In the Kingdom of the Bland...

...James Blunt is King.

Well, according to Mr HMV anyway, who has done his usual trawl of the end of the year 'best of' lists from the mags and papers, compiled a 'best of the best ofs' list, and compared it to the top ten best selling records of the year. Here's how they rank:

Critics Top 10

1 The Arcade Fire: Funeral
2 Gorillaz: Demon Days
3 Kanye West: Late Registration
4 Sufjan Stevens: Illinoise
5 Elbow: Leaders of the Free World
6 Antony & The Johnsons: I Am a Bird Now
7 The White Stripes: Get Behind Me Satan
8 Franz Ferdinand: You Could Have It So Much Better
9 Kaiser Chiefs: Employment
10 MIA: Arular

Top Selling Albums of 2005:

1 James Blunt: Back to Bedlam
2 Coldplay: X & Y
3 Robbie Williams: Intensive Care
4 Kaiser Chiefs: Employment
5 Westlife: Face to Face
6 Gorillaz: Demon Days
7 KT Tunstall: Eye to the Telescope
8 Eminem: Curtain Call - The Hits
9 Kelly Clarkson: Breakaway
10 Katie Melua: Piece by Piece

For my own two pence, I think the critics have been over generous to Franz Ferdinand and the White Stripes, who seem to become more toothless with each release. Overlooked LP of the year is A Certain Trigger by Maximo Park, which has had the most play in this house - or maybe it's just the only one that me and the Helster can agree on. The Elbow LP is great, and we are hoping to see them at Rock City in the new year. And who is Kelly Clarkson anyway??

Miss Otis Regrets

Neu!

I downloaded this LP, the first album by Neu! about a year ago, and have listened to it on and off without paying it much attention beyond the opening track Hallogallo. I've played it all the way throught twice tonight, and it's bloody fantastic. Much of what is passed off as Krautrock is very very tiresome, but Neu are out on their own. Must have been great to see them live.

elsewhere, the mags are trotting out yet more best of 2005 music lists, and it seems to be a toss up in the main between Anthony and The Johnson, Gorillaz, and Arcade Fire. I've tried with Anthony, but I just don't get it, I've heard a lot of the Gorillaz LP on the 2005 cdrs, likewise Arcade Fire, sounding good.

A few tracks sticking out for me which I had missed this year so far but which have turned up on the cds from Graham and Jim - 'I Burn Today' from Frank Black's solo LP, and 'The Well' from the Smog album. will have to pick up both records in the new year when I have some spare cash.

The Heavy Heavy Monster Sound

Went to see Madness on Monday night, at Rock City. Part of the 25th anniversary of the country's stickiest shit hole, apparently.

They were tremendous, it was bedlam, and they did all the old stuff. Not many bands had a better run of singles, and they weren't all Baggy Trousers jolly-ups either - loads of Madness songs are very dark and bleak, which is of course fine by me.

The sax player, name escapes me, climbed to the top of the PA , but down his horn, and made as if he was about to leap into a suddenly wary crowd. There's no way he's going to jump, no way - oh look - he's jumped. I thought he would have broken his spine and taken out a few aging mods with him, but no, apparently he was fairly unscathed, and eventually reappeared on stage more or less intact.

'You Call Glastonbury 'Glasto'...

...you'd like to go there one day.
When they've put up the gun towers
to keep the hippies away'.

Anyway - that's off the new Half Man Half Bisuit lp, Achtung Bono. Still doing it for me, 20 years on.

Those best of the year lists are starting to pop up in the mags, and a depressing quantity of them are dribbling hyperbole all over the Magic Numbers. Grown men reduced to tears at gigs, well crafted tunesmithery etc etc. Over-rated bland out toss I'm afraid.

We're already dead, but not yet in the ground

Saw John Cale on 'later' the other night, bashing away as if his life depended on it. He's 63 or something. I hadn't heard any of his solo stuff, apart from Songs For Drella with Lou Reed, and the Bill Bragg cover version of Fear (Is A Man's Best Friend). Anyway, bought the new one on spec, and it's pretty good - especially 'Perfect', which he did on Later. Better is the album 'Fear' from 1974, which I downloaded but will pick up from Selectadisc.

