Engine Blood's Guide To 2014: Toro Rosso

IN SHORT: "#Red Bull Babies/we'll make your dreams come true (if they involve extreme sports or horrendous carbonated drinks)"

HISTORY: Toro Rosso were once Minardi, a proud Italian team of underachievers who were forever employing Pierluigi Martini throughout the eighties and early nineties.  Financial strife rocked the outfit, who came under Australian ownership and were subsidised by Bernie Eccleston to keep an increasingly threadbare grid stocked up.

Red Bull, who had previously bought Jaguar to launch their own team, bought Minardi with the intention of running new drivers in existing year-old cars as a sort of farm system.  Part of that idea didn't work - chassis transfer remains against the rules - but the other part certainly did, with Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo making an initial impact here (including a win for Seb) before moving on to the parent team.

THE LOOK:

Source: crash.net

Kind of a vulture-nosed affair, painted in the usual corporate colours and therefore bound to confuse Brundle again when Vettel comes up to lap them.  Or will it be the other way round this year?

ENGINE: Renault, in a potentially disastrous switch from Ferrari last season.  This does however bring them in line with Red Bull, so maybe they got a two for one deal.  Every little helps!

DRIVERS:

25. Jean-Eric VERGNE (FRA) - Last year: 15th (13 points, best finish: 6th, Canada)

26. Daniil KVYAT (RUS) - Last year: GP3 (Champion, 168 points, 3 wins - Belgium, Italy and Abu Dhabi feature races).  Also, for some reason, Formula 3, but ineligible for points due to late registration; no, we're not making this up (1 win - Netherlands)

Poor Jean-Eric.  On points alone he was ahead of Ricciardo for a large portion of last year, but the Aussie still got the nod to go up to head office; you have to wonder if his motivation has been thrown off by that.  Still, at least he's seen the potential for promotion is there, and if relations sour with Vettel after a bad season or two he's doubtlessly still in the frame.

Kvyat is clearly a very fast young man, and his results last year speak for themselves, but Engine Blood always worries about the increasingly fresh faces making their way to Formula One in the last few years.  It's all good fun until someone makes an elementary mistake and someone gets injured; it does seem like they're risking some flak if something goes wrong, but since for once this appears to be a triumph of talent over sponsorship bucks, we hope this appointment works out just fine.

LAST YEAR: 8th (33 points)

Daniel RICCIARDO (AUS) - 14th (20 points, best finish: 7th, China and Italy)

Another woefully inconsistent season for Toro Rosso, and though they did manage to get well ahead of the disastrous Williams campaign, they never threatened to challenge Sauber and Force India ahead of them.  They solely exist to develop talented drivers that may at some stage serve the main team; thus is their niche, and ever has it been so, though the advantage there is that conventional success and improvement isn't necessarily their raison d'être.

PROSPECTS: Always hard to tell; they're usually either initially good and rubbish later, or initially rubbish and good later.  So one of those, then.

Engine Blood's Guide To 2014: Williams

IN SHORT: Have seen better days.

HISTORY: Started by the great Sir Frank Williams in the seventies, they rose meteorically to take a number of titles in a competitive early to mid eighties.  After going a bit off the boil at the very end of that decade, their fly by wire, traction controlled, pretty-much-drives-itself model of 1992 and 1993 won with embarrassing ease, and two more titles followed that decade.

Whilst they were still competitive in the early 2000s with their intriguing Montoya/R. Schumacher driver line-up, later years have been particularly unkind to the once dominant team, and though they clinched a win in 2012, it was a result that flattered to deceive.  Last year was the worst in living memory, so this one could be make or break for the ultimate privateers.

THE LOOK:

Souce: F1 Fanatic

Williams have never fought shy of maverick technological and design steps, as proven by the walrus nose of the early 2000's and an experiment with six wheels in the seventies.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is that they're in the majority this time; rather than putting a twist on like Caterham or Lotus, they've gone for the basic shape that most have agreed on, with a tapering nose.

ENGINE: Mercedes.  Williams has made some great choices (Honda, BMW) and some terrible ones (Toyota, Judd) in the past.  Williams-Renault was such an evocative combination for anyone who saw their automatically-driven cars sweep all before them in 1992 and 1993, but early testing suggests the jump to the Germans may have been a stroke of genius...

