"You've got to be the best, you've got to change the world & use this chance to be heard"

So, the good folks at FASCIST have been on to me & the time has come to nail down the 10 albums that I'm permitted to take with me on my exploratory mission to Saturn. Obviously it's going to be a long voyage (some 1300 million km, fact fans!) so I need to choose with great care. I also have one rule to stick to: They must all be "proper" studio albums except for one that may be a compilation (if I so desire).

First I narrowed it down to a shortlist of 25, it's still at 14 so I'll have to make the toughest choices right now whilst I'm listing them.

Consider this, the final list isn't actually my 10 favourite albums. It's a group of albums that I love that will hopefully fulfil most of my listening needs whilst I'm tootling through the cold, dark solar system.

Right time to make some decisions....

One more self imposed rule is I don't want to take more than one album by any particular artist.
This leads to some more tricky choices. In the case of the first album on the list this was very difficult indeed. In the end the "skip factor" did the work for me.
So I'll be taking this...


Radiohead - OK Computer
Airbag
Paranoid android
Subterrenean homesick alien
Exit music (for a film)
Let down
Karma police
Fitter happier
Electioneering
Climbing up the walls
No surprises
Lucky
The tourist

I know everybody loves it & that makes it a very predictable choice but everybody loves it because it's chuffing well ace! The Bends is also top notch but I can only see Fitter Happier doing my head in, whereas there's 2 or 3 on The Bends that would have me reaching for the skip button.
"Paranoid android" is one of my favourite pieces of music ever, "Karma police" is a great singalong song, as is "Exit music" and just picture yourself sitting in your spaceship, dashing across the solar system with Thom Yorke's unmistakable voice urging you "Hey man slow down". Nice.

I would imagine some pretty dark emotions would come to the fore when on such a long period of solitude, so I'd naturally want something very dark indeed, something filled with despair, rage & vitriol. Cue Rolf: D'you know what it is yet?


Manic street preachers - The holy bible
Yes
Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforoneday-
it'sworldwouldfallapart
Of walking abortion
She is suffering
Archives of pain
Revol
4st 7lbs
Mausoleum
Faster
This is yesterday
Die in the summertime
The intense humming of evil
PCP

"Faster" rocks like a bastard, "Archives of pain" has quite possibly the dirtiest bassline ever heard & the whole album has a terrible beauty in a lyrical sense.
also given the amount of time I'll be listening to it, I might just nail some of the words that I've never got instead of screaming out some undeterminable high speed babble!

There must be a rose to The Holy Bible's thorn though...


ABC - The lexicon of love
Show me
Poison arrow
Many happy returns
Tears are not enough
Valentine's Day
The look of love (part 1)
Date stamp
All of my heart
4 ever 2 gether
The look of love (part 4)

A sumptuous, luxurious, rich listen. Solid gold pop music from a bygone day.
The words "timeless" & "classic" are oft overused when talking of great albums. Not in this case.
Every track is a work of clever, earworming beauty making it one of the easier choices I had to make.

Believe it or not, there was once a time when the creators of my next choice did not have scorn poured upon them at every opportunity. A time before the NME & the like decided they were to be blackballed. A time before the horrors of "Step on my old size nines" or "Handbags & gladrags". That time was 1997, the album was...


Stereophonics - Word gets around
A thousand trees
Looks like Chaplin
More life in a tramp's vest
Local boy in the photograph
Traffic
Not up to you
Check my eyelids for holes
Same size feet
Last of the big time drinkers
Goldfish bowl
Too many sandwiches
Billy Davey's daughter

This album is bristling with the kind of raw energy commonly found on a debut, but it's the lyrical themes of small town life that set it apart. It's all real life with not a sniff of Hollywood or even London. It's the old lonely fella who gets a soaking in "Looks like Chaplin" or the wedding reception from "Too many sandwiches" which every working class Brit has definitely attended or the exasperated market trader of "More life in a tramp's vest". It's 12 stories set to a good old fashioned rock soundtrack & Kelly Jones' voice is a wonderfully expressive instrument on Word Gets Around, free of the affectations that spoil some of the more recent stuff.
"Same size feet" is a huge favourite of mine & a song I adore singing.

I like to rock & I like stories. What if there were an album that was one big long story & it rocked like there was no tomorrow. If only such a thing existed...
ooh, hang on...

Green Day - American idiot
American idiot
Jesus of suburbia
Holiday
Boulevard of broken dreams
Are we the waiting?
St. Jimmy
Give me Novocaine
She's a rebel
Extraordinary girl
Letterbomb
Wake me up when September ends
Homecoming
Whatsername

If you'd had said to me a year ago that I'd be taking a Green Day album to Saturn with me as part of my ten, I would have guffawed at your foolishness, I would have peeded my pants at the very suggestion & I would have called the men in white coats to attend to you in your delusional state.
How much I love this album still defies belief. I've gone on about it many times on these pages so I won't blather on endlessly. I'll just say that I still regularly listen to it & it's always a joy.
Always.

Now I've always been partial to music that tugs at my heartstrings. Music that makes me cry. Music to pine for somebody by. For me, Flash, one person does that infinitely better than anybody else.
It's almost like he lived in my head without me noticing when he wrote this...

