Albums
Sunday, October 23, 2005
In shops tomorrow: 24/10/05
Singles
As if to recover from the excitement of last week it's all gone a bit quiet this Monday, what with Robbie albums and Westlife singles. But... as if to say "that's a rabid fanbase, is it, Arctic Monkeys? No, no. This is a rabid fanbase!", Kate Bush releases her first single in nearly eleven years, King Of The Mountain
Even if it has left us with the rather good new video, there really is no reason for Warp, of all labels, to re-release Maximo Park's Apply Some Pressure. It got to number 20 with next to no promotion eight months ago!
One of the best moments of Summer Sundae this year was Tom Vek getting the amassed umbrellas watching his set moving up and down in time to his signals. It might be a bit difficult to recreate it in your bedroom as he brings out the song that caused such brolly choreography, Nothing But Green Lights
Do singles to promote tours long after the album release actually work? To test the theory, The Wedding Present's Ringway To Seatac. Their support The Organ apparently bring out Memorize The City this week too.
Albums
A paucity here too, being down to curious experiments such as the Fiery Furnaces' Rehearsing My Choir, a series of duets between Eleanor Friedberger and her 83 year old grandmother. According to Matthew Friedberger's notes, "Tracks 3 and 4 take place in the 40's; tracks 5 and 6 in the 20's and 30's; track 7 in the later 50's; track 8 starts in the very early 40's; track 9 goes back and forth; track 10 takes place in the early 60's; the final track takes place in the early 90's." It's that kind of album.
Also out is the OST to Thumbsucker, the forthcoming film starring Tilda Swinton, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio, Keanu Reeves and Benjamin Bratt and soundtracked by the Polyphonic Spree plus three new Elliott Smith songs.
Albums
The Weekly Sweep
Patrick Wolf - Tristan
Cardigans - I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer
Arab Strap - Dream Sequence
Animal Collective - Flesh Canoe
Pop Will Eat Itself - Can U Dig It
Silver Jews - Random Rules
Field Music - If Only The Moon Were Up
Arcade Fire - Wake Up
New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Young Knives - The Decision
Cardigans - I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer
Arab Strap - Dream Sequence
Animal Collective - Flesh Canoe
Pop Will Eat Itself - Can U Dig It
Silver Jews - Random Rules
Field Music - If Only The Moon Were Up
Arcade Fire - Wake Up
New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Young Knives - The Decision
Friday, October 21, 2005
Is this it?
To have one track leak well in advance of your make or break third album is unfortunate.
To have two leak is careless.
To have three leak is plain suspicious.
Four leaks? Now come on, RCA...
(NB. the links therein are almost certainly all down by now. Wait until January, like normal people.)
To have two leak is careless.
To have three leak is plain suspicious.
Four leaks? Now come on, RCA...
(NB. the links therein are almost certainly all down by now. Wait until January, like normal people.)
Thursday, October 20, 2005
The only chart that counts
Nicked from William Hill, the latest odds for the Christmas number one:
9-4 Westlife & Diana Ross
Clearly believing in the all-out approach for the big chart, Louis Walsh, who surely has enough already on his plate at the moment - actually, were you aware Westlife were back at all? - and Miss Ross do a Julio Iglesias song. Perfect for children wearing mittens waving tinsel.
5-2 Crazy Frog
In a desperate final attempt to drain the last drops out of the rapidly fading fad, 'he' is doing a single which Gusto are trying desperately to keep the identity of a secret. It's Jingle Bells. As Lord High Admiral to the Sarky Simon off No Rock'n'Roll Fun points out, Jamster have already made an arse of the PR too. Don't forget Popcorn only made number 12, although it's just followed Axel F to number one in New Zealand.
3-1 G4 Feat. Robin Gibb
What fresh hell is this? Not so much Vesuvius versus Krakatoa as geyser meets four Standard rockets, they're renting air asunder with When a Child is Born.
7-1 Winner Of X Factor
Well, at the moment it's seemingly an attempt to find someone with less chance of sustained success than Steve Brookstein. Apparently the winner will be announced days before Christmas, so don't save up to put money on this.
8-1 Tony Christie
Slade's Merry Christmas Everyone, which actually might survive its mauling by big band until when the vocal kicks in, when it's a different story. We'd like to hear him do the big shout, of course. Guess what's reprised on the B-side. By the way, a Christmas related song hadn't topped the festive chart since 1990 before Band Aid 20.
8-1 James Blunt
Six down, and we get to the first new song. Ladies and gentlemen, pop music in 2005. Goodbye My Lover, which by some accounts makes You're Beautiful sound like Caught Out There.
10-1 Girls Aloud
As if to prove the adage about a band that works hard being well received in the pop fraternity, they're releasing singles in November and December. The latter is called See The Day, a D C Lee cover. And let's face it, in the modern vogue for 80s referencing you can't do much better than reviving D C Lee.
12-1 Robbie Williams
Last year's Christmas single Misunderstood holds a special place for us, in that we don't think we ever heard it. Advertising Space, the big orchestral number off his new album, is his latest go.
12-1 The Choir Boys
Hats off to Declan Galbraith! In what was probably called Choir Idol by twats, three 11/12 year olds were picked out after a search of church choirs nationwide, signed to a half million contract and launched with a cover of Tears In Heaven for the NSPCC's benefit. Aled Jones is their co-manager, presumably in the same way Simon Webbe was VS' co-manager.
12-1 Rosetta Life featuring Billy Bragg
This is the song written by cancer stricken Maxine Edgington which Bragg added music to. For Dorset cancer care, it's a heartwarming tale that unfortunately has no place in this list as it's released on October 31st.
12-1 Liberty X
Doing A Night To Remember and I Can Make You Feel Good, just to make sure, for Children In Need. Might just hang around for a bit given that.
16-1 Sugababes
Taller In More Ways?!? They're releasing Ugly, a title just asking for trouble.
20-1 Kaiser Chiefs & Bloc Party
Hold hard here, as the team-up of Britain's liveliest and grumpiest What They Used To Call Indie bands as reported some months ago never came to be beyond possibly drunken discussions. Compare to how Ricky Gervais was in last year's book for ages because there was a CD given away on limited edition versions of The Office DVD and lots of people got the wrong end of the stick and wouldn't let it lie.
20-1 Patrolman Pete
A name that's only turning up on Google searches in terms of Christmas betting. Possibly it's to do with the AA's official mascot, but don't hold us to that.
20-1 Take That
20-1 John Lennon
Take That are releasing a greatest hits album; it's 65 years since Lennon's birth and 25 since his death. These are speculative efforts.
25-1 Pussycat Dolls
Proving life is a cabaret, a single called Beep. Lord, imagine what local commercial radio DJs will do with that.
25-1 Mary J Blige
She's not even had a top ten single for three and a half years, so One doesn't stand a great chance. We'd rather hoped this would be the single.
25-1 Kelly Clarkson
Stand by, self-aware bloggers, Because Of You is coming out. The big ballad about her family, not a Dexys cover.
33-1 Charlotte Church
Show A Little Faith has been mooted, but if there's a solid release planned it's strange she's only considered down here.
33-1 Rachel Stevens
21, more like.
33-1 Coldplay
Talk is set for only two weeks before The Biggest Chart Of The Year, which is a lot later than the dates of some singles you see above.
33-1 McFly
This seems low too for The Ballad of Paul K, the 'mature' one off the album.
33-1 Nizlopi
Cult acoustic duo who... um...probably have a mate who works in William Hill's PR department. They're re-releasing small scale viral video hit JCB, for what it's worth.
33-1 Daniel Powter
No idea.
40-1 Mariah Carey
Don’t You Forget About Us, apparently a brand new track. She must have some new hot pants she wants to try out.
40-1 Franz Ferdinand
Walk Away, chiefly of note so far for an Ealing comedy-referencing video.
40-1 Will Young
40-1 Lemar
40-1 Kylie Minogue
40-1 Elton John
40-1 Beyonce
40-1 The Darkness
You're just guessing now. Kylie? In her current state?
50-1 Madonna
Hung Up's out on the 7th November, which seems a stretch.
50-1 Elvis Presley
There are strong rumours that BMG/RCA are to re-release all Elvis' original number two singles from the start of next year, which would just be taking the piss, never mind the natural reaction to Elvis' number twos.
50-1 Gwen Stefani
BlueSquare have Marvin Gaye, for some reason, and Antony & The Johnsons, who are/is releasing You Are My Sister in December but can only be there because they've heard vaguely of them, at this price too. Still, at least that story about Andrew Flintoff releasing a Christmas single seemingly came to nothing.
9-4 Westlife & Diana Ross
Clearly believing in the all-out approach for the big chart, Louis Walsh, who surely has enough already on his plate at the moment - actually, were you aware Westlife were back at all? - and Miss Ross do a Julio Iglesias song. Perfect for children wearing mittens waving tinsel.
5-2 Crazy Frog
In a desperate final attempt to drain the last drops out of the rapidly fading fad, 'he' is doing a single which Gusto are trying desperately to keep the identity of a secret. It's Jingle Bells. As Lord High Admiral to the Sarky Simon off No Rock'n'Roll Fun points out, Jamster have already made an arse of the PR too. Don't forget Popcorn only made number 12, although it's just followed Axel F to number one in New Zealand.
3-1 G4 Feat. Robin Gibb
What fresh hell is this? Not so much Vesuvius versus Krakatoa as geyser meets four Standard rockets, they're renting air asunder with When a Child is Born.
7-1 Winner Of X Factor
Well, at the moment it's seemingly an attempt to find someone with less chance of sustained success than Steve Brookstein. Apparently the winner will be announced days before Christmas, so don't save up to put money on this.
8-1 Tony Christie
Slade's Merry Christmas Everyone, which actually might survive its mauling by big band until when the vocal kicks in, when it's a different story. We'd like to hear him do the big shout, of course. Guess what's reprised on the B-side. By the way, a Christmas related song hadn't topped the festive chart since 1990 before Band Aid 20.
8-1 James Blunt
Six down, and we get to the first new song. Ladies and gentlemen, pop music in 2005. Goodbye My Lover, which by some accounts makes You're Beautiful sound like Caught Out There.
10-1 Girls Aloud
As if to prove the adage about a band that works hard being well received in the pop fraternity, they're releasing singles in November and December. The latter is called See The Day, a D C Lee cover. And let's face it, in the modern vogue for 80s referencing you can't do much better than reviving D C Lee.
12-1 Robbie Williams
Last year's Christmas single Misunderstood holds a special place for us, in that we don't think we ever heard it. Advertising Space, the big orchestral number off his new album, is his latest go.
12-1 The Choir Boys
Hats off to Declan Galbraith! In what was probably called Choir Idol by twats, three 11/12 year olds were picked out after a search of church choirs nationwide, signed to a half million contract and launched with a cover of Tears In Heaven for the NSPCC's benefit. Aled Jones is their co-manager, presumably in the same way Simon Webbe was VS' co-manager.
12-1 Rosetta Life featuring Billy Bragg
This is the song written by cancer stricken Maxine Edgington which Bragg added music to. For Dorset cancer care, it's a heartwarming tale that unfortunately has no place in this list as it's released on October 31st.
12-1 Liberty X
Doing A Night To Remember and I Can Make You Feel Good, just to make sure, for Children In Need. Might just hang around for a bit given that.
16-1 Sugababes
Taller In More Ways?!? They're releasing Ugly, a title just asking for trouble.
20-1 Kaiser Chiefs & Bloc Party
Hold hard here, as the team-up of Britain's liveliest and grumpiest What They Used To Call Indie bands as reported some months ago never came to be beyond possibly drunken discussions. Compare to how Ricky Gervais was in last year's book for ages because there was a CD given away on limited edition versions of The Office DVD and lots of people got the wrong end of the stick and wouldn't let it lie.
20-1 Patrolman Pete
A name that's only turning up on Google searches in terms of Christmas betting. Possibly it's to do with the AA's official mascot, but don't hold us to that.
20-1 Take That
20-1 John Lennon
Take That are releasing a greatest hits album; it's 65 years since Lennon's birth and 25 since his death. These are speculative efforts.
25-1 Pussycat Dolls
Proving life is a cabaret, a single called Beep. Lord, imagine what local commercial radio DJs will do with that.
25-1 Mary J Blige
She's not even had a top ten single for three and a half years, so One doesn't stand a great chance. We'd rather hoped this would be the single.
25-1 Kelly Clarkson
Stand by, self-aware bloggers, Because Of You is coming out. The big ballad about her family, not a Dexys cover.
33-1 Charlotte Church
Show A Little Faith has been mooted, but if there's a solid release planned it's strange she's only considered down here.
33-1 Rachel Stevens
21, more like.
33-1 Coldplay
Talk is set for only two weeks before The Biggest Chart Of The Year, which is a lot later than the dates of some singles you see above.
33-1 McFly
This seems low too for The Ballad of Paul K, the 'mature' one off the album.
33-1 Nizlopi
Cult acoustic duo who... um...probably have a mate who works in William Hill's PR department. They're re-releasing small scale viral video hit JCB, for what it's worth.
33-1 Daniel Powter
No idea.
40-1 Mariah Carey
Don’t You Forget About Us, apparently a brand new track. She must have some new hot pants she wants to try out.
40-1 Franz Ferdinand
Walk Away, chiefly of note so far for an Ealing comedy-referencing video.
40-1 Will Young
40-1 Lemar
40-1 Kylie Minogue
40-1 Elton John
40-1 Beyonce
40-1 The Darkness
You're just guessing now. Kylie? In her current state?
50-1 Madonna
Hung Up's out on the 7th November, which seems a stretch.
50-1 Elvis Presley
There are strong rumours that BMG/RCA are to re-release all Elvis' original number two singles from the start of next year, which would just be taking the piss, never mind the natural reaction to Elvis' number twos.
50-1 Gwen Stefani
BlueSquare have Marvin Gaye, for some reason, and Antony & The Johnsons, who are/is releasing You Are My Sister in December but can only be there because they've heard vaguely of them, at this price too. Still, at least that story about Andrew Flintoff releasing a Christmas single seemingly came to nothing.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
A certain romance
Thinking about our suggestion earlier that there had to be more to the Arctic Monkeys' rise than everyone suddenly discovering the same website at once we got searching on Technorati and found they were being talked about as early as last November. Better, though, is this February live report including a sighting of Amy Winehouse and an appeal to the NME to leave them alone. Hey ho.
