally shown in June, an extraordinary two hour delve into the life of a man so multi-faceted that not even many of the other interviewees are across it all, from jazz to Sinatra to The Italian Job to Thriller.
20:00 Sky Arts 1 Sinatra: A Song For The FBI
Everyone now knows Sinatra consorted with the Mafia, but it wasn't known until recently that the FBI dossier on his activities, partly about his Communist leanings, spanned 1,275 pages. This is what they found, sensationalised just for you the television audience.
22:00 Sky Indie Quadrophenia
From here, Parklife.
00:00 Radio 2 Mark Lamarr
Another best of the year's sessions deal, but in Lamarr's case they're usually eclectic enough for further investigation.
00:40 BBC2 TOTP2
Westworld! And the Associates with Alan Rankine's Thornton's chocolate guitar. That's not a euphemism, he had a guitar made out of chocolate which he ended up feeding to the audience.
SATURDAY 27th
18:15 Radio 4 Loose Ends
Elbow, Glen Campbell, Sergio Mendes and Mavis Staples among the year's best guests.
19:00 Radio 2 Pacific Ocean Blues - The Life And Death Of Dennis Wilson
Pacific Ocean Blue made the top ten on reissue; Roger Daltrey explains its author's story.
21:00 C4 Bring Back...Fame
No, Justin, no.
21:00 Radio 2 Best Of The Dermot Sessions
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Talk Talk Live In Montreux
The 1986 synthpop version rather than the later minimalist, influential stuff. Well, that wouldn't have gone down well in the Swiss enormohalls.
00:15 BBC2 TOTP2
SUNDAY 28th
14:30 Radio 2 Pick Of The Pops
1969, which means Two Little Boys at number one ahead of Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town, Sugar Sugar and Suspicious Minds, and if he doesn't play either The Liquidator or Roger Whittaker we're writing to Ofcom. Then the somewhat less auspicious 1989, featuring Band Aid II, Jive Bunny, Donald Where's Your Troosers? and Jeff Wayne's Eve Of The War. Electronic's Getting Away With It and De La Soul's The Magic Number will hopefully provide relief.
18:00 Absolute Absolute Xtreme
Had to get them in somewhere - Geoff Lloyd spends four hours introducing us to next year.
22:00 Sky Indie Tenacious D in The Pick Of Destiny
Directed by Liam Lynch. And indeed, whatever.
MONDAY 29th
10:45 C4 Twenty Biggest Selling Singles Of The Last Ten Years
14:00 Radio 2 Michael Jackson: 30 At 50
For the following four days at this time the station celebrates musical institutions that turned fifty this year - Jacko, Madonna, Prince and Motown - by playing their thirty best selling songs alongside interviews and blah. Buy a compilation.
19:00 Radio 1 In New Music we Trust
Steve Lamacq does three hours of the year's new music, and the Pigeon Detectives too. Inscrutable, Lammo. Westwood does the same on Tuesday.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out
Stewart Copeland bought a Super-8 camera in 1978 and filmed everything as his band ascended from chancers to enormodomes and eventually fell apart. A bit later, he pieced it together.
23:20 BBC2 TOTP2
The Strokes and the Goodies - together at last!
TUESDAY 30th
22:00 BBC2 All New Shooting Stars
Or you could have new comedy ideas, Vic and Bob. Just a thought. Dizzee Rascal's a guest, anyway.
22:30 Radio 2 The Wonderful Sound Of Woolies
Ah, timing. This is about Woolworths' contribution to music, not the shared memory of buying your first single from there but the "popular music on a budget" they made up until the 70s.
23:30 BBC2 TOTP2
NEW YEAR'S EVE
17:35 BBC1 Top Of The Pops New Year's Eve Special
"The year in music" is the wideranging scope, which allows this to be less new TOTP performances and more festival and one-off occasion film.
