In shops tomorrow: 12/12

The Christmas rush begins in earnest, possibly because the labels think they can claim their charge was Christmas number one for most of the day itself. So what chance a label called FDM Records run by two blokes out of Leamington Spa? Well, plenty of chance as it's Nizlopi's JCB Song (alert Dotmusic here, who dismissed it as a cynical major label release), breaking big at the second attempt after years of trying. You all know about its viral success, and with William Hill now offering 7-4 for it to be the festive chart topper, even if looking at the rest of the list they appear to be guessing releases more than anything else, we'd bet it'll outdo its May chart position of number 160. It's based on Luke Concannon's actual childhood, stop describing it as a novelty hit!

Pretty much the only other release of note, bar The Boy Least Likely To doing Little Donkey as a download only release, is the White Stripes' Walking With A Ghost EP, leading with a Tegan & Sara cover and mostly filled with live tracks.

Albums

Everyone seems spent in this regard, but a cheap three CD set of Love's eponymous debut and classics Da Capo and Forever Changes is sneaking out. Unfortunately it seems Arthur Lee's mental health has deteriorated of late, so help out his medical bills and see how he changed a decent sub-section of music.

The Weekly Sweep

Nizlopi - JCB
St Etienne - Side Streets
The Fall - Free Range
The Crimea - Lottery Winners On Acid
Clearlake - Winterlight
Coldcut - Man In A Garage
Early Years - All Ones And Zeros
Cat Power - The Greatest
Godfathers - Birth School Work Death
¡Forward, Russia! - Twelve

Christmas cheer

There's not a lot of quality Christmas songs that are actually about Christmas - even Fairytale Of New York barely qualifies - so hats off to The Joseph & Mary Chain, a collaborative title for a group of the North East's finest - Barry and Jaff Futureheads, the Brewises of Field Music, Kathryn Williams, the Golden Virgins, J Xaverre, even the return of Marie from Kenickie - covering The Twelve Days Of Christmas on a limited edition 12". It'll be sold out by the time you read this, but hear it through here.

Seriously, though, Kenickie were great, weren't they? Emmy-Kate was at Goldsmith's studying sociology last we heard and wrote about their major label experience for their magazine last year?.

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 10

The Young Knives - Weekends And Bleak Days

Perhaps the least likely looking of the artrock rabble, the tweed clad Oxford-via-Ashby-de-la-Zouch threesome are nobody's idea of post-Franz pinups. Perhaps one of the best, mind. The bass player's called The House Of Lords, y'know

Some things for the weekend

* The Art Of Noise's A-Z reaches D

* The Test Pilot compiles a Holiday Mix, featuring the inevitable Sufjan...

* ...whose Denver gig in July My Old Kentucky Home is housing.

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 9

Caribou - Barnowl

When trading under the name Manitoba Dan Snaith was of the post-shoegazing laptop pop persuasion. Now he's Caribou he does much the same but throws in Four Tet electronica too. Off of The Milk Of Human Kindness

The only Christmas chart that counts (2/6)

Continuing our look back at fifty glorious years, or so, of Christmas charts, let's head back to 1987, a tight year full of circumstance, surprise and, frankly, covers:

1 Pet Shop Boys - Always On My Mind
Nowadays ITV covers specials feature Liberty X, Darius and five actresses from Emmerdale, but in 1987 a special commemorating the tenth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death debuted their Elvis goes Trevor Horn-house with a black heart version, which received so raptorous a welcome they recorded it and watch it climb three places this week to surprise the pack. If someone had thought to comission Rufus Wainwright to cover Lennon's Just Like Starting Over we might all be the better now.

2 Rick Astley - When I Fall In Love
A restrained SAW effort for this chocolate-voiced fireside festive cover, post-Whenever You Need Somebody but before Casio preset melody favourite Together Forever. Had an album out recently, which you may have noticed from the welter of publicity about his long-awaited return, a press release that is hauled out every 18 months for each new album of his.

3 Michael Jackson - The Way You Make Me Feel
Bad was still the defining long player of the day, this shuffling dance thing relatively early in its singles lifespan. Broke all known records for vocal whooing on record.

4 Alison Moyet - Love Letters
Baritone even by her standards, one of Alf's actual hits in a career that's veered wildly between getting nowhere and going big. With a certain inevitability, she's currently rehearsing for a play with Dawn French.

5 T'Pau - China In Your Hand
No Secret Garden, and frankly far too big a ballad. Their percussionist - ah, this is 1987 alright - was called Tim Burgess, it says here.

6 Mel Smith & Kim Wilde - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree
"Pumpkin pie, anyone?" The actual Mel & Kim were at their height at the time, so the Comic Relief spinoff could only go in one direction. There's going to be a BBC1 Smith & Jones Sketchbook next year, which we hope will feature Kim coming on for an encore.

7 Shakin' Stevens - What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For
Sid Waddell's mate clearly not too quick to shake off those 50s comparisons, featuring a uniquely cheap and cheerful video in which Shaky loons around post boxes and policemen while interacting with growing crowds, including a bequiffed Vic Reeves.

8 The Pogues featuring Kirsty Maccoll - Fairytale Of New York
Since you ask it only made number two on the following week's chart, which counted sales up to the 26th. The Best Christmas Album In The World...Ever substitutes it for Ronan Keating's cleaned up version, which will not do. It's being re-released on the 19th to raise funds for the Justice For Kirsty Campaign, and in a moral world would be the festive chart topper. Come on, where's the campaign?

9 Madonna - The Look Of Love
"Though my friends just might ask me, they say Madge, maybe one day
you'll find true love." It's not that. It's from the Who's That Girl soundtrack and only one of her first 32 top 40 singles, covering nine years, charted lower.

10 Jellybean - Who Found Who
And here's Mr Benitez' supposed kiss off/piss off to Madonna featuring singer Elisa Fiorillo, who even by the standards of early house was a featured vocalist who went into immediate obscurity.

11 Alexander O'Neal - Criticize
We're not doing it in this run, but we did have a look at the 1989 chart, headed by Band Aid II, in our research, and at 24 was O'Neal with that most turn of the decade phenomenon, the megamix. Hitmix, to give it its proper title, would have been the most out of place thing there were it not for Jeff Wayne's Eve Of The War (in 1989?) and Smoke On The Water by Rock Aid Armenia.

12 The Proclaimers - Letter From America
We've got this on mp3, and we're proud to admit it in polite company. Who needs a Highlands A-Z?

13 George Harrison - Got My Mind Set On You
14 Paul McCartney - Once Upon A Long Ago
This must have provoked comment from Bruno on the chart rundown. George was on his way back from number 2 with its syncopated stately home video, while Paul was promoting a greatest hits with that most alien of concepts then, a new track on a Best Of. It opens with the couplet "picking up scales and broken chords/puppy dog tails in the house of Lords", and now you can see why the critical renaissance was so far off.

15 Johnny Hates Jazz - Turn Back The Clock
Hello, Mrs Datchler, is your Clark about?

16 Whitney Houston - So Emotional
We're sure this fits an air raid siren of a shriek into the final chorus, back when people were actively impressed by that sort of thing.

17 Simply Red - Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye
This is on their new album Simplified, which is a recasting of some of their best loved songs into an acoustic setting to highlight their craft and the development of Hucknall's voice. Yes. And not at all an attempt to get the rights back into Mick's hands after his falling out with EMI.

18 Communards - Never Can Say Goodbye
We can never hear their name in anything but Roland Rat's voice. They were on his The Series doing Don't Leave Me This Way, see, and he pronounced it very specifically.

19 Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Started as drummer for The Germs, you know. This was her solo debut, cleaned up (in many ways) and having germs juggled around her in the Diane Keaton-directed video. She did Playboy in 2001, you may be aware.

20 Nat King Cole - When I Fall In Love
Rip-off.

21 Wet Wet Wet - Angel Eyes (Home And Away)
No idea where that extraneous bracketed title comes from, and we're fairly sure this is the track which features a rogue belch within the first ten seconds. In retrospect this may have been Marti's cleanest habit at the time.

22 Level 42 - Children Say
If you're at all bothered Rock Aid Armenia, which was for an earthquake fund, featured Ian Gillan, Bruce Dickinson, Paul Rodgers, Brian May, David Gilmour, Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore, Keith Emerson, Geoff Downes, Bryan Adams, Chris Squire and Roger Taylor. Mark King must have got stuck in traffic.

23 Anthrax - I'm The Man
Tiresome metallers attempt to leap on the Beastie Boys bandwagon and accidentally invent nu-metal in the process.

24 Hooters - Satellite
Man alive, we were mad about this soft rock with folk chords quasi-satire at the time. Not sure why this and not Huey Lewis And The News in retrospect, but there you go.

25 New Order - Touched By The Hand Of God
Not about wanking, Barney reckons. Heavy on the Hook, near-PSB synths and comedy video.

26 Five Star - Somewhere Somebody
27 Maxi Priest - Some Guys Have All The Luck
28 Cutting Crew - I've Been In Love Before

29 Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes - (I've Had) The Time Of My Life
The reason why we never go to wedding receptions any more.

30 Jellybean - Jingo
He's back, and with a proper funk house corker too. Theme for a Gladiator, which didn't quite suit.

31 Housemartins - Build

32 Whitesnake - Here I Go Again
We were born without the modern affectation of an irony-aided hair metal appreciation, so this could always fuck off.

33 Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares For Me
As represented by a plasticine cat in the video. They probably wouldn't have taken the same line if Strange Fruit was re-released.

34 Smiths - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
In the Guardian Weekend this week Pete Waterman is quoted as saying he was driven to make SAW a chart monolith organisation because the Smiths were "blocking up the charts for records kids actually want". Anyone who lived through the mid-80s will of course have grown heartily sick of one Smiths song following another to number one for 12 weeks without a break, of course.

35 Rick Astley - Whenever You Need Somebody
See?

36 Wally Jump Jr And The Criminal Element - Tighten Up (I Just Can't Stop Dancin')

37 Sinitta - GTO
When Ms Malone was on Through The Keyhole Loyd's clues at the end were a model toy GTO, a toy pair of dumbbells (So Macho) and an Action Man (Toy Boy). God knows what the rest of the house was like if they had to go to those tenuous lengths.

38 Boy George - To Be Reborn

39 Christians - Ideal World
Henry Priestman - the British Frank Beard.

40 Kiss - Reason To Live
The follow-up to inexplicable Mark Radcliffe favourite Crazy Crazy Nights. Is there a message in how five of their six UK top 40 singles came during their Robbie Williams-baiting makeupless era?

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 8

CocoRosie - Noah's Ark

The freak folk label will end up being attached to Paul McCartney if its definition grows much further, but the Casady sisters' psych-Bjorkian moves fit the intention like a glove. Buy the album this is the title track of

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 7

Infadels - Jagger '67

Coming on like the DFA grown up on rave culture, sporting a hugely energetic live act and a hugely bald frontman. Buy the single

It doesn't work, of course...

...but even this far down the line it's still worth reading Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty's The Manual

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 6

Seth Lakeman - Kitty Jay

Token Mercury nomination! Well, that's as maybe, but the Dartmoor folkster brews up a dramatically dark storm with his album's title track

Don't cha wish your singles were charted like this?

1 Pussycat Dolls - Stickwithu
The Dolls are of course American, so can be forgiven for not knowing about the critical oppobrium heaped upon Westlife for the getting off stools trick.

2 Oasis - Let There Be Love
If it went any slower it'd be going backwards. This led the midweeks until Saturday, it's vaguely worth noting.

7 Kelly Clarkson - Because Of You
This is surely the sort of record everyone expected Clarkson to be making by now, and if it was we'd be able to make our anti argument so much clearer, along the lines of "but we already have a Westlife!" rather than banging on about how one man's Strokesisms is another man's tuneless screeching.

8 Babyshambles - Albion
He's bought an A-Z, then. Here's where the intersection between 'poet of his age' and 'semi-conscious bloke who read William Blake once' occurs. The drummer's properly jazz trained, y'know.

11 Rihanna - If It's Lovin' That You Want
12 Sean Paul - Ever Blazin'
Were you aware either of these were out? Were the artists themselves?

18 Futureheads - Area
Only their second top 20 single, which is typical, of course - the first of the properly successful current crop to emerge are the last to establish a decent chart foothold. Ross?



Good.

29 Gorillaz - Dare
Back up four - it was number one in September - which doesn't say a lot for Dirty Harry.

30 Blink 182 - Not Now
Their final single, as the revived trick of the video edited together from all their other videos demonstrates. Is there supposed to be a USP to Meet The Barkers?

32 Jamie Cullum - Mind Trick
34 David Gray - Hospital Food
That's right, put them together so we can get a better aim.

35 Sigur Ros - Hoppipolla
Their singles chart debut and, Gambaccini, Read, Rice and/or Rice take note, the first top 40 single in Hopelandish. We expect college courses by June.

39 Antony & the Johnsons - You Are My Sister
You may recall this was number 42 last week, which makes this odder - when was the last time something off kilter like this actually held steady its sales in its second week? By comparison Lady Sovereign, who entered at 44, is at 75 this week with a more commercial sounding record. Could be the Jonathan Ross performance last Friday, but that didn't help the Vessels much.

The only Christmas chart that counts (1/6)

You know we love a good chart here on STN, so between now and the 25th, as well as everything else that's going on - please, tell your friends/visitors to come here, or else it feels like we're shouting down a quarry - we'll be revisiting six classic Christmas top 40s of the last 25 years. To start, as Band Aid 20's somehow re-entered the top 75 this week, let's look at Bob'n'Midge starting it all off in 1984:

1 Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas
B-side Feed The World turned up on an mp3 blog the other week, and if there's any interest we'll stick it up on YSI for everyone to share in the stupid laughing, Big Country, Bob leaving a space for Johnny Fingers and how it's left to Jon Moss - Jon Moss! - to be first to remind us of the serious message.

2 Wham! - Last Christmas
Before Bob decided to catch the news one night the stage was essentially set for the big Frankie/Wham! playoff, which in the end was comprehensively won by the biggest selling single never to top the chart, although, George, there's an idea for next year now you're floating the idea that Wham! weren't so bad after all. So if she gave away his heart the day after she opened it, what sort of Boxing Day party was she at?

3 Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus - We All Stand Together
It's a bloody kids' song! And not all that unattractive either, from the same year's Rupert And The Frog Song film, the accompanying feature to Give My Regards To Broad Street, which he apparently recorded the soundtrack for five years earlier. Bear in mind, incidentally, that in September he'd got to number two with No More Lonely Nights, and the previous year Pipes Of Peace had been in Crimble contention following his brace of Michael Jackson duets, so for this to sell wasn't that much of an aberration. As an extra bonus, nobody in pub quizzes remembers the title.

4 Madonna - Like A Virgin
Doesn't seem like a Christmas record, does it? In fact it hit its peak in January, her third top 40 single. Worth the fingers from anyone's gloves.

5 Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power Of Love
Course, any band whose first three singles don't go to number one now gets dropped immediately, moan grumble moan. Every schoolkid in the country could name the first three, of which this made Frankie the second three weeks previously.

6 The Toy Dolls - Nellie The Elephant
"It was a more commercial arrangement with a key change etc, but it didn’t have the guts of the first version. I thought the tempo was too fast also." Some people are never satisfied. Annoyingly voiced Geordie Oi! veterans chance it and score well. Still going. Of course they're still going.

7 Gary Glitter - Another Rock'n'Roll Christmas
Another Christmas rock'n'roll. His final top 40 hit, and [CENSORED]

8 Nik Kershaw - The Riddle
Tree, river, hole, you know. Snood!

9 Paul Young - Everything Must Change
Isthmian League balladry from the... hold on, let's just check up... ah yes, gravelly voiced white soul man. Climbed to this position this week, and stayed there for another four weeks. He must have been pulling his hair out by the end.

10 Black Lace - Do The Conga
Fairly Route One follow-up to Agadoo featuring a video shot in Blackpool on the most overcast day they could manage. Their last album was called What A Party!, which you'd expect, and featured Tubthumping, which you wouldn't. What a discussion must have taken place in Chumbawamba's squat the day that letter came through.

11 Shakin' Stevens - Teardrops
Shaky dons the jacket and pulls at the heartstrings. Phillip from The X Factor makes careful notes.

12 Kool and the Gang - Fresh
Lest we forget, Ronald 'Kool' Bell was the bass player, and didn't even write most of the songs. No wonder vocalist JT Taylor pissed off shortly afterwards.

13 Tears For Fears - Shout
Lennon talked about it, Curt and Roland made a six minute record about it. Made for shouting into strong wind.

14 Murray Head - One Night In Bangkok
Tim Rice gets a song into his own book with Benny and Bjorn's help and some frankly remarkable lyrics. If there is another song that namechecks Somerset Maugham (we do know there's one that mentions Yul Brynner, before you say), we've yet to hear - no, experience it.

15 Ray Parker Jr - Ghostbusters
Coming to a Radio 1 Ten Hour Takeover near you soon.

16 Alvin Stardust - I Won't Run Away
Very much into his Christian phase at this point, although the TV-AM Sunday morning series was still a couple of years away.

17 Eurythmics - Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty Four)
Ahoy, Fairlight! B-sides: For The Love Of Big Brother, Julia, Doubleplusgood. We can't help feeling Dave had thought of a theme.

18 Jim Diamond - I Should Have Known Better
Caution: Scottish lover's soul ahead. The number one before Frankie, which puts Bob Geldof's quote about the impact of Band Aid being shown by Diamond wanting people to buy that record and thus knock his off the top into perspective.

19 Spandau Ballet - Round And Round
No memory of this, although there weren't many hits left.

20 Thompson Twins - Lay Your Hands On Me
Proving a band can never have too many percussionists.

21 Chaka Khan - I Feel For You
We all know how this starts, but our mind always segues this into Go West's We Close Our Eyes.

22 Queen - Thank God It's Christmas
Well tonight thank God it's Christmas instead of you?

23 Alison Moyet - Invisible
24 Human League - Louise

25 Slade - All Join Hands
Not only on the new Very Best Of, but track one of disc 2, not far away from Myzsterious Mizster Jones, a title which perhaps suggests trying too hard to rekindle the old days. Only the mighty Radio Wall Of Sound, which we remember them doing on Saturday morning telly before the cult of Noddy had got underway at all, was left.

