It would seem that my straight-snogging technique can be encapsulated in just two words: lunge and suck.

Still, at least it's consistent.

Following our recent friendly exchange of jumbo-sized e-mails, Siobhan of Tranniefesto has put together a dialogue-style posting, in which she offers point-by-point replies to my nervous experimental musings on various aspects of cross-dressing culture (a subject which I have only just started thinking about in any degree of detail).

Unless I'm very much mistaken, Siobhan has coded her blog from scratch, using a content management system of her own devising. This gives the site some interesting individual features, including the seamless incorporation of comments into the main body of the post. Siobhan's replies to these comments are then displayed as if they were a continuation of the original post, thus making each entry much more of an open-ended dialogue. Having been following Tranniefesto for the last week or so, I have become increasingly taken with this way of doing things; it suits Siobhan's relaxed, conversational blogging style very well.

At the end of this particular piece, a lengthy, considered and thought-provoking comment has appeared from someone called Kelly, which adds a lot of value to the original dialogue. I'm beginning to sense that there is quite a lot of debate taking place on some of these issues within the TV community (on the whole subject of what is referred to as "passing", for instance), and I am finding it fascinating to be witnessing some of this debate for myself.

But first: the albums countdown (as it stood at the end of 2004; if I were doing it now, a few positions would be adjusted).But second: the compilation albums countdown.But third: the "best gigs" countdown.But fourth: the full singles countdown, from 90 to 2.

Click on each song title for a write-up. Items listed in bold denote a write-up which is longer than the usual.
Back later, when I'll be appending this post with the Number One single of 2004.

1. Lola's Theme - Shapeshifters

How unexpected that, in a year where it became less relevant to my life than ever before, my favourite two singles of the year should both have emerged from "dance" culture. But then there's no arguing with this kind of sheer, unassailable magnificence.

What makes Lola's Theme so special is simply this: that it can single-handedly turn a shit night out into a great night out. Instantly. For during the few minutes that it's playing, even the bleakest, shoddiest dive on the planet can glimpse transcendence - and even the most wretched of lost souls can experience redemption. As for me, I'm not ashamed to say that I have openly wept to this record in the middle of a crowded dancefloor - and have felt all the better for having done so.

All of which means that, thanks to a cannily timed vote earlier in the day, WE HAVE A WINNER!

Step forward Chav Gav: citizen of Leith, frequently mentioned in dispatches at Naked Blog, and even a very occasional blogger in his own right. (I remember this lurid tale particularly vividly.) E-mail me with your address, and I'll stick the CDs in the post.

However. I do feel that a consolation prize is due to one poor soul: a dogged tryer in this contest, who has dolefully admitted that he never wins anything, and who came so agonisingly close to tasting victory this week.

dave: The CDs are yours as well, mate.

(How could I ever refuse? You'll feel like you win when you lose! Oy!)

I hope that at least some of you have enjoyed this ridiculously long and drawn-out spectacle over the last few weeks. It has probably cost me what little chance I had of winning a Bloggie, but f**k it: I still have my integrity, and isn't that infinitely more important than these mere baubles?

(You know: for a moment there, I almost convinced myself.)

To the rest of you: thank you for bearing my indulgence with such good grace, and I hope that you managed to mine at least some small measure of value from all the trainspotterishness. I know this isn't a music-blog, and I've not even been particularly aspiring/adhering to music journalist values during this series. What I've really been trying to do - especially in some of the longer pieces, as highlighted in bold in the list above - is talk about music as it relates to my own personal experience, rather than to the world at large. In this respect, maybe I haven't really departed so far from "personal" blogging after all.

There will now be a brief refractory period, during which I shall endeavour not to talk about music at all for a couple of weeks or so - at least until the next overblown blog stunt comes along. (Long-standing readers will know of what I speak.) Wish me luck!

2. Good Luck - Basement Jaxx featuring Lisa Kekaula

Tell me, tell me, is life just a playground? Think you're the real deal honey, and someone'll always look after you? But wake up baby, you're so totally deluded, you'll end up old and lonely, if you don't get a bullet in your head...

So unarguably great that it was a hit twice over in 2004 - reaching #12 in January and #14 in July.

Tactical last-minute voters: this is your final chance to make an educated guess, before I reveal my favourite single of 2004 some time between now and midnight (UK time).

Until then, in the words of Basement Jaxx themselves ... GOOD LUCK!

3. Slow Jamz - Kanye West featuring Twista & Jamie Foxx- Marcello Carlin, The Clothed Maja, excerpt from THE COLLEGE DROPOUT – THE BEST HIP HOP ALBUM IN THE WORLD…EVER? (If you're at all familiar with Kanye West, then scroll down to April 21 2004 and read the whole article, because it's brilliant.)

4. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand

With two Franz Ferdinand singles already in my countdown (at numbers 87 and 85), this one - by far their biggest song, and so ubiquitous in 2004 that you scarcely need me to explain its appeal - was another doddle to predict.

And predict it you did! Well, kind of. For hereby hangs a tale.

