Absolutely ridiculous song with stupid lyrics and an annoying beat.

Yet for all its faults, it is brilliant. As catchy as shingles and guaranteed to make even the most boring person in the world start dancing like a lunatic. (SC)

The Avalanches -- Electricity

A band who seemed to have been forgotten about since the release of their brilliant debut album a few months back.

This is a song which captures the mood of the album, a laid-back cut of groove. Don't know what laid-back cut of groove means but it sounded good when I wrote it. (SC)

Bomfunk MC'S -- Super Electric

Lots of funny voice effects and a bloke singing just like Brian Harvey used to in E17-- sort of trying to be hard but failing. That said, this is a pretty good tune with plenty of casio keyboard thrown in for 80's lovers everywhere. (SC)

Tweenies -- I Believe In Christmas

Christmas, don't you just love it. Log fires, turkey sandwiches, mince pies, uncles who strip down to their underwear at drunken late night parties.

The Tweenies have added to our festive enjoyment with a rip-roaring tune about reindeers singing and dreams coming true. Brilliant for the simple reason that without these daft novelty songs Christmas just wouldn't be the same. (SC)

Marillion -- Between You And Me/Map Of The World

This was given to me not by a record company but by a lad I play football with; a City fan but despite that a nice bloke. The band asked their fans to pay for their new record before it was even recorded. An amazing 12,700 people paid up front.

Then the band mailed out two copies of the single to every person who ordered it and asked the fans to pass the extra one on to either the local paper or radio station, to gain a bit of extra publicity.

A good, innovative idea which defenitely deserves a few column inches. But what is the music like?

Pretty good actually and certainly better than a lot of stuff in the charts. The best is definitely first song Between You And Me, a sprawling rocker. Map Of The World isn't as good, sounding a little bit wimpy. However, there's still a good melody and it's probably a grower.

There's also a live version of Quartz and the excellently-titled If My Heart Were A Ball It Would Roll Uphill.. (SC)

The Vibrators -- Punks Sonic Gormandizers LIVE @ cbgb's 5-5-2000

Everyone who knows me will no doubt agree that I like a tasty ham salad buttie, but how could I enjoy my sandwich if I found the bread to be full of mould and no pepper to give the sarnie some bite? Well I suppose you could use this as an analogy for the Vibrators reliving their past in this one track, 21 song CD recorded live in front of a bunch of sandwich starved punk kids.

The band give away their combined age of 800 years with static punk rock, although "Tired of living with you" was pure power punk, but as my gran always said "anything's better than Craig David."

This is one for the fans I'm sure but sticking all your songs together as one long track kind of ruins the point of CDs, or is that anarchy. (NT)