26 Foreigner - I Want To Know What Love Is
Come 19th January this blustery overkill of a new entry would knock Band Aid off number one. The next Darkness record will sound like this.

27 Limahl - The Never Ending Story
Always used to be fascinated by the way he went "stor-EEEEEE!" Knowingly wears a wig on stage these days. Apparently he appeared on CITV at Christmas 1998 to perform this ahead of a showing of the titular film, which can only have been for the production team's benefit.

28 Kane Gang - Respect Yourself
29 Chicago - Hard Habit To Break
30 Dazz Band - Let It All Blow
31 Temptations - Treat Her Like A Lady

32 Duran Duran - Wild Boys
You'll get pneumonia.

33 Bronski Beat - It Ain't Necessarily So
George Gershwin and Peter Tatchell to a disco beat. Richard Coles met Jimi sessioning on this track, and intriguingly is now training to become a CoE priest. No more series of that Sunday night Feedback-style slot on 5 Live in the pipeline, then.

34 Stevie Wonder - I Just Called To Say I Love You
How many weddings in June did he go to, then?

35 Tina Turner - Private Dancer
Forever tainted in our minds by Little and Large's reworking, a good six or seven years after the event.

36 Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day
That's Wizzard Featuring Vocal Backing By The Suedettes Plus The Stockland Green Bilateral School First Year Choir With Additional Noises By Miss Snob And Class 3C to you. Originally released in 1973, it's only actually been reissued twice, this being the second time. No, we're not counting the Roy Wood Big Band version (no. 54, 1995) or I Wish It Could Be A Wombling Merry Christmas Every Day (no. 22, 2000), although the latter was the most successful release on Mike Batt's label until he popped by the Brits school one day and wondered who the girl over there with the winsome look and acoustic guitar was.

37 Council Collective - Soul Deep (Part 1)
You'd have thought Paul Weller (and to a lesser extent Mick Talbot) would have done better with his pro-miners benefit then to saddle it with a name that sounds like a rubbish collection service, but then you'd have thought he'd have done better then make a deep funk record with Jimmy Ruffin, Junior Giscombe, Heaven 17's Martyn Ware and loads off other people you've never heard of to state their case. There wasn't a part 2, no.

38 Billy Ocean - Caribbean Queen

39 Alvin Stardust - So Near To Christmas
Well, yes, Shane, it is. Release schedules, eh?

40 Big Country - Where The Rose Is Sown
Mmm. A week later and we'd have got Smiley Culture's Police Officer. Next time: Anthrax, the Hooters and The Best Christmas Song Ever (TM).

Swearing at Jo Whiley

Are we to read anything into how if there's any effing and blinding, however blinding comes into the equation, on Radio 1 it now always seems to be on Jo's show? In August Dave Grohl couldn't contain his surprise at Elbow's version of Independent Women during one of his quintillion interviews on the show, and now Ofcom's latest standards bulletin has... well...

Jo Whiley
BBC Radio 1, 7 October 2005, 12:40

A listener complained that a record contained offensive language. The track included
the line: "she’s pretty fucking far from nice" (this being Arctic Monkeys' Bigger Boys And Stolen Sweethearts)

The BBC said that the presenter had apologised at the first available opportunity. The unedited track, rather than the edited version, had been played out by mistake. Those involved in the production of the programme have been reminded of the need to check material carefully in the future. The broadcaster apologised for any offence.
This is not the first time that tracks on this show have included swearing. However on the previous occasion, the performance had been live and so the broadcaster had less control over its output. On this occasion, however and in view of the presenter’s immediate apology and the reminder to production staff of the need to check material for its suitability for broadcast, we consider the matter resolved. However we would not expect any further repetition of swearing of this nature in lyrics.

So that's her production team told.

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 5

Metric - Patriarch On A Vespa

Broken Social Scene alumni stay just the right side of Republica on album Live It Out

In case you're wondering how Dennis Wilson got into the Weekly Sweep...

Jefitoblog has posted the whole of the long out of print Pacific Ocean Blue

In shops tomorrow: 5/12

Singles

This is an odd week for singles, too early to give the Christmas chart a good go (although Tony Christie's cover of Merry Xmas Everybody's out), too late to be considered as part of the normal year's promo. What we do have are two long-awaited releases, Franz Ferdinand's dramatic Walk Away and the chief opinion polariser that is the Strokes' Juicebox. You'll have downloaded the leaked version in September, of course.

Albums

The slowdown is even more pronounced here, where there really is nothing to be gained from releasing a new artist album at this stage. WEA are sticking out a load of Platinum Collection remarketing of old Best Ofs at mid-price, of which the most notable is the Beat's, often derided at the time as 2-Tone chancers, although they were on their own Go-Feet label at the time, but it all stands up very well. Ranking.

DVD

We thought there was a Kraftwerk live DVD out a few months ago, but Minimum-Maximum is apparently their first release, a visual companion to the world tour live album and as such surely the more worthwhile investment. It's not robots for the whole gig, we assure you.

The Weekly Sweep

Young Knives - The Decision
Belle & Sebastian - Another Sunny Day
Kubichek! - Taxi
John Vanderslice - Trance Manual
Dennis Wilson - Thoughts Of You
New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
Ben Folds Five - Battle Of Who Could Care Less
Smog - The Well
Girls Aloud - Swinging London Town
Lene Lovich - Lucky Number

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 4

XTC - Spiral

Vintage verdant pop pastorialism dug out from the vaults in Andy Partridge's converted shed, more precisely the bit labelled 'outtakes from 2003's Wasp Star album', released on this year's compilation of that, the preceding Apple Venus and sundry out-takes, Apple Box

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Boring Bob Grover

...and a whole host of 1982 big pop names, as off the Rocking Vicar website comes Smash Hits' 1982 Christmas party flexidisc, narrated by David Hepworth himself and topped and tailed by festive rarities in the shape of Good King Wenceslas by Duran Duran and Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer by Musical Youth. Plus, Fun Boy Three!

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 3

Art Brut - My Little Brother

A new leader of men was declared early in 2005 in the form of pinstripe suited, declamatory, occasionally rakish moustachioed, Eddie Argos, who somewhat incredibly is building a reputation among the New York scene at the moment. When we saw them he appended a cry of "STAY AWAY FROM PETE DOHERTY!" to the end of this. Buy Bang Bang Rock'n'Roll

A craven appeal

Does anyone have a copy of The Guinness Book Of Top 40 Charts (Paul Gambaccini, 1992) to hand and would be prepared to do a bit of copying out of it for us? We were planning a feature about old charts this month using the copy in our local library, but they've had a pipe burst in the snow and closed the reference section.

Wonder if it's like this for professional writers.

Poll to poll

Who gives a shit about relative placings in the NME end of year list anyway? Danny Baker maintains that all those polls, up to and including reader ones, were decided on round the office in bored moments, so let's not all live our lives by them. (Apart from any we do, which are of course primary sources of modern cultural information.) Filter magazine polls the stars instead. - Shirley Manson, Ricky Wilson - oh look, he's mentioned the Cribs - and Jason Lyttle off Grandaddy first. Elsewhere Muzzle Of Bees attempts to water down the growing image of the music blog scene that celebrates itself by, um, interviewing notable mp3 bloggers, while we heartily recommend m3 Online posting Sufjan Stevens' three CDs worth of Christmas songs.

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 2

Mystery Jets - Zoo Time

Early Pink Floyd fighting the Liars in a tumble drier oddballeries, their debut single on label of the year candidate Transgressive. Well, it was until they were forced to declare the new Young Knives single hadn't made the shops as they'd not got round to pressing it up in time. Numpties. They're from Eel Pie Island and the singer's dad is in the band - you'd have thought reviewers would have mentioned those facts by now

Advent Calendar Of Music: Day 1

Battle - Tendency
The post-punk/new wave revival took many forms this year, not all of them good. This bit is, especially when the South Londoners were giving it away free on their website, and a re-recording is rumoured to be their next single. We're happy about it. Here's that website now.

Yeah, all these will be on YouSendIt. Sorry.

Santa down the chimney Sweep

Christmas comes but once a year, but when it does it brings good reminiscing, or something. And that retrospective starts tomorrow with our Advent Calendar Of Music, 24 really quite good tracks from the year that you might have missed, be they great single shot right across the collective bows, offcuts from underwhelming albums or the like. Then on Monday 11th December we begin our big countdown, which we won't give away the USP of yet suffice to say that the more astute of you will notice that date is twenty days off New Year's Day, which is the day we'll list our top 50 singles of the year. Oh, and there'll be the usual gubbins alongside it all as we go. All here on your festive Sweeping The Nation!

In the meantime, some outlinking: Jamie's Runout Groove reminds us of Serum's bass and harmonies oddity Know How, Mr Red Penguin pays tribute to Sultans Of Ping and the 2006 Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame - the proper one - nominees are announced. "Let's face it, Black Sabbath has never been media darlings" quoth Ozzy the first time they were nominated. Sharon presumably forgot to have a word with him in time.