In more upmarket news, we mentioned Do They Know It's Hallowe'en a few months back, and now a video has showed up just in time for the day itself.
In more upmarket news, we mentioned Do They Know It's Hallowe'en a few months back, and now a video has showed up just in time for the day itself.
You know, sometimes you willingly go public by expressing admiration for a broadcasting figure...
...and then they get involved with recording celebrity ringtones and video messages.
Mind you, at least these have a certain charm. Unlike some other participants on there. Boy George agreed to do this?
Mind you, at least these have a certain charm. Unlike some other participants on there. Boy George agreed to do this?
Monkey business
We knew they had their fans, who apparently all chose purely at random to visit the downloads on their website nine months ago, but the Arctic Monkeys are number one in the midweek chart, a decent amount ahead of the Sugababes. It's preposterous mostly because we can't recall any other band of their ilk in recent times being actually top halfway between Sundays. Can't wait for the 'demos were better' brigade to emerge, although we'll lose hope if this and Franz Ferdinand's success turns Domino's Lawrence Bell into Alan McGee at his most shades-indoors Blessed Leader-like.
Also of note, new Busted - But Girls! the Love Bites, who as far as we're aware are unique in having no offspring of late 70s pop-experimentalists in their line-up, are at 7. We wonder how long it took the video director to come up with the idea of the girls hassling a single bloke, and by 'how long' we're counting in seconds.
Also of note, new Busted - But Girls! the Love Bites, who as far as we're aware are unique in having no offspring of late 70s pop-experimentalists in their line-up, are at 7. We wonder how long it took the video director to come up with the idea of the girls hassling a single bloke, and by 'how long' we're counting in seconds.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Sweet neo-con
Sometimes a story seems so outlandish that the only possible immediate course of action is to close the paper/browser, take a moment's pause and open it again. Even by these standards, however, the news that former male Tracy Shaw Adam Rickitt is on the shortlist for potential Tory parliamentary candidates is staggering. Can you imagine Rickitt passing a public speaking test? Would his political enemies be within their rights to bring up that video where he was in a clear plastic box in the nude? What if he was put forward as a stalking horse candidate against the party leader? Should David Cameron get worried this early about a threat to his telegenic reputation?
Steady Gallup - the top 40 explained
1 Sugababes - Push The Button
Also number one for albums, downloads and airplay. When did they get so popular? Oh, we know they always had number one singles, but nothing spanning all media or so long-lasting - probably four weeks, looking at next week's contenders - as this. Note to Stevens, R: maybe an underlying hint of hatred of everyone around you might help.
4 U2 - All Because Of You
This entered the top 75 on import last year and rounds off their most successful set of singles from one album. And you thought this release had passed us all by.
5 Friday Hill - Baby Goodbye
Well, that's any hope they had of having Blazin' Squad retrospectively assessed as a proper street R&B concern gone. Appropriately it sounds like an East 17 ballad. OK, you name the two that aren't Kenzie.
8 Daniel Powter - Bad Day
Drivetime! Back up two places in its twelth top ten week, just to prolong the agony.
11 Feeder - Shatter
Who knew Feeder had such a devoted fanbase? This is the second time they've re-recorded an old B-side for a single release, which suggests they don't have much of a grasp of their best songs.
12 Lee Ryan - Turn Your Car Around
Sorry, is this a new song?
13 Lisa Scott-Lee - Electric
Many have said this being so low is the record buying public's attempts to damn her for her brazenness in the wake of Totally Scott-Lee (awful title, isn't it?), but then how high would this have got without it? Famously the basis of the promo was that if you didn't make it top ten she'd retire - who says the charts don't matter any more? - which at first seemed very "yeah, you're saying that, are you? Not your label?", but then her label for this single is a Dutch dance imprint that Andy Scott-Lee's already on. Everyone's backtracking hurredly, of course, but without this masterstroke of... something, what's the purpose of having Lisa Scott-Lee still releasing singles to supposedly act as anything more than shelf filler? Written by Guy Chambers and Ben Adams, possibly under hypnosis. She's beaten Jenny Frost by 34 places, mind.
24 Roll Deep - Shake A Leg
Younger readers may recall Wiley was last year at the forefront of grime's cutting edge, so much so that he had to invent his own genre, Eski, just for himself. There are worse things to be than a British De La Soul (come on, tag team rapping plus dayglo samples is pretty much 3 Foot High And Rising right there), but it's not going to get style mag fawning. Speaking of which, looking further down the list (bloody hell, Delirious? are back!), we see that almost ridiculously for the amount of press attention and ILX discourse she gets, MIA has missed the top 75 again, Galang 05 matching the original mix by peaking at 77. Someone get Maya a 80s One Hit Wonders complilation pronto, would they?
Also number one for albums, downloads and airplay. When did they get so popular? Oh, we know they always had number one singles, but nothing spanning all media or so long-lasting - probably four weeks, looking at next week's contenders - as this. Note to Stevens, R: maybe an underlying hint of hatred of everyone around you might help.
4 U2 - All Because Of You
This entered the top 75 on import last year and rounds off their most successful set of singles from one album. And you thought this release had passed us all by.
5 Friday Hill - Baby Goodbye
Well, that's any hope they had of having Blazin' Squad retrospectively assessed as a proper street R&B concern gone. Appropriately it sounds like an East 17 ballad. OK, you name the two that aren't Kenzie.
8 Daniel Powter - Bad Day
Drivetime! Back up two places in its twelth top ten week, just to prolong the agony.
11 Feeder - Shatter
Who knew Feeder had such a devoted fanbase? This is the second time they've re-recorded an old B-side for a single release, which suggests they don't have much of a grasp of their best songs.
12 Lee Ryan - Turn Your Car Around
Sorry, is this a new song?
13 Lisa Scott-Lee - Electric
Many have said this being so low is the record buying public's attempts to damn her for her brazenness in the wake of Totally Scott-Lee (awful title, isn't it?), but then how high would this have got without it? Famously the basis of the promo was that if you didn't make it top ten she'd retire - who says the charts don't matter any more? - which at first seemed very "yeah, you're saying that, are you? Not your label?", but then her label for this single is a Dutch dance imprint that Andy Scott-Lee's already on. Everyone's backtracking hurredly, of course, but without this masterstroke of... something, what's the purpose of having Lisa Scott-Lee still releasing singles to supposedly act as anything more than shelf filler? Written by Guy Chambers and Ben Adams, possibly under hypnosis. She's beaten Jenny Frost by 34 places, mind.
24 Roll Deep - Shake A Leg
Younger readers may recall Wiley was last year at the forefront of grime's cutting edge, so much so that he had to invent his own genre, Eski, just for himself. There are worse things to be than a British De La Soul (come on, tag team rapping plus dayglo samples is pretty much 3 Foot High And Rising right there), but it's not going to get style mag fawning. Speaking of which, looking further down the list (bloody hell, Delirious? are back!), we see that almost ridiculously for the amount of press attention and ILX discourse she gets, MIA has missed the top 75 again, Galang 05 matching the original mix by peaking at 77. Someone get Maya a 80s One Hit Wonders complilation pronto, would they?
Sunday, October 16, 2005
In shops tomorrow - 17/10/05
Singles
Plenty this week, not least the eventual arrival of the Arctic Monkeys. Whether you like them or not, there's something about a non-manufactured band whose first single might get to number one, isn't there?
The great thing about Ring A Ding Ding by Brakes is that it's 80 seconds long and isn't even their shortest single to date.
Nobody appears to have noticed dEUS are back with new single 7 Days 7 Weeks. They appear to have merged with fellow Belgian eclectics Evil Superstars somewhere along the line too.
John Cale's new single Perfect seems to have come out of nowhere too. Oh, but you'll jump to attention when the far less worthy new Lou Reed material comes out, won't you?
Did Peel go for Laura Veirs, whose new single is Galaxies? She'd fit in well with his latter day Laura Cantrell, Nina Nastasia and Neko Case tendencies.
Albums
They're Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deaken - and whoever is eventually voted favourite of the four will be managed by Sharon Osbourne! Not really, this is Animal Collective, whose Feels adds an electronic element to their psych-folk. Meanwhile former collaborator and great lost English folkie Vashti Bunyan releases Lookaftering, her first solo album in - eat shit, Kate Bush - 35 years, featuring Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom.
Yet another singles chart failure for Rachel Stevens, who also has an album out this week, reminds us that this chart lark really isn't as easy as we like to make out. Consider Annie, whose two singles and Anniemal album featured credible, inventive pop fronted by someone with proper personality. Single chart positions: 25, 50. Back to the DJ booth, then, with her DJ Kicks compilation.
Malcolm Middleton's solo work, Aidan Moffatt working under his L Pierre alias and most of the live band ending up in Sons & Daughters might have suggested last orders for Arab Strap, but almost quietly The Last Romance is turning them into a pop band. On their own terms, of course.
As mentioned earlier in the week, Bloc Party's Silent Alarm is back out with Two More Years added, as well as Little Thoughts and a DVD disc featuring a documentary, videos and live tracks. Weren't they talking about having a new album out for this current semi-arena tour?
A new Boards Of Canada album is as big an event to what used to be called the underground, The Campfire Headphase turning them into - oh, let's say it - a new My Bloody Valentine.
We always felt the Cardigans are continually weighed down by Lovefool, their least likeable single and therefore their most successful. Super Extra Gravity won't return them to the top ten but at least they're thinking about where to go now.
We can't quite believe that Dangerdoom's The Mouse And The Mask, the spot-on collaboration between Danger Mouse and MF Doom, is retaining its inserts from Adult Swim, the US Cartoon Network offshoot, for the overseas market. Who's going to get those? There's a track called Vats Of Urine. It's about vats of urine.
The American Rakes, anyone? That's the unfulfilling pigeonhole we'd unthinkingly place We Are Scientists' With Love And Squalor in.
Alright, John Peel - A Tribute doesn't contain any dark drum'n'bass, ancient Irish reels, death metal or scrappy indie poorly recorded in a bedroom. Is that technically the point? Why it features the Doors, Van Morrison and Song 2 we're not as sure. Speaking of the subject...
Books
At the point at which John's contribution to Margrave Of The Marshes trails off he hasn't even got behind a mike yet, but such is its attitude to chronology that he still works in the famed Mallory Park Radio 1 Fun Day Out/Bay City Rollers/BBC Sub-Aqua Club/speedboat/Tony Blackburn/Womble anecdote among others. Unfortunately the story of how Sue Cook broke the family waterbed will remain merely an unexplained footnote.
Albums
Books
The Weekly Sweep
The Decemberists - 16 Military Wives
Cat Power - The Greatest
MIA - Galang
Architecture In Helsinki - Do The Whirlwind
Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World
Futureheads - Area
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Is This Love?
Maximo Park - Apply Some Pressure
Wedding Present - Ringway To Seatac
Pipettes - Dirty Mind
Cat Power - The Greatest
MIA - Galang
Architecture In Helsinki - Do The Whirlwind
Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World
Futureheads - Area
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Is This Love?
Maximo Park - Apply Some Pressure
Wedding Present - Ringway To Seatac
Pipettes - Dirty Mind
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Looking in on wonders
Surely we're not alone in being fascinated by VH1's 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders, a US production which turns up whenever the UK version has five hours (!) to fill. Firstly it's presented by William Shatner, which is actually not as bad as it sounds as he holds back on the knowing irony, even if his style does take pregnant pausing to new heights. Also it's fascinating to see which bands are regarded as one hit wonders for Billboard, from huge British acts (Soft Cell, Spandau Ballet) to oddities such as Quiet Riot's version of Cum On Feel The Noize, an electro cover of Putting On The Ritz and Thomas Dolby's She Blinded Me With Science. Have fun explaining Magnus Pyke to Americans. Then there's the talking head quotient, none of whom are captioned so we don't know the name of the even smugger looking Alex James-alike to look out for for future avoidance. You have to wonder why Henry Rollins said yes, though. And Starsailor! Only to 'discuss' Edwyn Collins admittedly, but were this repeated in America that audience would be clueless. Actually, the UK audience might well be struggling.
In a completely different vein, an attempt to list every notable musician with their own blog. Pop by Dan Treacy off of the Television Personalities' diary and wonder at the entry that combines a rant against bands from the indie sphere who are still going long after their time with a plug for a forthcoming gig.
In a completely different vein, an attempt to list every notable musician with their own blog. Pop by Dan Treacy off of the Television Personalities' diary and wonder at the entry that combines a rant against bands from the indie sphere who are still going long after their time with a plug for a forthcoming gig.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Sometimes tours are fated to fail
Cat Power doing a solo tour? Will they get a single complete song out of her all night? Follow that link for an mp3 of the title track of The Greatest, released in January.
Sink that (graveyard) shift
Truth be told, we've been neglecting Mark Radcliffe of late, we suspect because the live guest quality seems to have either dipped or got trapped in a small pool of guests (ah, KT Tunstall and Aberfeldy!). Monday's show seems to be a must-listen, though, as he'll be job swapping with Ricky Wilson. Throw in Danny Baker's return to BBC LDN on the same day and everything will truly be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Just waiting for that
It's not every week that Dermot'n'Natasha on BBC Breakfast are found interviewing Laura Cantrell, but this is the much-vaunted John Peel Day. For all the idea's faults, and there are many - let's get it straight after yesterday's post that an all-star single really is pushing our collective luck, although even here you could hardly state "this Tom Ravenscroft knows nothing about John Peel!" - surely for the BBC it was damned if they do, damned if they don't, and by the way how do you know exactly what John would have thought? In one of the autobiography extracts in the Telegraph this week Sheila noted that friends and family were worried about the late starts that came for cynics to symbolise the end of his Radio 1 tenure but he, after seeing the likes of Walker and Kershaw be moved aside, was just happy to still be on the station. (We'd argue, by the way, that even this wasn't the worst slot he'd ever had, if you discount the thought about what time a 65 year old with diabetes should be working - it's easily forgotten now that in the mid-90s, a time on Radio 1 now cemented as Matthew Bannister's new broom bringing in a new music ethos across the network, the arbiter of the new did a total of four hours a week on Saturday afternoons as the dance warm-up and a dead slot on Sunday evenings.) We're fairly sure unknown bands play gigs most nights, however.
