Slipped discs

The 30 worst singles of all time (pt.1)

30. The Cheeky Girls - Cheeky Song

Not funny, not sexy, not entertaining - just stupid and a bit creepy. And that's before Lembit got involved.


29. Color Me Badd - I Want To Sex You Up

Talking of unsexy, this horrible slab of R&B lite is about as erotic as a road accident and reminds one of white, middle class frat boys trying to do raunchy street music. Because it is.


28. Gazza and Lindisfarne - Fog On The Tyne

The original was a slightly drab, folky tribute to Newcastle. This unecessary 'cover' pulled in a cheap drum machine and worst of all, Paul Gascoine rapping. It's not just the sausage rolls that were sickly.


27. Grange Hill Kids - Just Say No

Of all the misguided attempts to put kiddywinks off the old Persian Rugs, this was surely the most ridiculous. Not only was the message trite and empty, it soon transpired that almost none of the GH cast could carry a note in a bucket. Pass the crack-pipe.


26. Michael Bolton - Can I Touch You There?

Unless you wish to spend a fortnight in hospital followed by a lengthy spell in court. No.


25. Vanilla - No Way, No Way

We only hope this was a post-modern experiment to see how far a very, very annoying, piss poor song from an anonymous girl band could be hyped before it collapsed. Makes 'Wannabe' sound like 'Hey Jude'.


24. Five featuring Queen - We Will Rock You

We could debate the quality (or lack of it) of the original long into the night but few would doubt that this remake is a dreadful waste of everybody's time. Close cousin of Blue and Elton's equally awful 'Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word'.


23. General Levy - Incredible

Clearly 'jungle' wasn't a musical genre that suited everyone, but the problem here was that proper followers of the speedy drums and bassy bass genre labelled this as inauthentic tripe. 'General' made matters worse by appointing himself 'King of Jungle and was never seen again.


22. Mr. Big - To Be With You

If you ever hankered after seeing a bunch of second rate poodle rockers sitting around and jamming trite, garbagey love songs on acoustic guitars, this is the hit for you. Or you might try 'More Than Words' by Extreme.


21. Black Eyed Peas - My Humps

Rapidly becoming the worst very successful band of all time, BEP hit a bizarre and frankly embarrasing low with this ditty about a lady's special parts.


20. Afroman - Because I Got High

Song about a useless b*stard who gets so wasted he can't perform even the most basic of tasks (or 'entertain' his lady love), proves to be more irritating than an actual useless b*stard who ...



NEXT WEEK: The world's worst singles numbers 19 - 11

Mostly 'armless

Whether you’re a fan of Radiohead or not, you have to admit they’re no slouches when it comes to marketing. Already known for pioneering the “honesty box” payment method with 'In Rainbows' in 2007, they’ve got everyone in a tizzy again with 'The King Of Limbs'. As if an out-of-the-blue announcement of an album release in just five days time wasn’t enough, they then brought the date forward by 24 hours with no warning.

On the day itself, bloggers and web journalists tripped over themselves - and each other - in an attempt to be the first to review the record, but now the dust has settled, The King Of Limbs can be seen in context, divorced from the brouhaha surrounding its release. What we’re left with is an album which is striking on first listen, promises a great deal, but ultimately fails to deliver.

The King Of Limbs is very much an album of two sides. The first five tracks display a more prominent dance influence than any of their previous work, while the last three (yes, there are only eight songs) are more sedate and genteel, as if the band have exhausted their capacity for intensity.

The “dance” side is propelled by twitchy, off-kilter rhythms and wandering basslines, but it’s too often a case of style over substance. Opening track, 'Bloom', is unsettling enough to hold the listener’s attention with its bursts of white noise and backward looping effects, but subsequent numbers are too similar. Feral is the worst offender - an urgent, breathless song with a soupçon of dubstep that sounds like a work in progress. Chord stabs are barely there, hints of melody are snatched at and the threat that something interesting might happen is never realised.

These five songs are far from a pointless exercise though. 'Little By Little' sounds like a Morricone score in a hall of mirrors and its descending, chiming chords are haunting. As Yorke’s falsetto
reaches at the lyrics, “Little by little, by hook or by crook / You are such a tease and I am such a flirt”, it’s striking how incongruous the chorus sounds. That’s because it’s pretty much the only chorus on offer throughout the record. It’s also telling that 'Little By Little' is one of the highlights as well as sounding most like Radiohead in their 90s pomp.

This rhythm-driven approach comes to an abrupt end with 'Codex', a gorgeous, reverb-drenched piece which would soundtrack slow-motion footage of a space walk perfectly. It’s probably the strongest, most melodious work on show, and provides a welcome counterpart to the frostiness of the first act. We then get our first burst of acoustic guitar on the mournful 'Give Up The Ghost' before 'Separator' - a pretty yet insubstantial song - closes the record.

