UK TOP 40 POLL: 17/05/1997

What a rubbish chart.

#9 is my favourite out of that lot, I think.

Not terrific by any means. Cardigans, probably. I like chirpy pop songs with lyrics which reveal themselves as quite dark when you listen closely.

Quite like that Brainbug track as well.

I think shitty charts are much more fun to talk about than good ones. Especially ones like this that mix arse-end of Britpop survivalists, dreadful Eurodance chancers, and about 40 different flavours of the month.

that week was quite good i recall, probably because i wasn't listening to anything in this chart

Suggs And Co Featuring The Chelsea Team - Blue Day

Thank god my brain has obligingly suppressed any memory of this I might have once had.

36. Laurie Johnson/London Big Band - Theme From 'the Professionals'

^^^Was this from the lounge revival period?

God!

When you end up having to vote Robbie Williams as best!

Oh: Striking similarity! The intros to "Old before I die" and "Vanishing Girl" the Dukes of Stratosphear.

Well, the break-in to the first verse..

my schmindie enemies went bananas for the seahorses

Are you just choosing weeks at random, Dom?

Hah. No, I'm choosing charts that basically look interesting. Plus I'm not interested in the week where we're all gonna pick, I dunno, "Gangsta's Paradise" or "Walk This Way" or some other song that there's going to be agreement on.

There are rubbish charts and great charts but this just comes under the category of "too boring to give a fuck either way" charts.

"Belissima" spawned a trillion kacky Euro imitations, and it wasn't exactly a beacon of originality in the first place - but I have a residual fondness, soundtrack to the mid-life crisis and all that. Same goes for the Xenomania mix of "Love Shine A Light" - their first I think, after breaking away from Steve Rodway's Motiv8 stable. Same also goes for Damage's Clapton cover; I'm not going to attempt to mount any form of coherent defence, but the song was v.v.big with my step-family. CJ Bolland/Space Brothers/Brainbug all got dancefloor love at the time, but memories are hazy. Never cared much for Chris Evans power-plays "Lovefool" or "Drop Dead Gorgeous". "Kowalski" was a let-down, Seahorses still more so; "Susan's House" (and probably the Brownstone, if it's the one I'm thinking of) I recall as pretty decent.

The Seahorses - Love Is The Law

This is the worst record ever. But the Glastonbury 'performance' when That Busker John Squire Got In was so bad at singing that he just gave up half way through their signature tune was kind of hilarious in a horrific way.

"NOWWWWWWWWWW WE KNOWWWWWWWWW WHERE WE'RE GOIIIIIING BABY YOU CAN LAY BACK AND ENJOYYYYYY THE oh fuck you sing it"

Jesus Christ I just voted for Primal Scream.

DG abstains

Also Carmody to thread to say whatever the hell this says about the dawning day's of Blair's Britain because I can't make head nor tail of it.

...with special reference to Katrina winning Eurovision a day later, of course. Oh happy dawn!

Sash! - Encore Une Fois

Tuuuuune.

Was there one?

Not a "tune" tune, a tune.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yDepHS9ZA8Y

Not really into Trance or Prog house, but I think it falls more into the "Hardbag" category anyway.

16. 911 - Bodyshakin

^^^this was a bit of a banger. Girl you got my body shakin'... TO THE BONE

Eurohouse, surely?

xpost

Yeah, but there are many strains of cheeseball euro house, innit.

Eels, but then I'm from L.A.

Also Carmody to thread to say whatever the hell this says about the dawning day's of Blair's Britain because I can't make head nor tail of it.

-- Matt DC, Thursday, 6 March 2008 16:49

Yeah, I was thinking this. A particularly "optimistic" chart?

Interesting how through the 90s, there were lots of chart hits that crossed over from the clubs/Ibiza and were released on small labels. Not so much now.

25. Red 5 - I Love You... Stop!

Don't remember this at all. Boy band?

I guess you guys have never been chased down the alley by strap-on Sally else you'd be casting your votes very differently

Interesting how through the 90s, there were lots of chart hits that crossed over from the clubs/Ibiza and were released on small labels. Not so much now.

