The great Top 52 Album Tweetathon

Just over a month ago some of the finest musical minds on twitter (and me, @boxofpeppers) compiled their Top 50 album lists.

I thought you might like to see my list. Obviously it's just a snapshot. I've already changed my mind about some of the albums that made the list, along with some of the ones that missed out (how could I have forgotten about 'Tapestry' for example) and as I shortlisted 52 albums I've shown all 52, so you can see the two that just missed out.

There's also a longlist, which I may (or may not) include in a blog one day. The photograph above shows one batch of albums considered for movement from long to shortlist. (Why not see how many of them you can name!)

1	Back in your life	Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers
2	Grand Prix	Teenage Fanclub
3	Metamatic	John Foxx
4	Hunky Dory	David Bowie
5	Trans-Europe Express	Kraftwerk
6	Sign 'o' The Times	Prince
7	London Calling	The Clash
8	My Beauty	Kevin Rowland
9	Tin Drum	Japan
10	Queen of Denmark	John Grant
11	Travelogue	The Human League
12	For your pleasure	Roxy Music
13	808s and Heartbreak	Kanye West
14	The Sophtware Slump	Grandaddy
15	Moon Safari	Air
16	Songs to remember	Scritti Politti
17	Out of the blue	Electric Light Orchestra
18	Closer	Joy Division
19	Jordan:The Comeback	Prefab Sprout
20	Pet Sounds	The Beach Boys
21	Songs from Northern Britain	Teenage Fanclub
22	The Man Machine	Kraftwerk
23	I'm wide awake it's morning	Bright Eyes
24	Yoshimi battles the pink robots	The Flaming lips
25	Construction time again	Depeche Mode
26	Germfree Adolescents	X-Ray Spex
27	Roxy Music	Roxy Music
28	Upstairs at Eric's	Yazoo
29	Modern Lovers Live	Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers
30	Translucence	Poly Styrene
31	Thunder, Lightning, Strike	The Go Team
32	Abbey Road	The Beatles
33	Tupelo Honey	Van Morrison
34	The Smiths	The Smiths
35	Salutation Road	Martin Stephenson and The Daintees
36	Relations	Kathryn Williams
37	Licensed to Ill	The Beastie Boys
38	Sandinista	The Clash
39	Dummy	Portishead
40	Raising Hell	Run DMC
41	Loss	Mull Historical Society
42	The Lamb lies down on Broadway	Genesis
43	Pauline Murray and The Invisible Girls	Pauline Murray and The Invisible Girls
44	The age of plastic	The Buggles
45	69 Love Songs	The Magnetic Fields
46	Before and after science	Brian Eno
47	Street  Sounds NY v LA Beats	Various
48	New Wave	The Auteurs
49	3 feet high and rising	De La Soul
50	Tron Legacy (soundtrack)	Daft Punk
51	Sound-on-sound	Bill Nelson's Red Noise
52	The Archandroid	Janelle Monae

500 singles on a snowy night in Durham

Greetings from the frozen north. I’ve got a confession to make - it’s been over two months since my last 500 singles blog posting. If you find that kind of wait unacceptable, then you can find me on twitter (@boxofpeppers) where I ramble on a far more frequent basis.

To make amends here’s a picture of a classic single that features on our page 12 tonight.

We’re going to concentrate on page 12  this time (from The Rubinoos to Spandau Ballet –  singles numbered 363 to 395)

Page 12 goes pretty much as follows;

The Rubinoos – I think we’re alone now and Rock and Roll is dead – I was attracted to The Rubinoos for one reason and one reason only, their records appeared on the same Beserkeley label as Jonathan Richman

Saxon – Wheels of Steel – You can’t say this list isn’t varied!

Scritti Politti – The Sweetest Girl – quite simply one of the best pop singles ever recorded

The Scaffold – Thank U very much – pre-dating the kind of textspeak favoured by Prince almost 20 years later (note also the brief departure from alphabetical order here as seen on the original list)

Jack Scott – My true love – quite simply another one of the best pop singles ever recorded and boasting a b-side (Leroy) that most artists can only dream of as an a-side

Neil Sedaka – Happy birthday sweet sixteen

The Seekers – The carnival is over – the kind of thing that was considered ‘folk music’ back then (when it was really unfashionable to be considered as such!)

The Shadows - Mary Anne and Wonderful land – watch out for a version of Apache by The Sugarhill Gang on the next page

Shakatak – Easier said than done – probably haven’t listened to this single since that day 27 years ago

Shalamar – Friends and There it is (still known as ‘Ferret ears’ around these parts)

Sandie Shaw – (There’s) always something there to remind me

Shock – Angel Face – check out the very 1980 cover below (original by The Gl****r band)

Simple Minds – Chelsea Girl – at this point they were simply brilliant

Skids – Working for the yankee dollar – not their best by any means, but pretty good all the same

Sky – Cannonball – see comment re Shakatak above

Slade – Everyday and Merry Xmas everybody

Slik – Forever and ever and Requiem – Midge never really bettered these two single as far as I’m concerned!

