richie

Looks like a mixture of Rusev and Hillbilly Jim.

I thought we all agreed to put it at no.36? I wasn't going to do a top 50 but then I realised my favourites would all get 20 points less than others so I bolstered it.

I've still got a lot of time for Sesame's Treet. There's certainly nothing wrong with the track if you remove the samples - and the same with Urban Hype - but that's what caught the record buying public's imagination. I was the perfect age - 15 - old enough to remember the kids TV shows and young enough not to let the cheesiness bother me. The trend went on and on and later in 1992 two acts released tracks that sampled the Rainbow theme in the same week. Only one had the backing of Zippy and George (the rubbish(er) one). Then at Christmas, Keith Harris and Orville were given the hardcore treatment..... It was immense fun for me, but pretty tiresome for most...and we haven't even got on to the Nintendo remixes yet... Anyway, if anything, Sesame's Treet introduced me to Suburban Base Records and what was by far the best hardcore label then and now. There's a great clip from Dance Energy about the emergent 1992 Essex hardcore scene here -> http://idmmag.com/news/the-essex-rave-scene/

Yep, great run from Rabah Yousif. Just qualifying for the final is great. Ditto Eilidh Childs.

How on earth is Daniel O'Donnell only 53? He seems to have been around forever. http://24.media.tumblr.com/570bce3b1498f2f22731f6d7b07df1ae/tumblr_mpb01uvR061qleraio1_250.gif

YES!!!!!! Now hopefully Bolt can make it a treble and send Gatlin home with three silvers. Great performance from JEH - composed the whole way through. KJT looked nervous as anything but she was desperately unlucky in the long jump. She will get there though. She won the high jump and 200m and set personal bests in the hurdles and shot putt. Would have been a really, really exciting finish if she'd still been there for the final 800m.

Seems to be all over the web already in animated gif form. I didn't bother with it this year as the line-up looked really poor. I guess the only plus is that John Cena lost his title - but where does that leave him? It was fine having him in the mid-card but now he'll probably be back in main events again. Hopefully he can get in some kind of feud with the Big Show and that'll keep them both busy. Otherwise very bored of the main roster in general - the tag division is awful and the intercontinental title scene isn't any better. Owens should beat Ryback as soon as possible for that title and make his feud with Cesaro for the belt instead. Practically given up on Raw as it's now just 70% talking with main event tag matches between the same handful of stars...happening...right...now.

Something Good was such a good record! I'd say that "I Want You" from 1993 was still a good record even though it wasn't anywhere near as big as their first 3 singles. Not sure if the Utahs managed to get all their samples cleared though. I think the early white label versions of 'What Can You Do For Me' had a snatch from 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen which they weren't able to clear for the full release.

Neither - both sound like parodies of themselves.

Heh, we'll have to agree to disagree! The Bends is the best Radiohead album and, although OK Computer is good, I can't really listen to anything from Kid A onwards. I've tried, but it just seems to me that all the acts they were taking influence from were much, much better at it than them. I also think Bjork's work with the Sugarcubes and on Debut are her best. Blur recovered slightly with their self-titled comeback after the embarrassing pool party that was The Great Escape but 13 was self-indulgent and very, very boring I thought. Never liked Mansun much - they were real also-rans. Mezzanine is nowhere near as good as Blue Lines or Protection! But, as I said, it's probably everything to do with how old we are when we get into things.

