You’ll probably have noticed that I’ve got a slight preference for noodling electronica and female singer-songwriters, with an added dash of blokes with guitars thrown in for good measure. It’s nothing if not varied.
A few points to note though:
1. Spotify didn’t have every album I owned. Where possible, I’d try and then find a song off that album and include that in the playlist, so don’t necessarily think I go owning some of the more random albums on there. In particular, I was surprised at the lack of Underworld albums on Spotify. There’s also several obscure folk bands, Roisin Murphy’s Ruby Blue and 4 Hero’s Two Pages missing, not to be found for love nor money. And the Sneaker Pimps track is off a remix album – the original is nowhere to be found.
2. Compilation albums, thankfully, weren’t included in this, although film soundtracks were, hence a few songs from Chicago, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill in there.
3. Yes, there are a lot of greatest hits albums. What of it? I wasn’t exactly flushed with cash and best ofs were often a good way to collect a lot of songs I liked in one place. If you’re wondering why not so much Blur or Suede in there – I owned their albums on cassette tape, until The Great Gary Clearout of quite a few years ago where a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have chucked out got chucked. Including a NES. Boy, do I regret that.
4. Ahem, yes, your eyes do not deceive you. I do own three U2 albums. In mitigation, I only purchased one of them. There are also a lot of albums I own but didn’t buy. I don’t shoplift, I’ve just acquired a lot of free stuff over the years.
5. Sadly there’s no Echo and the Bunnymen in this list. I do not own any album that has The Killing Moon on it, and this makes me sad.
6. I own more albums by Eliza Carthy than anybody else. This is no bad thing. I probably don’t have enough albums by Eliza Carthy, if truth be told. She is excellent and I’ve seen her more times than any other act, bar the Super Furry Animals.
And that’s it. I’m not going to write out the tracklisting as I’d be here for ever. Grab a pair of earphones and have a snigger.
You know how it is: you’ve carefully been saving up a set of blog posts on media and the wider world that are so corking that they may just change the way people think about the world and will surely elevate you to the rank of minor deity, then when you come to sit down and blog all you can think is: “I really, really want to write about Britpop.”
It’s probably my fault for plugging in Pulp on the bus home. Different Class was the first albums I ever purchased and I still know all the words to every track. It may well still be the best album ever made (although Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On gives it serious competition).
When Britpop was at its height you were either a Blur or Oasis man and, being a poncy Southerner, I naturally fell on the Blur side. Looking back, Roll With It is clearly a much better song than Country House, but I was blind to loyalty at the time (although The Universal was probably one of the best tracks from this era of Blur).
Taken as individual tracks, Oasis probably had the edge with several iconic anthems. Cigarettes and Alcohol, Champagne Supernova and Some Might Say sounds just as good today as they ever did. But in terms of overall canon, progression and longevity, Blur have the edge.
But just as I was wrong about the 1995 race for number one, so I was wrong at the time about Blur and Oasis being the best two bands from that period. I’ll occasionally dig out a Blur album, usually their self-titled offering from ’97, or Modern Life Is Rubbish, while Oasis occasionally get fired up on Spotify.
But for timeless classics that never fail to hit the spot and get repeat plays nearly every month, it’s a toss up between the aforementioned Pulp and a band who may never have quite got the credit they deserved – Suede.
Pulp really need no more eulogising. They were the perfect band – a witty, lyrically gifted frontman in Jarvis Cocker, with a stage presence that gave up to all us bespectacled teenagers, while their songs were witty, pithy and said more than Noel Gallagher has managed in his entire career. Common People – need I say more.
Then there’s Suede. Perhaps unfairly maligned for not being Blur or Oasis or Radiohead or Pulp, or as the band that filled the gaps between releases of the others, or a band who peaked too early and then lost their guitarist and were never quite the same. Not true.
Ok, so Richard Oakes was a little showier than Bernard Butler on the guitar and the band’s glam rock influences started to take over by the end, but they could still produce a cracking tune. Coming Up was an amazing album that defies their reputation as a singles band, while Film Star and especially Saturday Night were highlights, while later tracks such as Electricity and She’s In Fashion were Suede playing at being Suede and wonderfully entertaining.
And then there’s the Bernard Butler era. Animal Nitrate, So Young, New Generation and We Are The Pigs and all outstanding songs while Wild Ones may well be one of my favourite ever tracks.
Put up against other bands from the era, Suede’s tracks seem to have survived the test of time. Radiohead may have been a great band, but their albums are more to be appreciated than subjected to repeated listening while Blur and Oasis, while producing fantastic albums, tend to be remembered for a few select anthems. Pulp, sadly, also occasionally fall into that category, even if their best work – This Is Hardcore and Babies – came after and before Britpop’s peak.
