What was the best 1990 UK number one single?

1990 was a big music year for me. I was 16 going on 17, blossoming from a snot-nosed teenage misery into a slightly older snot-nosed teenage misery.

This mean I have OPINIONS about chart hits in 1990. That's OPINIONS in capital letters. In fact, I'm pretty sure I could grade all of 1990's UK number one singles without much thought at all.

Let's do it. A first-draft blog post, no editing, no research (apart from getting the list from Wikipedia). What were the best UK number one singles from 1990?

Let's go through every dang one of them. Firstly, we have Band Aid II's Do They Know It's Christmas? Bros and Sonia? Pretty terrible, although not as embarrassing as the third one in 2004. Then there was New Kids on the Block's Hangin' Tough, which sounded as tough as a floppy curtains fringe (which hadn't quite hit the mainstream just yet). A bad start to the year. 

Then we have a half-decent run of number one singles. Kylie Minogue turning into a career artist with Tears on My Pillow, a weeping Sinéad O'Connor being iconic on the Prince-penned Nothing Compares 2 U, and Norman Cook foreshadowing his 1990s dance music dominance on Beats International's Dub Be Good to Me. Let's put Sinead and Beats into the top tier, which I will discuss at the end of this blog post.

Remember, this is all first reactions. Looking through the list, typing these words, zero post-editing.

Ah, now here comes Snap!'s The Power, a strange, angular block-party jam with Turbo B looking like a president or something (pictured). I hated this track when it came out: so strange and discordant. I was wrong, of course. This genius track goes straight through to the top tier.

Madonna's Vogue was a huge hit, but it was no Like A Prayer. Adamski's Killer rocked my world in so many ways, and despite a pretty ropy album, this goes through to the top tier, as does England New Order's World in Motion which is the only acceptable football song alongside that crowd-chanty Pop Will Eat Itself track. 

From June onwards, it's a pretty rough run of number ones. Elton John's Sacrifice was the one where he started giving all his royalties to charity. Then came the novelty hits: Partners in Kryme's Turtle Power, which taught kids about the names of classical painters, and Bombalurina's Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini - Timmy Mallett later became a painter himself and has a website called Mallett's Pallet. No joke.

Is it one T or two Ts for Mallett? No time to check: this is all first-draft.

Those novelty hits were bad, but nowhere near as bad as The Steve Miller Band's The Joker, which is one of the worst singles of all time. I'm getting upset just thinking about it. Was this the one with the guitar wolf-whistle? I want this song to die.

This next bunch of number ones, taking us from September through to November, I kind of respect, but they're not for me. Maria McKee's Show Me Heaven is an undoubted tune, The Beautiful South's twee A Little Time has its own charm, and The Righteous Brothers rerelease of Unchained Melody was a chance to revisit one of history's greatest anthems. My mum loved that one. No top tier for any of these, though. 

That leaves us with Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby, only really good for karaoke, and Cliff Richard's Christmas number one Saviour's Day, which I don't think even God would listen to.

So that's the year. Most of the good stuff was in the first half of 1990. Now let's visit the top tier choices, and sort them into some kind of order. We had weepy Sinead and Norman's Beats International and angular Snap! and Adamski's Killer and New Order's football fun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can grade this lot without much thought.

The bestest UK number one singles from 1990, as decided on the spot by me.

5. Snap!: The Power 

4. England New Order: World In Motion

3. Beats International: Dub Be Good To Me

2. Sinead O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U 

1. Adamski's Killer 

There you have it. Killer was easily the winner: it gave me permission to become my own bedroom-based keyboard wizard. To live my life the way I wanted to be-ee-ee-eee, yeah! I hope I didn't make too many mistakes in this entirely unedited blog post. We should do this again: 1991, maybe. *hits publish*

Further Fats: The Designers Republic vs B12 Records: are the 1990s dead? (2007)

Further Fats: The doctor (Adamski) will see you now (2018)

Ten slices of shallow-fried Twitter whimsy

Twitter is a platform in which everyone can communicate with everyone else all of the time without any downsides whatsoever.

What follows are ten slices of shallow-fried whimsy lovingly copied-and-pasted from my Twitter account. Some if it reads as a useful self-help guide along the lines of The Power Of Now, How To Win Friends And Influence People or the Roland SH-101 Owner's Manual. Some of it reads like poetry along the lines of, er, poems and stuff.

I have given each tweet a header so you can perhaps make an index from it, like they do with proper books.

1. The food puns
Butter Living Through Chemistry. Meusli Has The Right To Children. Thymeless. Dubnobasswithmyheadman (where bass is a fish). Adventures Beyond The Ultrawurst. Endtrojuicing. Not sure where I'm going with this.

