Wot? No Thin Lizzy?

No UB40 or The Specials on that list of British groups, yet both hugely influential and revered.

How do Girls Aloud and Beautiful South slip onto it yet The Specials, UB40, Status Quo, Slade and T.Rex as already mentioned fail to appear any of them.

Just thought of another, The Eurythmics, innovative, sold millions, broke the States but absent here.

Downing Street Cat wrote:
Wot? No Thin Lizzy?

They're irish

I can't stand Dire Straits or Simply Red, but they have been very successull and should appear in the lower half of the list. I'm not sure how the voting worked, Did people just pick their favourite or a top 10 etc.. Dire Straits and Status Quo weren't' even on the short list

Btw the definition of a british group is as follows:

A British group is defined as an act containing two or members that is made-up wholly of, or where the majority are, people who were born, live or hold British citizenship.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3wZzK0...ultimate-british-gro

robbiex wrote:
Downing Street Cat wrote:
Wot? No Thin Lizzy?

They're irish

With an American and Scotsman.

Simply Red are a dirge and a moniker for Mick Hucknall.

Dire Straits is a band that played too safe but they had did make a batch of very memorable studio albums. Brother In Arms I do find a bit overrated but I will never tire of Why Worry and The Man's Too Strong. When Brother In Arms was released you couldn't get away from it departments and electronic stores, the used it as a demo when they flogging Hi-Fi's because it was the first album to be recorded or mixed full digital at the time, which does not mean anything. Don't get me started on SACD.

I always imagined Dire Straits fans to be City Boys (also young father types)listening to them on the way to work, they are type who like rock but don't like rock but play air guitar when no-one is around or to entertain their kids when they get home from work.

D.S. do have their place Robbie, I do agree with you.

I hate that Mark Knopfler albums have different versions, you have to spend to more to get the extra songs for the same album.

Another Yuppie band Level 42 didn't get on the short list. If they are going to include vocal pop groups like Girls Aloud and One Direction, then why not include Bucks Fizz or Brotherhood of Man. They won Eurovision for the UK didn't they and both had a couple of no.1 singles, and numerous top 10 singles.

Well it gets worse.

I've now this evening listened to the full two hour "Your Ultimate British Group - The Extras" on BBC Sounds and here are the other 24 groups that didn't make the top thirty but that make up the full 54 that were allowed to be voted on, you could call these the bubbling under ones, and I began listening to this feeling very confident that at least I would be hearing Slade and T.Rex on here, as well as Status Quo mentioned by others here. I was absolutely stunned by the end of it when none of them appeared and by what was on the list.

It was played in no particular order. They should have given them their positions voted on, I wonder why they chose not to do so with these "extras" as they call them.

Here they are;

New Order

Florence & The Machine

Pulp

Frankie Goes To Hollywood

UB40

Sugababes

Eurythmics

10cc

Bananarama

Arctic Monkeys

Soul II Soul

M People

Wings

Stone Roses

Imagination

Simply Red

One Direction

All Saints

Muse

Culture Club

Erasure

Elbow

Stereophonics

Human League

As for Slade I wouldn't put them in the Top 100.

Green Man wrote:
robbiex wrote:
Downing Street Cat wrote:
Wot? No Thin Lizzy?

They're irish

With an American and Scotsman.

Ah...that shows up my knowledge of music. lol.

robbiex wrote:
Another Yuppie band Level 42 didn't get on the short list. If they are going to include vocal pop groups like Girls Aloud and One Direction, then why not include Bucks Fizz or Brotherhood of Man. They won Eurovision for the UK didn't they and both had a couple of no.1 singles, and numerous top 10 singles.


I never got into Level 42, I do agree they were a bit Yuppie, China Crisis were also but they do put on good concerts. I found Squeeze fan base a bit odd you were were either a student or an office worker.

Rich wrote:
Well it gets worse.