If this all sounds a bit “glass half-empty”, it’s worth noting that Radiohead ought to be commended for trying something experimental like this so far into their career. It’s difficult to think of a band this popular who would still be taking these kinds of risks after so many albums. It’s just that, sadly, 'The King Of Limbs' is more of a record to appreciate than love, a thing of intrigue rather than a thing of joy. After many listens, it recently struck me that 90% of everything you need to know about each track occurs in its first ten seconds, and that kind of limitation isn’t going to keep you going back for more.

So, is 'The King Of Limbs' a stop-gap? It may well be, but it’s also true that Radiohead’s stop-gaps are better than most bands’ finest albums, so there needn’t be too much cause for alarm. 'The King Of Limbs' isn’t a bad record by any means, but in a canon that includes 'OK Computer', 'Kid A' and 'In Rainbows', it can’t help but be tinged with disappointment.

Joe Rivers,  February 2011

The art of not falling apart.

I’d make a better job of it now, I’m sure. I’m unlikely to get a chance though, for the compelling reason that she’s dead.

The first live interview I conducted on the radio was thirty years ago. A Christmas ‘Special’ in 1981; I interviewed Mary Whitehouse and let her get away with it. I think (though recollection is hazy) I probably asked about three or four questions in the forty minutes that she went on, and on, and on. Of course, I should have interrupted but she didn’t actually appear to be breathing. It was one word sliding into the next without a pause.
“Mrs Whitehouse, thanks for joining us; is there really a place for an organisation such as yours in these modern times?  Many commentators might suggest....” (I don’t think I got any further)

That was my opening question, and she was off. Like a thoroughbred scooting out of the stalls in a six furlong dash at Ascot.

There are probably as many media courses and ‘coaches’ available to match the number of media jobs that don’t exist anymore, and I’m sure they spend many hours ‘teaching’ the art of interviewing. I don’t think it can be taught. You can either do it or you can’t. You can improve, and learn, but if you can’t relax, and empower your interviewee to relax, you can’t do it.

Earlier this week, I asked Razia Iqbal, Special Correspondent for BBC News, about the techniques she employs for the breadth of interviews she conducts, from the less challenging encounters with authors on ‘Talking Books’ to the harder hitting political interviews on mainstream news.

Confirming this contrast, Razia told me when conducting a three minute ‘junket interview’ with a star plugging a movie, she never wastes any time with introductory chit-chat (“I love your dress; who designed it?”) and goes straight in, ever aware that a P.A. clutching a stopwatch is hovering a few feet away.

In relation to the longer interview, Razia referred to the drama of silence, and how not being panicked into filling every gap may draw a more reasoned response, and a more compelling story. We reflected upon unfashionable styles of interviewing and Razia said she was learning a great deal from looking back at interviews from British television in the 1950s; Edith Sitwell and Carl Jung interviewed by John Freeman in the ground breaking Face To Face series.

There is a disagreement amongst many prominent interviewers about how much preparation should be undertaken prior to an interview. In the relatively recent past, the BBC has gone through a lot of anxiety in drawing up rather terrifying flow charts for its presenters, instructing them that if the guest answers this way, then guide him or her to this next question box and so on. Many breathed a heavy sigh of relief when John Birt moved on, and his grand vision was buried in a lead-lined box, somewhere under the Blue Peter garden.

This week I also chatted with Adam Boulton from Sky News and we discussed a similar theme about styles of interviewing. Adam told me we should never be worried about asking ‘the stupid question’, in that appearing to be completely ignorant of the subject may encourage an interviewee to open up and explain their position more thoughtfully. As Adam conducts most of his interviews in the heat of the Westminster greenhouse, this seemed like sage advice when questioning a reluctant politician.
“The best question you can ever ask” said Adam, “is ‘Why?’”

In summary, it seems to be important not to over-prepare to the point that the interviewer seems to be reading from a series of cues, and thus not responding to the replies; but equally that Terry Wogan look of ‘frozen fear in the eyes’ is soon picked up by the guest and brings with it a lack of confidence in the interviewer from which the encounter will never recover.

Confidence and relaxation are vital.

One of the most famous political interviews was broadcast in May 1997, when, on BBC Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman asked the same question, twelve times, to former Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard.

Razia Iqbal told me that Jeremy Paxman has since revealed that he did this not for the reasons that have been recorded in history – a pursuit of the ultimate truth, but simply because he had been informed, in his earpiece, that the next item wasn’t ready.

So, if by some miracle of resuscitation I was interviewing Mary Whitehouse today, I would take on board some of that advice from Adam Boulton and Razia Iqbal, and try out the occasional pause here and there, but more likely, I would probably find myself yelling, “Will you bloody well shut up for a moment, so I can ask you something else?”

This week I have:

Been listening to the excellent ‘Pickin’ Up The Pieces’ album from Fitz and the Tantrums

Reverted to buying paper copies of the Times & the Racing Post. I missed the ‘feel’
of them.

