BLAME IT ON THE BADGER (Volume 1)

Last year, SWC over at No Badger Required turned 50 years of age.  As part of the milestone, he embarked on an epic series for the blog:-

200 songs in order of greatness from 200 to 1. The greatest 200 songs in the world, the only songs you will ever need in your life etc etc.

It began in January and went all the way through to September.  I took note of every one of the songs as I intended to, in the fullness of time, make use of SWC’s writing talents without actually letting him know of my plan….so if you’re reading this today, mate, a big thanks.

The plan is to have a handful of posts across 2026 here at TVV made up exclusively of songs which were part of the NBR 200. And the commentary about each song will be cut’n’pasted from NBR on the basis that the writing is, inevitably, brilliant for one reason or other.

As our dear friend Dirk would say, enjoy!

mp3: Various – Blame It On The Badger (Volume 1)

1. The Wonder Stuff – Unbearable (#181)

There is man in my village who I didn’t like very much the first I time met him, and for the record, right now, I like him even less. He’s a bully and very probably a con artist. Trust me, if you knew the person I was talking about, you’d wouldn’t like them very much if you met them either. I suspect however, that Miles Hunt disliked the person that he is singing about on their brilliant debut single, for entirely different reasons.

Between 1988 and say 1995, the Wonder Stuff were one of the best and biggest things about British music. The started out life as a noisy guitar band, their songs were rough and had an almost punky edge to them, then they took a more pop and folky direction which appealed to the a wider audience. Their second album ‘Hup’ was a huge success and was the first record I ever bought from what I used to call an ‘indie record shop’ (I was 14 and my grandad came in with me because I was scared).

2. Pixies – Debaser (#3)

The wonderous thing about the Pixies and ‘Debaser’ in particular is the way that they (and it) always seemed to be something different from everything that was going on around it. The band were outsiders, they weren’t part of the Seattle scene (although they were lumped in with it), they weren’t part of the post punk scene not the hardcore scene. You could never really tell what they were going to do next, the occasionally sung in Spanish and there songs were often about bizarre things. Additionally, Pixies didn’t look like rock stars, I mean that with the utmost respect to Frank Black, and add, hastily, apart from Kim Deal.

And yet despite all that, not belonging, they went and made one of the greatest indie rock records of all time in the form of ‘Debaser’. ‘Debaser’ is essentially a two and a half minute blast set around lyrics about some surrealist film from the twenties, which pretty much sums the band up, but the fact remains, that every inch of it is utterly tremendous, from that opening bass rumble to Frank Blacks iconic yelp.

3. Jonathan Fire*Eater – Give Me Daughters (#138)

Personally, I think more bands should have unneeded asterisks in their names. How much better would Jesus Jones be if they were called Jesus*Jones. Much better that’s how much. Jesus*Jones would be a kick arse punk band not some sort of poor mans EMF. Or EM*F as they should now be known. In fact, I’ll say it right now, there has never been a bad band who have an asterisk in their name. Necessary or unnecessary.

The asterisk in Jonathan Fire*Eater may be unnecessary but their music, in particular the wonderful ‘Tremble Under Boom Lights’ EP (from which ‘Give Me Daughters’ is taken) is anything but. It is urgently brilliant stuff.

4. The Sundays – Here Where The Story Ends (#169)

More than 30 years ago when Madchester was all the rage, a band who were if anything, the anti Madchester, almost become the biggest band in the country. That band was The Sundays, a quiet and unassuming four piece from London and when they released their debut album, ‘Reading, Writing and Arithmetic’, they received almost unanimously euphoric reviews for it and suddenly everybody wanted a piece of them.

The most talked about thing about The Sundays was the voice of their singer Harriet Wheeler, which was distinctive, longing and at times achingly beautiful. The way her voice combined with that melancholy but terrifically jangly guitar gave them something very special indeed. Wheeler, you see had this ability to go from a near whisper to an impassioned shriek in the bat of an eyelid. In fact, you could argue that The Sundays set the route for bands like Echobelly, Sleeper, Tiny Monroe and all those other female fronted four pieces that emerged in the next few years.