Further scheduling news - Tom Robinson chats to Sheila on Home Truths on the 22nd, with Margrave Of The Marshes as Radio 4's Book Of The Week for the following week, with Michael Angelis (Chrissie from Boys From The Blackstuff) and Carolyn Pickles (Emmerdale chiefly, but she's been in all sorts) handling the readings. BBC4 have a special night on the actual death anniversary, mostly repeats - their own Fall documentary, Peel's own Beefheart documentary, the live archive clips from their special night last year, PJ Harvey live and Peel's Undertones documentary.
Go on then, commenters, where were you when you heard? We, for no good reason, turned Radio 1 on during Colin & Edith and wondered why they were reading texts and emails from people who'd met John in a shocked, low tone.
Further scheduling news - Tom Robinson chats to Sheila on Home Truths on the 22nd, with Margrave Of The Marshes as Radio 4's Book Of The Week for the following week, with Michael Angelis (Chrissie from Boys From The Blackstuff) and Carolyn Pickles (Emmerdale chiefly, but she's been in all sorts) handling the readings. BBC4 have a special night on the actual death anniversary, mostly repeats - their own Fall documentary, Peel's own Beefheart documentary, the live archive clips from their special night last year, PJ Harvey live and Peel's Undertones documentary.
Go on then, commenters, where were you when you heard? We, for no good reason, turned Radio 1 on during Colin & Edith and wondered why they were reading texts and emails from people who'd met John in a shocked, low tone.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Peel Eve
The accepted line about John Peel Day seems to be that he'd be acutely embarrassed by it. Given he seemed acutely embarrassed by the idea anyone liked his shows this seems a touch churlish, and what would be his problem with knowing people were remembering his musical impact anyway? Full Peel Day gig details and a wealth of information on the Radio 1 site, while the Cuban Boys want you to play their The Nation Needs You at midday tomorrow in tribute. It's better than the Ever Fallen In Love? all star cover, which isn't as bad as it initially sounds (although, we think, Robert Plant adds an unneccesary vocal ad-lib about halfway through, and apart from Barry Hyde at the start we can't make out who's who properly) despite Tom Ravenscroft's declaration in this week's NME that invites were sent out to new bands based on who he would have loved. Futureheads, Datsuns, Soledad Brothers - well, he played them both first. El Presidente? Seriously, Tom? Hear Phill Jupitus debut it on 6 Music on Monday via the wonder of RealPlayer or see the video exclusive on Channel 4 on Thursday at 11.05pm. Meanwhile the Guardian have revisited his top 20 album list, including Neil Young's famous Arc disc of live feedback.
Background reading: his last Radio 1 playlist which you'll note wasn't actually a year ago tomorrow; clips from his pirate days; Sonic Youth's Fall covers Peel session; Radio Rewind gets some mp3s up; tributes from Spike, TV Cream and, after a fashion, Wikipedia.
Background reading: his last Radio 1 playlist which you'll note wasn't actually a year ago tomorrow; clips from his pirate days; Sonic Youth's Fall covers Peel session; Radio Rewind gets some mp3s up; tributes from Spike, TV Cream and, after a fashion, Wikipedia.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Scraping the barrel
You know you've got a decent bandwagon growing when you get your own compilation, and thus among this week's Various Artists new releases we find Howzat! The Unofficial England Cricket Album. Each disc starts with good intentions - Jerusalem, Soul Limbo, Mambo No.5 - and then suddenly realises that, actually, there aren't 42 songs related to cricket. So we get very little actual reggae (not even Victory Test Match, although that's about an England defeat) but the 'someone didn't check the lyrics' likes of Mirror In The Bathroom, Police & Thieves and Friday Night Saturday Morning, plus Fit But You Know It for the lads, the Undertones' It's Going To Happen for the title and the Subways' Oh Yeah because, erm, someone in the office was listening to Young For Eternity, probably. How did Buster Bloodvessel get involved enough to contribute both Bad Manners' Can Can and a song of his own? Who are the St George’s Brass Ensemble? Who is going to listen to this by the time the Pakistan tour starts next summer?
Ono soul
Somewhere among the nine - nine! - special awards at the Qs yesterday, the type of thing which makes you wonder why the music media continually takes them so seriously, Yoko Ono revealed John Lennon worried that nobody covered his songs. Because obviously nobody's ever attempted Imagine. Or All You Need Is Love. No. And McCartney wrote all his songs on a child's xylophone.
The report goes on to state Yoko "delighted Liam Gallagher by anointing Oasis as the keeper of Lennon's spirit in modern rock". Good to see Lennon's legacy is being upheld by a band nobody likes now, then. You know, Noel must always think he's over the unthinking Beatles comparisons by now, and then...
The report goes on to state Yoko "delighted Liam Gallagher by anointing Oasis as the keeper of Lennon's spirit in modern rock". Good to see Lennon's legacy is being upheld by a band nobody likes now, then. You know, Noel must always think he's over the unthinking Beatles comparisons by now, and then...
This week's top 40 - what we've learned
1 Sugababes - Push The Button
Note how everyone's quoting that line about multi-dimensional asses without pointing out how overly hard it's trying despite that on record it sounds about as as sexy as David Mellor, which for all we know might be the intention. For one of the bands at the forefront of The New Proper Pop this does sound like something that might have come out at the end of the 90s, or at a pinch an Ann Summers Kosheen - the first time we saw the video we thought it was one of those workaday dance acts because nothing about it suggested the Sugababes - so how this one's become the popular one we're not totally sure.
2 Robbie Williams - Tripping
It was reported at the weekend that Robbie and Guy Chambers have patched up their differences, which isn't before time given that with Stephen Duffy he's so far come up with an Ultravox offcut and an attempt to cut and shut his own Supreme, the Police and Ja Rule's lyric book.
6 Kanye West Ft Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger
Funny how Minnie Driver and Juliette Lewis get stick for being film stars imagining this will make them successful in all forms of art whereas Foxx has virtually been ushered into a studio.
7 Bloc Party - Two More Years
Kele reassured fans last week that this is a standalone single that won't be used to shore up their next album. No, because it's been stuck on the end of Silent Alarm for its Deluxe Edition re-release next week. Oh, Wichita, Wichita, Wichita!
11 Ricky Martin - I Don't Care
Now there's a hostage to fortune title. The problem with Martin, as evidenced by the type of promo he's been doing, is that he now needs to be aimed at an older audience because he's been so long away kids are going to go "sorry, Livin' La what?"
12 Rachel Stevens - I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)
And so the universal music blog gnashing of teeth continues. It's been argued that people have turned against Stevens because of her image as someone who doesn't have a personality and would quite like to keep it that way - never mind going on Dick And Dom In Da Bungalow not expecting to be covered in muck muck, how do you fall out with a TV show (Popworld) made by a company co-owned by your manager? - but as we've seen, people have hardly fallen out with the notoriously prickly Sugababes. Instead we'd suggest that Polydor need to realise that Rachel's audience is divided into the people who buy and admire the records and the people who perv at the pictures when they'd spent a couple of years believing both to be indistinguishable.
16 James Blunt - High
Meanwhile You're Beautiful starts going back up, which is something of an own goal by Atlantic's radio pluggers. Gee, we wonder if Wisemen will be the next single?
23 Bratz Rock Angels - So Good
Bratz as in the dolls, yes, this being the spin-off of their straight to DVD film. Not enough session musician money in the world, we're saying. A few years ago the whole music industry seemed to be banking its future on virtual bands - Tom Watkins wouldn't shut up about his surfer cyberbabe at the turn of the century - but given not even Damon's pretending any more that Gorillaz are nothing to do with him it's boiled down to spinoff records. What happened to the Archies revival?
32 Schnappi - Schnappi
Originally scheduled for late August when it might actually have caught the returning from holiday market. As it was, not even JK & Joel could be bothered to launch an ironic campaign.
35 Bedouin Soundclash - When The Night Feels My Song
Sod off.
Note how everyone's quoting that line about multi-dimensional asses without pointing out how overly hard it's trying despite that on record it sounds about as as sexy as David Mellor, which for all we know might be the intention. For one of the bands at the forefront of The New Proper Pop this does sound like something that might have come out at the end of the 90s, or at a pinch an Ann Summers Kosheen - the first time we saw the video we thought it was one of those workaday dance acts because nothing about it suggested the Sugababes - so how this one's become the popular one we're not totally sure.
2 Robbie Williams - Tripping
It was reported at the weekend that Robbie and Guy Chambers have patched up their differences, which isn't before time given that with Stephen Duffy he's so far come up with an Ultravox offcut and an attempt to cut and shut his own Supreme, the Police and Ja Rule's lyric book.
6 Kanye West Ft Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger
Funny how Minnie Driver and Juliette Lewis get stick for being film stars imagining this will make them successful in all forms of art whereas Foxx has virtually been ushered into a studio.
7 Bloc Party - Two More Years
Kele reassured fans last week that this is a standalone single that won't be used to shore up their next album. No, because it's been stuck on the end of Silent Alarm for its Deluxe Edition re-release next week. Oh, Wichita, Wichita, Wichita!
11 Ricky Martin - I Don't Care
Now there's a hostage to fortune title. The problem with Martin, as evidenced by the type of promo he's been doing, is that he now needs to be aimed at an older audience because he's been so long away kids are going to go "sorry, Livin' La what?"
12 Rachel Stevens - I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)
And so the universal music blog gnashing of teeth continues. It's been argued that people have turned against Stevens because of her image as someone who doesn't have a personality and would quite like to keep it that way - never mind going on Dick And Dom In Da Bungalow not expecting to be covered in muck muck, how do you fall out with a TV show (Popworld) made by a company co-owned by your manager? - but as we've seen, people have hardly fallen out with the notoriously prickly Sugababes. Instead we'd suggest that Polydor need to realise that Rachel's audience is divided into the people who buy and admire the records and the people who perv at the pictures when they'd spent a couple of years believing both to be indistinguishable.
16 James Blunt - High
Meanwhile You're Beautiful starts going back up, which is something of an own goal by Atlantic's radio pluggers. Gee, we wonder if Wisemen will be the next single?
23 Bratz Rock Angels - So Good
Bratz as in the dolls, yes, this being the spin-off of their straight to DVD film. Not enough session musician money in the world, we're saying. A few years ago the whole music industry seemed to be banking its future on virtual bands - Tom Watkins wouldn't shut up about his surfer cyberbabe at the turn of the century - but given not even Damon's pretending any more that Gorillaz are nothing to do with him it's boiled down to spinoff records. What happened to the Archies revival?
32 Schnappi - Schnappi
Originally scheduled for late August when it might actually have caught the returning from holiday market. As it was, not even JK & Joel could be bothered to launch an ironic campaign.
35 Bedouin Soundclash - When The Night Feels My Song
Sod off.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
In shops tomorrow - 10/10/05
Singles
Not a lot all round this week, although this is the week when Lisa Scott-Lee's single comes out, and she says she'll quit the music industry if it doesn't go top ten. Who says the chart doesn't matter any more, eh? And yes, that's her saying that, not her label, oh no. Elsewhere Louis XIV re-release their one good song, Finding Out True Love Is Blind, unencumbered by making a right mess of it on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.
The Andes-worth of press mountains regarding MIA all seem to miss out one crucial detail, that being that nobody actually buys her records. Arular and all three singles all missed the top 75, which explains why Galang's being given another go. This confused the hell out of the 6 Music Roundtable panel the other week, most giving it low marks on the basis that they couldn't work out the song's political message. Maybe it doesn't have one?
Get behind Adam Buxton in the queue for Spoon's new single Sister Jack.
Albums
Actually, when we wanted new Gang Of Four material we didn't mean a set of re-recordings and remixes in the shape of Return The Gift. Some of the re-recordings work better than others, and getting T*e O***rs to rework the original master tapes sounds much how you'd expect. Entertainment! must be going cheap somewhere.
Books
There's a few new books out in the last couple of weeks that deserve Amazon links. Fool The World - The Oral History Of A Band Called Pixies by Josh Frank and Caryn Ganz spun out of the Frank Black musical that was talked about a couple of years ago and derives new interviews from all four members and assorted sidelings and hangers-on. Word is it's hugely detailed and pretty much the last historical word on them.
Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Andrew Motion's book of 2004, is out in paperback and still doesn't make a lot of chronological sense. Imagine John Steinbeck gone folk...
Richard White's Dexys Midnight Runners: Young Soul Rebels should, if the publishers had a proper sense of humour, have been advertised with full pages in the NME. It's a complex story, and White seems to have done a decent job on it.
Also, don't forget to get your orders in early for Margrave Of The Marshes (Peel/Ravenscroft), the serialisation of which starts in today's Telegraph. Speaking of which, the Radio 1 Keeping It Peel website has now officially launched. Look at that sessions detail!
Albums
Books
The Weekly Sweep
Metric - Poster Of A Girl
Arab Strap - Dream Sequence
The Crimea - White Russian Galaxy
Brakes - Ring A Ding Ding
Chris Mills - Chris Mills Is Living The Dream
Jesus & Mary Chain - Just Like Honey
James Chance - Designed To Kill
Broken Social Scene - Fire Eyed Boy
Kate Bush - King Of The Mountain
Velvet Underground - Sister Ray
Arab Strap - Dream Sequence
The Crimea - White Russian Galaxy
Brakes - Ring A Ding Ding
Chris Mills - Chris Mills Is Living The Dream
Jesus & Mary Chain - Just Like Honey
James Chance - Designed To Kill
Broken Social Scene - Fire Eyed Boy
Kate Bush - King Of The Mountain
Velvet Underground - Sister Ray
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Just laziness this time, we're afraid
In the meantime, congratulations to the Mystery Jets for making a £92 profit on their guitarist. Further investigation reveals Blaine Harrison has bought a Fender Rhodes (fair enough), synth drums (crikey), Stylophone (inevitably), Cajun Washboard Necktie Wearable Percussion (it'll blend nicely with the colanders) and detachable hard drive (mmm) and sold Stooges tickets (bloody major labels, eh?), which we'll assume clashed with the shooting schedule for their recent video.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
In shops tomorrow - 3/10/05
Singles
Labels looking for decent placings for their new signles are pretty much screwed tomorrow as the great Robbie/Rachel/Mariah/Blunty/um, Schnappi fight for number one kicks off. Come on, the Stevens single only proves that her producers are getting even quicker at ripping off Goldfrapp, doesn't it? So good luck to Wichita in finding room for Bloc Party's Two More Years. Anyone got a spare for the tour?
