Nite Songs

PREVIOUSLY IN THIS COLUMN:   Intro  •  Part 1 (50-41) Yup, it's that time again. Grit your teeth and strap yourself in as we wander further into the depths of Nite Songs' Worst Albums Ever. You have been warned... 40. WENDY JAMES - "Now Ain't The Time For Your Tears" (1993) I did warn you in the intro to this thing yesterday that although Transvision Vamp's critically derided but not actually that bad  Little Magnets vs The Bubble of Babble  album had missed out on this that Wendy James might not be so lucky. In the wake of TV's breakup following the  Little Magnets  album, Wendy announced that she would be collaborating with one of her heroes Elvis Costello on a new project which turned out to be the  Now Ain't The Time For Your Tears  album. According to the rumours, Costello basically whacked all ten of the songs on this album out in the space of a weekend and oh boy, it shows. The likes of lead-off single  London's Brilliant  an...

  “I’ve been here before, somebody said with the ghosts of my fathers washed away on the riverbed” - Angelic Upstarts - Progress One of those bands who really deserve to be more recognised than they are, I’d honestly put the Upstarts up there with the likes of Billy Bragg and Joe Strummer in terms of bands who helped to shape my political views growing up. The Angelic Upstarts were a first wave punk band from Sunderland who unfortunately largely got roped in with the Oi! movement through their friendship with Jimmy Pursey and Garry Bushell. Now, let's get something straight here, I'm of the opinion that oi is one of those musical movements that's been very much maligned down the years - started up as a street punk movement (and a working class counterpoint to the more pretentious art school inclined post-punk bands) it was always dogged by being the sort of music that far right boneheads seemed to latch on to despite the best efforts of bands like Sham 69 (arguably the ones...