RANDOM TOP TEN

old songs,

21st Century Whoopee Boys

Since signing on for spotify I have spent hours listening to old songs that I once had on vinyl or cassette and haven't heard since I abandoned my record collection some time in the mid 1990s. In no particular order here's ten songs that actually sounded as good, if not better, than I remembered them.

1) Teardrop Explodes - Better Scream/Make That Move. From a Peel Session that I taped off the radio on the night it was broadcast, it's a version of the Wah! song which itself is one of my favourite ever singles.

2) Echo and the Bunnymen - Villiers Terrace (Early Version). Prompted by their great show in Camden I have been rediscovering a lot of Bunnymen stuff. The Crocodiles album still sounds amazing and this demo version has been tacked on to the end of it. Was this the version that appeared on the Zoo To The Shores of Lake Placid compilation? I can't remember and the one downfall of Spotify is the scant information about the tracks.

3) Scritti Politti - Asylums In Jerusalem. I'm not sure if I actually liked this all that much at the time but I was thinking about somebody who used to play this a lot and it actually sounds great. Surely the greatest cod-reggae number ever.

4) Black Uhuru - Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. I would never profess to being any kind of reggae expert but I will say that when Benjamin Zephaniah was on Celebrity Mastermind I got every question right in his specialist subject choice of "reggae music". Maybe the questions were easy.

5) Gun Club - Death Party. The lead track from an EP of the same name. Wow! What a racket. Beautiful.

6) Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11. I absolutely loved SSS. And I regret only seeing them play live twice. Shoot it up!

7) Ultravox! - RockWrok. You used to be able to buy the early Ultravox albums secondhand for a few pence. Pre-Midge, pre-Vienna they were amazing. This is like Roxy Music covered by an inept punk band.And then there's the great camp "rockwrok" at the end.

8) Tubeway Army - That's Too Bad. Following on from the above some more sci-fi punk. The early guitar heavy Tubeway Army stuff all sounds pretty good. It's harder to listen to the electronic hits but at the time I liked them a lot. Right up to the Complex single era.

9) Fela Kuti - ITT. I remember listening to this with a friend of mine and we had to take it off because it was just too good. It was painfully good. Mmmmm. But then again we also listened to a detuned AM radio fot about 30minutes once waiting for the DJ to tell us what the amazing track he was playing was called. It must've been something we put in our water. Even so, Fela's still the fella.

10) Voices of East Harlem - Right On Be Free. I only ever had this as a low grade ancient cassette tape. Memorex brand, wow and flutter all part of the package.