Stared, and pursed my lips at a minor member of the Royal Family who didn’t leave me enough space to edge out of a lane near Windsor. She frowned back at me.

Discovered that Newmarket’s Michael Bell is training a horse named ‘Joe Strummer’

Terence Dackombe, February 2011

You say you want a revolution.

It’s different now. Everything has changed in 2011. A government can fall in days if the people that government ‘serves’ can be mobilised in sufficient numbers for the armed forces and police to be overwhelmed; or more likely that they see which way the wind of change is blowing, and make a tactical decision to follow the winning side.

Commentators tell us it’s the Twitter Revolution, the Facebook Foment, indicating that thousands, if not millions, of citizens have been stirred to gather in city squares and on roundabouts by instructions or comments on social network sites.

A more prudent explanation is that whilst these lines of communication have their place (hard to imagine people in Tahrir Square were busy checking how many ‘Follow Friday’ mentions they achieved), it is the knowledge, the reassurance, that television cameras, and to a degree, mobile phone footage through YouTube, are cascading the images, sights and sounds around the world, that impels people to risk everything to bring about change in their country.

As I write this, on Friday evening, February 18th 2011, the BBC is reporting that Bahraini security forces are firing at their own people. Indications are that similar scenes are building in Libya and Yemen.
President Obama and Mrs Clinton have expressed their deep concern.

It is often useful to reflect on the past to gather a sense of place about the present and the future.

Richard Nixon was elected to office in 1968, on a ticket that included a promise to end the war in Vietnam. Shortly afterwards, a unit of the U.S. military executed approximately five hundred unarmed South Vietnamese civilians. In early 1970, Nixon announced that United States forces had invaded Cambodia.

Although there was widespread concern across America and the rest of the world, as usual it was the young people who had the energy and the will to get together to express their outrage at what was being undertaken in their country’s name.

At Kent State University (oddly, on a grassy knoll), several hundred students gathered to rally and protest against the expansion of the war in Asia. The Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, banged his fists on a table and said of the students, “"They're the worst type of people that we harbour in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."

At 12:24 pm on May 4th 1970, twenty-nine of seventy-seven National Guards who were present at the university fired sixty-seven rounds of live ammunition at the students.

They were firing at their own people.

Four students, aged 19 and 20, were killed. Nine were wounded, including one who was permanently paralysed.

They shot their own people.

Five days later 100,000 people rallied in Washington to demonstrate against the war, and the deaths and wounding at Kent State.

There was television, but no Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. It was different then. For the young people (and I was one of them) repulsed by the horror of the Vietnam War and the Kent State murders, the protests were organised through the underground press; we grew our hair to stand out, to show we were part of the counter-culture, the peaceful side of the trenches.

Immediately after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young wrote a powerful and angry song, ‘Ohio’.

Music doesn’t bring about revolution in 2011, and it didn’t in 1970, but it gives a voice to dissenters. It can add to our understanding.

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”

They shot their own people

This week I have:


Learned that Chrissie Hynde was studying at Kent State and was on campus at the time of the massacre in 1970.


So was Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.


Realised that Gill Scott-Heron was wrong. The revolution will be televised.

Terence Dackombe, February 2011

More deadly than The Mail ...

Jan Moir's greatest hits

15. The truth about my views on the tragic death of Stephen Gately

You were pretty mean, disparaging and homophobic. Does that cover it?


14. Forget the icy roads, where's our own grit?

You're right, Jan. Skidding to your untimely death is what made this country great.


13. Were Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes just too alike to survive?

I don't know, Jan. And neither do you.


12. Saintly but sinister Sarah vs outspoken Miriam 

She may be sinister but does she need new worktops?


11. Does Waity Katie know something we don't? 

Waity Katie? WTF?


10. An artless victim of the hip hop woman haters

Jan blames rappers for woman's silicone poisoning. Naturally.


9. Austerity? Just get on with it and stop moaning!

Jan thinks a bit of poverty will do us all good.


8. The year I fell out of love with Planet Celeb

Jan used to like famous people. Not so keen now.


7. Why I'm tired of deluded losers whining they've been 
cheated out of stardom

Not big on X-factor either.


6. Still loving the X Factor after five weeks

Oh! Hang on ...


5. Is all this dirty dancing really family viewing?

No, no. As you were.


4. Why don't designers make clothes that flatter real women?

Like Jan.


3. Get real, Selina, you were an autocutie too

Yeah! Female jounalists, eh? Who needs 'em?


2. Why Sam Cam deserves new worktops at Downing Street 

Oh, good grief.


1. Lads' mags and a toxic culture that treats all women like meat 

Or calls them autocuties.

Who's BAD?

Mick Jones always wanted to re-form The Clash. He and Strummer came very close to doing it too. Negotiations were approaching a conclusion when Joe simply said ‘Let’s not bother’. It was probably a good decision - and with Joe now absent, one that will be permanent. But I hope Mick doesn’t feel his next band proper - Big Audio Dynamite - were in any way a substitute for a re-united Clash, because they were far more important than that.

