music

[17] Blur, ‘Tender’

Albarn

Or Damon’s brave devotional country and western mantra folly. If nothing else, it makes babies rock slowly back and forth, wailing along here and there. Mind you, by the seventh minute, Junior was on her belly pulling herself over to the coffee table to upset all the Sunday papers. Whatever it takes to block out Graham Coxon’s whiny, reedy voice.

I loved this song for a week or two. Albarn’s singing was shocking on Top Of The Pops, but I thought we had a new Kumbaya hippy dippy campfire classic. Yes, of course we needed one. Its appeal waned all too quickly, and by the time everyone saw that cute little milk carton haring about it was completely forgotten. Aw, bless that little milk carton.

‘Tender’ sounds ok today. Moving off-topic, there are FIVE American female soloists to come in the next 16. A special, unspecified, possibly fictional prize to anyone who can guess them.

[18] Super Furry Animals, ‘Northern Lites’

Super Furry Animals copyright Tom Sheehan

I don’t know why I hated the Super Furry Animals. Maybe it was because they had marijuana bore Howard Marks on their album cover. God, where did he pick up his cachet? I had the ill luck to see him live in a Central London bar, where he treated us to 90 minutes of tedious aren’t-drugs-cool? stories, all lapped up by his zany student/70s casualty following.

Anyway, something must have clicked between me and SFA. Years later I owned all their albums and could be found singing an impromptu ‘Golden Retriever’/’Day Tripper’ medley in Inferno, hellish Clapham nightspot. You don’t want to know.

‘Northern Lites’ is a typically directionless tune, perked up by horns and steel drums. It’s a mess, but an endearing one, and it makes you flap your arms up and down until your bouncy chair is a bucking bronco.

[19] Len, ‘Steal My Sunshine’

Len

Junior was in crawling position when I put this on and rocked back and forth as if she was on her starting blocks, raring to go. Or she was trying to get as far away from the stereo as possible. It’s a jaunty, stumbling rhythm, mind, and that’s usually her bag. This crawling position business is still just a dire warning, but we’re ill-prepared. I need to put the Kajagoogoo and later Air LPs on the lower shelves.

Len, then. I thought Jane’s Addiction had taken a brave new direction when I first heard this; he sounds a bit like Perry Farrell, innit. It’s not a record that stands up to repeat plays, so it was lucky to be released late in the year. I was probably fed up with it by the time I recorded number 16. Still, it’s a bit of throwaway pop fun, and they have an unfathomably stupid name. Bonus.

[20] The Chemical Brothers, ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’

The Chemical Brothers

“Dad?” Junior fixed me with one of her quizzical looks. “Didn’t we have this in the 1995 chart?”

If it ain’t broke. The Chemical Brothers picked up ‘Leave Home’, dusted it off, souped it up with bleeps and sirens and punted it back out to an unsuspecting public. They would never have got away with it if “Superstar DJs, here we go!” didn’t sound so exciting in its hoary old way.

Junior really was agog for the first minute or two, no doubt speechless that anyone could show such brazen cheek rejigging their own records. Although, if she wants bare-faced idle chancing, she wants to hear the songs they did with Noel Gallagher.

Better not. Someone would only go and alert the Social.

They’d come round here with their dark wood interiors, beans on toast and flawless jukebox.

[1] The Stone Roses, ‘Fools Gold 9.53’

The Stone Roses

The last couple of minutes of ‘I Am The Resurrection’ gave us a clue, ‘Fools Gold’ rammed it home with wah-wah to spare. British rock had found the funk, and we tripped over our unfeasible trousers to show that we’d had it all along. The beat is still aggressive enough to startle Junior into involuntary bouncing, and she’s right into it in seconds. A bit of rock, a bit of groove, mix them together and it’s a nine-month-old’s nirvana.

Heaven knows what Ian Brown’s on about, mind. Something about his mate shopping at Mr Pyrite. Soz. It didn’t matter, it was all about the Funky Drummer and John Squire putting his guitar to good, economical use – possibly for the last time. Everyone was waiting for this single – me, I bought it on the day it came out, in Replay in Bristol. I was there on a university open day, clearly more concerned about red hot new tunes than whether the Classics department was the place for me.

1990 went rock-dance crossover crazy, but nothing had this record’s brass balls, and Northside never blew The Late Show’s sound system. Fookin’ amateurs. The Stone Roses, of course, hoovered up Colombia’s gross national product and went on to release records that actually sounded like expanding paunches.

‘Fools Gold’ is still lithe.

[2] Depeche Mode, ‘Personal Jesus’

Depeche Mode

I ditched Smash Hits for Record Mirror in 1986, and had it delivered until its demise in 1991-ish. Nothing ever lived up to it, nothing seemed to cater for me after that. In the late 80s it hooked itself onto the new rock/dance crossovers in its superlative BPM section alongside the usual house and r&b reviews, ahead of the game with early warnings about unexpected remixes and bewildering new directions. ‘Personal Jesus’ was one of these blindside dancefloor monsters.