2. A question about 1996
Did the boy ever see his mom that weekend to tell her Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan?

3. Thoughts post-Brexit
Don't worry, everyone, we don't need Europe. Just stay in your towns, don't go anywhere, don't meet new people and don't buy anything. We didn't have the EU around the time of the Great Plague and everything was just fine.

4. Morning reflection 1
A grey morning in Manchester. Cold raindrops fall on puddled streets like polar bears in spandex, if polar bears were tiny and made of water, also forget the spandex, that's just a distraction tbh

5. A motivation
How to have a positive day:
- smile more
- do one kind thing
- pay a compliment
- open up the portal of d'ath krondor
- eat healthy
- live in the moment
- the tentacles, the tentacles, they burn
- be a good listener
- the void shall become all, ye wastrels of earth

6. A concern
I'm slightly worried that Antifa is short for Anti Fat Roland.

7. A dream for the future
It's splitting hairs, but I'd like to hear New Order's Mr Disco covered by Electronic.

8. Morning reflection 2
It is morning. The sun comes alive in the eastern sky and says its happy greetings. Hello trees. Hello fields. Hello squirrels. Hello sun! they call and wave. In the western sky, the moon dies a horrible death. Everyone laughs.

9. A simple wish
I wish Squarepusher was called Squidpusher and all of his promo shots were of him in back alleys selling squid.

10. The bird incident
Twitter, I forgot to tell you. A low-flying goose honked at me pretty aggressively the other day, so that's pretty much 2020 written off. How's YOUR week been?

Further Fats: Squarepusher's psychedelic number - could it send him (robert) miles off course? (2009)

Further Fats: Top ten ways to write a top ten music list (2012)

In praise of 808 State's Gorgeous (which is gorgeous)

Here is a theory.

If a band calls their album Gorgeous, then everyone thinks it's gorgeous. Witness the scrabble at the record shop counter as dribbling music fans demand to feast on something gorgeous. "Look at this gorgeous album!" you scream at the haggard shop assistant. "It's called Gorgeous!"

Here is how that plays out in practice.

808 State calls their album Gorgeous. People are kinda fine with it, but are still wedded to previous album ex:el. Meanwhile, album tracks Sexy Synthesiser and the UB40-sampling One In Ten sound odd in the long-receding wake of novelty chart rave. Select magazine calls Gorgeous "over-familiar" and gives it three stars.

I have to say, though: Gorgeous was MY album. It came out in 1993, a year in which I was absorbing all the techno like a big shape-throwing sponge. It was my musical 'coming of age' year. Synthesisers WERE sexy. Calling something gorgeous DID make it gorgeous. I even wore the album's t-shirt to ribbons.

There is so much to commend about this album. The sun-soaked steel drums of Plan 9. The deep forest samba of Contrique. The hippy indie vocals on Europa being the most 1990s thing ever. The Loop Guru-style stomp of Southern Cross. And Colony being an out-and-out banger.

Following up 1991's ex:el was tough. That album had Bjork and New Order's Bernard Sumner. While Ian MacCulloch's vocals on Gorgeous's Moses had a Sumner-esque waver to them, serving to remind you of the previous album, Moses was much more of an earworm than any vocal on ex:el.

On ex:el, In Yer Face and Cubik landed with such a thump in the charts, their reverberations were felt for years. Gorgeous was softer somehow, more mature, and there was nothing that would obviously trouble the top ten. This was nice because it felt like my secret underground album: an eccentric collection of post-Balearic bangers (new)built especially for my CD player.

Gorgeous is great, and I have an affection for this album that's probably tied into my 1993 musical awakening. But I reckon I'm right. It's underrated. It might not have sultry lift music or James Dean Bradfield, but it's full of phat sounds. With a ph. And when people talk about pH scales, they're talking about science. Gorgeous is scientifically great.

I demand we reassess this album's status in the pantheon of techno history. Go up to that record counter. Feast on something gorgeous. Dribble all over the "card machine broken" signs and flyers for student club nights. Make sure the shop assistant knows you're serious. "I want gorgeous," you chant. "I want gorgeous. I WANT GORGEOUS." Recite this blog post as security bundle you onto the pavement outside.

You want Gorgeous. Say it. SAY IT.

Further Fats: A good week for old LPs - and if you say 'what's an LP', I'll set fire to your mp3 player (2008)

Further Fats: Zombie'ites! Going underground with Transglobal and Banco De Gaia (2017)

You'll enjoy these endearing FruityLoops versions of banging electronic music tunes

There's a knob-twiddler on YouTube who's been posting FruityLoops version of New Order songs.