When Jones and his former punk colleagues parted company amid no little bitterness in 1984, they were already exploring the unfamiliar music they’d heard in New York: the nascent hip-hop and electro scenes. In fact, they’d gone as far as to have Futura 2000 appear on stage with them at Bonds Casino and incorporate raps into tracks on Sandinista and Combat Rock. But Jones’ departure led to a marked fissure – Joe and traditional rock on one side, Mick and the new electronic territories on the other.

I’m sure it felt very different at the time, but this was an unintended parting gift from the band. As his former comrades descended into the compromised, disowned disaster that was Cut The Crap, Mick Jones was free to recruit a likeminded posse and cut loose with a blend of rockabilly guitars, dub, electro, hip-hop and sampling. After a brief false start with TRAC, Mick formed a new band. This was B.A.D. and their debut album was intriguing, adventurous, fresh and clever in just the way that Cut The Crap was not. They sported a terrific line up too: former Roxy DJ and London Calling video director Don Letts, keyboard ace (and first husband to Patsy Kensit) Dan Donovan, reggae bassist Leo Williams and drummer Greg Roberts. As with The Clash, they looked fantastic too – a blend of sharp young punks and cool rastas led by Jones, often in an outsized titfer.

More importantly, B.A.D. were opening doors and exploring possibilities, the effects of which are still very much seen and heard today.

Sampling is now taken for granted, but the first time I heard snippets from other songs and classic movie dialogue in a track was on early Big Audio Dynamite releases. And I don’t recall having the slightest inclination to discover breakbeats until Mick and his crew introduced them to the ever eclectic B.A.D. sound.

Pleasingly, the second Dynamite album - ‘No.10 Upping Street’  -  was co-produced and co-written by Joe Strummer and it started to dawn on those of us who cared, that this was the music The Clash would have created had they managed to hold it together.

I saw Joe Strummer and The Latino Rockabilly War around this time (Mick was dangerously ill with pneumonia) and he not only praised Jones and his band but covered B.A.D.’s Sightsee MC. Joe clearly liked B.A.D. a great deal, but loved Mick even more. Regretting his rash decision to fire Jones years before, he was now contrite and possibly even meditating on a means to restore their working relationship.

But I guess it was more than just logistics and money that prevented these two friends and brothers in music coming together again. Could Joe join B.A.D. without it becoming a quasi-Clash? Not really. Would Mick split his band in order to work with Joe? Of course not.

Effectively, Big Audio Dynamite were so good they put the kibosh on any further Strummer/Jones/ Clash adventures.

Fortunately, a number of excellent albums from the band (Tighten Up Vol. 88, Megatop Phoenix) followed and the burgeoning acid house scene was absorbed into their later work. But eventually members left, inspiration faded and subsequent releases brought diminishing returns. Name changes (BADII and Big Audio) did little to boost their fortunes and in 1994 the band called it a day.

Now rapid wind to the present and Mick Jones, fresh from a world tour with Gorillaz no less, has announced the reformation of the original Big Audio Dynamite line-up and a UK tour. I, for one, am delighted. I sincerely hope this outing will draw attention to a truly original and unmistakable act, who were never properly recognised for their influence and pioneering spirit. But more than that, I hope Mick Jones is reminded of the fact that he fronted not one, but two stupendous, legendary bands, that he feels rightly proud and I am there to see it.

Magnus Shaw, February 2011

The Man Who Fell To Earth

Some things are hard to admit. Pilfering cigarettes from your Mum’s dinner party would be one. Using the same train ticket for six weeks would be another. But admitting David Bowie hasn’t been much cop for about 25 years – well, that takes real emotional courage.

If there was ever an artist touched by an almost supernatural genius, surely it was Bowie. From 1969’s 'Space Oddity' to 1980’s 'Scary Monsters', he produced a body of near faultless work. Not simply interesting or satisfactory, but heart-stopping in its scope, invention and creativity. What’s more, unlike contemporaries Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, he was a household name and hugely commercially successful. Even the more experimental exercises on 'Low' and 'Heroes' did nothing to detract from his standing as one of the world’s most admired, dazzling and purchased recording artists.

But Bowie was always a breed apart. While Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones were firmly anchored in the rhythm and blues which spawned their careers (likewise Dylan and protest folk), David Bowie appeared to be creating brand new genres on a six monthly basis – sci-fi rock, glam, white soul, industrial synth and more. If he was ever too camp or outré for the post-hippy musical traditionalists, he was never dissuaded from his theatrical adventures and constant re-invention. Indeed his approach dared the conservative plodders still adhering to the twelve bar formulae of Deep Purple and the nascent metal acts to re-think everything. Through the 70s, only T-Rex and Roxy Music really challenged rock and roll convention with anything like the same vigor. Until punk, it would have been a very dreary decade without Bowie, Bolan and Ferry. And Bowie led that trinity.

