Friday is Michael did WHAT? Day

A week ago a retired child molester and star of a pop video that meant launderette floors could never be seen in the same light again died. Today a millionaire cripple has signed for the biggest football club on the planet. Two Fridays. Two Michaels.

Child molesting and earth-shattering hypocrisies aside, I quite liked old Jacko. I felt sorry for the abused child forced into the life of the recluse. Billie Jean (there's your launderette one), Dont Stop Till You Get Enough, Thriller, Black And White - over the years when he wasn't burning his face off or persuading Californian children that there was nothing wrong with being the Len Fairclough you can dance to, he made some pretty good tunes. I wasnt upset enough to spill my tea when he died but it was a tragic end to a fairly tragic life. On the eve of a supposedly triumphant comeback his doctor fucks up the aspirin and Jacko ends up in a Hollywood morgue.



Michael Madsen, last Friday, sniffing Vietnamese orphan piss for kicks.

Michael Owen joining Manchester United is a piece of football romance straight out of Hollywood. You can hear the growly voiceover on the trailer. "He couldn't run. He couldn't get a game. But the biggest team in the world took a shot on.....MICHAEL." Brilliant. And knowing Man Utd's luck, the cunt will turn out to be the bargain of the millenium and score 99 goals this season.

So clearly, Friday is Michael did WHAT? Day. What's going to be the next instalment? Will Michael Barrymore produce a blood stained butt plug at a press conference whilst wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo "Stuart Lubbock Died For Our Sins". Will Michael Parkinson get caught smacking his silly grey Yorkshire cock silly over pictures of Moira Stuart? Maybe Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow will be renamed Smug Grinning Chucky Faced Cunt's Laughter-Free Shitrinse.

Who fucking knows, who cares? My money's on Princess Michael of Kent turning up at a press conference with never-seen-before footage of her on top of a little white car throwing bottles of her own piss through Henri Paul's window before being plucked to safety by a helicopter driven by The Queen Mum. What's yours? Send me your hilarious Michael - friday based predictions to....

I RECKON MICHAEL FLATLEY WILL TAKE SOMEONE'S EYE OUT IF HE's NOT CAREFUL competition.......

The Book Club - a short story

Ann and Mary were sat in Espressions, a book and coffee shop opposite the building site that occupied most of the city they had grown up in. They were both in their sixties and had seen a lot of change in Cardiff but it was getting ridiculous now, they both thought. They’d only finally got used to one monstrous shopping centre and now that had been knocked down to build a bigger, better, brighter one.

At the moment the bigness, betterness and brightness was represented by a set of nine foot posters depicting the ´capital’s exciting retail experience of the future´. That and a square mile of cranes, rubble and fat men in orange hats.
Espressions wasn’t the sort of place they went to normally. But a lot of those places had gone. Once, if Ann or Mary had fancied a cup of tea, then they would have gone to one of the many cafes and teashops that used to operate in the city. Nice, quiet affairs. There were coffee shops everywhere now, all of them filled with horrible teenagers with those skateboard things. And you couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls. And the price of a cup of tea in those places. One pound fifty. For a cup of tea. Ridiculous.

But now Ann and Mary were sat in Espressions with a pot of tea for two and a cake each that hadn’t given much change from a ten-pound note. Sipping at their tea, they exchanged glances at each other’s little book-sized shopping bags, wondering what the other had bought.

Ann and Mary were both widowed. They’d known each other all their life; they’d grown up on Claude Road together, kids next door. Ann had married Charlie, a bus driver and they were together forty-one years until he’d had his third heart attack and died loudly in his sleep. Mary had married Charlie’s brother, Roger. Roger was a salesman for a local brewery. He’d fallen down the stairs at home after several pints down the Conservative club. The neighbours claimed they’d heard a row but the police weren’t convinced. Still, Roger was well insured and Mary had finally had the house paid off as a result. She’d taken Ann on a cruise but they were both bored now they didn’t have husbands to be bored with.

That was when they joined the Book Club.