Slow children – spring in fialta – just found it again on the Youtube, a classic lost early 80s single http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGod9lHmHmc if you’re particularly interested

The Smiths – This Charming man and What difference does it make? – it tends to be forgotten now but The Smiths were a great pop band

Sniff ‘n’ the tears – Driver’s seat and Driver’s seat (remix) – with the benefit of hindsight this seems a bit like cheating

Snips – 9 o’clock – a sort of power-poppy kind of thing struggling its way to 1500 YouTube views

Soft Cell – Soul inside, What and Where the heart is – What is a classic pop single, the other two aren’t (sorry Marc and David). Not sure if it was an urban myth, but we heard that Soft Cell’s producer Mike Thorne was the son of our primary school teacher from Chester Road school in Sunderland (just googled him and he was actually born in Sunderland – maybe it’s true!)

Soul Sonic Force – Planet Rock – possibly the most influential single on this page? An classic early hip-hop tune

Spandau Ballet – Chant No. 1 – in many ways time hasn’t been to kind to Spandau Ballet and I wanted to prove time wrong so I listened again to this track and it turns out that time was probably right all along (sorry boys – did enjoy your court case though!)

 Soundtrack to this post  - 'Writer's block' by Peter Bjorn and John

My favourite 50 films

Taking a brief break from the 500 singles and moving swiftly to my 50 favourite films. Inspired  to make my selection by a small and dedicated band of twitter geeks (tweeks?) here are my favourite 50 films, adhering strictly to the rule of no more than two films by the same director.

Please note that this is my list dated 24th November 2012 - ask me tomorrow and you may get a completely different answer!

According to my statistics the greatest year for film was 2004 with 7 entries (who knew?!) and the 1930s and the 1950s have no entries at all. Oh, and the whole of the top three are black and white.

1.       Metropolis (1927) – Fritz Lang

2.       Young Frankenstein (1974) – Mel Brooks

3.       It’s a wonderful life (1946) – Frank Capra

4.       Amelie (2001) – Jean-Pierre Jeunet

5.       Casshern (2004) – Kazuaki Kiriya

6.       Pan’s labyrinth (2006) – Guillermo del Toro

7.       Barry Lyndon (1975) – Stanley Kubrick

8.       Spirited away (2001) - Hayao Miyazaki

9.       Walk the line (2005) – James Mangold

10.   2001 : A space odyssey (1968) – Stanley Kubrick

11.   The Godfather Part 2 (1974) – Francis Ford Coppola

12.   House of flying daggers (2004) – Yimou Zhang

13.   Akira (1988) – Katsuhiro Otomo

14.   Team America : World Police (2004) – Trey Parker

15.   Blade Runner (1982) – Ridley Scott

16.   The Empire strikes back (1980) – Irvin Kershner

17.   1492 Conquest of paradise (1992) – Ridley Scott

18.   Ferris Bueller’s day off (1986) – John Hughes

19.   O brother, where art thou (2000) – Joel Coen

20.   Bonnie and Clyde (1967) – Arthur Penn

21.   Princess Mononoke (1997) – Hayao Miyazaki

22.   The Godfather (1972) – Francis Ford Coppola

23.   The Incredibles (2004) – Brad Bird

24.   The Untouchables (1987) – Brian de Palma

25.   The abyss (1989) – James Cameron

26.   Cinema Paradiso (1988) – Giuseppe Tornatore

27.   La vie en rose (2007) – Olivier Dahan

28.   The day after tomorrow (2004) – Roland Emmerich

29.   A.I. : Artificial Intelligence (2001) – Steven Spielberg

30.   A very long engagement (2004) - Jean-Pierre Jeunet

31.   Shallow Grave (1994) – Danny Boyle

32.   Say anything (1989) – Cameron Crowe

33.   Uncle Buck (1989) – John Hughes

34.   Belleville Rendezvous (2003) – Sylvain Chomet

35.   Edward Scissorhands (1990) – Tim Burton

36.   This is Spinal Tap (1984) – Rob Reiner

37.   Le diner de cons (1998) – Francis Veber

38.   Hellboy (2004) - Guillermo del Toro

39.   2012 (2009) - Roland Emmerich

40.   Being there (1979) – Hal Ashby

41.   The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) – Wes Anderson

42.   Dune (1984) – David Lynch

43.   Eraserhead (1977) – David Lynch

44.   Avatar (2009) – James Cameron

45.   The time machine (1960) – George Pal

46.   Westworld (1973) – Michael Crichton

47.   Almost famous (2000) – Cameron Crowe

48.   Carry on Screaming (1966) – Gerald Thomas

49.   The jungle book (1967) – Wolfgang Reitherman

50.   Heat (1995) – Michael Mann