Tuesday, December 20, 2005

2005: My Highlights

These are going to be aggregated into one big Dot-Alt end of year review, but here are my unfettered highlights. No complaints about how there's too many grime things you haven't heard of, these are my personal highlights and thassit. Do add your own by all means.

*‘The Thick of It’ on BBC4. Apart from The Office this is the best sitcom ever made.
*Sky Mangel from Neighbours. Ridiculously hot anyway, she then compounds my love by becoming a rabid anti-capitalist activist on a mission to expose Paul ‘Satan’ Robinson, and namedrops Roots Manuva and TTC. Hot damn.
*‘Cesky Sen’ (aka Czech Dream) – it had Prague, it had anti-capitalist art stunts on a massive, flawed scale, and the wit and cynicism that comes from 50 years of oppression by Nazis and Commies respectively. What more do you want?
*Labour getting re-elected in May. Because otherwise we would have a Tory government now. And if you even think about saying ‘it would make no difference if we did, they’re all the same’ man will slap you in the chops with your own self-satisfied, self-imposed detachment from the political process. Like people never heard the expression ‘the lesser of two evils’, let alone understood it.
*England winning the Ashes and Liverpool winning the Champions League. The finales of the second test at Edgbaston and the Champions League were the most nail-biting sport I have ever seen. And as much as I’m a patriotophobe, it was exhilarating beating macho Aussies and smug Italians respectively.
*The TV Punorama. 'Slattery’s Not Included', 'Qaddafi, Duck', 'Jung Guns', 'Luther, Rinse, Repeat', 'Crimea River', 'The Long Good Furby', 'Balti Towers', 'Buffy the Christian Slater'; these made me laugh much more than most real TV programmes.
*Bossman dropping ‘God Save The Queen’ at FWD>>: an awful song to have as our national anthem, but in his Midas-like hands turned into pure brilliance. The two Essentials sets at FWD>> this winter were the two live highlights of the year by about a mile. Southman it’s about time we slew!!
*Five rewinds in a row of ‘Request Line’ during Tubby’s set at FWD>>, especially the desperate, needle-busting way it was done.
*The moment it felt like something had gone wrong with the speakers during Distance’s set at Dub Pressure – head-caning feedback from a bone-shaking PA. Like he’d been getting lessons from Sonic Youth.
*Saturday Looks Good To Me live. Their handclaps and shimmer-shimmer summer indie, performed, appropriately enough, in the summer (July) in the Brixton Windmill (the indiest venue in London).
*Big girl’s blouse-y indie. The Arcade Fire, Rufus Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens, Bright Eyes (back in January) – indie is best when it’s gay as a window.
*Why and 65dos moving on with their new LPs. The former to poppy indie, the latter to more sophisticated glitchy post-rock.
*‘One Thing’ by Amerie. Pop music don’t get no better. It makes me lose my grip on English grammar it’s that catchy.
*Dubstep’s explosion into my life. DMZ’s ‘Neverland’, Loefah’s mix of Skream’s ‘Monsoon’, the Vex’d album, all of these made my head rumble like an old washing machine in the best, best possible way.
*Heartbreakingly sweet r’n’b, chipmunked (it’s a verb now) into grime riddims: Wizzbit’s ‘Nicole’s Groove’, Ruff Sqwad’s ‘I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight’, Davinche's 'Sometimes' and Low Deep’s ‘Jedi’. These are actually probably my four favourite tunes of the year.
*That sorta swallowing sound on Young.Dot’s ‘Bazooka Riddim’. How did he do that?
*Skepta's catchphrases. ‘Oh my diddy!’, ‘it’s Skepta the African hotty’, ‘oooonnnnnghhhhhhh I would kick you ooooutttta!’, ‘Gowonen gowonen!’, ‘if you’re single, then mingle’. Most of these are lyrics not catchphrases, but when you hear things that often… we even started playing ‘count the diddys’ at FWD>> and got as high as five one night.
*‘Midnight Request Line’ by Skream gets its own asterisk. Undisputed tune of 2005.

2 Comments:

Blogger John said...

The things I am familiar with (Thick of it, Amerie, Rufus Wainwright) I love, the rest might as well be in Greek. But then I bought You Could Have It So Much Better the day it came out and am actually pretty much just that woman who wrote in that magazine incarnate,

I think you were forgetting Madonna's "Hung Up" when you said "1 Thing" is the song of the year though Dan.

4:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

you know they're starting the rerun of thick of it on bbc2 soon yes? You can watch it all over again.
I'm sick, I think I'm dying.
Jen

9:20 PM  

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