Wow 25 years since the last year of the 20th century, these were the tunes I was enjoying then:
York - The Awakening
Liquid Child - Diving Faces
Wow 25 years since the last year of the 20th century, these were the tunes I was enjoying then:
York - The Awakening
In April 2004 there were several candidates for best record which made picking one a tough choice. Whilst March has some good records, none of them would stand a chance at best record had they been released in April.
I've picked "Black Cherry" by Goldfrapp. I'm a big fan of Goldfrapp but "Black Cherry" is nowhere near my favourite tune of theirs. When comparing Goldfrapp to chart music in general though they're always likely to come out on top.
Just the one dance record gets full marks and it's a cheesy one which is "Look At Us" by Northern Heightz. I can't help but like it, it's a fun record. There's half marks for JX with "Restless", alright but no "Son of a Gun" or "There's Nothing I Won't Do".
The rest is AATW type nonsense and one of those AATW records is the worst record. Kelly Llorenna sang on "Set You Free" by N-Trance and therefore gave me a positive impression at first. Her solo hits though were terrible including her cover of "This Time I Know It's For Real". My positive impression of her had long gone by the time this came out.
In the rap and R&B world it came as no surprise at the time that Nerd would have a decent record with their comeback single "She Wants To Move". What did surprise me at the time was liking an Usher record in "Yeah". The production from Lil Jon no doubt helps as does his shouting of a few random words.
What was perhaps even more surprising was 2 decent records that came courtesy of Roger from Sister Sister. We had Roger himself aka Marques Houston with "Clubbin", I didn't actually realise he was Roger when I first heard it. Then we have "Badaboom" by B2k on which Marques Houston was a writer.
Simon from Blue went into music management and gave us a male/female vocal group called VS whose members included 18 year old future JLS member Marvin Humes. Sounds awful, but their debut single "Love You Like Mad" quickly became a guilty pleasure of mine.
No Doubt did a cover of "It's My Life" by Talk Talk which is one I've always considered to be pretty decent. We also have Kraftwerk in the charts with "Aerodynamik" which is a decent tune.
Here's a list of the records with the best on top, worst at the bottom and the good ones in green, OK ones in amber and rubbish ones in red (and in no particular order):
Score: 23%
Here's my weekly look at the Top 30 from 26 years ago. The plan is for these posts to go out at 17:30 on a Wednesday.
Here is the Top 40 in full.
Obviously some of the records will be the same as last week so therefore the review will be the same for these. I've indicated which ones are new so you can skip the others if you read last weeks post.
Once again my opinions are inevitably going to differ from other people, but I'm not trying to convince anyone something is good or rubbish, I'm simply giving my opinion.
So this is the top 30 from this week in 1998 with my verdict on each record:
Several DJs have retired over the years, but few if any turn out to be permanent retirements. However, one retirement that does seem permanent is DJ Sy who has just announced he is to retire from DJing with immediate effect. The reasons stated is because of how DJing has affected his hearing and he's finally had enough of driving up and down the country.
When you look at the first 20 years or so of the hardcore scene, pretty much the only constant throughout was DJ Sy. He was there in 1991 when hardcore rave really took off. Many of the other DJs who were around at the time either went down the jungle route when the scene split or never really lasted beyond that point in an upfront sense.
What differentiated DJ Sy from the other happy hardcore DJs was his scratching which earned him the nickname "The Scratchmaster". He formed Quosh Records with DJ Unknown which went on to become one of the longest running hardcore labels.
My first insight into DJ Sy as a person was when he was interviewed on Club@Vision at Dreamscape in 1998. As you might expect the subject of his scratching came up and one thing I remember him saying is that he'd also scratch when playing house sets which was quite unusual for that style of music.
He was also interviewed on the Helter Skelter Millennium Jam video and the main thing I remember him saying was that he wished the music was slower and pointed out how the house scene had taken off. This was a time when the popularity of hardcore was at an all time low and in the year 2000 Sy and Unknown did a garage remix of "Let Me Be Your Fantasy" by Baby D under the name Trick or Treat and enjoyed chart success with it.
There were really only 2 other major happy hardcore DJs who had been around for as long as DJ Sy by this point, there was Seduction who retired after Helter Skelter Energy 99 and Slipmatt who played his last hardcore set at Hardcore Heaven in early 2000 before moving onto house music. There were newer DJs such as Vinylgroover who also moved away from the hardcore scene. To me it seemed inevitable that DJ Sy would move on.
He didn't though, he carried on doing what he did and was seen as the old guy of the scene. He'd also got a reputation for cramming in several gigs in a single night and driving quickly to get between them.
In 2012 Quosh Records and his partnership with DJ Unknown came to an end, as did his time as an upfront hardcore DJ/producer. He still continued with the old skool sets though which would arguably make him more in demand.
Some years before he stopped making new music he got into property development. There's obviously much more money in that, so the music would of been more of a hobby than a source of income. Now it seems the enjoyment in that has gone for him which leads to him announcing his retirement.
Starsailor are one of those bands who have had more Top 40 hits than you might think. They've had 10 in total and this was number 7 for them. It was the follow up to "Silence Is Easy" which was their highest charting single to date.
The key difference here is that "Silence Is Easy" came before the album of the same name was released whereas this record came after said album was released. Given that album made number 2 in the album charts a lot of people would have already got the album.
They never got any higher than number 22 with their final 3 Top 40 hits which came at a time when indie music was getting more and more popular. Perhaps they peaked too soon.
Here's my weekly look at the Top 30 from 30 years ago. The plan is for these posts to go out at 17:30 on a Sunday.
Here is the Top 40 in full.
Obviously some of the records will be the same as last week so therefore the review will be the same for these. I've indicated which ones are new so you can skip the others if you read last weeks post.
Once again my opinions are inevitably going to differ from other people, but I'm not trying to convince anyone something is good or rubbish, I'm simply giving my opinion.
So this is the top 30 from this week in 1994 with my verdict on each record: