Wow. What an unexpected and wonderful birthday present (yes, it's today; no, that's fine, you couldn't be expected to remember) the Which Decade project has seen fit to bestow on me.

Five years, 44 rounds of voting and scoring... and yea, on the 44th day, something rather marvellous has happened.

At the time of writing, the votes for this year's Number 8s are stacked up in exact chronological order. Sure, this has happened several times before; but always with the 1960s in first place and the 2000s in last. However, for the first time ever in the history of Which Decade Is Tops For Pops, the 2000s have the leading song (The View's "Same Jeans"), and the 1960s have the losing song (The Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron").

Many congratulations to The View for salvaging the reputation of this most beleaguered of decades; you must be feeling very proud of yourselves right now.

To underline the magnitude of their victory: "Same Jeans" is the first winning song from the 2000s since The Source's "You Got The Love", on Day 4 of last year's contest. However, since "You Got The Love" was essentially a microscopic re-twiddle of a 1990s backing track and a 1980s vocal, which would have been excluded under this years rules, we have to go all the way back to 2004 to find a previous victor from the 2000s: Britney Spears' "Toxic". Thus it is that "Same Jeans" breaks a drought which has lasted for no less than twenty-three rounds of voting.

Welcome back to the game, Noughties. Now, let's see whether you can capitalise on your renewed success, as we get our critical teeth stuck into the Number Sevens.My my, but wasn't February 1967 an uncommonly whimsical time for chart pop? Following Donovan's surrealist strut and the Royal Guardsmen's ever-so-slightly-sweary beagle-based novelty, the New Vaudeville Band, with their exaggerated plummy accents (shades of Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy?) and their nostalgic 1920s tea-dance stylings, come across like a somewhat sanitised Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - as the above video link will confirm. (It's worth watching just for the introduction from the bosomy old broad in bottle-green, and for the performance of their US Number One hit "Winchester Cathedral" which follows.)

"Peek-A-Boo" was the work of the songwriter Geoff Stephens, who also penned pop hits such as "The Crying Game" (Dave Berry), "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr.James" (Manfred Mann), "Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha" (Cliff Richard, pre-empting gender-bending by over a decade) and the mighty "Knock Knock, Who's There?" (Mary Hopkin). It's a cute but slight affair, whose initial charm wears off fairly swiftly.

There were, of course, two competing versions of "Don't Leave Me This Way" in the Top 20 of February 1977, nine years before the Communards took the song to Number One. Thelma Houston's fine rendition peaked at Number 13, but this superior version (originally recorded in 1975) by Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes - featuring Teddy Pendergrass on lead vocals, and best heard in its dizzying, ever-intensifying, seemingly endless full length version - made it as far as Number 5. (In the US, where Thelma's cover of the Bluenotes' original reached Number One on the pop charts, the fortunes were reversed.) Thirty years on, and despite saturation exposure to the Communards version in the 1980s, the song has lost none of its power, and I'm banking on a solid stream of first placings.

Five Star's ghastly "System Addict" was at Number Seven in last year's snapshot of the 1980s, and it is our unique misfortune to have them back at Number Seven this year, with the even more forgettable "Stay Out Of My Life". To all of you who are about to lose just over a minute of your lives to its anaemic, cloying, personality-free wretchedness: be at least grateful that you didn't have to spend 79p on its acquisition (and, yes, I resent every last penny).

"I Can't Live Without My Radio", "Rock The Bells", "I'm Bad"... yes, in his early days on Def Jam records in the 1980s, LL Cool J produced some of the most compelling and ground-breaking hip hop cuts of all time. And then he recorded a rubbishly piece of slush called "I Need Love" (or "I Need A Hit", as we all called it), hit the charts, and generally went a bit rubbish. Successful, but still a bit rubbish.

