Live on arrival

Famously, for both Band Aid and Live Aid Bob Geldof announced acts were involved and that would be the first they knew of it. Of course, now we all have compassion fatigue and people aren't afraid to speak out. Bloggers, for a start. Damon Albarn famously did, and now Jay Kay has said "what? Paris? When?"

Single File Retro

It is June. A band with their best days behind them are comfortably number one new entrants in the album chart. The singles chart sees an act which annoyed the hell out of many on television achieve massive crossover success ahead of a landmark new entry by one of Britain's biggest guitar bands. Yes, it's the top twenties from w/c 10th June 1995...

Singles

1 Unchained Melody/White Cliffs Of Dover - Robson & Jerome
Simon Cowell's doing, of course. Hard now to think they had three number ones from three singles, all insufferable in a way even Steve Brookstein could never be

2 Common People - Pulp
Second week at number two. I remember the radio premiere of this well, Lamacq wondering if this really was a new single in a white sleeve with just the title and a date written on

3 Scream - Michael & Janet Jackson
Much wailing and gnashing of teeth when this wasn't immediately chart topping, as I recall, and yes, you'll note the juxtaposition with who's immediately above Michael here. Still the highest new entry, as previewed a few weeks before simultaneously around the world, including on the Big Breakfast with everyone in the crew immediately declaring it a hit, record company heavies just out of shot and on Chris Evans' breakfast show. Until he decided he couldn't be arsed and shoved it forward half an hour, that is. Still the most expensive video ever made, although only number 20 on VH1's Most Famous Videos Ever countdown

4 (Everybody's Got To Learn Sometimes) I Need Your Love - Baby D
In those days the samples from the decade before last's MOR were attached to trance rather than obvious beats

5 Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop) - Scatman John
Jimmy Saville would be unhappy if the brackets were left off. Dead now, sadly. I always preferred Scatman's World

6 Guaglione - Perez 'Prez' Prado
Off the dancing fool Guinness advert, of course, as seen round about now in Eskimo form. Because it's cold, you see

7 This Ain't A Love Song - Bon Jovi
Sounded like one, though. One of three new singles off their Best Of, which is chancing it in anyone's terms

8 That Look In Your Eye - Ali Campbell
Proto-swingbeat UB40 side project with uncredited female singer who co-starred in the video and everything. Maybe she didn't want her parents to know

9 Reverend Black Grape - Black Grape
Tell kids today that three top 10 new entries was a remarkable feat at this time and they'd laugh. Papal libelling, "fucking tennis" playing Ryderese, noted by Danny Baker as a close vocal cousin to Grampa Simpson

10 Your Loving Arms - Billie Ray Martin
Superior Euro-house one hit wonder, kind of

11 Yes - McAlmont & Butler
"I couldn't tell it was until she started singing" quoth Evans upon accidentally crashing the vocal one morning. David McAlmont's vocal, yes. Far better than Refugees

12 Think Of You - Whigfield
Her third (and last) top 10 single, it's worth noting, from the oft-quoted as archetypal summer one hit wonder renamed after her music teacher

13 Surrender Your Love - Nightcrawlers
From the 'christ, I'd forgotten about them' file, Stringfellow-haired John Reid goes from MOR songwriter to club producer du jour for a bit

14 Right In The Night - Jam & Spoon featuring Plavka
Supposed names: Jam El Mar, Mark Spoon. And to think all those history lessons have faded from my brain but I can remember that

15 Swing Low Sweet Chariot - Ladysmith Black Mambazo Featuring China Black
Bet that credit didn't get on the Best Of sleevenotes. There was a rugby world cup on, you'll have guessed

16 A Whiter Shade Of Pale - Annie Lennox
You can guess how this went. From covers album Medusa, which also featured the Clash's Train In Vain. What the hell did that sound like?