19:00 BBC1 Celebrity Mastermind
Featuring Mick Hucknall, Comic Relief Mel & Kim's Mel Smith, St Winifreds School Choir's Sally Lindsay and musical actress and Hollyoaks plant Summer Strallen.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii
Elvis dons the white jumpsuit for the first time and gives 99.9% of the world's stack of impersonators a point to look no further back than. Fact: as it was part of a cancer charity fundraiser, the studio audience were invited to pay what they liked to attend. Don't look so smart now, do you, Radiohead?
22:00 Sky Arts 1 From The Basement
The series prides itself on the clarity of its sound, which we suspect might not be of the utmost when Seasick Steve performs. The Raconteurs and Band of Horses have their own takes on American traditions.
22:55 BBC2 Jools' Annual Hootenanny
That bloke they pay to stand around with a clock over his head fails to see any of Martha and the Vandellas, Dizzee Rascal, Annie Lennox, The Ting Tings, Dave Edmunds, Duffy, Adele, Sam Sparro, The Hold Steady, Kelly Jones, Lily Allen, Jools' Rhythm & Blues Orchestra and Svang, a Finnish harmonica quartet. But of course.
23:15 ITV Elton's New Year Party: Live From The O2 Arena
A somewhat more auspicious setting for a somewhat less auspicious performance. The set's designed by David La Chapelle, for one thing against it.
NEW YEAR'S DAY
12:00 Radio 2 6 On 2: Adam & Joe
There's a few 6 On 2 programmes over the week but this is the only one really worth your while. Only two hours, though.
19:00 Radio 1 New For 2009
On last year's evidence, very little of this five hour show will actually include naming the songs played.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 Elvis '68 Comeback Special
Forty years gone back on December 3rd, and Colonel Tom Parker wanted it to be a schmaltzy set of carols. Parker apparently didn't know what it actually was going to entail until rehearsals. Oh, and the director and at least one confidante have claimed Elvis put so much into his performance that his black suit had to be cleaned mid-shoot as during one of the sit-down performances he'd ejaculated. (Sorry.)
FRIDAY 2nd
09:00 Radio 1 10 Hour Takeover
For, we think, the fourth time most of the day is handed over to requests from the entire BBC music library. Great in principle, thousands and thousands of requests for current Super A-listed tracks in practice.
14:00 Radio 2 Rob Brydon's New Year's Resolutions
Do the whole three hours in your Ken Bruce voice, Rob! Go on!
19:00 Radio 2 Motown Record Producers
Smokey Robinson and Holland Dozier Holland help chart the changing sound of the Motor City.
21:00 Sky Arts 1 The Who - The Vegas Job
Here's a weird old story we've only just come across. In October 1999, the golden age of the dot com bubble, a company called Pixelon, promising technological advances in online video streaming, threw a $16m party at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and hired the Who to headline a stellar bill. Shortly afterwards, Pixelon's MD did a runner and it turned out he was a massive fraudster, among other things failing to actually webcast that gig. Obviously, however, had the thing not been professionally filmed someone would have said something earlier, and so we have a document of the greatest hits set, the last officially documented performance of John Entwhistle's life to boot.
21:00 BBC4 Prog At The BBC
22:00 BBC4 Prog Rock Britannia - An Observation In Three Movements
Whey-hey! "The first comprehensive, feature-length documentary about progressive music" says the blurb, which it isn't as they did one a few years ago. As the title of the second programme (the first is a collection of archived performances) suggests it's the first in a three parter, dealing with the genre's birth and ambition. Contributors include Robert Wyatt, Mike Oldfield, Rick Wakeman, Phil Collins and Ian Anderson.
22:30 Sky Arts 1 The Kids Are Alright
From slightly younger days, a document of TV appearances and interviews from The Who's golden age alongside documentary filming and performances from the late 70s, Keith Moon dying just after completion.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Picture post
The best YouTube clips found in the name of Weekender filler this year:
The way things used to be
Oh Boy! (one, two, three) was television's first showcase for rock'n'roll, set up by the celebrated impresario Jack Good. In this, the entire last show from May 1959, there's an opening of the excellently named TV Hop, then Lord Rockingham's XI, a song called Let's Rock While The Rockin's Good, Dickie Pride, the Vernons Girls, Marty Wilde and Cliff Richard early in his British Elvis phase.
