Thursday, April 30, 2026
1982 Top 40 23rd May # 2 Adam Ant
Adam Ant was no longer a cool name to write in your pencil case or school bag. But looking back this is an incredibly quixotic song to get to Number Three in the charts. I didn't know who Al Green was. 'Don't drink don't smoke. What do you do? ' Apparently it was a dig at Dexys.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 50 Shine
There are worse ways to spend 50 days thtn listening to 50 Joni Mitchell songs. Starting wuth the last collection of new material. One of the great things about Joni is her use of space.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,400 Rodriguez - Cold Fact
A record which spins on a different axis. Sometimes so far out, it's outta site
1982 Top 40 23rd May # 3 Yazoo
Only You. Listening to thus takes me back to the tume it came out. Listening to it I was of an age where I didn't understand the incredible depth of emotion that it was talking about. The profound.
.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 86 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
With time to me Unknown Pleasures becomes less about biographical detail and more of an act of artistic inspiration. It's a record with genuine pagan qualities
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 182 The Earlies - Those Were The Earlies
I'm listening to an album from 2002 called These Were The Earlies by The Earlies. It came out in 2004. It's already clasped me close to its chest and I've taken off my headphones, gone off and made myself a cup of tea. Returned to my desk. Put my headphones back on. Now I'm going to listen to the rest of it. I've found another one.
It's immediately obvious that the record has a strong sense of self mythology. This is a strong essential component of the DIY independent mythology which has always been a component of Rock & Roll alternative culture. A SUB culture. A hidden universe.
This is a band from Texas. But I felt sure they must feature membes of The Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev because the DNA of the record seemed so immediately familiar. Like my own skin. .The instant familiarity of records becomes one of its essential attractions with time.
This is a cute record. Coy. But with boundless and vaulting admirable ambition. Like many great records an incantation. An invitation back to childhood. The low door in the wall.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,381 Juni Habel
2026 seems to be a slightly enchanted time music wise, What magical time and place to you want to be transported back to today? The early Seventies? The late Sixtues? Encased in now. Why not. Juni Habel and her third album Evergreen In Your Mind. The slow, deliberate act of becoming according to The Line of Best Fit. That sounds as if it will do,
And so the album proves . It's elfin twinkle toes delight. Tenderness and playfulness meet in a Norwegian meadow and frolic and gambol to their hearts content as the sun decsends. It makes your mind go back to the likes of Vashti and Sandy. Forward to the arrival of the bew Aldous Harding album which is due soon. This will do,
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,401 Weyes Blood - And In The Darkness Hearts Aglow
A record I play that never fails me. Best listened to
as the sun goes down.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 87 The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
I never mind listening to The Stone Roses. It's such a glorious record. Ever! It's such a fundamental record. It's why people like me listen to records so much. It takes me back and guides me forwards. It genuinely changed things.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 183 Keiji Haino - To Start With Let's Remove The Colour
Freeform Psychedelic noise. I gave up waiting fir ut to start after a couple of minutes.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,380 Brown Horse
Perhaps Brown Horse's are Norwich's finest. They're certainly a horse of a different colour. Third album Total Dive might at first seem like an open invitation for doomscrollers of the world to unite and feel sorry for themselves.But persevere. For there's much here for lovers of Neil Young, The Band , Springsteen and the open road to celebrate. I'm not quite sure what Alan Partridge might think of it really. But frankly, what dies that guy know,
This is a band that must be growing used to being compared to artists and records that came out over fifty years ago. This is tonally not necessarily the cheeriest record you're likely to hear this week but it may well be one of the best. I went to university in Nowich but it certainly doesn't remind me of The Fine City. It probably reminds me of somewhere like Omaha, even though I've never been there and am probably unlikely to ever get there. Good recirds do things like that to you. This is a very good record !
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,402 The Beatles - Let it Be (Naked)
I just listened to Let It Be. Naked. On my television. No that's not what I meant. I'm not that kind of person.This is a record which us so incredibly of its time. You can't help but visualise The Beatles. Feel the tension between them. Feel the Sixties become The Seventies.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 184 Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight.
One of the characteristics musically speaking of the current age appears to me to be the encroaching march of the Fleetwood Mac brugade. As in the Nicks Buckingham incarnation. I don't mind them but I do sometimes rail against the overwhelming blandness they bring in their wake. This album is emblematic of that tendency . Frankly I wondered if I was drowning in marshmallow.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 88 West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - A Child's Guide To Good & Evil
This seems a world away from where I'm sitting now. But maybe it's not. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band feeds on an energy that is reborn with every succeeding generation. An urge to get back to the garden. A fear of what might germinate and grow.
Heavenly harmonies and vibes. A sense that this album might not actually be bought by that many people but it will be loved by those that make the effort and spread the word.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,379 Jessie Ware
I listened to Jesse Ware's latest album Superbloom last night. I'm listening to it again now. She takes the heady essential ingredients of original Seventies Disco. Distuls them to the essence and then unleashes the cork and allows you to rise to the ceiling like Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins. So you're floating up towards the ceiling. With all your favourite people. The helium fuelled staircase to heaven !
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 29 The Clean - Compilation
We all miss out on essential lives. Our essential vocations. My essential vocation was to dream I suspect. Mu 91 year old parents sit together in the living toom with a set of pictures of their children to their right. There's a photo of me which I think is the essential photogtaph of my lifetime .
It shows me walking down a garden path in Zimbabwe towards the swimming pool at the bottom of the garden. Chameleons in the trees. Banana tree ahead of me. Africa in all its verdant majesty and vibrant life all around me. I have a far away look in my eyes. A dreamer. I doubt if I will ever escape my essential self. I doubt if anyone does really.
My other essential selves are. Working in record shops. I've never done that so. I haunt them instead.I lack ambituin except to live. Collecting records. Collecting experience. Teaching now online. Reaping the rich harvest of life abroad. Experience life. As i said teaching. Learning .First in class. Now online. Every class is dofferent. Every time you play a record the experience is never the same
I should have been in a band. I would have been in a band loke The Clean. Minor Cult players. Not the big boys. Velvet Underground, Doors, Roxy Music, Joy Division. Essentially happy. But aware that life is a mountain path and the road is the long and winding one and we could trip and fall at any moment. Don't point that thing at me!
1982 Top 40 23rd May # 5 Tight Fit
My very dear friend Philip is completely obsessed with Tight Fit. I should encourage him to write the band the tribute they clearly deserve in their honour. Personally I reckon they're just Bad Pop and even worse Camp !
Monday, April 27, 2026
Song(s) of the Day # 4,378 Bill Orcutt
I may have got to that age. The age where I can happily gaze at a fly wnadering across a pain of glass facing out on the street below While listening to Bill Orcutt's Music In Continuous Motion on my television set as the sun goes down. Then going over and cooking my tea. There are wirdse ways to spend a Monday evening in April,
The record is like something that Tom Verlaine and Tichard Lloyd might have dreamed up. Otcutt has been round the block more than most. He was apparently initually unspired to create by seeung Muddy Waters perform on The Last Waltz.. He's supported Sonuc Youth. He has nothing left to prove. But Music In Continuous Motion proves it. Just the facts !
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,403 The Horrors - Primary Colours
Shocking ! And not in the Hitchcock as in the classic dig your nails diwn your boyfriend's palm sense. But in the this is really, really piss poor car crash respect. The Cure meets Bauhaus meets the worst of The Scream OSTs. Go back to Drama Scool lads. Do not pass go. Ever again !!!
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 89 Nina Simone - Pastel Blues
Some talents are so extraordinary it's difficult to do them justice. This is a set of shades of humanity. Pain, urban blues, protest and sublime singing and playing. It didn't do too well in the Billboard Album Charts at the time.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 185 The Streets
Self conscious and intertextual like so much Post Millennial music is. A down at heel Brummie Good Fellas one moment. Bad bets and relationship decisions follow but the narrative and momentum drags rather. Iy seems to portray a rather mundane existence. I take iy iff and put on Pastel Blues.
1982 Top 40 23rd May # 6 ABC
Half of my record collection is in the process of being moved. To the museum . Graded , listed , ranked and codified. These are times I lived through. It doesn't really feel like ancient history but that seems to be the current approach.
There was a sense when Lexicon Of Love camd out that it was a record of note. For us at school it felt a bit silly but we didn't fully appreciate the reference points.We didn't approach the greatest of The Temptations, and Bacharach & David. We needed Mojo for that. ABC I now realise did know how good that stuff was and they appreciated Semiotics too. Respect .
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 31 The Kinks - Village Green Preservation Society
'I miss the village green. With all the simple people . I miss the village green. The church. The clock. the steeple.....'
Nostalgia's not what it used to be. It probably never has been. Or will be again. The Kinks were always very good on its comforts and tiger traps. Look out your window. That's what I'm doing as I type this. I sit at my desk on the second floor of a picturesque listed Georgian building of flats near the Central Station . It's a lovely day and I have a glorious view of the street below .I glance down at the pavement opposite my flat and can watch as people pass by below and can speculate on where they're coming from and where they're heading to. And what are the thoughts in their heads. .
And all the time as I do so Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks spins on the turntable in the corner of my flat, It's an album whuch came out when I was three years old and had little awareness of the existence of the UK. I was born in Zimbabwe . We all came back when I was 60 yo the land where my parents had grown up .
I've never forgotten that I was not born here. That I was born somehwere else and that some might consider me an immigrant. An outsider. As they do others. Now at 60 I'm more aware of this strange and troubled country. In many ways I'd prefer to be somewhere else. But this is where I've made my home and I love Newcastle.
I also love The Kinks and Village Green Preservation Society. It has 14 songs. Not a dud amongst them. Sweet pop songs wuth hodden depths. About railway trains and village greens. And sitting by the riverside and staring at the sky and dreaming of escape .
Nostalgia's not what it used to be. But the people are still prone to being rather simple from where I sit. I do not except myself from that judgement We're easily swept by simple narratives and easy solutions to complicated problems. But so long as we like the Kinks !
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 90 Kate Bush - The Kick Inside
Kate Bush like all great artists introduced a voice, a persona and with it a world that didn't exist before her arrival..And she changed things.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,404 Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson
Harry Nilsson is still in his dressing gown on the cover of Nilsson Schmilsson. You get the sense that he's undergoing some kind of crisis but he's such damned good company for the course of the album that you're certainly rooting for the man.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 186 Kings Of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak.
Not the excellent furst. Not the breakthrough third. A transitional album but to my ears a fantastic one. Creedence, meet, Blondie meet Befheat meet Ramines and get down and dirty. They lost what they had from here for me byt their bank manager wasn't complaining.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,377 RAYE
'It's a shame about Raye...' This morning I was listening to Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds . An important record from my youth. I like it, and am glad I bought it last year on the day I went to see The Loft at Cluny 2. . They're putting out a second album soon and returning to Newcastle. I'd like to see them again next month.
But in the meantime This afternoon I'm listening to RAYE. It's not really a shame. This is about as far away from the Leminheads as you could possibly get. RAYE.second album THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE is not actually a million miles from The War of the Worlds. Because what is music really? It's escapism. Entertainment. Sustenance fror the brain, soul and feet.
I confess I don't really speak THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE's language or walk its streets .It's not really aimed at me. I don't have any children. I'll never completely live in this world. But it strikes me as not too dissimilar exercise as The War of the Worlds in essence. It's tuneful. It's huper theatrical, t's incredibly ambitious and it's surely destined for the West End.
I imagine any number of people are listening to this on permanent rotation and I can quite understand why. It's rather kitchen sink, but let's face it we're living through the kutchen sink age good as dammit.. Thimbs up from me!
Saturday, April 25, 2026
1982 Top 40 23rd May # 7 PhD
There was always an odd song that was in the charts for weeks that didn't do anything for you but hung around got radio play and was on Top of the Pops every couple of weeks. Everybody's Got To Learn Sometimes. Video Killed The Radio Star, This.
PhD were a duo. their lead singer was a guy called Jim Diamond.He wasn't a particularly trendy looking type. An everyman. I Won't Let You Down got to Number Three in the UK. But it parked in the charts for weeks it seemed. It charted in the Top 10 all over the place,
I just listened to it. I haven't heard it for years. It had a small majestic 45 quality. But I remember why U didn't like it. I don't care for Jum's voice. The way he sings 'Woman.' It wouldn't have featured on the evenung Radio One shows whuch is what I listened to mostly. I understand why it resonated but don't need to hear it again really..
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 32 The Go Betweens - 16 Lovers Lane
I almost died a few times. Don't we all. My mother almost died befioe I was born. Drowned . An older boy saw her adrift in the sea before she was five and plucked her from the waves and returned her to her parents on the shore. My sister as a baby fell into our garden swimming pool in Zimbabwe and her sister rescued her. I almost fell out of the open window on a train heading across Botswana. Casual incidents but they make you pause..
The Go Betweens 16 Lovers Lane reminds me of another one of the times I might have died. When I was at unuversity I was ill. Very ill. I had to intercalate for a couple of years and return to my parental home and be diagnosed and treated back to some kind of health so I could return to university and complete my degree. All the while. My older sister was dying and died in the same house.
There were four of us there with her. My younger sister who had been plucked from the pool by Sarah in Zimbabwe.. My mother who cared for Sarah when she returned from the hospice. My father. And me. But it made a mark on us all. And the five if us still bear the scars. Though you may not know it to meet us. We never recognise each others scars. .
I bought this album, the last of The Go Betweems albums during their initial run at round about that time. I'm playing it now as my supper warms.. It's essentially an album about Love in its many incarnations. An incredibly beautuful and refined one. As the man says, 'Love goes on....'
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 187 Girl Aloud - Chemistry
There are daus when I'm faced with a selection like this and I think 'I don't write that kind if a blog. I don't really have an ipinion on this which is worth hearing I'm afraid,'
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 91 Ash Ra Tempel - Ash Ra Tempel
A German Krautrock group led by guitarist Manuel Gottsching. Their eponymous debut from 1971 is a hidden passage into the pyramids.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,376 Parlor Greens
Parlor Greens Emeralds plays a straight bat . It's Booker T & The Mags for the late twenties. Frankly it's difficult to fault an approach like this. Smokin'
Friday, April 24, 2026
Song(s) of the Day # 4,375 My New Band Believe
It's Friday. So let's relax. This is complete pants. I suspect it has no redeening features whatsiever. Look we've all been young and can understand the meaning of precocious. I personally loved Joseph & His Technicolor Dreamcoat and I knew all of the words.
But I was nine. I'm not now. I didn't form a Rock & Roll band called My New Band Believe and go out on the road dragging the good name of Rock & Roll through the mud behind me while I pranced and preened and genuinely expected anybody to take me seriously for a moment. This is ghastly nonsense.
Iggy Pop knew and knows all about the inner child and how it can be channeled to produce creative and challenging art. I left primary school almist 50 years ago. It was a wrench at the time but part if life's passage. My New Band Believe seem to be in denual of this essentual feature of life's passage
Thursday, April 23, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 92 Donnie & Joe Emerson - Dreamin' Wild
The greatest Rock & Roll record ever to come out if Fruitland, Washington. Self released in 1979. Originally only 2,000 copies 1,000 of which were destroyed. This is a story which is so uncanny and a record which sounds so beautiful that it's almost impossible to categorise. Just hear it. If you want to learn more start here.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 188 The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
I find The Magnetic Fields rather arch generally but I could go for this because it chooses to skip across genres like it's in a field if daisies. And a fine time is had by one and all..
Song(s) of the Day # 4,375 Pale White
Interesting day today ! Every day should be interesting . Well here's an interesting record to go with it. From Newcastle Upon Tyne where I reside as it happens. Pale White's third; Inanimate Objects of the 21st Century; White Stripes meet Queens of the Stoneage at the Bigg Market on Friday Night .. And make a damned fine night of it.
1982 Top 40 23rd May # 10 Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
The clock was ticking down to eight o'clock. I was due in Dussledorf in a couple of minutes for a virtual lesson. I needed a warmer. Every half decent lesson needs a warmer. I came up with this one. What's the Next Line? 'I Love & Roll...' Cathi and Carsten were stumped. Don't they teach Insurance Professionals anything anymore? For the record it's 'So put another dime in the jukebox baby !' Don't pretend you know that ......
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
1982 Top 40 23rd May # 10 Hot Chocolate
When I was growing up Hot Chocolate were always in the Top Twenty. And this always seemed like a good thing. .
Song(s) of the Day # 4,374 Jose Gonzalez
I'm listening to Richard Thompson and thinking about Kevin Morby today. Jose Gonzalez' Against The Dying Of the Light has been chiming with that. Plugging into that primal Folk energy. Revving up the motor and presseing your bootheels on the accelerator and bombing down the woodland road until dawn.
There's some Nick Drake inspired poetics and picking and that's always welcome. This is some record. It has plenty of company in 2026.. 'Do not go gentle until that night.; You heard what the man says.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 93 Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want to See The Bright Lights
Life is not all peaches and cream. We must realise this and face the music, Here is an album that spells that out clearly if we needs a reminder to tell us it has always been thus. This feels like being cast and finding yourself adrift in a Hardy novel. There's plenty of light and shade here as there.
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 33 The Undertones - Positive Touch
How does a band that comes to fame at a certain age appealing primarily to people of a similar age as them last the course. Take the Undertones and Positive Touch. They could always write sings and play. Now they found nuance and moved away lyrically frim a largely hormonal rush. Discovered Soul and Dexys and Orange Juice. Maintained the joy and humour. (less of a factor on The Sin of Pride, the record which broke them).
Here they really embraced the experiment. Were content to be out of synch. They broadened their palate and range of harmonies and finally sang about the Troubles. Theirs and the part of the world they hailed from. This is a gorgeous textured and incredubly colourful record. Almost dayglo. I can't think of another album which sounds quite like it.
1982 Top 40 23rd May # 11 Duran Duran
I have double standards. At heart I'm an NME reader. I like the Stranglers so tirn a blind eye to their callous misogyny and thugushness. But I'm not so forgiving to Duran Duran.Hungry Like The Wolf. 'A character who hunts women. Charming !' I suppose the tune's alright.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 190 Lambchop - Oh (Ohio)
Lambchop seem like a world to discover for another lifetime. For now to melt into this should suffice.
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