17 Naked - Reef
Music to throw Sony MiniDiscs out of record company windows by

18 Dreamer - Livin' Joy
Former number one I used to take quite violently against for no good reason

19 Staying Out For The Summer - Dodgy
Flying camper van video antics ahoy for what they used to call pop from threesome chiefly remembered for rotund, life and soul of party, hat-sporting, Never Mind The Buzzcocks life pass holding drummer Math (now of the Electric Soft Parade, stylistic footnote fans)

20 This Is How We Do It - Montell Jordan
Did anyone else hear the 'Montell Jordan's dead' rumour a couple of years ago? Paul Is Dead is one thing, but...

Albums

1 Pulse - Pink Floyd
The only thing I know about this new entry is that there was a constantly flashing red bulb in the middle of the cover. Sit down now, Mr Thorgerson

2 Singles - Alison Moyet
Amenable Southend favourite surely due a renaissance soon, as long as Dawn French keeps out of her videos

3 Stanley Road - Paul Weller
Just last week reissued in tenth anniversary deluxe form, the boxy packaging making Peter Blake's artwork look even clumsier

4 The Colour Of My Love - Celine Dion
Easy to forget about Celine if you don't have one of those Gold stations that plays Think Twice every hour on the hour to hand, but her albums would regularly top 10m worldwide at this point

5 A Spanner In The Works - Rod Stewart
Rod's albums of new material have been pretty much interchangeable for 25 years now. Followed live album Unplugged...And Seated, worded like he was trying to impress us

6 Nobody Else - Take That
The last That album, of course, Back For Good on its final top 40 week over in the singles chart, 37 days away from 'I QUIT'

7 Grand Prix - Teenage Fanclub
Maconie's right when he calls this a great British guitar album for the ages, you know. Simtek F1 car on cover, melodies in collective hearts, McGee probably having his back turned to stare out Noel at the wrong moment

8 Natural Mystic - Bob Marley And The Wailers
David Baddiel considered putting Iron Lion Zion in Room 101, lest we forget

9 Picture This - Wet Wet Wet
Still in post-Love Is All Around clover, which lest we forget was the single immediately after their Greatest Hits. D'oh

10 No Need To Argue - Cranberries
When it's Dolores O'Riordan involved? This is the one that ruined them as a chart force, largely due to half-arsed lead single Salvation

11 Tuesday Night Music Club - Sheryl Crow
Apparently getting an entire city confused with a disco and/or country club. Much cheer recently when I discovered John Harris, like myself, thought it was a new direction for Jamiroquai when he first heard All I Wanna Do

12 The Complete Stone Roses - Stone Roses
I bet it wasn't. Not reforming at all now, largely because people didn't recognise John Squire's joke as a joke when they read it

13 Medusa - Annie Lennox
It also featured Marley's Waiting In Vain, which she should have done with the aforementioned as a medley

14 Blues For Greeny - Gary Moore
Laborious guitar virtuoso of a type you luckily don't get any more pays tribute to then still indisposed Peter Green

15 The Bends - Radiohead
Only ever reached number six on initial release before later climbing to 4, let the records show. Fake Plastic Trees was on its way out of the 40, meaning we were not far from Thom in the aqueous helmet as sneered at on Sky News (see Meeting People Is Easy)

16 Definitely Maybe - Oasis
Some Might Say had been a recent number one, at which this rocketed back up to number five after three quarters of a year. Props to Word magazine for their New Oasis Album Magic Pie Charts showing which tracks steal from where, apparently co-written by Robyn Hitchcock

17 Dummy - Portishead
New album this year. Yeah, we've all heard that one before

18 I Should Coco - Supergrass
This is a fertile area this week, isn't it? Yet to make number one as Alright was a month away, the much forgotten Lenny having just been and gone

19 PHUQ - The Wildhearts
Yes, yes. What did happen to Ginger? Don't answer that

20 Greatest Hits - Bruce Springsteen
Then, of course, Word go and devote four pages to a Broooce live review, not the first time they've done that either. Parklife was at 21 after more than a year while the country's 24th best selling LP that week, and tenth best selling four weeks earlier, was Pan Pipe Inspirations. Robson and Jerome, Pink Floyd and pan pipe albums. What was that about 1995 being the year Britpop swept all before it again?

Did I dream this?

