END OF THE DECADE HOT 10 MUSICAL ROUND UP OF THE HOT 10 OF BEST EVER 10 HOT LP ALBUMS OF THE HOT 10 DECADE

'Hey evah baddah wuur Jedwards!' Jedwards

Seeing as the world and his wife seems to have got in on the Pitchfork style list-o-mania to mark the end of this decade in modern music I decided it only right that I should be in on the act.

I read a lot of other peoples lists and nobody seemed to get it quite right, a few publications forgot that the U.S existed (Guardian/NME), others that the year 2000 is actually part of this decade (Stereogum) and it seemed to slip the collective minds of all involved that 'Metal' became a legitimate musical force over the last ten years and should no longer be prisoner of it's own genre specific year/decade end lists. My personal favorite other than the fact that Thom Yorkie obviously bought Pitchfork.com sometime in 2003, was that somehow Kasabian seemed to have convinced Britain's only surviving weekly music paper that 'Pauper Lunar Piper Fuckface' was in fact not a joke album.

I've left this late on the off chance that something might come up the inside lane to both stagger and shock me like The XX managed to do with their debut. This has not happened. The past few months in contemporary music have been what wine connoissuers might call dry and tasteless. Initially I had this down as a list of fifty, then thirty but decided I was being a bit too wishy washy, had a failure to commit and forced myself to cut away not only all of the chaff but half the wheat as well.

This should be in reverse Miss World order but it's not. If you would like to view it this way scroll to the bottom and work up.


TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE DACADE...

DR. JOHN THE NIGHT TRIPPER - GRIS GRIS

Times like these you wonder if eating a pommegranite is really worth the time and effort it takes. I say that not as a clever segue into this review, suggesting that the piece is hard to get into and ultimately perhaps not worth it but because I am actually eating a pommegranite as I type.

Things we know about Dr. John...

• Dr. John sang the theme music to nineties teen sit-com 'Blossom'.
• Dr. John is not in fact a doctor
• Dr. John's real name is Malcomn

Dr John, also released 'Gris Gris' in 1968, a record so fiercely individual that I am more than happy to wipe his slate clean, forget the fact that he not only lied about his name but also his occupation, forget that 'In his opinionation the sun is gonna surely shine.'

THE WORLDS BIGGEST RECORD COLLECTION... IT'S SHIT

It's bigger than a really big house, it weighs more than a planet (probably) and if you were going to count each record on a seperate finger you would need 3 million fingers. And it's for sale... 

http://www.thegreatestmusiccollection.com/

Or should I say, it's STILL for sale. Why hasn't it sold? Because it's shit. Okay, it's not all shit, but the vast majority of it, realistically 95% of the worlds biggest record collection is utter donkey doo. Why? Because Paul Mawhinney (proud owner) never learned the word 'Filter'. Filter, filter, filter.

SATURDAY NIGHT - RANDOM MIDDLE AGED AGORAPHOBIC MIX TAPE

Why are you staying in alone on a Saturday night?

Because It's snowing outside, because its really fucking cold.

Why are you really staying in alone on a Saturday night?

Because I have mental problems.

I have been extended two separate Festively themed invitations for this evening both of which I have declined employing the most paper thin of excuses, cheap brown finger toilet-roll thin excuses. It is cold outside, but is that really reason enough to be sat in alone shut away from the world on a Saturday night? I know that in reality a Saturday night should be no different from any other day of the week but popular Western culture dictates that it's something else, something special. Saturday night is after all alright for fighting, worth spelling out whilst wearing platform heels and tartan trousers, a roller-skating jam and whatever the fuck it was Whigfield said it was. (I only recall the pigtails and Balearic piano).

BRAINTICKET - PSYCHONAUT

Question: What record starts off making you feel like you are a miner on the face of music? A miner crawling, cramped through a dark passageways, his way lit only by the lamp on his helmet, chipping away a the rock face, a miner who has just struck a thick vein of musical amazingness, the likes of which he didn't think was even possible? What record starts like this and ends sounding like off-cuts from the spit-roast corpse of Emerson, Lake and indeed Palmer?

Answer: See Above.

