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).