The path to Alex James Britpop Classical

Believe it or not, there was a rock band before there was ALEX JAMES BRITPOP CLASSICAL!!!!!!! and that band was called Blur.

I had a thought about Blur (when I could tear my mind away from ALEX! JAMES! BRITPOP! CLASSICAL!) which was that, slightly surprisingly, my favourite Blur album is now Think Tank.

Think Tank is the seventh of nine Blur studio albums, and, although (thankfully) there have been two Blur albums since, this is their break-up album, the sound of a band on its last legs, the two key members divided, the glory years long gone.

Think Tank is not the only sad Blur album about the end of things, of course. It is a funny thing about this band, so far from their tabloid image, that Blur, 13, Think Tank and The Ballad of Darren, are all, to an extent, about the end of an era, and even Parklife, their prime "Britpop" album, contains To the End, End of a Century, This is a Low and Badhead - songs about ends and/or feeling bad.

I'll take a little detour from talking just about Blur to talking about Britpop in general, which will lead back to Think Tank. As much as I'm quite defensive when the usual criticisms of Britpop recur, it's also true that ... I don't really listen to it. It's not actually the music I like to listen to, and hasn't been for a long time. I think there were an unusual number of excellent indie-guitar bands of that era, many of whom I have considerable fondness for, but it's not the Britpop of theirs that I'd listen to. Like, what are the classic Britpop songs?

• Parklife, Girls and Boys, Country House
• Common People, Disco 2000
• Alright
• Cigarettes and Alcohol, Live Forever
• Trash and Beautiful Ones
• Wake Up Boo
• Waking Up
• Slight Return
• Great Things
• Fine Time
• Female of the Species
• Good Enough
• Daydreamer
• Inbetweener

A few nice memories, but not sure the last time I chose to listen to any of those...

Blur were the first of those bands for me, in some ways they're the definition of Britpop, and they're the one I still love the most, but the reason I still love them so much is precisely how quickly and how far they moved away from it.

Think Tank is probably the Blur album that sounds least like Blur - for obvious reasons, mainly that Graham Coxon only plays on one track. Actually The Good, the Bad and the Queen, from 2007, sounds a lot more, thematically, like a Blur album than Think Tank (that is another album I realise I love quite a lot now).

I liked it when it came out, but have grown to love it. It's interesting for a few reasons. It's the first Blur album after Gorillaz had success, and after the Mali Music album, so the first time Blur was just one Damon Albarn project, not the Damon Albarn project. With Graham's absence, there is more contribution from Dave and Alex, both in terms of composition and background vocals. There is more acoustic guitar, less lead guitar. There are more drum loops and world music influences. Although there is the trauma and sadness of Coxon's absence, this is Albarn near the start of the long-term relationship he'd be in for the two decades. In short, this is the closest he ever gets to sounding like a nice, normal person on an album. 

By which I mean, no shade, there are several really lovely, endearing songs on this. I've always loved Battery in Your Leg (the song about Coxon that Coxon actually plays on) - there's Good Song and Sweet Song, which really are those things (I think Sweet Song is one of my all-time favourite Blur songs). On the Way to the Club is also a subtle beauty, and then there's the single Out of Time, which gets better and better with age, and leads the anti-war theme of the album. I always felt with 13, this album's predecessor, that I wanted to love it, but it just didn't hold on to enough tunes and lyrics - it just didn't have enough "song" for someone like me, whereas Think Tank carries on the path away from Parklife, but remembers to have more actual song.

For years, I've loathed Crazy Beat, the second single, the botched attempt to do another Song 2, or Girls and Boys, produced by Norman Cook, but now, in the context of the album, I almost like how botched it is, as if the whole purpose is to say "this is not what this band is" ... well, there's a spin ...

Blur are a very different band after The Great Escape - imagine if their first album had been Blur, how differently the world would look on them. Don't get me wrong, when I go see the monster stadium act BLUR what I want is To the End and The Universal and For Tomorrow and This is a Low and Popscene, and, fuck it, Country House, but, to me, the reason Blur are the greatest British band of their era is because of Blur, Think Tank and The Ballad of Darren (I like The Magic Whip as well, certainly the second half of it, and think 13 is a nobler failure than The Great Escape is).

Albarn's prolificity this century is quite something - three Africa Express albums, two GBQ, two solo, two operas, one musical, I'd even forgotten there was Rocket Juice and the Moon as well. Oh yes, and eight albums and several EPs by one of the biggest dance/hip-hop acts in the world. 

My favourite of all that is still Blur, and I sure hope there's a 10th Blur album to cap it all - to celebrate, returning to Alex James Britpop Classical, that a band can still be triumphant whilst having the most truly embarrassing grifter of a bassist any band could possibly have, but anyway, here's a 60-song Albarn compilation, which I think has a pretty dizzying level of quality and range.

