LONDON LOVES!

LOW POINT first. I finally moved to London only to discover that Big Ben is just a clock. What a disappointment for a girl . . .

On the up side, there was a tremendous hollow laugh to be had at the expense of the Stone Roses, who spent seventeen years completing the difficult second album to end all difficult second albums, only to have Oasis pop up, rip them off wholesale, and usurp their place in the inkie news pages minutes before its release. Chortle.

Album of the year was Blur’s Parklife. There’s not the faintest whiff of a duff track on it. It even wins out over The Divine Comedy, REM, American Music Club, Sugar, Stina Nordenstam and Morrissey, all of whom probably released the second best album of the year depending on who I’m with and how drunk I am. Fighting over that gleaming bronze-effect trophyette for third place are A House, Suede, Grant McLennan, Grant Lee Buffalo, The Auteurs, Pulp, Liz Phair, Robert Forster, The Catchers, In Motion, Therapy?, Ash and Pavement.

Then there’s Gene. Their singles were fabulous, their concerts dazzling, they’ve got Morrissey drooling all over them, and yes, I want to shag lead singer Martin Rossiter. Other excellent shows came from Bjork and Blue at Féile, American Music Club, Violent Femmes, Grant Lee Buffalo, The Go-Betweens (you missed it! Ha!) and – sniff – That Petrol Emotion.

Best live performance of 1994 though – and of this there is no doubt – was the mesmerising Abba medley sung by Alan Partridge and Gina Langland on Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge. For six glorious weeks, Alan scaled the north face of Chatmandu, wielding his conversational grappling hook until he’d reached the summit of Chat Mountain. What a man, and what a show.

It was a year of untimely, ugly deaths, particularly if you happened to be appearing in Pulp Fiction, but the death of one individual threw a shadow over all of 1994. He was young, incredibly talented, and, as is always the bloody way, his life was cut short just as he was producing his most impressive work. Who knows what he would have gone on to achieve had he lived but for now let’s just say – Bill Hicks, wherever you are, we salute you.

Lorraine Freeney