That Music List: LIST 242

Hello again,

As promised, part two of this weekend's double-header. Monsieur, with these Blogger postings you're really spoiling us, as the Ferrero Rocher lady once nearly said.

Among the new and old fare on offer this time we have the first outing of the Straight In At... feature - or to be more accurate, its first outing on That Music List.

This is something salvaged from some place or other by the name of Twitter, my engagement with which is now at the barest of bare minimums for all of the same reasons that many of yours will be also. Straight In At... was a feed I ran on there for a few years, wherein every new entry in the Official Singles Chart on the given date in a past year was surfaced and reviewed.

For years in the 1950s and 1960s with not even one hand's worth of new entries per week, it wasn't a hugely time-intensive exercise. For years in the late 1990s and early 2000s with as many as 35 new songs hitting the then top 100 each week (and invariably disappearing again right away), it absolutely was.

The volume of stuff to wade through wasn't an issue for me, however. Instead, I found myself having to think of things to write about too many songs which, with the best will in the world, I really didn't like at all. Some people are of course of a disposition to be able to do that without it becoming wearying, and for a living at that; but I gradually found it a less than satisfying, less than optimal use of my energies.

That's by no means a whinge - these were the parameters I'd set myself, so had no grounds for complaint. I just had to go there to find out it wasn't for me.

The Straight In At Twitter feed thus died a quiet death around the end of 2022, at a time when my love for music wasn't all it should have been in any event, but even then I wasn't wholly prepared to walk away from it forever. Hence Straight In At That Music List style, with charting songs still included from today's date in history, but just not all of them.

Four selections from February 22nd 1981, then, and no more than four. No sign of that week's highest new entry (19) from Status Quo, as it's not a favourite. No Walking On Thin Ice by Yoko Ono (the next highest entry but way down in position number 50 - these were very different times), as, love it as I do, it's been on at least one List already and I found other things I'd rather include for the first time.

Instead, plucked from the lowest fifth of the then top 75 we have a still just about pre-mainstream crossover Human League; an also still just about pre-mainstream crossover Classix Nouveaux; Yorkshire-born and raised Euro disco gentleman Geoffrey Bastow (appearing here in his K.I.D. alias); and the commercial highpoint in the career of Landscape which underlines as much as anything else how broad a church 1981 was in terms of what could become a hit. It's my favourite year for chart music on that basis, an opinion which has only firmed up over time.

Six years further on from 1981 finds Hebden Bridge's finest export Bogshed in typically idiosyncratic form, and their inclusion gives me all the excuse required to include a link to a review I penned on Facebook two years ago of Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids?, Nige Tassell's exhaustive quest to find and interview at least one member of all 22 acts - of which Bogshed were of course one - featured on the NME's eponymous compilation cassette.

It's an impressive, accessible piece of work, as well as at times poignant, considering the fates to have befallen some players in the piece in the now almost four decades since C86 was released. It's possibly not giving too much away to confirm that the quest would likely fail if commenced only in 2026.

From West Yorkshire past to West Yorkshire present, it's a pleasure to be able to include some Craven Faults for the first time here. It can be assumed that this (by design) anonymous producer of compelling dark ambient would have been as regular a fixture as any had TML not gone on its extended hiatus, given forthcoming album Sidings, from which today's selection is taken, is already an eighth album in six years.

I'll eat my own arm if I haven't found a way to include some of his more extended pieces in my The Long Goodbye feature before this year's through. Today, however, that honour goes to some classic Kraftwerk - as if there's any other kind.

From Germany to France, and the first appearance of Fabriqué en France, another new feature which showcases French and Francophone pop. I have the very fine Leeds indiepopper Owen Radford-Lloyd (formerly known as The French Defence) to thank for tuning me into Mylene Farmer's very early output a couple of years ago - I'd only really picked up on her from a certain early 1990s monster European hit onwards.

The more I've explored Mylene, the more it's occurred to me how the likes of Florence Welch and Alison Goldfrapp owe at least as much to her as they do other more often cited touchstones such as Kate Bush and Noosha Fox. See what you think.

Please also feel free to enjoy the wholly unexpected return of Sugar after 32 years; a 1987-88ish cut from celebrated Zimbabwean Chigiyo pioneers Zig Zag Band; an early single of the year contender of the year for me from Mitski; a reminder of the pristine pop wonderment of La Casa Azul, whose 2009 set is still talked about in revered tones by us Indietracks stalwarts; an example, for those not yet aware, of why Knitting Circle are one of the most vital, important acts in DIY/punk/indiepop right now (with an album very recently recorded and to follow); and a wee tribute to Jimmy Cliff.

Actually, please feel free to enjoy it all.

J xx

Click on the video to play each tune (links last checked as all working 18/02/2026).

Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.

PIGEON - Miami (2026)