1. Ascension - Gorillaz ft Vince Staples
2. Song 2 - Blur
3. Sunset Coming On - Mali Music
4. For Tomorrow - Blur
5. There's No Other Way - Blur
6. The Narcissist - Blur
7. On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz
8. On the Way to the Club - Blur
9. 19/2000 - Gorillaz
10. Young and Lovely - Blur
11. Apple Carts - Damon Albarn
12. The Nearer the Mountain, the Purer the Stream - Damon Albarn
13. Badhead - Blur
14. Good Song - Blur
15. Dirty Harry - Gorillaz
16. Photographs (You Are Taking Now) - Damon Albarn
17. Trimm Trabb - Blur
18. End of a Century - Blur
19. 80s Life - The Good the Bad and the Queen
20. Sweet Song - Blur
21. He Thought of Cars - Blur
22. Oil - Gorillaz ft Stevie Nicks
23. Superfast Jellyfish - Gorillaz ft Gruff Rhys and De la Soul
24. Yuko and Hiro - Blur
25. Under the Westway - Blur
26. Soldier's Tale - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
27. Everyday Robots - Damon Albarn
28. Best Days - Blur
29. Silent Running - Gorillaz
30. On Your Own - Blur
31. Heavy Seas of Love - Damon Albarn
32. Sunday Sunday - Blur
33. Poison - Rocket Juice and the Moon
34. Herculean - The Good the Bad and the Queen
35. Andromeda - Gorillaz
36. Popscene - Blur
37. Cracker Island - Gorillaz
38. Merrie Land - The Good the Bad and the Queen
39. Chemical World - Blur
40. Beetlebum - Blur
41. We Got the Power - Gorillaz ft Jehnny Beth and Noel Gallagher
42. This is a Low - Blur
43. Rock the House - Gorillaz
44. Momentary Bliss - Gorillaz
45. The Universal - Blur
46. Ong Ong - Blur
47. Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz ft De la Soul
48. Tender - Blur
49. Goodbye Albert - Blur
50. Barbaric - Blur
51. Northern Whale - The Good the Bad and the Queen
52. Skinny Ape - Gorillaz
53. Pyongyang - Blur
54. The Universal - Blur
55. Let Me Out - Gorillaz ft Mavis Staples and Pusha T
56. The Heights - Blur
57. Death of the Party - Blur
58. Battery in Your Leg - Blur
59. Out of Time - Blur
60. To the End - Blur ft Francoise Hardy

10 Books

Having not read much for the previous couple of years, I determined, in summer of 2018, to read as many short novels as I could. Somehow or other, in the first year, I managed 70 (don't even know how that happened). It settled down after that, and I've found it harder to read quickly since my eyesight started to deteriorate, amongst other time-stealing factors, but I am still managing to have a book on the go all the time, and am managing to get through 15+ a year, which I'm happy with. I am also glad that I don't give up on a book. Maybe sometimes it would be a good idea, but I've stuck with every single one I've picked up in this period. 

So, I thought I'd write a paragraph or two about 10 of my favourites from these seven years of reading. I wouldn't say these will be reviews so much as attempts to remember how the books made me feel.

Firstly ...

Autumn - Ali Smith

Like other Ali Smith books, Autumn invites you into a world of words, ideas and arts - in this case, the central real-life figure is the (then) little-known pop artist Pauline Boty. [each of the books in the Seasons tetralogy revolves around a Shakespeare play and a female artist].This was the first Ali Smith book I'd read, and, though I am now more used to her style, this book rather swept me off my feet. As a writer she gives you a lot but doesn't demand all that much in return. The sentences flow, the quirky jokes keep coming, the type is big and easy (I like big type!). You learn a lot and you feel comforted. I can sometimes feel a bit uncertain about books that are this easy and enjoyable to read, and perhaps the three other season books fell victim to that in my mind. But I have rarely felt such a giddy thrill, from good humour, anger, learning, storytelling, as with this book.

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

I read it this year, having read The Sound and the Fury more than 10 years ago. TSATF has 4 sections - the first is so (deliberately) impenetrable that, truthfully, although I ended up getting to grips with the book, my memory of it is still a bit tainted by my initial uncomprehending... fury. I am just not sure anything should be so utterly impossible to grasp in the moment.

As I Lay Dying was written a year later, in 1930. I loved it. I found it a strangely blissful read. There are unreliable and confused narrators, certainly, and you don't really add everything up until the end, but you're always in the game! It's a beautiful, sad, tale, seems like it's years ahead of its time.

The Green Road - Anne Enright

I read this in the week before the first lockdown, at the start of March 2020, so obviously my head was full of BIG THOUGHTS at the time. This is one of my favourite novels ever, if not my favourite. It is an Irish family saga - there's an aged parent and four children who are then, in the middle section separately, and in the later section together, adults. Clearly I had some investment.

There is a section focussing on (or starting with) one of the grown-up sons living in New York during the AIDS crisis, which could stand alone from the rest of the novel, and is, I felt at the time, the work of a writer possessed, consumed by genius. Enright is always a stylish writer - the first book I read by her 'The Forgotten Waltz', I felt a bit like the intensity of the writing overwhelmed the paucity of the story, and. though I've ended up liking all the rest of her novels, there's nothing else that has hit me as hard as The Green Road, in particular that section of The Green Road - I somewhat think that might be the greatest thing I've ever read.

Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead

This was the novel Colson Whitehead wrote after winning the Pulitzer twice in succession, for 'The Underground Railroad', which I haven't read, then 'Nickel Boys', which I have. Those are (I presume of the first and know of the second) pretty heavy books.

Harlem Shuffle is, on the other hand, a hoot. One of the most enjoyable books I've read - a piece of crime fiction set in New York in the early 60s, with a hero you root for and villains who are only a bit villainous. I think my tendency seems to be to choose books that end up being a bit unsettling, but every now and then it's nice to read something that is both brilliantly written and not unsettling at all.

Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban

I read several contemporary Russell Hoban novels in my twenties. I enjoyed them. They were funny and light and rude. In fact, they had a lot in common with Ali Smith - there was usually a piece of art at the centre, and there was a delight in playing with language. 

Knowing Hoban's son as I did/do, Wieland would sometimes roll his eyes when I mentioned I'd enjoyed his dad's latest book and say, you should read his earlier stuff, that's much more substantial. I'd tried Riddley Walker first, though, and not got past the first couple of pages. I finally committed to read it in 2019. It is, strangely, a masterpiece, one of the greatest books ever written, entirely the work of a writer possessed, with a depth of storytelling and prophesy and wit, skill in language, darkness and beauty, that I have come across in very few other places. It is also, funnily enough, set in a post-apocalyptic eastern Kent which is where I live right now! Boom-tish!

August is a Wicked Month - Edna O'Brien

I didn't think, at the time, that this was one of my favourites, but it has stayed with me. It is the first novel she wrote after The Country Girls trilogy which began her career with a bang. It also, like them, feels pretty semi-autobiographical - indeed, one of the funniest things is the lead character meeting a Hollywood actor on the French riviera who I could just tell was meant to be Robert Mitchum, and then you google Edna O'Brien Robert Mitchum...

Anyway, what strikes me about this book, very much like the last of the Country Girls books, Girls in Their Married Bliss, is how very sad they made me feel at the end. Rather like Y Tu Mama Tambien, this book just pulled the rug away and that feeling had not really left me.

The Heat of the Day - Elizabeth Bowen

I was given this dark, misanthropic wartime thriller set in a strangely recognisable London, where no one is treated all that kindly by the author. I was struck by how much confidence Bowen had in her sentence construction. I would get halfway through a vast half-page flowing sequence of words and worry that she'd forgotten the main verb, and then there it would be when you needed it most. I don't think I'm a man who, on average, is interested in the First or Second World War, but they sure do have a lot of great novels about them.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

A lot of people write a lot of different things, and you can't necessarily tell much about an author by what they write, but, hey, let's make an exception, it's clear to tell from Blood Meridian that Cormac McCarthy was a depraved man ... well, at the time, apparently, this was his transitional novel as from this point on his novels had more morality and beauty, and that is certainly true of All the Pretty Horses and The Road, later books I'd already read. In this book, like in the Simon and Garfunkel song, they've all gone to look for America and what they find is not so nice. 

Apparently, the unfilmable novel is finally being filmed. 

Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry, Night Boat to Tangier - Kevin Barry

Two for the price of one - both by (unrelated) Irish Barrys. I read a disproportionate number of novels by Irish people - there are a disproportionate number of excellent Irish novelists, and, I guess, I just like the territory. Old God's Time is a beautiful novel, very much in the world that a lot of Irish novels are in - the church, child abuse, history, memory. S Barry's Days Without End (set in a similar America to Blood Meridian) is also a beautiful novel. K Barry's books are hilarious - Night Boat to Tangier is also about history and memory, but it's funny as hell and like a gangster's Waiting for Godot.

Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers - Ryan O'Neill

And, finally, this masterpiece. If I ever wrote a work of fiction, I would want it to be like this, and in a way, I think, I'd have my best shot of writing something in this vein - just having one silly idea and running with it all the way, creating this fabulously fact-based alternative reality, full of detail and history and names and faux-solemnity.

I would recommend this book above all others. It's the Inside Number 9 of 21st century novels.

2025

I guess it's time to tell you the music I liked this year.

Some years I write a big review of the year, because they are vast magnificent years, and sometimes my rundown is quite desultory, as I felt there just wasn't that much that really stood out.

This year is somewhat in between. I'm not sure there are many classic albums this year - there may be one. There are a lot of songs I enjoyed. I found myself listening to a lot of old music in quite specific ways. So, for the first month or so, I was basically listening to Bob Dylan entirely, then in the middle of the year, I listened to all the UK Number 1 singles ever that I didn't know, and lately I've been listening to acclaimed American songs from this century I didn't know.

I have also tried to stay on top of good new music, but with a lot of albums, I realised I listened to them to the point of saying to myself "I recognise this is a good album", but then not that much more.

So, all that being said, I'm going to list

a) my 25 favourite new songs

b) 25 old songs I loved this year

c) 25 albums which made me go "this is a good album"

So here are my 25 favourite songs. There'll only be one by each artist

1. Anthem - Mavis Staples. Well, it's taken 30 years for Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley to no longer be my favourite Leonard Cohen cover that mentions the holy dove, but here we are. This is miraculous, really, the perfect meeting of singer and song. Moving beyond any words.
2. Where is My Husband - Raye Just a huge, joyous burst of talent and charisma. I'm not sure I'll still be listening to it in a few months, but this feels like something like Doo Wop (That Thing) or Crazy in Love, just a major announcement of stardom.
3. Invisible Thread - The Divine Comedy
4. Knocking Heart - Hamilton Leithauser
5. wayne rooney '06 - jim legxacy Just the most unexpected indie pop anthem of the year.
6. Elderberry Wine  - Wednesday This was probably the song most like the thing I like all year.
7. Be Kind - Annahstasia
8. mangetout - wet leg
9. I Love You - Tobias Jesso Jr
10. Remembering Now - Van Morrison He really did a good, moving album this year, that old grump Morrison the Vorrison.
11. Music by Men - Florence and the Machine
12. 16 Chapters - Dave ft Kano This is charming, funny, for me the standout track on the album which is good but has had quite a lukewarm reception.
13. Days Gone By - Midlake
14. Nice to Each Other - Olivia Dean
15. When a Good Man Cries - CMAT
16. Westerberg - Blood Orange
17. Lou Reed was My Babysitter - Jeff Tweedy
18. Taxes - Geese
19. Opalite - Taylor Swift Funny the Taylor Swift album, which has been listened to a fair bit in this house. Probably some of her catchiest tunes, but I'd wager the day it was released was one of the world's all-time cringe days. Hard to get through most of the songs. To me, Opalite is clearly the best tune and the least wincing lyric.
20. The Subway - Chappell Roan
21. Golden - Huntr/x
22. Wasteland - Snocaps
23. Divinize - Rosalia
24. House - Charli XCX ft John Cale Bit of fun.
25. Background Noise - Pulp

