tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30306696155207245072024-03-19T21:44:15.711+00:00Where shingle meets raincoat'Fear of the future is so deep in our hearts / We'll all but destroy ourselves'Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.comBlogger161125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-28348711896730041582018-12-12T11:26:00.000+00:002018-12-12T11:42:41.205+00:00MAY'S BRITAIN... Part One: 'Moderation' Island<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"The Conservatives must not be a single issue party. We are a party of the whole nation - moderate, pragmatic, mainstream; committed to reuniting our country and building a country that works for everyone; the agenda I set out in my first speech outside this front door; delivering the Brexit people voted for; building a country that works for everyone." </i>- Theresa May, Downing Street, London, 12 December 2018, c. 08:50am</blockquote>
What's 'moderate' about enabling more homelessness and food banks in Britain? What is 'moderate' about 14 million being in poverty? More than one in five of the population. What is 'moderate', fair or reasonable about building an economy around a powerful constituency of multiple-home owning rentiers as opposed to tenants of social or private housing, the young or anyone who audaciously just wants to own one home?<br />
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As in the 1980s and 1990s, what is 'moderate' about flogging off the public realm and its public goods and utilities that are good and have utility for the public?<br />
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I would be impressed if anyone could persuade me of Theresa May's wise 'moderation' in leading Britain towards an absurd Brexit countdown, when she has indulged the "No Deal" fantasies of the "European Research" Group ultras every step of the way. Despite failing to win a majority in June 2017 for a "Hard Brexit". Despite the inevitable <i>realpolitik </i>of the UK being one country ranged against 27 kicking in. Terry Hall, Neville Staple and Lynval Golding had it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POzSXzwbwIc">right</a> 37 winters ago, but could they ever have imagined the rise of such grotesque Thatcher sprogs as Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson, Priti Patel and Jacob Rees-Mogg?<br />
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As Philip Alston of the United Nations <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Poverty/EOM_GB_16Nov2018.pdf">reported</a> in November, this government's domestic austerity programme is 'patently unjust and contrary to British values'. This government's foreign policy programme is shambolic and is fashioning a new, enfeebled, disgruntled Little Britain - or is that England? Cameron and May's Brexit will go down in history as the most ill-advised foreign policy since Blair's Iraq War of 2003, or even Eden's Suez Crisis of 1956. Our international self-belittlement is thoroughly interlinked with austerity: the mendacious, 'necessary' and national suffering visited upon us over the past eight years.<br />
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12 December 2018<br />
Newcastle upon TyneTom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-10510988000816338892017-06-08T16:33:00.000+01:002017-06-08T16:46:07.005+01:00Have-a-go zeroes, Brexit dreamers and a tribune emerges: the UK General Election of 2017<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘He would probably have to move to Downing Street. He says: “I am very happy where I live. Others may wish me to move. I did not become leader of the Labour party to get a new house. There are going to be pressures. Security issues, no doubt. But I like where I live. My neighbours like me being there as well, most of the time.’</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[1]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, election 2017... A weird, surprising experience; an entirely unnecessary party-political ploy by the Prime Minister, but one the left have made use of. If Corbyn wins it or (infinitely more likely) if there's a hung parliament, it will be the biggest political upset of... surely any!? The thing is, each day the prospect seems a bit likelier. Could events in Chris Mullin and Alan Plater's superb 1988 Channel 4 drama <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Very British Coup</i> actually come to pass...? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This has been, viewed objectively, the most incompetent Tory campaign you could imagine. In 2001 Hague-led, they were underdogs. Now, in 2017, they were massive, media-boosted favourites and yet... now face an entirely new political landscape. Labour will now surely at least gain 33-34% of the vote. All accounts point to a highly significant swing to the left among younger voters. The Labour manifesto and campaign has dragged the political "Overton Window" to the left. This refers to Joseph Overton’s theory of which policies are publicly considered acceptable within a given political context.</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[2]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> It can be argued that May’s duplicitous left-ish rhetoric also engages with the reality that neoliberal right-wing policies are now less acceptable than in their 1990s-00s heyday, and Corbyn’s manifesto will surely cement a general leftwards trend in which policies will be seen as not just desirable but <em>possible</em>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br /><br /> Whatever you think about Jezza, you simply cannot imagine Owen Smith or Liz Kendall pulling this off. The most important test for progressive politicians is <em>how they affect the political centre of gravity</em>. The affable but uncharismatic Ed Miliband's caution just did not work. This more cerebral leader hedged his bets on everything, didn't seem genuine. He lacked passion. Corbyn is now showing these qualities and it seems they <em>may</em> even advance beyond "shoring up the core vote"... Whatever happens, it is good to see that this is now not a walk in the park for the most arrogant, laughable politician in my lifetime, my namesake: T. May. In this, she may beat stiff competition from Michael "something of the night" Howard, Billy "14 pints" Hague and even the pathetic "Quiet Man" of British politics, IDS!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The mind-numbing political language of cliché and sound bite has, yet again, dominated. But, it has been good to see “Strong and Stable” widely mocked. “Magic money tree” needs to be as widely reviled – but then, public understanding of the complexities of economics is so low that such arguments may not easily find purchase. A telling moment in the debate was when Paul Nuttall decried Labour’s manifesto as set on taking the country “back to the 70s”. There was some scoffing and laughter, if not quite as much as when Rudd boasted of “our record”. Surely, a large number who lived through the 1970s would say it was a better time than now, in terms of a shared common culture, but also the diversity of subcultures and the power that working people had. It also saw the most significant developments in British feminism and environmentalism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Worst of all has been May’s “no deal is better than a bad deal”, winning idiotic right-wing cheers for a paradox: no deal actually being the likely most punitive and economically devastating situation conceivable. In the Paxman interview, May was vastly more at ease talking about Brexit than domestic policies; this has been the Tory mantra this time, replacing the "maxed out credit card". It is believed. Many voters are willfully deluding themselves that an independent future will be rosy. They can kid themselves, as we won’t leave until 2019 at the earliest… They can still, somehow, cling to their own idealised visions of what “Brexit” will entail: a return to the 1950s, a return to metric measurements, more deregulation, more nationally focused regulation, fewer bendy bananas…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Therefore, it is the right-wingers in this country who are the dangerous dreamers and the next few years will make this amply clear – this wouldn’t be a bad election for Labour to narrowly lose, as dealing with Brexit is the <em>ultimate poisoned chalice</em>. These voters are ultimately deciding to focus more on their imagined “Brexit” panacea than thinking deeply about frankly absurd policies such as the expansion of grammar schools at the expense of the majority of children. Sadly, for a great many voters, the power of simple appeals to patriotism will outrank critical thought about the Tories' remarkably sectional domestic agenda: class war on behalf of the already sharp-elbowed and prosperous. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A more gratifying aspect of the election has been UKIP’s overdue eclipse. Unless they are able in the future to claim some sort of ‘betrayal’ of the Brexit ‘promise’, they are finished for good. Paul “Eddie Hitler” Nuttall is the most singularly unimpressive political leader the party has had, <em>this year</em>. My funniest moment of the campaign was when Andrew Neil questioned the pro-capital punishment scouser, following his reported comments claiming he’d like to pull the lever on those convicted of the death penalty: “do you want to be an MP… or an executioner?” I'm not usually a fan of Neil, but here he encapsulated Nuttall's have-a-go zero nature in one stroke.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hopefully, the Corbyn campaign has <em>engaged young people in politics</em> - a vastly important development regardless of exactly what happens tonight. From this week's Gateshead rally to anecdotes within my Further Education workplace, there is tangible engagement – seemingly entirely on the Labour side. This could bode well for future elections if people react to the probable Tory victory in the right way – avoiding becoming disheartened and getting even more active.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The campaign has been ‘won’ by Labour, with even the more pessimistic polls from a left-wing perspective seeing a swing of around 6.5% since the start of the campaign with its 24-point Tory margins. They have presented an agenda that clearly entices voters after seven years of austerity. It is an interesting fusion of Corbyn’s ideas and the PLP’s; while a compromise, it is more radical than would have been probable with another leader, e.g. Cooper or Burnham. As John Harris argues, ‘an entire way of doing politics – deadened, arrogant and often absurd – is dying in front of our eyes. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party has revealed that the received wisdom of the past 15 years was wrong, and that talking in plain-spoken, moral, essentially socialist terms about the condition of the country need not entail political disaster.’</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Corbyn's humility is key; he is just one of the people himself, who genuinely likes listening to and learning from people. He is more interested in tending his allotment than in wielding power for its own sake. His tribune-like giving voice to the crowd will be a much more winning way of doing politics than the old devious bullshit, if only Labour will learn from it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">While the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardian</i> seems to have recanted its Corbyn scepticism, the <em>New Statesman</em>’s leader article last Friday tortuously triangulates – ironically, given its reference to Ed Miliband’s ‘tortuous triangulations’. It acknowledges Labour’s increased support – due to ‘a spirited campaign’ – but ultimately asserts the conventional New Labour rhetoric: ‘a leader who cannot command the support of his parliamentary party is no leader at all’.</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[4]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> This fails to see that much of Corbyn’s appeal is in his break with conventional Labourist attachment to parliament and elections as the be-all and end-all. QUOTE MILIBAND. The NS asserts its politics as ‘liberal, sceptical and unpredictable’, in no way engaging with arguments about the Overton Window.</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[5]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> They instead ‘believe’ we should take Theresa May at her word regarding these declaratives in her manifesto: “We do not believe in free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality.’</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[6]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Somehow, they do not castigate such statements as being as divorced from real objective policies and conditions as Blair’s ‘belief’ in the rightness of his actions over the Iraq War. Peter Wilby forwards wiser words, seeing it as plausible and beneficial for Corbyn to come close to Blair’s 35.2% in 2005: ‘We may then hear less from Blair, Mandelson and their ilk about how Labour can’t win on a left-wing manifesto.’</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[7]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Yet, editor Jason Cowley focuses on a likely ‘shattering’ defeat, based on apparent conversations with Labour MPs in marginal seats, and ends up advocating a sort of Blue Labour approach, quoting Orwell: “Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again” – and arguing than ‘an era is passing and the right is once more in the ascendant in these unsettling new times’.</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[8]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> It reads more like an intervention in a putative post-election leadership debate than a deep analysis of where the UK is at ideologically. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, a Tory win of 50+ seats will necessitate a reckoning for Labour: for future advances to be made, both left and right will have to give some ground. The leftist’s perennial vice, embroilment in myopic sectarian squabbling, must be avoided. It is Labour’s challenge to harness the novel positives of the Corbyn campaign and not retreat into 'politics as usual', 'austerity-lite' or the comfort zone of New Labour nostalgia. Even if May ends up winning, this win will be pyrrhic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, complacency would be folly. As Tufecki claims, there are ‘historically low levels of union membership and workplace militancy, along with the continued electoral fragmentation of Labour’s ‘natural’ base in the working class […] a Labour allied working-class movement […] appears largely absent today’.</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[9]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Much of this can be laid at the door of Labour under Blair and successors, who did not challenge the Thatcherite settlement. The unenviable challenge is to advance within parliament and also outside it – this latter process has been begun, but has an immense way to go. A wider socialist culture won’t easily transpire without a radical government able to legislate – e.g. removing Tory laws restricting the practices of trade unionism. However, the election of such an intentioned government just won’t happen without greater pressure from the public. Dissatisfied working people – as well as the young – are going to have to get organised.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Key policies for medium-to-long term strategy that need relentless focus, to shift public discourse to move towards a more interventionist, socialist place: housing, wages and holidays, local democracy and the NHS. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Labour campaign has effectively used the perception of its underdog status – as fostered by the media and polls – to build support, and increase scrutiny of the Tories. Aided, as Joe Brooker has argued, by the greater air-time an election campaign gives to opposition parties.</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[10]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> It has tapped into a notable anti-establishment mood – tellingly shown by the laughter in the TV debate when Amber Rudd made a ‘look at our government’s record’. Just how widespread the angry, naysaying public mood is remains a key moot point. Even if it turns out to be limited, we will likely see evidence of a larger left-wing ‘protest vote’ than in living memory – the switching to the Liberal Democrats over the Iraq War in 2005 may be the only comparable moment. If Labour manages to gain over 11 million actual votes cast, as is possible, this would be a good result: their highest total since 1997! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This does not <em>feel</em> like an election where the Tories are going to match or better the popular votes of 42-44% won by Thatcher and Blair in the 1979-87 and 1997 elections. Those campaigns largely saw those victorious party leaders controlling the agenda and featured only very minor 'wobbles'. Contrastingly, this has been the campaign of “weak and wobbly” May. The question is how damning the voters will be towards her presidential-style campaign…</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Probably not so much, knowing this country’s entrenched political culture… The British public have a predilection for self-punishment. They go for an abstract idea of ‘safety first’ and endanger their own and our futures. They complain about things getting worse in their local areas, yet many of them vote in the party least committed to local democracy. On this, Tom Crewe’s excellent, depressing piece from December is worth quoting at length: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘The establishment of a neoliberal consensus in Britain has been, in its essence and by necessity, an anti-municipal project. Austerity is Thatcherism’s logical end-point, effecting simultaneously the destruction of local government as a potentially rivalrous state-within-a-state, and the marketisation of nearly every aspect of public policy. Since 2010 the Conservative leadership, following the example of Thatcher and Blair, has diminished local democracy in order to entrench the gimcrack democracy of the free market, with the all-conquering mantra of ‘choice’ relied on to produce its own virtuous aggregations of opinion and activity: it is indicative that the Conservatives have not only brought back Right to Buy but also sought to expand the Free Schools programme so that councils would no longer have any role in the education system. Local government will soon be brought into line with its national counterpart: both limited in their essential functions, outsourcing the greater part of their responsibilities to the private sector. Private companies are now partly or fully responsible for the parole service, schools, roads, prisons, GP surgeries and walk-in centres, hospital services, the Royal Mail, tax credits, care homes, welfare assessments, refugee and detention centres, deportations, the provision of court interpreters, government pay rolls, broadband roll-out, IT programmes and government security. Most of these outsourced services are handled by four firms: Atos, Serco, Capita and G4S, who between them receive around £4 billion a year from taxpayers. (When the Tories won the general election in 2015, Serco’s share price rose by 5.95 per cent, Capita’s by 6.72 per cent and G4S’s by 7.35 per cent.) Mooted for future privatisation are the student loan book, the land registry, child protection services and the law courts. This isn’t to mention our privatised rail, gas, electricity, water and nuclear energy networks.’</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[11]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Tories promise five more years of this deadening, unnecessary austerity – and are now even unable to credibly argue it has been in any great economic cause: deficit and debt have grown more than previously when spending was higher. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Also, the electoral system now thoroughly favours the Tories, even more than in the past – they get votes where it counts. <strong>If Labour won’t back PR after this, it will be off its electoral rocker.<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The polls offer something for all; for the pessimists, yes, but also the optimists: some are showing 1-4% leads for the Tories. If this transpired, a hung parliament would be definite. While May’s party would likely be the largest, it would be a fatal blow to the Prime Minister and a dent to the Tory agenda. YouGov’s seat-by-seat <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/uk-general-election-2017/">model</a> currently shows the Tories ahead of Labour by 42-38% and with a narrow 33-seat lead: 302 to 269. It claims to contain a heavy focus on exact seat demographics, Remain-Leave and is said to be based on the current polling and factors in higher youth turnout. It also has the Lib Dems on 12 seats and Vince Cable winning by 18% in Twickenham (53-35).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the cautious side, I am sensing YouGov’s model may be missing something. While I sense that Electoral Calculus is much less seat-specific and will be widely out in some areas, its caution is generally a bit more persuasive, given the ‘shy Tory’ factor clearly at play in elections like 1992 and 2015. On EC, you plot a 7-point Tory lead and the majority is nearly fifty. Some polls are showing 10-11 point margins. While many of these polling companies bizarrely cap youth turnout at 2015 levels, they may factor in some probable Tory – and status quo – “swing-back” (as the jargon has it).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Tories have clearly had more money to spend on the campaign, and while the media has become increasingly critical of May’s campaign, the previous idolatry of the “Strong and Stable” One engendered too big a lead in perceptions than this campaign could fully overcome. In addition, the Tories have been deploying dark advertisements using social-media, untracked by the law or election authorities. These have been micro-targeted to specific demographics and specific marginal seats, in addition to a big spend on propaganda within local newspapers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Bureau of Investigative journalism have revealed that nine out of ten such Tory ads personally attack Corbyn.</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[12]</span></span></span></span></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Tories’ attention to electoral geography gives them a massive advantage. Even if there’s a Conservative to Labour swing in the national popular vote (perfectly possible), there could well be a counter-swing in the marginal seats. There unquestionably <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will</i> be such a pro-Tory swing in narrowly held Tory seats that are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> in London or bastions of Remain voters, as basically Labour have not focused on campaigning in Tory-held constituencies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><u>Some key seats to watch</u>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong>1. Twickenham</strong> – will social democratic slaphead Vincent Cable win, against a Remain-leaning Tory? <br /><br />VERDICT: not quite. Photo-finish, with the Tories just edging it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong>2. Vauxhall</strong> – as focused on in John Lanchester’s LRB piece. Will Farage associate and pro-fox hunting and grammar schools Tory in all but name Kate Hoey hold off the anti-Brexit Liberals?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">VERDICT: No. Liberals lose out, as Hoey wins by association with Corbyn-led Labour.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong>3. Hartlepool</strong> – Mandelson’s old coastal seat epitomises the disillusionment with metropolitan pro-immigration New Labour politics. This seat, in an isolated, deprived and insular part of the north-east, has seen massive UKIP votes in recent General and European elections. Just how much of that vote goes to the Tory will decide who wins in 2017…</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><br />VERDICT: Labour to hold with 5-10% lead over Tories. Quite a lot of the UKIP vote will actually go to Labour – I think you’ll see this in quite a few more seats than expected. A 3:1 Tory:Labour ratio?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong>4. South Thanet</strong> – Tory Craig MacKinlay has a 2,812 majority in this Kent seat, over second-placed UKIP, and was around 7,000 ahead of third-placed Labour. All so straightforward, until CM was charged with election spending offences from the 2015 election…<br /><br />VERDICT: a Brexit heartland, so surely an increased Tory majority, of around 9,000 ahead of Labour, who will easily beat UKIP. I don’t think the voters will care that much about his being charged, though it may reduce the majority more than I am positing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong>5. Hastings and Rye</strong> – Coastal Sussex seat, with Hastings a left-leaning town, but Rye and rural wards in-between solidly Tory. In Netherwood, within this seat, there was once a Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) guesthouse, in the post-WW2 era. This seat is now held by ‘magic money tree’ fabricator Amber Rudd, with a 4,796 majority. YouGov have Labour ahead 48-42%.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />VERDICT:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see a result almost exactly the other way around as probable. A slightly reduced majority compared with 2015, due to there being less of a UKIP vote than other such seats.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong>6. Halifax</strong> – now it’s this sort of seat that is absolutely crucial to whether the Tories fail to win a majority, scrape home similarly to 2015 or rack up the sort of 50+ majority that the odds surely point to. The northern and midlands marginal seats, held by Labour with small majorities under Miliband, will be key. This seat was won by Labour’s Holly Lynch by a mere 428 votes. The New Statesman had an article last Friday suggesting it’ll fall to the Tories. However, there isn’t a massive UKIP vote for the Tories to stockpile – they only got 13% last time, like in Hastings and Rye. What the NS failed to highlight is the inexorable decline of Labour’s majority in each and every election since 1997. This is exactly the sort of traditional Labour seat – see Wakefield too, in the same region – that feels massively let down by New Labour. Viewed logically, it would be curious for the seat to go Tory considering ‘there is dissatisfaction here, particularly with public services’.</span><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftnref13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[13]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Yet, there is little logic in politics and thus it’s little surprise that Theresa May unveiled her manifesto here – it’ll be interesting to see if even that cack-handed document will stop a Tory gain here… If it does, we would be in hung parliament territory.<br /><br /> VERDICT: knife-edge Tory win by 200 votes. I think the post-1997 pattern won’t quite be turned around. But it will be close. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><u>My overall election prediction</u>:<br /><br /> CON 43.5% (351 seats)<br /> LAB 36.5% (225 seats)<br /> LD 7% (4 seats)<br /> GP 1.5% (1 seat)<br /> UKIP 4% (0 seats)<br /> SNP/PC 4.5% (51 seats)<br /><br /><em>Tory majority: 52.</em> <br /><br /> A result that Labour would certainly have taken a few weeks ago! But also one that the Tories would have taken in the early days of June, and that, sadly, will give Theresa May a boost – even if it will now clearly only be a short-term one. We have seen her mettle – or lack thereof – and know she’ll be devoured by Brexit.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To quote Antonio Gramsci, this election is, more than any, about “optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect.” It has to be about maintaining and nurturing that hope for the long haul, without any illusions regarding harsh realities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[1]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> MacAskill, Ewen (2017) ‘Facing the political fight of his life: on the road with Corbyn’s campaign’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian</i>, 3<sup>rd</sup> June, p.7 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Lehman, Joseph G. (2010) ‘<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">An Introduction to the Overton Window of Political Possibility’, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Mackinac Center for Public Policy</b>, 8<sup>th</sup> April [online] <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/12481"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.mackinac.org/12481</span></a> [accessed: 08/06/17] <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[3]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Harris, John (2017) ‘Corbyn has shown there’s a new way of doing politics. Straight talking is back’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian</i>, 3<sup>rd</sup> June, p.33<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[4]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Leader (2017) ‘Labour and the common good’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Statesman</i>, 2-8 June, pp.4-5<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[5]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Leader (2017) p.5<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[6]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Leader (2017) ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[7]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Wilby, Peter (2017) ‘Corbyn’s bung to the middle class, the true causes of terror, and a musical’s off-key message’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Statesman</i>, 2-8 June, p.7<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[8]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Cowley, Jason (2017) ‘The reckoning’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Statesman</i>, 2-8 June, p.28<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[9]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Tufecki, Baris (2017) ‘’Politics of containment’: The (Ralph) Milibandian critique of the Labour Party’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Socialist History</i> 51, pp.65-6<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[10]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-small;"> Brooker, Joseph (2017) ‘Election Campaign 2017’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reeling At All</i>, 6<sup> </sup>June [online] </span><a href="https://reelingatall.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/election-campaign-2017/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-small;">https://reelingatall.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/election-campaign-2017/</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> [accessed: 08/06/17]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[11]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Crewe, Tom (2016) ‘The strange death of municipal England’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">London Review of Books</i>, (38)24, 15<sup>th</sup> December, pp.6-10<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[12]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Anon (2007) ‘Tories ‘using fake news to attack Corbyn’’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian</i>, 3<sup>rd</sup> June, p.7<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/ELECTION%202017%20blog.docx" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">[13]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Lewis, Helen (2017) ‘Unhappy valley’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Statesman</i>, 2-8 June, p.32<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-76888364431309812162017-06-01T09:40:00.000+01:002017-06-01T09:54:34.095+01:00David Edgar's 'Destiny' piece on British Television Drama website<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>"An ideology red white and blue in tooth and claw"</em></span></strong><br />
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I am delighted to return here to announce that I have a three-part epic post on David Edgar's 1978 Play for Today, 'Destiny', currently being published on British Television Drama website. This is a significant play (currently viewable <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtXFfzI9qZ0&t=502s">here</a>) that dramatises the insurgent far-right and British national identity in the late 1970s. I have been researching this TV play for eight months and have included e-mail interviews with the writer and producer, as well as extensive use of the BBC WAC in Caversham (thanks to Matthew Chipping). <br />
<br />
Thanks go to David Edgar and Margaret Matheson for their detailed e-mails with their memories of the play and conscientious answers to my questions. Thanks also to David Rolinson for his tireless work in editing this juggernaut of a piece (originally 20,000 plus words!), as well as Mark Sinker*, Justin Lewis**, Ian Greaves and John Williams who have assisted with queries and research.<br />
<br />
Part 1 (David Edgar, the theatrical Destiny and British historical context) <a href="http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=7040">http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=7040</a><br />
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Part 2 (production of the TV play, its broadcast and its reception) <a href="http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=7043">http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=7043</a><br />
<br />
Part 3 (analysis of the play and its afterlife and Edgar and Matheson's subsequent careers) <br />
to be published 2 June 2017<br />
<br />
*Who knows much more about English Baroque music than I.<br />
**Who knows much more about UK chart history than I.<br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Tom May</em><br />
Newcastle Upon Tyne<br />
Thursday 1 June 2017Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Newcastle upon Tyne, UK54.978252 -1.617780000000038954.8325385 -1.9405035000000388 55.1239655 -1.2950565000000389tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-90404983658832565602017-01-27T15:56:00.002+00:002017-01-27T16:01:59.845+00:00Poems for the moment #2<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Trident cry</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">19th July 2016</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Your three-pronged spear</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Of Christ lifespan minus two.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In last-resort letter,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Game of one:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Set off eight Hiroshimas;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Multiply a conflagration</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Built in Aldermaston</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Born in a bloody union jack</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">bonce;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Long</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Leased out to Lockheed</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Corporation of Sunnyvale, CA.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Narcissistic suited juveniles buy seat at</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">TABLE.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">472 of 'em, top adults.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">117 are for the bottom table.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Relegation awaits Cleggster and Jezza!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And canny Mhairi, the best and youngest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's Britannia's attribute:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">She needs sixteen.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">She needs sixteen!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">To threaten incineration</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">At 7500 miles' reach;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Culture obliteration we're okay with (in theory)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And the Iron pose</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Nostalgically re-enacted</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">From days of Joe and / or</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Maggie.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In your studied clam, be able to</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Go ballistic.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Gan proper radgie!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Or at least appear to.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And spend thirty-one billion pounds.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Postscript: 23rd January 2017</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Sir Michael refused to give details,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Sir Michael, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Sir Michael refused to give details.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Sir Michael has 'absolute confidence' in the system.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">So, that's all right, then.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-63030900482634220892016-07-05T12:07:00.001+01:002016-07-05T12:10:38.165+01:00Beyond the ‘one-size-fits-all scapegoat’, what? Britain and the ignominy of ‘Brexit’<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>In a speech on 19 April, which was hailed by most of the Brexiters as definitive, Michael Gove finally made it clear that Out means Out. Not tagging along like Norway or Switzerland, not seeking a new and complicated relationship like Canada, not a country member or a candidate member, but OUT. Gove, looking more than ever like a gleeful hamster on steroids, announced that Britain would leave the Single Market, would not seek to be part of EFTA (the organisation that includes Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein), and would remain a member only of ‘the European Free Trade Zone that stretches from Iceland to the Russian border’. Alas, despite this grandiloquent description, the EFTZ exists largely in the imagination. The UK would be as Out as Bosnia, Serbia and Albania (the signal difference being that Bosnia, Serbia and Albania are all trying to get into the EU). We would be launched on a journey to become a Greater Albania. […] Albania has no EU passport for financial and other services and no access to EU deals with the outside world. </em><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[1]</a><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Yet, before the Second World War, the phrase “Britain and Europe” was much less prevalent, and there are good historical reasons why. In messy historical reality, as distinct from much present-day polemic, “Britain” and “Europe” have rarely followed entirely distinctive paths, any more than they have ever – either of them – been monolithic structures. </em><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[2]</a> </blockquote>
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So, "we" voted for ‘prolonged turmoil and stagnation simply for the exhilaration of being on [our] own at last’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[3]</a>. As Ferdinand Mount argued, this was not so much the Garbo ‘I want to be alone’ option as the ‘Third Division’ Millwall option: ‘No one likes us, we don’t care’.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[4]</a> This piece seeks to understand why Britian left the EU and to critique the discourses used by both the Leave and Remain camps. As Neil Kurkarni has argued, the level of debate was leagues below 1975. This is a more considered approach than I took to the issue in my review (with Adam Whybray) <a href="http://kittysneezes.com/2016/06/28/the-tower/">here</a> of The Legendary Pink Dots' dystopian <em>The Tower</em> (1984), written on 24th June. I seek to make a pro-European intervention, and synthesise some of Britain’s wiser counsel that didn't prevail.<br />
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To counter a first myth, this vote wasn’t necessarily about the old stitching up the young, so much as the media and political establishment (generally those born in the 1950s-70s) misleading everyone. Those of pensionable age have generally been the most eloquent: Ferdinand Mount (b.1939; 76) and Bernard Porter (b.1941; 75) in the <em>LRB</em>, Neal Ascherson (b.1932; 83) in the <em>New York Times</em>, Linda Colley (b.1949; 66) in the <em>New Statesman</em>, Anthony Barnett (b.1942; 73) in <em>Open Democracy</em> and John Major (b.1943; 73) on the BBC.<br />
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Why did I vote to ‘Remain’, against the 3.8%-margin “tide”? No great matter of consistency or principle, due to the EU's treatment of Greece, for example. However, philosophically and geo-politically: being on your tod and being an increasingly angry little England is not a good idea. Global issues such as climate change and terrorism cannot be dealt with locally. And it would be England, as “Brexit”, rather than being a naff breakfast cereal, risks the future of the UK as well as endangering the legacy of 1998’s Good Friday Agreement. In addition, Farage and Johnson were a disgrace: their campaigning pandered to the lowest human impulses. Paul Mason spoke pointedly about the degradation of our political system and national culture that Boris Johnson embodies: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>“Let me be clear about what I’m saying about the Conservatives. We now know what a £35,000 a year education at Eton buys you. It’s that ability to stand up, slag off your opponent. If you’re not winning the argument, stand up and raise ludicrous points about the EU banning banana bunches more than three.<br /><br />If that doesn’t work, you tussle your hair and you grin in an inane manner. If I spent £35,000 a year and sent somebody to Eton and they came out saying that, I’d be disgusted.<br /> <br /><strong>I’m talking about Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson</strong>, who is debasing the rationality of this debate, and you should be very worried that this guy could be leading your party if he wins the referendum.”</em></blockquote>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n8qEh6xwRd4" width="400"></iframe><br />
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Speaking to Andrew Marr, ex-PM and retired Tory John Major also weighed in against the Leave tactics and rhetoric:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>“What they have said about leaving is fundamentally dishonest and it’s dishonest about the cost of Europe. And on the subject that they’ve veered towards, having lost the economic argument, of immigration, I think their campaign is verging on the squalid, and I’ve said so before and I’m happy to say so again.”</em><a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[5]</a><br />
</blockquote>
Porter argued that the Leave campaign did not articulate what they wanted for the future, apart from coveting ‘woolly abstractions – ‘control’, ‘freedom’, ‘greatness’, ‘the good old days’ – and some totally inappropriate models: Canada, Norway, Switzerland’.’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[6]</a> The problem for those of us who will have to live through ‘Brexit’ is that it is far from assured we will get as good a deal as a Norway or Switzerland, and the likes of Gove do not even want such actually existing beneficial trade deals, as they would still have to abide by EU regulations, as Mount has explained.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[7]</a><br />
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As Mount explained, for the ‘Brexiteers’ ‘it isn’t about economics’; former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson gave him no economic arguments but emphasised ‘self-government’.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[8]</a> Few commentators will know more about Tories than ex-Thatcher adviser Mount, and he elaborates a pointed critique of the Tory ‘Brexit’ mentality as inherited from Enoch Powell: ‘Powell had not only a passionate attachment to his own nation-state but a chilly indifference to everyone else’s. He thought the Cold War was a delusion […] He insisted that the Republic of Ireland be treated in all respects as a foreign country. Other countries, other minds have no meaningful existence. Weapons-grade solipsism.’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[9]</a><br />
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Mount argued that the Powell tendency persisted in today’s Tory euro-sceptics whom he described as ‘incurably chilly, sometimes abnormally intelligently, often physically awkward and requiring a good deal of personal space.’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[10]</a> He contrasted their paranoia about the EU as a ‘deep-laid plot to undermine and eventually to extinguish the nation-state in general and Britain in particular’ with the ‘energy and farsightedness’ of Wellington, Aberdeen and Palmerston in maintaining the Concert for forty years after Waterloo.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[11]</a> He could also have mentioned Churchill’s integrationist credentials. Johnson is always up for claiming Winnie’s mantle but descended into characterising this organisation which, in its infancy, his idol had actively supported into an ‘out-group’, a ‘them’ against ‘us’.<br />
<br />
Linda Colley mentioned the fact that other EU states such as Denmark, Holland, France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium and Spain, all had maritime empires, like Britain, and yet they don’t have a national self-image as ‘exceptional’.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[12]</a> She argued against the constant placing of “Britain and Europe” as oppositional binaries, and points to many deep historical connections. She identified the ‘overly iconic’ myths of WW2 as primarily causing the British to see themselves as ‘different’, not having experienced defeat and invasion. This lack of humility is our Achilles heel.<br />
<br />
Many of the Leave camp exhibited a myopic view; as Mount argues, all of the ‘frictions of modern life’ were blamed on the EU, whereas most ‘excessively fussy regulations’ are due to our parliament, and, I might add, our hegemonic ideology of neo-liberal capitalism is behind present frictions.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[13]</a> All of these stunted ‘arguments’ apparently justify the set of massive risks that Mount identifies: recession, trade deal difficulties, a flight of capital, unemployment, the Union with Scotland and the ‘morale of the rump EU.’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[14]</a><br />
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Considered economically and pragmatically then, “Vote Leave” simply did not articulate a case to leave or any viable future vision. ‘Brexit’ will leave us prone to a needlessly destructive period of difficult bespoke negotiations – Christopher Chope MP’s ‘WTO option’ is not being ruled out – that will harm British businesses and freedom of British people to travel and work in EU states. It is no surprise that all world governments and a vast array of academic analysts say that it is, on balance, much better to stay. 80-90% of scientists backed Remain for the reason that it was the better option for British and European science, which should know no borders.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[15]</a><br />
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There is a fundamental dividing line in the Tory Party and the Right in Britain, and it concerns immigration: the Cameron-Osborne position of being generally relaxed about it, according to the neo-liberal capitalist ideology vs. the Gove-Redwood-IDS position of pulling up the drawbridge, favouring old-school nationalism and specious ideas of ‘the Commonwealth’ welcoming us with open arms. Ascherson discussed the con of Boris Johnson, who claimed he would have his cake and eat it, leaving the EU but remaining in the Single Market, before Gove and others advanced ideas of a glorious isolation, further ‘out’ than even Norway or Switzerland.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[16]</a> The City of London financial sector, and the broader UK services sector will lobby intensely for retaining access to the SM; will the Tories be able to resist such calls, especially if public opinion turns even more decisively against Brexit than it has thus far?<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[17]</a> As Porter argued, four days after the referendum result, the ‘government has been all too willing to disregard the popular will in the case of ‘austerity’.’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[18]</a><br />
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Who were the arguers? What authority did they have? Remain had Barack Obama and virtually all world leaders. Leave had among the worst specimens available in the fields of politics, business and ‘punditry’ in 2016: not merely Katie Hopkins and Donald Trump, but also Nicholas Ridley – who, as Mount acidly recalled, showed the same ‘flamboyant optimism’ in his previous role as chairman of Northern Rock.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[19]</a> Then there was the supposed bright spark Michael Gove, someone worth listening to above ‘expert’ opinion, apparently… <br />
<br />
I would rather listen to academic and world opinion than to Ian Terence Botham on an issue of this magnitude, seemingly many millions did not.<br />
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I am unsure quite how the distrust of ‘experts’ fits in with the national characteristic of trusting empiricism over ideas… Many in England clearly have felt starved of emotional and atavistic attachments to identity – and this arrogant sense of national grandiosity has overridden concern for data or fact-based arguments. As Ascherson argues, ‘Behind Brexit stalks the ghost of imperial exception, the feeling that Great Britain can never be just another nation to be outvoted by France or Slovakia.’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[20]</a><br />
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How did Leave voters justify their gamble? Channel 4’s interviews with Barnsley Leave voters revealed a sentiment important in the result: "It's all about immigration". They were no doubt further riled up by the scaremongering claims about Turkey joining the EU, rightly dismissed by John Major as ‘nonsense on stilts’.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[21]</a> I feel sad for the deluded people of Barnsley. As Hanley has argued, they were expressing that ‘the way the modern world works was not working for them.’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[22]</a> In reality, they are clearly not going to get what they want – unless the anti-single market isolation mania of Gove wins out – and, either way, they will face more austerity as EU Regional Development money goes towards corporation tax cuts, or just goes. Will they be open to learning about what the actual, complex situation with immigration is? Will they be open in attitudes to the world and the 48% of their country who took a different view? Or will they just have to accept their part in our sliding backwards in outlook towards the sort of brutality depicted in Oi for England and Tales out of School: ‘Made in Britain’?<br />
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<em>"I think it's put England back on the globe again, and I feel very proud!"</em><br />
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Yes, but as an infinitely sadder, poorer, more isolated island, with the prospect of a "brain drain" of a much larger scale than the mythical 1960s/70s one. As Ascherson explains, the USA would turn from London to Berlin.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[23]</a> As he states, ‘isolation brings out the worst in Britain’ and giving a detailed example of its ineffectiveness when peddled by Chamberlain in the 1930s; then, how we learned the lesson and got involved in a unifying Europe, post-WW2.<br />
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A problem for Remain was, of course, the lack of positivity in the message they articulated. But could the likes of campaign-leader George Osborne credibly offer ‘positive’? Would the media allow such a case to be heard? Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats were all marginalised by a pathetic, Johnson v. Cameron-framed media perspective on the referendum. As Tom Ewing has <a href="http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/146420642411/obsolete-units-surrounded-by-hail">argued</a>, there was sadly no popular voice of pro-Europeanism around like Charles Kennedy.<br />
<br />
Mount stated the major unarticulated positive of the EU; it being designed to ‘retrieve the nation-state from ignominy and demoralisation after two catastrophic world wars’; a ‘worthy’ purpose in exchange for an ‘ultimately retrievable […] sacrifice of day-to-day sovereignty and a piffling contribution from national revenues’.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[24]</a><br />
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The arrogance of Leave was in its assuming that all EU countries want to be ‘freed’, just like an over-entitled Gove hamster. As Mount argues, ‘there are still plenty of nations that regard membership as the best guarantee of peace, stability and prosperity and are clamouring to get in. They may be deluded, but who gave the gleeful hamster [Gove] licence to set about demolishing the shelter they are struggling to reach?’<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[25]</a> Colley argued that we in Britain have become ‘cosseted’ and ‘blissfully forgetful about the prospect of military conflict’.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[26]</a> She also stated that both NATO and the EU (and its predecessor organisations) have ‘played an essential role’ in keeping the peace. She warns of US isolationism under a possible President Trump and the possible US drift from backing NATO – ‘Europeans […] will need to collaborate ever more closely to defend themselves’.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[27]</a><br />
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Nobody in the Remain camp saw fit to counter the myths of anti-democracy in the EU, but conceded the argument. Mount refers to how the European Parliament ‘gives democratically elected representatives from the whole EU an opportunity to help frame the rules, which British MPs don’t really have’. He also defends the European Council of ministers, as ‘itself an elected body’, with its dinners and wrangles thrashing out a consensus in the style of an Indian <em>panchayat</em>: perhaps ‘a more appropriate method of seeking a way forward for such a vast and heterogeneous community’.<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[28]</a><br />
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So, 17-odd million people on this self-mythologising island have thought in a meagre, limited way and not about the impact on the future of the UK itself or on the impact on the rest of Europe. They have regarded the <em>Daily Express</em>, the Daily Mail and Boris Johnson MP (the most odious politician ever, as grinning superego to Farage's id) as more worth listening to than academic experts. These sadly myopic attitudes will mean 23/06/16 will be an infamous day in world and UK history, instead of some equivalent of American Independence Day for the people of Barnsley.<br />
<br />
<u>REFERENCES</u>:<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[1]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ‘Nigels against the World’, <em>London Review of Books</em> (38)10, 19th May [online] Available at: <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n10/ferdinand-mount/nigels-against-the-world">http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n10/ferdinand-mount/nigels-against-the-world</a>[accessed: 01/07/16] <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[2]</a> Colley, L. (2016) ‘An island, but not in isolation’, <em>New Statesman</em>, 10-16th June, p.35<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[3]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid. <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[4]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[5]</a> Major, J. (2016) ‘Sir John Major’s Interview on the Andrew Marr Show’, <em>The Rt Hon Sir John Major KG CH</em>, 5th June. [online] Available: <a href="http://johnmajor.co.uk/page4401.html">http://johnmajor.co.uk/page4401.html</a> [accessed: 28/06/16] <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[6]</a> Porter, B. (2016) ‘Historic failure’, <em>LRB blog</em>, 27th June [online] Available at: <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/06/27/bernard-porter/historic-failure/">http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/06/27/bernard-porter/historic-failure/</a> [accessed: 01/07/16] <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[7]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid. <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[8]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid. <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[9]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[10]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[11]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[12]</a> Colley, L. (2016) ibid., p.35<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[13]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid. <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[14]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[15]</a> Galsworthy, M. (2016) ‘Angry scientists must fight to pick up the pieces after Brexit’, <em>New Scientist</em>, 27th June. [online] Available at: <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2095198-angry-scientists-must-fight-to-pick-up-the-pieces-after-brexit/">https://www.newscientist.com/article/2095198-angry-scientists-must-fight-to-pick-up-the-pieces-after-brexit/</a> [accessed: 28/06/16]<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[16]</a> Ascherson, N. (2016) ‘From Great Britain to Little England’, <em>New York Times</em>, 16th June [online] Available at: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/opinion/sunday/from-great-britain-to-little-england.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/opinion/sunday/from-great-britain-to-little-england.html?_r=0</a> [accessed: 01/07/16]<br />
<br />
[17] Dearden, L. (2016) ‘Brexit research suggests 1.2 million Leave voters regret their choice in reversal that could change result’, <em>The Independent</em>, 1st July [online] Available at: <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-news-second-eu-referendum-leave-voters-regret-bregret-choice-in-millions-a7113336.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-news-second-eu-referendum-leave-voters-regret-bregret-choice-in-millions-a7113336.html</a> [accessed: 04/07/16]<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[18]</a> Porter, B. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[19]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[20]</a> Ascherson, N. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[21]</a> Major, J. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[22]</a> Hanley, L. (2016) ‘Divided Britain’, <em>LRB blog</em>, 24th June [online] Available at: <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/06/24/lynsey-hanley/divided-britain/">http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/06/24/lynsey-hanley/divided-britain/</a> [accessed: 01/07/16]<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[23]</a> Ascherson, N. (2016) ibid.<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[24]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid. <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[25]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid. <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[26]</a> Colley, L. (2016) ibid., p.35 <br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[27]</a> Colley, L. (2016) ibid., p.35<br />
<br />
<a href="file://safilesrv01/NSFC$/tmay/My%20Documents/Europe%20piece.docx">[28]</a> Mount, F. (2016) ibid. <br />
<br />Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE4 7SA, UK54.9664268 -1.627107499999965554.9641478 -1.6321499999999656 54.9687058 -1.6220649999999655tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-23886307853723400382015-07-23T11:08:00.001+01:002015-07-23T11:08:14.207+01:00Who closed down the Community Centre?<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>DieHard Gateshead</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Written by Ruth Raynor; Directed by Neil Armstrong</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Caedmon’s Hall, Gateshead Library<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thursday 16<sup>th</sup> July 2015<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>TOM MAY</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ0RYmWi_SEb74ViPVKs8soGQ-pxMioQZEWMH7a2LKQcTanl2pgiDIY5ynlkfafSxmyCcuaOwZkSnhdOhcm6jpsnWcsVDAXC_qqmSjS6w4s_wi7dBWpwNr7y90apvGukjpkAatNgBaxAu2/s1600/DIEHARD+GATESHEAD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ0RYmWi_SEb74ViPVKs8soGQ-pxMioQZEWMH7a2LKQcTanl2pgiDIY5ynlkfafSxmyCcuaOwZkSnhdOhcm6jpsnWcsVDAXC_qqmSjS6w4s_wi7dBWpwNr7y90apvGukjpkAatNgBaxAu2/s400/DIEHARD+GATESHEAD.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
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It wasn’t quite <i>Byker
Grove</i> meets Brecht, but while that is a pleasing notion for the noggin,
this was tangibly necessary: a humane, subtle drama about austerity
and its impact on community. Not placard-waving, confrontational agit-prop but
a demonstration of what our people are like; <i>this is who you are trying to do
down and what you are trying to take away, Mr Osborne.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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There is a place for political theatre, and the time is surely
now. We’re faced with an arrogant government, on a low-turnout 37% vote-share ‘mandate’,
that looks to further curb trade unionism, cut back legal aid, turn education
into solely a financial transaction, close libraries and open up the countryside
to the moot practice of fracking. An administration that is seriously considering
making people save up for their own sick pay. </div>
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Raynor has spoken of being inspired by the writing of the
likes of Alan Plater and Tom Hadaway; the influence shows; something of the
jovial, egalitarian spirit of Plater is transposed to the inexorable treadmill of austerity Britain in 2015. She sets the piece in a Gateshead Community Centre,
which has just about kept going through already harsh financial ‘economies’ in
previous years.</div>
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The Gateshead parliamentary seat has the 92<sup>nd</sup>
highest unemployment rate in Britain (5.9%) and the 26<sup>th</sup> highest
seat with constituents who are in very bad health: 2.07% 34.45% live in social
housing – also 26<sup>th</sup> highest out of 600+ constituencies. 30.47% of
people have no qualifications. 22.55% of people hold no passport. While UKIP
did well here in the last General Election, finishing second with 17.8% of the
vote, this was considerably less well than in Tory seats in Essex and Kent or
coastal north east constituencies such as Blyth Valley and Hartlepool. Only
just over one in ten of the 'Heed' electorate voted UKIP. This play does not engage in
the media habit of assuming that this vocal minority therefore demonstrates that
the people of Gateshead have a resentful, insular mind-set. </div>
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Raynor has commented that her play ‘was built with the
kindness of a Tyneside women’s group. Participants took part in a range of
workshops and interviews and gave feedback on two drafts of the script. Because
of cuts and changes to the terms of funding the group is no longer running.’ <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is a complex dissolving of hierarchies within the Centre's women’s group, which is not homogeneously this or that (working-class,
middle-class, underclass), but is carefully pitched and realistic to the locale.