"We have always thought that it might be a good question to put to Mr Kenneth Dodd and the members of the Beatles to what extent do they attribute their success to their hairstyles." Ken pretty much takes the lead from there, but even in the first flushes of Beatlemania they were still just another branch of light entertainment, as also shown by their guest slot in Morecambe & Wise's first successful series, ITV vehicle Two Of A Kind from the same year. John attempts to outflank Eric, fails.
At Christmas 1965, the year that saw Help!, Shea Stadium, Rubber Soul and Yesterday, the big ITV spectacular was The Music Of Lennon & McCartney (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven), an attempt to equate their escalating fame with musical cabaret. Here we find the pair introducing the George Martin Orchestra, Henry Mancini, Marianne Faithfull, Peter Sellers doing his Richard IIIrd She Loves You, Lulu, Cilla Black, Esther Phillips, Peter & Gordon, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, jazz organist Alan Haven, composer Fritz Spiegl and hordes of dancers.
What's on the other side? Ah, part two of the 1967 Top Of The Pops Christmas Special (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven). We join Jimmy Saville, Pete Murray and Alan Freeman start by recording a trail for what we're about to see, and what we then see is the Bee Gees, the Monkees in video form, the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones in a rakish hat, Long John Baldry, Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich, Lulu (the ace, Jimmy Page-featuring Love Loves To Love Love), Scott Mackenzie, the Supremes, Cliff Richard, Procul Harum, the famed All You Need Is Love film and Engelbert Humperdinck.
Forward just a few years, to 1985, and a cub punk reporter attempts to call out Black Flag's Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn with, shall we say, limited success.
And from Engelbert to Black Flag to Five Star. They opened the last Pebble Mill At One (3:14) by showing us round the building to the tune of Can't Wait Another Minute. And by round the building, we include corridors, offices, canteen, scene dock, switchboard and gallery. The glamour of BBC Birmingham.
The things they do for publicity
And believe us, they always have. The Ramones were meant to be advertising The House Of Guitars in Rochester, New York, but instead appeal for viewers to buy Leave Home and Rocket To Russia.
Surprise television appearances are something we've always loved, especially if they're on kids TV, and we don't just mean Eels dressing up for CD:UK. Nickelodeon's Yo Gabba Gabba! was created by Christian Jacobs of oddball faux-superhero ska-punks The Aquabats (Blink 182's Travis Barker was once a member) and as such has his connections - Biz Markie, Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh and John Reis (Rocket From The Crypt, Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu, The Night Marchers) appear in occasional slots and they get the odd band in. Jimmy Eat World, the Shins and Cornelius (Cornelius!) have fallen victim to Viacom, but still hanging around is the not at all cloying sight of the former Dear Eskiimo, the Ting Tings, covering Altered Images. The other end of the spectrum is doing a grown-up song to a school assembly, as Mike Scott of the Waterboys tried, doing The Whole Of The Moon in Ireland in 1987 while wearing a visor.
Then there's the international chat show circut. Joan Rivers briefly hosted a Late Show rival for Fox in the mid-80s, with sitcom actress Suzanne Somers sitting in one week. That was the week they booked Wire to play the uncomfortable The Drill. Listen for that studio sound distortion and watch for Somers' meeting of minds with Bruce Gilbert. McLusky on German daytime television where producers here would have Donny Osmond or Katherine Jenkins is an eyeopener. How much do you suppose Falco really wants his photo taking at the end?
You did just hear that correctly
That just said, Mark E Smith did once appear on Top Of The Pops, even if the Inspiral Carpets had to smuggle him on. (Horribly letterboxed, we know.) That sort of thing can really get you on the wrong side of Andi Peters.
