Slide Away

It came as a sobering realistion today that many of my favourite records are 15 years old this year.

Albums from 1997 that rank among my favourites or that otherwise had a big effect on me at the time include:

Radiator - Super Furry Animals
OK Computer - Radiohead
Tellin' Stories - The Charlatans
Do It Yourself - The Seahorses
Be Here Now - Oasis
Urban Hymns - The Verve
In It For The Money - Supergrass
Marchin' Already - Ocean Colour Scene
Vanishing Point - Primal Scream
Dig Your Own Hole - The Chemical Brothers
The Fat of The Land - The Prodigy
Heavy Soul - Paul Weller
Flaming Pie - Paul McCartney
When I Was Born For The Seventh Time - Cornershop
The Colour and The Shape - Foo Fighters
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space - Spiritualized
Young Team - Mogwai
Songs From Northern Britain - Teenage Fanclub
Blur - Blur
Stupid Stupid Stupid - Black Grape
Good Feeling - Travis
Portishead - Portishead
Attack of the Grey Lantern - Mansun

And those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head in 10 minutes.

Quite easily the best year of music in my lifetime. We'll never see its like again...

Desert Island Discs

As seen at Cedric M. Kippers' Magically Bored - The Desert Island Discs challenge.

Rule number 1. You only have room for 25 albums.

Rule number 2. You can only name one album per band.

Rule number 3. They have to be named in order.

Rule number 4. Greatest Hits or compilations are invalid.

So without further ado (or any ado at all) here is the list of 25 records I'd take with me to listen to until the end of my days.

25 - The Cooper Temple Clause - See This Through and Leave

24 - Supergrass - In It For The Money

23 - Gomez - Liquid Skin

22 - Powderfinger - Vulture Street

21 - The Charlatans - The Charlatans

20 - Primal Scream - Exterminator

19 - Michael Jackson - Thriller

18 - The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead

17 - The Jam - Sound Affects

16 - Elbow - ASleep In The Back

15 - The Libertines - Up The Bracket

14 - Radiohead - OK Computer

13 - Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

12 - The Doors - The Doors

11 - The Bluetones - Return To The Last Chance Saloon

10 - The Coral - The Coral

9 - Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

8 - John Lennon - Imagine

7 - Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

6 - Stereophonics - Word Gets Around

5 - Oasis - Definitely Maybe

4 - The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

3 - Super Furry Animals - Radiator

2 - Nirvana - Nevermind

1 - The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

This isn't the list of my 25 favourite albums - there would be at least another six Beatles albums, and others by Nirvana, Oasis, The Stone Roses and Radiohead if it was. I couldn't elevate a single Rolling Stones album, or any of the records by Pink Floyd, The Who, The Jimi Hendrix Experience or David Bowie to my top 25, and even Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse, Coldplay and The Verve fail to make the cut.

Now, I throw the challenge open to everyone else - what would be the 25 records you would take with you to a desert island?

My Favourite Albums: Number 3: Super Furry Animals - Radiator

The two records that top the list of my favourite albums - The Stone Roses' debut and Nirvana's Nevermind - are amongst those that regularly feature in magazine polls to determine the greatest record of all time.

But the third album on my list rarely features, if at all. I seem to remember it appearing in Q's list of the best albums of the magazine's lifetime, and possibly in the best British albums ever. But it is by no means regarded by the Great British Public as one of the must-have records, a defining piece of art the equal of The Beatles', Pink Floyd's and Bob Dylan's masterpieces.

It should be.

Drawing comparisons between Super Furry Animals' second album - released in 1997 as the follow-up to Fuzzy Logic - and other records is difficult, as it contains so may varied influences that should be almost incompatible.

There are nods to 70s prog rock, with electric pianos, mellotrones and string sections. There are sections of buzzsaw guitar work, referencing punk's finest. There are short bursts of techno beats welded with four-part harmonies and horn sections.

But most of all, there are the songs. I've said before that Gruff Rhys is one of my favourite lyricists, a wayward genius who has never been given the recognition his abilities so richly deserve.

Comparing Radiator to Fuzzy Logic is almost akin to comparing Sgt Pepper with Help! - unquestionably the same band, but elevated to a different plane entirely.

The album is, on first listen, a confusing hotch-potch that sounds as though it will last forever - yet it clocks in at well under an hour (I think it's nearer 45 mins, if that, but don't have it to hand to check at the moment).

And despite sounding at times as though it's a prog epic, it's packed with blisteringly brilliant singles - The International Language of Screaming, Demons, She's Got Spies, Play It Cool and Hermann Loves Pauline.

The topics covered across the songs are as off-the-wall as they are varied - Che Guevara's asthma; Marie Curie; the mythical Puerto Rican goat-eating monster chupacabras; Sierra Leon's Valentine Strasser, who became the world's youngest head of state when he staged a military coup; and Albert Einstein's parents (the titular Hermann and Pauline).

