Snow Day

Why, in the UK, does the snow take us by surprise every year?

We act like we have never seen the stuff before.

Ohmygod! Snow! On the ground. On the roads. Everywhere! White stuff! I can’t possibly travel in that. Our modern technology just cannot cope with it! We’re just not built to function in snow! Stop the country! Back to the caves!

A hundred years of industrial revolution grinds to a halt in the time it takes for some middle class office worker to pull back the curtains, see an inch of snow on his people carrier and decide that it is simply too difficult to attempt any kind of journey into work.

Scott of the Antarctic would throw his frozen shite at us in disgust. I bet Sir Ranulph Fiennes is out on his front lawn right now sunbathing and eating a Cornetto.

What utter wussies we are.

The entire country shuts up shop. It’s ridiculous. My wife has had to take an unpaid day off work today because all the bloody schools are closed.

There’s barely an inch of snow on the ground here in the Midlands! It’s nothing. Nothing at all. When I was a kid I can remember weeks and weeks of heavy snow in ‘81/’82 and having to walk to school in it every day. The staff all turned up for work. And so did most of the kids. The only time the school ever gave us a day off was when the boilers broke.

Nowadays everybody leaps onto the smallest snowflake as an excuse to take a day off. To have an impromptu holiday. No wonder this country is the poor old man of Europe. Where’s our hardy British spirit gone? Over the last few decades it’s been replaced with a whiny, wheedling, shirking tendency to try and wriggle out of any onerous responsibility or task that requires even the tiniest bit of hard work. Nowadays I suspect schools and businesses close merely to avoid the possibility of litigation should someone slip and smash their buttock on a kerbstone while trying to gain access to their premises.

It’s cowardly, lazy and a little bit tawdry.

The snow up North has been far worse and I bet there’s a fair few people there who will still struggle into work nonetheless.

From the Midlands down to the South though (maybe I’m wrong) the snowfall hasn’t been nearly as bad. It should be business as normal with the added novelty of some beautiful winter views to gawp at from our office windows.

Instead most people are at home watching telly or building snowmen in the garden.

I’m not. I’m at work.

Harrumph.

Pass me another turd, Scott old man, I’ve got the ballista working properly now.

The Day The Music Died

I’m wondering if I have fallen out of love with music.

Or, to be precise, new music. The discovery of it. The giving a go of new bands. The trying something new. I seem to have become as locked into the music of my formative years as my parents were when I was a kid.

Why does that happen?

When I was a teenager (though I came to record buying late) I was an avid music consumer. I would buy a batch of records every week. Singles, EPs, LPs, picture discs, I couldn’t get enough. I can remember going to a record shop in Birmingham and spending so much money that the shop assistant was kind enough to not ring the amount up on the till to save me from embarrassment. I must have blown an entire week’s wages in one go on rare records and collectibles. That seems so obscenely hedonistic now.

In no time at all I had built up an impressive collection of literally hundreds and hundreds of records (which I still own). They took over my entire bedroom. All of them boxed, alphabetized and inventorized. It was a collection that I lavished love and time on. And each weekend I’d carefully load up my turntable with my latest acquisitions, carefully wiping the dust off them with the special cloth I had bought for this purpose and savouring each hiss and pop of the needle swinging itself into the opening groove.

It was my life.

And then somehow, in the nineties, my expenditure dropped off, my interest waned and was pulled elsewhere. I moved on and got into other things. Books, computers, gadgetry, travel. The fact that the nineties were an awful decade for decent music only hastened me out of the scene.

And now, here in 2009, I’m somehow completely on the outside of it all. On the outside looking in but unsure of where the door is or if I even have enough interest to want to open it and step inside. A few new bands have caught my ear – The Doves, The Editors – but I haven’t gone as fanatically overboard on them as I did when All About Eve arrived on the music scene in 1985 or when Kate Bush released “Hounds Of Love” in the same year.

The passion for new music has left me.

My MP3 player is proof of this. The majority of its contents have been sucked from my CD collection and I’d say that 90% of that is from the eighties. I’ve become trapped in my very own time warp.

I’m no longer “down with the kids”. I’m looking at them and frowning at the infernal noise they listen to and dare to call music – much the same way, I suspect, as when my father just couldn’t appreciate the blisteringly fierce music of The Jam’s “Funeral Pyre” and dismissed it as tuneless rubbish. At the time his music of choice was Buddy Holly and Marty Robbins.

Is this the fate that has now befallen me?

Worryingly, checking my MP3 player this morning, I can’t fail to notice that “El Paso” is already on there...

*Sigh* It’ll be “Rave On” next.

And not in a cool way either.

Popping One's Clogs

My last post (or more specifically, its title) got me thinking about Red Dwarf. And in particular the episode where Rimmer and Lister perform a mind swap. For those of you who don’t know the show, Rimmer is a hologram (cos he’d dead) and gets to borrow Lister’s body for a week on the condition that he puts it through a rigorous training regime to get it back into shape. Rimmer, of course, reneges on the deal and goes on an extravagant orgy of eating and drinking. Lister is less than happy about this and accuses Rimmer of mistreating his body. Rimmer’s answer is that Lister has mistreated his body himself for years... and points out all the little pains, tweaks and twinges that Lister never ever mentions...

Now I’m not, by rule, a hypochondriac. By and large, like Lister, I ignore all but the most insistent messages that my body gives me. Or at least I did when I was younger.

Now that I’m 40 I’m suddenly becoming more aware of them. The slight headaches that come and go. The twinges in my guts. The aches in my elbows and my thumbs. The low level but nevertheless ever-present back pain.

Lying awake in the morning I can’t help but think my body is giving up whispering its messages to me and is now beginning to shout them at me through a loudhailer.

Are these all signs of my inescapable mortality?

I’ve never been one to dwell overlong on death and existentialism but I guess with my granddad grumbling his way through Death’s waiting room and a spritely 2 year old running around my home my thoughts are, quite naturally, being prodded into contemplating the great mysteries of life.

The last ten years of my life have flown by like they’re nothing at all – which is a little worrying for the next ten which will take me up to (gulp) the big 50. I’m already slowing down. I can feel it. My powers of recovery are weaker. I feel more tired more easily. I’m starting to really enjoy eating my greens. And, worst of all, I have stopped buying music.

I am becoming – slowly but perceptibly – old aged.

Mentally I still consider myself the same curmudgeonly, mean spirited grump that I was in my twenties... but physically I’m now less inclined to chase after ruffians on bicycles and throw my shoes at them for being cheeky. The spirit is willing, etc, etc.

I’m becoming less inclined to move with the times. I’m losing my grip on popular culture. Musically I’m still in the 80’s and cannot deny the parallel with my parents who were stuck in the 60’s when I was getting into Killing Joke and Fields Of The Nephilim. New music is beginning to pass me by.

Of course there other factors at work here. Less disposable income. Less space in the house to store my already humungous record and CD collection. But is this how it starts? Will I start falling in love with old black and white films purely because they remind me of my childhood? I can’t deny I’m already tempted to buy retro kid’s programmes on DVD for Tom (Bagpuss, Chorlton & The Wheelies, Pipkins).Of course I realize this is not on. He needs to be experiencing the same reference points as his peers not those of his father.

So am I merely wanting to regress to my own childhood to satisfy my own craving for what was once familiar? Isn’t this one of the signs of old age? Seeking to abandon the confusing present for the safety of the rose tinted past?

But maybe I’m looking at all these twinges and aches the wrong way. Maybe they are protests? A wake up call to get with the programme? To smell the New World coffee? A rallying cry to deliver me from the abyss of entropy?

Hmm. You know, I think that’s how I’m going to look at them.

A call to arms. A war cry raged against the dying of the light...

My 40’s are going to be my new 20’s. Old age can wait a little bit longer.

I is feelin’ the need to get me some bling, innit?

Making New Cheese Out Of Old Cheese

I don’t believe it.

They’re bringing back Knight Rider.

Re-made, re-cast and possibly retro-fitted, Michael Knight and his camp Kit car are already gearing up to turbo-boost back onto our TV screens sometime this Autumn.

And I feel nothing but dismay.

Some things are just best left alone.

Most of the TV shows from the eighties being a case in point.

Although I have fond memories of Knight Rider, The A-Team and Airwolf et al, they are time-locked into a small, blessedly sealed, period of my teenage years and that is where I’d prefer them to remain.

My teenage years weren’t great. I was shy, geeky and nerdy and not particularly a success with the ladies. I lived most of the time in my head, my imagination fuelled by the shows above, my morals and political outlook to a degree informed by the heroes who machine gunned their way to justice and democracy for all. In my innocence I bought unthinkingly into the American way.

Yes folks. I wanted to be Michael Knight. I wanted to be David Hasselhoff.

Oh the shame. And I’d rather not have to relive it.

Well, to be honest, I never wanted to actually be Michael / David. But I did covet the car. I coveted the car in a big way. Yes, I wanted a car that looked butch but was, at heart, gay... Though that gayness is only apparent in retrospect. At the time it wasn’t so obvious. Kit was, well, just Kit. Just as C3PO was just C3PO (and not a metallic version of Charles Hawtrey – which he plainly is).

Looking back on it it’s plain to see why I was such a messed up teen.

But that aside, I’m just sick of this regurgitation of the eighties. It’s lazy. Nostalgia is nice when it is infrequent but not as a permanent mindset. And nostalgia certainly isn’t an art form worth spending money on.

But plainly I’m wrong.

Some TV money man somewhere obviously feels Knight Rider is good for a few bucks more. So they’re wheeling it back out of the scrap yard only this time without the Hoff.

Which surely is a bit like having The A-Team without Mr T?

Or Star Trek without Shatner?

Er...

OK.

That last point wasn’t argued so well but even so...

It’s just not going to be the same. It’s like – having mentioned Hawtrey above – trying to remake the Carry On films. It cannot be done. Sure you can emulate all the physical / visible ingredients. But what you can’t recreate is the original time frame. Nostalgia just cannot be contemporized.

Now, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe they will inject a whole new ethos into it. New blood into old wine skins, etc, or whatever the saying is. But why bother when you can buy the originals of every bloody series from the eighties on Amazon?

I mean, can people not write anything new anymore?

What are they going to remake next?

Street Hawk (remember that anyone)?

Whizz Kids (anybody)?

CHiPs?

Geez. CHiPs. Please, please don’t get me started on Eric Estrada...

Fun To Funky

The BBC managed to divide my loyalties last night.

Was it to be Heroes – now already half way through the much improved fourth series? Or was it to be the first episode of the brand new series of Ashes To Ashes?

In the end it was no contest. The twin allure of Keeley Hawes and “Gene Hunt” (possibly the finest fictional cop creation of the last 20 years) managed to knock Hayden Patisserie (or whatever her name is) and Silage into a cocked hat.

The Quattro beats the Petrellis as sure as rock beats scissors.

Apologies for those of you who don’t get this show but your loss enables the rest of us to feel smug. Thank you for your sacrifice.

Yes. My life is complete. The Gene Genie is back not only with a vengeance but also with a cracking soundtrack that featured The Human League, Duran Duran and The Thompson Twins (I used to love The Thompson Twins – it was so nice to hear them again).

Hawes’ “Alex Drake” character has been given something of a makeover – the New Wave makeup has been toned down, the perm has disappeared in favour of a flicky bob and her hot pants are now tighter than Hunt’s shoulder holster. In fact whereas a bullet from Hunt stands only a 99% chance of flooring you the arsenal Keeley is packing in those hot pants is guaranteed to a put a red blooded male on his back without fail 100% of the time and without leaving an unsightly exit wound. A definite plus for those of you who can’t afford dry cleaning bills. She can fire a few rounds in my direction any time.

Last night’s episode tipped us straight into the heart of Soho and endemic police corruption and featured a script that could cut diamonds. In turns both funny and moving it was virtually impossible to keep tabs on all the references that peppered the dialogue. But why bother even trying? Just sit back and enjoy the ride in the knowledge that the cops aren’t going to pull you over for not wearing a seatbelt and won’t bang you up for sporting a mullet. Folks, good times are here again.

It’s time to roll those jacket sleeves up, loosen that leather pencil tie and whack some Dire Straits onto the tape deck.

Welcome back to the Eighties.

Home at last!

Proper Winters And Erin Grey

So is this a proper winter?

There’s been considerable debate in our house.

Well. Karen mentioned once that the temperatures this year have actually hit freezing a few times rather than just being “a bit chilly” and I grunted in reply that they still haven’t approximated anywhere near the arctic winters that I remember from my childhood.

But thinking about it I can only really recall one particularly arctic winter from the 18 or so that constituted my pre-adult life...

*(adopts West Country pirate-like accent for no good reason whatsoever)* Aar, it were the winter of ’82 and us young uns had to be carried through the mile high snow drifts like new born lambs in the arms of the bare-chested, ruddy nippled menfolk lest our poor shoeless feet should freeze solid like the last packet of rissoles at the bottom of the meat freezer at Iceland...

I think 1982 sticks in my mind because it was my very first year at Secondary school (the “big school”) and I had to tramp a mile or so there and back on foot which back then seemed akin to some poor African child walking 15 miles to fetch water from a bore hole and slay a gazelle or three on route, skin it and bring it home pre-butchered and ready for the village cooking pot.

Really I had no idea I was even born.

But the winter that year was genuinely very bad. A proper winter in every sense of the word. Snow that was several feet deep and lasted for weeks. Icy winds that froze ponds, streams, canals and rivers solid. Loads of days off school because either the boilers broke down or not enough staff / pupils made it into school to make a normal school day viable. And so bleak and grey outside that it seemed as if the sun had fizzled out completely like Jim Davidson’s telly career.

Going outside was frequently not an option that winter. I can recall in particular having to work hard to bend my parent’s arms to allow me to go for my usual Saturday morning walk to the papershop (we call them newsagents now) on a morning when the overnight snowfall had been extraordinarily heavy. Not going out that day was not an option for me. You see, every Saturday during this period I would religiously go to the papershop in the morning and hand over my hard saved cash – a piddling amount by today’s standards – to purchase a couple of packets of Buck Roger’s In The 25th Century sticker album stickers. I was very close to completing the album but the one sticker that I was most desperate to have and hadn’t yet acquired was the portrait of Colonel Wilma Deering that was to go on the very first page alongside Buck Rogers himself. My 12 year old self was very much taken with Colonel Wilma Deering – played by Erin Grey – and watching re-runs now it seems clear to me I must have had a thing about rather austere looking women with steely blue eyes and a slightly cold manner... though I will say she did look bloody fine in those tight jumpsuit things that they constantly crow-barred her into.

Crow-barred? I do hope not. I’d like to think that perhaps they oiled her up instead in order to facilitate her body’s smooth entry into that 1980’s smooth warm white Lycra... ahem. Oh yes. Where was I?

Well, this particular Saturday I finally got that much sought after sticker and it was fabulous. It was worth battling through snow drifts that were so high they swamped my wellies. It was worth enduring the biting cold that ate through my finger gloves like Kerry Katona eating her way through the last rissole at the bottom of the meat freezer at Iceland. It was worth the whole God damned ice blasted winter.

I still have the sticker album and no, it isn’t complete. I think once I got Wilma my incentive to buy the packets of stickers each week suffered a loss of impetus. I’d got what I wanted: Erin Grey in a tight blue futuristic zipper top smiling sardonically to camera. What a girl. Hard as steel but gorgeous enough to make the coldest of winter snows melt.

Which of course they did. Eventually. Leaving the world a rather grey, limp and drab place in its absence.

*sigh*

Now that folks was a proper winter.

When Heroes Grow Old

Heroes Unmasked was of double interest to me last night as not only did it preview the season finale of Heroes (due for UK broadcast next week) but also focused on Wendy and Lisa, the delicious duo who long ago were musical compadres of Prince and now score all of the incidental and theme music for Heroes.

I’ve long been a fan – from the early Revolution days, through Purple Rain and Prince’s purple patches and finally during their last incarnation as independent pop duo “Wendy & Lisa”. If I’m honest I still play their solo (duo?) albums on my MP3 player but then I’ve always been an eighties head at heart anyway.

But enough about my confused biology...

As the narrator introduced the theme for the night’s analysis they kindly cut to a clip of Wendy and Lisa grooving their funk-thang on TOTP – early nineties by my reckoning – all gorgeously teased hair, cheekbones, curvy hips and tight bouncing tops... how they enticed the eye even as they pleasured the ear... my excitement was mounting.

And then we were presented with the lovely ladies as they are today.

I feel down-right mean for saying this but they looked old.

I mean they looked “old” – not just older. Maybe it was the appalling light in their studio but they didn’t appear to have aged well.

I apologise. I don’t know why. I just feel the need to. For making such an uncharitable observation. I feel I’m being somehow mean spirited and disloyal. And I’m being grossly unfair. Their heyday was 20 years ago for God’s sake – what did I expect? I ought to be proud that they’ve spurned the cosmetic surgery route and have decided to stay au naturale. To stay real. They always were “real women” – it was part of the attraction.

And – let’s be honest – I’m no spring chicken myself. More like a leathery turkey. Old age is already digging its gnarled claws into my once plump and youthful flesh. I’m getting white hair all over the place these days (but enough about my bizarre biology)... Minor cuts are taking longer to heal... I’m grinding my teeth when I sleep... I go all sentimental when I hear Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”...

It’s surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

And despite the wrinkles, despite the jowls, Wendy and Lisa have still got it for me. The old (no pun intended) spark is still there. So we wouldn’t go out partying anymore – what does it matter? So Wendy wouldn’t tease my bod with her quirky guitar licks – so what? There’s nothing wrong with a nice frappuccino in a quiet, downtown coffee house. And bowls, so I’ve been led to believe, is a fabulous sport. Hell, I may even enjoy a bus tour to an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical...!

Sigh. So it’s come to this: Wendy and Lisa have mutated in my mind from teen-hood fantasy girlfriends into imaginary aunties...

*Shrugs*

But if that’s how the cookies crumble, I guess I’ve just got to embrace it and move with the times... (now where did I put my pension book?)

Most Embarrassing Record

In a move that will probably prove to be as unwise as John McCain choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate and simultaneously start the blog world’s most shortest lived meme I hereby pose the challenge:

Name your most embarrassing record / CD ever!

You know the kind of thing.

You were young / old. You were feeling impetuous / temporarily insane. You had the money spare and you just thought, “What the hell, Shakin’ Stevens has never looked so good...” and before you knew what you were doing you’d done the deed; you’d bought IT – the single or album that for a short while was a guilty pleasure and then with the passing of time just became a source of unpleasurable guilt. The record that you store secretly in a separate place from the rest of your collection just in case visiting hands chance upon it in the midst of your other far cooler musical acquisitions.

The record that will lose you friends, family, hairdressers and influence people in a bad way.

Ahem. OK. Deep breath.

Mine is “Wired For Sound” by Cliff Richard.

I know. I know. I feel like upping the challenge a bit more and yelling, “Yeah! Beat that!”

Let’s get one thing straight. I hate Cliff Richard. I loathe the man. And I am at pains to point this out to absolutely everyone that I meet. Every time I see his sanctimonious, tea-stained leather face staring up at me from a magazine or newspaper I just want to vomit. And as for his singing voice... that “Oh I’m so sincere” warble makes me want to gouge a hole in space and time and chuck him into it.

But “Wired For Sound” in my opinion is a great record. What can I say? It’s a really catchy melody. It’s got great hooks littered all over the place. It wasn’t written by Cliff. Maybe this explains it?

And can I just add that liking the record does not mean I enjoy watching the video. The video – Cliff gliding around on sparkly roller-skates like a terrified geriatric tied to a conveyor belt of death is not the stuff that great music videos are made of. I hoot with vicious laughter every time I see it.

But I do have the song on my MP3 player. And I have been known to listen to it whilst pootling my way around town.

OK. It’s done. Hate me if you must. Revile me if you can but the gauntlet is thrown down.

I now challenge Inchy, Rol, Tris, Reluctant Blogger, Brother Tobias and The Sagitarian to name their most embarrassing record of all time. Usual meme rules apply: pass it on, let other victims know they’ve been tagged and then wash your dirty musical laundry in public.

Go on. You know you want to.

Slipped Discs

In response to a tag from Old Cheeser I’ve been invited to share with you the ten albums that I just could not live without. The ones that saw me through the drink and drugs hell of my teenage years (I couldn’t get any for love nor money). The ones that helped patch up my achey-breaky heart (please note this post will be a Billy Ray Cyrus free zone). The ones that, joking aside, continue to inspire me, lift me and make the world seem a much better place when I listen to them.

Fire up the Quattro, guys, welcome back to the eighties!

In no particular order:

1. Killing Joke – Brighter Than A Thousand Suns.

I’ve been a long time fan of KJ, right from the occult inspired punk furore of their early releases through to the metal-esque tribal moshes of their more recent output. And yet I’ve never ever considered myself to be a metal-head. In truth I abhor heavy metal and all it stands for... Neanderthal, beer fuelled, sex obsessed, unintelligent music for spotty boys who cannot get girlfriends. Instead I’ve always leaned towards sensitive, well crafted, texturally layered music for young men who cannot capture the love interest of a beautiful gal. But KJ were the exception. There was intelligence behind the anger, a furious need to push back the boundaries, to confront everything. “Revelations” is probably the ultimate KJ album – it captures the KJ sound with a dirty purity never before or since achieved but because of that it is probably quite inaccessible to most outside listeners. Odd then that I choose “Brighter Than A Thousand Suns” as this is probably their most accessible album to date and I’m sure many KJ puritans see it as a skeleton in the KJ cupboard. Critics at the time cursed it with the moniker Adult Oriented Rock. This does it a huge disservice. Oh I’m sure fans of KJ’s early punk forays were pulling out their spiked hair at Jaz Coleman’s beautifully honed vocals, the sustained chord changes, the orchestral sweep of much of the album’s content... it is after all a truly beautiful album. And this is not what KJ are supposed to be about. But the anger is still there. The occult paranoia. The conviction that the world is about to end imminently and enjoyably. The fire still burns but not now in an uncontrolled blaze... instead it has been sculpted into something truly majestic. “Chessboards” even today fills me with heart pumping exhilaration and “Goodbye To The Village” is a perfect anthem for the fight against global warming and world-wide corporate expansion. I still dig this album out on a regular basis and wallow in its unadulterated glory. Point of note: it was the amazing lyrics of this album that first got me into writing poetry.

2. Kate Bush – This Woman’s Work

What can I say about Kate Bush that hasn’t already been said? Everybody should own at least one Kate Bush album. Personally I’m the proud owner of just about every 7” single she’s ever released and have all her albums neatly lined up in chronological order on my record shelf. Everybody raves about “Hounds Of Love” and it IS a fabulous album but for me she hit her peak with “This Woman’s Work”. Lush and layered with rich depths – not unlike the woman herself – this album is amazingly evocative and emotive. “The Fog” is my all time favourite track though it is overlooked by many. Strings that catch the heart and a simple metaphor about learning to swim and letting people go all combine to get me watery eyed and blissful. The sustained emotional drive of this album is very powerful and purely feminine whereas “Hounds Of Love” has an inexplicable male energy to it – not that that’s a bad thing. “This Woman’s Work” is Kate Bush at her most complete and accomplished. It’s never been bettered.

3. Fields Of The Nephilim – Dawnrazor

OK. I admit it. I was a goth at heart. I even bought myself boots and a cowboy hat to see the Neph’s play at Birmingham Powerhouse in the mid to late eighties. This album owes more to Ennio Morricone than to true goth-dom however – full of howling wind and the ker-chink ker-chink of metal spurs. You can practically see the dust bowls rolling down the dusty street at high noon. “Volcane (Mr Jealousy Has Returned)” sees Carl McCoy’s thunder-bass vocals put to good effect with the catchy refrain “yer-hee yer-hee yer-hee”. Lyrically it’s a ridiculous album but something about the sidewinder guitars and the spaghetti western ambience just works for me. It makes me smile with fondness every time I listen to it. You gonna reach for those irons or just stand there whistling Dixie?

4. Breathless – Between Happiness And Heartache

I don’t actually know much about Breathless. I was given a copy of this album on cassette by a penfriend and fell in love with it immediately. It’s all ‘sensitive poetry boy’ kind of stuff but packaged up in jangly guitars and marvellously throaty vocals. Music to listen to when you’re reminiscing about a relationship break-up that no longer upsets you... when any upset you do feel is purely a luxury and a pleasure. This is an album of emotional indulgence for me. It’s a humble album in many ways and I doubt many people will have heard of it... but that all adds to the sense of intimacy I feel when I listen to it.

5. Danielle Dax – Jesus Egg That Wept

Danielle Dax is something of a curio and an enigma in the world of music – never quite crossing over into the mainstream despite many efforts to do so... and yet I bet most of you would recognize “Big Hollow Man” or “White Knuckle Ride” if you heard them. However, “Jesus Egg That Wept” was apparently recorded on a humble four-track before she got a major record deal and captures a rough and ready sound that is both unpolished and rawly energized. Danielle’s vocals aren’t for everybody – dipping to monster baritone and then rising to eyelash flickering angel all in the space of a heartbeat. Standout tracks here are “Hammerheads” – a nursery rhyme diatribe against the male ego and “Evil Honky Stomp” which begins with the memorable line “Up at the big house they’re branding niggers...” There was something both disarmingly charming and ineffably dangerous about Ms Dax. It’s a shame she wasn’t bigger as she would have been the perfect antidote to the Stock Aitkin and Waterman malaise that was to infect the UK music industry in the nineties.

6. Propaganda – P-Machinery

Ah Claudia Brucken and her fabulously sexy German nose! Propaganda delivered – with the help of Trevor Horn – one of the most perfectly polished and lush albums of the eighties. “Duel”, “Dr. Mabusa” and the title track all stand out as immaculate examples of synth driven eighties pop. My personal favourite is “The Murder Of Love” which features Claudia’s sexily Teutonic vocals put to good effect as she convicts a love-rat to some terrible fate. Sadly Propaganda’s follow up album was a huge disappointment - mostly because the wonderful Claudia had left (I think) to pursue a solo career that was just as equally disappointing. Alas we shall not see the like of her nose again. It made her look like an exotic bird woman. An eagle faced Valkyrie. Coupled with her cold Germanic demeanour and a fetish for outfits made out of metal lattice work... well, let’s just say she launched a few fantasies from the closeted comfort of my adolescent bedroom.

7. Wendy and Lisa – Eroica

Talking of adolescent fantasies, I’m a huge fan of Wendy and Lisa. Most people will know them as being members of Prince’s original backing band, The Revolution. When Prince disbanded the Revolution in the late eighties he lost, in my opinion, much of the beauty and the oddly delicate touches of much of his sound. He descended into self indulgent soul-funk and I bailed out of the whole Prince ‘thang’ when he released the God-awful “Graffiti Bridge”. Wendy and Lisa, however, decided to form a duo and go it alone together. If that makes sense. They released 3 superb albums here in the UK and developed a robust and respectable following... but alas they just couldn’t quite hit the big time which is a great shame. “Eroica” is their most accomplished album and features some gorgeous classics – “Mother Of Pearl” would have been an immediate smash hit if someone at their record company had had the brains to release it as a single and “Valley Vista” for some reason makes me melt at the knees. My God did I have a thing for Wendy when I was growing up. Sigh. Anyway, enough of my teenage bedroom daydreams – Wendy and Lisa are still plugging away at the music scene though have diversified into atmospheric and aurally textured sound worlds. Those of you that watch Heroes will know that Wendy and Lisa supply the incidental music and the theme. It’s far removed from the groovy-disco-pop-funk tracks that they were producing in the eighties. As a critic at the time memorably wrote – some people make music for people to dance to; Wendy and Lisa make music that dances.

