What do they know of Brit-pop, who only Britpop know?

Radio X - the radio station that used to be known as XFM - has polled its listeners to find the best song ever.

We wish they hadn't:

"Wonderwall" is the best British song of all time; at least, so say the listeners of Radio X.

More than 50,000 votes were cast for the music station's inaugural Best of British poll (via RadioToday); which saw Oasis utterly dominate the results, occupying all four of the top positions. "Don't Look Back in Anger" came in at number two, "Champagne Supernova" at three, and "Live Forever" at four.

Normally, this sort of thing pukes up a list of Beatles titles so I suppose there's some sort of progress that we've moved on to people pretending to be the Beatles.

Here's the full chart:

1. "Wonderwall", Oasis
2. "Don’t Look Back In Anger", Oasis
3. "Champagne Supernova", Oasis
4. "Live Forever", Oasis
5. "I Am The Resurrection", The Stone Roses
6. "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor", Arctic Monkeys
7. "Heroes", David Bowie
8. "Life On Mars?", David Bowie
9. "Bittersweet Symphony", The Verve
10. "Gimme Shelter", The Rolling Stones
11. "One Day Like This", Elbow
12. "Bohemian Rhapsody", Queen
13. "Hey Jude", The Beatles
14. "Common People", Pulp
15. "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", The Smiths
16. "Slide Away", Oasis
17. "Fool’s Gold", The Stone Roses
18. "How Soon Is Now", The Smiths
19. "A Day In The Life", The Beatles
20. "Love Will Tear Us Apart", Joy Division

Hang on; don't sob yet. There's worse to come:

The poll also revealed how its presenters voted; DJ Chris Moyles plumping for Coldplay's "Viva La Vida", while Vernon Kay backed The Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK"

Vernon Kay. Anarchy In The UK. Obviously, this does make sense - The Sex Pistols and Vernon Kay are both about as threatening to the status quo as each other. But you know that Vernon and his agent probably had a ten minute conversation before deciding to go with such an edgy option.

Thugobit: Ronnie Biggs

Ronnie Biggs, who was part of a gang who beat an elderly train driver with a metal bar, has died.

For years, Biggs lived in Brazil and performed a canary-in-the-coalmine role in British music, outing the more dimwitted stars of the scene and removing any lingering doubt that they might be admirable.

The fawning of The Sex Pistols is well-known, but let's also take a couple of moments to remember this:

Ah, what larks - that's got it all: Shaun Ryder, a criminal, being brought together by Rupert Murdoch's Sun in a stunt organised by Piers Morgan. Even Hercules would have trouble cleaning that one up.

Biggs also helped push his son into the music business. Michael was a member of child band Turma do Balão Mágico, who did things like this:

Of course, Biggs wasn't the only member of the train-driver beating gang who was taken to the hearts of the more low-wattaged amongst British musicians: Phil Collins played one of them in the film Buster, for example.

Tonight BBC One is showing yet another programme about the train robbery, but you don't need to waste your time as Paul Hardcastle did the same thing, faster, and also found time to include the St Valentines Day Massacre:


Jack Mills died in 1970. Although the violence meted out by Biggs' gang was never officially linked to his death, he had never recovered full health following the attack.

Morrissey unimpressed by modern music, life

What's the noise coming from the day room? Oh, it's Mr Morrissey muttering to himself about how things were better in the olden days:

The 53-year-old singer believes people are ''encouraged not to think'' so outspoken or political artists are not able to flourish, and few pop acts are able to work on their own terms.

He said: "The arts have diminished, because we are now living through a time when we are encouraged not to think. No one making music wants to waste time struggling with art. A group like the Sex Pistols would never again be allowed to slip through, and there is no such thing in 2013 as a popular artist who sets their own terms for success."

Robyn? Amanda Palmer? David Bowie? My Bloody Valentine? Adele? A large number of punk and metal acts? Quite a number of rap acts who head up their own mini-military-industrial complexes?

Come on, if you still think that The Sex Pistols is the gold standard in a band doing it without being told what to do (or the 'pretend that McClaren wasn't scripting it' thesis) you're as awry on the old days as you are on modern times.

