music

[7] Basement Jaxx, ‘Red Alert’

Basement Jaxx

This has a summery feel, but a muggy, oppressive summery feel. Our living room conspired with it yesterday, the sun flooding through all the windows, cooking the vinyl as it span round on the deck. It was hot when I lifted it off afterwards – a steaming platter, pop pickers.

Basement Jaxx hit their peak early, breaking the Top Five here. They’ve disappointed since, with a knack of writing tunes that sound brilliant on first listen, peeling away layers of emptiness later. ‘Red Alert’ still sounds special, at least, and Junior danced to it enthusiastically with her old dad.

We played it again this morning and she snubbed the “Don’t panic!” line with an audacious attempt to pull the iron off the board. Pan’s People couldn’t have weighed in with a more literal interpretation.

[8] Ol’ Dirty Bastard featuring Kelis, ‘Got Your Money’

ODB

It’s a sensitive treatise on Child Support. It’s a generous offer to appear in a pop video. It’s a flipped-out, garbled, screaming funk monster with a Kelis on top. Once again, there’s a thin line between inspiration and eyeballs-on-stalks insanity, and ODB (RIP) just pogos from one side to the other.

The Neptunes produced this, sneaking their protégée in on chorus duties, and it’s an early sign of the bounce and originality they’d go on to sprinkle over piles and piles of records – before deciding a couple of years ago that N*E*R*D were flippin’ Supertramp or something, and messing everything up. Kelis does a perfunctory job, saving her best stuff for the greatest female r&b album ever (honest, look it up somewhere).

There’s a school of thought that this record’s a bit rude for a 10-month-old’s ears. Ah, come on, she can’t understand. Can she? While storing up a cache of colourful language, Junior gets into the groove from the first beat. She looks delighted that I’ve even put it on. The cool kids at nursery have probably been talking about it.

[9] Britney Spears, ‘…Baby One More Time’

Britney Spears

Odd to think that this is the first time Junior’s heard this, when the rest of us could probably sing it in our sleep. That’s almost the case for her too – I have to wake her up, and we grab our jukebox moment in the five minutes before we need to scoot off to nursery. Junior greets the song with a blend of crying, laughing, dancing and squawking. She’s obviously been watching Britters’ recent videos.

With this record, teeny pop took a swerve for the better, beefing up its sound and realising that the kids wanted something more than saccharine ballads. Which was hardly rocket science. The 8-12 year olds used to buy Blondie, Duran Duran, Frankie, A-ha, all of whom had a bit of muscle behind the velvet. Surely the 90s kids could cope? OK, I suppose some of this record’s success was down to the school uniform – no accounting for dubious taste – but it’s still top-drawer power pop.

Of course, Britney’s second single was ‘Sometimes’, a sugarsweet ballad.

[10] Lauryn Hill, ‘Ex-Factor’

Lauryn Hill

Loved by the fashionista and common punter alike, Lauryn Hill’s patchwork soul was lapped up at the end of the 90s, until she disappeared in a puff of, hmm, eccentricity. Since ’99 there’s only been one flabby Unplugged album and the occasional idiosyncratic live performance. It’s a fine line between genius and flinging your marbles all over the show.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was talked up a bit. A cold-eared editor would have cut out a pile of songs and promoted the two excellent ‘hidden’ tracks (hidden tracks aren’t very well-disguised when you have the vinyl, are they?). Whatever, ‘Ex-Factor’ is still beautiful with its ‘Loving You’ tweets and ‘Little Wing’ solos, and it makes you miss her. I don’t think Wyclef Jean was the Fugee we wanted to keep.

After a fragile, under-par weekend, Junior is all perky this morning. Whether it’s Hill’s cooing that’s given her the spark, it doesn’t really matter.

[11] Gomez, ‘Rhythm & Blues Alibi’

Gomez

Does anyone listen to minidiscs anymore? My Sony player is about eight years old now, and the clearest and sharpest-sounding walkman I’ve ever owned, but it’s still been booted into touch by the inferior mp3 player. Now I can carry 40 gig of music around in my metrosexual manbag; who can resist that?

We shared great days, the MZ-R50 and I. There was that time I recorded The Avalanches’ album onto a minidisc, and listened to it. And the time I wrote “Remain In Light” in pretty letters on another disc, and listened to that too. And the time the record function broke, and I tried to replace it with one of those swanky Net MD players. It was rubbish, so I returned to the old faithful. Ah, I’m welling up.

I’m sure there’s a withering insight into our attention-deficit society here – something about one album not being enough for a 35-minute commute nowadays – but I’ll leave that to the style mags.

Oh, Gomez. Bring It On is the only album I bought on minidisc. This single’s from their second album, it’s a beauty and very big with Junior.  In fact it appeals to all girls. No, I can’t back this up with anything so prissy as proof.