There was a poster in the window of a charity shop that they both volunteered at. The shop raised money for an animal charity; all the proceeds went to the care of rescued circus animals. A man they both recognised, whom Ann always thought smelt slightly of cough sweets, came into the shop with a bin liner full of stuff he thought they might be able to sell. As he was leaving, he did an about turn and asked if he could put a poster in the window.

´What’s the poster for? ´ said Ann

´Oh. It’s a book club. A friend of mine is starting one up. Like on that Richard and Judy.´

And so it was that Ann and Mary met Mr. Chubb or Peter as they got to know him. Peter Chubb was a friend of Isabella who was heavily involved in local arts. The Roath Book Club met every Tuesday 6pm at an old church hall off Albany Road. The first meeting it was just the four of them, Peter, Isabella, Ann and Mary. Ann and Mary didn’t know how it worked ´ they just turned up for something to do. Isabella explained that each week someone would suggest a book and the others would read it over the week and then talk about it. Also, somebody would be asked to nominate a book for the group to read the following week and so on.

Isabella’s initial recommendation was The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon. Ann really liked the book, Mary was not so keen. Ann’s first recommendation was a romantic novella she’d read on the cruise the summer before which was a predictable enough romp about an older woman who befriends a Turkish restaurateur with one leg. Mary chose Black Beauty as it was her favourite ever book and she was certain that no one else would have read it. Peter never turned up after the first meeting.

Over the next few months, the book group swelled. There was little Vicky who liked stories where vampires and rape prominently featured. She worked in a chemists apparently. Then there was Matthew, a shy Northern man with thick glasses who also liked horror. He had that screeching violin from the film Psycho as the ringtone on his phone. People only knew this because Matthew would show them. The Book Club wasn’t like a library; you could have your mobile on just in case the babysitter rang or the police or whoever. Nobody could recall anyone actually ringing Matthew.

There was Tony, the supermarket manager with a penchant for SAS memoirs. He was a fat man with a speech impediment and always stank of beer. Whenever he used to turn up, he would always try and sit next to Mary. The last time he turned up, he was clearly drunk and asked Mary to come for a drink with him after. She declined the offer and Tony was clearly mortally wounded by this snub as they never saw him again. There was something in the local paper a week or two later. He’d been found dead in his car. No note, just a bottle of Gordon’s and an empty packet of headache tablets.

Mary had made an ill-advised joke when they next met. Vicky had brought in the local paper, trying to look sad and shocked but failing to pull it off. Tony’s picture was in the paper underneath the sad tale of his demise. The headline read ´Suspected Suicide of Supermarket Manager´

´Oh, his poor family, and ´ said Ann. ´Why do they have to make such a big headline of that? It should be kept private, these things.´

Mary began to giggle.

´I have a better headline. Who dares gins? ´ she said.

It was thought best to cancel the meeting that week.

Catherine was next, both Ann and Mary thought she was a bit stuck up, partly because she had a double-barrelled surname but they both really liked her recommendation, which was a book about a boy with cancer who could fly. Kim was a bored housewife who liked extremely erotic fiction, which made Ann extremely uncomfortable discussing. The book they’d been asked to read was set in Berlin in the 1920s. The things that people did to each other in that book. Ann was horrified; Mary called her an old prude. They’d had a bit of a row about it on the drive home but it was quickly forgotten unlike the daisy chain scene on page 48 of Verboten Loves.

Then there was another Vicky, who liked something called chick-lit. Duncan liked detective novels. Mark liked detective novels. Ursula was a fat Irish girl with LOVE tattooed on both sets of knuckles. She liked a book called The Tesseract, which everyone pretended to read but didn’t get past page 19. As a result of this group, Ann and Mary had quickly expanded their literary tastes as well as the contents of their own personal libraries. It was Ann’s turn in a week and Mary’s the week after that. They had heard about Espressions from the other members of the group the week before. And so, one Wednesday morning a few weeks before Christmas, the two ladies caught the bus into the city. Surrounded by iPods and call centres, they felt almost like tourists and instinctively made their way from the bus stop towards the indoor market just to be somewhere that hadn’t changed from their childhood.