LL's utterly pointless version of Rufus & Chaka Khan's classic "Ain't Nobody" was taken from the soundtrack of Beavis & Butthead Do America, and the single came packed with a picture of Beavis & Butthead on its front cover. At the time, it felt like a new benchmark of marketing over content - and it also felt like the most insignificant Number One in British chart history. (Go on, I bet you had forgotten all about it. YouTube doesn't even have a video.) The slow devaluation of the Top 40 was just beginning, and "Ain't Nobody" was at the vanguard.

All of which leaves Jojo's rather effective little lament to a love affair turned sour, which has been hanging around inside the 2007 Top Ten for several weeks now. Yes, "Too Little Too Late" is part of the new breed of real hits, which are hanging around because people actually like them, and are getting the chance to know them before they disappear from sight.

I like to think of "Too Little Too Late" as a necessary corrective to Akon & Snoop's witless slobberings of a few days ago. Jojo's image is that of a comparatively ordinary girl-next-door, and the plight which she describes is an easily identifiable one. Unfortunately, this is badly undercut by the auto-tuning software, which makes her sound like a whiney robot - but not even that can altogether prevent little glimpses of true emotion from poking through the sheen. I particularly like the wordless wailing at the end of the track (not featured on the MP3 medley), in which Jojo is either celebrating her new freedom, or exorcising her pain - but most likely a mixture of both.

My votes: Harold Melvin - 5 points. Jojo - 4 points. New Vaudeville Band - 3 points. LL Cool J - 2 points. Five Star - 1 point.

Over to you. After three days of voting, the 1990s are our clear leaders - blimey, whoda thunk it, there is hope, etc etc - with the gap between the other four decades still too close to call. Why, even the 2000s are still in the running. There's everything to play for here, in what could be our most open competition to date.

Labels: whichdecade07

(This feature originally appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post.)

EG caught up with Duke Special (aka Peter Wilson) shortly after the Meteor Awards, Ireland’s version of the Brits. Having been nominated in three categories, he came away empty-handed – although the evening did have its compensations:

“The Best Album award went to Snow Patrol – but the cool thing was that Gary (Lightbody), when receiving the award, said that Duke Special should have won. Then he held the award up, and got everyone to clap!”

Erm, isn’t that what award winners usually do on these occasions? Still, it’s an impressive endorsement. As for duplicating his Irish success in the UK, Duke is taking a relaxed, long-term view.

“I’ve been working in both places equally – but Ireland’s population is less than London, so it’s easier to succeed over there. It’s served people like Damian Rice and David Gray well in the past. The way I’ve gone about things has been very organic – just going back and playing the same places over and over, and people bringing their friends along. It’s only in the last six months that there’s been any kind of media attention.”

When it comes to his performing alter ego, where does Duke Special start, and where does Peter Wilson end?

“It was important to have a name that said something about what I was doing, in the same way as having a band name is like setting your stall out. Peter Wilson is a very popular name, shall we say, so I wanted something a bit more enigmatic. What I want to portray on stage has elements of theatre and performance, that’s more than just ambling on and singing some songs – so having an alter ego helps.”

But with any alter ego, the boundaries can blur. In some cases, artists have turned into their aliases, dropping their real names altogether.

“Well, unlike Elton John, no-one’s going to think that my parents gave me this name! It’s more like Badly Drawn Boy – a suitable vehicle to do what you do onstage. Some people call me Duke, but never my close friends and family.”

It’s a reassuringly well-balanced answer. So what are Duke’s – or rather Peter’s – major musical influences?

“It’s constantly changing. When I was very young, it was Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. Tom Waits was an epiphany for me, in terms of presenting something in a more showmanlike way. There were old country records which my Dad would have played, and my Mum used to play Nana Mouskouri every Christmas!”

“There are certain things which get under your skin, whether you like it or not – like my mum singing You Are My Sunshine, and a lot of novelty songs from my Dad. I’ve never wanted to be overly earnest when I’m singing. I feel like a mixture between a soul singer and a vaudeville performer. I want to say something that is meaningful and has depth, but I also want to make it playful and entertaining.”

How does Duke feel about the frequent comparisons with Rufus Wainwright? Flattered, annoyed or bemused?