Comments box-related confirmation required - was I in a particularly hazy state this afternoon, or is there really a new advert for Cathedral City cheddar doing the TV rounds soundtracked by Devendra Banhart?

Missing your own bandwagon

The NME's been building up this Summer Of Ska idea slowly, largely around Hard-Fi, who sound as much like a ska outfit as G4 do. Just to ruin the momentum immediately, though, comes news of the Dead 60s' album being moved back more than three months apparently due to US success, which I've never heard anyone do before. You might recall Riot Radio going top 20 towards the end of last year, a breakthrough they've completely failed to capitalise on.

In the meantime Madness bring out a covers album, The Dangermen Sessions, featuring the original seven members on July 18th and are doing this year's National Forests tour, albeit without Chrissy Boy who's seemingly fallen out with them. Well, it's been 26 years.

Most bands tour incessantly and give many trees' worth of interviews around a new album. Six By Seven and Kinesis, on the other hand, both marked new album releases this week by splitting.

Attn: Frengers

I had Mew's UK debut Frengers down as the album of 2003 - near enough ignored by most, it had a power and emotion that few have matched before or since. They're about to return with a new single called Apocalypso (streaming Windows Media), which sounds much like Mew produced by someone who's worked with Soundgarden, Marilyn Manson, Korn, Chilli Peppers, Hole and Soul Asylum (and Herbie Hancock) would, largely because it's Michael Beinhorn at the controls. They aren't really calling the album The Saviours Of Jazzballet, are they?

Such a lot of fools trying to anaesthetise the way that you feel

Time, then, to have a proper look at the Radio Times curated poll of the 40 most powerful DJs in British radio, and see what it all means for us as music fans:

1 Jonathan Ross (Radio 2)

Lets Andy Davies choose the non-Bowie records, which is a good thing given his ridiculously broad tastes which have in recent months included Radio 2 plays for the Kills and the Rakes. Vague memories here of the Electric Soft Parade delaying virtually the whole show thanks to a broken keyboard.

2 Terry Wogan (Radio 2)

It were all Clifford T Ward and Eva Cassidy round here. Perhaps the last place on British radio where you'll hear Christopher Cross, he appears to have played a Zucchero record featuring Mark Knopfler yesterday morning. Do you think he really likes all those British Eurovision songs?

3 John Humphrys (Radio 4)
4 Christian O’Connell (Xfm and Radio 5 Live)

Late Radio 1-era Chris Evans without the affability. What in god's name is going on here?

5 Eddie Mair (Radio 4)
6 Peter Allen (Radio 5 Live)
7 Chris Moyles (Radio 1)

Bizarrely, once managed to get Sarah McLachlan as his record of the week. May not have heard of any new bands.

8 Zane Lowe (Radio 1)

I'm glad the industry bods like him, because nobody else seems to. It's all that shouting and whooping, which long ago crossed the line marked 'knowing'.

9 Jane Garvey (Radio 5 Live)
10 Chris Evans

Most recent Radio 2 special show playlist reveals a) complete breakdown towards the end, b) lack of Ivor Cutler albums, c) a lot of cheap TV-advertised compilations.

11 James Naughtie (Radio 4)
12 Rob Cowan (Radio 3)
13 Humphrey Lyttelton (Radio 2 and Radio 4)

Within a gnat's crochet of the original.

14 Johnnie Walker (Radio 2)

Perhaps the last of the ex-pirates to still be on music radio, even if he appears to actually notice the music less and less.

15 Steve Wright (Radio 2)

16 Nick Ferrari (LBC 97.3)
17 Harriet Cass (Radio 4)
18 Fi Glover (Radio 4)
19 Clive Bull (LBC 97.3)

Well, I know he was the observer of Peter Cook's Sven monologues, but beyond that the relevance escapes me.

20 Nick Clarke (Radio 4)
21 Simon Mayo (Radio 5 Live)

Often characterised as a typical nothing to say 80s Radio 1 DJ, but his final show handpicked playlist included Nick Drake and the Ramones, and he attempted to launch the Flaming Lips in the UK.