ALAN VEGA - ALAN VEGA

Have a cracking Christmas...At Woolworths.

Over a year after I first googled 'Woolworths Christmas advert' the images, especially now haunt me like the hastily buried corpse of a young boy might. No, even that doesn't quite go to explain the sheer horror and sickness I felt when I first watched a combined cast of The Goodies, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Russian dancers, Ballerinas and that woman with the bowl cut present their Yuletide extravaganza. I really don't want to go into too much detail because I need to do anything I possibly can to stop the images coming to life in my head so all I will do is post a link so that if you really do feel like you must see the above ensemble attempt to sell you Maxell C90 Cassettes and the like all to the sound of some ABBA meets Brotherhood of Man evil supergroup you can. Link and article continue after the break.

ALICE COLTRANE - WORLD GALAXY

So I can't think of a better way to end the weekend than on a cloud of other-worldly harp strings and dramatic orchestration courtesy of Alice Coltrane. The sinister interludes and occasional dischord are not helping my hangover but it could be so much worse and besides the state of my head is entirely my fault. I attempted to drink myself to a level of inebriation that would mean that my ears stopped working, that the cunts outside with their cigarettes and endless Germanic chatter, their laughing and joking would leave me be just for one night. It worked - The price is a hell like cranial throbbing that has definied much of my day. This aside I do feel all the better for one nights full and undisturbed sleep - I just try and see it as practice for fatherhood. The nocturnal interruptions that is rather than the binge drinking.

DAVID BOWIE - LODGER

If I slept last night I don't remember it. For somewhere that looks dead and is closed at least half the time this particular part of Nuremberg is noisy as fuck. It' starts around nine o'clock, the doorway opposite my apartment is a night club and next to it a seemingly lawless drinking establishment, one that thinks nothing of opening until 6.00am Monday morning. When these mother fuckers finally shut up shop the street cleaners take up the mantle and make as much noise as they can cleaning up the broken glass and cigarette ends. Then, then it's up to the builders a few doors down to keep me awake.

PORTISHEAD - DUMMY

'It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under uh-huh huh huh huh.'

So once again the god of 'Pulling records at random from the shelf ' shines on me with this. Not even sure of the last time I listened to it but I do know it totally fucking rules. So, first time I heard it? I got this copy shortly after it came out, I remember buying the 12 of 'Glory Box' exhausting it as what the youth of today might call a 'shagging' record and then finally buying this. The album made things a lot easier, no more getting up partially clothed from a sex bed to skip a needle back to the start of a five minute song, the album bought me time, a whole twenty minutes per side (or similar).

T REX - TANX

Although I am still reeling from the awesomess of one recent purchase in particular: The below Sergio Mendes LP, there has been much room for this particular album in my life over the past week. For reasons unknown I halted my exploration of all things T Rex at Slider. When I was about 13 I had a double cassette compilation that included works beyond that but beyond playing it in the car with my dad as an exercise in bridging the generation gap I remember little of it.

'He died in a car crash y'know, drove his mini into a tree.'

'Really? I thought he'd be driving a Jeep.'

LIVE RECORD SHOP REPORT 16.22 (PINK FLOYD - ATOM HEART MOTHER)

So during the course of today's exercise my readership has actually reduced by a staggering 10%, conceeded there were only ten 'readers' at the beginning of the day but that is still the kind of loss you don't want to highlight in a pie chart beaming onto the boardroom wall. Maybe I need to be doing more swearing? Less self analysis and more talking about music. Pretty sure I could treble the readership if I refocussed the content to included my second hobby of compulsive pornography viewer. 'Records I am listening to on my record player and pornography I am watching on the internet.' ... Might actually be something in that, just need to work on the title.

LIVE RECORD SHOP REPORT 15.33 (DJALMA CORREA - BAIAFRO)

I just used Babelfish (an online translation application) to explain to a customer that I would not be buying his records because I was only looking after the shop. Truth be known, had he not already come from the record shop next door who had refused them I might have had a look, but if they had turned them down then, wow, they were shit.