Punk is often seen as a year zero. This was the movement with the scorched earth policy, which took no prisoners and left the old school dying in the dust. But there was an exception. Indeed, the Bromley Contingent – the Sex Pistols’ fan base, which gave birth to Siouxsie and the Banshees and Generation X – came together through their shared admiration of David Bowie.

In the early 80s, The Blitz Kids (later New Romantics) arrived to replace the stagnating punks and who was their figurehead? Who pushed them to a wider audience via his Ashes To Ashes video?

And yet, and yet. Even as Bowie led Steve Strange and his friends along that beach, in their nun, priest and clown costumes, David Bowie was only a couple of years from the ‘Tonight’ album and drop in quality so marked, it was hard to believe this was the same artist and not some imposter recruited to compensate for the real David’s unexplained disappearance.

This was no forgivable blip. After ‘Tonight’ things went from bad to worse. I recall a press conference to launch the Glass Spider tour in 1987. Bowie seemed to be subtly acknowledging his frailties and promising a return to form, with fantastic sets and a fine band. Most of us believed him until we saw the gigs. Dismay rapidly set in as we gazed upon a mulleted man in a crimson jump suit with plastic wings, trolling out anemic versions of his old hits and new stuff so lame it was hard not to wander off to the pizza stand shaking one's head.

‘Never Let Me Down’ – the album he was plugging - was a new low (as opposed to a new ‘Low’, sadly) bringing grown men to tears of disappointment and frustration.

Admittedly forming a ‘proper’ band was at least unexpected and did much to give us hope of a Bowie revival and new impetus for the man who once made songs like ‘Scary Monsters and Supercreeps’ sound at once effortless and so astonishingly good they may well have been beamed from another dimension. Surely he still had that ability in his head and that power in his heart. No, not really.

The Tin Machine project has enjoyed some retrospective kudos, but not much. They were superficially noisy and owned some smashing suits, but their output was never anything inspiring and had they not had Bowie as their lead singer, they would never had managed so much as a contract, let alone two albums.

I’d like to pinpoint a moment when it all came right, but I cannot. At the same time it is also too painful to recount the evaporation of the man’s talent, release by release, track by track. So the simple truth is this: somewhere around 1983 David Bowie lost it. Whether you include the ‘Let’s Dance’ collection as the start of the decline or regard it as Bowie’s last great (albeit very mainstream) album is a moot point – nevertheless either just before or just after the release of that huge selling LP, an unexplained rot set in.

Maybe such a level of exceptional achievement is just unsustainable and we should be grateful that Bowie’s abilities were so mighty they carried him through a fifteen year period of unbroken highs. Perhaps Bowie’s only failing was forgetting to retire in 1984. But being a rock star isn’t like being a civil engineer and I can’t think of a single example of a famous musician simply putting down pen and guitar to spend their days in a country cottage. And as a solo artist, David could hardly split up.

Earlier this week, Radio 2 re-broadcast a live performance given by David Bowie to a select BBC audience in 2002. Although the man was in fine avuncular form between songs, the set was heavy on material from that year's so-so ‘Heathen’ album and, although admirably eclectic, firmly resisted the spectacular glories of 'The Man Who Sold The World' or 'Aladdin Sane'.

Then, without warning, he rolled out the divine ‘Bewlay Brothers’ from 1971’s ‘Hunky Dory’. And how it leapt from the DAB, sublime genius rippling through every note, every cadence. Sung with conviction, style and skill, the Bowie we fell in love with was right there.

And then he was gone.


Magnus Shaw, February 2011

Roots Britannia

It’s Reggae Month in the UK! No, I don’t know why either. Still, any excuse to bring out those old Trojan & Greensleeves compilations.

Normally, in my house and car, the reggae season begins as soon as the temperature moves into the 20s, the sun is shining, and the windows can be opened without a snow drift appearing in one’s lap.

I’m old fashioned. The misogyny, violence and homosexual bashing that accompanies much of latter day reggae, especially ‘Dancehall’ is at best, very sad, and at worst, a disgrace to the peaceful intentions of the pioneers (and The Pioneers, as it happens) of reggae from the 1960s and 70s.

The breakthrough singles for reggae in the UK, ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, ‘Montego Bay’ and ‘Double Barrel’ brought a sense of mystery and excitement to the top forty charts in the early 70s. As a teenager caught halfway between the hippie era fleeing over the hill and the punk rock circus not yet in town, reggae was my natural home. Rebellious, but not too scary for a white boy from Middlesex.

As the local record stores only stocked the hit singles, I soon learned that to increase my reggae knowledge and record collection, I would have look further afield than W.H. Smith & Son in Staines.

