Radio 1: as it is IV

Scott Mills, 4pm-7pm

Judging by the 'wake up with Moyles, go home with Mills' trailers, Radio 1 are grooming Scott Mills as the next breakfast show host, being Moyles' holiday cover and like him having started at the station on early mornings and taken over Kevin Greening's role as the regular supply DJ. This is interesting, as among the four daytime DJs he's probably the one with the least profile among non-listeners, so much so that you might be able to get away with putting any late 20/early 30 year old with slicked back hair on telly and claiming it's him, although he's cameod on Casualty playing a reporter and done the midweek lottery show. It's also telling that Radio 1 now see drivetime as a personality-led format after years and years of the music first approach. This does, however, mean wind-up phone calls.

Hard-Fi - Suburban Knights
Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own
The Enemy - You're Not Alone
Alright, to be honest, Scott's on holiday this week, although Mark Chapman, occasional stand-in DJ and erstwhile sports presenter currently stinking up the place along with the rest of Five's Italian football coverage, is hosting Scott Mills Gold in his stead. Pause to consider that prospect, and move on. It turns out Chapman's gag of announcing that Mills is in fact dead has somehow backfired and newspapers and magazines have been receiving enquiries to that end, and indeed it's been reported in the French broadcast press. Again, we can learn far more from this than any focus group about the makeup of the modern daytime Radio 1 listener. Chapman ends up lapsing into a Michelle of the Resistance impression.
Mason vs Princess Superstar - Perfect (Exceeder)
Chapman points out Mills is hosting the Lottery that night, which given it's all fairly clearly recorded apart from the balls isn't much help. Then he starts playing stupid and/or inaudible noises, but not what he only describes as the "brown noise" as apparently it "sets things off in another building". Blimey.
Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & DOE - The Way I Are
Milburn - What Will You Do
A clip of Mills playing the "shopping trolley noise", which appears to work on the same level as some of Danny Baker's visual-based phone-ins without the accompaniment of a middle aged man trying to work in a Wodehouse reference between surprised gasps. Say someone had emigrated twenty years ago, has just returned to the homeland and decided to test the temperature of UK pop culture nowadays by listening to Radio 1 at this very point...
Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone (which still doesn't sound like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Interpol, rockists)
News
The Twang - Two Lovers
Booty Luv - Don't Mess With My Man
Chapman tells a story involving builders and face masks which doesn't seem to have affected anyone or anything
Bedouin Soundclash - When The Night Feels My Song
Mills Gold, featuring some sort of testing of the limits of sick humour, or at least as much of them that can be broached during the school run. Those parameters have surely already been stretched like a cheap metal spring by Moyles, of course. Most of the studio somewhat ruins it by going at the placename 'Bangkok'.
Fall Out Boy - This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race
KT Tunstall - Hold On (Live Lounge)
News
Maroon 5 - Wake Up Call
Just Jack - Starz In Their Eyes
Chapman points out that this has been used as backing on the X-Factor. In case we don't get the irony, he then explains what the song is about just to hammer the point home.
Interpol - Mammoth
A 'celebrity call' with Zippy from Rainbow 'ringing' a publishers. Basically it's a load of clips and someone apparently gullible enough to think this waste of two minutes of their life is worth persevering with. At least when Noel Edmonds was doing it there was something more to it.
Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls
Keane - Is It Any Wonder
Rihanna - Shut Up And Drive (were the lyrics written by Max Power staffers?)
Marcus from Big Brother impressions! Marcus from Big Brother impressions!
Rooney - When Did Your Heart Go Missing
"Steven Gerrard says 'eat sweets, be good at football'!" Mills Gold with Scott's ten year old World Cup expert. Hilarity almost ensues, if not when Mills affects not to be able to pronounce Oswestry.
Gym Class Heroes - Clothes Off (god, not again. Lil Chris has just covered this too, curiously, and Clea released a cover not too long ago, which is three more people than you ever thought cared about it to begin with)
Newsbeat
Kaiser Chiefs - The Angry Mob
Chemical Brothers - Galvanise ("haven't heard that for a while" Chappers says, which was very much not the case when it was out)
Girls Aloud - Sexy! No No No
Sam in his combine harvester texts in. Progression throughout the day, see. Meanwhile from the archive Bruce Forsyth 'calls' someone
Justin Timberlake - My Love
Stereophonics - It Means Nothing (it's alright, they've not progressed)
Akon - I Wanna Love You
David Guetta feat. Chris Willis - Love Is Gone
Entertainment news, which is even less consequential than the earlier one
Deep Dish - Flashdance
Editors - An End Has A Start
Mills Gold? Some sort of sexually related truth game also involving, inevitably, Colin Murray ends up with everyone else in the studio telling about Spoony's penis. No wonder he left the station. Murray inadvertedly rescues the morass with a reference to Greta Garbo, although fails to follow up with the required Peter Cook impression.
Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah
Freaks - The Creeps (how evidently have the 'attitudional' vocals been shoehorned over the top of the instrumental? Yer Mam! have posted about the original)
Maximo Park - Girls Who Play Guitars
Well, what was that? Mills' style seems stuck between Drivetime Crew Heart FM (his previous employer) and post-Moylesisms, the fate awaiting any man now who comes to Radio 1 boasting a personality. Perhaps this dual stool-falling is why Mills has yet to make much of a cultural impact outside the station - what is he, then? What does he specialise in? New music's five hour stand tomorrow.

Because you never envisaged Nena and two other blokes covering Young Folks in German

Radio 1: as it is III

Edith Bowman, 1pm-4pm

For years Edith Bowman was MTV UK's bronze girl as opposed to its golden one, the only member of their ever evolving presenting team who never made it onto proper telly. Six years she spent gainfully doing just about every home grown show on the network while everyone from Air (Donna) to Zane Lowe graduated to the big leagues. Then in 2003 Colin Murray invited her to join him on a new Radio 1 show on Saturday mornings, so lightweight and stupid it was hard to believe it didn't have sponsorship from a company that made helium canisters but which led to them taking over from Mark and Lard (Murray said at the time that those complaining were "closer to their pensions than to their 18th birthday". That went down well.) Murray went back to night-times last year, and we'll get round to him, leaving Bowman with as much time to refer to everything as "genius!" as she wants. Has she settled in at all? Let's find out.

