THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

#20: The Fall – Cruiser’s Creek (7″ version)

That thing I said last time out about the Pet Shop Boys and how the song of theirs in the rundown would change from day-to-day depending on my mood. It’s time for a touch of deja-vu.

‘ ‘Cruiser’s Creek’ is brilliant. It’s also bonkers. Mark E Smith, in a contemporary interview with one of the music weeklies, said ‘it’s a party lyric with a party twist’. I’m thinking he was referring to the utter danceability of the song, with a pacey riff and sing-along-chorus, albeit so many of the words in the verses are hard to pick out or fathom. Reading them written down many years later and there’s confirmation that MES is having a sly dig at two of the year’s biggest happenings in the music world in 1985 – Red Wedge and ZTT Records.

If you’re not careful, it’s possible to have a John Peel moment with the 7″ single as it spins at 33.33rpm and not the traditional 45. In other words, that’s me confessing I got caught out the first time I put it on the turntable. The reason for using the slower speed is that the song actually extends to more than six minutes, as opposed to the album version’s running time of a bit more than four minutes. It reached #96 in the hit parade.’ (23 December 2020)

#19: Buzzcocks – Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve?)

In November 1977, Buzzcocks were touring the UK. Before a gig at the Clouds (also known as the Cavendish Ballroom) in Edinburgh, they stayed the night. Pete Shelley later recalled:

“We were in the Blenheim Guest House with pints of beer, sitting in the TV room half-watching Guys and Dolls. One of the characters, Adelaide, is saying to Marlon Brando’s character, ‘Wait till you fall in love with someone you shouldn’t have.’ “I thought, ‘fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have?’ Hmm, that’s good.”

The following day he wrote the lyrics of the song, in a van outside the main post office on nearby Waterloo Place. The music followed soon after. It’s a song that particularly appealed to my teenage sensations, when the girl(s) of my dreams were way out of my league, preferring the company of lads a couple years older or those who weren’t total bookworms. Not sure that my tastes in music helped much.  But as the years have passed and relationships have come and gone, it’s very clear the song can apply at any time in your life and needn’t be about unrequited adolescent relationships that lead to severe bouts of self-pity.

#18: Arab Strap – Here We Go

‘Aidan Moffat is probably the most unique songwriter to come out of Scotland in my lifetime. The characters in his songs are more often than not angst-ridden, lacking in self-belief, riddled with doubts and always in fear of failure. Almost all of his songs could be filmed as a short story. And when you dig a little bit below the surface, you will often find some fantastic examples of humour in his writing.

What makes the band so special however is that Malcolm Middleton was able to take these brilliant bits of narrative and set them to music that was equally as ground-breaking and imaginative.

(And before anyone pulls me up about how I’ve suggested the labour in the band was divided, I’m well aware that sometimes Aidan wrote music as well, and that Malcolm did contribute some lyrics.)

I’m sure we’ve all been in this place at some point in our lives – sitting or standing looking at the other half of your relationship and wondering just what it is that has led to the two of you temporarily hating the sight of one another….’(1 May 2008 and 22 May 2015)

#17: Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy

From one of the ICA’s I penned. #37 on 15 September 2015.

‘If anyone ever mentions that they don’t like Billy cos he is a one-trick pony only capable of singing protest songs then this is my way of coming back at them. A stunning tale of love and rejection. And a reminder of what exactly la la la la la la la la la la means when used in a song (most of the time anyway).’

#16: Friends Again – State of Art

It is baffling that Friends Again endured a career of such poor record sales and never got beyond headlining the student circuit in the UK.  But theirs is an all-too familiar story of a label interfering and seeking to control the artistic and performance sides of things, with bosses insisting on certain production values that diluted rather than strengthened how the band’s sound came across on record.

In short, they were stifled at every turn, including for a rare and important live TV appearance where somebody came up with idea of adding two female vocalists despite the band never having worked with any backing singers at any point in their career in the studio or on stage. Utter madness. And when success didn’t come with the first LP and the record label asked questions the band did the sensible thing and broke up, leaving the individual members to go off and do their own thing.

The reunion show in Glasgow last January remains a live highlight of 2026.

#15: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Do You Love Me?

This was written back in 2008.  It’s dated a wee bit!!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

“When I was the new wave kid on the block, I used to snigger behind the backs of the guys at school who were fans of bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Led Zeppelin and Yes. (I didn’t do it to their faces as they were bigger than me and would have giving me a right good kicking).

“I did so because, unlike them, I got to hear the songs that I liked getting played on the radio, and sometimes I even got to see the bands that were my favourites appearing on the telly. I was of a very impressionable age, and my attitude was that you were a nobody if you didn’t get played on Radio 1 or Radio Clyde this side of midnight. And an even bigger nobody if Noel Edmonds, Jimmy Saville, Tony Blackburn or Dave Lee Travis didn’t read out your name in a rundown during Top Of The Pops.

“In my wee world, it wasn’t relevant that the sorts of bands – the ones that so excited the guys with long hair, the combat jackets and the patchouli oil – could sell LPs in their millions and play concerts that recreated perfectly all the albums note-for-note in shows lasting three hours in length – mainstream recognition was the be-all and end-all.

“So, it’s just as well that as I’ve got older my attitude has softened –for I would never have found a place in my heart and mind for the greatest act to ever come out of Australia.

“In a career that now goes back more than 30 years, Nick Cave, whether with The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds or Grinderman has had one commercial hit that got him on TOTP. And even then, that was because fans of Kylie Minogue bought the single….

“His fame and career is now so similar to the dinosaurs of the 70s in being based entirely on critical acclaim album sales and live performances that leave you panting for more without ever troubling the compilers of the singles charts.

“All this means is that an awful lot of folk who have an interest in music, but no real depth of passion or soul for it (i.e. they’ll maybe buy what they hear on the radio but never take risks) are missing out on his genius and talent. I suppose that’s good in one way as it means Nick Cave will never get so big and famous that his live shows move to arenas and stadia. But overall, don’t you agree that his music should be in every household?” (25 April 2008)

Dearie me.  I’m no threat to Nostradamus

#14: Associates – Skipping

‘ ‘Sulk’, released in 1982, was the third album from Associates in as many years, albeit one of the previous LPs had simply brought together singles and b-sides. It was, however, the first to bring them commercial success to match the critical acclaim of the earlier releases. It can often be the case that the inclusion of one or two truly stunning songs can overshadow the rest on an LP and make everything else seem tame or even mediocre in comparison. But there’s no chance of hit singles ‘Party Fears Two’ or ‘Club Country’ having that impact or effect on Sulk, as all ten tracks really are something very special. (16 June 2023)

#13: Frightened Rabbit – Music Now

This blog started out back in 2006 just as Frightened Rabbit were beginning to get noticed, initially here in Scotland. I got on board with them very quickly and watched them go from playing the tiniest and cramped of venues to becoming a band with devoted fans the world over.  So many songs that I could reflect on and tell a story related to TVV, but in the end I’ve gone for the one that was the defiant opening on the day T(N)VV was launched, just 24 hours after blogger/google nuked the original. (24 July 2013)  (and this happens to be post #5003)

#12: The The – This Is The Day

Me and The The go back a long long way, not quite to the very beginning of the band but certainly to 1982 and the singles which pre-dated the release of ‘Soul Mining’ the following year.

The enigmatic yet charismatic Matt Johnson has always fascinated and impressed me, releasing distinctive music that seemed to be perfectly in tune with my own feelings and views at different stages in my life. He has always surrounded himself with the very best of musicians, initially in the studio and then on the road in the 90s. He is highly regarded and respected by just about every other fellow musician, not least Johnny Marr whose membership of The The was actually longer than his time in The Smiths. Having said that, Luke Haines isn’t a fan, having had a huge bust-up when The Auteurs were the support act on a UK tour…….

This particular song is the one that I most associate with my first flat.

‘Well you didn’t wake up this morning cos you didn’t go to bed’ – as an opening line seemed to capture what every weekend was designed for.

‘This is the day your life will surely change’ – as a chorus seemed to capture what the hope of every Friday and Saturday night was going to be about as I set out in the (forlorn) hope of finding a true soul mate.  (26 September 2018 and 12 June 2008)

#11: R.E.M. – World Leader Pretend

‘For highly personal reasons, this is up there among my all-time favourite songs by anyone, far less by R.E.M.

Let’s just say that it gave me inner strength and self-belief at a time when I was going through a lot of turmoil, not really sure if I had the ability to break out of a relationship in which I found myself trapped. There’s also an amazing live performance captured on Tourfilm in which the song’s opening is amended to name check a song by Gang of Four.’ (20 September 2016)

#10: The Wedding Present – Dalliance

‘Kennedy’ will never lose its place as my favourite TWP song, but I thought it would be too predictable to have it in this rundown….a sentiment that is going to apply as we get closer to the #1.

‘Dalliance’ is quite extraordinary. A woman is walking away from an affair, deciding that her life is going to best spent with the person she is married to. Her now jilted lover is, understandably, distraught about it. He recalls incidents from their time together, and in particular how she used to always bin his gifts and presents, because she was scared what her husband would say or do, and as he finally realises that her two relationships were built on tissues of lies and at least one of them was doomed from the outset.

Then, the kicker comes.

You told him what he wants to hear and so you got another chance
But I was yours for seven years
Is that what you call a dalliance?

Seven years?? For fuck’s sake, that’s a helluva time for things to have been going on. I can say that with some personal knowledge….the affair between myself and Rachel – we were both married at the time – was so intense that it all came to a head after four months, and we knew decisions had to be made one way or another. Both marriages were soon over, and we’ve been together since February 1990. There is no way either of us could have tried to keep things secret for seven years………..

#9: Bourgie Bourgie – Breaking Point

A band with just two singles to their name from back in 1984 really shouldn’t be bothering the higher echelons of any rundown.  But then again…..

It’s not just the stunning vocal performance that makes this such an outstanding record – listen to the fantastic production that sees some great guitar and keyboards work beefed-up by a cello and strings that aren’t a million miles away from the sound that would appear years later on ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’. And wouldn’t you know that ‘Breaking Point’ was a Kingbird Production…..one of the names used by the soon to be famous Ian Broudie……

#8: Joy Division – Transmission

From one of the ICA’s I penned. #160 on 6 April 2018.

‘A guest posting from Dave Glickmann in August 2017 described ‘Transmission’ as the first true kickass JD track; my own thoughts were articulated at length when I placed it at #6 on my 45 45s at 45 rundown back in 2008 – Hooky’s basslines grab you in, Stephen’s drumming sets a beat that makes you want to jump out of your seat while Barney’s guitar work reminds you of the punk ethos when anyone could pick up an instrument and play. But it’s THAT voice which makes the song so very special. It’s the sound of someone reaching deep inside his own soul and then straining it through every nerve in his body before hitting the listener in the chest with its power and authority. And just as you think he can hit you no more, he screams…..

‘And we can Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaance’

#7: The Go-Betweens – Cattle and Cane

‘Sublimely beautiful.  The single version is some 20 seconds shorter than the version on the LP ‘Before Hollywood’. Nowadays, when I hear the song, it is with some sadness as it reminds me of Grant’s sudden and very unexpected death, but against that, it is one that I associate with some of my happiest days, weeks and months on Planet Earth when I fell properly in love for the first time a long time ago.

Fun facts : It was written as a recollection of childhood in a London flat in an effort to combat homesickness with the band as far away as can be from their native Australia, cold and skint and fearing they’ll never succeed. It was written using the acoustic guitar belonging to the owner of the flat while he lay comatose from drug abuse. The guitar belonged to Nick Cave.’ (23 November 2016)

#6: Magazine – Definitive Gaze

From one of the ICA’s I penned. #35.  7 September 2015.

‘It’s the opening track on the debut LP (and opening song on ICA#35).  It was a great way to introduce yourself to the album buying public. It was co-written by Howard Devoto and John McGeoch , respectively one of the greatest post-punk lyricists and one of the most underrated musicians these lands have ever produced. John’s work elsewhere outside of Magazine resulted in the best songs of other bands ever recorded by bands such as Siouxsie & the Banshees and PiL and yet on this track it is the keyboard playing of Dave Formula and the bass notes of Barry Adamson that really make this tune so memorable. It’s a perfect example of how Magazine, while made up of amazing individuals, really were the sum of those talents.’

#5: Orange Juice – Blue Boy

‘Released in September 1980, on the same day as Josef K‘s ‘Radio Drill Time’, which was just as well as the two singles shared doubled up picture sleeves. These were black and white, with the plan being to have them hand-coloured individually, using pencils.  The members of Josef K were meticulous in their approach, carefully adding relevant colours to a pair of shoes and a pot plant.

Orange Juice did things a bit differently. The band, and a few of their friends held a ‘colouring-in party’ at 185 West Princes Street in Glasgow, home of Alan Horne and the de facto HQ of Postcard Records at which, having discovered that doing things carefully and properly would take an incredibly long time, they all just scribbled lines, shapes and the occasional words randomly, meaning that no two sleeves were the same.

‘Falling and Laughing’ may have been the debut but ‘Blue Boy’ has proven to be the most enduring and enjoyable single from the Postcard era. And surely the greatest song to ever make use of the word ‘gabardine’. The unexpected appearance of an organ just short of two minutes in adds to the charm of this otherwise noisy and frantic guitar frenzy.’ (5 October 2025 and 27 January 2016)

#4: The Clash – White Riot

As with ‘Kennedy, so with ‘White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)’

Famously written in the aftermath of disturbances at the Notting Hill Carnival in August 1976, it couldn’t be any further removed from being about a call for some sort of race war, which incredibly was what some media commentators claimed was its subject matter when it was released. It is of course, a demand/plea/call-to-arms aimed at disaffected white youth in the UK, of which there was an ever-increasing number, to take note of the fact that the black community wasn’t afraid to take direct action to get their viewpoint across.

As a debut it was incendiary, raw and quite unlike anything most of us had heard before.  The single version differs from the US album version in that it opens with a police siren instead of Mick Jones counting the band in.

#3: The Smiths – Girl Afraid

From one of the ICA’s I penned. #150. 21 December 2017

‘To me, the great single that never was. There are some critics out there who feel the tune is let down by a trite and simplistic lyric. Maybe it was one that Morrissey wasn’t completely convinced by and so it ended up as the extra track on the 12” release of ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. It was one of the first of the second batch of songs that fans got to enjoy (i.e. it wasn’t on the debut album nor had it been aired on a BBC radio session) and to those of us who liked to throw ourselves all over the student union dance floor, it was deemed an instant classic. It’s still one that I love to air whenever I’m lucky enough to be putting together playlists for club nights. The lengthy instrumental introduction set a standard for indie music that very few, if any, matched over the remainder of the decade.’

#2: The Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

‘There are days when I think this may well be the greatest record of all time, especially with each passing year. An incredible tune with an incredible lyric which, to a 15-year-old who hadn’t yet set foot in London, was genuinely terrifying. Not only did I never want to bump into the muggers but please don’t ever let me cross the path of the atheist nutter who sprays ‘Jesus Saves’ onto walls. My first trip on the London Underground came in 1983. It happened to be on the Piccadilly line at King’s Cross, and I was genuinely intrigued at how deep down I had to go to get to the platform.

All the way down on the escalators I was quietly singing this song to myself, and to my amazement when I finally reached the end of the escalator ride down into the bowels of the city, I found I could indeed make out the distant echo of faraway voices boarding faraway trains.

Thankfully, I never met the atheist nutter, not knowingly at least.’ (21 March 2025)

#1: New Order – Ceremony

‘Temptation’ won’t ever lose its place as the greatest 45 of all time, and ‘Age of Consent’ will always be my favourite piece of music by New Order.  But this rundown has seen me in a very reflective mood over the many all-consuming weeks it has taken to pull together.

“The songwriting credits indicated that this was a Joy Division song and eventually we would later get to hear their take on things with an Ian Curtis vocal via its inclusion in the ‘Heart and Soul’ box set released in 1997. But back in 1981, it was an indication that New Order were determined to carry on as best they could, and even though it was clear that Barney wasn’t anything like as good a singer as Ian the powerful delivery of the music more than made up for it. I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat when I first listened to this record and whenever I have heard it in a live setting ever since it has had the same impact. ‘ (26 June 2015 as part of ICA #20)

 

And with that, the 20th anniversary celebrations are over, 20 years to the day that the very first post appeared over on the old blog.  It’s now 5,003 posts here at the new blog since 24 July 2013, and with the what I reckon were 2,292 posts over at the old place between 30 September 2006 and 23 July 2013, that’s 7,295 efforts at engaging with folk out there!

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing this series, although I’ll admit that it did drive me a bit insane at times trying to narrow down the song choices.  I did spend a lot of time reading through the archives, and I reckon there’s a huge amount that we, the TVV community, should be collectively proud of.  The guest contributions are, without question, what helps keep this blog afloat.

Rachel asked me how many words have been typed up, and of course there’s no way of finding that out, not least because quite a number of posts over at the old blog can no longer be accessed, but I did a rough count for the 20th Anniversary series and it added up to around 68,000 which is probably enough to count as a small book.

It’s been difficult to do all this and keep up with all the other blogs that I love to read, but as of late yesterday, I did finally complete the task of reading what everyone has posted at their own places these past few months.  I promise not to fall behind as badly ever again.

The final thing I want to say, again is ‘THANK YOU’, and that’s directed at everyone out there for being part of something that has brought me so much happiness.  The fantastic responsse to each and every posting on this series have offered constant reminders as to why I keep going, even on the days when it can feel like a bit of a chore.

As Edwyn Collins once sang ‘upwards and onwards’, but in saying that, I do have to say I doubt that it’ll last another 20 years given I’m already in my early 60s.

And I really will need to come up with a solution to what will, one day, become a genuine problem when I’m truly old and decrepit….what to do with the vinyl and CDs taking up so much space here in Villain Towers.

Hopefully, you’ll all be back again tomorrow.

 

 

JC

#40: Björk – Human Behaviour

‘Nobody anticipated the sounds which Björk would bring to the party with her first solo material after The Sugarcubes had called it a day. There was a fair chance that it would be a touch different from the music she had made over the years with her band, but surely it was still going to be indie-schmindie with the emphasis still being on a traditional line-up of a guitar, bass and drum, with a flavouring of keyboards……so it was something of a shock to the system to hear the debut offering.’ (29 November 2019)

#39: Electronic – Feel Every Beat (7″ remix)

From one of the ICA’s I penned. #205 on 7 February 2019.

‘A five-minute version of ‘Feel Every Beat’ closes the debut album and tempting as it was to use that here, I have to bow to the remixing skills of Stephen Hague who chops about a minute off the original and helps deliver something which captures perfectly what Jonny and Bernard wanted Electronic to sound like and what they wanted a band to be….”we don’t need to argue, we just need each other” ‘

#38: James – Hymn From A Village

Here’s Dirk.

Jim Glennie, the bassist, once said that “this is the one James song that he would want to survive if all but one were accidentally erased”. That would be my wish as well, although I strongly suggest to everyone reading this to have a closer look into James back catalogue until, let’s say, 1993: if you’re not familiar with what they issued then, you may have missed a treat.

(16 November 2023)

#37: Gang Of Four – I Love A Man In A Uniform

I’ll happily admit that this has jumped a few places in the rundown, thanks to me being given the opportunity to firstly chat to, and then a few weeks later meet, Jon King at the time of the paperback launch of his autobiography.

‘Gang Of Four had wowed the critics with the albums ‘Entertainment’ in 1979 and ‘Solid Gold’ in 1981 without ever really translating the column inches into sales and familiarity with the general public. Things weren’t helped by a hard-headed and uncompromising attitude towards their art, with one example being them eschewing the opportunity to appear on Top of The Pops after the show’s producer asked that the word ‘rubbers’ be replaced by ‘rubbish’.

The third album, ‘Songs of The Free’, was released in 1982. It was preceded by an absolute belter of a single, one which could be said to be the perfect hybrid of post-punk and disco.  The song stood every chance of hitting the charts and this time there wouldn’t be a word which would be of concern to the TOTP censors…..and then Argentina and the UK went to war over the Falkland Islands and a large number of songs, old and new alike, were banned from radio play for fear of causing offence. ‘I Love A Man In A Uniform’ had no chance of surviving that cull.’ (31 January 2019)

#36: Josef K – Chance Meeting

Originally formed in 1979 as TV Art, this Edinburgh four-piece then decided to name their band after protagonist of Franz Kafka’s novel ‘The Trial’. A ten-track demo brought them to the attention of a few labels, but it was on Absolute Records, founded by Orange Juice drummer Steven Daly, that the debut 45 was released.  This then led to Josef K receiving and accepting an offer from Alan Horne at Postcard for whom there would be three singles and an album. One of the singles was a totally different (and better) version of the debut on Absolute Records.

#35: Fatima Mansions – Blues For Ceausescu

‘The lyrical genius of Cathal Coughlan reflecting on how a popular uprising in Romania brought down a dictator yet closer to home in the UK and Ireland nothing changes……..

Someone on Discogs described this 1990 single as hearing the voice of an avenging angel having a bad day and guitar chords like a firing squad. The only reason this never made my 45 45s at 45 countdown all those years ago is that I missed out on it when it was originally released. My first exposure came via an end of the year round-up on some late evening show on Radio 1. I bought the CD single the next time I was in a shop and paid almost £5 for the privilege. I’ve since picked it up on vinyl and it was for a lot less than a fiver.’ (2 October 2013)

#34: Cocteau Twins – Musette and Drums

‘The closing track on the 1983 album ‘Head Over Heels’, and still my all-time favourite Cocteau Twins song, by the proverbial country mile.

My first exposure to the LP was thanks to a flatmate who not only had an enviable record collection but an expensive stereo system. When I bought my own copy a few days later and played it on my cheap stereo, it sounded good, but not as majestic as it did on the equipment sitting in the bedroom through the wall. It was then that I vowed to save to get myself a bigger, better and more powerful set-up, which I achieved some nine months later, thanks to the generosity of my parents on the occasion of my 21st birthday….and I’ve always made sure, ever since, that my equipment, whether for vinyl and/or CDs, has been decent but affordable.’ (8 May 2023)

#33: Mike Garry and Joe Duddell – St Anthony : An Ode to Anthony H Wilson (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

First time this has featured on the blog, other than in the middle of a mixtape.

I’m tempted to say it does exactly what it says on the tin, but it deserves an explanation, just in case nobody knows the backstory.

Mike Garry, a Manchester-born poet, wrote the text shortly after Tony Wilson passed away in 2008, and began performing it in his live shows.

Joe Duddell, a Manchester-born composer and arranger, was moved to put the words to music, based on ‘Your Silent Face’ by New Order.  It was released as a single in August 2015, including a Weatherall remix which took it to even greater heights. All the proceeds went to charity.  And in case you haven’t see the video…..it’a a film which always chokes me up.

#32: Broken Chanter – Piazzale Loreto

A track from the newest album, ‘This Could Us, You, Or Anybody Else’ released in April 2026.  In what I feel is the greatest thing to happen as a result of this blog, I’ve become friends with frontman David MacGregor, and when he learned that it was my thus-far unfulfilled ambition to appear, somehow, on a vinyl record, he arranged for me to come to the Chenikal Underground studio and record some handclaps for possible use.  The thunderclap that comes in behind the drums at the six-second mark (and a few times thereafter) is all me, as produced by the legendary Paul Savage (ex Delgados).  And I’m given a mention in the credits…..

#31: Echo and The Bunnymen – Heads Will Roll

ICA #41 was composed at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet initially above the Atlantic Ocean and latterly over the north-east corner of Canada as the plane headed ever closer to the city of Toronto. The headphones were plugged into the i-phone and as I went through the songs I typed the words into its ‘Notes’ function from which I later did a cut’n’paste and edit.

‘Critics of the band feel they got a long way on the back of one tune and one groove. But the thing is, when the tune and the groove is this divine why quibble? Yes, you might initially think this is ridiculously close to bring just a speeded up version of the track (‘A Promise’) which closed the other side of this imaginary album but wait till you hit the two-minute mark and get blown away by the psychedelic instrumental break…it’s still incredible to think that much of the album ‘Porcupine’ was written and recorded at a time when the band weren’t really on speaking terms.’ (6 October 2015)

#30: Le Tigre – Deceptacon

‘The irregular indie-discos hosted by John Hunt of Butcher Boy always finish with an absolute gem of a song, and quite often it was this.  And if wasn’t the closer, then it was one of the songs aired during the final 15-20 minutes. Given how popular a song it has become, especially given that it was only ever an album track on the 1999 eponymous offering, then I’m assuming loads of other indie-discos aired it too.  But I like to think of John as the pioneer.’ (5 May 2022)

PS : AND A LATE ADDITION TO THIS POST.

This is such a difficult song to cover, but SPRINTS (who featured in the rundown a few days ago at #287) made a great stab at it earlier this year.  I only found out about it last Saturday when I was catching up with posts over at No Badger Required.  mp3: SPRINTS – Deceptacon

#29: The Auteurs – Show Girl

Rol of ‘My Top Ten’ fame.  Another ridiculously talented writer that I’m lucky to have as an occasional contributor.  This comes from ICA #178 on 15 August 2018.

Back to the beginning then, and the opening track from the debut Auteurs album, New Wave. Released in 1993, when Britpop was but a twitch in Brett Anderson’s underpants, it immediately established Haines as one of the most entertaining lyricists of his era – like a less romantic Jarvis, or a Morrissey who doesn’t both hate and love himself*.

*I suppose I should explain that remark, especially here in the Former Republic of Morrissey Fandom, now renamed isntheatwatland. Morrissey has clearly made a career out of a curious mix of self-love and self-loathing. Haines combines the wit and cynicism we all loved about pre-Brexit Moz with a healthy dose of iconoclasm… but you never get the feeling that he’s a nasty man. In fact, he seems like quite a jolly chap in person…

#28: Pixies – Monkey Gone To Heaven

A song cited by so many as an influence, yet in peaked at #60 in the UK charts in March 1989.  I’ve a personal tale to tell.

I got married in July 1988 after a whirlwind romance to someone whose interest in music was virtually non-existent…..but I felt the change was what I wanted and more importantly, needed. It was time to put the toys and distractions of my youth away forever.

Within a matter of months, I was bored rigid. I missed my old mates and my old lifestyle. I missed going to gigs and listening to Radio 1 after 8pm of an evening. It was all soap operas and detective shows in my household. I was in danger of growing old before my time.

I wasn’t reading music papers, and I wasn’t buying anything. All my own music had been put under the stairs.

One day, instead of waiting at the stop for 20 minutes for the next bus home, I popped into a well known Edinburgh city centre record shop. The second, or maybe third song that was played was unlike anything I had ever heard before. A great guitar riff, big powerful drumming and a whiny vocal that was part-spoken, part-sung and part-screamed. And was that some cellos there at the end? Surely not…

The song needed to be bought. So, it was up to the counter to ask the bloke behind the counter who and what was that? The answer, of course, was ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’ by the Pixies.

I had no idea who he was talking about. But I bought the single. The first bit of vinyl in at least 9 months since my wedding day. And then went home and pulled out the turntable and amp and record collection from under the stairs.  Within a year, I had moved out of the marital home. A few months later I was back living in Glasgow with a woman called Rachel, who became my second wife – you may have seen her referred to here and there as Mrs Villain. Crucially, Rachel liked a lot of the music that I loved and was all for going out to gigs rather than get hooked on Eastenders and Taggart. She’s still like that all these years later. Oh, it was Rachel who, in September 2006, bought me an mp3 turntable and encouraged me to start writing a blog instead of just reading them.  I’ll never really be able to thank her enough.