Dig a bit deeper and find perennial UK tourers and MTV2 eaters We Are Scientists' The Great Escape
Albums
We were slow to take up with the Beta Band bandwagon when they were being hailed at the end of the 90s as the future of everything, possibly as much due to how every major British band around then were supposed to be having 'a Beta Band phase', but it's now evident that they never matched the early acid-madrigals. We will now sell five copies of Music - The Best Of The Beta Band.
With the onset of time comes an appreciation of bands like Cream, whose Royal Albert Hall reformation gigs documented here do feature ten minute drum solos but also the kind of ensemble playing people are too scared to do now. Excuse us while we get a Mojo subscription...
Debate still rages about the veracity of the Mark E Smith Classified Check story, although the Fall's official website has it and Steve Lamacq read what he said was a press release from them. We'll have to wait and see, in the company of Fall Heads Roll's maintaining of the full-on charge plus irascible drunk winning formula of recent years.
Actually, You Could Have It So Much Better With Franz Ferdinand is all that - there's a couple of moments where you wonder if this couldn't have been left for a B-side and it's more 'fuck dance, let's art!', but the songwriting and riffing standard is still high and there's actual emotions too. Don't bother with the limited edition DVD, it looks rubbish.
Reissues with extra tracks should be smited as a matter of course, but it's hardly as if everyone has the Go! Team's Thunder Lightning Strike as it is, and the two new tracks fit right in.
With all these sales nowadays you can probably pick up Never Mind The Bollocks and Metal Box for less than John Lydon's Best of British £1 Notes Best Of for much the same effect, but neat enough to have a lot of it in one place. Try and get hold of the limited edition set of the even darker, dubbier PIL 12" mixes on CD for the first time.
How come New Order never turn up in lists of great singles bands? New Order - Singles adds another disc's worth to 1987's Substance, which means the under-rated Republic cuts, Fine Time and, well, World In Motion.
We slagged off Pure Reason Revolution once as part of a general Poptones moan, more generally because their first single was a perfectly good song subjected to self-indulgence beyond its means. We were too hasty, it turns out, mini-album of sorts Cautionary Tales For The Brave showcasing odysses of sound and musical fields of vision, generally the sort of thing you would never have expected from ex-members of Gel and Period Pains.
Deluxe reissue time for Siouxsie & The Banshees' The Scream accidentally inventing post-punk and plenty besides through John Mackay's guitar sounds and Siouxsie'n'Severin's malevolence. An extra CD brings with it alternate versions and Peel sessions.
DVDs
New Order release DVDs at the same rate others buy lottery tickets, the typically gnomically titled Item being one disc of videos, including a couple of new versions for old songs, and one comprehensive documentary with live footage.
The Pixies reunion has gone better than anyone expected, which is to say Frank and Kim haven't had an onstage brawl yet. They sound good too, Pixies Sell Out being the set from France's Eurockeennes festival that turns up every so often very late at night on VH2 plus plenty of other filmed material.
Albums
DVDs
The Weekly Sweep
Franz Ferdinand - The Fallen
Kubichek! - Nightjoy
Joanna Newsom - This Side Of Blue
Go! Team - Bottle Rocket
Mew - A Dark Design
Dangerdoom - El Chupra Libre
Bloc Party - Two More Years
We Are Scientists - It's A Hit
Sufjan Stevens - Decatur
Wolf Parade - You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son
Kubichek! - Nightjoy
Joanna Newsom - This Side Of Blue
Go! Team - Bottle Rocket
Mew - A Dark Design
Dangerdoom - El Chupra Libre
Bloc Party - Two More Years
We Are Scientists - It's A Hit
Sufjan Stevens - Decatur
Wolf Parade - You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son
Could have done it so much better
Everyone knows that Western stars do ridiculous things in the cause of Japanese adverts knowing that over here we'll never see them. Course, the advent of the Internet means this isn't the case any more, and you'd think a band as smart as Franz Ferdinand would know this, but no, click on the big central advert on this, then on 'TVCM' and admire those meaningful looks to camera in the cause of the new Walkman.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Friday, September 30, 2005
You Say France And I Whistle
Been waiting ages for someone to pick up on this - WFMU's Beware Of The Blog collates Van Morrison's Bang Masters, 31 knocked off songs to fulfil his early contract with a hated label. Danny Baker used to play Ring Worm occasionally to much hilarity, but there's equal goodness in such standards as Want A Danish and The Big Royalty Check. It's most surreal if you keep in mind throughout that this really is the famously grouchy Van Morrison.
In more appropriate, if no less nuts, album news, the Danger Mouse/MF Doom collaboration Danger Doom does that whole streaming thing
In more appropriate, if no less nuts, album news, the Danger Mouse/MF Doom collaboration Danger Doom does that whole streaming thing
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
And are there any more Others albums in the pipeline?
It's been hanging around for about a month now, but the full horror has just been alerted to us of Rock'n'Roll Promz, a title so desperately straining to be 'punk' and 'unconventional' (Promz, you see? Like the Proms... but off the wall like, um, Bratz!) you'll not be surprised to learn it's the brainchild of Alan McGee. PR?
"The idea for Rock N Roll Promz came to Alan whilst onstage DJing at Glastonbury. Alan was the last person onsite playing music and with the tent bursting at the seams the organisers decided it was time to turn the volume down for safety reasons. But when the volume went down the crowds started a euphoric mass-sing-along, creating an amazing atmosphere which Alan instantly picked up on, and, in keeping with the mood reached into his box for more classic and iconic tunes: Stones, Verve, Beatles, Oasis, Kinks, all taking the crowd higher and higher. The buzz in the tent was amazing with more and more people joining the celebratory mood. Alan immediately thought why not create that same atmosphere around the UK?"
Right. So basically it's a DJ set of the most famous songs Alan McGee knows in the style that about twelve people on the Internet and nowhere else call 'rockist', that is to say records that pissed lads in rugby shirts bellow while placing hands on each other's shoulder blades. You'd never guess that he hangs around with Oasis, would you? And he's properly touring with it! No wonder those The Bands compilations sell so well.
"The idea for Rock N Roll Promz came to Alan whilst onstage DJing at Glastonbury. Alan was the last person onsite playing music and with the tent bursting at the seams the organisers decided it was time to turn the volume down for safety reasons. But when the volume went down the crowds started a euphoric mass-sing-along, creating an amazing atmosphere which Alan instantly picked up on, and, in keeping with the mood reached into his box for more classic and iconic tunes: Stones, Verve, Beatles, Oasis, Kinks, all taking the crowd higher and higher. The buzz in the tent was amazing with more and more people joining the celebratory mood. Alan immediately thought why not create that same atmosphere around the UK?"
Right. So basically it's a DJ set of the most famous songs Alan McGee knows in the style that about twelve people on the Internet and nowhere else call 'rockist', that is to say records that pissed lads in rugby shirts bellow while placing hands on each other's shoulder blades. You'd never guess that he hangs around with Oasis, would you? And he's properly touring with it! No wonder those The Bands compilations sell so well.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Turning into themselves
Of course, we all know by now that mashups don't work - the vocals are always pitched wrongly, the chorus never matches up, it's just an excuse for the label to put acapellas on CD singles. Mind you, the odd one sneaks through - for example, Indie mp3's find of a Don't Cha/Banquet collective effort, the text for which also reveals the Indie mp3 'team' have never heard of the Pussycat Dolls. What a strange and beautiful musical landscape they must inhabit.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
In shops tomorrow - 26/9/05
Yes, we're jumping on this bandwagon every Sunday from now on:
Singles
Going from New Younger Younger 28s to saviours of Irish pop in one bound, the Chalets' No Style
Editors re-release Bullets in what we've eventually decided is a superior form
This is how we introduce them one at a time - the Go! Team rejig Bottle Rocket to avoid those sampling bills piling up
Back at Summer Sundae we noted the Infadels, who release Jagger 67, finally blending Radio 4 punk-funk with UK dance culture, plus the singer's relentless energy and the guitarist's hat. At least one of these facets is on show here
LCD Soundsystem's Tribulations probably won't get Murphy back into the top 20, but it's closer than Black Dice will manage
Points to Levy's Rotten Love just for adding itself to the list of songs where the singer namechecks himself
Albums
The Dead 60s' debut finishes its three months on the release schedule sidelines, which has allowed them to add a limited edition dub mix second CD to their underachieving but high aiming Clash-ska
As previously reviewed, Help: A Day In The Life comes to CD minus two of the best download tracks
Piss-poor title, appalling cover, weak ending, but Mew And The Glass Handed Kites at least proves they're still approaching indie-prog-dreampop like nobody else
DVDs
A critically acclaimed retrospective 25 years of steel city blues in Made In Sheffield, oddly released in America before Britain. If you're not that arsed about the Human League, get Curb Your Enthusiasm Series 4 instead.
Singles
Albums
DVDs
The Weekly Sweep
Half Man Half Biscuit - Upon Westminster Bridge
dEUS - Bad Timing
Metric - Monster Hospital
Okkervil River - Black
Tilly And The Wall - You And I Misbehaving
Emmanuel Jal - Gua
Maximo Park - Wasteland
Belle and Sebastian - The Eighth Station of the Cross Kebab House
David Bowie & Arcade Fire - Wake Up (Fashion Rocks performance)
Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead
dEUS - Bad Timing
Metric - Monster Hospital
Okkervil River - Black
Tilly And The Wall - You And I Misbehaving
Emmanuel Jal - Gua
Maximo Park - Wasteland
Belle and Sebastian - The Eighth Station of the Cross Kebab House
David Bowie & Arcade Fire - Wake Up (Fashion Rocks performance)
Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Warchild of our time
The Help: A Day In The Life album is released in physical form - you know, the media nobody cares about any more - on Monday after some remarkably quick online selling for something not actually given all that much mass media publicity. What this means is we can legally tell you what the tracks are like before you spend money on the good cause. The tracks by the Zutons - Hello Conscience, pots and pans percussion giving way to their standard issue warped pop shapes replete with rasping guitars and a touch too long running time to get to the enormous pounding finish - and Belle And Sebastian - The Eighth Station of the Cross Kebab House, a surprisingly skanking effort referencing the Israel situation Stuart Murdoch recently saw first hand - are held back from the CD apparently for a future EP release, which leaves this new tracklisting:
Coldplay - How You See The World No.2: On the surface, much like you'd expect as a piano meanders and builds to an arena sized finish, but there's a certain passion in Chris' voice to go with the sort of politicised lyricism he's still tiptoeing towards and drive in the band that seemed to have gone missing in the X&Y sessions. Mixed by Mark 'Spike' Stent, which probably explains it.
Razorlight - Kirby's House: Starts oddly like an anaemic Magic Numbers before developing into a slightly more developed campfire strumalong, Borrell even letting the others have backing vocals. Then it disappears for twenty seconds and re-emerges with a shiny gospel edge added, as all Razorlight songs are sure to have now. This is the track radio seems to have decided is the only one on the album worth bothering with, which demonstrates all sorts.
Radiohead - I Want None Of This: Much of this new song-erama is Radiohead's doing, of course, having seen a proper version of Lucky stand out in a morass of demos and scraps. This was first track on the download version and you can see why it got moved back, as your pop consumer's going to be put off by something pitched not far from Amnesiac's You And Whose Army, or at least Ed O'Brien's description of that song as like a modern Inkspots. Like that track, it sounds intriguing in the context of an album but tells you nothing taken on its own. They've said they're looking at a full band version for their next album, which might be interesting.
Keane & Faultline - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Not entirely sure what David Kosten's added to this, given the burbling electronic undercurrent he adds to a lot of guest production spots was on much of Hopes And Fears too. It's a delicate late night vocal in any case with a notably audible ride cymbal, for what that's worth.
Emmanuel Jal - Gua: Ah, tokenism! Fast rising Sudanese rapper and, as no doubt everything ever written about him suffixes his name with, former child soldier multilingualises intelligently about peace over electro-reggae and a female choir. Oddly affecting.
Gorillaz - Hong Kong: Speaking of world music... more like a Think Tank sketch than anything done under 2D and co's name, essentially it's Damon refinding his longing, faraway voice while people mess about with various stringed instruments, someone lets a small child loose on a piano at various intervals and the rhythm section work around the theme of Lambchop's Up With People. It's be perfect for sunlit mountain roads.
Manic Street Preachers - Leviathan: Flagged up by Nicky Wire as the punkiest thing they've ever - ever! - done, but it's no more balls out than the rawer bits of Know Your Enemy, complete with short twiddly solo. No idea what it's about, namechecks for Patty Hearst and Baader Meinhof (FX: Luke Haines spitting feathers) implying something of great significance but not much more than that. Also seems to fade out accidentally.
Kaiser Chiefs - I Heard It Through The Grapevine: Yes, we've heard the Slits version too. It's not quite as dubby as that, not least as they've copied the original bassline and stuck an inappropriate guitar solo in, but it's clear where the influence has come from. It was cobbled together in three hours' recording time, and it shows.
Damien Rice - Cross Eyed Bear: Presumably after hearing James Blunt, Rice has noticeably dropped his voice an octave or two but not done anything about the sparse acoustic. Just as you begin to wonder when something's going to happen Lisa Hannigan arrives - wasn't she supposed to be getting joint billing these days? - sounding oddly like an Irish Chan Marshall, or alternately like she's just got up. It doesn't help the song much.
The Magic Numbers - Gone Are The Days: It sounds like the Lovin' Spoonful, of course, albeit with more of a country swing. Is it also so wrong to mention the Coral's Pass It On at this juncture? What they need at this juncture is something that works on their grittier live sound; what they've provided is almost the opposite.
Tinariwen - Cler Achel: "Tinariwen formed in Colonel Ghadaffi's rebel camps having been violently forced from their Touareg nomadic life by Malian government forces", it says here. According to their Wikipedia entry their style is known as Tishoumaren, or "music of the unemployed", which perhaps makes them a kind of New Deal For Touareg Musicians. Political, then, and clearly there's some theme of regret tinged with anger going on in their funny foreign language and their Jeff Beck style solo, but to the English ear it could as easily be a song for the harvest. The sort of thing Andy Kershaw sticks on immediately before Loudon Wainwright III session tracks.