Number 19s +20 Mardi Gras - Too Busy Thinking About My Baby +18 B Bumble & The Stingers - Nut Rocker +16 X Ray Spex - Germ Free Adolescence +14 Clash - Tommy Gun +12 Squeeze - Take Me I'm Yours +10 Weathermen - It's The Same Old Song +08 Lynsey De Paul & Mike Moran - Rock Bottom +06 Sham 69 - Angels With Dirty Faces +04 Father Abraham & The Smurfs - Christmas In Smurfland +02 Sally Oldfield - Mirrors Number 20s +20 Public Image Ltd - Death Disco +18 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Long As I Can See The Light +16 Buzzcocks - Promises +14 The Goodies - Make A Daft Noise For Christmas +12 Scotland World Cup Squad - Easy Easy +10 The Damned - Love Song +08 Chas & Dave - Gertcha +06 The Commodores - Machine Gun +04 Eddie Drennon & B.B.S Unlimited - Let's Do The Latin Hustle +02 Shalamar - Take That To The Bank

+50 Medicine Head - One And One Is One +49 Mike Oldfield - Portsmouth +48 T.Rex - 20th Century Boy +47 Kenny - The Bump +46 Van McCoy & The Soul City Symphony - The Hustle +45 Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3 +44 Dean Friedman - Lucky Stars +43 Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough +42 Hank Mizell - Jungle Rock +41 Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight +40 David Bowie - Sorrow +39 Mott The Hoople - All The Young Dudes +38 Wurzels - I Am A Cider Drinker (Paloma Blanca) +37 Bobby (Boris) Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers - Monster Mash +36 Abba - Money Money Money +35 The Jam - Eton Rifles +34 David Bowie - Sound And Vision +33 David Essex - Rock On +32 Robin Sarstedt - My Resistance Is Low +31 Edwin Starr - War +30 Michael Jackson - Rockin' Robin +29 David Bowie - Life On Mars +28 Boney M - Hooray Hooray, It's A Holi-Holiday +27 David Essex - Oh What A Circus +26 Frankie Valli - Grease +25 Status Quo - Rockin' All Over The World +24 David Dundas - Jeans On +23 Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street +22 America - A Horse With No Name +21 Lene Lovich - Lucky Number +20 Lulu - The Man Who Sold The World +19 David Bowie - Drive-In Saturday (Seattle-Phoenix) +18 R Dean Taylor - There's A Ghost In My House +17 Hawkwind - Silver Machine +16 Lynn Anderson - Rose Garden +15 Carly Simon - You're So Vain +14 Rose Royce - Wishing On A Star +13 Peter Shelley - Love Me Love My Dog +12 Abba - Angeleyes/Voulez-Vous +11 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Up Around The Bend +10 Abba - Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight) +09 Four Tops - Simple Game +08 Mungo Jerry - Alright, Alright, Alright +07 Wombles - Remember You're A Womble +06 Johnny Mathis & Deniece Williams - Too Much, Too Little, Too Late +05 Earth Wind & Fire - September +04 Donna Summer & Barbra Streisand - No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) +03 Boney M - Sunny +02 Python Lee Jackson - In A Broken Dream +01 Slade - The Bangin' Man

Heard of 'em but not sure if I've heard 'em. If they were on one of the Creation Soup compilations then I will have :)

The fun and urgency of Caught By the Fuzz, Mansize Rooster - even Alright - were gone. I dunno, Oasis seemed to just dampen everything with some kind of stodgy haze and everyone took a cue from it. I'd say it's a massive step down from His 'n' Hers and the singles that immediately preceded it. Yes! I actually forget that Different Class came out just after the "Britpop war" but it's certainly not Pulp's best album. With the exception of the Betas who had not quite formed as The Beta Band, they were all already around before then. Radiohead, Bjork, Mercury Rev and PJ Harvey all arguably produced their best work before August 1995. Of course there will be exceptions to my rule - it's not a thought out theory, it's just that I reckon that's when things changed. I could just as easily point at Wake Up Boo! by the Boo Radleys as being the turning point a few months earlier. "Indie" was getting into the top 10 but the plodding, popularised version of what it had been was not a continuation nor an improvement and the term started to belong to a much wider range of music. Before that, to say you were "into indie" to someone was greeted with the same bands. In the second half of the 90s, if you said you were into indie music people were as likely to say "Oh, like Kula Shaker or Space?" as they were to say, "oh, like The Beta Band or Urusei Yatsura"? I'd imagine there are some of them on music forums just now claiming that the Arctic Monkeys coming along was when indie died and that they could never match up to the Stereophonics etc.