5. Television – Marquee Moon (#122)

When I was about seventeen my favourite song in the entire world was ‘Tom Verlaine’ by Stoke Newington via Cornwall (and Plymouth and Southampton) indie guitar band The Family Cat. I remember being overjoyed when at Christmas 1992, OPG handed me a bag of presents and the twelve inch of ‘Tom Verlaine’ could be seen peeking out of the top. She paid £1 for it from Parrott Records in Canterbury and I told her it was the best pound she would ever spend. Of course, we all know now that she paid a pound for it because despite how great I thought The Family Cat were, no one ever bought their records, and they were always destined to be perennial bargain bin attendees.

Tom Verlaine is of course the singer in the band Television, who were a band that my friend Martin recommended to me after seeing that same £1 copy of the Family Cat single lying on my bedroom floor. “You should check out Tom’s band Television” he said to me, pointing at the record and telling me that I would probably love them.

So I did.

I borrowed a copy of ‘Marquee Moon’ from Martin and that was pretty much that because ‘Marquee Moon’ (the album that is) is incredible, a hailstorm of psychedelia and gritty rock and roll underpinned by excellent lyrics and some of the best uses of a guitar ever recorded.

It is however the title track from that album that sticks in my mind. 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 is absolute perfection given the chaos that is happening behind it.

6. The Wedding Present – Kennedy (#30)

The Top Thirty is ushered in by the recently crowned winners* of the Rock’s Greatest W contest, The Wedding Present, and their stone cold indie classic ‘Kennedy’. Or as my daughter calls it (or did back in 2020 when she was eight), “The Apple Pie Song”. Largely because at No Badger Towers we always listen to the Wedding Present whenever we have apple pie for dessert. I wouldn’t read much into that, we also listen to Bananarama whenever we have banana milkshakes and ‘Carrot Rope’ by Pavement whenever we have carrot soup. In fact, when I retire I intend to open the world’s first restaurant where all the food is musically themed. I digress.

I was fifteen when I first heard ‘Kennedy’ it would have been in the summer of 1990 when I was carefully taking my first footsteps into the murky world of indie guitar music. Back in the summer of 1990 I thought that Ride and James were the best bands on the planet. For my 15th birthday my dad got me a James Tshirt and I barely ever wanted to take it off.

Enter, Dominic, mate of my brothers, and the lad who is singlehandedly responsible for turning my brother into a Goth, Dominic used to come to our house after school. It was largely known that at our house you could smoke and listen to loud music without being lectured by your parents, so for a bit it was the place where we all hung out. My brother and his mates, used to congregate in the lounge, because it had the telly and the big stereo, where they would listen largely to awful rock music like Guns N Roses and Skid Row.

Upstairs, out of the way was where me and my mates hung out, largely because we feared getting a Chinese burn if we dared congregate on the sofa (actually it was pretty good natured, we hung out upstairs because we didn’t want to listen to the awful rock music). The one person who crossed the sterile corridor in between was Dominic – well technically once Dominic’s girlfriend, Dawn did, she walked into my room thinking it might be the bathroom, and caused five 14 and 15 year old boys to suddenly lose the power of speech – Dominic was allowed in because before he went full on Goth, he listened to decent music and was responsible for I think eighty percent of the music that I played back then. It was on a tape that Dominic lent me that I first heard ‘Kennedy’.

Anyway, ‘Kennedy’ blew me away. I loved the way the guitar crashed in, I loved the way the bass rumbled and wobbled away near the end, I loved the way the drums sounded like they were being physically thumped and I loved the way that David Gedge sung and of all the ‘new’ bands that I first heard via Dominic’s tapes, The Wedding Present were the ones that stuck around. Two days after almost wearing out the tape by constantly rewinding it so I could relisten to ‘Kennedy’ all over again so that I could throw myself around my room as pretended to play the guitar to it, I walked into the local Our Price store clutching a crisp ten pound note and walked out with a copy of ‘Bizarro’ and I’ve never looked back.