OK, and 25 of the non-2025 songs I loved listening to this year

• Why Do Fools Fall in Love? - Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers
• Love it if We Made It (Live from Madison Square Garden) - The 1975
• Caravan (live from The Last Waltz) - Van Morrison
• Ruby Falls - Waxahatchee
• Something Like Happiness - The Maccabees
• Doll Parts - Hole
• Diamonds - Rihanna
• Concrete and Clay - Unit 4 + 2
• Silver Lady - David Soul
• Novacane - Frank Ocean I listened to Channel Orange and Blonde when they came out, and although I heard the talent, I just didn't hear one great song, so I've never really been on the Frank Ocean train, and I only heard Novacane, his debut single, this year, and it's brilliant, a proper tour de force (contains one of the great "Yikes!"), and I reckon if I'd heard this first, I might have heard the rest in a different light.
• Save it for Later - The Beat
• Isis (live from Montreal) - Bob Dylan
• Place to Be - Nick Drake
• Hasta La Raiz - Natalia Lafourcade
• Doo Wop (That Thing) - Lauryn Hill
• I Can't Give You Anything But My Love - The Stylistics
• There Must Be An Angel - Eurythmics
• Werewolf - Fiona Apple This is one of the best lyrics ever written.
• Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - Crosby, Stills and Nash
• Don't Let Go (Love) - En Vogue
• Surf - Roddy Frame
• Cranes in the Sky - Solange
• What a Fool Believes - Doobie Brothers
• Chop Suey - System of a Down
• Treaty - Leonard Cohen I've listened to a lot of Lenny in the last month. This is a song from his last album. I can't get enough of him singing "I'm angry and I'm tired all the time", because like a prophet, he really pre-empted the era when everyone in their right mind is angry and tired all the time.

And 25 albums I thought were good (there are others, actually, but, here are 25)

1. This Side of the Island - Hamilton Leithauser I think this is the album I've listened to most, and, since it looks like the Walkmen might not be following up their reunion tour with new music, it's very nice to hear the singer from the Walkmen giving it a bit of Walkmen
2. Lux - Rosalia Though this is, I think, the classic album of the year.
3. Eurocountry - CMAT.
4. Songs for Nina and Johanna - James Yorkston with Nina Persson and Johanna Soderberg I obviously love Yorkston, but it's also very nice to hear Johanna Soderberg taking lead vocal on songs.
5. Sad and Beautiful World - Mavis Staples
6. black british music - jim legxacy
7. Everybody Scream - Florence and the Machine. Very funny, acerbic lyrics.
8. Bleeds - Wednesday
9. Tether - Annahstasia 
10. The Art of Loving - Olivia Dean Great album, hits all the way through.
11. Remembering Now - Van Morrison
12. moisturiser - wet leg
13. Interior Live Oak - Cass McCombs
14. Who Believes in Angels? - Elton John and Brandi Carlile
15. snocaps - snocaps
16. A Bridge to Far - Midlake
17. Getting Killed - Geese I like the Geese, but just can't quite get there. It's been interesting reading a lot of people split on the vocals of Cameron Winter. Some absolutely love him, some, like me, find that the main stumbling block. It's one of those ones, like, say with Yeasayer, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, even Julian Casablancas, where the singer sounds both passionate and bored, and it doesn't quite work for me. It sounds like a bit of a bit. I think it might take seeing this band live to really get them.
18. Essex Honey - Blood Orange
19. Antidepressants - Suede
20. The Boy with the Harp - Dave
21. Virgin - Lorde
22. Love, Death and Dennis Hopper - Waterboys
23. Straight Line was a Lie - The Beths
24. Baby - Dijon
25. More - Pulp

And what else? I've seen not many films this year but I loved 

The Ballad of Wallis Island.

Have read slowly and steadily and my one 10/10 was William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, but also loved Donal O'Ryan's The Spinning Heart and Heart, be at peace, and Paul Lynch's Prophet Song.

Favourite TV show ... dunno, I'm going to say

The Bear - though Season 4 really got it back on track. Damn, Rob Reiner ...

It's been 30 years since 30 years

I have (re)watched The Beatles Anthology. I'm pretty certain, apart from clips that come up on YouTube, this is the first time I've rewatched it since it was first broadcast in Nov/Dec 1995, and I have a few thoughts about a) The Beatles and b) watching The Beatles anthology.

