Tuesday, December 13, 2011

He who whispers loudest.

It's been a pleasant wander around the last few remaining bookshops in west London, stopping off in Waterstone's to peruse the laughable tome that is XFM's 1000 best songs. I wonder if it would have been such a poor effort if Capital radio hadn't sullied the XFM brand. Can anyone seriously consider the Wonder Stuff's Size Of A Cow as their best moment? Practically every previous single was superior to that nonsense which one suspects was written around a title dreamed up over a failed evening of cow-tipping. Further proof of the inadequacy of the compilers is the choice of I'm Free as the sole representative of the exceedingly disappointing Soup Dragons. They started their career brightly with such jaunty ditties as Swirling Round The Garden, Whole Wide World and Hang Ten before descending into the darkened cellar of ordinariness in order to gain public recognition, which worked for a brief time. The real question is if either of these groups could squeeze but one song into a top 1000.

Having evacuated those thoughts from my troubled mind I'll return to the mysterious case of Tac-Tix and probably their only 7" release, Whisper On The Street/See The Love, which generated enough interest to sell for £165 though there were only three bids. They hailed from Guildford apparently and released this in 1988 on the R.E.Good label. Seller Strike Up Matches has a good pedigree with C86 devotees but judging by the sleeve this could be as big a dud as the Y Do I single.