Oh, Mr. Morrissey has more to say:

''Whether it be Beyonce or Justin Bieber, we see singers who have absolutely nothing to offer anyone as they walk offstage clutching three Grammys in each hand.''

When did Moz start to think the Grammys were some token connected to artistic achievement?

''In recent years I saw McDonna live, and no audience member reached up toward her to try to touch her. I see this so often with artists whom we're told are global stars. It is a big lie. Or else, you might possibly be a big star, but you are not loved."

McDonna - do you see what he did there? Hilarious.

If Morrissey really wants to test if big name bands attract blind, loving devotion, he could take a look at the correspondence the NME has been getting after Harry Styles won villain of the year.

Mr Morrissey, of course, feels that he's better than that, though:

My audience has an urgent need to touch, to shake hands, to move out of their seats

Given the age of most of your fans, Moz, the need to move out of their seats because their bladders can't hold out all the way through Paint A Vulgar Picture any more.

They don't simply sit and observe, but feel the urge to act. It's a great compliment for me, and one that most Grammy winners could probably never imagine.

I suspect that Morrissey has never been to a Justin Bieber gig, but surely he doesn't picture them as being full of young people sitting down quietly, does he?

The tantric Sex Pistols

I'm sure nobody would deny the rights holder the opportunity to flog the dead horse of Never Mind The Bollocks a little more upon its 40th anniversary, but a four disc version?

No tracklisting yet, but the fourth disc is believed to consist of the sound of Universal executives standing in a pile of coins, laughing and laughing and laughing.

Lydon draws attention to single he doesn't want you to buy

John Lydon is livid - livid - with the re-release of God Save The Queen. Livid, I tells you:

In a statement, Lydon said of the re-release: "It is certainly not my personal plan or aim. I am proud of what The Sex Pistols achieved and always will be but this campaign totally undermines what The Sex Pistols stood for.

"This is not my campaign. I am pleased that the Sex Pistols recordings are being put out there for a new generation, however, I wish for no part in the circus that is being built up around it."

'Yes,' continued Lydon, 'those singles that are available in all good stores, via Amazon.co.uk and to download from iTunes certainly don't have my blessing. I'm certainly doing my best to stop people from noticing what otherwise would have been an insignificant and frankly embarrassing re-release by trumpeting quite loudly how I don't approve of people buying them'. He then got a box of records from the boot of his car, yelling 'roll up, roll up' as he sold them, tutting in the face of everybody as he pocketed their cash.

The Sex Pistols: The dead horse is shaken again

Just to reassure you, it IS 2012:

Punk rock band The Sex Pistols have signed a record deal with Universal, it has been announced.

Why? Seriously: what is point new Sex Pistols deal?

An "expanded and repackaged edition" of the band's Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols album will be released later this year.

Repackaged? Isn't the original packaging kind-of the bit that's stood the test of time?

"To be given the opportunity to re-evaluate the Sex Pistols catalogue is every music lover's dream," said Universal's Karen Simmonds.

Really, Universal's Karen Simmonds? You think that not just anybody who believes that there's anything left to re-evaluate, but that every music lover is dreaming of doing it?

Record labels. They're really their own worst enemies, aren't they?

John Lydon doesn't trust the National Trust

The National Trust must be delighted with John Lydon's loud complaining about not having had his 'permission' sought for inclusion of a Sex Pistols track on their odd punk collection:

"I would like to be able to trust the National Trust but from this point forward I can't. I was very proud to collaborate with The National Trust back in 2003 and voice a radio advert for them.

"No-one however has even spoken to myself or my management or had a conversation with myself or my management about this album. Never Mind The.... Permission."

He added: "Thievery as I have always thought seems to come from very high places. Whatever happened to the art of conversation?

"As of yet, I am still not sure what the game is in all this. I love my England, my honest England. My heart is true, but this particular situation seems deeply sneaky and we are waiting to be supplied with information on this chain of events, and the answer better be good."

Now, I don't know for sure, but I'm prepared to assume that the National Trust has all the permissions it needs in place - and that doesn't extend to having to ask a performer for an OK before putting a track owned by someone else onto a compilation.

