Reviews by mibbiesaye

As a teenager in Scotland I always resented how it seemed like your national duty to like Simple Minds.

This album is a weird nexus of 80s sounds. I hear Mick Karn of Japan's bass playing, Simple Minds' own post-punk origins, pop keyboards of Scritti Politi and you can clearly hear its influence on U2's next couple of albums after War.

The 90s produced a lot of faded photocopies of older sounds, especially in the UK. In guitar music Britpop was the 60s and 70s, in funk and soul we had this lot and the Brand New Heavies trying to resurrect 70s sounds. I'd rather have the Brand New Heavies cos at least you don't have to listen to Jay Kay and ponder his many non musical crimes. Being an ungentlemanly ex of Winona Ryder, repeatedly endangering the lives of people using the A9 by driving like a knob, storming the US Capitol building, etc

She had a great band when she toured this one. It's a shame she doesn't do live albums. I've got a great bootleg of her singing The Fall's Janet + Johnny + James from around then, maybe the next album.

I like the uncharacteristic shiny simple production on this, as an excursion - everything she does is an excursion, but overall I don't think the songs quite match up to her best. This really becomes apparent when The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore hits because it is just so great.

I was in a proper pit of despond when this album came out. It was perfect. It helped that there are moments of hope and humour in there.

I suppose you include this in the book because it was the starting pistol for Britpop, if you think that particular marketing campaign was as important as music writers like to make out. Suede weren't the starting pistol to their credit.

Blur are a singles band to me. The albums always seem to have more than their fair share of filler.

I can't imagine why the Teardrop Explodes peeps haven't sued over Colin Zeal's similarity to the way superior Sleeping Gas. They even add insult to injury by immediately following it up with a song called Pressure On Julian.

One amusing thing to observe is that the 1 star reviews by American participants complaining about its Britishness would no doubt have delighted early 90s Damon Albarn.

This was a rebellion against Grunge but it was also a rebellion against the perceived musical excesses of shoegaze and the influence of the likes of the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Marychain. For me the problem with that is that they end up with a restricted pallette to work from and too many of the arrangements are a bit dull and the melodies and lyrics aren't good enough to pick up the slack.

It sounds pompous.

I used to want to like this record. It has components that I like. Seventeen Seconds The Cure guitars, simple beats and understated vocals but I find it pretty dull.

Front loading the hits was a definite thing in the 80s, eh?

The Madonna comparisons aren't really fair to either. Lauper clearly stays in a New Wave pop lane while by the time Madonna was making records she was clearly very much more influenced by club culture. For a brief moment I guess they shared some fashion influences.

Big Beat is definitely over represented on the list. Sure it was mega popular but you'd think from this book that there wasn't that much else going on in electronic music at the time.

I don't think I'll ever relate to the obsessive love some folk have for the Beach Boys. I like the ones with the most memorable melodies and while I can appreciate the cleverness and ingenuity of some of the arrangements it just doesn't excite me. Nice to be prompted to think of The Ramones.

Here's me been thinking for a few decades that Stiv Bators sang I Wanna Destroy You. Soft Boys/Dead Boys confusion. To be fair it sounds more like a Bators' title than a Hitchcock one. Still. The shame of it.

Dam it I've only just realised the title is a pun. I'm so slow I'm more than a quarter century behind.

It's a bit crazy Mott the Hoople get an album but the Cockney Rebel's The Psychomodo doesn't feature. It's an even better example of Bowie-ish sons of Anthony Newley glam. Still this is great. I really enjoy their unnecessary self mythologising.

I wonder how many people the world over have seen Iggy's cock? I know I've seen it at least twice.

Surprised how much I enjoyed revisiting this as I wasn't fully convinced at the time. But yeah, all us Britpop naysayers certainly loved our reverb.

Did some people click on a remix version? None of these tracks are particularly long. Also, who needs 'development' when the grooves are this good?

Well it's got Riders On The Storm so that already makes it a million times more crucial than Morrison Hotel. I'm not a huge fan of the blues rock ones but they are a bit more interesting than the Morrison Hotel blues rock ones. And overall I like its loose thrown together feel.

LA Woman has that tantalising 20 seconds at the start where they almost invent Californian motorik.

Good enough for The Cramps. Good enough for The Fall. Good enough for me.

It's a shame how much people can't allow albums to be entirely of their time. Seems like music has to be up to date or from the 60s/70s or a copy of stuff from then.

I like how you can place this in the late 90s. Electronic but with guitars and that most 90s of 70s influences krautrock making itself apparent. You had to make use of multiple vocalists too. See also David Holmes and Unkle.

They were so inventive and sleek when they started out. I can never understand why people, seemingly the editors of the book included, prefer their later bar room blues efforts.

I've never really understood the reverence for this album. It's merely ok for me.

Townshend knows his way round a chord progression but his widdly widdly scree action is pretty lame.

Their cover of Summertime Blues is fun but once you've heard the Blue Cheer version can you go back? They maul Shakin' All Over with Townshend taking liberties with the riff and mostly ignoring the tremelo chord on the chorus.