It is quite a staid documentary - that is my first thought. It potters along. There are only six talking heads throughout - McCartney, Harrison, Starr, George Martin, Neil Aspinall, and, a little bit, Derek Taylor (and, of course, the voice of Lennon, usually from 70s interviews). All inner circle. Fair enough, it is not a series about the Beatles per se, it is a series by The Beatles. It is openly canon. Imagine it nowadays with various tabloid journalists and modern fans and rival bands, they'd probably have wives and children too, and some of that would provide interesting context, and a lot of it wouldn't.

Of course, it was not as exciting to me this time around as when I first watched it. But, it dawned on me pretty early on in the rewatch, Anthology was when I really first found out about The Beatles. I mean, I knew about the Beatles by 1995, but only in a pretty limited way. At home, we had the Oldies but Goldies tape (hits up to about 65), my aunt had Sgt Pepper, I'd heard a few other songs, but the Beatles didn't get played that much on the radio, not as much as Queen and Elton John etc. I'd have known the ones that were taught at school - Yellow Submarine, When I'm 64, I'd have known Hey Jude, Strawberry Fields, Let it Be, I don't know if my knowledge went much deeper than that of their later years. So, watching and listening in autumn 1995, it was all revelatory and thrilling. Whereas now, of course, I know it all already, several times over.

So, what, if anything, did I notice this time around? Two main things, linked together. It's about McCartney and Harrison. So much written about McCartney and Lennon, but McCartney and Harrison is just as important, in a good and and a bad way. These are the two who always knew each other, a school year apart. These are the two who stood together on stage, singing into one mic, whereas Lennon is usually on his own on the other side, standing face-on. 

This is the most beautiful thing I really noticed this time. The, for want of a better word, choreography of the Beatles as a live band. McCartney with his left-handed bass, Harrison with his right-handed lead, the melodic heart of the band, leaning into each other, singing their harmonies, George stepping away when Paul's on lead, then, with perfect timing, coming up for the chorus. I'm not sure I've ever seen another band so perfectly use three voices and three guitars. The vocal sound of the Beatles is one of the all-time great vocal sounds, not as revered as the Beach Boys or CSN, but just as memorable, and that's Paul and George singing into one mic together working off John a few metres away. So wonderful.

And then there's the other thing with Paul and George - the overbearing older brother thing, which never went away, and you can see it really clearly in the doc, even in the 90s when they're all cheery and nice. Paul is trying his best not to annoy George, George is just about putting up with it. 

It's quite something to hear the hurt vitriol with which Harrison speaks about McCartney in 70s interviews - "Paul McCartney ruined me as a guitar player", and, of course, we all saw that painful tension between then in 'Get Back'. By the 90s, they're equals - Harrison has done Here Comes the Sun, Something, While Me Guitar ... he's done All Things Must Pass, he's organized the concert for Bangladesh, he's produced Life of Brian. Paul knows they're equals now, but still ...

The series has been edited somewhat since 1995, including tacking on an extra "making of" episode, which shows some of the recording of Free as a Bird. It is funny to think about Free as a Bird now. It was, when released close to Christmas 95, considered rather disappointing, both critically and commercially. It reached Number 2, kept off the top by Robson and Jerome. I wonder if it had been released out of the blue, rather than after everyone had been enjoying several weeks of classic Beatles song, it would have fared better. As it is, listening to it now, I had, ironically, a powerful sense of nostalgia for 1995, hearing a song with a pretty melody which was everywhere for a short period of time but which I've hardly heard in the intervening 30 years.

I have been trying, self-indulgently, to figure out my exact chronology of musical discovery in late 95. Time it was and what a time it was etc ... when Bob Dylan came up in Episode 2, I couldn't quite remember if I had already had Dylan tapes made for me by Stephen Bovey and Jeremy Levine, whether I was already saying "Aah, yeah, here comes my hero Bobby D" or whether it was literally this episode that prompted me to get into Dylan. 

And, most pertinently, at what point did Alex Frith copy for me the Red album and the Blue album? Was it before Anthology, during Anthology, or after Anthology? Mindblowing to think about the Red and the Blue album as well, to remember, when I listened, how many of the songs I didn't know (this makes me think he made it for me just before the show was broadcast) and heard, all at once, for the first time ... Drive My Car, Girl, Nowhere Man, Revolution, In My Life, Penny Lane even, I Am the Walrus, Lady Madonna, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Don't Let Me Down, John and Yoko. Nuts. That 56 song collection, first issued in 1973 (it was expanded recently, but we'll ignore that) is really, obviously, the most sustained collection of brilliance there is in pop songs. 56 songs across 8 years. Arguably, the only slight drop-offs are Ob-La-Di and Old Brown Shoe. And what of the songs that aren't included? 

To name a few - I Saw Her Standing There, If I Needed Someone, Happiness is a Warm Gun, For No One, Here, There and Everywhere, And Your Bird Can Sing, Got to Get you Into My Life, Blackbird, Twist and Shout, Oh! Darling, Helter Skelter, She’s Leaving Home, Tomorrow Never Knows.

Imagine (not Imagine, of course ...) another band making a 56-song Best of covering eight years and not having room for those songs ...

As well as red and blue albums, I think Alex also taped me the White album a while after that, and I also did buy Anthology 3 - I had that before I had Abbey Road and Let it Be, so the Anthology versions  were my first experience of some of those songs. The other great thing about Anthology 3 was that it had an early version of All Things Must Pass and McCartney laying out Come and Get It for Badfinger. Genuinely, I remember Come and Get It was my favourite song on the whole thing for a while ...

And the one other thing I thought, watching Anthology, was about death.