In the time lapsed I have hidden from one customer - a guy from work, not because my temporary second job might be viewed as a conflict of interests but rather because I am an anti-social shit who makes uneccesarily heavy work of occaional pleasantries. At times I am utterly incapable of even a 'Hi how are you', I mean, yes I can say the words, but can I do it without sounding insincerre, without sweating, looking awkward? That's a negatory.

LIVE RECORD SHOP REPORT 14:28 (SERGIO MENDES & BRASIL '77 - RAIZES)

A lady with three of her front teeth missing just tried to sell me some CDs.

Shortly afterwards another customer appears, a polite browser, no discerning features. I pretend I am German and nod as he talks. Eventually he leaves and I am alone with Sergio Mendes and his Brasil '77. Good album this. A million light years away from the mid to late 60's fodder more readily associated with lift muzak. This is something of a tribal/world/spooky free jazz sound clash. Well, less of a clash, more of a blend, it's probably a lot like coffee or something.

LIVE RECORD SHOP REPORT 13.30 (LINDA MCCARTNEY - WIDE PRAIRIE)

Okay so it looks like the record player is, for now at least back up and running. Personally I can't think of a better way of celebrating the fact than seeing what this sounds like. I am for obvious reasons full of anticipation here. This is where Paul's very own Yoko get's to flap her wings (Wings! Get it?). Linda's musical history is forever tainted by the isolated sound desk tapes of her 'backing singing' that did the rounds in the late 80's. This in mind I am expecting something as wonderful as the Shaggs here...

LIVE RECORD SHOP REPORT 13.01 (GAL COSTA - LEGAL)

This could turn into somekind of endurance blogging, a veritable marathon of typing reviews of records, CDs rather that I really don't want to be listening to. This in mind I reserve the right to abandon 'Operation:Record Shop' without prior notice, not least because up to now my day reallty isn't worth writing about.

LIVE RECORD SHOP REPORT 12:28 (POPOL VUH - HOSIANNA MANTRA)

I forgot to mention in my last log the reason for it's running late. Didn't have a password for the computer.

Anyway, by this point the record player has inexplicably stopped working and I can't find the lights for the back of the shop. I suffered through more Steve Windwood/Traffic than any man should have to. I had been under the impression that I needed a copy of 'John Barleycorn...' but beyond the drums and flute of 'Freedom Rider' it really is a nothing record.

LIVE RECORD SHOP REPORT 12:07 (BLACK SABBATH - BLACK SABBATH)

So my day has not panned out quite as expected thusfar. Currently I am sat in near darkness listening to a scratched CD copy of Traffic's 'John Barleycorn Must Die'. Battling with the Ys and Zs of a German keyboard. Anywaz the day so far...

CELEBRATING MY 80th ENTRY

I wanted to do something special to celebrate that all important 80th anniversary. According to the internet In wedding terms I would be celebrating my 'oak' anniversary, which is interesting. I would have guessed at some precious stone above diamond, but no, coffin wood it is. Anyway, I got to thinking, I should review a Black Oak Arkansas album or something or other to do with wood, but then I thought, 'no, that's a shit idea'.

Then as luck would have it something truly wonderful happened...

CODEINE - THE WHITE BIRCH

...It's the most wonderful time of the year! (sung with equal parts gusto and Christmassy cheer)

Traditionally, and when I say traditionally I actually just mean the past four or five years, rather than say since I was four, this record and a handful of others will now stay on heavy rotation until the weather lifts and the bears come out of their caves. This basically means I will hear it at least twice weekly until the end of March.

TIM MAIA - TIM MAIA RACIONAL

So what do we know about Tim Maia? We know he is dead, that he died in 1998, that he was a Brazilian singer song writer who did not age as well as he might (his head in particular changed shape in a very non flattering way as his twilight years approached). We also know that in 1975 he recorded the album Racional. At this time Tim was a member of the Universe in Descenchant cult.

VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO - THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

I decided to wait until I finally had an early press of this before commiting it to the annals. Reviewing anything other than an original peelable banana sleeve just seemed criminal, as if something was missing from the experience.

I finally found an 'affordable' copy on returning from my holidays. In fairness I had seen it before waving at me from the racks, slightly too expensive and with an unfortunate case of spine wear creeping at least three inches from the base to just below the title writing. I could just about see past the fact that the top of the banana has seperated about 20mm down and that the print at the edges is dulling but the spine, something I am particularly anal about always put me off until now.