Know what you mean but wouldn't most of the "small labels" that got singles into chart return shops been offshoots of majors?

Yeah, probs. FFRR was part of Warners/London and they had a lot of hits. I suppose in a deal like that the label had some autonomy, because the majors didn't really know how to market dance music.

'The Prophet' but not the shit airplay mix - gotta be the album version.

25. Red 5 - I Love You... Stop!

Don't remember this at all. Boy band?

JX-esque Pop trance

Plus I'm not interested in the week where we're all gonna pick, I dunno, "Gangsta's Paradise" or "Walk This Way" or some other song that there's going to be agreement on.

Good strategy/approach carry on (do some older charts maybe)

'The Prophet' but not the shit airplay mix - gotta be the album version.

I've been refreshing my memory on this one. Yes, agreed. Tres dramatique, fits well with the Brainbug tune. "Encore Une Fois" is even shittier than I remember (it was all too easy to get it confused with "Insomnia", in messier moments). Brownstone not as good as I hoped (composed by Michael Jackson), ditto the Blackstreet.

To hell with all his other singles but I'm still fond of 'Encore Une Fois'

Eels by a long stretch. Though 'Strumpet' is terrific, unlike everything else MLS recorded.

Anyone know if the Sinead O'Connor ep has anything interesting on it.

Things on there I kinda like against my better judgement: Seahorses, Shola Ama, Olive.

Things I might actually be prepared to vote for: Olive or Sash, just possibly Eels if I can keep the dude's face out of my head.

Oh, DJ Quicksilver's fair enough too.

'Kowalski' got to number eight?! Blimey. Voted for Shola Ama, pretty much everything else there is either awful or totally forgettable. 'Love Is The Law' really is one of the worst songs ever recorded too.

This was the time of my GCSES, seemed like a very long year. I was excited about the second Chemical Brothers album.

And here I end up voting for Robbie Williams again.

Which means this must be one of the weaker lists from 1997, which was not at all a bad year for UK music. Some really good hits by Radiohead, Blur, Oasis and The Verve that year.

wau @ 'kowalski'! higher chart-placing than any subsequent PiL tibute i can think of.

Presumably this was first-week placing for Kowalski though, I wonder where it is in 24/05/1997 chart? Primal Scream got a lot of press building up to this and Vanishing Point "oh they're back and definitely not dying from taking heroin and oh look Mani's in the band now and even they hate Give out but don't give up (except Rocks and Jailbird) etc". I think I voted for Eels, which I remember hating at the time, but I think I'd rather hear that now than Kowalski.

Yeah, we all dashed out and bought it, and then went "oh!"

and then the album "Vanishing point" went on the "if I see one in Oxfam, maybe" list. Which I did, eventually.

Wonder if ILM had been around in 1996 if it'd have been pro- or anti-Eels.

Pro, naturally. Mark "E" would probably have been an ILx poster who suddenly was too busy to be here anymore.

Of the 1/3 of those numbers that I can even remember, there's nothing I like enough to actually vote for. Worst on the list, baby bird, maybe.

Baby Bird fans are odd people.

Song was an ironic statement about the racism shown to pakistani/asian shopkeepers, but you'd only know that if you read the sleevenotes on the CD single.

I liked it (Kowalski xpost)! Actually, I loved it at the time, but then again I was also excited by the prospect of Hurricane #1 happening. And I was 18 ferchristsake.
VP is still probably my 2nd favourite Primal Scream album (not sure why I've used 'still' there, it's not as if anything post-XTRMNTR has improved with age. I still like it, I mean).

North and South win the prize for most creepy boy band song.

I bought Vanishing Point out of the old Ambient Soho shop in Berwick Street, the Thursday before its official release date (together with Let Us Play by Coldcut).

I thought it an excellent album at the time and still do.

Funnily enough, I bought "Kowalski" off MVE before it's release date.

It was more a taster for the album I guess, but I really wanted a 'blow yr socks off' great single. I guess it was more "yeah, I know the film, what more?"