I've now this evening listened to the full two hour "Your Ultimate British Group - The Extras" on BBC Sounds and here are the other 24 groups that didn't make the top thirty but that make up the full 54 that were allowed to be voted on, you could call these the bubbling under ones, and I began listening to this feeling very confident that at least I would be hearing Slade and T.Rex on here, as well as Status Quo mentioned by others here. I was absolutely stunned by the end of it when none of them appeared and by what was on the list.

It was played in no particular order. They should have given them their positions voted on, I wonder why they chose not to do so with these "extras" as they call them.

Here they are;

New Order

Florence & The Machine

Pulp

Frankie Goes To Hollywood

UB40

Sugababes

Eurythmics

10cc

Bananarama

Arctic Monkeys

Soul II Soul

M People

Wings

Stone Roses

Imagination

Simply Red

One Direction

All Saints

Muse

Culture Club

Erasure

Elbow

Stereophonics

Human League


M People was just Heather Small with a bunch of keyboard players.

Elbow and Muse are popular with middle-aged women and shop workers.


If you do meet Jarvis Cocker you will be off Pulp for life. I would like to Erasure live but seeing Andy Bell prance about in a basque or a dress puts me off, whatever happened to his plain t-shirts?

Arctic Monkeys is a band I have got into but did try, credit to them they were one of the few success stories from MySpace.

You could mention Wings but the drummer was a Yank, so was Linda and Jimmy McCulloch was a Scotsman.

Stones Roses only released 2 studio albums, rest of their releases are compilations of remixes, demos and unused rough takes. Turns To Stone is just a singles compilation.

Florence Welch is another one who acts working class but she comes from a wealthy and semi-famous family.

It seems everyone in music is supercilious.

Green Man wrote:
robbiex wrote:
Another Yuppie band Level 42 didn't get on the short list. If they are going to include vocal pop groups like Girls Aloud and One Direction, then why not include Bucks Fizz or Brotherhood of Man. They won Eurovision for the UK didn't they and both had a couple of no.1 singles, and numerous top 10 singles.


I never got into Level 42, I do agree they were a bit Yuppie, China Crisis were also but they do put on good concerts. I found Squeeze fan base a bit odd you were were either a student or an office worker.

I saw China Crisis on one of these "Here and Now" 80s concerts. They did their 2 or 3 hits. Not exactly a group to get a party started, but were perfectly good in the right venue.

Also isn't everyone screaming "Wheres Roxy Music".

robbiex wrote:
Green Man wrote:
robbiex wrote:
Another Yuppie band Level 42 didn't get on the short list. If they are going to include vocal pop groups like Girls Aloud and One Direction, then why not include Bucks Fizz or Brotherhood of Man. They won Eurovision for the UK didn't they and both had a couple of no.1 singles, and numerous top 10 singles.


I never got into Level 42, I do agree they were a bit Yuppie, China Crisis were also but they do put on good concerts. I found Squeeze fan base a bit odd you were were either a student or an office worker.


I saw China Crisis on one of these "Here and Now" 80s concerts. They did their 2 or 3 hits. Not exactly a group to get a party started, but were perfectly good in the right venue.

Also isn't everyone screaming "Wheres Roxy Music".


I saw China Crisis do an intimate concert before the lockdowns there were about 250-300 people there. It was very laid-back and comfortable evening, Gary Daly is one hell of a storyteller and very amusing.

I think with Roxy Music people tend to know more about Bryan Ferry's solo stuff.

I do see Manifesto and Country Life in a lot of record shops. I guess the cover of Country Life got a few hormones going.

Radio 2 presenters, Jo Whiley, Sara Cox, OJ Borg, Vernon Kay, Scott Mills, Trevor Nelson, DJ Spoony, and Owain Wyn Evans.


This sorry list of people tells me exactly why the groups list is nothing more than a bad joke with glaringly obvious leave outs and very odd obscure put ins. I can see exactly why Imagination got on the list, via Trevor Nelson, even though they basically only charted with a couple of decent and memorable tracks over twelve months during 1981/82 and didn't even set the album chart alight with much off those single releases then.

