Magoo - A to Z and Back Again

I don't really know much about this band except that they were on Chemikal Underground, although they don't have the lo-fi sound associated with that label. Closer to Stereolab, I think, albeit somewhat different vocally (to say the least). The album this is from, The Soateramic Sounds of Magoo, is a bit of a mixed bag but this is a great single.

The Smiths - Cemetry Gates

I'll admit it, I was one of those sad obsessive Smiths fans in the mid-1980s...but I have a much lower tolerance threshold for them now. Maybe it's my dislike for nearly all of Morrissey's solo work, or for his persona, or maybe it's just that I'm older now and some of the lyrics which struck me as unbelievably profound when I was 15 now just seem kind of silly. I still like a lot of their songs, don't get me wrong, but I'm a bit more discerning about it, let's say.

Here's one of the ones that has stood the test of time.

Orange Juice - In A Nutshell

Everything I love about Orange Juice is summed up in this song.

Biff Bang Pow! - It Happens All The Time

It's a general rule of thumb that people involved in the "business" end of the music business are useless at music themselves. Which makes sense when you think about it. If you were any good at making your own music why would you spend your time dealing with other people's by, for example, releasing their records, producing their records or, erm, writing/blogging about their records? (Yes, I speak with some authority on this matter I'm afraid...)

Alan McGee is a rare exception. Despite being the brains behind Creation, with Biff Bang Pow! he also managed to release half a dozen albums of his own tunes which were, for the most part, really quite good. A lot of music critics seemed to dismiss them as a frivolous pet project (like they were Russell Crowe's band or something) but that was really unfair, I think.

Pity about his taste in football teams.

Band of Holy Joy - Real Beauty Passed Through

Here's another Holy Joy track, showing off Johny Brown's stunning lyrical gift (only he could write such a romantic love song with words like "choked and defiled"). Although dating from the 1990s - just - it has a real 1980s feel, what with the prominent keyboards and slick production. I actually think it would have benefitted from a little less technology but whatever. It's really the lyrics that make this one.

Echo and the Bunnymen - My Kingdom

Although I was quite young and still relatively new to this kind of thing, I can remember knowing instinctively when Ocean Rain came out that it was a bit of a disappointment. The edge had come off the Bunnymen's sound and they were moving towards the more mainstream "modern rock" (remember that awful term?) which left an awful lot of unhappy Bunnyfans behind.

Funnily enough though, 25 years later (I feel so old saying that) I actually think it holds up better than some of their previous albums. OK, so it's not as dark and intense and Ian's lyrics, never great to begin with, verge on dreadful in spots - but the songs themselves are really quite strong and taken as a whole it's a remarkably coherent work. Their swansong, as it turned out. Next to Crocodiles I'd put this on before any other Bunnymen album today.

The recording here is from a Peel session.

Sewer Trout - Sewer Trout For President

Of the punk subgenres, one of my favourites is that which emerged from the Berkeley, California area in the late 1980s and centred on 924 Gilman Street. Though the bands in this scene were indisputably punk, in ethos and attitude, the music was often as catchy as anything being put out on NME cassette compilations at the time. They were the successors to the great pop-punk bands of the 1970s like the Buzzcocks, Rezillos and Undertones, although a bit more DIY and hence less polished-sounding than those bands (or at least their recorded legacy).

Some of the Gilman bands were also a bit more political than their '70s predecessors, although you'd rarely get the kind of pure politicism of their anarcho-punk contemporaries. This is a good example: although more of a "fun" song than anything else, the opening verse is an amusing dig at the hypocrisy of the Reagan administration.

Green Day came out of this scene, by the way, and I still love them. So there.