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TOPIC: National Album Day
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Re:National Album Day 8 Months, 2 Weeks ago
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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
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Re:National Album Day - Your Ultimate British Group 8 Months, 2 Weeks ago
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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.
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Re:National Album Day 8 Months, 2 Weeks ago
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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.
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Re:National Album Day 8 Months, 2 Weeks ago
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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.
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Re:National Album Day 8 Months, 2 Weeks ago
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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.
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