#27: Massive Attack – Protection

I’ve loads of Tracey Thorn records, dating back to her time with The Marine Girls, as a solo artist and of course with Everything But The Girl. But she has never sounded better than on this collaboration. No point in me repeating what I’ve said previously about dance acts/dance music and how I’m not well-enough qualified to comment with much conviction.

But somehow I’ve never really regarded Massive Attack as a dance-band – particularly when thinking about their best singles. It was a close run thing to include this instead of ‘Teardrop’. Both songs are equally gorgeous, haunting, unique and unforgettable. But in my mind, Tracey shades it over Elizabeth Fraser.

Why?

I think it’s because Protection is one of the best lyrics ever recorded by a female artist – its full of conviction, passion, love and strength without ever falling into the trap of being soppy or maudlin.

#26: The Twilight Sad – That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #3 on 9 September 2014.

‘A track which in some ways is eerily reminiscent of ‘Maps’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, this is a strange and disturbing song told from the point of view of a very unhappy and disturbed teenager. It was my introduction to the band back in 2007.  And yes, there is the occasional use of the dreaded c-word which is normally a bit of a taboo, but it is spat out by James in such a way that you can have no doubt that the person being sung about is truly loathed. They say you never forget your first time and in the case of The Twilight Sad I never will.’

#25: Pet Shop Boys – Domino Dancing (disco mix)

More than 300 PSB songs to pick from…and  I can guarantee that if I was typing this up tomorrow, or had done so yesterday, then it probably would have changed. This is the one most fitting my mood today. Here’s what was written as part of the PSB singles series a while back.

‘Perhaps already tiring of being pigeonholed as purely a synth band, the duo in March 1988 had decamped to Miami for some recording sessions. They chose to work with Latino producer Lewis A. Martinée, the results of which saw far more musicians play on a PSB track than ever before (at this point in time). The credits list two additional keyboard players, a guitarist, a four-piece brass section and a backing vocal group in the shape of The Voice Of Fashion.

The record-buying public didn’t really take to ‘Domino Dancing’ as it only reached #7, which was seen as a bit of a let-down after two consecutive #1s. The disco mix is the version released on 12″ vinyl and then on the album ‘Introspective’.  It’s majestic.’ (19 February 2023)

#24: Paul Quinn & The Independent Group – Will I Ever Be Inside Of You

Talking of majestic.  Here’s the blurb from ICA #66, posted on 7 March 2016

‘Even if this had been the only song that the great man had ever been part of then his legendary status would have been sealed.

The opening and title track of the band’s second and final LP may extend to over nine minutes in length but there isn’t a single second of waste or excess. The Independent Group were ridiculously talented but then again what else would you expect when it was made up of some of the greatest musicians to ever have come out of Scotland at any time in our history, never mind that short period in the aftermath of punk and when a certain type of indie music gained a foothold. Add in lush orchestration and a contribution from one of our then leading opera singers and you have a recipe for something unique and unforgettable.’

#23: Blondie – Heart Of Glass

This one happens to be another from 1979 in this rundown. I’ve written it or made reference to it as much as any other over the past 20 years, but I reckon the few sentences I knitted together for ICA #197 on 20 November 2018 does best for this rundown.

‘The 12” version of ‘Heart of Glass’ is one of the finest pieces of music in my lifetime. It goes on and on and on and on…..and there are days, especially when I’m lying on the beach under a blazing sun, when I feel it comes to a halt all too prematurely. Indeed, on such a day and when I’m in such a mood, I’d be happy to have a 25-minute version of Heart of Glass take up an entire side of an ICA. But such a thing, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t exist.’

#22: The Specials – Ghost Town

‘To lots of people, this will always be associated with events in 1981 which briefly threatened the very fabric of British society. To this humble scribe, it’s a great song, quite different from anything else that had thus far emerged from the ska movement. Oh, and it also had two equally memorable b-sides. (2 April 2016)

#21: Butcher Boy – There Is No-One Who Can Tell Where You’ve Been

The fifth birthday of the blog was celebrated by a gig in Glasgow held belatedly on 19 November 2011, headlined by Butcher Boy with support from Adam Stafford.  I lost a bit of money in putting the event on – very much the mistakes of a rookie promoter, but for a long long time, it remained the most exciting thing, musically, that I’d ever been part of.  The events of that night were referenced in ICA #17, posted on 19 June 2015.

“A tune that is played more than any other within Villain Towers as I’ve taken its first thirty seconds and turned it into a customised ringtone for my mobile phone. All those influences that the early reviewers pinpointed (The Smiths, Tindersticks, Felt, Belle & Sebastian, R.E.M. and Go-Betweens) can be heard in its perfect two and a half minutes. It’s also evidence that John Hunt is a fine singer although he personally considers that he is merely OK….but what it does highlight is just how talented he is as a musical arranger.”

 

JC

#60: The Breeders – Cannonball

‘Kim Deal did a lot of great things with Pixies, not least her lead vocal and bass notes vocal on ‘Gigantic. But I still think ‘Cannonball’ is her finest ever moment.

It’s one of those songs which tips its hat in the directions of indie and grunge and has an unnerving ability to lodge itself into your brain. Go on…..give it a listen right now, and I bet you find yourself singing or humming snatches of the tune later in the day as you go about your business.’ (17 March 2023)

#59: Scritti Politti – Faithless (Triple Hep’n’Blue)

‘I’m no connoisseur of art and paintings. I’m not able to dissect a work of art, nor can I really look beyond the immediate visual images that meet the naked eye for something that is more deep and meaningful. And sometimes this happens in music.

I chanced upon a brilliant piece of writing on the LP ‘Songs To Remember’ by Scritti Politti. It highlights how the record, which on first listen appears to be a hotchpotch of soul, jazz, R&B and pop at its purest, is actually a very clever and subversive piece of work full of political sentiments that almost border on the anarchic. Now I’m not saying I was never aware of the fact that Green Gartside had a strong and almost extreme left-wing ideology, but I kind of let it drift away on the wind whenever I played what has long been one of my favourite LPs of all time.

There’s a lot to admire in the essay – for instance, I’d never have cottoned-on to the fact that the sleeves of the singles were a parody of the finer things in life such as cigars and Courvoisier. I also love the analysis that this was a record full of innovative acts of homage thanks to Green’s style and approach, but the use of soul would later be stolen by ‘the hideous mid-Eighties Live Aid Brigade with their own agenda’, with many of them believing ‘big hair and big volume equals soulfulness’ .

This is all very well and true, but I just can’t help but proclaim my love for the songs is all down to finding something sounding classy in among all the guitar-dominated stuff that I was immersed in at the age of 18.’ (23 January 2016)

#58: Julian Cope – Bagged-Out Ken

‘From the notes of the Head EP, released in 1991, and which got as high as #57.

A Ken doll from Miami leaves his home and flies to England “….looking for Feeling-Groovy Barbie”. He hears the Happy Mondays and, being a U.S. college student, digs the whole loose scene.  N.B. The backing vocalists are singing the names of old ’60s Barbie outfits.

Quite barking, I’m sure you’ll agree. But quite brilliant with it is so many ways.’ (11 September 2015)

#57: Radiohead – No Suprises

Martin of the New Amusements Blog.  ICA #108.  15 February 2017. The self-imposed rule for this ICA was no more than one song from any album,

“A lullaby for the suicidal, perhaps. And yet one that somehow manages to be uplifting, even in the unsettling video in which Thom looks set to drown (spoiler – he doesn’t). You can draw a straight line through Asleep by The Smiths to this song, and then… where? The parent album was, for a time, often held up as not just the band’s best but the best ever, by anyone, frequently troubling the top of the “best N albums of all time” lists that were very popular around the millennium. It is great, but I think The Bends shades it.”

#56: Edwyn Collins – Don’t Shilly Shally

‘Santa Claus was very very good to me. Mrs Villain scoured e-bay for something unusual, and a box of 7″ singles by Altered Images/Edwyn Collins/Orange Juice ended up coming down the chimney in the old man’s sack. A total of 30 records going back to the Postcard era and containing a few rare gems such as flexidiscs and a Clare Grogan solo single. One of them was this, a very early solo single by Edwyn from 1987 produced by Robin Guthrie from Cocteau Twins. Like so many songs I end up posting on this blog, it should have been a hit…..but wasn’t.’ (6 January 2007)

(Addendum from a repost in January 2019) :  ‘From recollection, the job lot was a little over £30, including postage. The mania from a vinyl revival was still a couple of years off…..you’d certainly be looking at £100 and upwards nowadays….there were three postcard singles in the bundle along with every 7″, in mint condition, along with every single ever released by Altered Images, including rare picture discs.’

#55: Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – Surfin ‘USM

SWC and Tim Badger with a joint ICA,  #150.  19 November 2015.

This one took us about eight seconds to decide upon. In 1992 I went to see Carter with my friend Rob –it was his first ever gig. To this day I have never seen someone grin as much as he did when that Red Dwarf sample starts up, then the crowd start chanting ‘You Fat Bastard’ at the (starry eyed?) bollock naked guy on stage and then the guitars fire up. This was why we all loved Carter. The amazing lives shows and the sense of belonging you got at one of them.

#54: Elvis Costello & The Attractions – I Hope You’re Happy Now

‘Early summer of 1986. There was a very unusual opening to an edition of Whistle Test. No presenter telling us what was coming up on the show. Just a quick blast of the theme tune and straight into what turned out to be a stunning performance of a song which contains what must be one of the most vicious and vindictive lyrics ever penned. It’s really only when you see them written down on the page that you get the full extent of the bitterness contained in the lyric. All spat out over an incredibly catchy, infectious and jolly tune.  One of my favourite tracks from ‘Blood & Chocolate’ which is my favourite EC album.’ (11 October 2023)

#53: The Cure – Lullaby (12″ version)

‘The Cure have released 41 singles going back to ‘Killing An Arab’ in 1978 right through to ‘The Perfect Boy’ exactly 30 years later. But I would never have guessed that ‘Lullaby’ was the one which performed the best in the UK singles chart when it crawled its way up to #5 in 1989.

So the highest chaarting 45 turns out to be the one about the creepy and haunting tale of an eight-legged creature which frightened Robert Smith in his nightmares as a youngster. Or, is in fact the song, as has been suggested in some places, really about drug addiction and dependency but written in such a way that it gets past the censors at the BBC for the all important airplay? Either way, I think it’s one of the most inventive arrangements to feature on any record by The Cure.’ (24 April 2015)

#52: Kendrick Lamar – m.A.A.d city

‘It was SWC who brought my attention to Kendrick Lamar. He put up a number of postings about the latest superstar of rap music that got me listening and thinking that there was something worth delving into. I can’t really explain why I missed out on all that was written at the time about ‘Good Kid, M.A.A.D City’ (2012) and ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ (2015) other than I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe I had a sense of being too old and too white to look to pursue any further interest in the genre.

But I am very grateful to SWC. He didn’t go into any overdrive about Kendrick Lamar other than to point out that he had a lot to say about the social, political and economic injustices facing black communities in America, and that he was doing so through what was not a new form of rap but one which seemed to take things to a different level. My interest was piqued. ‘ (2 May 2023)

#51: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Rattlesnakes

Here’s Dirk…….

Hello friends,

thinking about it, there might be four, five, six albums which, after all those decades, I would still consider to be good throughout. And with ‘good throughout’, I mean all songs: ‘no fillers, just killers’ as we, rather pathetically, used to say when we were younger. Well, I did, at least. ‘Psychocandy’ comes to mind, Billy Bragg’s debut as well as the first one by The Undertones, ‘Crazy Rhythms’, ‘London Calling’ of course, perhaps the first one by The Smiths – but also ‘Rattlesnakes’, the first album by one of the finest bands ever to emerge from Glasgow, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions.

I remember taking the record home, and it did not get off my turntable for weeks – every song a winner, as I said. I still cannot say what it was that attracted me so much back then. I mean: I can now, but in 1984/85 it was punk/New Wave only for me by and large, so how on earth a record as fragile and in parts even turgid as this managed to meet with my approval, I simply don’t know. Perhaps I just wanted to show off a bit, presenting my oh so clever Dylanesque side to those girls I couldn’t convince with my oh so dangerous Strummeresque side …. as you might already have gathered, none of it worked at the slightest, of course – but hey, I was 16 and desperate! But I loved these songs even when I listened to them on my own, so it wasn’t all about impressing the female population, I reckon.

As much as I do hate snakes, this is a mighty fine tune and for me, it hasn’t aged a bit. Then again I’m still a bit of a hopeless romantic poseur, so …Enjoy!!

#50: PJ Harvey – Sheela Na Gig

Craig McAllister.  ICA #63.  22 February 2016

‘Sheela Na Gig’ was PJ’s second single and also appeared on ‘Dry’, her debut LP. She sets her stall out early here, singing about ‘child bearing hips‘ and ‘ruby red lips’. Hearing this for the first time as a 21 year old, I had no idea what a Sheela Na Gig was (Google it), so I listened to this thinking “Oh! Aye!” I always had this faint idea from then on in that one day she’d go out with me, until she met that bastard Nick Cave. Oh well, her loss.

#49: Fire Engines – Candyskin

‘A magical and wondrous moment in pop music history. Said moment happens at the nineteen seconds mark when the strings so unexpectedly kick in.

I was completely unaware of ‘Candyskin’ till September 1983 when I finally moved out of the family home and into a student flat at the beginning of my third year at University. This noisy, abrasive and unconventional single was owned by a flatmate and it was one of his all-time favourites…….it didn’t take me long to understand and appreciate why.

About 19 seconds…….’(22 December 2015)

#48: Tindersticks – City Sickness

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #48 on 6 November 2015.

‘This was initially released as a single in September 1993 just a couple of months prior to the debut double album. The single use of the f-word towards the end of the song would have stopped it getting any airplay, but then again I’m sure producers would also have been scared to suggest to their presenters that they play a 45 which tells the tale of a man masturbating to block out the memory of a failed relationship. The band’s unwillingness to compromise can be seen from the fact that they never recorded it for a Peel or Radcliffe session at the BBC as the rules of the day would have meant either a bleep-out or a word change.’

#47: The Sundays – Can’t Be Sure

strangeways. ICA #411. 20 May 2026.  Let’s face it when it came to The Sundays place in the rundown, I wasn’t going anywhere else.

Preceding what would become synonymous intricate guitar work, a few seconds of pitter-patter drums announced the Sundays’ arrival. This is a rasper of a debut single, and it caused – deservedly – quite the stir at the time.

So many years later, and even counting its screeds of memorable lines about weather (bad) and desire (even worse), it’s the let-it-all-go lift on the penultimate word ‘later’, the frantic scramble of guitar and the ‘yeaaaaahhh’ ending that remains the moment-and-a-half to experience.

#46: Aztec Camera – We Could Send Letters

”High Land, Hard Rain’ is packed with ridiculously catchy and memorable tunes and some wonderfully observant lyrics, many of which were written before Roddy Frame had reached his 18th birthday. He was also astute enough to recognise that the sublime ‘We Could Send Letters’ deserved a far better fate than to wither as a b-side on an obscure and hard-to-find 45 on Postcard Records, and in doing so he takes what was already a very special song and turns it into something as beautiful as the sun going down of a late June evening off the west coast of Scotland. The album version has a slightly slower tempo than the Postcard version thus enabling the song to breathe a little bit more, and at almost a minute longer in length, it accommodates a cracking guitar solo.’ (23 July 2019)

#45: XTC – Making Plans For Nigel

Jonny the Friendly Lawyer (aka fiktiv). ICA #26. 28 July 2015.

One of the band’s best known and loved songs, but what is it about, exactly? Parents planning their child’s future? A comment on English society’s emphasis on steady employment? Never been able to work that out, but I do love this number.

And later on,  here’s what I typed out as part of the XTC singles series.

‘Colin Moulding has said it is semi-autobiographical in that his parents weren’t sure about his efforts to pursue a career as a musician and tried to persuade him to remain at school and get enough qualifications to go to university.

Lyrically, it was a brilliantly timed song. The British Steel Corporation (BSC), for so long a cornerstone of the UK economy at a national and many local levels, was now in deep financial trouble and making huge losses, largely from the fact that the more modern plants elsewhere in Europe and further afield could easily supply the products to manufacturers much more cheaply. Nigel, or indeed anyone, didn’t appear to have too much of a future,and indeed there soon followed a high number of plant closures in the early 80s that put tens of thousands of men out of work and with few prospects.

But having said all that, the tune is responsible for it becoming a hit. I think that has a lot to do with the sound of the drums which were quite unusual for the time in question as well as the nagging riff that once heard isn’t easy to forget….in a good way!!’ (9 April 2017)

#44: Violent Femmes – Blister In The Sun

‘To my ears at least, American music was really appalling in the early 80s. Maybe I was so accustomed to the punk/post-punk/new wave/indie stuff that I was wrapped up in my student flat that I missed some things. But America was, at time, all stadium anthems from the likes of Broooooce, Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac and the like.

One day, a flatmate came in and demanded we all listen to a new album he had picked up. It was from an American band called Violent Femmes. Not expecting much, the other four of us gathered round the turntable and speakers …wow!! This was something truly different. Songs of unrequited love, misery and suicide but not like we had heard before. These tunes were upbeat…the lyrics were funny….you could even dance to them!! It was a truly innovative record – it was the first time that I realised a ‘punk’ record could be made with acoustic instruments.’ (15 March 2016)

#43: Pete Wylie & The Oedipus Wrecks – Sinful

The Mighty Wah! did appear in an earlier part of the rundown, but this is Wylie, kind of, as a solo artist.

Almost thirty years Forty years on and this still sounds amazing when it blasts out of the radio, which it still does, albeit rarely, on the nostalgia stations. It reached #13 but was worthy of at least Top 3 to match his biggest ever hit.  It’s a tune and a half while lyrically it’s a fine commentary on the social injustices imposed on society by the Tories and Republicans in the first half of the ‘greed is good’ decade. (14 October 2015)

#42: Beastie Boys – Triple Trouble

From one of the ICA’s I penned on 21 February 2020. In keeping with the spirit of the Beastie Boys, all the words used in the ICA were sampled (!)

‘No New Yorker was unaffected by the terrorist attacks of 2001, and the Beasties were no exception. Released in 2004, ‘To the 5 Boroughs’ was reflective, in part, but just as much a part of their challenge to the darkening mood was to get back to what they do best – revelling in rhyme and having fun with music and words, celebrating New York as the place where all these things became possible, and defending it by carrying on as before. ‘Triple Trouble’ went back to hip-hop’s early days, sampling the opening of ‘Rapper’s Delight’ while the trio traded gallumphing brags and outrageous boasts back and forth over the infectiously bouncing beat.’

#41: Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy

‘It really is all too easy to forget how brave Jimmy Somerville and his bandmates were for being so open about their way of life and their views. Their records, and those of such as Pet Shop Boys and Frankie Goes To Hollywood took the celebration of queer culture into the mainstream, and made many people realise, probably for the first time, that homophobia was every bit as distasteful as racism and apartheid.

There’s just something about the early Bronski Beat records that make them sound so special. There’s a bit of the inventiveness of Giorgio Moroder in there, along with the pop-savvy touch of Human League and Heaven 17. There’s also the choir-boy falsetto vocals of Somerville that recalled, in some ways, Russell Mael from Sparks. Theirs were records which struck a chord with so many people, from the hard-core gay militants to the indie-kids and the disco-divas with their handbags and stiletto heels. ‘(7 September 2013)

 

 

JC

#80: Sparks – The Number One Song In Heaven

‘The Number One Song In Heaven was totally unexpected in the summer of 1979. Just about everyone had more or less forgotten about Sparks after a bundle of hit singles in 1974 and 1975  and they were probably regarded as a bit of a novelty act, mainly to the fact that Ron Mael when appearing on telly stared intensely at the camera and freaked everyone out. Oh, and he also had a moustache and haircut that made him look awfully like Adolf Hitler….

It shouldn’t be forgotten that very few bands used electronic keyboards to any great effect in the late 70s. Sparks went for it in a big way, deciding to recruit Giorgio Moroder into their number – an act of absolute genius.  The long version was the b-side – where prog met glam met disco met film soundtrack on one piece of 7″ black vinyl.’ (7 December 2016).

That passing mention of Moroder does lead nicely to this…..

#79: Donna Summer – I Feel Love

I quoted extensively from a piece written back in May 2012 by Jon Savage for the Guardian newspaper.  Given I pay a monthly sub to said publication, I feel fine about quoting much of it again:-

“I Feel Love was and remains an astonishing achievement: a futuristic record that still sounds fantastic 35 years on. Within its modulations and pulses, it achieves the perfect state of grace that is the ambition of every dance record: it obliterates the tyranny of the clock – the everyday world of work, responsibility, money – and creates its own time, a moment of pleasure, ecstasy and motion that seems infinitely expandable, if not eternal.

I Feel Love went to No 1 in the UK during the high summer of 1977, and stayed there for four weeks – filling dance floors everywhere, because it’s so good so good to dance to. Like David Bowie’s Low and Heroes, and Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express, it was also the secret vice of those punks who were already tiring of sped-up pub rock, and it sowed the seeds for the next generation of UK electronica.” 

(30 July 2020)

#78: Kirsty MacColl – A New England (12″)

‘I don’t think anyone will disagree with my proposal that A New England is a classic. Written in late 1982/early 1983, it has always been one of the most popular of Billy Bragg songs, one that gets as loud a cheer as any when he plays it live.  It’s a song that came to wider public attention back when Kirsty MacColl covered it and took it all the way to #7 in the UK charts in the early months of 1985.  Credit does have to go to both Kirsty for the way she re-interpreted the song, turning it into a bonafide pop classic while keeping the innocence and charm that was such a hallmark of the original, and to Steve Lillywhite whose deft and crisp production has ensured the song hasn’t dated. The 12″ version is almost eight minutes long, with a very lengthy fade-out.’ (21 September 2020)

#77: Simple Minds – This Fear of Gods

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #72 on 2 May 2016.

‘It was the band’s misfortune to be on Arista Records for ‘Empires and Dance’ as the label was unable to promote properly an album that was described on its release by Paul Morley as ‘authentic new torch music….an LP of terror-songs, vigilance and vanity‘. It was as dark and deep and wonderful as anything Joy Division were producing, but with a disco-beat….’

#76: Paul Quinn & Edwyn Collins – Pale Blue Eyes

‘Pale Blue Eyes was released back in 1969 by The Velvet Underground. It very quickly became a favourite of buskers and would-be-rock-stars the world over and has since been given the cover treatment by countless bands and artists. If you don’t believe me, google in the words ‘Pale Blue Eyes – cover versions’ and see the results for yourself. Just about all of the versions I’ve ever heard more or less stick faithfully to the tone and delivery of that of the original – but no doubt there is a drum’n’bass or house style out there somewhere just to prove me wrong.

In August 1984 Paul Quinn & Edwyn Collins released their version as the first release on a label called Swamplands, the boss of which was none other than Alan Horne, the genius behind Postcard Records. The label was funded entirely as a subsidiary of London Records. Alan Horne had huge hopes for this record, believing it would catapult Swamplands and all its acts to fame and fortune. It got no higher than #72 in the UK charts. In the end, just six singles were released on the label, none of which sold well, before London pulled the plug on the venture.’ (12 April 2014)

#75: Camper Van Beethoven – Take The Skinheads Bowling

‘If the statement on the reverse of the sleeve of this single is to be believed, then this was “recorded at Samurai Sound Labs in Davis, California, with mixing taking place at Samurai Sounds Labs & Chris Molla’s-enormous-piece-of-squid-in-the-fridge-studios while most everybody was naked or wearing massive fur boas & platform shoes.”

If only mobile phones and social media had been around back in 1984, then we would have an idea whether it is fact or fiction. After all, who keeps giant squid in their fridge?

Camper Van Beethoven aren’t all that well known beyond this song, released here in the UK in early 1985 on Rough Trade. It made it all the way to #8 in the Indie Charts and was voted in at #47 in the end of the year Peel Festive Fifty. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it is one of the finest, funniest, freshest and most wonderful songs from that era, one which always got me off my seat every time it was aired at an indie-disco or night out.’ (13 September 2021)

#74: Care – My Boyish Days (12″ version)

‘Care was primarily a coming together of Ian Broudie and Paul Simpson. The former is best known as the man behind The Lightning Seeds, but he’s been part of the music scene in his native Liverpool since the late 70s, initially as part of the new wave band Big In Japan (who also featured Holly Johnson, who found fame with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and Bill Drummond, likewise with The KLF).

I remember hearing their debut single one evening on either the David Jensen or Janice Long show on Radio 1 and being knocked out by what was then a pretty unusual and distinctive mix of acoustic guitars and synthesisers. I tracked the record down the following day.’ (11 December 2013)

#73: Blur – Death Of A Party (12″ Death)

‘In 1993 and 1994 it was all a bit ‘cor blimey guv’ and catchy upbeat sing-a-long numbers driven along by the classic sounds made by a line-up consisting of singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer.  Things had changed a lot by 1997…. very few fans were prepared for the self-titled 1997 LP. It sold less in the UK than more recent albums but sold far more in other countries. Blur and Britpop had parted forever and ‘Death of A Party’ is their sign-off.

This mix is by Adrian Sherwood. It’s 7 minutes long and miles from removed from ‘Parklife’.’ (6 June 2014)

#72: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Electricity

Rhetor.  ICA #33.  24 August 2015.

“This song makes the perhaps natural connection between synthesizer music’s novel sound, and the power behind it that makes it all possible. The real feat of the song is that the emotional range and warmth of the voice of singer Andy McCluskey offsets so naturally the “colder” machine generated synthetic sound of the instrumental track. Along with other club hits such as Tesla Girls and Telegraph, the theme of exploring the potential for both good and harm in even the simplest forms of technology continues, through the very unexpected medium of new wave dance music, treated from the uniquely historical perspective of “hindsight”.”

#71: Arctic Monkeys – When The Sun Goes Down

‘I was 42 years of age when I first encountered Arctic Monkeys. They, certainly to this wizened and gnarled veteran, felt different and made me wish I was 18 again. It was all down to the fact that this group of working-class musicians made infectiously catchy guitar-led music, fused with lyrics that defied belief, given they were the work of a teenager.

This tale of prostitution on the streets of Sheffield, as observed by a bystander who turns down an approach and then sees the woman get into a car driven by, in the narrator’s own words, a scumbag. Not only is it an astonishing lyric written by someone so young, but it comes with a tune that moves from the melancholy/resigned to pounding stomper and then back again.’ (24 April 2023)

#70: The Popguns – Waiting For The Winter

I have previously written about this tune, but only in a factual descriptive way. It dates from 1989 and my first exposure to it was many years later via the CD compilation Rough Trade Shops – Indiepop 1, bought on release in 2004.   Here’s some words from the booklet that came with the compilation:-

‘Eugenie’ by the Popguns is a collection of their first three singles and every track is as close to total perfection as ‘Parallel Lines’.  The Popguns make the most perfect relationship break-up music – just listen to the heartache in Wendy’s voice.

Wendy had such an ache and unrequited love in the way she sang – every syllable stripped back to the heart of emotion.  As Paul Weller almost once put it, in the Popguns one can hear the sound of a thousand lonely housewives clutching milk bottles to their hearts’

#69: The National – Mistaken For Strangers

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #95 on 18 November 2016.