Had Lydon actually been a proper punk, rather than the plaything of a major label, he might have cause to be upset. But he's got about as much grounds here as a guy from Bernard Matthews complaining that the turkey he raised has ended up for sale in Sainsbury's.

But oh: Lydon has played his part to perfection - moaning and wailing and making a fuss, for all the world like a punk version of those guys who dress up as soldiers and pretend to fight on other National Trust lawns. The Trust really need to build a kids' theme day round this historical re-enactment.

John Lydon didn't like being called a punk

In a bid to try and come up with something new to say as he pushes the same old stories, John Lydon has decided he doesn't like being called a punk:

Speaking at the launch of his book 'Mr Rotten's Scrapbook', he told BANG Showbiz: "I never liked the moniker punk, it was given to us by Caroline Coon (journalist and artist), who called me the King of Punk, but when I found out what the world meant, like, somebody's bottom boy in an American prison, I was none too thrilled with the concept."

Coon might have called Lydon King Of Punk, but the use of the word "punk" surely derives from Creem magazine from back when Lydon was still in short trousers; by the time McClaren was pushing his boys onto the bandwagon, the connection between prison sex and the word had surely been broken?

Besides, for someone who never liked the word "punk", Lydon is always happy to claim his position in the pantheon. Like in The Times, in 1999:

Lydon's recollections of punk suggests that the Sex Pistols documentary, as yet unscheduled by Channel 4, should make great viewing. "The truth about punk will get out," insists Lydon. "It was not an intellectual movement orchestrated by Malcolm McLaren. We didn't set out to be seen as some great, culturally significant force. If we had an aim, it was to force our own, working-class opinions into the mainstream, which was unheard of in pop music at the time."

If it was all your own, how come you didn't come up with your own name for what you were doing?

The Sex Pistols: Rotten stench

Had they not chopped him into parts and sold him in Punk Reliquary boxes, Sid Vicious would be turning in his grave, again. Here's The Sex Pistols: The perfume:

The English punk rock band - fronted by Johnny Rotten - have teamed up with cosmetic firm Fragrance and Beauty Limited to create the Sex Pistols scent, which is described as resisting tradition, fighting conformity and disregarding aromatic conventions.

Yes, it's resisting conventions and fighting conformity - the hole is on the wrong side of the bottle so whenever you try to squirt yourself, it ends up going in your eyes and burning. Or something.

According to a statement the fragrance - which is available exclusively at The Fragrance Shop -

See? Selling perfume at a perfume shop - in your face, tradition.

leaves a "fresh, restless bite of lemon, sharpened and intensified by a defiant black pepper".

Lemon and black pepper? Did anyone else think the Sex Pistols smelled like a well-prepared dover sole?

The release added: "Electrified by aldehydes, the fragrance exudes pure energy, pared down and pumped up by leather, shot through with heliotrope and brought back down to earth by a raunchy patchouli."

Hang about: patchouli? The hippiest scent of them all? Didn't anyone put any thought into this at all?

Alex Kapranos: Wish I was Sid

Ah, the follies of youth - apparently Alex Kapranos was so desperate to emulate Sid Vicious, he was hoping he was going to die an early death:

"I wanted to be like Buddy Holly or Sid Vicious or Rupert Brooke and have achieved everything I was going to do and done it all by the time I was 21 and then die glamorously. Unfortunately, it didn't happen like that."

... so, instead, I did the next best thing and stabbed someone to death and spent time lying about in a pool of my own shit and misery.

Sioux throws shoe

Siouxsie is unhappy with the way women are treated by what's left of the music industry:

Speaking at the launch of her live DVD, Finale, the iconic singer told 6 Music: "There are some strong female performers but the industry's pre-occupation with the packaging of how a woman looks has gone completely the other way, back to almost the 60s, early 70s.

"I like a bit of eye candy like anyone but to have it solely about the eye candy and have it fall into a category so rigidly as well is wrong."