David Guetta feat. Chris Willis - Love Is Gone
The Twang - Two Lovers (bizarrely, Bowman recently stated Phil Etheridge's vocals were comparable to Jonsi Birgisson's for Sigur Ros)
At least she keeps the intro short.
Justin Timberlake - Sexyback
The Lunchtime Linkup gives over the first half to a kind of Workmates Request deal like you used to get on ILR, except this week it's a group of mates evidently making very slow progress towards the Reading Festival. Today it's "Steve Palmer AKA Roachy", with his brother, apparently nicknamed 'Weiner'. We think we're ahead of the implication. They're in a pub. The first use of 'quality' as a descriptive term happens here. Pete, the aforementioned brother who wants to see The Used and Brand New, has picked...
Funeral For A Friend - Streetcar
Joey Negro - Make A Move On Me
"How can you not like it?" Steve says of FFAF. We think we can try. Somehow it gets round to impulse buying and inviting both stories of and a song that suggests such from listeners. The latter will have to be very inspecific.
Remi Nicole - Go Mr Sunshine ("Download it now!" says Edith. They never used to suggest we bought CDs and vinyls now)
Pigeon Detectives - Take Her Back
News
Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good
Editors - An End Has A Start (is this allowed under BBC guidelines?)
Ida Corr vs Fedde Le Grand - Let Me Think About It
Lily Allen - Smile
Plenty of stories coming in and some very mark-stretching song suggestions, most worthy of Bowman's noting Money For Nothing, Celine Dion's Think Twice and something Edith only refers to as "the eBay song".
Plain White Ts - Hey There Delilah
2 Unlimited - No Limit
Yeah, this is what they came up with. We've just stared at the monitor for a good minute trying to work out the criteria under which this came out top.
Beyonce - Green Light
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - By The Way
"We haven't had a reaction like that to a track for quite some time" says Edith of No Limit. Ironic nostalgia has to stop. Bizarrely, she then receives a text from someone who added 'Manson' to her son's middle names by deed poll. Edith clearly thinks very little of the idea, although she does mention that Colin gave himself a middle name by deed poll of 'J', after Homer J Simpson. Someone could build a fascinating psychological profile of that man.
Beatfreakz - Somebody's Watching Me
Now people are suggesting a new middle name for Edith. The madness never stops. "I know a bloke who changed his name to Creamy Goodness" says one text. Not. Enough. Murders.
KT Tunstall - The Prayer (as performed about two hours earlier)
Gym Class Heroes - Clothes Off
Brakes - Beatific Visions (Edith's record of the week, not that it's helped their profile much)
Someone suggests Bowman change her middle name to 'dot' after her email address, which is actually quite good for as long as Edith doesn't then explain and expand it. First 'genius' of the day.
Axwell - I Found U
News
Kaiser Chiefs - The Angry Mob
Lemar - If There's Any Justice
Previously Edith has been in hysterics at the idea that James King might have been in Ibiza, which seems to be an injoke too close to the edge of listener reason. Movie expert in residence King is taking trivia questions, although given the first question requires King to explain to Bowman that Brian Conley and Bradley Walsh are not the same person it's not entirely clear how readily this is being taken up.
Out Of Office - Hands Up
Robyn - With Every Heartbeat
So they've decided that nobody wants to spend time in film critic screenings with anyone but Mark Kermode - not a majority view, we're guessing - but frankly James gives the game away when talking about Coronation Street actors in major films following an enquiry about whether Fred Elliott is in Hudson Hawk (answer: no, he's fictional, although John Savident is) Isn't the tag that he's supposed to be receiving these blind?
Reverend & The Makers - He Said He Loved Me
Gnarls Barkley - Smiley Faces
Linkin Park - Bleed It Out
Basement Jaxx - Oh My Gosh
Peter Bjorn & John - Young Folks
Muse - Supermassive Black Hole
Edith is saying stuff during much of this, it's just not very interesting business regarding Knocked Up and Dawkins-baiting clairvoyancy therapy, and after all this is as much about listing the records played as critiquing the DJs. Right?
Kano feat. Craig David - This Is The Girl
Freaks - The Creeps
News
Fratellis - Whistle For The Choir
Royksopp - Eple (perhaps as a giveaway as to how this got in, Edith starts talking over it a minute and a half in)
The Logical Song, excellently, appears to be the title of a guess the song competition which appears to have the add-on of listeners providing an overelaborate pretend description of what they're doing at the time. It could be more literate, in all honesty.
Foo Fighters - The Pretender
Kanye West - Stronger
Blur - Tender
That was as the answer to the competition. The clues we couldn't be arsed to transcribe, but it is notable that she plays all eight minutes of the album version. Thinking about this whole afternoon shift, when Mark & Lard had their two hours it was well known in the industry that it was getting a phenomenal amount of listeners at that time and indeed the independent sector would use it as a clarion call for more individual ideas among its local stations, yet the audience has only grown since this kind of two text-ins, basically breezy Fifian banter (Bowman is from Anstruther, the same village the Fence Collective is based in) and more music per half-hour has come in. Which, we feel, says something hugely profound about what the pop radio listeners of 2007 really want.

Radio 1: as it is II

Jo Whiley, 10am-12.45pm

The oldest (42) and longest serving (14 years this month, six and a half in this slot) of the weekday team, Whiley may perhaps be the person upon whom your opinion of the station stands or falls. She gets the new music to daytime job and can make a band, but the ones she makes, while starting out with the best intentions (Roy Vedas, anyone?) have of late been of the rockist same as before but lesser methodology. Changing Tracks appears to have become a Noughties Our Tune, while the simpering over this month's Grazia-approved celebrities and TV imports could well put the listener off them entirely. And why does she have so many people getting in touch who a) start their texts 'Hey, Jo' and b) are on tractors?

Kaiser Chiefs - The Angry Mob
Mark Ronson - Ooh Wee ("fantabulous", apparently)
"What is your status today?" Do you see? Jo Whiley is down with the Facebook kids! Jo, being all new and that, gets three or four free plays a show but completely ruins the surprise by playing clips of them at this point. She does this a lot in varying ways, possibly to ensure the producer is earning their crust
Editors - An End Has A Start
"What cover do you think she (KT Tunstall, remember) will do?" This is the other thing that gets on people's wick about Whiley, the way she's taken the ironic live cover and run with it, the ultimate result being Squalid Schmindie Band Do A Pop Song But, Like, Meaningfully And Acoustically. When Arcade Fire did the Live Lounge they covered Maps and Whiley didn't so much as put it out on the air, leaving it for the online team. Again, just to completely ruin any sense that there may be an unlikely payoff, Jo states it'll be one of Take That's Shine, the Holloways' Generator (no chance), Plain White T's Hey There Delilah and Bloc Party's The Prayer. CAN YOU WAIT?
Rihanna - Shut Up And Drive
Lostprophets - Rooftops
M.I.A. - Jimmy
Maximo Park - Girls Who Play Guitars
News
Gym Class Heroes - Clothes Off
Jack Johnson - Upside Down
Seven Song Shuffle. It's not as good as Bits And Pieces, largely because we got one out of the seven chopped and diced clips. One. "Maybe it's easier than it has been" says Jo. Cheers.
Charlean Dance - Mr DJ (they still make records like this? And get them on the Radio 1 playlist?)
Clearly we're spending too long listening to this no-ambition indie schlock to recognise half the Radio 1 A-list (and Pearl Jam's Alive). Although Scouting For Girls actually sound much, much better at half speed.
Athlete - Hurricane
Kate Nash - Foundations (not actually playlisted until the week of release)
The Hives - Tick Tick Boom
Audio Bullys - Shoot You Down
Jack Penate - Torn On The Platform
Scissor Sisters - She's My Man
Changing Tracks. It's different, see, because it's over some sort of anodyne beats backing. Jo uses just as many light pregnant pauses as Simon Bates, that's what it is. Today it's a bloke called Calvin who tried to keep a girl and a boy going at the same time while at university, failing and wanting the girl, who split with him, back. This song's been picked as it showed him "I didn't have to conform to what people expected of me".
Embrace - Ashes
Hundreds and hundreds of texters tell Calvin to "be yourself". That's what gets so many people into trouble, of course.
Taio Cruz - Moving On
Lee Cabrera - Shake It (Move A Little Closer)
The Go! Team - Doing It Right
Jo seems to value "energy" above everything else in her live music. We suggest she never goes to see Spiritualized Acoustic Mainlines. "Quite a few people getting in touch because they watched Skins". See, these people walk among us. One texter is indeed on his tractor.
Razorlight - In The Morning
"Richard on his tractor" now. "Some good news - Joe Dempsey, who played Chris, is on this show on Friday". Then she talks about hating slugs for some reason.
P Diddy feat. Christina Aguilera - Tell Me
"I do hate them, on a par with egg whites" Jo continues as perhaps the unlikeliest intro news have ever had
Linkin Park - Bleed It Out
Freaks - The Creeps (do all dance records have to sound like Yeh Yeh by Bodyrox now?)
More slugs. Whatever floats the mid-morning nation's boats. Someone claims they couldn't see the cat's bowl for them the other night. Is that possible?
Jamie Scott and the Town - When Will I See Your Face Again?
Hard-Fi - Suburban Knights
Now we're onto leeches.
Eminem - Lose Yourself
Showbiz news. Athlete and Adam Brody say little of ultimate interest. Sienna Miller talks about global warming as patron of some charity or other. How this fifteen seconds, as opposed to the full minute about her love life, is meant to increase their standing lord knows. "Genuinely normal" is Natalie Jameson's verdict, presumably on the basis that she wasn't made out of newsprint.
Libertines - Don't Look Back Into The Sun (At the time this sounded ridiculously scrappy and half-formed. Now it sounds exactly the same as half the guitar records released in any given week.)
Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson and someone else - The Way I Are
The Hoosiers - Worried About Ray (Why were we not warned about the revival of soft rock production?)
KT arrives. Jo immediately butters her up so much she may consequently be unable to stand up. Tellingly, when Jo asks her who the most impressive person she's met is and suggests Justin Timberlake, Kanye West and Mary J Blige, Tunstall replies with Bonnie Raitt.
KT Tunstall - Hold On (Live Lounge)
Meck feat. Leo Sayer - Thunder In My Heart
Apparently KT's backing singers don't have names. She reveals she's recorded a Christmas mini-album, including Fairytale Of New York with Ed Harcourt and Sleigh Ride apparently in the style of the Beastie Boys. Sweet lord. So, did you guess right?
KT Tunstall - The Prayer (Live Lounge) (Done just about straight, which somewhat defeats the object of, well, KT Tunstall covering Bloc Party)
Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls (What a bizarre record this is, by the way. Why does that backing seem to be a WH Smith PA-style budget cover of Christina Aguilera's What A Girl Wants in an 80s soft pop style?)
The Zutons - Valerie
Sonny J - Can't Stop Moving ("you'll recognise this song", apparently. Does anyone else think St Etienne's Nothing Can Stop Us gone blaxploitation?)
"Check 'em out on Myspace" Jo somewhat inevitably advises
Kanye West - Stronger
There's something oddly unsatisfying about Whiley these days for someone painted as daytime Radio 1's emissary to the very soul of music fandom. She seems overkeen as a result to hitch herself to any potential youth cult going - indeed she's also going a bundle on Heroes - and at times seems to want to spoonfeed her audience rather than distract them. See you the other side of Newsbeat.

