Category: 41-4-40

Mr Scruff - Get a move on Mr Scruff, AKA Andy Carthy, is the last person who has truly entered my roll call of Musical Heroes (which is a funny bunch including Miles Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Smith, Matt Johnson, David Sylvian, Gilles Peterson and Joyce, amongst others). DJ, cartoonist, producer, recording artist, pie maker … Continue reading 2001

Moloko - The Time is Now And then the year 2000 arrived, the world didn't stop, the computers carried on working, and a new millennium and decade were begun, yet again, a year early. I really like the Moloko track. The only thing is that for ages I thought it was sung by Texas. So … Continue reading 2000

The Chemical Brothers - Let forever be 1999 was a weird year. I blame it on the fact that Prince had been singing about it from about 1984, but there were some strange, cult-like things going on, not least the millennium bug and peculiar suicide sects believing that the end of the world was nigh. … Continue reading 1999

The Beastie Boys - Intergalatic The Beastie Boys leaped into the public consciousness in the mid 1980s in a whirlwind of teenage high jinks, the theft of hundreds of VW car badges and the general disapproval of the Daily Mail. I seem to remember that there were even calls to ban the band from entering … Continue reading 1998

Coldcut - Atomic Moog 2000 The story of Coldcut (abridged): two massive pop hits ('People Hold On' and 'The Only Way is Up') in the late eighties followed by setting up the Ninja Tune label and being some of the most innovative DJs (and latterly VJs) on the scene. The label and offshoots have produced … Continue reading 1997

DJ Shadow - Changeling I was talking with a school friend of 24 years ago on Facebook a couple of days ago about how much of my life was intrinsically linked to the BBC. I owe my very existence to the Corporation, as it was there that my parents met in the 1960s. In the … Continue reading 1996

2 Player - Extreme Possibilities 1995 and the beginning of the 'years of dance music'. As is it seems customary in my musical history, I came to the dance scene a little later than some. Mostly this was because I couldn't really see much of interest in the four-to-the-floor 'bleepshite' that seemed to dominate much … Continue reading 1995

Blur - Girls & Boys Ahh. Britpop. When did the charts last get mentioned on the TV evening news? Erm, probably when the latest instalment of Simon Cowell's Pop Tarts kicked off. Or at least when Rage Against The Machine swore their way to number one at Christmas. 'Fuck you, we'll all download the single … Continue reading 1994

Bjork - Human Behaviour Looking back (and we're just past the halfway point now), it's remarkable how short a period of time my university days took up. I'm not the sort of person who continually pines for the 'good old days', but I do recognise how much influence the three years I had at Loughborough … Continue reading 1993

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit This is the riff of my student days... So this one is a bit of a cheat, because Smells Like Teen Spirit was actually release in 1991. It did, however, feature in some charts across the globe in early 1992, so it counts. My count-up, my rules, and it's … Continue reading 1992