‘Since forming in Cincinnati in 1999, this five-piece band have, in a career path sort of similar to early R.E.M., built up a following through a combination of increasingly good songs with the desire and willingness to graft for their art.  There was a real sense of ‘wow’ when 2007 album ‘Boxer’ hit the shops with North America embracing the band as the latest potential saviours of alt/indie/radio friendly guitar music.’

#68: Talulah Gosh – Talulah Gosh

strangeways. ICA #153. 30 January 2018.

“Talulah Gosh, featuring the mighty Amelia Fletcher, tend to polarise. Easily distinguishable from say Motörhead or GG Allin, the band’s output was, and is, often dismissed and marginalised as cute, shambling and, most especially, that reliable kiss-of-death: ‘twee’.

“Slow verses. Quick choruses. Talulah’s self-referencing anthem is a corker and, as alluded to already, paints a picture of an elusive, unsolvable character. Just who is the phantom Talulah Gosh? A minor myth insists it’s a thank-you to the band-naming Clare Grogan herself. Let’s hope, though, that the mystery endures – like an indiepop yeti or Loch Ness Monster.”

#67: The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy – Television, The Drug of The Nation

‘An unparalleled attack on mass-media brainwashing, written and delivered in a pre-internet age, but whose message still resonates 25 34 years on. Possibly more so in an era of so-called fake news and alternative facts.’ (12 May 2017).

#66: Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit

‘First time I heard this was as the opening song on a cassette made up by Jacques the Kipper. It was a time when every six weeks or so, we would thrust a tape into each other’s hands along with set of cryptic clues for each song, and challenge the other, not just to identify the track, but also offer a few observations.

His clue for the opening song was ‘Vodka’. Sheer genius if you ask me…..the boy should have become a copywriter with an advertising agency.’ (4 March 2015)

#65: Half Man Half Biscuit – National Shite Day

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #8 on 16 March 2015.

‘Most HMHB tracks are of the short and sharp variety, so this, the closing track from ‘C.S.I. Ambleside’ which clocks in at almost six and a half minutes, has to be regarded as epic. It is an extended rant of what it is about modern society that pisses Nigel off set to a tune that thirty forty years ago you’d probably never imagined the band being capable of recording and playing.’

#64: Soft Cell – Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (12″ version)

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #156 on 27 February 2018.

‘In which Soft Cell showed that the cold and harsh synth sounds could be every bit as soulful and haunting as the Tamla Motown mid-temp ballads. ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ really is ‘What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted’ in a new era and a new location. Every late-teen and twenty-something, male and female alike, empathised with the protagonist who was standing in the door of the Pink Flamingo, crying their eyes out as the rain poured down in sympathy. The 12” inch is particularly glorious, with its extended and mournful clarinet solo intro setting the perfect tone for what, I would argue, has always been the finest few minutes in Marc Almond’s entire career, with his failure to hit the perfect notes at the end of the song only adding to its poignancy.’

#63: The Wild Swans – Revolutionary Spirit/God Forbid

‘Revolutionary Spirit/God Forbid was the last single to be released on the legendary label Zoo Records which was run by the equally legendary Bill Drummond. It came out in 1982 and was produced, in mono, by the late Pete De Freitas who also drums on the record. I remember hearing both sides of the single on Radio 1 – it was most likely on the John Peel show but I can’t be certain – and then trying to track it down in shops in the coming days. It proved an impossible task.

One of my mates did however know someone who had a copy (I think it was a cousin in Liverpool) and he sent us up cassettes of the record. In those days, maybe it was the sheer obscurity of the songs that helped make it all so special but in all truth they both perfectly capture so much of what was great about the sound of new young Liverpool. It took me until 1990 to finally got a hold of my own copy of the songs thanks to the purchase of a Zoo compilation.’ (11 April 2008)

#62: The Chesterfields – Ask Johnny Dee

‘A lot of the stuff from the C86 movement hasn’t aged well. In many cases, this will be down to poor production which nowadays grates on the ear while all too often the off-key singing which in its day seemed to be part of the charm now sounds annoying.

But there are still some songs that, almost 30 40 years on, deserve to be thought of as absolute classics. It’s a crying shame that so many of the small indie labels weren’t able to give the records the push they needed to crossover into the conscious of mainstream listeners. All too often, the label and indeed the band seemed happy enough to settle for a few playings on the John Peel Show, a positive review in the NME and then an appearance somewhere in the indie Top 10. I’m not saying that was the case with today’s tune, but there is seemingly something seriously wrong when a song as brilliant as this has to settle for #4 on the Indie Chart. ‘(7 February 2014)

#61: Paul Haig – Something Good (10″ remix)

‘In 1988, Paul Haig took a very bold and brave step by fully financing the recording of his next album himself without the safety net of a guaranteed release. He again worked with Alan Rankine (Associates) and thankfully for all concerned, it was picked up by Circa Records, an offshoot of Virgin. Hopes were high, particularly for the release of an outstanding and poptastic lead off single that was tailor-made for radio play and an appearance on Top of The Pops.

But….once again, Paul was denied by the pop gods with him again being in the wrong place at the wrong time with Madchester all the rage and synth-pop well out of fashion. And yet, when you listen to ‘Something Good’ (especially the 10″ remix version), and indeed some of other tracks on parent album ‘Chain’, it’s not a million miles away from some of the less clubby tracks on ‘Technique’ by New Order (e.g. ‘Run’).’ (27 January 2019)

 

 

JC

#100: Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – Glasgow Jubilee

‘In June 2012, before a packed audience at the Barrowlands in Glasgow, it was announced that the winner of the inaugural Scottish Album of The Year Award was ‘Everything’s Getting Older’ by Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat. It was a hugely deserved and popular win as it is a quite extraordinary record, combining the talents of one of our premier jazz pianists with our modern-day indie bard best known for being half of Arab Strap.’ (9 July 2016)

I don’t think there’s any denying that ‘The Copper Top’, a song featured on many previous occasions on the blog, is by far their crowning moment.  I’ve selected another track from the album for this rundown, one that’s NSFW…..

#99: Iggy Pop – The Passenger

Swiss Adam. ICA #183. 6 September 2018.

‘A killer riff, the perfect punk rock ‘n’ roll riff, written by Ricky Gardiner. Iggy, narrator and punk outsider, riding around Mitteleuropa in David Bowie’s car, seeing the city’s ripped backside, the hollow sky and everything else, through the window of the car. Little touches can make such a difference in recordings- note the bell ringing at the start. I read somewhere that The Passenger is Johnny Marr’s favourite song. A song that is both impossibly exciting and as numb as it can be.’

#98: Squeeze – Up The Junction

‘A soap opera story in just over three minutes. The boy about town gets caught out with his trousers down. He can’t cope with the fact that he has to grow up and take responsibility. The woman of his dreams soon moves on and all he has left are bittersweet memories.’ (5 December 2014)

#97: The Hardy Boys – Wonderful Lie

‘The Hardy Boys passed me completely by back in the day. My first time hearing them would have been at one of the Little League nights that were always so much fun – I wouldn’t have known them while the song was being played (this being the pre-Shazam app era), but the full playlists would be posted a few days later. in 2015, a full twenty-six years after its original release, the Berlin-based Firestation Records reissued the single on 12″ vinyl.  I snapped up a copy.  Thankfully, that was the pre-Brexit era when vinyl could be shipped across Europe without incurring penal charges through postage and customs.’ (21 January 2021)

#96: Super Furry Animals – Golden Retriever

Between March and September 2015, The Robster treated us to a fabulous 30-part series looking at all the 45s ever released by Super Furry Animals.  I’m spoiled for choice in this instance, but here goes:-

“For album #6, Super Furry Animals went back to basics. Initially, the plan was to write songs all based around the same unconventional guitar tuning: D-A-D-D-A-D. And while a batch of songs were written to that concept, it was felt to be too limiting over all, so that plan was abandoned. The public’s first taste of the new album  was one of those songs written by Gruff on his acoustic guitar in the D-A-D-D-A-D tuning and has real echoes of the blues about it, not just in the musical structure, but in Gruff’s lyrics referencing the devil and the crossroads. It certainly has a more basic, raw feel to it than the songs on ‘Rings Around The World’, but those amazing backing vocals at the end of the chorus, that escalating “dryyyyyyyyyy” really sets the whole thing off for me. It’s that tinge of brilliance that runs through nearly everything the Furries ever did. As for those lyrics – they’re about Gruff’s girlfriend’s two golden retrievers……”

(13 July 2025)

#95: Robert Forster – When I Was A Young Man

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #399 on 2 December 2025.

‘Robert looks back on his own life and the paths that led him to become a musician. It’s a song of celebration, but not made with any sort of boastfulness, while the lyrics and tune clearly pay homage to those heroes of his who helped him on the journey.’ *

* kind of what I’m trying to do through all the references in the rundown to those whose contributions to the blog over the decades have been invaluable.

#94: Malcolm Middleton – Choir

Me, again.  well, given how often I’ve tried and failed many times over the years on TVV to try and persuade you all that Malcolm Middleton is a first-rate singer/songwriter, then there’s no way it could come from any guest contributor.

‘One of the saddest and most poignant songs I have in my entire collection.  I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about Malcolm directly having struggles with his mental health, although many of his lyrics do cover feelings of despair and do feel like the work of someone who has personal experience of anxiety attacks, depression and fears of self-harm; perhaps it isn’t him and he is/has been very close to someone in such a situation. This is an astonishingly moving number that was the subject of a reverential cover a couple of years later by King Creosote.’  (ICA #188, 14 September 2018.)

#93: Martin Stephenson & The Daintees – Crocodile Cryer

‘It was through an appearance on a BBC-TV music show that I first saw and heard Martin Stephenson. It was love at first sight and sound. He played a great little instrumental, on acoustic guitar, called ‘A Tribute to The Late Rev Gary Davis’. He then went to change his guitar for a song to be played with his band The Daintees, at which point his strap gave way and he had to fumble around sorting things out. He gave a sheepish look at the camera, said ‘God Bless’ into his microphone and then strummed the opening notes of “the tale of phoney mourners at a funeral just out for what they can get.” ‘

(14 November 2015; the description of the song is lifted from ICA # 92, penned by Rich Cundill on 2 November 2016)

#92: The Undertones – Get Over You

Another from the class of ’79.

‘I remember putting it on the turntable and being really disappointed in the first few seconds as I thought either my needle was damaged or my speaker was broken (it was still an old-fashioned Dansette record player in those days). Thankfully, it was just the opening riff that blasts away in the background before giving way to a short wolf-whistle clearly delivered by someone who had ambitions to get on a building site…..and then the opening riff comes in at full tilt. It’s Status Quo on speed.  At this point in my life, I had yet to have my heartbroken by a member of the opposite sex…..but I instinctively knew, on hearing this record, that when that particular day came, as inevitably it had to, this was a song I would play, again and again and again (even if only in my head) until the pain went away.’ (14 August 2014)

#91: Leftfield/Halliday – Original

Sonically, I’m in control….and enjoying it.  The one time I specifically featured this, back on 3 August 2015, I ended up warbling on about the different mixes on the CD single and not saying enough about the actual tune other than ‘One of the best bits of dance music ever released.’  I’ll stick by that.

#90: Talking Heads – Pyscho Killer

One of the bands not actually mentioned by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip in ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ , but the sentiment he expresses carries through.  Here’s Echorich from ICA #115 on 6 April 2017.

“The bass line of God. Psycho Killer is a song that I hold close to my heart. It was less than a year since the killing spree of the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz when Psycho Killer came out. I lived not 4 blocks from the next to last of his killing scenes at local discoteque, Elephas, in Bayside, Queens. The events of that killing changed my neighborhood for years. Psycho Killer was the darkest song I had ever heard. The motorik influence of the song brings out the detached nature of the song. Its darkness is still powerful 40 years on.”

#89: Hinds – The Club

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #286 on 1 June 2021.  Written when nobody knew the group was tearing itself asunder, with the isolationism and mental health aspects of dealing with COVID taking a grip.

‘Just the three albums in a five-year period, but each of them being quite different in the way that have been worked on, produced and delivered. There are some days when I prefer the lo-fi and noisy approach of ‘Leave Me Alone’, the 2016 debut when the duel vocals from Carlotta and Ana aren’t always in harmony, and indeed on occasions seem to be embarking on their own semi-private duel for supremacy. Then, there are those days when the most recent album, ‘The Prettiest Curse’ (2020) is given a spin as it never fails to put a smile on my face, thanks to its more pop-friendly and sunnier approach, with some of the lyrics being sung in their native Spanish.

And then there’s the middle album – ‘I Don’t Run’ – which was, in 2018, my introduction to the band. While it doesn’t offer anything truly groundbreaking, it is a fabulous listen from start to end, packed with jaunty upbeat sounding songs which provide cover for a set of lyrics dealing, for the most part, with the downside of falling in love – failed relationships, bitterness, misery, loneliness, revenge and relying on your friends to pull you through.’ (‘The Club’ is from the middle album).

#88: Shop Assistants – Safety Net

The last, and best, of the five Edinburgh mid-80s bands in this rundown whose singers and musicians who not only shared rehearsal space, but were often happy enough to moonlight.

‘The musicians who made up what is regarded as ‘classic’ Shop Assistants released just one album and three singles/EPs in 85/86 before imploding.  Their best song is a tremendous piece of pop which may well be of its time complete with an inexpensive, fuzzbox production,  but it still sounds great. It would be voted into the Peel Festive Fifty at #8 at the end of 1986 and it spent more than four months in the indie charts.’ (5 July 2015)

#87: The Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet

‘The Only Ones released their debut 45 in June 1977. They disbanded in March 1981 after a career that had seen six singles and three albums. None of the singles charted while the first two albums reached #56 and #42 respectively in May 78 and March 79. It wouldn’t normally be the sort of stats that get you noticed far less fondly remembered. Except for the fact that one of the flop singles would, in later years, be acknowledged as a post-punk classic.’ (21 September 2016).

#86: Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – The Message

‘From 1982. Aptly named, as it is reckoned to be the first hip-hop/rap song that was used to offer a social commentary. Only two of the furious five contributed a vocal – Melle Mel and Duke Bootee.  The entire lyric was posted as part of the ‘Some Songs Are Great Short Stories’  –  the fifth verse, ‘A child is born with no state of mind…..’ is one of the finest bits of songwriting of any kind.’ (24 October 2019).

#85: Happy Mondays – Kinky Afro

‘Tony Wilson once made the claim that Shaun Ryder was a better poet than William Butler Yeats, and that in the fullness of time, he’d come to be regarded every much as talented a genius as Mozart. I do suspect Tony’s tongue, and not for the first time, was parked right into his cheek. But having said that, the opening four lines to ‘Kinky Afro’, in which a dad directly addresses his young offspring, are as good as any representation of a misogynist and unreconstructed man I’ve ever read in my life.’(July 2008)

#84: De La Soul – Eye Know (The Know It All Mix)

One of the signs that I was growing increasingly confident that the blog was doing OK came four months in when, in January 2007, I wrote about De La Soul, beginning to feature music beyond the jingly-jangly stuff that was utlised as a security blanket.  I mentioned previously in the rundown that the whistling from ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay’ would appear in a sample later on in the rundown……

#83: April Showers – Abandon Ship

;April Showers were a short-lived Glaswegian pop duo comprised of Jonathan Bernstein and Beatrice Colin. Releasing their only known single ‘Abandon Ship’ on Big Star, a subsidiary of Chrysalis, in 1984 it quickly gained a cult following due to its sparkling production from Anne Dudley (Art of Noise) and string-heavy arrangements. This quality was echoed on B-side ‘Everytime We Say Goodbye’ with the 12-inch featuring the instrumental ‘Abandon Ship Sing-A-Long-A-Wonder Mix’. Both records are now highly collectible. (£50 As much as £900 nowadays for the 12″!!!)’  *.  (15 October 2011)

* now regretting that I didn’t shell out £50 back in 2011…..

#82: The Chemical Brothers – Asleep From Day

Twenty ‘Twenty-seven years ago, we were on the cusp of a new millennium. It’s a period which already feels like a lifetime ago but, when you turn to the music, seems to have been just the day before yesterday. It’s a year when I enjoyed albums by Fatboy Slim, Underworld and Basement Jaxx as well spending money on a couple of compilations on the basis of having, via finally at the age of 36 going on a boys-only golf holiday to southern Spain and visiting night clubs.

It was a time when Primal Scream had gone full-on with the hard hitting beats and even The Fall, with ‘Touch Sensitive’, were making dance music of sorts. But my age meant I needed the much comedown music as much as the higher energy stuff, and so what The Chemical Brothers offered with their masterpiece ‘Surrender’, seemed perfect.’ (21 January 2019).

#81: Adam Stafford – Shot-down You Summer Wannabees

‘I’ll never tire of shouting out very loudly that Adam Stafford is a musical genius. It’s his misfortune (as such) to have been born in Sunderland and to spend most of his life in Falkirk, instead of one of the great and innovative cities of the world where his talents would have been more readily acknowledged. His music defies any conventional description, with a thin white duke playing his guitar, beat-boxing, crooning and using effect pedals to make sounds unlike anything else that sits here in Villain Towers. In saying that, I’ll quickly add that the live experience always outshines what comes across on vinyl. ‘ (5 April 2023)

 

 

JC

The final six parts of the rundown will be largely made up of cut’n’pastes from previous postings over the past 20 years.  The singers/bands shouldn’t come as a surprise, but some of the song choices might raise the occasional eyebrow.

#120: Soup Dragons – Hang Ten!

“I’ve a bundle of Soup Dragons 12″ singles in the collection, mostly picked up very cheaply in second hand stores. The lead track from this 1986 release is a particular favourite.” (16 August 2014)

#119: Jazzateers – Sixteen Reasons

“The 2013 Glasgow International Jazz Festival runs from 26-30 June. Jazz is a form of music I have no inclination for at all and I’d normally show no interest at all in any of the gigs at the 2013 Festival except that on Thursday 27 June at Stereo has the Jazzeteers (who are most definitely not a jazz band) reforming for one night to play songs from their 1983 eponymous album released on Rough Trade.” (5 June 2013)

NB : It proved to be a gig beyond my wildest dreams.  Not only did they play the album and other songs from the back catalogue, but they threw in some cover versions, including ‘Felicity’ by Orange Juice, with James Kirk on guitar and with Vic Godard on lead vocal.

#118: Basement Jaxx – Red Alert

“Three times in my life have I been the recipient of something thrown from the stage by a singer or member of a band. The third, and thus far, final, incident was at the very end of a Basement Jaxx gig at the Carling Academy, Glasgow in April 2009.  On the previous two incidents the objects ended up with me when I very close to the stage. This time around, I was the back of the back of the lowest tier of the venue, with nobody behind us to push or shove us for the reason that I was with Rachel who was still recovering from a nasty fall some 10 days previously when she had been out running that left her cut and bruised in a few places, with the worst injury being a broken nose. Basement Jaxx gigs, as we knew from previous experience, can be quite boisterous affairs and it was all about keeping safe.

“I would love to tell you that the drumstick landed at my feet, or that, as I spotted it come towards us, I put up a hand and caught it as cleanly as a baseball outfielder pushed up against the boundary fence.

“I really would love to tell you that.

“The reality is that I didn’t see it until it was too late and could only cry out the word ‘drumstick’ as a warning to Rachel as to what was happening….and as the ‘k’ was sounded, the flying object hit her full in the face, including her nose.

“It all happened stupidly quickly and Rachel, unsurprisingly, burst into tears, more thankfully from the fright of what happened rather than the actual pain. The drumstick had traveled a fair distance to reach us and its downward trajectory meant it wasn’t quite at full pelt. But still, it was a scary few seconds looking at her face and praying to a non-existent god that there was no serious damage.” (2 July 2020)

#117: Felt – Primitive Painters

“An epic rolling track of more than six minutes in length that has all the hallmarks of the involvement of the Cocteau Twins with Robin Guthrie behind the production desk and Liz Fraser on co-vocals. It turned into Felt’s biggest selling single, topping the indie charts for two weeks in September 1985.” (3 April 2017)

#116: HiFi Sean and David McAlmont – Happy Ending

“David McAlmont‘s voice has always been something to treasure, but there’s something truly special about the way it matches up with Sean Dickson‘s electronic and production wizardry.  The title track from an album that was recorded, over an extended period, in David’s home which is on the 18th Floor of a high-rise building in east London, while the added strings were conducted and recorded in Bangalore, India.” (21 December 2022)

#115: Pulp – Common People

Tim Badger. ICA #32.  17 August 2015.

“Quite simply one of the best British singles, ever, by anyone. Absolutely their defining song, and the classic song of the Britpop era. I toyed with the idea of leaving it off just to be controversial but then I realised that I can’t write about Pulp without mentioning it. It’s too good a record. As a song it’s scathing yet hilarious, deeply personal yet turns an eye to larger social questions, intelligent yet simple enough to fit within a massively infectious pop melody. And to top it all triumphant enough to close a live show.” 

#114: The KLF – Last Train To Transcentral (live from The Lost Continent)

“‘Stadium House (The Trilogy)’ was a VHS video released in 1991 that is just under 30 minutes in length. The main film purports to be live footage of The KLF performing their three chart hits at Woodstock, Europa while the supporting feature is called ‘This Is Not What The KLF Is About’, a behind the scenes look at the main film. It is, of course, nothing of the sort, although the main film has been pieced together does make it seem as if the singers, musicians and dancers are performing on a stage within some sort of post-apocalyptic setting, interspersed with footage of a police car and a fast moving passenger train, and is just the splicing of the three promo videos. ‘Last Train To Transcentral’ peaked at #2 in May 1991, kept off the top by Cher and ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’.” (20 September 2021)

#113: The June Brides – Every Conversation

“There’s a case to be made that The June Brides had no right to be categorised as part of the C86 movement.  They had formed in London back in 1983 and the following year saw two cracking singles released on Pink Records. They initially called it a day before 1986 came to a close. The use of the trumpet and viola gave The June Brides a unique sound. They really deserved to have enjoyed far more success than they experienced. Maybe just a wee bit too ahead of their time as their sort of sound became more fashionable in the early 90s by which time singer and main songwriter Phil Wilson was working as a tax inspector.

“There really is no justice in the world of pop music.” (9 February 2014 and 24 May 2017)

#112: Sons & Daughters – Fight

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #199 on 30 November 2018.

“The opening song on the debut mini-album ‘Love The Cup’ (2004).  In many ways, it is the archetypal Sons & Daughters track with great vocal interplay between deadpan Scott Patterson and excitable Adele Bethel while the talents of David Gow (drums)  and Ailidh Lennon (bass) see things driven along at perfect pace and without either of them seeming to break sweat. Oh and it features the best use of a mandolin on any piece of music since ‘Losing My Religion’…..thanks Ailidh.”

#111: Altered Images – Don’t Talk To Me About Love

“The Scottish ‘Heart of Glass’ “ (7 August 2020)

#110: Wah! – Story of The Blues (Parts One and Two)

“Pete Wylie doesn’t do things by half. This climbed all the way to #3 in the charts and is probably the best known of the hits. To my young(ish) ears it sounded like no other record that had ever been released at that point in history. To my old(er) ears it still sounds like no other record that has ever been released in history.” (14 October 2015).

#109: The Bodines – Therese

“Although they are no more than a small footnote in musical history, The Bodines in 1987 did write and record one of the best ever indie-pop singles. They were a four-piece band from Glossop, a town fairly close to Manchester and given they emerged in 1985, it is probably fair to say that The Smiths were amongst their inspirations.” (20 June 2014)

#108: The Skids – Into The Valley

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #128 on 14 June 2017.

“Puts a smile on my face every time those first few distinctive notes are played. Richard Jobson has stated that the indecipherable lyrics are about the recruitment of Scottish youths into the army and more specifically about a friend who had been killed on a tour of duty in Northern Ireland. I prefer to think that it is actually a tribute to High Valleyfield (aka The Valley), a former mining village just outside of Dunfermline whose residents have long endured a reputation for hard living.”

#107: Johnny Cash – Hurt

I grew up with the sounds of Johnny Cash in the 60s and early 70s, sometimes in my own house, but most often when I visited and stayed over with an aunt and uncle who seemed to have all his records. In saying that, there was no way in my sultry teenage era, nor during my time at university when I thought I was cool and trendy, could I admit to having a love of any sort of country music far less having an idol in Johnny Cash. But as more and more hip bands began to include acoustic songs on their albums, it began to be easier to suggest country/blues influences without getting laughed at.

And then in the 1990s, Johnny Cash became fashionable again. His series of ‘American Recording’ LPs, which featured a mix of Cash originals and cover versions, brought him to a whole new audience.  This is probably the best known of the cover songs, thanks to a stunning and moving video that was on heavy rotation on MTV.

#106: Kylie Minogue – Confide In Me

Swiss Adam.  ICA #260.  11 August 2020.

“In 1994 Kylie signed to DeConstruction, Mike Pickering’s label that had massive hits with K-Klass and Bassheads but wanted someone who was a name signing. Kylie wanted some credibility and to work with different songwriters. The result was this, a superb adult pop song, Kylie with Brothers In Rhythm on production, some trip-hop drums, Middle Eastern melodies, a didgeridoo and a string section. The strings are seriously giving the song gravitas and sexiness, there’s a moody undertow and she sings of being hurt, of bearing crosses and sharing secrets. The breakdown part where she whispers ‘stick or twist/ the choice is yours’ is Kylie grown up, the PWL years consigned to the past.”

#105: Hey! Elastica – Eat Your Heart Out

“AGGRESSIVE TRASHY DANCE-POP was one of the descriptions meted out to Hey! Elastica, a short-lived but rather wonderful Edinburgh band from the early 80s who I featured more than a few times over on the old blog before google had its evil way with it. There was a huge hype about them – visually they were quite stunning, while the sound they made was tailor-made for radio play. The indie kids and students loved the sound and yet it had the potential to crossover to younger folk more in tune with mainstream pop. Jacques the Kipper was, like me, rather fond of them as we would discover many years later when we bonded over our tastes in music.” (20 May 2016)

#104: The Style Council – Money Go Round (12″ version)

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #217 on 26 June 2019.

“From 1983.  It’s a big song in every aspect – the best part of eight minutes long, Paul’s pulpit sermon is given added nuance thanks to D.C’s breathless backing efforts while Mick hits the keyboards as if he’s determined to land the next big solo on a song by The The; there are pounding drums, lashings of bass slaps and the best use of a trombone/trumpet combination outside of 2 Tone. It’s still, for me, one of the best moments in all the Modfather’s lengthy career.”

#103: Prince – Sign “O” The Times

“It is now exactly 30 years almost 40 years since this single was released with the album of the same name following a month later. This coincided with the period when I wasn’t paying as much attention to pop music as I had in previous years. My consumption was mainly through radio and TV and so I’d have heard this, and caught the video a fair bit, not only for the fact that it reached #10 in the singles charts but as it proved to be one of those songs which stayed on playlists for many months afterwards.” (2 March 2017)

#102: King Biscuit Time – I Walk The Earth

“King Biscuit Time is also the name under which Steve Mason of The Beta Band initially released his solo material, with two EPs in 1998-2000 and then two singles and an album in 2005/2006. My favourite of his stuff from that era is the lead song from the No Style EP, which came out in June 2000.” (14 September 2019)

#101: The Monochrome Set – Eine Symphonie des Grauens

“The Monochrome Set, formed in 1978 in London, would go on to release twelve singles between 1979 and 1985, before their initial break-up. Almost all twelve of the singles are worthy of sitting in the collection of any fan of fiendishly catchy, clever and danceable indie-pop. The first three singles came out in 1979 on Rough Trade. I’ll be honest and say that I wasn’t huge on the band at this time. If I had been aware of the quality of these singles, I’d have snapped them up at the time…..or at least I’d like to think I would have…..the 15/16-year old me might have thought them just a tad too quirky and maybe it was best that I didn’t discover them for a few more years, courtesy of them and later singles being aired at nights in the student union.” (16 October 2019)

 

 

JC

#160: Maxïmo Park – Graffiti

Maxïmo Park put on at a sold-out Glasgow Barrowlands in December 2005. They weren’t supposed to play there, but they had long sold out the Student Union location the debut album tour was supposed to call at and the demand for tickets was huge. Maybe it was the unexpected nature of them playing the iconic venue that drove them on to delivering a gig that remains one of the best I’ve been to.