At the time, I’d never have said it, but Suede may now just be my favourite band of the 90s.
Although don’t necessarily trust me. My first gig was The Bluetones.
Otherwise known as the lazy blog post of cultural stuff I’ve quite liked in 2008, namely film, TV and music.
Film-wise, 2008′s film of the year should, by rights, be The Dark Knight, which was fantastic in every way. But an understated Pinteresque [1] comedy that starred both Colin Farrell and racist dwarves was also equally as good and, as such, I can’t pick between them.
In Bruges should have probably been discarded the moment you mentioned Colin Farrell’s name in conjunction with comedy and existentialism. But then it’s just possible writer/director Martin McDonagh saw Farrell’s performance in the sadly underrated and little-seen Intermission and decided he’d be perfect for the restless, foul-mouthed, hyperactive naive first-time hitman Ray. And the film world, it can safely be said, is all the better for this casting decision.
In Bruges’ joy lay in the characters and the script, while the plot took a back seat. Watching Farrell and Brendan Gleeson’s mismatched hitmen lay low and bicker in the boring but culturally rich city of Bruges while waiting for orders from their psycopathic boss (Ralph Fiennes) was one of the cinematic highlights of the year. It’s also not often you manage to get a film that has a very soft, sweet centre but such a hilariously profane script that manages to offend pretty much every minority and country, often in just one sentence.
On the flipside was Christopher Nolan’s brooding, intense masterpiece. Had this been a cop film, it would be a shoe-in for Oscars. As it is, it may still get one.
If Heath Ledger picks up posthumous awards then there’ll always be a suspicion that, well, the academy voted for him because he’s dead. But that takes nothing away from his performance as the Joker, which is thoroughly deserving of every accolade anybody wants to throw at him. While Christian Bale’s Batman takes a back seat, almost out of necessity, Ledger’s Joker steals the show completely to the point you’ll completely forget Jack Nicholson ever hammed it up under the facepaint.
Such a majestic graphic novel adaptation has been a long time coming (the first Hellboy probably got closest in the action stakes, with Ghost World leading the way elsewhere) and, with the Dark Knight, Nolan’s raised the bar so high that most other superhero films might as well give up now. Or at least wait a few years. Certainly it puts a lot of pressure on the forthcoming Watchmen film, as if there wasn’t enough already.
On the small screen, sports aside, there’s been one show that has stood head and shoulders above the rest. Britain may be a bit behind on getting Dexter, but it’s been worth the wait.
Michael C. Hall is perfect as the police blood splatter expert cum serial killer, while the scripts are gripping, tight and very playful indeed. It takes a lot to make you root for a serial killer, even one who only offs bad guys, but Dexter pitches the show exactly right – somewhere between extreme black comedy and taught police thriller. Season 2 has already been on FX but comes to terrestrial (ITV1) in the New Year. I’m halfway through it on DVD and it’s every bit as good as the first.
Finally, music wise, the album that’s rarely been off my iPod since I brought it: TV On The Radio’s Dear Science. A mixture of funk, downbeat, noodling experimental electronica and, finally after several albums that promised but never delivered, some tight, killer tunes. A masterpiece from start to finish. Here’s a quick clip of the band performing The Golden Age on Later…
[1] I’m not using this word just to show off I know about his stuff now that he’s dead (although I’ve studied a lot of Pinter in the past). Rather that the film really did remind me a lot of the Dumb Waiter.
A few weeks ago I eulogised about Mixwit, a site that allowed you to create your own mixtapes, embed them in blogs and the like, and generally feel nostalgic for the 1980s through to the mid-90s.
Now it seems it may be going the same way as Muxtape, a similar kind of site that taken down after problems with the RIAA.
Mixwit isn’t actually down. It’s just that a large number of songs I’ve put on compilation tapes are now unavailable and the amount of songs that are available for new tapes are decreasing by the day to the point that the site isn’t worth bothering with.
Mixwit, in many ways, was no different than putting together a compilation tape for friends when you were younger. Sure, it was technically illegal but everybody did it and it helped share great new music among like minded people. Now it seems introducing friends and colleagues to songs they might like is a bad thing.
Mixwit and Muxtape aren’t in the same league as Napster – these are just people who want to create that perfect compilation for a sunny day and share with others. They’re fun. They’re fan communities. They’re also very very bad.
I have no idea what the solution is to making sites like Muxtape and Mixwit work with the record industry (if I did, I suspect I’d be a lot richer) but surely just throwing cease and desist notices isn’t the way? As Adam Tinworth notes, the music industry spends a lot of time killing things for something that’s meant to be a creative industry.
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