Espressions was on the other side of the market building, a big glass fronted department store. It had a coffee shop on the top floor and was staffed by excitable young people with strange facial hair and those headset things you saw assassins wearing in American films.

It was a prime location and handy too as it sat on the space where there used to be a separate bookshop, record shop and an old café. The café, Bruno’s, had been there since before the First World War and both Ann and Mary remembered being taken there as young girls. Upstairs in Espressions, one wall had been entirely taken up by a huge black and white photograph of Bruno’s so people would remember it fondly.
Mary stared at the moustache of the original Bruno on the wall. Blown up like this, his moustache was now wider than her head. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the sounds and smells of Bruno’s but all she could hear was a compilation of Argentine folk music that was free with every fifty pounds you spent in the store.
´Mary! ´

The daydream ended. Ann was excitedly emptying her Espressions bag.

´Mary, come on. Show me your wares! This is what I’ve bought.´

Ann had bought three books. One was a romantic novel by someone she'd seen on a cookery programme on telly. Next out of the bag was a selection of poems by Dylan Thomas. She’d probably give it to someone for Christmas. The last book was one she’d seen on display in the front of the store. Tunnel Boy was ´a harrowing memoir of an abused childhood´. Since they’d read the book about the flying boy with cancer, Ann had become slightly obsessed with tales of survival. She hadn’t read Robinson Crusoe. For Crusoe to appeal now, he would have to have been raped and partially eaten by Man Friday. This was the book Ann would read first, she found herself quite excited at the prospect of a quiet evening in with Tunnel Boy.

´So. Come on what’s in the bag? ´

Mary emptied her bag. Works by Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard and John D Westlake lay on the table. Murders, robberies and more murders. In the last month alone Mary’s eyes had witnessed 27 murders, 14 armed robberies, at least a dozen rapes and various blackmails, beatings and buggeries. No wonder she looked tired, thought Ann.
Ann looked at Mary. Mary stared at Signor Bruno’s 18-inch moustache.

´What’s got into you Mary? You never used to be into crime.´

At this point Fate intervened in the shape of the clumsy looking assistant who’d had the decency to look apologetic when handing Ann the heartbreakingly small amount of change from their tea and cake. He was named Michael and he was, according to the hand written badge on his striped shirt, a barista. Michael had slipped on a piece of spilt tiramisu behind the counter and, in his effort to stop himself from falling, accidentally turned the stereo up to full volume.

Consequently, the only person that heard Mary break down and confess to pushing her violent husband down the stairs and breaking his neck; to holding up a sub-post office near Monmouth with a sawn-off shotgun; and to a host of other criminal offences was Mary herself. Everyone else had their fingers in their ears trying to blot out the noise of an Argentine sheep herder mourning what could have been.

´What did you say Mary? ´

´Oh nothing´ said Ann.

Outside, the cranes swayed uneasily in the wind as the rain picked up again. Shoppers ran for cover. Espressions filled with the sound of wet people pretending to be interested in literature.

Mary stared at the window, at the fresh raindrops silently racing down the outside of the glass.

BLOOD (ANOTHER FUCKING DAD STORY)

Erm second draft, new short story.

“Well… we got another hour till Cardiff. Then we’ll get a taxi, take about ten minutes.”

My son is ten. Wants to know how long till we get home. How long it is till we get to my home, at any rate. He doesn’t live with me. I used to drink.
We’re on a train because I don’t have a car anymore. It’s late summer, the evenings are cooling. The sky is a boxer’s eye. Purples, mauves and lilacs all swelling with that cut that just won’t close – the red sun.
“Are you hungry?”

“Dad, you just asked me that. I’m fine.”

My son returns to his gizmo. Some little electronic game thing that I’ll still be paying for in six months. He’s a good kid, he’s worth it. Of course, he never asked me directly for it, this birthday present was a direct order from his mother. Same thing, every year. She’ll think of the most expensive thing he wants. Tell me he has to have it. She knows what I earn. It’s a test. If I don’t buy it, its cos I’m drinking. That’s what she thinks. That’s how she thinks.