“Before Rufus, there was nothing like that in the mainstream – so the comparison is tempting. He’s been a pointer for me along the way. When I heard him, I thought: Brilliant, there’s another person doing this! What he does is absolutely incredible, and he’s further on than I am – but his collaborations with the likes of Van Dyke Parks, and his orchestral approach to pop music, make everything sound as if it’s in its own world.”

Whereas Wainwright takes an arch, detached approach, Duke’s songs feel warmer, and more emotionally direct.

“Perhaps. I start my writing from a point of experience – where I collide with something, and it throws something to the surface – and I think inevitably, most songwriters will do the same. There will be some kernel of reality in there, and then songs can go off somewhere else, and even become fiction. In some respects, I don’t mind what people get out of a song – what’s important is that it impacts them in some way. So it doesn’t matter whether the events in the song happened or not, as long as I believe it when I sing it.”

As if to emphasise the fictional elements in his songs, Duke’s album is illustrated with various cute looking animals, which look as if they have sprung from the pages of a fairy tale. Animated versions of these animals also star in his videos.

“An illustrator friend approached me, and asked whether he could experiment with my music. We had no idea what angle it would take. The second picture he drew was of an old theatre in the middle of a forest, with branches encroaching over the top of it, and an audience of bears. I loved it, and said to him: whatever happens, I want this to be the next album cover. I then called the album – which I hadn’t even written – Songs from the Deep Forest. Over the next year, he collaborated with me: listening to the music, and providing the other illustrations. So it was an evolution of ideas between the two of us.”

“Fairy tales are child-like – but there’s a darkness in them as well, which sometimes comes to the surface. That really appealed to me. As you emerge into adulthood, you realise that people aren’t perfect, and that a lot of bad stuff goes on in the world. Suddenly you’re discovering all this bad stuff within yourself – but you’re also trying to hold onto a sense of child-like wonder.”

This mixture of lightness and darkness is reflected in the songs. Many are jaunty, catchy and musically uplifting – but other more bruised qualities emerge in the lyrics, and the two elements play against each other in an interesting way.

“I want to convey that contrast in the live shows. There’s a whole visual aspect to play with. It’s important to give people some visual cues. I want them to walk in and know that it’s not going to be just another singer-songwriter, but another world.”

As an artist who revels in playing to an audience, Duke’s music takes on an extra dimension when heard live – but can that live sound be captured in the studio?

“I approach them in two different ways. Playing live, I want to pull in elements of theatre and illusion – whereas recording an album is like making a film. An album is hopefully something which you’ll be happy to hear over and over again, improving with each listening – whereas a live set is something of the moment, and right for that particular audience.”

Speaking of pitching to the right audience on the right night: if invited onto Al Murray’s Happy Hour, where all guests must perform something by Queen, which song would Duke pick?

“It would have to be from A Night At The Opera, which was my first Queen album. Bohemian Rhapsody might be a little ambitious and over-cooked. I really like the John Deacon song that goes: Ooh, you make me feel…”

You’re My Best Friend it is, then. A fitting choice for such a genial, open-hearted artist, whose music often feels like one extended bear-hug.

Labels: eveningpost, interviews, popmusic

My interview with the Irish singer-songwriter Duke Special can be found in the EG supplement of today's Nottingham Evening Post, and also on the paper's website. To my surprise and delight - as I was expecting some fairly savage cuts - the full 1200 word feature has been published exactly as I wrote it. This makes me very happy, as it's my favourite piece of work for the Post to date, by some distance. Even if you're not that interested in the man himself, he has some interesting observations to make on the songwriting process, and on the extent to which personal experience can be spun into fiction without compromising its essential truthfulness.

Meanwhile, a few pages further on in the same supplement, a Q&A session with X Factor finalist Ray "Snappy Fingers" Quinn makes my recent interview with Shayne Ward look positively Socratic by comparison.

(Incidentally, for all you Shayne fans out there: here's Chig's review of his Tuesday night show at Nottingham Arena, as composed on the PC in our study, while the rest of us all sat around and chatted. I couldn't have coped with the distraction, being far too much of an "I need space!" prima donna, but Chig didn't have a problem with it at all. The man is such a professional.)