The pervtastic ‘Mode (© Smash Hits) were big but somehow still niche. I reckon this single – with its swampy swagger, twanging groove and stomping beat – made it “OK” to like them. It topped Record Mirror’s Cool Cuts chart on its white label release, and went on to storm the clubs and excite indie kids and pop kids alike. ‘Blasphemous Rumours’ didn’t quite have the same broad appeal.

I’d been buying their singles for years – a dubious inheritance for Junior – but ‘Personal Jesus’ was the first one that I thought was really great. The tight, pulsating Violator album was pretty special too. They peaked here, I reckon, before Dave Gahan started on all that dying and being resurrected caper. Junior hasn’t got time for all that showing off; she’s only here for the music, and the glam stomp grabbed her right from the off. A leather-skirted hit for the Basildon boys.

OK, viewers, your turn: guess the Number One, choose the next year, suggest a new theme, throw in some bad puns on Martin Gore’s name, slag off the songs so far and gnash teeth at the absence of Technotronic.

[3] Ten City, ‘That’s The Way Love Is’

Ten City

I could juggle the Top Three all day and still be unsure. This is the best euphoric house record ever, No.2 is a beast and No.1 the defining record of the year. Whatever that means.

Byron Stingily (WHAT a name) and the other shoulder-padded chaps deliver a beautiful happy sad song, that tells us everything might get messed up but it’s no big deal, don’t get hung up, it happens to everyone, now let’s get lost in the sweeping strings and thumping piano and skyscraping vocals and floor-eating beat. Nothing more convincing.

The message probably doesn’t reach Junior, who thinks everything is pretty much spot-on anyway, but the jumping tune kickstarts her limbs. She grooves, Dad irons. See? Oblivious to life’s hardships.

Before we get to the big two, a shout out to a few records I was troubled to see miss out on the 20:

NWA, ‘Express Yourself’
Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, ‘What I Am’
Digital Underground, ‘Doowutchyalike’
Roy Orbison, ‘She’s A Mystery To Me’
Black Box, Starlight, all that Italo House fun

Tough decisions for a 17-year-old.

[4] Happy Mondays, ‘W.F.L. (The Vince Clarke Mix)’

Happy Mondays, WFL

Look at the video for this, the Vince Clarke mix. With his floppy hair, tatty hoody and pissholes-in-the-snow eyes, Shaun Ryder set a template for a generation of teenagers who wanted to achieve that blissed-out E’d-up look. Trouble was, we were buzzing off our nuts on a combination of Woodpecker cider and Fisherman’s Friends. We had breath that could cut dry ice, and our love for our fellow man bordered on the surly.

You had to get the correct hoodies too. Hanes had the best texture and weight, but they cost 20 quid and the cider was soaking up most of the cash. Top Man did some thin versions with self-consciously trippy patterns. These would ride up to make you look like a bellydancing Bez. Who’d defected to Candy Flip.

So we were never quite right, but the music was. Until this point, I’d always felt as if I was catching up, picking up on bands and movements as their time was passing. Whatever you want to call it – baggy, Madchester, indie dance – we were watching it unfold this time. Strands of house, techno, Balearic, acid, rock and pop mixed into a heady potion that could even make white schoolboys dance.

As a girl, Junior’s not afraid to dance, and this had her rocking. She threw in a maniacal cackle at the start. Maybe she’s seen pictures of that purple Aztec-design hooded top.

[5] De La Soul, ‘Say No Go’

De La Soul

Junior greeted the first few bars of this with a well-timed Godfather of Soul-style “Owww”. Totally unprovoked; she just felt the music, man. She went on to applaud the snappy use of Hall & Oates, clock De La’s message and assure me that she’d rather know a shover than a pusher ‘cos a pusher’s a jerk.

Now, here was a ludicrously over-long album that just about held it together. Even the skits weren’t quite aural torture – but that’s not to say we can’t blame them for abominations that followed; indeed they got the “crap skit” ball rolling themselves on De La Soul Is Dead, as they set off on their resolute path to have no more hits. For a summer, though, the world was De-La-Cratic.

When I hear this song, I see black and white dusty ghetto streets. Was that the video? Or were they the Home Counties mean streets where I kicked around, shocking passing pensioners with my modishly wide school trousers and billowing hair?

[6] Soul II Soul, ‘Keep On Movin”

Soul II Soul

I went to Junior’s parents’ evening last night at the nursery. Tried to recoup some of the mind-boggling fees by flinging down as much of their rosé as possible, and heard about the nipper’s progress from the one semi-articulate carer. Anyway, she told me that Junior loves music. Sits there, rapt, while they all sing, and bounces and cocks her head when particularly taken. You see? This isn’t just a selfish, inhumane experiment. She LOVES it.

And she’s learning to compare and quantify. She reassured me this morning that ‘Keep On Movin” is indeed streets ahead of ‘Back To Life’, and that anyone who said otherwise only did so because they were slow to catch on. Got quite strident opinions, this one.

Somehow lush in its sparse arrangement, this record still oozes warmth and class, which is a bugger to get out of the carpet. Luckily, we have bare floorboards in the new gaff, so there’s now a nice 80s soul varnish.