Could they by any chance be related?

30th August: Rhodri Marsden, writer, man about cybertown and formerly of The Free French, Scritti Politti's live band and Spearmint sidemanery, writes for the Independent about his YouTube hit project The Schema.

4th September: Rhodri Marsden (see biography passim) 'writes' for the Mail about his YouTube hit project The Schema.

Radio 1: as it is

A while ago we found an old notebook, a good eleven or twelve years old, packed with ideas, doodles and flights of fancy. Among these was a plan we'd taken up on some summer's day to note down every record played on BBC Radio 1 from the end of the Golden Hour at 10am through to the moment Radcliffe became Sturgess/Lloyd at midnight. What purpose it served us at the time is unrecorded, but it seemed fascinating with the benefit of hindsight, records lost to the passage of time rubbing shoulders with future retro playlist classics.

As Radio 1 steps up to celebrate its fortieth anniversary at the end of September, it got us thinking. The station's listenership figures are going sharply up again after several years in the commercial and critical doldrums, yet the stick it receives from the cognescenti is unmatched since at least DLT and Bates were running things. Is it really that slow to reason and fast to trend or does it merely hold up a mirror to what the 16-24s and factory workers of today really want, in its position as Britain's only national pop station? Well, that question is for a conference of some sort, but it's about time we took notes once more.

What we're doing over the next five days, with the aid of some Listen Again ripping, is taking in a whole day's Radio 1 output, from 7am to midnight, noting down every record played and everything else we deem notable along the way. As a fairly normal day in the scheme of things we chose Wednesday 22nd August, two days before the big Reading & Leeds Carling Weekend festival but with nothing untoward otherwise, and notably a day when the regular schedule was technically unbroken. Moyles today, Whiley tomorrow, Bowman Thursday, Mills Friday, the specialist shows Saturday - time to embark on seventeen hours' checking on where the pop nation stands...

Chris Moyles, 7am-10am

Just past his own tenth year anniversary, Chris Moyles has earnt his role as emblem of the modern Radio 1. RAJAR after RAJAR his figures go up, yet for many he remains a totem of all that is wrong with modern youth broadcasting. Clearly he wouldn't be here without Evans' example, having made his radio name in the mid-90s, but his persona of high grade cajoling and drawing back only when threatened, like a gazelle might, has, perhaps because he's never had Evans' simultaneous TV exposure, crystallised what many feel is the modern Radio 1 attitude. Bloody hell, he's got a second autobiography out next month. We've not heard his show since before he started on breakfast at the start of 2004. Much of this, we suspect, will sail clean over our head. We also half suspect it'll be read out on the show before the end of the week.

Is the start always this prolonged? Do people not want records any more? Chris had a late night at a showbiz event (the Rolling Stones). Some things don't change. Chris talks about security at the O2, then something about jobsworthiness. He's still working the retro-styled jingles, which don't sound like old Radio 1 jingles at all any more. Twelve minutes in, a record!
Robyn feat. Kleerup - With Every Heartbeat (cut off before the really good bit)
The Bravery - An Honest Mistake
Some convoluted stuff about the ill sportsreader and Dave introducing some sort of football in-game
Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls
News, then some sort of birthday feature. This must work on endless levels of irony.
The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (we suspect this wasn't on the computer system)
Hard-Fi - Suburban Knights
Justin Timberlake - Lovestoned
Joel off of JK & Joel gets auditioned for the sports news. It doesn't last long.
Ida Corr vs Fedde Le Grand Let Me Think About It ("which they should have done at playlist")
Dave has a new game and Chris chooses the intro music live. This is clearly going to take much longer than the game.
Pink - Get The Party Started
Maroon 5 - Wake Up Call
Think Of A Number, it's called. It's some sort of draw-based football prediction game. Eight minutes later it makes no more sense then when it started.
Scouting For Girls - She's So Lovely (Chris likes it. Of course he does)
When did periods of silence become a successful part of a radio persona?
News. Followed by Who Knows Dom?, some sort of Six Degrees-esque feature that makes precious little sense, and an anecdote about making gravy that's as exciting as it sounds.
Kanye West - Stronger
Freaks - The Creeps
We've just realised that we're two hours in and have barely written anything for such a length. It's Dave's Tedious Link, which today comes up with, wow...
Prefab Sprout - The King Of Rock'n'Roll
Moyles ends up doing an impression of Paddy McAloon, and McAloon's vocal style on Steve McQueen at that. Then he plays a lot of non-obvious TV themes, which he's also always been good at. This dissolves into Chris talking about who he fancies, as per, which somehow leads onto long forgotten girl band Girls At Play.
Pigeon Detectives - Take Her Back
An advert for the show's podcast sees Chris do What Darth Vader Would Have Sounded Like Had Dave Prowse Not Been Redubbed. He would have had a strong Bristolian accent, apparently.
Kano feat. Craig David - This Is The Girl
Chris does a series of impressions of Leigh Francis' version of Craig David, for all the use that is. Then, news, followed by Chris' poor take-offs on the entire BBC live England football studio team. This doesn't seem a lot of content for two and a half hours.
David Guetta feat. Chris Willis - Love Is Gone
Gossip - Standing In The Way Of Control
Some sort of gubbins about Fantasy Football, the sort of thing you come up with 2 hours 50 into a breakfast show that's not had a narrative to hang on to this morning. It gets onto fit women, of course.
Armand Van Helden - I Want Your Soul
Jo Whiley's got KT Tunstall in, so the team are swapping Jimmy Krankie approximations. "Rubbish show today, wasn't it?" is a fair way to leave it, being a show that sometimes hints at structure but is more content to follow its nose and its obsessions for three hours. Given those with any awareness of Moyles' style and preoccupations already know what these obsessions are more than likely to be, especially within this hermetically sealed world of catchphrases and internally led features, it's a show that stands or falls on whether they actually have anything to discuss at length. This makes it actually quite brave in the music-led breakfast radio world, especially with little requested listener interaction, but if it doesn't come off it jars horribly.

Weekender : the international board of wishing

FREE MUSIC: Like your hushed, intelligent acoustica? Then you'll like Washington's The Caribbean, who namecheck the Go-Betweens in The Go From Tactical, from forthcoming album Populations, and sound reminiscent of their striped sunlight sound at its most stripped back, along with the Shins and the folky end of Americana in general. There's something very clever and subtle going on here.

HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Maybe it's unfair to call Napoleon the new I'm From Barcelona just because they're both mob-handed Swedes, but there's the same full but organised atmosphere around their music. Mixed by Peter Bjorn & John associate Linus Larsson, there's that same tinge of melodic DIY indiepop that everyone in Sweden now seems to have as their birthright, but at the same time they're not wrong in proclaiming themselves a soul act. They've played London supporting Lucky Soul and are set for a UK release of their debut album out this week in Sweden, possibly through Ruffa Lane itself. Essentially, beat the rush.

VISUAL REPRESENTATION: This is the ironic age, where the closest we come on television to worlds colliding is the sort of inverted commas hanging heavy in the air around the already for Comic Relief as it was Jeremy Clarkson vs Lethal Bizzle (note to commenters: actually, the Bizzle probably knows exactly what's going on) How different are the days of TV-AM, when if it wasn't Toyah taking a blunt object to Echo Beach it'd be Anne Diamond or whoever facing up and talking down to Phil Oakey, Sparks (who the hell are those presenters?) or, good lord, Timmy Mallett and the Style Council, while Mad Lizzie would attempt to empathise with the London Boys or Bucks Fizz and occasionally Steve Strange would conduct a makeover. Andrew Castle knows precisely who Ben Folds is nowadays and it's no fun.