The older community centre worker Lesley, with her beliefs in Noel Edmonds –
false-consciousness subtly and funnily highlighted – and the feint but
palpable class memory coming out in Sandra when she talks about the ‘New’
Jarrow March and its Facebook group. The strong women of this play - chiefly Lesley and Sandra - mirror Heather Wood of Easington Action Group, who I saw speak forcefully and
eloquently of practical community campaigning at the recent Durham Moot event.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lesley (Judi Earl) is the convenor of the group, unpretentious and grounded, yet with odd ideas about self-help. Katie
(Christina Berriman Dawson) is morose, glowering and reluctant mother of six,
but who grows into the action and with the group. Sandra (Jessica Johnson) is
the most forthright and belligerent, with a rough way with words, and who is incredibly
articulate. Julia (Arabella Arnott) seems like she'll be an overly stereotypical materialistic middle-class lass, but isn't quite so clear-cut. Rosie (Zoe Lambert) is the theatre project leader, idealistic and
driven, if less worldly than she might think. The cast is uniformly excellent, able to veer seamlessly between gags and pathos.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The play mixes and contrasts high and low cultural
references – the ancient Greek Orpheus myth with Die Hard and Crinkly Bottom. This is necessary to take the audience with
the action, and weave in the political ideas. What does this say to me about my
life? You feel that Raynor is pondering and addressing this question for a wide
range of local audiences – the play was also staged at Newcastle’s Alphabetti
and the Washington Arts Centre. Music is shrewdly used: from a looped intro
from recent-ish pop that I cannot place, to two Crowded House tracks, including
the apt melancholy of ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ to close. </div>
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She also astutely
includes a mixed lexical register of “shite”, “asset management” and “wifey”
and the ace wordplay of “Start Arts”. As well as posing the comical
interrogative: ‘Remember Blobbyland?’ There is some sense of language being
contested, while the financial parameters are set from Westminster. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Ruth Raynor’s play is more Mhairi Black than Liz Kendall. It
is controlled, funny and tender and yes, it is angry. There is class
consciousness and compassion for disparate people. We need this sort of thing
on telly, and a better BBC to produce many new and proudly low-budget single
plays in place of high-cost adaptations and costume serials. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In post-<i>Chavs </i>era,
we should have seen the back of grotesquely stereotypical representations of
the working or under-classes. I don’t think we have. Nor does Raynor, who knows
that current snobbery is the path to decay; she doesn’t just see the best in
people, but sees that drawing lazy or prejudicial distinctions is not the way to
live your life. The play carefully displays human differences and foibles,
but implies that only in acting together – metaphorically and literally – can we
laugh and connect, or indeed achieve anything of lasting worth.<o:p></o:p></div>
Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE2 1RE, UK54.9809643 -1.598144854.979825299999995 -1.6006663 54.9821033 -1.5956233tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-70745535876368192122014-08-25T17:39:00.002+01:002014-08-25T18:46:25.967+01:00Edinburgh 2014: in the present age, they take sarcastic minutes...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, Edinburgh, 2014: four nights, five days, twenty-five shows, shared with a friend who was a Fringe neophyte. There was unwise traipsing around on an inevitable rainy day. There was wise staying-put around the venues with free shows. There was a geographically handy B&B with a helpful proprietor. There was some planning - but not too much! There was inadvertent incongruity in hearing, but not seeing comedy from a 'have-a-go' Geordie comic in an Open Mic night at a random bar. His 'so-so' routines were played through the PA and speakers right by our table, which was in a completely different part of the bar to the performance. His thing was a vaguely </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Viz</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">-esque quoting of working-men's club 'non-working' regulars and the older north-east generation: 'Me granda said: "they ran onta tha field like a pack o' gays!"' Which was weird without seeing facial expressions and further de-contextualized by our missing the first part of the gag! If it was a gag.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Edinburgh Festival is a sixty-odd year institution with the emphasis on <i>odd</i>. At least its oddity will reveal itself, if you let it.</span><br />
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Such an expedition has to include some familiar figures, venues and personal institutions. So it was that we took in <b>Richard Herring: Lord of the Dance Settee</b> (Assembly Square, Sunday 10/08/14). A good, if much more ragbag show than his previous ones I've seen that touched on sex, death and the male member. He had an amusing teenage holiday story, a right-on demolition of those on Twitter who oppose International Women's Day and told of odd goings on in a wood (a disturbing doll placed in a rustic window, looking out at passers by!). All pretty good; a mix of the serious and utterly silly - yet the Sunday night audience's spirit seemed quelled - either by that day's torrential weather or by sheer lack of humour! Quite saddening to witness, really, as it had the sort of amateur charm and sense of arcane absurdity alien to the bland McIntyre-and-assorted-Russells school of comedy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"We have freedom of speech. We should have freedom of thought..."</i><br /><br />Then there was <b>Simon Munnery Sings Søren Kierkegaard</b> (The Stand, Saturday 09/08/14). Munnery has, in many ways, got me 'into' stand-up. I'd liked Bill Hicks - who didn't, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">who was at university from 2001-4 and</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> who had anything approaching a counter-cultural mindset? But most of the comedy I'd loved was on the box - Chris Morris, Alan Partridge, Steptoe, Fawlty etc., plus a late-night BBC-2 dose of absurdism called </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Attention, Scum! </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This 2001 series was where I first encountered Munnery; I went to my first Edinburgh Fringe in 2007 - if just a day trip, featuring his show at The Stand, which involved improvised routines based on the audience's suggestions placed on a rock by the stage. It was another five years before I actually made a fuller Fringe pilgrimage. In 2012, I 'saw' - or was involved in - the immersive </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">La Concepta</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">: perhaps the funniest live comedy I've yet experienced, where Munnery attended to an audience of 12 'diners' in a surreal virtual restaurant. Since then, he'd done variants on his winning <i>Fylm </i>template - which I'd seen both in Edinburgh in 2013 and in Newcastle twice (most recently, 08/04/14).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />This new show on Kierkegaard - its title referring to Arthur Smith's Leonard Cohen themed show, which my parents saw last year in Edinburgh - was more autobiographical and political than usual; Munnery will never deliver the expected and repeat himself. This involved not just a thoughtful attempt to derive comedy from the dour Danish Christian philosopher Kierkegaard's words, but a dissection of Munnery's university experience at Trinity College, Cambridge and the class implications of The Jam's 'The Eton Rifles'. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Compared with my last two Fringes, I saw relatively little theatre. <b>Altamont</b> (C Nova, Monday 11/08/2014) was an impressive one-man show - with John Stenhouse telling the story and enacting the characters connected with that disastrous venture. The amorality and shoddy organisation of the event seems to symbolise the limits of what rock 'n' roll could achieve. Could an emancipatory movement be forged with the participation of violent hell's angels or the market-liberal figurehead Jagger? Stenhouse conveyed chaos and crushed dreams in a well-paced, impressionistic show.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuUpt9AtsiU2Ctnq8P-PC6m0Tz4LE192LdUT3TLFJcosQDsII0aKPZj_vV9r6GPR3q5_EGddSUbNz_v1h8xlAPRvfPvaImjvEBDfmOAoC4OnlUOi2J9wMt5WwF7KEchHxXS8d-iZkMQMaP/s1600/I+Need+a+Doctor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuUpt9AtsiU2Ctnq8P-PC6m0Tz4LE192LdUT3TLFJcosQDsII0aKPZj_vV9r6GPR3q5_EGddSUbNz_v1h8xlAPRvfPvaImjvEBDfmOAoC4OnlUOi2J9wMt5WwF7KEchHxXS8d-iZkMQMaP/s1600/I+Need+a+Doctor.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><br />Jessica Spray's<b> I Need a Doctor! The Whosical </b>(Pleasance Above, Sunday 10/08/14) was a very affable mainstream musical take on the great British institution of <i>Doctor Who</i>. Perhaps overplaying the postmodernist card - repeated references to avoiding copyright-infringing use of 'iconic' DW names - yet with a sense of knockabout timing that beguiled. You entered to the strains of the Timelords' 'Doctorin' the TARDIS'. The audience consisted - oh that cliché! - of all ages and the show was enjoyed. Spray was a clever, sassy, spectacled companion - far preferable to Clara. There were some witty lines for different sections of the audience - a hard one to be able to please, potentially. It did get me thinking of how I could write a more eccentric, out-there musical on the same theme ('Corridors and Air Ducts'? 'Sweet Skarasen', anyone?), but then such a venture wouldn't be a large crowd-pleaser like this was. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The more niche DW related show was <b>Richard Tyrone Jones: Crap Time Lord </b>(Pilgrim, Tuesday 12/08/14); Jones, a self-styled 'ginger Nigel Havers of the spoken word scene'. We were late to this, due to an overlap with the previous spoken word show at the Labyrinth, so instead of interrupting, sat in the bar listening to the show - which was behind a curtain. RTJ (sorry, it's a <i>Doctor Who</i> thing!) most pointedly does need a Doctor, and his erudite, absurd show explored his health issues through the DW lens. A hospital's heart monitor screaming in time like Bonnie Langford. A frame of exophoric reference that takes in W.H. Auden, Catullus, <i>Lovejoy, </i>Thaksin Shinawatra and coming "back to my TARDIS, to see my Terry Nation". Wonderful mix of euphemisms and bathos; I must actually <i>see </i>his full show - and not just what was an in-effect audio version...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He made the best reference to the nature of the Free Fringe: "Don't put any coppers in... As when they hit the bucket they sound like a Cyberman's tears."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Free shows included John Kearns' <b>Shtick</b><i> </i>(Voodoo Lounge, Friday 08/08/14). Kearns, in gormless headpiece and teeth get-up, was affectingly melancholy and rambling. He had a great way of debunking frozen register language: "I think I'll be found dead..." His central story about the old couple in the pub was touching and sad and spoke of habit, ritual and aggravating banality. There is deadpan darkness in attempting to lead an audience in a singalong of Sting's 'Fields of Gold'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Immediately following this show was <b>John-Luke Roberts: Stnad-Up </b>(Voodoo Rooms, Friday 08/08/14), a Newcastle Upon Tyne-born comedian with some stock gimmicks that, in defiance of explanation, just work: reeled-off insults addressed to the front few rows of the audience (mine was "You're Mork and Mindy, without Mork, without Mindy... and with you as a COCK!") and inventive, bizarre appropriation of twenty-first century standards such as 'Somebody That I Used to Know' and 'Hurt'. It was a show concerning the break-up with his long-time girlfriend, and was winningly melancholy and deranged.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Trevor Lock: Special Mouth Noises </b>(Bannerman's, Tuesday 12/08/14) was impressive, a smaller-scale Stewart Lee-type deconstruction of 'comedy' and, primarily, 'the show'. This improvisational show was constructed from the audience's foibles rather than gags; we were in a small room in Bannerman's pub and laughs arose from how people acted in the claustrophobic setting, as well as Lock's handling of the audience - two people were assigned to take minutes and he took a 'register'. Lock was very observant but not in the smugly observational sense. Constructed rituals, inability to follow instructions, the slants and interpretations we place on things. It was somehow thoughtful and unaccountably funny. With no more than one straightforward 'joke' for the fifty plus minutes of the performance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /> Dave Nelder's show <b>Scotland's Referend...uhm?</b> (Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, Monday 11/08/14) was a lightly enjoyable morning show. Not uproariously funny, but since when is comedy just about laugh count? Nelder is a self-styled Gladstonian liberal - isn't Scotland unique in its ability to generate such political affiliations? His other evening show was based on Voltaire's <i>Candide</i>, which we couldn't quite fit in. He had an excellent gag about reintroducing the Merk, Scotland's pre-Union currency, inaugurated around 600AD - which paid off in reference to German economic aid... Staunch feminist and humanist Kate Smurthwaite's <b>The Evolution will Be Televised</b> (Ciao Roma, Monday 11/08/14) was similar in effect, with a larger audience, seemingly comprised of scientific boffins with more knowledge in the noggin than I have on matters Darwinian.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The very last show we saw was Andrew Watts' <b>Feminism for Chaps </b>(Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, Tuesday 12/08/14). Watts resembled a forty-something Jonathan Meades: suit and tie, distinctly RP tones. He was somewhat less acerbic, but pretty much as intelligent as that great TV fusionist of the lecture hall and the music hall. His 'chaps' guide' to feminism deftly educated on the variety of divergent feminisms and indulged in a sense of the absurd and numerous cricket metaphors. The juxtaposition of his patrician, gentlemanly style with the content made for an enjoyably fresh and thoughtful perspective on the subject. Observations of how men are treated in maternity wards mingled with discussions of feminist porn. A wonderful scene was conjured of Watts on a Feminist march in London, being photographed 'cringing' while Kate Smurthwaite was shouting "WHAT DO WE WANT!?" into a megaphone just behind him and there was the most brilliant story to invoke Penfold from <i>Danger Mouse </i>I'd heard all Fringe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another PBH Free Fringe show was <b>Pornography and Heartbreak </b>from American slam poet David Lee Morgan (Banshee Labyrinth, Sunday 10/08/14). This explored the sexual psyche - and all the darker irrationality entailed. I'd seen Morgan in 2013, with a much 'lighter' show that distilled his beat-influenced communism. This was intense and compelling; not all shows have to be easily accessible and such truth-telling isn't always going to 'please'. Nor should it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We frequented the spoken word-specialist part of the Banshee Labyrinth: the 'Banqueting Hall', an excellent little room that is anything but its name - its many free shows are both economical and mind-expanding. You can try out free comedy and spoken word shows with no upfront cost and then pay a fiver or so if it is enjoyed. One we actually wandered into by mistake, looking for Chris Boyd's Ben Target-directed show: <b>300 to 1 </b>(Banshee Labyrinth, Sunday 10/08/14). This featured poet Matt Panesh playing a teenage boy in his bedroom performing the action film absurdity <i>300 </i>- while watched by the ghosts of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. A properly odd Fringe show, with Panesh an imposing physical performer, in a show that emitted wisdom as the Edinburgh skies were about to emit great quantities of certain other stuff that day...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On our last day, we had been looking to see <i>The Philosorap Cabaret</i>, but that wasn't on, so we just moved rooms in the BL and saw a compilation show of spoken-word; all really engaging, ranging from onomatopoeiac travel pieces to reflections on Buddhism to words from the Mancunian Zach Roddis, with his inventories of mundane, banal details and assaults on facile cultural clichés:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Grave Invaders </b>(Banshee Labyrinth, Friday 08/08/14) was a 'slam poetry' performance, consisting of three poets with differing yet dovetailing styles: Mark Grist, MC Mixy and Tim Clare. It was loosely based on the premise of a road trip visiting the graves of dead poets, but largely was a showcase for their styles and flow; a mix of the acerbic, bawdy, heartfelt and debunking. There were some excellent puns. There were also deft <a href="http://iammixy.bandcamp.com/track/wee-bonnie-scott">parodies</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Clare's '<a href="http://vimeo.com/89812957">Portishead</a>' assailed not the excellent band but the limited, Tory mindset of the south western town in which he was born in 1981. Grist had a humanist, illusion-less poem about the 'perfect marriage'. The show ended with an agreeably silly 'poets' death match', with the three dressed as a winged man-bee type thing, a 'space unicorn' and a hapless maths teacher.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Shows not enjoyed? Pointless to dwell at much length, but our first was a very mild stand-up show in the Sportsters bar that at least didn't last over half an hour. I didn't take to the storytelling show in the Banshee Labyrinth, <b>Rebranding Beelzebub</b>; just not imposing or original enough. Will be enjoyed by those literally into anything Gothic, but I found the tales and the delivery monotonous; inexorable in the wrong sense. I had perhaps hoped for something surreal and weird in <b>Shakespeare's Avengers Assembleth </b>(Greenside Royal Terrace, Saturday 09/08/14), but it was merely predictable am-dram panto. Some of the actors were broad, others were frothing at the mouth ham-dram. I'm not 'AVING A GO really, as there are far more deserving candidates for vitriol among the most popular comedians. SAA was fundamentally harmless - provided it isn't the <i>only </i>sort of theatre the audience ever thinks to see. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nothing I saw this year was anywhere <i>near </i>as bad as a <i>non</i>-PBH Free Fringe free show of two years ago, with several comics on the bill 'essaying' a rancid, outmoded strain of humour - aggression, misogyny, homophobia; irony less (not that that's a way-out, Mr Carr & Co.). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't like gongs, baubles and awards for the arts... Yet, here's an exclusive 'TOP FIVE SHOWS OF THE EDINBURGH FRINGE 2014'!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>5: Hooray for Ben Target! </b>(Banshee Labyrinth, Saturday 09/08/14)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Hey, easy, asbestos fingers!"</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I saw Ben Target (pronounced 'TAR-ZHAY')'s last Fringe show in 2012, which was a revelation to me in how it played with conventions and barriers between audience and performer. And, in its sheer hilarious, unhinged absurdity. This was almost as good, and similarly Dadaist in its free-form splicing of different registers and comedic styles. He presented a fictitious (?) slideshow about his ancestors and grandfather. He had the whole audience assist in making a virtual 'cake'. He had us jumping to the strains of Van Halen in tribute to the 'death' of the band's bassist. Later, Target instructed us to throw our right shoes at him, while he was standing in front of an archery target. Then he produced a riot shield to fend off the flying footwear and finally collated the shoes in a bag and walked off.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>4: Free Gaza</b> (Gilded Balloon, Tuesday 12/08/14)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"I thought it was something about a footballer..."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Edinburgh in August can be an education in politics, humour and inform your cultural capital - or sense of yourself, who you are and what you like. Your <i>habitus</i>, in Pierre Bourdieu's terms. Edinburgh might give the discerning 'left-liberal' personality a sense that a lot more is possible, politically and culturally, than might <i>seem </i>to be the case in non-Fringe everyday life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This was a heartening show; arranged at short notice by the Jewish Socialists' Group and with probably the largest crowd of the 25 shows we saw. All four comedians on the bill had different styles, yet it converged into conveying a humanist message. The Peace Bloc in Israel was alluded to. Money was collected at the end. Josie Long was sparky and charming. Andy Zaltzman was pointed and irreverent and unafraid to be arcane: "You've come a long way for a Graham Gooch". He was just the right side of mainstream. Chris Coltrane, who oddly resembled a work colleague of mine, was a righteous, bald-headed, left-wing activist comedian. He mined the absurdity of how police deal with demos against UK Uncut, and spoke from personal experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then, for Daniel Kitson. A seemingly effortless stand-up style; bantering but with an underlying intellect and comic judiciousness. Like a more rapid fire Trevor Lock, he made comedy from his interactions with the audience and produced a rich humour <i>from </i>the deliberately avoiding mention of the political reason we were here. This was a sort of demonstration of what it is about to be human: not monolithically fixated, but interacting. Trying things out. Improvising. All the better to respond to complex situations - such as Gaza is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There was even a Leith pun, relating to the decline of their Docks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>3: A Slight Ache </b>(Pleasance That, Monday 11/08/14)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"You could call the police and have him removed. You could say that he's a public nuisance. Although I can't say I find him a public nuisance..."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tremendous to see Pinter staged, and played with such vigour and understanding. I've seen his work staged just once in Newcastle at the Gulbenkian (now Northern Stage) in 2001: those not living in London don't often get the chance to see the Hackney playwright's comedies of menace. This is an intriguing radio play - staged as a wonderfully absurd sexual power struggle and satire of middle-class pretensions. What it loses in utter bizarre ambiguity, it gains in humour, with Munnery's corporeal presence and inscrutable gaze as the balaclavaed 'match-seller'. Catriona Knox is Vivien Merchant-esque in suggesting reserves of strength and sensuality beneath Flora's seeming primness and Thom Tuck is a megalithically pompous Edward. I had recently watched the 1970s TV version of <i>No Man's Land</i>, and this is similarly evocative in its writing: cricket as perennial exophoric reference, language as chief tool for human dueling. It increasingly strikes me that Pinter is equally and subtly concerned with politics, language and anthropology and shows their inter-relations within a contested culture. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Edward's speech about surveying the local land with a telescope suggests the desire for 'mastery', 'ownership' and the 'rational'. So much else suggests a focus on physical territory and the human concept of property: so embedded in British culture, law and politics since John Locke. Wonderful stuff this play, and I haven't even got to the 'Barnabus' scene!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>2: Lippy </b>(Traverse, Saturday 10/08/14)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"It takes more than rooms and chairs to make a home..."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My favourite theatre show of 2012 was the participatory and political piece about the Covent Garden Old Price Riots of 1809: <i>Kemble's Riot</i>. In 2013, it was was the inventive, physical and auditory spectacle of <i>The Secret Agent</i>, incisively adapting Joseph Conrad.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This year, I'd tried to book for several things at the Traverse - but too late, and with no luck. Other than this Dead Centre production, which was directed by Ben Kidd - who I later realised was behind Headlong's excellent production of <i>Spring Awakening</i>, which I had seen at Northern Stage earlier this year (and mentioned towards the end of my last piece <a href="http://the-sphinx-without-a-secret.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/he-believes-in-beauty-music-and-life.html">here</a>).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like <i>Spring Awakening</i> and the work of Dennis Potter and David Lynch, there was an enveloping use of music: as something which beguiles and haunts, in equal measure. The end-section - with its Joycean dialogue emitted from a Beckettian mouth - was somewhat too conventionally modernist, in contrast with the rest of the play. It opens with a funny 'post-show discussion' that circuitously and deftly introduces the play's themes of lip-reading and the incommunicable. Then it shifts into 'depicting' the unimaginable circumstances surrounding four Irish women's decision to starve themselves to death, barricaded in their Leixlip home and erasing all traces of their identities. This was a news-story from 2000 - and the play makes clear the difficulties associated with finding meaning in such an act with limited 'evidence' on hand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is barely any discernible dialogue, for the most part. And that is vital.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This experimental production will necessarily divide critics and spectators: isn't that rather better than bland consensus? I certainly prefer theatre to challenge ideas of life and the world and make use of unusual staging techniques and, most of all, sound, in order to do that. Rather than be some pleasant 'pastime' viewed from behind the proscenium arch and thoroughly compartmentalized. The place 'to be' to keep up social appearances? Or a place to shape your world? Is it merely all about nice dialogue and 'life-like' acting? Or stage craft to fashion 'fantasies' or expose 'realities'?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gilbert Adair's piece on Tom Stoppard's play <i>Travesties </i>(1974) in <i>Myths and Memories </i>comes to mind. As does the thought of such productions from before my birth as the Theatre Workshop's <i>Uranium 235 </i>(1946) and David Edgar's <i>Destiny </i>(1976).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This production troubled me and made me think, and was brave enough to offer no answers or definitive, didactic interpretation of the Mulrooneys' hauntingly inconclusive story.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>1: Nathan Penlington - Choose Your Own Documentary </b>(Gilded Balloon, Monday 11/08/2014)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I won't say too much on this, other than the imperative: go and see it. This has deep pathos and is uplifting like you wouldn't think possible. It demonstrates the need for fictions, myths and stories as well as Jonathan Gottschall or Joseph Campbell. It is innovative and interactive, in a way deeply relevant to the heart of the show. And, yes, there is the heart that we need.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6dFb-xdL_WI" width="420"></iframe></span>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE2 1RE, UK54.9809643 -1.598144854.979825299999995 -1.6006663 54.9821033 -1.5956233tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-15073362534863831482014-06-03T08:25:00.000+01:002014-06-03T19:00:34.807+01:00"He believes in a beauty": music and life, mid-2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'From the Tyne to where to the Thames does flow<br />My English brothers and sisters know<br />It's not a case of where you go<br />It's race and creed and colour.<br />From the police cell to the deep dark grave<br />On the underground's just a stop away<br />Don't be too black, don't be too gay<br />Just get a little duller.'</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>1: AZTEC CAMERA - 'Good Morning Britain' (1990)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'Birds' is serene, celestially jaded 1993. It can't get more of the minute in post-2014 European Election Britain than 'Good Morning Britain'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In other ways, 1990 seems utterly unreachable: 'World in Motion'. 'Killer'. Sentiments: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'A uniform's a traitor</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i></i><i>Love's international'</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2014: pointing fingers to exercise influential power.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2: Lord KITCHENER - 'London is the Place for Me' (1950)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The UK media peddled many facile <a href="http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/local-election-results-2014-aav.html">myths</a> about the 2014 local and European Elections; one was that London voted drastically differently to the rest of the country: London as open, multicultural, defiantly anti-UKIP. Yet they did better in outer London suburbs than in the northern cities. No council seats in Manchester, Sunderland, Durham, York, Newcastle, Liverpool. Take that, 'earthquake' inciters! But, Sheffield: be ashamed o' yessels!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lord Kitchener isn't in the business of smugness or self-congratulation. This is music here that evokes all the best in humanity, not portentous predictions involving foam.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3: Damon ALBARN - 'Lonely Press Play' (2014)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You get the sense that Albarn would not be oblivious to the sentiment in 'London is the Place for Me'. Is there anyone else in blighty who writes better melancholy slow ones?</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4: Karen GWYER - 'Lay Claim to My Grub' (2014)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This music envelops, branches out. It advances on the Wolfgang Voigt model. Not all music has to have these lexemes... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'I close my eyes and dream about changing'</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>5: Sally SELTMANN - 'Dream about Changing' (2010)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Can we craft a world in which this is the popular music? Avalanches meet Feist, in several senses.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>6: COMMON - 'Nag Champa (Afrodisiac for the World)' (2000)</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">More 2014 music of the ilk of Nas. OutKast. Common. Please!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'My verse depth, is that of a baby's first step</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Or the old lady who died and the nurse wept'</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>7: LEGENDARY PINK DOTS - 'Pendulum' (2013)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'Your honesty is a saber tongued assassin in a loud checkered suit. </i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>A tap dancing killer on a grave, ranting about truth. Although, the funeral party left long ago. There is no place for small (mouses?) in your sterilized universe. </i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>It's black, white, and very red, where the blood of liars runs in roman ditches. Lined up, hands tied, no bullet is wasted when it comes to the truth. </i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>It's close range. A 1000 millimenter stare to the hole in your skull. No blindfold. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>
No u-turns. Truth runs in straight lines. There is no view from the window. </i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>But it's your truth… it's drawn with a stick in the sand, as the desert wind rages, and covers your hands. Blameless once more, in the end, just a man... Just a man like me.'</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This formed the opening to one of the most imposing, beguiling live performances I've ever seen, 2014 or any year. Star and Shadow Cinema (where else?), Friday 11th April 2014. There's a recording of a gig with basically the same set <a href="http://legendarypinkdots1.bandcamp.com/album/paris-in-the-spring">here</a>. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">8: HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT - 'Even Men With Steel Hearts' (1995)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our witty, humane music of the 1990s, that doesn't elicit broadsheet panegyrics and seasons on BBC 6 Music. Nigel Blackwell uses words like 'augurs' and his language has a range of communication that is peerless.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'Even men with steel hearts love to see a dog on the pitch</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even men with steel hearts love to see a dog on the pitch</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It generates a warmth around the ground that augurs well for mankind</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And that’s what life’s about'</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'As the replay comes on, the commentator draws our attention to a retriever standing inside the goal, next to the post. Fortunately for the referee, it was human, rather than animal, intervention which prevented the goal. Something interesting then happens as the commentator asks ‘Do you like me sometimes wonder why on earth people sometimes bring a fine-looking dog like that to a ground like this?’ and claims that ‘the fans just want him away’. The fans, actually, are palpably overjoyed about the dog, despite the fact that the home team have just been denied a goal. HMHB were absolutely right: if there is one way of finally settling the epistemological dispute about who are ‘real’ football fans and who are not, just put a dog on the pitch.' (Joe Kennedy, <a href="http://straightoffthebeach.wordpress.com/2014/05/19/theres-some-p%CC%B6e%CC%B6o%CC%B6p%CC%B6l%CC%B6e%CC%B6-dogs-on-the-pitch/">Straight off the Beach</a>, 19/05/2014)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>9: Björk - 'Venus to a Boy' (1993)</b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To pub quizzes at the Carriage by Jesmond metro station.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To songs, heard by chance, that won't let go.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To opening lines that aren't typical opening lines, that don't apologize for being opening lines:</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'his wicked sense of humour</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">suggests exciting sex'</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>10: DISCLOSURE (ft. Eliza DOOLITTLE) - 'You and Me (Flume Remix)' (2013)</b></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'So please don’t let go, cause you know exactly what we found</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So please don’t let go my darling</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You keep me locked up underground</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s gonna be you and me</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s gonna be everything you’ve ever dreamed</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s gonna be who and me</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s gonna be everything and everything, we’re meant to be'</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rites of spring. Rites of passage. 1906. 2014.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wasn't alone in finding Northern Stage's version of Wedekind's controversial old German play a gripping experience. Impossibly affecting usage of this remix within its story...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Don't those lyrics almost evoke Al Bowlly? Thoughts of <i>Pennies from Heaven </i>following the sad passing of Bob Hoskins. The unobtainable dreams that popular song, banal-sublime, can give wing to. Like moonlight on a highway, this remix transforms 'You and Me' into something that transports. Most purposeful 'strings' on a pop song since 'ill Manors'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There's an opening narration to the play - from unseen speaker over the PA - which evokes the mottled art gallery preciousness we all know so well. Vecchio's Venus is described amid a distancing </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">aestheticism</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. Then, the curtain rises to reveal a man, sat at a seat and he is doing what we think he is doing... that wouldn't be seen in a heritage production where what stays behind the proscenium arch is always going to stay behind there and not engage on a visceral or intellectual level. </span>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE2 1RE, UK54.9809643 -1.598144854.9809643 -1.5981448 54.9809643 -1.5981448tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-31443380261941423522014-02-08T22:33:00.000+00:002014-02-09T11:02:48.417+00:00Film #3: What's Up Superdoc! (1978)<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>'Lest we forget, the Seventies was a decade in which people bought salted
pub-nuts in the hope that the landlord might pull the staple on the bag that
would reveal a small square patch of Page Three stocking-top; in which millions
of satisfied viewers watched speeded-up footage of Benny Hill chasing models
around a car park; in which cinemagoers made </i>Come Play With Me<i> Britain's
longest- running and most profitable domestic movie - a record it still
retains. Whether you consider them evidence of depressing ideological
backwardness or a refreshing absence of modern prudery, these phenomena are
just as much part of the fabric of the period as Arctic Roll, Anthea Redfern
and Hector, Kiki and Zaza.'</i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>- </i>Matthew Sweet (<i>The Independent on Sunday, </i>16/05/2004) </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In this film, which opened on 21st March 1978, there are mildly grainy shots of 1970s London locations and we hear hazy disco era music in the background. A <i>Financial Times </i>article in April 1981 revealed that <i>What's Up Superdoc!</i> along with the likes of <i>Erotic Inferno,</i> <i>Boobs </i>and <i>Diary of a Space Virgin</i>,<i> </i>had received subsidy from the state-backed British Film Fund, the so-called Eady Levy. This sex-comedy tendency was the flipside of such obscure, challenging late-1970s British films as <i>The Shout</i>, <i>Radio On</i> and <i>Jubilee. </i>By and large, it was the Great British Sex Comedy which kept actors and film crews gainfully employed as the 1970s progressed.</span><br />
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I watched this, curious to see Beth Porter in another role after her central performance as Kitty Schreiber in the stupendous <i>Rock Follies of '77</i>. Unfortunately, <i>What's Up Superdoc! </i>is the anti-<i>Rock Follies</i>. Its writer-director Derek Ford's dialogue is thunderously inane, where Howard Schuman's is finessed and punchy.<br />
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Here is an all too liberal sampling of Ford's wit:<br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: center;">"Not 'arf!"</span><br />
"Maybe it's on the National Health..."<br />
"Like a bull in a china shop..."<br />
"That word! [...] That could even give Mary Whitehouse a baby!"<br />
"They didn't tell me he was a WANKER!"<br />
"Bloody <i>women</i>..."<br />
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Christopher Mitchell's titular 'Superdoc' - Dr Robert Todd - is entirely without social context. He is a moustache and eyebrow twitching atom in a world of cardboard amorousness. He is the male 'hero' who indulges in the usual wish-fulfillment fantasies and is every bit as annoying as Robin Askwith and a good deal smugger.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGoxVhg_7pU6YHQZeiaYSfLKwFlLi95NMegCH8qT5iu3pqRwXjEHAVNjTYCTQVmuXx55v-eW_XsJj6UQhZnua4qascDki9IwUJmQ0vAvvVtEYv107itBQP83oDKFyCZ_WDLQ_W0Z6hh5u7/s1600/Christopher+Mitchell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGoxVhg_7pU6YHQZeiaYSfLKwFlLi95NMegCH8qT5iu3pqRwXjEHAVNjTYCTQVmuXx55v-eW_XsJj6UQhZnua4qascDki9IwUJmQ0vAvvVtEYv107itBQP83oDKFyCZ_WDLQ_W0Z6hh5u7/s1600/Christopher+Mitchell.jpg" height="160" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Obligatory Soho strip club scene alert</b></td></tr>
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What must Harry H. Corbett have been thinking when he was making this film? He plays Goodwin, a gormless, gurning ex-army caricature with occasional sad echoes of Harold Steptoe's vocal mannerisms. There is a scene in a public park where he is floored by a little kid's punch and a drenched Mitchell laughs at him, stood in a pond.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Corbett ponders the Faustian pact of being in this film</b></td></tr>
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Just when you think it can't get any worse, Hughie Green enters: playing the 'humorously' named 'Bob Scatchitt'. Playing himself basically: a mountainous TV presenter and staunch British patriot with a mid-Atlantic accent (he had spent four years in Canada in his early life).<br />
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Green's massively popular talent show <i>Opportunity Knocks</i> had been axed in the same month this film premiered in the UK, following his regular use of the programme as a bully pulpit for his right-wing views. An open supporter of Thatcher's Tories, he had performed his reactionary monologue 'Stand Up and Be Counted' on the show in December 1976, railing against the unions, the Labour government and various shirkers. It was Thames' Head of Light Entertainment Philip Jones who sacked him and went onto commission the excellent <i>Shelley </i>(1979-92): a double blow for enlightenment in British television.<br />
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In July 1978, Green was booked by the peelers for drink driving. A year later, he was telling the <i>Daily Express</i>: "The Reds aren't under the beds. They're right in there, running the programmes [...] Evil people are putting out anti-British propaganda." (25/07/1979)<br />
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Green had complained that TV was being deluged with filth; he clearly cared so genuinely that he decided to appear in this irrefutably moral caper! And I assure you, he doesn't use the word 'wanker' three times...<br />
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The film is a deeply unedifying spectacle. We get the most gobsmackingly crass, inapt reference to Jimmy Cagney in <i>White Heat </i>ever committed to film; we get the apter fact that some filming was done at the troubled British Leyland Motors. We even get a Bill Pertwee cameo, with the <i>Dad's Army</i> actor essaying an appalling American accent. It lacks even the down-at-heel bathetic appeal that Matthew Sweet just about discerns in the most successful film of this peculiarly British genre:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Once the lights had gone down on </i>Come Play with Me<i> </i>(1977)<i>, for instance,
those punters who had slavered over the ads which promised "10 girls being
screwed by 10 guys at the same time culminating with a group of Hell's Angels
coming to an orgy party," found themselves watching Alfie Bass capering
about in long-johns, bowler hat and Hitler moustache, droning his way through a
weak music hall number; Irene Handl, mumbling her way through a script upon
which she has only the slightest of grips; and production values so low that
when Henry McGee dries up and looks into the camera for help, the shot stays in
the picture. </i></span></span></blockquote>
It is just dully preposterous bunkum: watching it is like being forced to inhabit the psyche of UKIP idiot Godfrey Bloom for ninety minutes.<br />
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The one element that momentarily beguiles is the library music-style soundtrack; lounge disco with copious guitar and <i>those </i>late-70s synths. It isn't Moroder or Dee D. Jackson: see a piece on neglected 1970s music that David Lichfield and I put together <a href="http://itcher.com/mag/what-are-the-best-70-songs/">here</a>. The music is proficient and curiously sedated - like those honed, becalmed recordings you used to hear on Ceefax late at night after the main BBC programming had finished.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xxzsl8?start=2530" width="480"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxzsl8_what-s-up-super-doc_shortfilms" target="_blank">What'S Up Super Doc</a> <i>by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/crazedigitalmovies" target="_blank">crazedigitalmovies</a></i><br />
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The strangely serene music is often cut off 'amusingly' in scenes of excruciating dialogue, for little or no purpose. While <i>some </i>of the music is very pleasantly of its time, I doubt the titles-song 'Hold On! I'm Coming!' will be gracing Jonny Trunk's excellent <i>OST Show</i> on Resonance FM anytime soon.<br />
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The film is prurient and witless: a deadening combination. You don't have to be Mary Whitehouse to find its objectification of female flesh one-note. Only Porter displays an inkling of character, albeit within the constraints of playing that sex-comedy archetype the uncontrollable nymphomaniac. The New Yorker essays a very passable Scottish accent and has a magnetism quite unlike any of the other identikit actresses who parade for the Superdoc's attention.<br />
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1978 was a year of British cinematic atrocities: this joins two other films that would have to be among my ten least favourite films: the bleak, dismal <i>Carry On Emmannuelle</i> and the painful Cook & Moore debacle <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i>. <i>What's Up Superdoc! </i>represents a mainstream British culture happy to turn out utter shite at the same time as Post Punk, disco, experimental theatre and television drama were proving far more progressive forces.<br />
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It's rubbish. It's British rubbish. No buts about it.Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-31346360110318005142013-04-10T19:49:00.000+01:002014-02-08T22:40:08.521+00:00Not One of Us: The Political and Cultural Legacy of Margaret Thatcher<br />
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">‘She has always struck me as, on a personal level, a
completely fucking shit human being, not at all one of those people of whom it
is possible to say ‘I’m sure she’s a nice person, but…’, and an emphatic
riposte to the popular notion that ‘there’s a little bit of good in everyone’.’</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
– Alex Niven, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://thefantastichope.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/margaret-on-guillotine.html">The Fantastic Hope</a> </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(14/04/2008)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>‘Thatcher is remembered as The Iron Lady only because she
possessed completely negative traits such as persistent stubbornness and a
determined refusal to listen to others. […] Iron? No. Barbaric? Yes.’</i> –
Morrissey interview <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/morrissey-margaret-thatcher-was-barbaric-20130408">reposted</a> (08/04/2013)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>‘Any man who finds himself on a bus at the age of 26 can account himself a failure’</i> – Margaret Thatcher (1986)</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>‘There is too much Thatcherite ideology ingrained in our
political culture to celebrate, even for one night.’ </i>– Ben Sellers, <a href="http://theworldturnedupsidedownne.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/how-to-really-bury-thatcher-2/"><i>The World Upside Down</i></a> (08/04/2013)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>‘From now on the electorate was to be led, not followed.
