CONFESSION time: I voted for 'Congratulations' when Cliff Richard sought the nation's help in choosing his entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. But I've never voted in the NME Awards.
Many times I filled out the form... Best Guitarist ("Uh, Jimmy Page? No, Ritchie Blackmore's got better hair"), Best Bassist ("..."), Best Keyboardist ("Blimey, does Clifford T Ward count?")... but it never got sent, probably because in the grand scheme of things I didn't think my vote would matter. George Galloway would be ashamed of me.
The list is full of tiny injustices: Blur ahead of the Beatles (with Modern Life Is Rubbish, not the best of them either); Coldplay ahead of anyone (!). Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure at a lowly No 69 when without them there would be no Pulp (Different Class, No7) or Franz Ferdinand (Franz Ferdinand, 18) or ABC (The Lexicon Of Love, 85). Worst of all, the Fall only scrape in at No91, and with This Nation's Saving Grace, which isn't even in their own Top Ten.The poll is still running, it's in the latest edition of the mag. No musical categories any more, just the stuff that matters now: Best Dressed, Sexiest Woman, etc. Still, mustn't grumble, I said to myself, at least the Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not hasn't miraculously found its way onto the shortlist for Best Album in the very week it's released.
Imagine my Galloway-style sulking, then, when I turned to the same issue's list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever: The Stone Roses is at the top of the heap, The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead the runner-up, but sitting at No 5 behind Oasis' Definitely Maybe and the Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks are those selfsame cheeky Monkeys.
Lists, shmists, you might say. They're there to provoke debate. And if you were being uncharitable to the last surviving rock weekly, you could argue that the NME is low-selling, less influential and therefore ever more desperate - "Yes, you've got the front cover, have my office, too" - in its slavering adoration of the Sheffield skiffle sensations.
But here's a chilling thought: what if the mag means it? What if the editor - how old is he, eight? - and his staff thought long and hard over the list, applying a foolproof formula and utterly ruthless logic?
Well, in that event, I really do feel like George Galloway. The Respect MP was booted out of Celebrity Big Brother following a clash with the younger members of the House, including Preston and Chantelle, and no matter his stated intentions of bringing politics to the first-time voters who don't utilise their democratic right (apart from in BB), he ultimately came across as overbearing, pompous and, above all, old.
In challenging the NME's 100, I can't help but show my age and snort: "Ride at No39 with Nowhere? Who remembers them now or the early 1990s scene they inhabited? (Was it Brogue-gazers?)."
But I'm not too "Get-with-it-daddy-oh!" to spot the omission of My Bloody Valentine from roughly the same era, and though I didn't much care for them, I acknowledge the importance of Loveless.
Then there's Pink Floyd. There would be no Radiohead (The Bends and Kid A, 11 and 65) and Muse (Absolution, 21) without them. Presumably, the NME's attitude to the Floyd was "Out, demons, out!" - and, no, the Edgar Broughton Band don't make the list either - but the mag would have been more provocative if it had included Dark Side Of The Moon.
By finding room for Elastica, Supergrass and Adam and the Ants but excluding The Kinks' Face To Face, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and PiL's Metal Box, the NME has committed a gaffe of Chantelle proportions ("Is Dundee in Wales?"). But I guess that concerns them less than their official stance on Preston, singer with the Ordinary Boys, who wouldn't exist without the Specials and the Jam, far less The Who, all of whom are on the list.
How does Preston's BB performance affect his cool quotient? This is a question of some urgency, and never mind Arctic Monkeys, maybe the mag will be regretting not slipping an Ordinary Boys album into the 100, to appeal to the five chavettes out there who fancy the whinnying scooterboy.
You wouldn't catch me tarting myself around for extra readers, as that Cliff Richard confession demonstrates.
Source: http://feed.insnews.org
Recommended Comments
There are no comments to display.