The series talks about Stuart Sutcliffe, but then, somewhat weirdly/disrespectfully, doesn't mention him dying. Maybe in the 1995 broadcast, Backbeat was so recent that that was a given for most viewers, but still.

But, then, I thought (and I saw someone else talking about this as regards McCartney recently). the Beatles have so many deaths running through their history. Paul's mother in 56, John's mother in 58, Sutcliffe in 62, Brian Epstein in 67, Mal Evans in 76 ... all just absolute core people to the core people.

And then, of course, you think, how strange that Paul McCartney remained the most cheerful man in the world, then to lose Lennon, his wife Linda, George - all of those people by the time he was 60.

So, to end with McCartney - it remains pretty extraordinary that he was, all at the same time, the bossy annoying one, the organiser, the workaholic one, the adaptable one (prepared to bunk with Ringo, prepared to switch to bass), the more financially savvy one, the cute boybandy one, the first heavy rock one, the melodic genius, the lyrical master, the keeper of the flame. Some fellow.

Menchester

I'd been thinking about Ricky Hatton since he died, but not quite got to want I wanted to say, but now I think I might combine that with writing about Mani from the Stone Roses, as they were both Manchester heroes whose death has clearly been particularly closely felt by a lot of people because of their outgoing, friendly personalities.

I'll not pretend to have been more closely attached to either than I was, but I do have specific thoughts about both. 

I'll start with Ricky Hatton. I didn't actually watch many his fights live, but he's a significant figure in my peak years of boxing-watching, nevertheless.

Hatton was, I think it's true to say, the first superstar of Sky - the first guy who built up a huge following and reputation despite never being seen on terrestrial television. I first read about him in the early 2000s, that he was attracting vast numbers to his fights, big viewing figures on Sky, that he was approaching world level. I didn't have Sky at the time and still, I think, was not that close to getting it, as they didn't have cricket yet.

His greatest night was in June 2005, when he shocked Kostya Tszyu, then considered one of the Top 3 pound for pound fighters in the world, to win the IBF (and Ring) Light Welterweight title. It was a sufficiently big deal that they showed the full fight, I think on ITV, the next day or the next week. That was the first time I saw Hatton fight. He would maybe never be so great again, though, sometimes forgotten, he had a run of good wins against good names from across the Atlantic after that. I still didn't have Sky but I would now stay up, or wake up in the middle of the night, to listen to his fights in America. I remember listening to his first fight at welterweight, with Luis Collazo, where he held on to win despite fading after a strong start. His second greatest moment was his defeat of Jose Luis Castillo - a great fighter maybe a notch past his best.

When the superfight with Mayweather was made in 2007, it wasn't perceived as a shot in the dark, a plucky shot, it was the best fighter in the world against one of the other best fighters in the world, not 50/50, but 65/35 or so.

By this point, Hatton was doing the talkshows, telling his jokes, taking about how much he drank and how much weight he put on between fights. 

The build up to the Mayweather fight was huge, and was the straw that broke the camel's back and made me get Sky. Ironically, I got Sky in such a way that I couldn't get pay-per-view, so still didn't watch it live. But many people did

Against Mayweather, most agreed that, though well beaten in the end, he was done over by the referee Joe Cortez who didn't allow him to fight his best fight by roughing up Mayweather in close. It's very clear watching the fight back that that is what happened, that Cortez called "break" unnaturally early whenever the two were in close, and this greatly favoured Mayweather's slicker style.

So, so be it. A loss to a great fighter. A couple more fights followed and the bizarre news that Hatton was going to be trained by Floyd Mayweather Sr, replacing his longtime trainer Billy Graham (I'll return to that).

I remember he fought and defeated Paulie Malignaggi on the Saturday night I was in hospital after breaking my leg, following it on my phone. I remember the good-natured build-up to the Pacquiao fight. This was Pacquiao at his peak but he was so affable, you'd forget how dangerous he was.

I remember pretty vividly the night, as I went to bed, set my alarm to listen to the fight but, of course, fights don't start at an exact time, and when I turned on the radio, I'll never forget the atmosphere, the tone of the commentator's voice. Like someone had died. Hatton had been brutally, humiliatingly knocked out in the 2nd round.

Then started the afterlife of the professional fighter. There was an attempt at a comeback three years later, ironically the only Hatton fight I watched live, when he was beaten by the decent but not outstanding Russian Vyacheslav Senchenko, and there were a lot of ups and downs, fallings out with family, courtcases, bouts as a trainer, attempts to get fit. 

Again, I think Hatton was quite pioneering in talking regularly about his mental health struggles. It is far more commonplace for sportspeople  now, but his affability set against the words he would use did set a striking tone.

I watched a documentary about him a year or two ago, and although the tone attempted to be optimistic, there was still a sadness to it, particularly as regards Hatton's unresolved relationship with former trainer Graham.

As I say, I wouldn't claim to feel Hatton's death as deeply as many, but he was definitely a notable figure, and should also be remembered, I think, as one of the Top 10, maybe top 5 British fighters this century, in terms of victories against high-class opponents. 

He was clearly a folk hero in Manchester, just like Mani (who was at Hatton's funeral).

I was not much of a Stone Roses fan most of time, in fact, for reasons, I even developed a certain antagonism to them, but I did love that first album for a while, and, it struck me, thinking about it, that what I loved, what many people loved, was the bass and drums. That is what is most interesting about the band.