What ‘I believe’ became what all were to believe, and remained so for twelve
years.’</i> – Simon Jenkins, <i>Accountable to None </i>(Penguin, 1996, vii)<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>‘Perhaps if a Labour government had reduced the prosperous
middle-classes of the Home Counties to mass unemployment and poverty, and
stockbrokers desperate to save their livelihoods had been chased by police on
horseback through the City of London, they would understand the bitterness’ </i>–
Owen Jones, <i>The Independent</i> (16/09/2012)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">‘</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>London became a city Hogarth would have recognized.</i></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">’ - </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Glenda Jackson, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8">parliament</a> (10/04/2013)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>‘</i></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thatcher’s own attitudes are less important here than the
political context she exploited. The broad base of support for the New Right in
politics included an element of white English nationalism, which successively
gave allegiance to the extra-parliamentary threat of the National Front in the
1970s, and to the relatively authoritarian and jingoistic government headed by
Thatcher.’</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> – Joseph Brooker, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Literature of the 1980s: After the Watershed</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
(Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp.144-5)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>‘Her whole philosophy was that you measured the price of
everything and the value of nothing – and we have to replace that… there is
good and bad in everyone and for 10 years it has been the bad that has been…
promoted and the good that has been denounced as lunatic, out-of-touch, cloud
cuckoo land and extremist’ </i>– Tony Benn, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETqOvBKnKdk">parliament</a> (1990)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>‘I’d vote Socialist. There was a documentary on Margaret
Thatcher on ITV last night, and it’s enough to put </i>anybody <i>off.’</i> – Elton John, <i>NME</i> interview with Charles Shaar Murray
(08/03/1975)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In January 2012, I was sat around a table with academic types in a Newcastle pub. One of them had been to see <i>The Iron Lady</i>. We had a measured
discussion on the dangers of an ‘apolitical’ film about a decisive figure in
our recent political history. The gent who’d seen the film, an affable PhD student at Warwick University, persuasively criticized the
sentimental ‘humanizing’ of a woman who was driven by the protestant work ethic and was notable for her steely stoicism. In that social context, I didn’t think I
needed to point out the lack of human empathy with the victims of her policies
– or the doctrinaire certainty and zeal that genuinely made her more of a Maoist than a
mainstream member of British society. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But then the complicated picture does need to be
illuminated, as few people younger than I will possess any first-hand memories
of Thatcher and often simply know nothing: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Whether we are of a left, right, liberal or green persuasion, surely
none of us are served by forgetting or misrepresenting her personality or politics.
In August 2012, Thomas Byrne <a href="http://www.platform10.org/2012/08/why-the-past-must-inform-our-future/">contributed</a> to a debate regarding left-wing people
preparing to celebrate Thatcher’s demise. Byrne is a rare breed – not just a
thoughtful Tory, but a north-eastern one – and, unlike Nigel Lamont on Monday’s <i>Newsnight</i>, he clearly grasps at least some of the reasons behind the significant
antipathy towards her. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He counsels fellow Tories thus: ‘When you stop feigning
outrage and ignoring the real emotional and social reactions of people who feel
they were failed by Thatcher, I’ll stop feigning surprise that so many people
still ignore us.’ (1) Indeed; the party’s continued adherence to Thatcherism holds
them back from being a palatable option for a large number of
voters. T<span style="line-height: 115%;">he party’s continued adherence to Thatcherism holds them back from any prospect of being a palatable option for a large number of voters, as Colin Kidd
pointed out in an insightful recent <i>LRB </i><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n02/colin-kidd/the-darth-vader-option">article</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Much of the mainstream media hagiography misses the fact
that in her three election victories 56-58% of the voting electorate cast their
ballots for non-Tory candidates. It was the divided opposition that enabled her
to win. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Before I go further, it is worth highlighting a few things
in her favour: she did – rhetorically at least – stand up to Reagan on the
USA’s imperialist invasion of Grenada, taking a pro-self-determination position. However,
she did not show quite such principled concern about US abuses in other
non-Commonwealth countries. She must take some credit for moving towards
diplomacy with the USSR and some nuclear arms reduction. Thatcher was shrewd
enough to utilize her knowledge as an Oxford-educated Chemist to make a
significant speech to the UN in November 1989 regarding the dangers to the
environment relating to climate change. However, in later years, she recanted
this constructive stance, falling into line with
the right-wing orthodoxy of George W. Bush and <i>Fox News</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When it comes to <i>us </i>being failed by Thatcher, her
deregulation of the City of London in 1986 looms large; this led to an
exceptionally irresponsible Boom culminating in the following year’s Bust. This
more broadly freed up unscrupulous spivs to acquire riches through absurd means
like betting on which companies would fail next. Caryl Churchill’s play <i>Serious Money</i> (1987)
is the key contemporary depiction, as Brooker notes in his excellent book on
1980s literature. Fry and Laurie also displayed a righteous anger at what she
was doing to the culture; they knew that ‘<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4">choice</a>’ did not equal quality in
broadcasting and that believing unquestioningly in ‘market forces’ is a negation
of humanity itself:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All of which makes this pronouncement in her 1987 <i>Smash Hits</i>
interview all the more disingenuous: ‘You know, some of the rules are coming
back and life is much better when you have rules to live by.’ She preached
orderliness, yet life for many in the UK became substantially more unsettled
and uncertain during her tenure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, a large number of us in the North shiver at the thought
of what was done. This was apparent during Sam West’s April 2012 Northern Stage
production of Alan Plater’s <i>Close the Coalhouse Door</i> - a lively ‘epic
history’ of north-east working class culture including songs by Alex Glasgow
and inspired by Sid Chaplin’s County Durham coalfield writings. (2) On the stage prior to the
performance there stood a large billboard film poster of Meryl Streep as
Thatcher. Scary, harsh eyes staring you out – belying the supposed Hollywood woolliness
of the film. The play’s conclusion was heartrending: it was originally staged
in 1968 with the prospects for socialism still – broadly – on course. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This version of the play included a brief coda with a wistful song
regarding the historical progress the working class had clearly achieved by
1968 via the likes of Thomas Hepburn: “It’s only a story / a fanciful tale”.
The Thatcher-turn in history has rendered this all merely a story to tell the
bairns today, albeit with tantalizing if threatened remnants of the Attlee world just about visible. It isn't clear-cut, but by 1968 safety and working hours and conditions had been vastly
improved out of all recognition compared to previous eras. As Ken Loach stated
in his recent documentary film, the<i> Spirit of '45</i> had won significant advances for society. Plater’s
original ending was upbeat and dryly jovial in his best style; the 2012 staging
was shattering in its evocation of a backwards movement. ‘Community’ is too
broad a word to evoke the collective memory and experience that Plater’s text
conveyed when enacted on stage. This was the essence of socialism in practice, intrinsically social.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The sort of pride in work and companionship shown in the play is
anathema to Thatcher. Long hours are a badge of honour to a City banker or
grocer’s daughter wanting to change the country – not, apparently, a backward
Victorian horror. She incarnated the ludicrous idea that we work better when
working longer, and that there is some intrinsic nobility in ‘working hard’: toiling
so absurdly hard destroyed her personally and influenced her later hubris. Some form of self-sacrifice
for the ‘good of the country’? The strong-willed individual: battling for ‘The
Individual’? It all takes on a creepy, barking <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swOxKu80JpU">mad</a>, Ayn Rand complexion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Where ‘hard-work’ was extolled, being on benefits was
denounced, with Tebbit attack-polecat subtlety. There is a strident body of
opinion in this land that ‘benefit dependency’ is a problem. Whether you concur
with the swivel-eyed, blanket-condemnations of the <i>Daily Mail</i> or possess a humane
perspective on diverse people’s circumstances, you must acknowledge this ironic
truth: that Mrs Thatcher actually presided over the colossal expansion of
welfare provision that resulted from her policies. In the political calculus, she
preferred former industrial and manufacturing workers pacified and on the dole rather
than in unionized employment and part of the ‘enemy within’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I'm over 26 and I sometimes use a bus. What a failure I am!</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is, of course, inconceivable, that heavy-industry could
have remained as it was indefinitely; yet, as Byrne acknowledges, there were
other alternative options: liberal, social democratic and ‘wet’ Tory as well as
Old Labour – more ameliorative policies and humane methods could have been used.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In her <i>Smash Hits</i> interview, Thatcher tries to be relatively
amicable, though comes across as patronising: ‘most young people rebel and then
gradually they become more realistic’. She speaks of her youthful liking for
the 1940s Hollywood cinema of Carmen Miranda and Jean Arthur but even here she
is drawn back to a characteristic emphasis on toil: ‘But I suppose things turn out to
be less glamorous the closer you get to them: they were jolly hard working, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">jolly</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> hard working.’ She speaks of the
escapism in enjoying <i>South of the Border</i> and <i>The Plainsman</i> and also that young
people shouldn’t be persuaded ‘into a direction into which they don’t want to
go’.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Guardian</i>, 07/02/1986</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">However, the hectoring impulse is never far away,
overwhelming these accommodating words which had no doubt been given her by cynically
youth-conscious PR advisers. The moralistic matriarch comes into view: ‘On the other hand if they want to do terribly
glamorous things which aren’t going to give them a living, you’ve got to say
‘now, look dear, don’t you think it would be worthwhile taking some training
which will give you a much better chance of earning a basic living?’ She was a
cultural philistine; in the interview, her most enthusiastic cultural
endorsement is of a Nanette Newman-featuring Fairy Liquid advertisement on the
telly.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-8cgKlFww-bwqXfDOFY1qJ1Sdbd20UFvj-6QhIuteoV_3-SAiRF9VZLD-fbfsbilSibVyyhyphenhyphenI2IeTUl45uDrSQ-mgvr8bfxKxGu4QjdHTusPHageTeNBw1rcVWTDMauX2uiS3bjnxc-y3/s1600/Thatcher+and+Murdoch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-8cgKlFww-bwqXfDOFY1qJ1Sdbd20UFvj-6QhIuteoV_3-SAiRF9VZLD-fbfsbilSibVyyhyphenhyphenI2IeTUl45uDrSQ-mgvr8bfxKxGu4QjdHTusPHageTeNBw1rcVWTDMauX2uiS3bjnxc-y3/s400/Thatcher+and+Murdoch.jpg" height="250" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thatcher’s ideal New Year’s Eve party at Chequers would have included Ronald Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, Jeffrey Archer, Paul Daniels, General Pinochet and Jimmy Savile – with Brotherhood of Man playing on the sound system, as the Smash Hits interview indicates. It is not without irony then that she spoke of the importance of friends; she clearly knew how to pick them...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While she clearly galvanized a rich oppositional counterculture,
she ultimately made the terrain much less fertile for any future such
sub-cultures. This has left mainstream culture a mean, bland and barren
‘business friendly’ zone. In music, from the Specials to Sudden Sway to Elvis
Costello to Roger Waters to Morrissey to Kirsty MacColl to Crass to The Housemartins, there was articulate
and implacable opposition to her anti-humanism. Red Wedge saw not just Weller
and Bragg, but Prefab Sprout and The Smiths appearing on stage in necessary
union.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiefeuX_CAdOGEuRMHQ5nsIRhXg-XN5d4G7mOU0s6nJTfDl5ZaYgjSpdhwrORSfPy_AkJXF1mtQagQ1LcdXobSBCeosYxM47ttmEY6Qt495SIQyzl7l2rPjQzTU01ZQG_3t6sCtUJlyVHh3/s1600/red+wedge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiefeuX_CAdOGEuRMHQ5nsIRhXg-XN5d4G7mOU0s6nJTfDl5ZaYgjSpdhwrORSfPy_AkJXF1mtQagQ1LcdXobSBCeosYxM47ttmEY6Qt495SIQyzl7l2rPjQzTU01ZQG_3t6sCtUJlyVHh3/s400/red+wedge.jpg" height="373" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On Monday, David Stubbs <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/11886-margaret-thatcher-obituary?fb_action_ids=10100277781557262&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210100277781557262%22%3A129541953902109%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210100277781557262%22%3A%22og.likes%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D">wrote</a> in <i>The Quietus</i> of the earlier 1980s post-punk
response: ‘Everything about the new music of the 1980s – forward-looking,
racially diverse, permissive, insolent, gleefully engaged in the “promotion of
homosexuality”, to use one of the more vile phrases of the Tories – flew in the
face of the tetchy, small-minded, prudish, selfish flight behind the net
curtains of pre-Beatles mores represented by Thatcher and her ilk’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The progressive culture was vanquished, even if <i>some</i> of its values became accommodated
in the mainstream from the 1990s on. Ultimately, the repellent cash-till
market dogma of Mick Jagger’s ‘Let’s Work’ won out over The Human League’s
‘Open Your Heart’, whatever those songs' chart placings when released.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An eminent literary man of her and our time, Ian McEwan, has
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-ian-mcewan?CMP=twt_gu">produced</a> a tepid, ineffectually ‘balanced’ ode to her in <i>The Guardian</i>. He
wasn’t personally affected for the worse by Thatcherism in the 1980s, unlike working-class
people in the north, Scotland or Wales. This fact explains, but does not
excuse, the lack of empathy in this liberal individualist novelist’s words – as
well as his unconvincing explanation of why the 1970s were so bad.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Right-wing pundits’ attacks on the 1970s ring hollow besides
the Thatcher-inspired disaster zone we are now living in. Harold Wilson, flawed
PM though he clearly was, has an increasingly impressive legacy in comparison
to hers, on all of the important measures. He did less harm to human
beings and society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A society one of the most equal in Western Europe by 1979
now stands as one of the most unequal and divided.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘NO. NO. NO.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS8doLQURnaASeKhBqKIpHi-GVTwip82W0jHOzAurwZSQZanHesheizePxB7XCwzCLRjldI26esfGf5rLy2w5mxQf-7W-btLlPeIYioR1a-QHZBQjw7siQPBTvhTO6MrZLwoISWAddUOro/s1600/Thatcher+15-11-90.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS8doLQURnaASeKhBqKIpHi-GVTwip82W0jHOzAurwZSQZanHesheizePxB7XCwzCLRjldI26esfGf5rLy2w5mxQf-7W-btLlPeIYioR1a-QHZBQjw7siQPBTvhTO6MrZLwoISWAddUOro/s320/Thatcher+15-11-90.jpg" height="320" width="168" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Guardian</i>, 15/11/1990</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[Shudder]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ah yes… that ‘last term’. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">From 1979-87, she had been a dangerous but clearly formidable political force. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Whatever clever judgement she had once possessed completely deserted her following her third victory. She started using the
royal ‘we’ – “we are a grandmother” – becoming an irrational, ranting little
Englander, with her attacks on Europe. In this twilight of her ‘reign’, she was utterly obstinate,
self-righteous and messianic. Other than the current coalition, surely no three
years of any other government has ever produced quite so much pernicious, culturally
degrading legislation as the following:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Football Spectators Act 1989<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Broadcasting Act 1990<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Community Charge (poll tax) 1989-90</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘Think for a Minute’, as the Housemartins <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywznu5DBjbM">urged</a>. What is her
actual legacy? A coarser public discourse. The lexis is more News International,
rather than Chaucer. No, we don’t have Alan Plater doing a modern-day northern
adaptation of <i>The Canterbury Tales</i> on ITV now. We’ve had <i>The Sun</i> dominating. Harry
Enfield’s Loadsamoney freeloading. Richard Littlejohn. A newly licensed yobbery: whether on the
council estates or the City of London stock-market. Lives, working or
otherwise, were sacrificed for an economic experiment dreamed up by marginal think
tanks and that despicable crank Sir Keith Joseph. She paraded an inverse-snobbery
regarding the arts and public services, reducing everything to its monetary
price. The old nineteenth-century ‘cash nexus’. He’s not Yosser Hughes, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CRXnO9v0sA">he’s</a> nobody. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibr3IN6paiGVcY6QA8xIRwBJfY02YtFsa4ywdVASM31zm8Sbc6OS62m_WOrMrUVq9PxPInf0xtPv9zZX3wON1vymZhmQF63NoS9xGdN18_bC1cXqUnCBYbZkzCx9TknTf23LkID89TcWNp/s1600/Guardian+07-06-1983.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibr3IN6paiGVcY6QA8xIRwBJfY02YtFsa4ywdVASM31zm8Sbc6OS62m_WOrMrUVq9PxPInf0xtPv9zZX3wON1vymZhmQF63NoS9xGdN18_bC1cXqUnCBYbZkzCx9TknTf23LkID89TcWNp/s400/Guardian+07-06-1983.jpg" height="336" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Guardian</i>, 07/06/1983</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She took sociopathic delight in dividing communities and
attacking ‘the enemy within’, who were largely workers concerned for their jobs
and localities, not a uniform bloc of Stalinist revolutionaries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She should have taken a career as a scientist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Falklands War. A new friend I met recently, who was
around 20 at the time, noted how the atmosphere in country seemed to tangibly shift
in a matter of days; previously sensible, liberal or progressive people were
swept along in a fundamentally distasteful jingoistic tide. Denis Healey’s
description of Thatcher ‘glorying in slaughter’ does not seem unfair when considering the Belgrano episode and how she posed for the
press in its aftermath. Military dictator General Galtieri was indeed hateful;
but so was the act to sink a boat that was out of the designated exclusion zone
and moving away from the HMS Conqueror. 323 Argentinian lives were ended.
Whatever claims some have made regarding her understanding of the gravity of
war and desire to reduce casualties, she gave credence to the mindless ‘GOTCHA’
mentality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUPxB5n2wfHN-yfpvsGnTFT569Z6T3XyvVPFc9l7CY_FK0V3LnklrXz7h-tYf4WX-ijfON7bf1fuaUlDWPbZ_oZEo0GzBeFczu3v31hvRm8_0ER3t0cAJIGD2TqcRmi0mObVadtyaqRy_3/s1600/Thatcher+New+Formations+-+Winter+1988.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUPxB5n2wfHN-yfpvsGnTFT569Z6T3XyvVPFc9l7CY_FK0V3LnklrXz7h-tYf4WX-ijfON7bf1fuaUlDWPbZ_oZEo0GzBeFczu3v31hvRm8_0ER3t0cAJIGD2TqcRmi0mObVadtyaqRy_3/s400/Thatcher+New+Formations+-+Winter+1988.jpg" height="222" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“NO. NO. NO.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">No: to thoughts of a work-life balance. No: to oppose the ‘yes’ of
Molly Bloom. ‘No such thing as society’. No: to the post-WW2 political culture and the idea that organised labourers should have a say. See Joseph
Strick’s 1966 film <i>The Hecklers</i> <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/do_people_heckle">here</a> if you don’t believe me: we had a mainstream
culture thoroughly engaged with politics in a way that seems alien to us today. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is highly ironic that this conviction politician created
and fostered attitudes that range from the apathetic or resigned to the
poisonously ignorant. A year or so before 1979 election, she cynically spoke of
immigrants ‘swamping’ the country; she introduced Section 28; she tried to introduce ID cards for footer fans; she ran down public services and infrastructure; she presided over
mass unemployment and then directed blame towards those unlucky enough to be
unemployed. We live with the after-effects: the horrible rhetoric of ‘skivers’,
‘shirkers’, ‘sponging asylum seekers’ and ‘immigrants taking our jobs’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1C7jZA1c2nE670Nk4XQuLIbkfrcfQFIRCYBHpunO6AyvVOJWwzpFsCm4OxaSnXgzTDsXB7WPOSleKNxvL6mfL6A-Ga62MoXQSuIYO776sNrUg6NTVJs32qad4ruVvJWAgfI8PUv-TSAIn/s1600/Thatcher+-+Khormek+cartoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1C7jZA1c2nE670Nk4XQuLIbkfrcfQFIRCYBHpunO6AyvVOJWwzpFsCm4OxaSnXgzTDsXB7WPOSleKNxvL6mfL6A-Ga62MoXQSuIYO776sNrUg6NTVJs32qad4ruVvJWAgfI8PUv-TSAIn/s400/Thatcher+-+Khormek+cartoon.jpg" height="400" width="306" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She presided over policies that abetted immigration – as
global capitalism always will, yet she indulged the mean-spirited, who take the
benefits of market liberalism but are averse to seeing immigrants taking jobs
that are not necessarily a God-given right to anyone under such a system. Therefore,
her legacy includes the risible UKIP, with their ‘three million Bulgarians are
coming to Eastleigh’ and a daily avalanche of disgraceful tabloid falsehoods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Her legacy is further dividing the society she claimed
didn’t exist. She encouraged people to scapegoat trade unionists, immigrants,
gay people or Osborne’s ‘shirkers’. All of which conceals a colossal transfer
of resources away from the average working person and towards the City of
London and Tory donors. That is History, that is what happened – an 'enemy
within' was gleefully vanquished and power redistributed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“NO. NO. NO.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">No: to the life of the many, ultimately. When I think of
Thatcher's impact, her legacy is in the single file insularity I have seen around me. It
is in that tendency among 'Thatcher’s children' to accept being atomised and cut
off from other people; I have to fight this off, but it isn’t easy, as this way
of life has had currency for decades now. Showing empathy for others is going
against the grain today. A good deal of the pettiness, cruelty and entitlement I have been witness to can be laid at her door, directly or indirectly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the booklet to the BFI’s <i>Miners’ Campaign Tapes </i>DVD, is
reprinted a <i>New Statesman </i>article from the novelist David Peace, composed
twenty years on from the Strike and circa the publication of his acclaimed
novel, <i>GB84</i>. He sets out what was at stake in 1984-5: ‘Sacrifice and
selflessness versus brutality and bribery, fear and greed. And we all know who
won. And we all know who lost – their jobs, their families, their communities,
their culture, their heritage – 150 years of socialist heritage. British
heritage, not nostalgia. Not romanticism. A heritage of sacrifice, of
selflessness. A sacrifice and a selflessness born out of compassion and empathy
– qualities that cannot be bought or stolen from you.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I refuse to accept that we are, to quote Nye Bevan on Hugh
Gaitskell, ‘desiccated calculating machines’. That it is in our nature and
interests to relentlessly weigh up our interests in mere pecuniary,
self-interested terms. Thatcher commandeered the language and enforced the
cheerless ideas that now seem to hold
the public in a vice-like grip. It is an urgent necessity, as Mark Fisher argues, for
the many of us who despise her corrosive legacy to be pro-active in
over-turning all this fundamentally evil, weird shit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> (1)<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span>Byrne is, however, wrong to primarily credit
Thatcher with bringing Nissan to the North East; this was mainly the work of
Sunderland’s Labour Council leader Charles Slater, and, to an extent,
Thatcher’s arch-enemy in the Tory party, Michael Heseltine at the DTI. He has always been rare in
modern Conservative circles for advocating that government cash should go into
stimulating industry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> (2)<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->This production was also adapted for BBC Radio
4’s <i>Saturday Drama</i> strand, TX: 29/09/2012.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE2 1RE, UK54.9809643 -1.598144854.979825299999995 -1.6006663 54.9821033 -1.5956233tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-43278090725647419452013-11-03T11:16:00.000+00:002013-11-03T11:30:19.299+00:00Major: grey manna from heaven or deep, grey emptiness?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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'For a time, Major took his charter very seriously. The absurdity of a citizens' charter, written in secret by a government department and launched by a prime minister, escaped him. As his predecessor had virtually abolished citizens, we are probably not yet very real to him either.'<br />
Sarah Benton (1991), 'Viewpoint: Citizen Major', <i>Marxism Today, </i>July, p.9.<br />
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'And he briefly resurrects old enmities, pointing out "an early example of... the Times's ability to be wrong on every major issue".'<br />
no author (2007) 'Major's Game: book review of <i>More than a Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years</i>', <i>The Economist</i>, 16th June, p.101.<br />
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'John Major's bizarre resignation - an act more of bravado than of bravery - will solve very little and carries considerable risks [...] It all smacks of Richard II, not Henry V.'<br />
Simon Jenkins (1995), 'This midsummer madness', <i>The Times</i>, 24th June, p.18.<br />
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'We have had a government that tried to operate an economy as well as a society according to blunt, free-market principles. It's clearly failed. What we don't have in Mr Major is an alternative ideology. We've got a change of style, and a lot of rhetoric about a classless society and opportunity for all - but we do not have a way forward.'<br />
Gordon Brown (1991) 'After Thatcher: Business as Usual', <i>Marxism Today</i>, January, p.26.<br />
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'Mothers who wouldn't know what to do with a Heseltine or a Portillo wish their daughters could find a nice man like John Major to bring home to tea.'<br />
Alice Thomson (1994) 'Can women's votes save John Major?' <i>The Times</i>, 2nd February, p.15.<br />
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'As Thatcher's preferred successor, John Major represents continuity. But he also represents the routinisation of charisma, and the dissipation of the energy, the radicalism, and the conviction that suffused the Thatcher decade.'<br />
Andrew Gamble (1991) 'After Thatcher: Following the Leader', <i>Marxism Today</i>, January, p.15.<br />
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'In a speech marked by the xenophobic smack of its attack on foreign 'scroungers', Mr Lilley openly and impertinently cheeked Mr Major for referring to himself and other right-wingers as 'bastards' - saying that he had it on his mother's authority that he was not 'fatherless' - and capping all by echoing a Thatcherite rant against the powers of a European superstate.'<br />
Anthony Bevins (1993), 'Bastards are the masters, for now', <i>The Guardian</i>, 10th October, p.8.<br />
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'John Major became an object of contempt for his dogged refusal to preside over the break-up of the Conservative Party.'<br />
Bagehot (2003) 'Archbishop Major', <i>The Economist</i>, 16th August, p.27.<br />
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Steadily, there has been a perceptible shift in perceptions of John Major.<br />
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Obviously, his resolutely centrist performance in Westminster on 22nd October will provide a contrast to the neo-liberal dogmatism of Cameron-Osborne Toryism and the shallow poujadism of Nigel Farage. In this week's <i>New Statesman</i>, ex-cricketer and columnist Ed Smith writes of Major's 'late popularity' and 'measured and affable public appearances'. He regards him as 'a victim of the way the market for news and public opinion operates', whose reputation has grown since leaving office - in stark contrast to Tony Blair's. Smith will have seen Major's intervention on energy prices, proposing a windfall tax in a manner that is rather more in touch with public opinion than with notions of a sacrosanct private sector 'market':<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/wkzNWeAUMRg" width="420"></iframe><br />
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The erstwhile 'Grey Man' has produced evidence of a 'hinterland', publishing books on cricket and music hall. Not areas that will prove everyone's cup of Earl Grey, but surely specific interests to be commended, next to the career politics and the workaday immersion in pop culture of the current generation.<br />
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Cultural historian Alwyn W. Turner has <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10288312/A-Classless-Society-Britaininthe-1990s-by-Alwyn-Turner-review.html">written</a> recently - in his new 1990s history - of Major's brief period of ascendancy as a 'classless' Tory, making great strides initially as someone from an unusually humble background who seemingly had more of a 'common touch' than the absurdly messianic latter-day Thatcher.<br />
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Turner writes of his understated compassion for the dying, cancer-afflicted left-wing Labour MP Eric Heffer. In January 1991, Major crossed the floor of the House of Commons, knelt beside Heffer and had a private conversation. Turner also mentions a curious flirtatious side that few knew existed prior to revelations of his affair with Edwina Currie. "Would you like a nibble of my mace?" he is said to have cheekily asked Margaret Beckett. All reflective of very different personality to the abrasive, inhumanly driven Thatcher. Major took a notably more realistic, constructive approach to the Northern Ireland question than his predecessor - leading to the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993.<br />
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It is beyond question that of living Prime Ministers, Major would be the most affable company on a personal level, as ex-Labour MP Chris Mullin's diaries attest. He clearly sees things on a human scale, and Mullin reveals that he was prescient regarding the threat to democratic and cultural values posed by Rupert Murdoch. He was too weak to act on this, however. Though his successor Blair was much more fawning in his subservience to the culturally debasing mogul.<br />
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Major, then, might just be the ex-PM you could just about engage with in an earnest and affable conversation over a pint...<br />
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Ultimately, however, his period as Prime Minister was disastrous.<br />
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The Criminal Justice Act was passed in 1994.<br />
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The railways were privatized from 1994.<br />
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In the same year, he presided over what Turner describes as a shambolic and demeaning failure to pass the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill to legislate for disability rights - earning the ire of Stephen Hawking among many others: 'I don't think any disabled person should vote for the present government unless they do something to atone for the shabby way they killed the Civil Rights Bill'. The responsible minister Nicholas Scott had killed the Bill with amendments and had used an eighty minute speech to talk it out, while refusing to admit that that was what he was doing.<br />
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Major maintained the despicable Section 28 and expanded anti-Union laws set in train under Thatcher.<br />
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Whatever his personal qualms - as detailed by Turner - he sanctioned Heseltine's steadfastly inhumane closing of the pits in late 1992.<br />
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His years in office were, as <i>The Observer</i> argued in the week of his vainglorious and bathetic resignation as party leader in 1995, 'characterised by crisis management'. That ludicrous episode demonstrated self-inflicted crisis, with the "PUT UP OR SHUT UP" call being followed by a challenge out of left - or rather right - field from vulcan headbanger John Redwood.<br />
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This 1994 sketch from <i>The Day Today </i>of a film 'reserved for times of national emergency' captured this sense of perpetual crisis, as well as the Major years' deluded, deadening preoccupation with heritage. The show's brilliance was to have this wonderfully ludicrous projection of Tory normalcy broadcast after its fabricated scoop of John Major punching the Queen. In its cynical fantasy the video summarises the government's attempt to paper over the cracks left by virulent Thatcherism. It represents the sad bathos of its times, as a hapless, non-threatening PM presided over measures that threatened the quality of a large number of people's lives - all the while pretending: <b>EVERYTHING'S ALL RIGHT</b>.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/T72TopWbXJg" width="420"></iframe><br />
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Major presided over a stagnant Britain. While there was vivid, energized cultural opposition from 1990-94, this was quickly overtaken by a resurgent cultural conservatism. Areas as diverse as television situation comedy, cinema, popular music and stand-up comedy saw a perceptible shift away from politicised, socially engaged content towards pastiche and willful, disconnected individualism.<br />
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The movement from Mike Leigh's <i>Naked </i>to <i>Secrets and Lies </i>indicates a shift. As does the movement from the likes of Derek Jarman being supported to the ascendancy of Guy Ritchie. Lad culture, while surely lamented by Major personally, was a significant legacy of his era - and the media culture grew ever more aggressive and cynical.<br />
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At the time, as the years passed, it felt as if his tired, incompetent and nasty government would never end. In 1996, yours truly was moved to write and record a song attacking the newly established National Lottery, coming across like Adrian Mole channeling John Lydon. In this intemperate, hastily assembled slice of punk agit-prop, my thirteen-year-old self lashed out at those running the culture, discerning "no ray of light in their Major-grey cheeks!" The song was a rather ghastly racket, but few could doubt the sincerity of the irritation at the man whose very name had became a sort of adjective synonym of 'dismal'.<br />
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Of course, now I know a bit more. Major did have the misfortune to preside over a party haunted, indeed besotted by the ghastly subject of its 1990 matricide. They have never looked back on looking back, remaining to this day the 'bastards' - in Major's words - that she created, forever seeking revenge against her assassins and completion of her ideological 'project'. The man Major might have had an instinct for the moderate, 'decent' English vote. His fellow party members haven't, at least since the passing of the Macmillans, Macleods and Whitelaws. In October 1995, Hugh Dykes, moderate Tory MP for Harrow East, noted that the representatives at his party's Blackpool Conference were 'more and more right-wing, narrow-minded, selfish and xenophobic'. Hardly an understatement when the event included the bombastic, bellicose "Don't mess with Britain" speech from bastard-in-chief Portillo. This era saw the ascendancy of such lovely humans as Peter Lilley, IDS, Michael Howard, John Redwood and Ann Widdecombe. A supposedly decent man in charge merely provided ideal incubation conditions for some of the lowest impulses:<br />
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While the 'Grey Man' possessed an unusually compassionate outlook - devoid of sharp elbows and social scorn - he simply did not run the country according to these 'decent', 'One Nation' Tory principles. He did little if anything to quell the juggernaut of neo-liberalism unleashed by his abhorrent predecessor. The best that can be said of him is that he didn't preside over a foreign policy disaster like the Iraq War or the sort of retrograde 'reforms' of health, education and welfare that Cameron's government are now pursuing.Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE2 1RE, UK54.9809643 -1.598144854.979825299999995 -1.6006663 54.9821033 -1.5956233tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-35685138933089218562013-06-05T18:48:00.000+01:002013-06-05T19:03:08.091+01:00'There's a message in our song'<i>'A New Year's Resolution to write something of value...' </i>- Camera Obscura, 'New Year's Resolution' (2013)<br />
<i>'It don't feel much like a church without a God inside' </i>- Robyn Hitchcock, 'Meat' (1981)<br />
<i>'Music is the healing voice of the world / It's understood by every man, woman, boy and girl'</i> - The O'Jays, 'I Love Music' (1975)<br />
<i>'The feeling of falling, the thrill of it all' </i>- Prefab Sprout, 'I Love Music' (2009)<br />
<i>'Understand why you dance' </i>- The O'Jays - 'Message in the Music' (1976)<br />
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The O'Jays can so often be relied on to get to the nub: 'We going to talk about all the things that been going down / Get your information from this means of communication'. Recently, in my day job, a discussion of students' exam answers regarding the role of music in 'the curriculum' and in society got thinking about what music means personally. Also, teaching A2 Communication and Culture has inevitably got me thinking about music and what it means in our lives. You can only discuss music with music at the forefront, so I've embedded ten songs, to assist.<br />
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Today, I've been listening to Camera Obscura's sparkling new album, <i>Desire Lines,</i> so really ought to have picked something from that, but there's a limited amount to select from on that old platform of YouTube.<br />
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Listen! Listen to those sparkling ethereal harmonies at the start; move your disco clasp tight the jubilant, serious and huggable whole:<br />
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<b>The O'Jays - 'Message in The Music' (1976)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/64e6DF4lJWk" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<i>'Trying to make you see that things</i><br />
<i>Ain't like they supposed to be'</i><br />
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This is a stormy, pleasurable, political delight; understanding why we dance.<br />
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Music expresses the ineffable as well as the tangible. The Bacharach crackerjack and the Half Man Half Biscuit diatribe. The celestial sublime and disconsolate confusion:<br />
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<b>Todd Rundgren - 'Sometimes I Don't Know How to Feel' (1973)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rnaN0dAIUQs" width="420"></iframe><br />
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Celestial soul evoking confessional, existential uncertainty. How humans can dread. This song hits the hardest of anything on a great, weird record with the aptest ever title.<br />
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Within this true star and wizard, there is difference and convergence of perspectives and lives. As in the Alain Badiou volume I've been reading, <i>In Praise of Love</i>...<br />
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<b>The Real Tuesday Weld - 'Asteroids' (2001)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MkBe9dkxh8k" width="420"></iframe><br />
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Music can be the short-term consolation or the long-term escape route. It has deep meanings - the context affects what we may feel about it. We make value judgments because we are human and have to enter into dialogue with others and ourselves. Is it at all about 'taste'? Isn't that too linked with spurious social status and tinkering lack of commitment?<br />
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It can speak of ambivalence towards a year or time in your life, as with this miraculous swooning pop, which also effortlessly carries you forward into the present and future, while reminding me of 2005.<br />
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<b>The Shortwave Set - 'Is It Any Wonder?' (2005)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vRvRetLBkeg" width="420"></iframe><br />
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It can evoke and drip with 'British Summertime'. Glide in linguistic eloquence and caverns of porous, vertiginous dreams.<br />
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<i>'No big deal but I feel the real you is the blue that I knew before / The refined and reclining, declining, demure and unsure'</i><br />
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Luke Sutherland is a novelist and sound artist; an inspired figure well in advance of our mainstream music marketplace. We avert our ears from this, impoverishing ourselves with a 'sustenance' of Peace and Mumfords:<br />
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<b>Long Fin Killie - 'British Summertime' (1997)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/L528o2KfDXc" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<i>Jordan: The Comeback</i> is mine; when low, I have put this array of delights on and been transported somewhere external, more deeply internal and eternal. My favourite album, still:<br />
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<b>Prefab Sprout - 'Looking for Atlantis' (1990)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9i7b9uzeu7s" width="420"></iframe><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>While tilting at windmills, pursuing grails and great ideals, you might overlook much else that could get you closer to those ideals.<br />
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<i>'I know you're listening out there somewhere...'</i><br />
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It can gleam with promise both breezily Utopian and hazily worldly, as in the passage of Bark Psychosis' 'The Black Meat'. Yearning, unfurling loveliness at 2:49 after that ashen pause.<br />
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<b>Bark Psychosis - 'The Black Meat' (2005)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FGFsdJ2OtCY" width="420"></iframe><br />
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Like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis into the daunting world.<br />
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Music knows. And can help you know things: social, political, romantic, aesthetic, delinquent, orderly, reflective, rambunctious.<br />
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It knows about 'My Lonely Room'. It can be a gateway to pasts that would seem impossible in the present: a 1964 of <i>A Hard Day's Night</i> and this gorgeousness:<br />
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<b>Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - 'In My Lonely Room' (1964)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3mVrZmTj_rw" width="420"></iframe><br />
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The ephemeral nature of popular song. When <i>so much is ephemeral</i>, shouldn't we pay it attention?<br />
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I know, it can be an inoffensive background - to dictate the party mood, or mere aural wallpaper, enjoyed at a remove. People are free to see it in this way; maybe they aren't missing out and are better adjusted in their indifference?<br />
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I could never be indifferent to the stuff of synths; of vintage OMD, PSB, the Korgis, New Musik and New Order... Even of Season 18 <i>Doctor Who </i>music. Even if I had never got up and sang 'World in Motion' with three other members of the Phoenix brethren Christmases ago.<br />
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<b>New Order - 'Thieves Like Us' (1984)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Fc1ldXDJicY" width="420"></iframe><br />
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As Lee Perry might have it, it transplants. Transplants the past into your present and worms its way into the memories that last. It is not surprising to find that one of the most useful therapies for Alzheimer's sufferers is singing songs remembered from their youths. Words and music in combination burrow their way deeper into us than anything.<br />
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Try spinning the narrative that it doesn't matter or can be viewed wholly through an economic calculus. See how far you get with most people.<br />
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Music: not in isolation, never. It exists in society and history, it encultures and accompanies the most alone. Provides chance for common or uncommon ground to be found.<br />
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It transcends us and enables us to ascend like the tingling on an adolescent spine. It's not about number one but two, as Nilsson or Patrick McGoohan might remind us. Do we stay rigid, confined and unchanging or open that door, as Richard Hawley would have it?<br />
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<b>Milton Nascimento - 'Clube Da Esquina No.2' (1972)</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Rn1Fvb_fiSI" width="420"></iframe>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE2 1RE, UK54.9809643 -1.598144854.979825299999995 -1.6006663 54.9821033 -1.5956233tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-64638585567460275712011-11-12T18:49:00.000+00:002013-04-10T22:04:34.045+01:00We taught ourselves the right from wrong, Ms. Mensch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>A thatcher is someone who makes a roof<br />
or used to, when things were quieter,<br />
was someone who sheltered people<br />
from the rain, when things were quieter.<br />
A thatcher took folks from the wind<br />
and layered the skin of a human weather.<br />
Now a thatcher exposes the dwellers,<br />
rips off the roof in the skinning wind,<br />
hurls down the roof on the dwellers,<br />
who for cover snatch at the straws<br />
the roof-makers rains<br />
on their rainwashed heads ruthlessly<br />
and in their teeth and in their eyes<br />
like a war<br />
that the thatcher unnaturally makes <br />
on the dwellers. And the luckier,<br />
snatching more straw cover of the undoing<br />
thatch, despise the unluckier, the colder ones,<br />
so that some see but many don't<br />
or do see but not why, and think it<br />
the way of a brave wise thatcher<br />
that their fellows are icy and cold <br />
in an inhuman country.</i><br />
- Judith Kazantzis, 'A Thatcher' (1984), <b>Red Sky at Night: an anthology of British socialist poetry</b> (Nottingham: Five Leaves, 2003, p.204)<br />
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How odd to <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/louisemensch/100116958/why-is-the-bbc-using-licence-fee-money-to-pay-a-man-who-wishes-margaret-thatcher-dead/">accuse</a> someone of being 'deranged' after you have made the most simplistic, smug attack on protestors imaginable?<br />
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Baker, Hislop and Merton are presented with an open goal to demolish an inept 'argument'. Of course, it is not as if she is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/10/louise-mensch-school-run-murdoch-hearing?newsfeed=true">any more diligent</a> in her role on the Media and Communication select committee. As well as her partial attendance and supplying of Murdoch with facile questions, she is campaigning to reduce workers' employment rights: Mensch is indisputably following in the path of Baroness Thatcher. A well-to-do middle-class smugness may seem far apart from the protestant work-ethic mania of her idol. However, same mean-spirited prejudices, same inequitable policies.<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ciframe%20width=%22420%22%20height=%22315%22%20src=%22http://www.youtube.com/embed/JZj5cY18yFk%22%20frameborder=%220%22%20allowfullscreen%3E%3C/iframe%3E"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JZj5cY18yFk" width="420"></iframe></a>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-27494397736981900082013-02-27T00:03:00.002+00:002013-02-27T00:19:21.256+00:00The Anti-BRITS: 25 Ways to the Future<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'BRIT Awards'. Check. 'NME Awards'. Check. 'Academy Awards'. Check. 'Grammys'. Check. Silly season featuring crushingly predictable roster comprising Kasabian Clyro Cribs Maccabees Vaccines and Adele Mumford-Mastercard and her Sons shite. Check.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In this of all weeks, we thought it best to check that you were still alive and hadn't drifted off into some blandness-induced coma. Now, here's the beginning of a counter-attack! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In April 2012, when Messrs Gibson, Niven, Lichfield and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I concluded our epic 'Worst 200 Songs' trawl, I alluded <a href="http://the-sphinx-without-a-secret.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/catharsis-reached-worst-200-songs.html">here</a> to the prospect of an epilogue to that project, identifying what each of us liked in current '2011-12' music. Basically: an optimistic coda, posting YouTube clips of recent music we loved with brief explanatory comments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Well, the BRIT Awards has motivated us to complete this task, which you will see has become less a coda and more a lengthy mix of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'earnest chin-stroking'*, 2012 diary and cultural manifesto. Not forgetting an obligatory dig at the 'winners' of the 'Best British Band' 'Award' at the BRITS, those Cameronite leeches Mumford and Sons, draining the life from the culture with their anodyne music and bumpkin apparel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(*</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">to quote one of our 'keyboard warrior' nemeses on that haven of reason, Digital Spy)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Alex has not been able to join us in writing here, but he has recently <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/counterculture-protest-brit-awards">written</a> in <i>The Guardian</i> about the preposterous BRIT Award spectacle and the lack of any subversive impulses: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'It hasn't always been like this. Not so long ago, we ridiculed awards ceremonies as comic charades. Even at the height of Britpop, bands used to turn up to the Brits in order to drunkenly take the piss out of the whole enterprise. Now, on the other hand, we are disappointed when prize events don't live up to our bizarrely high expectations. This shift reflects a deeper malaise in the recent history of the arts. Put simply, we now spend so much time discussing prize nominations and their theatrical showcases because there is no visible alternative to speak of.'</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As Alex suggests we are treated to a 'narrowness' in the Official Music Culture of the BRITS, but, outside of this bubble music in a healthy state and has a powerful part in our lives, as the writings below from David Lichfield, John Gibson and I attest. There has been great pop and great music outside of the mainstream, which does not need gongs, emotive speeches and bland presenters to give it 'worth'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>DL</b>: <i>Hello. I’m thirty. That’s the age
in which we’re all expected to close our ears to new pop music in order to
retreat to either sounds of the past or more embittered, grown-up music,
whether of the MOR type or of the more leftfield, rustic persuasion.