Whenever they make a programme about Women In Rock, Sioux always pops up, shortly before Kate Bush and Annie Lennox; very few of the programmes bother to mention that despite all this trail-blazing decades ago, it's apparently still considered so unusual for a woman to be a (mainstream) rock star that it's considered worthy of a concept for a television or radio show.

But, hey, there's always Susan Boyle, right?

6Music also says this:

Siouxsie, who came to fame in 1976 in the infamous Sex Pistols interview with Bill Grundy before becoming a star with The Banshees, also criticised the way music is sold.

Did her appearance being leered over on Today really make her famous? I was too young and, besides, we got Southern not Thames, but I've always had the understanding that once TV companies felt bold enough to start running footage of the infamous appearance a few years after it happened, the idea that Siouxsie was in the background was considered noteworthy.

Thatcher-off: Number eight

If you're just joining us, as you shelter from an inevitable Bank Holiday deluge, hello. Today, we're trying to decide if the charts were better before or after Thatcher, by using one of our patented poorly-conceived analytical methods. In this case, comparing the best sellers from the last months of the Callaghan and Thatcher premierships. So far, it's one-all.

Round three, then:

Number 8, April 1979 - Sex Pistols & Ten Pole Tudor - Silly Thing/Who Killed Bambi



The best thing about this late-period Pistols/Tudor split 7" was the angry letter written to Smash Hits complaining about the advert they ran for it. It was distressing to see a page which referred, obliquely, to a dead cartoon deer.

The record itself? Ed Pole's effort was alright, but clearly only added to give some extra heft to a Pistols track from a band who had run out not just of steam, but even the ability to pretend they were what they were supposed to be. Bambi wasn't the only cartoon character getting laid out by this one.

Number 8, November 1990: Belinda Carlisle - We Want The Same Thing



Ah, a woman with a successful career, having broken out from her group, desperately claiming that she wants the same thing as you. Did, I wonder, Thatcher sing this to the men in grey suits as they came in, one-by-one, to tell her they couldn't support her any more? Almost certainly not.

This is far from classic Carlisle - even a little by-rote - but still edges ahead of 1979. Pre-Thatcher 1 - Post-Thatcher 2.

Sex Pistols realise you can't live off butter adverts forever

Country Life advertising character John Lydon and his old chums out of The Sex Pistols might very well be about to make a new record, warns Glen Matlock:

"The Sex Pistols? We've done our bit this year…we'll meet again in the new year and see what we want to do," he explained.

"We were not recording a new album - I think that journalists are making it up, but you can never say never," he added.

"We all got ideas between us. It's a double-edged sword if you do it not good as the original, and if you don't do it people want to know why - but it's up to us. We are the masters of our own destiny."

Unusually for someone issuing such a dire threat, there has not yet been a follow-up list of demands that must be met in order to prevent said threat being carried out.

It's not yet known if the NME has plans, should there be another record, to launch a campaign like last year's bid to get God Save The Queen back to number one, but we can only hope.

Kele not drawing line, moving on

Kele out of Bloc Party not sounding entirely like he's put the unpleasantness with advertising's comedy character John Lydon behind him, then:

"I have only one thing to say about that man – John Lydon is the devil in my eyes," he told The Sun.

Speaking about the fight, he said: "I really wanted to, like, whip his face off. I was lucky I had lots of people around me who were calming me down.

"I didn't really think about what was happening at the time. I'm not really someone who's very good at backing down from fights. I'm just pleased there are witnesses."

While he's understandably got the hump - and without defending what Lydon's fawners and friends said - Okereke's decision to abandon the moral high ground to detail just how much bad hurting he thinks "the devil" deserved doesn't really do him any favours, either. The response to buffons to Lydon is to that which they fear the most: turn your back and forget him.

Lydon spreads himself thinly

The next time John Lydon starts on one of his oh-so-interesting rants about how he's the true spirit of punk and how he never got involved in marketing campaigns and it was all trees round here and so on, he'll be doing so from the perspective of a man who is doing an advert. An advert for Country Life butter.