Quo are out because they didn't want too many old (or young) white men on it did they, and when you get down to it most of the best British groups are all white and mostly male orientated, that's basic fact, not misogyny or racism to say so. American groups would be different. There was no credible way to manipluate the top positions of the chart but they could pull it off in the lower rankings and that is the BBC all over for you.

I'll name my own bad miss out, alright they only did one album but had many singles, have recently done gigs, are the ultimate punk group that defined an entire music era and generation, that's Sex Pistols. So obviously the Beeb had to ignore them in favour of Elbow, ha bloody ha.

Decent rock music used to be fully mainstream and always in the charts, now it gets shunted to the midnight hour on Radio 2 for barely 60 minutes a week and it's clear there was an anti rock music bias going on here. The original short lived Iron Maiden singer before Bruce has just died, so there's another group. These are big enduring British groups cast aside in favour of agenda setting and as someone else said, attempting to be cool and hip.

Elbow are for middle-aged people, even when they first started.

Another missing group ABC. Lexicon of Love was an iconic album, which spawned 4 hit singles. The follow-up Beauty Stab was rubbish, but they had hits later on with "When Smoky Sings". Worthy of been on the short list at least. I think they should be ahead of Imagination, but then they don't tick any diversity boxes.

Looking at the selection team. Most are too young to remember anything much before 1990 like Sara Cox, Owain Wynne-Jones, OJ Borg, and Vernon. Like people here they forget groups like me. Why isn't Mark Goodier and Paul Gambocino on the list, they really know their stuff.

I forgot about ABC but now people just call Martin Fry ABC these days.

Lexicon Of Love is a terrific album; are Stephen Singleton and Mark White still doing Vice Versa?

robbiex wrote:
Elbow are for middle-aged people, even when they first started.

Another missing group ABC. Lexicon of Love was an iconic album, which spawned 4 hit singles. The follow-up Beauty Stab was rubbish, but they had hits later on with "When Smoky Sings". Worthy of been on the short list at least. I think they should be ahead of Imagination, but then they don't tick any diversity boxes.

Looking at the selection team. Most are too young to remember anything much before 1990 like Sara Cox, Owain Wynne-Jones, OJ Borg, and Vernon. Like people here they forget groups like me. Why isn't Mark Goodier and Paul Gambocino on the list, they really know their stuff.

Yes Robbie, agree with every word of this. Who the hell are OJ Borg and Owain Wyn Evans anyway. Not even legends in their own living rooms. Why was the "professor of pop" Gambo not included in the panel with all his long experience, in favour of such utter nobodies. One thing that makes him great is that he cannot be pigeonholed into music types or eras and cuts across everything, whether British or American. He proves this and his detailed knowledge on his excellent Sunday night show - The Paul Gambaccini Collection.

I think what has happened here is that they picked the right people to get the right results they wanted, a bit like polling companies who ask questions in a certain way to get a particular answer.

I'm sure it was Johnnie Walker, whose radio career ends this weekend, who I heard a few years ago say that he thought All Of My Heart by ABC was the perfect pop song. I think the three top tens from 1982 that ABC had were all absolutely perfect pop songs which makes it sad they came back the following year with something so underwhelming and I also hated the name "Beauty Stab" as album title too. The biggest hit from that album contains a lyric that makes me cringe every time I hear it and I cannot believe it passed the quality threshold with "Can't complain, mustn't grumble, help yourself to another piece of apple crumble", on That Was Then This Is Now. The best song and worthy of being a huge hit was SOS which I regularly listen to. A crime that only scraped the forty at the time, so even an underwhelmin g album had a gem on it even if it wasn't a big hit.