BACK

So I am back. After a pregnant pause of nigh on a month my fingers are tapping away as they recover from a night of making up for lost record shop time. Already my tan is fading, patches of peeling skin forming on my shoulders as my shit turns back to normal. Sierra Leone saw everything ranging from 'runny like soup' to trying to pass an sizeable unsanded wooden stump... But this is 32RPM and not Brownycolwny.Blogspot.com so I shall cease and desist with that particular line of copy.

BILL PLUMBER AND THE COSMIC BROTHERHOOD - BILL PLUMBER AND THE COSMIC BROTHERHOOD

This was supposed to be a review of Blue Cheer's 'Oh! Pleasant Hope', that being the record I am most excited about at the moment but I can't find it so this will have to do.

So what happens when an insurance salesman from Wisconsin drags his pals away from the bi-weekly 'Lodge of the Hectic Moose' meeting and convinces them to pick up and play a host of Indian instruments? 

This is what happens.

DINO VALENTE - DINO VALENTE

I feel sick. I've eaten too much. Well it was either that or the ill advised horizontal lying down that I decided to get with as soon as I was done with the eating. For some reason my re-heated chili and rice dinner fueled me with the urge to take to the sofa, legs slightly elevated courtesy of the chair arm. Now I am paying the price. My digestive system is truly confused and my body hates me.

DICK HYMAN - THE AGE OF ELECTRONICUS

When I was younger, when I first heard of this guy, his name used to have me in fits of hysterics. Fifteen or so years later I just about have it under control, it hasn't been an easy few years though, I mean 'dick' and 'hymen' in same name? Whilst it was never as tough as when I first found out that American's said 'period' instead of full-stop, it was tough going non the less.

BAD BRAINS - ROCK FOR LIGHT

Scouting through Pitchfork.com's end of the decade round up the news that the ipod has been around less than ten years genuinely shocked me. How quickly we forget the joys of our first walkman and the invention of the auto reverse button.

In retrospect it has been a busy decade for music based technologies. The CD died, against all odds the vinyl record came back (to some extent, although not sufficiently to save a lot of already very average record shops), record labels spent much of the latter part of the past ten years shitting their collective pants as it became increasingly obvious that the vast majority of the public really were more than happy taking music without paying for it. Not sure what they expected, the MP3 makes music invisible and by default worthless to many. No more impressing girlfriends with your neatly catalogued CD collection...

PHAROAH SANDERS - WISDOM THROUGH MUSIC

As a silent protest to the fact that the whole of Germany is on involuntary consumer lock-down in the shape of a public holiday that falls on a Saturday I have spent almost the entire weekend in bed, a bed-in if you will, a John Lennon like gesture to the world, sadly without a young Yoko Ono to keep me from writing bad rock n' roll. The main difference being that time was spent, not talking to the press or sleeping but rather watching series 2 of Prison Break. I can hear Angela 'the haircut' Merkel shaking in her ill-advised fuck me boots from here. I showed her. I showed them all... Kind of.

FRANCIS BEBEY - HEAVY GHETTO (ANTI APARTHIED MAKOSSA)

So September was quiet, it was never intentional, just happened that way. Any record buying pattern that I might have went unchanged, I managed a trip to Amsterdam, London and spent more than a fair share of my time in my two (count 'em) local haunts. They weren't particularly forthcoming with the proverbial goods until last Thursday night. Could have been an aligning of the stars, some mystical payback for a pretty shitty week, who gives a fuck. After a good couple of weeks of digging with nothing to show for it aside of 'record fingers' I finally hit something resembling pay dirt.

THE TURTLES - THE TURTLES PRESENT THE BATTLE OF THE BANDS

Tough record to sell to me this. As forgiving in nature as I am it is almost impossible to see past the fat speccy cunt that takes up half the sleeve. Not even Oliver Reed (Top Right) can help.  I have had this record forever and I cant remember where I got it from. I  manage to make mental note of the approximate price and origin of pretty much every record I have - because I am THAT exciting, but this one, hmmm, this one is a mystery. Maybe it was planted on me, or maybe it was always there, an unnoticed prop in my formative years, under my bed as a hormonal teen discovering myself with the help of some cheap magazine.