Once people thought he might topple the Queen herself. Now, he's only capable of unseating these guys:

... and I never liked Kevin Shields anyway

Alan McGee takes to his MySpace blog for what presumably was meant to be an enthuse over Mogwai, but which crashes into being another one of his tiresome railings against former friends:

Finally got time to listen to it and it's even better than the last two Mogwai albums which to me have both been wonderful.I'm Jim Morrison,I'm Dead/Danphe and the brain/Local Authority/Kings Meadow/Thank you space expert are all beautiful Mogwai music.Their is a beautiful irony that the ''nostalgic cabaret'' that is my bloody valentine are throwing at people in 2008 gets critical acclaim in the easily pleased UK press with MBV still playing the exact same set they did 20 years ago and the only trick Kevin Shields has anymore in 2008 is actual volume and double extra pa to numb you and zero new songs.


Hear the new Mogwai record it's beautiful.Mogwai are 2008 My bloody valentine were a joke signing in 1991 maybe they got better...

This, of course, from a man who would be sleeping under the arches but for Oasis' tired old slogging.

Niall, who emailed us to bring the post to our attention, also offered a little context:

From the man who in 1996 took out a full-page ad in NME to rave about a gig the reformed Sex Pistols had played at Shepherds Bush Empire...

Also he seems to have trouble with "there" and "their".

John Lydon burns the last of his bridges, fills river with petrol, sets it aflame

There are many who find it hard to believe that John Lydon could have been involved in a racist scuffle the other week, and who will be looking to their hero to prove that he's not the sort of tiresome old twit who attempts to defend unpleasant reactionary attitudes by pretending he's just so refreshingly anti-PC.

He's had his chance, in an interview with the Daily Record.

He starts off having a go at Pete Doherty for being a "coward":

"Doherty's got trapped in a publicity campaign that has run out of order.

"Another fool who is given a golden opportunity to do something wonderful in his life and he'd rather be selfish and cowardly. Drugs are the modus operandi of the coward.

"Pete is a fine lad that needs to sort himself out. This is Mister Rotten telling you I waltz on stage sober because no drug in the world is as good as being absolutely 100 percent honest with your audience. Nothing compares to that emotion. People like him and Amy Winehouse are getting it wrong as usual."

Given that the Sex Pistols' fame is built, to a large degree, on Sid Vicious and his heroin habit, while Lydon might have a point, you could perhaps fill a couple of sides of an ethics class exam asking if it's more cowardly to be addicted to drugs, or to allow your band to carry on exploiting someone addicted to drugs until they die.

Still, a bit of low-grade hypocrisy is only to be expected. Lydon seems to blame Sid's death all on the record company and the stress they put the band through - although didn't Johnny brag to the Star the other week about how he'd never danced to a record label's promotional schedule? - and says that he still misses Sid, so that's alright then.

However, having had his thoughts turn to Winehouse, he decides he's got more to say:

"Poor old Amy. Aimless Winehouse would be a better term."

Aimless Winehouse! Oh, how amusing.

"I love all kinds of music but the one thing I have never done is imitate black music in her idiotic way."

Excuse me?

"I don't like pale imitations and shades of things and I am always wary when people go jazzy because jazz is the best cover up for a lack of talent the world has ever known. It don't wash real with me.

"And the cover up for her which is probably the guilt trip is that she requires vast amounts of drugs to hide the fact that she is fake."

There's just so many reasons why he's wrong, but let's just take the implicit suggestion that white people shouldn't play jazz, and the explicit statement that jazz (which Lydon identifies as a solely black form of music) is "a cover for a lack of talent." Ghettoising and damning an entire genre just to stack up a weak pun based on Amy Winehouse's name.

As if there was any point, he then goes to have a pop at gays as well:

I felt the same way playing at the Isle Of Wight. It is orchestrated deck chair seating and gay rainbow flag waving. It's very, very absurd.

Lydon doesn't explain - and the Record doesn't seem bothered to ask - why waving a gay flag is in some way absurd, or, indeed, if the freedom to wave a flag that reflects your sexuality wasn't meant to be one of things that punk was supposed to have been about in the first place. Lydon doesn't explain if he's uncomfortable with having gays in his audience (although we bet he'd respond that he's got several good-ish gay friends), or merely he thinks that gay pride in itself is absurd. To be honest, I don't much care. I can't wait until the US economy stabilises and he can go back to selling flats to the retirement market or whatever his day job is meant to be.