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And finally, on a completely unrelated note, here are a couple of choice links from the past week's browsing.

1. Adrian Sevitz: Unemployed, Single and Ill. A remarkable piece of home video, made using stop motion photography over the course of several days, with a well-chosen soundtrack.

2. For his regular "Open Thread Thursday" spot, Joe. My. God. asked his predominantly gay male readers: What was your worst sex ever? The many, many answers which follow make for fascinating reading, in all sorts of ways - but be warned, and I cannot stress this too strongly - the content is very, VERY explicit, and absolutely NOT for the squeamish.

Labels: celebs, eveningpost, interviews, linkage, popmusic

OK, time to face facts. No longer quite the carefree little thing that I was in previous years, my ongoing "professional" duties - plus a fatal weakness for, you know, actually enjoying the occasional night in front of telly with a fine wine and my man by my side - do rather stand in the way of being able to maintain a daily service.

On the other hand, it does give all of you busy little blog-hoppers and feed-snappers a bit of breathing space, and more time to form thoughtful evaluations of the material on offer.

But here I am, and here we are, and here they are: the Number Eights.With the memory of Snoop "Doggy" Dogg's unseemly slavering still fresh in our minds, let us now turn to his predecessor in title, as immortalised by the Royal Guardsmen's dodgy stab at World War Humour. Dozens of dead soldiers! Ho ho ho!

As an eleven-year old fan of the Trojan Records sound, and a Peanuts afficionado to boot, I was mightily fond of the 1973 pop-reggae re-working of "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" by the Hotshots, which blared out of my newly acquired Bush monaural gramophone with the smoked perspex lid, all the way through the High Summer of Glam. Some of our childhood enthusiasms stay with us through to adulthood, while others are gladly cast aside - and this song, in any version, shall forever reside in my mental Clearance Bin.

Like Whizzer & Chips, The Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, and Alfreton & Mansfield Parkway, The Moments shall be forever linked with their musical other halves, The Whatnauts. Sans Whatnauts, The Moments merely feel like half the deal - and sans any genuine disco-funkiness, or even a halfway decent song, the sickly, cloying "Jack In The Box" merely feels like bargain basement fodder for the Port and Lemon set.

It's at times like these that I reconnect with my inner adolescent crypto-Maoist year-zero scorched-earth Punk Rocker. Production line garbage for the brainwashed masses! With my Slaughter & the Dogs and Eater singles, I shall obliterate you all!

None of which can adequately prepare me for the creeping realisation that "Running In The Family", by the hitherto irredeemable Level 42, is - whisper it if I dare - actually quite good. There, I've said it. Back in 1987, when I was in thrall to more received notions of "cool" than were good for me (for what is a man, if he cannot be judged by the cut of his 501's and the badges on his black MA1 flying jacket?), I wouldn't have given this track house room. Looking back, it's so bizarre...

By 1997, former electro-pop pretty boys Depeche Mode had reached the height of their gnarly, "industrial", wannabe-Nine-Inch-Nails phase, and Dave Gahan had just begun to emerge from his own private Skaghead Hell of self-destruction. Produced by Tim "Bomb The Bass" Simenon, "Barrel of a Gun" is a harrowingly accurate reflection of his turmoil. I've never formed much of an emotional connection with the work of Depeche Mode - a band whose continued international mega-success has always bemused me - but this song comes pretty close to convincing me otherwise.

"Hang on, Mike: what's this cover of "Brimful of Asha" by The Proclaimers doing in the 2007 chart?" Oh, I will have my little joke, even if it's scarcely an original one. The Lurching Around At The Friday Night Indie Disco With A Pint Of Cooking Lager Aesthetic gets far too short a shrift in some purse-lipped quarters, and I happen to find it a perfectly acceptable aesthetic - which means that, bless my soul, The View have turned in my favourite track of the bunch. Oh, come on. It's FUN. You remember FUN, dontcha?