Having been knocked off the top of the leader board some time in the middle of last week, dave requested a slight change to the rules, in order to give himself a second chance at winning make the game more interesting and enjoyable. Being an accomodating kind of guy, I instantly acceded to his request - allowing anyone who was knocked off the top another chance to make a guess.

But ONLY WHEN they were KNOCKED OFF the top.

And NOT WHEN they were STILL AT the top.

Unfortunately, this is the part which dave failed to grasp. And so, when Dry Your Eyes by The Streets put him at the top of the heap, what did he do but attempt to place a third - yes, a THIRD - guess, for Take Me Out, BEFORE being dislodged from pole position?

Having disallowed his guess, it was - of course - still visible in the comments box for all to see. Because I only delete comments in highly exceptional circumstances.

You can probably guess what happened next. Someone else saw the comment - thought "hmm, good guess" - and repeated it as their own.

So, should I have disqualified the guess, or should I have made dave accountable for his mistake and accepted it as valid?

Being a harsh yet fair task-master, I decided upon the latter course of action. Meaning that - of ALL PEOPLE! - the Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen loving, all-modern-music-is-boring, I-thought-Franz-Ferdinand-was-a-dead-duke, look-dear-can-you-get-a-move-on-because-I'm-fed-up-with-all-this-pop-nonsense, defiantly and resplendently un-trendy Blue Witch now takes over the lead from dave.

This is all very amusing, I must say.

Three left!

5. Irish Blood, English Heart - Morrissey

It ends today, folks.

Our shared musical odyssey. Our crazy roller-coaster ride. Our castle in the sky.

My, but we've shared some times along the way, haven't we? Trudging through the foothills of the lower positions - ascending the graceful slopes of the middle positions - and now here we all are: giddy with altitude sickness, inches away from the summit, half-blinded by the dazzling lights of the Final Five. Exhausted, and yet strangely exhilarated.

Yeah, you're right. I can't think of one damned thing to say about this Morrissey single. Ummm... well... it's yer Masterful Grasp Of Rock Dynamics, innit? It's yer Tension And Release!

Kids: with Morrissey's other three singles of 2004 already listed in the countdown (at numbers 65, 59 and 48), you could have seen this one coming. Time is running out. Choose wisely.

6. Covered In Punk - PortobellaAnother smash hit that never was: irresistible turbo-charged bubblegum punk, as assembled by the same guy (Michael Gray) who was responsible for one of 2004's big gay club anthems (The Weekend).

Apparently, Portobella were also the winners of some reality show on MTV. Fat lot of good it did them, then.

Coming Soon: The Top Five. Have you made your prediction yet?

(To view the countdown so far, please check the comments box beneath this post.)

7. Dry Your Eyes - The StreetsFriday June 25, 2004.

     

I tried, I really tried.

But.

We had just finished watching the so-so Michael Douglas thriller on Sky. As I needed to check the progress of the match before heading out to meet A in the pub, I successfully negotiated a lightening-quick flick over to BBC1, in the few available seconds before Big Brother.

Only to witness, at that precise moment, Portugal's extra time goal.

"Oh my God!" we shrieked.

"That's it then", I authoritatively declared, still labouring under the delusion that extra time operated on a sudden-death principle. "England are out of Euro 2004".

And texted A in the sports bar:
I'll get my coat. :-(

And finally looked up again, and realised that the game was still going. A-hum.

"I feel like we've jinxed the match", I wailed.

"Better watch the rest of it, then."

Within seconds, the last two effete footie-phobes in town had metamorphosed into standard issue Come On Englanders. Why, I could hear our very vocal chords hardening over, even as our vocabulary contracted into guttural monosyllabics.

Shoe-horned into the collective consciousness. Helplessly abased before the Higher Power of Speuuurght.

As Engerland equalised, some deep-seated Pavlovian impulse caused us to rise up off the sofa as one, making those tight little fist-stabs as we did so.

"It's going to penalties!"

I text A again:
F***ing hell! :-)
He texts back:
My heart!
We're not built for this.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Striding into town to make it to the Roberts for last orders, deftly weaving my way through the shell-shocked crowds spilling out of the sports bars, I am struck by the weird, subdued atmosphere that prevails. It's so... quiet. Everywhere I look, lads are perched on the edge of the pavement; or stretched flat out on it; or slumped against walls, absently texting. Directing my own video-montage, I start mentally overdubbing the soundtrack.

Dry your eyes mate / I know you want to make her see how much this pain hurts / But you’ve got to walk away now / It’s over.

Snatches of conversation:

"I wanna see Sweden f***ing smash them in the semis. No, even better; I wanna see them get to the f***ing finals, think they're gonna f***ing win, then..."

"Can't believe they just played that Britney Spears song at the end. Like that's gonna cheer us up..."

"Yeah but, you gotta admit, it takes a lot of guts to come back and equalise like that, right at the end..."

I give K a quick call, just to bear witness.
"Honestly, you'd think Princess Diana had just died."

Even in the Roberts, the queens are all a-twitter. At the bar, I tell the story of how my Nokia - the gayest mobile in the whole world, like, ever - had changed footie to ennui. People start checking their own.

"No, it just comes up with foothe."

"Darling! Ennui simply isn't in my lexicon!"