That's fine, most people would say the exact opposite to me. But I really think the general "indie" sound was better before August 1995 than after.

Something has never seemed right about Raving I'm Raving. I bought a copy of it in an Inverness shop two weeks before it got to number two which makes me think the stock was already out but embargoed as there was an ongoing dispute. The Inverness folk either didn't get informed of the embargo or didn't care as nobody would check that far north. As I recall, Marc Cohn allowed the release to go ahead but no more discs were to be produced and ALL royalties had to go to charity (or maybe him, I can't remember). So, it ended up at no.15 the week after as stock simply ran out and then disappeared from the chart 100%. It ruined SUAD financially and, yep, the hastily put together "remix" with random synths replacing the piano sample and the new 'melody' for Peter Bouncer to try to sing was horrible.

Not something to celebrate. I see the moment John Humphries mentioned Oasis and Blur on the news as the death of indie music. Both bands released their worst singles to date and the flood gates opened for a generation of dad rock. Even bands who had been good up until that point (Supergrass, Ash, Pulp...) began to seriously dip in quality. Bands who had quite rightfully never made much of an impact up until then (Verve, Ocean Colour Scene, Dodgy...) started to hit the top 10. Moan, grumble etc. But does anyone agree with me?

For some odd reason, I bought the KWS single. I quite liked the cover at the time (although don't think much of it now) but I knew that their other tracks were more in keeping with the hardcore sound of the time and thought "Gameboy" might have been a rave track I'd heard somewhere earlier in the year that sampled the music from Tetris. Of course, it wasn't - it was pretty non-descript. Tetris would come to the charts later in the year, not in the form of the hardcore white label I'd heard but its polar opposite in L.L.W....urgh

I have never been more behind Usain Bolt than I will be on Saturday at 2:15. Gatlin should have been thrown out for good when he was caught a second time. "There are not going to be medals passed out to everybody in the world. It is going to be passed out to one person, the champion." - Justin Gatlin. Oh yes, Justin, there are medals for more than one person...and yours will be silver.

I'd never heard the Natalie Cole tune so just listened on Youtube. It's the weakest of the three there by far but it's kinda nice.

And just to upset things, I'll do the exact reverse and set them all equal again +03 Clash - (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais +02 James Brown - Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine +01 Natalie Cole - This Will Be

Number 24s +10 David Bowie - Heroes +09 X Ray Spex - Identity +08 Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Pump It Up +07 Siouxsie & The Banshees - The Staircase (Mystery) +06 Billy Connolly - No Chance (No Charge) +05 Elton John - Step Into Christmas +04 Rich Kids - Rich Kids +03 Nottingham Forest & Paper Lace - We've Got The Whole World In Our Hands +02 Squeeze - Slap And Tickle +01 Foreigner - Cold As Ice Number 29s +10 Buzzcocks - Everybody's Happy Nowadays +09 Stevie Wonder - Higher Ground +08 David Bowie - D.J +07 Robert Wyatt - I'm A Believer +06 Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Radio Radio +05 Ruts - Something That I Said +04 Cheap Trick - I Want You To Want Me +03 Sylvester - Dance (Disco Heat) +02 Stevie Wonder - Another Star +01 Angelic Upstarts - Teenage Warning Number 34s +10 Buzzcocks - Love You More +07 Undertones - Here Comes The Summer +04 Staple Singers - If You're Ready (Come Go With Me) +01 Equals - Rub A Dub Dub

Ah, no it wasn't - it was Sparky's Magic Piano!

The tracklisting sounds very familiar. I'm sure I had one with Tubby the Tuba on it too. I always found the fact that "Christopher Robin went down with Alice" weird - that two characters from different stories both went to visit the Queen at the same time.

Aha, thanks! I know Papa Oom Mow Mow in other novelty versions so I figured it had to be a good shout...and I like Sparks and Can in general.