"Knob-twiddler" is not a technical term, but instead is a nickname for people who like to experiment making electronic music. "FruityLoops" is indeed a proper term, in fact it's music-making software that's enjoyed something of a renaissance thanks to its users including Avicii, Basshunter and Timmy Mallett.

I lied about Timmy Mallett.

The YouTube user is called Mkaymufc and they are a New Order nut. Because they are using presets and some pretty basic plug-ins, their instrumental YouTube covers of Bernard & chums are not as well produced as the originals. That's like comparing a crayon drawing of a warthog stuck to your bathroom cabinet to a real warthog furiously trying to mate with your bathroom sink's overflow pipehole. You'll never get it in, Porkles. YOU'LL NEVER GET IT IN.

However, what is delightful is what Mkaymufc does with their limitations: there are some pretty detailed covers here, full of heart. There's something so comforting about a Midi-quality bass drum in a era of over-production. And like a cat following a laser along a carpet, you can watch it play along from start to finish in FruityLoops (now called FL Studio).

Sometimes it doesn't work: Electronic's Soviet doesn't come across well. But I loved Some Distant Memory (that Oboe's so cute!). New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle is brilliant, as is their take on Orbital's Kein Trink Wasser. It was an Orbital tweet that brought these videos to my attention. Sometimes the drawing is as enchanting as the real thing.

Here's Bizarre Love Triangle. Enjoy.

🔘 A PRODUCTION COVER OF OUR SONG KEIN TRINK WASSER BY MKAYMUFC 🔘 pic.twitter.com/fy9b1CDYXU

— Orbital (@orbitalband) December 27, 2019

Bluedot's getting in my face for 2019

Bluedot Festival has just announced its 2019 line-up, and it's a corker.

Firstly, they've got Kraftwerk in 3D. Normally, the klanky kids are in 2D, spooling out onto the stage from a fax machine.

And then there's Jon Hopkins. He twists his knobs with great gusto, which makes me think he'd be great at juicing lemons.

They've booked the lads from 808 State. When they say “in your face”, I'm not sure if that means going in through the mouth or entering up through the nostrils. I'm about to find out.

And there's Anna Calvi and Omar Souleyman and Maxine flipping Peake. And New Order. We're sure going to have a “fine time” with these guys. Geddit?! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The festival is just a taxi ride away for me, and I feel like the luckiest festivaller in the cosmos. Check the festival out here.

Further Fats: Posts on this blog about Bluedot Festival

Music Order Remixed New (see what I did there)

Back in 1993, when Gabrielle rocked an eye patch, I became obsessed with New Order remixes. Even now, the version I remember of Ruined In A Day was a remix, not the original.

There's a new New Order remix project in town. This one is by Fritz von Runte who has already rejiggled Lily Allen and Bowie. The New Order Music Remixed album is a re-imagining of the band's 2015 album Music Complete. It's free. You just need to fire your email into the website and you're ready to go.

Remixes used to be all the rage, when we had a billion versions on each CD single. Some even became huge: Brimful of Asha, Born Slippy Nuxx, Everything But The Girl, all that awful Elvis nonsense. I've only ever done one remix. It was entirely unauthorised and you can find it here.

Heck, the best album of 2016 was a remix. Hey, if Gabrielle can remix her own face, it's good enough for the rest of us.

Swimming with the sharks in the (Basic) Channel

This week, I have been mostly listening to the relentless stabbing* of German techno.

Basic Channel's BCD-2 is well worth a listen if you like watery synths splashing on top of throbbing waves of shark-infested drum machines.

For the dedicated techno fan, this compilation of a decade or so of Basic Channel releases renders all those rare 12"s dead. But it's worth it for the inexorable attack of the bass drum. Go buy.

Off State-side now. Producer Mike Cadoo has reissued his 2005 internet album Shimmer And Fade in a real life album format.

Released under his Bitcrush moniker, the three ideas here are electronic noodling, pop sensibilities and live percussion. With guitars. Four ideas, then. Like an indie Lemon Jelly. Five.

It's a pleasant enough 70 minutes of listening, but I wish it didn't wear so many influences on its sleeve, whether it's Plaid, New Order, Boards Of Canada, early Verve, MBV, Lackluster or Proem. If he stuck to the drudging indie stuff, this could be magnificent.

Finally, holy child of Detroit Kenny Larkin (pictured) has made his Chronicles 12" series available on one double CD for the first time. Detroit's a little too smooth for me, but the packaging's pristine and you get a free mix too, so give the boy some love.

I'm not sure if Detroit has many sharks, so I can't end this post neatly by looping back to my original theme of infested waters. You'll have to write your own ending in the space below.
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*if you like relentless stabbing, there's a new documentary in which Justice slash up the face of a psycho fan. That's, like, soooo Dead Set.