I drain the last of my can and instinctively crush it in my hand.

We’re pulling into Swindon. I used to date a girl from here. Every time I make this journey I think I’m going to see her at the station. I always wonder what I’d do if I did. Would I get off, tell her I loved her and ask her to marry me like in some soppy old movie like my mum used to make me watch with her when I was a kid and she was ill.

The girl isn’t at the station of course. I don’t know why I’m looking. Must be all of eight years ago now.

We pull away and it’s getting darker now. Saturday night and even the city is getting ready to go out. Putting on their streetlights, little bit of neon. Hoping to meet hundreds of Mr. Rights. Hoping to meet a mug like me, someone who’ll throw a lot of money their way, someone who’ll call back.

The city fades into the distance; the train begins to pick up speed. I want another beer. We’re only two carriages away from the buffet. I can be there and back within two minutes – he won’t even know I’ve been. I can bring him some sweets or something.

I can’t help but look at him and wonder when he got so tall. I tell myself that I don’t need a drink, I’m not thirsty and that I’ll reconsider my position when we pull into Bristol.

“I’ll drop your stuff off at the flat and then we can go out, grab some dinner. Or I can phone in a pizza if you’re tired.”

“Yeah sure, I don’t mind. Whatever.”

Someone’s left a copy of today’s Sun on the table opposite. I reach for it and start absent mindedly flicking through the pages. I’ve noticed recently how so many of my actions are self-conscious. I can’t shave in the mornings without thinking of how much I look like every other guy who’s had a shave ever. I wonder if I’m unique after all. I hate that feeling.

There’s an article about some fuck-up single mum from the North of England who’s just buggered off to Spain for a week on the piss. She left forty quid and a few pizzas in the freezer for her two kids to fend for themselves. One of the kids nearly burnt the place down and the game was up. Turned out she’d done it the previous two years as well.

The article’s to the side of the day’s Page 3 girl. She’s 17 and holding a pair of coconuts in front of her breasts. Coconut Shy is the headline.

“Jenny. 17, knows a thing or two about Bristols. She’s from the West Country herself. “I can’t believe these mums who leave their kids behind when they go abroad. I hope the judge passes her as stiff a sentence as he can”.

We’re pulling into Bristol ourselves and I laugh at the thought of suddenly seeing Jenny, 17, at the station. It’s much darker now. The sun’s behind the horizon and its last yawns of colour are all that remains of the day.

I notice him immediately. A tall man in a long, tweed coat. You read about people looking haunted or spooked and never really pay it much attention because it’s a cliché. Well, it was cliché time, the guy looked haunted alright. Shivering despite his coat and continually turning his head as the train finally came to rest.

Don’t come into our carriage. Please don’t sit next to us.

He gets on and quickly makes his way towards us, I know he’s going to sit opposite us and I know there’s something up here. Something’s wrong with this picture.

My son looks across at the man and turns instantly back to his game. He tried to explain it to me earlier. I feigned interest. I wish I cared more about these things that matter to him but I don’t. Better to be honest. He’ll thank me for it one day. Besides, you aren’t ten forever.

The guy opposite is looking out of the window, I snatch a glance as the train’s aisle lights are on now and my reflection is visible in his window. I look down to his side and see that his arm is dripping with blood from somewhere deep within his sleeve. I’m no doctor but it’s bad.

“Dad,” whispers my son.
“What”
“Why is he talking to himself?”

The guy opposite is really agitated now. He’s arguing with himself quietly, banging the table with his other hand. The floor by his foot is beginning to stain. He pulls out a half bottle of Smirnoff and quickly drains a good few measures. I wince at the memory of such moments in my own life now hurtling through my mind. Under the desk at my old job or in the stationery cupboard. Out in the back garden at our old place pretending to try and get a signal on my mobile or calling the cat.
I got to do something. This guy needs help.