VIRAL MARKETING: Although it seems to have been around for some time due to leaking at about the time Tim Berners-Lee legged it down the patent office, Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam is still a week away from issue and Domino are reputedly pulling something of a campaign around it. That'll go down well with the Paramore kids. They've even commissioned a video for Peacebone which is about as easy to comprehend as the song is.

FALLING OFF A BLOG: Obscure videos and tracks from our shared pasts are what make up The Sound Of Indie, described as "one person's music collection laid forth for the world to hear". It's a well indexed one, certainly.

EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Something for 50 Quid Man to lose an afternoon too, and while we usually shy away from major organisation-sponsored virals this one's too good to miss - replace the messages on the signs in the Subterranean Homesick Blues video with your own.

IN OTHER NEWS: Dedicated to the man who according to well placed sources apparently really has had his coffin given the catalogue number FAC 501, NineteenEightySeven, compiled by the Filthy Little Angels label that put out the Grease tribute last year and three years ago introduced the Long Blondes to the nation's record shops, is a selection of specially recorded covers of songs of that year. Wojtek Godzisz, formerly of Symposium, is as close as it gets to anyone you'll have heard of, but the rest of it strikes a balance well between the cool (the Replacements, the Vaselines, two Smiths songs) and the knowingly naff (Balor Knights' go at A-Ha's The Living Daylights is a highlight).

In shops tomorrow: 3/9

Singles

Loads this week, which is good. So, in our usual lack of defendable order: when the Go! Team toured last spring of the new songs debuted Doing It Right's Northern soul/girl group/nursery rhyme melody sung in Japanese/usual Go! Team sound was the standout. It's lost the "G! O! Exclamation mark!" bit from the start, but it's no less effervescent for that. Possibly easier to listen to, in fact. Lucky Soul are supporting the Wedding Present on two dates on the latter's George Best anniversary tour in November, which must have its own rhyme or reason somewhere. One Kiss Don't Make a Summer is more of the usual soaring sixties summer sound. The reason why the Rumble Strips album has been delayed and delayed finally becomes clearer as the new wave summer smash of Girls And Boys In Love has turned up soundtracking the trailer to Simon Pegg's film Run Fatboy Run and apparently features heavily therein too. It sounds a bit like Dexys, but you knew that. That Emma Pollock reminds of the Delgados (Peloton mixed with Universal Audio, if we're being exact) on Acid Test is more inevitable and no less good for the soul. Those who desire a British Iron & Wine will not find many better candidates than Leeds' The Rosie Taylor Project, who on their Myspace biography refer to allegations from others that they are "just a rip off British version of Ryan Adams, when in fact we don't sound a lot like him no matter how hard we try". Fair enough. Bits of Nick Drake and Ben Gibbard also work their way into Black And White Films, their debut 7" on the fast rising Bad Sneakers records. Interpol's Mammoth sounds like Interpol, Editors' An End Has A Start sounds like Editors, and Kubichek!'s Method Acting sounds like a band who should ideally be spoken of in the same terms as both. Have I Was A Cub Scout or Voxtrot really paid back the faith we had in them at the start of the year? Decide for yourselves using Our Smallest Adventures and Firecracker respectively. Finally not even the cold, dead hand of Ronson can quell unlikely forthcoming Kevin Ayers collaborator Candie Payne's retro-futurist Dustyist One More Chance.

Albums

Pausing only to note with glee that a band have called themselves Ted Maul (and then see that glee dissipate on learning they're a death metal drum'n'bass outfit), we don't find a lot about this week. Annie Clark has long been more sidewoman than star in waiting, being guitarist for Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree, but as St Vincent Marry Me is an admirably diverse collection that races between chamber pop, folk, soul, cabaret pop and just about everything else apart from zydeco. Kate Bush meets Feist, let's go with. There's no real reason why Charles Thompson has gone back to using Black Francis, especially now the Pixies reunion seems to have declared on four DVDs and two years of festivals (wasn't there supposed to be an Albini-helmed Breeders album this year?), but while Bluefinger is no Doolittle it recaptures something of the barely contained maverick essence of his earliest superior solo work. That's your lot for new releases, so into the remastered bins we delve with Dexys Midnight Runners, who perhaps tellingly have left the expansion of Too-Rye-Ay until last, even after the compilation of songs by a version of the band that never recorded an album (The Projected Passion Revue). This of course is the Emerald Express/dungarees/one hit wonder/actually it was meant to be Jocky Wilson all along as Rowland's idea of a joke version of the band. B-sides, live versions and 'that' pad it out to a second full disc. Coincidentally Kevin Rowland also gets a go as the compiler of the latest in the Motown Made To Measure archive celebrity choice series. Pink Floyd's The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn also gets a good going-over including a reproduction of a Syd Barrett notebook, stereo and mono versions and a third disc of bonus tracks including everything from the celebrated singles of the time (Arnold Layne, See Emily Play) and, oh joy, alternate takes. Apparently the fans are up in arms that EMI aren't bothering with many an unreleased track only available on bootlegs but we don't care what other baggage it carries around these days in the prog/psychedelia/Cult Of Syd sense, too much of it invented much that we hold dear today to dismiss. Bestival next weekend, so Rob da Bank gets to reuse Sunday Best's A-Z idea on A-Z Of Bestival 2007, actually Bonde Do Role to Zion Train, but nobody's counting. And while the market seems sluggish if not non-existent, that never stopped Stiff Records before, so now you can buy a cut and shut of Tenpole Tudor's decidedly odd Eddie, Old Bob, Dick And Gary/Let the Four Winds Blow: The Stiff Anthology and Jona Lewie's Kitchen At Parties containing On The Other Hand There's A Fist.

The Weekly Sweep

Broken Social Scene - Stars And Sons [live YouTube]

Candidate - Harryhausen

data.select.party - No Girls Allowed [Myspace]

Devastations - Rosa [mp3 from Hell Is Chrome]

Emmy The Great - The Easter Parade [live YouTube]

Future Of The Left - Manchasm

The Go! Team - Titanic Vandalism [live YouTube]

Gravenhurst - Hollow Men [YouTube]

The Hot Puppies - King Of England [Myspace]

iLiKETRAiNS - The Deception [YouTube]

Jens Lekman - Friday Night At The Drive In Bingo [mp3 from The Glorious Hum]

Les Savy Fav - Raging In The Plague Age [mp3 from The Rawking Refuses To Stop!]

Meet Me In St Louis - Eins Zwei Drei Hasselhoff! [Myspace]

M.I.A. - Bamboo Banga [mp3 from La New Shit]

Okkervil River - Unless It's Kicks [mp3 from Sonic Itch Music]

PJ Harvey - When Under Ether [mp3 from The Yellow Stereo]

The Rosie Taylor Project - Black And White Films [Myspace (And how many of them are called Rosie Taylor? Correct. Not even the girl)

The Rumble Strips - Girls And Boys In Love [Myspace]

Shearwater - Red Sea, Black Sea [mp3 from The Rich Girls Are Weeping]

Those Dancing Days - Those Dancing Days [Myspace] (The version Mark Radcliffe played on Thursday sounds subtly but suspiciously different to this slightly superior one, but it's all a radio breakthrough all the same. They have two London gigs in a fortnight's time, and you'll be writing their name on your pencil case before October is out)


And, as a yang to all this pop positivism ying, here's five things that upset the axis of our world this week - not necessarily bad things, as as well you should know by now to us that's taking the Luger to the wooden piscine cylinder, just things that disappointed us more than anything:

Beirut. Maybe we'll just never get in with the hip blog crowd now (seriously, is it all just because Zach Condon is so young?), but The Flying Club Cup sounds like the work of someone who's heard third hand that keyboards and choral shouting are back in vogue.

Edwyn Collins' new album Home Again. Fantastic to know that he's back in health and working towards regaining enough movement to be able to play live again, but the album he recorded before his brain haemorrhage is a highly limp thing by his standards.

The two new North American LP release-only Pipettes songs. It's like they decided to take the naysayers who accuse them of being a bad Bananarama head on by turning into a bad Bananarama. Also, never write a song with 'boogie' in the title.