I remember Fools Gold when it was first came out and that there was a lot of hype around them, and I remember when I was getting into music in the early 90s they were talked about a lot, particularly in terms of their long absence. I quite liked Love Spreads and Ten Storey Love Song as singles, and then, when I started buying the NME in mid-95, they were all over it, but not in a good way. A deteriorating soap opera from the point the drummer Reni left the band.

There was a line that stayed with me from the NME review of their disastrous 1995 Reading headline show, how it all felt promising and good as ever at the beginning of I Wanna Be Adored until Ian Brown opened his mouth. 

And that's kind of it with that band, isn't it, and actually it was notable even in the soap opera stuff in the NME. The journalists wanted to talk to, and talk about, the bassist and the drummer. Those were the interesting, cool ones that people liked. That's pretty rare in any band, particularly a British indie band.

I didn't buy 'The Stone Roses' until late-summer 96, but I did actually fall in love with it immediately, like with Astral Weeks, Deserters Song, and few other albums. It sounded like I thought it would sound. It sounded mythical, like a world unto itself. And it's Mani's bass you hear first, and all the the way through. And then Ian Brown sings. 

You can deal with it on the record, because you think maybe it's a choice, and they've got it to sound absolutely as good as it can.

But I fell away from the Roses almost as quickly as I got into them. Brown was just too much of a twat and such a terrible singer. And, as i've said before, the Stone Roses were omnipresent when I was at university, more than any other band. In the first two years there, when the living was pretty communal, and you'd always be going round to other peoples' rooms and flats (people who weren't exactly your friends, just kind of friends), it was always the bloody Stone Roses playing, so to me it became normie bloke music just as much as Oasis. But at least Liam Gallagher could sing.

The Mani went into the band of another belligerent tube who couldn't sing. Apparently his work with Primal Scream is superb, but I felt the same way about Bobby Gillespie as I did about Ian Brown. I wasn't going to be convinced that their voice or personality was tolerable. Again, if you read the interviews with the band, it was clear, every time, that the subtext was "thank god for Mani, he's a lovely bloke, but Christ, the singer ..."

It does make me think about what makes a bad singer. When people say Bob Dylan is a bad singer, it drives me nuts. Understandable not to love his voice, but, for most of his career, it's strong, powerful, not out of tune, adaptable, and, most importantly, it's appropriate. It's the voice that guy should have. Sure, you can find it ugly, but that's the ugly it's meant to be.

But a bad voice, I think, is a voice which doesn't live up to what the singer acts like, or what the music needs. So much swagger, so weak, so flat. That's Brown, that's Gillespie, that's a few indie bands of the 90s, to be honest, even some I like, but those two were the worst offenders. Like, who do you think you are? These bands would be so much better if you could sing better ...

Anyway, that might seem a detour, but it's what I wanted to say. Mani was beloved and famous because he really was a great instrumentalist, who gave the band its sound and its character. You may argue about whether that band is overrated, but, if it was a great band, he was certainly more than his fair share of the reason.

Return of the Mac

There was some discourse around Fleetwood Mac on Bluesky recently, about how they far outstrip most of their peers in terms of popularity with the young'uns, and someone drolly observed that the best way of telling if someone was 45-55 was if they didn't like Rumours, because everyone else did (or something like that).

That rings somewhat true, as when I (born 1978) was first getting into music in a big way (mid-90s) there was definitely lots of negativity towards them (when the 60s, new wave/punk and the 80s were the main influences on current bands) but I think that had pretty much gone by the turn of the century.

So perhaps it was their being "soft rock" that was held against them for a while. Perhaps, as someone suggested, it was that they were very feminine for a rock band. Perhaps it was they'd had mainstream hits like Everywhere, Little Lies and Big Love, pretty recently, so there hadn't been time to feel nostalgic about them. Or perhaps it was merely Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox presenting the Brits, and the Reynolds Girls rather jacking than Fleetwood Macking that did it.

I do remember Rumours being Number 16 in my first Greatest Albums Ever Made book from 1995, so it can't have been all negative. But, really, Rumours is a pretty undeniable album.

Though I denied it for quite a long time. I don't think I really listened to it properly until 2008ish. I by and large thought I knew it, knowing a lot of the biggest songs, which I recognised were good songs, but, apart from Go Your Own Way, hadn't fully connected with. 

Funnily enough, as I'd never really listened to Eva Cassidy, it was hearing Songbird for the first time that really connected me with Fleetwood Mac. It was undeniably both the kind of thing I liked, and, more importantly, a thing I liked.

So, following on from that, Christine McVie was the member of the band who seemed most likeable and intriguing, which I think is quite a common view. Though not as common as the view that Stevie Nicks is one of the great icons of rock'n'roll.

It's a view that slightly crept up on me, as my first impression of her was a couple of slightly odd Top of the Pops appearances in the 80s. I believe the band's mid-90s live album and video, The Dream, was a massive hit in America, and in particular, Stevie N's theatrical, inflamed singing of Silver Springs to Lindsey Buckingham. It's great stuff ...

And then the soap opera burst back to life when Buckingham was kicked out of the band by Nicks a few years ago, And continued to say delightfully scathing things about her high school boyfriend, decades of resentment finally getting their full expression.

Well, it seems they've made up a bit, combining to reissue their album 'Buckingham Nicks' which first drew them to the attention of Mick Fleetwood in the mid-70s.