Easyworld - Kill the last romantic
Kill the last romantic
2nd Amendment
Drive
'Til the day
A lot of miles from home
Celebritykiller
All I can remember
Tonight
When you come back I won't be here
Saddest song
You have been here
Goodnight

I don't know what to say about this that I haven't said before. It's pure, raw emotional resonance moves me in a way that nothing else ever has (the only thing that comes close is it's predecessor "This is where I stand", which did have an Ok Computer/ The bends type battle but lost) to the extent that sometimes it hits raw nerves with such quiet power that I wish I'd never heard of it. I have though and I would never be without it (though I could live without "Celebritykiller"). If anyone were to take a chance on one recommendation from me, I would say please let it be "Kill the last romantic".

On top of all that Mr. David Ford is a gentleman & a scholar.

Now for a strange beast indeed...

Mansun - Six
Six
Negative
Shotgun
Inverse Midas
Anti-everything
Fall out
Serotonin
Cancer
Witness to a murder
Television
Special/Blown it (Delete as appropriate)
Legacy
Being a girl

It's all a bit loopy. 7 of it's 13 tracks are over 6 minutes long. It's chock full of invention. It's wonderful. The 8 minute title track offers a window into what's in store. This album speaks to me, often in a language I don't yet understand, but it speaks to me all the same. Tom Baker speaks to me in the narrated plop that is "Witness to a murder", the albums only duff moment. "Cancer" is the album in microcosm, sometimes it's all a bit too much or it feels like it's going on for far too long but then sometimes you swim in it & sometimes mermaids join you during the exquisite piano breakdown.

I miss Mansun, they were special.

I really couldn't go without my favourite bedtime album now, could I?

The Divine Comedy - Regeneration
Timestretched
Bad ambassador
Perfect lovesong
Note to self
Lost property
Eye of the needle
Love what you do
Dumb it down
Mastermind
Regeneration
The beauty regime

It took me about 3 years before I grew to love this album & I still don't know why.
I don't know how to ably describe it's worth either. It has captured me with it's understated lusciousness. "Bad ambassador" & "perfect lovesong" are as good a pop singles as you will ever hear, "Eye of the needle" has an unexplainable eerie quality to it & "Mastermind" could be retitled Masterpiece with no argument from me. Lyrically the album is a treasure trove & "Lost property" contains some of my favourite lines I've ever heard. I'm a big fan of Neil Hannon & have always liked The Divine Comedy but the absence of anything frivolous like "National express", the sleek production of Nigel Godrich & the haunting arrangements makes "Regeneration" stand head & shoulders above his other work.


Now then I'm gonna be in space & space is big, right?
Well I've got something even bigger...

Muse - Absolution
Intro
Apocalypse please
Time is running out
Sing for absolution
Stockholm syndrome
Falling away with you
Interlude
Hysteria
Blackout
Butterflies & hurricanes
The small print
Endlessly
Thoughts of a dying atheist
Ruled by secrecy

Oh how I adore Muse! And my god do I love "Absolution"? Damn straight, I do! It's my favourite album of the 21st century!
No one else does what Muse do, no one else could make an album so stratospherically huge but still fill it with killer tunes. And the tunes are there for all to hear; "Time is running out" is faultless, right down to the "Ooh ooh ooh"s, "Butterflies & hurricanes" somehow marries the classical & the ROCK with frightening accuracy, "Thoughts of a dying atheist" is as ace as it's title is not, "Hysteria" is chuffing rampant & as for "Stockholm syndrome", imagine riding the universe's biggest roller coaster with 240 volts wired through you & the dozen enchanted electric guitars that are riding with you just as you crash into the most powerful drum kit ever conceived while some deranged west country imp tinkles his piano & bellows directly into your brain.
Imagine that? Still not even close.
"Absolution" is a masterclass in musicianship so huge that I don't even mind that the lyrics are mostly bobbins.

And finally...
Well you didn't think I'd go without them did you?
Yes it's Depeche Mode but which one?
It came down to a straight fight between "Violator" & "Songs of faith & devotion", & blimey, what a fight!
"Songs of faith & devotion" took it on points after 12 rounds but could I really go all the way to Saturn without "Enjoy the Silence"?
No. No. No. No. NO!
So I went for this...

Depeche Mode - The Singles 86>98
Stripped
A question of lust
A question of time
Strangelove
Never let me down again
Behind the wheel
Personal Jesus
Enjoy the silence
Policy of truth
World in my eyes
I feel you
Walking in my shoes
Condemnation
In your room
Barrel of a gun
It's no good
Home
Useless
Only when I lose myself
Little 15
Everything counts (live)

The track listing says more than I could ever hope to, it's damn near perfection!

So there you go that's what I'm taking to Saturn with me, I've been trying to make this definitive list (& blog it) for some time now & I'm glad it's one more project that's done & dusted.
So I'll...oh hang on, phone's ringing...

The top man at FASCIST says I can take one more!
Thing is, I'm not allowed to choose it, it has to be a recommendation from someone else!
Shit! How I wish I knew a diverse group of people who could furnish me with lots of different ideas...