Pop music has always been widely seen by those hitting a certain age as
something disposable, unintelligent or perhaps even too abrasive or
unlistenable. However, early mid-life crisis or not, personally I’m now
listening to more chart-friendly contemporary music than ever, addicted to the
youthful rush that it brings and sense of excitement that tends to characterise
it. I’m not lamenting the overall absence of guitar bands in the charts one
iota, and since the wave of supposed ‘Britpop 2’ bands thankfully died an
overnight death circa 2008/9, either splitting up, going on a long hiatus or signing
to Cooking Vinyl, I’ve been more engaged with pop, R‘n’B and dance than I
have been for years.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>My preoccupation with more
alternative forms at various points during the 2000s wasn’t due to ignorance
about pop, however – composing ‘best of the year’ playlists for each of these
years confirmed that the charts were in fact rubbish in the
mid-noughties. Meanwhile, a return to guitar-dominated charts is something that
has regularly been mooted by various <a href="http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/news/a456255/radio-1-boss-public-is-tired-of-top-40-and-guitar-music-will-rise-again.html"><span style="text-decoration: none;">sources</span></a> over the last few years. Personally, I
can’t think of anything worse than an army of boring Oasis sound-alikes coming
to fruition in 2013, and intuition tells you that it’s a return to 1996 as
opposed to 1979 that’s being longed for by the vast majority of tedious
past-dwellers. It’s bad enough listening to this <a href="http://uk.omg.yahoo.com/gossip/110--pop/jake-bugg-slams-one-direction-claims-must-know-102616959.html"><span style="text-decoration: none;">little turd
of walking cliché</span></a> go on. Hopefully, the following ten records will allow me to demonstrate that the future is in
the hands of gloriously inventive yet accessible pop architects, and does not
lie in re-treading the footsteps of past fixated guitar-wielding bores. <o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The success of bands like Alt-J
does however hint at a more avant-garde future for popular guitar bands, but
the transatlantic glories of banjo-fornicating pretend farmers do not. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Meanwhile, for me the recent Brit awards ceremony was not utterly depressing
because it reflected a particular dull music scene, it was in fact more
frustrating because of the lack of acknowledgement for the exciting and
invigorating music that is out there – especially when some of the more deserving
acts who were nominated but left the o2 empty-handed are considered; alongside
the lack of recognition for some fantastic music that is completely in the popular
consciousness. Not to mention the bizarrely cynical nomination of a dead retro
soul singer who didn’t even release anything posthumously last year, or indeed
win the award after all. Of course, there does remain a sizeable wealth of
inane and superficial pop music on heavy rotation – but that’s been the case
since 1952. Allow me to present ten stunning records that support the
idea that the last twelve months have offered some stunning singles,
regardless of whether they’ve troubled a chart or not. </i><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><b>1. Plan B - 'Ill Manors' (2012, #6)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ah yeah. If there’s no room in your heart for a scintillating, Shostakovich-sampling diatribe documenting the causes and event of the 2011 riots, I doubt that we can be friends. Top Ten singles rarely get as era-defining as this, or as political. In fact, you can probably count on the fingers of two hands the politics-addressing Top Ten singles of the last eighteen years. I’ll go for: ‘Common People’, ‘A Design For Life’, ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ and, erm, ‘Where Is The Love?’ which was stomach-churning. Add to that ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’ and you’ll still have one hand left. ‘Ill Manors’ was a bolt out of the blue when it first surfaced last spring, and a joy to hear on heavy rotation during release week. It was possibly unlistenable for the army of housewives who purchased the previous album of bar room-crooning <i>Strickland Banks</i>, but kudos to Ben Drew for using that to build a platform to say something stupendously important.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>2. Major Lazer feat. Amber - 'Get Easy' (2012, #56)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A cut from the early-anticipated second album <i>Free The Universe</i>, which sees the combo halved to what is essentially a solo artist in the form of Diplo with a series of guest stars, ‘Get Free’ marked a much more solemn affair in comparison to the often belligerent stylings of yore. However, it was an instant classic documenting themes of loss, uncertainty, natural disasters and futile efforts to break free of some sort of intolerable environmental situation over a sparse, reggae-tinged backdrop. Amber from the Dirty Projectors guest stars on one of the great lost singles of 2012.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>3. Sub Focus feat. Alpines - 'Tidal Wave' (2012, #12)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Drum'n'Bass re-imagined for the smartphone generation with added euphoria; even the now thankfully disbanded Pendulum couldn’t stop that high-octane beat from remaining completely remarkable in the right setting. The best EDM feels utterly contemporary whilst keeping one eye on the past, and the last twelve months have been littered with ecstatic, hook-laden sophisticated and blissful electronic pop records, such as this pulsating masterpiece that feel entirely up-to-date whilst evoking the sheer intoxication of the best early nineties dance. And it’s for these reasons and several others that Jake Bugg is the Skol to Sub Focus’s Cristal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>4. Future of the Left - 'Sheena is a T-Shirt Salesman' (2012, did not chart)</b></span><br />
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The only guitar band in my list, ‘Sheena…’ is a rollicking affair that combines every thrilling aspect of the Welsh-four piece's manifesto and squashes the results into two minutes and eight seconds of furious exhilaration. A caustic, cautionary tale about those who wear band T-shirts from Top Shop despite having no knowledge or two shits to give about the often iconic combo that they are 'endorsing', and a perfect curtain raiser from the magnificent third album, <i>The Plot Against Common Sense</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>5. B Traits feat. Elisabeth Troy - 'Fever' (2012, #36)</b></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another collaboration: the spirit of ’91 is once again evident in this #36 hit from last year. This whole chart positions thing is becoming more arbitrary with each passing week, and you’ve only got to compare the Radio 1 playlist to the actual Top 40 to how that particular institution seems to be an increasingly unreliable source when it comes to gauging popularity. It’s not even possible to merely point the finger at illegal downloads anymore. Whether you’re streaming a track, downloading it on Spotify or have simply purchased its parent item, there are countless ways to enjoy a track legally without influencing its singles chart position one iota. However, if you take a look at the Official Charts Company’s streaming chart, that’s even more stagnant and tedious than the official rundown, meaning that incorporating streams into proceedings would not seem to be the answer. I also discovered this work of incredible jubilation via the Radio 1 playlist, which is essential for keeping me up to date with the most thrilling, stirring and sublime new music around, making it a far better reference point for keeping abreast of developments than the charts itself. There is a respectful nod to Bizarre Inc, but it still feels unique. I’m glad that the ecstasy has returned to dance music, without any compromises on class or sophistication being necessary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span>6. Jessie Ware - 'Running' (2012, did not chart)</b></span><br />
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Infuriatingly overlooked at the Brits, Ware’s debut album <i>Devotion</i> is a cherishable collection of sophisticated and evocative electro-tinged soul and R‘n’B tracks of an almost timeless calibre. As contemporary as they come, yet instantly familiar, the epic ‘Running’ is just one of a steady stream of modern classics from the likeable Jessie in pop.</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>7. Frank Ocean - 'Pyramids' (2012, #129)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">‘Pyramids’ is a mammoth, evocative, ten-minute electro-soul hybrid that fully justifies its length by leaping seamlessly through various genres, with a sense of earthy melancholia in its sad grooves that helps to set Ocean’s work completely apart from the often superficial R‘n’B stylings that have come to dominate the charts over recent years. Drawing comparisons between ancient Egypt and the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All member’s own love life, this richly-produced track is a joy to experience through headphones and has been compared to both ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘Paranoid Android’, due to its length and the cinematic, journey-like qualities that it positively oozes. It’s not often that the ‘soul’ tag lives up to its name, with scores of highly successful yet utterly empty records being filed under it, but ‘Pyramids’ could scarcely be more heartfelt or inventive.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(TM: This <i>Saturday Night Live</i> version is different to the epic album version, and just as tremendous)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>8. Madeon - 'Icarus' (2012, #22)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />One of the last singles to be played heavily by the then-outgoing Chris Moyles, ‘Icarus’ was one of the most convincingly upbeat pop singles to be unleashed in 2012, with a feel of huge euphoria that once again demonstrates that the current pop climate is in a state of rude health, and certainly isn’t suffering from a deficiency in guitar-wielding luddites, thank you very much. <br /><br /> Orchestrated by teenage French super-producer Hugo Pierre Leclercq, the track equates to a cacophony of Daft Punk-influenced, shiny contemporary joy that seems to characterise so much pop music these days. It’s for these reasons that I’m now listening to more Radio 1 than ever, despite finally slipping out of its target audience at the age of thirty. In fact, recently putting together playlists documenting every single year of music that I’ve listened to has backed up the argument that in terms of pure unadulterated, joyous pop and dance, you’d have to go back about a decade or more to find any pop climate that rivals that of the current era. <br /><br /> Plus, with a no-longer-punchable Nick Grimshaw, who genuinely seems to adore exciting, energetic, engaging sounds and Sara Cox and Scott Mills still at the helm in the afternoon, I’m going nowhere, sunshine. Did you see this playlisted on Capital? No, you didn’t. Radio 1 is the most diverse, least complacent radio station out there by a country mile when it comes to breaking and supporting new artists, and I wouldn’t have encountered the vast majority of the songs that I’ve chosen without it. <br /><br /> Plus, in any case, why would you ever lose your interest in new music? A tune to convince even the most determined manic depressive leap out of bed to take on the grinding misery of British life in 2013.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Music written for the sole purpose of advertising a certain product (in this case Absolut Greyhound) doesn’t come with the most robust reputation, but when a track is as vibrant, exciting and zeitgeist-capturing as not only this but the other five Swedish House Mafia singles were, it’s easy to put all of that to one side. Each of their singles, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">whether vocal-led or instrumental, has felt like an event rather than a simple pop music - with the exception of ‘Save The World’, which was shit. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An EDM supergroup consisting of Sebastian Ingrosso, Axwell and Steve Angello, SHM were just one part of a scene that continues to thrive, with related acts such as Avicii, Steve Aoki, Cazzette and Afrojack being responsible for an ongoing series of huge-sounding, euphoric, celestial stadium house records.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>10. Rudimental feat. John Newman - 'Feel the Love' (2012, #1)</b></span><br />
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The only chart-topper amongst my selection of tracks; there was no way that this ultra-soulful, nu-DnB epic was being overlooked. A truly unique sound, real Hammond organs and brass bring glowing warmth to a genre that was sometimes considered rather more abrasive than this. You’d feel that this song would lend itself perfectly to almost any genre. A distinctive vocal talent and adept producers together craft one of the most original number one singles of the past couple of decades. Part ‘Ghost Town’, part ‘Sweet Harmony’, part ‘Inner City Life’, even part ‘Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay’ if you say so, all Hackney genius.</span></div>
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JG</b>: <i>These are five great pop songs from “recent times”...</i><br /> <br /><b>11. Battles – 'Ice Cream' (2011, #48 - album)</b><br /><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A mesmerising swirl of summery and increasingly psychedelic funk and Matias Aguayo’s breezily nonchalant chanting that is utterly hypnotic. That the lyrics are actually about ice cream makes it all the better. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />Rising out of an Ikonika-like dubstep low end, Santigold’s new song is a strutting, insouciant piece that appears to be about fighting power. However, in the current climate a song like this carries ambiguities; the dreams she’s singing about could just as easily be about looting Nike as about conventional understandings of ambition. One of our more perspicacious pop stars. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b>A stunning blueprint for a futurist, subversive dream-pop, with Cooly G’s buttery vocals sashaying through a thicket of relentlessly tight post-dubstep beats like fine silk. Elsewhere the swirling synth backdrop intelligently references early 2000s glitch and tech-house (Crane AK; Andreas Tilliander), leaving “Landscapes” sounding like little else currently out there. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Simple and straightforward like all good pop songs ought to be (it’s just a break-up song), yet Arfe Jurvanen builds a deceptively complex, intricate structure ought of a few breezy bits and a deliciously evocative Caribbean guitar lick that sends a might shiver up my spine whenever I hear it. Beautifully affective pop.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>15. Camera Obscura – 'French Navy' (2009, #141; #32 - album)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />Alright, it’s from 2009, but Tracyanne Campbell makes elegantly doomed romance sound so personal that you just want to cry. Far from the grind of postmodern pastiche, “French Navy” is a full-on, heartfelt soul epic, conveyed through a muted, pastel Glaswegian sky. Swoon.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>TM:</b><i> On 10 July 2012, I was pleased to accompany John Gibson and friends to see a concert at the Sage, Gateshead; this seemed to encapsulate the 'Loved Songs' and 'Worst Songs' ideas in microcosm. To begin with: a tepid, sleep-walking fusion of tiresome trends - as manifested in the Leeds band Swimming Lessons. Their one mildly inventive and beguiling song used up at the start. They amounted to a neutered Coldplay, if that is possible; drearily unspecific lyrical content and multiple synthesizers acting as sham window dressing on plodding 'epic' rock. Clearly, some think there is a point in regurgitating the surfaces of Arcade Fire, instead of doing something fresh. The singer, who vaguely resembled a </i>Family Guy<i> character, yelped his way through one particularly egregious five-minute number. The only mercy was that their set was limited to 25 minutes. It was as inevitable as rain in a North-East sky in July that I'd make the pithy reflection in the interval: 'They made Geneva sound like My Bloody Valentine'.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 16px;">tUnE</span><span style="color: #222222; font-style: italic; line-height: 16px;">-</span><span style="line-height: 16px;"><i>yArDs, on the other hand, were stupendous. After the paucity and utter </i>lack <i>embedded in British guitar music, we were presented with vigorous life and acquainted with the unexpected. Vocals manipulated and looped on stage; two saxophones, non-Western rhythms and synthesizer used sparingly with infinitely more nurturing impact in comparison to Swimming Lessons' tired instructions. As a member of the audience, you were encouraged to dance, not implicitly urged to a nodding torpor by a band of office workers carrying the day-job mood into their music.</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 16px;"><i>t-y's songs were distinct; the sounds were not uniform or amorphous - there was some fascination in engaging with what these able and enlivening musicians were doing. What were they going to come up with next? It was a heartening sight to see the audience's limbs gradually loosening and to be part of this myself.</i></span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we first set about this article in July, I had been wanting to select Jessie Ware's as was then '110%' but as she is getting the deserved exposure now and has coincidentally been picked by Lichfield, it seems less necessary. Likewise, the mighty Drake-Kendrick Lamar-Frank Ocean axis... There has been a resurgence in Hip Hop of the less aggressive, De La Soul-A Tribe Called Quest style, with added electronica: the hazy, psychedelic and soulful likes of Angel Haze, Oddience, Kilo Kish and THEEsatisfaction. Joker Starr and Lady Leshurr in the UK; plus, many others mentioned by Neil Kulkarni that I must listen to. I could have picked something from the fringes of indie guitar music that is actually thoughtful, affable and winning: Dent May's 'Fun', Yuno's 'Sunlight', Field Music's 'Just Like Everyone Else'. 2012 was the year I subscribed to the Wire magazine, and its Tapper and Below the Radar compilations included stormers like King Felix's 'Armstrong Limit', the Bersarin Quartet's grave '</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perlen, Honig Oder Untergang', evoking European cities in ruins, and the glistening, sighing delirium of Tudor Acid's 'The Sound of Raindrops'. </span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is indeed a WORLD of music out there that is barely hinted at by the sterile, absurd spectacle of prize giving that is the BRIT Awards. I'm not a 'Brit', as Alan Bennett says, that's too ugly and aggressive word to identify positively with. And a couple of more credible nominations (Ware, Ocean, Alt-J - though I'm unsure I yet agree with DL on just how promising they are) do not make the whole ridiculous rigmarole worthwhile. I quite agree with Jonathan Meades's assertion of the bankruptcy of awards across the arts; we must move beyond this. </span></i><br />
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<em style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I intend my ten selected songs to represent some of the more outward-looking and intriguing music of our time. A story of music finding its way to brighten lives, as it always does. This is a step away from the deadening detritus of our 'Worst Songs' list and a subtle clarion call for open-mindedness and cultural renewal. Oh, and there are no 'prizes' or 'winners'. Think of that!</span></em><br />
<em style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px;"><br /></em><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">16. Joe Nebula feat. Patricia Edwards - 'Shuffle As One' (2012, did not chart)</span></b><br />
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'See, the rain it ain't forever...'</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nottingham-based Nebula unleashed a firecracker here, that inevitably didn't trouble the charts. This was one of several lovely, lubricious tunes that DJ Bailey played on his BBC1Xtra show last spring; it is as evocative of that season as the late lamented Kevin Ayers' 'Girl on a Swing' (1969). This is a splendid compound of the erstwhile Drum'n'Bass and RnB pop music that, absurdly, is not being allowed to become popular.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Overcast, hazy synths hover, with that inkling of sun always just about to break through. It is a stately, wistful, ambling techno, possessing some of that glorious synthetic soulful essence of Roy Ayers/Lonnie Liston Smith/Heatwave/Light of the World. Just listen to those laconic, slight guitar figures: as balmy and cool as Jeanne Moreau or Jean-Paul Belmondo in late-1950s Americophile French films like <i>Lift to the Scaffold</i> and <i>A bout de souffle</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ah, but ah, I have to mention Marcus Intalex's 'Sell You Soul', Jaydan's 'Insatiable', Planas feat. Ed Thomas's 'Breathtaking', Pennygiles' jazz tableau 'Au Revoir Blackbird', Sevin's squelching city stomper 'Tonight', Sub Focus & Alice Gold's electro-pop 'Out the Blue', Level 2 & DJ Chap's 'The Sky's the Limit' - using a Notorious BIG sample, smoothing the big lad's anomie over into sun-kissing bonhomie - to give you some idea of the languid landscape of Bailey's show circa March 2012. This music treads a line between summery euphoria and that tangible uneasiness in much of Chris Morris' music selections for <i>Blue Jam</i>. I hope to hear more such music in the spring of 2013.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As with Huddersfield's DJ Q and his bassline show, this has now departed as a weekly proposition. Which, as Robin Carmody has rightly stated, will allow cultural conformists and Conservatives to sleep that little bit easier.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Because, as we know, the BBC should be about prim and proper and Tom Good and giving you what they think you want rather than what you didn't know you wanted!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bailey provided what I didn't know I wanted, or that even existed: delirious, lush, verdant urban music being made in the here and now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>'All day, all night, forever</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Could be the rain...</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Why I feel like I do'</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now, women and electronic music <i>go together</i>: Delia Derbyshire, Roisin Murphy, Nite Jewel, Sally Shapiro or the splendid Caro C, seen recently with John G at the Star and Shadow cinema, as part of a tribute night to DD. MM's music has intrigued me since I read an extended interview piece with her in the Wire by the estimable Nina Power.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Somewhat submerged, gigantically gleaming, 'A Lover and a Friend' emerges like a TARDIS underneath Jodrell Bank. Maria's vocal is even more engaging than Nite Jewel's; she delivers what amounts to a lovesick dramatic monologue, with disarming directness. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just before the minute mark, there's a glorious, bursting-out-of-the-chrysalis moment when the overlaid percussion breaks in; followed by the space-disco warmth of newborn synth lead parts. There is a sense that late-70s/early-80s retro influences are being turned to vitally lively ends, as with the Wire cover star Flying Lotus's music; listen to the whole of the LA producer's abstracted opus <i>Until the Quiet Comes</i> but, especially, 'The Nightcaller'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Charlie Fox has an excellent review of the album over at The Quietus </span><a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/10645-maria-minerva-la-vampires-integration-review" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">; he comments eloquently on this immense closing track: 'These surroundings slowly slip away, leaving her voice in mid-air, before soon fading, too. A choir of ecstatic voices swoop in - think of the 'White Lines' singers set at permanent, gorgeous high - majestic strings at the edges, an acid spiral sparking against smooth piano and comforting low-end. End-of-the-night, edge-of-the-morning delirium is reached and that moment of trance takes over, stretching out in regal splendour. Then, slowly all the atmospheric glitter transforming into rainfall, fantasia just fading out. Disco bliss.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Maria is about to release this, </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggWi1Vjm91Y" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">which is</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> mighty pop, designed for a wonderful land that you cannot quite place.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">18. Stubborn Heart - 'Knuckledown' (2012, did not chart)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A blunt, very English slither of grumbling, downbeat electro-pop. This London producer's music is in the lineage of My Computer and Darkstar, which is fine by me. Halls -with his imposing <i>Ark</i> album - is another Londoner working in this spare, melancholic mould; just listen to 'White Chalk' and marvel at its hushed, powerful, choral ambience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Misery guts lyrics, heart-tugging chord changes. Rarely did 2012 music offer up something as specific, downtrodden and palely absurd as this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>'But there's a five year old child in the driving seat of my car'</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A distant synthetic cor anglais to evoke dulling, harshly beautiful countryside. The sound of grim stoicism distilled into five minutes of far from popular song. Seagull sounds play us out, pitilessly evoking the personal response to society's 'NOSE TO THE GRINDSTONE' nonsense and a 'can't go on I must go on' grit. </span><br />
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'Two Inch Punch, you're an absolute genius, even if you did think I was from Birmingham rather than Nottingham' </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">- MistaJam, BBC1Xtra, 26/01/2013.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The above show included a truly glorious guest mix from the Londoner T.I.P., fusing hip-hop, RnB, electro-funk and house - Timbaland, Brandy rubbing up against Disclosure, Rudimental - with a persistently languid, aqueous feel.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ben Ash (T.I.P.'s real name)'s stunning, skittering British slow-jam is very much in the same vein: somehow dank and neon in equal measure. Beats asthmatically judder, torchlight synth pads quiver, a lone guitar ploughs a brief, courtly course. We are treated to some of the finest wavy technicolour lead synth parts this side of Silkie, Skream and Rustie: what about that section around the three-minute mark? Magnificent! If you like Burial and exquisitely sodden, anguished balladry, you will adore this.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'It's too late, it's too dark to see...</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>But I can feel everything... everything...'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I first heard this via Paul Lester's <i>Guardian </i>New Band of the Day entry back in May. I quickly learned that Ash had produced Jessie Ware's lush, sophisticated tunes. Along with fellow PMR records alumni Disclosure, Julio Bashmore, Javeon McCarthy, T. Williams and L-vis 1990, they are increasingly forming an inspiring UK counterpoint to the Odd Future aggregation.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is music for proper speakers or headphones, not the tinny i-pod earbuds or meagre laptop speakers. Play it loud, and love the fact that this doesn't need to go under a silly moniker like 'lovestep'.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now, this is a twinkling, should have been dance-floor smash from Bath based Greg Feldwick. Aptly for someone previously on Planet Mu record label, this evokes</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> μ-Ziq </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and Aphex electronica, styled for these fraught times. This sinuous single summons its title; bodies in crescents, flesh and blood in concert. Urgent, heart pounding, giddy deliriousness. Like Forest Swords pitching for a different kind of dance-floor, though I would love more of that Merseysider's weird memory music, following his wonderfully contrasting sets at the AV Festival <a href="http://www.starandshadow.org.uk/on/gig/420">last March</a>. The first half's haunting, drifting tones - backed by monochrome images of Luder's Gateshead car park in the 1960s - were followed by compulsive, bass-driven dubstep, bringing in the British Summertime and inciting bodily movement.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Slugabed album was one of the most purely enjoyable in the dance or electronica vein of its year, alongside Barcelona native John Talabot's dreamy<i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>ƒin </i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and Mancunian Andy Stott's striking, avant-dance-dub set <i>Luxury Problems. </i>Slugabed's <i>Time Team </i>formed a winning counterpoint to my walking around Heaton, Sandyford and Ouseburn in Newcastle in late July, while flat-hunting. It evokes Heaton Park, Heaton Park Road, Warwick Street, Starbeck Avenue; the topographical question mark that is the City Stadium. Reminds me now of thinking: yes, regardless of an initially fruitless viewing of a poky flat above a shop that was having work done on it; yes, I'd like to live around here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The album suggested and suggests an urban, forward-thinking way of living that is in touch with the past. I moved to Sandyford in early October 2012; on the day of the move, I was straight into the second TUSK festival at the Star and Shadow Cinema. Particular highlights being electronic adventurers Hieroglyphic Being and NHK'Koyxen - from Chicago and Osaka, respectively. Cosmopolitanism and the shock of the new brought into reach by a move to a proper city.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">21. Nneka - 'Shining Star (Joe Goddard Remix)' (2012, did not chart)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'll tell you what was more engaging in 2012 than the new Hot Chip album: the 2 Bears album, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Be Strong</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">: the most huggable pop-dance album of the year by some distance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having said all that, the summit of Goddard's year was this: which made the humble remix more akin to a Turner canvass or an Easter Island Head, rather than your jobbing DJ's tepid arsing around or your Skrillex's unwanted assault. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Nigerian Nneka's original is pleasant enough, but this is stratospheric. It is sped up, injected with percussion that sounds notably more Nigerian than the original version. This 9-minuter GALLOPS where the original merely gently jogged. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Communal. Optimistic. Like the 2 Bears' movingly jubilant 'Church' at the end of the path. No steel drums this time, but acres of sparse, hopeful minimalism then followed by that gently underpinning, utterly euphoric major-key synth chorale.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is the undeniable, irresistible stuff of which gigantic dreams are made. And giddy grins.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Communal. Optimistic. In the Blighty of 2013, those seem precious, endangered adjectives.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">22. Avicii feat. Salem Al Fakir - 'Silhouettes' (2012, #22)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now for some pop that has actually troubled, if not stormed, the charts. The third song in chart history with this title, but considerably livelier than the bland simpering of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9VaNoGscYo">Herman's Hermits</a> in 1965 or the even ghastlier, sax-infested 'doo wop' of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulL1BEIIveg">Cliff Richard</a> in 1990. Stockholm's Tim Bergling raises the bar many <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovdm2yX4MA">levels</a>, yet this charted 19 and 12 places lower than those two wet blanket 45s. Aye, those 'punters'; they always know best!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'So we will never get back to<br />To the old school<br />To the old grounds, it's all about the newfound<br />We are the newborn, the world knew all about us.<br />(We are the future and we're here to stay)'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is jubilant, crusading pop, which may speak of open-mindedness and social liberalism - as the video suggests, with its images of gender reassignment - as well as providing a clarion call for a younger generation to rebut Peter Hitchens-style conservatism. It could represent an attack on the vested interests of guitar band nostalgia. It most certainly does represent an enticement to dance and communicate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You say I idealise Sweden, but why not? The country can summon up: Abba, Ingmar Bergman, Sally Shapiro, Jens Lekman, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's crime fiction, exemplar social democratic politics and much of today's best pop music. They do have <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/10/sweden-free-schools-experiment">academies</a> to answer for, admittedly, but I haven't yet heard of any Gove or IDS-style doctrinaire ideologues quite as actively trying to turn the clock back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In a similar vein, I should also mention the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5uxQElYu68">Dream Academy</a>-gone-techno-house of fellow Swede Otto Knows's 'Million Voices', which reached #14 and stayed around for 17 weeks. It is gigantic, beaming and open-armed; like an Olympics sized rebuttal to the cretinous Tory MP Aidan Burley. Like 'Silhouettes', it makes most supposedly 'euphoric' music sound like it is voiced by Puddleglum or Eeyore.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'We've come a long way since that day<br />And we will never look back, at the faded silhouette'</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">23. Kimbra - 'Cameo Lover' (2011, did not chart)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We hear the voice immediately, pitching us straight in without prelude. Twinkling promise accompanies a tale of love in the moment. This evokes a panorama of city prospects and personal columnated ruins reassembling. Her voice is sinuous, shape-shifting; twisting 'like a silhouette in dreams'. This is Lavender Diamond <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlEyIG7a5sQ">sweet</a>, touching the places pop has not reached since moments in the music of Yelle, Amerie and Solange. Moments in love; a low-down of 'love' - is it actually to be in inverted-commas? Delicate, plaintive guitar embellishments amid the neo-orchestral drama. Sheer, vocals-as-pizzicato ecstasy at the end.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Best International Female Solo Artist, y' say? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">22-year-old New Zealander Kimbra makes the sort of intuitive pop links and hooks missed by so many who strain for weathered profundity or catchy banality. She has the right influences - Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Minnie Riperton, Prince, Rufus Wainwright - but does not pay pointless homage - instead she rather channels the head-rush of vintage northern soul or Motown and makes it hers. She is of course rightly famed for her contribution to Gotye's timely and humanistic #1 hit 'Somebody That I Used To Know' and more people should listen to her own music. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Best International Female Solo Artist, y' say? What about Maria Minerva? What about Kimbra?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>'Open up your heart'. </i></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">24. Lescop - 'La Foret' (2012, did not chart)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>'Dans le foret...' </i></span>
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<span class="entry-title entry-content"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I heard this via a <i>Kitsune Parisien </i>compilation released this year; there are other delights - for example, Slowdance's reinvigorated Stereolab-isms ('<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im6QJPVBWog">Airport</a>') or Birkii's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQiV8uvgZW4&feature=related">follow-up</a> to the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVbf6ypEYBQ">majestic</a> 'Shade of Doubt'.</span></span></div>
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<span class="entry-title entry-content"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A thudding, Alan Braxe-style intro; an assured, ineffably cool vocal. As the song progresses, its Post-Punk guitar chug gradually elides into a sort of shuffling, Gallic funk. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The structure makes this a particularly special pop song: glacial, unhurried and sparse intro section, urgent pop centre and that warm, communal final part(ing). So much more unusual and memorable than the often predictable stuff in our charts. This is brilliant electronic pop, taken to the sublime stratosphere with that gorgeous, redemptive coda: when the electric piano enters, glasses clink, conversation rolls. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">25. A*M*E feat. Mic Righteous - 'Find a Boy' (2012, did not chart)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the party has subsided, an uncertain morning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I could easily have selected veteran talents (Peter Hammill's 'Constantly Overheard', Scott Walker's 'Epizootics', the Pet Shop Boys' shattering 'Invisible', the Beach Boys' even more shattering 'Summer's Gone' or Peter Blegvad & Andy Partridge's 'St Augustine Says', a slice of pure head-rush, headlong pop from two angular old lags). But then there'd be no space for this: for me, clearly the best UK single of 2012, predictably nowhere near the radar of those culturally savvy 'Brits'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There was a flurry of urban house-pop singles in the spring: Rusko's 'Somebody to Love', Sub Focus feat. Alice Gold's 'Out of the Blue' and Disclosure feat. Ria Ritchie's 'Control'. Oddly, only the second of these charted (at #23). This fact, along with this song being kept off playlists and spurned by the cultural gatekeepers, demonstrates just how far we have to go to have truly interesting charts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The second West African in this list, the Sierra Leone-born Aminita 'Amy' Kabba moved to Lewisham, London when she was 8. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">MistaJam DJ'd at the Hacienda in Manchester when he was 14. His show was the first place I heard this - and it was no surprise that he just kept on playing it in the early summer, show after show. This is a jagged, pummeling juggernaut of a song; pop music going for the jugular in a way it all too rarely has of late. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It starts with a submerged beat, like a club that is underwater. Then soon we get the distinctive, siren-like double-note stab - that recurs throughout the song, acting as impure punctuation. The trailing, mournful semi-orchestral background seems like it can barely keep up with the pounding beats. It reminds us of the core sample in Plan B's 'ill Manors', but is more stately, drawn out and resigned, where that was irreverent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And we get a tense, insistent voice, delivering what sounds like an internal monologue:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'Find a boy who's willing to spend and give all he's got'</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The 'find a boy!' refrain is repeated, an exclamative given even greater emphasis by the barbed desperation of the synth stabs behind it. This is perhaps even more direct than Maria Minerva's vocal in song #17. A*M*E*'s voice is deadened, emptied of hope due to unsatisfying experiences. You can hear a teeming impatience, a frustration that the reality does not match the ideal and the jabbing insistence of lust. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'Find a boy who can love me and love me all the time</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>TIME TIME </b>Love me all the <b>time</b>'</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mic Righteous's intervention is crucial: providing a reality check, cautioning her against seeing love as consumable object of desire:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'Looking for the right one</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>You ain't gonna find love in the night club'</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He counsels about finding yourself; required before you can hope to find love. Love does not live in the market liberal cattle-market of the night club. Is it all about nurturing accommodation or a competitive bout?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The music cries in its show of not crying. It evokes and detonates 50 Cent's club, by giving a clear sense that feeling and thinking are essential in urban music as in life; rather than cynical, boastful braggadocio.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In this story of 2012 music, a surprising redemption can be found for arch-Tory, Ken Barlow-boring Gary Barlow, who indeed discovered Kabba and signed her to his now defunct Future Records. Even more significantly, Emeli Sande, who co-wrote this track with Naughty Boy, is redeemed: 'Find a Boy' provides a stark sign of life, in contrast to her interminably safe, dull debut album and Olympics and BRIT Awards omnipresence.</span><br />
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Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0Sandyford, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE2 1RE, UK54.9809643 -1.598144854.979825299999995 -1.6006663 54.9821033 -1.5956233tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-12169624220960344212012-09-16T13:57:00.003+01:002012-09-16T14:02:21.240+01:00One Type of Aridity<b><span style="font-size: large;">Ladyhawke - <i>Anxiety </i>(2012)</span></b><br />
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<br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'Ladyhawke still sounds like Ladyhawke, just tougher and more muscular, like Ladyhawke after a boot camp.'</i> (Nick Levine, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/65pn">BBC</a>)<br /><br /><i> 'Sadly 'Black, White and Blue''s organ stabs, so reminiscent of Saturn 5, fail to take you anywhere beyond grim, snakebite'n'black-encrusted dancefloors.'</i> (Tim Jonze, The <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/31/ladyhawke-anxiety-review">Guardian</a>)<br /><br /><i> 'While there may be no 'Paris is Burning'-sized hit this time out, the high level of intensity in the music, words, and Brown's singing -- plus the cumulative thrill that builds up as song after song punches you right in the face -- more than makes up for it.'</i> (Tim Sandra, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/anxiety-mw0002285294">All Music Guide</a>)</span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's not Empson's 'Seven Types of Ambiguity', it's rock and roll and it's tepid tedium. It's a 'punch in the face' to the listener akin to being in the ring with Frank Bruno in 2012. It's where wearing a Nirvana t-shirt somehow endows you with life, rage and spirit. I've spent much of the day listening to various songs from the <i>Dream Babes </i>and <i>One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found </i>compilations. Then I put this album on; after the human urgency of wondrous 'manufactured' 1960s stormers like The Tammys' '<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er8PN385PEA">Egyptian Shumba</a>' and Paula Parfitt's '<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1TAqk8Ln44">Love is Wonderful</a>', <i>Anxiety</i> brings me down to earth with a stultifying thud. </span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'Leave behind the mess that you've made</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And never ever do it again</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Balance out all the love that you've saved</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You'll need it 'til the bitter end</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[...]</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Make your run, make a fool of yourself</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You're an accident that's waiting to happen</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Life's so short, so forget all the past</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It'll be there 'til the bitter end</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And now that you realise</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>You seen the pain in my blue eyes, m</i><i>y blue eyes</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There's nothing more I can do but sing you:'</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To describe these lyrics as banal is like saying that George Osborne lacks empathy with working people. It's full of platitudes ('life's so short'), cliches ('You're an accident that's waiting to happen') and dull formulations ('the bitter end'). This could have been written as a calculated cut-up collage of the complete Coldplay and Florence Welch songbooks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Just as bad is the chorus, which is an inglorious bastard offspring of Bob Geldof's 'The Great Song of Indifference', no less. Sonically, there is something apocalyptically anonymous and predictable about this streamlined music. Compression is in overdrive, adventure is at an absolute minimum. The little 'weird' electronic bits just sound like more of the same. I didn't remember her 2008 debut being at all bad; containing some tuneful enough electro-pop. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This album contains little or no variation on 'Blue Eyes'' template. Yet, the NME's Ailbhe Malone talks of 'stadium-sized torch songs'. Approvingly. 'Triumphant stuff'. This track 'Cellophane' is, according to the BBC's Nick Levine, an emulation of Bowie's 'Heroes'. Totems like Sleater-Kinney, Blondie and Fleetwood Mac are bandied about absurdly. This music isn't alternative. It's streamlined bunkum, leaving artists of the Emily Haines and Eleanor Friedberger calibre entirely unchallenged. That this entirely generic and forgettable fare receives <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/music/anxiety/ladyhawke/critic-reviews">largely</a> good reviews speaks of a craven, yay-saying critical 'consensus'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Associate editor of <i>The Quietus</i>, Luke Turner <a href="http://riotofperfume.com/3215/swans-and-why-a-continent-has-sunk-into-musical-myopia/">takes</a> precise aim at the US 'alternative culture' that chimes with how our UK 'music-press' appraises mediocre albums:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>'We are living in a cloud cuckoo land, and we are listening to its songs, streaming eternally and interminably from the new transistors that are our tinny laptop speakers. We exist in a time where the cultural palette has become limited and discourse tamed just as the internet was supposed to usher forth a new age of enlightenment and democracy. Just as the mainstream – be it in the form of exploitative television talent pop shows, the great, tone-deaf leveller of Autotune or a vulgar celebrity culture – has become ever harsher there has been a corresponding backslide by what used to be an alternative culture into a banal comfort zone.' </i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With Ladyhawke there are 'devils' and 'deep blue seas'. There is a 'wall' of 'my own choosing'. 'Cautious' is rhymed with 'nauseous'. Who gives a fuck? Music writers who use 'baseball mitt' and 'boot camp' metaphors to describe music, clearly. </span><br />