The Coral - It Was Nothing: A jarring change, I'll give them that. Very much in the recent Coral style, that is to say James Skelly sounding all wistful over mid-paced mod-Merseybeat and making it hard to tell what producers Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley actually did, or indeed why they seem to be regressing stylistically as time passes.
Mylo - Mars Needs Women: Starts off with a squelching bass akin to Flat Beat being played on speakers someone's left an old mobile phone too close to before dissolving into something suspiciously 808 State-esque, all one step up from ambient synths and 303s that sound a bit like birds. Would segue nicely into Drop The Pressure in his live set.
Maximo Park - Wasteland: It's taken us a long time to realise the greatness of A Certain Trigger and this would fit neatly into the closing stages of that album, which is praise actually, full of hidden hooks and false choruses before suddenly stopping at precisely the right moment. "The devil in me made a pact with naivety" Paul Smith relays, possibly while grimacing and leaning to one side gripping the top of the mike stand.
Elbow - Snowball: It could have been risky to come to after Guy Garvey telling anyone who'll listen about this song's political content but it works well, moving over five graceful minutes from an acoustic stripped down form to controlled intensity and an accordion popping briefly by. It might be the closest they've come to Radiohead, the nearest comparison to Garvey's voice being the aforementioned resigned bitterness of Yorke transplanted into a wounded bear of a man.
Bloc Party - The Present: We'd heard a live version of this before which seemed to suggest their new songs were progressing in a more linear fashion, but clearly they've had a bit of a think about this themselves between, well, recording Two More Years (a real grower, but still not staking out the same territory as their earlier singles) and now. Some glacial synths arrive towards the end to root it right in the Cure-like 80s, but otherwise it builds cleverly through the reliable old delay pedal and Kele keeping the histrionics down while Matt Tong does his usual cyclical thing in the background.
Hard-Fi - Help Me Please: Well, this is different. Accompanied by acoustic guitar, the occasional backing melodica and basic drum machine setting, Richard Archer yearns for something better, as usual, and sounds too much like Oasis for that much comfort.
The Go! Team - Phantom Broadcast: You'd be entitled to wonder how a 'band' whose album is carefully made up of many years' worth of sampled beats could get a track together in a day, and it's a challenge they rise to with something approximating a lounge spaghetti Western theme, utilising the live band set-up well (no Ninja, mind). It'll be soundtracking something on the telly in no time.
Babyshambles - From Bollywood to Battersea: The face of modern evil incarnate turns in... well, he turns in a track within a day, which is a start. He doesn't seem to have finished writing proper lyrics in time, admittedly, but as a development to the Libertines' jaunty acoustic side it passes the time and it actually sounds like he wanted to be there and was fully conscious.
George & Antony - Happy Christmas War Is Over: O'Dowd and Hegarty, Boy and Johnsons, to be exact. Doing this song makes a kind of sense, we suppose, if not this version in which George starts off trying to outdo Antony for effort, Antony proves he's conclusively failing by just trying harder and most of the emotional approach of the lyrics gets lost, despite the lovely string arrangement. Still, at least they had fun.
Coldplay - How You See The World No.2: On the surface, much like you'd expect as a piano meanders and builds to an arena sized finish, but there's a certain passion in Chris' voice to go with the sort of politicised lyricism he's still tiptoeing towards and drive in the band that seemed to have gone missing in the X&Y sessions. Mixed by Mark 'Spike' Stent, which probably explains it.
Razorlight - Kirby's House: Starts oddly like an anaemic Magic Numbers before developing into a slightly more developed campfire strumalong, Borrell even letting the others have backing vocals. Then it disappears for twenty seconds and re-emerges with a shiny gospel edge added, as all Razorlight songs are sure to have now. This is the track radio seems to have decided is the only one on the album worth bothering with, which demonstrates all sorts.
Radiohead - I Want None Of This: Much of this new song-erama is Radiohead's doing, of course, having seen a proper version of Lucky stand out in a morass of demos and scraps. This was first track on the download version and you can see why it got moved back, as your pop consumer's going to be put off by something pitched not far from Amnesiac's You And Whose Army, or at least Ed O'Brien's description of that song as like a modern Inkspots. Like that track, it sounds intriguing in the context of an album but tells you nothing taken on its own. They've said they're looking at a full band version for their next album, which might be interesting.
Keane & Faultline - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Not entirely sure what David Kosten's added to this, given the burbling electronic undercurrent he adds to a lot of guest production spots was on much of Hopes And Fears too. It's a delicate late night vocal in any case with a notably audible ride cymbal, for what that's worth.
Emmanuel Jal - Gua: Ah, tokenism! Fast rising Sudanese rapper and, as no doubt everything ever written about him suffixes his name with, former child soldier multilingualises intelligently about peace over electro-reggae and a female choir. Oddly affecting.
Gorillaz - Hong Kong: Speaking of world music... more like a Think Tank sketch than anything done under 2D and co's name, essentially it's Damon refinding his longing, faraway voice while people mess about with various stringed instruments, someone lets a small child loose on a piano at various intervals and the rhythm section work around the theme of Lambchop's Up With People. It's be perfect for sunlit mountain roads.
Manic Street Preachers - Leviathan: Flagged up by Nicky Wire as the punkiest thing they've ever - ever! - done, but it's no more balls out than the rawer bits of Know Your Enemy, complete with short twiddly solo. No idea what it's about, namechecks for Patty Hearst and Baader Meinhof (FX: Luke Haines spitting feathers) implying something of great significance but not much more than that. Also seems to fade out accidentally.
Kaiser Chiefs - I Heard It Through The Grapevine: Yes, we've heard the Slits version too. It's not quite as dubby as that, not least as they've copied the original bassline and stuck an inappropriate guitar solo in, but it's clear where the influence has come from. It was cobbled together in three hours' recording time, and it shows.
Damien Rice - Cross Eyed Bear: Presumably after hearing James Blunt, Rice has noticeably dropped his voice an octave or two but not done anything about the sparse acoustic. Just as you begin to wonder when something's going to happen Lisa Hannigan arrives - wasn't she supposed to be getting joint billing these days? - sounding oddly like an Irish Chan Marshall, or alternately like she's just got up. It doesn't help the song much.
The Magic Numbers - Gone Are The Days: It sounds like the Lovin' Spoonful, of course, albeit with more of a country swing. Is it also so wrong to mention the Coral's Pass It On at this juncture? What they need at this juncture is something that works on their grittier live sound; what they've provided is almost the opposite.
Tinariwen - Cler Achel: "Tinariwen formed in Colonel Ghadaffi's rebel camps having been violently forced from their Touareg nomadic life by Malian government forces", it says here. According to their Wikipedia entry their style is known as Tishoumaren, or "music of the unemployed", which perhaps makes them a kind of New Deal For Touareg Musicians. Political, then, and clearly there's some theme of regret tinged with anger going on in their funny foreign language and their Jeff Beck style solo, but to the English ear it could as easily be a song for the harvest. The sort of thing Andy Kershaw sticks on immediately before Loudon Wainwright III session tracks.
The Coral - It Was Nothing: A jarring change, I'll give them that. Very much in the recent Coral style, that is to say James Skelly sounding all wistful over mid-paced mod-Merseybeat and making it hard to tell what producers Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley actually did, or indeed why they seem to be regressing stylistically as time passes.
Mylo - Mars Needs Women: Starts off with a squelching bass akin to Flat Beat being played on speakers someone's left an old mobile phone too close to before dissolving into something suspiciously 808 State-esque, all one step up from ambient synths and 303s that sound a bit like birds. Would segue nicely into Drop The Pressure in his live set.
Maximo Park - Wasteland: It's taken us a long time to realise the greatness of A Certain Trigger and this would fit neatly into the closing stages of that album, which is praise actually, full of hidden hooks and false choruses before suddenly stopping at precisely the right moment. "The devil in me made a pact with naivety" Paul Smith relays, possibly while grimacing and leaning to one side gripping the top of the mike stand.
Elbow - Snowball: It could have been risky to come to after Guy Garvey telling anyone who'll listen about this song's political content but it works well, moving over five graceful minutes from an acoustic stripped down form to controlled intensity and an accordion popping briefly by. It might be the closest they've come to Radiohead, the nearest comparison to Garvey's voice being the aforementioned resigned bitterness of Yorke transplanted into a wounded bear of a man.
Bloc Party - The Present: We'd heard a live version of this before which seemed to suggest their new songs were progressing in a more linear fashion, but clearly they've had a bit of a think about this themselves between, well, recording Two More Years (a real grower, but still not staking out the same territory as their earlier singles) and now. Some glacial synths arrive towards the end to root it right in the Cure-like 80s, but otherwise it builds cleverly through the reliable old delay pedal and Kele keeping the histrionics down while Matt Tong does his usual cyclical thing in the background.
Hard-Fi - Help Me Please: Well, this is different. Accompanied by acoustic guitar, the occasional backing melodica and basic drum machine setting, Richard Archer yearns for something better, as usual, and sounds too much like Oasis for that much comfort.
The Go! Team - Phantom Broadcast: You'd be entitled to wonder how a 'band' whose album is carefully made up of many years' worth of sampled beats could get a track together in a day, and it's a challenge they rise to with something approximating a lounge spaghetti Western theme, utilising the live band set-up well (no Ninja, mind). It'll be soundtracking something on the telly in no time.
Babyshambles - From Bollywood to Battersea: The face of modern evil incarnate turns in... well, he turns in a track within a day, which is a start. He doesn't seem to have finished writing proper lyrics in time, admittedly, but as a development to the Libertines' jaunty acoustic side it passes the time and it actually sounds like he wanted to be there and was fully conscious.
George & Antony - Happy Christmas War Is Over: O'Dowd and Hegarty, Boy and Johnsons, to be exact. Doing this song makes a kind of sense, we suppose, if not this version in which George starts off trying to outdo Antony for effort, Antony proves he's conclusively failing by just trying harder and most of the emotional approach of the lyrics gets lost, despite the lovely string arrangement. Still, at least they had fun.
Friday, September 23, 2005
I've been to a post-punk postcard fair
I think we can stop this Peel memoriam business being added to now, can't we? There's going to be a supergroup cover of Ever Fallen In Love curated by Tom Ravenscroft featuring Dave Gilmour, Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Pete Shelley, Peter Hook, Jeff Beck, The Datsuns, The Futureheads and, for god knows what reason, El Presidente. Oh, and that Virgin compilation album previously mentioned here was apparently put together by a DJ friend and the tracks were given the nod by his family. Presumably they weren't as keen on the African influence, Dutch techno, early hip hop, drum'n'bass, Ivor Cutler...
In related news, in that nobody now appears arsed about this excellent new Half Man Half Biscuit album (literally - we couldn't find it in any local shops), good to see the page of radio session tracks has been extended backwards, now including DJ chat including Johnnie Walker. See, there's someone who should be playing them now.
In related news, in that nobody now appears arsed about this excellent new Half Man Half Biscuit album (literally - we couldn't find it in any local shops), good to see the page of radio session tracks has been extended backwards, now including DJ chat including Johnnie Walker. See, there's someone who should be playing them now.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
It's so ridiculous it might just be true
Mark E Smith to read the classified football results on the BBC? Not quite accurate, this, as he'll be doing the repeat reading on the interactive Score service rather than making Tim Gudgin stay at home for the day.
Did these people not see him on Newsnight?
Did these people not see him on Newsnight?
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
New year starts earlier every year
Rolling Stone are first out of the blocks with their predictions for the Ten To Watch in 2006, although at least one of them could well be well watched by New Year's Day anyway. If you're at all worried about the possibility of Blunt going global and thus are wondering about how well their expert seer's eye works, on the basis of their Ten To Watch For 2005... not greatly.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
The nation needs you
The Peel festivities are heading towards us, with a compilation - but it should all be new bands!!!! - and according to the Radio 1 Peel Day page a soon come extensive site including tracklistings from every session, audio, video and pictorials. Radio Rewind has various 70s rarities up now too.
Cliff notes
Cliff Richard is threatening to stop releasing records apparently due to some sort of unofficial radio boycott. Yeah, the Cliff Richard whose last single was A-listed by Radio 2 and who can probably afford to keep himself in the manner to which he has become accustomed on Gold station plays alone. That Cliff Richard, apparently started when Chris Evans decided a modern rock radio station that didn't play his records shouldn't be playing his records. We know in our heart of hearts that this will lead to a post-ironic 'campaign' by a tabloid, and if it does, someone will die.
Never mind that, though. While we were checking this, we found out This Is London, the online wing of the Evening Standard, run their own downloads service, and this at the time of posting is their top ten:
1 Echo And The Bunnymen - Stormy Weather
2 M People - Search For The Hero - Smith & Mighty Remix
3 Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To
4 Jem - Wish I
5 Daniel Powter - Bad Day
6 James Blunt - You're Beautiful
7 The White Stripes - My Doorbell
8 Republic Of Ireland Squad 1990 - Put 'Em Under Pressure
9 Foo Fighters - DOA
10 Republic Of Ireland Squad 1998 - The Boys In Green
Us neither.
Never mind that, though. While we were checking this, we found out This Is London, the online wing of the Evening Standard, run their own downloads service, and this at the time of posting is their top ten:
1 Echo And The Bunnymen - Stormy Weather
2 M People - Search For The Hero - Smith & Mighty Remix
3 Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To
4 Jem - Wish I
5 Daniel Powter - Bad Day
6 James Blunt - You're Beautiful
7 The White Stripes - My Doorbell
8 Republic Of Ireland Squad 1990 - Put 'Em Under Pressure
9 Foo Fighters - DOA
10 Republic Of Ireland Squad 1998 - The Boys In Green
Us neither.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
The Weekly Sweep
Franz Ferdinand - The Fallen
Mew - The Zookeeper's Boy
Danger Doom -
Devendra Banhart - I Feel Just Like A Child
Infadels - Jagger 67
Seth Lakeman - Kitty Jay
Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl (Diplo remix)
TV On The Radio - Dry Drunk Emperor
Brakes - Ring A Ding Ding
Elvis Costello - Possession
And if you must ask, it wasn't problems at our end this time so much as laziness. (And the new Mew album and Elvis Costello DVD, yes.)