22 Ian McMillan (Radio 2, Radio 3 and Radio 4)

Of the Shirehorses' A Girl Like You (Hiya) guest vocal fame.

23 Paul Gambaccini (Radio 2)

Possibly this high on reputation alone, but his big book of Billboard Chart facts still keeping up to date on America's Greatest Hits, which meant him introducing early evening Radio 2 slumberers to System Of A Down last Saturday. Who knew?

24 Danny Baker (previously BBC London 94.9)

A primary influence on at least two of the top ten, of course, which you'd have thought might have counted for something. Launched the Spin Doctors in the UK, and nearly Hootie and the Blowfish too. Remains something akin to genius, however. Not having heard his final LDN show, we hope he played out with Sinatra's How About You? as usual.

25 Garry Richardson (Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live)
26 Gerry Anderson (Radio Foyle/Radio Ulster)
27 Mark Radcliffe (Radio 2)

Now appears to select his track selections via a brantub and his new release choices from a Norwegian chart. Still hugely entertaining, of course, although I do tend to get an early night when Sally Lindsay's on.

28 Alan Green (Radio 5 Live)
29 Martha Kearney (Radio 4)
30 Sarah Kennedy (Radio 2)

Music to throw stones at Ken Livingstone's house by.

31 Allan Little (Radio 4)
32 Jeremy Vine (Radio 2)

I was in a cheapo bookshop that has Radio 2 on the other day and Vine was playing Hayseed Dixie's new cover of Outkast's Roses, "shit don't stick" there unedited. This by the looks of it is one of the few times the part of him that picked the Joy Division T-shirt out of the wardrobe for his first R2 publicity photo gets a look-in. No Mark Lamarr, by the way?

33 Tim Westwood (Radio 1)

He's a white bishop's son who talks all funny, you know. He's also credited with being Britain's first rap DJ - not radio DJ, actual DJ - so I doubt he cares. Perhaps playing up to the image a bit these days.

34 Andy Kershaw (Radio 3)

Well, Zimbabwe had to run out of new bands one day.

35 Colin Murray (Radio 1)

No, seriously. Never mind no Edith, not even Steve Lamacq makes it in, and surely he's had more influence over radio from an Evening Session power base. And isn't a twat, obviously.

36 Andrew Marr (Radio 4)
37 Nicky Campbell (Radio 5 Live)

Yeah, OK, I liked the Teasingly Topical Triple Tracker.

38 Edward Stourton (Radio 4)
39 Jenni Murray (Radio 4)
40 Jonathan Pearce (Radio 5 Live)

Er... he's on Three Lions '98? Anyway, proof as if it were needed that industry experts are the last people one should ask about the industry itself.

The greater rock'n'roll swindle

Never mind the Babyshambles album details - oh look, the next single's got a swear word in the title, how big of them - I'm intrigued by his reading of the Libertines as "probably the most manufactured band ever" on the basis that, um, he and Carl decided to be a bit like the Strokes and recruit other people to be band members. Leaving aside the fact this makes 90% of bands manufactured, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't they gigging from about 1997?

NB. Those of you with hardier constitutions may like to compare and contrast Pete's quotes to Vanity Fair about drugs'n'Kate (warning: Ananova entertainment section writing style ahead) with the Babyshambles tour feature in the new NME.

The public image belongs to me

It was inevitable a major label would eventually launch a band via the medium of drama given a lot of producers remember Rock Follies and Breaking Glass, not to mention Endemol's involvement (Xenomania too, but they have to have a clunker eventually) One odd note, though - the band include the daughter of Jah Wobble, who of course came to prominence in Public Image Ltd, the overlying idea of which was band as production company. Now it's vice versa.

Say you'll (not) be there

It's called getting yourself out of a tight hole - Geldof patiently explains the Spice Girls would not be invited to Live 8 as they currently aren't popular enough. One might suggest the blanket coverage of this last week seemingly suggesting the event wouldn't be complete without a half-arsed once-over of Wannabe - they "hoped to reform" now, allegedly - would feed into popularity, but no matter. "If I get people who are currently selling 15 million albums, then there's an audience of at least 15 million people for the concert. It's a question of who is popular right now; that's the way it is" is Bob's explanation, which does leave some great big plot holes - how many did Annie Lennox's last album sell? Sting's? Have Razorlight, Velvet Revolver or the Killers hit seven figures at all? More prosaically, if it's about attracting the very biggest names to their country's event, why are the Kaiser Chiefs playing Philadelphia when Employment peaked at 83 in the Billboard chart?