#159: This Poison! – Poised Over The Pause Button

From Perth (Scotland and not Australia!) who came together in 1985 and disbanded in 1989, releasing just two singles during that time. They were signed to Reception Records, the label established by the Wedding Present. This was their second single, one I’ve long regarded belonging in the category of great lost 45s of the era.

#158: Davey Woodward & The Winter Orphans – After Midnight

The frontman of The Brilliant Corners has continued to pursue a career (of sorts)  in recent years, as part of different bands or more recently as a solo artist. As one reviewer has said, “his voice has matured into something reminiscent of mid-period Dylan meeting late-Velvets Lou Reed, with an air of slightly deadpan world-weariness which suits the songs perfectly.” His music isn’t always the sort that grabs you on first or even second listens, but there’s loads of rewards if you stick with things.

#157: The Frank & Walters – Fashion Crisis Hits New York

This is the first of the Cork band’s songs that I ever heard, again courtesy of it being included on a Jacques the Kipper compilation tape.  It got me really interested and soon after I went to see them play in King Tut’s in Glasgow.  Turned out to be a good decision to get along early to catch the support band, some unknown moody mob from Oxford calling themselves Radiohead.  Having said that, The Frank and Walters themselves put on a superb show.

#156: Ducks Ltd – Hollowed Out

Kind of came across Ducks Ltd by accident.  SWC had asked me to contribute a piece over at No Badger Required about Toronto, one which would cover my love for the baseball team and also the music to come out of the city, with the proviso that there was a focus on one little-known singer or band, of my choice, to pique some interest.  One google search later, and I was listening to a duo whose bio said “they then decided to collaborate upon discovering their mutual love for 80s pop bands like Felt, Orange Juice, and The Go-Betweens.”  Is it any wonder I got quickly hooked and have snapped up everything they’ve ever released?

#155: Propaganda – Dr. Mabuse

‘A Secret Wish’, the debut album by Propaganda has long been an all-time favourite. It was the sort of record I had imagined Simple Minds going onto make on the back of their earliest releases instead of gravitating towards the stadium rock behemoths they were becoming.  As with so many other songs that have made this rundown, I’ve gone back to the very first one I ever heard.  It’s probably my subconscious saying thanks for the introduction…..

#154: Fad Gadget – Ricky’s Hand

Fad Gadget was the stage name of the late Frank Tovey (8 September 1956 – 3 April 2002), one of the pioneers of UK electronica. In 1979, he became the first, outside of label founder Daniel Miller to release a single on Mute Records. He would be part of the label for the rest of his life, which ended at the age of 45 after a heart attack. This was his second ever single, released in 1980.

#153: Working Men’s Club – A.A.A.A.

From Todmorden in Yorkshire, a town famed for the Golden Lion pub/performance space that was beloved of Andrew Weatherall and which is at the heart of much of the work carried out by The Flightpath Estate, as referenced earlier in the rundown.  It can be no real surprise that one of the best new UK electronica bands has emerged from that scene, and I have a feeling that Working Men’s Club frontman and main songwriter Sydney Minsky-Sargeant has a few Fad Gadget records in his collection.

#152: Leftfield Lydon – Open Up (12″ mix)

As indeed might have the Leftfield duo of Neil Barnes and Paul Daley.  I’ll admit to cheating a bit here in that instead of simply attributing them with all the songs on the 1995 debut ‘Leftism’, I’ve divvied them up in the way the singles were, with the guest vocalists given a specific credit.  Which means……..

#151: Leftfield – Release The Pressure (single edit)

The opening track on the album is a tremendous blend of trippy/languid dance and reggae, extending to eight minutes. The single version was edited down to just under four minutes and with the hip-hop beat being maintained constantly throughout amidst additional vocal ad-libbing.

#150: The Organ – Brother

Here’s another who were written about a few times over on the old blog.  A five-piece Canadian all-female group who released just the one album, ‘Grab That Gun’ back in 2004. They gave us a slightly different take on North American indie music, as the so often bog-standard vocals/guitar/bass/drums were supplemented, appropriately enough, by a Hammond organ.

#149: The Walkmen – The Rat

ICA #360, from March 2014.  It’s time once again to hand over to SWC.

“If this was the only Walkmen song that ever saw the light of day then it would still be heads and shoulders above nearly every other song that was ever written or released. It was also Tim Badger’s favourite song and for that alone, it stands unchallenged as a moment of beauty and angsty post punk excellence. It is the sort of song that makes you throw yourself around the lounge like a petulant teenager.”

#148: Funkadelic – One Nation Under A Groove

Hey Hey Hey…..it’s 1979 again.  Well, not really. It was released as single in late 1978 but hit its peak position of #9 in January 1979.  All the 45s I bought back in the day came from the money I made delivering newspapers. It now seems ironic, from a distance, that the much despised capitalist bastards/press barons of the 70s played a significant part in me starting up a record collection.

#147: Jim Bob – A Song By Me

The former frontman of the much loved Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine has made quite a number of excellent solo albums, as well as becoming a reasonably successful author of fiction. He still has the same distinctive voice from the Carter USM heydays, and he’s never lost his knack for combining brilliantly constructed lyrics with the catchiest of tune.  Jim Bob’s stuff made great sense to the 20/30-something that I was back in the 90s, which was part of the great appeal about his band. Now that I’m a 60-something, it’s great to find he’s still very much hitting all my sweet spots.

#146: Spiritualized – Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (I Can’t Help Falling in Love)

I’ve said before that I never quite get the fuss over Spritualized. But this is jaw-droppingly magnificent.

#145: Kim Deal – Coast

The debut album from Pixies arrived in 1987.  The debut album from The Breeders was 1990. The debut (and only) album from The Amps dates to 1995.  All told, Kim Deal was involved with eleven albums, along with umpteen singles and EPs.  The biggest surprise perhaps is that it took until 2024, and at the age of 63, before she released anything under own name.  ‘Nobody Loves You More’ was one of the year’s biggest and best surprises containing a mix of the indie-rock we have long associated with her various bands alongside songs that utilise string and horn sections, with many of the lyrics being highly personal.

#144: Sinead O’Connor – Mandinka

See previous entries in this rundowm about including the first song you ever heard by a singer or band.

#143: The Lovely Eggs – I Like Birds (But I Like Other Animals Too)

Another for which I owe Aldo a huge debt for the introduction.  The Lovely Eggs are the husband/wife combo of Holly Ross and David Blackwell, and they’ve been releasing music for almost 20 years now, with seven albums and a host of singles/EPs. I think it would be fair to describe them as the ultimate cult indie band whose songs always seems to have more than a hint of cheek and fun.

#142: Florence and The Machine – Dog Days Are Over

Since 2010, I’ve become increasingly connected to the town of Westport in County Mayo, Ireland.  I’ve grown to love the county’s obsession with Gaelic Football, and in particular the efforts to win the All-Ireland Final (known lovingly as the Sam Maguire) for the first time since 1951.  The team came so close on many occasions – they had appeared in 11 finals since 1951 and lost them all, with some blaming a curse that had been put on the county after that last win.

This year, they finally got their hands on Sam.  I’ll admit to getting a tad emotional watching the scenes on the television.  As the players ran around the pitch in celebration, the matchday announcer played ‘Dog Days Are Over’ across the sound system.  I knew then I had my Florence and The Machine song for the rundown.

#141: Senser – Eject (Over Zealous Mix)

In the early ’90s, there was a short-lived trend of bands whose sound combined rock, rap, and electronica becoming all the rage, and London-based Senser were, rightly, thought of as one of the best exponents in the UK.

In 2006, when a new blog called The Vinyl Villain started up, one of the stated missions was to rip and post mp3s of difficult to find b-sides straight from the vinyl.  This remix of a 1994 single was one of the earliest such offerings.

#140: Vampire Weekend – A-Punk

I know this lot divide opinion, but I’ve always enjoyed the energy and obvious enthusiaism that comes through on this single from 2008.  Oh, and the indecipherable bonkers lyrics!

This provides another great illustration of the changes in the way that music is bought in the modern era.  A-Punk never got higher in the charts than #55 on its release in February 2008, probably selling around 10,000 copies of the CD.  But by February 2019, it had been certified as platinum in the UK with sales of at least 600,000 while by January 2024 it had racked up 1.2 million sales.  That’s some amount of downloads and streams. not to mention the profits for the hosting sites with not a huge amount going to the artists.  I wonder if young people will come to regret, in years to some, not having physical copies of so much of the music they enjoy

#139: Terry Hall – Forever J (Pulp Mix)

Terry Hall was more than just a singer, songwriter and musician. He was a brave champion of social and political justice his entire life, and when he stood up in the late 70s and early 80s to preach his message, he did so knowing he and his mates would get flak and be subject to violence.

‘Forever J’ is a track on his 1994 album, ‘Laugh’.  It was released as a single and when Khayem penned an ICA (#277) in February 2021, he said ‘ it sounds exactly like Terry performing with Pulp as his backing band.”

#138: Red Guitars – Good Technology

One of Dirk’s 111 singles series.

“Perhaps this is because the tune is so simple: three chords, a kick drum and a bass unchanging throughout the whole song. Nothing all too spectacular, not really comparable to, for example, „Anarchy In The UK“ really. But, then there are the lyrics, and boy, what lyrics! It’s all there: the power of the internet and social media, environmental catastrophe, reality TV, the fast food industry and an ever more grotesque arms industry”

It really is a belter of a song.

#137: Manic Street Preachers – A Design For Life (Stealth Sonic Orchestra Mix)

As with Teenage Fanclub, I’ll describe myself as an admirer rather than a lover of Manic Street Preachers.  Luckily, KT, who was part of the ensemble over the former ‘The Sound of Being OK’ blog came up with a stupendous ICA (#182) in September 2018:-

“The first time I heard this (not this version) I was sitting in a café in a small place called Chudleigh which is just outside Exeter and I was waiting for my sister to come back from the dentist. I was fifteen (going on sixteen) and it was played on Radio 1. I love every second of it from the opening bit about “Libraries giving us power” to drums, the strings and the twinkly bits at the end. The remix I love even more, especially the way the strings are brought to the forefront and the emotion of James Dean Bradfield’s voice is wrung out to devastating effect.”

#136: Badder Meinhoff – Badder Meinhoff

1995. Luke Haines and his great mate Phil Vinall, who had produced the first two albums by The Auteurs, were bored and restless, and over a weekend they went into a studio to have a bit of fun, trying to match music to a lyric or two that Haines had pulled together about his latest fascination, a left-wing terrorist gang that had become famous/infamous in the 1970s.  The owner of Hut Records had long regarded Haines as a maverick genius and gave the green light, not just for this as a single, but also a full album.  Both bombed (and yes, the pun is intentional)

#135: Basil Pieroni – Don’t Ever Go Away Again

He’s the guitarist in Butcher Boy and he’s become, in the years since this blog started, a real good pal.  And if I wasn’t able to include my pal in this rundown, then I’d struggle to sleep at nights.  The song is utterly DIY.  Released in 1986 only on flexi-disc, and as a b-side at that, with the a-side belonging to another set of musicians from Basil’s home town of Irvine, some 25 miles down the coast to the south-west of Glasgow.

#134: Modern English – I Melt With You

Big in America (albeit as one-hit wonders), but a flop in their UK homeland.  My reckoning is that they were just too poppy for the indie-kids and too indie for the pop-purists thus unable to satisfy any one demographic of a potential fan base.  Oh, and the fact that the label of the uber-miserablists, 4AD, didn’t really know how to market them.

#133: Edinburgh School For The Deaf – Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

They came to prominence in 2010, taking their name from a famous landmark institution in their home city, emerging in part from the ashes of St Jude’s Infirmary in which two of the members had played. Their own description of their sound was “deathjangle” and “noise pop”.

They were together for less than two years, during which there was just one single and one album on the Glasgow-based Bubblegum Records.  They were much feted, particularly among the many excellent Scottish bloggers plying their trade at the time.  Mike, from Manic Pop Thrills was one of their champions, as too was Matthew from Song, By Toad…and they are two gentlemen with impeccable taste.  As indeed is the owner of the now defunct Bubblegum Records, someone I would meet a few years later.

#132: House of Love – Destroy The Heart

The John Peel Festive 50 of 1988, voted in as ever by the listeners, contained six songs from The Fall, five from the Wedding Present, four from the Pixies, four from Morrissey while the likes of Public Enemy, Billy Bragg, New Order, James, Jesus and Mary Chain, Sugarcubes, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Sonic Youth and Happy Mondays all made an appearance. But the surprise poll topper was ‘Destroy The Heart’, one of three House of Love singles to make the list – the others were Love In A Car (#18) and Christine (#9).

#131 : Idlewild – You Held the World in Your Arms

In terms of hit singles, Idlewild are one of the most successful to emerge from Scotland in recent(ish) times.  There were twelve successive Top 40 hits between 1999 and 2007.  Only one of the singles breached the Top 10, and it was this, the lead-off track from the 2002 album, ‘The Remote Part’, which itself proved to be their best-selling LP.  The band is still on the go, and this year they celebrated 30 years together with a special sold-out outdoor show in Glasgow, that took place on lead singer Roddy Woomble’s 50th birthday.

#130: The Charlatans – North Country Boy

For Issac Robert Neville Turner (23 November 1988 – 30 November 2021).  Loved by Everyone.

#129: Dot Allison – Mo’Pop

One Dove broke up in 1996, but it wasn’t until 1999 that Dot Allison released her debut solo album, ‘Afterglow’.  I recall there being a lot of expectation in the music press that she would make it big and break into the mainstream of pop music.  The album didn’t chart, while Mo’Pop was the best performing single, but it only reached #81. I find it all a bit strange that the radio stations weren’t interested.

#128: The Modern Lovers – Roadrunner (Twice)

A tune first recorded in April 1972 with John Cale of The Velvet Underground fame in the producer’s chair but which didn’t become available for public consumption until 1976 on a much delayed debut album. In the interim, a new version had been recorded with Matthew King Kaufman as producer.  The latter version was released as a single in the UK in 1977 and went to #11 in the charts, credited to Jonathan Richman.  It’s b-side was the earlier recorded Cale version and credited to the Modern Lovers, although the info on the label credits Kaufman as producer. It’s really confusing. Anyway, the Cale version is the superior take.

#127: Curve – Fait Accompli

Quite rightly, this was single of the week in Melody Maker back in February 1992.  And while I have no idea what other records were released that week, I am 99.99999999% sure nothing was better than Curve’s finest moment.

“Faît Accompli” forsakes Curve’s usual sweet violence for a slinky radiance which sits well on them. It’s relaxed, playful almost – you can fair see the glint in Toni’s eye as she breathes, “I’ve come to crush your bones, I’ve come to make you feel good, I’ve come to mess with your head…” Oh well, if you must.

#126: Sugarcubes – Walkabout

I’ve decided to forego what I guess would be most folk’s Sugarcubes favourites and include what proved to be their second-to-last single back in 1992.  There’s countless songs about sex that have been written over time, and this must be one of the strangest, yet delightful.  Only Bjork can get away with singing lines such as “Delicious boy with animal eyes, beautiful buttocks, haunting movements” or “There’s a cove, and there’s a ship that goes in and out of the harbour” without sounding ridiculous, while on this occasion Einar’s contrasting spoken-delivery contribution works to a T.

#125: The Goon Sax – Make Time For Love

There were three albums of increasingly confident indie-pop from these three talented young Australians.  The first arrived in 2016 when they had an average age of 17.  The last was issued in 2021, while they broke-up in 2022.  I’ll let you do the maths.

#124: Roxy Music – Virginia Plain

I’d have been just nine years old when this one stormed into the UK charts all the way up to #4. I do vaguely recall hearing it on the radio at the time but then again that might be my memory playing tricks on me and maybe I only became hugely familiar with it in the ensuing years. By any account, it was a remarkable debut single, one that broke so many rules for 70s radio play, with a fade-in and gradual intro along with a dead-stop ending. Most noticeably, there’s no chorus, while title of the song is only uttered once – and that’s with its closing two words.

#123: The Costello Show – Little Palaces

OK, I’m cheating.  I’ve decided to treat The Costello Show separately from anything else that Elvis has done over the decades, but not to the extent that I’ll give a song from ‘King Of America’ a placing in the Top 120, even though I’m on record (back in October 2016) as saying ‘Little Palaces’ is the best track he’s ever recorded.  My rundown…my rules!!

This is basically a solo song – the acoustic guitar and mandolin are played by Elvis, with just a hint of string bass to back it up, played by Jerry Scheff. The closing few minutes of this song often bring a tear to my eye from the raw and powerful images invoked by the lyric and the traditional almost folk-like music.

#122: Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)

‘It’s better to burn out than fade away’, a line made (in)famous for being part of Kurt Cobain‘s suicide note, originally penned by Neil Young in the late 70s as part of the lyric to the closing track on ‘Rust Never Sleeps’, a part live, part studio album released in 1979.

This was the first Neil Young album that I became familiar with, thanks to a tape of it being part of the rotation in the 5th Year school common room, and while it didn’t fully appeal to my post punk/new wave sensibilities, it didn’t offend them. Indeed, I was surprised to learn that Neil Young was a rocker as I had assumed, on the basis of the songs of his that were most played on the radio,(e.g. ‘After The Goldrush’ or ‘Heart of Gold’), that he was a folkie/hippy.

#121: British Sea Power – Lately

They were the late Tim Badger’s favourite band, and I know he was delighted to be able to contribute an ICA (#61) back in February 2016.  I’m sure that, if he hadn’t passed away so tragically and so young (he was 51) from a heart attack back in February 2019 he would have roared in agreement with the reasoning and decision, from August 2021 onwards, to modify the name to Sea Power.

Tim closed his ICA with ‘Lately’, while SWC posted the song when he penned his incredibly moving tribute to his best friend.  Tim wrote:-

Well I can’t think of a better way to end the (ICA) album. This rocks in at nearly fourteen minutes evolving from a simple guitar melody into a geological chant of “Do You like my megalithic rock” then “Do you Like My prehistoric Rock” and so on – and then descends into a full on Mogwai style guitar wall of noise.

And I can think of no better way to close the part of the rundown where the songs were, mostly, given a random number.  The final six parts of the series will see me try, and most likely miserably fail, at ranking things from 120 down to #1.

Cheers.

 

 

 

JC

#200: LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends

This one goes out to anyone and everyone who has ever interacted with the blog.  Thank you.

#199 : TeenCanteen – Sister

A rather splendid all-girl band from Glasgow who, between 2013 and 2017, made tremendous old-fashioned pop music that made you want to just dance and sing along. The early releases were self-financed and on cassette, but in due course there would be vinyl releases – one album and two singles, while a retrospective collection of demos and early recordings was issued by Last Night From Glasgow in 2021.  Lead singer and main songwriter, Carla J Easton, has twice before appeared in this rundown as a solo artist and as part of the band, Poster Paints.

#198: Everything But The Girl – When All’s Well

Their absence from the Top 120 hopefully gives yet another indication as to how tough it was to narrow everything down.  So many great tunes to choose from. In the end, as I have done so often in this rundown, I go back to the early days for a song that was a staple of the music played in the first shared flat I lived in during my student days.

#197: Ronettes – Walking in the Rain

It’s not a good thing that the Ronettes have only ever been mentioned once on the blog, and it was thanks to strangeways.  ICA #386, in April 2025, was called ‘Ten Lovely Tracks’ and featured ten different groups or bands.  This opened the ICA.  strangeways made an incredible but astute observation:-

“With its references to shyness, its grown-up assertion that ‘sometimes we’ll fight’, its fondness for wishing on stars and of course its championing of rain over sun you could say that thematically Walking in the Rain gifted a bit of a blueprint to the indiepop genre that would emerge fifteen or so years later.”

I’m so lucky to have such great writers contributing on a regular basis.

#196: This Mortal Coil – Song From The Siren

It’s NOT cheating including this AND the inevitable Cocteau Twins song further down the line.

4AD label boss Ivo Watts-Russell originally wanted this to be a cappella but ended up including what was a one-take of Guthrie, and I quote ‘leaning against the studio wall bored out of his mind playing these chords’.  Elizabeth Fraser’s vocal was also, quite astonishingly, recorded in one take.

#195: One Dove – White Love

A third successive stunning female vocal in the rundown.  This one won’t have been captured in one take.   And to think that I lived in such an indie bubble back in the day that it took until the purchase of an NME Singles of The Week compilation CD in early 1994 before I heard it.  The same CD was also responsible for my introduction to Tindersticks.

#194: The Streets – Let’s Push Things Forward

I’ve always been someone who has placed more emphasis than is really necessary on the importance of a good lyric.  Maybe that’s why, despite really having no connection with garage music, that I fell so heavily for the debut album by The Streets. It was my dear friend Jacques the Kipper who put me onto The Streets. One day we met up at the football, and he handed me a new compilation CD that he’d burned (we had long moved on from the era of compilation cassettes!). I can’t recall what else was on the CD, but I do know I bought ‘Original Pirate Material’ a few days later.

#193: A Certain Ratio – Shack Up

Turning again to a guest ICA, this time from echorich.  It was #107 in February 2017, and was so well-curated that it inspired Adam to come up with one of his own just three weeks later, with ten completely different songs.

Here the band decides the best way to change the world is to work together, live together, sleep together. Pop sociology with thumping bass, manic guitar and horns straight off of J.B.’s charts. You can’t help but move to this. Played loud enough, the ground below you will force it upon you. I remember ‘Shack Up’ being one of those songs DJ’s would wait to play at the peak hour in Hurrah, Peppermint Lounge or Danceteria for years. It never failed to get the crowd to the next level.

#192: Foo Fighters – This Is A Call

This rundown is dredging up loads of memories.  Back in June 2021, SWC wrote about the Foo Fighters and in doing so, took himself back to 1995.

Another great record that evokes wonderful memories. In this case Saturday Night at the 1995 Reading Festival. One of those nights where you really had to be there – I was there, but I wasn’t ‘there’ there. If that makes sense.

It was the debut UK gig by Dave Grohl’s new combo.  SWC got there very early, so much so that he caught half the set of the preceding band.  He took up what he thought would be a good and safe space near the back of the tent.  There was plenty of space at the time, and then…..

15 minutes to go, you can just about move. My position at the near the back had become slightly squashed against a pillar right at the back. To my left a girl has just started to climb another pillar. To my right a couple of hairy arsed blokes start pushing their way to through, beer is being thrown across the tent.

5 minutes to go, the crowd is stretching back outside the tent and into the field behind it. I’ve been pushed back again and now find myself about fifteen feet from the tent and unable to see a bloody thing. I turn round as the cheers and yelling starts, and the people next to me push forward. Its looks seriously dangerous in there now. I shrug, it’s only a band I tell the bloke next to me as he pushes forward and I decide to leave.

A reminder, not that I needed it, as to why for decades now, I’ve not gone near any multi-stage festival.

#191: Ride – Sennen

SWC was responsible for the first ever guest ICA (#4) in October 2014. He sent it over from Guyana where he was temporarily working at the time.

Because it a truly beautiful song, it reminds me of home and I love it. I have said it before, that Sennen Cove in Cornwall is the most beautiful place on Earth. Also, the moment when the vocals enter, is a shivers up the spine moment.

#190: Gene – I Can’t Help Myself  and I Can’t Help Myself (Radio 1 Session)

This is the only time when I couldn’t bring myself to keep one version out of the rundown for another.  The studio take is one of the best b-sides that any band has recorded.   My preference is for the Radio 1 session, originally made available via a free cassette given away with a monthly music magazine but later included on the compilation To See The Lights, consisting of rarities, live tracks and acoustic versions of singles.  “This stripped down, piano only version takes the song from good to transcendent” said Dave Glickman in ICA #15 back in June 2015.

#189: Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip – Thou Shall Always Kill

Debut spoken-word electronic single from 2007 which has loads of laugh-out moments whilst disseminating fabulous advice for keeping sane in the modern world.  Oh, and in case anyone is confused by the title (as I was originally not being au fait with the language of hip-hop) ‘to kill’ means to deliver an exceptional, dominant, or devastating performance.

#188: Big Audio Dynamite – Hollywood Boulevard (club mix)

More from the memory bank.

This was on a compilation tape made for me back in 1987…one that had no info about the song title or the performers. I knew it was Big Audio Dynamite. Sadly, the sound quality on the tape was poor, and I couldn’t ever convert it to an mp3 for blog purposes.  But in 2020, I finally got my hands on the ‘V-Thirteen’ 12″ single on which this particular mix had been included.

#187: The Loft – Up The Hill and Down The Slope

The Loft disintegrated in 1985 after just two singles, but thankfully have since reformed and delivered an outstanding debut album. ‘Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same’ forty years later! Tempting as it is to offer up something from the album, I’ve settled on the second of their 1985 singles.

#186: Trashcan Sinatras – Obscurity Knocks

This was in the Top 30 of my 45 45s@45 rundown back in 2008.  But rather than bore you with what I said about it, here’s the incredibly gifted Craig McAllister, of ‘Plain or Pan’, from his ICA (#186) in September 2018.

The sadly prophetic debut single- number 86 with a bullet and almost all downhill from there-on in – introduced the world to the Trashcans on a bed of frantically scrubbed acoustics, a lightning fast solo straight outta Roddy Frame’s Big Book Of Flashy Fretboard Wizardry and an unashamedly Scottish vocal. Early Trashcans was packed full of word play and clever puns and Obscurity Knocks runs the whole gamut. “The calendar’s cluttered with days that are numbered,” it goes, and in terms of those damned chart positions (should such things still matter to the band) it probably is, but despite their lack of commercial success, the TCS plough gamely ever onwards.

The sudden and unexpected death of John Douglas on 3 August 2026, after a short illness, means TCS will likely be no more as it’s hard to imagine them continuing.  One of the really sad things being that a few days prior to John’s passing, the band’s seventh studio album, ‘Ever The Optimist’ was released to great acclaim, highlighting that, even after more than 35 years of making music, they were as essential as ever.

#185: The Selecter – On My Radio

It’s been a wee while since a song from 1979 appeared in the rundown.  This was the first of four hit singles over a 12-month period for one of the bands most associated with 2-Tone.  The future looked bright, but the band, sadly, would fall apart by 1981.

#184: Wet Leg – Chaise Longue

The tune that brought then out of nowhere in 2021/22. Wet Leg took the indie-world by storm and wowed the planet’s biggest male pop star, Harry Styles, who insisted on having them open many of his arena and stadium shows.  There were all sorts of awards and accolades and then things went quiet. They returned with a second album in 2025 that wasn’t as well received as the debut, albeit it had a number of great tunes.  The live shows were also less than stellar, with Hester Chambers, one of the two female founder members, taking a backseat, with it feeling a bit like the Rhian Tisadle show with a backing band.  I’m not sure what the future will bring.

