Pop Matters

Still smarting from the indifference received from a marvellous hot beverage pun and a clever paraphrasing cynical bastardisation of a famous quote from the Billy Wilder classic, Sunset Boulevard, I've fallen back on the standard of a music survey whilst I nurse my blogging wounds. Feel free to chip in; I'll feign indifference in response, as it does appear to be this season's brown:

-- band that changed your life: Dexys Midnight Runners

-- band that you love with a great singer: The Gossip

-- band with the best screamer: The Detroit Cobras

-- band that makes you calm: The Lilac Time

-- band that gives you inspiration: The Jam, even after all these years. File me under sad lefty bastard.

-- band that is your favorite live: Super Furry Animals. A 20 minute version of 'The Man Don't Give A Fuck' swung it for me.

-- band that you wish you were in:Sod that for a laugh. Ugly Rumour? That would have meant I attended Oxford University in the seventies, and it would have offered me the opportunity to spike a certain fellow band member's tea.

-- rad band that broke up and became another dope band: "rad" Who writes these surveys? I thought Fluff Freeman had just died. The Jam/Style Council. Still controversial after all these years, I know, but people will eventually come round to Paul Weller's blue coffee period.

-- band that started great and became lame: Au Pairs . . . sorry, but I don't think the second album, 'Sense and Sensuality', actually cuts it.

-- band you love, still around after 10 years: If a band hasn't been around for ten years, I automatically delete them from my playlists but in the spirit of the survey, I'll go with Supergrass. 'Road To Rouen' is a great album.

-- band that you can (or do) listen to every day: XTC . . . at the moment. Just discovered the track, 'Great Fire'. A hidden gem from the 'Mummer' album.

-- band that rules, but has a terrible name: Sons and Daughters. Naming yourself after a Australian soap opera that only conjures up bad memories of crap daytime telly and vegetable broth doesn't put me in your good books, however much I listen to the track, 'Dance Me In'.

-- a band that people probably don't know you love: Simple Minds . . . up until the 1984 album, 'Sparkle In The Rain', and before Jim Kerr's disappearing hairline went the same way as Britain's manufacturing industry. Not sure who or what was to blame for the musical demise of one of the best bands of the first half of the eighties: the Breakfast Club gig that obviously swelled the bank account, whilst sucking dry the creative juices; Jim Kerr doing his own version of 'Star in Your Eyes' in the second half of the eighties with his Bono-lite impersonation; or his belief that regurgitating New Internationalist articles was a good way of writing lyrics for the 'Street Fighting Years' album? Whatever the case, it meant that the new gold dream quickly became tarnished.

-- a band you could live quite happily without: Bon Jovi . . .move the fuck on.

- best named band: Julius Martov and the Sexy Mistakes For the reasons outlined here.

-- loudest band that you love: Spiritualised

-- most mellow band that you love: Blue Nile

-- band that yer folks love, and you do too: Patsy Cline

-- band that yer folks love, and you do NOT: Backstreet Boys . . . and, no, I didn't make that up.

-- slowest band you love: Love is not a word one necessarily uses when writing of Arab Strap, but they are still the answer to this question.