Kick it for me James!

This old town is filled with sin,
It'll swallow you in
If you've got some money to burn.
Take it home right away,
You've got three years to pay
But Satan is waiting his turn

And now it's time for a grim German football song

The internet is a marvellous thing, it really is.

This evening I have been listening to an mp3 of John Peel, filling in for Jakki Brambles on lunchtime Radio One in 1993. The great man started the show with 'Lost in Music' - not the Sister Sledge version, oh no, but The Fall...'of course that's the b-side of the new single 'Why Are People Grudgeful' says Peel. The typical Jakki Brambles listener stares at the radio and prays that the next tune will be Simply Red. Sadly for them, it's Jimi Hendrix, from a Peel session in 1967, a cracking version of the Beatles' 'Day Tripper'.

This is followed by 10 minutes of German happy hardcore, giving way to George Michael, and you can hear the sighs of relief up and down the land.

Peel then announces the daily 'PJ Harvey slot', at which point '50 ft Queenie' crashes in, sounding twice as loud as anything else on the programme. By now, a few disgruntled faxes are beginning to appear, one of which apparently reads 'John Peel, please stop'.

No chance of that however, as dancehall reggae seques into old time piano blues, German oom pah, more hardcore bleeping and whooshing, and the occasional foray into the Radio One playlist (seems very odd to hear Peel announcing Jamiroquai and Madonna...)

We shall never see his like again.

Death Disco

So farewell then , TOTP... I remember when pre-sainthood Bob Geldof ripped up pictures of Olivia Newton John and John Travolta when Rat Trap finally made it to number 1 in 1978...and various other memorable appearances, which escape me now.

Graham sent this link, which must have startled the more conservative viewers in 1979...

Then was America, we went there

poster for a recent Fall show in Los Angeles, which took my fancy...

Get Pissed, Destroy

Where to begin, where to begin...

The new national number one record, the nation's favourite, is called 'I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in my Hair)' by Sandi Thom, the lyrics of which go something like this:

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late to a world that doesn’t care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

I'm struggling to keep a grip on my sanity / temper here. On how many levels does this record offend me?

On the advice of Graham, I recently watched the Don Letts film 'Punk:Attitude', which was very entertaining and included a quote from James Chance of the Contortions: 'Originally, 'punk' meant a guy in prison who got fucked up the ass...and that's still what it means to people in prison'.

Are you going to tell that to Sandi Thom...or shall I?

Pop Will Eat Itself

Yet more 'Best Album Ever' poll arguments...

According to NME readers (I used to count myself an NME reader, after the Kerrang years, before the Mojo years...) the best album of all time is Definitely Maybe by Oasis. Other predictable candidates in the top 20 are Radiohead, the Stone Roses, The Smiths, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles.

Whilst it's in no way my choice for best album, I would rather a loud guitar record was voted top than some whiny Radiohead dribble, or the patchy and over-praised Stone Roses, which often comes top in these kinds of polls.

Oasis had their faults, which became more and more unavoidable as they got more famous and the cocaine kicked in, but there are some great tunes on Definitely Maybe, and it served as a vivid antidote to more critically lauded 'britpop' bands like Blur and Suede; bands which wore equally retro influences on their sleeves, Ray Davies and David Bowie in particular.

The 'Beatles rip-off' accusations chucked at Oasis were often valid, but they were equally in thrall to the Sex Pistols, T Rex, Slade, Stone Roses, etc. The piled up guitars which crash in at the start of Definitely Maybe could have been swept off the studio floor from the Never Mind The Bollocks sessions...and let's not forget that the Pistols had their own musical antecedants in The Who, Small Faces, Stooges, NY Dolls, Alice Cooper and more.

Originality in rock music these days is hard to find, and when it does show up, it's rarely going to set the charts on fire. Noel Gallagher was never slow to talk about the bands that went before him and influenced his songwriting -the copyright lawyers at Creation were often kept pretty busy- and his lyrics were usually terribly banal, but none of that stops me from enjoying Definitely Maybe for what it is, a cranked up guitar party record.