MUDDY WATERS - AFTER THE RAIN

As the leaves fall, the clocks turn and we bid farewell to yet another Summer a wasted my journey into 'The Blues' begins in earnest and has already pulled up what can only be described as double fucking awesome or DFA for short.

Aparently in an attempt to make Muddy Waters (And Howlin' Wolf) more relevant to 'the kids' Chess records 'suggested' they make electric/psych albums. Muddy's was called 'Electric Mud' something I am yet to hear and currently trying to get a copy of... 'After the Rain' is what followed. According to various sources this still holds much of the previous album's appeal but isn't such an obvious move in a new and for the artist unwanted direction. Muddy went on record as describing 'Electric Mud' as 'Utter shit'.

EARL HOOKER - 2 BUGS AND A ROACH

So prior to this my knowledge of the blues was nothing beyond remembering to name check Robert Johnson when the subject arose. For whatever reason I have never had the slightest interest in the genre, as soon as the blues or a bit of the old boogie woogie crept into anything that did enter my statosphere it was instantly dismissed with a swift lifting of the needle.

I say 'for whatever reason', who am I kidding, I know exactly why I have given 'the blues' such a wide berth... Three words 'Gary Fucking Moore'. Now he was alright while he was busy pretending to be a guitar carrying soldier widdly diddling over marching drums but then he did his blues album and... well, it's fucking crud.

GINGER BAKER - STRATAVARIOUS

Although music historians may contest this, the Derek and Clive fan's amongst us know who Ginger Baker is. Ginger Baker went to Africa to 'teach the blacks how to drum'. So as inventor of tribal rhythm and it seems drumming itself the man has a lot to live up to.

Well much of his career was spent sporting a very fucking brave ginger beard, the kind that (gingerness aside) many a Hoxton hipster would shoot their mum for right now. So cool beard -Brownie points. Same points deducted for Cream. I have tried and tried with this band and despite the sleeve of 'Disraeli Gears' being nothing short of a full blown corker, I've never made it all the way through. My passionate distaste for the boy Clapton doesn't help but that aside, electric blues, it seems is just not my thing, especially at the hands of a bunch of London? dandies who couldn't be further removed from the root reason of Blues if they tried.

SONIC YOUTH - GOO

It's Thursday and the sun is shining. The fact that I am stuck indoors in a temporary building with utterly useless air conditioning should be a mere detail, but it's not, it is a defining factor. It is hot and shitty and my arms keep sticking to the desk.

If I was in Sonic Youth I would be fine because by default I would be totally, utterly and completely cool rather than being able to feel my balls sliding around against my legs. As a side note and I don't know this for a fact but I imagine Thurston Moore to have the greatest record collection on the planet (I wonder if Kim Gordon keeps hers seperately?). Anyway my choice of words might indicate I am hot as a motherfucker right now, the air is stale and the t-shirt on my back peels from my chair when I sit forward.

STEREOLAB - SWITCHED ON

I was reheating a hearty portion of ravioli when I realized I hadn't listened to Stereolab for a while, that in mind I plucked this from the racks and fired up my turntable. 'Switched On' came out the same year as the band's debut 'Peng' and is a rather pointless compilation of the first two 10inches and the 'Stunning Debut Album' 7inch.

The album's release set a steady pattern that continues until present day where the 'groop' pretty much match every album release with a compilation of somekind - Not that I am complaining for a second. I hate 7inch singles and without this considerate marketing ploy I would be without much of the band's better work.

SUN RA - THE HELIOCENTRIC WORLDS OF SUN RA

After years of trawling Jazz sections and mistakenly getting excited about finding a copy of this album before turning it over and finding yet another Italian BASE re-issue, I have a copy.

Eventually I cheated and went the way of the American Ebay but it was worth it. Not so much because of the music (It's not his best - but more of that later) but because this has to be one of the greatest and certainly top 3 Sun Ra record sleeves ever. It's not actually the original sleeve... or pressing. The first ESP Disks press had a black and white mess of shapes across the cover, I have actually seen that fairly recently but I could hardly justify owning both and with this crazy cat still out there....