Speed equals distance over time of sound

Sign the 'Let's all get Coldplay on Radio One' petition. Peter Robinson's work, yes. Wonder how many will miss the gag.

While we're on the subject, the choral bit at the end of Fix You - is anyone else reminded of the High Fidelity's I Thank U?

Into battle

As expected X&Y is pissing on the album opposition from a great height this week, word being it might be the fastest first week seller since Be Here Now, which was also a third album with ridiculous levels of hype, which leads me to wonder where the NME's idea this week's new releases form a three way battle for the hearts and minds of the record buying public came from. The Tears are number ten in the midweeks, hardly six figure contention.

I know major labels move in mysterious ways...

...but why are Parlophone re-releasing The Departure's All Mapped Out this week? The industry standard now is to re-release earlier, lesser singles after the breakthrough, but All Mapped Out is still their biggest hit and hardly anyone's playlisted it! Let's take it as a tax loss.

It's a regatta trap, baby

Maybe it's the sting of criticism, and the criticism of Sting's participation, but Geldof has actually gone nuts now, adopting a jaunty Greek fisherman's cap to publicise Sail 8. This is part of his Million Man March on Edinburgh in the hope the G8 leaders might talk about poverty - I understand the previous anti-globalisation protests meant immediate switches of agenda - in which he wants boat owners to sail across the channel to collect protestors. Not sure he's quite got the hang of basic British Isles geography there, but we'll run with it as far as his line about wanting to "recreate Dunkirk", a reference to the battle in which getting a large number of allied boats out of the way of the advancing Nazis was deemed a triumph even though Churchill disagreed, as well as causing an irreperable cross-Channel rift that Geldof seems to have missed in referring to "French cousins". Given the Eiffel Tower leg of Live 8 is headlined by Jamiroquai and Craig David, it doesn't appear to be healing any time soon.

Single File: w/c 5/6/05

Yeah, still there. And the one involving Wes and Daryl Denham, truly horsemen of the apocalypse, is out tomorrow. Snipers should be made legal for such occasions. Ladies and gentlemen, this could last for some time.

Here's a thing, though. How come, with the size they are and the wide audience their albums attract, singles by Oasis and Coldplay have now failed to hang on to anything like a good sales pattern after week one? Last week Lyla went 1-6, now Speed Of Sound goes 2-8, meaning Akon and Gorillaz climb places for no decent reason. The Foo Fighters' new Nickelback direction gets the highest new entry at 4, beating their previous best by a place, only really notable for the fact this was co-held by This Is A Call, their first single now from all of ten years ago. Whatever did happen to Pat Smear? The White Stripes are next on the new entry roll call at 9, although Blue Orchid is hardly destined for Magic FM's playlist.

James Blunt, who almost by post-Gray/Rice osmosis now spends a second week in the album top five, enters at 12 on the back of a Times piece that tried to paint him as a renegade because he's an ex-soldier who makes reference to Kosovo in an album track. Funeral For A Friend are still going apparently and they're at 15, while Ben Adams is at 18. Oh, you do. He was in A1, the boyband that started out as a less complex Big Fun and grew into a band that made a big thing out of playing their own instruments and writing their own songs, because just imagine how much bigger the Beatles could have been if they did that. Now he's become Justin Timberlake manque, and nobody cares.

But more care than Geri Halliwell's fanbase. Now, we're led to believe that Ride It failed to make the top five last time out because people didn't know who it was by, being credited just to Geri and having her face on the single cover. She's gone back to her full name for Desire and in it crashes at... 22. Her first single, out of nine, to miss the top ten, it's hardly her fault that it's out in the week
everyone's more concerned about her old band but it is her fault that her promotion seems to have been Look Everyone It's The Famous Geri Halliwell rather than the Rachel Stevens cast-off of the song and its disturbing video she's been inordinately proud to call her own idea. The UN might want to make a phone call tomorrow.

