2001: The Good Old Days? - July

One thing is for sure about 2001, I can remember things I was doing at this point in time based on the music that was in the charts.

We'll begin with the best record which is "Frontier Psychiatrist" by Avalanches. It's the record I enjoyed the most when listening through the records just now. It's a bizarre record that just works.

This month was more of a guitar heavy month which supports the prediction Ash made at the start of the year. There were some decent guitar records, "Million Miles Away" by The Offsrping, "Broke" by Beta Band, "Juxtapozed With U" by Super Furry Animals and "Heaven Is A Halfpipe" by OPM. The latter is much better than I remember it being. Unfortunately "Sometimes" by Ash wasn't one of the records I liked.

Dance wise it was looking pretty good. There was the chart topper "Another Chance" by Roger Sanchez which showed you could make a proper dance record and be hugely successful with it in those days. Ian Van Dahl had their only hit worth listening to "Castle's in the Sky" which I bought on vinyl at the time. 

There were only 2 dance records I didn't like. There was the vocal trance record "Innocente (Falling In Love)" by Delerium & Leigh Nash. The other one was "Devil's Nightmare" by Oxide & Neutrino. The So Solid Crew were credited with fueling the demise of UK garage but Oxide & Neutrino were members of the So Solid Crew and their own material was also a factor.

Whilst not strictly a garage record, you can sense a bit of garage inspiration on "Perfect Gentleman" by Wyclef Jean and it's a decent record. The only rap record in it's pure sense was "Purple Pills" by D12 and this was around the time I bought their album.

The best of the R&B records was "Dance For Me" by Sisqo which I remember doing the rounds on the music channels a lot at the time. The worst R&B record was the worst record for the month. It was "Loverboy" by Mariah Carey. It heavily sampled "Candy" by Cameo, a decent record, but had her screeching over the top and therefore ruining it.

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: 40%

Here's a look at the chart:

We have the joint best month to feature so far. Now we're half way through 2001 it's certainly looking better than any year that came after.