vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 9, 2015 21:15:04 GMT 1
33. The one hit wonder number
The Bobby Fuller FourUgh. This is the worst number, perhaps, in the top 40. Pretty much everyone who peaked here was a one-hit wonder, or was not very good. I won't go through all the dance rubbish that stopped off here, but there are some acts of note that did peak at 33. A couple of US number 1 hitmakers, namely Joey Dee & The Starliters and Hamilton Joe Frank & Reynolds. But they were both atrocious. Also, both Judith Durham and The Mescaleros, the former a chart-topper with The Seekers and the latter a project of Joe Strummer, who of course went to no. 1 with The Clash. On the more artistically credible side, Fiona Apple topped off here, as did Oscar winners Three 6 Mafia, and one of Brian Epstein's unsuccessful charges, Thomas Quigley, aka Tommy Quickly, who was tagged with highly-regarded Merseybeaters The Remo Four for their one hit. Another Mersey link is the Z Cars theme, recorded by Norrie Paramore's Orchestra, although as Paramore is chartistically-speaking outrageously successful on the production side it's a bit churlish to put him here. Also, Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys reached here. Sad to relate for someone of such musical importance, he did so with a disco version of the surf classic "Pipeline". The equivalent of building a bypass through a Grade I listed building. So I've gone with the Bobby Fuller Four, if only because we may have heard more from Fuller had he not been found dead in the front seat of his car just as "I Fought The Law" (a bigger hit for The Clash, q.v. above) was giving him his biggest hit. His death is still an unsolved mystery. Plus it sums up this rather hopeless number to give it to someone with one success.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 10, 2015 22:14:55 GMT 1
32. Mull Historical SocietyAhh, there was a brief moment when it looked as if the pendulum might swing behind actual proper musicians who could sing, write and play. And Colin MacIntyre got a bit of publicity from the broadsheets for his prodigious output - a couple of hundred songs in the vault behind the debut album under the MHS monicker, Loss, which included the peerless " I Tried" and " Animal Cannabus". Sadly, within seconds of seeing that real talents could win out, Bowell and his Sony quisling twatfaces monopolized the airwaves and machine gunned the moribund body of Music. Just about eased out Birdland, the Birmingham thrash indiepop band, who were another act to get their break with a Snub TV video, for the rollercoaster ride of " Hollow Heart" (which you can get on Indie Top Video, incidentally, along with the track at no. 80). Apparently one of the Manics once said "I don't want to be another Birdland". Pfft. You wish. You f***ing wish. You're not even another Subway Sect. Also with talent and peaking here were Vegas, the duo of Terry Hall and Dave 'Eurythmic' Stewart, one of the original chix with lix Wanda Jackson, and Nick Drake. On the novelty side was Schnappi the German crocodile (why???), and Dick Emery, trying to follow in the Ken Dodd slipstream with a serious single that was well out of time.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jan 10, 2015 22:36:16 GMT 1
I missed posting it when it came around but at #39 my choice would have to be Ooberman.
Their career was ruined by radio 1 playlister snobs refusing to put their songs on their playlists. In particular there was a campaign for Shorley Wall to be added but it wasn't and peaked only at #47 a year after Blossoms Falling had given them their only week in the top 40. They were the first band I took Carol to see live. I already had a spare ticket when I met her.
Mull Historical Society had 2 #1s in my chart, "I Tried" and "Watching Xanadu" and the album "Loss" was one of my top albums at the time. New "real" bands breaking the chart like them was relatively scarce at the time but there were always a few who broke in. "Watching Xanadu" was released not that long into the year which was always the easier time to break.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 10, 2015 22:46:12 GMT 1
31. Darlene LoveI should really reserve her for no. 19, as she was really the voice of The Crystals on "their" hit " He's A Rebel". And this is not even her best Christmas song. But how can I refuse Darlene a place under her own name? For years she mostly plied her trade as a session singer, with familiar collaborators The Blossoms, until Phil Spector, grateful for her stepping in to record HAR in a rush to pre-empt an anaemic Vikki Carr version, signed her up for a solo deal - and had her do double duty as one of Bob B. Soxx' Blue Jeans. But it took the appalling Home Alone to give her a shout at the charts. There's no justice. Odd though as The Exciters got the bigger of their two hits thanks to Northern Soul, whereas Darlene never got the same rub. Also odd that The Exciters' best record (and how's this for an early promo?) was overlooked in favour of something rather bland. The bronze medal for 31 goes to a one-hit wonder, but an unusual one. A French producer called Mike Steiphenson was taken by recordings made in Burundi of a tribe's ritual drums, so he added some guitars and created an album of what might be called fusion music. An extract from the album gave them a singles hit under the name Burundi Steiphenson Black. Ten years later, the sound had found its audience, via Adam & The Ants, so Rusty Egan of Visage came in to polish it up a little. Didn't turn it into a hit the second time around, but it remains a powerful artifact. Everything is connected to everything else. Rusty Egan was in Visage with Midge Ure; Midge Ure joined Ultravox as a replacement for John Foxx; John Foxx peaked at 31 with " Underpass". Ice cold. Other 31ers of note: Kevin Keegan (he would get to no. 2 a few years later though), Charlotte Hatherley (who managed it twice), Army Of Lovers (seemed to be a fixture on MTV back in the day) and, er, Tony Blackburn (although Starturn would sample him into the top 20).
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 11, 2015 9:18:51 GMT 1
30. The outsider art number
The Fall
Chart Show graphics! Yay! Although saying "the band have been together for about 10 years" leads one to the question "what band?" So many people have passed through The Fall that Guardian journo Dave Simpson wrote a book about them. Called The Fallen. Includes Lard out of Mark & Lard. As Mark E Smith said, "if it's me and yer mam, it's The Fall." Which makes me wonder whether I should actually have them up at 18, where Smith landed up with when guesting with Inspiral Carpets. I still get the Hit Albums book out once in a while to stare at The Fall's entry, in disbelief that, for one astonishing week, they had a top ten hit. Perhaps the single easiest choice in the entire chart. No. 30 seems to be a bit of a home for the unconventional. Sounds Incorporated, the effervescent support act for The Beatles at Shea Stadium, some of the top session men in the industry who occasionally put together instrumentals on vinyl, landed up here. As did Towers Of London, who, for some mysterious reason, had a bit of a buzz around them for their sub-Chelsea punk revivalism. And the Trinidad & Tobago Tartan Army, who existed off the back of the 2006 World Cup, for which Scotland didn't qualify, but Jason Scotland did. There were only 2 other possibles; Sugar, mentioned in Husker Du above; and Flintlock, the house band for a proto-yoof TV programme called You Can't Be Serious (a sort of proto Your Mother Wouldn't Like It), which launched a teenage Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson, whose major chart success would come supporting Right Said Fred for Comic Relief. Surprising their appealing single " Dawn" was not a bigger hit, especially given the promotion. The singer with the sax incidentally, Derek Pascoe, is the father of comedienne Sara. But really they're bringing water pistols against the Exocet of the mighty Fall.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 11, 2015 9:52:01 GMT 1
29. The complete total and utter b*st*rd number
My Bloody ValentineI sometimes think about what I would choose on Desert Island Discs. I would certainly choose 8 different acts. And of those acts I would choose right now, I've already mentioned one at no. 77, there are four to come above, and Talulah Gosh never made the charts. Which leaves two spare spaces. Which is somewhat misleading, as those "spare" spaces would be the second and third names I would add to the list. And what happens? They both bloody peak at 29. How in the name of all that is or might be holy did that happen? There are a hundred thousand musical acts, and a hundred places in the top 100. How, how, how is it that two of the three best that have ever existed land up in this one, seemingly anonymous, place in the chart? Which is why I encomiumed Cocteau Twins at 65. They are the absolute perfect act. But so are MBV. I cannot split them. Kevin Shields' dreamscapes are Rothkos made aural, suggestions of shimmering shapes sublime susurrating in the subconscious. "To Here Knows When" must be the most extreme track to make the top 40. Quite, quite astonishing. I suppose I ought to be thankful that This Mortal Coil meant I could sneak CT in here. But knowing my luck it will somehow peak at 29 in the future... And you know what's worse? The Go-Go's, who would be a shoo-in for almost any other number in the chart, snuck into the top 30 on one of their comebacks. Certainly their pre-1990s peak of 47 would have seen them there. Perfect punkpop from the best all-girl band ever. And you know what's even worse? Cranes also peaked here. Ali Shaw's Groganesque vocals over meandering lost pop form an alluring trap for the heart. Again they would be a first choice anywhere else. So a real Solomonic choice here...29 is, simply, the best number in the charts there is. ^these go to 11
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 12, 2015 20:13:38 GMT 1
28. The Long BlondesI first heard them on a covermount CD from a music mag. Unthinkingly stuck it in the car music player and had it on in the background. Until it got to The Long Blondes' contribution. Wow, what the heck is this? A Talulah Gosh out-take? It was that good. I punched rewind to hear it again and again and again. Bought a bootleg and cradled it. And their debut single was as good as I expected. An adrenal rush of perfect indiepop. They followed that up with a stellar debut album. I maintain the "difficult second album" ("Couples") will one day be hailed as a masterpiece. Sadly they could not follow up the success of their first after Dorian's stroke meant other things became more important. Nobody else really came close. Belly would have been first choice though for many other numbers. Brook Benton never repeated his US success, although his " Boll Weevil Song" spent a long time in the lower reaches of the song. From the coincidence drawer, two television stars - Michelle Collins and Lucy Carr - desecrated this spot with hits off the back of separate sun-television shows. And from the how the heck did this happen drawer, Fields Of The Nephilim. Of longer-term import, Michael Nesmith had his sole solo hit top out here, but he created a pop video of some length for it - what would briefly be called a videola, basically a short film with the music as centrepiece - and took from that the idea of MTV, a television network that played music non-stop. Although these days the M in MTV seems to stand for Moron. Perhaps the best single to stop here though was not "Weekend Without Makeup", which was only the third best Blondes single, but " White Punks On Dope" by The Tubes - a real Jackson Pollock of a single from the American new-wavers.