Angry old man shouting and beating the fuck out of a geetar, just the job at the moment.

best of 2005 cd is finished - wedding present, cale, fall, arctic monkeys, stones, malc middleton, martha wainwright, sufjan stevens, cuban boys, blind boys of alabama, x-press2, alabama 3, maximo park. i think that's about it...

Lucifer Over Lancashire

This is very odd, there's a BBC football programme on something called BBCi (some kind of sub-ether wave band as far as I can tell) which is broadcast on Saturday afternoons for people who care rather too much about football. Anyway, bless them, they got Mark E Smith in to read the classified football results last week. If you have more bandwidth than sense, you can watch him in action here.

The same link has a clip from the recent channel 4 prog about John Peel's record box, with some more good Fall stuff. MES is quoted as saying 'you should never meet your heroes', whilst Billy Bragg is of the opinion that 'you should never meet Mark E Smith'.

A Creature Void of Form

Just back from seeing Dylan at Nottingham Arena. I'd heard that the venue wasn't quite as soulless and alienating as most other stadium gigs, but this proved not to be the case - it's a shed.

Anyway, Dylan was on tremendous form, his band these days are pretty much a straight up Blues / R'n'B / Swing band, and some of the interpretations of older tunes were majestic - there was a fantastic slow blues version of It's Alright Ma, and a mesmerising Blind Willie McTell. Times like this, the band sounds a lot like the Bad Seeds - a good thing.

It's best to approach Dylan live with a healthy scepticism and a readiness to be disappointed; on the evidence of tonight he was on his best behaviour, appeared to be enjoying himself, and even gave a straight version of Like A Rolling Stone full of feeling and (almost) all the right notes.

Maybe it was all down to a first time in Nottingham, wanting to impress, and a willingness to play up to the recent hype around the No Direction Home documentary and the paperback version of the Chronicles...either way, a night to remember.

set list:

1.	Maggie's Farm
2.	The Times They Are A-Changin'
3.	Lonesome Day Blues
4.	Love Minus Zero/No Limit
5.	It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
6.	Under The Red Sky
7.	Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
8.	Blind Willie McTell
9.	Highway 61 Revisited
10.	John Brown (acoustic)
11.	Floater (Too Much To Ask)
12.	Honest With Me
13.	Masters Of War
14.	Summer Days
	(encore)
15.	Like A Rolling Stone
16.	All Along The Watchtower

Sacrifice Is Going On Tonight

Apparently, 2005 is the 25th anniversary of NWOBHM.



You don't need me to explain what NWOBHM is, do you? The New Wave of British Heavy Metal, as typified by bands like Saxon, Iron Maiden (especially the pre-Bruce Dickinson line up) Girlschool, Motorhead, Diamond Head, etc etc

Now, some of these bands were inexcusably terrible. Some of the records are bloody good though! In a very silly way, maybe, with a lot of songs about motorbikes, denim, leather, living after midnight and touching each other's bottoms etc...tunes like Running Free, Breaking The Law (YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIIIIKE!!) Please Don't Touch, Wheels of Steel...
Amazingly, lots of these bands are still about, schlepping around Europe on the metal nostalgia circuit, and good luck to them say I.

Twisted

"For whatever reason you refuse to feel this space we're in,
to know its insanity, really know it,
whatever your particular anaesthetic is,
that you hold on to so desperately,
the thing I mean that makes you think you know who you are,
whatever that thing is you allow to keep you sane,
your ace in the hole,
the pscyhe that keeps you from trying to guess at what your pimp has in store for you,
whatever keeps you from screaming out at this very moment in absolute and sheer horror,
whatever you fuck your brain with,
whatever that is,
whatever that is,
it's a lie.
It's a lie."

alabama3

albums of the year

just picking over the tracks that might end up on my best of 2005 CDR...

It's been a year of good tunes featuring on otherwise disappointing albums, eg Teenage Fanclub, Beck. Plus, having become an iPod owner this year, I am losing the discipline to sit and listen to one LP from start to finish. The tempation is to skip about between favourite tracks, without devoting the time to properly get inside a whole record.