#183: Brian Bilston & The Catenary Wires – Alexa, What Is There To Know About Love

The Catenary Wires have already featured in the rundown, and I faced a bit of a dilemma whether to include any of the songs they recorded with the poet, Brian Bilston.  But as their collaboration happened to deliver one of my favourite records of 2025, and that the enjoyment came as much from the prose as the music, then I decided I could avoid having a guilty conscience.

#182: Public Image Ltd – Public Image

Hello, Hello. Hello, Hello. Hello, Hello. Ha Ha Ha Ha. 

It really was a cracking debut single. Lydon with the perfect introductory words and sign-off from the Pistols.

#181: The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu – Burn The Bastards

The last JAMMs single or the first by the KLF?  The label on this 1988 release says The KLF, while under other information it states ‘this is a transition record’.  But it had first seen light as a track on the LP ‘Who Killed The JAMMs’ with no mention of the KLF.

The subject matter of ‘Burn The Bastards’ is the debut JAMMs LP ‘1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)’, copies of which had been set on fire in a field just outside Stockholm to comply with a court ruling after Abba had successfully sued Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty for the unauthorised use of samples.  Making great use of ‘Dance to The Music’ by Sly and the Family Stone (along with a cheeky wee grab of ‘Bad’ by Michael Jackson), this single is an absolute hoot and infectiously danceable.

#180: HOUSE Of ALL – Magic Sound

When I first learned that five former members of The Fall had come together to form a new band in 2023, I assumed it was going to be some sort of tribute act.  But no, HOUSE Of ALL were very much there on their own merits, releasing an eponymous debut album that turned out be influenced by their former band rather than being a rip-off or a pastiche.  There’s since been three more albums, all of which have been promoted the old-fashioned way of going out on the road and touring. And just as I was typing up these words, I found out that they’ve now called it a day…but it seemed to have been good while it lasted.

#179: Chumbawumba – Give The Anarchist A Cigarette

From the sleevenotes accompanying the ‘Uneasy Listening’ compilation:-

Watching ‘Don’t Look Back’ (the rockumentary of Bob Dylan’s first English tour) around the time we began to write the ‘Anarchy’ album, we saw a man with a Christ complex. In the film, as the earth revolves around him in beautiful grainy black and white, we hear his manager Albert Grossman say : “Hey Bob, they’re calling you an anarchist.” Bob, enigmatic as ever, grunts “Give the anarchist a cigarette.” Albert slavishly proffers his boss a cigarette. Another revolutionary act in the life of a rock’n’roll rebel.  On the streets outside someone passed Guy Debord a cig….and the glowing ember burnt beauty into the streets.

#178: Ian McCulloch – Lover Lover Lover

An indie-dance tune, as penned by Lenny Cohen.  Bearing absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the 1974 original, Mac the Mouth gave us something we could all shake our snake hips to. Reached #47 in March 1992.

#177: John Cale – Hallelujah

Since 1991, ‘Hallelujah’ has been performed by more than 300 singers in many languages. Back in 2009, in an interview with a Canadian radio station, Leonard Cohen said he found the number of covers of his song “ironic and amusing”, given his record label had refused to release it when he first wrote it. John Cale covered it for the 1991 tribute album ‘I’m Your Fan’, which incidentally was the first time I ever heard any version of the song.  I don’t think anyone has bettered it….not even Tim Buckley.

#176: Editors – Blood (7″ version)

They’ve been together for almost 25 years, and there’s been seven albums, the first being ‘The Back Room’ (2005) and the most recent being ‘EBM’ (2022).  I’m kind of ashamed not to have paid any attention since the third album, ‘In This Light And On This Evening’ (2009), but plenty have stuck with them as every album has gone Top 10, albeit the last single to chart was in 2009. Blood was the third ever single, and reached #18 in 2005.

#175: Yard Act – The Overload

Yard Act’s 2022 debut, ‘The Overload’, was a majestic piece of post-punk music with lyrics that were as sharp as the guitars. They haven’t, however, made carbon copies with their next two albums shifting in all sorts of directions (some of which work better than others) that has caused some consternation.

But here’s the thing.  If they had churned out more of the same as the debut, they’d face accusations of being one-trick ponies.  By changing things, they get scolded for not giving their fans exactly what they are looking out for.  Seems to me that they just can’t win. (see also #170 later in the rundown)

#174: Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes – Splashing Along

One of five Edinburgh mid-80s bands whose fates were reliant on each other as the singers and musicians not only shared rehearsal space, but were often happy enough to moonlight. All five have been found a spot in the rundown. This was the 1986 debut single from the combo who took their name from Elvis Presley’s stillborn twin brother.

#173: The Sexual Objects – Here Come The Rubber Cops

If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll have seen mention of maverick genius Davy Henderson a few times already, with The Nectarine No.9 and Win already featured, while his first group, Fire Engines will feature in the Top 120. In keeping with how Davy wanted to play things, the discography of The Sexual Objects consisted of just a handful of singles and albums, more often than not in limited editions, but they did bow out in 2025 with ‘Orangutan’, an 11-song career retrospective that finally made some songs more readily available.

#172: FFS – Johnny Delusional

One of the most fascinating albums of recent times. It’s fair to say that it all came across as something fresh and not a case of Alex Kopranos belting out Sparks tunes or the Mael Brothers being backed by a talented indie guitar band.

#171 : The Normal – Warm Leatherette

The Normal was the performing name adopted in 1978 by Daniel Miller, the head honcho of Mute Records, and under which he wrote, recorded, produced and distributed a one-off 7” single that was quite unlike anything else happening at that time across UK music.  This is the b-side which became the better known of the two songs, thanks to Grace Jones doing a cover version in 1980.

#170: Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg

No matter who was being cross-referenced musically, all the reviews of the early EPs, and subsequent debut LP, from Dry Cleaning, homed in on the spoken word delivery of Florence Shaw.  I’m a fan of the way she calmly and almost dispassionately recites the monologues, which are often of a personal nature as if being read from a diary.  It made Dry Cleaning stand apart from most emerging indie guitar bands.  They’ve not too shifted too far from the template and so they consistently face accusations of being one-trick ponies.  This is the title track of said debut album.

#169: Slime City – Dial-Up Internet Is The Purest Internet

The self-description from bandcamp.  “Slime City are a band from Glasgow who play fast existentialist nerd rock for people who like sighing but also fighting.”  They don’t take themselves too seriously while some of their songs take pot shots at the modern world.  Sometimes the tomfooolery gets in the way of things as they are a great sounding band, and in Michael M, they have a genuinely entertaining and charismatic frontman whose lyrics are as clever as they are funny.

#168: Lord Cut Glass – I’m A Great Example To The Dogs

The name used by Delgados front-man Alun Woodward, when he embarked on what proved to be a short solo career, not withstanding a film soundtrack he composed in 2016. There was just one single and an album in 2009, with the latter described accurately in the PR blurb as “A beguilingly eclectic and hugely flamboyant affair – one of a kind and quite brilliant.”  Alun is now well distanced from the music industry, working as a Senior Project Archaeologist at sites all across Scotland.

#167: Emma Pollock – Don’t Make Me Wait

The Delgados front-woman used her own name when she embarked on what has proved to be a sustained solo career encompassing four studio albums, released in 2007, 2010, 2016 and 2025.  The delays between these latter releases have been well worth it as ‘In Search Of Harperfield’ and ‘Begging The Night To Take Hold; have turned out to be two of my favourite albums of the past ten years.  The critic who, in a review of Harperfield described her as “The Dusty Springfield of cerebral indie pop” should get the UK equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize – just a pity nothing like that exists.

#166: Sultans of Ping F.C. – Where’s Me Jumper?

There’s all sorts of earnest and serious songs in this rundown.  This isn’t one of them. It was a real thrill when, on my first ever visit to Cork just a few months banc in July 2026, I found a piece of street-art dedicated to the band.

#165: Fun Boy Three – Our Lips Are Sealed

They made music, often with edgy and confrontational lyrics, particularly in regards to dealing with nasty right-wing racist bigots. The group’s name was tongue-in-cheek, totally mocking the idea of being what the record industry’s demands for their pop stars to be happy and carefree.

Back in July 2014, and with his full agreement, I pinched a posting from Walter that he had put up over at ‘A Few Good Times In My Life’, looking back at the best music and cinema releases of 1983.  I don’t think anyone can argue with these words on the FB3 album ‘Waiting’:-

One of the most perfect records ever that combined political and social commentary with fantastic harmonies and melodic twists. The whole record has a full touch of sadness and hopelessness all over. Often combined with the last hope: love. ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’  is pure pop but the effective arrangements featuring trombone, cello and other orchestral instruments make it a milestone in British music.

#164: The Brilliant Corners – Delilah Sands

January 2018 was when The Brilliant Corners debuted on the blog, thanks to ‘Please Please Please’, a song that I’d come across via a compilation album.  The post ended with a heartfelt plea for a long-standing fan to maybe offer up a guest ICA.  Eric from Oakland duly obliged with ICA, #163, just three months later.

“This is my favorite Brilliant Corners song. I can’t get enough of it. There’s just something about the way it’s all put together, from the unusual bop ba da da bop cold start through to the brilliant trumpet line. This is my go-to whenever I need a little pickmeup. Brilliant Corners firing on all cylinders to be sure.”

Note to Eric if you ever come across this.  Thank you so much.  I’ve since picked up a 48-song compilation CD of the band’s music that had been issued by Cherry Red Records in 2013.  ‘Delilah Sands’ is also my favourite song of theirs.

#163: Microdisney – Loftholdingswood

As I get near the end of the 40 songs that have slotted in from 200-161, I am conscious of just how many words I’ve written for this particular part of the rundown.  It’s wholly reflective of how many great bits of music there have been and my love/enthusiasm for them.  I could write a full dissertation on Microdisney, but instead I’ll let the music do the hard lifting.  There’ll be more from Cathal Coughlan a bit later on.

#162: Wire – I Am The Fly

I’ve painted myself into a corner here, haven’t I? Can’t say too much if I want to keep this chapter below 4000 words.

Released in February 1978. It didn’t get near the charts. Indeed, I’d be surprised if it got much in the way of radio play. I know for sure that John Peel would have played it as it was performed in session in January 1978, one of three such sessions that Wire did for his show. But his listeners weren’t that enthusiastic, never once voting the quartet into the Festive 50 during their late 70s/early 80s heyday.

#161: Eminem – Lose Yourself

He divides opinion.  I think he’s a lyrical genius but only when he’s not doing his Slim Shady stuff.  Can even (almost) forgive him for foisting Dido on us.

I’ll do my best to make the final four chapters less of a demanding read.  But I make no promises.

 

 

JC

Before getting the latest instalment underway, I just want to clarify that only the songs between #1 and #120 in the rundown are ranked in order of preference (and even then, many of them could easily go up and down a few places on any given day, depending on my mood, and indeed whether the sun is shining while I’m typing!)

All the songs from #800 down to #121 are randomly ordered, but in a way that each part of the series will hopefully have something for everyone.  It would have been boring, for example, if all 40 songs on any given day happened to be the work of four skinny indie kids with guitars.  So without any further delay, we’ll get things going with a song that I know at least one very valued regular contributor will be bitterly disappointed it’s not somewhere in the final 120.  Indeed, he may well repeat the opening comments over his morning coffee and aim them in my general direction…………

 

#240: X-Ray Spex – Germfree Adolescents

One of the greatest ever opening paragraphs on this blog over the past 20 years came courtesy of flimflamfan, in June 2020.  Please bear in mind that fff is a gentle-mannered individual and that Poly Styrene is as close to him ever having a musical hero.

“Oh, for fuck sake!” “Whit!?” “Oh, come on!” “What a load of shite!” “Prick!” (whether male or female). These are but a small sample of my regular responses to interviews by nonentities (Talking Heads) all too keen to embarrass themselves with their ignorance re: the one, the only Poly Styrene.

#239 : Steve Mason – The People Say

I’ll whisper it as it may be a tad on the controversial side…..but I prefer Steve Mason’s solo output ahead of his music as part of the Beta Band. This is from ‘Brothers & Sisters’, released in 2023, one of my most-loved albums of this current decade.

#238: Mercury Rev – Goddess On A Hiway

I fully second all that SWC says here as part of ICA #187, back in September 2017:-

“A song which pulls on the heartstrings every time you listen to it. Donahue’s little cry of ‘I know it ain’t gonna last’ stirs emotions inside people that they didn’t even know they had. It is captivating, it is gorgeous, it is devastating and remains to this day a stunning piece of music. A track that is so vital to this band that if you suddenly deleted everything else that they had ever recorded, and just left this, it really wouldn’t matter.”

#237: Ballboy – Avant Garde Music

The first thing that jumps out about Ballboy is the finest set of song titles since The Smiths were in their pomp, but the tunes are more than a match for the song titles. This one captures perfectly what it is that makes the band such an appealing listen. It is self-deprecating, humorous, catchy and with has the most wonderful put-down line of ‘I don’t give a fuck what she says or thinks about me’. Indie attitude at its very best!

#236: International Teachers of Pop – After Dark

Sheffield is a city that has produced many of the best electronic pop groups to come out of the UK, and 2019 saw the emergence of yet another, International Teachers of Pop.  The eponymous debut album involved the use of old fashioned equipment and recording methods, yet still offered something that sounded fresh and very modern.

#235: The Servants – The Sun A Small Star

David Westlake, the singer with The Servants, featured in the rundown a wee while back.  The second single from the Servants was released in October 1986 and is a timeless classic. I posted this back in March 2015 with a plea that I’d love to hear from anyone who had a copy of the one studio album they had released in 1990 and/or a later compilation that was issued in 2006. Within a week, a very generous TVV reader had posted CDs to me.

#234: Talk Talk – Happiness Is Easy

Comrade Colin penned a very personal ICA (#109) looking at Talk Talk back in February 2017. They have long been one of his favourites, and he delved deep into the album tracks to come up with something very special and a long way from the few chart hits we all know and hopefully love. He opened the ICA with this one, the first track on the album ‘The Colour of Spring’, released in 1986.

“It’s a composition that reminds us how good it can be to feel alive. As a cure for melancholia and uncertainty, I can recommend no better song.”

#233: G W McLennan – Easy Come Easy Go

One half of the Go-Betweens song-writing duo released four solo albums in the period between the band breaking-up and then reforming.  This one can be found on ‘Watershed’, which came out in 1991.  Wouldn’t have sounded out of place on any Go-Betweens LP

#232: The Vapors – News At Ten

Without question, they are best remembered for the new wave hit ‘Turning Japanese’ which reached #3 in March 1980.  The follow-up single was much better.  A more ambitious effort which was both in terms of music and subject matter which owed a debt to The Jam, with the song’s protagonist having left school for a dead end job and finding life at home with the folks to be somewhat stifling. It stalled at #44 in the charts.

#231: Public Enemy – You’re Gonna Get Yours

Here’s a sort of hidden para by Jacques the Kipper back in August 2015, as part of a miscellaneous post commemorating his 50th birthday:-

When I played Yo! Bum Rush The Show for the first time, it was another jaw stretching moment. So much (black) power. Energy. Beats. And they meant it maan. Of course they’ve done better stuff since, of course listening now it doesn’t seem as powerful as it did then. But, in the modern world of social media, of (free) music at every turn, of sampler tracks, of rough recording releases, that moment of hearing an album this good and this (to me) different, for the first time, in full, will never be repeated. Hearing this, indirectly, took my musical direction down a whole new path.

#230: Dancer – Bluetooth Hell

A Glasgow-based band who have become of my favourite finds of the past couple of years. There’s just the two albums so far, but not a duff track across either of them.  As someone far better with words than I’ll ever be said, they are ‘a sonic mash-up of melodic warmth and perfectly crafted pop songs with crunch’.

#229: White Town – Your Woman

I still find it remarkable, even almost 30 years after it became a surprise #1, that this is the work of one musician, Jyoti Mishra, working in his bedroom and not in a professional studio.  Seemingly, with male vocals sung from a female perspective, it was the first gender-reversal song to ever top the UK chart.

#228: Oasis – Acquiesce

There was a lot of hyperbole in the wake of the 2024 comeback shows.  I had to laugh when I read a sniffy newspaper critic say “Oasis are the most damaging pop-cultural force in recent British history”.  And here’s me thinking we should be grateful that the money they generated for Creation Records helped the label  to bankroll critically-acclaimed but less commercially successful acts in the mid 90s, such as Teenage Fanclub, Super Furry Animals, Boo Radleys, My Bloody Valentine, The House of Love and Felt.

#227: Tracey Thorn – Hands Up To The Ceiling

As a solo artist as well as through other contributions, Tracey Thorn was also going to make into this rundown, and I was always going to call on Echorich to supply the prose, lifted from ICA #262(a) back in September 2020:-

“A contemplative song that looks back at the past – one filled with missed opportunities, vanished expectations and reality. There is a beautiful longing in Tracey’s voice as she tries to reach back to a time that was filled with promise. From the album Out of the Woods (2006).

#226: Airborne Toxic Event – Sometime Around Midnight

A song for when you’ve broken up with someone, perhaps unexpectedly, and you’re still not over them, and it’s even worse when you end up bumping into them with their new other half alongside them.  This is the ensuing gut-wrenching feelings captured in song.

But let’s not stay sad for too long………………………

#225: Chic – Le Freak (12″ version)

Seven million sales worldwide in 1979. It’s as great a single as any post-punk/new wave effort from the same year.

Get dancin’

#224: Dr Dre (feat. Snoop Dog) – The Next Episode

There’s a lot that is now unlistenable from the album ‘2001’ for all sorts of reasons, and so I’m pleased I own it only on CD as the fast-forward button is a necessity. Despite my unease about a lot of things, there are enough songs that were instant classics and still, all these years later, retain the right to be described as such.  ‘The Next Episode’ is possibly THE song which most captured west coast rap….until the emergence of a certain Kendrick Lamar.

#223: Bloc Party – Helicopter

Bloc Party were incredibly popular back in the day.  Debut album, ‘Silent Alarm’, released in February 2005, sold more than half a million copies in the UK and spent 60 weeks in the Top 100, thanks in part to a run of consistently excellent hit singles.

#222: Gorillaz – Tomorrow Comes Today

One night back in late 2000, while suffering from insomnia, I caught a glimpse of a cartoon video of on MTV. It must have been around 3am or something. My ears immediately picked up on a great tune and what sounded awfully like the vocals of Damon Albarn. But quite clearly, this was not anything by Blur.  I never imagined that Gorillaz would become such a force over the ensuing years.

#221: Leonard Cohen – Tower Of Song

I became aware of the work of Leonard Cohen from about the age of 13 as a mate’s older brother insisted on playing his stuff all the time. I can’t say I was too keen….it was all a bit doom and gloom and let’s face it, the majority of the subject matters went right over my head at the time. But as a number of my own favourite musicians in the 80s began to name check him as an influence I re-approached his material with a fresh mind and discovered that I was indeed a fan. And in 1988, I finally bought an album at the time of its release.

#220: Frank Wilson – Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)

The first-ever bloggers weekend back in May 2017 was unforgettable for all sorts of reasons, not least that there were all sorts of gifts handed out.  Drew, from the much-loved and much-missed ‘Across The Kitchen Table’, handed me a bootleg copy of a Northern Soul single, with the words ‘You’ll Love This’.  He was right.

#219: Alvvays – Adult Diversion

“The Toronto-based band have variously been stapled to styles as similar and diverse as dream pop and shoegaze, power pop and twee. Genre-hoppers then, albeit beneath the blanket-descriptor of indie. “ So said strangeways in his ICA (#353) in October 2023.  He deliberately left off songs that I’d previously written about some twelve months earlier, including this, the opening song on their eponymous debut album back in 2014.

#218: Panic Shack – Tit School

More music from Wales.  I’ve only, thus far, featured Panic Shack via mixtapes, but that’ll change sometime soon(ish).  A modern band for the modern age, building things up via TikToc etc.  The debut album arrived in June 2025, and it’s a great listen, full of energy, wit and bravado.

#217: Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Talking Straight

More music from Australia.  RBCF have been on the go for over a decade and first made a splash over here in 2018.  One of their most striking features is that they have three distinct lead vocalists which does make for variety, but can be a bit distracting when listening to an album.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens next as the critical and fans response to their third and most recent LP, released in 2022, was a bit more lukewarm than the first two.

#216: Eugene Kelly – I’m Done With Drugs

After the Vaselines split up in 1989, Eugene Kelly formed Captain America, only to have to change the name to Eugenius after the threat of legal action.  In 2003, he recorded ‘Man Alive’, a solo album under his own name, initially released on CD only in Japan.  It wasn’t until 2023 that the album was given a very belated vinyl release, courtesy of Past Night From Glasgow.   The opening song on the album is three minutes of damn-near perfect pop…and maybe the best Teenage Fanclub song that none of Norman, Gerry or Raymond ever wrote.

#215: The Bug Club – The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System

Yet more music from Wales!  My introduction to The Bug Club was through ICA #368, delivered by The Robster in June 2024. Within a matter of weeks, I’d bought their brand-new album, ‘On The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System’, which was actually their third, and there’s been two more since. Evidence that the duo are as hard-working and prolific as any in the industry.

#214: Lambchop – Grumpus

Until the release of ‘Nixon’ in 2000, the work of Lambchop had passed me by.  The album, their fifth, was lauded in almost all the end of year polls, and so I bought it on CD, and later bought it on vinyl when it was given a re-release.  It all led me to explore the back catalogue while I would also buy their next five offerings.  The verdict, however, is that nothing before or since has matched Nixon’s consistent brilliance.

#213: The Filthy Tongues – Black Valentine

A sort of offshoot of Goodbye Mr Mackenzie in that three current members of the Filthy Tongues were also in GMM.  But the music is totally different in sound and style, with the words ‘dark’, ‘brooding’and ‘gothic’ never being far away from the reviews, albeit there are few real signs of the latter.  ‘Black Valentine’ was a new song within a twelve-song compilation released by Last Night From Glasgow in 2023.

#212: Azealia Banks – 212

Filthy raps and bouncing electro beats from a native New Yorker.  I think the phrase is NSFW…….

Notwithstanding that this is such an incredible track, it is nigh on impossible to like Azealia Banks as a person, although it does seem that many of her outbursts can be linked with ongoing mental health issues.

#211 : John Cooper Clarke – Twat

Possibly NSFW.  One of JCC‘s best-known and most-loved poems. Just in case anyone not from the UK doesn’t know, twat is vulgar slang for a vagina, as well as being the perfect word to describe a stupid, obnoxious and unpleasant person, for example D Trump or N Farage.

#210: Another Sunny Day – I’m In Love With A Girl Who Doesn’t Know I Exist

Another Sunny Day was the name used by multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Harvey Williams.  He was one of the first to join the then fledgling, and later to become famous, Sarah Records, and between 1988 and 1992, he would release six singles on the label. This was the second of them.  It’s very twee.

#209: Hüsker Dü – Eight Miles High

Hüsker Dü is arguably the most essential band that came out of the USA’s independent punk scene. They wrote the most open, affecting and human songs of that scene, blazed the trail for groups going from an indie (SST) to a major and were determined not to be hemmed in by U.S. hardcore punk’s rules.

The words of Swiss Adam in ICA #88, delivered in August 2016.  He went on to say that this is the cover version against which all other covers must be judged.

#208: Secret Goldfish – Amelia Star

One of the mainstays of the Creeping Bent label which has just wound down its activities after 30 years.  The Secret Goldfish were responsible for two albums and twelve singles between 1995 and 1999, and after a break for lead singer Katy McCullars to raise a family, they returned in 2015 and would release two more albums. This is from the 2017 release, ‘Petal Split’.

#207: Xmal Deutschland – Polaricht

Loads of the guest postings have included songs that passed me by back in the day. This was one of them, and it came from flimflamfan thanks to his compilation ICA, #289, in July 2021.  ‘Goth – 13 Shades Of Black’ did exactly what it said on the tin and in terms of ‘Polaricht’, which came out on the 1987 album ‘Viva’, he said his first thought was that it was a Siouxsie and the Banshees track that he hadn’t heard before, before summarising it, accurately, as “a cracker to dance to”

#206: The Bluebells – Sing Like Little Birds Sing

A band with staying power, and 45 years after forming, they are probably more popular than ever, certainly in terms of the numbers they attract to gigs here in Glasgow.  They’ve achieved this by always playing the big hits of the 80s (all three of them), while the past five years have seen two new albums with reflective songs which seem to strike all sorts of chords with a fanbase that, by and large, has aged consummately with the band members who are now all in their mid-late 60s.

#205: Madness – Embarrasment

A truly astonishing single from 1980. A soap-opera in just under three minutes. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy and girl have sex…baby gets created. Parents of the boy and girl react with anger and horror…and completely ostracize their own offspring. Not because of the unexpected pregnancy….the ‘crime’ was creating a mixed-race baby.

Based on a true story. The teenage sister of saxophonist Lee Thomson had a black boyfriend and became pregnant, only to be horrified by the fact that many in her family shunned her.

#204: The Lemonheads – My Drug Buddy

1992 and 1993 were the peak years for Evan Dando/The Lemonheads.  1994 was a disaster. It began when the new single, ‘It’s About Time’, sold miserably. Dando’s addiction issues, which he had never shied away from, really took hold and shows were cancelled, leading to a media backlash.  He dropped out of sight, not re-emerging with any new songs till 1996, by which time the musical world had moved on.

#203: Human Don’t Be Angry – H.D.B.A. Theme

2012 saw the Arab Strap guitarist surprise everyone with a largely instrumental and largely ambient electronica album. It was a well-received work, one which made the ten-strong shortlist for the Scottish Album of the Year, but it didn’t match the sales of his guitar-focussed solo albums.

#202: Heavenly – I Fell In Love Last Night

A twee-pop band (?) with a song that is over five minutes in length.  But then again, Heavenly never really wanted to be burdened with the ‘twee’ designation, as can be evidenced in the variety of tunes across their four albums of the 90s and the delight that is ‘Highway to Heavenly’, the comeback album from earlier this year.

#201: Delgados – Pull The Wires From The Wall

The Delgados were more than a band. They were an institution.  The comeback shows in 2023 after an 18-year absence were sensational.  So sad that nothing emerged afterwards.  ‘Pull The Wires From The Wall’ was #1 in the 1998 Peel Festive Fifty.

 

 

 

JC

#280: Stevie Wonder – Superstition

I love this song in a way that it is difficult to express in words. Its opening notes offer one of the most immediately identifiable pieces of music in all history, one that defies any listener to stay rooted to their seat and not enjoy a boogie.

#279 : Sophisticated Boom Boom – Joe

An all-girl band from Glasgow named after a song by The Shangri-las. Played three Peel Sessions, one in each of ’81, ’82 and ’83.  Never commercially released a single or album in their time, but the Peel Sessions were gathered on a 2024 LP issued by Past Night From Glasgow.

#278: The Redskins – Keep On Keepin’ On (Die On Your Feet Mix)

Released in 1984 at the height of what was the most bitter and confrontational industrial strike that has happened in my lifetime and a real favourite in the student union discos among those of us who were of a left-wing persuasion. The Redskins delivered a fine mix of pop, soul, blues, folk, punk and politics, and it’s a pity that they called it quits all too soon having collectively concluded that a career in the music industry was not their idea of fun.