Strummer may have been the white man in Hammersmith Palais; I was the very pale face in Daddy Kool Records in Dean Street, Soho. I realised the only way to overcome the 1972 awkwardness of being a long haired, white teenager in a tiny shop full of dreadlocked Rastafarians was to stride boldly to the counter and hand over my list with a self-enforced confidence. Initially, I was met with some patronising comments and asked, rather hurtfully I felt, if I didn’t want to be in the Virgin Store up the road on Oxford Street. I don’t think I ever quite overcame the mild reverse racism, but as my visits increased, I was at least met with a smile, as the assistant muttered that they didn’t have half of the records I sought.

There was something glorious about those imported 7” singles from Jamaica. Yes, ‘the 1970s never been anywhere’ glamour of knowing they had come all the way from Kingston, but additionally it was the tactile experience of the weighty vinyl, the lack of a ‘middle’, the off centre printing of the label (and sometimes the off centre pressing of the record) that was so very distant from the Porky Prime Cut thin, plastic-y, vinyl of British records.

Sometimes I chose these Jamaican plates of vinyl purely on the name of the singer or group; Burning Spear, Big Youth, Junior Murvin – their names sounded like they would be a good bet.

Dub. I liked the idea of dub, and again, the names were exotic, and such a selection process rarely let me down; King Tubby, Augustus Pablo – I found them both through this random process, and immediately fell for these new bass-heavy sounds.

Lovers Rock, One Drop, Roots, and Rockers Reggae, I loved them all.

Wandering through Harlesden today, and remembering gigs at the Roxy and the Coliseum; singing Police and Thieves in my head, I stumbled across a lovely piece of synchronicity, as I noticed, in a shop window, a flyer for a Millie Jackson gig at the Brixton O2 – supporting artists are Ken Boothe, Maxi Priest, and Marcia Griffith. When I returned home, I tried on my Trojan Records t-shirt from 1974.

No. Of course it didn’t fit.

You may wish to sample our ten track Spotify Roots Reggae selection

If you like any of the sounds you hear, consider checking out the BBC’s Reggae Britannia season on BBC4, which includes a movie in which I make the most fleeting of all fleeting appearances as an extra.

This week I have:


Had lunch in what used to be the Wimpy Bar in Harlesden, and sat at the same table where I bought lunch for an impoverished member of the 101ers in 1975. Including that bendy frankfurter.


Read ‘I, Me Mine’, the disappointing George Harrison ‘autobiography’. 


Watched a couple of rather terrifying fellows having a fight in My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.


Noticed that Giles Coren looks rather grumpy when walking in the London rain.


Terence Dackombe, February 2011

Tickets please

The best attended tours - ever!

10. Wildest Dreams Tour, Tina Turner
3,000,000 attendees

Wobbly, bewigged grandma of soul pulls in a crowd in 1996.


9. U2 360° Tour, U2
3,071,290 attendees

God's favourite rock band and tax avoiders sell a ticket or two in 2009.


8. Licks Tour, The Rolling Stones
3,400,000 attendees

Vintage, Seven Seas abusing, white blues fellas coin it in  2003.


7. Living Proof: The Farewell Tour, Cher
3,500,000 attendees

Gypsy, tramp, thief and semi-bionic songstress attracts attention in 2002.


6. Sticky & Sweet Tour, Madonna
3,500,000 attendees

Creepy auntie and ex-Mrs Penn, sucks up the ticket dollars in 2008.


5. PopMart Tour, U2
3,935,936 attendees

Them again. Nearly half a million people and one pair of wraparound shades.


4. Bad World Tour, Michael Jackson
4,400,000 attendees

Before the awkward questions and the overdose, Jacko does the business.



3. HIStory World Tour, Michael Jackson
4,500,000 attendees

1996 and the world was his for the taking. How wrong it went.


2. Vertigo Tour, U2
4,619,021 attendees

That's a lot of folk, so it is. 2005.


1. A Bigger Bang Tour, The Rolling Stones
4,680,000 attendees

Just goes to show, losing Bill Wyman needn't make you unpopular.

Cutting cruise

You know things have come to a pretty pass when you’re sleeping in your singer’s kitchen with your suitcase of belongings taking up barely more room than the guitar case beside it at the end of the mattress. One of the items of clothing I’d stuffed into the case, and thence into the back of the van, when making my troubled escape from Humberside domesticity to the bright lights of Ipswich’s downtown rock n’ roll heartland was my Kevin McDermott Orchestra t-shirt, a gift from a grateful record industry in the days when a pencil and the back of a fag packet were all you needed in order to complete a fully authoritative chart return. It was clean, it was comfortable, it was on top of the washing pile when I left.

We were on a cross-North Sea ferry en route to play a series of arts festival-funded shows to disinterested Danish youths when a bass player walked up to me and said that he knew one of the guys on the back of my t-shirt.