And it did make me realise I get pretty invested in the lifelong tensions of the heroes of rock'n'roll. Heart warmed when one hears Simon and Garfunkel had a conciliatory lunch. Heart saddened when one hears Baez hasn't heard from Dylan in years. What of Morrissey and Marr? Will they reconcile? Will Dave and Ray keep it together? Jagger and Richards?

Anyway, the five most streamed Mac songs on spotify are Dreams, The Chain, Everywhere, Go Your Own Way, Landslide, which tells you that it was a pretty special band to have three such great writers and singers and two big beardy English men to be the band's name and keep the beat.

1997-2001

I was at university from late summer 97 to early summer 2001. That period was bookended by the two biggest news events of my lifetime - the death of Diana on 31st August 1997 and the attack on the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001.

I know a thousand more truly significant things have happened than the death of Diana, but I still think it is accurate to describe it as, in the UK, one of the two biggest news events. It consumed and set the national mood for a long time. It defines the time. News was different then.

I think it makes sense to see 97-2001 as a distinct "era", notwithstanding the fact that it is a personal era for me. You can describe it as lots of things - a fool's paradise, a transition, a new age. There was a lot going on but also not much going on.

I don't know if it's true of other centuries, but it is striking how much the world really did change around the turn of this century. Not on the dot (thankfully), but, you know, "end of history" was not being laughed out of court in 99 and it was in 2001 ...

I had five dilatory and mostly lethargic years between the end of school and the start of my adult life. It's a little obscene. I worked (actually quite hard) in the autumn of 1996 and then took my trip to Kenya in 1997, which was also, in its way, pretty hard. It was meant to finish on 31st August 1997, but as detailed elsewhere, it was, to my tacit relief, cut six weeks short. So I'd had the summer back in London (and Portsmouth, and Dorset) - drinkin' London Pride, smokin' Marlboro Light. My fellow East African adventurers were returning on 31 August, and one of them was going to stay with me for a couple of days. We lived near Heathrow so my mum and I were going to meet them all at the airport.

So, they emerged blinking from the overnight flight into the weirdest atmosphere the UK has ever had, as I would also have done.

It perhaps helped a little to spend time with these people over the next couple of weeks (there was a "debrief" of sorts in Wales). Not many of them really gave a hoot about Diana. It seemed trivial, man ... I certainly think there was a split in the national consciousness that month, between people consumed by grief and people who thought this was all a bit weird. I think that mood really was important, as it was one of the first times we'd really all seen what each other were like ...

Tonty Bliar was, of course, the well-coiffed spokesperson of the national grieving. I remember thinking "what a creep" and wish I'd stuck with that all the way through. 1997 and 2001 was, also, of course, the period of the first Labour term, a term where they did quite a lot though not enough, and laid the ground for doing more, but not enough. But still, that was, for its flaws, the most welcomed and stable government of my lifetime.

I was pretty lucky at university in that, though I was definitely left-wing by 97, a lot of that was on a "Christian" level (as I'll get to) and I thought in terms of justice, equality, fairness, in quite abstract ways and, then, at famously socialist hotbed the University of St Andrews, I fell in with more clearly political people and by the end had a fairly decent grasp on UK politics. I mean, not brilliant, but not bad.

As mentioned above, it amuses me now to remember I spent my university years in the grip of an existential crisis. I mean, of all the times.... Christian before, very much happily not Christian after, in the furnace of my doubts during. Really fun guy ... so I guess that was another of the great transitions.

Perhaps the greatest transition, the one that truly has mattered the most unfortunately, is technology. I know everyone has a slightly different timeline on this, but in 97, mobiles were rare, e-mail was rare. By 2001, both were commonplace (though i myself didn't get a mobile until 2003). Social media was still a while away, but the business of living our lives online started in that era. In 1997, we all got our news from newspapers, TV and the radio (probably the radio most of all). By 2001, most of us students were reasonably internet-savvy (and then it drove everyone nuts and civilization broke down, hurray...)

It could even be argued that it is  quite a transitional time in sport. It was not really a time of GOATS (to use that horrible term). There were Ronaldo and Zidane, but they were not Messi and C Ronaldo. Sampras, but not Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. Just the start of the age of the Williams sisters. Not yet Bolt. I guess there was Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, so maybe it doesn't really hold up, but in a lot of sports, there was more of an element of surprise. Records were not being broken quite so much.

It was also a very specific era in music, between the third Oasis album (the death of britpop) and the first Strokes album. Be Here Now. Is This It. Almost exactly four years apart. Some people would tell you nothing happened in between, though it's one of my favourite eras, both because it was the first time I had proper money to spend on music and because it was when I got really into some of the bands I love to this day - SFA, B and S, Beta Band, Wilco. Blur released a very odd album (13), Oasis a very very bad one (SOTSOG), most of the big Britpop bands dipped a little or split, but some of them did some of their best stuff. 

2001 began with Ash's Shining Light, a little gem I have the most enormous fondness for. I remember standing on the scaffolding outside our flat on a sunny winter day listening to it. 2001 in general is one of my favourite years in music ... it felt like something was coming, even before the Strokes. I bought so many albums that year.

Summer 2001 being the very long summer after I finished university and before I started working, and, of course, before 9/11 (the day I interviewed for the job I took),. it has a very particular golden place in my memory. I mean, I arsed around a lot when I was young, but I'm not sure I ever arsed about quite so contentedly as that summer.

So, yes, the end of summer 2001 was truly the end of an era, for me, for everyone.