My votes: The View - 5 points. Depeche Mode - 4 points. Level 42 - 3 points. Moments - 2 points. Royal Guardsmen - 1 point.

Over to you. Cartoon capers, plastic disco, yuppie funk, f**ked-up self-loathing, or Sheer Youthful Exuberance From Some Promising Youngsters Who May Go Far? The choice is yours!

Labels: whichdecade07

Over at Blogzira, Lucy Pepper - the prodigiously gifted donor of my disco-dancing topless avatar - has publicly requested my help regarding a rather nasty outbreak of Dylan Worship on the part of her Life Partner.Dear Lucy,

Alas, I fear that Dylan-itis is a largely uncurable disease. "Bob-heads", as they like to call themselves (I know) are an uncommonly intractable bunch, and most provocation will only inflame the condition.

(It's a Martyrdom Complex thing. To paraphrase Neil Innes: Bob has suffered for his art, and now it's your turn.)

However, maybe there are ways of reducing the symptoms. So why not try some of these for size?

1. The "Clay Feet" approach.

Does your Life Partner know that His Perpetual Right On-ness has licensed one of his wretched CDs for exclusive distribution by the Great Satan that is Starbucks? Or that he has appeared in an advert for a tatty bra-n-knickers emporium called Victoria's Secret? Tell him, Lucy! Tell him!

2. The "Fighting Fire With Fire" approach.

Load up your music player with some of Bob's, um, less seminal works, crank up the volume, set to repeat, and prepare to cut a deal.

Here are my top tips for maximum damage.

a) Any live recording from the past two or three years, which reveal the great man's vocal range - never that impressive in the first place - to have shrunk to about three notes. Until you have heard the once-passable "Like A Rolling Stone" re-worked as experimental plainsong, you haven't truly suffered.

b) Selected works from his "Born Again Christian" phase of the late 1970s - in particular, the execrable "Man Gave Names To All The Animals", which includes this deathless couplet:3. The "Mike Yarwood" approach.

Buy a cheap mouth organ (don't worry, you won't need lessons), smoke 40 consecutive Marlboro Reds, mix yourself a nifty paint-stripper 'n thumb-tacks mouthwash, and treat him to a Zimmerman-esque rendition of these deliciously appropriate Baby Boomer Busting lyrics, from the pen of The Overnight Editor. Now, that's Social Commentary! A few repetitions, and he'll be jibbering putty in your hands.

We shall overcome!

Yours in solidarity,
Mike xxx

Supplementary material: This week's "In The Dock" debate over at The Art Of Noise, and a live review cum hatchet job of mine own.

Labels: celebs, popmusic

Eyup, my cryptic crossword comments thread has yielded a right gem of a clue from The Overnight Editor:

Without a doubt, drivel is Mike's forte (8,4)

I'm nicking that for my sidebar, so I am.

Labels: meta

At this early juncture, I should explain something about the thorny matter of re-releases. In past years, I have sometimes included them (Elvis Presley's "Wooden Heart"), and sometimes excluded them (Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round"). This year, I'm definitely excluding them - and here's my reasoning.

The objective of this little stunt is to compare the music that was actually made in each decade. Therefore, older records which happened to find popularity in a different decade - most usually because of successful marketing - would only skew the sample. Exceptions can be made for remixes which noticeably change the original, and for re-releases that still belong to the same decade.

This year, three singles fall foul of the re-release rule: Elvis Presley's "Suspicion" (a 1962 recording which hit the charts in 1977), and two hits from 1987: Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" and Percy Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman", which were both used in massively popular (and deliciously homo-erotic) TV advertisments for Levi's Jeans. To fill the gaps, I've added Number 11 and Number 12 hits to the bottom of the lists, and shuffled everything up accordingly.