EDIT: Oh, hold up, it appears The Art Of Noise's A-Z Of Music has had to get to C before we've remembered to link to it.

Singles barred

1 Madonna - Hung Up
Presumably scheduled to be in advance of the Kaballah Centre's paid for advertorial, we caught Truth Or Dare, some say In Bed With, on satellite over the weekend. Does she just forget she's being filmed despite being right next to the camera?

4 Simon Webbe - No Worries
Up three! Who decided this was the week to buy this? Who decided any week was the week to buy this?

6 Gorillaz - Dirty Harry
One of our favourite memories of the year is someone claiming that their advance copy of Demon Days had been spoilt by what was obviously a Christian fundamentalist overlaying choirs on certain tracks. So much for foisting creativity on the masses.

10 Tom Novy - Your Body
Formerly half of Novy vs Eniac - Eniac is currently appearing in Run For Your Wife at the Savoy Theatre, Burnham - it's a big welcome back to the top ten for handbag house, with vocals by the bloke who sang on Luniz' I Got 5 On It. A slow sales week, by any chance?

11 50 Cent - Window Shopper
Evidently not slow enough.

17 Stereophonics - Rewind
By the way, Kelly, was it not enough of a hint that everyone seemed to like Dakota more than your usual fare?

22 Paul McCartney - Jenny Wren
As you may know this is the very Blackbird-esque plucked acoustic track off his new album, which makes us wonder if it was conscientiously thus after the roots revisiting of his previous LP, or whether this is his natural state having returned to playing all the instruments himself. A fine decision, unfortunately about to be swamped by the Yoko-led tide of Lennon anniversary mourning.

26 Goldie Lookin' Chain - R'n'B
A musical target about three years out of date, which at least makes it one of their more contemporary targets.

28 Various Artists - Ever Fallen In Love...
The Peel tribute record, which Radio 1 decided not to playlist. Actually, this is pretty much the most Peel-like thing they could have done.

36 Freefaller - She's My Everything/Basket Case
Bye, then. Yes, that's the Green Day Basket Case, and you can imagine how that makes the transfer to a major label-led skatepop outfit featuring one of Point Break.

42 Antony & The Johnsons - You Are My Sister
Presumably this had a late week spike after the fine performance on Jonathan Ross off the telly's show, as everyone outside our little music sphere has done their best to forget the Mercury result. American!

44 Lady Sovereign - Hoodie
More a victim of timing, the Bluewater thing - couldn't we just ban Bluewater Shopping Centre? - having long passed into the back of the And Finally file for the year. As with MIA her British mix'n'matching is paying off better in America, where she's just signed to Def Jam, than here, where she's corralled onto CD:UK to give Myleene Klass rapping tips.

In shops tomorrow: 28/10

Singles

We should be grateful of the Futureheads' Area for many reasons - it's a new track released as a single that isn't being followed by a reissuing of the album, the extra tracks feature Ross and Jaff on lead vocals, there are few who would write a song around home security. Oh, and that it's great.

We could have seen King Creosote earlier in the year but ended up having other things to do, which by all accounts is unfortunate. Bootprints comes off the KC Rules OK album and is backed by the Earlies on more immediate form than usual. Must check if this is one of the tracks with KT Tunstall on backing vocals.

Can't find links for these, but the Spinto Band's Lipsish double A-side Mountains/Brown Boxes is on vinyl only, while the mighty Young Knives are probably as perplexed as us by the two reviews that compare The Decision to the Darkness. The big one, though, is the giant-sized 'here comes 2006!' sign that is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's 7" only Is This Love?

Albums

To start this section, an album you may have already - Want One + Want Two equals Rufus Wainwright's double album Want, apparently the way he wanted it all along, although why he didn't just release it that way is unclear.

Back earlier in the year, before all this Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! nonsense, the smart money for the first band to be declared The New Arcade Fire was on Thunderbirds Are Now!, a Detriot collective with Byrnesian vocals, plenty of synths and disco-punk stylings pickpocketed from Andy Gill. Justamustache finally gets a proper British release this week, as does another long-released in America favourite of the art-jerk cognescenti, Les Savy Fav's final album Inches.

Ah, Th' Faith Healers. The first band signed to Too Pure, their discordant yelping akin to inventing lo-fi a couple of years too early and compensating by dumping all the distortion and feedback possible on top like Wile E Coyote with his new bag of Acme Quick Drying Cement, god knows what their Peel Sessions sound like.

On a very different tack, there must have been hundreds of Very Best of Slades released down the years, but this double set with a cover seemingly developed in Microsoft Paint presents their hard boogie as something to be admired in itself rather than a means to a Christmas song pension plan end.

Inevitably, NME Presents The Essential Bands is if anything safer than those Best Bands Ever compilations, only The Automatic - ah, the buy-in - and Test sodding Icicles likely to scare the kids. For the wider picture we must look at Children Of Nuggets - Original Artyfacts From The Second Psychedelic Era 1976-1995, which transcends its attempt at lineage from the original Lenny Kaye curated compilation classic and the idea everyone was mad about it for 19 years. A few names you might recognise creep in - early Bangles, XTC's own Dukes Of Stratosphear, the Cramps, Revillos, Teenage Fanclub, the inevitable Julian Cope, Inspiral Carpets, early Primals and even the La's There She Goes - but there's plenty of retro-flavoured powerpop goodness to newly mint.

But what are we going to get the kids this Christmas? Probably more early twentysomethings than six year olds have been awaiting Dick & Dom In Da Bungalow: The Album - featuring The Stoke-On-Trent Song! - but you don't need to go all Daily Mail to appreciate Hello Children Everywhere, three CDs of Junior Choice favourites from the 1920s to early 1970s incorporating everyone from Rolf Harris to Max Bygraves (Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen By The Sea) via the Kingston Trio, Bernard Cribbins' Right Said Fred, Scaffold's plain scary Lily The Pink and Peter Sellers doing Any Old Iron. What child of the modern age would get any enjoyment from this is a moot point, but we would.

DVDs

Franz Ferdinand's DVD debut will be assured to have smart menus if nothing else. Luckily there is something else - two full gigs plus a full set of offcuts, two documentaries, one inevitably titled Tour De Franz, and, ulp, karaoke tracks.

You can't help feeling, though, that that whole artschool schtick and design awareness might have led to something with more side to it like, say, Kaiser Chiefs - Enjoyment, also built around two full gigs but also a 90 minute documentary voiced by Bill Nighy which tells their story from Parva's inception to 2020.

Speaking of art school, Radiohead - Live At The Astoria does what it says on the tin, assuming you'd written 'recorded in 1994' on the tin in magic marker first. One final quick sidenote - Guided By Voices - The Electrifying Conclusion is actually out this week.

The Weekly Sweep

Futureheads - Area
Nizlopi - JCB
The Decemberists - Los Angeles, I'm Yours
Breeders - Divine Hammer
Guillemots - Trains To Brazil
Semi Finalists - Show The Way
¡Forward, Russia! - Twelve
Kirsty Maccoll - Walking Down Madison
The Crimea - Lottery Winners On Acid
Broken Social Scene - Windsurfing Nation

David Hasselhoff not pictured, thank god

Onwards with our international countdowns, and in the days when MTV's leftfield teletext service would list all the continent's top tens Germany was always the most entertaining, so let's see if they've kept it up...

20 Anastacia - Pieces Of A Dream
The eighth biggest selling albums artist in Britain this century, which can only be achieved by SAS levels of stealth. Nobody even noticed when she stopped wearing glasses.

19 Juanes - La Camisa Negra
Colombian singer-songwriter, very much a Shakira-meets-James Blunt, who is set to be the lead entertainment at the World Cup draw. A former number one, the title translates as The Black Shirt, which has lead to some worrying about precisely why this has taken off in this country of Mussolini. Looks like Justin Currie out of Del Amitri.

18 Depeche Mode - Precious
There's a case for saying they're the biggest fanbase led band in Britain, as radio doesn't seem interested any more yet their first single from each album is guaranteed a high position.

17 Sean Paul - We Be Burnin'
Music to shake ass to.

16 Kelly Clarkson - Behind These Hazel Eyes
Not as many 'brown eyes' jokes as expected after this came out.

15 Christina Sturmer - Mama (Ana Ahabak)
Pinched, shorter haired Lisa Scott-Lee-alike who was a runner-up in Austria's Starmania 2003. More Clarkson than Lemar, it seems.

14 Mattafix - Big City Life
Still not popular in Britain, though.

13 Tokio Hotel - Durch den Monsun
Four teenagers with their debut single, and we know you can't judge every act on what they look like, but we already hate them on the evidence of...


12 Banaroo - Coming Home For Christmas
It's the new Alcazar! Albeit going for it a little early if you ask us.

11 Fettes Brot - An Tagen Wie Diesen
Here's a name from our teletext-based past - Mr President must be recording - a Hamburg hip-hop outfit, as worrying a concept as that sounds.

10 Shakira - Don't Bother
And the reviews write themselves.

9 Robbie Williams - Trippin'
Nobody seems to have noticed that Gary Barlow opened today's reformation press conference with a switch on his opening words for the band's last press conference, "unfortunately the rumours are true..." Wonder if they'll do Smells Like Teen Spirit again.