Anyway, my cdr will eventually feature the likes of The Fall (there's a surprise), Malcolm Middleton, Maximo Park, Martha Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens, Elbow, Seth Lakeman , Alabama 3, Arctic Monkeys, etc etc many other too tedious to list.

Last year, judging by most people's final 'best of 2004' cdrs, the most popular LPs were by Nick Cave, Morrissey, and Franz Ferdinand...it'll be interesting to see if anyone runs away with it this year.

Gut of the Quantifier

The Fall were good - not as blinding as earlier this year at the same venue , but still good. I think that's partly because in March I would have been impressed if MES had lasted longer than 10 mins, such was the man's reputation at the time, but the band is young and plays very tight garage R'n'R...good stuff.

Another English eccentric, Ray Davies...I am enjoying the Kinks 'Village Green Preservation Society' which I've never heard before. I only have one Kinks LP which isn't a 'greatest hits' which is pretty shameful really as I reckon RD to be, on his day, the equal of Lennon and McCartney and Townsend in the Greatest English Songwriter stakes.

Ears still ringing from the Fall, I laid off the iPod today...

Well it's lonesome in this old town...

...everybody puts me down..

Out to see the Fall tomorrow night, hoping that Smith doesn't implode with whisky and bile as he apparently has been doing on a few nights of the current tour. He's gone and cancelled most of the remaining provincial gigs except Nottm and Wolves -burning out already?

Started the Peel biography this weekend, you can hear him speaking each line...very good and very funny, but incredibly sad - he clearly was expecting to live a bit longer than the end of the next sentence.

Strolling Bones

Not heard the new album yet, and to be honest the sensible reaction to a new Stones record is a weary shrug of the shoulders, and a safe assumption that it will be a a bucket of bollocks.

However - opening track is a blinder, and I only know this because I saw it on young person's beat network MTV2. 'Rough Justice', not quite as dirty as Stray Cat Blues from 30 odd years ago (no WAY you could get away with lyrics like that these days) but still pretty sleazy. A pretty tune, and a charming sentiment.

Mick Jagger is 91.

Double Albums - why?

With the new Kate Bush (you wait 12 years for an album, and when it arrives - it's a double) record on the horizon, time to reflect on the truly essential double LPs which wouldn't have been better honed down to a single - here's Graham:

I honestly find it hard to think of a double album which wouldn't have been better off editted onto one disc (with the possible exception of Quadrophenia and the Wall - but they're operatic so maybe they can be let off). Even London Calling - when was the last time I actually got as far as Train in Vain?

I would weigh in for 'Exile on Main Street' and the White Album as being worthy of 2 discs, though I am scratching my head to think of any others...'Blonde On Blonde', 'Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus'...

I would love to say 'Zen Arcade' and 'Warehouse:Songs and Stories', both by Husker Du, but to be honest I just don't have the stamina for more than side one of each. If we are allowing live albums, I'm having 'It's Too Late To Stop Now' by Van Morrison, and Queen Live Killers (which apparently isn't very 'live' at all...but it's good fun.

Kids Today

The Arctic Monkeys, new single out now pop pickers.

Does it for me. So much hype around this band, but on the strength of this record (which I bought! From Mr iTunes!) it seems deserved.

Sometimes A Light Don't Shine

Saw the Alabama 3 in Wolverhampton last night, good venue and a marvellous gig which saw me go 'down the front' for the first time in at least a decade.

Tour diary from the Spirit Of Love in today's Independent.

50 Bands To See Before You Die

More no brainer list nonsense - this time from Q magazine, via this Wikipedia article.

I've seen 10 out of the 50, which bearing in mind several are DJs (hmm, stretching the concept of 'band') and several others are dead, I reckon is not too bad. Out of the Top 10, I've seen Kraftwerk, the Pogues and The Fall. Would love to have seen AC/DC or The Who...

Dutch Peel show online

I can't remember how I happened upon this, but it's a show from 1986 which Peel did for a Dutch radio station - the first 5 mins are in Dutch, the rest is the man himself and some great records (Husker Du's version of Ticket To Ride?). Click 'uur1' on the page, it's streaming audio.