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Post by TheThorne on Jan 12, 2015 20:31:08 GMT 1
Do we agree that 'Giddy Stratospheres' was their finest moment ??
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 12, 2015 21:52:06 GMT 1
I'd still think it "Once And Never Again", although that might be because it was the first thing I heard from them. Moving onwards with Perfect Pop... 27. The Darling BudsI've eulogized and fetishized the Perfect Pop Single. Grabbing introduction, singalong chorus and a bridge that twists the whole thing again. It's a surprisingly rare beast. Blondie did it quite a bit, of course. So did Talulah Gosh. And this lot added something that took it up to eleven - a female lead singer with a tambourine. Is there anything on this planet that is cuter? Their finest three minutes was " Burst", which, in yet another added bonus, was tinged with melancholy. I really have no idea why this was not a hit, unless it was the title, which does not really fit the song; you'd have to have good ears to hear it, and the original demos didn't even have it. I wonder how many people went into record shops asking for "I Just Can't Take It". Then again they seemed to be unlucky in other aspects. The TV series The Darling Buds Of May seemed to seize the name from them - to be fair, they had nicked it from the original books, but even so - and then their album Erotica was trumped by that embarrassing school disco man-mum Madonna stealing the title for her distinctly inferior effort a month later. And even worse was the fate of their one top 40. "Hit The Ground" was selling well when a British Midland aircraft crashed near the M1 and dozens were killed. The BBC promptly pulled it from airplay and stymied its possible top 20-ness... Anyway, they were easy winners of 27, the next best being Jake Shillingford's My Life Story, who might be considered an experiment in chamber pop. The Big Pink took bronze, and Pavement and Wendy & Lisa (surprised at that; thought they'd got much higher) also got to here, but otherwise it's an anaemic number, with even Rotterdam Termination Source - whose one hit had no lyrics and one note, I trust that everyone who bought that is too stupid to breed - stopping off here. One top single of note though - one of the progenitors of kidcore, which is not what it sounds like, Mark Summers, snuck his version of the Magic Roundabout theme here. The most successful kidcore act though was The Prodigy...
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Post by vya on Jan 12, 2015 22:47:25 GMT 1
Never understood why they never rereleased "Burst" after they'd finally got their breakthrough top 40 hit - it really was a very fine single, and quite their best. All four singles off that first album were minor delights though (with "Hit The Ground" being the least accomplished of them). How we hoped for more...