8 Tatu - All About Us
They're lesbians, I heard.

7 US5 - Just Because Of You
This is Lou Pearlman's new TV-created charges, following in the footsteps of LFO (one hit) and O-Town (two hits - come on, Liquid Dreams?) Like the Backstreet Boys and N'SYNC Pearlman appears to be launching them on the continent first; unlike the Backstreet Boys and N'SYNC they've not started sueing him yet.

6 Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha
Nicole, Ashley, Kim, Meryl, Maureen and Lemony, or something, are soon to launch their own clothing range. Ann Summers are already planning the design copyright injunction.

5 James Blunt - You're Beautiful
Guaranteed never to sound the same after Jeremy Hardy had a go at it in Pick Up Song on Monday's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

4 Sugababes - Push The Button
Always remember one of these people can bear to spend large amounts of time with Dave Berry.

3 Melanie C - First Day Of My Life
Blimey. This one doesn't even appear to have been released in Britain, which perhaps says a lot about what she thinks of her chances. Maybe she's laying low so nobody can throw quotes back at her round about the Spice reunion tour.

2 Xavier Naidoo - Dieser Weg
Manheim's soul boy veteran, the other name we always recall, even if just for that double o at the end.

1 Madonna - Hung Up
Tch. Have some variety.

Awards season

As kind of promised yesterday, Take Your Medicine hold up the UK side of the intra-blog national polling trend, and once you learn the Arctic Monkeys are down at 13 and it's a load of British music bloggers voting you've probably guessed the winner.

Meanwhile Popjustice are doing their annual reader's poll their own way, while coming in with proper official organisation and everything, the Plug Independent Music Awards.

Oh, and according to the print version of the NME (which changes some of the top 20 round, which is hardly fair on us) the Who got into their Fool List for their "15 minute prog-wankery at Live 8". Yes. We all remember that, and all the critical oppobrium heaped upon them afterwards.

Is this cool?

Over, then, to this year's NME Cool List, which yet again declaims the notion of 'cool' itself until it refers to people who wear nice tops. Almost a reverse of the FHM list, now we come to think of it. Anyway:

20 Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance)
Oh, sod off. The British music press have never quite got emo, or indeed chosen not to get it, perhaps thinking of the Great Goth Wars of 1984. Clearly if it sounds like a rapless nu-metal group it's worth the effort, though.

19 Henry Harrison (Mystery Jets)
The senior one, of course, and if we're remembering correctly he seems to own a decent amount of Eel Pie Island too. If he'd finished much higher the papers that picked up on this would have had to explain who he is, which we'd have liked to have seen.

18 Tom Atkin (The Paddingtons)
Ugh. Redolent of those uncomfortable weeks when we were told Hedi Slimane should be influencing our music choices - is the pop/fashion tradeoff not normally the other way around?

17 Billie Joe Armstrong
And don't the kids just love it!

16 Paul Epworth
Was about here in the list last year, since when he appears to have spent his time refining his way of making guitars sound a bit tauter and done some rubbish remixes. Seven months ago it was decided that connecting his name with the word 'ubiquitous' would lead to the word flashing on big black screens behind the speaker while Stephen Fry mock-despairs.

15 Ninja (Go! Team)
She's paying for all those cheerleaders, you know.

14 Julian Casablancas
This is what's known as application of the advanced coolness factor, given nobody seems all that won over by the new material yet. This is a good time to remember that on their breakthrough UK tour of 2001 they were supported by Mull Historical Society. Whither Colin?

13 Ryan Jarman (The Cribs)
Mmm. So of the three singers on the recent NME tour the top 20 finds no room for the very successful and interesting Ricky Wilson or the mildly successful and interesting Paul Smith, but this bloke gets in. This is what passes for intrigue.

12 Damon Albarn
About as far from cool as humanly possible during and after the UK Music Hall Of Fame ceremony, which might explain why he's been spending time being lightboxes of late.

11 Ian Brown
Surely he's not done that much cool recently? Yes, nostalgia, but if that's the case you might as well put Fruitbat from Carter USM in.

10 Carl Barat
Not that he's done anything of note in 2005, but he still wears dark jackets which seems to be the dividing line.

9 Bob Dylan
Someone got the DVD set early.

8 Jemima Pearl (Be Your Own Pet)
For a band who seem to be making less and less impact since their first single, it's difficult to see why the NME editorial team have chosen the excitable cute blonde 17 year old... oh, wait up.

7 Pete Doherty
When he was named top of last year's chart Conor McNicholas defended the decision on the grounds that, whatever you thought of his habits, his story was the NME world story of the year. This year we're not totally sure he's in control of his story.

6 Devendra Banhart
Freak folk, a genre that increasingly appears to encompass every solo artist that isn't Phil Collins, is surely no better encapsulated than by Banhart's hirsuteness, self-indulgent gigs and lyrical obsession with mammals. Nobody seems to have bothered trying to describe him.

5 Brandon Flowers
Although a pink jacket will do just as well.

4 Antony Hegarty
In these days where we know Boy George's gender and every Old R&B singer's colour it's hard to think of anyone who exhibits more disparity between look and sound. In the Mercury-winning photos it looked like he was permanently puffing his cheeks out.

3 Kanye West
Just like Michael Moore, he is. We might think more of him if he hadn't spent months before his first record going on about how everyone in rap owed him a living. And if he stopped making bloody awful records, obviously.

2 Liam Gallagher
A pejorative question when it comes to this list, of course, but cool in what sense?

1 Alex Turner
It's a measure of their rise, if not a particularly saleable one, that most probably wouldn't know this is the Arctic Monkeys singer, much less recognise the distracted-during-pudding-bowl haircut yet. Only a matter of time, of course. While we're about it, Take Your Medicine collates their available mp3s (and their answer to the US Top 40 Bands and 33 Hottest Canadians is on the way)

They've also done the inevitable Fool List, which looks like this:

1 Richard Bacon
2 David Cameron
3 Prince Harry
4 Michael Jackson’s Jury
5 The Who
6 George Bush
7 Coca Cola
8 James Mullord
9 Tim Westwood
10 James Blunt
Bacon has always been a twat, of course, but he's here for his making friends and influencing Magic Numbers, which of course complements Romeo Stodart's place high up in the Cool Li...ah. Not entirely sure what the Who have done to deserve such hatred - nearly taken Zak Starkey away from Oasis? Made people read that supposed Pete Townshend blog? Coca Cola's download service is the only one the NME haven't run an advertising feature on. James Mullord is Pete Doherty's ex-manager, who ought to be on danger money rather than a Fool List. On second thoughts his label were first to sign Towers Of London, which should place him much, much higher.

Confessions on a chartfloor

1 Madonna - Hung Up
Put it away, luv. If nothing else, and in this case it's nearly literally so, she's stayed true to the spirit of small gigs by big names - most huge acts who announce 'intimate club gigs' book Brixton Academy or Shepherd's Bush Empire. If you're counting, this is Number One #1022, which puts it just outside the spectrum of How To Have 1000 Number Ones The Easy Way.

3 Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
Imagine if this became all they were remembered for.

4 Girls Aloud - Biology
An intro possibly inspired by a Nokia preset ringtone leads into the usual freeze-dried layered pop, this time so layered they help you see the joins too. Nadine definitely messed up the vocal cue at the Poll Winners' yesterday.

5 Will Young - Switch It On
Of "bloody hell, this is Will Young?" fame. A nation of middle aged mothers says "bring back the light jazz!"

6 Liberty X - A Night To Remember
The Children In Need single, seemingly picked out of a hat as it's hardly memorable otherwise. At one point on the night they were corralled into the BBC car park to sign a car to be given away, all donning massive coats, apart from Jessica, who was wearing hot pants. There's exuding sexiness, and then there's looking stupid.

8 The Darkness - One Way Ticket
Apt that they should come back in the same week as Little Britain, as it's one joke spread out for far too long. We never did quite work out how many people were claiming irony two years ago.

10 White Stripes - The Denial Twist
Aided by the live download offer/chart scam. Is there some ulterior reason why this has come out straight after the similarly blues piano/cymbal/tambourine-indebted My Doorbell?

13 Son Of Dork - Ticket Outta Loserville
You're not from New York City, you're from Southend. James Bourne, perhaps the last man in the country who believes Busted could have continued along the same path for a while longer yet, makes so much like the wing of US pop-punk that doesn't sell here that he's had a New Found Glory t-shirt soldered to his skin. (NB. Wikipedia claims Charlie Simpson's guitar style is "reminiscent of Tom Verlaine")

17 Green Day - Jesus Of Suburbia
In which they realise they've become popular with the kids and release the nine minute track with five phases. Doesn't work, but then we doubt the kids are noticing the political aspirations therein either.

29 Arcade Fire - Wake Up
John Harris in the Guardian becomes the only person in Britain not to notice Funeral's already getting plenty of Album Of The Year notices.

30 Towers Of London - How Rude She Was
Are you still here?

35 The Modern - Jane Falls Down
An electropop outfit, which is handy as if there was an artrock band with that name we'd all be obliged to beat them to death with tyre irons.

46 Cream vs The Hoxtons - Sunshine Of Your Love
See, when you're wholesale sampling a record for dance hit purposes, make it one the ironic 80s kids remember!

