Madness - One Step Beyond

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 10 we have One Step Beyond by Madness  (1979).

There were a few Ska bands around in the late 70s and early 80s, bands like The Specials, Bad Manners and The Beat and while i was drawing Siouxsie Sioux make up on my Cindy Dolls and falling into the Punk movement, my brother would be in his bedroom playing Madness singles and despite my constant advice that him and his speeded up reggae music was lame, i did like them but i wasn't ever going to admit it to him.
A DJ friend always said that whenever a disco was dying on its arse, he would whack on One Step Beyond as it was a sure way to get people up and dancing and i can't hear that song now without seeing groups of lads going from standing around trying to look cool to doing that jerky arm waving dance only Sugg's seemed to be able to do properly.
As this was the debut album it has all their best songs because Madness started off brilliant but as they got more famous, their songs became more 'grown-up' and they rapidly went downhill over the next few albums and they finally broke up after no longer bothering the top 20 of the charts.
Over the years Sugg's has become something of a National Treasure and the group played on the roof of Buckingham Palace at the Queen's Golden Jubilee and they are back touring again and i went along with my brother to see them in concert a few years ago but it was the early hits that they played and which got the best reception which proves that although some bands mature and change style successfully, it never worked for them and the style change did them no favour's whatsoever.

Liz Truss's Election Suicide Note

With Boris Johnson refusing to do anything to help ease the Cost of Living Crisis and saying it is for the incoming Prime Minister to sort it out, eyes turn to what exactly the two potential leaders are offering when they pick up the reins in 5 weeks time.
We can politely glide over Rishi Sunak's pans, his rival Liz Truss is so far ahead in the polls that even someone as dimwitted as her shouldn't be able to mess it up, and she has said that she will not be giving handouts to people but instead will cut income tax to help the poorest in society.   
Now i'm no Tax Expert but the poorest in society are by definition, the ones with the least amount of money so if you are on benefits, a state pension or earn below £12,570, then you don't pay tax anyway so cutting the rate of tax will add precisely zilch to your income.
If you are an average earner of £25,971 and currently pay 20% tax and under Truss will pay 19% tax, your tax bill will reduce by £131 a year or an extra tenner and some small change in your monthly pay packet.
Anyone earning over £50,000 currently pays tax at 40% and over £100,000 at 45% so they are the ones who will benefit most from any tax cuts and are by no possible definition the poorest in society, if anyone can weather a cost of living crisis and could forgo a bit more back in tax, it's these people.
For some people on a low wage an extra £10 a month will be very gratefully received but you have to remember that a change in tax affects all earners across the board so while you get the extra £10 to pay your gas bill, a higher earner will be receiving much, much more, enough to pay their gas bill easily and have extra to spend on luxuries.
A former Cabinet Minister called Liz Truss's economics plans 'an Election suicide note' and we can only hope so because after 12 years of Right wing policies, sleaze, corruption and lies which has led to a broken UK, the Conservative Party should never be allowed near an elected office ever again.

Have You Seen Those Boxes I Left Here Melania?

Funnily enough it was only the other day that we mentioned that America's third fattest and first small handed President has been quiet recently and we found out why today, he has been going through the 15 boxes of documents he skipped out of the White House with in his teeny weeny, dinky little fingers.
No news yet of exactly what the FBI were looking for when they raided his Mar-a-Lago home but it is assumed it is linked to one of the many investigations he faces for election interference, financial crimes, the storming of Congress and various lawsuits by police officers injured in the Congress attack,fraud, sexual assault charges, cheating his own family out of inheritance and his own personal lawyer who is suing him.
Trump once said that he loves the poorly educated and the barely educated have been out in force as expected to defend the man who once suggested ingesting Bleach as a cure for COVID-19, and they have gone with the usual of when an opportunity for a good explanation isn't available, just make do by pointing out that if this can happen to the former president, then the ordinary people are next so all you ordinary people with over a dozen boxes of stolen classified presidential records should sleep with one eye open.
One former Republican Congressman said recently that there is only one way his party can move on from Donald Trump, and that is waiting for him to die and at 76, a liking for fast food while morbidly obese and with high cholesterol, he may be only one KFC Bargain Bucket away from their wait being over so the courts had better get their act together quickly.

Green Day - Insomniac

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 11 we have Insomniac by Green Day  (1995).

