Seconds out

No, it's not a review of a Genesis live double album but time for another round of Pop Wars (although it's very rock flavoured today). The concept is simple. A team of highly qualified scientists rate the top ten songs (as downloaded from Audiogalaxy) by two artists related by genre or historical accident, and calculate the winner. Our first contest today is between the kings of 70s slick and cynical and the lords of 70s laid back and smug.

Steely Dan
Reeling in the Years 10
Rikki Don't Lose That Number 8
Deacon Blues 10
Do It Again 10
My Old School 10 
FM 8
Hey Nineteen 7
Black Friday 7
Black Cow 8
Peg 9
Score: 87

the Eagles
Hotel California 7
Desperado 4
Tequila Sunrise 3 
Take It Easy 3
Life in the Fast Lane 6
Lyin' Eyes 5
Take it to the Limit 6
Witchy Woman 3
Peaceful, Easy Feeling 3 
One of These Nights 6
Score: 46

Verdict: I must confess that this particular contest was engineered out of a general annoyance that these two are often bracketed together. I am pleased that it has now been proved beyond all reasonable doubt that they inhabit entirely different realms. If this was a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it in the first round.

Next we have two more old rockers doing battle. Both are mainly rubbish, but who is more rubbish, and do I secretly like the early singles of one of them more than I might care to admit? Let's find out:

Status Quo
In the Army Now 0 
Whatever You Want 2
Rockin' All Over the World 4 
Pictures of Matchstick Men 5
Ice in the Sun 4
Down Down 6
Caroline 7
What You're Proposing 0
Mean Girl 6
Roll Over Lay Down 6
Score: 40

AC/DC
You Shook Me All Night Long 3
Back in Black 4
Thunderstruck 2 
Highway to Hell 6
Hells Bells 4
Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution 1
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap 3
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) 0
Big Balls 4
Whole Lotta Rosie 5
Score: 32

Verdict: AC/DC may be a cooler name to have on your designer t-shirt, but it seems 'the Quo' are better despite having been complete toss for at least 20 years now. If they are in fact still going.

Our final head to head today concerns two 'seminal', 'underground', 'alternative' acts.

Sonic Youth
Sugar Kane 6 
Teenage Riot 8 
Bull in the Heather 4 
Sunday 4
Diamond Sea 4 
100% 5
Drunken Butterfly 6
Kool Thing 5
Schizophrenia 7 
Dirty Boots 7
Score: 56

Pixies
Where is my Mind 8
Here Comes Your Man 7 
Monkey Gone to Heaven 8 
Gigantic 8
Wave of Mutilation 8 
Hey 8
La La Love You 7 
Velouria 8
Gouge Away 7 
Bone Machine 8 
Score: 77

Verdict: Sonic Youth lose by a surprising margin, their larger catalogue working against them. Pixies score consistently well, indicating they split up at just the right time. Or that all their songs sound the same.

Okay, it seems there's just enough time to fit another contest on the bill. Run to the hills kids, as two of the fattest old prog-rocking dinosaurs take to the stage. Gadzooks, it's...

Pink Floyd
Another Brick in the Wall 3
Wish You Were Here 8
Comfortably Numb 6
Money 8
Hey You 5 
Time 9
Learning To Fly 2
Shine On You Crazy Diamond 10
Mother 3
Have A Cigar 5
Pigs 8
Score: 67

Yes
Owner of a Lonely Heart 2
Roundabout 8
Starship Trooper 8 
Long Distance Runaround 7 
Leave It 2
Yours Is No Disgrace 10 
Changes 2
And You And I 6 
Close to the Edge 10 
Heart of the Sunrise 10 
Score: 65

Verdict: A points victory for Pink Floyd. Note wild fluctuations in points awarded, suggesting either a wildly uneven output for both groups and/or serious prejudice against anything they did after about 1979 on behalf of the Pop Wars academics who awarded three perfect scores for Yes. What can they be thinking?!?!

Listmania

I thought I'd write a quick top ten list for Amazon.com's Listmania section, like I've got nothing better to do, but then it grew to 20, and when I started to paste the comments in, I find out there's a 200-character limit, and all my comments are longer, which was quite frustrating, but it was my fault for not reading the guidelines propely, so rather than fiddle about editing them, I present the full list here, and it is called "Winter in England - 20 albums for the coldest season" because I am shivering away in my lonely attic, and also snivelling a bit in a rather unattractive fashion.