The ten best moments of the Smash Hits/T4 Poll Winners Party

...AKA Where's Fruitbat When You Really Need Him?

* Keisha Sugababes waving at the camera and getting the biggest roar of their 'set'

* Billie Joe Armstrong getting a nomination for Most Fanciable Male

* Every one of Vernon Kay's lines making lead balloon-like

* Miquita Oliver declaring of Rachel Stevens "you just can't get enough of her", something her record company wish was true

* Steve Jones introducing Maggot from Goldie Lookin' Chain as what sounded like "Rhys"

* Miquita's "can I get a boo?", trying to channel UK garage hopefully ironically given nobody knew what that was

* Oliver referring to Back To The Future as "a 90s movie". We know she was barely born by the start of the 90s, but surely someone should have picked up on that one

* The sheer incongruity of Son Of Dork taking Hot New Talent ahead of bands who have actually released records

* The Boy Least Likely To clearly feeling horribly awkward, both for realising they'd been beaten in a popularity contest by the Lidl Thirteen Senses, Kubb, and just because they were there

* Ashley Cole looking like the most embarrassed man ever as he fulfilled his new role in life on Cheryl Tweedy's coat-tails

In shops tomorrow: 21/11

Singles

Antony & The Johnsons seem to have dropped back below the radar they/he briefly vaulted with the Mercury win, meaning you could easily miss this week's release of You Are My Sister. Maybe they really were too off-kilter to be taken in a pop context, or maybe it was all frightened off by the 'but he's American!' backlash. None of those people complained about American acts in the UK Music Hall Of Fame, we bet. Antony is supposedly in the video to Devendra Banhart's Heard Somebody Say too. What would the Star make of him?

Hard to tell what more the Dead 60s can do without following supposed bretheren Hard-Fi into the top end of the charts. It's not as if Ghostfaced Killer isn't an immediately obvious slice of ska greatness. A dancer, perhaps?

We've yielded to few people in our admiration of the Decemberists' Picaresque album, which really should have picked up more than a small cult following by now. It's all those long words! 16 Military Wives has a shot at becoming the big pop hit, coupled with perhaps the video of the year.

Pitchfork recently fell into the good old North Eastern trap of placing all emergent artists from the same town, coupling Field Music, the Futureheads and Dave Stewart in with Newcastle's Maximo Park and Washington's Bryan Ferry. It's the former, in at least their third recorded incarnation, who are active this week with If Only The Moon Were Up.

That Gorillaz 3D hologram performance at the EMAs was a bit of a letdown, wasn't it? We wanted them to appear in the middle of the stage and be viewed from all angles around, not images that looked like balloon animals on a screen. Dirty Harry, anyway.

Even Peelites such as ourselves are beginning to feel this is all being overplayed a bit, and it seems the public agree if Margrave Of The Marshes' 22nd place in last week's Waterstones chart - behind Jeremy Clarkson and Sharon Osbourne, for lord's sake - is anything to go by. Do get it, it's great. This week's addition to the proto-legacy is the Ever Fallen In Love tribute single. How come people are more willing to question the appearance of the Datsuns, who Peel played incessantly during their summer of mild success, than Elton John's?

We're getting worried about Lady Sovereign, who seems to be being pitched as a one-woman sidebar to GLC as the comedy rapper with the clothing stance to match, even if it does get her places...



But Basement Jaxx don't just choose to produce anybody, their hands being behind Hoodie, but the attendant Save The Hoodie campaign is getting us nowhere.

Paul McCartney will always be our foremost melodysmith, as Blackbird part two manque Jenny Wren proves.

We're sure Schwab were briefly around a couple of years ago, but this is the time if any that DJ's In A Row's soul breaks cop show mix should be successful.

Albums

We'd wondered the other day if there was going to be a proper Johnny Cash single disc retrospective covering his whole career soon, and of course if we missed this one there'll be another one along by Christmas 2008. Beat the rush with The Legend of Johnny Cash, excellently including the live San Quentin version of, well, San Quentin.

Speaking of overanthologised bands, this year's Madness Best Of is actually a remaster of Divine Madness with the video compilation DVD tacked on. Waiter!

We're sure 4AD were talking about fans being able to put their own label compilations together to celebrate their 25th anniversary, but 1980 Forward - 25 Years Of 4AD is fine enough for the time being, from Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares to the Mountain Goats. This Mortal Coil are being revived next year, we hear.

DVDs

The final Guided By Voices show last New Year's Eve didn't scrimp much - 63 songs in four hours, an onstage bar, assorted ex and wannabe members onstage, Robert Pollard writing another two solo albums (not visible, but can't be ruled out). Guided By Voices : The Electrifying Conclusion is just that, and you might want to also pick up the retrospective book Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll, complete with foreword by Steven Soderbergh.

If that's not long enough for your rock demands, the three volumes of Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs have been boxed up into one nine-hour set of everything from the Edgar Winter Group to the Jesus & Mary Chain.

Another sucker falls for phone company's ambient marketing

We were reminded flicking through Schott's Almanac the other day of the Naomis, those acts for the alleged worst acts of the year that are pitched somewhere between the Razzies and a supposed comedian you've never heard of in a Channel 4 Top 100 going "yeah, I remember he had really stupid hair!" Seriously, who apart from three admin staff at whichever rundown cable channel organises it would have taken a look at Rachel Stevens' 2004 output - we're thinking Some Girls rather than More More More, obviously - and decided it was the worst of the worst? "Worst British attempt at rock"?

We were reminded of the sheer futility of lists about the worst things in popular culture upon the release of OneTel's top ten of talentless tossers (it says here, if not, we'd suggest, in the press release) to tie in with their UK Music Hall Of Fame sponsorship. And the winners are:

1 Milli Vaniilli
2 Steps
3 Babyshambles
4 Right Said Fred
5 Hear'Say
6 Bros
7 Westlife
8 B*Witched
9 Black Lace
10 Motorhead

Motorhead? Were they just thrown in for the sake of it? Does Philthy 'Animal' Taylor owe OneTel's MD money? Of course it's a waste of breath suggesting Babyshambles are the third worst band of all time as most of the voters, if there were voters (we didn't get a form), have probably never heard of them, and they wouldn't be the only entrants in there for reasons not connected to their musical output - even Milli Vanilli's sound wasn't that wide of the mainstream of the time, and haven't we all got over the levels to which the nation sunk during the Hear'Say backlash? We're surprised more than anything not to see Chico there.

The Weekly Sweep

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Is This Love?
New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
Kubichek! - Taxi
Kathryn Williams - Spit On A Stranger
Bloc Party - Tulips
Roxy Music - Virginia Plain
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Ramblin' Man
Young Knives - The Decision
Field Music - If Only The Moon Were Up
Amerie - One Thing

Tieing up a loose end-ah

From the ever worthwhile Fall Multimedia Project, Mark E Smith reads the scores, appraises Ray Stubbs' haircut, fails to walk out or swear

Don't hold your breath

The Star is excitedly reporting today that Little Britain's Daffyd could have the Christmas number one. See, all Matt and David have to do is find time in their touring and promotion schedule to pad out the existing song, professionally record it, sign a record deal, get a publisher and then find a gap in the release schedule. Five weeks and counting, lads!

Incidentally, it's a song we like a lot, but how on earth can William Hill justify making Nizlopi second favourite for the festive top spot when it's had all of two daytime Radio 1 plays, none off Radio 2 and as far as we know nothing else apart from being a record of the week on local station XFM?

Norway men

As part of our international music blog community spirit, and because we mentioned the chart the other week, the Norwegian singles top 20:

20 Katie Melua - Nine Million Bicycles
They've never heard of Simon Singh out there. We were watching Fizz, that odd Sky music selection channel between U and The Amp, the other day for the first time in a while and this was on twice in three videos.

19 Crazy Frog - Axel F
Note those new Jamster Frog adverts which feature a great big 'NO SUBSCRIPTION' graphic. It's not making anyone like it better.

18 Westlife - You Raise Me Up
Not even the popists will go as far as supporting this.

17 Paperboys - Keep It Cool
It's Atari's house band! They wear matching yellow caps and blue tops and throw rolled up newspapers into the fans! Not really, it's some sort of Norwegian R&B act.

16 McKompis - Internatet
A song about interns using the Internet. Possibly.

15 t.A.t.U - All About Us
Maybe a faux-lesbian angle would prop up their sales.

14 Alejandro Fuentes - Stars
It's not so easy, this trans-continental sarcasm lark. We found the lyrics to this on a blog and started wondering if David Sneddon's lyrics were all that bad.

13 Amy Diamond - What's In It For Me
This meanwhile must surely be an old Mary J Blige out-take. Although home grown she was born in England, which explains the name. She'll being aimed at the international market sooner rather than later, which explains the title. Voice identity ahoy!

12 Hurra Torpedo - Total Eclipse Of The Heart
Billed as "the world's leading kitchen appliance rock group" - put that in your pipes and smoke it, Einsturzende Neubauten - a Nowegian viral hit incorporating stove abuse, matching tracksuits and, you'd hope, irony.