I FORGOT THE NAME OF THIS RECORD SHOP IN AMSTERDAM

I was out on business last week, following that I managed to tack on a few thoroughly enjoyable days back home. Although record shops and record shopping were not a particular focus, I did manage to have a cheeky peek in a couple of stores around Amsterdam. Well actually one store and a couple of market stores on Waterlooplein. There is little to say of Waterlooplein re: record shopping. It has been reduced to a damp graveyard of used Beebop Delux albums, one of the last places on earth that a Christopher Cross record might reach mid single figures. In fact, unless you are in the business of buying bike locks, spray paint or getting shouted at by drunk Kanye West types I'd probably give the entire area a wide berth.

POPOL VUH - DAS HOHELIED SALOMOS

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall and the concequent end to communism in Europe there is one question on everyones minds:

'In the record shop featured in the 1986 film 'Pretty in Pink', why is it that the Laurie Anderson album on the wall is censored so you can't make out her name?'

They did the same to the Mighty Wah! Album as well changing the WAH! into WA8!. Why?

ASMUS TIETCHENS - BIOTOP

So the good news is that Thom Yorke (I believe pronounced Tee-Hom York-E) of Radiohead has announced that the band will not be recording any more albums!

The champagne was already flowing accompanied by a ticker-tape filled sky and celebrations akin to those of V-E Day by the time I got to the end of the article and discovered that they would sadly still be recording singles and EPs.

STEVE MARCUS - TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

If i was say seven or however old enough you have to be to do that thing where you sit on Santa's knee at Christmas time, that thing they do in department stores the world over (Israel and Muslim states excluded) where Santa asks you what you want for Christmas in his deep and bearded Santary voice. If I was of the correct age and in said knee based situation I would probably say,

'A bike Santa, what I really want for Christmas is a bike!'

And Santa would laugh his big Ho! Ho! Ho! laugh and then say something like,

'But you already have a bike, isn't there anything else you want?'

BUDKA SUFLERA - PRZECHODNIEM BYTEM MIEDZY WAMI

Is it wrong to buy an album solely because of the standard of the screen printing on the sleeve? Polish film posters have long been the thing of wet dreams for the designer types and the sleeve this Budka Suflera album seems to belong to a similar school. The contrast of the matt silver on the off white card is really strong even if the stock used to produce the sleeve is symptomatically thin.

TOM WAITS - BLUE VALENTINE

Tom Waits is a great actor. His turn in Robert Altman's 'Short Cuts' remains one of the finest supporting roles I have ever seen on film. I have tried with him on record a few times before: As of writing this I have owned 'Swordfishtrombone' twice, I have owned 'Heart Attack and Vine' and I have a recollection of owning 'Small Change' although that might well just have been a strange and random record shop based dream.

So hear I am again, sitting down and listening to one of the most critically acclaimed singer song writers of our time...

FELA KUTI AND AFRICA 70 - ZOMBIE

I remember the first mass 'reconsidering' of Fela Kuti's work in the mid to late 90's, (it was also around that time that I first heard Sun Ra.) Suddenly he was the name to drop, his records became expensive and in demand and shortly thereafter box sets and bootlegs of every last shit he took flooded the market. Well I say flooded, it wasn't so much of a flood as a trickle but we are talking relative terms here, relative terms.

GROOVES RECORDS OF SAN FRANCISCO

Like most record shops in SF, this record shop is on a hill. I very nearly didn't go in it. Not because I feared a sweatly back from the steep climb but rather beacause Grooves are breaking one of the ten record shop commandments in what can only be described as a truly flagrant manner.

Thou shall not ever, ever, ever display records without sleeves, regardless of how pretty the coloured vinyl is, regardless of whether they are part of that cosmic joke that is known as the picture disc... Not even if the record is worthless. Thou shall not prettify your shop with records without fucking sleeves!