My Bloody Valentine - isn't anything
More played around these parts (i.e. my house) than the much vaunted follow-up Loveless, this is the ultimate wintry album. It sounds like snowdrifts, howling blizzards, moments of calm when the bones are warmed before being cast out into the unforgiving icy landscape. Kicks off with Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside), which says 'brrrr it's chilly' like no other song. Finally, I couldn't care less about drumming as a rule but, as I like to say whenever this album gets mentioned, listen to the drumming on this record - it's totally astonishing.

Karate - Unsolved
Karate singer Geoff Farina's intimate vocals seem to give off steam, like your breath on a freezing day. Emotionally desolate, yet with a rich, warm sound. If bare floorboards in a dark house could make a record, which they can't obviously, and it's insane to suggest they could, it might sound like this. But what does Unsolved sound like? Jazz-influenced post-hardcore (please don't call them emo) that's deceptively easy listening until it creeps up and delivers a blow to the kidneys when you least expect it. Mysterious, human, one of the few truly great albums from beginning to end that have been released in recent years.

Clientele - Suburban Light
Spectral, fragile etc... Like Karate, this also employs intimate vocals and lyrics that can't escape the sickening tug of nostalgia (see also: regret and yearning). Suburban Light could be music for a summer evening or a winter's morning, depending on your point of view. Don't be put off by the knowing retro stylings and (lack of) production, this is a masterpiece - simultaneously heartbreaking and life-affirming.

Tindersticks - 1st
I played the double vinyl of the Tindersticks' first album on a cheap portable record player at my parents' home one Christmas, over and over, pining away like a lovestruck goof for a girl on the other side of the country. A magnificent record that sums up 'wounded'.

Bonnie Prince Billy - I See a Darkness
Will Oldham sings like he's locked in a shed in the middle of a field suffering from the terminal stages of pneumonia or something so it's only fair to include him in this list. This is my pick of his lengthy back catalogue, all of which is chilling and I don't mean that in any ambient stroke relaxation sense.

Bitter Springs - In the Parish of Arthritis
Grim and grizzled 30-something music for thwarted intellectuals and trainee alcoholics. Sarcastic, literate lyrics of the highest order from Simon Rivers' melancholic crew, outsiders who deserves wider recognition, but probably wouldn't thank you if they got it. (Don't pay this much for it though.)

Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
Winter, and Christmas in particular, is a time for reflection, for looking back over the year and taming stock. Taking stock, I meant to write. Taming stock sounds like something a cowboy might do. Anyway, I played this all winter after it came out and it's joyous and melancholic, witty and weepy, a timeless classic. Alternatively, it's 'record collector rock' if you prefer to adopt a sneering tone.

Felt - Absolute Classic Masterpieces
I wanted to choose Forever Breathes the Lonely Word by Felt but Amazon don't have it. This is a great collection of their best tracks, though. I played Felt over and over while reading James Kelman books at a variety of bleak train stations in the winter of hmm... 1992 or 93. Perhaps both. The little instrumentals on side two of Forever Breathes... (I have the cassette version) are the very definition of winter, which I know I've said before re: MBV, but I'm saying it again. Felt understood 'icy'.

Elliott Smith - XO
One for those wintry days where the sunshine pierces through the window and you're fooled into thinking it's warm outside. There's something about delicate, intimate vocals (Karate, Clientele for example) that summons up crunching through the snow in warm boots and the fragile beauty of icicles hanging off a branch, if you may permit me to be fanciful. This is his best record because it was the first one I heard, and has the lovely Waltz #2, and Baby Britain. And he swears when you least expect it, which is always a nice touch.

Joy Division - Closer
Decades is the very defini - oh hang on, I've said that. A wintry album, for me, because I first heard tracks from it in 1980 or so on John Peel's festive 50 which is broadcast at the end of the year when it is winter where I live. Also wintry because it's so crushed and desolate (maybe even sepulchral although I'm not sure if I know what that means) and it's like being buried in a block of ice.

Cocteau Twins - Victorialand
One word - snow. Ideal listening on the personal stereo when going for long walks. Wrap up warm and don't forget your gloves.

Nico - The End
The ice queen groans her way through frozen wastelands of despair and gothic gloom, just the thing to bring festive cheer to any family gathering. Features cockney knees up versions of The End and the German national anthem. Well, she sings more like a tranquilized moose, to be honest. Fine record, for all that.

