Thank F#ck For The Music

This week, I have been mostly stripping wallpaper.

I’ve been staying with my sister Rona and her family down near Oxford to help decorate her new house and it’s been hard f#cking physical work; the hardest f#cking physical work I’ve done since… well… ever.

Rona is very on-the-ball and organised and presented me with a detailed work schedule for the week when I arrived on Monday. What she neglected to mention however was the fact that woodchip wallpaper sealed tight with industrial strength paint is a right b#stard to try and strip off.

From the get-go (as my American friends would say in that quaint, invent-our-own-language type of way), it was clear that this was going to be monotonous work. And monotony can be a dangerous thing when working with sharp bladed tools since it sends your vocabulary to the f#cking gutter and gives you too much f#cking time to think and dwell on subversive questions and issues.

- Why the f#ck did I agree to do this?
- When’s lunch?
- If I finish this room in two days, do I get Wednesday off?
- What do you mean there’s no f#cking nap times?
- What the f#ck was that popping sound in my back?
- Why can’t I feel my legs?
- When’s lunch?

However, my sanity (and Rona’s continuing good health) has been saved by a ghetto blaster and a stack of quality CDs to help pass the hours safely and without unnecessary bloodshed.

We were inspired to plunder the depths of our respective music collections by a four-hour programme on Channel 4 on Sunday night entitled “The 100 Greatest Albums”. The list was compiled by viewers votes which would suggest a free reign to nominate any album at all but it turned out that viewers were voting from 125 albums already short-listed by a panel of music “experts”.

No matter. The programme was entertaining and prompted lively debate during the week about which of the 100 albums were already in our collections and which would make it to our own personal top tens.

So over the next few days I’ll reveal which stunning examples of musical genius made into my top ten. Meantime, here’s the top ten as voted by Channel 4 viewers and the full 100 can be found at

www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/G/greatest/albums/results.html

0. THE SIGNALS - Days To Come

1. RADIOHEAD - OK Computer
2. U2 - The Joshua Tree
3. NIRVANA - Nevermind
4. MICHAEL JACKSON - Thriller
5. PINK FLOYD - Dark Side of the Moon
6. OASIS - Definitely Maybe
7. THE BEATLES - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
8. MADONNA - Like a Prayer
9. GUNS N' ROSES - Appetite For Destruction
10. THE BEATLES - Revolver

Incidentally, Rona and I have had Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’ with us every day at the house renovation but are too frightened to play it in case we end up cowered in a corner, shaking and weeping uncontrollably and emitting excess drool. It is one scary record and on a par with the song I invented on Monday before the appearance of the ghetto blaster… “just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping, just keep stripping…"