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Post by TheThorne on Jan 13, 2015 12:29:20 GMT 1
I actually really liked their early 90s Curvesque single 'Sure Thing' as well
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 13, 2015 21:46:07 GMT 1
26. The PipettesThe most predictable choice in the 101? I'm usually quite good at remembering when I first heard (of) an act, but strangely with the Pips I can't. I think it might have been a passing reference in Music Week. I do know though that on reading about them I sought them out online, pre-youtube, and fell in love. Instantly. And hard. Their debut album is a masterpiece. There has never been another album that has been so wall-to-wall with potential hits. Every single track is a perfect pop song. Even to the extent that they threw in a ballad - which I only ever saw them perform once, at Christmas 2006. That was, I think, the second time I saw them; I saw them in the end seven times. The first five times had a broadly similar setlist but every experience was different. They were unique on stage. The inter-song bants should have got them a sitcom on its own. You can get a flavour of that from some live vids on youtube. Second album is more a flawed masterpiece. To be fair, Rose and Joe had gone, and they had been a driver behind most of their instant grabbers (Joe wrote "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me", Rose "Judy" and "Dirty Mind" - although all songs were group credits, on the basis that they all contributed to the track once the basics were done, a process known as Pipetting up, I got to know who wrote what after a while; "Pull Shapes" was Jon's), so it was always a bit difficult. That, and the constant push from a new label to write something commercial. Annoyingly they had a number of songs in their locker that they never recorded which ought to have been hits (" By My Side" for instance), but " Boo Shuffle" ought to have been a Eurovision entry, total popfun, and a number 1 hit in waiting. I think it fair to say that the failure of The Pipettes to become a massive success is the biggest indictment on the record industry. How they could take an act with three ladies with astonishing stage presence, sass and raw talent, with the best pop songs this millennium, and dance moves that even I could imitate, and conspire to keep them down, is a complete, total and utter disgrace. Ben Haenow, you are not fit to be the sh*t on the bottom of their shoes. One day, perhaps, someone will take one of those tracks, put it on an advert or in a film, and it'll be Pipette Rescue all over again. Shame for everyone else at 26, really, because there are some really top acts. The Go Team! are linked with the Pips as Gareth Parton produced We Are The Pipettes; also The Raveonettes have a similar retro attitude. Polyphonic Spree could be almost as exultant in their best moments - interestingly both they and The Pipettes are acts that everyone I've introduced them to likes - and there are also a couple of less serious acts here. Sultans Of Ping FC (" Where's Me Jumper" gets any dance floor moving; no wonder the bloke from 808 State is now doing time for drug dealing, who would pay for a DJ when you could flip that 45?). And for those of us of a certain age, The Four Bucketeers have the same effect. John Gorman of T4B had topped the chart as part of Scaffold, and Sally James had had an abortive couple of solo singles, but with Chris Tarrant and Bob Carolgees they got a hit that would have been bigger had it not been for a) ITV not allowing them to use the name Tiswas for promotional purposes and b) the BBC getting all wussy when it came to Top Of The Pops...
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 13, 2015 22:56:12 GMT 1
25. bisThere was a brief period in 1996 when Top Of The Pops decided to showcase unsigned or otherwise unknown bands. The first beneficiaries were Sci-Fi Steve, John Disco and Manda Rin, aka bis. TOTP was the first I had heard of them; they instantly reminded me of Altered Images. Can there be any higher praise? No. No, there isn't. They followed a slightly different path but were never better than when they did their shouty teen-c nation punkpop. Creative high charter was " Sweet Shop Avengerz", a great sugar rush of headlong pop; their outright greatest production though was " The End Starts Today", their last single before becoming DataPanik for a decade. A palpable change of pace, with elements of the classical, even the video is uncharacteristically arty. Epic. Says something of how much I think of bis (new album last year! Yay!) that they could oust PJ Harvey and " Down By The Water" from the 25 spot. And they both sneak in ahead of Television, despite Marquee Moon being one of the iconic albums of the seventies. Also peaking here was Annie, whose " Chewing Gum" is another slice of exquisite pop; and Team America, one of the South Park incarnations. They would score higher hits.
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Post by raliverpool on Jan 13, 2015 23:23:05 GMT 1
Get's the time machine out: It is December 2022 and the girlband put together by X-Factor producers "mentored" by former Little Mix member Perrie Edwards (whom is married with two kids to Zayn Malik (of the former 2010s boybond One Direction)) release as their debut single an anaemic EDM-lite cover version of Pull Shapes and scores the Xmas #1 spot thanks to streaming sales points of 173,200..... And Vastariner spontaneously combusts .... On a more serious note the Pipettes are on an indefinite sabbatical arent they after Gwenno quit in 2011? Although I think I read ... somewhere she would be prepared to rejoin if Rosay & RiotBecki were on board ... Still on some immaculate timing by yourself Radio 1 played the new single from Rose tonight around the time you assembled your post (about the best part of a month after I first heard it on BBC 6 Music (mind you they failed to playlist it (yet), despite it containing a harmony vocal from Gwenno): thequietus.com/articles/16847-rose-dougall-take-yourself-with-youGwenno released her Welsh language first solo full length album "Y Dydd Olaf" in October 2014 for which the lead track received some airplay on Radio 1 & BBC 6 Music, she also hosts a Welsh language music Radio show on Radio Cardiff, and is due to go on tour soon supporting Gruff Rhys: Alas Rebecca Stevens seems to have slipped off the music scene. Still ... I now have a Meat Loaf earworm damn it.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 14, 2015 0:04:59 GMT 1
Becsta was in Projectionists and is as of last week working with Silverclub. Unfortunately, she is also engaged. ;(
(not that I'm stalking or anything, oh noes)
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Post by Earl Purple on Jan 14, 2015 11:01:48 GMT 1
Bis had their biggest hit in my chart last year.. peaking at #2 with "Minimum Wage". Gwenno had her biggest hit in my chart duetting with The Boy Least Likely To, getting to #1 in 2013.