Sunset Rubdown's forthcoming Random Spirit Lover. The one track we'd previously heard lulled us into a false sense of security; maybe the better ideas all went into the Swan Lake album, but Spencer Krug has definitely lost something from his skyscraping ambition since Shut Up I Am Dreaming.

The 1900s. We raved about the Chicago psych-pop outfit's Bring The Good Boys Home from last year's debut mini-album, but their full-length inauguration Cold And Kind sees them do what must now be called 'doing a Rilo Kiley', tipping too far into MOR.

Jacked on Pollock

The Delgados are one of those bands who you just return to every so often to remind yourself how great they were over the course of five proper albums. Watch The Fireworks, released on September 17th on 4AD, is singer/guitarist Emma Pollock's solo debut, carrying on some of that band's intelligently structured sound but in a more intimate, less fuzzy or orchestral vein. Much of it is piano led, and in Delgados terms it pitches somewhere between the breezier pop of Universal Audio and Peloton's darker urges. Here's a couple of tasters:

Emma Pollock - If Silence Means That Much To You
Emma Pollock - Here Comes The Heartbreak

And from the old band:

The Delgados - The Arcane Model
From Peloton

The Delgados - I Fought The Angels
From The Complete BBC Sessions

Read is murder

What's happening now is we're working on a big feature that'll be running Tuesday to Saturday inclusive, so hold on to your hats. In the meantime, it's 21st February 1985 and Paul 'Hill Challenge' Coia is manfully working his way through a stilted new produce review in esteemed company. What's that he's suggesting about Sexy Shorts?

The music that moves you

We know we said these would be up on Saturday. Things happened. OK?

Shearwater have made three albums before 2006's Palo Santo, reissued by Matador this week in 'Special Edition' guise (an extra CD of out-takes and demos, everything else remastered and/or re-recorded), but this is the one where they've broken free from the looming presence of Okkervil River, the band Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff began collaborating in. While Sheff continues sharpening his lyrical nous with that band Meiburg, who has also been out playing piano with Bill Callahan this year, has taken them in a dissonantly elegant direction, and if that sounds like a horrible contradiction it's the best way of summing up how the album, dedicated to and apparently inspired in whole by Nico, sounds, ranging from Talk Talk serenity to folk to John Cale to full-on histrionics.

Shearwater - Nobody

Reading's SixNationState have toured with the Maccabees and the Holloways but don't particularly share that much Libertine DNA with either. Studio guests on Dermot O'Leary's Radio 2 show last week, they've been compared to the Coral and Zutons by, erm, us, when we saw them at Truck last year, and they've been invited back for this time round. Their self-titled debut, issued on the reactived Jeepster Recordings on 24th September and produced by Iain Gore (Brakes, Rumble Strips, Larrikin Love, Blood Red Shoes, Les Incompetents), is full of darkly summery moods inflected in ska and dub as much as the sheer contagiousness plenty now strive for and few achieve. Or something.

SixNationState - I Hate The Summer

Alexandria Quartet went down in STN folklore when they became the first band to send us badges with their CD, one of which reads 'I'm here tonight 'cos the zeitgeist couldn't be bothered'. It's a lyric from their EP The Daydreams Of Youth, released in June on Walker & Orfing Records, which either deals in poetic folk balladry or, as here, trousers-on-fire railing against the day's ills in a style that reminds us of the Pogues and Whipping Boy. Which in itself is interesting, given they're North Londoners rather than Irish.

Alexandria Quartet - Through The Back Door

Weekender : lying on the couch with Lucozade and a hot water bottle

FREE MUSIC: Could it finally be time for Les Savy Fav to make a move towards the common concensus in the UK? Come on, let's get them on the Album Chart Show and watch Tim Harrington make Sara Cox wet herself in fear. The reliably hopeless ContactMusic describes Let's Stay Friends (September 18th America, 1st October UK through Wichita) as "the Kaiser Chiefs with Pistols and Arctics character". You be the judge of that by listening to The Equestrian.

HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Cats On Fire - not to be confused with Cat On Form (Steven Ansell's band before Blood Red Shoes), Cats And Cats And Cats (highly rated post-rockers) or the Stray Cats (nobody will ever confuse them with the Stray Cats) - are from Finland but with their guitars set to 'summer meadow' and inscrutable lyrics would fit comfortably in the nascent Sarah Records sound revival, although they're more like Felt, the melodic Aztec Camera end of Postcard Records and the new wave of post-twee Scandipop. And anyone who reminds us of the Monochrome Set has automatic pride of place round here.

VISUAL REPRESENTATION: "Lead singer Charles has just been voted the roundest person at the band's record company!" This week's YouTube yomp is courtesy of some sort of genius going under the handle 23Daves, who not only kept a VHS of Chart Show Indie Charts between 1989 and 1994 but has uploaded a great wodge of them to the 'Tube. Some of our favourites: July 1989 with the Cowboy Junkies and, as they seem to be in every chart from this period, Birdland at 2; February 1991 in which Video Visuals decide the only way to get kids up and ready to go on a Saturday morning is with My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3; September 1991 with Mega City Four, Chapterhouse, clips of the Moonflowers and Thousand Yard Stare, and a Family Cat video with a guesting pre-Dry Polly Harvey; May 1992's celebrated, fan-converting play of "currently on tour supporting Kingmaker" Suede's The Drowners; November 1992 with the Drop Nineteens, the Boo Radleys' original video for Lazarus with Alan McGee cameoing (what happened to the promised all-star tour video?) and Pavement's Watery, Domestic EP at number one with a picture that excludes Steve Malkmus; March 1993 with a top two unilaterally banned by the show and Huggy Bear's Her Jazz at 3 played at the wrong speed (is it just us who'd like to hear it all at that Beefheartian No Wave pitch?); November 1993 featuring Aphex Twin atop, someone called Seaweed covering Go Your Own Way and Chumbawamba next to Codeine; and March 1994, with Jacknife Lee's old band Compulsion and still hanging on in there at the top, Senser.

FALLING OFF A BLOG: Bloodshed In The Woodshed actually makes us feel better about our own critical faculties - not that they're a bad writer (they very much aren't), but we've always had a concern that we reference people and bands in posts that the layman might have to have a glossary handy for. That was until we saw the write-up on here of Minotaurs, whose singer is described as having "reminded me of Paul Smith (fine so far) initially, and then Jason Bavanandan". Jason Bavanandan from Battle being used as a marker! That aside they've got a keen ear for new music and you might learn something new.

EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Øyafestivalen is an annual Norwegian festival which is growing in stature year on year, and for 2007 they've uploaded a number of performances from the likes of The Jesus & Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Roky Erickson, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Gogol Bordello, Architecture In Helsinki, Lady Sovereign, Justice, CocoRosie, Eagles Of Death Metal and the Melvins.

IN OTHER NEWS: Another tribute album! Dig For Fire: A Tribute To Pixies, released in America in November, isn't the first and doubtless won't be the last, but with a contributor list including Mogwai (Gouge Away), British Sea Power (Caribou), Joy Zipper, The Rosebuds, OK Go and They Might Be Giants it has more potential than most.

In bed tomorrow: 27/8

Quick one today, as we're laid up with a bad stomach bug. This is the sort of commitment that'll get those BT/DMA voters going, we tell you. So top singles are the return of cynical Brummie nuts Misty's Big Adventure with double-A side I Can’t Bring The Time Back/Serious Thing and energetic young scamps Cajun Dance Party's Amylase. Not too sure they're got that much past this, but that's their problem. Slim album pickings, including the Super Furry Animals' slightly below form (which of course is well above most people's top form) Hey Venus!, Blue States' return from indie-dance trio to Andy Dragazis' downtempo mood music favouritism on First Steps Into and a second CD being grafted onto Shearwater's gem Palo Santo. Warning: half the album has been re-recorded.

The Weekly Sweep

4 Or 5 Magicians - Forever On The Edge [Myspace]

Emmy The Great - The Woods [mp3 from The Daily Growl]

Foals - Mathletics [YouTube]

Future Of The Left - Small Bones Small Bodies [live YouTube]

The Go! Team - Doing It Right [YouTube]

The Hot Puppies - King Of England [Myspace]

Huggy Bear - Her Jazz [Myspace]

iLiKETRAiNS - The Deception [YouTube] (Featuring the voice of ex-Radio 4 announcer Peter Jefferson, something you'd only ever get in an iLiKETRAiNS project, and properly filmed performance footage, something we surely never expected to see in an iLiKETRAiNS project. If you're keeping score it's about Donald Crowhurst)

Jens Lekman - Friday Night At The Drive In Bingo [mp3 from The Glorious Hum]

Kitchens Of Distinction - The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule [YouTube]

Les Savy Fav - Raging In The Plague Age [mp3 from The Rawking Refuses To Stop!]