Reginald Bosanquet was main ITN anchor between 1974 and 1976, famous for his slurred delivery and alleged drinking habit. His Wikipedia entry contains the line "He also reached the headlines for breaking into his ex-wife's flat, an offence which got him thrown off the judging panel for Dustman of the Year 1975." In 1980, he made this... would 'song' be too kind? It's called Dance With Me, it was voted 'top' of Kenny Everett's Bottom 30 and it makes you wonder if the Disco Demolition people at Comiskey Park had a point.
And what more is there to possibly add to a choir of seventy New York fifth graders reinterpreting Chas & Dave?
The way things used to be
Oh Boy! (one, two, three) was television's first showcase for rock'n'roll, set up by the celebrated impresario Jack Good. In this, the entire last show from May 1959, there's an opening of the excellently named TV Hop, then Lord Rockingham's XI, a song called Let's Rock While The Rockin's Good, Dickie Pride, the Vernons Girls, Marty Wilde and Cliff Richard early in his British Elvis phase.
"We have always thought that it might be a good question to put to Mr Kenneth Dodd and the members of the Beatles to what extent do they attribute their success to their hairstyles." Ken pretty much takes the lead from there, but even in the first flushes of Beatlemania they were still just another branch of light entertainment, as also shown by their guest slot in Morecambe & Wise's first successful series, ITV vehicle Two Of A Kind from the same year. John attempts to outflank Eric, fails.
At Christmas 1965, the year that saw Help!, Shea Stadium, Rubber Soul and Yesterday, the big ITV spectacular was The Music Of Lennon & McCartney (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven), an attempt to equate their escalating fame with musical cabaret. Here we find the pair introducing the George Martin Orchestra, Henry Mancini, Marianne Faithfull, Peter Sellers doing his Richard IIIrd She Loves You, Lulu, Cilla Black, Esther Phillips, Peter & Gordon, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, jazz organist Alan Haven, composer Fritz Spiegl and hordes of dancers.
What's on the other side? Ah, part two of the 1967 Top Of The Pops Christmas Special (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven). We join Jimmy Saville, Pete Murray and Alan Freeman start by recording a trail for what we're about to see, and what we then see is the Bee Gees, the Monkees in video form, the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones in a rakish hat, Long John Baldry, Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich, Lulu (the ace, Jimmy Page-featuring Love Loves To Love Love), Scott Mackenzie, the Supremes, Cliff Richard, Procul Harum, the famed All You Need Is Love film and Engelbert Humperdinck.
Forward just a few years, to 1985, and a cub punk reporter attempts to call out Black Flag's Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn with, shall we say, limited success.
And from Engelbert to Black Flag to Five Star. They opened the last Pebble Mill At One (3:14) by showing us round the building to the tune of Can't Wait Another Minute. And by round the building, we include corridors, offices, canteen, scene dock, switchboard and gallery. The glamour of BBC Birmingham.
The things they do for publicity
And believe us, they always have. The Ramones were meant to be advertising The House Of Guitars in Rochester, New York, but instead appeal for viewers to buy Leave Home and Rocket To Russia.
Surprise television appearances are something we've always loved, especially if they're on kids TV, and we don't just mean Eels dressing up for CD:UK. Nickelodeon's Yo Gabba Gabba! was created by Christian Jacobs of oddball faux-superhero ska-punks The Aquabats (Blink 182's Travis Barker was once a member) and as such has his connections - Biz Markie, Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh and John Reis (Rocket From The Crypt, Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu, The Night Marchers) appear in occasional slots and they get the odd band in. Jimmy Eat World, the Shins and Cornelius (Cornelius!) have fallen victim to Viacom, but still hanging around is the not at all cloying sight of the former Dear Eskiimo, the Ting Tings, covering Altered Images. The other end of the spectrum is doing a grown-up song to a school assembly, as Mike Scott of the Waterboys tried, doing The Whole Of The Moon in Ireland in 1987 while wearing a visor.