John Lydon attempts to explain

As we expected, why, John Lydon has issued an explanation of his side of the attack on Kele from Bloc Party:

"I feel very sorry for a man who needs to lie about what was a perfect evening. After the show John Rotten and management remained behind to sign autographs, which we did for four solid hours without incident and had a great time talking to other Spanish bands. This seems to have sparked jealousy in certain bands.

"The trouble was brought to us, resulting in those causing the trouble being physically removed by festival security."

"We are in the middle of a wonderful tour, after 30 years we are achieving a true unity in our audience. They are multi-varied, all ages, all races, creeds and colours.

"When you are at a festival with bands who are jealous fools, lies and confusion usually follow. If they need publicity so badly this is the allegation universe they run into."

Oddly, though, it's Kele who has got the cuts and bruises, not Lydon.

In many ways, this is classic Lydon eyewash - even down to responding to the claims in a way that, once again, focuses on what a wonderful chap he is; so wonderful his brilliance leads to lesser bands turning up to rain blows down on his splendid head.

Still, at least he didn't fall back on "some of my best friends are black" line, choosing instead "some of the people who have seen me play aren't white" to demonstrate his impeccable credentials.

Of course, you're down to which of the two sides you believe; but a man who issues a statement about a violent attack and refers to himself not only in the third person, but as "John Rotten" (which isn't even his own stage name) seems more interested in the myth than truth.

There's a final flick of the fingers:

Lydon concluded by telling Okereke to "grow up and learn to be a true man.

"When you have achieved as much as I have, come back and talk to me," he added. "It's a shame that the wonderful world of the media is riddled with nonsense like this.

Now, considering that he's talking to a man who Lydon claims was causing trouble, that sounds surprisingly belligerent. It's not known if Okereke will, indeed, wait until he's done a couple of celebrity reality shows and got a job in his wife's estate agency before taking things further.

Even Weller thinks Lydon's an embarrassing old grump

When even Paul Weller is telling you that, frankly, you sound like Grampa Simpson, you should probably take a look at yourself.

Weller has stretched and yawned in the face of John Lydon's latest 'I remember when it was all horses" tirades:

"I don't really understand him anymore," Weller explained. "He's become the antithesis of what he once was. Does he need the money?

"Perhaps he misses the adulation, the buzz. Nostalgia has become a whole industry in itself... and I don't like it. You can never recapture what has gone."

That's not a problem for Lydon, of course: he's much more interested in making up a past that never really happened.

I use the Daily Star

There had been quite a bit of excitement at the idea that John Lydon had been due to guest-edit the Daily Star today (a role which would be less about deciding between credit-cruch and environment and choosing which photo of Sylvia from Big Brother should be used, of course). Turns out, though, that his guest-editing duties extend only to the Playlist page.

And he's not edited so much as just written some things about what a visionary he was.

Like this bit:

I ALWAYS wanted the music business institution to fall apart – and now it is. Gloriously.

My advice to young musicians is: You can do it for yourself, you really can.

The Sex Pistols, of course, were signed to record labels and never did it themselves; Public Image Limited did their duty for Warners, Elektra and Virgin. Since when did Lydon press up his own seven inch singles and flog them round the streets?

Despite the shaping of his career break by Malcolm McClaren, Lydon warms to his theme of being your own man:

During the whole of my career I’ve never orchestrated a record with a tour and a publicity campaign. It’s never happened and yet I’m here today doing this page.

Part of the reason why the Pistols never had a record label led campaign was because they were being marketed to, not by labels. Even so, you have to wonder what that big signing outside Buckingham Palace was, and the Jubilee boat trip up the Thames if the idea wasn't to promote records.

More amusingly is the way that Lydon positions 'writing some stuff for the Daily Star' as if it is one of those honours, like a laureateship or an ITV 'An Audience With' programmes which are granted to our culture's elder statesfolk, rather than, erm, part of a promotional blitz to try and push a Sex Pistols DVD.