11 Daisy - Weird
Insert fact-starved reference to Daisy Chainsaw here.

10 A-Ha - Celice
We did think it was about time for their irregular comebacks, always well-meaning but always foundering on the rocks of Morten's cheekbones.

9 Robbie Williams - Tripping
Rare is the documentary where all five central participants end up coming out of it looking bad.

8 Mattafix - Big City Life
Ah, that's where they're big names! Really, the press must stop going on about them until someone shows signs of proper interest.

7 Rihanna - Pon De Replay
That's what Chasetown were missing.

6 Baracuda - Ass Up EP
This can only spell trouble. Some dance thing, FWIW.

5 Bratz Rock Angels - So Good
Clearly Scandinavians are more susceptible to singing dolls than we are.

4 Sugababes - Push The Button
See, how many ways can you be taller in without getting comparative?

3 Kent - The Hjärta & Smärta EP
The Swedish Coldplay, even before Coldplay existed - some may remember their hard working but failing attempts to crack Britain throughout much of the late 90s.

2 Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha
Straight onto the ballad with the second single? What's going on?

1 Madonna - Hung Up
A bona fide what they used to call international hit, then, still looking unbecoming of her. Meanwhile Wall Of Sound are shoving as much Les Rhythmes Digitales stuff out as possible, which maybe they should have thought more about at the time.

Taking drugs to listen to music to take drugs to

"These albums were once the property of Pete Doherty", apparently. Big Country, Blow Monkeys, Church, Dave Stewart And The Spiritual Cowboys, Deacon Blue, Dread Zeppelin, Edie Brickell, Fish, Flash And The Pan, Paul Hardcastle, Human League, Midnight Oil, Pete Murphy, Hazel O'Connor, Sinead O'Connor, OMD, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Shamen, Sisters Of Mercy, Skid Row, Toyah, Judie Tzuke, Yazoo... no wonder he shipped them off.

We do think the music nostalgia market has its limits, mind.

Did we ever doubt it wasn't a hoax?

Well, yes, frankly. But indeed, Mark E Smith will be reading the BBC classified football results tomorrow

The architecture tango

News from the music press this week that bloggers have started writing about music. Inevitably most are making a mess of it, Alexis Petridis getting it reliably wrong for starters, scouring the Internet far and wide for new music, if you mean as far and wide as the Arctic Monkeys' forum, Pitchfork and Myspace, akin to an amateur astrologer trying to discover solar systems outside our own by ringing Heather Couper (her that used to be on Going Live every so often) and looking through back issues of The Astronomer and that column that used to be in the Telegraph. The Observer then stepped in with its cutting observation that, well, some US websites use odd language sometimes, especially Pitchfork (them again), apparently on the basis of their unfollowable Lady Sovereign single review from the other week. We've always been able to make both head and tail of it, but never mind. Pitchfork, being a regularly updated website, is obviously now a blog despite predating the word itself, as are, seemingly, Village Voice, the New Yorker and Playlouder (the Playlouder that is several years old, employs proper journalists and runs its own Singles Club and gig nights, yes. You might as well say nme.com is a blog.) "Write a 50-word 'Bloglish' review of your favourite recent album or track; the funniest will win our next four Albums of the Week" it states. On the other hand, don't, it'll be shit. The BBC's go is better, even if it does suggest early on that you should steer clear of any site writing about new music. So much for development, and indeed the guiding principle behind the very root of this sudden interest in Internet music writing. We wonder how many casual browsers escaped from the ILM links with their faculties intact.

While we're about it - Information Leafblower's Top 40 Bands In America Today (Okkervil River 24 - excellent! Kelly Clarkson 16 - uh?) which has inevitably given us an idea we'll have to think about, and a word for the closure of Last Night An mp3 Saved My Wife, one of the superior UK mp3 blogs.

In shops tomorrow : 14/11

Singles

Vinyl first - Annie seems to accept that she won't sell records and so The Wedding is 12" only, while Arcade Fire's spectacular year ends with Wake Up, on 7" and special live version with David Bowie on iTunes download only. Or just watch the video.

Yes, you might well be suspicious of The Like and their debut What I Say And What I Mean - they're a female pop-punkish three piece on a major label, plus they're the daughters of A&R bigwig and sometime producer Tony Berg, producer Mitchell Froom (mention Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson and Suzanne Vega rather than Sheryl Crow, the Corrs and Daniel Powter) and Attractions drummer Pete Thomas. But sod it, it's great.

If there's any suspicion around The Pipettes, debuting properly with Dirty Mind, it's all self-perpetuating from a band whose mission statement is to "turn back the clock to a time before The Beatles ruined everything", which we won't counter with the fact that stated main influence the Shangri-Las emerged in 1964. We're right in thinking bandleader Monster Bobby has a connection to the Add N To (X) song of that name, yes?

The White Stripes' Denial Twist seems to be a single released because Michel Gondry made a video that doesn't quite work for it. Readers from the future may prefer the download live versions.

Albums

Conor Oberst live shows are notoriously inconsistent, but Bright Eyes' Motion Sickness seems to have caught him on a good night. It's a good week for live albums by American acts whose image is radically different here from in their native land, as Wilco issue Kicking Television. Alt-country or Chicago Radiohead? The Pogues' Streams Of Whiskey is back out while we're about it, and public opinion of them depends on how much you know about Shane McGowan.

Oh look, a 'New Edition' version of Martha Wainwright's album. Drowned In Sound must owe their website redesigner a lot of money.

Another feature of the week is slightly bizarre compilations. The OC Mix 5 compilation mentioned last week got moved forward to tomorrow, someone called Patrick Doyle prepares to accept the royalties boosted by Jarvis and some of Radiohead's contributions to the soundtrack album of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, while even Top Gear - The Ultimate Driving Experience seems to go mad on CD2 with Nightmares On Wax, a Primal Scream dub mix and Dusted. You still wouldn't want to put it in a place where it's too visible, mind.

Which isn't something you can say for the 3CD Benicassim festival tie-in, which heads from the Kaisers to Tarwater via bands with unlikely names (Love Of Lesbian), reputations (Mouse On Mars) and likelihood of actually being asked to do Benicassim (Daniel Johnston).

DVD

Not before time Dig! makes it to DVD, albeit with not a lot of extras. Dammit, we wanted Anton Newcombe on commentary!

Someone should tell the Hives that Tussels in Brussels isn't spelt correctly. Part-surreal documentary, part-live concert and a few TV appearances, it's as linear as Howlin' Pelle's attitude.

The Weekly Sweep

The Crimea - Lottery Winners On Acid
Cat Power - Islands
Roxy Music - Virginia Plain
¡Forward, Russia! - Twelve
The Decemberists - 16 Military Wives
José Gonzàlez - Heartbeats
Futureheads - Area
Nizlopi - JCB
Freeland - Heel And Toe (Evil Nine remix)
Felt - Ballad Of The Band

This is your solemn duty for the weekend

Get The Boy Least Likely To onto the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party!

And also...

...Wichita Recordings' own podcast, mostly featuring Euros Childs' debut solo material outside Gorky's and assorted Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! tracks. They're the next Arcade Fire, y'know.

Other sites that are much better than this one

The inevitably titled Blog Party features two far more than half-arsed comic strips and Final Fantasy covering This Modern Love; Channel 4 report on the science behind last week's Gorillaz gigs; Stereogum has links to Michel Gondry's White Stripes video and reports from an extra; Mr Red Penguin reports the full inspired madness of British Sea Power and the Wurzels - together!

Search engine hits you'd love to see happen

'kele bloc party dick and dom'

Come on, who wouldn't like to see Okereke, K doing the Pants Dance?

Explanation corner

The title of the new Darkness album, One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back, is a knowing joke. Please stop sending letters and comments emails to music outlets going "surely they'd need a return ticket?"

Running jokes ahoy

We'll float on, good news is on the way - yes, Kidz Bop 9's tracklisting is out, everybody. This time the stage school screamers will be marking their own path through Pon De Replay, Stefani's Cool, These Words (blimey, she is making an impact) and We Belong Together, but also Beverly Hills, Wake Me Up When September Ends and, most incongruously, Feel Good Inc. Most incongruous, that is, if you discount Axel F. Yes, the Crazy Frog one (don't worry too much, it 'only' peaked at 50 on Billboard). As sung by a bunch of kids. Hide your eardrums.

You think you can trust a radio station...

...and then it gives shows to Russell Brand and the Queens Of Noize and suddenly you want to raze it to the ground. (Stevie Van Zandt's garage rock show special, though)

Perhaps the scariest record of the year

You could guess that Unchained Melody, Amarillo and Imagine are on here, but after that they appear to have gone mad. Eye Level! This Ole House! Side Saddle! My Ding A Ling! Just the thought of them tackling that last one's making us nauseous. Imagine what the rehearsals were like when they were cutting down the possibilities. "Foster! What accordion key do you think You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) is in?" "Don't interrupt me now, Allen, it's difficult enough making Doop scan this minor chord acoustic arrangement as it is"

The Top 40 is not a cold, dead place

1 Westlife - You Raise Me Up
Thirteen number ones. Thirteen. And how many can you name? Go on, hum Queen Of My Heart. Of course, they're pretty much as much a fanbase band as more credible acts now, albeit a much bigger fanbase, maybe one more aware than most that Daniel O'Donnell took it to number 22 in 2003 - it's six and a half years since their Keating-propelled launch, a generation or two in pop terms, but they're still plugging away at the pop shows, looking as out of place as an artrock band might have done five years ago. Stand up for the key change!