And amongst all the chaos, the Welsh language song Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir, the electronic sub-bass and the screaming over the fade-out to The International Language of Screaming, there are subtle nuances that continue to reveal themselves 12 years after the record was released. There are no real gaps between the songs, though at times the interludes are audible only on headphones or with the volume set high on the stereo. And in these interludes are lost melodies, miniature vignettes added to ensure that Radiator stands head and shoulders above its fellow post-Britpop records.

Words can scarcely do this record justice. The band have never come close to matching it and, in my opinion, only two bands have ever bettered it (and The Beatles aren't one of them).

Videos can't really catpure the essence of the album, but here's an attempt with the video for the majestic Demons.

My Favourite Albums: Number 2: Nirvana - Nevermind

In the 17 years since its release, I'd imagine more has been written about Nirvana, Nevermind and Kurt Cobain than any other combination of band, album and songwriter from the 1990s.

Many of these pieces focus on Cobain himself - his misery, his inability to deal with fame, and his suicide at the age of 27.

What is often overlooked is the music - a tragically small collection of just three studio albums, two live recordings and a rarities compilation.

As a teenage Britpop fan, I was fairly dismissive of Nirvana and their music, and the Grunge v Britpop debate, at least at my school, was akin to a modern retelling of the Mods v Rockers wars of the 1960s, albeit without the scooters, violence and Sting.

I only really gave Nirvana a chance in the few months between leaving school and starting university. And I was immediately enamoured.

As I'm sure is the case with many, perhaps even most, Nirvana fans, my introduction to the band was Nevermind. And the introduction to Nevermind is Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Again, many words have been used to describe the album's lead single - bombastic, thunderous, vitriolic.

But, above all else, Smells Like Teen Spirit is an extraordinary pop song.

Kurt Cobain was an exceptional writer of pop songs and pop hooks, and Nevermind is dripping in them. Smells Like Teen Spirit may be the best known - thanks also to Cobain's nihilistic roar and buzzsaw guitar and Dave Grohl's furious double drum detonations - but the opening half of the record would stand the test of time alongside any other single side of vinyl ever pressed.

In Bloom continues with the thunderous drums and dark imagery, before making way for the more sedate Come As You Are.

Though Nevermind is defined by the growl of its louder tracks, it is on the quieter songs that the other side of Kurt Cobain, as a crafter of mature and thought-provoking lyrics and melodies, shows itself. Polly, narrated by a kidnapper/torturer is a glimpse into its writer's dark side, while closing track Something In The Way puts into music the life of a heroin addict.

Metal, rock, pop - whatever Nevermind is, it stands as one of, if not THE defining album of the 1990s.

Rather than leave you with the obvious Smells Like Teen Spirit, here's the video for In Bloom:

My Favourite Albums: Number 1: The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

There are some records that define certain years for me - Oasis' Definitely Maybe was the soundtrack to 1996 for me, despite being two years old at that point.

There are records that I heard early on in my musical development, and which acted as stepping stones into new worlds - an appreciation of Paul Weller's solo work acted as a starting point for my forays into punk, soul and r&b.

And there are records that have had such a cultural impact that they are inescapable, and are as much a part of living in Britain as the Queen, Coronation Street and Tetley's tea.

But my favourite album is none of these. It doesn't define any specific point in my life, having remained a constant source of joy since the first time I heard it. It never encouraged me to find out more about any other bands, primarily because I was already well versed in the works of The Beatles, The Jam and The Rolling Stones by the time I came to The Stone Roses.

And while The Stone Roses is most definitely a British album - and Her Majesty is the inspiration for Elizabeth My Dear - the Roses never reached the heights scaled by Oasis and Blur in their wake.

But, since the age of 18, I've been unmoved in my assertion that The Stone Roses' debut album is the greatest ever made. Given that I regard The Beatles as the greatest band ever, it's a bold statement.

I was only nine when the album was released in 1989, and I didn't really discover it until it was almost 10 years old. It was actually the third Roses album I acquired, having received a copy of the compilation The Complete Stone Roses as a birthday present and purchased a second-hand copy of Second Coming from the magnificent Dundee institution that is Groucho's.

The Stone Roses grabbed me immediately. The opening bass rumble and nimble finger-picking of I Wanna Be Adored's intro sets the scene, and even Ian Brown's foghorn voice can't impact on vintage pre-Britpop psychedelia.

I could attempt to explain why each of the songs on the album is a classic (with the possible exception of Don't Stop - just Waterfall played backwards with new lyrics whispered over the top), or why the whole package transcends the sum of its parts.

But I can't, and I won't attempt to. All I can really do is urge you all to buy a copy of the album and give it a listen. And I'll leave you with the album's final track, the euphoric, climactic eight-minute burst that is I Am The Resurrection.