[12] Madonna, ‘Beautiful Stranger’

Madonna

Ooh, a William Orbit production without those bap-bap-bap echoey synth noises and heavily treated guitar. Sorry, there’s the heavily treated guitar now. As one of the Austin Powers themes, it’s meant to have a 60s psychedelic feel and, 10 years on from ‘Dear Jessie’, Madge has clocked that this doesn’t have to mean pink elephants, paisley patterns and newspaper taxis. The spiralling tune, flutes and whizzy effects can cover all that without any feeble “Oh man, look at the COLOURS” tosh.

To think I put 11 singles higher than this. It’s a seriously infectious pop hip-swinger, one of the year’s more obvious stand-outs. Junior takes a while to cotton onto this too, starting off vexed because I wiped her nose, but she’s wiggling her padded behind before long. Even she’s beginning to realise that the musclebound old girl’s put in a handy 20-year innings.

Still to come: three American female soloists, an all-girl band, a Strepsils-avoiding pretend British blues band, the Saviours Of Dance Music (for a bit), a bunch of hairy septics, a not-so-hairy septic with a made-up band, a guest spot from Kelis, some faceless lounge noodlers and, er, Moloko.

Don’t go away.

[13] Fatboy Slim, ‘Praise You’

Fatboy Slim

This record is painfully 1999. It would get laughed out of town if it showed its big beaty face these days, wacky Spike Jonze video or not. Norman Cook had a way with a pop tune, admittedly – this, ‘Rockafeller Skank’ and ‘Gangster Trippin’ all grabbed you first time – but they were guaranteed to annoy your teeth out within a few plays.

It’s getting harder to measure Junior’s reactions, now that she’s a baby scud forever homing in on the living room’s most vulnerable points. This was the first time she’d made a beeline towards the stereo, however, desperate paw reaching out for the amplifier. Norm, mate, I think she was trying to put you out of your misery.

I remember reading interviews with The Housemartins back in the day. The others used to take the rise out of Quentin, ribbing him for his love of soul, funk, hip hop and dance when he was in this itchy pop band. You have to say he had the last laugh: the drummer went down for trying to brain some chap with an axe, Stan Cullimore ended up in Basic Instinct 2, obviously, and Paul Heaton was last seen releasing a compilation of his favourite soul, funk, hip hop and dance tunes. Pah.

[14] Mercury Rev, ‘Opus 40’

Mercury Rev

Deserter’s Songs topped most critical lists at the end of ’98, so people actually bought it in ’99. Inside they found a beguiling mix of Disneyesque arrangements, soaring melodies, traditional Americana and fingers-down-a-blackboard violin-mangling, all topped off with a sugary vocal from a man old enough to know better. At least half of it was great, and ‘Opus 40’ was the straight-up pop song.

I’ve lost the album, and my exclusively* autographed copy of the 7” inch single is in one of the crates I haven’t bothered to unpack yet, so I had to find the stupid, special lead to plug the mp3 player into the stereo. Was it worth it? Junior took advantage of her dad’s preoccupation to zoom around the living room pulling items out from under the coffee table and sticking her hand in the video. Almost disastrous, then. She gave the song a quick bouncing acknowledgement before taking another swing at fusing the electrics.

*Four of the fellows have signed it but there were PILES of copies knocking about in HMV, so maybe they’d had their moment in the sun. They must’ve spent a lonely session, watching the punters buying up the Flaming Lips album.

[15] R.E.M., ‘At My Most Beautiful’

R.E.M.

Stipe’s weirdo stalker ballad fails to keep Junior on the rug. She’s halfway to the plug sockets before she can hear what he leaves on his beloved’s answer phone.

This is a gorgeous little tune, with sparing use of strings and Beach Boysesque “doo-doo”s. It even made the Top 10, but who remembers it? R.E.M. still have an impressive hardcore of fans, despite no one being excited about them since Automatic For The People, and they can usually clock up a solid hit per album. They just don’t seem to matter much these days. To think, there was a time when half the population was up in arms about ‘Shiny Happy People’.

I’m sure their cash keeps them happy, when they’re not flinging yoghurt around on aeroplanes.

[16] Fiona Apple, ‘Fast As You Can’

Fiona Apple

Poor Blur, shunted down a place because I couldn’t find the Fiona Apple album yesterday morning. I asked Junior’s mum if she’d seen it in the car, and it turns out she’d taken it to work the day before. Two extraordinary things here: a) an album untouched for a good five years is removed the day before it’s needed; b) Junior’s mum doesn’t seem to be scared about nabbing my records without asking. She obviously hasn’t heard what karma rained down on my big sister in 1983.

So, this is 16 going on 17, innocent as a rose.

It seems to have the same fade-in as ‘Northern Lites’ before coming on like incidental music in a Broadway musical. Apple has a fantastic, mad, fruitily passionate voice for such a willowy frame, and the song draws Junior’s attention with its frantic pace. It peaks with the big soul breakdown in the middle, and Dad keeps the baby punter rapt with a piercingly accurate impression.

“I’ll be your giiiiirrrrrl…” No wonder she was dumbstruck.