About eleven years ago on a Saturday night I was disturbed indoors by noise and went outside, where I suddenly heard music playing in the distance. I thought someone was playing loud music somewhere and listened and began to realise I was actually listening to a live band playing and they were all these songs by ABC. It turned out the real ABC were playing an outside gig at carmaker VW headquarters a couple of miles away from me and with the wind blowing in the right direction I heard them perfectly do the whole set list of all the hits, I just stood listening and enjoying. A friend was at this and told me all about it a few days later.

Rich wrote:
robbiex wrote:
Elbow are for middle-aged people, even when they first started.

Another missing group ABC. Lexicon of Love was an iconic album, which spawned 4 hit singles. The follow-up Beauty Stab was rubbish, but they had hits later on with "When Smoky Sings". Worthy of been on the short list at least. I think they should be ahead of Imagination, but then they don't tick any diversity boxes.

Looking at the selection team. Most are too young to remember anything much before 1990 like Sara Cox, Owain Wynne-Jones, OJ Borg, and Vernon. Like people here they forget groups like me. Why isn't Mark Goodier and Paul Gambocino on the list, they really know their stuff.

Yes Robbie, agree with every word of this. Who the hell are OJ Borg and Owain Wyn Evans anyway. Not even legends in their own living rooms. Why was the "professor of pop" Gambo not included in the panel with all his long experience, in favour of such utter nobodies. One thing that makes him great is that he cannot be pigeonholed into music types or eras and cuts across everything, whether British or American. He proves this and his detailed knowledge on his excellent Sunday night show - The Paul Gambaccini Collection.

I think what has happened here is that they picked the right people to get the right results they wanted, a bit like polling companies who ask questions in a certain way to get a particular answer.

I'm sure it was Johnnie Walker, whose radio career ends this weekend, who I heard a few years ago say that he thought All Of My Heart by ABC was the perfect pop song. I think the three top tens from 1982 that ABC had were all absolutely perfect pop songs which makes it sad they came back the following year with something so underwhelming and I also hated the name "Beauty Stab" as album title too. The biggest hit from that album contains a lyric that makes me cringe every time I hear it and I cannot believe it passed the quality threshold with "Can't complain, mustn't grumble, help yourself to another piece of apple crumble", on That Was Then This Is Now. The best song and worthy of being a huge hit was SOS which I regularly listen to. A crime that only scraped the forty at the time, so even an underwhelmin g album had a gem on it even if it wasn't a big hit.

About eleven years ago on a Saturday night I was disturbed indoors by noise and went outside, where I suddenly heard music playing in the distance. I thought someone was playing loud music somewhere and listened and began to realise I was actually listening to a live band playing and they were all these songs by ABC. It turned out the real ABC were playing an outside gig at carmaker VW headquarters a couple of miles away from me and with the wind blowing in the right direction I heard them perfectly do the whole set list of all the hits, I just stood listening and enjoying. A friend was at this and told me all about it a few days later.

Yes, "All of my Heart" is Martin Fry's personal favourite too. I remember been disspointed when hearing "That was then, but this is now" and the cringworthy lyric, which is almost as bad as Eminem rhyming Elton John with Leprachaun. There were a few tracks that I enjoyed on the album like SOS, but they don't really stand the test of time. I was also dissapointed with the image, wearing overalls and casual clothes didn't really work for me. I know they couldn't really make "The Lexicon of Love part 2" which they did do (or Martin Fry did) years later. I've seen ABC at numerous 80s packages, but it is just Martin Fry now, which I think is a bit of a con. There was Mark White and Martin Fry up till the 90s, but the original band split after Beauty Stab. I don't know how some groups appear as solo singers like Marc Almond and Andy Bell, but Clare Grogan and Martin Fry still perform under their band names, even though they are the only member.

Who was responsible for putting Sugababes on that extras list, a group that changed line up completely and didn't even end up with an original member at one point.

If you can run off a list and put Sugababes on it while leaving off Status Quo and Slade then you screwed up and that's only with the groups beginning with an 'S'.