8. XTC – Skylarking

As with Kate Bush everybody should own at least one XTC record. And as with Kate Bush I’m the proud owner of much of their vinyl output. I could have picked any one of XTC’s marvellous albums to grace this list: “Black Sea” with the classics “Sgt Rock” and “Generals And Majors”; “English Settlement” with “Senses Working Overtime” (possibly the greatest pop single ever) or even one of their later offerings, “Oranges And Lemons” with the heartily clever “Mayor Of Simpleton” and “Poor Skeleton Steps Out”. “Skylarking” however is the one that brought XTC some kudos and success in America thanks to the track “Dear God” (which initially didn’t appear on the UK release, pop-pickers). “Dear God” was a woeful lament about the state of the world and a loss of faith set against an almost medieval sounding acoustic guitar. Allegedly some disgruntled student in America forced his Uni radio station to play the track over and over again at gun point. But “Skylarking”, I have to say, is hardly a reactionary’s dream. It’s a warm, languorous, fun, ultimately English summer cocktail of an album that is best played outside when the sun is low and the barbeque is high and the beer is cold. If “Mermaid Smiled” doesn’t make you grin then your heart needs to be thrown onto the barbie to warm it up. Pop pure and simple, unpretentious and divine.

9. Siouxsie & the Banshees – Twice Upon A Time

It’s probably a cheat to have a compilation album on here but I don’t care. I love this album. “Swimming Horses” is hauntingly beautiful and is possibly my favourite Siouxsie track of all time followed closely by “Song From The Edge Of The World” which alas doesn’t appear here and “Dazzle” which does. The musical output of Siouxsie & the Banshees was an odd mix of experimentation and fixedness. No matter how avant garde they tried to be they only ever sounded like themselves. The reason for this I’m sure lies in Siouxsie Sioux’s distinctive vocals. Both a curse and a gift. Personally I’d veer toward the latter. What can you say about Siouxsie? Formidable. Intelligent. Uncompromising. Passionate. Individual. Wonderful. A must have.

10. Bjork – Debut

I was on holiday in Canterbury when I first bought this and initially bought it on cassette so I could listen to it on my Walkman. I didn’t take it out again for the entire summer. “Debut” caught a charm, a knowing naivety, a gentrified naughtiness about Bjork that was never quite seen again in her follow up albums. “Venus As A Boy” is, of course, the stand out single – the video made frying eggs seem somehow incredibly sexy – but “Come To Me” is by way and afar my favourite track from the album. A warm, bath towel hug of a song, you can almost feel Bjork’s arms around you, holding you close as she croons / breathes the vocals intimately into your ear. Ah if only. How perfect Canterbury would have seemed if that had really happened! Instead I had to make do with Bjork on my Walkman and a collection of Roger McGough poems in my hand. An odd mix to be sure but it worked for me. And all of Bjork’s mispronunciations have never seemed so cute! Ah Bjork. How do you like your eggs in the morning? Oh. Fried. OK... do you want a sausage with that?

There you go folks, my top ten albums as picked today. Trouble is tomorrow I dare say I could easily give you a different ten. And a different ten the day after that. I’ve missed out loads but a top hundred would be totally impractical. Right I’m off for my lunch. May have to delve into some of these on the old MP3 player. Technology may have changed but my taste in music hasn’t. I guess I’ll always be an eighties boy at heart!

This Was NOT Acceptable In The 80s!

Has every DJ in the UK taken a kick-back from Calvin Harris’s record company?

No matter where I go, no matter when I turn the radio on I am plagued with “Acceptable In The 80s” – surely the most abominable recording since Maggie Thatcher’s “Where there is despair may we bring hope” speech in the late 70s.

Stupid lyrics. Stupid pitch-warped vocals. And a stupid fake reedy synth backdrop that sounds like it was composed on a Bontempi organ. Utter utter shite.

This would absolutely have NOT been acceptable in the 80s.

It even wouldn’t have been acceptable in the 90s and that’s saying something.

Calvin. You may have hugs and love for people born in the 80s but for those who experienced their teenage years during that period we have nothing for you but a rather stiff middle finger.

Swivel you wasock.