Donald Fagen - Kamakiriad
A cold, clinical album from what some would say is a cold, clinical fellow. Not me, I love him like a brother. Well, more like a distant and faintly alarming uncle who secretly terrifies you with his air of intellectual disdain, actually. Wintriest track: Snowbound.

Mogwai - Rock Action
Made more sense to me hearing this through headphones walking the cold miserable streets of London in winter than when it came out in spring, or early summer of last year.

Piano Magic - Seasonal Affective
Wanted to list their Artists' Rifles CD but it's not available. This is a good collection of some rare tracks and I couldn't resist including it for the title alone. Music for librarians and people with long scarves. Who ride bicycles. And wear spectacles. That's enough, get on with it... I like Piano Magic, by the way, don't get me wrong.

Durutti Column - Vini Reilly
Any Durutti Column really. Vini Reilly's neo-classical guitar is the perfect accompaniment to whatever it is you like doing in the wintertime. From covering yourself in tinsel to filling your stockings. This is a diverse and accomplished album of real and rare beauty.

A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector
Go on then. I'm not a complete Scrooge. Gets me in the festive mood. Top track: Frosty the Snowman.

Clinic - Walking with Thee
Organs, if you get my drift, as in snowdrift, are a very chilly, wintry instrument I find. and Clinic use the organ sound a lot, although what they actually use to make that sound I have no idea, I'm not a musician. This is a very liquid album. It oozes and bubbles and drags you beneath the surface where you may be nibbled by a shark.

Papa M - Whatever, mortal
Many of these albums have songs with wintry connotations, e.g. Roses in the Snow on this excellent offering from Mr. Dave 'Papa M' Pajo, who sings.

Aztec Camera - High Land, Hard Rain
Haven't heard this in years but it is very chilly in the cheeriest kind of way, like having your frozen cheeks rubbed by someone you love who is wearing warm gloves. Yes, I did mean cheeks as in face. Key track: Walk Out To Winter. One of several albums by Scottish artists on the list, because it is of course much colder up there. I'm down here, in England, where it is still freezing cold at the end of February 2002 as I type furiously with fingers which could snap off at any minute.

Pop Wars

Head to head contests: the accelerated culture's method of establishing a pecking order in the absence of Eternal Values. Thus, Britney vs Christina, Will vs Gareth. It trivializes personalities and careers but hey, if it makes us feel in control of our lives in some tiny, demented manner then it can't be all bad. The head to head is not exactly scientific but it is fair, especially when I'm doing the judging. And yet I am often riddled - or is it ridden? - with doubt. Ridden implies that I'm a horse, riddled sounds like either I've got worms, or I'm a court jester. All of these may be true.
So I hereby present the first Wisdom Goof Pop Wars. I shall apply the same method as the sports pages do with big football matches when they list the players on both sides and give them a mark out of ten and then add them up to see who's got the strongest team. Today, I would like to find out which I objectively think is the better band - Radiohead or Blur, both of whom I affect to dislike but secretly quite enjoy at times. Their top ten songs as listed by download popularity on Audiogalaxy shall be the basis for the contest (with all erroneous listings disregarded, likewise if I don't know any of the songs in the top ten I won't let on because that will make me look less than professional, so I'll just go on and rate number 11 instead).
Finally, all scores are relative to the contest in question in a way that is too complex for anyone to understand. So, if xxxxx score 65 in one game it's not comparable to a zzzzzz score of 65 in another game.

Radiohead
Creep 7
Karma Police 8
Paranoid Android 7 
True Love Waits 6
Fake Plastic Trees 5 
High and Dry 6
Idioteque 6
Everything In Its Right Place 6
Pyramid Song 7
No Surprises 7
Score: 65

Blur
Song 2 7
Tender 6
Beetlebum 7 
Girls and Boys 8 
Country House 5
Charmless Man 6 
Music is My Radar 5 
Parklife 9
The Universal 8 
There's No Other Way 6 
Score: 67

Verdict: A surprise win for Blur, largely because I didn't like the top ten Radiohead selection that much. But football isn't played on paper, it's played on grass, and that's the score.

Game Two: Back to the 80s for two of my old faves who I don't listen to much anymore: the Smiths vs Husker Du.

the Smiths
How Soon Is Now 9 
Girlfriend In A Coma 7 
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out 9
Bigmouth Strikes Again 9 
Ask 7 
Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want 6 
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now 7
This Charming Man 8
Panic 5
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me 8
Score: 75

Husker Du
Eight Miles High 10 
Makes No Sense At All 7 
Could You Be The One 10 
New Day Rising 8 
Pink Turns To Blue 8
Celebrated Summer 8
Something I Learned Today 8 
Diane 6
Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely 10
Never Talking To You Again 7 
Score: 82

Verdict: Not the result many may expect (unless you know me) but Husker Du win by a clear margin. Excellent score by the Smiths, though.