DRIVERS:

19. Felipe MASSA (BRZ) - Last year: 8th (112 points, best finish: 3rd, Spain)

77. Valtteri BOTTAS (FIN) - Last year: 17th (4 points, best finish: 8th, USA)

2008 World Champion Felipe Massa - it's only a Wikipedia update away! - finally departs a Ferrari team who were always on at him to improve, but not so much that he got in Alonso's way.  Now he no longer has to walk that tightrope, we could see the racer of old unleashed - IF the car's half decent; otherwise he'll be following his mate Rubinho into retirement.

Bottas, who has a vaguely amusing surname that is sort of a portmanteau of terms for the human behind in English, but is doubtlessly probably very serious in Finnish, had little chance to impress last year given the lack of quality equipment.  He did storm it in some later qualifying sessions though, so judgement should be reserved for now.  Is he all hot air?  Will he bottom out or follow through?  Can he (remember to come up with a third anus-related pun later, or this joke won't work - Ed).

LAST YEAR: 9th (5 points)

Pastor MALDONADO (VEN) - 18th (1 point, best finish: 10th, Hungary)

The name above is probably uttered with total disgust in the corridors of Williams HQ.  Maldonado did bring a fat Venezuelan oil cheque and a briefly impressive win in 2012, but last year the relationship turned sour in a hurry, as he accused the team of wrecking his chances in a number of races and sessions.  Unprofessional conduct, but that'll be someone else's problem this year, and replacing him with Massa improves on him in absolutely every area.

PROSPECTS: Another false dawn for the increasingly downtrodden veterans - but it can't be as bad as last year.

Engine Blood's Guide To 2014: Marussia

IN SHORT: Not in much of a (Ma)rush.

HISTORY: Every year we mention this, and every year we will continue to mention this: when Marussia debuted (as Virgin Racing) in 2010, their first car had a fuel tank that was not large enough to finish a race.  Try to take that in for a moment.  That's the kind of team we're dealing with here.

Richard Branson made some unfortunate comments about lady racers and had some kind of guffawing billionaire's bet with Tony Fernandes, then promptly buggered off, leaving a Russian interest to take over the unimpressive team.  They achieved their best ever finish last season - second to last.  Whoopdy-doo.

THE LOOK:

Source: Fox Sports (photo by Adam Cooper)

Well, that's a bit more like it at least.  Definitely a more conventional design than most this year, albeit with a stupid pointy bit right at the front.  Whether this is a damning indictment of their inability to develop or a clever exercise in sticking with what they know will hopefully become apparent on lap 1 in Melbourne.

ENGINE: Ferrari, by way of highly rated prospect Jules Bianchi piquing their interest at around the same time as Cosworth quietly withdrew from Formula One.  Again.  They'll be back...

DRIVERS:

4. Max CHILTON (GB) - Last year: 23rd (0 points, best finish: 14th, Monaco)

17. Jules BIANCHI (FRA) - Last year: 19th (0 points, best finish: 13th, Malaysia)

Great Britain's Max Chilton set a record last year by becoming the first driver ever to finish every race of their debut season!  Largely this consisted of last place finishes, but it's still a thing.  A sad little thing, but a thing.  Continuity is great for a lower league team in terms of car development, so keeping a safe pair of hands like Fantastic Max on is a shrewd move.

Bianchi has a lot of interest from the higher teams, and nearly got a Force India berth last year before they decided to stick with Mercedes engines.  It was he who clinched the all-important 13th place that got the team their coveted (by two teams) tenth place finish, and he who may be in the mix for a less pointless drive in 2015; a better finish this year would really put him in that frame.

LAST YEAR: 10th (0 points)

I know how that looks, but this was a marked improvement over previous years.  It still seems odd that so much can turn on a seemingly innocuous 13th place, but it meant the balance to this hard-working and seldom-rewarded squad.  Building on it this year seems unlikely, but if they can survive until the budget comes in, it could be their time.

... There's never going to be a budget cap, is there?

PROSPECTS: In the last testing session in Bahrain, they got a computer virus which wiped out nearly a day's worth of running.  That's the kind of team we're dealing with here.

Engine Blood's Guide To 2014: Caterham

IN SHORT: Lean, green and departing the scene?