THE SUPREMES - SING COUNTRY WESTERN AND POP

So 1999, I am on holiday in the deep South with my then girlfriend and two friends, our driving holiday had taken us out to Baton Rouge and back round again to the infinitely less fun tourist ridden part of Florida. We spent the day in Tampa, everybody with the exception of me wanted to go to Busch Gardens to ride amongst other things the Spiderman Rollercoaster. I haven't really had any love for ammusement parks since working at Six Flags Great America in the mid 90's. The fact that I was employed to work 'safety' on a rollercoaster after a mornings training kind of put me off ever risking my life to any kind of Final Destination 3 scenario type death... That plus theme parks are gay.

THE DWARVES - BLOOD, GUTS AND PUSSY

If this blog was about CDs I listened to in my car I would be reviewing the 20th Anniversary edition of the 'Dirty Dancing' soundtrack. I would be telling you about how it's kind of patchy and not much of an improvement on the original and how 'Hungry Eyes' and the theme from 'Dirty Dancing' are still the two stand-outs. I would also be lamenting about how I remember watching the film for the first time at a house party, the same house party which acted as my gateway to adolescence by means of the game 'Spin the Bottle'. It was at Francesca Reynolds' house in Sheffield and it was a Saturday night, facts which mean absolutely nothing to anybody unless they were there.

THE MAKE UP - I WANT SOME

In an alternate universe we would all worship The Make-Up like Gods. Instead of the Sixties ending with Altamont, that stabbing of an unfortunate by idiot bikers and a truly average performance by the Stones would have signaled a beginning, the beginning of some glorious fucked up distorted beat pop orgy of awesome hair and tight black jeans.  Human sacrifices would be made outside of Ian Svenonius' D.C home and other band's maybe even more awesome than The Make-Up would have picked up the baton and run with it in the general direction of a truly better tomorrow.

THE WHO - WHO'S NEXT

So 'Who's Next' reminds me of a few things. Firstly there's the time I was in a strip club in Potland OR a couple of years back. The song came on and was being used as a 'get naked' soundtrack by a particularly young looking blonde lady. I was with a few friends and a guy I didn't know so well, anyway the song came on.

'Brilliant 'Teenage Wasteland!'

'It's called 'Baba O'Riely', stupid name I know but it's called Baba O'Riley'

'Nah! This is 'Teenage Wasteland' it's the soundtrack from that thing on the telly.'

He was right, it was the soundtrack from that thing on the telly, that thing where criminals leave hair or bits of skin at crime scenes and consequently get caught. I shook my head, ordered a PBR and left him to the stripper.

THE BYRDS - THE NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS

I just read a very brief history of the Byrds, I learnt that they had more line-up changes than is healthy and confirmed my suspicions that David Crosby was an utter twat.

This is not just down to the moustache he sported in his later years or because he always looked like a cross between the bad guys from Dirty Harry and the Warriors, it isn't because he was always the worst dressed of the band or that he looked entirely out of place with a smugness that just screamed 'kick me!' ....well, okay it is partly those things, maybe mostly those things, but reading about him being a giant dick just legitimised my sentiments.

ROY HARPER - STORMCOCK

I now have black bogies. I got home from a 'record shop' called 'Record Detective' on Palmers Green about twenty minutes ago, the nose blowing came after a fevered hand washing and it was there I discovered the dark grey snot.

As friendly as 'Mr Detective' is I will not be going back. This has nothing to do with the fact I walked for two hours to get there, or my return journey that ended up as a messy combination of bus and underground, it is because unless you are into the Beatles, Stones or Elvis or some very random rack filler there is absolutely nothing there, and it's all unpriced making it hard to spot a bargain. I am pretty sure this wasn't always the case but right now it looks and feels picked over like a week old cowboys corpse in the sand of the Mojave desert.

ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO - CERTAIN BLACKS

Getting a letter from the IRS saying I owe them $5257 is never the best way of starting the day. Needless to say I was still smarting from this entirely dick news when I got home from work.

If I had even and ounce of energy I might have gone for a run or a bike ride, something to clear my head, get my thoughts together, work out a way out of my new hole. Unfortunately I don't. I get as far as sitting dour faced looking through my t-shirt at my beer gut and then usually find something more important to do, something like say looking on the internet for pictures or plane crashes or trying to find a new book on Japanese war crimes.