Our final game tonight is between two bands who really get on my tits but I shall attempt to be fair and rate their top songs in a grown up, democratic manner. So, bring on U2 vs Manic Street Preachers.

U2
Beautiful Day 6
With Or Without You 4
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 3
Where The Streets Have No Name 3
Sweetest Thing 2
Elevation 5
Sunday Bloody Sunday 4
One 8
Stuck In A Moment 3 
Walk On 3
Score: 41

Manic Street Preachers
So Why So Sad 3
Ocean Spray 2
The Masses Against the Classes 3
Suicide Is Painless 3
You Stole The Sun From My Heart 6
Motorcycle Emptiness 6
A Design For Life 10
Let Robeson Sing 3
Tsunami 4
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next 5
Score: 45

Verdict: Narrow win for the Manics, courtesy of the freakish score for A Design For Life. More fun and games later.

Stupid boy

Thanks to a unique combination of Abbot Ale, Beamish and halal fried chicken at midnight, my creative processes were stimulated last night and I invented some new shoes in my sleep. Not only that but I invented a sinister new mind control device, too.

But first, the shoes. They are called Pinos and are for the discerning hipster with more money than sense. They are pale green and cream in colour, tooled from the softest calf skin and to the untrained eye, may look like a bowling shoe. But look at the toe, it's a different shape. And they're altogether softer with a tantalising hint of the pimp about them. They are on sale in San Diego at the price of $129.99 and I should know because I invented them. The subliminal advertising device meanwhile, lives in your pillow and transmits low frequency radio waves into your brain as you sleep. The attractive part for those on a low income who sleep a lot is that you get paid for installing it as it is still undergoing testing before it's launched upon the world. The downside is that it broadcasts advertising messages into your brain when you enter certain stages of sleep receptive to its low level operations, and these messages appear in the form of dreams, so when you wake up you really want a pair of those new shoes called Pinos. Although you're fucked if you can be bothered to go to San Diego to find them, and you would never spend that much on a pair of fancy shoes even if you could afford them.

This relates to my Dad's Army in Glastonbury novel, also invented in my sleep, in which a cast of characters named after and behaving like the Dad's Army crew, but who are NOT them, end up at the Glastonbury festival waging a war against a gang of monks (hooded) who are plotting against them in some unspecified way perhaps related to music, and involves a torrent of gratuitous filth, bad language, sex and drugs. But a few weeks after having this brilliant idea, I read a newspaper review of a Shakespeare play where the original characters had been replaced by the Dad's Army crew. A very British response to setting Romeo and Juliet on Venice beach, perhaps.

And now, Radio One's Mark and Lard have a new comedy routine on their afternoon show called Slipknot's Army (there, I got some musical content in at last), where Slipknot members behave like characters from Dad's Army. They're all stealing my thoughts! Thus, Pigface talks like Private Godfrey, except when he lapses into the scary Slipknot voice which has an undeniable comic appeal. The value of Dad's Army as archetypes cannot be underestimated I think. But of course with these developments, my Dad's Army in Glastonbury novel can never now be written, and thank God for that.

Finally in this mental thread, a couple of years ago I made up some random C90s for a trip to Australia, taping mp3s straight from the computer, making no tracklistings, just dragging anything into the player till 45 minutes was up and trying not to look at what I was taping. So I had about 10 tapes, unlabelled, the contents of which would be a surprise, kind of... And the best moment of this curious exercise came in Kuala Lumpar airport waiting for a connection, falling asleep with my Walkman on, and Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler? comes on after something soporific and jolts me awake. It was a beautiful moment and I laughed like a cat, as the Poles say.

Reach out and grab it

One of the benefits - some say nostalgic dead ends which can only lead to spiritual impoverishment - of the mp3 digital highway revolution is tracking down half-remembered songs from my past. Many of these songs come from a period in the late 70s when my favourite listening was pirate radio station Caroline. Situated on a ship off the Essex coast, its soundtrack of hippy listening was wilfully ignorant of the contemporary forces of disco and punk. It was bizarrely, through Janet Street-Porter that I discovered Radio Caroline as she mentioned it on one her of Sunday lunchtime TV shows, which I watched avidly for sightings of the alien creatures known as Sex Pistols, of whom I was in some kind of prepubescent awe. So I tuned my radio to 319m, and found a whole new world of music which would be as important to me as anything contemporary would ever be again.