Unsurprisingly, Green Day feature heavily in my top Albums because i have been a fan of Billy Joe and the gang since that first 39/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours album in 1990, becoming part of the noise which spat forth from my car casette player back then along with the likes of Gun N Roses and the emerging grunge bands.
Green Day hit upon a sound early on and pretty much stuck with it which is fine if that sound is a good one, which there's is, but it didn't work out quite so well for Rick Astley who spent 1987 at the top and 1988 known as that whats-his-name bloke who had those few songs that sounded the same.
Insomniac harks back to their three minute pop-punk style before they got all political and back when only a handful of us knew who they were and before the likes of Blink 182 and Sum 41 become the face of Pop-Punk and Green Day went on a hiatus every couple of years citing exhaustion (from abuse of alcohol and prescription pills) between albums which popped out every 3 or 4 years.
There has always been a question asked around if they're 'punk' and to me they fit comfortably into that genre and Insomniac is the 1995 version of it and anyway in true punk style, i don't care, i like them.

Nirvana - In Utero

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musician's who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 12 we have In Utero by Nirvana  (1993).

Always amazes me the amount of teenagers walking around wearing Nirvana T-Shirts because if they had been born in 1993 they would have been doing stinky things in their nappies rather than singing along to the line 'I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black' in Heart Shaped Box which i guess passed for a romantic line in the strange drug fueled World of Kurt Cobain.
Almost certainly the Nirvana the kids today think of is the cool one behind the brilliant hits of the Nevermind Album because it certainly wasn't this second effort which reeks of the Record Company allowing their new stars to do what they wanted for half of it as long as they got a say in the other half.
That they sank even further afterwards with their insipid Unplugged Album probably shows that they peaked straight away but they did leave behind a few great songs from this album, even managing to make a very decent song out of an anti-rape message.
As Kurt later found it easier to put a gun to his head than stay amongst the living, we won't ever know if the trajectory of Nirvana was going to tick back up again or continue it's decline but a note to today's teenagers with the Nirvana logo on their chests, if you do happen across the Unplugged Album, it also contains Dumb, Pennyroyal Tea and All Apologies but do yourself a favour and avoid it, it's the musical equivalent of finding an original first edition of To Kill A Mockingbird and shoving it under the leg of a table to keep it steady.

Hey Ho, Let's Go Premier League

 Ah, it's the dawn of the new Football Season which brings with it a sense of optimism, hope and expectation unless you are a fan of one of the teams who will face months of being mocked when they go into work on a Monday morning because they have suffered yet another humiliating defeat.
The Premier League title is only destined for Manchester City, Liverpool or Chelsea and Arsenal, Tottenham and Man Ure will be fighting it out for that fourth place and the final berth in the lucrative Champions League so the top of the table won't be that vastly different to last seasons so the real battle will be at the bottom where it is perm 3 from about 8 who could fall out of the Premier League.
I am expecting to see the new boys Fulham and Bournemouth swapping places not so proudly in the bottom three all season and joined by Brentford when the gong sounds in May but you can't discount Brighton, Leeds or Aston Villa who have managed to escape relegation recently but look a bit below standard.
Southampton will flirt with the drop and then pull it out the bag with 5 games to go as they always do and as much as i would like to see the back of Everton, they will do enough to avoid it as i suspect Nottingham Forest will although that will be by the skin of their teeth.
So it's full steam ahead to November when the League pauses for the World Cup in the desert and then back again for the Boxing Day fixtures and the first stop is tonight at Selhurst Park where my team Arsenal, with a striker called Jesus and a continental midfielder called Vieira who will take on Crystal Palace managed by our previous continental midfielder called Vieira.

Joan Jett - Glorious Results Of A Misspent Youth

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 13 we have Glorious Results Of A Misspent Youth by Joan Jett  (1984).

As a young girl learning guitar there were not many female rockers to emulate in the early 80s but my teacher was a proper music nerd and would teach me the chords and then punk or metal riffs which used the three or four chords i knew and through him i found out there were two rock goddesses, Joan Jett and Lita Ford, and both were in the band The Runaway's and when i heard that the remnants of the Sex Pistols were working with Jett and Black Sabbath and Motley Crue with Ford, it was Jett i kept my ear out for because a punk band was always going to knock musical spots off a metal band.
Joan Jett really hit it big in the UK with I Love Rock n Roll in 1982 dressed in leathers and full of attitude and looking like someone i had for me in my minds eye as well as adding another dirty great riff to my repertoire.
The brilliant angry sounding Cherry Bomb was the Runaway's debut song but Jett seemed to take the thought that she wrote it so she can have it on any damn album she wanted and put it on this one along with her version of I Need Someone and somehow fused the original doo wop and her guitar sound and did the same with another 60s hit New Orleans so her misspent youth was sitting in her bedroom playing 60s songs and working out how to turn them into brilliant 80's rock anthems which was more productive than my misspent youth which involved cigarettes and nicking bottles of Babycham from my parents drinks cabinet.