“Jack.” I whisper.
“What?”
“We’re going to the buffet to grab something to eat. Both of us now.”
“I said I’m not hungry.”
“Come on.” I grab his arm.
“Dad. No, I’m playing.”

I know I can’t leave him here but I do. And I promise to hate myself forever for doing so as I stumble down towards the buffet car. There’s nobody else waiting. The guy behind the bar is filling the little fridge behind him with cans of strong lager. I tell the guy the situation. He asks me where we’re sitting. There’s a man bleeding and shaking and he needs help. I don’t want him arrested. I don’t care what he’s done. The buffet man thanks me and phones the driver.

I buy four cans of lager and a bottle of gin and tonic. I’m shaking as I make my way back to our seat, the cans in my hand and the g and t in my coat pocket. We’re in a tunnel and it’s all I can do not to cry out as the lights flicker and send us into the darkness for a second or two.

My son’s smiling as I walk up to him as casually as I can. Which isn’t casual at all, more of the same self-conscious stuff that keeps me up at night.

“I finished the game, Dad. I did it. Look.”

I look at the screen and it’s filling with little pixel fireworks spelling out the name Jack in capitals. I wonder what it must be like to be convinced by them like Jack is right now. These fireworks are real.

The man opposite is shaking now. He has begun to stare at us now. We’re out of the tunnel and have begun to slow down.

I give him a can because I know we are in this together now. He looks at me then at the boy and opens the can with his bad hand. Blood falls on the table next to the empty vodka bottle.

“Dad” he whispers.
“Ssshhhhh”

The train is stopping at the little station just after the tunnel. It’s not a scheduled stop. There’s a police van and an ambulance by the tracks. The bleeding man looks at me and then to my boy and then back out of the window. We stop and I am shaking more than I ever have in my entire life. Cops get on the train. A policewoman makes her way up the carriage. I can see her. The man knows she is coming but is in denial. He is looking out of the window and drinking.

“Sir, you’ve got a nasty looking cut there. We’re going to need to have a look at it. Can you come with us?” the policewoman begins.

The man starts to cry and I feel sick to the bottom of my heart. There’s a moment of struggle and the train fills with bigger guys who pull him away from the seat. More blood spills on the table. They lead him back past my window and I look to try to make eye contact but he’s crying with his head down as they take him to the ambulance.

The conductor apologises for the delay over the tannoy as we move away. The three cans on the table in front of me seem suddenly no more real than pixel fireworks. I look to the table opposite and to the little flickers of blood upon it. I stare at my reflection in the window and turn my head to gaze at my son, now lost in some comic. My fingers are slowly drumming on the cans of lager, my nail slowly teasing the cold and golden ring pull.

Outside it grows darker as the city approaches.

Stories, Poems. Shit From Me, Shat To You.

Inspired by Chris "Adolf" Winters ingenious use of blog as literary advert. I'll start cramming my crap on here now so people can be spiteful about it.

Cocksucker Proxy?

In the rather underrated Coen brothers' 1994 opus, The Hudsucker Proxy, there is a scene where Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) has a piece of newspaper blown onto his leg by a strong breeze. This piece of paper contains an ad for a job which changes the course of his life. All very fortuitous of course but the same thing just happened to me.

Well, it wasn't a newspaper. And it wasn't a job advert but a hand-written note containing the following (the spelling is the author's). And if this note changes my career path I'll probably be forcing the price of yoghurt through the roof.

"Hi.

If you're sorting through my effects after I've died - possible - Please throw this CD holder and its contents, straight into bin - Just a bit of porn but wouldnt want anyone to see it, nothing nasty...just emberrassing..."

Anyway, soon as I've found my digital camera charger I'll take a pic of the note.

You know, for kids.

Now You're Fucked

Amazing idea for a television show.

Well, by amazing, I might just possibly mean "tasteless and unpleasant". But, in a world, where Sharon Osborne is held up as a paragon of female empowerment (rather than beaten up by angry spastics who've just been locked in a cave for 4 years being fed through tubes and forced to view a screen with flashing images of Sharon Osborne and abbatoir training films), who's to judge?

