I'm back with some picks from my current playlist. Turn them up - especially the last!

Flares and Manchester!

Stone Roses - I Am The Resurrection

Manchester swagger. Ian Brown schooling Liam Gallagher. Epic guitars, epic bass, powerful drums. Epic Length. Flares. Daft hats. John Squire, Mani, Reni cooking up a storm. Ian Brown singing in tune. So good they don't even bother going for the chorus until two verses have passed and then the song goes into a four minute axe-led instrumental that is anything but guitar-wank. The dog's bollocks of the indie scene; it's vastness, virtuousity, and Manc cockiness always gets men of a certain age onto the dance-floor. Tim coughs and moves on.

Pele and Bobby Moore Swap Shirts 1970 Award

I Think I Love You - The Partridge Family

Like a shadow at the edge of town, a half-forgotten dream, this song dances on the far horizon of my earliest memories. David Cassidy was hip when I was young (along with the Osmonds, T-Rex, David Essex). He may have been a pretty boy in a hit TV series cashing in with a pop career, but, by god, it's a whacky song, weird and episodic, with a kick-ass chorus. A true pop classic.

Obligatory Stones Live Track!

Midnight Rambler - Live at Leeds 1971 (Sticky Fingers Special Edition)

Keef whacks a foot thru his amp, and stomps his way - in a dirty-blues fashion - through this Let It Bleed epic. Add Jagger giving a shit on his vocalisations, playing a blues harp like a blind cotton picker on double time. Chuck in Mick Taylor - the most under-rated of the cohort of great British blues guitarists - adding dextrous licks like a bastard. Yeah it's 13 minutes long but put it on when you walk the dog, when you're at the gym, when you're cooking; when you're trying to explain to your kids just what the hell rock music is about. The Stones at their best. The Greatest Rock n Roll Band in the world, indeed.

1966 or 2012 Award

The Noisettes - That Girl

How this song wasn't written, recorded in the 60's and then discovered a couple of years ago, I don't know. Unbelievable nostalgia bait it may be, but I love the retro feel, the boy and girl harmony, the impeccable taste, the aching hip vibe. 2012 FFS. Why aren't this group more famous? Took me ages to track this down. A party track.

Incongruous but Special Award

The Carpenters - Goodbye To Love

The Carpenters invent soft-rock, the power ballad! Typically gorgeous Carpenters song, sad, touching, well orchesterated. Karen's aching beautiful vocals. Richard's perfect arrangement. And then. And then. Tony Peluso fucks it all up with the guitar solo handed down from the rock gods themselves - heavy, fuzz toned, did-you-spill-my-pint hardness, providing the perfect foil to the Carpenters middle of the road class. It shouldn't work but it kicks ass! A fusion that, Rousseau-like, pushes human progress towards something better. A song that just pisses on all imitators that followed. Long Live Tony! Long Live Karen!

But for now this is my song. And it's goodbye to love.

Laters

DJ Tim