2 Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
On the other hand, this story remains remarkable purely because the so-called rabid fanbase spike band is still up here three weeks in. Their first New York gig's just been upgraded too - watch those mp3 blogs, now!

3 Pharrell feat. Gwen Stefani - Can I Have It Like That
Well, even his supporters seemed to write this one off, and it was barely worth officially splitting N*E*R*D if all he's going to do is pedestrian beats. What did happen to the Great Sounding Like An Autechre Offcut Beats Revolution? And his restyling of himself as Skateboard P can fuck off too.

4 Craig David - Don't Love You No More
Welcomes Careful Hostages To Fortune. It can't be coincidental that his placings have improved as Leigh Francis has moved on.

9 Goldfrapp - Number 1
The Pac-Man style game on their website is fun, the Moroder stylings so now, the end product... well, with most of radio and advertising breaks still plugging away at Ooh La La it's hardly a surprise people have got summarily confused.

11 Rosetta Life feat. Billy Bragg - We Laughed
Not that this is about Bragg at all - if nothing else he's only on co-writing and guitar - but let the record state it's his eighth top 40 entry, his highest if you discount his contribution to the Childline single. He was good on Breakfast this morning too, talking about finding shared ground with the patients in Dolly Parton. Wonder how JK & Joel introduced this.

12 Bob Sinclar feat. Gary Nesta Pine - Love Generation
Still hanging around four weeks in as the label realise that they really did leave it too late.

14 Texas - Can't Resist
Must... resist... urge... This seems to have largely come out of the blue, as once the media have realised Sharleen hasn't been horribly disfigured they tend now to forget that other little thing in the equation. Much better position than the Corrs managed last week, though.

15 Eurythmics - I've Got A Life
Now, what was this? Lennox puts on a suit, Stewart cranks up the synths, the world wonders if they've got a repeat Greatest Hits out this week too (yes). As if to prove it's a losing battle, Sweet Dreams is the B-side.

16 Darren Hayes - So Beautiful
What did happen to the other one out of Savage Garden?

20 Fightstar - Grand Unification (part 1)
Part 1 in a Listen Without Prejudice or Trapped In The Closet sense? Referred to on last night's biggest selling artists of the millennium clutter as Charlie Simpson's solo project, which must have delighted all four of them, they're still badly treading that Busted fan/suspicious scenester line. Who'd dare drop them, though?

23 Kray Twinz - What We Do
Subtle name. Twista and Lethal Bizzle, two men with a history of reinterpreting everyone else's ideas, help join a party that's long blown out.

29 Status Quo - All That Counts Is Love
Which is odd given their recent publicity push - they've even got their own teleshopping advert now - and the traditional fanbase rush. Who'd really want to hear a Status Quo record called that?

36 Backstreet Boys - Just Want You To Know
Number eight last week!

39 Rakes - 22 Grand Job
Well, that was worth it. The idea behind this proper release must have been that this would finally be the record to take them to radio. No such luck.

58 Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman No Cry
That seems a baffling enough place to draw a veil over this week.

Not a lame appeal at all, oh no

Has anyone still got the live acoustic version of the Futureheads' Hounds Of Love that was up on Mr Red Penguin a couple of months ago? (We only realised the other week that we've met the curator of said blog, actually. There is no punchline to this anecdote. In fact, it's barely an anecdote.)

To add to yesterday's mini-moan about labels deciding it's more economical on the R&D to put out a new Best Of rather than repromote the old one - there's a new Elvis compilation out! Surely everyone who wants his hits now has them in triplicate at least?

Not that we'd want to labour a point, Bloc Party, but...

This new US market video for Helicopter - are you assuming nobody's seen the Pioneers video?

Any Road up

We've never been to Roadmender's in Northampton, but it's always good shorthand for the kind of small clubs where stars of tomorrow are often bred. Being a small club venue, of course, Northamptonshire County Council want to close it down via removing their funding. Signing the petition is the least you can really do (note to 'josh': "if u close roadmender ill slit my wrists NO JOKE!!" probably won't help in the long run)

In shops tomorrow : 7/11

Singles

Elbow's Leaders Of The Free World really should have been the big single, but everybody seems to have ignored it and its remarkable video. More fool them. Not so much looking the other way, as expected, for the Kaiser Chiefs' Modern Way

Albums

According to BBC Online Kate Bush's Aerial, her first album since the Bronze Age or thereabouts, has been getting "mixed reviews" in the press. What this seems to mean is some papers gave it four stars out of five, some five out of five. Songs about Pi, washing machines and Rolf Harris paintings never seemed so good.

Always worth reminding yourself of the power of Patti Smith's Horses, now with a live recreation disc which apparently makes it a 'Legacy Edition'. The cover inspired KT Tunstall's Suddenly I See, apparently. Not sure that's mentioned in the sleeve notes. It's worth viewing this kind of care and attention in the light of the release of Blondie's first Greatest Hits in three years (not counting last year's live version), David Bowie compiled also three years after the last compilation and a Stock Aitken & Waterman Best Of, which we mention for a) the three of them, long thought to have been at loggerheads, reforming for promo just coincidentally at the same time all their major projects have fallen through and b) the curious tracklisting that includes the Zeebrugge and Hillsborough charity covers, Boy Krazy, Divine, Mandy Smith, Pat & Mick, their own Roadblock (insert white label scam anecdote here) and of course I'd Rather Jack. We'd rather sing along with Yazz.

Bod: Words And Music? Isn't that too far in the past for modern day students who might otherwise be fingering the new Bullseye board game with post-ironic love? Hey, it keeps Derek Griffiths off the breadline.

The OC Mix 5 provides further evidence that you can enjoy this stuff and never have to watch the actual show. Taking it to the suburban kids this time are LCD Soundsystem, Gorillaz, Kaiser Chiefs, Stars the Shout Out Louds, Of Montreal and Youth Group.

And taking it to the lazy teenagers is Going Underground: Teenage Kicks Vol.2, a fairly obvious cherrypicking of vaguely alternative hits of the 70s and early 80s. The Lambrettas?

The Weekly Sweep

New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
Arcade Fire - Wake Up
Young Knives - The Decision
Field Music - If Only The Moon Were Up
XTC - Spiral
Quannum - I Changed My Mind (Stereo MC'S remix)
Nina Nastasia - Bird Of Cuzco
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Is This Love?
Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World
Go-Betweens - Bachelor Kisses

Cookies working overtime

It must be hard work being an XTC completist, what with all the out-takes and demos Andy Partridge puts out in box sets every so often and how he seems to release a Peter Blevgad collaboration every month. The last two proper XTC albums and their sidelong demo compilations are now out together in Apple Box, complete with - hurrah! - two new tracks. Luckily Partridge, not a man known for technological impulses, has put these two tracks online, as long as you join the mailing list. If that seems like too much hard work, the really rather good Spiral is downloadable here. (link via Large Hearted Boy)

EMA leaden *

As usual, we ignored the MTV Europe Music Awards show - Borat's not even that famous in his proper country of origin! - to admire the build up. We do this every year for two reasons: a) it proves all European what-used-to-be-called-VJs are still obliged to speak broken English (Enrico's still there!), and b) you get an idea of the glamour gap between the proper VMAs and the European version. The first guests Trevor Nelson, 'doing' the red carpet that was actually blue, was presented with were Bloc Party, Matt seemingly in a cricket jumper. Robbie Williams, a man who can afford a stylist, complained about his scuffed shoes. As with their record, only a couple of the Pussycat Dolls piped up. The whole thing actually managed to overrun badly, Trevor and guest John Legend breaking new boundaries in desperate filling, nobody explaining why exactly we'd passed what zero would have been on the countdown clock (and we believe there were more technical holdups throughout the night). The tradition of launching the station's new trailers during the warm-up seemed to have been abandoned, though.

For us, the main point of note from the main event is that along with all the proper awards - the Chemical Brothers won Best Video for Believe, not that it's mentioned here or as spectacular as last year's Sigur Ros triumph which left the audience static - virtually every country got its own Best Act. These were pre-recorded and pasted in to each country's feed, although who says the already long enough ceremony wouldn't have been better without seeing them all. On second thoughts, despite Mew's Best Danish Act triumph, nobody needs to see triumphs of Rammstein, Turbonegro, The Rasmus and Anouk. Congratulations to MTV Adria's Siddharta, though!

* Puns about little remembered ex-Live & Kicking presenters - yeah, that'll make us the toast of the blogosphere

Overkill

There's a longstanding rock rumour that Lemmy, unarguably the last man to walk it like he talks it for the whole duration, has been told by various doctors that his vital organs will malfunction if he stops taking speed (seems unlikely to us too, but let's just run with it). You would, therefore, maybe stop and think before inviting him to share the platform at an anti-drugs event with a Tory spokesman (bet David Cameron steers clear). An anti-heroin meeting, yes, but the point remains. If nothing else, can you imagine him giving a cogent sociological speech?