The Opinionated Diner

A ranting we will go..

I felt like doing a list. I’ve always been a sucker for lists and a complete set of David Wallenchinsky, Amy & Irving Wallace’ s “Book of Lists” (and the densely trivia filled and grossly time wasting "People’s Almanacs”) including the sexual (see I managed to get the word in to get my hits up) book of lists, sits on my shelf. They’re well read (best loo books ever) and held together with various bits of tape and gum. Well read but not well made....

So I wanted to do a list. Everybody else on the planet did a best of 2004 list, including the best pizza, all numbered and nicely linked etc, but the best I could do was a rambling litany (one of my favourite words..I loved Justice Mahon talking about an “orchestrated litany of lies” all those years ago- it was a tragic event but a fine turn of phrase that I bet he was justifiably proud of) which I posted below. But, best of year..done, too late, and simply dull this far into 2005…

So I decided to carry on from the Fingers Inc thing below and list my favourite electronic records….ever…it may have been as grey as Wanganui on a good day, but it was a list..

The problem I encountered came when I tried to find a record to play whilst I was clumsily typing-I’m getting faster by the day-as I wrote. I realised pretty quickly that the E Dancer album, whilst I love it, and it would easily make my list, was going to piss off everyone else in the house on a Tuesday evening…so, I decided to try non list things. I dragged out my battered vinyl copy of The Flaming Groovies “Shake Some Action” ( bought a CD of it once but it sounded completely sad off digital), the happiest record I could think of, but, the sixties pastiche thing really started to piss me off tonight…so, to the real deal…20/20 by The Beach Boys, an astounding, warm and magical record that sits in the latter third of the unbroken streak of eleven peerless albums that began with “All Summer Long” in mid 64 and finished with “Surfs Up” in 71..the Beatles only managed six years and I can’t think of anyone who comes close in pop…most bands only have one half decent song in them if push comes to shove. But you can’t write electronic if you’re listening analogue…..out come the singles..I tried the Leftfield’s remix of Supereal’s “Body Medusa” on Guerilla (good, slightly forgotten label owned by uber-producer Willian Orbit..it’s time will come again when the nineties revival hits properly in a year or two), but its long been obvious that Leftfield were one of those acts that only had a couple or five, of good, actually completely great to be honest, tunes in them, and this ain’t one of them…on to The Junkyard Band’s double a side on Def Jam, back when it mattered. I went for “The Word” and that radically sloping synth bassline, was the bomb and with all those young kids bashing things sounds as vital as it did back then…they’re still going..they must be heading towards middle age now. I’m really not sure about bands that just keep going…the Rolling Stones simply are and haven’t mattered for decades, U2 haven’t made an interesting record since about 1990…guess it’s a well paying job, but do the rest of us have to suffer crap like Vertigo. But, to the matter at hand..

I played my favourite singles this week, Closer Muzik’ s ”One Two Three Gravity”…I like the Ewen Pearson acid mix because it has faceless teutonic vox over a tb303… a winning combination and commendably soulless; Herb Martin’s percussion fest “Soul Drums” on Jerome Sydenham’s unceasingly wonderful Ibadan- I’ve not heard of Herb (not a cred name Bro..) before but this thing is fucking ace; the Soulwax mix of “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” by the LCD crew which is noisy and really pissing off the DFA purists (funny and inevitable how a label that took the piss out such nonsense now attracts it); another Ibadan thingy, “ Road to Calabar” from the label owner, Sydenham and Denis Ferrer, very much in the style of the Sandcastles and Timbuktu, albeit a bit techier; and Kerri Chandlers’ retrospectively old school “Back to the Raw”..best thing he’s done in years and much better than all that conservative trad house from labels like King Street, Soulfuric and MAW that does my head in these days…those guys have been churning out the same old shit for years now and its really time to move on………..its a rut that he's been in for some time but this shows Kerri still has the edge when he's not treading water ..and it inspires me to drag out an Ibadan classic from him…it makes you feel all fuzzy when a hero bounces back with form

So to the list..actually by this time I’d well and truly realised the pointlessness of the list, a fatuous and egotistic exercise to begin with…if such a list exists it should stay on my hard drive…. and decided to let (the artist formerly known as DJ) Hell indulge me in his fantasies

the vinyl version of course...