7. The Prodigy – Firestarter (#65)

JC interjects…..there’s no commentary on the actual song as this part of the rundown was in the middle of what I hope was an imaginary tale of the debauchary at a 50th birthday party……

If scenes of after party devastation are not really your thing, then you don’t even want to think about venturing upstairs in the house that hosted my pretend 50th birthday party. There are four bedrooms up here and I have seen naked rock stars in all of them. I shall spare their blushes for now but will say that I had no idea that the guitarist from Cud had a tattoo there.

8. Kings Of Leon – Molly’s Chambers (#136)

I’ve seen the Kings of Leon twice in my life, both at festivals. The second time isn’t important because they were awful. The first time, however, was Glastonbury around a month or so before their debut album, ‘Youth and Young Manhood’ had been released.

It was inside the New Bands Tent on a damp Saturday afternoon and they were superb. Utterly brilliant. Four brothers who decided to turn their backs on their religious roots and give the world dirty country garage rock songs that talked of sex, drugs and rock n roll instead. On that stage in 2003, the brothers Followill didn’t just sing about lusty desires, the oozed it out of every possible pore. If the Kings of Leon of 2003 had been around 40 years earlier, Mick Jagger and co would have looked like Flannagan and Allen in comparison. Literally every single person who witnessed that show in that tent came out absolutely obsessed with the Kings of Leon.

On that day, ‘Molly’s Chambers’ was delivered with a blast of good old fashioned seedy punk rock. Caleb looking the audience directly in the eye before telling us all that “You’ll plead, you’ll get down on your knees/For just another taste,” before the drums crash in and guitars add to the general filthiness of it all.

The chants of “LEON, LEON” continued well after the band had finished, left the stage and sat backstage drinking whiskey and then about two years later it all went horribly wrong as the Kings of Leon turned into REO Speedwagon.

9. Aretha Frankin – Respect (#195)

Of course, Otis Redding wrote and first recorded ‘Respect’ back in 1965 (the original appears on his brilliant ‘Otis Blue’ album) but the version that we all know, love and cherish is the Queen of Soul’s 1967 rearrangement. Aretha utterly owns this song and is synonymous with it.

Franklin changed a few of lyrics and the song fast became one of biggest hits as well as being one of her most recognised tracks. The way that Franklin sang the song changed the narrative entirely, and what was originally a song about Redding wanting his tea ready when he got home from a hard days singing, became a song about female dignity, gender roles and fast became a feminist anthem.

And, yeah, it should be so much higher than number 195. I’m not sure what I was thinking.

10. Happy Mondays – Wrote For Luck (#140)

Sometimes the brilliance of music is all down to risk taking. Take ‘Wrote For Luck’ for instance. That was recorded in the dull east Yorkshire town of Duffield. Tony Wilson sent the Happy Mondays there deliberately because he thought that the band were taking too many drugs in Manchester and he wanted them to record a new record. That itself wasn’t the risk. The risk was having Martin Hannett on production duties and Shaun Ryder’s ability to have drugs delivered to him wherever he was. Wilson’s view was either there would be brilliance or there would be carnage. Or both. Or neither I suppose. But to Wilson it was definitely worth the risk and he was proved right.

Hannett and the Mondays apparently (according to Shaun Ryder) bonded over an appreciation of house music and ecstasy and an apparent wanting to create something incredible. To be honest a lot of that incredibleness came from Hannett’s production. The way that he stretched their sound and filled the gaps with reverb and spacey echoes. The brilliance of it was that way it pitched itself squarely in the clubs because the band itself deliberately made it sound like they were all on one when they recorded it (which they might well have been).

11. Soup Dragons – I’m Free (#160)

We have the small matter of the next tracks from the No Badger 200 to talk about which starts, like all good Monday mornings should, with a cover version.

Actually, it’s sort of two cover versions rolled into one, as the Soup Dragons version also contains elements of Donovan’s ‘Barabajagal’ as well – but I didn’t know that back then when this first came out. I only knew that ‘I’m Free’ was a Rolling Stones song because after hearing the Soup Dragons version blaring out of my stereo when I was fifteen or so, my dad came into my bedroom and plonked his rather battered vinyl copy of ‘Out of Our Heads’ on the table and said “At least play the original, boy” and then went back to what ever he was doing in the lounge (which was probably watching the cricket).