HISTORY: Oh God - do we have to do this again?  OK, deep breath and...  In 2010, F1 expanded its line-up at exactly the wrong time; the global financial situation caused some manufacturer teams to sod off, and Caterham (then called Lotus) answered the call in a roundabout way, as AirAsia maestro Tony Fernandes decided he wanted in to the sport of kings.

Cue several seasons of beating only their fellow 2010 expansioneers, and a car best known for acting as the launchpad for Mark Webber's amateur moon mission in Valencia, until last year's standstill and woeful lack of ambition in the driver employment stakes left them bottom of the stack.  Fernandes says no more: allegedly, it's points this season or die for the delightfully-liveried losers.

THE LOOK:  Just to fill you in, there have been some big changes to powertrain and aerodynamic regulations this year.  We're not going to go into the exact points, because they are boring, but let's just say that the cars will be looking a tad different this year: behold!

Source: F1 Fanatic

Oh.  Our.  Various.  Gods.  That's nasty.

We're going to be seeing some abominations over the next few posts, but we're starting with a proper faith-shaker.  The vaguely obscene protrusion is one of a number of different ways that F1 designers have interpreted a tightening of the regulations that gave us the horrible "stepped noses" from last year; no-one else has gone this route, but if it's successful they'll all follow...  However, as it's Caterham, it won't be, so that at least is one worry off our minds.

ENGINE: Renault.  The first of the 2010 teams to switch from Cosworth, their relationship with the world champion engine designer has been of at least some assistance to them thus far.

DRIVERS:

9. Marcus ERIKSSON (SWE) - Last year: GP2 (6th, 2 wins, 121 points)

10. Kamui KOBAYASHI (JPN) - Last year: FIA World Endurance Championship (7th, 98 points)

Here's a cause for some celebration: Caterham have managed to attract a half-decent driver in the form of the highly-rated Kamui Kobayashi, who sadly finds himself paying for the privilege of driving a terrible car for the next year.  It'll be great to see him back, but his best case scenario is coming out of this with a shred of dignity and the hope of a better drive.

Marcus Eriksson is a human being of some sort, and there the trail ends.  We hope to bring you more coverage on this no doubt colourful character (let's face it - Formula One drivers are always extremely interesting and well-balanced people!) in an upcoming edition of ENGINE BLOOD!!!

LAST YEAR: 11th (0 points)

Charles PIC (FRA) - 0 points (Best finish: 14th, Malaysia and Korea)
Giedo Van Der GARDE (NED) - 0 points (Best finish: 14th, Hungary)

With not much to talk about from the team's performance last year, let us discuss the drivers they ushered out of the sport at the end of it.  It would be fair to say that Charles Pic did not set the world alight in either of his seasons in F1, but the originally unheralded Giedo Van Der Garde did seem to be improving.  Conventional wisdom said that the much-improved Dutchman should get a second year; conventional wisdom ain't never heard of Tony Fernandes, that's for sure.

PROSPECTS: Bloody awful; how we wish it were not so.

A Godawful Small Affair: Epilogue

"A GODAWFUL SMALL AFFAIR"

Source: Bowienet (if it's still called that)

Starring: DAVID BOWIE

Written by: G.F. HIRONS

Chronologically critiquing David Bowie's albums, as based on opinions formed during a (nearly) comprehensive listen through in order conducted in February - March 2013.

Statistics

Time taken to listen to all of David Bowie's albums in order: 20 days (including 14 day wait for the release of "The Next Day")

Time taken to finish writing these columns: 365 days exactly!  I knew it must be around that, but only just realised it was on the nose.

TOP FIVE ALBUMS:

1. "STATION TO STATION" (1976)
2. "Low" (1977)
3. "Outside" (1995)
4. "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)" (1980)
5. "Diamond Dogs" (1974)

THE DREGS:

25. "TONIGHT" (1984)
24. "Heathen" (2002)
23. "David Bowie" (1967)
22. "Pin Ups" (1973)
21. "David Bowie" ["Space Oddity"] (1969)

But it's not all bad - to show that every cloud has a silver lining, and there's diamonds in the sand and every turn, here's three great tracks from that festering five...