Basically, there was a thing in the Guardian the other day, asking why there aren't more disabled people on telly. Well, apart from the fact they dribble and fall over a lot, there's the fact that the ones who are on a lot have kind of desensitised us to their astonishing achievements in overcoming their own personal hurdles.

Now, here's the solution.

My programme which I think should be called "Now You Are Fucked" will feature prominent disabled personalities who are forced to endure an additional handicap for a week and get on with their lives.

Stevie Wonder has to do a concert without hearing. Or maybe with his mouth filled by one of those tasty snooker balls that gimp kids have in their packed lunch. Tanni Grey-Thompson has to compete in a race blindfolded. Those little sign language fellas in the corner on Sunday afternoon telly have to do the signing whilst nailed to a tree. That sort of thing.

Stephen Hawking's pretty much superfucked already so maybe we'll let him off. Or maybe get him pissed up before a lecture.

Trouble is with Wonder, Blunkett and all that - they've become complacent and self-satisfied. Showboating crips dont float my boat. Like Edmund Hilary, he climbs the biggest mountain in the world and then what, nothing. He should have tried to do it naked or something.

This programme will a) satisfy the urgent need for reality-tv shows featuring celebrities taken out of their usual comfort zone and b) highlight the very real problems facing everyday blind superstar soul singers.

And c) make insensitive shitlizards like myself weep with a joy not seen since the Downs Syndrome Bolero on Going Live circa 1989......

My 100 Pub Jukebox Classics.

In my happily misspent adolesence, the pub jukebox held totemic power. Providing the soundtrack to a wasted afternoon or a leisurely evening - seizing upon and dominating the jukebox was a selfish act of asserting your territorial claim. It was either that or risk playing pool/being dumped/having a laugh to the sound of Black Velvet by Alannah Myles.

Your old classic jukebox had room for about a hundred songs - not like today's digital monstrosities. By the time you've finally chosen a song, your pint's gone flat, your girlfriend's left you and your grandkids have changed their Facebook status to "married".

Anyway, if I ever get the bucks together I'm going to build a fantasy jukebox. 100 songs that will pass the jukebox test. Songs you can either sing along to, play pool to, get dumped to or otherwise help build an atmosphere. Songs to enjoy before going out clubbing or gigging. Songs for that Bank Holiday hair-of-the-dog pint after a few cheekies the night before.

100 songs for every conceivable mood - my sole concession to the tastes of other pub goers is that there can only be one song by any particular act.

Anyway, my hundred....