Mew - The Zookeeper's Boy
Danger Doom -
Devendra Banhart - I Feel Just Like A Child
Infadels - Jagger 67
Seth Lakeman - Kitty Jay
Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl (Diplo remix)
TV On The Radio - Dry Drunk Emperor
Brakes - Ring A Ding Ding
Elvis Costello - Possession
And if you must ask, it wasn't problems at our end this time so much as laziness. (And the new Mew album and Elvis Costello DVD, yes.)
Thursday, September 15, 2005
CD player
We've covered the CD:UK revamp before, and they're doing an introductory webchat so you can ask Lauren what the hell she's playing at yourself, but it's a hats off to the viewer's chart on BBC1 Saturday morning makeweight proto-interactive Anthea-immolating series UP2U with Mitracks, in which viewers are invited to vote for their favourite songs of the day using a curious weighting mechanism. There's fifty to choose from, including some apparently chosen by the presenters - LCD Soundsystem up against Tatu! - and they say the top ten will be incorporated into the show. We give it three months, but nice idea.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
We did think we'd dreamt this...
...but no, Baddiel and Skinner really did end last week's Unplanned with How I Wrote Elastic Man. See the audience go wild!
Did we miss much?
Nothing, it seems, that Take Your Medicine didn't, with its covers mp3 album and seperate post of the Subways doing TV On The Radio.
Elsewhere, as Mitch Benn himself mentioned in the comments box, Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now has a video which will also be showing as filler on Paramount. Meanwhile, this is Digiguide's description of this Saturday's Top Of The Pops Reloaded:
"Fearne Cotton, Sam Nixon and Mark Rhodes introduce live performances, music videos and exclusive interviews. Performances come from Sugababes, Franz Ferdinand and Jo O'Meara. Fearne hangs out with Ms Dynamite, Sam goes backstage with Arcade Fire, and JK and Joel give us the latest gossip from their Radio 1 week."
No, not the bit where JK & Joel are made out to have any worth. but the idea that one of Sam & Mark is following up Arcade Fire's TOTP triumph by introducing them to the kids, against the new CD:UK. Our heads are already spinning.
Elsewhere, as Mitch Benn himself mentioned in the comments box, Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now has a video which will also be showing as filler on Paramount. Meanwhile, this is Digiguide's description of this Saturday's Top Of The Pops Reloaded:
"Fearne Cotton, Sam Nixon and Mark Rhodes introduce live performances, music videos and exclusive interviews. Performances come from Sugababes, Franz Ferdinand and Jo O'Meara. Fearne hangs out with Ms Dynamite, Sam goes backstage with Arcade Fire, and JK and Joel give us the latest gossip from their Radio 1 week."
No, not the bit where JK & Joel are made out to have any worth. but the idea that one of Sam & Mark is following up Arcade Fire's TOTP triumph by introducing them to the kids, against the new CD:UK. Our heads are already spinning.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
The 'Weekly' Sweep
The Fall - Bingo Master's Breakout
Guillemots - Made Up Love Song #43
Rilo Kiley - Portions For Foxes
Chalets - No Style
International Noise Conspiracy - Capitalism Stole My Virginity
Luke Haines - Meet Me At The Airport
Shooting at Unarmed Men - Pink Ink
Elbow - Mexican Standoff
We Are Scientists - The Great Escape
Go-Betweens - Here Comes A City
And that's it from here for a bit while this PC goes off for an upgrade. All being well, we'll be back a week on Monday.
Guillemots - Made Up Love Song #43
Rilo Kiley - Portions For Foxes
Chalets - No Style
International Noise Conspiracy - Capitalism Stole My Virginity
Luke Haines - Meet Me At The Airport
Shooting at Unarmed Men - Pink Ink
Elbow - Mexican Standoff
We Are Scientists - The Great Escape
Go-Betweens - Here Comes A City
And that's it from here for a bit while this PC goes off for an upgrade. All being well, we'll be back a week on Monday.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Where did you last see it?
Not that he's ever struck anyone as the most organised of men, but having done so three years ago, Guy Garvey has managed to lose another notebook full of future Elbow song ideas. Unless, with the album release coming up, it's the least elaborate publicity stunt ever.
Monday, August 29, 2005
To whoever put our preview of BBC7's Purely Peel on its UKNova torrent...
...it's not that accurate, you know. And it's still on Listen Again. Not a lot else doing on this bank holiday Monday bar Stylus' MTV VMA review. Seriously, we're not telling you again about Since U Been Gone being shreiking rubbish.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Crimes Against Music
It almost had to happen - Mitch Benn is releasing his Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now as a single on 5th September. If it's responsible for another half-arsed Independent article don't blame us.
A couple more links while we're about it - Insound's mp3 page has recently been updated with much goodness, and the Gang Of Four's re-recordings album Return The Gift is being streamed.
A couple more links while we're about it - Insound's mp3 page has recently been updated with much goodness, and the Gang Of Four's re-recordings album Return The Gift is being streamed.
Billboard beauty
Time for our irregular look at America's hottest twenty albums this week:
20 Gwen Stefani - Love Angel Music Baby
These bananas are shit. Also worth a mention, the aforementioned here Kidz Bop 8 at 31 having entered at 6.
19 Sugarland - Twice The Speed Of Life
A surprising amount of new bands around this week. This lot are a country singing-songwriting trio from Atlanta and therefore are unlikely to cross over here.
18 Bow Wow - Wanted
Formerly of Lil' status, although we stopped caring when he grew up.
17 Fall Out Boy - From Under The Cork Tree
Pop-punk's not dead! Contains song called 'I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me'.
16 Rascal Flatts - Feels Like Today
Not Dizzee's newly purchased apartment block but another country hoedown trio, experiencing a sales renaissance after an American Idol guest spot.
15 The Click Five - Greetings From Imrie House
A new entry, and watch out for these, not least as they were on Popjustice the other week. The American McFly, essentially.
14 Gorillaz - Demon Days
Shaun returns from the embalmers'.
13 Green Day - American Idiot
Wake Me Up When September Ends is currently making a huge impact on US MTV, their audiences perhaps appreciating the sap quotient more.
12 Coldplay - X & Y
Out of the top ten after ten weeks. In that gig shown in the Fix You video, which looks like it's their Bolton concert from early July, did Chris actually have to go off stage halfway through that song so he could be filmed coming back on?
11 Killers - Hot Fuss
Not sure why this has just climbed back up 18 places as All These Things That I've Done hasn't taken off as a US single just yet. Were you aware Brandon Flowers is a Mormon? (no, The Bravery, we wrote 'Mormon')
10 Young Jeezy - Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101
Charming. Def Jam Atlantan who's featured Jay-Z on a remix, as with every other rap record of the last five years.
9 Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway
Stop screeching, girl!
8 Faith Hill - Fireflies
Christ (literally), is she still going? This is her return to roots country after her spell as a pop-Nashville diva, which having been in The Stepford Wives she should know all about.
7 Staind - Chapter V
Nu-metal will never die! This was actually number one last week, scarily. Even mentors Limp Bizkit would struggle for that these days.
6 Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
Facts That First Hand Evidence Bears Out But Still Can't Possibly Be True: Fergie was the voice of Sally in Charlie Brown & Snoopy.
5 311 - Don't Tread On Me
A hundred short of the Mary J Blige album and already forgotten girl group, a full six hundred behind the Bodyshakin' auteurs, the veteran rap-rockers enter.
4 Various - Now 19
1 Thing, Hollaback Girl, Switch, Girlfight, Speed Of Sound, Feel Good Inc. Only one CD, which isn't keeping to the original Now! spirit. Our Now 19 came out in March 1991, the lightweights.
3 Mariah Carey - The Emancipation Of Mimi
We came across her appearance in Ant and Dec's final Chums (you know, off SMTV) the other day, where she deals manfully with pretending to know who any of these people were. Even we didn't recognise some of them five years on.
2 Brad Paisley - Time Well Wasted
...is not usually spent listening to new entries by makeweight country singers, we find.
1 Hilary Duff - Most Wanted
A new entry, so the brand extension has been successful. We must check with celebrity picture sites whether she has accomplished the 'skank ho' tag yet.
20 Gwen Stefani - Love Angel Music Baby
These bananas are shit. Also worth a mention, the aforementioned here Kidz Bop 8 at 31 having entered at 6.
19 Sugarland - Twice The Speed Of Life
A surprising amount of new bands around this week. This lot are a country singing-songwriting trio from Atlanta and therefore are unlikely to cross over here.
18 Bow Wow - Wanted
Formerly of Lil' status, although we stopped caring when he grew up.
17 Fall Out Boy - From Under The Cork Tree
Pop-punk's not dead! Contains song called 'I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me'.
16 Rascal Flatts - Feels Like Today
Not Dizzee's newly purchased apartment block but another country hoedown trio, experiencing a sales renaissance after an American Idol guest spot.
15 The Click Five - Greetings From Imrie House
A new entry, and watch out for these, not least as they were on Popjustice the other week. The American McFly, essentially.
14 Gorillaz - Demon Days
Shaun returns from the embalmers'.
13 Green Day - American Idiot
Wake Me Up When September Ends is currently making a huge impact on US MTV, their audiences perhaps appreciating the sap quotient more.
12 Coldplay - X & Y
Out of the top ten after ten weeks. In that gig shown in the Fix You video, which looks like it's their Bolton concert from early July, did Chris actually have to go off stage halfway through that song so he could be filmed coming back on?
11 Killers - Hot Fuss
Not sure why this has just climbed back up 18 places as All These Things That I've Done hasn't taken off as a US single just yet. Were you aware Brandon Flowers is a Mormon? (no, The Bravery, we wrote 'Mormon')
10 Young Jeezy - Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101
Charming. Def Jam Atlantan who's featured Jay-Z on a remix, as with every other rap record of the last five years.
9 Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway
Stop screeching, girl!
8 Faith Hill - Fireflies
Christ (literally), is she still going? This is her return to roots country after her spell as a pop-Nashville diva, which having been in The Stepford Wives she should know all about.
7 Staind - Chapter V
Nu-metal will never die! This was actually number one last week, scarily. Even mentors Limp Bizkit would struggle for that these days.
6 Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
Facts That First Hand Evidence Bears Out But Still Can't Possibly Be True: Fergie was the voice of Sally in Charlie Brown & Snoopy.
5 311 - Don't Tread On Me
A hundred short of the Mary J Blige album and already forgotten girl group, a full six hundred behind the Bodyshakin' auteurs, the veteran rap-rockers enter.
4 Various - Now 19
1 Thing, Hollaback Girl, Switch, Girlfight, Speed Of Sound, Feel Good Inc. Only one CD, which isn't keeping to the original Now! spirit. Our Now 19 came out in March 1991, the lightweights.
3 Mariah Carey - The Emancipation Of Mimi
We came across her appearance in Ant and Dec's final Chums (you know, off SMTV) the other day, where she deals manfully with pretending to know who any of these people were. Even we didn't recognise some of them five years on.
2 Brad Paisley - Time Well Wasted
...is not usually spent listening to new entries by makeweight country singers, we find.
1 Hilary Duff - Most Wanted
A new entry, so the brand extension has been successful. We must check with celebrity picture sites whether she has accomplished the 'skank ho' tag yet.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
The slightly late Weekly Sweep
Lord Beginner - Victory Test Match
Victorian English Gentlemen's Club - The Tales Of Hermit Mark
Danger Doom feat. Ghostface - The Mask
Smog - I Feel Like The Mother Of The World
Zutons - Creepin' And A Crawlin'
Animal Collective - Grass
The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
Rodney P - The Nice Up
The Blood Arm - Want X 3
Coco Rosie - Noah's Ark
Victorian English Gentlemen's Club - The Tales Of Hermit Mark
Danger Doom feat. Ghostface - The Mask
Smog - I Feel Like The Mother Of The World
Zutons - Creepin' And A Crawlin'
Animal Collective - Grass
The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
Rodney P - The Nice Up
The Blood Arm - Want X 3
Coco Rosie - Noah's Ark
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Starts quietly
The John Peel memorial bandwagon seems to be picking up speed at the moment following the Peel Day announcement, which we note is the day before the anniversary of his last Radio 1 show. His semi-autobiography has a title, cover and release date of the 17th October confirmed and more imminently this Saturday on BBC7 sees Lamacq present Purely Peel at 9am with an 8pm repeat, a three hour special featuring: an episode of Peeling Back The Years, the 1987 Peel/Walters session nostalgia (a later clip featuring New Order discussion here in fabulous mp3), a John Walters interview, something called Radio Radio from 1986 which might be a Radio Active episode, David Gedge interviewing him for Radio 5's Chain Reaction in 1992, him interviewing, we think, Kenny 'God - an informal pose' Dalglish the next day, and to close a 2003 end of year Home Truths. And it'll all be on Listen Again for a week afterwards.
Klassy
New CD:UK presenters have been announced for the programme's impending relaunch on a press release that brings to mind the only ever occasion when Dave Berry will be comparable with Trotsky. You'll note how well Myleene Klass' attempt to turn kids onto classical music has gone, and the new bloke having a stupidly spelt first name and singular surname, seemingly like everyone now. However, if you know this blog at all you'll be able to join in on the coda: Lauren, Lauren, Lauren! The day after her former UK Play kind-of-straight man Chris Addison gets a Perrier Award nomination, we again ask: what type of career development does Laverne have in mind?
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
24 hour garage people
For most people, stopping off at every service station on the M4 on a bank holiday Monday constitutes the average family outing. For The International Karate Plus (Dinosaur Jnr-esque phoenix from the Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi ashes) it's a tour.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
The links effect
Radio 1 announce the first annual John Peel Day for Thursday 13th October; Leonard Cohen is cleaned out and by the sounds of it in a whole heap of legal trouble; chartsingles.net charts the fall of Top Of The Pops over the last year; and MTV2 take a look round Maximo Park's Ibiza crib (hi/lo), mostly worth it for Paul Smith's shorts.
Attention tall ships in the Thames Barrier area
You may wish to pass by on September 6th when Texas gig on Tower Bridge as part of a tourist/Virgin Radio initiative. The internal arse-quoting contest features a strong candidate in Ken's description of it as "a combination of the modern and the best of the old" - which one is which he didn't say - but Sharleen effortlessly trumps him with "we've played some of the top locations all over the world and this one is right up there with the best of them, quite literally". We hope that's someone quoting on her behalf.
What's wrong with being sexy?
Ah, the silly season. After yesterday's Independent big front page picture of Joss Stone, perhaps added when someone realised there's not a lot of pictorial detail about Vioxx, today's Guardian ponders how successful sex would be while listening to the new Goldfrapp album. We expect to see this factored into all music reviews within a month.