Then there's the international chat show circut. Joan Rivers briefly hosted a Late Show rival for Fox in the mid-80s, with sitcom actress Suzanne Somers sitting in one week. That was the week they booked Wire to play the uncomfortable The Drill. Listen for that studio sound distortion and watch for Somers' meeting of minds with Bruce Gilbert. McLusky on German daytime television where producers here would have Donny Osmond or Katherine Jenkins is an eyeopener. How much do you suppose Falco really wants his photo taking at the end?
You did just hear that correctly
That just said, Mark E Smith did once appear on Top Of The Pops, even if the Inspiral Carpets had to smuggle him on. (Horribly letterboxed, we know.) That sort of thing can really get you on the wrong side of Andi Peters.
Reginald Bosanquet was main ITN anchor between 1974 and 1976, famous for his slurred delivery and alleged drinking habit. His Wikipedia entry contains the line "He also reached the headlines for breaking into his ex-wife's flat, an offence which got him thrown off the judging panel for Dustman of the Year 1975." In 1980, he made this... would 'song' be too kind? It's called Dance With Me, it was voted 'top' of Kenny Everett's Bottom 30 and it makes you wonder if the Disco Demolition people at Comiskey Park had a point.
And what more is there to possibly add to a choir of seventy New York fifth graders reinterpreting Chas & Dave?
Saturday, December 06, 2008
The Yearly Sweep
44 Weekly Sweeps in 2008 - who appeared in them the most? Hardly a surprise, in fairness:
18= (12 mentions) Okkervil River, The Wave Pictures, Young Knives
13= (13) British Sea Power, Johnny Flynn, The School, The Walkmen, Wild Beasts
12 (14) Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
9= (15) Dananananaykroyd, The Futureheads, Jeremy Warmsley
7= (16) Foals, Laura Marling
5= (17) Broken Records, Those Dancing Days
4 (19) Mystery Jets
3 (20) Noah And The Whale
2 (24) Los Campesinos!
1 (30) Johnny Foreigner
18= (12 mentions) Okkervil River, The Wave Pictures, Young Knives
13= (13) British Sea Power, Johnny Flynn, The School, The Walkmen, Wild Beasts
12 (14) Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
9= (15) Dananananaykroyd, The Futureheads, Jeremy Warmsley
7= (16) Foals, Laura Marling
5= (17) Broken Records, Those Dancing Days
4 (19) Mystery Jets
3 (20) Noah And The Whale
2 (24) Los Campesinos!
1 (30) Johnny Foreigner
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The last good month of the year
As longtime readers - yeah, right - will know, it's about time for normal service to be suspended on Sweeping The Nation as from December 1st we go into end of year mode. The first part of this procedure is in the post immediately above this one; then from tomorrow we commence our annual rundown in detail of the albums of the year, which we've now extended to a top 50, although still only the top thirty get full write-ups. There'll be mp3s and embeds about, as usual. No STN favourite polling this year, it'd just be the same people again and we don't want to piss on our chips. Even Warmsley, y'know, we think he likes us and he sends us links to his online filmed work and stuff, but secretly we know he desires a greater range of awareness than just answering our requests for content twice a week or whatever it must feel like.
Can we just take a moment of your valuable if pointless time to discuss the list for this year? Being the sorts who get paranoid about misrepresentation to our nearly twelve readers, not to mention liability to get embarrassed by what we've written in retrospect, it might be worth noting that we've been chopping and changing this list for the last few weeks virtually daily, only coming up with a final order of merit when we started having to write the thing and stop mucking about. A number of albums that extends down into the chart's twenties could have been in the top ten had the wind changed, records we could write a lot more about superceded eventually by those that had more to impress us with, which is all partly why we’ve extended the full countdown to highlight those records which just missed out and might not get much attention elsewhere. Also, three other factors had to be brought into play:
- No Half Man Half Biscuit - CSI Ambleside
As you know we yield to few in worshipping at the altar of Blackwell, and finally seeing them live last month was properly among the best nights out we had all year. Nevertheless, it feels wrong to put their records in competition with others - they work on an entirely different plane, one which we never feel can be compared easily with others. So, to be on the safe side, they're sidelined.