What else? The Noise Next Door's final single - not announced as such yet, of course, but you watch - limps in at 27, Embrace make an even duller record than usual at 28, Groove Coverage cover Alice Cooper's Poison to little effect at 32 and somehow Studio B creep back in at 40. Triple 8, the boy band you thought had split given they were less successful than V, who have, will surely do so anyway after their 42 entry, only two ahead of The Kills.

Stephenson's ricket

Were you aware Debra Stephenson had an album out? Having finished sixth in Celebrity Fame Academy - no, nobody else in it has bothered yet - Stephenson clearly feels it's time to start declaring that music has always been her first love, and as such has made for the most available ballad writers around as well as going for the Terry Wogan audience covers route (as well as, bless her, Babooshka) As if to prove Amazon shoppers will praise anything nakedly commercial with a beat it's had two five star reviews, one apparently straight-facedly declaring it "should leave Kylie looking over her shoulder at soe formidable competition.Probably the best album by a female soloist since 'Like a prayer'. I predict HUGE things for the future for Debra, Corrie won't be able to keep hold of her once this career takes off." As it entered the album charts at 82 the week before last, I doubt it.

If they can't get the Spice Girls...

Having virtually excommunicated Geldof for not personally intervening in the non-Spice 'row' a couple of days ago, the Mirror are launching a campaign to get Status Quo onto the Live 8 bill. You know, hopefully in the four weeks between then and now they'll get the point of the event.

Anglia will happen

This is probably bugger all use now but Elvis Costello is on top live form at the moment - I saw him just last Monday blitz through a two hour set virtually without stopping, full of family favourites and making the new Nashville stuff nobody really admires all that much come alive. This is probably the least of the thoughts on the minds of University of East Anglia gig-goers wanting a refund because Costello was watching the Champions League final when he should have been onstage. The reason why this has broken a full eight days late is largely because he wrote it up for the Times, which actually muddies the waters a little in terms of when he started and what allowances were made, but got the local press angry anyway as they're wont to do (cf Norwich council's regular complaints to the BBC about Alan Partridge)

Pump up the Jamster

So, as reports reach us that the current number one record, he types in a Googler-thwarting way, sold as much in the first half of the week as it did last week - well, we all know what all publicity is - the Advertising Standards Authority special complaints inbox hits 800. As decreed by 'you might be annoyed by it, but it's outselling that Gwyneth Paltrow's husband's band!!!!!!' newspaper pieces three quarters are complaints about frequency, but a good 200 suggest it's targeting children as customers for an expensive mobile subscription service. Jamster might be able to deny this - after all, Axel F is hardly a Box favourite - but just last week HMV's spokesman put the single sales down to the character's popularity among kids.

Meanwhile, an entirely different character tops the Swedish charts. When people describe this situation as just Vienna/Shaddap You Face all over again, they don't account for how Joe Dolce wasn't followed by every major label bringing out its own single featuring an Australian comedian playing on basic national stereotypes to a zither backing.

Sales Pitch : HMV 2 For £10 special

HMV's head pricing office must have been aware of our sale buyer's guide feature, as the range in this latest offer is just ridiculous. You could dip in and pull out, from my random and by no means thorough sample, It Takes A Nation Of Millions..., The Queen Is Dead, All Mod Cons, all three Nick Drake studio albums, classic Echo and the Bunnymen, best ofs by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ash and the Teardrop Explodes, Snow Patrol (seriously, it's not that bad, honest)... the celebrated £50 Man might well clear himself out. Let's opt for the time being for just the tenner on two albums aware of the funk - the greatest of all the post-punk live albums, and plausibly the greatest live album full stop...



...and the Motown creative performing genius let loose with a box full of exciting new instruments and their Moog sounds plus lyrical confidence full of agendas and playfulness, which was behind a load of cheap Love Songs compilations in the local racks: