That link was c/o

That link was c/o Submeat, which is also running its own best singles of 2002 list. Singles are great! We like singles!

The Top 212 Singles of 2002

The Top 212 Singles of 2002, according to Popjustice at any rate. We thought of a joke for PJ’s advent calendar but it got so absurdly long that we’ll be running it as the Freaky Trigger Christmas Joke separately and meanwhile try and think of another one.

Another day another Sam Smith’s pub.

Another day another Sam Smith’s pub. The consistency of the Sam Smiths experience is one think which could be held against them, the other being the ridiculous notion that thei rrestricted range of drinks is in any way a bad thing. The Princess Louise has all the Sam Smith’s trappings in one of their best spaces. A horseshoe bar, an old style tin roof and excellent etched mirrors. Not only that but its raoring fire makes it a great place to be in the winter. But due to the homogenity of the Sam Smith’s chain (and I use that word with reservations) in the end the most interesting thing to say about it is its authintic Voctorian toilets. Which makes it soundlike you are slagging it off….

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL (Part 4)

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL (Part 4)

Two years have now passed from the death of Ian Dury, and as promised in The Unbearable Shiteness of Ian it is time to calmly, critically and objectively rate his body of work. At least it might be time for other people to do that kind of dull, sober review. Me - I think his body of work was a manky as his physical body - the failing of one thankfully stopped the other. As mentioned elsewhere hanging around with a band called The Blockheads suggested the general intelligence of everyone working with him.

Sickness can be an excuse in the short term, but if I worked in industry (and frankly such an idea is anathema to me), using sickness as anexcuse for shoddy work for twenty years is pushing it a bit. Okay Ian, you had polio as a kid but that’s not an excuse for not even trying to sing. And certainly no excuse for Spasticus Autisticus when you neither had multiple sclerosis or autism. You can try to use the excuse that the song is in character, but its basically in the character that didn’t realise that the song would be used in the summer of Joey Deacon to abuse fifty percent of the countries children. The ones who had already been partially been crippled by being hit with what was so euphamistically called a “rythmn stick” a few years before (in my case the rythmn stick was a bamboo cane and made me destest music lessons and much of what came out of them ever since).

What annoys me most about Dury (apart from his son) is that he appeared to be totally aware of how annoyingly useless he was. Look at the list of jobs he could have done on “What A Waste” that he could of done instead of playing the fool in a six piece band. “What a waste, what a waste - but I don’t mind” Dury sings, but what about the rest of us. We blood mind your lousy Essex vowels removing any aspect of wit from the lyrics already sucked out by the monotonous delivery. I bloody mind. And I also beg to differ the “Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll is very good indeed”. Actually not only is it not rock’n'roll (which would be a “thank heavens for small mercies” moment if it wasn’t jazz-funk instead), but it isn’t even vaguely good. Sex and drugs I can agree with, but have you ever tried to do the wild thing or take acid with the Big Bopper on?

In conclusion when discussing Ian Dury one has to hold your hand up and go for a partially disabled bloke he had a remarkable career. But I would go even further. For a bloke who was rubbish it was remarkable he had a career at all. “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards” Ian says. Not you Dury, not you.

NAS - “Made You Look”

NAS - “Made You Look”

One of Nas’ most famous tracks finds him rapping from a gun’s point of view; here that idea gets turned into music. A shot is fired - and the beat is a bullet trail, slowed down John Woo style until we can see the air surge and buckle around it, mapping the wobble of the bass, the skid of a spun-back turntable. Nas is an action hero: his lines here aren’t much but when he says them he sounds so tough and at the end when the beat drops out and he keeps rhyming you realise he does his own stunts too.

Momus-

Momus-My Sperm is not Your Enemy
There is debate that this album is not as political as his other work, which confuses me, because Momus is all about aesthetics and fashion and posturing- his Maoists are in the media and the permanent cultural revaluation is about hemlines- on that note our synth pop Haydn is back, our spooge obsessed Schubert, its old Momus as good as old Momus, and for all of this talk about a new direction and deconstruction, he is more stuck then Madonna. It doesn’t really matter because I’m all about his rakish raspy drawl and his calculated John Wilmot in the 21st Century personae.
There is a coda-all abstract and analogue Commodore 64 and Atari Noises which is much odder, prettier and god forbid American then we deserve. I want to hear the album he makes when the words run out.