In related news, both parties deny the Love/Coogan story, linked here purely because of the accompanying picture of the latter suggesting he's gone into hiding by disguising himself as Wayne Coyne.
In related news, both parties deny the Love/Coogan story, linked here purely because of the accompanying picture of the latter suggesting he's gone into hiding by disguising himself as Wayne Coyne.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Stone free
Something curious turns up in the report that the Live 8 DVD is being thoroughly Auto-Tuned (which the Sunday Times seems to think is all because of Pete Doherty, although surely they'd have to have another singer adding bits in for that - and also, in what way is the idea singers' vocals don't get tweaked a "trade secret"? Most people seem surprised nowadays when the singer credited with vocals turns out to have actually sung on the recorded track), namely Keith Richards' explanation as to why the Rolling Stones didn't play: "I heartily applaud what they were trying to do, except that it was tied in with government policy and I always try and separate politics and music." Right. So this much talked about track Neo Con on the new Stones album, and the largely forgotten 1991 anti-Gulf War single High Wire...
Sunday, August 21, 2005
V and E
Of course there's a reason why the BBC are much better at sprawlingly long televisual events - they're three to four minutes long and Bill Hicks wanted everyone involved in making them to kill themselves. Nobody else has really tried a live linkup with festivals because there's no way of keeping the music flowing when you've got to cut away every so often. E4's V Festival coverage started yesterday and proved why it was thought such a bad idea. (Actually we're not sure ITV2 didn't do Reading terribly a few years ago, but the point stands.)
Or maybe it's just the production values. Quite a few times songs were cut into by pointless links or adverts without warning, making it look like they had no idea that this music was supposed to be continuous. At one stage Dave Berry, who half-shouted everything in a most unbecoming way and you couldn't get away from it as he was the only host for all six hours (for some reason, C4's highlights show had a strong Deeley/Kay V/Bowman line-up and then stuck it out at nearly midnight) linked to Jet, waited a good ten seconds and then realised they were going back to the Streets set they'd just cut away from as Mike Skinner was introducing Has It Come To This?, which seemed apt. Indeed, picking bits almost a random from live sets meant we saw loads of Streets but not Dry Your Eyes, quite a bit of Doves but none of their big hits, the Chemical Brothers but not the bit where the Magic Numbers came on and, worst of all, the Kaiser Chiefs set cutting off just as I Predict A Riot got started, going straight into Born To Be A Dancer, so they could show it a couple of hours later in full, after it had been billed as live coverage. On the positive side they showed ten minutes of Sonic Youth and every band from the main two stages (even if this did mean two Stands tracks), but you get the feeling that the most artificial of all the UK festivals has got the digital coverage it deserves.
Or maybe it's just the production values. Quite a few times songs were cut into by pointless links or adverts without warning, making it look like they had no idea that this music was supposed to be continuous. At one stage Dave Berry, who half-shouted everything in a most unbecoming way and you couldn't get away from it as he was the only host for all six hours (for some reason, C4's highlights show had a strong Deeley/Kay V/Bowman line-up and then stuck it out at nearly midnight) linked to Jet, waited a good ten seconds and then realised they were going back to the Streets set they'd just cut away from as Mike Skinner was introducing Has It Come To This?, which seemed apt. Indeed, picking bits almost a random from live sets meant we saw loads of Streets but not Dry Your Eyes, quite a bit of Doves but none of their big hits, the Chemical Brothers but not the bit where the Magic Numbers came on and, worst of all, the Kaiser Chiefs set cutting off just as I Predict A Riot got started, going straight into Born To Be A Dancer, so they could show it a couple of hours later in full, after it had been billed as live coverage. On the positive side they showed ten minutes of Sonic Youth and every band from the main two stages (even if this did mean two Stands tracks), but you get the feeling that the most artificial of all the UK festivals has got the digital coverage it deserves.
The only chart that counted
So yesterday ten years ago was the climax of the central point of Britpop, the end of a week of battle that Treusteppers vs Spiller - sorry, Posh vs Sophie - could only dream of in desperation. But how did the chart actually look in that week beginning 20/8/05?
1 Blur - Country House
Seriously, people loved this at the time. There's clearly the germination of something - apparently Damon worked from the "blow, blow me out" backing vocals outwards, which is strange - but then the music hall gene took over. Matt Lucas was in the Hirst-directed video before anyone knew who he was. Worth noting in the light of the hype, and given the hosannahs the record industry gave when James Blunt made it to about 60,000 a few weeks back, that 274,000 was only the fifth biggest sales week of 1995, beaten by Take That's Back For Good and Robson & Jerome's Unchained Melody three times. What constitution was buying singles at that point?
2 Oasis - Roll With It
And this was eighth, 216,000 putting it behind Robson & Jerome's Up On The Roof and, ironically for Britpop week as it'd turn out, Earth Song. Invited to comment on Chris Evans' Radio 1 show, Damon was heard singing Rockin' All Over The World over this, which led to Noel having a 'Quoasis' T-shirt made, which led to collapse of very few stout parties. Exited the chart quicker too.
3 The Original - I Luv U Baby
Had the above not happened this would have climbed to number one, already unusual enough by mid-1995. Soul jazz singer Everett Bradley repeats the title over the work of one Walter Taieb, now a classical composer who's worked with Vanessa Mae. How strange the potency of cheap music.
4 Take That - Never Forget
Billed at the time as their big salute to their fans to demonstrate how they were still as together and as powerful as ever, stymied by the giveaway "we've had success, we've had good times" lyrics and, more notably, Robbie leaving the week before release. Being shoved into a reservoir by Paula Hamilton was just round the corner.
5 TLC - Waterfalls
So, right, in the video, how come they're perfectly able to perform on top of the water in the middle of the ocean but when it moves to an actual waterfall there are only aqueous representations of the girls?
6 Clock - Everybody
The Eurohouse chart act of champions, who it says here had only just got to number four with a version of Whoomph! There It Is, which followed a cover of Axel F. Both of these are covered on the Crazy Frog album Crazy Hits. Hmmm.
7 JX - Son Of A Gun
Official lyrics: "A man just on the run (x42)/Damn near son of a gun (x60)". People became a little cynical of the charts at this stage, as you can imagine.
8 Madonna - Human Nature
This was Madge's answer song to accusations she'd pimped herself out, not that setting the video around bondage helped her answer reach many ears. After this the forgotten ballads album and then Evita. Wonder if she ever gets these albums out at home.
9 Seal - Kiss From A Rose
Reissued from a year earlier, when it had made number 20 on the back of a Batman film. And they say guitar bands are milked now.
10 Corona - Try Me Out
And another hurrah for Eurodance, an era of pre-eminence meaning at least two sets of men behind decks in white tracksuits next to two women singing while twirling around in cut-off black on TOTP every week. Producer called Francesco Bontempi, which is worth a cheap laugh.
11 Diana King - Shy Guy
She don't want no fly guy. From the Bad Boys soundtrack, if anyone dares to remember that.
12 Charlatans - Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over
Became part of Britpop without actually changing that much, people just noticed they were still around, still lugging a Hammond around and on their third album, you know, like Parklife was.
13 Deuce - On The Bible
Steps before their time, in that they were the property of a famous svengali (Tom Watkins - where he now?), were mixed gender, knowingly kitsch and did Abba inaccurately. Only ever come up in conversation as part of the sentence "Ant McPartlin, whose long time girlfriend is former Deuce singer Lisa Armstrong..."
14 Xpansions - Move Your Body
Armstrong was actually linked with the Live & Kicking job after Emma Forbes left, the Star putting her in the final three on the shortlist with Sally-Anne Marsh, who sang on this, and... Louise Wener! Can you imagine if Zoe Ball was stuck on CBBC while Wener became massively famous?
15 Michelle Gayle - Happy Just To Be With You
No Sweetness, but perfectly respectable pop-soul from one of the few UK soap actors to actually pull off the crossover. Still married to Mark Bright, since you ask.
16 Suggs - I'm Only Sleeping
Thing was, he went on Danny Baker After All the previous year and did this and Suedehead with the Mark Kermode-fronted house band, and apparently the reaction was such that he recorded it as his first solo single. His original go's much better.
17 Boyzone - So Good
Their third single (not counting Working My Way Back To You, obviously). Four of them are still hanging around, which is more than you can say for Take That.
18 Outhere Brothers - Boom Boom Boom
Easy to forget about their reign of terror, less easy to forget the rude lyrics that did the rounds of every classroom. Way-oh!
19 The Real McCoy - Come And Get Your Love
Mad Stuntman not pictured.
20 Supergrass - Alright
Heading down after setting their image in stone for the rest of their career. Gaz has had to grow an unpleasant beard before anyone would take them seriously.
21 Connells - '74-'75
Richard Allinson playlist staple one hit wonders
22 Alanis Morrissette - You Oughta Know
We've never seen such one star-esque marks across the board as we did for Jagged Little Pill Acoustic.
23 Bjork - Isobel
24 Felix - Don't You Want Me
Rollo, in other words. A remix re-release, much like JX (see above) from the same label.
25 Ali Campbell - Let Your Yeah Be Yeah
Clearly not some great concept side project which demanded seperation from UB40 given it's a weak reggae cover, Jimmy Cliff in this case
26 U2 - Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me
Best single in ages, not that it made them cool just yet.
27 Happy Clappers - Hold On
Piano house will never die. Except it has.
28 The Shamen - Destination Eschaton
29 Levellers - Hope Street
Everyone got pulled into the Britpop wave in mid-1995.
30 Moist - Push
Despite the revionism, US rock didn't fully curl up and die the day Parklife was released. You probably got these confused with Cracker.
31 Ash - Girl From Mars
Possibly the very week when Tim announced his A-level results on the Evening Session.
32 Eusebe - Summertime Healing
Proto-Love City Groove, as we recall. Bet it sampled Sexual Healing.
33 Tina Arena - Heaven Help My Heart
The Delta Goodrem of the 90s.
34 Smokie feat. Roy 'Chubby' Brown - Living Next Door To Alice (Who The F**k Is Alice)
Right, what happened was veteran Dutch songwriter Peter Koelewijn and a couple of friends put together, for no good reason, a version of the Chinn/Chapman MOR classic with a crowd chanting the obscenity back after each namecheck. Massive in Holland, obviously, and picked up some British notice in much the same way we would occasionally laugh at the funny foreigners and their odd buying patterns (cf Jordy Lemoine). As if to prove some people miss the point altogether, the then chicken in a basket touring version of Smokie featuring few original members roped Chubby Brown in to cover the cover. It entered in this week and became one of the last records to slowly climb the chart, peaking at number three, two higher than the original. Then Gompie's version, which had made a small chart impact a couple of months before, got re-released and made it to 17. Then everybody slapped themselves round the face.
35 Edwyn Collins - A Girl Like You
Now back at home, thankfully
36 A.D.A.M. featuring Amy - Zombie
A not at all point-missing Eurohouse cover of the Cranberries' tanks/guns/guns/bombs decrying.
37 Shiva - Freedom
38 Shaggy feat. Rayvon - In The Summertime
Plenty of Carribean rap coolness, no jug playing.
39 Cyndi Lauper - Come On Home
40 Matt Goss - The Key
And that was as far as it got, as they used to say on Pick Of The Pops. Goss has released four solo singles in the last ten years, each preceded by excited talk of a comeback. It was Luke that was in Blade II.
1 Blur - Country House
Seriously, people loved this at the time. There's clearly the germination of something - apparently Damon worked from the "blow, blow me out" backing vocals outwards, which is strange - but then the music hall gene took over. Matt Lucas was in the Hirst-directed video before anyone knew who he was. Worth noting in the light of the hype, and given the hosannahs the record industry gave when James Blunt made it to about 60,000 a few weeks back, that 274,000 was only the fifth biggest sales week of 1995, beaten by Take That's Back For Good and Robson & Jerome's Unchained Melody three times. What constitution was buying singles at that point?
2 Oasis - Roll With It
And this was eighth, 216,000 putting it behind Robson & Jerome's Up On The Roof and, ironically for Britpop week as it'd turn out, Earth Song. Invited to comment on Chris Evans' Radio 1 show, Damon was heard singing Rockin' All Over The World over this, which led to Noel having a 'Quoasis' T-shirt made, which led to collapse of very few stout parties. Exited the chart quicker too.
3 The Original - I Luv U Baby
Had the above not happened this would have climbed to number one, already unusual enough by mid-1995. Soul jazz singer Everett Bradley repeats the title over the work of one Walter Taieb, now a classical composer who's worked with Vanessa Mae. How strange the potency of cheap music.
4 Take That - Never Forget
Billed at the time as their big salute to their fans to demonstrate how they were still as together and as powerful as ever, stymied by the giveaway "we've had success, we've had good times" lyrics and, more notably, Robbie leaving the week before release. Being shoved into a reservoir by Paula Hamilton was just round the corner.
5 TLC - Waterfalls
So, right, in the video, how come they're perfectly able to perform on top of the water in the middle of the ocean but when it moves to an actual waterfall there are only aqueous representations of the girls?
6 Clock - Everybody
The Eurohouse chart act of champions, who it says here had only just got to number four with a version of Whoomph! There It Is, which followed a cover of Axel F. Both of these are covered on the Crazy Frog album Crazy Hits. Hmmm.
7 JX - Son Of A Gun
Official lyrics: "A man just on the run (x42)/Damn near son of a gun (x60)". People became a little cynical of the charts at this stage, as you can imagine.
8 Madonna - Human Nature
This was Madge's answer song to accusations she'd pimped herself out, not that setting the video around bondage helped her answer reach many ears. After this the forgotten ballads album and then Evita. Wonder if she ever gets these albums out at home.
9 Seal - Kiss From A Rose
Reissued from a year earlier, when it had made number 20 on the back of a Batman film. And they say guitar bands are milked now.
10 Corona - Try Me Out
And another hurrah for Eurodance, an era of pre-eminence meaning at least two sets of men behind decks in white tracksuits next to two women singing while twirling around in cut-off black on TOTP every week. Producer called Francesco Bontempi, which is worth a cheap laugh.
11 Diana King - Shy Guy
She don't want no fly guy. From the Bad Boys soundtrack, if anyone dares to remember that.
