In 1998 we were still weeping over the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur – how how how why why why were such bland talents taken away from us so young? They had so much more to give. A decade’s worth of rubbish records reheated for a puzzlingly keen audience, in fact.
 
Jurassic 5 were different.  Well, different from those two and their gangsta ilk.  On the other hand, they were very similar indeed to De la Soul, Jungle Brothers, even The Pharcyde, as they brought back a bit of humour, a relaxed style, “original beats from real live MCs, playground tactics, no rabbit-in-a-hat tricks” and all that.  The smiling good-time piano of ‘Concrete Schoolyard’ and b-boy whistles of ‘Jayou’ extolled the simple life.
 
Junior let it roll over her and didn’t really get going until ‘Action Satisfaction’ a few tracks later.  She nodded her head to old skool beats, just a little too late.  Rather like Jurassic 5.

‘Party Hard’ crashes in on howling guitars and dance-rock beats, way sexier than anything on Different Class but squeaky clean and callow next to ‘This Is Hardcore’ (which doesn’t make the 20 – sorry, kids; it just belongs to the album). Jarvis is on Stars In Their Eyes again, and this time, Matthew, Cat, whoever, he’s David Bowie with a touch of the usual Bryan Ferrys.  The song sleazes and slinks with whispered come-ons, but Junior waves her arms around and conducts an invisible band.
 
Pulp were systematically dismantling their career.

In which Stoke’s finest neurotic chubster and his Lemon Trees pal Guy Chambers pen a number that sounds exactly like the Pet Shop Boys with David Cassidy emoting over the top, then actually get Neil Tennant in to sing backing vocals along with a clearly lost Neil Hannon, and then somehow make it sound good.
 
Williams is such a ham that he can carry off the dramatic songs with some aplomb – he sounds like he means it, with his wafer thin hollering and growling, and you end up swept up in the passion of it all.  Well, I do, anyway.  Junior tried to act detached, in pink shades with a pink baseball cap covering half her face, but there was some infant butt-shaking and a few twirls with the “pretty” (she’s rather taken with the yellow dress) red-haired doll.  And Junior’s mum appeared to know all the words.
 
My favourite RW song.  It’s not a hotly contested gong.

Mark Ramos-Nishita was, and quite possibly still is, the Beastie Boys’ ivory-tinkler.  Or plastic-nudger.  Anyway, he plays piano, keyboards, Hammond, that sort of caper, and by himself he makes lovely lo-fi pop.  His first album, Mark’s Keyboard Repair, took lo-fi to its lowest extreme with snatches of half-produced songs and the odd gem shining through the demo fuzz, but 1998’s follow-up, Push The Button, was fully realised with proper songs that kept the cloudy edges and quirky interruptions but flicked the pop switch.
 
‘Maybe I’m Dead’ pimp rolls joyously through surreal imagery and creepy thoughts – “I’m just a spider making my way, underneath your house – maybe I’m dead” – getting ghostly with Hammond squirts and synthed horns.  It’s a shuffling piece of pop fluff that I should’ve put on many more tapes than I did.
 
More pressing concerns troubled Junior, who’d learnt minutes earlier that we’re going on holiday in a few weeks – burglars, don’t bother: we’ll be “between homes” – and banged on about “holiday” for the whole song.  She thinks we’re going to the impressionist African coast in the painting by the stereo.

It’s the reverse gender version that never needed to happen, but it’s a damned sight better than Macca and Jacko’s chummy, creepy ‘The Girl Is Mine’.  Here you can actually envisage a scenario where the two protagonists are fighting over the same paramour, and also imagine that the paramour isn’t weirded out by the whole experience.  Who the hell were McCartney and Jackson squabbling over?  ET, probably.
 
Junior and her mum became r’n’b chicks here, doing “safe” hand gestures to the crunking hip-hop beats and wailing along to the ad libs.  I make it sound worse than it was.  The record is still shiny and crisp, its synthetic strings dramatic and mournful at the same time.  But while B and M make the face-off sound a whole lot more serious than those other two did with their take on the same theme, the chorus line “you seem to be confused” drips with playful sarcasm.  This has sass. 

Before she became the only sensible voice of music coverage on all of the UK’s eleventy million television channels, Lauren Laverne was a bit cutesier and fronted this “punka” outfit from Sunderland. They were erratic but still darlings of the inky music press and Lauren was a doe-eyed pin-up. ‘Punka’ was one of their early tunes and ended up sticking as a name. I think they pushed it pretty hard – they certainly pushed themselves hard.
 
‘I Would Fix You’ prompted some hip-bumping from our Junior Punka.  Its chords do swing, after all.  Mostly, though, it’s a gorgeously sweet song about our L being the cure for your ills, sailing in on waves of “ba-ba-ba”s and sprightly yet melancholy strums.  It was their one real shining pop moment, not to be repeated.  Ditching the others and becoming the new wan John Peel was probably the right idea.

It took The Beautiful South years to recover from the straight-out-of-leftfield success of Carry On Up The Charts. Other acts – their record companies, certainly – have tried to emulate the “Ooh, I never realised [so-and-so] had made so many great songs” angle, but rarely with the sort of stellar success Paul Heaton and co managed when their greatest hits set up camp at the top of the charts, years after their well of singles triumphs had run dry. It did little to reignite their fire, though. ‘Perfect 10’, a track that wouldn’t have shamed itself as part of the collection, came four years later.
 
Junior spent the time emptying her book shelf, finally settling on Big Red Bath for a read. She missed Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott trading saucy lines that are funny - “If he’s XXL, well what the hell, every penny don’t fit the slot" - and scan perfectly. It’s underpinned by a rude and down dirty funk and topped off with a chorus of unbounded delirium. However clever-clever the ‘South could sometimes be, this has heart, soul and hooks. And it’s clever too.