"BLUE JEAN" (from "Tonight")

"THE WILD EYED BOY FROM FREECLOUD" (from "David Bowie" [Space Oddity])

"SORROW" (from "Pin Ups")

 

BEST EXTRA CREDIT SEGMENT:

 

 

IGGY POP "The Idiot" (1977)

 

FINAL STATEMENT: Whether you agreed with me or not, I hope this series has inspired you to listen to these albums for the first time, or revisit the many twists and turns of David Bowie's career.

 

Due to personal circumstances, there will now be a break in service - apart from Engine Blood's (pre-prepared and therefore out of date) preview of the 2014 Formula One season, which will now run daily for the next Christ knows how long.  But stay tuned for our next epic project, a teaser for which will be released on March 31st.

A Godawful Small Affair: Twenty-Five "The Next Day"

"THE NEXT DAY" (2013)

COVER: Bloody pathetic.  Easily the worst thing about it, though.

 

You can hear it from track one: this won't be another "Heathen" or "Reality".  The title track sounds like Bowie's entire career chewed up, minced and spat out to excellent effect.  "Listen", he implores.  He doesn't have to.  I'm already listening harder than I have since the mid-nineties, and I can't wait to hear what comes next.

 

Let's rewind a little, though: Bowie goes to ground for a decade, seen only occasionally, appearing at his son's movie premiere (the excellent "Moon" - check it out, dudes) here, being photographed nipping out for some milk and twenty Gitanes there.  As it turns out that wasn't all he was nipping out for - an album was being recorded between 2010 and 2012, under an unprecedented cloud of secrecy.

 

Meanwhile, and for no apparent reason, me and my peer group were actually discussing Bowie more than when he was last releasing records.  The silence from the once-prolific artist was fascinating; he'd even plugged the gap between "Never Let Me Down" and "Black Tie White Noise" with Tin Machine, so this was huge, and whilst it was becoming assumed that he'd quietly retired, that seemed at odds with a man who had previously made a big deal about one of his characters retiring.  The other persistent worries were the rumours of failing health, updated obituaries and affliction with the big "C".

 

Then - bosh.  "Where Are We Now?" was released as a single with absolutely no fanfare.  The introspective ballad namechecks Berlin landmarks, immediately linking it to an instantly evocative and fertile creative period for him.  More importantly, it's really, really good; reflective, misty-eyed and optimistic in equal parts, it made for a stunning comeback.  Another 'single' was released before the album - sadly, "The Stars Are Out Tonight" wasn't nearly as good, with many observers rankling at a celebrity dissecting celebrity itself.

 

No need to worry though - the album's a stonker.  Any doubts about the opening tracks being a fluke are kicked in the head by the sleazy crawl of "Dirty Boys", and maintains this run of great and very different tracks for the majority of the album (if you ignore "The Stars..." at track three, which I will for convenience's sake) - in particular, "Love Is Lost" is up there with his best tracks.

 

There's a bit of a wobble with the ordinary "Boss Of Me" and the nice but a bit unresolved "Dancing Out In Space", but it gets back on track with "How Does The Grass Grow?" and particularly the closing track, "Heat".  A genuinely stop-everything-and-listen offering, it's a haunting song that demands your attention and deposits you, open-mouthed and blinking, back into the world.  Then if you've got the version I have, the throwaway nonsense of "So She" starts up and somewhat ruins the moment; ah well, you can't have everything.

 

It's a great song to end on, not just for Bowie's career (to date, of course), but also for A Godawful Small Affair.  Throughout the year, which was supposed to only be a month, we've gone from vaudeville to folk, glam to soul, electronica to corporate pop, hard rock to industrial and out the other side into simple respect.  Thank you for coming along for the ride.

A Godawful Small Affair: Twenty-Four

Finally...  Finally, we're here!

"THE NEXT D-

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!

"DAVID BOWIE" (1967)

COVER: Bah!  He looks like a girl.  Cut that hair, hippy!

Oh, figs. 

Yes!  I decided I couldn't get away without listening to it - then immediately regretted it...  David Bowie's first album, released on Deram and arguably not at all in keeping with basically anything he's done since, to the extent that the album we all colloquially know as "Space Oddity" was released self titled a couple of years later and there was still little connection made between the two.

Now re-mastered and expanded into one of those impressively put together two-disk sets that are the big thing of the moment, there really wasn't much of an excuse I could offer for not giving this at least a cursory listen, despite my inability to conceive of any circumstances in which I would enjoy the contents.