12 Charlatans - Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over
Became part of Britpop without actually changing that much, people just noticed they were still around, still lugging a Hammond around and on their third album, you know, like Parklife was.
13 Deuce - On The Bible
Steps before their time, in that they were the property of a famous svengali (Tom Watkins - where he now?), were mixed gender, knowingly kitsch and did Abba inaccurately. Only ever come up in conversation as part of the sentence "Ant McPartlin, whose long time girlfriend is former Deuce singer Lisa Armstrong..."
14 Xpansions - Move Your Body
Armstrong was actually linked with the Live & Kicking job after Emma Forbes left, the Star putting her in the final three on the shortlist with Sally-Anne Marsh, who sang on this, and... Louise Wener! Can you imagine if Zoe Ball was stuck on CBBC while Wener became massively famous?
15 Michelle Gayle - Happy Just To Be With You
No Sweetness, but perfectly respectable pop-soul from one of the few UK soap actors to actually pull off the crossover. Still married to Mark Bright, since you ask.
16 Suggs - I'm Only Sleeping
Thing was, he went on Danny Baker After All the previous year and did this and Suedehead with the Mark Kermode-fronted house band, and apparently the reaction was such that he recorded it as his first solo single. His original go's much better.
17 Boyzone - So Good
Their third single (not counting Working My Way Back To You, obviously). Four of them are still hanging around, which is more than you can say for Take That.
18 Outhere Brothers - Boom Boom Boom
Easy to forget about their reign of terror, less easy to forget the rude lyrics that did the rounds of every classroom. Way-oh!
19 The Real McCoy - Come And Get Your Love
Mad Stuntman not pictured.
20 Supergrass - Alright
Heading down after setting their image in stone for the rest of their career. Gaz has had to grow an unpleasant beard before anyone would take them seriously.
21 Connells - '74-'75
Richard Allinson playlist staple one hit wonders
22 Alanis Morrissette - You Oughta Know
We've never seen such one star-esque marks across the board as we did for Jagged Little Pill Acoustic.
23 Bjork - Isobel
24 Felix - Don't You Want Me
Rollo, in other words. A remix re-release, much like JX (see above) from the same label.
25 Ali Campbell - Let Your Yeah Be Yeah
Clearly not some great concept side project which demanded seperation from UB40 given it's a weak reggae cover, Jimmy Cliff in this case
26 U2 - Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me
Best single in ages, not that it made them cool just yet.
27 Happy Clappers - Hold On
Piano house will never die. Except it has.
28 The Shamen - Destination Eschaton
29 Levellers - Hope Street
Everyone got pulled into the Britpop wave in mid-1995.
30 Moist - Push
Despite the revionism, US rock didn't fully curl up and die the day Parklife was released. You probably got these confused with Cracker.
31 Ash - Girl From Mars
Possibly the very week when Tim announced his A-level results on the Evening Session.
32 Eusebe - Summertime Healing
Proto-Love City Groove, as we recall. Bet it sampled Sexual Healing.
33 Tina Arena - Heaven Help My Heart
The Delta Goodrem of the 90s.
34 Smokie feat. Roy 'Chubby' Brown - Living Next Door To Alice (Who The F**k Is Alice)
Right, what happened was veteran Dutch songwriter Peter Koelewijn and a couple of friends put together, for no good reason, a version of the Chinn/Chapman MOR classic with a crowd chanting the obscenity back after each namecheck. Massive in Holland, obviously, and picked up some British notice in much the same way we would occasionally laugh at the funny foreigners and their odd buying patterns (cf Jordy Lemoine). As if to prove some people miss the point altogether, the then chicken in a basket touring version of Smokie featuring few original members roped Chubby Brown in to cover the cover. It entered in this week and became one of the last records to slowly climb the chart, peaking at number three, two higher than the original. Then Gompie's version, which had made a small chart impact a couple of months before, got re-released and made it to 17. Then everybody slapped themselves round the face.
35 Edwyn Collins - A Girl Like You
Now back at home, thankfully
36 A.D.A.M. featuring Amy - Zombie
A not at all point-missing Eurohouse cover of the Cranberries' tanks/guns/guns/bombs decrying.
37 Shiva - Freedom
38 Shaggy feat. Rayvon - In The Summertime
Plenty of Carribean rap coolness, no jug playing.
39 Cyndi Lauper - Come On Home
40 Matt Goss - The Key
And that was as far as it got, as they used to say on Pick Of The Pops. Goss has released four solo singles in the last ten years, each preceded by excited talk of a comeback. It was Luke that was in Blade II.
Is *this* cool?
To quote from I'm Alan Partridge series 1's Towering Alan:
Alan: So, who's your favourite singer, then?
Ben: Oh, anything, really, you know. Frank Sinatra, Kurt Cobain...
Alan: Who's he?
Ben: Nirvana. Blew his head off with a gun?
Alan: Why?
Ben: He was depressed.
Alan: Why, were they not very good?
Ben: No, they were great.
Alan: Oh. Someone should've told him.
Alan: So, who's your favourite singer, then?
Ben: Oh, anything, really, you know. Frank Sinatra, Kurt Cobain...
Alan: Who's he?
Ben: Nirvana. Blew his head off with a gun?
Alan: Why?
Ben: He was depressed.
Alan: Why, were they not very good?
Ben: No, they were great.
Alan: Oh. Someone should've told him.
Friday, August 19, 2005
The Weekly Sweep
Patrick Wolf - Teignmouth
Elbow - Mexican Standoff
Infadels - Jagger 67
Sonics - Strychnine
William Campbell & Kevin MacNeil - Local Man Ruins Everything
We Are Scientists - The Great Escape
Antony & The Johnsons - For Today I Am A Boy
Orange Juice - Consolation Prize
Sons & Daughters - Rama Lama
Blur - Popscene
Elbow - Mexican Standoff
Infadels - Jagger 67
Sonics - Strychnine
William Campbell & Kevin MacNeil - Local Man Ruins Everything
We Are Scientists - The Great Escape
Antony & The Johnsons - For Today I Am A Boy
Orange Juice - Consolation Prize
Sons & Daughters - Rama Lama
Blur - Popscene
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Everybody get random
Pulled out of the URL pile - My Old Kentucky Blog collects the Decemberists' live covers, Wikipedia's breakdown of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire reminds us of how H2G2 did the same for Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3, you'll be surprised nobody thought of a video blog before now, and the Channel 4 Music site now linked over on the right brings to our attention a John Lydon career spanning Best Of that all but ignores the Pistols. It's got Sun on it! Yes!
Feed the world...or treat!
Of course someone was going to do a song called Do They Know It's Hallowe'en eventually, although suggesting it "stems from a frustration with other benefit songs' misguided, somewhat patronizing attitude, and Western-centric worldview" does seem to be overegging the satirical pudding somewhat. Ridiculous guest list, mind, including Beck, Thurston Moore, the Arcade Fire, Geno Washington, Devendra Banhart, Rilo Kiley, Russell Mael, Peaches, Karen O, Roky Erikson, Elvira (is she still going?), Feist, Buck 65 and, oh bloody hell, Malcolm McLaren.
It's like some big competition for unlikely comebacks
The Sultans Of Ping FC?!
There's also word Carter USM are doing a one-off just before Christmas - an invite to This Morning is not expected - and following their re-exposure on Britpop Now! comes rumours that Jaime Harding, who you may recall went to prison for stealing garden gnomes three years ago, has formed a new version of Marion that's about to start gigging. Quick, someone pin Stump's members to the floor before it's too late.
There's also word Carter USM are doing a one-off just before Christmas - an invite to This Morning is not expected - and following their re-exposure on Britpop Now! comes rumours that Jaime Harding, who you may recall went to prison for stealing garden gnomes three years ago, has formed a new version of Marion that's about to start gigging. Quick, someone pin Stump's members to the floor before it's too late.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
The Northern Uproar revival starts here
Last night's John Harris Britpop documentary on BBC4 fulfilled all the requirements of a Britpop retrospective - everyone listened to grunge until Suede came along, then Blur reclaimed the flag, Oasis arrived and fought everyone, Pulp were there too, then Be Here Now happened and the result of it all was Thirteen Senses.
Like all chronological summaries, of course, it was badly flawed. Where do Suede, for example, fit into the accepted 1994-96 timeline of Britpop given Bernard Butler was being sacked at the start and all they really did during the period was have a ludicrous argument over headlining the Phoenix festival over Bob Dylan - if they're thrown in as an influence you might as well mention the Smiths, whose critical revival really started around 1992-93 as Morrissey started his time away from the NME and the Best Ofs started. Modern Life Is Rubbish wasn't as critically panned as many would have you believe but didn't sell a lot in album or single form, while Jarvis got a lot of slightly bemused press at this point but not much in the way of public note until, bizarrely, he appeared on Chris Tarrant's BBC1 Pop Quiz revival, which was still 18 months ahead of Common People. There's hope for you yet, Eddie Argos. Oasis of course flew out of the blocks, but not without hype that almost equalled that given to Suede and the Manics (who initially stood aside themselves with the very anti-New Britain The Holy Bible but after Richey disappeared worked slowly back up to Everything Must Go speed) and later Menswear. Who, as the following Britpop Now reminded us, weren't all that bad.
As for lasting effects, which seems to be the crucial issue whenever Britpop is discussed in a way punk is never subjected to even though some of its main players were immediately trying to get away from it at the time, surely there's a lot of Britpop's internal logic around at the moment - a small area of London being a creative hub for a lot of chancers, most of the influences being boiled down to one small period, trace elements of glam and androgyny, even the way it's come out of a US-centric movement which swept the music press in the shape of the so-called New Rock Revolution, even if the current participants are happier to acknowledge the Strokes'n'Stripes. What it might all boil down to in the end is a theory long held by some that the middle of the decade sees a movement emerge for a couple of years that has no real function other than to excite a new generation of kids - Elvis and nascent rock'n'roll, the Beatles/Stones counterculture, punk, the Smiths and birth of indie, Britpop and now The Scene Which Nobody Dare Risk Putting A Name To. Born largely out of frustration with surrounding conditions both social and musical, providing a few albums for the ages (let's not overlook that Radiohead were successful with The Bends as much due to timing as their nationality) as well as a heap of transience, and subject to overanalysis for years to follow.
Like all chronological summaries, of course, it was badly flawed. Where do Suede, for example, fit into the accepted 1994-96 timeline of Britpop given Bernard Butler was being sacked at the start and all they really did during the period was have a ludicrous argument over headlining the Phoenix festival over Bob Dylan - if they're thrown in as an influence you might as well mention the Smiths, whose critical revival really started around 1992-93 as Morrissey started his time away from the NME and the Best Ofs started. Modern Life Is Rubbish wasn't as critically panned as many would have you believe but didn't sell a lot in album or single form, while Jarvis got a lot of slightly bemused press at this point but not much in the way of public note until, bizarrely, he appeared on Chris Tarrant's BBC1 Pop Quiz revival, which was still 18 months ahead of Common People. There's hope for you yet, Eddie Argos. Oasis of course flew out of the blocks, but not without hype that almost equalled that given to Suede and the Manics (who initially stood aside themselves with the very anti-New Britain The Holy Bible but after Richey disappeared worked slowly back up to Everything Must Go speed) and later Menswear. Who, as the following Britpop Now reminded us, weren't all that bad.
As for lasting effects, which seems to be the crucial issue whenever Britpop is discussed in a way punk is never subjected to even though some of its main players were immediately trying to get away from it at the time, surely there's a lot of Britpop's internal logic around at the moment - a small area of London being a creative hub for a lot of chancers, most of the influences being boiled down to one small period, trace elements of glam and androgyny, even the way it's come out of a US-centric movement which swept the music press in the shape of the so-called New Rock Revolution, even if the current participants are happier to acknowledge the Strokes'n'Stripes. What it might all boil down to in the end is a theory long held by some that the middle of the decade sees a movement emerge for a couple of years that has no real function other than to excite a new generation of kids - Elvis and nascent rock'n'roll, the Beatles/Stones counterculture, punk, the Smiths and birth of indie, Britpop and now The Scene Which Nobody Dare Risk Putting A Name To. Born largely out of frustration with surrounding conditions both social and musical, providing a few albums for the ages (let's not overlook that Radiohead were successful with The Bends as much due to timing as their nationality) as well as a heap of transience, and subject to overanalysis for years to follow.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Summer Sundae: just to round things up...
Stuff we missed
- The Magic Numbers, as you'll have spotted
- Clor's set being curtailed by power failure
- The Scratch Perverts, playing 70s soul to 200 people talking amongst themselves when we passed through, packing out the indoor stage with revellers before long by playing Smells Like Teen Spirit
- Minotaur Shock - heard literally seconds of their Friday set which sounded like gorgeous folktronica but couldn't stop
- Former Top Of The Pops scourge Ric Blaxhill, who was observed dancing to the Dirty Backbeats
- Rico Rodriguez and The Pressure Tenets' roots reggae overflowing the acoustic stage as the last act on the Sunday
The Sundae Sweep - the best live tracks we saw
British Sea Power - Carrion
Emiliana Torrini - Sunny Road
The Bees - Chicken Payback
Sondre Lerche - Dead Passengers
Patrick Wolf - London
The Earlies - Morning Wonder
Battle - Tendency
Luke Haines - Unsolved Child Murder
Yo La Tengo - Today Is The Day
Wedding Present - Kennedy
- The Magic Numbers, as you'll have spotted
- Clor's set being curtailed by power failure
- The Scratch Perverts, playing 70s soul to 200 people talking amongst themselves when we passed through, packing out the indoor stage with revellers before long by playing Smells Like Teen Spirit
- Minotaur Shock - heard literally seconds of their Friday set which sounded like gorgeous folktronica but couldn't stop
- Former Top Of The Pops scourge Ric Blaxhill, who was observed dancing to the Dirty Backbeats
- Rico Rodriguez and The Pressure Tenets' roots reggae overflowing the acoustic stage as the last act on the Sunday
The Sundae Sweep - the best live tracks we saw
British Sea Power - Carrion
Emiliana Torrini - Sunny Road
The Bees - Chicken Payback
Sondre Lerche - Dead Passengers
Patrick Wolf - London
The Earlies - Morning Wonder
Battle - Tendency
Luke Haines - Unsolved Child Murder
Yo La Tengo - Today Is The Day
Wedding Present - Kennedy
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