Now that we're all singing from the same revisionist hymn sheet, let's crack on with the Number Nines.Ah, but didn't The Artist Subsequently Known As Yusuf Islam have some great moments, before he went all soppy and sappy in the early 1970s? Boasting some terrific orchestration, "Matthew And Son" is a fine piece of slightly Kinks-esque social observation, which bemoans the plight of the Oppressed Worker and delivers a sophisticated pop take on the emergent genre of the "protest" song.

From deep and meaningful to shallow and meaningless, but in the best possible way: Boney M were rarely less than preposterous, and rarely more fun than on this, their debut hit. So good that they based a musical around it, "Daddy Cool" is production-line German disco from that eternal pop tart, Frank Farian (of whom more in a few days' time) - and as such, it sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from Giorgio Moroder's increasingly ground-breaking work with Donna Summer. "Daddy Cool" may be no "I Feel Love" - but at eight out of ten wedding discos, it's the one which is more likely to get me wiggling my pin-striped booty with the bridesmaids.

Ooh Betty, Andrew Lloyd-Webber's done a whoopsie all over the Top Ten! From the musical Phantom of the Opera, Michael Crawford buries the memory of Frank Spencer with... with...

...no, sorry. We all have our blind spots, and this brand of over-egged, pseudo-operatic Musical Theatre is one of mine. Please don't make me think about it any more than I have already had to.

Featuring vocal samples from Marlena Shaw's superb "Woman of the Ghetto", Blue Boy's "Remember Me" was one of those crossover club hits that just about everybody loved at the time. Perhaps it got a little over-played, and perhaps it needs laying aside for a few more years before we can all start loving it anew - for such is the fate of the "used groove" - but you can't argue with class like this, can you?

I've tried to do my best by Akon & Snoop Dogg, even beefing their track up with a running beat-mix from "Remember Me", but I can already hear the howls of outrage building up in my embryonic comments box. Although bearing the DJ-friendly title "I Wanna Love You", the word "love" is mysteriously absent from the track itself - and there are no prizes for guessing which four-letter word takes its place, either.

A couple of years ago, I penned a fairly detailed defence of the use of the f-word in Eamon's huge hit, "F**k It (I Don't Want You Back)" - and I'd stand by that defence today. With Akon & Snoop's "I Wanna F**k You" - a straightforward ode of dribbling lust towards a pole dancer - the issues are somewhat different. There's no subtlety here. No subversion of the apparent meaning. Not even any redeeming wit. They want to f**k her. End of.

So in that case, why do I find myself becoming increasingly obsessed with this song, which I must have played half a dozen times in the past 24 hours? Maybe it's because I'm trying to absorb the shock - because, yes, having a song like this in the Top Ten does shock me. Maybe it's because I'm trying to work out, from a generational distance of at least twenty years if not thirty years, how this song is being consumed by its target audience. Do they find it funny, or horny, or thrillingly transgressive (I'll bet this is huge with 13-year old boys), or are they even listening that closely in the first place?

Although this country doesn't boast much in the way of a pole-dancing culture, it's a safe bet that "I Wanna F**k You" will be blaring out thrice nightly, in every titty-bar from New York to L.A. Well, of course it would, as it handily perpetuates the fantasy that the dancers are gagging for it, and that the punters have some sort of legitmate claim over them.

On the other hand, perhaps people aren't as dumb as I'm making out. Of course this track perpetuates an erotic fantasy. That's the whole point. It's a fantasy - and as such, does its existence necessarily have to be a harmful one?

But then again: is it just me, or isn't there something bleak, desolate and almost mournful about the atmosphere on this track? Doesn't it exude some kind of languid, disconnected loneliness, which intensifies with each repeated listen, to the point where the tune becomes perversely enjoyable?

Or maybe I'm over-analysing, and it's just a pile of lazy, offensive crap (and also Akon's second consecutive appearance in the 2007 Top 10, but I can't think of anything remotely interesting to say about that). We shall see, soon enough.

My votes: Cat Stevens - 5 points. Blue Boy - 4 points. Boney M - 3 points. Akon & Snoop Dogg - 2 points. Michael Crawford - 1 point.

Over to you. Votes in the comments box, please. I'm predicting an early lead for the 1960s, but what do I know?