1. Rain – Beatles
2. Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bob Dylan
3. Sympathy For The Devil – Rolling Stones
4. An American Trilogy – Elvis Presley
5. Good Vibrations – Beach Boys
6. Suffragette City – David Bowie
7. Hey Joe – Jimi Hendrix
8. Wild Night – Van Morrison
9. Whisky In The Jar – Thin Lizzy
10. Don’t Stop Me Now – Queen
11. Private Psychedelic Reel – Chemical Brothers
12. Ya Mama – Fatboy Slim
13. Born Slippy – Underworld
14. Loaded – Primal Scream
15. Out Of Space – Prodigy
16. Killing In The Name Of – Rage Against The Machine
17. Being Boring – Pet Shop Boys
18. Cars – Katzenjammers
19. Getting Away With It – Electronic
20. Fools Gold – Stone Roses
21. Kinky Afro – Happy Mondays
22. Roll With It – Oasis
23. Girls And Boys – Blur
24. Crashin In – Charlatans
25. How Soon Is Now – Smiths
26. Bizarre Love Triangle – New Order
27. Paranoid Android – Radiohead
28. Feel Good Hit Of The Summer – Queens Of The Stone Age
29. Velouria – Pixies
30. Motorcycle Emptiness – Manic Street Preachers
31. Do You Realise? – Flaming Lips
32. Herman Loves Pauline – Super Furry Animals
33. AM 180 – Grandaddy
34. Showdown – ELO
35. The Passenger – Iggy Pop
36. What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? – R.E.M
37. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
38. I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor – Arctic Monkeys
39. Too Much Too Young – Specials
40. Boys Don’t Cry – Cure
41. Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay – Otis Redding
42. Always On My Mind – Willie Nelson
43. I Drove All Night – Roy Orbison
44. A Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash
45. This Is How It Feels – Inspiral Carpets
46. History – Verve
47. Wichita Lineman – Glen Campbell
48. Maggie May – Rod Stewart
49. This Town Aint Big Enough For The Both Of Us – Sparks
50. Never Forget – Take That
51. Round And Round (soulwax mix) – Sugababes
52. Sound Of The Underground – Girls Aloud
53. War Of Nerves – All Saints
54. Unfinished Sympathy – Massive Attack
55. Lipgloss – Pulp
56. Wake Up Boo! – Boo Radleys
57. You’re In A Bad Way – Saint Etienne
58. Personal Jesus – Depeche Mode
59. The Obvious Child – Paul Simon
60. Lola – Kinks
61. No Woman No Cry – Bob Marley
62. Return Of Django – Upsetters
63. Dot Dash – Wire
64. I’m Waiting For The Man – Velvet Underground
65. Enter Sandman – Metallica
66. Nearly Lost You – Screaming Trees
67. Cannonball – Breeders
68. Headache – Frank Black
69. Reverend Black Grape – Black Grape
70. Situation – Yazoo
71. Maps – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
72. Power Out – Arcade Fire
73. Making Plans For Nigel – XTC
74. Old England – Waterboys
75. Last Of The Famous International Playboys – Morrissey
76. It’s A Mans Mans Mans World – James Brown
77. Better Not Look Down – B.B King
78. Metal Mickey – Suede
79. Last Train To Clarksville – Monkees
80. Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond
81. Me And The Farmer – Housemartins
82. Summer Breeze – Isley Brothers
83. You Win Again – Bee Gees
84. My Generation – Who
85. A Minha Menina – Os Mutantes
86. Ball Of Confusion – Temptations
87. Put Yourself In My Place – Elgins
88. Town Called Malice – Jam
89. Don’t Mug Yourself – Streets
90. Pyjamarama – Roxy Music
91. Everybody Dance – Chic
92. Crazy Horses – Osmonds
93. The First Big Weekend – Arab Strap
94. Woke Up This Morning – Alabama 3
95. She’s Not There – Zombies
96. Disco Inferno - Trammps
97. Style – Lemonheads
98. Where Did You Sleep Last Night – Leadbelly
99. John The Revelator – Blind Lemon Jefferson
100. Mansize Rooster - Supergrass

Time Capsules and Animals That Swim

Having found myself strangely gripped by Channel 4's Life After People....I find myself worried that any future alien archaeologists or post-holocaust evolutionary surviving thingies will have a very limited view of our civilisation.

Yeah, we got to save Beethoven, Picasso, Shakespeare, the Beatles. I understand the historical and cultural significance of that above, say, the Grease Megamix.

But I'm worried about the likes of Tindersticks, Ivor Cutler and Animals That Swim. What if nobody else is out there preserving for all time the record "Hilly Fields (1892)" by Nick Nicely.

So I'm buying an mp3 player to store 1000 songs on for all eternity.

The first fameless five are

1 - Nick Nicely's aforementioned "Hilly Fields (1892)". A bit of early 80s psychedelia I once heard on the much missed Mark Radcliffe show from his graveyard shift years on Radio 1. My treasured vinyl copy a genuine eBay bargain.

2 - Larry Grayson "Shut That Door". Seriously, this is the funniest record ever made.

3 - Ivor Cutler "Beautiful Cosmos". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x9OVIuboy4 for a grab of the action.

4 - Animals That Swim "Faded Glamour". Could have been "Roy" or one of many others. This though is my favourite.

5 - Oblivians - "Vietnam War Blues" Ah man, this is such a cool song. Like a kind of Deep South drug fried Pixies. And if that doesn't cause your boat to stay atop the water then you sir/madam are a plop.