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Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-64477300600999227442012-06-27T19:31:00.000+01:002012-06-27T19:39:18.373+01:00Poems for the moment #1<br />
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<b>Sunderland Library, 27<sup>th</sup> June 2012<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<i>In Keane we Trust</i> in the Sound and Vision</div>
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On sale for £12 in 2012;</div>
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Efficiencies, layout changes,</div>
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No separate short-story section;</div>
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From comfy Blair blandness</div>
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To Coalition disorientation:</div>
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Exercise machines by the reading
desks,</div>
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Just for the Olympics or is this a</div>
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Permanent move? Diversification;</div>
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Intangible loss, the traces erased.</div>
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‘CUSTOMER NOTICE’ about ‘quiet
study’:</div>
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Citizens reduced; served, rephrased.</div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-33037844256005291612012-04-16T20:50:00.001+01:002012-04-16T20:54:49.069+01:00A catharsis reached: the Worst 200 Songs podcast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyZdHejsNp1059Bc15Y-0cq-UJv6dXnW0lyia9tpyTyQPsp4D2oiT3-q1GrfMqwjgBdDJFe2U-BVGtVqM4Uk5hyphenhyphenjheZNX4aIcIbIY0il6vrZsXoHvlb5V0fAzk8XwJyg_iKYSlAG3HqAs9/s1600/Nov.52+Third+Programme+cartoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyZdHejsNp1059Bc15Y-0cq-UJv6dXnW0lyia9tpyTyQPsp4D2oiT3-q1GrfMqwjgBdDJFe2U-BVGtVqM4Uk5hyphenhyphenjheZNX4aIcIbIY0il6vrZsXoHvlb5V0fAzk8XwJyg_iKYSlAG3HqAs9/s320/Nov.52+Third+Programme+cartoon.jpg" width="306" /></a></div><div><i><br />
</i></div><div><i>"Rage, rage against the dying of the light" </i></div><div>- Dylan Thomas</div><div><br />
</div>For anyone who missed it, here is the podcast running down the Top 10 of our <i>Worst 200 Songs Project </i>and reflecting on the whole thing. It features all of those who gave words, sweat and tears during our 10-week purgatory: Gibson, Lichfield, May, Niven.<br />
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</div><div>From Jimmy Corkhill to Herbert Marcuse, all human life is here. There are 'considered' views from some of our critics; there is commentary from us lot that is righteous and scabrous by turn. There is desecration of a 'national treasure' and knight of the realm. There are the 10 ghastly (i m o - forum folk*) songs themselves, though thankfully most of them have some pithy or philosophical comments from our panel to lessen the pain. There is a late-80s TOTP-style rundown of the whole Top 40, with Lichfield and May in Batesian mode: Simon and Alan, respectively.</div><div><br />
</div><div>This unique proposition was originally broadcast on some sort of internet radio gubbins, at 9pm on Sunday 1st April 2012 and then repeated the following evening. The second broadcast incorporated some further edits and embellishments.</div><div><br />
</div><div>This was my first stab at any sort of online radio - and it has instilled a new respect for anyone who does this sort of thing live!<br />
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There will also be an epilogue post setting out what we love in current 2011-12 music; we are hoping to post this over the next week or two. <br />
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Anyway, enjoy - if <i>that </i>be the word...<br />
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<iframe height="200" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.4shared.com/minifolder/tF3VVmLi/_online.html" width="200"></iframe><br />
</div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-10969439458915395542012-03-27T22:32:00.002+01:002012-04-04T17:10:52.653+01:00The Worst 200 Songs, Part X (a): #20-11<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>And now for the top 20... 10-1 will follow on Sunday, alongside a podcast.</i></span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>20. Staind - 'It's Been a While'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #15, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: This week's records are so bad that it's taken me a full two hours to even pluck up the courage to press play. Knowing what awaits me, the fact that I only have ten to write about at this point is more than merciful. Do one, you droning metal cunt. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: There’s something Tracy Chapman-esque about this. In a shit way. I don’t understand the spelling of Staind either. In fact most band names are really inappropriate aren’t they? Except for ones like Echo and the Bunnymen. They’re weird, but in a good way. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: As if to confirm the thick-skulled and utterly conservative underbelly lurking in the background of the adolescent squeal of nu-metal and all that surrounds it, it turns out that Aaron Lewis is a registered Republican. You can see this coming in the lyrics to this heinous piece of shit, in which Lewis mildly self-flagellates without once expressing any actual remorse to anyone who might have been hurt along the way. I’m sure Ayn Rand would approve. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: As part of a fine weekend spent chiefly at the local AV Festival, I witnessed The Caretaker sing in baritone an impassioned version of ‘The Lady in Red’, which bookended his show. It is impossible to imagine anyone essaying this plodding ‘nu-rock’ ballad with anything approaching vitality. A bald man washes his face and looks vaguely earnest, while I wish this was Michael Stipe or Matt Johnson. Staid!<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>19. Florence and the Machine - 'You've Got The Love'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2009, #5, AN)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I don't trust people whose signature records are cover versions. At Glastonbury 2010, the kooky one apparently gate-crashed the sets of a number of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rYut_pfs3M&feature=related">different</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ozSBEc814&feature=related">artists</a> to collaborate on further renditions of it outside of her own fucking set. Of course, the lack of musical intro means that you don't even get anything in the way of a warning before it infects your headspace. It's Candi Staton's, give it back. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: A strong candidate for my all-time least favourite tune. And here’s why. Firstly, FATM has done much harm to humanity. As a paragon of the present nadir of British popular culture – consumer decadence, poshness, commodified theatricality, apoliticism masquerading as marginal “kookiness” – she is all of the things that are shit about life right now. Not just shit in the common or garden variety sense of the term, but shit in the sense of actual worthless evil blocking the path of anything genuinely good ever again seeing the light of day.<br />
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Secondly, cover versions are generally not very worthwhile. That said, every once in a while a reworking or remix comes along that refracts the original in a way that is ingenious and creative, justifying the whole notion of recycling in pop. In 1997, The Now Voyagers <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54tKyD9fSoE">remix</a> of 'You've Got the Love' by The Source featuring Candi Staton provided an ingenious and creative reworking of a tune that had already been reworked as a house track in 1991. It was marvellous and I loved it. In the ensuing years, however, this version became such a staple of adverts and football highlights shows that I grew tired of hearing it. Then, as part of a wearisome noughties craze for half-arsed cover versions spearheaded by another unequivocally evil person, Jo Whiley, people began reworking it with alarming frequency. Among the terrible karaoke iterations were execrable versions by The Longcut and Joss Stone.<br />
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It was at this juncture that the wonderfully radical and avant-garde <i>BRIT Critics Choice Award</i> winner Florence and the Machine decided to take the daring creative risk of releasing her version of 'You've Got the Love'. Despite the fact that it was unimaginatively arranged and featured hackneyed, spectacularly off-key vocals, this version somehow became a kind of anthem for a country entering one of the darkest periods of its history, under a radical Tory administration that was only allowed to get away with its unequivocally evil programme of right-wing wealth redistribution to the rich because the mainstream British Left had long ago morphed into a tendency of do-nothing “liberals” whose definition of a counter-culture began and ended with the sort of reactionary, privileged, lifestyle aesthetic promulgated by Florence and the Machine.<br />
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Somewhere in the Outer Hebrides in late 2013, a teenage girl heard 'You've Got the Love' for the first time on Spotify and reacted with such instinctive hatred to this travesty of human potentiality that she decided to do something about it. And so she began to write music on her laptop that was daring and revolutionary and new, music that was filled with anger at the ways things were and hope about a more intelligent and socially meaningful future. Her music was the polar opposite of everything she had heard in Florence and the Machine. And it took the changing world by storm. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Candi Staton’s original version of ‘You've Got the Love’ is a heartfelt gospel track about wrestling with issues of faith, self-belief and sacrifice. Florence Welch’s version is, by contrast, an absolute atrocity committed that sounds like an internship – jumping through the hoops required to showcase one’s abilities through free labour; all backed up with inherited wealth that excludes those from poorer backgrounds. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Bland, bellowing flimflam; lacking any character or subtlety. The Source’s 1990 version did not need to be remade: it is <a href="http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/marseille/">Unité d'habitation</a> besides this Barratt Home, which saps all life-force. The popularity of her work is mystifying – as is the supposed likeness to PJ Harvey, Bjork and such distinct female artists. It seems consumers will lap up any old gubbins if it contains the approved, showy display of vocal gymnastics. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You're not Kate Bush.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">18. Katie Melua - 'Nine Million Bicycles'</b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2005, #5, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Three minutes that epitomise perfectly why I will never, ever make the switch to Radio 2. Such a Poundland idea of Starbucks-friendly, continentally-tinged jazz-blues. There should have been some Cullum in here too. I'm taking this as a vote for Cullum's arse <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw0wE5Kzq3Y">version</a> of ‘Frontin’’ too. Embarrassing. Are those lyrics supposed to be meaningful? Hard to believe the man responsibie for 'Bright Eyes' was behind this. ‘Remember you're a Womble’ had more emotional nous. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: “No ideas beside the facts”, said William Carlos Williams, once upon a time. But I doubt very much that this obscenely vaporous work of aural pornography was what he had in mind. “There are nine million bicycles in Beijing / That’s just a fact”. No it’s not, it’s a terrible lyric slapped on top of a non-existent backing track. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I think Mike Batt (who wrote this lightweight nonsense and who appeared earlier in this list) needs to understand the fast pace of economic development and therefore car ownership (and consequently declining rates of bicycle use) in Beijing. Therefore, Katie Melua was lying when she exclaimed that “I will always love you till I die.” Because she means that she will love you right up until the new Volvo<i> </i>showroom opens in Financial Street. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: From synthetic harp to cod-Gaelic flute: it’s Mike Batt Strikes Back! Misconceived attempt by the self-styled ‘pop maverick’ to write a ‘40s standard, with a half-arsed lyric that incredibly enough fails to scale the Cole Porter heights: "There are six billion people in the world / More or less / And it makes me feel quite small / But you’re the one I love the most of all." To exacerbate the crime, she also sang this list's #61 live with its author.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>17. Mark Ronson feat. Amy Winehouse - 'Valerie'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #2, AN)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Not as bad as the plodding original but, Christ. Retro bollocks. A cover of an already-tired song in a tired style of four decades prior, voiced by a figure who unnecessarily and needlessly met her end in a typically tired and futile style. Retromania gone mad. And again, this reworking seems to have become her signature song too! Is it bad that I physically can no longer listen to these in their entirety? I had to turn that off to protect my own sanity. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: See above entry on FATM. The same goes. Amy Winehouse was quite simply a very mediocre cabaret singer. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I don’t understand the reasoning here at all, taking a boring song that was barely a year old anyway and then reconfiguring it to sound like ersatz, horrid Motown-lite that get splayed in expensive bars. Except, of course, to claim ownership over it. Not that they were much cop themselves, but who even remembers The Zutons now? <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Doherty and Winehouse: their imprudent rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle oblivion was never worth the expenditure of time and column inches. Late ‘00s neo-soul was as backward and obstructive as its late ‘80s forefather. In the words of Spearmint, Say Something Else – or, just play the old Motown and Northern Soul greats and savour their immortal vivacity. Not the last we’ll see of the man Ronson, rather ominously.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>16. Plain White T's - 'Hey There Delilah'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #2, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: There's a wealth of selections from the hit parade of 2007 here and rightly so. This emo-schmaltz is just as stomach-churning as anything Marty Wilde and Jess Conrad offered up to proceedings earlier on in the countdown. I might have to have a sick break. A lighters-in-the-air load of spaff not a million miles away from Green Day's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnQ8N1KacJc&ob=av2e">'Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)'</a> and I fucking hated that with passions that I'd never unearthed previously too. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Fascist-slick pop. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I absolutely fucking hate this with its cloying sentimentality and disgusting earnestness. This isn’t really about a distance relationship. No, it’s about a fool claiming some sort of romantic ethic of self-sacrifice when all he’s doing is feeding his own narcissism and infuriating shallowness. Horrible band name too. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Lacklustre, whiny stab at a sincere ballad which is more of a sales pitch than an explication of desire (“someday I’ll pay the bills with my guitar”). His persistently imbecilic rhymes would shame a primary school dabbler; he drizzles on and on and on, making Sarstedt seem like Neil Tennant. “My word is good”: no, it is paltry debris in the grand scheme. “Give this song another listen”? I’d rather have News International on my case. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>"I'll be making history, as I do" - hubris, anyone?</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>15. Jessie J. - 'Price Tag'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: This is becoming a harrowing experience. Can we all stop saying 'bling' now, in any context, ever? I've got tea cosies that have more genuine street cred than Jessie J. If only I knew something more pleasant was going to follow it. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Stage school trash. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: There have been concerns raised on one forum that my continual harping on about the BRIT School is an unfair attack on the backgrounds of its alumni. Bollocks is it. BRIT School alumni are target marketed and PR trained to death to the point that any enigma, malevolence or genuine personality is sucked out of their careers and their focus group determined songs and ‘kooky’ personas. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this shit. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Of course, it’s not about the price tag: it’s about the outstandingly innovative, socially engaged and unifying artistry of Jessie J! Nothing at all to do with the money, hype and vanity of BRIT-schooled Britain! This is like David Icke having a go at someone for being a conspiracy theorist. “Why is everyone so serious?” Because this alleged frivolity is a trite, insincere cover for more avarice and musical nullity?<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>14. James Blunt - 'You're Beautiful'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2005, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I liked it when mainstream singer-songwriters were exactly that before Oasis came along, ruined everything and enabled any given number of mop-headed buffoons to soothe us of all with their tepid acoustic sounds in the mistaken belief that what they were doing was in any way more credible than Paul Young, Chris De Burgh or Mick Hucknall. Although as a disclaimer he's always seemed an agreeable chap on the tellybox etc. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: James Blunt’s poshness and ex-army backstory was a sort of anomaly back in 2005 wasn’t it? Oh how we mocked him. Now that the charts are full of such twats, and the populace is drifting towards a worrying militaristic jingoism, the joke is very much on us. Fuck! <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Listen to those lyrics carefully: “I saw your face in a crowded place, and I don’t know what to do.” Isn’t there something quite dark and psychotic about that? Unfortunately, whatever strange anti-heroics might result from that obsessional idea are more than neutralised by Blunt’s appalling, sub-Gibb vocals and the overwhelming impression that he’s... well, a bit thick, to be honest. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Ah, to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_g3Hehwm3M&feature=related">some</a> this man’s vocals may seem wondrous! To me they are a yelping chore. For the All-Music Guide his second album was ‘a step in the right direction for Blunt, a move toward love songs free of pretension’ – yes! His songs possessed Peter Hammill-esque levels of complexity before! In the week that Margaret Thatcher <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/thatcher-i-wish-id-never-gone-into-politics-7584640.html">expressed</a> regret that she ever went in politics maybe Blunt will express similar contrition for his ‘acoustic-tinged’ mixture of rock, pop and folk?<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>13. Kid Rock - 'All Summer Long'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2008, #1!, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Yep. Just what I need right now. A knuckle-headed 'Sweet Home Alabama' re-appropriation. The more appalling and remorseless these monuments of despair become, the more stumped I feel. Is this comparable to an American 'The Day We Caught the Train' in its stupendously obvious sense of summer nostalgia? <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Another weird example of the karaoke craze. Like the product of an octogenarian record producer with Alzheimers who is recuperating by trying to remake a song he once heard in his youth, but which he keeps getting badly wrong. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: A kind of ‘Summer of ‘69’ for the iPhone generation that lazily loops its good-time-livin’ theme around Lynyrd Skynyrd. I suppose you can’t really argue with the fact that Kid Rock is ultimately self-made, given that he made six albums before anyone had even heard of him. Perhaps this shows us that the American Dream is one that is most effectively pursued by selling out to vapid consumerism. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Dexys Midnight Runners <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haHuTxhXXbo">used</a> Warren Zevon’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpYBT0XyvA">‘Werewolves inLondon’</a> riff rather brilliantly on their outstanding parting shot <i>Don’t Stand Me Down</i>. This bearded goon spoils it all by fusing it with ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, recording a smug video where he is surrounded by <i>Baywatch </i>‘lovelies’ and offering his sundry reflections on those halcyon pre-internet days. ‘SHA’ expressed apathy about Watergate. This is an even more airheaded incitement to ennui.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"IT ALL SOUNDED THE SAME!"</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>12. P!nk - 'So What'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2008, #8, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: No, you're no more of a rock star than Bob Carolgees. Is she trying to be obnoxious? 'P!nk' has actually somehow regressed in terms of maturity over the years. If anyone genuinely thinks there's an ounce of real rebellion in this, then they deserve to listen to it on a never-ending loop. With melodies as aggravating as the lyrics wrapped around them, 'So What' is a stone cold slab of cold excrement. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: God, the weight of noughties awfulness is starting to turn my soul to ice again. Yes, I remember Pink. She was dreadful. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This trend for self-referential pop music absolutely stinks. Tragically, when Pink asserts some kind of fuck-you independence, what she really means is that she’s still a rock star and therefore still making various anonymous Cowell-like figures very rich, thank you very much. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Its lack of politesse isn’t the problem. It’s just an irritating, branded sort of ‘feisty’ – hardly the Waitresses, Princess Superstar or The Slits. “I am a rock star / I’ve got my rock moves” – what’s the betting that they are like Jagger? Still, while this is tommy-rot I don't hate it quite as much as ‘Every Beat of My Heart’, ‘Stand Up and Be Counted’, ‘No Charge’, ‘Darling Buds of May’ or indeed ‘Let’s Work’!<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>11. The Stereophonics - 'Have a Nice Day'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #5, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Well, I suppose if we can't have ‘American Idiot’ then a similar horror from a band who should have never been allowed to incorporate even the slightest element of politics into their music will suffice. 'Mr Writer', 'Pick a Part That's New', 'Just Lookin'... the choices were multiple. Even if you ignore the shoehorning of ill-informed cultural commentary into proceedings, the idea of people getting off on a banal, piss-poor nothing song about having a nice day is even fucking worse.<br />
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<b>AN</b>: Not very good. In all the wrong places. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: San Francisco. Home of Blue Cheer’s proto-metal howl, the biting sarcasm of the Dead Kennedys and playful avant garde types Matmos. The centre of US gay culture, with all of its erotic possibilities. But you wouldn’t think so from this turgid horse-spunk, in which Kelly Jones mopes around Pier 39 like a mildly hung-over Coldplay fan, before moaning about a greeting that is the equivalent of “alright, mate?” The wanker. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Dear lord, this is a dismal, excessively played crock of codswallop. They were of the generation of bands who gradually moved into complacent, cowed, crowd-pleasing vagueness and yachting affluence - as featured in the sickening video. The best that can be said is that the lyric contains traces of self-diagnosis: '"We’re going wrong / We’ve become all the same"' "It’s all money gum /No artists anymore". Its title’s deadening customer-service imperative sums up the prevailing sense of cash-till tedium.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>And now for </i>Baywatch<i>, guest starring a cheeky, rasping voiced Welsh chappie</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-33275137161408242952012-04-01T22:06:00.001+01:002012-04-04T17:09:56.854+01:00The Worst 200 Songs, Part X (b): #10-1<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">10. Bruno Mars - 'The Lazy Song'</b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Motherfucking Hell. I told you the upper echelons of the chart would be indescribable and in turns out I was right. Just watched the entire Top Ten in visual form and the amount of time I felt a powerful, magnetic force between the screen and my fist was vast. Not least in this one, where the level of hatefulness reached during THAT "really nice sex line" was optimised via his "this tall to enjoy this ride" hair and fuckcunting grin. A certain, truth-playful person I once knew was once afforded the pet-name 'Bruno' by her enigmatic, similarly unhinged boyfriend due to her penchant for the works of Mr Mars. She called him 'The Pig'. Bruno and The Pig. BRUNO AND THE PIG. And it's that level of association that turns a bad song into a total cunt song. Never mind, the next one will be better... <br />
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<b>AN</b>: This sort of passed me by. There’s something quite offensive about the appropriation of reggae motifs. Gap Year imperialism. I suppose this is the American equivalent of British nu-folk: MOR for privileged kids gesturing limply at “roots”. Conversely, American nu-folk is actually quite good on the whole. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: It’s almost tolerable (after all, Elastica had much the same idea with ‘Waking Up’) right up until the moment Bruno Mars starts noting that he can shove his hand down his pants if he feels like it. It then progresses to Mars using the internet to locate call girls, sending a terrible shiver down the spine, as though Robespierre had entered the room just as one was extolling the virtues of constitutional monarchy. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: “Today I don’t feel like doing anything”. Bruno: you are implying that on other days you are contributing to the wellbeing of human civilisation and culture. You are not. You are a drain on the lifeblood of all that is wise and good. Perhaps this is what modern liberalism has come to: chirpy strummed chords, paeans to apathetic arsing around in your ‘castle’, the chronic conceit of “some really nice sex”. And of course messing around is synonymous with a ‘college degree’. Frankly, a new album by Franklin Bruno would be a preferable prospect compared with this beaming irritant.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Aye, it's a lovely video; on a par with Buster Keaton's 'One Week' in its portrayal of home life...</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>9. The Wombats - 'Let's Dance to Joy Division'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #15, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Perhaps the bronze medal in the race to become the 'Britpop 2' nadir. I've turned to drink in order to endure the Top Ten twice in order to re-acquaint myself with the plethora of suicide-inducing shite that awaits me, yet I'm not sure it's performing any anaesthetic qualities. Just inane, and a blasphemous name check, yet a fitting one. What was once a style of music so associated with the edgy, the raw and the poetic reduced to infantile, inane bullshit with nowhere to really go after this. Such a monotonous howl too. That middle-eight is particularly indicative of production-line indie. And you thought Stock Aitken and Waterman did cynical and formulaic song-writing? 'Better The Devil You Know' is worth a billion of this.<br />
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<b>AN</b>: Joy Division were always the ultimate unco-optable band, so the fact that they were roundly co-opted in the noughties speaks volumes about that decade as a whole. This is the paradigmatic counter-revolutionary artwork: irony, mediocrity, pastiche, and faux-colloquialism neutering one of the bleakest, most difficult bands in pop history. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: You know what? I’ve had about enough of the way that Joy Division have been commoditised into some saleable chunk of Great British Musical Heritage. Conveying the fractured, often unintelligible nature of alienation and ostracism in an uncertain, darkening environment was precisely the point of Joy Division. Whereas now they seem to have become a branded commodity for indie clubs. Fuck off. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Intense, chugging boredom: from the first guitar lines to their complete misapplication of irony. “You know what to ask for!” Apparently: unending smirking revivalism with guitars and the despoiling of past musical wonders. A children’s choir has never been so inaptly used as here: to background this numpty’s dashed off extemporisation around the words: ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. “This could all go so wrong”. You mean to say, you loveable mop-top wannabes, that it hasn’t with this fucking abysmal song? Get ye to New York, though I doubt they’d have your brand of numbskull retro.<br />
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<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">8. Toploader - 'Dancing in the Moonlight'</b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2000, #7, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Help me please! I told you not to trust people whose biggest hits were covers and I was right. Just the right kind of party anthem that feels horrendous to endure if you're not on board. I'm thinking Jamie Oliver, I'm thinking omnipresence, I'm thinking Jo Whiley, I'm thinking horrific things. Is 'smugness' a genre? It should be. Although I did enjoy its ironic use in <i>Four Lions</i>. I haven't heard this for quite a few years, and I hope this is the last time. The sound of utter dismay and a loss of faith in all that surrounds you and every school of thought you've ever thought made you feel safe. I'd wager that people have topped themselves to this song. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Again, there’s an imperialist aspect to this: African American soul used to sell millions upon millions of records, tickets, and merchandise by a group of soulless Western session musicians. It’s really quite depressing when you begin to approach the economic underpinning of karaoke MOR rock. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Is it the organ? The shockingly poor vocals? Or even the fact that Jamie Oliver likes this? No. The reason this is a crime against music is that, back in 2000, as with many toffs of his age, a young George Osborne was firing his cold black semen right into the horse-face of a young wench from Buckingham just as the annoyingly twee middle-eight kicked in. And for that reason alone, dear reader, this is one of the worst songs ever recorded. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Is there a more representative slab of 2000s torpor than this cynical cover version of a tepid single from 1973? King Harvest’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR47TZdJg64%20">original</a> is dull but harmless; this is a cretinous cluster bomb lodged in the heart of the culture. From their <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=toploader">name</a> onwards they are shite. Eastbourne vocalist adopts the sort of phony mid-Atlantic accent that utterly grates on me. Radio and club DJs, dance-floor denizens, ‘music fans’: all should have known better than to elevate this to its perch of infernal ubiquity. At least their belated 2011 third album flopped: a deserved public indifference. But then this fucking song appears for the millionth time! And people lap it up as if it’s the musical second coming. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>What is it with these curly haired vocalists?</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">7. Scouting For Girls - 'She's So Lovely'</b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #7, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Worst song of all time for me, but that's democracy for you. Like some estate agents trying their hand at 'that indie music' and getting it all wrong completely. The usual 'cheeky' signifiers, the 'wacky' bassist. A massive pile of <i>FHM</i> ear-sperm that makes me so angry that I could commit 100,000 words to it and still never fathom why it makes me want to annihilate entire continents. It's excruciating enough, but like The Wombats, its middle-eight has to be heard to be believed, like 'Country House' era Blur-meets-Simply Red turned even more chronically evil. Presumably they thought that their moniker put them in the same sensitive-pop bracket as Belle and Sebastian or Camera Obscura but no, just no. Impossible to even enjoy ironically and if the lack of lads in bands scoring hits these days means we're missing out on gibberish like this that makes Cast sound like Can then FUCKING GOOD. Cunts! And I still don't think that's enough. <br />
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"She's pretty, a fitty"? SHE'S PRETTY, A FITTY?!!! I mean, that lead singer must have got this past his band-mates without them shooting him in the face via completely agreeable motives. It would have only been a manslaughter charge. If you're housewife-friendly anodyne pop music, don't try to masquerade as something you aren't. Unfortunately, the noughties equivalents of Chris De Burgh et al had delusions of credibility. FUCKING BRITPOP. Seriously. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Unimaginative, repetitive, cynical, trite, blasé, disengaged, weak, clichéd, backward-looking, corporate, underwhelming, non-existent, offensive, flaccid, dire, boring, boring, boring. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: The fag end of the Blair era coincided with pop music raping its own re-animated corpse. Here, the frightful trio take their cues from such flotsam as Sailor, Edison Lighthouse and The Rembrandts. Toss, basically. Plus, Roy Stride – for God’s sake man, you’re singing about some absolutely stunning woman offering you non-committal sexual favours and you “don’t know how we’ll make it through this.” Get a grip, you idiot! <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Argh. Now this is getting epically painful: a chirpy, eager-to-please piano enters, stage-bereft. Head-banding. Bowling alleys. So far, so far Neanderthal; though our simian forebears would turn up their noses at this lot. Then all too soon: that braying, god-awful chorus and monumentally ghastly lines like “She’s pretty; she’s a fitty”. Who ever thought that such minstrelsy to witless drooling was a good idea? Maybe it was the inarticulate, moronic, laddish repetition that charmed people? The prospects for pop seem desolate, sometimes...<br />
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</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>6. Snow Patrol - 'Chasing Cars'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2006, #6, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I heard that Tom May had to break down his analysis of the Top Ten into two halves and I'm thinking of following suit. I never thought that the Second Division of Britpop was that bad, having not been susceptible to the main players of the late 1970s and 1980s who they were ripping off at the time, only discovering the music of Joy Division, The Smith, The Cure and the Bunnymen during and after Britpop itself but can now see why the second rate players of Britpop irked so many, although I will still say that Gene, Shed Seven and Echobelly et al had a few good tracks. This is why I could possibly forgive a teenager for holding 'Chasing Cars' in the same esteem as I hold 'Fake Plastic Trees'. On the other hand, that's bullshit, and teenagers of the noughties and now have instant, free access to a world of musical history that I could have only dreamed of as a teenager. So fuck that argument. <br />
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'Chasing Cars' is a desperate, tuneless and cynical piece of music that takes the mid-paced yet emotionally potent mid-tempo balladeering template of Radiohead and turns it into utter calculated dross. From the loud-quiet dynamics to the insanely rubbish insincerity of its half-arsed exploration of unrequited love, every note of it sounds designed with fiscal benefits in mind. You can't really blame Lightbody and co. for clinging onto their place in the hearts of casual music fans and reality TV music supervisors alike after struggling against the grain for so many years (you could have probably seen them in the Joiner's Arms in Southampton with one man and his bludgeoned prostitute for £2.50 and a bag of pork scratchings in 2002), so fair play, but I don't hear emotion in this, I hear cold, calculated cynicism. <br />
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AND IT SOUNDS LIKE THE 'BROOKSIDE' <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx4OOk_aObY">THEME</a>. ONLY COMPLETELY INFERIOR! <br />
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<b>AN</b>: There’s a nice catharsis about the top 10. I really dislike Snow Patrol and just couldn’t understand their apologists over the last decade. It’s heartening that we’re of the same mind about this. A cultural lowlight of recent history. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: The message of this song is as follows: never mind all that alienation you feel toward having to sell your labour power for a decreasing reward, a quiet moment with one’s squeeze can help ameliorate that disaffection and block out that big nasty old world, leaving one fresh enough to face more of the same shit ad infinitum. A quiet moment that sounds like a blunter version of Keane, no less. Twats. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: How many more videos will there be with a moony-eyed, t-shirted dullard lying. On a floor. With that slight, self-satisfied grin on his face, surely pondering the pennies this colossally boring dirge would yield? I am not an easily offended person but I have had enough with this tedious and vague Andrew Strauss-endorsed effluence. Is it an aspirational anthem for striving entrepreneurs? Is it a theme for those manufactured ‘poignant’ sporting moments on TV? Is it about lurve? It’s about fuck all. ‘Chasing Cars’ is a lesion on the arse of an increasingly stale British mainstream music scene. This record has spent 108… ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT weeks in the UK Singles Chart since its release nearly six years ago. Who is buying or MP3-ing this now...? Be ashamed.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2004, #4, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: This song almost single-handedly put me off pressing 'play' on the last quintet. Ouch. Such fake sincerity, such utter nauseating gooiness. “I don't mind spending every day out on the corner in the pouring rain”. Isn't it rather noticeable how all these 'tender' declarations of 'love' seem to be from the viewpoint of a determined stalker? To me, the refrain “she will be loved” is synonymous with some cheesy goon who’s just run off with your bird and is trying to make you feel better about it. Or abducted her, with the full aim of appearing on some televised appeal to confirm her safety. He'd probably set up a good cause in her name and fuck off to France with the proceeds. And I'm only 1:27 in! 'Though I tend to get so insecure...' No shit, Sherlock. Lasted two more seconds. 'It's not always rainbows and butterflies...' This earnest wank really grinds my gears. Shall we go on? And another crap middle-eight! Adam Levine's probably forever locating girls with “broken smiles”. Weak ones, to manipulate like it's going out of fashion. Can I be friends with anyone who likes that? <br />
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<b>AN</b>: The top 10 seems to support the theory that 2004-7 was some kind of nadir for pop. I was 19-23 during these years and, to speak sincerely, I’m incredibly angry that my youth was wasted being forced to listen to the likes of Snow Patrol and Maroon 5. That anger is still a central part of most of the things that I do. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Maroon 5? The Feeling? Scouting for Girls? I lose track of who’s who among that lot. Anyway, this is absolutely terrible. This is where that Jennifer Warnes and Joe Cocker nonsense from a few weeks ago leads. Unambitious, turgid, restaurant music like this. In a ying-yang twist, somewhere in a parallel (better) universe, diners must be downing their Chablis to Altern-8’s ‘Hypnotic St8’. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: This is the product of a complacent, clapped-out culture. Every time this has appeared on a TV advert or a shopping centre PA system, it is a little death. It becomes REALLY horrendous with the bridge into the whining, mind-numbing, deadly chorus. Singer Adam Levine did have a go at the ‘fucking evil’ – <a href="http://hypervocal.com/news/2011/adam-levine-new-poster-boy-for-conservative-rage/">his</a> words and mine – Fox News for playing his music, without realising that that is the name of the commercial game he signed up to. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>4. Mark Ronson feat. Daniel Merriweather - 'Stop Me'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #2, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I'm happy to announce that I'm now on the good old fag-per-song ratio. Maroon 5 was horrid, but even more so with the knowledge I had to face this next, like being called to the Headmaster's to confess to farting in assembly. <br />
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So basically... how dare you pair of fuckers unleash this level of vandalism upon this seminal song, or even pair of songs? How can you deliver 'Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before' with so little humour, wit, knowingness, irony... just the way he sings it... 'Seething' is the only acceptable reaction. YOU FUCKING CUNTS! If I could have gone any higher than ten out of ten, I would have. Surely someone you encountered before releasing this must have informed you that it doesn't work at all? Plus, has brass ever sounded less rousing as per every time Ronson polished a steaming turd with it? <br />
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Fuck you Mark Ronson featuring Daniel Merriweather. FUCK YOU. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: As with #9, a counter-revolutionary piece of shit. I don’t want to waste any more of my life thinking about this sort of worthless effluvia. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Does anyone really need to explain why this great robbery is here? Cross-referencing was an interesting way around cost restrictions in the heyday of rave, but crashing The Smiths into The Supremes? I mean, come on; that just smacks of the socialite, aristocrat circles that Ronson has always frequented. It isn’t witty or quirky; it really isn’t and is wrong in every conceivable way. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Another cover. Ronson embodies the new Cameronite establishment of Britain today; he is particularly representative of this era as his two biggest hits have been mystifyingly accepted cover versions. Dreadful, laughable, tepid tripe; it goes without saying. But it must be asserted, as this did reach #2 in the charts and the Ronsonian mode continues to set the tone, alongside the BRIT and the X-Factor schools. The vocals are showy, slick and grating, showing no affinity whatsoever with the Mozzer’s idiosyncratic lyric. You can practically hear the silver spoon; Ronson is the grandson of a convicted share-trading fraudster and property tycoon, with family links to Leon Brittan and Malcolm Rifkind. His mother married Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones. With all the privileges of his St John’s Wood upbringing, why can’t Ronson do better than this nonsense? <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>3. Elton John - 'Candle in the Wind 1997'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1997, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Ah, a tender tribute from one friend to another. Nothing tasteless about that. Only it's totally tacky and Taupin's lyric scans appallingly. 'Youcalledouttoourcountry!' This doesn't anger me in the way the rest of the Top Ten have thus far, but it's still a 10/10 hate for its utterly sinister and somewhat inappropriate qualities and I'm sure Messrs Gibson, Niven and May have more to say in a far more academic way than I can. This did hilariously mean that the whole wide world is far more au fait with AA-side 'Something About The Way You Look Tonight' than the weaved one ever though dreamed of. And 'Bingo!' by Catch for that matter. Did this song really need to happen? It was bad enough when he was posthumously stalking that glamour model. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Nothing has been quite the same since this happened. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Ah, the Diana funeral. A moment of enforced public mourning like no other: nothing but violins on Radio 1; Tony Blair crying for the cameras; serious questions in Parliament about a <i>Viz </i>story that dared to prick the bubble of such jejune grief. The distance between those days and those in Pyongyang in 2011 is considerably shorter than we allow ourselves to think. This piece of collective mix of class deference and tabloid voyeurism reached its apogee with Elton John’s piece in Westminster Abbey, killing whatever lingering vestige of mystique he might once have had. <br />
<br />
<b>TM</b>: I am not going to have a go at Lady Di, the ‘Princess of Hearts’ in Blair’s vacuous phrase. That would be too easy; she clearly did good deeds within systemic limits. It was more how the whole event established a cult of sentimentalism that imposed limits on British culture and music; partnering the overblown, overhyped Be Here Now in keeping out distinctive, dissident voices. This is the sound of that early, more liberal Blair era that could not help but be profoundly neo-liberal. Its prevalence needs to be made clear: 5.4million sales in the UK, best-selling single worldwide in the modern era (with Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ probably edging it out in the longer term), bizarrely: 46 weeks at the summit of the Canadian chart. Oh, and it’s another cover, this time by the original artist himself; with re-fashioned lyrics: hackneyed ‘rose’ metaphors and so much that reeks of Catholic idolatory: ‘the grace’, ‘the wings’, ‘this torch’. Empathic sentimentalism could be a spur to collective action; it does not have to be as profoundly disempowering and dispiriting as this is.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinHRoL0TRfEqEf-5LOqRZcUiVkp5W0i9rhQAfcVSbNZI-fx1P8sbWxKUeRmwnJcNwA3uwnhPK-__qRRFRMxHxS3wc6fCmCXbHsrxhZiFEp9CTiDssEEfL26QnYDz2avzw_2zIq5x23usiZ/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinHRoL0TRfEqEf-5LOqRZcUiVkp5W0i9rhQAfcVSbNZI-fx1P8sbWxKUeRmwnJcNwA3uwnhPK-__qRRFRMxHxS3wc6fCmCXbHsrxhZiFEp9CTiDssEEfL26QnYDz2avzw_2zIq5x23usiZ/s320/3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><i><b>'I want to be the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn1rmuzIF4g">new Diana</a><br />