Labels: whichdecade07

Hmm. Perhaps that "major arena" tour was a little over-optimistic after all?

Having turned down the chance to review Shayne's Nottingham show this evening (the interview was quite enough, and we've decided to see Dreamgirls instead; even more Gay Points), I have instead sub-contracted the assignment to Chig, who will be hot-footing it over from Birmingham this evening, notebook and pencil in hand. (The relief from my editor was palpable.)

As usual, K and I won't be celebrating Valentine's Day, because a) we don't do slushy, b) it only distracts attention from my birthday on the 17th, and c) it's a bag of bollocks, as this lethally accurate post from last week's Post of the Week shortlist illustrates.

Alternatively, maybe I'll send him one of Meg's Anti-Valentine cards instead. It wouldn't be the first time...

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While we're on the subject of Post of the Week: although the project is going every bit as well as I had hoped, we could still do with a few more volunteers. To this end, we have introduced a new category of volunteer: the Permanent Judge.

The duties of a Permanent Judge are dead simple, and not in the least bit time-consuming. Once every four to six weeks, you'll be asked to read the shortlist - which contains between six and twelve of the week's best posts - and to e-mail the names of your favourite five posts, in order of preference. You'll have from Saturday lunchtimes to Sunday nights to do this. I can't imagine it taking any longer than 30 minutes at most, and you'll get to read some damn good stuff into the bargain.

If you're interested, then please e-mail me.

What do you think of Post of the Week, anyway? I'd be interested to hear your opinions, criticisms, suggestions, whatever...

Labels: linkage, love, postoftheweek

Oh, is it that time of the year again? Why, I do declare it is! Let joy be unbounded, as we gird our loins for Year Five of our seven year quest: Which Decade Is Tops For Pops?

Before we start, here's a brief introduction for newcomers. Over the next couple of weeks, we shall be examining the Top Ten best-selling UK singles from this week (my birthday week, as it happens) in 1967, 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007. Today, we shall be looking at the five singles at Number 10; tomorrow, we look at the Number 9s... and so on until we reach the Number 1s, at the end of next week.

On each day, I shall be publishing a short medley of the five songs under examination. Your job is to listen to the medley, to arrange the five songs in descending order of merit, and to leave your vote in the comments box.

I'll be totting up the points for each day, and adding them all together, using a simple scoring method which is frankly too tedious to bother you with at this early stage. You'll soon pick things up as you go along.

Suffice it to say that at the end of the ten days, one of our decades - the Slinky Sixties, the Sexy Seventies, the Excessive Eighties, the Naughty Nineties or the Neglected Noughties - will be crowned this year's winner.

Last year, 1976 brought it home for the Seventies, who duly notched up their second victory in four years. Can the Top 10 from February 1977 work similar wonders - or will we finally see some big points for those two perennially scorned decades, the Nineties and the Noughties, neither of whom have even so much as placed in the Top Three?

Are we all ready, then?

OK, eyes down (and indeed eyes sideways, as we've got video links for the first time this year, Youtube be praised) ... it's the Number Tens!Not too shoddy an opening selection, is it? Listening to Donovan's gentle whimsy, a small window opens onto the Sixties' Next Big Thing: hippy psychedelia, which would hit its historic peak over the "Summer of Love" in five months' time. The first clues are there - the wacky surrealism, the langourous nonchalance, the "anything goes" attitude - but at the same time, there's not much of the overtly counter-cultural on display here. "Mellow Yellow" might take us on a dandified strut down Carnaby Street or the King's Road, but we'll search in vain for a signpost to Haight-Ashbury.

Ten years on, and the next soi-disant Youth Revolution was swiftly gathering momentum - but looking at the February 1977 singles chart, there was no evidence whatsoever that punk rock was on the way. Never mind the bollocks - here's Manhattan Transfer, stalwarts of the peak time TV variety show, with their biggest UK hit - and also possibly one of their downright naffest musical moments. Displaying little of the slick sophistication of their best material, "Chanson D'Amour" is well-executed but swiftly irritating swayalong schlock for the Sing Something Simple generation, whose main redeeming feature is to summon up images of a Morecambe and a Wise, gleefully hamming it up to the ra-da-da-da-dahs.