Here we have a portrait of the artist as whimsical light entertainer, but comedy character pieces such as "She's Got Medals" and the risible "Uncle Arthur" rub elbows uncomfortably with the disturbing "Please Mr Gravedigger" and the acid-tongued poison pen picture of a clique, "Join The Gang".  Unsurprisingly I found the whole thing quite annoying, but I was wrong to omit this from the project - you cannot look at a piece of an artist's history, no matter how large, and expect to see the full picture.

None of this is to take away from the excellent reissue package.  Disk 1 features the original Stereo mix followed by the original Mono mix, which somewhat dulls the impact of "Please Mr Gravedigger" by striking up "Uncle Arthur" again straight afterwards.  Hearing is not my forte, but I understand this choice is the kind of thing that people like as part of their listening experience, so good for them.

Disk 2 has a number of singles, B-sides and unreleased mixes, along with a session for the BBC's Top Gear programme, though sadly his lap in the Reasonably Priced Car was wiped in the eighties, ha ha.  There's actually some good tracks on that, and I prefer "The Gospel According To Tony Day" and "Let Me Sleep Beside You" to anything on the album - so it's lucky for all of us this collection got put together, really.

It's a really interesting artefact, and one that I recommend everyone with an interest in Bowie hear at least once - in fact, you probably already have heard "Love You 'Til Tuesday" and infamous bonus track "The Laughing Gnome", so that's a toe in the water right there - but I'd be a dirty great liar if I said this would be visiting my stereo again anytime soon.

We apologise for this unscheduled interruption to "A Godawful Small Affair".  Those responsible for this obvious Terrance and Phillip homage have been thrown into the pit of fire.  To make up for this unwelcome diversion, we present this picture of a weasel:

Join us next time when we really will look at Bowie's latest album, "The Next Day".  Oh, mercy!

A Godawful Small Affair: Twenty-Three "Reality"

"REALITY" (2003)

COVER: Oh - I get it!

 

Having been slightly unprepared for my own strength of ill feeling, or least lack of feeling, towards "Heathen", I approached "Reality" with substantial trepidation.  Let's get this bit out of the way now: it is better than "Heathen".  It's nowhere near the top of the tree, but it's perfectly serviceable and with a fair few good tracks.

 

There's one other thing that it most definitely is: cool.  Not, however, the sort of effortless cool you might associate with The Fonz, or "Where It's At" by Beck, or a SUDA 51 game; no, this is the kind of cool that's worked hard at, like a teenage wardrobe, Matt Smith as Doctor Who or a post-Strokes indie band.  It's full of itself and screams it from the rooftops - and that's not always bad, but it does make the album come off a wee bit smug at times.

 

Witness the cover of Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso".  Whilst not as wholly uninspiring as the last album's Pixies cover, it's like a collision of good bits of music and ideas, but too many of them at once, with Bowie throwing the lyrics on top wherever they fit.  Or "Fall Dog Bombs The Moon", which is so laid back it keeps stopping.  Or "New Killer Star", which has a good verse and a good chorus - apparently from different songs.

 

Then there's the closing track, "Bring Me The Disco King".  It's said that this was an idea that he'd had knocking around for quite some time, trying to figure out what to do with it.  The answer seems to have been to make a very loose-limbed, lounging crawl across the finish line.  It's not bad at all, but you get the feeling it thinks it's better than you - or maybe that's me being paranoid again.

 

Also, "Try Some, Buy Some" can fuck off.

 

But hey!  "The Loneliest Guy" is a cracking ballad, with good use of empty spaces, and "Fall Dog Bombs The Moon" actually is a very good offering, despite teetering under the weight of its own cool.  Even "Reality" itself is a bombastic track to send the album into the home straight, like a latter-day "Suffragette City".

 

Moreover, this album leaves an impression, unlike its predecessor.  And this is important, because for a long time we thought this might be the last of Bowie; after a cardiac incident, and that horrible episode with the lollipop in the eye, he withdrew from the recording industry for an indefinite period that started to seem more permanent as time went on.  This may have been the last thing he left for us: an album that tries hard and largely succeeds, full of what in retrospect seemed like coded references to retirement and death.

 

Join us next time for...