Lucky Soul - One Kiss Don't Make A Summer [Myspace]

M.I.A. - 20 Dollar [mp3 from Get Weird Turn Pro]

Miracle Fortress - Maybe Lately [mp3 from Comfort Radio]

Misty's Big Adventure - I Can't Bring The Time Back [Myspace]

Okkervil River - A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene [mp3 from polaroid > un blog alla radio]

The Rumble Strips - Girls And Boys In Love [Myspace]

Sonny J - Can't Stop Moving [Myspace] (A mysterious funk cut-up maverick, apparently, who essentially sounds like if Ian Parton had never discovered Sonic Youth. Even the video resembles a Go! Team collage, unsurprisingly apparently made by the same people too)

Spoon - Black Like Me [mp3 from KEXP]

Those Dancing Days - Hitten [YouTube] (Back as they've been picked up by Wichita for the UK, although this is being held back for 2008 single release)

Knowing your audience

According to their TV adverts, The Star on Sunday is aimed at people who love barrel-scraping celebrity tittle-tattle, girls in their smalls and Premiership football, apart from the difficult to explain stuff.

According to their weekend TV advert, tomorrow they're giving away a Best Of Echo & The Bunnymen. What are the disco bunnies going to make of that.

In new music we tryst

So with Corporate Anthems not really doing much and midweek things being slow around this end we thought we'd re-amalgamate the two and, as we have a stack of new stuff to post, do mp3 posts every now and again, when something of interest crops up. Fine by you?

First, M.I.A. It's interesting to note that, for all of Arular's column inches, controversy, blog posting, discourse and general hoopla, neither it nor any of its singles made their respective format UK top 75s. Kala should change that at least but at the moment it only looks set to scrape the top 40, which is an interesting reflection on someone who enjoys/endures such a critical profile, this album being lauded with hosannahs pretty much across the board last week. This one samples one of our three favourite Clash songs and is one of three tracks on the album touched by the baile hands of Diplo.

M.I.A - Paper Planes
From Kala

Miracle Fortress is from Montreal, but then so is everyone these days. The alter ego of one Graham van Pelt, by day a member of fuzzpop outfit Think About Life, it's in the same Brian Wilson-appropriating ballpark as Panda Bear's lauded Person Pitch, sending the arrangements and harmonies even more spaced-out wayward, bringing in Kevin Shields' studio play, and there's essences too of White Album Beatles wooziness, Mercury Rev's calmness and and fellow travellers Stars. Amazon says it's released through Rough Trade on 24th September but our promo literally has that crossed out in marker pen and 'August 27th' written underneath, so mind how you go.

Miracle Fortress - Little Trees
From Five Roses

Finally, Leicester's Redcarsgofaster are leaving the world with a farewell gig at the Charlotte on September 8th. Their incendiary live show was, inevitably, never quite captured on their three singles but their Sonic Youth/Bloc Party/Ikara Colt-referencing wall of artnoise was pretty damn essential if you like that kind of thing. Guitarist Matt's valedictory blog post is well worth reading. This is a new track which we believe will be on an album they're selling at their last show.

Redcarsgofaster - Demagogues

More new stuff tomorrow.

All my people right here right now

It's not even a cover, is it, it's just A Mess Of Things. Note Bonehead playing the big Chubb key - hilarity! - as if it were a guitar, and the big calendar, apparently there to emphasise that this was A Historical Event In Popular Music History.

Oh, and it was.

696,000 copies in three days in the UK and a reported 8m shifted in total worldwide (more than Definitely Maybe) later, Be Here Now, ten as of yesterday, has become the great British music millstone, the sole release that ended a signpost genre and changed the fortunes of Oasis forever. There are much better places to read about its protracted conception after a Morning Glory campaign that had ended up buckling under the strain and difficult coming into being, not least Creation and Ignition's genius thought that holding back information and radio play for as long as possible might quell some of the post-Knebworth anticipation for new Oasis material, even to the extent of barring midnight store openings in case the hypemen of the press pack turned up (they turned up to see the 9am queues instead). Famously Steve Lamacq had advance plays of album tracks withdrawn as he hadn't spoken over them enough, which led to John Peel, seemingly without explanation as this hadn't been made public at the time, playing Radio 1 jingles throughout the following night's handover.

We've never quite seen a convincing explanation as to why the reviews were uniformly uber-positive, besides some sort of reaction to the faint praise Morning Glory had received and wanting to keep in with the biggest band most of those journalists would have ever seen. We now know even Creation insiders, including Alan McGee, had bad feelings about the sound, but literally nobody went against the Britpop grain for about three months. Bear in mind that this was also the year of OK Computer, Urban Hymns, Homework, Blur, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, Fat Of The Land (similarly hyped and denied in retrospect but still the band's commercial high water mark), Dig Your Own Hole, New Forms, Vanishing Point, If You're Feeling Sinister, Buena Vista Social Club, Mogwai Young Team, Time Out Of Mind, Homogenic, Radiator, Either/Or... not exactly a short year in terms of moving forward and planting your flag on the landscape (or back on it in Dylan's case), so not a lot to hide behind when popular opinion turned. Either way, it was a permanent mark in pop culture, and not one that anyone would really like to return to if given the choice.

Or is it? Be Here Now currently has a 4 star rating on Amazon from 96 customer reviews and even Noel Gallagher, one of its hardest critics, said in the NME earlier this year of their next album (reportedly they're esconsed in Abbey Road as you read this) that "I really fancy doing a record where we just completely throw the kitchen sink at it. I'd like to get a 100-piece orchestra and choirs and all that stuff". Presumably Noel Gallagher is one of the few people in Britain concerned that the production on Be Here Now, notoriously helped along by the rows, fights and immense amounts of marching powder all concerned were nose-in-trough into during its recording and mixing (Owen Morris, whom Alan McGee later described as "out of control, and he was the one in charge of it", didn't work on a notable album again until The View's Hats Off To The Buskers), might have been a little underwhelming. Still, there's a definite sway back in its favour going on, so on this most notable of anniversaries a decade on from the death of Britpop and that movement's concurrent destruction of what we know as indie there was only one thing to do. Get hold of a copy, sit through its 71 minutes 38 seconds for the first time since our solitary previous hearing nearly ten years ago and annotate it as we go to see just where it actually lies here in August 2007.

D'You Know What I Mean?

0:00 Right, so this is where it all began. We remember listening to Jo Whiley as she gave it its first play without build-up (it had in fact been leaked in advance by a Scottish independent station and a playable copy had been couriered round to the BBC) and Radio 1 proceeded to play it in its entireity for the rest of the daytime schedule, interspersed with B-sides and so forth. Such was their sway over the populace at the time that Noel says he fully expected the call for a radio edit to come in and was surprised that nobody requested one.

0:24 Planes! Rushes! Morse code! Scratchy rhythm guitar in the background! Feedback! It's Apocalypse Now! Only with, for once, less drugs!

0:42 Christ, put those drums a bit further back in the mix, especially when they're only competing with acoustic guitar. Noel's backing vocal gets cut and sliced. Presumably this is psychedelic.

1:20 "Fool on the hill and I feel fine". We see.

2:29 Well, it's a strutting, cocksure Oasis starter, and as we hit the first big beery singalong come-together chorus it's a more effective one than Hello. The drums are sampled from Straight Outta Compton, although it sounds like a fairly standard loop.

3:56 This "I met my maker...listen up pal" business - Liam believing his Messianic press, or believing his struggles (having cocaine, marrying actresses) are those of the lord?

4:56 You can step away from the amp now, Noel.

5:17 For a change, the slowdown followed by big wah-wah-aided solo sounds like a filched idea from The Queen Is Dead's title track

6:30 Everything disappears into a Leslie rotating speaker cabinet of backward vocals and playing with even more bloody feedback. Our temples are starting to throb, but Vietnam has been cleared.

7:42 It'd be an all time high water mark if they'd thought to compress its running time down a bit, but it sounds like a great big production mess of an album by the contemporary cocks of the walk should start. Better than the demo-esque The Hindu Times at least.