The dub remix album of Vanishing Point is actually pretty listenable too, against the odds.

the best embrace single and one of the better babybird singles (which isn't saying much really).. i pick the embrace.

having said that, i still have a soft spot for the 4-track babybird stuff

I bought a pre-release cassette of Vanishing Point from a shop in the back of Record Collector, ages (maybe about two months) before it came out. It probably cost a small fortune. And I bought a 'white-label' 10" of Echo Dek, and then had to buy the 7" boxset because it looked nice, and I think there was a song missing from the 10".

Is there a thread for reminiscing about times you wasted money on promo copies of post-britpop-era 'indie' singles and albums in the vain hope that they might be worth something, when you know you'll only think of selling them long after that band's bubble has burst?

Yep, there is: Theaudience C/D?

Well, I did get the "Kingsize" Boo radleys:

Full Album promo
4(?) track album promo
CD single promo...

The last one is worth loads as they never released it, and at least one track remains so.

Personally, I'm hoping my investment in those Dawn of the Replicants promos pays off one of these days...

Will UK indie ever return to the glory days of the war of words between Dawn of the Replicants and Placebo? We can only hope so.

I was with DOTR on that one.

I don't remember this war of words. Must've been in the Melody Maker?

I think I'll be voting for CJ Bolland- The Prophet, which had an amazing Hardknox remix. Ah, the heady days of big beat!

I think at the time "Money Wrench" was the favourite of a 14-year-old me. Used to put it on my stereo while playing Worms 2.

i don't want to think about dom playing with his worm

nulab was the first thing that came to my mind as well - this chart is essentially empty, meaningless, but i think that is quite right for the time. it says a lot about the proud meaninglessness, the boasted-of ideological void of nulab itself. it has an air of permanent NEW CONSENSUS, unkillable global agreement on neoliberalism.

this chart is, of course, terrible - there is no defence whatsoever for the vast majority of songs here. but i can't see how it could have been anything else. my favourite of these songs is "kowalski", the only single here i actually owned (and vanishing point as well). but i cast a symbolic vote for a song which suggests a europe attuned to guaranteed content-free modernity and a drift towards neoliberalism, and thus one nu-britain could have been truly absorbed into, before the divisions reasserted themselves. sash! it was, then.

also, i have rather a soft spot for the number one, perhaps precisely because of its deliberate vocal "soullessness" and its all-purpose, consciously sympathetic lyrics.

for sympathetic read "sympathetic"

i think the number one is pretty dece, and a rare breakbeat hit too (isn't it?)

at the time i was pretty indifferent to sash! but you mellow out yo -- tbh though i was into very little of this chart, i remember spring 1997 as a good time, and this feels like an odd week for the time. like, 'fly life' came out the week after, 'hypnotize' was around, stuff like that. i can't remember a lot of the rnb tracks or eurodance.

got damn 'don't speak' hung around. (as did 'encore une fois'.)

A friend's brother was in the number 1 act. Seemed like a nice bloke.

I like these: 1,2, 9,10,22,32 and 39, maybe "Don't Speak" not so much now and I probably would hate "Nightmare" but, er, I bought the single at the time, so more fool me. Anyway, "Lovefool" or "Susan's House" are a long way ahead of anything else.

Kowalsksi is brilliant, seriously. The last great Primal Scream single. I remember seeing them play it at a festival and the entire stage, plus the ground we were standing on, was shaking and rumbling. Astonishing.

The fact that Primal Scream had the presence of mind to record it in the middle of 60s revivalism mania, given Bobby Gillespie's otherwise astonishing conservatism, makes it even better.

Also THANK FUCK it was Olive who made number one at the start of the Blair era and not the Cardigans. A piece of flimsy pop-dance about which there is nothing interesting to say vs a million smug broadsheet articles going (OMG we loved him, he fooled us, do you get it???)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

34. Embrace - Fireworks EP 3

lol southall

heard eels for first time in a decade in record shop by chance. lol beck.

gah. would've shown 911 some if I'd seen this. They were a pretty terrible boyband but "Bodyshakin" was my jam back then.

cardigans song as anodyne as they come. is it meant to be a joeks?

it's not anodyne just because it's sunny indie-pop. i'm not that into it either way.