(OK!, Hello)<br />
Visiting the shore occasionally<br />
Politics and minefields, press and P.R.<br />
These are bad places for a queen of hearts'</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>2. Sandi Thom - 'I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker with Flowers in My Hair'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2006, #1, TM)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EriaeS3pEE8" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<b>DL</b>: Authenticity, and the lack of it, seems to be a recurring theme in our countdown, and you won't find less of it than in the narrative surrounding this big pile of PR-manipulated jizz. “Pop stars still remained a myth” sings the lady whose appeal was mainly formed around a tall tale about a struggling artist performing gigs from her cellar every evening to thousands upon thousands of fans across the world online, with miraculously enough bandwidth to allow this. Of course, these were the burgeoning Arctic Monkeys days when the idea of a musician or indeed any other cultural phenomenon gaining prominence online via word-of-mouth still filled the public testicle with callous clumps of gullible spunk. The song itself is a doe-eyed ode to those simpler, pre-internet days “where accountants couldn't take your soul” and suchlike. Is the music industry cynical enough to support this and actively endorse the infinite ironies around it? Yes, yes it is. There's a ‘best of’ out if you're interested.<br />
<br />
<b>AN</b>: Joy Division, The Smiths, punk: nothing escaped the commodifying embrace of a triumphant capitalism in the last ten years. When you consider how they managed to take the counter-culture away from us, it makes you want to weep. I repeat, I’m just so fucking angry. So sad.<br />
<br />
<b>JG</b>: In a way it just admits the end of a process long underway. Previously subversive movements become re-sold as little other than marks of individual expression of the type so memorably derided by Slavoj Žižek in his analysis of the way in which late capitalism commands us not only to express ourselves through various disciplinary quirks, but to enjoy doing so. The Superego writ large, combined with a lethal dose of historical denial. It’s enough to suck the serotonin out of an entire convention of clowns.<br />
<br />
<b>TM</b>: Okay... The jibe at Blair’s guitar playing is well placed, but this song is part of the problem: its retro fixation is a roadblock to insurgent new music. “When we didn’t know everything”? I think that the age of Granada television, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, theatre-in-education and Penguin books, we knew rather more. “Scared of computers”? Presumably: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkYWNOreRVQ%20">WOTAN</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKUlGJFWgdw">BOSS</a>. Alex has written <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20%20http://thefantastichope.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/few-thoughts-on-i-wish-i-was-punk.html">previously</a> of Thom’s absurd, ‘confused’ elision of “’77 and ‘69”. This is a paean to 60s/70s ‘authenticity’ that simplifies and reduces those pasts to fashion accessories, being a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/20/david-cameron-the-pr-years">PR man</a>’s idea of what makes ‘radical’, ‘rebellious’ music. It failed the first time it was released in 2005; it supplanted Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ from the top spot on 4th June 2006. What a sad indictment. More IXtra: less, much less, of this conservative shite.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzcAHMP8WESLJaxCFNlqHDdH7mItA2DRpXuPVu8cnsgr2_wJ9bsfIOXms_Bw_gb_NfTaSQFRHfolCJoD2Cr9R0qNuKtqMSvnICnAaR29Udl7vGTqZf5b_qZZOrb5JR88xRJEj4c00QPbA5/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzcAHMP8WESLJaxCFNlqHDdH7mItA2DRpXuPVu8cnsgr2_wJ9bsfIOXms_Bw_gb_NfTaSQFRHfolCJoD2Cr9R0qNuKtqMSvnICnAaR29Udl7vGTqZf5b_qZZOrb5JR88xRJEj4c00QPbA5/s320/2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Yes, the PR man from 'Quite Great Communications' is in shot</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>1. Nickelback - 'Rock Star'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #2, DL)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DmeUuoxyt_E" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><b>DL</b>: 'She's So Lovely' aside, I cannot think of a more deserving chart-topper in a countdown of horror. Of course, the song is understood (made more infuriating) when 'enjoyed' alongside its video, in which a roll call of famous American bell-ends from the worlds of sport, music, film and general anonymity each take turns to perform a line from the song in the most crass, arrogant and punchable way imaginable. There are some British people in there too. I know this because huge, unsubtle signifiers like the Houses of Parliament allude to this. It's been said that it's unclear as to whether the song itself as a satirical ode to the materialistic, decadent rock-star lifestyle but as there's no real humour in there worthy of being deemed remotely funny, I'd say it was exactly the kind of tedious celebration of the high-flying soulless lifestyle as outlined above. If it is satire, it's the worst attempt at satire in the world and is particularly strange considering the guest stars of the video lip-sync every lyric in a highly celebratory way. No one comes out of that video not looking like a complete cunt. It's like being force-fed a fatal dose of the most base, crass and stupid elements of American mass culture. <br />
<br />
Embarrassing, painful, knuckle-headed, tacky, reminds me of Republicans and sofa adverts, wrestling, handlebar moustaches, rednecks, country music, cunts, bastards, twats... although they have been noted for responding to criticisms free on social networking sites so maybe Chad Kroeger would like to step and claim his award for being behind our Worst Song of all time? <br />
<br />
<b>AN</b>: A worthy number one. This manages to glorify the profit motive, advocate anorexia, bury rock music for good, and fundamentally be a piece of evil crap. Friends, it’s been emotional. Thanks for putting up with my meandering rage. Solidarity to messrs Gibson, May, and Lichfield. This was a necessary repudiation, if a painful one. Onwards! <br />
<br />
<b>JG</b>: What can you say? At root, Kroeger and his Kurt Bon Jovi lot are only trying to make us think beyond the shallowness with which they think we fantasise about being rock stars. So why, then, does this song stink like an abattoir? Because Kroeger and co have made it as rock stars. And they’re mocking us. “Ha ha, you think we eat for free and have eight bodyguards that like to beat people up.” That’s exactly what you do (or could very easily do if you wanted to), Kroeger. Didn’t you read The Dirt? What else? It plods, Chad Kroger whines, the riff sounds like it was written in 1953 by a 6 year old David Bowie. Chad Kroeger is also an utter cunt. He looks like one, acts like one and just is one and he can fuck off. Grrrrrrrrrr. Shit like this – it makes psychopathy swill up in my head. Can we stop now? <br />
<br />
<b>TM</b>: Ultimately, this ode to bloated, inane excess had to be number one: receiving <b>10/10</b> on the hate-o-meter from all four of us. This ticks every box: unadventurous, stunted guitar chords, mentions of James Dean and Elvis, sham ‘inclusiveness’ in the video; leering misogyny, lunkheaded machismo, avaricious money-grabbing toss about “playboy mansions” and “a credit card that’s got no limit”. This record represents the etherised ‘common sense’ of our neo-liberal age: its ailing philosophical core. It is up to us to roll away the stone; or, indeed, the millstone that Rock has become...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDsxvyw1tH-0DC02RB_AyUOc0AEABMiJ1R0YtlD6_GLT5ECLFNF4rDbOZesDuh8i6zAxfmWRURbojrVitHWV42GSkpaVtlODn3McR5jIUkFQwu924Wdgbkbd1vfeAvYO9p6_eZJppw2iQn/s1600/1a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDsxvyw1tH-0DC02RB_AyUOc0AEABMiJ1R0YtlD6_GLT5ECLFNF4rDbOZesDuh8i6zAxfmWRURbojrVitHWV42GSkpaVtlODn3McR5jIUkFQwu924Wdgbkbd1vfeAvYO9p6_eZJppw2iQn/s320/1a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd85ULearAr3KS15j6h69oXgPGUZKNoAVKI9PScUEcKJzTlAcHWVWFoR8-oNlarjqdNZT83cAlk834_AfAiec-fjXZ7RR4XMtpAE_qSJDNhUTpYjTtMxtRxVqzyuun6vF37tTtskm2pXvS/s1600/1d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd85ULearAr3KS15j6h69oXgPGUZKNoAVKI9PScUEcKJzTlAcHWVWFoR8-oNlarjqdNZT83cAlk834_AfAiec-fjXZ7RR4XMtpAE_qSJDNhUTpYjTtMxtRxVqzyuun6vF37tTtskm2pXvS/s320/1d.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYl3YTLLgRq5Q683rjv7mrCQNTVpWZnspybZRS28X-8GAIUib4xtb66BvqJjpHaTJwnwyR2R-x4QH1cog6WTP6bvOD6PbO-RCzYb_1G3Bef95dnnAH20XBwmAXC93zjHVi6MIcBllD466j/s1600/1b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYl3YTLLgRq5Q683rjv7mrCQNTVpWZnspybZRS28X-8GAIUib4xtb66BvqJjpHaTJwnwyR2R-x4QH1cog6WTP6bvOD6PbO-RCzYb_1G3Bef95dnnAH20XBwmAXC93zjHVi6MIcBllD466j/s320/1b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYXpJ_lliyGR-hC8GLSJaB_jnbuDjYR4exZCIu1cXUb3bItRgh42mujxxeoS5aKQ_cUJQF_F2YknTFFzIPsM4enV25Zzwx0S6k8Bmnw8kVYtnYpwIrfVzQVNSICArl0DwAt9OsMVGgLU4N/s1600/1f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYXpJ_lliyGR-hC8GLSJaB_jnbuDjYR4exZCIu1cXUb3bItRgh42mujxxeoS5aKQ_cUJQF_F2YknTFFzIPsM4enV25Zzwx0S6k8Bmnw8kVYtnYpwIrfVzQVNSICArl0DwAt9OsMVGgLU4N/s320/1f.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhN1TtCwv-kwCmfPxx5_fweZCIkgbpx9drjFofC_tAfHufSJYGWPTxFcV9HQ5EUtymzQ0Mbjfipb3V9uTW440vWRpRyqD4UjRtY0SdImmXS9HZ_6k1WXyugW2EZ2lLS0FBhm2t8XAi1wyn/s1600/1c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhN1TtCwv-kwCmfPxx5_fweZCIkgbpx9drjFofC_tAfHufSJYGWPTxFcV9HQ5EUtymzQ0Mbjfipb3V9uTW440vWRpRyqD4UjRtY0SdImmXS9HZ_6k1WXyugW2EZ2lLS0FBhm2t8XAi1wyn/s320/1c.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlgZeduKBWIKQdZDiu4gTsZngHLBi2qs_QBcuiiHoOXYgYPl4aLAifjI1bQlXC0pn2O2K_QVQJ95b81ObVp7wFKCex60teTh49WOmCtFMT1ZAtbRE9eklnre2UeZ6x4Twh-5Pppr_BLxs0/s1600/1e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlgZeduKBWIKQdZDiu4gTsZngHLBi2qs_QBcuiiHoOXYgYPl4aLAifjI1bQlXC0pn2O2K_QVQJ95b81ObVp7wFKCex60teTh49WOmCtFMT1ZAtbRE9eklnre2UeZ6x4Twh-5Pppr_BLxs0/s320/1e.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-86970967465222785982012-04-02T15:28:00.003+01:002012-04-04T16:15:47.811+01:00Worst 200 Songs: A Readers' List<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>So... which songs did we miss, which maybe ought to have been in the reckoning? Here is a list of suggestions from our readers...</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>John Lowther: </b></span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bryan Adams, </b><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sting & Rod Stewart - 'All for Love' (1994, #2) </b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">[ed. - how did we forget this monstrosity!?]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ofA3URC1wyk" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Steve Webster: Gwen Guthrie - 'Ain't Nothing Goin' on But the Rent' (1986, #5) </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XecTPWJu0wk" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Paul Simpson: Bob Geldof - 'Silly Pretty Thing' (2011, #146!) </b><i>('truly woeful' 'Haha, I'd forgotten about the ludicrous video')</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="243" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yuMplSNLBdY" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Paul Simpson: Status Quo - 'The Oriental' (2002, #15 - album) </b><i>('It's obscene')</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/B9pAYfe1Si4" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Paul Simpson: Francis Rossi - 'Faded Memory' (2010, Did not chart)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="243" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RR2ubLGXKm0" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'In March 2009 Rossi decided that his distinctive trademark ponytail of the previous 35 years should be cut off. The ponytail was subsequently won by long-time Status Quo fan Sharon Littleton in a competition organised by <i>The Sun</i>.</span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
Rossi was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours.'</span></div><div><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Robin Carmody: Star Turn on 45 (Pints) - 'Pump up the Bitter' (1988, #12)</b></span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mG79-FSQ7hQ" width="420"></iframe><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Nick Davidson: Starship - 'We Built This City' (1985, #12)</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TxGGckAc1rs" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Richard Oram: Dodgy - 'Good Enough' (1996, #4)</b> <i>[Ed. - was actually nominated by Robin Carmody but didn't quite make the Top 200!]</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qapDnDDHNfs" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Chris Loach: The Cheeky Girls - 'Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)' (2002, #2)</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/25qljXlGdQc" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Pauline May: Clinton Ford - 'Old Shep' (1959, #27)</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="243" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/78gQQ6xfmG0" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Pauline May: Charlie Drake - 'My Boomerang Won't Come Back' (1961, #14)</b></span><br />
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</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PiNwWqrBKzQ" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Damian Robson: Terry Jacks - 'Seasons in the Sun' (1974, #1)</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cd_Fdly3rX8" width="420"></iframe></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Jack Roberts: Cast - 'Walkaway' (1996, #9)</b><i> ('unbelievably dreary tosh')</i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;"><i><br />
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</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Jack Roberts: Counting Crows - 'Mr Jones' (1994, #28) </b><i>('god-awful lyrics')</i></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIXn_jqp29RhzlYx3Tt7izgfNCfi7ZG3ba3pn6J7ITFAq7oCL50sN-F2xIPaRp9jDqIcPBl-lwfyc2ykFcyFgMOAjbjpH1ZF_YSbe9Kq4OuZEQ8XrRYArTR97HKYJiX1KI6DN_icovEojY/s1600/readers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIXn_jqp29RhzlYx3Tt7izgfNCfi7ZG3ba3pn6J7ITFAq7oCL50sN-F2xIPaRp9jDqIcPBl-lwfyc2ykFcyFgMOAjbjpH1ZF_YSbe9Kq4OuZEQ8XrRYArTR97HKYJiX1KI6DN_icovEojY/s320/readers.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Sha-la-la-la-la-la-lah!" FUCK OFF!</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-38972297836902691092012-03-20T23:57:00.000+00:002012-03-20T23:57:17.936+00:00The Worst 200 Songs, Part IX: #40-21<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>From 40-1, we have increased the permitted character-limit to 500 (I said 400 initially, but that was just aspirational... like fairness is for George Osborne). </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>20-11 will follow next Tuesday. 10-1 will then be posted on the following Sunday evening in old-style BBC Radio 1 manner: to be accompanied by a podcast, counting down the top 40 with further discussion to round up the whole exhaustively partial project.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>I also request a readers' list... While we have been slated on certain limited internet fora, there has been a heartening understanding from people I know in 'real life'. What do you want to see in the Top 20? Please post below or email me at: mysteryofthefence@googlemail.com</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>40. Mumford and Sons - 'The Cave'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2009, #24, DL)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="243" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fNy8llTLvuA" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: One of the most irksome things about this funny banjo combo is that there’s music of this ilk around all the time, albeit in mostly superior form, but rather than dig for it (and with <i>Spotify</i>, <i>6Music</i>, <i>YouTube</i> there really is no excuse) the general populace would rather wait to be spoon-fed it via the aisles of <i>Tesco</i> and heavy rotation. You’ll also find that it’s always the BBC taking the risk with such acts first before the commercial stations latch on to the burgeoning popularity of the artists, and reap the rewards. The tune itself: typically earnest annoyance with pastoral tinge, for festivals David Cameron would attend. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: After all is said and done (and indeed I have said quite a lot about these chumps), this is just a really flat, facile, weak tune. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: A divisive choice, this. Mumford and Sons have plenty of fans who see in them the same spirit as US folk rock contemporaries like Grizzly Bear and Songs: Ohia. But it is a fine line between there and Daniel Powter harping on about a bad day. And 'The Cave' is far too polished to have any real rustic charm. I don’t think it’s quite bad enough to be #40 on this list, though. <br />
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<b> TM</b>: The lyric is full of the ‘right’ signifiers and vague allusions but contains little discernible meaning. Their studied authenticity – ‘corporate-trad’ in Alex’s words – endears them to the most casual of music fans. Theirs is a ‘freedom’ that won’t rock or indeed float any boats, other than at country residences of Cleggs, Camerons and Fearnley-Whittingstalls.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzz0O25bF1Z2Qb86k0e5CHuDq2n8RrzDmNtuQA949QBkUequMxDpomMh_ajt3zhxautbQ3PqGMgbKXS7RHEUBHpYlSjY2hqeani8B_e9x9-Ntb0PqnSGuA9orPCXv6fS6A1SHbEdQsdT6Y/s1600/40.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzz0O25bF1Z2Qb86k0e5CHuDq2n8RrzDmNtuQA949QBkUequMxDpomMh_ajt3zhxautbQ3PqGMgbKXS7RHEUBHpYlSjY2hqeani8B_e9x9-Ntb0PqnSGuA9orPCXv6fS6A1SHbEdQsdT6Y/s320/40.bmp" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>39. Eric Clapton - 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1975, #19, TM)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-5ASC20TIwY" width="420"></iframe></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Ironic reggae grooves from the man who a year later drunkenly roused an audience <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg9IZyx_-Os">thusly</a>: "This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don't want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards". Rather more than a simple slip of the tongue there. I think China Black’s version of a terminally dull standard might have actually been better. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Sheesh. If they ever change the national anthem I really fucking hope they pick 'Jerusalem' instead of this. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Has there ever been a more offensive pilfering of someone else’s entire musical culture than this? Clapton puts on a vile half-creole accent, reduces the volume of the bass (this being the entire point of reggae) and displays as much enthusiasm for his subject as only a wealthy anti-immigrant coke-addled cunt can. Still, 'Police and Thieves' was only 18 months away. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Offensively wimpy reggae-lite from the not-God <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2007/dec/01/ericclaptonisnotgod">he</a>. Whether beery rugger sing-along or earnest spiritual, I cannot say I am enamoured of the song – but Clapton’s sleepwalking version takes it to new levels of drear desultoriness. Also, recall his comments in 1976 praising Enoch Powell, which emphasised the need for ‘Rock Against Racism’. Why was this recorded?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqwB76fECzKy-y3xYNrq9FYxX4ek78HQDODSCtIw2aO6CGgh-FaDXBQslXupyqk6_dmQ13I__VwNXXoHPMoabE6qq9gWkrgS5-vQDKRc5dU9jr9T_xdVJtVaKGJBORcgcDF0_Pv_L1v4lk/s1600/39.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqwB76fECzKy-y3xYNrq9FYxX4ek78HQDODSCtIw2aO6CGgh-FaDXBQslXupyqk6_dmQ13I__VwNXXoHPMoabE6qq9gWkrgS5-vQDKRc5dU9jr9T_xdVJtVaKGJBORcgcDF0_Pv_L1v4lk/s1600/39.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>38. Puddle of Mudd - 'Control'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2002, #15, JG)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="243" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/I0-lENIRHaM" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Really was hoping that ‘She Hates Me’ would be P.O.M’s representation on the countdown, but yes, Nirvana really were responsible for some terrible bands. Gormless macho dirge so typical of what we once knew as nu-metal. Why do the lyrics have to be so childishly self-centred and brainless? Inarticulate, monotonous and whiningly adolescent. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Hilarious! <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Second only to the dreaded Nickelback in terms of converting grunge signifiers into hyper-masculine cock rock, this is complete rat wank. Don’t they have electric chairs for this sort of thing?<br />
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<b>TM</b>: “Dude. Seriously... Bro.” Forgo the familiarity, fellers; your sort of predictable row makes Metallica sound like King Crimson. This possesses the sort of distinctively unappetising raunchiness that only lunkheaded pseudo-metal can quite evoke.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXcoCIbqm7GlpT3r0pyA4Dmc3eijmiLBM3wobsKIvaZpEL5tpn-1hU01PMiWGzRMcLb6FUrAnMnVv_dOIh4cEwg3-bGry_3Gd6VLFXRv_raLFi6gLYNDTqdoV6F2Qxqw91JfG5AOzDoTWP/s1600/38.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXcoCIbqm7GlpT3r0pyA4Dmc3eijmiLBM3wobsKIvaZpEL5tpn-1hU01PMiWGzRMcLb6FUrAnMnVv_dOIh4cEwg3-bGry_3Gd6VLFXRv_raLFi6gLYNDTqdoV6F2Qxqw91JfG5AOzDoTWP/s320/38.bmp" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>37. Bell and Spurling - 'Sven Sven Sven'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #7, RC)</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/q33sNrncVmI" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<b>DL</b>: We’ve covered a lot of ground on the novelty football record front even without recalling the Embrace one, but this is certainly one of the worst. What is this unwritten law that when football and music come together, the results have to be cretinous? Who bought this, the lobotomised? It’s not just a bit of fun, it’s like holding up a mirror to the image of the national game. Who gave a fuck that he was from Sweden? <br />
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<b>AN</b>: This is – almost – defensible on grounds of sheer surrealism. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: 400 characters to spunk away on this? Jesus wept. Well, the fact that shit like this gets written after one anomalous thrashing of Germany perhaps says something about the general mental insecurities of the lad types that this cynical toss was clearly intended to appeal to. Plus, “don’t forget that he’s from Sweden?” Well, that McClaren chap from England did so much better, didn’t he? <br />
<br />
<b>TM</b>: Jonathan Pearce’s stupid, partisan tones set the tone. His annoyingly bullish shrieks accompany the ‘comic’ gloating of Bell and Spurling, who sang at celebrity parties for such <i>Worst 200 Songs</i> perennials as Rod Stewart and Simon Cowell and went on to guest on <i>Talk Sport</i>. The diminishing chart returns of ‘We’re All Having a Darius Vassell Party (It’s Gonna Be Awesome)’ are not surprising – it reached #143. The success of this moronic, xenophobic tripe is a national disgrace.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsD2VXmQOCKdYrrLug6nLaeFwjZcI2pIQjFp5rd6Iuv1uHmb170DWMZXPwzM5cujS81QpoperlTM2zG2h1jsQspuVKtRXQ413RRAetRGYJ4lZRbFS-v6gdynty3ZKbTUA20XBb8IkXZ-Ox/s1600/37.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsD2VXmQOCKdYrrLug6nLaeFwjZcI2pIQjFp5rd6Iuv1uHmb170DWMZXPwzM5cujS81QpoperlTM2zG2h1jsQspuVKtRXQ413RRAetRGYJ4lZRbFS-v6gdynty3ZKbTUA20XBb8IkXZ-Ox/s320/37.bmp" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>36. WWF Superstars - 'Slam Jam'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1992, #4, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I’m as happy to note the continuing presence of American macho bullshit in our chart as I was to oversee the numerous highly placed, phony landfill indie bands dominating last week’s chapter. Although I’m in trouble in the morning when the landlord sees this.<br />
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<b>AN</b>: A straight steal from Michael Jackson’s 'Black or White'; furthermore, a sly co-option of African American music as a whole (hip-hop specifically); furthermore: a total fucking travesty. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: There really is nothing to say about this early example of song-as-marketing. So I’ll simply note that one of my favourite episodes of <i>Curb Your Enthusiasm</i> sees Larry David upset the sons of WWF wrestler Thor by informing them that wrestling is fake, not real. Jeff then gets caught letting down Thor’s tyres, resulting in an off-screen beating. Magnificent.<br />
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<b>TM</b>: This is musically clattering – about as subtle as WWF Wrestling itself but lacking any of the melodramatic absurdity which made it inevitably reliable kiddie-fodder. It is a dire sludge of synthetic percussion and horns, appended with unwelcome “whoah-oh-oh”s and random sampled catchphrases from the rogue’s gallery of wrestlers.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguldOTkLLMJE6CgRn_OUcoIMdwyHW4ASQ8gjnq38YrHwymWAZs8Pfa3dfe9xa832BIY2gU6I7NO14as-BtpASsGYUxtd7E3tzIyWGc2e4d89KHrlSUS9PZgBrjnHKQpP3YJmBK1mWe38ka/s1600/36.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguldOTkLLMJE6CgRn_OUcoIMdwyHW4ASQ8gjnq38YrHwymWAZs8Pfa3dfe9xa832BIY2gU6I7NO14as-BtpASsGYUxtd7E3tzIyWGc2e4d89KHrlSUS9PZgBrjnHKQpP3YJmBK1mWe38ka/s320/36.bmp" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>35. Michael Jackson - 'Heal the World'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1992, #2, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I don’t think I nominated a single record from between 1987 – 1992 because I have a sycophantic devotion to almost all chart music released between those years, and was easily impressionable, too, at the time. However, bugger me sideways if this saccharine delight wasn’t the gateway song that led to the ‘facepalm’ borderline blasphemy Brits performance of 1996, perfectly punctured by Cocker’s arse. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone try to defend this, though I haven’t read <a href="http://www.zero-books.net/books/resistible-demise-of-michael-jackson-the">that</a> Zero book yet, shamefully. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: It’s just too depressing, isn’t it? The most gifted musical performer of his time reduced to trite, childish nonsense like this. It’s as though Jackson had come to believe his own mega-maniacal myth as a magical figure able to transform the world to his liking with the click of a finger. No wonder he was reduced to sulking that 'They Don’t Care About Us' a few short years later. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: ‘We are the World’ Part II, but more omnipresent for me, being ten when it was released. The undeniable melancholy inherent in his naivety and isolation does not negate the malign influence of this slice of Disney pop. Alex’s point about liberal megastars holds here: vigorous protestations of caring can hide a terrifying void. There isn’t just one key change, but two.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjToHvhdMU2yRA54zixk9jIaxTbFYuLQgPDbp7jB6iu7bb4cUhwTipoV1ZpARtsCpsDzbLRYN1GeIESF8Z2XgBlhJeaJAHu14xxCm4ZOClPcVAXEtE6gSMW0uVLjz0FCNau_bHdTvVGSTn_/s1600/35.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjToHvhdMU2yRA54zixk9jIaxTbFYuLQgPDbp7jB6iu7bb4cUhwTipoV1ZpARtsCpsDzbLRYN1GeIESF8Z2XgBlhJeaJAHu14xxCm4ZOClPcVAXEtE6gSMW0uVLjz0FCNau_bHdTvVGSTn_/s320/35.bmp" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>34. Razorlight - 'America'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2006, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: "There’s nothing on the TV, nothing on the radio that I can BE-LIIIIEEEVE IN!" ‘Cynically Courting A Radio Hit In) America’ was thankfully the only chart-topper from Johnny Borrell’s Boomtown Rats tribute band whose long-threatened comeback is yet to come to fruition. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Hmm, tricky. For some reason, despite being a die-hard Razorlight hater, and despite the fact that this is obviously risible, I have a soft spot for it. It somehow came along at the right time, and I quite like melodic, reverby guitar lines. Sincere apologies. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Lunk-headed, appallingly crass attempt to break the country of the same name with FM-friendly Strokes-lite bollocks. Hardly 'I’m So Bored with the USA' is it? Having lost their committed early audience through sell-out nonsense like this, Razorlight have since quite rightly faded into complete obscurity. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Infamously rubbish, but is that just in our circles? Maybe Borrell is regarded as a key player, a latter-day Lennon or Dylan; if so, we are doomed. Current British musicians never ‘get’ the concept of America right, always reducing it to simplistic and demeaning symbols. “There’s nothing on the TV, nothing on the radio means that much to me” – especially this sort of unmitigated shite.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>33. DJ Otzi - 'Hey Baby (Uuh, Aah)'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Not quite football-related, but was re-recorded a year later with the lyrics altered 'appropriately'. We really do seem to be approaching whole new levels of mindbending gormlessness as we progress towards records we happen to see less and less merit in. Can I be arsed to bring up the ‘of course it’s fucking subjective’ disclaimer again? No. When I say "if you don’t like it, don’t read it", there’s probably a heavy irony in there I’m deeply proud of. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Even though this was released at the peak of my teenage “poptimist” phase, I still thought it was one of the worst pieces of music I’d ever heard, and still think so. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This is simply appalling and it isn’t even worth the effort of writing anything witty about it. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: The epitome of a lowest common denominator dance track. That’s why it isn’t <i>quite</i> as objectionable as the dross that surrounds it in this week’s list: while this is as guileless as it gets, such dance tracks are at least relatively harmless. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>32. JJ Barrie - 'No Charge'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1976, #1, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: How the fatherfuck did this get to Number One? Apparently a country music staple documenting the unconditional love and altruism offered up by a mother in comparison to a supposed invoice sent to her by her son for performing various tasks. I feel the need to charge after three and a half minutes of that. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Fuck, there’s something incredibly sinister about the lecherous Noel Edmonds in the intro to this. On the other hand, isn’t the song itself actually quite a cogent critique of capitalist exchange value? <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I would have preferred this song a little more if, instead of the boy welling up with schmaltzy tears at the end, he simply turned around and went “fuckin’ cough up man, will yer?” in a North Tees accent. At least it would have been amusing, rather than turgid. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: This was claimed by wrongheaded ‘Blue Labour’ <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/10/no-charge-song-seventies-less-greedy-britain">types</a> to represent the more social-democratic ’70s. This smug, insincere profession of warm-heartedness – “Great big ol’ tears in his eyes” – is as ‘socialist’ as Pat Robertson or <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-santorum-college-remarks-20120303,0,734840.story">Rick</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9156051/US-election-2012-Rick-Santorum-under-fire-over-unemployment-gaffe.html">Santorum</a>. “And, when y’ add it all up”, it is even more sickeningly cloying than the Paul Anka track we slated a couple of weeks back. If the sentiment was genuine, then why wasn’t it released without charge?<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>31. Shayne Ward - 'That's My Goal'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2005, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I’d yet to be sucked in to the Cunt Contest by this point (that came a year later through the ill-fated scenario of a Saturday night in and little else to do, so I missed this the first time round). I’m not even entirely sure that the standard winner’s single has improved since they started releasing covers. Actually Little Mix doing ‘Cannonball’ is maybe akin to having your entire being cleansed if you play it after this terrible, terrible record. These things are so identikit now that the plodding, inspirational ballad is almost beyond parody. But did it have a key change? I’m not listening to it again to find out. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Bland dross. Not worth more than ten words of commentary. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Is it just me or does this kind of overblown shite just get worse as time goes by? Ward sounds like he’s distracted by something as he sings, e.g. a pigeon having a shit on someone’s head, and the production is as low rent as a cardboard box. At least when people like Mariah Carey were doing this sort of thing it had a modicum of class and airiness about it, whatever else. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Last Thursday, amid an epic pub-quiz triumph, a friend claimed to quite like ‘No U Hang Up’ as it was “slick”. Each to their own. I would be gobsmacked if anyone in 2012 finds this other than draining and dull. Yes, the key change is present; the "story", the "journey" and the "the heart and soul" are all gallingly correct. Go on lad; sing yet another culturally suffocating Cowellite ballad in return for a transient pat on the head. Desist British public; stop the rot.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>30. R. Kelly - 'I Believe I Can Fly'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1997, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Isn’t it strange how the more I’m subjected to these apparently all-encompassing inspirational ballads, the more crushed and powerless I feel? <br />
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<b>AN</b>: A career lowlight for a man who has latterly become cool among hipsters, largely because he allows them to revisit with impunity the macho puerility of adolescence. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: That line at the start where R. Kelly sings about once feeling unable to go on – I don’t believe R. Kelly has ever felt like that. Plus the lyrics are back in 'Search for the Hero' mode again. Music for Emma Harrison’s theft of taxpayers’ money. I know I’ve used that line before but it bears repeating. Endlessly. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: This one is one of the first pop songs to have truly rankled with me. Why was the 1990s so hospitable to the chest-beating, self-motivational ballad? Something to do with ‘The End of History’; the move inwards from Reaganite bombast to Clintonian self-glorification? Gospel choir, key change, piss-easy rhymes and the teeth-grinding melisma of an utter exhibitionist: aye, it’s an R. Kelly ballad that’s worse than that infernal remix.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>29. Geri Halliwell - 'Lift Me Up'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1999, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: See #30. Utter blankness fills my ears. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Geri Halliwell is an awful human being; really really horrible on every level. And unlike all of the other Spice Girls, she didn’t make a single even half-good record. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Ginger Spice’s opening gambit in a failed attempt to be taken seriously as a sophisticated artist. Who the hell even remembers this today, let alone takes it seriously? <br />
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<b>TM</b>: There is a lot to be said for the initial Spice Girls singles, even if they were never as effortlessly brilliant as the All Saints. This is just tiring in its generically uplifting manner – even more so in the context of this week’s selection of lumbering ballads. Ah, and my best friend Mr Key Change... hello sirrah, pull up chair! MAKE IT STOP, <u>PLEASE MAKE IT STOP</u>.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>28. The Supernaturals - 'Smile'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1997, #23, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Perhaps the ‘Chelsea Dagger’ of the nineties. Possesses the entire opposite of its desired effect on this tired mind. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Death of Britpop. Good riddance, certainly in this instance. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Another pub-rock band with money hurled at them in the dark days of Britpop. The message here is no less trite self-help nonsense than M People. Hmmm, there’s a bit of theme emerging here. The worst songs are the ones in which we are all implored to keep calm and carry on. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Joy unconfined: the Britpop hobby-horse hurtles into view! There’s an idiot grin on the face of the rider, who’s got that faraway, ‘am-I-being-ironic-here?’ look in his eyes. There is an inept Beach Boys pastiche unnecessary in the era of the Wondermints and the High Llamas. Emblematic of TFI Friday ‘pop’, which was so rightfully skewered by Luke Haines in his memoir <i>Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall</i>.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>27. Jessie J. - 'Who's Laughing Now'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, #16, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Needs to be watched with its accompanying video to be ‘enjoyed’ fully. Neurotic, moaning shite from the least authentic popstar of our age. Should have aged considerably well by the time <i>YouTube</i> is something we’re telling our grandchildren about. ‘Wa-bucca-wa-wa-bucca…’. I can genuinely say that bit in particular fucking riles me senseless. ‘Look at me now’ is a theme I’d like to blacklisted from popular music. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Isn’t Jessie J sort of credible in some quarters? I’m puzzled as to why this is the case. Mechanised corporate stage-school evil. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Yes, one can indeed shirk off one’s childhood tormentors when one has money hurled in one’s direction after being classmates with Adele at the BRIT School and have major entertainment companies queuing outside your front door. Frankly, this is a grievous insult to anyone who struggles with self-esteem issues. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: This song effortlessly defines maddening: from its ‘beat-box’ vocalising at the start to the unearned <i>schadenfreude</i> of the chorus. Ugh, and what of the verse with Ms. J’s vocals vacillating between sub-Lily Allen panto-cockney – “Let the haters HA-ATE!” and slick ‘soulfulness’? This is a barren calculation straight out of the BRIT School manual and a timorous low-ebb in the annals of British pop music.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>26. Kasabian - 'L.S.F.'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2004, #10, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Speaking of inauthenticity, this pseudo-Madchester nonsense has never won me over. Similarly to the legacy of Cobain, Ian Brown’s swagger and bravado has been re-appropriated by numerous goons over the years, with his intelligence and mystique side-stepped for an extra layer of inane lairiness that they’ve picked up from Liam fucking Gallagher. Utterly meaningless and, even when I watched them play a small gig for free in 2004, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t connect at all. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Again, apologies, but this is the only tune I like by an otherwise irredeemable band. I just think that keyboard sample is pretty magic. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Amazingly, Kasabian are like an even shitter version of the Lo-Fidelity Allstars, and the first incarnation was quite shit enough, thank you. Laughably, the opening lines to 'L.S.F.' directly pilfer the riff from The Beach Boys’ 'Kokomo'. That’s 'Kokomo', not 'Caroline No'. What an absolute shambles. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: “Step on it, ‘lectronic!” This foolery is akin to a lobotomised fusion of Primal Scream and the Stone Roses. There is a horribly obvious lift from ‘<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU">Once in a Lifetime</a>’ at the start, beyond-banal ‘1960s’ organ and references to a “polyphonic prostitute” and tiresome drug chic. “Messiah for the animals”; Eric Burdon you most certainly are not. I am not necessarily any great shakes in the well-adjusted human stakes, but this lot are clearly unspeakable. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>25. Ed Sheeran - 'You Need Me, I Don't Need You'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, #4, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Isn’t Ed edgy? Not only did he not go to [you guessed it - ed] BRIT School, he sleeps on a couch. And his hero’s the defiantly Blunt-lite Damien Rice. All of this speaks <i>volumes </i>of uncompromising grit to me. Only it’s completely safe, pedestrian and embraced by the Brit establishment. Funny how he gladly accepted their accolades...<br />
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<b>AN</b>: Don’t worry friends: they shall not pass. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: If there’s one thing worse than manufactured pop, it’s singer-songwriters churning out self-valedictory toss about having written their own songs. Still, at least it’s not 'The A Team'. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: This chancer’s mug materialised on the 2011 Christmas Day TOTP and my brother’s withering expression said it all. This makes one nostalgic for the days of Craig David or Daniel Bedingfield. It is musically overly busy, prattling and trite in its name-checking of the greats of cutting-edge urban music: erm, Damien Rice... If this lad’s our brightest new hope, we’re fucked.<div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>24. U2 - 'Elevation'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #3, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: We’ve had U2 already of course, and this is to ‘With Or Without You’ and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ what Heron Foods is to Waitrose. By this point, the magic had been absent from events for a full decade. Workmanlike and annoyingly ordinary. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: It makes me feel sick that U2 can get away with so much artistically and ethically pernicious bullshit and they still think they’re in some way a force for moral good. Somewhere therein is a parable of the root of all injustice. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Rather than a mole digging up Bono’s soul, I’d rather it dug out U2’s tax receipts and published them so we can see just how far these earnest NGO-hijacking tits are squirrelling away.<br />