Another ten years on, and with yet another musical paradigm shift waiting in the wings, most of the country's gay clubs were happy to continue ploughing the same old Eurodisco furrows. Why bother learning how to jack your body, when you could simply pass the poppers and party like an eternal 1983? Within this increasingly impoverished cultural cul de sac, walloping belters such as Taffy's "Midnight Radio" (to give it its correct original title) were as manna from heaven - and this one duly ruled every gay dancefloor in the country for weeks on end, stretching well back into late 1986.

However, when it came to promoting "Midnight Radio" as mainstream chart crossover material, a hideous compromise was made. Since BBC Radio One (The Nation's Favourite!) actually stopped broadcasting at midnight, handing its airwaves back over to Radio Two (Brian Matthew! Sheila Tracey's Truckers Hour!) for the wee small hours, none of its DJ's were likely to promote a song with lyrics like "Wo-oh, my guy, my DJ after midnight, I love my radio, my midnight radio". Instead, an absolute clunker of a re-worked chorus was forced upon the UK singles market: "I love my radio, my deejay's radio." Big Yuck! Sacrilege!

A further decade down the line, and the musical shifts that Chicago House had set in motion were now at their popular, commercial peak. Dance culture was mainstream, and ubiquitous, and yet to harden over into the diminishing returns of Ibiza Trance, which were to deal it an almost fatal blow towards the end of the decade. And so it was that interesting, well-crafted, non-formulaic, genre-blurring tunes such as Apollo Four Forty's Van Halen-sampling "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Dub" got a crack at the Top Ten - complete with one of the few instances of jungle/drum-and-bass rhythm patterns selling in large quantities, even if Apollo Four Forty themselves were anything but a jungle/drum-and-bass act. Covering broadly similar ground to The Prodigy, one of the biggest dance acts in the country at this stage, "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Dub" stands up remarkably well.

And so, with a weary sigh, we turn to the singles chart of 2007 for the first time, ready for whatever half-assed pap that the Noughties might throw at us - but stop! Wait! Reconsider! After a slow ten year slide in relevance, during which genuine popularity was routinely overshadowed by efficient but meaningless target marketing, newly liberalised regulations are already re-establishing the Top Forty as a genuine barometer of taste. With most new entries now falling outside the Top Ten, the "climber" is back, and we are once again seeing those gratifyingly smooth rises and falls which are a more accurate reflection of the way that we fall in and out of love with our favourite tunes of the day.

None of which offers much by way of defence for Gwen Stefani's latest effort: a slight piece of retro-tinged pop fluff, with shades of Madonna's "True Blue" and faint echoes of the soda fountain, which falls some way short of the standards set by her enjoyable run of hits from a couple of years back. Cute but forgettable - and I promise you that we'll hear better.

My votes: Donovan - 5 points. Taffy - 4 points. Apollo Four Forty - 3 points. Manhattan Transfer - 2 points. Gwen Stefani - 1 point.

Over to you. Please leave your votes in the comments, starting with your favourite and working downwards. No tied positions are allowed, and all five songs must be ranked. You'll find me very strict on that.

And there's one more earnest plea, which I make at this stage every year: when casting your votes, please try to rank them in terms of merit, and not just in terms of subjective nostalgia appeal. OK, let's go...

Labels: whichdecade07

I devised this one while lying in bed this morning, basically as a displacement activity for getting out of bed and cracking on with the day. Yes, that might be an extra clue.

Automobile financed, Ethel Merman starts to rise and shine, we hear. (5,4)

I'll leave the solution in the comments - but no advance peeking, do you hear? I'm placing you on trust...

Update: OK, so maybe that one was too easy. In which case, try this one.

Minty Yorkshireman's ejaculation into African dictator's behind. (6,6)

Labels: quiz