What the hell is wrong with the Brits!!!

Everyday I download news and various web pages from Avantgo, a kind of precursor to RSS & Podcasting. Three of the major channels that I subscribe to are BBC: News, Sports, and Radio One. But sometimes even the Beeb manages to amaze me. For one the Radio One channel has not updated their play list since: 03/06/2004 and then their is the charts; how the hell can anyone say that the BBC and the British Music scene are at the forefront of new music when last weeks charts included music spanning almost 5 decades... DUDE THAT IS ALMOST 50 YEARS!

Let me show you what I'm talking about, this is last week UK Singles Chart according to the Beeb.

Radio 1 - Top 40 Singles

Official UK Top 40 Singles - 09/01/2005

1 - Elvis Presley - 'Jailhouse Rock'

2 - Steve Brookstein - 'Against All Odds'

3 - Iron Maiden - 'The Number Of The Beast'

4 - Erasure - 'Breathe'

6 - Band Aid 20 - 'Do They Know It's Christmas'

13 - Ronan Keating feat. Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)- 'Father And Son'

25 - Christina Aguilera feat. Missy - 'Car Wash '

27 - Merrion/McCall/Kensit - 'I Got You Babe/Soda Pop '

Ok Presley would of been 70 recently so it is understandable but what the hell is going on with the Iron Maiden comeback? Seriously, I'm a huge fan of Eddie and the Maiden but what's the story? Somebody please enlighten me... Have I been gone from Blighty that long that I don't even know why 80's metal rockers are suddenly back on the scene?

As for the Phil Collins and Rose Royce remakes, well that is only normal for British pop. Half the pop producers are old rockers trying to re-ignite the royalties on some of their old projects. Ok that might just be my own conspiracy skepticism but the are very few pop producers in the in the UK charts and far to many covers. Actually I had tried to get a show commission on UK radio that would solely play covers. After discussing it with a few Programme Controllers, I was told that the show would sound too much like a normal radio hour. Which made me think back to an old high school project where a classmate had predicted that we would run out of notes and all songs would simply be resamples and covers. This guy was heavily into thrash and speed metal and could not imagine too many new kinds of music. Even after all the drum and base and hard house stuff that is coming out, I can't help think back to this guy and what he was thinking.

When I see Radio One charts like those of last week, I can't help but think that my old metalhead classmate might have been onto something.

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