What's that coming over the hill, apart from a lyrical cliché? Clue: not a monster

What's that coming over the hill, apart from a lyrical cliché? Is it a monster?

Niet. It's a three-headed dog. The Black Dog, in fact, with an album of sparkling ambient techno called Radio Scarecrow.

Amid a cacophony of remixes and rereleases (Book Of Dogma artwork remixed above), I reckon this is their first new material for a while. It lopes over that brow with certain intent: to be nostalgic, to be minimal, to be ever-so-slightly Detroit.

Word on the grapevine says the basslines are so intense, the band had to take scheduled breaks from recording.

Health and safety, you know.

The Black Dog dates way back, before music had invented all the notes, and so does Meat Beat Manifesto.

MBM is headed by arthritic vegan Jack Dangers, and they have thrown another LP of breakbeat-rolling distorto-dub in the shape of Autoimmune.

Dangers is meant to be a magpie when it comes to gathering samples, but it sounds like he's avoided nest nicking for a while considering how old some of these samples sound ("say whaaat" and the like).

Instead, why not befrend Bochum Welt's ROB (Robotic Operating Buddy)? This album is out now on the legendary Rephlex imprint.

Third track Saint (Dmix) is a spit for a New Order track, but don't let its synth-pop tendencies put you off.

ROB is an acidic Atariesque throwback to early Aphex and catchy analogue (kraft)work-outs.

I leave you with an mpSunday, where I slowly give away my music collection. It's a rather low-key single from Black Dog's Radio Scarecrow.

mpSunday: *plop* this mp3 has expired. Click here for the latest mpSunday.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: REPEAT REPEAT, IN SOUTHPORT

"I am the trigger for your gun" suggests a relationship that isn't exactly balanced*

Pancake Day, National Novel Writing Month, Healthy Eating Day, National Ketamine Month.

These are events to be respected and celebrated. Especially the last one.

That's why I'm standing on the steps of my palace, gleaming trumpet in hand, and declaring March the National Month Of The Whip.

I caught their barnstormer Trash on XFM whilst me and a few chums were bombing it down to Wales this weekend. Whilst there is every excuse to gnash teeth and rip clothes at the demise of a great radio station, there is every reason to be optimistic for The Whip.

The Whip are the best thing to come out of Manchester since Doves. They're like Gary Numan and Underworld falling into a blender, being poured into Apollo 440's cup, topped with Daft Punk's nuts, and drunk by New Order's Peter Hook.

You can boogie with them at The Warehouse Project on March 21st or buy their debut long-player X Marks Destination two weeks today.

Or you can ogle them in a cracking performance (whip, crack, geddit?) at last year's DPercussion in this here video link here.

I really should buy some fancier robes for announcements of national significance. These are covered in cat hairs.

*the actual line is "I have become the trigger for your gun" but this didn't fit into the space. Editorial decision. Or summat.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: RIP TONY, GRAAH UM

RIP Tony Wilson aka "Mr Manchester" 33AD to 2007AD inclusive

BBC News website: "Anthony Wilson, the music mogul behind some of Manchester's most successful bands, has died of cancer. The Salford-born entrepreneur, who founded Factory records, the label behind New Order and the Happy Mondays, was diagnosed last year. He died on Friday evening at the Christie Hospital surrounded by family."

I only managed a third of Anthony H Wilson's egobiography 24 Hour Party People before I flung it across the room. That'll learn that self-obsessed narcissist, I thought. You can only go so far when someone constantly refers to themself in the third person, as though they were some separate entity, like a god or an ancient spirit.

Fat Roland was not impressed.

But Wilson has a right to be arrogant. Today, the netosphere will be full of talk of his greatest achievements, including working with Richard and Judy, starring in the hilarious Cock And Bull Story and, of course, living with a former beauty queen.

Apparently, he also set up a club and a record label or something. I might have to google that one.

My iconic image of Wilson will be his early television career, hacking for Granada Reports then fronting the punktastic So It Goes.

My radio co-presenter (and now producer) Lee insists the role of a "mike jockey" is simply to be a talking box for the producers' genius ideas. He's right, of course. But Wilson held his own (oo-er) and you knew he was never an autocue slave.

I'm not sure of my Manchester credentials. I am a Mancunian, but I live in the posh bit. I was into Madchester, but at that time was just as likely to rave on to Candy Flip. I never loved the Hacienda; I only really hooked onto the place in its dying days.

That said, Wilson's passion created the Manchester I know, with its minimalist record covers, ill-fitting clothes and awkwardly placed pillars in clubs.

Rest in peace, Anthony H Wilson, Manchester's modern-day Jesus H Christ. Generous blog readers can give money to the Christie hospital by clicking here.