Back in the days before JJJ entirely lost its soul, it heaved and sweated and gave birth to a poll … the JJJ Hottest 100.
In the first couple of years you could vote for any song without restrictions … hence Joy Division won the first two years straight with the sublime Love Will Tear Us Apart. This was sung by a by-then dead guy with a bunch of people who would go on to form New Order after he topped himself. Incidentally this latter group would go on to have a massive club/underground hit about the dead guy … Blue Monday (which also made the poll’s top five).
Of course, it was inconvenient for JJJ to get such results as the poll was intended to hype the latest crop of music industry offerings and thus the rules had to be changed.
Anyway, among the top five in both of the first two years of the poll was an English band – The The – with a wonderful song called Uncertain Smile. The The released other great songs such as Sweet Bird of Truth, Slow Train to Dawn (watch out for Nenah Cherry) and Infected.
Given all this, I was rather surprised to come across this graffiti in a Belconnen library alcove this afternoon.
Just for the record I, for one, am not ashamed of The The. In fact I’m rather fond of them.