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<b>TM</b>: “A <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdwLp0co6C0">mole</a> digging in a hole!” While they have made some good music, U2 are ultimately symbolic of their nation’s sub-prime ‘Celtic Tiger’ phase: globalisation run amok. Each album contains laughable silage like this that makes a mockery of ‘quality control’. This is a breathtakingly clunky turkey, and that’s being unkind to our friends in the <i>Meleagris</i> genus. As Yeats once stated: ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone’. No U2-helmed “EX-CA-VA-TION!” please.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>23. Travie McCoy feat. Bruno Mars - 'Billionaire'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2010, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Can’t believe we’ve got all the way up to #23 and we’re only experiencing the first appearance of Mr Mars, whose entire recorded solo output seems to have been penned from the hand of a particularly creepy stalker. I can’t say whether records like this make me feel older or simply less American. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Yet another good call Dave. Definitely one of the worst tunes of all time. I would be happy to have this in the top (bottom?) 5, actually. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: When Christopher Lasch wrote his thesis <i>The Culture of Narcissism</i> not even he could have imagined that, thirty years on, he would be proven as right as this psychotic wank. Plus, Bruno Mars’s shit beard and beenie hat makes my blood boil so much I can hear the bubbles. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: ‘Cos that’s all it’s about for the majority of people: an unrealisable dream of riches, <i>Forbes</i> magazine covers and Angelina on tap. I don’t believe this is genuinely the case – I just hope we’d have less evidence to the contrary, like the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93WRQ8HT_WA">success</a> of this ghastly avaricious bauble.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>22. Limp Bizkit - 'Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: There really was some appalling heavy rock music bridging the gap between the death of Britpop and emergence of The Strokes. Maybe records that completely infuriate you are indescribably hideous for a reason, leaving normally coherent commentators with little else to offer than Tourette’s-esque outpourings of cultural dismay. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I don’t have any strong feelings about this. Turgid misogyny. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This is utterly contemptible and I’m surprised it’s outside the Top 20. Fred Durst’s cynical and knowingly adolescent toy-throwing in all its horrible, detestable “glory”. One of the few times I’ve thought the patronising phrase “grow up” justified. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: “Old school soldiers”. Durst claims to have liked The Smiths and The Cure in his youth; his music bears absolutely none of their sensitive imprint. Instead, this is all too easy to imagine <a href="http://kasamaproject.org/2009/04/11/the-torture-playlist/">being</a> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/feb/28/theusmilitarystorturetop1">used</a> in Guantanamo Bay to torture prisoners in the name of freedom. This is knuckle-headed macho rock ripe for military appropriation; as Groucho Marx said, <i>military intelligence is a contradiction in terms</i>. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>21. Chris De Burgh - 'The Lady in Red'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1986, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Basically the mid-eighties equivalent of a Scouting For Girls hit, without the embarrassing attempts at cheeky irony. Stomach-churning, though people have released similar guff under a thin veil of ‘credibility’ and that’s very worrying indeed. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Ha, I wondered when this was going to crop up. A good old-fashioned absolutely fucking shit tune! <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Music for bastards who own big yachts. And that is all. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Equally tortuous, though not as aurally assaulting as #22. Who would have thought that Chris De Burgh could ever constitute a comparative relief? Nah, this is an irredeemable decimation of the ‘singer-songwriter’ ideal. “Cheek to cheek” is justly derided. His straining vocals jettison all subtlety and the backing track is music for airports that not even JG Ballard could imbue with alluring weirdness.</div><div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_C0MXH8ZpKlljHv3o_v2bZtcKTfvboxkJmwf-u4OqWM2yAWw9OwZZfn7tNpZTdqp5ku21Qs8UNPjPo-xWwqNgvqVv5Czg5TWjoauAm2YSIw2bcgU7jm3Aj-OJFNVONr3zYQazguSwLII/s1600/21.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_C0MXH8ZpKlljHv3o_v2bZtcKTfvboxkJmwf-u4OqWM2yAWw9OwZZfn7tNpZTdqp5ku21Qs8UNPjPo-xWwqNgvqVv5Czg5TWjoauAm2YSIw2bcgU7jm3Aj-OJFNVONr3zYQazguSwLII/s320/21.bmp" width="320" /></a></div></div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-65749610711816273762012-03-14T18:26:00.001+00:002012-03-17T21:59:18.179+00:00The Worst 200 Songs, Part VIII: #60-41<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>The lateness of this week's comments is due to, well, life. John was away at All Tomorrow's Parties over the weekend. I was with friends at Richard Herring's performance at the Stand Comedy Club in Newcastle last evening. Herring was a quick-fire and yet subtly wise presence, considering the subject of love and relationships with a carefully balanced dichotomy between the realist's scathing cynicism and the humanist's warm romanticism.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>60. The Automatic - 'Monster'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2006, #4, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: 'Wacky' wank. If there is to be a resurgence in charting UK guitar music, you can guarantee that it would be even more banal than this. How does anyone relate to this song? Daft shouty boy is icing on cake.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Another tune that reminds me of Justin Lee Collins, <em>Hollyoaks</em>, and the mid-noughties nadir of human existence<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: The whole “Britpop II” thing really was a waste of everyone’s time, wasn’t it?<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Overhyped ‘zaniness’ from these ‘indie’ paddlers down the mainstream, as expressed in the tiresome video. Such dumb, meaningless lyrics: the human brain’s demise “through misuse, through misuse”.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>59. Marty Wilde - 'Donna'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1959, #3, RC)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Standard late-1950s schmaltz of the type that must be on its way to extinction as generations die away. With a bit of luck Radio 2 might be listenable by the time I get to 65. This old 45 can do one.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: In a few isolated cases, the attempt to make something that will sell results in pop genius. More often, sadly, it results in hollow pastiche. This epitomises the latter trend.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: What a load of crooning toss. It’s shameful that the raw energy of rock and roll ended up in schmaltzy rubbish like this. No wonder The British Invasion bands sounded like the second coming.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Lachrymose crooning without an ounce of sincerity from the South Londoner who took his stage first-name from the Paddy Chayefsky-scripted film. However, he did write ‘<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerER6af04k">Jesamine</a>’ and spawned Kim. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRxR33NLzKGCBSittkR1FfRz2ydelXghacCrgMMSGAhF_wp6wZedcPBTs93kXjIhosP1GnUUs1Ddr0-6Lt2oT6UEoRrdDFZsctIG415vbowFTWIw9A7uDzKfOZ6oeR2p6BjhK5nUvjKFIu/s1600/59.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRxR33NLzKGCBSittkR1FfRz2ydelXghacCrgMMSGAhF_wp6wZedcPBTs93kXjIhosP1GnUUs1Ddr0-6Lt2oT6UEoRrdDFZsctIG415vbowFTWIw9A7uDzKfOZ6oeR2p6BjhK5nUvjKFIu/s320/59.jpg" width="256" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>58. Shayne Ward - 'No U Hang Up'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #2, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Don't want to say too much as I hear his family <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/shaynes-dad-saw-win-in-jail-570213">can be</a> a bit tasty but this reminds me of baltic mornings at HMV York, Xmas 2007 in just a t-shirt, alternated with 'Bleeding Love' on constant rotation. <br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: One of the ways that the whole X Factor thing has become so terrifyingly hegemonic is that it’s so difficult to critique. I mean, there’s just nothing there is there? Strikingly similar to the Marty Wilde in that sense.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Is this just about those 090 numbers I see advertised in the back pages of tabloids? I hope so.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Smug emoting from this designer slap-head, with a video that verges on soft-porn. Unappealing in its self-satisfied solipsism; take your “No U Hang Up kind of love” and learn some basic humanity.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>57. Elton John & Kiki Dee - 'True Love'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1993, #2, RC)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Funny how you don't hear this as often as 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'. Elton is one of those tabloid aristocrats who has actually composed a number of agreeable mainstays, but this makes ears vomit.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Increasingly, I think it’s not really the right-wing idiots that make the world such an awful place but the wealthy liberals who grow fat on exploitation while making blasé gestures at philanthropy and bien pensant post-sixties ethics. Or, put another way, Elton John is a cunt.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Amazing to think that in the 1970s Elton John was an outré, exciting performer responsible for such great songs as 'Benny and the Jets'. In contrast, 'True Love' is little more than the sound of a bulge spreading around a middle-aged belly.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: For me, one of this list’s most heinous ballads. A Casio aided and key-change abetted mass of treacly, saccharine ghastliness. Two old pros grandstand, with little enthusiasm and nothing to say.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>56. Eiffel 65 - 'Blue (Da Ba Dee)'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1999, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: The late 1990s really were a miserable time for me, and like The Mavericks, revisiting this leaves me profoundly gloomy. Just tacky. No redeeming features. I think the 90s just ran out of steam by the end.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Quite enjoyed this at the time purely because it’s so fucking weird. Hallucinatory Euro dalek pop. Its release did coincide with some teenage experiments with magic mushrooms, which might have had something to do with it.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Remember when the KLF wrote that book about how to become a star? You can hear the embers churning about the breeze right here.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Can’t be worse than #57, but: a rare piece of less than enjoyable euro-pop. It possesses a certifiably exasperating tune and a total blankness – from the shell-suited singer to the animation.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>55. Wet Wet Wet - 'Love is all Around'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1994, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Luckily, the '00s gave us far superior long-standing chart toppers ('Crazy', 'Umbrella') to the 1990s. Jarvis's 'I hate Wet Wet Wet' TOTP message was the perfect gesture. No wonder people fell for Oasis.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Yeah this is shit. Everyone knows why. It took people longer to realise that Richard Curtis was even more insidious as a cultural influence though, eh?<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Number 1 for about a year in 1994. Here, the latent promise of love as widespread agora in The Troggs’ original version is converted into atomised, individualised ideals of love as saccharine shite. <br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Even in 1994, this sounded like greasy hands in the till: life seeping out of the culture. This milking of a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut5uC91FcbI">so-so</a> ‘60s ballad paved the way for more inane film tie-ins and the worst boy-band tendencies. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>54. Eamon - 'Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2004, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Struggling to get to the end of these tracks now. What an awful, pitiful and misogynist strop of a record. However, the week when Morrissey propped up not only this but its answer record too was quite a moment. Fuck this.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: An empty hook amid nasty noughties misogyny.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Supposedly, this song was released as a kind of “twist” on the usual teen break-up nonsense. That’ll be the kind of “twist” that made Bruce Willis a ghost in <em>The Sixth Sense</em> when we all saw it coming from the opening frame. <br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: This whiny railing against his ‘hoe’ exemplified the bitter, mean-spirited mood of the early 2000s. The emotion seems staged and calculated, as in Frankee’s infamously egregious ‘answer’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1K0pUSSFUo&feature=related">record</a>. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>53. Phil Collins - 'Groovy Kind of Love'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1988, #1, RC)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Deep down, I know this is a terrible record yet I can't help but cite a fondness for it. On the other hand, no, I can't even enjoy this nostalgically. Has there ever been a less glamourous pop star? "I'm talking nonce sense".<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Proto-Westlife dross. How did he get away with this?<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: There is just something about Phil Collins’s late 1980s output that makes my blood boil and I don’t even know what. Maybe it’s just fundamentally infuriating in every conceivable way.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: A reasonably charming ‘60s hit is premeditatedly, ruthlessly slain by Collins, a man who exemplified ‘80s efficiency and selfishness as much as The Beatles summed up ‘60s egalitarianism and openness.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>52. Hughie Green - 'Stand Up and Be Counted'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1977, did not chart, TM)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Hateful and sinister right-wing patriotic spoken word horror from a fucking game show host. No wonder Paula Yates was so saddened to learn that he fathered her. Yep, this is terrifying. Not rousing, but spooky and extremely unnerving.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Actually scratch what I said about the liberals. The right-wing cunts are obviously slightly more blame-worthy.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: A man approaching pension age (and who hid in the Canadian Air Force during WW2 like Zilly from <em>Catch the Pigeon</em>) self-pityingly decries the end of empire as though his flaccid little ego depended on it. A 1970s antecedent of the execrable <em>Noel’s HQ</em>.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Portentous, mean-spirited poppycock from the talent-show host with right-wing delusions of grandeur. "The will to win"! Like Portillo in SAS mode; mere Mosleyite demagoguery flanked by grim choir and strings.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>51. Jonathan King - 'The True Story of Harold Shipman'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, album track; did not chart - surprisingly!, TM)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Even scarier than #52. It was bad enough listening to this when the nominations began so I don't think I can repeat the experience. I would imagine that the full opera is quite amusing in the wrongest sense possible. Had to be in.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: By god, sometimes the sheer weight of sinister shit in the world really gets me down.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Jonathan King’s effort to implore us all to treat media caricatures with scepticism might have won more favour had it not attempted to rehabilitate a man who killed dozens of his patients in cold blood in the process. <br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: There is much scope for a song to critique media sensationalism. The vile King is manifestly not the man to record it, as this pitiful effort attests. Simply abysmal, as well as crass.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>50. Eric Clapton - 'Wonderful Tonight'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1977, #30 - live, 1991, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: I'm all for sincere musical declarations of love to your chosen figure of obsession, but fuck me if this isn't unbearably gooey. He's as boring as shit anyway at the best of times, the acoustic 'Layla' being a lifeless drag too. Get a room.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Good call Dave. Can’t understand people who like this. It’s odd that Clapton became so terrible though, isn’t it? People of a certain age regard him in the same bracket as Hendrix. Which makes me wonder: is death the only escape from capitalism?<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Millionaire anti-immigrant bore tells us all about the great shags he reckons he’s getting. Well thank you and fuck off!<br />
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<strong></strong><strong>TM</strong>: Clapton sleepwalks through this ballad <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiNpAyBuCd0">which</a> makes Knopfler sound animated. There is nothing of interest in this: just a dull, complacent riff and soft chords with barely any musical variation at all.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXnOaqDQVyLyWFpUk_yQRSBat4eboYiUnSHdEwfPKsE3nSkZRrjkXCRDoSlyEfu1CCpPx1yljeITxcjzG-ggOHZtx7jfyGZiK4_mrtRqyFz8aGoH3MLqf8oAoVaiKNtQ6tPkPNt1LH8acO/s1600/50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXnOaqDQVyLyWFpUk_yQRSBat4eboYiUnSHdEwfPKsE3nSkZRrjkXCRDoSlyEfu1CCpPx1yljeITxcjzG-ggOHZtx7jfyGZiK4_mrtRqyFz8aGoH3MLqf8oAoVaiKNtQ6tPkPNt1LH8acO/s320/50.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>"CLAPTON IS GOD" - or just a millionaire in a suit?</strong></em></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>49. Athlete - 'You Got the Style'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2002, #37, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Sub-Coldplay. How can a song about rioting sound so safe and conceited? And how many will have picked upon the subject matter, rather than thinking it's simply a cosy song about nice weather?<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: I quite like 'Wires' by Athlete.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Why the hell were Athlete so popular? This is awful, plodding nonsense that pre-empts no-marks like Orson and The Feeling as much as anyone else. For an indie band, that’s scandalous.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Student-friendly ‘indie’ from 2002 defines forgettable. I preferred Lemon Jelly, Junior Senior and Tweet. This Athlete tune is far from hateful, but is evidence of how little we’ll settle for.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>48. The Kooks - 'Ooh La'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2006, #20, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: So pleasing to see so much dreadful bland 'indie' in the upper reaches of the chart. Fake Scouse accents, Brit School background, sub-Britpop backwards-looking bullshit. 'Pretty, pretty, petti-coat'. FUCK OFF.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: The most inexplicable thing about The Kooks – and there were many – was the guy’s accent. It’s fake Scouse isn’t it? I can think of no real explanation for this.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: As with Kula Shaker before them, and The Vaccines later, The Kooks are just an Etonian idea of what indie music ought to be – gelded, depoliticised and “nudging” the masses toward a life of diligent consumption.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: “Your pretty, pretty petti<em>coat</em>”. A John Power lookalike advances words that are vague, presumptuous and puzzlingly smug: empty Hollywood references thrown around like so much hollow tinsel. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>47. Jess Conrad - 'Mystery Girl' </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1961, #18, RC)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: Conrad's beige and sickening pop ditty may be as edgy as Daniel O'Donnell, but by all accounts he was something of a fearsome psychopath in his day, not only biting chunks out of his rivals' faces, but even threatening to chop Frankie Howerd's ears off. What a nice man.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Similar to the Marty Wilde. The English Establishment attempting to negate and twee-ify the counterculture before it was even born.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: Number 47?! This isn’t that bad, surely?<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Much to their credit, the British public preferred ‘<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e4JXwd7XMo">Johnny Remember Me</a>’. A cantering, innocuously dim bauble of a track; cut-price teddy-boys surely swaggered. The last pre-1970s entry: deeply resistible. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIMbBdgULtiXxXGhd8tEhU4EyhbJNxlT9V4aRCWIRlORPO9vFgafTHoyO597qCzInC1llt515RLYFPcgnOr8pu5_bzl_ex7WgZuFEUJRddRYm16bb8FuVBErk_nJ7oX-jHW3sZ-XqT19sy/s1600/47.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIMbBdgULtiXxXGhd8tEhU4EyhbJNxlT9V4aRCWIRlORPO9vFgafTHoyO597qCzInC1llt515RLYFPcgnOr8pu5_bzl_ex7WgZuFEUJRddRYm16bb8FuVBErk_nJ7oX-jHW3sZ-XqT19sy/s320/47.jpg" width="315" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>46. Kula Shaker - 'Mystical Machine Gun'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1999, #14, TM)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: The accompanying TFI Friday performance was akin to experiencing the last dying whimper of Britpop. This was at a time when the key players of that movement found their popularity had crumbled seemingly overnight. Pretentious yet hilarious self-indulgent drone.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: Funnybad.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: This is just a re-working of 'Spaceman' by Babylon Zoo, except it’s worse. Imagine that. Utterly vacuous shite.<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Utterly misbegotten and ponderous grand-folly churned out by Mills & Co in their twilight. 346 seconds of pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo that even that crazed shyster L. Ron Hubbard would find fanciful. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><i><b>“Open up forget your life, breathe in breathe out retain a sense of suicide / Are you glad to see how far you’ve come? / You’re a wizard in a blizzard / A mystical machine gun”?</b></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>45. The Feeling - 'Never Be Lonely'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #9, DL)</span><br />
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<strong>DL</strong>: "B-b-b-b-b-b-b-baby, I think I'm going c-c-c-crazy". I'd like to hear you defend that. On the other hand, it's practically Modeselektor when compared to the works of similar offenders Scouting for Girls.<br />
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<strong>AN</strong>: The rundown this week is making me depressed. At least in previous weeks I was heartened by the tunes I quite liked. Eiffel 65 is the best we’ve got this time around.<br />
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<strong>JG</strong>: This (and Adele, and Jessie J, and The Kooks) is what the BRIT School churns out. One institution, degrading our aural culture like a great whirling piece of Ideological State Apparatus. “Consume, do not think.”<br />
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<strong>TM</strong>: Mika might have been an even surer bet, but this is an absurdly successful fusion of Supertramp, Macca and The Rembrandts, crowned with a glib sentiment. Why accept this, when we have Hot Chip?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7mkYLrhjJRy8eZXjJVNJUUCECFD2Bhm4GqQIZ520pA_cB06FdbTuKB3xdFthG51NSWIY6phBSulxnN8KTuUG3GU8Oytq8HlkLxOFhjJucZkypI6cLsSLTQao2zryi6IGncjqEfNZyJPa/s1600/45.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7mkYLrhjJRy8eZXjJVNJUUCECFD2Bhm4GqQIZ520pA_cB06FdbTuKB3xdFthG51NSWIY6phBSulxnN8KTuUG3GU8Oytq8HlkLxOFhjJucZkypI6cLsSLTQao2zryi6IGncjqEfNZyJPa/s320/45.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>44. Scouting For Girls - 'Elvis Ain't Dead'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #8, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I've spent five years trying and failing to put the anger awoken in me courtesy of this trio into words. After this, you could never use the word 'indie' to describe a style of music again. "Elvis has left the building!" A pathetic example of popular song. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: On the other hand, I’m glad we’re now getting a preponderance of recent excrement. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the members of SfG in the future. Actually, no it won’t. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Actually, I can relate quite well to that line of “I wish it was me you chose.” It’s rawer than anything else this shower have achieved. Naturally, the mood is then killed off with a completely nonsensical reference to Elvis being alive. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: More tin-pot ‘70s theft in those keyboards. I <a href="http://tom-may.livejournal.com/86726.html">slated</a> this over four years ago, and have no reason to change my mind now; sadly, SFG have yet to leave the building. Yes he is dead, you Ruislip fuckwit!<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>43. The Stereophonics - 'Madame Helga'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2003, #4, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Extremely unpleasant, tuneless and bluesy coke-rock that a certain pub-rock covers band used to open with at work every single time they played. Completely charmless. What happened to the poignant humdrum small-town tales of the 'Word Gets Around' era? <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Fuck me. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: That this isn’t technically the worst thing the Stereophonics have produced should not be read as any kind of recommendation. Like a heavier form of The Feeling, unfortunately. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: </div><div><br />
</div><div>Assail my tired ears <br />
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With hoarse, strutting gutturals <br />
<br />
In tatty facades<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>42. Cher Lloyd - 'Swagger Jagger'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Christ. M.I.A's become disappointing enough without having to endure an 18 year old 'street' reality TV star emulating her style. At least it doesn't have a dubstep breakdown. The referencing of Twitter sounds very desperate too. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Profoundly dystopian. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This kind of nursery rhyme shite makes Simon Cowell lots of money by bowdlerising earlier templates established by the likes of Lady Sovereign. Criminal. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: The sole W200S track with a majority of dislikes on YouTube. There’s brash, bubblegum pop but this is just woeful. “Be what I be”: such senseless lyrics make it the natural and equally odious sibling of ‘Darling Buds of May’.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>41. Lenny Kravitz - 'Fly Away'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1999, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: 1999 was so shit. I remember listening to <i>13</i> a lot as the perfect antidote to everything. Lenny is synonymous with terms such as 'vapid', 'cliche', and 'Mondeo' and quite rightly so. It's piss miserable hearing this again. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: In many ways this pre-empts the noughties trend (Scouting for Girls, Stereophonics, The Feeling, Athlete) for lobotomised rock with just enough alternative street cred not to be laughed out of town by Joe Average. Risible. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: The entire latter two thirds of this song consists of Lenny Kravitz wishing he could “get away”. Go on then. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: To Curtis Mayfield what Ed Milliband is to Clement Attlee. And that’s actually being kind to this journeyman irritant. This is a monumentally galling record, endlessly ubiquitous in its nettling triteness.</div><div> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaGxF7yo35ZOe8aQ61tcBR7B1iOHXQJxcgv8maySz108G_OxbJ8M9i3wJaRacT8xB1t2KxlCkYBYhA_mboArl8oSs5Rg9Ag1sNtD1xjGZ6eCN_Sih_F6tUiGWD_jfPiILgaV-sUzgBYD65/s1600/41.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaGxF7yo35ZOe8aQ61tcBR7B1iOHXQJxcgv8maySz108G_OxbJ8M9i3wJaRacT8xB1t2KxlCkYBYhA_mboArl8oSs5Rg9Ag1sNtD1xjGZ6eCN_Sih_F6tUiGWD_jfPiILgaV-sUzgBYD65/s320/41.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-48801819717754058872012-03-06T20:46:00.003+00:002012-03-06T21:15:04.733+00:00The Worst 200 Songs, Part VII: #80-61<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>I must be cruel only to be kind.</i><br />
William Shakespeare, <i>Hamlet</i>, c.1599-1602, III.IV, 178</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 21px;"><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oh, love is found in the east and west<br />
But when love is at home, it's the best<br />
Love is the cure for every evil<br />
Love is the air that supports the eagle<br />
It's called love<br />
And it's so un-cool<br />
It's called love<br />
And somehow it's become unmentionable<br />
It's called love<br />
And it belongs to every one of us<br />
It's called love<br />
And it cuts your life like a broken knife </span></i><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">New Order, 'Thieves Like Us', April 1984 (FAC103)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>80. Reef - 'Place Your Hands'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1996, #6, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Post-Euro '96 Britrock known in its superior form as 'It's Your Letters', sung from the point of view of a man who hadn't passed a solid in a fortnight. Of course, many will clearly dissent. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Quite like this I’m afraid. I find it difficult to be snarky about such unabashed optimism. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I’m sure Gary Stringer thinks he’s being all emotive like Bob Mould by singing like that. But in truth it sounds like a labrador having its testicles sandpapered. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Dull riff, though the vocal irks most: “Oh righ-ah-ht!” This is debased ‘blues’ bellowed with the humility of a Premier League player’s wage packet. Rawk & Roll at fun-point: I conscientiously object!<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>79. The Fratellis - 'Chelsea Dagger'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #5, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Worthless, infantile and moronic landfill 'indie' yob-rock that hasn't aged well at all. Conventional old rot that I truly expected to bag a Top 20 placing. Ear-gratingly compressed production too. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I went to New York in 2007 and saw a giant poster of this utterly forgettable band in Times Square. The noughties: what the Jesus Christ happened there? <br />
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<b>JG</b>: All The Fratellis ever really had was the football terrace chant from this, and that became tiresome quickly enough. Otherwise, this is just gentrified meat and potatoes pub rock.<br />
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</div><div><b>TM</b>: Horribly unpretentious bass-line. Lairy chanting. Bullshit about a “blagger!” A desultory evocation of the emptiness of being on the hedonic treadmill; fuck the morals, it’s Made in Chelsea!<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>78. Foo Fighters - 'All My Life'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2002, #5, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I really can't bear the overblown bluster of the Foos at the best of times, taking the crunchy power of Grohl's former band and discarding all the angst and integrity from it, and this typifies why. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: This is an especially poor effort from a conspicuously terrible band whose popularity has always baffled me. A lame attempt to borrow Queens of the Stone Age’s leftfield kudos. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This is the epitome of former young Turks slipping into an irrelevant, comfortable and slack middle age, but who think they’re still The Shit. Rather than just shit. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Generic rock vocals. While there is more offensive stuff in our list than this, it does exemplify an aesthetic mediocrity. Metal-lite exerts a mystifyingly persistent hold over so many; why?<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>77. The Mavericks - 'Dance the Night Away'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1998, #4, DL)</span><br />
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</div><b>DL</b>: The late '90s swells with records that make me feel nauseous for personal reasons, and the arse-end of high school was a low I'd never wish to return to. This drags me right back. See also Vengaboys. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Novelty shite. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Ubiquitous though it is at weddings and the like, I don’t hate this. It’s not forced. It’s not really all that slick or commercial. That’s not to say I like it much either, mind. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Dire strumathon; a mariachi panto in the aisles of WalMart. The vocalist vacantly, consciously echoes Roy Orbison. This sort of hollow jollity depresses me more than the old Mozzer.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>76. Right Said Fred & Friends - 'Stick It Out'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1993, #4, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: 'Deeply Dippy', 'I'm Too Sexy', 'Don't Talk Just Kiss' - all pop genius. This long-forgotten <i>Comic Relief</i> single is the epitome of awfulness however. They would never trouble the Top Ten again. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I’m grateful to Robin for pointing out with his choices just how awful the early nineties could be. I’d forgotten. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Is there a rule somewhere that says all <i>Comic Relief </i>songs must be embarrassingly unfunny, with cringeworthy cameos from BBC stars of the day to boot? This is even worse than Michael Buerk headbanging to 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.<br />
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TM: Inexplicable tosh, with Caine impressions and sub-<i>Carry On</i> innuendo. Puerile use of varied talents: Cook, Laurie, Fluff. I like ‘Deeply Dippy’ but this is shite, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X71mU-kpIDg">this</a> now grimly ironic <i>Newsnight</i> ditty. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>75. Zucchero & Paul Young - 'Senza Una Donna (Without a Woman)'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1991, #4, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Unwittingly funny drone not miles away from Jimmy Nail's infinitely <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hv2JXw7Nwg">superior</a> 'Ain't No Doubt'. Self-pitying, sexist snooze-fest that doesn't even make sense in duet form: unless they both had a go. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Some ‘80s kitsch is beyond even the revivalist fetishism of the hipsters. You can’t redeem this. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Dreary. Next. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: ‘I changed the world’ with a Knopfler-esque guitar solo! Airy, ’80s sophisto-schmooze. I find it hard to hate the <i>sound</i> of this, but Yello or Art of Noise it is most certainly not. Clunky if not quite as bad as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrc1GB7YVe0">this</a>. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>74. Gym Class Heroes, Ft. Adam Levine - 'Stereo Hearts'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, #3, BB)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: God damn you for resurrecting the UK profile of Maroon 5. Gym Class Heroes really do embody the worst excesses of novelty US hip-pop, with a typically imbecilic chorus from Adam Levine. Dreadful. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I mean obviously it’s the Adam Levine parts that make this unlistenable. There are some dreadful voices in the world. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I do welcome the use of turntable crackle on this. It’s years since a big charting hip-hop song had that. But otherwise this is pointless. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Flimsy confection that makes #75 seem a work of unalloyed poignant humanity. “Make me your radio!” Simple-minded, half-hearted and witless: devoid of crucial things like desire and humour.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>73. 4-4-2 (Talk Sport) - 'Come on England'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2004, #2, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Everytime I hear an unofficial football song, the more my soul is charred. Glamour models, <i>TalkSport </i>and a blasphemous cheapening of a Dexy's classic. It's a good job football already has a bad name. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Can’t think of anything more to say about these shit football novelty songs. They’re just shit football novelty songs aren’t they? <br />
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<b>JG</b>: One of the great many reasons I’m glad I was living in Canada for the whole of Euro 2004, and wish I could live there during every major international football tournament. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: “Like ’66”? Nah. <i>TalkSport</i> demolish a great, overplayed song. Such beery misappropriation makes one mourn the loss of the intense working-class spirit of bands like Dexys. This country’s dream debased.</div><div><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Because giving 'your all' for 'Engerlund' is what will win us a trophy!</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>72. Elvis Vs. JXL - 'A Little Less Conversation'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2002, #1, AN)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Another football-related offering. Overplayed relentlessly to the point of collosal irritation, and sounded like a cheap Fatboy Slim knock off. Adopted by Dubya in 2004 as Republican propaganda too. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Hmm. I can’t actually remember why I chose this. It’s the final nail in the coffin of nineties dance music, I suppose. Big Beat committing suicide. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Fatboy Slim was shite. Absolute shite. So having a second-rate Fatboy Slim facsimile ripping into the fabric of one of Presley’s more interesting songs really corrodes the heart. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Included on an 'Engurlund' footer tie-in compilation. The title becomes an all too literal credo for nihilist nullity. Dreary, <i>B&Q</i>-friendly ‘funk’. Just how dismal is bad dance music?<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>A little </i>more <i>conversation would generally be preferable, like!</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>71. USA For Africa - 'We Are The World'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1985, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Good to have this in lieu of Band Aid. Trite, plodding, embarrassing. Seems even more patronising now the formula's been employed ad nauseum by Cowell and his revolving door of jumped-up semi-finalists. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Profoundly ethically dubious and disastrous in its effects on a global scale. The rich beginning to justify the murderousness and inequality of their neoliberal project by revivifiying nineteenth century philanthropic propaganda. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Controversial choice? To my mind 'We Are the World' (like its Band Aid counterpart) contributed to the misunderstanding of African famine as an act of God, rather than the consequence of poltical decisions made with the West’s backing. Thus, shite song and shite cause. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: “We’re saving our own lives!” These histrionics are paradigmatic of how charity has acted as self-help and a boost to sundry musicians' careers. 7 minutes of sanctimony and hand-clapping delusion from the emoting roll-call.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>70. LMFAO - 'Party Rock Anthem'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: This 2011 chart-topper features GoonRock, and I couldn't put it better myself. For every Lana/Gotye there's at least 20 of these in the Top 40 at any time. You can't demand someone to have a good time. <br />
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AN</b>: Don’t mind it. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Half Scooter, half Flat Eric: all toss. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Out of the CPR-flecked, windy haze: the utterance “Homeboy!” Tedious, easy chords attend priceless insights like: “We going to make you lose your mind” – why can't a mainstream dance hit be an ode to mindfulness for a change? “Everyday I’m shuffling” – what?<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>69. Enrique Iglesias - 'Hero'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2002, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: How can so many people have such strange ideas over what constitutes a sincere and heartfelt song? Even by 2002, this had been done to death. Still demands a scrap more respect than Westlife though. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: We used to have this album on loop at the Italian restaurant in Hexham where I worked after me A levels. Needless to say I don’t have a lot of time for it. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Shit. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Melodramatic, emotional popular song needs richer embellishments – like Haircut 100’s heart-bursting marimba <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_msHpEa3_Y&ob=av2e">here</a>. This is entirely redolent of the<b> 9/11</b> moment – profuse humanity hardening into reaction. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>68. Paul Nicholas - 'Grandma's Party'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1976, #9, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Oh, go back to much-loved sitcom <i>Just Good Friends</i>, penned by the late John Sullivan. There's no doubt these stupefyingly banal '70s hits deserve their place but I'll not miss having to endure them. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: The time signature/phrasing in this is actually quite remarkable. A fascinating piece of music. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Can you imagine attending a party featuring Paul Nicholas and his grandma? I’d be off down the railway line after that. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Capering clowning follows the overdone solemnity of #69. Tragedy followed by farce and all that. This is an equally dismal party prospect as #70 with Nicholas a far too eager to please host.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>67. Tenacious D - 'Fuck Her Gently'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #38 - album, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I once remarked that I didn't think I could ever friends with anyone who liked Tenacious D. I have been proved wrong, but this is neither clever nor funny. Just crass and as hideous as its authors. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Novelty shite. Henceforth I’ll just say NS, I think. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Has there ever been a less funny comedy rock outfit than Tenacious D? This is humour for <i>FHM</i> readers, i.e. cunts. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: “Sum lur-u-urve”: this evokes a greasy, beardy, lank-haired hell; human relations reduced to the cash nexus. “That’s fucking teamwork” – this is team-less individualism all the way. Profoundly unlovely.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>66. Brian Harvey & The Refugee Crew - 'Lovin''</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #20, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Wyclef barely revisited the UK charts again after teaming up with MDMA hoover Harvey - 'Hips Don't Lie' aside - but re-emerged later as Will.I.Am. The musical equivalent of running yourself over.</div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div><b>AN</b>: This is great.<br />
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<b>JG</b>: The musical equivalent of the Quintinshill rail disaster, with Wyclef Jean and Brian Harvey pissing around in the signal box whilst the 6.00am troop special ploughs into the night train from Euston.<br />
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<b>TM</b>: After the cringingly unfunny ‘humour’, comes an enjoyably laughable folly. The dispiriting words: “IT’S BRIAN HARVEY!” are followed by an epically tame rendition of the oldest football chant going.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>65. Matchbox - 'Midnite Dynamos'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1980, #14, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: You could probably be forgiven for thinking this is Shakin' Stevens. What the fuck was this doing in the charts in 1980? No wonder people sought solace in John Peel and <i>Closer</i> as perfect antidotes. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Sounds like a Dennis Waterman theme tune. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: You “only come alive when the old moon shows”? What, you’re werewolves? Well you bloody look like them! Good and night. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Pitiful, limited Americophilia. Its baseness is exacerbated by their performance of it against the backdrop of the Confederate flag. Clapped-out revivalism plus pre-Civil Rights nostalgia: a fucking awful brew.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>As far as backdrops go it's...</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>64. M People - 'Search for the Hero'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1995, #9, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Wasn't Mike Pickering a key player at Factory Records? You can see how M People were seen initially as a classy, soulful combo yet by 1994 must have been writing specifically for Anodyne Shite FM. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Don’t mind it. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: More self-help nonsense that reeks of the post-1979 enforced individualisation of society. This could function perfectly well as something A4e play to the unemployed during 'Employment Skills' training whilst quietly stealing taxpayers’ money. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Actually a relief in context, at least during its PSB-lite intro of warm synths. BUT, a none-more-Blairite exhibit of crassly ‘feel-good’, fluffy materialism. Mere self-help makes islands of us. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>How many consumer products has this song flogged?</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>63. Simply Red - 'You Make Me Feel Brand New'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2003, #7, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: *Not the most obvious SR single, but by 2003 Hucknall was bludgeoning perfectly acceptable soul standards to death in arrangements that must have pissed off dogs everywhere. A bit like driving too fast over a series of aural speed-bumps. Ooft! Ouch! Fuck! Bastard! Shall I press charges? <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Simply Red once walked into the Wellington Pub in Riding Mill causing much consternation amongst the waiting staff who worked there, including my friends Grant Edgeworth and Richard Lognonne, who relayed the information to a rapt audience the next morning at school. “He was wearing fucking leather trousers”, said Lognonne. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Human beings who are “brand new” tend not to have the linguistic capability to sing. How I wish that were the case here. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Pointless mauling of a rather lovely Stylistics <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dU1mSV-P5g">song</a> about the redemptive nature of human communion. Needless to say, he’s an affable enough luvvy-socialist. This is just needless. Lasting 305 seconds.<br />
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* = I'M BREAKING THE CHARACTER LIMIT JUST FOR SIMPLY RED<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>62. Paul Anka - 'Having My Baby'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1974, #6, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: This is unsettling, gruesome and worrying enough even when you don't imagine Josef Fritzl singing it, as I am now. As Willy Wonka once offered: "Shush. For some moments in life, there are no words". <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Nice keyboard sounds in this. But it’s crap. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Proto-MOR that presages every cynical 'romantic' bastard ever since. Phil Collins must have been taking notes in between bouts of trying to ignore his vocalist dressing up as a fucking tree. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: “I love what it’s doing to you”. The “seed”. An automaton-lady appears just to re-iterate Anka’s self-glorifying tripe. It’s odd that this cloying claptrap didn’t cause a drop in Western birth-rates.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>61. Brian May - 'Too Much Love Will Kill You'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1992, #5, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: <a href="http://www.virginmedia.com/images/anita_brian-gal-lookalikes.jpg">Self-marrying</a> May initially dealt with his post-Mercury grief by re-recording 1988 offcuts and then, in tandem with Roger Taylor, over two decades of attacking the legacy of Queen incessantly in a series of ever-inventive ways. (Could have gone on for much longer)<br />