As the beers kick in, a sort of refractory queeniness has begun to steal over us. A necessary corrective process, no doubt. Excitedly, A starts to tell me all about his new bit-of-rough builder friend.

"Darling! Lucky you! How rough exactly?"

"Well, just before Euro 2004, the police called round to his house and confiscated his passport. I think he must be on some sort of List."

"Darling! The sex must be fabulous! But does he know that you're a native Portugese speaker? He doesn't? Oh, I don't think you should tell him. At least, not unless you're up for some extremely adventurous role play..."

In the late bar over the road, the mutual healing continues until stupid o'clock. Even the regular Thursday night trannies are bitching about that silly Swiss hem-hem of a ref. As ever, the more slurred and messy everyone gets, the more fulsomely articulate I become. (Why is this?)

It's the landlord's last night, so the final rounds of drinks are on the house. The wiry little skinhead in the corner has hitched his T-shirt up, his beltless waistband down, and is distractedly stroking the area in between, over and over and over again; the effect is quite mesmerising. Pints are sloshed onto the carpet, nonchalantly; arses are grabbed, inappropriately; no-one can understand a word that anyone else is saying, but no-one seems to care.

Good grief. We're not even like this over Eurovision.

As you were, sisters. As you were.

(This piece originally appeared as a guest post on Sashinka.)

8. I'm A Cuckoo / I'm A Cuckoo (Avalanches remix) - Belle & SebastianBest bit of the Avalanches remix (although "remake" is probably a better term in this instance) - when the track finishes, and the South Sudanese choir keep right on chanting, eventually dissolving into whoops and cheers, and one final uproarious burst of laughter.

9. You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve - Johnny Boy1. For the title alone. I mean, come ON, classic or classic?

2. For James Dean Bradfield's widescreen, Spector-esque production - right down to the nicking of the "Be My Baby" drumbeat intro. (I've been a sucker for Spector pastiches ever since the days of Wizzard.)

3. For the trumpets.

4. For the "yeah yeahs".

5. For the Tomorrow Never Knows screechy squawky bits.

6. For the way it builds, and builds, and builds, and then builds some more.

7. For the way it sounds like the missing link between Pete Wylie's Wah! and Little Does She Know by The Kursaal Flyers.

8. For the way that, despite my not having the faintest clue what they're actually singing about, this still manages to sound Anthemic and Significant and A Definitive Statement Of Its Time, To Which We Should All Pay Heed. Because I like it when pop plays tricks like that.

(ADMIN: Post delayed/revised from Monday night, due to the lateness of the hour and the advanced state of decrepitude of the author.)

Flipping heck. Two full days after Saturday's Last-Night-EVER-At-George's-Bar Marathon Bender To End All Benders, and my brain is still like concrete. Which TOSSER was it who said "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom", anyway?

(UPDATE: Oh! It was William Blake! And the full quote actually reads: The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom - for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough. Whoops! Point taken!)

A great night, though - even if poor old K only lasted a bare hour, due to the crowds, the noise and the claustrophobia.

(At which point they put someone on the door, thus swiftly reducing the numbers to a more manageable level, as the mid-evening bridge-and-tunnel crowd moved on to ritzier pastures. Unfortunately, the new regulars-only policy meant that poor old Dymbel was refused admission. If this doesn't convince him of the benefits of texting, then I fear nothing will.)

For me, the defining pinnacle moment came at around 2am, when Dolly Parton's 9 To 5 got the whole bar on its feet - even the ones who "don't dance, darling" - for a shared moment of delirious communion. Trannies on the tables, respectable elderly gentlemen in burgundy cummerbunds tapping their toes, gurning queens passing round the poppers, straight boys snogging gay boys snogging fag-hags, ashtrays spilling onto ruched silk, tables teetering ("careful darling, that's champagne"), nice young gels hurling their guts up into the one remaining functional wash basin, while other nice young gels held their hair back ... Hockley Babylon, it was. We shall not see its like again.

(Neil MovieBuff, another George's regular, also writes about the night on his own blog, with his customary eloquence.)

I've also been corresponding, at some length, with one of my fellow Bloggies finalists - the lovely Siobhan of Tranniefesto - about perceptions of the whole cross-dressing scene, following a comment I left in this post. (Scroll past the rant about traffic in Lancaster, until you get to the section titled Whoo! Long hair!) Part of me wishes that we were blogging our conversation, rather than hiding it away in e-mails - although Siobhan does expand on the subject in this post. (Needless to say, the other part of me wishes that I didn't spend quite so much time mining real life for blog posts.)

Anyway. To compensate for the break in service, have a couple of MP3s. Both of these popped up at random on my iPod during Monday, and both got me right THERE. The first is a bitter-sweet "farewell to all that" lament, full of wistful regret, which seems appropriate under the circumstances. The second is a heartbreaking soul ballad from 1970, which I found in one of the few crates that remain from James Hamilton's collection.

No multi-tasking when you listen to these, please. They both require your full attention.

Nightsong - Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft
(Buy it from Amazon UK.)

Go On Fool - Marion Black
(Buy it from Amazon USA.)