- No Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
Less justifiable, this one. Firstly, they say it isn’t a proper album despite being ten tracks and comfortably over half an hour long. Moreover, it makes things easier for us, as it’d take us another year to work out which of their two records is the more accomplished. We’ll cover this in brief when we get round to Hold On Now, Youngster…, but leaving it out of the countdown makes an already tricky job that much more straightforward.
- No Anathallo – Canopy Glow
For the simple reason that despite a good year’s worth of fevered anticipation on these pages (alright, page) we still haven’t heard it despite it apparently being released on Monday. No shop we can find stocks it, there’s no sign of our pre-order, we wouldn’t know how to go about scrounging promos off Anticon, the likes of Norman Records and Puregroove aren’t listing accurate release dates, and even the leaked torrent is different to the release version according to the band. As we have to get our top 50 sorted by the weekend for obvious reasons, even if it landed tomorrow we wouldn’t be able to give it the listening time amongst sorting out what else we’re writing about to justify any sort of decision about its worthiness compared to the rest of the year’s output. We'll write something about it in the new year, touch wood. (There's something to look forward to.)
What else is coming up? Dissection of further Christmas top forties of yore, a good list of songs that also entertained, Weekender and Weekly Sweep round-ups, a festive television guide, and then once the whole personal listing shebang is done our mighty review of the year on New Year's Eve and the fourth annual UK Blogger Albums Of The Year Poll on New Year's Day, followed two days later by the Class Of '09 covermount ahead of the resumption of musical hostilities. Cool yule!
Can we just take a moment of your valuable if pointless time to discuss the list for this year? Being the sorts who get paranoid about misrepresentation to our nearly twelve readers, not to mention liability to get embarrassed by what we've written in retrospect, it might be worth noting that we've been chopping and changing this list for the last few weeks virtually daily, only coming up with a final order of merit when we started having to write the thing and stop mucking about. A number of albums that extends down into the chart's twenties could have been in the top ten had the wind changed, records we could write a lot more about superceded eventually by those that had more to impress us with, which is all partly why we’ve extended the full countdown to highlight those records which just missed out and might not get much attention elsewhere. Also, three other factors had to be brought into play:
- No Half Man Half Biscuit - CSI Ambleside
As you know we yield to few in worshipping at the altar of Blackwell, and finally seeing them live last month was properly among the best nights out we had all year. Nevertheless, it feels wrong to put their records in competition with others - they work on an entirely different plane, one which we never feel can be compared easily with others. So, to be on the safe side, they're sidelined.
- No Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
Less justifiable, this one. Firstly, they say it isn’t a proper album despite being ten tracks and comfortably over half an hour long. Moreover, it makes things easier for us, as it’d take us another year to work out which of their two records is the more accomplished. We’ll cover this in brief when we get round to Hold On Now, Youngster…, but leaving it out of the countdown makes an already tricky job that much more straightforward.
- No Anathallo – Canopy Glow
For the simple reason that despite a good year’s worth of fevered anticipation on these pages (alright, page) we still haven’t heard it despite it apparently being released on Monday. No shop we can find stocks it, there’s no sign of our pre-order, we wouldn’t know how to go about scrounging promos off Anticon, the likes of Norman Records and Puregroove aren’t listing accurate release dates, and even the leaked torrent is different to the release version according to the band. As we have to get our top 50 sorted by the weekend for obvious reasons, even if it landed tomorrow we wouldn’t be able to give it the listening time amongst sorting out what else we’re writing about to justify any sort of decision about its worthiness compared to the rest of the year’s output. We'll write something about it in the new year, touch wood. (There's something to look forward to.)
What else is coming up? Dissection of further Christmas top forties of yore, a good list of songs that also entertained, Weekender and Weekly Sweep round-ups, a festive television guide, and then once the whole personal listing shebang is done our mighty review of the year on New Year's Eve and the fourth annual UK Blogger Albums Of The Year Poll on New Year's Day, followed two days later by the Class Of '09 covermount ahead of the resumption of musical hostilities. Cool yule!
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