#277: Ultravox – Sleepwalk

Their biggest hit and best-known song means nothing to me, so here instead is their first ever hit single, from back in 1980, one which reached the giddy heights of #29.

#276: Grace Jones – Slave To The Rhythm

A song which, in so many ways, perfectly encapsulates the 80s.  Written in part by Trevor Horn as a song intended for Frankie Goes To Hollywood who never quite nailed it. But listening to it now, you have to ask how could anyone but the OTT persona who is Grace Jones really do it justice?

#275: Dead Kennedys – California Über Alles

The rundown returns, again, to 1979. The name of the band led to hostility from the outset, even over here in the UK.  Bob Last, the entrepreneur behind the Edinburgh-based Fast Product label, managed to secure the licence for a UK pressing. I don’t ever remember hearing it on the radio back in 1979, but I do know a few of the independent record shops proudly had the distinctive sleeve on display. Eddie, the bona-fide punk in our school, of course bought a copy and brought a tape in so we would listen to it in the common room. Let’s say it divided opinion.

#274: Earth Wind and Fire with The Emotions – Boogie Wonderland

The rundown returns, again, to 1979 with a total contrast to the Dead Kennedys.  Nothing controversial about a single that was in the UK charts for over three hot summer months.  Punk and new wave may have ticked all the boxes of us typically angry/frustrated/unfulfilled teenagers but ‘Boogie Wonderland’ offered some form of escapism, even if it was just within the confines of a far from glamorous church hall where the local underage discos took place. Maybe the previously mentioned Ghost of Troubled Joe did have a point…..

#273: Lambrini Girls – God’s Country

Moving away from the retro feel of thing, if only for a little while.  Lambrini Girls are a punk band, in every sense of the definition, whose debut single appeared in 2021 and whose debut album arrived in 2025.  ‘God’s Country’ was a stand-alone single in February 2024 and it takes no prisoners in its critique of what is wrong with the UK right now, and in particular the views held by those of a far-right persuasion.

#272: Suicide – Dream Baby Dream

The duo of Alan Vega and Martin Rev never achieved any commercial success whatsoever, but Suicide has long been a hip band name to drop into any conversation. I never knew about them back in 1979, and indeed only picked up on them when Paul Haig later covered ‘Ghost Rider’. This flop 45, released on Island Records, may be a bit on the repetitive side of things, but it’s bloody brilliant!

#271: The Magnetic Fields – I Don’t Want To Get Over You

My wider introduction to The Magnetic Fields came via the wonderfully talented Rol Hurst and his guest ICA, #120, back in April 2017.  Indeed, the ICA came as a result of me making a direct request to Rol after he had featured a song on his blog, My Top Ten. This was included on the ICA.  It was released on ’69 Love Songs’ back in 1999, a triple-CD offering, yup, 69 songs of immense quality.  Rol describes the album as the band’s masterpiece.

#270: The Primitives – Out Of Reach

The Primitives proved to be one of the few C86-era jingly-jangly indie bands to actually achieve mainstream chart success when ‘Crash’ barged its way to #5 in early 1988. The big hit is a great piece of pop music, but my particular favourite is its follow-up single, one that many don’t recall too easily despite it reaching #23.

#269: Teenage Fanclub – Sparky’s Dream

Another whose absence from the Top 120 might be met with a few bemused looks.  A consistently very good band over many decades but one whom I admire more than adore.  A single that was lifted from the 1995 album ‘Grand Prix’ is the one that really does it for me,

#268: The White Stripes – Fell In Love With A Girl

Another whose absence from the Top 120 might be met with a few bemused looks.  A consistently very good band over many decades but one whom I admire more than adore.  A single that was lifted from the 2001 album ‘White Blood Cells’ is the one that really does it for me,

#267: Trembling Blue Stars – Abba On The Jukebox (7″ version)

I was late to the work of Bobby Wratten, one of the most important and influential UK indie musicians of the 90s and 00s. My introduction came when I was discovering new music thanks to the wonderous talents of music bloggers whose passion for the music they were writing about was so infectious that I decided to start one of my own (and yes, I am referring in the main to the friend I now call Comrade Colin – and have you noticed how often the words ‘I was late to….’ have featured in this rundown?).

Bobby Wratten had been in a long-term relationship with Annmari Davies, as well as being bandmates in The Field Mice and Northern Picture Library. The relationship ended and the heartbroken Wratten, who was already on record as a self-professed incurable romantic, decided to write a lot of songs about his ex, all of which appeared, on a wonderfully delicate LP called ‘Her Handwriting’ in 1994 which was attributed to a new band called Trembling Blue Stars. This was the lead-off single, a gorgeous and fragile recording which recalls the happy memories of time spent together.

#266: The Nectarine No.9 – Don’t Worry Babe, You’re Not The Only One Awake

Davy Henderson is one of the greatest musicians to emerge from the Scottish scene in my lifetime. He was part of the initial post-punk surge of band (Fire Engines) after which he would ‘chase’ pop stardom (Win) before forming a third band of significance, whose mix of pop, glam, punk and occasionally all out rock attracted a fair smattering of fans for well over a decade without ever making the crossover to commercial success.

PS : There was a fourth band, but more of them later!

#265: Fire Island (feat. Loleatta Holloway) – Shout To The Top (Hifi Sean Mix)

Fire Island is a name used by the English house music duo, Pete Heller and Terry Farley, and in 1998, they recorded a version of a hit single by The Style Council, bringing in veteran American singer Loleatta Holloway to provide the vocal. HiFi Sean delivered a stupendous remix in 2021.

#264: Bill Drummond – I Believe In Rock & Roll

After he launched Zoo Records and managed Echo & The Bunnymen, but before he became famous/infamous as part of The KLF, one of my all-time heroes released a solo LP on Creation Records in 1986. ‘The Man’ is an understated piece of work with its tunes underpinning a distinctly Scottish brogue. It was lo-fi, recorded in just five days for not a lot of money and didn’t sell well.  But as I said, Bill is one of my all-time heroes, and his solo material was always going to make it into the 800.

#263: Arcade Fire – Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)

Arcade Fire don’t do lo-fi. Right now, there’s a lot of black clouds hanging over the band, and in particular frontman Win Butler, and nobody can be sure of what lies ahead. But I’m not prepared to deny them a place in the rundown.

#262: Subway Sect – Ambition

1977. Vic Godard, the lead singer of the newly emerging Subway Sect, once said his band differed from the Sex Pistols in that the Rotten & co wanted to revitalize rock &; roll whereas his band wanted to get rid of it. Their second ever single, released on Rough Trade, was kind of their manifesto with its opening line of ‘You can take it or leave it as far as we’re concerned’

#261: Vic Godard – Won’t Turn Back

Subway Sect didn’t get rid of rock’n’roll and I doubt Vic Godard ever wanted to in the first place.  Subway Sect broke up and then reformed and then broke up again and Vic retired from music to become a postman in London.  He came back in the 90s, releasing an album on the newly resurrected Postcard Records, from which this is taken. It’s a song which Edwyn Collins would later cover as a b-side.

#260: The Bathers – If Love Could Last Forever

The Bathers are really a front for the singing/songwriter talents of Chris Thompson, a man whose work I have admired and enjoyed since the early 80s and the emergence of Friends Again. His music, particularly since the mid 90s has become increasingly focussed on lush arrangements and the use of strings, brass and keyboards rather than the guitar. I can’t argue that his albums are in the genre of chamber-pop. This is from the fifth album, ‘Kelvingrove Baby’, released in 1997.

#259: Cinerama – Health and Efficiency

The mention of chamber-pop leads me nicely to this.  Cinerama came into being in 1998 as a result of David Gedge deciding he wanted to make music that was different from The Wedding Present. Over a six-year period there would be three studio albums and twelve singles often with cellos, violins, flutes, oboes and trumpets to the fore. And best of all, the mighty strangeways penned a ten-piece guest series for the blog between May and July 2024.

#258: The Cords – I’m Not Sad

The duo of sisters Eva and Grace Tedeschi have been making a great deal of noise across the Glasgow scene these past few years. Their debut album channels so much that is wonderful about 80s and 90s indiepop into 13 songs which is all done and dusted in just 31 minutes.  I’m still not 100% convinced by them, but I seem to be in a minority among the indie cognoscenti round these parts.

#257: The Jazz Butcher – Southern Mark Smith

I can’t claim to be a huge expert on The Jazz Butcher. Indeed, most of what I have on the hard drive consists of songs included on compilation albums or box sets and I’ve liked them enough to consider myself a casual fan. On the other hand, Friend of Rachel Worth is a dedicated fan, and he came up with a very informative and entertaining ICA, #158, in March 2018.  The band are, sadly, no more after the death of frontman Pat Fish, at just 63 years of age, in October 2021.

#256: Stephen Malkmus – Jo Jo’s Jacket

The second solo single released by Stephen Malkmus after the break-up of Pavement is brilliantly bonkers. It opens with a sample of dialogue from the actor Yul Brynner, over a slow piano. After 35 seconds it explodes into the sort of song you’d have expected to hear from his old band.  A catchy non-chorus of ‘ayeeeeey-yee’ (or something similar) while the verses veer all over the place. Then, just as the tune really gets motoring along, threatening to become absolutely tailor-made for radio, it completely changes tempo and rhythm, not only putting off any previously interested daytime producers, but making it night on impossible to dance to at the indie-disco without making a dick out of yourself.

#255: Throwing Muses – Counting Backwards

Throwing Muses are a great example of a band whose critical acclaim has never resulted in any meaningful commercial success. There’s never been a Top 40 hit single, while the seven albums that have actually registered enough sales to qualify for the UK charts have a combined stay of sixteen weeks.  ‘Counting Backwards’ was a single in 1991 and the lead-off track on the album, ‘The Real Ramona’.

#254: The Damned – Smash It Up

The Damned, thanks to ‘New Rose’ on Stiff Records in October 1976, may be resonsible for the first punk rock single by a UK band but to many they were regarded as a bit of a joke or comic outfit, and rarely given the same kudos as many of their peers. If you look back at their history, they do appear to have been a half-decent pop/rock band who were in the right place at the right time to jump on the bandwagon with enough savvy among certain band members to adopt the look and feel of punk.

#253: Working Week – Venceremos (We Will Win) (7″ Bossa Version)

A jazz-dance band with something of a fluid membership, this single in 1984 was a benefit record made to raise funds for the UK Chile Solidarity campaign, and had been inspired by the Pinochet junta’s brutal murder of political activist Victor Jara (who had been name-checked by The Clash in ‘Washington Bullets’ on the ‘Sandinista!’ album). The vocalists are Claudia Figuerora, Robert Wyatt and Tracey Thorn.

#252: McCarthy – The Drinking Song of The Merchant Bankers

The great lost band of the ’80s who helped forge the idea of politics within music in the mind of none other than Nick Wire, a then teenager dreaming of one day being in a rock band. There were nine singles, one EP and three albums of rather excellent left-leaning indie-pop before between 1984 and 1990. This one is a satirical take on those who populate the Square Mile and Canary Wharf in London.  ‘The oiks have been scattered, the commies smashed, this government has done alright by us’.

#251 : Stereolab – Ping Pong

When McCarthy called it a day in 1990, guitarist Tim Gane decided to form a new band with his French girlfriend – Laetitia Sadler – taking on vocal duties.  This time round, the occasional dab into left-leaning pop music would find a bit more success.  Just a pity this ditty didn’t get any higher than #45 in July 1994 as a Top of The Pops appearance could have been fun.

#250: The Pastels – Truck Train Tractor

Glasgow royalty. They formed in 1981 and are still very much on the go today, having gone through numerous line-up changes, but always having Stephen McRobbie (aka Stephen Pastel) at the helm and as the band’s guiding force. There have been five albums and twenty-one singles on various labels over the years. This one is now 40 years old!

#249: Primal Scream – Swastika Eyes

They were always going to make the rundown but I had an inkling from the outset that they wouldn’t make the Top 120.  I was torn in terms of choosing a song, what with the jingle-jangle indie years, the Weatherall magic and songs from Vanishing Point all coming into consideration…..but in the end I went for the electronic noise era of ‘XTRMNTR’ circa 2000.

#248: Soulwax – NY Excuse

They began in the mid 90s as a bona-fide indie-rock band from Belgium, but before long were making a name for themselves as producers and remixers, with semi-bootleg albums released under the moniker of 2 Many DJs and they moved almost exclusively into the world of electronica.  This is from 2004 album ‘Any Minute Now’.

#247: Jarv Is… – Must I Evolve

Almost seven minutes of music dissecting mankind’s development from the big bang to getting off one’s face at a rave in the 21st century. From the surprisingly very good album ‘Beyond The Pale’, released in 2020. The surprise being that Jarvis Cocker’s first two solo albums post-Pulp had been seriously underwhelming.

#246: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll

The only time I’ve written extensively about Yeah Yeah Yeahs was when I offered thoughts on the four singles lifted from the album ‘Fever To Tell’, released in 2004.  A couple of folk in the comments section expressed the view that they favoured the third album, ‘It’s Blitz’, thanks to its use of synths to provide a fuller sound.  I’ve therefore gone for one of the singles from that album.

#245: Flight of The Conchords – Too Many Dicks (On The Dance Floor)

Please……never forget that music, no matter how much it consumes your very being, should never lose the ability to make you smile.

#244: Dag Och Natt – See-Through

Here’s Martin, our Swedish Correspondent, offering some thoughts on the best music in his homeland in 2025:-

Stockholm based dream-pop, shoegaze, outfit, delivered what I consider to be the best Swedish album of 2025. Would mid-80’s have been a perfect fit on the 4AD label. Mix some reverb with soaring angelic vocals floating over the melody, what’s not to love?

#243: The Weather Prophets – Well Done Sonny

The Weather Prophets are still fondly remembered and regarded as one of the ‘should’ve been’ bands of the late 80s. This won’t be the last time a band featuring Pete Astor will appear in the rundown.

#242: The Libertines – Up The Bracket

I’ve always felt a tad sorry for The Libertines.  They were hyped, particularly by the London-based music press, as being the next coming of the best thing ever.  Even those who were writing these words were saying thing like ‘ I know, we’ve said this before but this time we really mean it.’ It’s like those who confidently predict when the world is going to end, and then vow to come back another day.  The Libertines did turn out to be a decent band and, as it turns out, one of 800 I’m willing to go out on a limb for.

#241: Honeyblood – Bud

Originally formed as a duo in 2012, Honeyblood is now the solo project of the singer/songwriter/guitarist Stina Tweeddale, albeit there’s been no new music since 2019 when Cat Myers was officially part of the band on drums.  Cat was on the second and third albums, while founding member Shona McVicar played on the eponymous debut, released in 2014, from which ‘Bud’ is taken.

 

 

 

JC

#320: The Young Knives – The Decision

These posts for the 20th anniversary of the blog have involved me digging deep to try and find some of the stuff which was written for the old blog, with some material still available thanks to The Wayback Machine, an internet archive.  I found a posting from 9 November 2006, when the blog was less than six weeks old, boasting that, just the day before, I had purchased a brand-new real-life 7” vinyl record for the first time in some time in something like 20 years.  Seems only right to include the A-side of that single in the rundown.

#319 : Marc Almond – Jacky (12″)

The lyrics were penned by Jaques Brel who recorded and released it, in French, in 1965. Three years later, Scott Walker recorded an English-language version that went Top 20. The spelling of Scott’s version was ‘Jackie’.  In 1991, Marc Almond turned it into one of his finest solo singles, thanks in the main to an incredible production by uber-producer Trevor Horn who included all sorts of sampling as well as a 70-piece orchestra. Completely over the top and wonderful.

#318: Kid Canaveral – Good Morning

Kid Canaveral formed in 2005 through students studying in St Andrews.  They were together until 2019 after which lead singer David MacGregor announced the formation of Broken Chanter (but’s that’s another story for elsewhere in the rundown).  KC delivered three very good albums of intelligent and enjoyable indie-pop during their time, and this is from the debut album, ‘Shouting At Wildlife’.

#317: Bee Gees – Night Fever

The old blog had a guest contributor known as The Ghost Of Troubled Joe.  He was a contrarian, always looking to stir things up.  I think a lot of people did work it out, but Joe was your humble scribe in disguise.  The other half of the Gemini, so to speak.  Joe posted this on the old blog : “The soundtrack of 1977 for most teens was not as JC likes to claim, The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Ramones or The Jam. It was the Bee Gees”

#316: Suede – Metal Mickey

The UK music press were adamant that Suede were going to be the next big thing.  There was a sense of disbelief when debut 45 ‘The Drowners’ was a relative flop (it only reached #49 in May 1992), and it looked as if Suede were going to be yet another band who promised much but commercially delivered nowt.  In effect, ‘Metal Mickey’ (#17 some four months later) provided the breakthrough.

#315: Wild Billy Childish And The Musicians of the British Empire – He’s Making A Tape

There’s surely a case to be made that this is the ultimate break-up song for serious musos.  Surely, all of us have spent hour upon hour in our bedrooms/bedsits trying to perfect the art of filling up both sides of a C90 cassette in order to attract the attention of someone with whom we hope intimacy will later appear on the agenda.

#314: 10,000 Maniacs – Like The Weather

I can only trace a small proportion of posts on the old blog, and sadly I can’t quote verbatim from the time when I wrote about how I discovered 10,000 Maniacs.  It came courtesy of standing on a picket line outside my office in 1987 when we were on strike in protest about the terms of the latest pay offer.  A portable cassette was on hand for which five or six of us had brought along tapes to see us through the day.  One of the handmade compilations from a comrade on the picket line had this on it, and it really stuck in my mind as yes, the rain was pissing down!

#313: Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros – Bhindi Bhagee

Dave Martin, in July 2016, contributed ICA #82 in which looked at the career of Joe Strummer after The Clash had imploded.  A number of the songs came from the four albums released with The Mescaleros, and here’s what he had to say about ‘Bhindi Bhagee’:-

” Despite never being released as a single, this track can be argued to be the defining sound of the band. The album had a genre-melding folk-rock sound a million miles from Steeleye Span, and this track is at first a celebration of the diverse and exciting ethnic and multi-cultural areas of the local London High Streets, principally through the foods on offer, and then describes the band’s sound in a similar manner.

#312: M.I.A. – Paper Planes

Once I had determined the M.I.A. was going to miss out on the Top 120, this was always going to appear immediately after Joe in the rundown.

#311: Sabres of Paradise – The Theme

Just about everything I now know about the late Andrew Weatherall has come from reading the many thousands of words that have been written over the decades by Adam, either over at Bagging Area or here at TVV usually via a guest posting but also via the comments section.  Turns out, however, and thanks to its inclusion on the ‘NME Singles of The Week’ 1994 compilation CD, that I had long owned this tune that Adam included in his epic four-sided Weatherall ICA, which was published in December 2016 as #102 in the series.

#310: Sandie Shaw – Hand In Glove

It was a great idea to ask 60s chanteuse Sandie Shaw to cover the debut single by The Smiths less than a year after the Mancunians had released it.  The band had long been irked that it had failed to chart, with a lot of the blame attached to their label Rough Trade.  Riding very high on the wave of adulation, it would have been really easy to simply offer up ‘Hand In Glove’ as a re-release in 1984 as it would, without question, have sold well. But it was re-recorded with Sandie on lead vocal, leading to her first brush with fame in fifteen years.

#309: Revenge – I’m Not Your Slave (US Remix)

There’s a lot of Factory Records within the rundown and as many New Order associated songs as I could squeeze in without breaking the rule of one song per singer or band.  I’ve said before that much of the material released by Revenge hasn’t aged well, but for some strange reason I still have something of a soft spot of this remix of a single that was released in 1990.

#308: Section 25 – Looking From A Hilltop (Restructure)

This single, from 1984, has the catalogue number of FAC 108.  A much deserved underground club hit that still sounds great all these years later.

#307: Luna – Great Jones Street

Back in 2016, two of blog’s biggest supporters – JTFL and Echorich – collaborated on a short series celebrating New York City. One of their posts featured ten great songs which highlight streets in Manhattan.  Johnny told us that this is a quiet number by a quiet band about a quiet street and explained that Great Jones is actually 3rd Street between Broadway and the Bowery.  Echorich offered his view of Luna having a knack for taking their brand of Dreampop and infusing it with an arty Downtown NYC vibe that really REALLY has its origins in the sounds of The Velvets.

#306: Fatboy Slim – Kalifornia

The Golden State on the west coast of the USA has had more than its share of musical namechecks over the decades, with all sorts of lyrics penned to describe its lifestyle. According to this, it is druggy, down by law and right from the core.  Which seems fair enough.

#305: The Indelicates – We Hate The Kids

Two of my favourite guest contributors have offered their thoughts on the single from 2006.

Rol, as part of ICA #146 in November 2017, believes it to be “the best single released in the 21st Century”. Dirk, in his 111 singles series called it “the perfect mixture of cynicism, disaffection and cleverness, well-packed in a lo-fi tune that make you want to jump along with it; what more could you possibly ask for?’ ” Indeed.

#304: Dinosaur Jr – Freak Scene

Once again, SWC proved to be responsible for coming up with the perfect words for this song, courtesy of its inclusion ICA #312, submitted in May 2022.

“The band’s most popular, and most talked about song, and the song that more indie club nights were named after in the 90s than any other. Of all the alternative rock songs about alienation, self-esteem and generally moodiness that came out thirty odd years ago, this is probably the greatest of them all.”

#303: Close Lobsters – Foxheads

By the time I had even heard of Close Lobsters, they had come and gone, breaking up in 1989 and leaving behind a body of work consisting of two LPs and six singles. Indeed, the first time I ever got to listen to any of their songs was when The Wedding Present did a cover version on a b-side. But I’ve more than made up for it since, buying everything since they reformed in 2012 and making sure I got to see them play live on a handful of occasions.  This is a track from their 1987 debut album.

#302: Spare Snare – Ring To Me

The most recent time I saw Close Lobsters was during the At The Edge of The Sea Festival in Brighton in 2024.  There’s two stages at this festival, which is curated by David Gedge.  No sooner had Close Lobsters finished on the main stage did Dundee-based Spare Snare take to the smaller stage from where they proceded to deliver the most memorable set of the entire weekend, one that was worthy of headlining Glasgow Barrowlands and not the second and temporary stage at Concorde 2 in Brighton.

#301: The Hives – Hate To Say I Told You So

The Hives burst out of Sweden just after the turn of the century when the media decided it was time for guitar music to be briefly fashionable again. The band had already released two albums, four singles and two EPs to almost near universal failure – even in their native land where they were a cult more than a commercial success – until Alan McGhee decided to sprinkle his magic fairy dust and proclaim them as the biggest thing he’d heard since the last biggest thing he’d heard.

#300: Peter Gabriel – No Self Control

One of the reasons I began to listen to Peter Gabriel was that he was championing the end of apartheid at a time in my life when I was just beginning to become more socially and politically aware of what was going on in the world. And from the same 1980 album on which he included ‘Biko’, comes ‘No Self Control’ which, when released as a single somehow made it to #33, despite being radio unfriendly, as a rather dark number that focuses in on lust. The fact that it has the utterly delicious Kate Bush singing away rather erotically on backing vocals somehow only adds to its intensity.

#299: Aidan John Moffat & The Best Ofs – Big Blonde

Aidan Moffat is the most diversely talented and intriguing Scottish musician of my generation. He’s been a staple part of the music scene in my part of the world for 30 years ever since Arab Strap came to prominence. It would take forever to list all that he’s been involved in.  In short, he’s a one-off and a national treasure. This one is from the 2009 LP, ‘How To Get To Heaven From Scotland’.

#298: Carla J Easton – Get Lost

Carla J Easton is another on whom the title of national treasure could be decreed. A musician and now an acclaimed documentary co-director who has been a part of the Scottish music and creative scenes going all the way back to 2006.  She’s already featured in the rundown as part of Poster Paints, while another of her bands will pop up in due course.  There’s been five solo albums, and this is taken from ‘Weirdo’, released in 2020.

#297: The Cranberries – How (Radical Mix)

A last second change of mind as to which song should represent The Cranberries in the rundown.  I’ve chosen the first of theirs I ever heard when Jacques the Kipper included it on a homemade C90.  The original version of ‘How’ is on the debut album ‘Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?’ while this forceful mix was included as an extra track on the CD single of ‘Linger’.

#296: Jack Butler – He Got No Game!

Not a solo artist, but in fact a four-piece indie band from Stirling, right here in the heart of Scotland.  Oh, and the first names of the four musicians were Allan, Chris, Greg, and Liam.  Not a Jack among them.  There were a handful of releases in the 00s on their own Whimsical Records.  The song included in the rundown is actually a b-side of a single released in 2006; it sounds as if the Associates had reformed.

#295: 39 Lyon Street – Kites

In which the Associates exercised an unusual clause in their recording contract allowing them to issue singles for any label they desired, so long as the A-side was not credited to Associates and Billy Mackenzie didn’t sing lead vocal.   39 Lyon Street was the address in Dundee where the band lived, and ‘Kites’ is a cover of a song that had been a Top 10 hit for Simon Dupree back in 1967.  The lead vocal is quietly delivered by Christine Beveridge, a friend of the band, while Billy belts out the choruses.

#294: Marine Girls – Don’t Come Back

The Marine Girls fully embraced the DIY recording culture promoted by the punk/new wave scene. Their first collection of songs was a self-financed cassette-only release, recorded while the four band members were still attending school. The second collection was another that was set for a cassette-only release before it was picked up by Dan Treacy’s Whaam! Records.  The third collection, which proved to be their last, was released on vinyl by Cherry Red Records in 1983.

#293: Moloko – Fun For Me

A single that was bought for 99p back in 1996 after I’d seen the promo video. The CD was great value in that it has seven tracks on it and lasted nearly 40 minutes (which is longer than quite a few of the albums in my collection). But then again all seven were a variant on ‘Fun For Me’, and to be honest, while I liked the song, this was stretching things a bit far.  It did reach #36 in the UK singles charts, but Moloko would find fame and fortune in 1999 with handbag classic ‘Sing It Back’.

#292: The Nightingales – Use Your Loaf

The Nightingales, a post-punk band from Birmingham, played eight John Peel sessions between 1980 and 1986, a period in which there were also three studio albums. ‘Use Your Loaf’ is taken from the 1983 debut ‘Pigs On Purpose’.  The band reformed in 2004, since when there have been ten more LPs. Comedian Stewart Lee is one of their best-known fans and in 2020, he was responsible for writing and producing ‘King Rocker’, an excellent documentary film about the band and its lead singer………………………..

#291: Robert Lloyd – Funeral Stomp

Robert Lloyd, lead singer with The Nightingales, had a short-lived solo career from 1988 to 1990 during which he released four singles and one album, while also recording five sessions for John Peel.  This is one of those singles.  Rather different from the stuff he did with his band, but enjoyable enough.

#290: They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse In Your Soul

They’ve been on the go since 1982 and have released 24 studio albums, 18 compilations, 20 live albums, 25 EPs, and 40 singles. But I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of us can only recall this hit single from 1990.  It must be up there as one of the most surreal hits of all time, being a song about a night-light, which is in the shape of a blue canary, told entirely from the night-light’s point of view.

#289: The Stone Roses – She Bang The Drums

ICA #83, provided by SWC in July 2016.   “Perhaps this is the definitive Stone Roses song – it’s definitely a contender. I love all of this song, the way the hi-hat tingles, the way the bass builds, the way the guitar soars and then that lovesick opening line “I can feel the Earth begin to move/I hear my needle hit the groove”. Basically you get thirty years of guitar pop stripped down to this song.”

