Category: Music

Here’s my top 10 song chart for the week ending August 5, courtesy of the home office in London:

1) Ambra Red – “Beauty 606”
2) Marsheaux – “Wait No More”
3) Marsheaux – “Empire State Human”
4) The Magnetic Fields – “Swinging London”
5) Blackbird Blackbird – “Hawaii”
6) Wild Nothing – “Shadow”
7) Crystal Castles – “Plague”
8) Class Actress – “Careful What You Say”
9) Two Door Cinema Club – “Handshake”
10) No Doubt – “Settle Down”

Here’s my top 10 song chart for the week ending July 29, courtesy of the home office in London:

1) Washed Out – “Call It Off”
2) Saint Etienne – “I’ve Got Your Music”
3) Katy Perry – “Part of Me”
4) Marsheaux – “Wait No More”
5) Wild Nothing – “Nocturne”
6) Wild Nothing – “Shadow”
7) Wild Nothing – “Through The Grass”
8) Wild Nothing – “Midnight Song”
9) Washed Out – “Eyes Be Closed”
10) Washed Out – “Echoes”

So something really awful happened recently, and to take my mind off it I decided to make a list of the 50 greatest British bands of all time. The actual list only took an hour or so to make, but it’s taken me a couple of weeks to write the necessary paragraph or two about each artist.

I did my best to keep my personal tastes out of this list, insofar as that’s even possible. This isn’t a list of my favorite British bands of all time. I’ve tried to use record sales and chart performance to justify my positions as much as I could. But, at the end of the day, my musical tastes did dictate at least a little of the list. Not many of these lists would include the Cocteau Twins over, say, Squeeze, but hey – it’s my list and I’ll do it as I please.

Keep in mind that the list implicitly includes spin-off acts. If you’re wondering how I could leave Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins off the list, note that they’re included under “Genesis”. My reasoning is that if I gave Gabriel his own entry, I’d have give Collins one, too. And if I did that, I’d have to have separate entries for Joy Division and New Order, Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno, and maybe Marc Bolan. And if I did all that, my list of “50 Greatest British Bands” would become the “15 Greatest English Bands, and their 35 Spin-Off Acts”.

Of course, the list also includes artists who are primarily known for being solo acts, like David Bowie. You typically wouldn’t call Bowie a “band”, but “50 Greatest British Musical Artists of All-Time” just doesn’t have the same ring that “50 Greatest British Bands of All-Time” does.

*     *     *

50) The Verve: They weren’t my favorite band (“No shit? Your #50 band isn’t your favorite?”), but there’s no denying that The Verve had a certain degree of magic when they weren’t busy arguing with each other. These guys were tight, but seemed to have more personnel issues than Spinal Tap. And it’s kind of ironic that their most popular song… is now a Rolling Stones song. The band worked out an agreement to sample an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones’ song “The Last Time” for their single “Bitter Sweet Symphony”. Originally, the deal called for a 50-50 profit split between The Verve and the license holder. But when the song turned into a major hit, Allen Klein sued (he’s the former Stones manager who managed to steal the rights to most of their pre-1970 catalog), saying that The Verve had sampled it “too much”. Unbelievably, a court agreed. All profits were given to Klein, and songwriting credit was given to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. This led Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft to quip that “Symphony” was “the best song Jagger and Richards have written in 20 years” (and it was true: “Symphony” was the highest-charting Jagger\Richards single since 1971’s “Brown Sugar”!)

49) Japan – One wonders what British pop music might have been like had Yuka Fujii never existed. She was the girlfriend of Japan’s bassist, Mick Karn. In the early 80s, she packed up her things and, without telling Karn, moved in with lead singer David Sylvian. Not surprisingly, the band broke up shortly thereafter. Japan’s catalog is inconsistent, pretentious, and slightly dated. They started as a glam rock knock-off, moved in to disco for an album, then settled into art pop. But they did create some of the most unique pop music in British pop culture history. Their “Ghosts” single hit the Top 5 in 1982, and is one of the most… unique records to ever chart that high. And Sylvian’s solo work varies from esoteric to brilliant.

48) Bananarama – I know what you’re thinking: “Bananarama?”  But hear me out on this one. Until the Spice Girls came along, Bananarama had sold more records than any girl band in history. The Go-Go’s… The Supremes… Salt-n-Pepa… Bananarama outsold them all. And the band still holds the Guinness World Record for the most chart entries by a girl group: Destiny’s Child and the Spice Girls might have sold more records overall, but Bananarama have had more hits than any girl group in history. Ever. And it’s a sad, sad soul who doesn’t perk up when “Venus” or “Cruel Summer” come on the radio. The girls are still together after 33 years too, so they’re one of the few bands on this list that are still making new music!