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<b>AN</b>: This statement is factually inaccurate. Love saves you, everyone knows that. An extremely pernicious statement. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I’m sure Freddie Mercury gave his full blessing in his final weeks for his close friend to release this later-period Queen song as a solo single, but the fact is that Brian May just can’t fucking sing. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Would-be profundity from my namesake. Backed by pompous, precious music that we supposedly ought to be in awe of. Pizzicato, inevitably. “You’d sell your soul” – not to Faust but to Lloyd Webber, nemesis of the musical.</div><div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh6T_wJ-v19ill8Q3QXicN8qw_XM-Jy3IRLIm0jX6fZXY2VbtBa9BlictDyvIz-myxXmn8Js2d0DpEmjIZJGYoWCj7Q_unqCHX1mDTC6pNH-wHeo9KikRkz_F3ot7GN9qxnQdTwltXLbv_/s1600/61.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh6T_wJ-v19ill8Q3QXicN8qw_XM-Jy3IRLIm0jX6fZXY2VbtBa9BlictDyvIz-myxXmn8Js2d0DpEmjIZJGYoWCj7Q_unqCHX1mDTC6pNH-wHeo9KikRkz_F3ot7GN9qxnQdTwltXLbv_/s320/61.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div></div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-79188006129354147182012-02-28T19:21:00.001+00:002012-03-05T17:04:33.663+00:00The Worst 200 Songs, Part VI: #100-81<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>'The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography'</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oscar Wilde, Preface to <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>, 1891 (Norton Critical Edition, 2007, p.3)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>100. Mick Jagger - 'Let's Work'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1987, #31, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Reminiscent of and from the same period as George Harrison's seminal 1987 cover version 'Got My Mind Set On You', only totally dreadful. Somehow not as hilarious as his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjIwmJMqrco">current</a> guest spot though. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Thatcherism dressed up as a rootsy work-song. I often ponder over the mystery of how The Stones’ best singles (‘Sympathy for the Devil’, ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, ‘Gimme Shelter’) were so gloriously transcendent, when they were clearly such massive twats. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Somewhere in the depths of a dark cellar, Iain Duncan Smith is assessing the potential of this shite as the soundtrack to a workfare advert near you. Scrub that toilet you lazy fuck!<br />
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</div><div><b>TM</b>: A personal bête noire: a ghastly paean to Thatcherism from the new establishment’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Wtf8M7Pw0">Stakhanovite</a> ‘rebel’. This is a millionaire haranguing the “lazy”: like a triumphalist Tebbit speech set to ‘music’.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>99. Templecloud - 'One Big Family'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, #24, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: One of many stripped back, 'haunting' and rubbish 2011 cover versions of middling rock records alongside Birdy and Charlene Soraia's efforts, this time flogging KFC. Really, who covers Embrace?! <br />
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<b>AN</b>: The remarkable credibility of cabaret in the 21st century: how did it happen? Quite liked the original though. In fact, I’ve just revisited 'All You Good Good People' and can confirm that it’s actually definitely better than completely mediocre. It uses the pentatonic scale, which is the magic one. I hope to speak more about this in future. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This was complete toss when Embrace did it. What’s the point of a new version from a karaoke Winehouse? </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: Slushy middlebrow song in symbiotic relationship with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4mLsUon3fM">KFC</a> advertisement shock! This is more <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exclusive-a4e-and-a-200m-backtowork-scandal-7440966.html">fraudulent</a> family championing in Cameron’s Britain, appropriately harking back to late-90s insipidness.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>98. The Thrills - 'Big Sur'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2003, #17, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Typical of much charting indie-pop of the noughties. Backwards-looking, empty, ironic pretentions of musical authenticity. Oozing with desperate West Coast clichés at every turn. You're not American! <br />
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<b>AN</b>: The Thrills are Irish, so I forgive them. Almost everything about Ireland is good. Except Bono obviously. And sectarian violence. And the conservatism of the Catholic church. But I stand by my point. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Right, I see. Shoehorning completely unwarranted Kerouac references into song is the way forward, is it? What’s next? Wipe those Dharma bums? </div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div><b>TM</b>: Merely another sort of middlebrow; this is in the Top100 ahead of Viva Brother due to its higher chart placing. This embodies dull competency and the line about “monkeyin’ around” is undeniably irritating.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>97. Heather Small - 'Proud'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2000, #16, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Takes me back to 2003 again, and a bleak pub jukebox on very narrow rotation when no one fed it with money. What have you heard today to make you want to rip said jukebox off wall? Insipid bullshit. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Don’t mind this. Black female Londoners scarcely need criticising, even if this isn’t particularly brilliant. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: The main issue here (other than its contribution to the commodification and cheapening of the amateur sport of athletics) is with the appalling grammar – “What have you done today to make you feel proud?” Yourself, surely? </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: The message of the ‘motivational speaker’ in song form. Emblematic of the wilful self-delusion and ‘feel-good’ cajoling of the management culture that has served us so well in recent years...<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>96. Tonedef Allstars - 'Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Jurgen Klinsmann?'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2006, #13, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Have there ever been any good unofficial football records other <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvuqgyKj5iM">than</a> 'England's Irie'? As a footballing nation, we really don't do sophistication very well. The musical equivalent of a tabloid spit-roast. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Another football novelty song. Nowt more to say on this meme, I’m afraid. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: No. Just fucking no. </div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div><b>TM</b>: Not just deluded, but odious in its xenophobic idiocy. English ‘pluck’ is embodied by Warden Hodges and Frank Bruno. You think it can’t reach lower depths... and then the “It’s a <i>Wayne’s World</i> Cup!” sequence rears its repugnant head.<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>95. LeAnn Rimes - 'How Do I Live'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1998, #7, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Celine Dion-lite late-nineties hit penned by restraining order pop architect Diane Warren. I'm sure it has tugged at the heartstrings of people with no personality the world over. Haven't missed it. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: LeAnn Rimes was a poor woman’s Shania Twain, whose ‘I’m Gonna Getcha Good!’ is one of the all-time great pop tunes. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Conservative US music culture is all arse over tit, no? Here’s a good honest clean-living 15 year old girl from the flyover states wondering how she “gets through a night without you”. Oreos and soda pop, presumably. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Rimes’s singing is incontinent in its deployment of melisma: “bab-e-eh-e-eh-y-aiiirrrrrrrr!” “no-o-ow-ow-ow!” Tedious, routine, compliant: monumentally unappealing in every conceivable way.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>94. Barenaked Ladies - 'One Week'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1999, #5, JG)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I will get into trouble, but unfunny, annoyingly smug surprise UK hit that really must have worked better on the other side of the Atlantic. Pre-cursory caution for future rap-rock chart hazards. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Don’t mind this either, largely because of some neat little harmonies in the bridge. As with ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, I feel like this is open about its frivolity, unlike, say, Ed Sheeran, who dresses up frivolous shite as bankable emo-lite pseudo-art. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Not even the late Scatman John (clearly the template for this vapid nonsense) would have allowed a line such as “chicken de China, the Chinese chicken” to slip through quality control. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: There is an exasperating conceit in the singer’s delivery; you can practically hear the goatee beard. This is ‘zany’, but sadly not the Marx Brothers. It at least keeps its twaddle within 3 minutes.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>93. East 17 - 'Thunder'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1995, #4, JG)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Particularly low ebb from a band approximately a billionth as treasured as their one-time equals Take That. It's this kind of lineage that leads up seamlessly up to N-Dubz. May sound good on 12 Es. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Yeah this is pretty crap. I live right next to Walthamstow now. Weird. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This song starts: “When the thunder calls you / From the mountain high / Better spread your wings and fly.” It’s all downhill from there. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Pompous piano chords. Egregious Brian Harvey posturing and gesticulating in the video, alongside scantily clad ladies. “When it calls you!” “Whoah-oh-oh!” Plus, a silly backwards-vocal bit. Cretinous.</div><div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>92. Mike Batt with the New Edition - 'Summertime City'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1975, #4, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Oh such luck! There's a reason that some of these seventies hits haven't endured. Maybe sentimental and nostalgic for some, but surely vacuous, cheap and vacant to everyone else. I hate the 1970s. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: A pretty shockingly cynical co-option of the vitalism of funk and disco that quickly descends into MOR froth after an attention-grabbing intro. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Bloody hell, did this flaccid, uninspired, sub-Mike Love crap really get into the Top 10 when The Beach Boys’ own <i>Surf’s Up</i> album sold about five copies? <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Carrot-topped <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1317687.stm">Tory</a> songster produces wimpy, inane ode to the weather, the city and a baby. He was later responsible for a preposterous science-fiction <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqE6ygueYrQ">concept</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wse5A0RO53k">album</a> and TV-musical (as brilliantly <a href="http://prezi.com/pn0czpryqqu9/tachyon-tv-presents/">featured</a> <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=%22tachyon+tv+presents%22&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tachyon-tv.co.uk%2Fttvpresents.doc&ei=uRlKT-XxNqPB0QXHmumaDg&usg=AFQjCNFL0aqYpY4fOIKnZI4sQMnQxk-epw&sig2=miQqQl4DP9jjUHEFkjdKbg">here</a>).<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>91. 50 Cent - 'Candy Shop'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2005, #4, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Misogynist 50 Cent really is a caricature of an absolute penis isn't he? After Eminem, such a shame to see Dre back something so cliched. Worst euphemisms for blow jobs in the history of music too. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: 50 Cent is so, so fucking terrible. For me he will always epitomise the awful mood of 2003, the year casual venality broke: Bush, Blair, Iraq, reaction in the air; The Darkness on the radio, Jonathan Ross on the box, Mohican haircuts, and just around the corner was the next entry … <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This is the sound of 50 Cent ordering a young woman to perform sexual favours for him. Hideous. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Can he sound anything other than arrogant and unpleasant? Ah, what great days in 2005: Bush and Blair; the public lapping up sub-prime mortgages, thinking they can live the 50 Cent life. Fuck 'bling'.</div><div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>90. The Libertines - 'Can't Stand Me Now'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2004, #2, AN)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Self-mythologising, glorified demo from band who were for the most part pure image over substance. Typifies the gaping universe between their popularity and rather non-existent cultural contribution. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Thankfully I feel like I don’t have to go to any great lengths to convince people why The Libertines were so vastly obnoxious any more. But I would just like to remind people that Pete Doherty once tried to justify his heroin habit by saying that his mum would rather he was a drug addict than a vicar. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I appreciate the autobiographical nature of this song, but I never really got the Libertines. It all sounded like a bit of an East London in-joke to me. Plus, that Carl Barat is an offensively earnest little runt, no? <br />
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<b>TM</b>: I wouldn’t put this higher than #108 or #102, but it is bog-standard stocking filler from Hexham’s most improvident son. Just a bit dull, really; sign of the undue sway of folk like The Strokes.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Well facking futile, indeed.</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>89. Adele - 'Chasing Pavements'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2008, #2, BB)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Can't say it does much for me, but it doesn't drive a grinding churn into the very pit of my stomach like the opening notes of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0&ob=av2e">'Someone Like You'</a>. Big hit, but now dwarved by omnipresent successors. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Adele is just so boring isn’t she? Even FATM has some vaguely interesting arrangements. Watch barely human Guardian journalists attempting to justify their complete lack of conscience/consciousness <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2012/feb/21/adele-brit-awards-2012-video">here</a>.<br />
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<b>JG</b>: The more I think about it, the more this song is basically a reiteration of Shed Seven’s ‘Chasing Rainbows’. At least choose ‘Getting Better’, if you must. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Is she a one-woman boon for <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17138664">UK</a> exports or a selfish <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/may/25/adele-tax-grievances">objector</a> to the 50p tax rate? Either way, the grain of the voice has always agitated me; this is so fucking tasteful and wearisome: leading nowhere. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>As captivating as a crime scene in an ITV cop show</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>88. True Steppers & Dane Bowers, Ft. Victoria Beckham - 'Out of Your Mind'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2000, #2, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Seems this was to the underground garage movement what Skrillex and Nero are to dubstep now. Hook-less arsewank that was deservedly beaten to the punch by Groovejet. This tune's still punishing me. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I loved UK garage, hence I have a soft spot even for its more risible commercial incarnations. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Somewhere in the bowels of deepest hell, Satan is assessing the potential of this shite as the permanent soundtrack to an eternity of being hosed down with Bernard Manning’s diarrhea. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Particularly early-noughties pop stylings here. Misapplied drum ‘n’ bass and techno tropes; dismal vocals from ‘Posh’ and Dane: “Ice cream, you’re out of your mind”. Maddening, airbrushed opulence. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>87. Oasis - 'All Around the World'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1998, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Ah, we meet at last. Thankfully I'm only having to endure the 5 minute edit (!) and am saved the 2,000 key changes and extended sense of coked-up, bloated aural violation of its 9-minute plus form. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I am a committed and long-standing Oasis apologist, but my argument hinges on the fact that, post-Morning Glory, they did absolutely nothing of any worth whatsoever. Except for ‘Stay Young’, which is quite good. And ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong?’ which is a nice Neil Young pastiche (listen to the harmonies on line “alone under stormy skies” about half way through). <br />
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<b>JG</b>: The remarkable sound of Oasis ripping off their previous ripping off of Badfinger’s ripping off of The Beatles. </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: Epically bloated farrago from their disastrous folly Be Here Now. With every <b>8/10</b> review and sycophantic comment, you could sense people’s musical horizons narrowing. “Yeah I know what I know!”<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>"Yeah I KNOW WHAT I KNOW!" / Aye, all too little...</b></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>86. Little Jimmy Osmond - 'Long Haired Lover from Liverpool'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1972, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Why would you adopt a Scouse persona to snare some paedophiles somewhere? It's again an utter enigma as to why anyone would have not only wanted to listen to, but pay actual good money for this. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Everyone knows this is shit, and why. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: It is patently ridiculous for a nine year old child to be singing a song such as this. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: What is ‘cute’ about this infernal little tyke singing a post-coital ode to a Scouse hippy? It is about as appealing as the prospect of a nuclear winter spent in Slough within earshot of Lee Newell.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>85. Boyzone - 'You Needed Me'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1999, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: It's constantly hard to comprehend that the people who identify with these teeth-grindingly blank records on any level are capable of fully-functioning emotions. Thank God boy bands have evolved! <br />
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<b>AN</b>: ‘Love Me for a Reason’: magic. Everything else they ever did: black magick. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Isn’t the point of these slow schmaltzy songs for the singer to admit to a feeling of vulnerable dependence on another? Rather than the other way round? <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Hubristic and hyperbolic: you just know that it won’t end happily. Pedestals and human peculiarities don’t mix. He apparently ‘lies’ but is somehow redeemed by her God-like influence.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>84. The Killers - 'Mr Brightside'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2004, #10, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Yet another cheesy noughties indie-disco number totally inferior to the records it alludes to. Very popular this one, possibly more so than anything else so far, so reactions will be interesting.<br />
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<b>AN</b>: Hmm. Controversial. The Killers were obviously an utterly pernicious cultural force but it’s difficult to argue with this tune taken in isolation. The bass line in the chorus is particularly nifty.<br />
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<b>JG</b>: This song would be improved with the following lyrical amendment: “But it’s just the price I pay / Destiny is calling me/ Open up my eager eyes / Cos I’m Norman Whiteside!” Youngest goal scorer in World Cup history, I’ll have you know.<br />
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<b>TM</b>: Another entry damned by ubiquity. Not that it stands up that well to aesthetic criteria in its contrived ‘uplift’ and early-80s pilfering: having ‘influences’ doesn’t make your music interesting. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>83. The Woolpackers - 'Hillbilly Rock Hillbilly Roll'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1996, #7, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: The most successful line-dancing hit our shores have ever produced? Or simply: the only one? The thing is, <i>Emmerdale</i> is shit, and God knows I've persisted with it. Stood no chance with awful genre. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I never did try line dancing. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Do you know, I think I preferred <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRQCpVbbcFM">'Old Pop in an Oak'</a> by the Rednex to this. At least that had a (very, very) faint whiff of anarchy about it. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Foreign influence can sometimes embed backwardness, as with this silly <i>Emmerdale </i>spin-off. As Meades <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9naig_71Ql4">argued</a>: ‘Insularity and rural indigence prompt the same emotional landscape wherever they’re found’. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>82. Paul Oakenfold, Ft. Shifty Shellshock - 'Starry Eyed Surprise'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2002, #6, JG)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: As you may have gathered, rap-rock makes my skin crawl in a way not much else can, and even when one of its vocalists takes his dubious talents into other waters, the delivery continues to grate. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Not great, but not all that bad. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: By the early 2000s, superstar DJs were the Rick Wakemans of their day, living comfortably in the sticks, inviting Crazy Town to appear on their half-arsed songs and pilfering the opening lick from Harry Nilsson’s sublime ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ like right bastards. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: The inane flipside of dance music’s utopian dreams. Nilsson’s sampled ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ is stripped of its splendour amid the downright gormlessness. “Seeing stars! Seeing stars! I’m seeing stars!”<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>81. Curtis Stigers - 'You're All That Matters to Me'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1992, #6, RC)</span><br />
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DL: Some of these 'love' songs really are soulless. Said it before and I'll say it again: the only romantic love worth penning a song about is that of the dark, sadistic unrequited variety. Total shit. <br />
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AN: Crazy midi percussion track. Bizarre. <br />
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JG: Jesus, this is boring shit. Have we got any Michael Bolton songs coming up? <br />
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TM: Neutered horns, smugly clicking percussion, sanitised ‘gospel’ backing vocals, a waist-coated man earnestly emoting: is anything less liable to connect with me than an early-90s AOR ballad? So humdrum!</div><div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu09PMnqoylTvZkar4bCEAt6ykaXcyZ3i2FSVp5HexuBwujhDPij8VA__UOz7g_aniB4DJ86BUwJVpGfUDP0S686UR0tgw3ZuzoDQWgxcM7QH7eNarNsKLu-hqikT8CAxYnnwp6Xv4peAf/s1600/81.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu09PMnqoylTvZkar4bCEAt6ykaXcyZ3i2FSVp5HexuBwujhDPij8VA__UOz7g_aniB4DJ86BUwJVpGfUDP0S686UR0tgw3ZuzoDQWgxcM7QH7eNarNsKLu-hqikT8CAxYnnwp6Xv4peAf/s320/81.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030669615520724507.post-7170704435788312462012-02-21T20:54:00.002+00:002012-02-21T22:41:29.386+00:00The Worst 200 Songs, Part V: #120-101<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span id="goog_1480338569"></span><span id="goog_1480338570"></span></b></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><a href="http://fourcolors.blogs.pressdemocrat.com/files/2012/01/Peanuts-Hope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://fourcolors.blogs.pressdemocrat.com/files/2012/01/Peanuts-Hope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>120. Typically Tropical - 'Barbados'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1975, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: More borderline racist and embarrassing novelty tripe, once again documenting the 1970s plight of Brits abroad. just as bad as the Vegaboys hit that it inspired. Mercifully, this no longer happens. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Is there something recoverable in the communitarian aspect to this, the call and response, the singalong element? Just playing Devil’s Advocate. Obviously I don't like it really. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Typically Western staging of a troubled Third World state (as was) as the usual island paradise. Later revived by the Vengaboys to inform us that they were going to eat pizza. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: It wouldn’t be half as annoying if the singer didn’t adopt the cod-Caribbean accent, auditioning to be Sting seemingly. That 70s synth sound is grating, rather than charming as it can often be.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>119. Bobby Goldsboro - 'Honey'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1968/75, #2 - both times, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Gooey dreck that makes 'Seasons In The Sun' sound like 'I Know It's Over'. Thinking about 1970s pop makes me feel so very tired. A constant in these kind of lists, and quite rightly so. Make it stop! <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I’d never heard this before. When it started up I was ready to defend it as Bacharachian orchestral kitsch. But then the chorus spectacularly failed to happen. Not good. A Westlife antecedent. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This is completely forgettable easy-listening fluff, somewhat enlivened by the curious line: “I impressed her with a puppy.” </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: Treacly ballad, monotonous enough to make ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ sound as adventurous as Nick Nicely’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuf3rD_pczs">‘Hilly Fields (1892)’</a>. “Guess you could say” such vapid smugness deserves a neck-wringing. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>118. Kenny Loggins - 'Danger Zone'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1986, #45, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: One of my nominations and a staple of free CDs from the <i>Daily Star</i> circa 2004. Selected on the grounds that I couldn't imagine why anyone would possibly want to own it. Cinematically short of epic. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Republican gym pop rock fuck. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: If you think about it hard, the individual elements (a continuous pulse-like rhythm, lots of synth bits, muted guitars) almost have something of Can or Neu! about them, but recalibrated for heinous Reaganite celebrations of jingoist toss. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: I resent the infernal persistence of these sort of films and this species of chugging, airbrushed 80s rock. <i>Transformers: the Movie</i> is nostalgic viewing for me and its music is at least enjoyably ludicrous.</div><div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>117. Reverend and the Makers - 'He Said He Loved Me'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #16, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Laughably simplistic social commentary from the man who must have been dragged through several hedges backwards clinging onto the Arctic Monkeys’ coat-tails. Educated enough to lyricise better too. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: 2007 was a dark time for music. But then again, so is 2012. Will somebody please just do something good? It’s getting fricking desperate in here. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Middle class types playing on their “northernness” to get away with writing some utterly ignorant Jeremy Kyle shite about chavs whilst having no more idea of such demographic environments than George fucking Osborne. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Embarrassingly dire ‘northern’ vocals and sneering faces. The self-styled ‘The Reverend’ is a chancer, who claims to be influenced by John Cooper-Clarke. Evidence that Sheffield music is not always great.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>116. Simple Minds - 'She's A River'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1995, #9, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: A world away from their innovative early work, this arrogant drone marked their last real dent into the hit parade. Even U2 did this kind of stadium synth-rock more convincingly. Sounds like cocaine. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I had this on a tape of the Radio 1 Top Ten countdown in the early weeks of ’95. This was a lowlight. Human League’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tLrD5VKZNk">‘Tell Me When’</a> was also on there: an underrated little gem of a tune. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: She’s a river??? What the fuck does that even mean??? That you sit next to her and smoke doobies till you’re blue in the face???!!! No wonder she fucked off. </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: Clattering bunkum, with a U2 likeness and inexplicable Buddhist monk motif in the video. Once they had <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6MwzSaBBQY">travelled</a>; by 1995 their terminus was Stadium Rock gigs and lengthy features in <i>Q</i> magazine.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYpDrrsdunSPbzSYl5N6MerOTx4BYnuczMZAfTU1KBDbys6KYf3bxd3U62lubrF8beEM_8B020FNez0czLlvGuHjqu0Opxx1_Qz6uCMwmq298tTvDS46ewfhbglCM5Stf4RlMneojifBVv/s1600/116.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYpDrrsdunSPbzSYl5N6MerOTx4BYnuczMZAfTU1KBDbys6KYf3bxd3U62lubrF8beEM_8B020FNez0czLlvGuHjqu0Opxx1_Qz6uCMwmq298tTvDS46ewfhbglCM5Stf4RlMneojifBVv/s320/116.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hi, I'm Khalid from infamously masterly <i>Dr Who </i><br />
<a href="http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2011/12/classic_doctor_who_blogging_ti.html#axzz1n39qSECG">adventure</a> 'Time Flight', walking a tightrope</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>115. Tina Turner - 'The Best'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1989, #5, AN)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Can't say it's one of my favourites, but for an omnipresent late 80s soft-rock track, it does its job. Can't see much in it actively worth loathing. It's just there and it's not going away soon. </div><div><br />
<b>AN</b>: My choices were shit, weren’t they? <br />
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<b>JG</b>: I usually enjoy this song more if one completes the time-honoured trick of exchanging the word for “you” for “I” and vice versa. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: It’s hard to overstate the prevalence of this bathetic, overblown song in 1990-95: music for bland, kitchen unit magnates. It was SAFC chairman Bob Murray’s favourite and a perennial at Crosby-Buxton era games.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>114. N-Dubz - 'I Need You'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2009, #5, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: The very moment I heard "Facebook" name-dropped into the chorus of this, I decided I had dropped out of Radio 1's demographic. Light as an excuse for persistent online stalking too. "Bang bang shoes"?! <br />
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<b>AN</b>: An awful-sounding tune from a band with the most awful-sounding name in pop history. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This is just an advertorial for Facebook, right? <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Petty, gormless anthem for misogynist stalkers: “I been searching all over Facebook”. “And that’s why we call them bitches” – pots calling kettles black and all that. Plus: silliest hat since #147. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>113. David Gray - 'Babylon'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2000, #5, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: If you're missing faux-hippy Jo Whiley's tenure at the above station, don't, unless you sadistically enjoyed having boring, prematurely middle-aged singer-songwriters like this pounded into the ears. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I vividly remember being 16 and hearing Jo Whiley (who I saw as a sort of female John Peel) hyping this up on Radio 1 in 2000 and thinking, hang on, something has gone badly wrong here. This was a seminal moment in the bourgeois incursion into the “indie” centre-left. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: OK, the man can sing, but seriously, how is this excessively cosy shite any different to nonsense like Des’Ree’s notorious <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4Tpvbokf0">'Life'</a>, only masked by a slightly more refined lyricism? Music for pre-9/11 “End of History” bores. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: It’s my ‘5’ rating that keeps this out of the Top 100. The opening is surprisingly wistful and evocative; then the familiarly dismal chorus enters – so odious! He is also culpable for this utter <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjy3jWLz4Fk">calamity</a>.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>112. Tottenham Hotspur FC - 'Ossie's Dream (Spurs Are On Their Way to Wembley)'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1981, #5, JG)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: This looks, sounds, and feels much more than thirty-one years old, featuring traditional football song platitudes that no one would ever actually say, not even pundits. But laugh at the funny Argie! <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Ossie Ardiles. Fucking hell. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: There was a whole generation of novelty football songs like this that in hindsight look like understandable attempts to create a happy image to counter the pockmarks of hooliganism and racism afflicting the Beautiful Game at the time. Still, none of the others feature Ardiles reading “in the cup for Totting-ham” off an autocue. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Mild enough compared with a few of the football horrors to come in this list. Yet this is a tired, scarf-waving musical knees-up that even the most die-hard mockney wannabe could not rehabilitate.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>111. Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin - 'Separate Lives'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1985, #4, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: If you take some of his songs on face value (excuse the pun) then some of Collins' work is fairly agreeable pop. Not even the U.S. R’n’B community can defend this, though. Like an egg throwing a strop. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Phil Collins. Fucking hell. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Every bit as turgid as only something associated with the dreaded Phil Collins can be. Nashville non-entity Marilyn Martin ended up as a realtor and therefore contributed to our current economic misery just as she previously contributed to our cultural misery. </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: Power Ballad exemplar featuring the receding one on auto-pilot, accompanied by Martin’s showy melisma. As far as separation songs go, not a patch on Peter Hammill’s <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfr9ndkWxpA">Over</a></i>. Not the last we’ll see of PC. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>110. Kula Shaker - 'Tattva'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1996, #4, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Sometimes you wish The Beatles had not bothered going to India after all. 'Strawberry Fields'-looting cod-mysticism that was somehow not even their worst crime. Hinduism via Sky Sports and Carling. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I don’t really mind Kula Shaker. The thing is, they used to get slapped down and ripped to shreds in the NME and Melody Maker, so you could just treat them for what they were: a sort of sixties pantomime. Fast forward to the noughties and Noel Fielding is hailed as a comic genius; no one bats an eyelid. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Of the many atrocities committed during the Britpop era, the entire catalogue of Kula Shaker ranks among the worst. Tenth generation facsimiles of various ’60s radicals with the ink so worn it’s impossible to know what any of it might once have meant. </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: Retro-rock with ludicrous mystical frills. Clemency for Mills’s ‘youthful indiscretions’ with the far-right would be more feasible had he not polluted our auditory senses with this unmitigated drivel.</div><div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>109. Billy Ray Cyrus - 'Achy Breaky Heart'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1992, #3, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: I've got a theory about MOR Country rock: it's fucking shit. Like most genres that happily live outside of the mainstream UK charts, it takes a novelty record to enter the popular consciousness. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Fakey mediocre shit. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Another easy target, but this is the kind of easy-going depoliticised noddy country music (a music that began life as a folk music of dispossessed poor people) that is Republican through and through. At least the Dixie Chicks came to understand the connection. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Cocksure country-pop from a vain specimen of traditional masculinity. If this isn’t bad enough he is also notable for allowing George W. Bush to use <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSXBEzL1KUk">another</a> of his songs as his 2000 campaign anthem.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>108. Rod Stewart - 'Every Beat of My Heart'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1986, #2, RC)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Another mid 1980's power ballad with a heroic and patriotic sentiment. What commercial radio stations piped into wagons were invented for. Makes one think of amorous builders getting their oats. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I’ve already expressed total incomprehension of the Rod Stewart aspect of life. This doesn’t change my view. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Everything that is regrettable about patriotism – cloying sentimentality, the de-contextualisation of “national” signifiers (bagpipes in this case) and the screening out of real (Real?) social problems. All whilst living in tax exile. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Absurd, bombastic Tartanry, with the Londoner Stewart bellowing: “Here’s one Jacobite!” Some of the most idiotically parochial lyrics ever, shouted out against a clattering 80s backdrop. Hell.</div><div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>107. Fast Food Rockers - 'Fast Food Song'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2003, #2, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Easy target, but about as funny as receiving a County Court Judgement on your birthday. Moronic to the point of nausea and more so when it was inescapable. Really, who pays good money for this stuff? <br />
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<b>AN</b>: I mean, this is a kids song isn't it? I find it hard to criticise this sort of thing without making vague gestures at the “infantilisation of culture” or something equally tendentious. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: An advert for various unethical food outlets performed by photogenic types who have clearly never been within 25 miles of any such establishments. Post-ironic in a bad way. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: As ‘amusing’ and appetising as an evening’s date with Andrew Lansley trying to sell his health reforms to you – if more coherent. It doesn’t exactly give Yeats or Donne a run for their money with its symbolic imagery. <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>106. Kaiser Chiefs - 'Ruby'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2007, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: A pub rock 'indie' band that were in the right place at the right time; it was horrifying to see the expensive video and crisp Stephen Street production values applied to something so undeserving. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: People are talking now about a Britpop/nineties revival but the Kaiser Chiefs are proof that it never went away. The Vaccines are just the Kaiser Chiefs with less interesting arrangements aren’t they? <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Their early singles were at least faintly amusing, but Kaiser Chiefs had well run out of steam two years on with this boring song about unrequited love. Not exactly ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’, is it? </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: “Due to lack interest”: the Chiefs show admirable foresight of their own deserved obscurity today, with their sole utility as a punch-line for all too obvious gags about the 2011 ‘England Riots’.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>105. Black Eyed Peas - 'I Gotta Feeling'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2009, #1, DL)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: King of a thousand Prozac electro-urban anthems, its lyrical themes are utterly depressing in that we're stuck with hearing this at any major social event we ever attend during the rest of our lives. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Good call Dave. Empty hooks running riot. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: The prospect of devil-may-care hedonism has rarely sounded so joyless. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Liked this initially when I heard it: though that was before it gained context. Relentless airplay has worn away some of its appeal, but I still wouldn’t put this anywhere near a <i>Worst 200</i> personally.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>104. Brotherhood of Man - 'Figaro'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1978, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Tacky and tasteless as the Seventies efforts that have plagued our chart so far are, it's terrifying to imagine what the era has in store for us as we progress. An insultingly inferior ABBA pastiche. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Novelty trash. Quite like the wah-wah guitars though. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: This is just embarrassing holiday music from the era when the Costa del Sol was a novelty. The roots of ‘Macarena’ and ‘The Ketchup Song’ can be found right here. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Asinine simulation, nay, assassination of Abba’s daft but wonderful ‘Fernando’. This lothario lacks even the vaguest revolutionary credentials and this “magic” “Romeo” just seems a bit of a creep.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>103. Nick Berry - 'Every Loser Wins'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1986, #1, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Funny how few soap operas have attempted to release singles on the back of an in-house band since 1986. I defended 'Heartbeat', this I cannot. Precedent for many solo soap star pop careers, however. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Wow, this is pretty bad. I reckon there’s probably a degree of global consensus straddling race/religion/creed about this. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Quite apart from Berry’s flat voice (which required extremes of reverb, the Auto-tune of its day), the message of this song is complete Thatcherite toss. Because if every loser wins, then those that never “win” must therefore be undeserving incompetents who aren’t self-reliant enough, etc. </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: Garrulous piano tinkling does not disguise a rather dull song. Road / love metaphors, illuminating light in tunnels and pearls of existentialist wisdom: “Nothing is certain in a changing world”.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>102. Viva Brother - 'Darling Buds of May'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2011, failed to chart, TM)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: This inspired our project, and is a laughable failure in terms of a supposed ‘resurgence’ in meat-and-potatoes indie-pop. Note the stolen 'Some Might Say' passage. Britpop is not coming back! Capiche? <br />
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<b>AN</b>: British art really is terrible right now right across the board isn’t it? Just risible. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Kagouls? Check. Button-down shirts? Check. Boring non-entities playing at being lads? Check. Roaring commercial success? Un-check. Viva Brother – the new Heavy Stereo. <br />
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<b>TM</b>: Astonishing that this hasn’t quite made the Top 100! “IT. IS. WHAT. IT. IS!” This derisory, strutting shite should live in infamy as a cautionary tale for all budding British ‘guitar-bands’. Laughable!<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPDbcTnexUOVouY5Iu0g_GDTERUmuTYaCLP1zmAuj2yos_2BVss34WDEIm25cayOnmskFSsNenvcfTF0EHhPeCLXG-VxyN_WN3fMzPlxHer6oNRG35y1WKbrdWiDkG3XnOWgpnq-EWt1mf/s1600/102.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPDbcTnexUOVouY5Iu0g_GDTERUmuTYaCLP1zmAuj2yos_2BVss34WDEIm25cayOnmskFSsNenvcfTF0EHhPeCLXG-VxyN_WN3fMzPlxHer6oNRG35y1WKbrdWiDkG3XnOWgpnq-EWt1mf/s320/102.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>'Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!<br />
It isn't fit for humans now'</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>101. Staind - 'Outside'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2001, #33, JG)</span><br />
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<b>DL</b>: Nu-metal was fucking horrible, but when its key players slowed down the tempo to show off their sensitive sides, the results were scathingly bad. How is this not monotonous? Charmless, ugly music. <br />
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<b>AN</b>: Ha. This cheered me up. <br />
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<b>JG</b>: Self-pitying, disempowering shite that aims low by simply asserting that all those beautiful people are just ugly and unhappy inside too. But postmodern capitalism rewards superficiality and plasticity. Shallow people are pleased with themselves. This, shockingly, is why you are unhappy. Dig deeper and the insights will start to come. </div><div><br />
</div><div><b>TM</b>: The dirge-friendly grain of his voice affronts almost as much as Lee Newell’s. Recently and somewhat aptly, a new Staind track entitled ‘The Bottom’ appeared on the <i>Transformers: Dark of the Moon</i> soundtrack.<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVJuPhQ7j-odaid92XEHhibeHL2sMxaSqjqTL9QswqPgrACXaoHo1JfzuEQqv0rDLUxgwd8cEUvCt6EGlI-SRaPub_QuIzork6_AK0UuacXpaL8F1XzsCcnINIM2B3-JSBfq2oF5sTYJnK/s1600/101.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVJuPhQ7j-odaid92XEHhibeHL2sMxaSqjqTL9QswqPgrACXaoHo1JfzuEQqv0rDLUxgwd8cEUvCt6EGlI-SRaPub_QuIzork6_AK0UuacXpaL8F1XzsCcnINIM2B3-JSBfq2oF5sTYJnK/s320/101.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div>Tom Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12926419257352932141noreply@blogger.com1