#288: The Vaselines – Teenage Superstars

The Vaselines are one of the best examples you can find of a band becoming more famous and influential long after they had initially called it a day. Two EPs and one album between 1987 and 1989 which seemingly had been more-or-less ignored outside Scotland.  And then Kurt Cobain declared his love for them. The duo of Eugene Kelly and Frances McGhee reformed in 2010 after which there would be two further well-received albums.

#287: SPRINTS – Little Fix

Formed in Dublin in 2019, their sound has evolved a great deal over the years. The first few EPs were a mix of straight-up indie songs and garage rock, but many of the songs on 2024 debut album ‘Letter To Self’ were a lot harder edged than before. The follow-up, ‘All That Is Over’ in 2025 moved further to a heavier and more explosive style, lyrically and musically, but then again there is a lot for young folk to be angry about.  ‘Little Fix’ is from 2022.

#286: Barry Adamson – The Last Words Of Sam Cooke

He started out in Magazine, and was later one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, but arguably Barry Adamson is best known for his solo work as performer and composer of note, with his work expanding into film soundtracks, real and imaginary, encompassing a wide range of genres. I’m a huge fan in particular of his most recent album, ‘Cut To Black’, which came out in 2024.

#285: Biff Bang Pow! – The Whole World Is Turning Brouchard

Biff Bang Pow! were active between 1983 and 1991 during which time there were six singles and six albums released on Creation Records, which is no real surprise given label owner Alan McGhee was on guitar and vocals.  The track in the rundown is a 90-second instrumental named in tribute to French artist, painter, writer and band collaborator JC Brouchard, who himself has been a great supporter of the blog over the decades, including a number of guest postings.  Merci Mon ami.

#284: The La’s – There She Goes

It is, rightly, regarded as a classic. It is kind of astonishing that it took three goes before it was a hit,  November 1988 had been the first attempt, but then perhaps realising it had been lost in the traditionally crazy way of record sales in the run up to any Xmas period, Go-Discs tried again in January 1989. But it wasn’t until October 1990, and thanks in part to a remix by star-producer Steve Lillywhite, that it made it to #13 in the singles chart.

#283: The Sisters of Mercy – This Corrosion

Considered by many to be THE greatest goth anthem of all time.  This is the album version. All 11 minutes of it. Lay down your pints of snakebite and get dancing.

#282: Bikini Kill – Rebel Girl

Bikini Girl released three different versions of the song that has become synonymous with the riot grrrl movement of the early 90s, and there’s long been a debate on which is best.  I’ve settled on the second of the versions which appeared as one of three tracks on the ‘New Radio’ single, to which Joan Jett, as producer, adds guitar and backing vocals.

#281: Tom Vek – I Ain’t Saying My Goodbyes

This is very much from my MTV2 watching years. A song from 2005 that had long stuck in my head but it wasn’t until 2021 that I picked up the 12″ single.  As with so many things I’ve bought second-hand over the years, it sounded great coming through the speakers but after one or msybe two listens was then filed away in its place (alphabetically among the non-Scottish 12″ singles) unlikely to be given another spin.  I really do have too much vinyl, and at 63 and a bit years of age and with no kids to leave it to, I really should start to give some thought about what to do when the time does come to say my final goodbyes.

 

 

 

JC

#360: B52’s – Rock Lobster

The B-52’s could so easily have just been a novelty act, long forgotten for all but their 1978 debut single, but such was their ability to write and record catchy, radio-friendly tunes in the years ahead that they have carved out a career that has now lasted 50 years. It’s such a great sounding record that I’ve included the much longer album version.

#359 : James Yorkston & The Athletes – St Patrick

Back in 2001, a relatively unknown Scottish musician sent his demo tape to John Martyn with a request that, if he liked it, he might offer him a chance to be on the bill as a support act at an upcoming gig in Edinburgh.  John Martyn was so impressed by the demo that he invited James Yorkston to be the sole support act across a 27-date tour of the UK and Ireland.

Laurence Bell of Domino Records was at the London gig and was so taken by the support act that he moved quickly to sign him to the label.  Within a year, the debut album, ‘Moving Up Country’, which was jointly produced by Yorkston and Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins, was released to huge acclaim,  At the end of the year, it was named as Rough Trade Record Shops Album of 2002.

#358: Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster (Peel Session)

Dirk, back in May 2025, wrote a superb piece on Stiff Little Fingers in which he suggested the band never get mentioned as one of the Top 5 Punk Bands of 1978 for the reason that they came from a country which was in absolute disarrayment in the late 70’s for reasons too complicated to understand for anyone not being involved by living there.  He went on to add that for many people, it was easier to listen to stuff with throwaway lines rather than lyrics oozing with Northern Irish politics.

#357: Wilco – Outtasite (Outta Mind)

A band that I have never fully taken to, but I know are quite popular across much of the TVV readership. JTFL gave us a guest ICA – it was #238 in February 2020 – in which he said the band’s catalog has something for everyone: 4/4 rock, alt-country, ballads, experiments, love songs, party songs, anthems—with every sort of instrumentation along the way.

#356: Taylor Swift – Shake It Off

There’s got to be room in the rundown for some pop perfection, hasn’t there?

#355: Television – Marquee Moon

Once again, I call on the services of the writing skills of SWC.  I’ve unashamedly stolen this from No Badger Required:-

A ten-minute masterpiece of electric poetry full of guitars that seemingly burst out of nowhere and physically fight with Tom Verlaine’s sneering vocals for primacy. Verlaine’s voice by the way, is despite its seeming awkwardness absolute perfection given the chaos that is happening behind it.

#354: Brian – Understand

Brian is the recording name used by Dublin-born singer/songwriter Ken Sweeney, and his charming debut album ‘Understand’ was released on Setanta Records in 1992 to almost complete indifference. The writer/critic Pete Paphides is a man with quite impeccable taste and he’s long been a fan, so much so that he reissued it, on vinyl, for the first ever time, in 2025 via his Needle Mythology label.

#353: Air – Sexy Boy

TVV semi-regular, author and stand-up comedian Steve McLean described this better than I could ever dream of.

1998. Frenchpop vs Britpop. Sorry Britain, but I’ve always been a collaborator. Do you remember when this came out? All those guitars that were making your ears bleed suddenly gave way to this calm beauty. It must have been what it was like when electropop stole the thunder from New Wave in the early 1980s. I’d say it was Laurie Anderson meets Kraftwerk with ELO tunes but I’d sound like a tosser so I won’t (note to other tossers – being self aware allows you to continue to be a tosser without any life adjustments)

#352: David Westlake – The Word Around Town (BBC Session)

David Westlake was the frontman in indie band The Servants who were active between 1985 and 1991, and who themselves will feature in this rundown in due course. There was a solo album in 1987, released on Creation Records, that was later issued in 2023, by the now defunct Optic Records, a label that specialised in making long-lost or hard-to-find singles and albums more readily available and affordable. The reissue had the added bonus of a BBC session, recorded for the Janice Long Show, on which David’s backing band included three members of the Go-Betweens.

#351: Chin-Chin – Stop! Your Crying

Chin Chin were an all-female indie group who formed in 1982 in Biel, Switzerland. By a long and convoluted route, an eight-song compilation mini-album ended up being issued by Scottish indie-label 53rd & 3rd Records in 1987.  Long out of print with an asking price of silly money, Optic Records did us all a huge favour by issuing three of the songs on a 7″ single in 2021.

#350: Hardway Brothers – Theme For Flightpath Estate

The Flightpath Estate is a Facebook group dedicated to the music, art and work of Andrew Weatherall. It began life in 2013 and has become a virtual home to his fans, friends and family. ‘Sounds From The Flightpath Estate’ have been two compilation albums celebrating people and places, along with the outlook, aesthetic and music Andrew Weatherall was known for, and the sense of community and love of music centred around The Golden Lion in Todmorden.

Our dear friend Adam, the talent and brains behind the Bagging Area blog, is very much involved with The Flightpath Estate.  It’s quite incredible what the collective has already achieved and I know, from chatting with Adam, that they have great plans for the future.

#349: Baby’s Got A Gun – Suicide Girl

A noisy bit of pop-punk from East Kilbride, the town which most famously has given us Roddy Frame and The Jesus & Mary Chain.  This dates from 1987 and the band’s drummer was Murray Dalglish, the original drummer in the JAMC and who played on their debut single, ‘Upside Down’.

#348: Futureheads – First Day

I’ve always thought the sound this lot made was a notch above your average indie-guitar band. They reminded me a lot of early XTC thanks to the catchiness of the songs, complete with sing-a-long choruses, while there was something quite beguiling about the fact that the vocals are delivered in a local accent. This, from back in 2003, was their first minor hit single, produced by the late Andy Gill of Gang of Four.

#347: Hairband – Bee

A five-piece all female band who were very much part of the DIY scene, releasing, back in 2018, a five-track EP via Monorail Music, a label established by the legendary record shop that’s been here in Glasgow since 2002.

#346: The Jags – Back Of My Hand

Can you guess the year that this went to #17 in the singles chart?   Pick any prize from the middle shelf if you happened to say 1979.  The Jags were very much a power-pop outfit rather new wave and this was their one and only brush with fame in terms of chart success.  I also wonder exactly when, given the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones, when it was no longer de rigeur to ask for and actually write someone’s phone number on the back of your hand….

#345: The Raveonettes – Attack Of The Ghost Riders

The Raveonettes blend of surf and garage proved to be reasonably popular, slightly above mere cult status but never gaining full commercial acceptance as evidenced by just two Top 40 singles and one Top 50 album.  The debut single is still very tasty.

#344: Rollins Band – Low Self Opinion

My, oh my, I’d forgotten just how shouty and angry this single from 1992 is in places. Henry Rollins is a god in the eyes of the hardcore punk cognoscenti and he is, to be fair, a very entertaining and engaging individual, known as much these days for spoken word material as he is for songs such as this single from 1992.

#343: Voodoo Queens – Kenuwee Head

Voodoo Queens came into being in 1992 when Anjali Bhatia decided to leave Mambo Taxi.  This new five-piece band had three members of Asian origin, all of them female, and the press had a bad habit of associating the band with music scenes such as riot grrrl or lumping them in with other Asian-fronted bands such as Cornershop. It seemed that the actual music rarely got much attention. This, their second single, is a fun-filled tribute to the actor Keanu Reaves.

#342: Quando Quango – Atom Rock

Again, without giving too much away, the Marr/Sumner duo of Electronic will appear at some point in the rundown.  But for now, here’s the 1984 single which proved to be the first time Johnny and Barney worked together. Quando Quango were a Manchester-based dance band signed to Factory Records, and ‘Atom Rock’, released in 1984, was their third single. Barney was one of the co-producers (alongside his then regular studio companion Donald Johnson), and Johnny added the guitar parts.

#341: ionnalee – Not Human

Martin has been this blog’s Swedish Correspondent since August 2015 when he submitted ICA #28 on New Order. Since 2017, he has kindly submitted an annual round-up of all that’s he enjoyed musically in his native land, and in doing so has brought to the attention of the TVV community, a substantial number of singers and bands that would otherwise have flown under the radar.  My personal favourite has been ionnalee, who first appeared in the 2018 round-up.

“Brought up in my home town she started out as indie rocker Jonna Lee, transmorphed into electronic audiovisual artist iamamiwhoami and in 2018 she moved into electronic (dance) artist ionnalee, releasing the magnificent album Everyone Afraid To Be Forgotten. Excellent live as well. She’s potentially the secret child of Kate Bush and Bernard Sumner.

#340: David Bowie – Boys Keep Swinging

Gasp.  Shock-horror.  I am picturing in my head a few folk reading this and wondering if this rundown can be taken seriously given that Bowie is not in the ranked Top 120.  ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ was the first single of Bowie’s that I bought at the time of its release, and thus it’ll always be the one I’ll offer up as my favourite….which incidentally doesn’t mean I’m saying it’s his best.

#339: King Creosote – You’ve No Clue Do You?

Dedicated to those who are still digesting the appearance of The Thin White Duke at #340.  This one dates from 2007, courtesy of the singer/songwriter born as Kenny Anderson and who, as King Creosote has released over 40 albums in digital or physical form going back to 1998.

#338: Luke Haines – Discomania

And here, possibly to prove just how difficult it was to decide who’s make the ‘all important Top 120’, is an appearance from another of my heroes.   The Singular Adventures of Luke Haines was a 23-part weekly series that ran from September 2019 to March 2020.  It featured 45s by The Auteurs, Baader Meinhoff and those that were released under his own name.  This, however, wasn’t a single. It can be found on his debut solo album, ‘The Oliver Twist Manifesto’, released in 2001.

#337: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Young Adult Friction

Another to whom I owe my dear friend Aldo a huge debt for teaching me all I know about TPOBPAH (as nobody ever refers to them!).  I started TVV almost purely as a retro-blog, and I didn’t pay too much attention to what was going on in the late 00s other than music coming out of Scotland.  Call it not having enough spare time on my hands.  This wonderfully catchy, near-anthemic, gloriously happy four minutes of indie-pop got aired one night at Little League and I danced away to it, asking afterwards what the hell it had been.  Cheers, Aldo!

#336: U.S. Highball – Let’s Save Bobby Orlando’s House

This Glasgow duo of Calvin Halliday and James Hindle haven’t yet appeared on the blog, which is a severe oversight on my part. They were on the bill of the 2023 Glas-Goes-Pop festival, and entertained me so much that I went to the merch table and bought a copy of their then most recent album, ‘A Parkhead Cross of The Mind’.  Calvin and James are lifelong friends and have released five albums, all for Philadelphia-based Lame-O Records.  Despite the title, this one is a bit of an ode to Neil Young.  It’s also, as far as I know, the only song to reference the Shettleston district of Glasgow, the area of the city in the east end that was the location of my first ventures into pubs.

#335: The Beths – Uptown Girl

All I know comes courtesy of ICA #341, yet another wonderful guest posting from The Robster, this time in June 2023.  A New Zealand band who formed in 2014 after meeting at university and named themselves after singer/songwriter Elizabeth Stokes. This isn’t a cover of the Billy Joel song!

#334: Dead Or Alive – You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)

Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Not names you see too often on TVV.  The songwriters/producers enjoyed more than 100 UK Top 40 hits, including thirteen #1 singles.  And to think it all started when they produced a song written and sung by Pete Burns, a contemporary of everyone who was anyone in the post-punk Liverpool scene based around Eric’s Club in the late 70s.  A majestic, magnificent and memorable single, but Wylie, Cope and McCulloch must have been looking on in bewilderment as it made its way to #1 in March 1985.

#333: Faithless – We Come 1

It’s fair to say that 99% of stuff that I’ve bought since my formative years can be described as guitar driven pop, however you define it. It’s very much my forte but every now and again something catches my ear and demands purchase, as this did back in 2001.

#332: Hole – Doll Parts

On 8 April 1994, Kurt Cobain shot himself. Four days later, the very unfortunately named ‘Live Through This’, the second album by Hole, was released with an eerie cover of a beauty queen, similar in looks to Courtney Love, with mascara running down her cheeks as the result of her crying. You couldn’t make it up……….

It was known that Cobain had worked with his wife on the LP and critics and fans alike poured over it to see if the record contained any clues to his suicide. None were forthcoming, but what they found however, was a record that sounded the way that the industry had hoped Nirvana would go on the back of ‘Nevermind’ when in fact they had gone much heavier on ‘In Utero’.

#331: The Motorcycle Boy – Big Rock Candy Mountain

The Shop Assistants had been one of the most highly regarded indie groups to emerge out of Scotland in the early-mid 80s. Much of the interest centred around vocalist Alex Taylor, and it was a bit of a shock when she quit the band in 1987.   Next up for Alex was The Motorcycle Boy in whom Rough Trade declared an immediate interest with this debut single issued to great acclaim, but not much in the way of sales.

#330: Queens of The Stone Age – The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret

I think it’s fair to say that this one falls into the less heavy of the rock tunes written and recorded by QoTSA over the years, which is probably why this single from 2000 is my favourite of theirs.  They’re another band who have been part of the ICA series, on two occasions, and both as guest postings.  SWC came up with #40 in September 2015 while Hybrid Soc. Prof regaled us with #241 in February 2020.

#329: Strangelove – Sway

Strangelove were one of those bands that should have but never did. Formed in 1991 they centred around singer Patrick Duff. They released three albums before splitting in 1998. This was a rather lovely single lifted from the second album, ‘Love and Other Demons’.

#328: We’ve Got A Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It – Rules and Regulations

A four-piece all-female outfit from Birmingham whose debut 1986 EP, from which this is lifted, was the work of a 16-year-old, two 17-year-olds and a 20-year-old. Then the major labels came calling, and by 1989, they were known simply as Fuzzbox with a whole new sexed-up look and a sound that was pure pop based on female harmonies. Three Top 20 singles and a Top 5 album ensued.

#327: Sneaker Pimps – Post Modern Sleaze

While I know what it looked like from seeing it on TV and in contemporary photographs, I never made it inside the Hacienda night club in Manchester. It’s always been a source of regret.  A remix version of this was the last song ever played at the Hacienda (not that anyone knew it at the time), on 28 June 1997.

#326: NWA – Fuck Tha Police

It may well have been written about the LAPD, but the song title may well have been muttered by the youth of Manchester and the wider north-west of England when their nightclub of choice was closed down.

#325: Jens Lekman – The Opposite of Hallelujah

I first fell for the idiosyncratic charms of this Swedish singer-songwriter back in 2007 when I heard his then new album, ‘Night Falls Over Kortedela’, played in a record shop in Toronto.  A few years later I discovered that he’s also a favourite of my mate Aldo, and ultimately we saw Jens play live a couple of times in 2017, one of which was in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, which we followed up the next day by going to Manchester and going on a pub crawl with Adam. Almost a year to the day after that adventure, I had the joy of receiving ICA #184 courtesy of Martin Elliott, the blog’s Swedish Correspondent.

#324: Grandmaster and Melle Mel – White Lines (Don’t Do It)

One of the great early hip-hop records dating back to 1983.  Although the sleeve to the single credits Grandmaster and Melle Mel, the duo were no longer working or touring together and were indeed in the midst of a legal battle with one another.  The song is the work of Melle Mel and Sylvia Robinson, a female songwriter and producer who was very much at the forefront of the development of hip-hop, but whose name rarely features in any narrative.

#323: The Flatmates – I Could Be In Heaven

The Flatmates were, for the most part, literally a group of musicians who lived together under the one roof. There were just five singles to begin with between 1986 and 1989, with much more since they reformed in 2013.  The single was the debut and is a bona-fide indie-pop classic.

#322: bis – Kandy Pop

This Glasgow-based trio are famed for being, in March 1996, the first ‘unsigned’ band to appear on Top Of The Pops when they performed ‘Kandy Pop’, a track on their ‘Secret Vampire Soundtrack EP’. At the time of the TOTP appearance they were all teenagers.  But the truth was that while technically unsigned, Bis had the comfort of knowing their records would be released by Chemikal Underground.  It was also kept quiet that The Secret Vampire Soundtrack was in fact their third release, so its not as if they were complete novices.

#321: ABC – The Look Of Love

One of the great pop singles, not just of its time, but of all-time. It sounds just as big, powerful, catchy and radio-friendly nowadays as it did back in June 1982. Hip-hip hooray, yippee-aye, yippee-aye-a.

 

 

JC

#400: Billy Mackenzie – Wild Is The Wind

I suspect the majority of us were introduced to this song via David Bowie who took it into the singles chart in 1981, a full five years after he had recorded it for the album ‘Station to Station’. The original, by Johnny Mathis, was actually nominated for an Oscar as ‘Best Song’ in 1957, as it was the theme from a film of the same name.  This stunning and haunting version was released in 2004 on Billy’s posthumous album, ‘Transmission Impossible’, and gave us a reminder, as if any was needed, just how much we were missing him, a full seven years after he’d taken his own life.

#399 : Scot & Sager – Barcelona

Jock Scot, who died in April 2016, was an Edinburgh-born Scottish poet and recording artist. Gareth Sager is probably best known as a founder member of The Pop Group, one of the most influential of the post-punk acts. The two of them were close friends for decades but it took until 2006 for the two of them to go into a studio together. The result was ‘The Caledonian Blues’ which consists of twenty-two crazy pieces of ranting poetry, delivered in the broadest of accents, over some very lovely, minimalist guitar work akin to the work of Vini Reilly at his best.

#398: Jacob Yates and The Pearly Gate Lockpickers – Mark

A band once memorably described by a music writer as having a ‘Mississippi-meets-Maryhill sound’ (Maryhill being one of the oldest working-class communities in Glasgow).  This is a track from their 2011 debut album, ‘Luck’, and if you happen to be someone who harks back to the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds era of 84-96, then it surely ticks all your boxes.

#397: Alabama 3 – Woke Up This Morning (Chosen One Mix)

It really was a touch of genius to take a fairly obscure track by an obscure British band and match it perfectly to deliver the unforgettable opening credits to what will always be one of the greatest TV series of all time.

#396: BMX Bandits – Come Clean

It was back in 1991 when BMX Bandits recorded ‘Star Wars’. The make-up of the band had always been fairly fluid, but the cast for this particular album was fairly stellar with Duglas T Stewart being joined by Gordon Keen, Norman Blake, Joe McAlinden, Eugene Kelly and Francis MacDonald. The fact that members of Teenage Fanclub, The Vaselines and The Groovy Little Numbers were all present meant that we got as close to a Bellshill super-group as could be imagained.

#395: The Police – Can’t Stand Losing You

It is almost impossible to admit your love for a band when the frontman has been such an insufferable and pretentious prick for such a long time and has been involved in projects that just make you cringe with embarrassment. But I will argue long into any night that some of the best post-punk pop singles ever to be released were the work of Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers.

#394: Cornershop – Sleep On The Left Side

Reaching #1 in 1998 with the Norman Cook remix of ‘Brimful Of Asha’ meant that Cornershop finally had a profile after seven years of obscurity. If there was any justice in the world, then its follow-up would also have crashed high into the charts. Sadly, ‘Sleep On The Left Side’ stalled at #23, proof that the record-buying public would only really embrace the band’s unique mix of indie, dance and Asian music if someone famous like Fatboy Slim put their name to it.

#393: Dumb Instrument – Reverse The Hearse

One of the most significant songs in terms of the history of the blog.  Here’s Comrade Colin:-

“This is the best anti-death song ever written and it’s a piece of music, like a certain Go-Betweens song, that JC and myself immediately bonded over. We both laughed (out loud, yes) at the dark humour and the sentiments. It was a giant V-sign to the fact we all check-out eventually, some, alas, sooner than others. Our mutual appreciation of the lyrics, and their Ivor Cutler-like delivery, signed the deal on our early-years friendship. Indeed, this was the first band JC and myself ever went to see play live together. It was also the night of our very first meeting! We’d put it off and put it off but eventually we went beyond an electronic/digital friendship to something else. It seems like forever ago now, that night in a stupidly cold January at the 13th Note in Glasgow.

I remember being rather nervous and, weirdly, it felt a bit like a first date! I needn’t have worried though as JC was not at all indie-precious or a pompous prick and I managed, just about, to not project my 100 MPH verbal diarrhoea or music/Goffman geekdom all over him. It was a brilliant night, all round, and we’ve since become very good friends indeed, with music (and a shared sense of humour) at the centre of this connection”

JC adds…..I’ve looked it up, and it was 8 January 2008.  The 13th Note has since closed as a music venue and re-opened as a pub.  I reckon there should be some sort of blue plaque or  the likes to commemorate our meeting.

#392: Credit To The Nation – Call It What You Want

In which a 22-year-old English rapper called Matty Hanson boldly uses the riff from ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ to preach a message about racism.  Kind of ground-breaking back in 1993.

#391: Add N to (X) – Plug Me In

The advent of the blog did reignite my love for vinyl, and over the past 20 years I’ve got my hands on more than a few things that I hadn’t bothered with when I was strictly a CDs only man.  ‘Plug Me In’ was picked up almost twenty five years after its 2000 release when it was spotted during a browsw among the small selection of vinyl in a bric-a-brac shop on the south side of Glasgow.

#390:World Party – Put The Message In The Box

A cracking bit of pop music from 1990. All lovely and warm and perfect for a summer’s day of which, even in Glasgow, there were plenty in 2026. Scientists are suggesting global warming has a lot to do with it….so maybe the late Karl Wallinger should have been promoting something more environmentally friendly than driving around the word to deliver his message in a box.  Still, at least he wasn’t suggesting using a jetplane.

#389: James Kirk – Rehab

I think you probably all know that James Kirk was a founder member of Orange Juice but left after the release of the debut LP and before the chart success of ‘Rip It Up’. While there was a one-off single as Memphis, and the occasional contributions to other bands, he more or less put music on the back burner and instead trained to become a chiropodist.  Out of the blue, at the tail end of 2003, a solo album called ‘You Can Make It If You Boogie’ was released. It proved to be an astonishingly good record, but all too soon, and without really doing any promotion, James had again retreated to the shadows

#388: The Wonder Stuff – Unbearable

Before they signed to a major label, The Wonder Stuff released two superb and catchy singles on their own Farout label in 1987, the second of which had the cracking sing-a-long line of ‘I didn’t like you very much when I met you’ repeated a few times in succession.

#387: Belle and Sebastian – If You’re Feeling Sinister

1996.  The whispers on the streets of Glasgow were growing louder by the day that an exciting, talented and innovative band calling themselves Belle and Sebastian had emerged from a group of students studying a music course at a local FE college. By the time the whispers reach the ears of your humble scribe it is too late to pick up any of the 1000 copies of the debut LP ‘Tigermilk’ that had been pressed by the college.  Luckily enough, the band was snapped up by a new independent label called Jeepster Records which enabled a second LP to be released before the year had ended, which is why mine and many people’s first exposure to the music of B&S was ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’.

#386: M|A|R|R|S – Pump Up The Volume

Can’t be too many acts, if any, who only ever released one single which subsequently became a worldwide hit and then chose not to release anything further.

#385: The Decemberists – Summersong

Happiness personified. Formed in 2000 in Portland, Oregon, it took until I started blogging in 2006 before I learned about them, by which time they were onto their fourth album.  I still find it hard to understand why so many in the music industry believed that bloggers, by sharing mp3s, were helping to destroy things, when the vast majority were actively encouraging readers and listeners to go out and buy new music in the form 0f over-priced CDs.

#384: Bettie Serveete – Hell=Other People

Another of the 2006 discoveries in the first few months of blogging. This is indie-pop from the Netherlands from a four-piece who initially tried to make a go of it in the mid 80s but to no avail. By the time the four musicians were in their 30s they tried again, this time with a fair degree of success and longevity with ten albums between 1992 and 2016.  This one is from the 2006 album, ‘Bare Stripped Naked’.

#383: Ida Maria – I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked

Typing the last three words of the #384 in the rundown and my thought processes immediately turned to this #13 hit from August 2008. There’s an interesting sideline which illustrates just how much differently music was beginning to be ‘consumed’ in 2008 as this single, by a then barely known Norwegian pop star, entered the UK Singles Chart at #18 on downloads alone the week before it could actually be bought in the shops.