My Big Mouth

0:06 It's an army of Dave Hills! The bovver-boy glam riffs are nothing new, the sheer scale of them meant to bludgeon people into submission. Maybe that's what the reviews were about. And they seem to be playing several slight variations of the riff. Eat shit, Glenn Branca.

1:04 At least they hide the fact this bit up to the chorus is stolen from Soul Asylum's Runaway Train.

1:58 More talk of God and heaven. We know they were brought up good Catholic boys, but it's not something you'd connect with them at this point.

3:07 "My Big Mouth, my big name/I'll put on my shoes/While I'm walking slowly down the hall of fame". Either it's the most self-aware album in history, or the most ironic, or he genuinely hasn't got a clue.

3:35 Bit more bass in the speakers, please.

4:25 Distorted guitar overdubs! That's just what the song needed.

5:02 Oasis have always had long, pointless Noel solos at the end - it's what briefly got him a tag of the era's great guitarist and gave him a dirty great cameo on a track on the album that saw Goldie's career off - but it's difficult to see what he's doing here. It's a throwaway pop-rock song, and it's slathered in layers of production, all of which actually might be turned up to eleven.

Magic Pie

0:00 A what?

0:20 Morse code! Maybe there was meant to be a theme running through the album, although this comparatively pastoral effort suggests it's not essentially a musically architectural one.

0:37 Sing properly, Noel.

1:08 As if on cue, half a verse in the amped-up cavalry arrive.

2:08 As much as Noel possibly denies it, there's definitely a framework in this song for much of what has followed. The second part of the chorus is a first go at Where Did It All Go Wrong?, for a start.

3:45 He's clearly meaning whatever he means about it from the heart, and then he's gone and called it Magic Pie. This is why you need a clear-headed second voice in studios.

4:18 A Mellotron arrives to not much garnishing effect. Solo two!

5:08 Seriously, Noel, just making that noise on what must be an expensive instrument to maintain these days won't do much for this extended coda... oh, you're going to sing the chorus half a key higher. That's a studio tack-on.

6:04 Is it finishing?

6:11 Oh, no, he's going to stick in little riffs and vocal improvisations for a minute.

6:42 Oddly, for such a meticulously mixed album, the drums sound hollow and slightly tinny.

6:48 Now what the fuck have you found?

7:07 And out, just in case it needed to be any longer, with what the trade knows as 'pissing about'.

7:19 Even at the time this must have come across as Oasis Lighters Aloft Anthem By Rote. Like driving a coach and horses through Champagne Supernova's bridge.

Stand by Me

0:00 The second single

0:17 Already sounds like Northern Uproar.

0:41 Alan's had a word and now the drums are mixed higher in the verse than the guitars, strings and everything.

2:02 So much for the old Motown maxim of hitting the chorus within 50 seconds.

2:51 Has Noel ever said this is a song for Meg Matthews? From half-inched title downwards the subject of wanting a loved one by your side through thick and thin is horribly hackneyed.

4:48 We're never quite sure what to make of Liam's mid-paced vocal - of course he has the Northern Lydon sneer to take him through
and everyone remembers the falsetto he hits in Live Forever even if he can't reproduce it live, but this sounds like the aural version of a two week beard and parka. That held note on "away" is just out.

5:36 Handclaps?! Note that the strings are kept subtle rather than over the top.

5:56 Well, that was relatively painless. It definitely sounds like something from classic rock playlists we can't quite place, though.

I Hope, I Think, I Know

0:00 4:22! It's virtually the Ramones.

1:02 It'd probably only be B-side quality an album earlier, but at last it's back to Faces-esque straight up snotty barnstorming. How come, by the way, they never properly followed up the post-baggy angle suggested by Columbia?

2:48 "You'll never forget my name" is the hook line. Not short of self-confidence, this lad.

4:22 Well, it's Oasis rocking out. What more do you need to know?

The Girl in the Dirty Shirt

0:19 Already it can't decide whether it wants to rock out or be Fade Away.

1:11 This is definitely taking liberties with some other tune, and we suspect it's another Oasis song.

2:13 It's another song about how great Noel's new wife is. Tip: never do this if an acrimonious divorce is in your future.

2:52 As Alan White makes like he's Keith Moon in power, it occurs that it's actually not that far removed from Stand By Me, especially in the rhythm guitar undertow.

3:54 "God Be Here Now is sure a great album. Hey oasis arent only good with the hit single !! Usually their b sides are even better !! This is one of the proof !!!!! Start posting to their other song peeps !!" It's not even a B-side, SongMeanings' 'milhouse4'. Anyway, it's not helping with the tunejacking thought.

4:26 The sort of electric piano sound you only otherwise hear now on Paul Weller at his most cod-soulful turns up.

5:28 Not for the first or last time, there's no need to keep going for this long.

5:49 Not even the apologists can work up much enthusiasm for this one, by the looks of it.

Fade In-Out

0:20 Odd one, this, as it's clearly an acoustic campfire lament, with tambourine in the mix, that's been overdubbed to cod-blues Chris Rea drivetime hell. Johnny Depp is on this. Johnny Depp.

1:14 And then Liam starts bellowing as if it's a Sex Pistols tribute in his headphones.

3:06 Too much splash cymbal on this album by far.

3:10 And then there's a ridiculous filtered scream and it turns into an attempt to match D'You Know What I Mean?'s sound on bottlenecks which can't quite let go because it's still driven by that acoustic guitar.

4:20 Noel, from Wikipedia: "Liam does the best singing I've ever heard from him. I pushed him to the limit on that. I said, Pretend you're a black man from Memphis." No. No. Noel, just... no.

5:13 And this is this track's point where the extended nature of the outro begins to really tire as Liam repeats the title almost endlessly and Johnny and Noel play the same bits they've been playing for the last two minutes/months.

6:13 Fade, you bastard.

6:52 At least it's not got the steamroller production of most of the album, which is about all you can say for its attempt at getting the blues. Mark Ronson has more natural R&B (old definition) energy than this.

Don't Go Away

0:00 This was an American single, but it was talked up at the time as the album's big Wonderwall moment.

1:03 And you can see why. Though everything's quite subtle, including the vocals, and the mix is condensed down - there's cellos aplenty but they're only helping things on rather than stuck over the top - and there's a definite emotional touch that actually isn't quite there on Wonderwall and the like because that seemed so much like Guitar Band Arena Hit by committee.

2:53 Except now it's turned into Slide Away.

3:56 And maybe that's what really stops it going over the top - it's trying to catch a point between the first two albums, the lager-louts-have-feelings-too air of Definitely Maybe and the national unification of ...Morning Glory.

4:00 And we know this album too well by track eight to know that just because the flangers have been turned off that the song's not finished for a good minute yet.

4:48 Apparently it's about family health traumas in the band, which might be why it catches the unaware listener right there. But crossing over into the homes of the nation? Stop Crying Your Heart Out did it much more effectively through force of nature, despite being rubbish bellowing. An emotion in search of something new and solid to attach itself to.

Be Here Now

0:18 Odd keyboard effect and shaker give way to pub rock. Ah, here we go again.

0:55 Is that whistling or a really cheap keyboard?

1:01 "Your shit jokes remind me of Digsy's". Note - never cannibalise yourself when you're in this precarious a position.

1:33 "Sing a song for me/One from Let It Be". Goodness' sake.

2:52 God, listen to that little riff there. Noel adopted the 'Quoasis' jibe as a T-shirt, but it really is like half speed Quo without the sense of fun or humour. Everyone seems to be knocking this out in a trance.

4:03 Most bands would finish here.

4:22 The "yeah yeah yeah"s from quite a few previous songs of theirs make a cameo appearance. Otherwise Liam's just repeating "come on, come on" to mark out time, perhaps thinking he's Richard Ashcroft.

5:13 Seriously, you didn't have to put a stodgy rock song on just because you're Oasis.

All Around the World

0:00 Right, let's steel ourselves. All Around The World is the song Noel says he wrote when he was 17 and they played live early on but decided all along to save for album number three when they could afford to give it the grandiose orchestral treatment.

0:04 Just because it starts acoustically means we cannot assume it continues like this. We have learnt this from Coldplay over the years.

0:24 And we're off.

0:49 See, the strings are there but aren't really doing anything, they're just there stabbing away or playing whole notes as filler between the acoustic and electric guitar tracks.

1:16 Rhythm from Wonderwall, drum fills from Don't Look Back In Anger. If we knew anything about chord sequences they'd probably be copied over too.