Continue reading “The 50 Greatest British Bands of All-Time”

Here’s my top 10 song chart for the week ending July 15, courtesy of the home office in London:

1) His Name Is Alive – “Blue Moon”
2) Lisa Gerrard – “Largo (from Händel’s Xerxes)”
3) This Mortal Coil – “Mr. Somewhere”
4) Enya – “Caribbean Blue”
5) This Mortal Coil – “You And Your Sister”
6) This Mortal Coil – “The Lacemaker”
7) Brian Eno – “1/1”
8) Brian Eno – “1/2”
9) Brian Eno – “2/2”
10) New Order – “True Faith”

Here’s my top 10 song chart for the week ending July 8, courtesy of the home office in London:

1) Ambra Red – “Beauty 606”
2) Marsheaux – “Empire State Human”
3) Katy Perry – “Part of Me”
4) Pink Floyd – “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”
5) Ramones – “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”
6) Cheap Trick – “Dream Police”
7) Love and Rockets – “No New Tale to Tell”
8) The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Head On”
9) Concrete Blonde – “It’ll Chew You Up And Spit You Out”
10) Dramarama – “Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You)”

From Last.fm:

“Swedish electroclash bombshell Ambra Red delivers the soundtrack for luxuriant club life with a fusion of her metrosexual vocals and a retrolicious foundation of venue-moving electro-tech grooves. Soaring acidic synth strobes, thick sweeps, and gritty analog percussion pulse and explode while Ambra tantalizes the club floor with her playful lyrics and modulated vocal finesse.”

This song, from her self-released album Electronic Creations for Special People, tells the story of the singer meeting a woman in a chatroom (username: “Beauty 606”) on some kind of smutty website. Only it doesn’t quite work out the way Ambra wanted:

It seems like I’ve played this song 100 times in the past three weeks. Have a listen and find out why!

Here are my Top 10 Bands for the first six months of 2012, according to the play count feature of Last.fm. Yes, I’m obsessive about play counts: I go through each list of iPod scrobbles to make sure all the played songs are submitted… and I even recreate non-scrobbled playlists. Note the play counts in parenthesis.

1) Marsheaux (570)
2) Saint Etienne (234)
3) Ambra Red (149)
4) Beach House (101)
5) The Raveonettes (81)
6) Katy Perry (79)
7) Blouse (62)
8) Freezepop (58)
9) Roxy Music (56)
10) Ladyhawke (51)

Here’s my top 10 song chart for the week ending July 1, courtesy of the home office in London:

1) Ambra Red – “Beauty 606”
2) Marsheaux – “Empire State Human”
3) Parralox – “I Fell In Love With A Drum Machine”
4) The Raveonettes – “Night Comes Out”
5) Stars – “The Theory of Relativity”
6) Foretaste – “Do What You Can”
7) Foretaste – “The End of Days”
8) Saint Etienne – “Heading For The Fair”
9) Garbage – “I Think I’m Paranoid”
10) The Dandy Warhols – “Bohemian Like You”

Here’s my top 10 song chart for the week ending June 24 2012, courtesy of the home office in London:

1) Marsheaux – “Empire State Human”
2) Ambra Red – “Beauty 606”
3) Marsheaux – “How Does It Feel?”
4) Marsheaux – “Faith”
5) Lana Del Rey – “Video Games”
6) Saint Etienne – “I’ve Got Your Music”
7) Duran Duran – “Hungry Like the Wolf”
8) Ambra Red – “I Was A Star”
9) Marsheaux – “She’s Leaving”
10) 10,000 Maniacs – “Everyone a Puzzle Lover”

Here’s my top 10 song chart for the week ending June 17, 2012, courtesy of the home office in London:

1) Saint Etienne – “I’ve Got Your Music”
2) Yann Tiersen – “La Valse D’Amelie”
3) Ambra Red – “Beauty 606”
4) Marsheaux – “Summer”
5) Marsheaux – “Faith”
6) Public Image Ltd. – “Deeper Water”
7) Marsheaux – “Inside”
8) Marsheaux – “Empire State Human”
9) Lotus Plaza – “Out of Touch”
10) Soft Swells – “Overrated”