The Soup Dragons were one of those bands that awoke something inside me. Their success arrived at exactly the right moment in my life, baggy was happening, from here the door opened to bands like the Inspiral Carpets, The La’s the Roses, the Mondays and I barely looked back at my abandoned Fine Young Cannibal’s cassette as they laid no longer loved in my drawer.

Whilst ‘I’m Free’ will always remain my favourite Soup Dragons moment, because of basically where it took me, nowadays I find myself listening more to their earlier, more scuzzy, rockier records, from before they embraced a more dance element.

12. Petula Clark – Downtown (#73)

I’m 50 years old today. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. Still, its only a number, right?

Right…..?

When I started compiling this nonsense the plan was to reveal the number one today but that all went to rats when I decided that what we really needed to do was to argue about Rocks Greatest R and do a month about protesting. So instead today its all about the number 73 and a little bit about number 72.

Number 73 is a very special number in that it is a prime number and also the name of a formerly anarchic children’s TV show that was filmed in Maidstone that was a staple part of my Saturday mornings when I was much younger than I am now.

Talking of being much younger, this is the only song that I can remember my dad singing to me when I was nipper and its kind of nice that this has appeared today of all days. I was about four when this happened and had an awful nasty cough and couldn’t sleep and so my dad sat me downstairs on the sofa with blankets and a warm lemon and honey drink and sung to me – his voice was surprisingly soft and tuneful. Not bad for a fella who was smoking 20 a day at the time.

13. Arctic Monkeys – Cornerstone (#60)

JC interjects…..there’s no commentary on the actual song as this part of the rundown was near the end of what I hope was an imaginary tale of the debauchary at a 50th birthday party……we’d reached the part where there were court proceedings!

14. Doves – There Goes The Fear (#164)

Some questions in life are difficult to answer.

Like the one about where babies come from when it comes out of the mouth of a five year old on a bus. Or the one that comes from Dave’s wife at midnight asking you where Dave is, because Dave has told his wife that he is with you and you have frankly no idea where Dave is. Both of those questions are normally met with a stutter, an ‘Erm’ and in the latter case, a ludicrous attempt at deflection, (“Oh, I’m glad you phoned Sally because I need to talk to you about, well anything other than where Dave is, because Dave is probably, almost certainly, with Molly the barmaid from the Dog & Duck and he has dropped me right in it”).

But some questions in life are very easy to answer. Like the one I got asked by a so-called friend yesterday

“Do you want to come and see Jesus Jones in Bristol with me?”

To which the only possible answer you can give is, No. I don’t. Unless Jesus Jones are being publicly flogged in middle of Bristol City Centre with massively thorned brambles, then yes, I’d love to.

Having ended another lifelong friendship and reflected on the tough conditions I set upon being sociable, it’s probably time to continue our countdown with a song that is also in a reflective kind of mood.

Doves, of course, have recently released new material, which was kind of ace. Whilst it is good to have them back, their new material doesn’t quite take you to the same sort of places that ‘The Last Broadcast’ did but I don’t think anyone expected it too, music has changed too much for Doves to achieve that sort of success. But when ‘There Goes The Fear’ was released back in 2002, it went straight into the Top Three. The cynical amongst us, would argue that was mainly due to some rather sneaky pricing tactics, but all the same it would be a brave soul who would argue that ‘There Goes The Fear’ didn’t deserve the success it got.

‘There Goes The Fear’ was one of those songs that took the listener on a journey. It was always more than just a song. It starts brilliantly with that sparkling intro riff before turning into a seven minute dance music inspired trip that tells a tale of a man who has woken up to the fact that his life has passed him by and from there a melancholy masterpiece unfolds and then a few years later they very nearly did all over again, when their atmospheric single ‘Black and White Town’, a single about growing up on council estates rocketed into the Top Ten.

 

JC/SWC