Radio Caroline also promoted a love and peace attitude called 'loving awareness', a kind of stoned hey man passiveness and mix 'n' match mysticism which even at my age could tell was past its sell by date, although it was touching and sweet, too. And the theme tune for the whole loving awareness thing was a song called Existence by the Loving Awareness Band which, last week I heard for the first time in over 20 years. Before clicking play I had no memory of how it went or the words or anything, but as it started it all came flooding back, and I found I could sing along! And I knew what was coming next! Oh, send me to bed and call me Marcel!

The mysteries of memory aside, it is far better than I could have hoped. It starts with solo voice, declaring 'The time is right to find one another...' not pompous, but like he knows he's singing to an empty room. The tone turns to questioning as the guitar comes in ('Don't you ever wonder what you're really here for?'), but the tone is one of confusion, as if the singer doesn't know the answers, but is merely thinking aloud. The accusatory tone of 'What's it to you if I love you?', could be addressed to an individual the singer feels he's been hard done by as well as 'the movement' in general, which has disappointed him by letting the peace and love ideal fall by the wayside in the 1970s. There really was a different consciousness in those days that's difficult for us to comprehend now in the long, long aftermath of the 80s, and Existence is so pre-ironic it hurts.

It's an ambitious song, full of layers, harmonies, changes in tempo and key and style (it suddenly goes all reggae on us at one point), and stuffed with moments like the 'Reach out and grab it' fake ending and the 'One thing to remember... loving is a habit to get into in this incarnation' line. It makes me smile partly because of its earnestness and partly because it's just so damn pretty.
Existence sounds like it was written so short excerpts could be used as radio jingles on behalf of the loving awareness brigade (which they were). Radio Caroline used the Beatles' The End a lot in this way - 'And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make' - and Existence seems like an attempt to expand upon that short song's simple motto, to bulk it out with some full on gravitas. Abbey Road is clearly an influence, and in sound and intent, it's also very much like George Harrison's Give Me Love (Give me Peace on Earth), a blend of the personal and political with a side dish of reincarnation - not an entirely selfless plea for global harmony, but a request to be understood on an individual level, too.

The way he adopts a pre-Neil out of the Young Ones persona of rambling hippy bore on the line 'We've got to rid ourselves of fear and doubt and hate and insecurity you see, our aimless use of energy' is an admission of defeat from the outset. And rather than baldly state that we all want to be free, we get the line 'Don't want *not* to be free' underlining the hesitancy at the heart of the song, the knowledge that this is a doomed plea from the start but dammit, this is my truth and it needs to be heard and I'm not afraid to make this one last statement on behalf of all long haired gentle and beautiful people who believe that peace and love really is a valid idea and we need to wake up and not be so hateful and cynical.... please?! The outraged 'What happened to the flower power? It got bought and sold for power!' is laughable to modern ears and certainly isn't the most eloquent line in the song, but it does point towards a betrayal. Our time has passed brothers (and sisters). It's the musical equivalent of Danny the drug dealer's 'They're selling hippy wigs in Woolworths' speech in Withnail and I. But the song ends on a note of cautious optimism with the whispered mantra 'Day by day in every way life is getting better and better - believe it!' And gratifyingly, for such obviously talented musicians and songwriters, the transformation of the Loving Awareness Band into the Blockheads proves they did have a future.

I know these things to be true but I cannot prove them

--Rick Wakeman lives in a treehouse equipped with real musical chairs
--Thom Yorke's glass eye is made out of a special kind of hard sugar that he invented while at university
--None of the Strokes band has ever had a curry. And they never will even if they live to be 85
--The singer Shaggy lives in a forest and when no one is watching he likes to gnaw on the bark of trees
--Sophie Ellis Bextor, when she was growing up, wanted to work in a swimming pool but didn't know what her precise role would be
--One of the members of Level 42, I don't which one but not the singer, was my driving instructor
--While in prison, Arthur Lee wrote a novel called The Trouser People about a family of tiny talking amphibians who live in people's trousers
--Brian May out of Queen owns the island of Guernsey
--Baby Spice fancies me and follows me round the supermarket
--The band Slipknot are composed entirely of computer generated images