A Godawful Small Affair: Twenty-Two "Heathen"

"HEATHEN" (2002)

COVER: Laser Eye Surgery: The Horrible Truth

 

"Nothing remains..."

 

Well, we're off to an optimistic start here, aren't we?  A logical progression from "Hours...", towards the more mid-paced reflective, and - dare we utter that worst of musical profanities - adult-oriented material, and one track into the album we're straight into Maudlinville, with nowt but a one way ticket.

 

Contrary to the popular D:Ream song of the late nineties, I fear things cannot only get better.  DB's covers output has been patchy, as evidenced by "Pin Ups" and "Tonight".  Here he tackles "Cactus" by the Pixies, with little added but some funny noises and an extended midsection; it's still infinitely better than the following "Slip Away", which is a painful crawl through what appears to be an attempt at a heartfelt... Something.  I'm not entirely sure what, but something.

 

So we're a quarter of the way through the album and nothing has really switched me on yet; even by this point on "Tonight" we'd already had "Loving The Alien".  So the question must be asked: is this as bad?  The answer - of course - is no.  It's largely original material, rather than the jaded, mid-tour covers on the earlier selection, and it's inoffensive to the ears.

 

But let's consider that for a minute: here is an utterly inoffensive David Bowie album.  I've tried to think of the albums I've reviewed negatively in this series, or less gushingly at the very least, and I don't think I've ever been at such a loss for words before. 

 

"Tonight" certainly makes its presence felt, even if it is an unwanted one; "Black Tie White Noise" won't bloody shut up with that saxophone; "Pin Ups" is stuffed with classic songs, if not classic versions thereof; and "Space Oddity" and "Young Americans" have some great tracks and are fantastic genre pieces, just in genres I'm less familiar or comfortable with.  Plus there's the Tin Machine stuff, which I still managed to get a few gags out of.  All of these have talking points...  "Heathen", for this writer at least, simply doesn't.

 

What's good here?  Well, "Slow Burn" has an appropriate title, but at least it does burn, showing that this style of music needn't be boring.  "Everyone Says 'Hi'" is a nice little song, loaded with a wistful message that any ex-patriot of country or town would want to hear, though it does get a bit tiresome when he starts listing absolutely everyone who says 'hi' - "and your cousin Fred/and his daughter June/and Queeg from Red Dwarf/and Blue Monster (Munches)/and former Gretna striker and medical doctor, Kenny Deuchar/and Larry 'The Ax' Hennig" and so forth (which is totally unnecessary since he has already stated, quite unequivocally, that everyone says 'hi', and since that includes, well, everyone, there's really no need to go any further into it - not to mention that it's grammatically troubling to hear that you can add people to 'everyone', since 'everyone' AND "the guy upstairs" is more people than 'everyone', which is an impossibility on the level of schoolyard favourite 'infinity plus one'...  Sorry, where was I?)

 

To sum up: this is album that will quite happily go by in the background, and that's not what I personally look for in a Bowie album.

 

Join us next time for something that I will hopefully be able to actually write something about.

One From The Vaults: Mark And Lard/"Fuzzy Logic"

Ah, the graveyard shift.  Perfectly positioned for insomniac students of all ages, the ten to midnight slot, Mondays to Thursdays on BBC Radio One will forever be associated with two northern English scamps - at least by people of a certain age; they may be broadcasting live snuff porno in that slot now for all I know, or worse than that, bloody Zane Lowe.

From 1993 to 1997, Mark and Lard were contemporary tastemakers to the young and the restless, a pair of hip older brothers with an extensive and varied record collection and an initially impenetrable sense of humour.  DJs Mark Radcliffe and Marc "Lard" Riley, the latter of whom was a former victim of Mark E. Smith (all Marks today, eh?), built a safe space for the musically curious with their casual delivery and championing of the unlikely.

Aside from playing the latest indie hits - and what a fertile period it was for that, let's face it - they would also spin some older selections, helping me to draw a line through music and connect the influences to my latest favourites and slowly warming me to the idea that newer wasn't necessarily better.

There were also the live sessions, which I and many others would capture on a spare TDK D90 for posterity: Marion and Mansun spring to mind, as getting their sessions on tape tripled the amount of music I had to listen to by them, but there was also Nick Cave breaking the epic slaughter of "O'Malley's Bar" into three parts, either The Tindersticks or Babybird appearing what seemed like every single night and of course the mighty Salad, whose performance of "Kiss My Love" was nearly derailed by some impromptu animal noises by an errant backing vocalist.

