TVV IN 800 SONGS : CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF BLOGGING (Part Fifteen)

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