We got chatting and it turned out that he lived four doors down from where James the Singer and I were sharing rather too much domesticity. Drinks were taken, tour plans discussed and before too long overtures were being made to the in-house cabaret band who had already proved themselves to be embittered veterans of the Harwich to Esbjerg round trip and had forewarned us darkly of the fates that lay in wait for any rising young group of popstrels who should misguidedly accept an engagement playing covers while they waited for their proper career to sort itself out. A visibly sweating floor manager watched as we disengaged ourselves from the ancient musicians, leaving them as idle as painted ships upon a painted sea and took their places on the bandstand for a glimpse into our future. The ghosts of cruise ships past, present and future were in the room.

At some point during the evening it became apparent that wagers were being taken on various courses of action and their possible outcomes. Thus it was that I found myself asking a lady of fairly advanced years if she would like to take to the floor in order to both dance, and earn me several Krone in illicit gambling returns. After some discussion regarding the advisability, motives and possible outcomes of such a course she gracefully accepted, and started to tell me about herself. She had been widowed some years before after a long and happy marriage, and when newly bereaved had decided to explore what else life had to offer and, as a result, had eventually pitched up on a ferry as part of a choral group doing a low key tour of opera recitals. At the same time, I was going off to do a low key series of evenings, staying up late, playing indoor cricket with a tennis ball, building campfires, riffing on a double bass we found in a games room at our accommodation and putting the drummer’s hand in a glass of water when he fell asleep to see if he’d wet himself.

She was not planning to indulge in any of these activities herself but, to be fair, I hadn’t exactly set them in stone at this point either. She spoke on, I moved my clumsy feet to the music as best I could, trying not to either trip me or her up or become entangled in her evening dress, and after some time had passed I realized that we’d been talking easily for ages, her quietly with grace, passion and humility, me with a sense that I was learning a life lesson in the company of a far wiser head than I had been able to muster so far. It was almost spiritual. As we parted, I think I may have kissed her hand. “Will you still respect me in the morning?” I enquired wolfishly. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem” she replied, the coquette.

When the band disembarked the next day in a flurry of sleeping bags and hangovers, I felt a tap on my shoulder. “I told you I’d still respect you in the morning”. She smiled, with eyes as grey as the colour of the sea. “I wasn’t sure I’d recognize you in the daylight, but I saw your shirt. Be kind, you are a good person, I wish you happiness” she said.

Shane Kirk, February 2011

The hurt rocker

Infamous rock star injuries:

1. Noel Gallagher
location: Canada | Doctor's notes: bruised ribs

Lego haired, Burnage Beatles basher, Noel, was running through another set of lad rock when a 'fan' jumped on stage and barged him into his monitor. Cue one angry brother and trip to the ER.

2. Michael Jackson
location: Los Angeles| Doctor's notes: scalp singe

The Billy Jean love denying, lunar strolling, Jehovah's Witness was taping a Pepsi commercial in 1984 when a special effect ignited his hair. Result? Off to hospital on a stretcher. Before his death he claimed this was the start of his surgery woes.

3. Arthur Brown
location: Windsor | Doctor's notes: minor burns and wetness

Never one to avoid the flames, painty face, 'God of Hellfire' Brown, sported a crown ablaze with methane gas. One night the methane ran down his face and chest but he was instantly extinguished with beer from the front row.

4. Matt Bellamy
location: USA | Doctor's notes: hole in face

Prog rocking, baby-faced stadium botherer Matt, was launching into another epic solo when he bashed his boat race with his axe and shoved a machine head through his cheek. Gig over.

5. Krist Novoselic
location: Hollywood | Doctor's notes: bashed bonce

Bearded, lanky Nirvana sideman Krist, was turning in another spurt of teen spirit at the VMA awards and celebrated by lobbing his bass in the air. Said instrument proceeded to fall on his skull with some considerable force. Ambulance attended.

6. Shingai Shoniwa
location: London's Buffalo Bar | Doctor's notes: poorly peeper

The elaborately coiffed Noisette was enjoying a set by The Young Knives when the bass player leaned out for a kiss and just about took her bloody eye out with a stray string. Eyepatch ahoy.

7. Pete Townsend
location: Washington | Doctor's notes: impaled paw

The beconked, boiler suit sporting, amp destroyer is known for his windmill guitar action. However, at one American gig he managed to stick his whammy bar clean through his playing mitt. No encores, or waving, that night.

8. Blackie Lawless
location: USA | Doctor's notes: don't plan a family

Daft, fright-wigged, PMRC upsetting WASP frontman Blackie, is famed for his exploding codpiece. But on this particular night in the 80s the device misfired and almost removed little Blackie from his owner. Backstage Big Blackie quipped 'If we wrote better songs, we wouldn't have to do stunts.'

9. Aldrin Montecinos
location: Chile | Doctor's notes: facial hair incineration

Scary, less-than-famous, South American death metal dugong Aldrin, once rocked a lengthy stretch of face fungus until he set light to it as he attempted to eat fire on stage. Not the best a man can get.