So Begin The Water Bans In UK

Following the driest July since records began in 1935, a hosepipe and sprinkler ban is being imposed on a million people in Kent and Sussex with the firm saying it 'had no choice' although the kickback has started as South East Water loses about a sixth of all the water it supplies through leakage and its customer face a £1000 fine if they use are seen using a hosepipe, sprinklers, irrigation systems or pressure washers.
Last week Southern Water announced a partial hosepipe ban in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight which comes into effect from Friday and other water companies are looking closely at imposing bans although with over three billion litres of water leaking from water companies pipes every day, it isn't going to go down well with their paying customers.
Thames Water (leakage 673m litres per day) said they may to introduce water saving restrictions soon as did South West Water (leakage 84m litres per day) who announced formal restrictions over the coming weeks and Sutton & East Surrey Water (leakage 25m litres per day) are keeping restrictions under review.
Anglian Water (leakage 211m litres per day) said they continued to monitor water levels as are Severn Trent Water (leakage 453m litres per day) while Wessex Water (leakage 71m litres per day) and Portsmouth Water (leakage 30m litres per day) are asking customers to use water responsibly.
Bristol Water, (leakage 49m litres per day) Northumbrian Water (leakage 66m litres per day), and South Staffordshire Water (leakage 74m litres per day) have said they have no plans to impose a water ban.
An Environment Agency spokesperson said that they are 'working with water companies to protect water resources and ensure they take precautionary action so the needs of water users and the environment are met but everyone can play their part to use water wisely' which i assume means not allowing three billion litres of water be lost through leaking pipes although it is far easier and cheaper for the water companies to not fix them and tell us not to waste the water we do get obviously. Got to protect those profits after-all.

That Truss Lady Is For Turning

Whisper it quietly but Labour supporters are telling me that they are concerned that despite them being 11 points ahead in the polls against the Conservatives, any new Leader for the Tories will gain a new leader 'bounce' and they may call a snap election to cash in on the rise in support and deny Labour the majority to rule.
There will be a bounce, there always is, but how big it will be in the world outside of the Conservative Party members is up for debate as both Rishi Sunak as Chancellor and Liz Truss as Foreign Secretary are widely seen as irretrievably linked to Boris Johnson who's star dropped so far that he skipped going to the Women's European Cup Final for fear that he would be deafened by the crescendo of boo's aimed his way.
With every poll heavilly suggesting that it is going to be Prime Minister Truss in September, yesterday we had a taste of why the Tories voting in Truss as the third British female Prime Minister should be welcomed by Labour supporters because she may not want to be known as the continuity candidate but she has continued the policy of making major announcements only to U-Turn on them once it is pointed out that the policy is painfully flawed.
Monday evening she announced that one of the first things she would do once elected is pay government employees less in parts of the country where the cost of living is cheaper and save the Government £8.8bn.  
Obviously she went to bed that night feeling very chipper with herself but by breakfast, less than 12 hours later and after someone had obviously whispered into her ear that her policy would mean cutting the wages of Teachers, Nurses and Police and the public wouldn't accept that, she was on TV announcing that: 'Our hard-working front-line staff are the bedrock of society and there will be no proposal taken forward on regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers' and blamed journalists for 'wilful misrepresentation' of the policy, aka as reporting on the details in her own press release.
You know what fellow Labour supporters, i think with Liz Truss running the show and making policy, i think we will be alright and by alright i mean Keir Starmer should not stop looking at the carpet samples and wallpaper catalogues for number 10 because the only bounce she is likely to see is her suitcase going into the back of a taxi leaving Downing Street in a few short months.

REM - Automatic For The People

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musician's who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians and at number 14 we have Automatic For The People by REM  (1992).

REM had six other albums released before they hit their stride with Out of Time and then the even better Automatic For The People and then as soon as they hit it, they missed it again with the next seven but they were part of the early 90's along with many other great bands like Nirvana and Guns N Roses although they couldn't be further away from the guitar sound, their greatest hit, Losing my Religion, featured a mandolin but they were on MTV at the time between the louder, more shouty bands so are inexplicably linked with them in my mind.
Like most REM songs, the lyrics to their songs can be a bit weird, i would sing along and think that can't be right and look up the lyrics and discover actually, he really did say that but then Michael Stipe is wonderfully eccentric so it makes sense.
The song Everybody Hurts is one of the most downbeat songs i have ever heard but the video did give a friend and i the game of looking at people in stationary traffic and guessing what they are thinking so it would be she's thinking 'i wish i had turned on the light when i put my make up on this morning' or the old guy is thinking 'I wonder where the tree is that is growing the wood for my coffin?
Those two albums did bestow upon them the label of One of The Biggest Bands Around and made them household names but i can't help thinking that it they hadn't had that burst of inspiration over those 20 odd songs in the very early 90s they would be the band version of Tom Petty who everyone heard of but when he died, the conversation with most people went i know the name but buggered if i can name any of his songs.