(Whilst I remembered these, I also did a bit of research at http://www.scrawnandlard.co.uk/sesions.htm, which is well worth a look - and if anyone's got a recording of that excellent looking "Now I Got Worry" era Jon Spencer Blues Explosion session, please do get in touch!)

There were contests both real and ridiculous, an intriguingly pretentious section with a featured musician reading poetry or prose (and usually plugging a latest release at the same time), the rising of cinematic curmudgeon and unconvincing greaser Mark Kermode, parody songs by the bucketload, "Fanfare" by Eric Matthews and the show where they had an extra pip for the re-calibration of Greenwich Mean Time, but Lard lost it, which on paper doesn't make any bloody sense at all now I think about it but it's staying in nonetheless.

Success actually did come a-knockin', and the writing was slowly appearing on the wall for the late night wonderland as the unlikely pair gradually, and presumably at least partially accidently, grabbed a heaping handful of the zeitgeist, and as such were sucked in to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show upon Chris Evans' final throwing of toys from pram in 1997. 

This was not a fantastic move - in part as their humour had to be toned down for a pre-watershed audience, in further part due to the musical restrictions placed upon them, and in yet another part due to Evans' gleeful scuttling of the ship - but it did lead them to a more comfortable early afternoon slot, where they gave this now-employed member of society a whole bunch more chuckles at lunchtime, and found time to play the odd graveyard smash, before their tearful break-up in 2004.

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS "Fuzzy Logic" (Creation, 1996)

FOUND: I can't pretend to have been on board since their first release - the "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (In Space)" EP - but Mark and Lard brought the lead single from this album, "Hometown Unicorn", to my attention.  An extremely short snippet of the video was also shown on The Big Breakfast; Jesus, remember that show?  The hell was that all about?

The album was purchased instead of dinner from Bedford's Our Price, during the wait between Media Studies and Computer Studies lessons and soon after the death of my cat Fizzy, after a typographical mix-up in the NME caused me to think there was a track on the album called "Fizzy Birds".  Well, "I" is next to "U" on the keyboard, so I suppose it's forgivable.

THE SELL: "Britpop" was a bit of a misnomer, referring as it usually did to English bands making their traditional regional music, usually split into Northern and Southern camps.  Very few interlopers were allowed at the party; arguably, more Swedish bands got swept up in the palaver than did the other British countries.

Super Furry Animals were one of two medium-profile Welsh bands (the other being Gorky's Zygotic Mynci) who were co-opted into the empty party, despite making psychedelic-flavoured music with lyrics written in Welsh, rather than the English used the country's last alternative export, the Manic Street Preachers.  For this, their first album on the uber-cool Creation Records, they did deign to sing in English, inarguably bringing them more crossover appeal.

THREE KINGS: Otherworldly and with a hint of sinister overtones, first single "Hometown Unicorn" sounded like nothing else that was being done at the time.  Three more singles were released from the album, most of which were great, but I remember the noisy mayhem of "Frisbee" and the extended chug of "Hangin' With Howard Marks" more fondly.

WORST TRACK: I was never keen on "Something For The Weekend", though apparently I am simply wrong about that, as a rerecorded version was issued as a single and promptly broke the band into the top twenty for the first time.

ALSO TRY: Follow-up album "Radiator" lacked pace, though that wasn't necessarily a bad thing (though "Demons" went on for about ten hours), which leads me to prefer third album "Guerilla", which expands the instrumentation and use of electronics to produce a hugely inventive album.  However, SFA achieved perfection with the "Ice Hockey Hair" EP; there is no greater crystallisation of their range of styles than said four-track artefact.  Go and get it.  Now.

BUT AVOID: Every album since their return to the Welsh language on "Mwng" has left me cold, with "Rings Around The World" being the last I bought.  It would be improper of me not to add that the odd good single has still been produced since, so I am always open-minded with regards to their new material.

MAGIC MOMENT: Not so much a moment, but this was THE album to have amongst my peer group towards the end of 1996, and 'twas I who cottoned to it first.  On such things the world once revolved.