10. David Bowie
location: Oslo | Doctor's notes: suck it and see

Giving it some Space Oddity, Ziggy, Let's Dance action in 2004, The Dame was going down so well with one Norse fan that they opted to show their pleasure by bunging a Chuppa Chupp lolly onto the stage. With painful precision the stick of the confection inserted itself into his left eye socket. Nooooo ... (He finished the show though).

Magnus Shaw, February 2011

Song of a beach

There is an unspoken rule in entertainment, that generally holds true for TV, movies, books, radio; in fact just about all of the arts.
It’s the ‘Law of Heaven’s Gate’, which states that the longer a project takes, the more people involved, and the more money hoovered up in the making of the project, then the bigger the failure that venture will be.

That, somehow, Brian Wilson, in between two eras that saw him having such a massive panic attack on an airplane that he stopped playing live for decades, and a period in which he ingested vast amounts of drugs and food, that left him both obese and mentally ill, produced the finest piece of recorded work of a generation is remarkable indeed.

Potentially, Good Vibrations was Wilson’s Heaven’s Gate. It took nine months to complete, cost $100,000, of which $15,000 was spent on one instrument – the newly popular (in 1966), and handily psychedelic sounding, theremin.
It should have been a disaster. It was recorded in so many stages that, at the time, those involved lost count. Nineteen musicians played on the finished track.

In the 1960s the press liked to follow an easy route by describing The Beach Boys as the ‘American Beatles’ and whilst this is an absurd comparison in many ways, the story arc that took The Beatles from ‘She Loves You’ to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is a similar trajectory to that which took the Beach Boys from tales of surfing and car races to ‘Heroes & Villains’ and ‘Hang On To Your Ego’.
Whether it was Paul and John that inspired Wilson, the other way round, or a bit of both, it is clear that in 1966, Brian Wilson held a magic wand as he conducted those nineteen players through the most startling piece of music, which, even in 2011, still makes the listener shiver when it suddenly shimmers through the radio.

Good Vibrations is symphonic without pomposity. It’s a love song which contains as many na-na-nas and do-do-dos, as reflections on the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.
If we read the lyrics, but had never heard the song, we might very well consider Good Vibrations was a leading example of bubblegum disposable pop.

It isn’t.

Brian Wilson has a predilection for getting the vocal going within the opening bar of many of his songs, and Good Vibrations follows that rule.
Carl Wilson’s angelic “I, I love the colourful clothes she wears...” is accompanied only by Paul Tanner’s theremin, and Carol Kaye’s beautiful bass runs. At the twelve second mark they are joined by the player who contributes arguably the greatest slice of drumming you will ever hear on a pop record.
If Hal Blaine had never played the drums again after this recording, it should still have been plenty enough evidence to install him in the Hall of Fame, and for grateful nations to carry round banners and statues of his image every year on his birthday. Blaine has the wonderful talent of keeping metronomic time, whilst still adding in nuances, fills and spills, of which others can only dream.

Good Vibrations was an autumnal hit that both threw back to the summer just passed and gave a glimpse of the summer of love, the dawning of psychedelia, and the Laurel Canyon misty mornings of the coming months.

It heralded that brief moment in time, before Charles Manson and the Kent State shootings killed the dream, when anything seemed possible. Lyndon B. Johnson was consumed with his domino theory, and college kids were being sent to kill or be killed in Vietnam, but the alternative culture was showing a new way. Not just on Haight-Ashbury but in New York, Paris, and London.
Young people were beginning to believe there was an alternative.

Somehow, Brian Wilson captured that perfume and placed it into a three minutes and thirty-five seconds bottle of harmony and bliss. The song moves elegantly from the Carl Wilson/Tanner/Kaye/Blaine simplicity of the verses to the blessedness, the euphoria of the ‘Good, Good, Good Vibrations’ section.

“I don’t know where, but she sends me there”
The middle eight isn’t eight bars and it isn’t in the middle; but it is a wave of harmony echoing round a huge Phil Spector-ish cavern of sound.
It was as if Brian Wilson had climbed the Santa Monica Hills and returned with a new set of musical commandments.

Ninety hours of tape, seventeen sessions at four different recording studios, each part recorded at different times with as many different personnel.
It could so easily have been a Heaven’s Gate. Instead, Good Vibrations is the most influential pop single ever produced.

You can listen to the journey of the making of Good Vibrations, and nine different versions, from the earliest takes to the finished work at our Good Vibrations Spotify playlist

It’s a glimpse into heaven.

Terence Dackombe, February 2010

This week I have been:

Revising my view on the merits of Fernando Torres


Spending an evening walking round IKEA in Wembley and wondering if I would ever see daylight again


Advised, by an agent, to market myself more assiduously


Watched the ‘Director’s Cut’ of ‘Tantrums and Tiaras’ and felt the urge to hang around outside Elton John’s house and shout “Coo-eee” to see if it still makes him go ballistic.