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 14, 2015 23:36:51 GMT 1
24. Sigur RósThey did an entire album in a made-up language, they performed the first two songs I ever saw them perform live behind a curtain, they have songs over 12 minutes long, they play guitars with a violin bow. Pretentious? Well, oddly, not. It just somehow works. Must be something to do with being Icelandic and not having any sort of societal norm. It's just them themselves, and they somehow win. Annoyingly though they should be much higher up this listing, for two reasons. Firstly, some tw*t ripped off "Hoppipolla" and turned it into a top 10 hit, but did not even have the slightest decency to credit them. Atrocious. Secondly, their best single was chart-ineligible - I wonder whether it would have gone top 20 had it not been. That best single was " Glosoli". An automatic Desert Island Discs choice. And quite simply the best synthesis of sound and vision music has seen. If this doesn't move you to heaven, you are already dead. A shame that One Dove get blasted aside - their brand of come-down trip-hop allures in a way that still resonates today. At least I could sneak them in via Dot Allison. Also Cud were probably a couple of years too early; they could have capitalized on the Britpop boom. Let's face it, if it were them or Menswe@r, it would be them. And there's Kenickie. There were genuine outpourings of grief in the music media when they announced they were calling it a day. They looked like they could blow a breeze through pop, although their last single always sounded half-hearted to me - as if the label told them it was a hit or nothing, they tried to write a hit rather than a great single, and it fizzled like the last balloon in January.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 15, 2015 21:44:25 GMT 1
23. PixiesLots of second-division-good acts here. Electric Soft Parade, for instance, out of whom emerged lots of Brighton bands; Brakes, for instance, and it was argued once that The Pipettes was effectively ESP's girl group project. Then there are Mystery Jets, who were a lot better when they had the old bloke with them. And Electribe 101, whose finest moments came with Billie Ray Martin fronting them. Also peaking here were Brumbeat instrumentalists The Flee-Rekkers, American double-toppers The Association, and Denise Welch, whose son, by one of those astonishing miracles, just happened to get his band's first single fast-tracked to Radio 1's playlist. But let's face it. There can only be one option here. Quiet, then LOUD.
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Post by TheThorne on Jan 15, 2015 22:22:47 GMT 1
Actually the 1975 had three singles before they were play listed by Radio 1 and the first single wasn't even played on specialist shows till zane Lowe picked up on their 2nd single , I loved them before I knew anything about his parentage and they were just a random indie band found by chance on a little indie label. Their wiki page is well wrong btw
But yes Pixies are awesome
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 15, 2015 22:23:44 GMT 1
22. CurveA few coincidences on this number. For instance, The Bodysnatchers, who morphed into The Belle Stars, peaked at exactly the same number as the act who provided them with their biggest US hit - The Dixie Cups. Then you have a couple of northern comedians top out here; Mike Harding, whose "Rochdale Cowboy" might get another mention later, and That's Life's Doc Cox, who made single-entendre records under the name Ivor Biggun. And then there are a couple of acts who were inspired by television. Department S, whose name came from a seventies secret agent series, and Cats UK, whose one hit was inspired by a Martini advert starring Lorraine Chase. OK, so that one is really tenuous. But Hylda Baker & Arthur Mullard's disastrous cover of the biggest Grease hit (be thankful I didn't link their TOTP appearance) definitely was television-inspired. Produced by Kenny Lynch. Although we could stretch a point and say it was also film-inspired - as were The Wonders, a non-existent one-hit wonder from the film That Thing You Do! which then existed. It boiled down to three. Client, who got to here, rather surprisingly, their sound is not really chart-friendly. The Subways, who looked for a while like they might break through for a while, but they were obviously too talented. And the actual choice, whose debut single is still startling, and whose " Horror Head" is one of the singles of the 90s. Toni Halliday ought to be a star; Dean Garcia is in spacey nugaze outfit SPC-ECO with his daughter (and it's slightly worrying that some of the bands I like are now second-gen...indeed, the mum of one of My Red Angel tried to chat me up at a concert once...).
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