#382: Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – The Rattler

This was the band’s calling card in 1986, released on a newly emerging label, Precious Recordings, which was also home to the soon-to-be chart conquering Wet Wet Wet.  ‘The Rattler’ didn’t sell well, but that didn’t stop Capitol Records dangling a contract in front of the band.  The first couple of singles for the major failed to chart and so they went into the studio and re-recorded ‘The Rattler’ as the next 45.  This time round it reached #37, a ludicrously poor showing for such a wonderful piece of pop music.

#381: Garbage – Stupid Girl

Surely you’d guessed that this would be the next act in the rundown??? Unless you thought that Garbage were destined for the Top 120.

GMM got belated recognition for their music once Garbage became international superstars.  They may well have formed in Wisconsin in 1993, but their lead singer, Shirley Manson, was undeniably Scottish and her recording career had begun as keyboardist and backing singer with GMM.  Jonny the Friendly Lawyer once was seated next to Shirley Manson at a wedding in Hollywood.  He shared the story with us back in November 2019.  Click here if you’d like to be reminded of it or maybe to read it for the first time.

#380: The Coral – Dreaming Of You

The eponymous debut album from Merseyside-based The Coral stood out back in 2002 for the simple reason that it was damn near impossible to categorise. Neo-psychedelia, folk rock and garage punk were just some of the styles suggested in the music press along with the all-embracing ‘indie’.  The catchiest of all the songs  features the prominent use of a trombone and a xylophone.

#379: The Field Mice – Emma’s House

Bristol-based Sarah Records is widely accepted as the label most associated the indie-pop of the late 80s and early 90s, and London-based The Field Mice was probably their ‘flagship’ act given that they released three albums, seven singles/EPs and one compilation, which accounts for 11% of the label’s entire output. ‘Emma’s House’ was the debut recording, a single in 1988.  I can think of no better description than the one I used when I wrote about it previously – ‘achingly gorgeous.’

NB: As I go back and look at what I’ve written about songs in years gone by, I realise how limited my vocabulary really is!  I could never make any sort of living as a professional critic…..

#378: Japan – Life In Tokyo

Here’s yet another great song from 1979. It was a co-write between the band’s vocalist David Sylvian and Italian disco producer Giorgio Moroder in a year when just about everything the latter was involved in turned to gold.  But for some reason or another, ‘Life In Tokyo’, which came out on Hansa Records, turned to dust and came nowhere near the charts.   By 1982, and now on Virgin Records, the band are all over the charts with hit singles and the album Tin Drum.  Hansa try again, this time it reaches #28.

#377: Mazzy Star – Fade Into You

If I was ever to be asked to name just one song that would act as a reminder of the writings of SWC, either on his own blogs or here on TVV, it would be this.

“You probably already know this song. We probably all know it. It’s beautiful. Wonderful.  The sort of song that makes you half smile because it reminds you of another time when you might have been happier than you are right now or just associate it with a lovely moment in your life, but it’s also the sort of song that makes you half weep because it reminds you of a time when you felt fragile or lonely or that you missed someone or never got an opportunity to right a wrong.”

I wish I could write like that.

#376: Pete Shelley – Homosapien

The former frontman of Buzzcocks stunned many, fans and critics alike, when he released this as his debut solo single in September 1981. Few people knew that Pete Shelley was in fact revisiting his first love, having dabbled unsuccessfully in electronic music before meeting Howard Devoto at college and forming one of the most important punk/new wave bands to emerge out of the UK.

#375: Say Sue Me – Old Town

I’m being villainous and stealing again, this time from Paste Magazine. What follows is high praise, but it is fully merited:-

“The best pure indie-pop record of 2018 is not from Brooklyn or Glasgow or Melbourne or Olympia but Busan, South Korea. The album, ‘Where We Were Together’ from the band Say Sue Me, is a perfectly paced fusion of jangling guitars, bouncing bass and sighed melancholy. The album’s best track, ‘Old Town’, is sleek and slightly frazzled, lithe but potent, and ridiculously catchy—as much so as any pop-rock you’ll hear this year.”

#374: White Lies – To Lose My Life

White Lies burst onto the scene in 2008, one of those bands who get hyped all over the media on the back of some journalists having caught them at a gig and prior to any music being available to buy. This is normally a recipe for disaster, but for once the music did just about live up to expectations.

#373: Tanya Donnelly – Pretty Deep

The second of what will be three appearances by Tanya Donnelly in this rundown.  Belly has already featured and Throwing Muses will appear in due course.  It was in 1997 that she took the decision to make a solo album, one that turned out not to be too dissimilar in sound from those of the bands she had been part of.  This is the debut single.

#372: Allo Darlin’ – If Loneliness Was Art

Allo Darlin’ began as a vehicle for the solo songwriting exploits of Elizabeth Morris, an Australian by birth who, at the age of 22, had moved to London in 2005. In due course, it would become a four-piece band and they signed in 2009 by Fortuna Pop!, one of the foremost indie labels of the time, fow whom there would be three albums before the band broke up in 2014, eventually reforming and recording in 2025.  This delightful offering is from the eponymous debut.

#371: Graham Coxon – Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery

Very few paid all that much attention to the three solo albums released by Graham Coxon while he was still part of Blur. To be fair, none of the records were remotely commercial and could easily be dismissed as vanity projects to while away the time in between recording and touring with his ‘mates’. After he unexpectedly and rather messily left the band in 2002 he seemed to make more of an effort to write and record material that would be more easily enjoyed as exemplified by the release of ‘Happiness In Magazines’ in May 2004, on which this #22 hit single can be found.

#370: The Kane Gang – Printer’s Devil

The Kane Gang consisted of two vocalists and a multi-instrumentalist, with all three members knowing each other from school days in Sunderland in north-east England.  They signed to Kitchenware Records, based in neighbouring Newcastle, with the label having belief that trio’s take on soul and gospel music had commercial potential. The belief was well-founded as there were three hit singles in 1984 while a debut album in 1985 reached #21.  It’s an album track that’s made this rundown, and is a song  full to the brim with early 80s production techniques.

#369: Penetration – Don’t Dictate

Penetration were from Ferryhill, a small coal-mining town some 25 miles south of Newcastle.  They took their name from an Iggy Pop song and ‘Don’t Dicate’, a genuine artefact of the punk era, sung with gusto by Pauline Murray, was a great debut.

#368: Meursault – A Few Kind Words

Meursault were founded in 2006 in Edinburgh by singer-songwriter Neil Pennycook. Their musical style has been variously categorised but folktronica is quite accurate.  And if The Field Mice were the ‘flagship’ act for Sarah Records, then it could be said that Meursault fulfilled a similar role for Song, By Toad Records, the label founded in 2008 by the legendary Matthew Young whose first involvement in music was, like myself, as a mere blogger.

#367: Siobhan Wilson – Dear God

My introduction to this singer-songwriter was when she supported Meursault in Glasgow in 2017.  My mate at the gig whispered to me as applause rang out at the end of another stunningly delivered song that her delivery and vocal range reminded him a lot of Harriet Wheeler. Me? I was thinking of Hope Sandeval during some of the quieter moments.  Siobhan has recorded albums for some small but established labels in Scotland, but is increasingly releasing her music direct to her fans through a very active presence on social media and digital outlets. ‘Dear God’ was one of the highlights of that 2017 gig and was later on her debut album ‘There Are No Saints’.

#366: Grandaddy – Hewlett’s Daughter

“Their blend of vintage electronics, psychedelia, Americana, alternative rock and acoustic melancholy gave them a sound of their own. Their discography boasts only five proper studio albums, but there’s a plethora of singles, EPs and compilations in there, which makes compiling a satisfactory ICA all the more difficult.”

The words of The Robster back in August 2017, when he lovingly compiled (as he always does, complete with unique artwork), an ICA, this being #131. The song chosen for the rundown is from what is perhaps their best-known album,  ‘The Sophtware Slump’, released in 2000.

#365: Jill Lorean – Kneading

Jill O’Sullivan has been part of the Scottish indie/folk scene for almost 20 years, playing in a number of bands, and her most recent two albums, ‘This Rock’ (2020) and  ‘Peace Cult’ (2022) have been as part of the three-piece Jill Lorean. ‘Kneading’ is taken from ‘This Rock’.

#364: English Teacher – Albert Road

‘This Could Be Texas’, the debut album by English Teacher took a while to grow on me. I eventually made the time to listen to it properly (without distractions!!)  and discovered there was a lot to like, particularly this, its closing song, in which singer Lilly Fontaine, unflinchingly and movingly, recalls how difficult it had been to deal with growing up as a mixed-race child in a tight-knit, small working-class town.

#363: Lloyd Cole – Undressed

I think the blog has shown over its entire lifetime that I’m one of Lloyd Cole’s biggest fans, and yet, as far as his solo material goes, I couldn’t find a place for him in the Top 120.  I suppose he can console himself that he’ll appear in a very high position alongside the band with whom he made his name – not that I am arrogant enough to think he would actually give a jot about this self-indulgent rundown!  His eponymous debut solo album rocks in many places, but my favourite moment comes from this whimsical quieter number, complete with occasional harmonica.

#362: Veruca Salt – Seether

Listening to the pace, energy, and noise within this song makes me wonder why the band’s two female members –  Nina Gordon and Louise Post – ever really had their hearts settled on being sort of the acoustic duo that they had started out as.  It was after they brought in  Steve Lack (bass) and Jim Shapiro (Nina Gordon’s half-brother) on drums that their songs became fully formed.  This is the 1994 debut single.

#361: Win – Super Popoid Groove

It was after the break-up of his post-punk outfit The Fire Engines that Davy Henderson formed Win, embarking on a real effort to make more accessible pop music.  It remains a real mystery as to why their popularity never really extended much beyond the confines of Scotland, despite a handful of great singles and two albums which, while having dated largely because of their reliance on the 80s production trends, still have a smattering of excellent and catchy tunes.

 

 

JC

#440: Isaac Hayes – Theme From Shaft

The hi-hat opening…..the wah-wah guitar…..the menacing piano notes….the synthesized keyboard that could pass for flutes and horns, all in perfect combination for two minutes and forty-two seconds which is when the spoken baritone vocal comes in, closely followed by the trio of back-up female singers.  Ground-breaking stuff as it was arguably the first ever disco record.

#439 : Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead

Bauhaus never quite made it in the way that so many expected them to. Of the 11 singles and 4 EPs released at their peak between 1980 and 1983, only two of them actually cracked the Top 40, and one of these was a cover of ‘Ziggy Stardust’. But no matter what, they will always be responsible for the greatest nine-minutes in length single of all time.

#438: The Drums – Let’s Go Surfing

An infectiously cheery offering to counteract Bela.  Debut 45 from an NYC band, released back in 2009.  There used to be four of them in the group, but nowadays it’s really a solo vehicle for singer/songwriter Jonathan Pierce.

#437: Franz Ferdinand – I’m Your Villain

I’ll admit to being mildly surprised that Franz Ferdinand are still on the go more than 20 years after the stupendous debut album was released. Two of the founding members may have come and gone, but they remain an interesting act to watch and listen to, particularly in the live setting, and especially in front of a home audience here in Glasgow. I reckon this track, from the 2005 album, ‘You Could Have Had It So Much Better’, is appropriate for the rundown.

#436: His Latest Flame – Somebody’s Gonna Get Hurt

Named after an Elvis Presley song, and formed in the mid 80s in Glasgow, His Latest Flame were thought by many as the nearest Scotland ever got to producing an all-girl pop band akin to The Bangles. There would be a handful of 45s and one LP, ‘In The Neighbourhood’, before they called it a day in 1990. This was the debut single, released in 1986.

#435: The Blue Nile – Tinseltown In The Rain

A perverse moment in the rundown.  I’m very much in the minority as thinking this song is dull, dreary and devoid of any sort of soul. It’s utterly antiseptic. But whenever I have suggested this on TVV, the comments section has exploded in derision.  I’ve always regarded TVV as community orientated, and given so many readers do have such affection for what Comrade Colin has described as ‘a love letter to Glasgow’, it would be churlish not to include it in the rundown.

#434: The Pipettes – Judy

Again, I make no apologies to repeat that the guest ICAs have become the most important part of TVV.  The Pipettes were the subject of ICA #93, penned by strangeways in November 2016. As ever, the writing was of the highest imaginable quality, and the songs weren’t too shabby either.

#433: The Shamen – Possible Worlds

The early incantation of The Shamen in the mid-80s was right there among the UK guitar-led indie-scene in the UK. A complete change of direction (and personnel) took place in 1988 and by 1991, their brand of dance/club music had crossed over into the mainstream with a string of hit singles.  This one is from the 1990 album ‘En-Tact’.

#432: David Byrne – Independence Day

I never saw Talking Heads play live, but I have seen David Byrne a couple of times,  The first was in 1989 at the Glasgow Barrowlands when he was touring the album ‘Rei Momo’, complete with a cast of 15 musicians.  It’s a celebration of Latin American culture and music, and the live show was a riot of colour and choreography. Come the end, the vast majority of the audience weren’t too fussed he had played just one Talking Heads song.

#431: Geneva – No One Speaks

This Glasgow band were often lumped in with their labelmates Suede and other contemporaries such as Gene and Strangelove.  One listen to their debut single, which reached #32 in 1996, and you’ll see why the comparisons were made.  Their debut album, ‘Further’, was a Top 20 hit in 1997, but the much-delayed follow-up, ‘Weather Underground’, which eventually came out in 2000, flopped very badly and led to the band being dropped by Nude Records. They split almost immediately.

#430: 1990s – 59

There are two ways to get to Villain Towers from Glasgow city centre. The best and quickest way is to take a train from Central Station, with it being just one stop and five minutes to Dumbreck, itself a couple of hundred yards away from the tower’s turrets. The alternative is to take a 59 bus, which nowadays is a pale imitation of its glory days some twenty-five years ago when it used to meander from the south side through the centre, over to the west end via Glasgow University every twenty minutes or so. Now, it’s merely an hourly service, from the city centre to the south side only.  And yes, the 1990s did include a song about the bus route on their sophomore album, ‘Kicks’, released in 2009.

Bonus track : 1990s – Pollokshields

The 59 bus makes it way through Pollokshields, an area of the city celebrated in song on the debut album ‘Cookies’, released in 2007.

Told you that this rundown was self-indulgent.  Talking of which……

#429: The Affectionate Punch – Scars VI (featuring The Vinyl Villain)

A number of amazing things have happened over the past 20 years as a direct result of getting this blogging show on the road, not least me being asked to contribute to a commercially released piece of music. This came about in 2020 when The Affectionate Punch got in touch and asked if I would consider doing a spoken vocal version of a new song that the collective had just written.  It took me all of a nanonsecond to say ‘yes’.  I still really can’t quite believe it ever happened.

#428: Father Sculptor – Lowlands

Continuing on the theme of amazing things to happen.  After I gave a glowing review to a live performance by up-and-coming Glasgow band Father Sculptor, the band got in touch to say thanks, after which there were further two-way exchanges of correspondence over a period of months.  It all led to me being asked to promote a gig that would see the launch of their vinyl debut, the ‘Faith and Violence EP’.  I did all the necessary – booking the venue, printing and putting up the advertising posters (with which Aldo helped me out as we traipsed around Glasgow), sorting out support acts (with thanks to Song, By Toad Records) and then crossing my fingers.  The sales were decent and I was on course to make the expected small loss that I was happy to absorb, but then in the week of the gig, the latest edition of the NME highlighted it as one to make sure you didn’t miss!!!

Stereo in Glasgow has a capacity of 300 and it ended up being around three-quarters full.  It meant that I could pay the two support bands and Father Sculptor much more than we had agreed beforehand, and I went home having broke even.  A great outcome to what was a memorable night.

#427: Josh Rouse – Winter In The Hamptons

Here’s one which evokes memories of The Go-Betweens at their finest and, dare I say it, the jauntier side of The Smiths. ‘Winter In The Hamptons’ is the only single from Josh Rouse to ‘crack’ the UK charts.  It did so for one week, entering at #100 on 19 February 2005.  A ridiculous state of affairs.

#426: Madonna – Hung Up

Unlike this lady, who can boast 71 singles going into the Top 40 of the UK charts going back to ‘Holiday’ in 1983 all the way through to Danceteria earlier this year. 13 of those hits have gone to #1, including Hung Up which did so in 2005.  Spoiler alert…..the Abba sample in this one is the only time the music of the Swedish superstars will appear in the rundown, although the band name will be namechecked.

#425: The Rezillos – Top of The Pops

A programme on which Madonna would have featured regularly, although more often than not via a promo video as she was too famous and busy to drop into the studio other than on a handful of occasions.  The Rezillos were great fun back in the late 70s….two albums and five singles of which this is easily the best known and most remembered.  There was a short comeback with a third album in 2015 while singer Fay Fife continues to entertain and perform as The Countess of Fife.

#424: Mighty Mighty – Everybody Knows The Monkey

A personal favourite from the C86 era, the 40th anniversary of which is being celebrated with its own year-long series on the blog.  This was the Birmingham band’s self-released debut single which was followed up by five further mighty 45s and one album.  The band reformed briefly in 2009/10 to play at Indietracks in the UK and at Popfest in Berlin and then in 2012, Cherry Red Records issued a compilation double CD which captured everything they had recorded, including material that had been intended for a sophomore album.

#423: Razorcuts – Sorry To Embarrass You

The first TVV celebration of C86 actually came back in 2015 with a year-long series called ‘Next Year’s Nostalgia Fest’.  One of the song was ‘I’ll Still be There’ by Razorcuts which I dismissed as “….the  perfect example of the off-putting whining, struggling-to-hit-the-right notes delivery that quickly became synonymous with much of the C86 genre.”

Thankfully, I later came across a few more Razorcuts songs and in October 2022, I posted ‘Sorry To Embarrass You’ with a small apology for my words back in 2015 and saying this about what was the band’s second single – “It’s a very solid, enjoyable and catchy piece of mid-80s indie pop, albeit the vocal does occasionally verge towards being very off-key, but I suppose that all becomes part of its charm.”

#422: Silver Biplanes – Just One More Thing

The C86 era and the wider indie-pop genre still gets celebrated in many ways, including the annual Glas-Goes-Pop Festival, which had its fifth staging back in August. Myself and Aldo have gone along to all of them, and along the way there’s been a few very pleasant surprises, not least the set in 2025 from Silver Biplanes, a self-described ‘indie pop post-punk psychedelic krautrock glam band’.  One of the mainstays in Silver Biplanes is Tim Vass, who many years ago was the bass player in Razorcuts.

#421: Tuff Love – Duke

Tuff Love released three EPs across 2014/15 on the Fife-based label, Lost Map.  They were a duo of Julie Eisenstein (guitar/vocals) and Suse Bear (bass/vocals) who specialised in catchy songs of an indie-pop bent that wouldn’t sound out-of-place at a C86 evening albeit there are noticeable influences from later acts such as The Breeders, Elastica and Bikini Kill.

Fun fact.  Scottish soul/pop singer Paolo Nutini personally invited Tuff Love to be on the bill of his one-off outdoor show at Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park in 2015. The bill also featured the legendary Grace Jones.  The show was attended by a sold-out audience of 35,000.

#420: Age of Chance – Kiss

In June 1996, just three months after Prince had taken ‘Kiss’ into the Top 10, a little-known indie-band from Leeds, with just two self-released singles to their name, decided to perform the song as part of their second session for the John Peel Show on BBC Radio 1, after which an indie label offered a one-off single deal, but on the proviso that Kiss is part of the release.

November 1986.  The cover version is released with the band stating they had “removed the sex and replaced it with lump hammers”. It reaches #50 in the UK charts.  Prince is reported to have approved of everything.

#419: Fun Lovin’ Criminals – Scooby Snacks

Call it the Tarantino effect as Fun Lovin’ Criminals breakthrough in 1996 came thanks to a single which sampled dialogue from ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’, two of the biggest films of the early 90s that had turned a previously unknown scriptwriter and director into the hottest name in Hollywood. Worth noting that the catchy guitar riff was also sampled.

#418: Les Négresses Vertes – I Love Paris

Les Négresses Vertes arose from the alternative-music scene in Paris in 1987.  I don’t have too much in the collection and this comes from its inclusion on the ‘Red Hot + Blue’ compilation of Cole Porter covers released in December 1990 to raise money for AIDS charities.  Maybe it’s all down to the accordion and the accent in which the lyrics are sung, but this is the song I always find myself singing to myself when I visit the French capital.

#417: Stornoway – I Saw You Blink

There was a brand of indie folk that became quite fashionable towards the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. The problem was that too many of the emerging bands sounded like the loathsome Mumford & Sons.  I always felt Stornoway managed to rise above the dross, albeit the record buying public didn’t agree with me as none of their singles were hits.

#416: Wolf Alice – Yuk Foo

Wolf Alice had burst onto the scene in 2014/15 with a series of critically acclaimed singles and the debut album ‘My Love Is Cool’.  In June 2017, they released a new single.  When I heard it on the radio, I thought the copy being played was faulty and jumping all over the place. Turned out that the mute button had to be hit on what seemed like every second or third word.  The music critic in The Guardian later that week described it as “a two-minute surge of self-indulgent punk fury”.  Works for me.

#415: Tom Tom Club – Wordy Rappinghood

As evidenced by Yuk Foo………..‘Words are Stupid, Words Are Fun’

#414: Northside – Shall We Take A Trip

Northside were a Manchester band, and given what Factory Records was becoming famous for at the beginning of the 90s, it was a natural home for them. This was their debut single for the label and I’m thinking that it will bring back fine memories for those of you who loved popping your Ecstasy tablets (I was too old and, even worse, in gainful employment to consider engaging in such behaviour in 1990)

#413: Madder Rose – Car Song

Madder Rose were a four-piece band from New York. The main songwriter was lead guitarist Billy Cote, but the vocal duties were taken by rhythm guitarist Mary Lorson. They emerged in 1993 with a sound quite different from the grungy stuff that had dominated indie music for the preceding two years, and a million miles away from Britpop that was shortly to take over. In other words, they were doomed to be no more than a cult footnote in history thanks to being in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.

#412: I, Ludicrous – Preposterous Tales

This lot have kicked around from the the mid 80s and their most recent album dates back to 2017. But they are probably best known for the song on their debut flexidisc which was voted in at #11 in John Peel’s Festive Fifty of 1987.  I’m sure we all know and tolerate someone like Ken McKenzie……….

#411: Blondshell – T&A

Is it right that a 60-something male music fan should be a fan of the sort of indie-rock songs with a feminist bent that are written, recorded and released by a 20-something from Los Angeles?  No need to answer as the question is wholly rhetorical.

#410: Dead Hope – Swordz

Dead Hope were a three-piece group. In September 2017, they released a debut album, ‘Songs From The Second Floor’. It contained ten tracks and took about 34 minutes from start to end. In some ways, the songs were a mild variation on the one tune, but in all honesty, it was a belter of a tune that stood up to repeated listening.

In October 2018, the band’s drummer, Keith Martin, died from cancer at the age of 51.  I was only on nodding terms with Keith thanks to the music scene in Glasgow, but I’m good pals with a lot of people who were very close to him, including some who had known him all their lives, from their time playing in bands in their home town of Irvine, a new town that had been built in the 60s to deal with urban overspill from Glasgow.  Keith’s friends miss him greatly and think of him every day.  He was also the inspiration for one of the main characters in the novel ‘Mayflies’, written by Andrew O’Hagan.

#409: The Big Gun – Heard About Love

I’m typing these words and wondering to myself why this isn’t in the Top 120.  History doesn’t say record much about The Big Gun. They only ever released one single, ‘Heard About Love’, on their own Hi-Fibre label in 1986.  Thirty years later, a Berlin-based record label, Firestation Records, issued all six bits of music known to have been made by the band, including three previously unreleased demos, on a limited edition 12″ EP.  It is one of my most treasured bits of vinyl.

The vocals and lead guitar on this one?  The very same Keith Martin who later drummed with Dead Hope.  The percussionist on ths one?  Andy O’Hagen.

#408: Girls At Our Best – Getting Nowhere Fast

I was intrigued when noticing that ‘Getting Nowhere Fast’, a Wedding Present b-side, had been written by ‘Alan, Evans, Swift, Oldroyd’.  But the names meant nothing to me and in the pre-internet days couldn’t readily be looked up.  It was to be some time before I learned that the original had been by a Leeds band called Girls At Our Best, released in 1980. Even when furnished with that information, I was still none the wiser. Eventually I got to hear the original. And loved it more than the cover.

#407: Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come

Written in 1964.  Things may have got slightly better in some instances, but many are still waiting for the change.

#406: Withered Hand – Horseshoe

Withered Hand is the stage name adopted by Dan Willson, an English-born but Scottish-based musician. He was a relative latecomer to music, seemingly not picking up a guitar until the late-90s, by which time he was in his 30s. It took until 2009 before he released his debut album ‘Good News’, and a further five years for the follow-up, ‘New Gods’ to appear.  The wait was worth it as the end result was a tremendous blend of indie/pop/folk/acoustic music of what often seemed to be short stories set to memorable tunes. Horseshoe is one of the singles to be found on it.

#405: Belly – Feed The Tree

It’s not just ICAs that have formed the basis of guest postings.  One of my favourites was the £20 challenge in which SWC and the late, and much missed, Tim Badger came up with and supplied ten posts outlining how they managed to spend that total amount on CDs in charity shops.  Tim spent £1.50 on Star, an album released in 1993 by Belly, to the great delight of SWC as he offered up this review

” ‘Star’ is a stunning record. It has aged very well, full of happy/sad sugar-coated indie pop that has this excellent wooziness running through it. In tracks like ‘Gepetto’, ‘Feed the Tree’ and Slow Dog’ it had three tracks which filled the indie dance floors of my early(ish) 20s.”

The thing is, I reckon that if I was at an indie disco in what is now my early-mid 60s, those three songs would still fill the floor.

#404: Duran Duran – Girls On Film

As might this.  But only if the dancers were being ironic.

#403: Malcolm Ross – Lowshot

The only man who has recording credits with all three of the Scottish bands who signed to the original Postcard Records. He was a founding member of Josef K while Edwyn Collins later made him an integral part of Orange Juice after the initial line-up of that band had imploded, and Roddy Frame, having recognised that a second guitarist was essential for the live setting, drafted him into Aztec Camera initially for touring purposes but afterwards for studio work.

Malcolm Ross is one of the great unsung heroes of the Scottish indie music scene.  He spent the latter half of the 80s and much of the 90s as a musician for hire, including stints with Barry Adamson, Blancmange and Paul Haig, He also released the above fantastic solo single in 1993

#402: The Monkees – Last Train To Clarksville

I’m just too young to remember the first airing of ‘The Monkees’ TV show which ran from September 1966 to March 1968. It was, however, a programme which was seemingly on constant repeat within the children’s segment of BBC1 in the 70s and therefore was one of my earliest exposures to pop music outside of the radio and whatever was played by my folks at home. I loved the show.

‘Last Train To Clarksville’ is sung by Micky Dolenz, my favourite of The Monkees. Oh and it also has the word Clark in part of its title and that’s my surname…

#401: Randolph’s Leap – Hermit

Another of the great moments of my blogging life can be found on the wiki page of Randolph’s Leap. Tucked away within the section dealing with their 2014 single ‘Hermit’ are some words lifted from T(n)VV : “the keyboards, violin, trumpet and trombone invoke marvellous memories of Dexys at the height of their powers but with lyrics that invoke the gentle humour and playfulness of Neil Hannon.”

That’s the sort of thing that makes all of this seem worthwhile.

400 down. 400 to go.  Thanks for sticking with me.

 

JC