As promised and threatened last time, this week's List has an NME bent to it - not something that happens on here very often by any means as I'm no particular fan of the paper overall, though of course the 25th anniversary of its C86 cassette was quite happily featured last year (q.v. List #57).
Ruby Trax doesn't occupy anywhere close to the status of legendary, musically significant compilation that C86 does, but this 40-song collection of cover versions, originally released in autumn 1992 to celebrate the paper's 40th anniversary and to raise money for the Spastics Society, is well worth a revisit exactly 20 years after its original release.
No compilation of this magnitude and ambition is ever guaranteed to be 100% successful, but the project did throw up many absolute treats. The Wonder Stuff's folky stomp through Slade's Cos I Love You makes perfect sense but is no less wonderful for that; ditto Curve's augmentation of Donna Summer's I Feel Love with Toni Halliday's customary sighs and swoops, Dean Garcia's industrial clanks, etc.
Elsewhere, Baby Come Back by Karl Bartos's Elektric Music predates by two years Pato Banton's chart-assaulting reading of the same, and happens to be better than that one; Marc Almond sounds absolutely to the manner born in soaring over the sympathetic arrangement of Like A Prayer given to him; and all of The Fatima Mansions, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and The Fall score highly for delivering pretty leftfield cover versions that actually warrant repeated listens.
J xx
Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 28/10/2026).
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.
THE WONDER STUFF – Coz I Luv You
RIDE – The Model
THE FALL – Legend of Xanadu
ELEKTRIC MUSIC – Baby Come Back
THE BLUE AEROPLANES – Bad Moon Rising
BLUR – Maggie May
WELFARE HEROINE – Where Do You Go To My Lovely?
NED’S ATOMIC DUSTBIN – I’ve Never Been to Me
SUEDE – Brass in Pocket
MARC ALMOND – Like A Prayer
KINGMAKER – Lady Madonna
CURVE – I Feel Love
TEENAGE FANCLUB – Mr Tambourine Man
BILLY BRAGG – When Will I See You Again?
JOHNNY MARR & BILLY DUFFY – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
MANIC STREET PREACHERS – Theme from M*A*S*H