2:46 And the Hey Jude "na na na"s are underway as if to signpost for even the thickest where the inspiration comes from.

3:20 Key change, roaring strings, more guitars. The words run out here.

3:35 Even more violins playing basic notes. Fully trained professional orchestra, remember.

4:22 Horns and repeated shouting of "it's gonna be OK". The effect seems to be some sort of tempest of strings, like George Martin might have arranged.

4:46 Seconds over halfway, key change two. OV now well in the red.

5:34 Isn't that horn arrangement from Echobelly's unashamedly Sgt Pepper-esque I Can't Imagine The World Without Me?

6:15 It's at this point you get the impression they've barely touched the surface of what they think is possible.

6:44 Noel thinks of something else: "Please don't cry, never say die!" The way he sings it it's unfortunately sounding like "pigs don't cry" to us.

7:20 You start thinking the guitar solo, going nowhere but mixed up well over everything else, is going to go on forever.

7:57 Key change three.

8:22 See, if only all these millions of string sections and trumpets could have clashed then we'd have had some quasi-avantgarde thing going on to keep attention levels up this far into it, but they're all playing the same bloody thing.

9:20 A fadeout, giving the impression that even this far down the line they might still be there, playing at a pitch only dogs can hear and Liam's still going "please don't cry, never say die" at the end of each bar. It's not so much that it's nine and a half minutes long, it's that it's nine and a half minutes with no message, no surprise, no insight, no valuable arrangement and in which nothing happens. It's an epic pop song filled with helium when it should have been hewn from marble.

It's Gettin' Better (Man!!)

0:01 As if to realise what they've just put us through, a phalanx of guitars arrive once again to...erm...

0:23 To be the Faces, apparently. This is one of the tracks that was previewed in live form on the night before release's fawning puff piece on prime-time BBC1, so clearly they valued it.

2:00 By the way, the best Oasis song is Some Might Say B-side Headshrinker, which actually achieves their much vaunted 'Pistols with Ron Wood' ambitions and then some.

2:45 And at least it goes somewhere having decided on its intentions early, unlike this. It's as if the band are so much out of puff after the longeurs of All Around The World that they don't appreciate being roused to record this.

3:35 Halfway through the song, Noel's forgotten to write the rest of the song again. Morrissey used to be mocked for this, but at least he kept it to three and a half radio minutes.

4:45 And yet more title repetition designed to hide the fact that they've got tape spare and nothing much to do with it except keep playing this mini-solo.

6:33 Fucking hell, he's still doing it! Noel meanwhile launches into full throttle in the hope it makes it sound more energetic.

7:00 Shame, we thought we remembered that one as quite the rabble rouser. Right, how are we finishing?

All Around the World (Reprise)

0:00 Oh shite.

0:03 And it's not even a literal faded back up reprise, it's just the strings to show you how little they're actually doing at those different keys, the trumpets playing all the main riffs and loads and loads of cymbal, with backing walls of guitar just to remind you what you're missing. Which is, of course, their dealer's number.

1:36 Before breaking down into piano, feedback and, thank goodness, not cheering and clapping as you might expect but footsteps away from the mike and a door slamming, somewhat spoilt by the fact they start before the music has faded out.

2:08 So, what have we learned about this greatest of time-addled follies? Erm... not a great deal. Clearly there's songs in there, but they're so weighed down by the crushing weight of the production mix and the need to carry them further than surely possible because these are songs of great import from our one true working class genius (self-appointed) that any benefits are automatically made negligible. (Can we not pay someone to do a Let It Be...Naked on it?) It's like someone attempting to be Oasis in 1996-97 with wannabe anthemic chants for choruses but lacking the seige mentality and spark of boggle-eyed intensity that marked Oasis well apart from the pack in the first place, worn away by their sheer scale. This world out here of record buyers was not their world of Supernova Heights and Johnny Depp on slide guitar cameos any more. They couldn't be that band on Definitely Maybe any more; what Be Here Now showed was that, in their desperation to make the enormoalbum for all time, they were the last to know that. Even after this album Noel could never resist adding a couple of useless minutes onto the end of potential crowd-slayers.

In summary, to anyone who may be time travelling and be reading this in early to mid August 1997: please don't put your life in the hands of a rock'n'roll band.

Be Here Now is ten years old today

More on this tomorrow, which would have been tonight but our computer's throwing a hissy fit. Unlike this well presented young man who will surely be no harm to a fly in future years*, we won't be taking the Umberto Eco view.



(* Insert joke about how Eddy Temple-Morris went on to condone the dark art of mash-ups on his XFM show here)

Weekender : on a stick

FREE MUSIC: Victoria Bergsman's last appearance with the Concretes was on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, which seems to have been more of a springboard for more high profile things for her then for the band. Young Folks is pointlessly coming back round again, while Bergsman's own Taken By Trees project, a loose collective which on album Open Field brings in Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn & John as producer. It's not too far removed from the Concretes' best moments, airier maybe, with overtones of Camera Obscura, not unlikely as not only is she best mates with them but Tracyanne Campbell wrote Lost And Found.

HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Michael Knight, in a long lost grand tradition, are a band, a Dublin-based trio who really did name themselves after the Knight Rider character. Please, keep reading Having released an album, Youth Is Wasted On The Young, in 2005 and currently preparing a second, there's the same airy, erm, air of a lot of those Irish bands who briefly came to prominence at the tailend of Britpop, they exist not too far from Belle & Sebastian's rarefied atmosphere (leader Richie Murphy hates the comparison, but that's just artist inevitability) but have also clearly taken account of the Magnetic Fields' dreamy writing, Bacharach structures on a tight budget and more than just the Beach Boys' harmonies, although the female rhythm section provide those to a T. They've recently played with Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, which if you remove their electronic elements is a fair enough comparison.

VISUAL REPRESENTATION: As promised last weekend, this week we take a proper look at the Tony Wilson legacy through Factory Records. The Factory cataloguing scheme is one of our favourite music industry idiosyncracies ever, containing doublings up, special numbers reserved for landmark albums and catalogue numbers granted for everything from Rob Gretton's molar reconstruction work to a bet between Wilson and Gretton in which Wilson put the future of his chairmanship of the label on New Order's Round And Round going top five (it didn't, he did, albeit temporarily). FAC 211 was a two part documentary on Joy Division for Channel 4's Wired which also acts as a Factory history primer, featuring Wilson, Gretton, Peter Hook, Paul Morley and Alan Erasmus. Also on the books, FAC 6 (OMD's Electricity), FAC 13 (Joy Division's Tranmission, from the BBC's Something Else with John Cooper Clarke introducing with a snatch of Evidently Chickentown), FAC 34 (ESG - You're No Good, live at last year's Primavera Sound), FACT 210 (Cath Carroll's Moves Like You), FAC 222 (Happy Mondays' Lazyitis with Karl Denver live at the G-Mex in 1990) and FAC 329 (The Other Two - Tasty Fish), not overlooking the Durutti Column (rarity Marie Louise Gardens) and A Certain Ratio (Shack Up, never properly released on Factory). FAC 51, The Hacienda, was still the subject of pilgrimages up until its closure in June 1997 but looked in much better shape when the Stone Roses and New Order played there.

VIRAL MARKETING: We'd watch out if we were you around the 24th September, because we're already coming over all unnecessary about Future Of The Left's debut album Curses. Had we been at this gig at the 100 Club in February we might have not recovered yet, frankly, as one person recorded forthcoming single Small Bones Small Bodies and another got Wrigley Scott and My Gymnastic Past. When you've gone and done all that, Too Pure's podcast page is full o'Falkous in top form in discussion with Huw Stephens.

FALLING OFF A BLOG: The Plastic Floor has existed for about a month, but starting with Zappa, Edan and a summer mixtape which includes perfect barbeque accompaniment Faust, Black Mountain and Herbert is as good a way as any of marking yourself out.

EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: WinAmp, which we play CDs on our PC through, has stopped scrobbling track and artist titles (do drop us a line if you know why), which means our last.fm isn't as completist as we'd like it to be. If yours is, find out "How eclectic is your musical style?" Ours is 83%. We are better than you.

IN OTHER NEWS: Does anyone else have the sinking suspicion that Cadbury bringing back Wispa bars - and we don't recall anyone being a fan of them at the time, so away with your Internet petition irony - was entirely brought about by that banner brought on by some of the Stooges stage invaders at Glastonbury?