RHINESTONE COWBOY

Rikki & Daz featuring Glen Campbell

Oh, hell. I’m sure you know how Glen Campbell’s original goes, so think of that mixed in with either Cotton Eye Joe or (brace yourself, here it comes) N-Trance’s vicious and totally unprovoked asault on Stayin’ Alive. It’s really quite terrible, however, this is the time of year when all manner of rubbish starts hitting the chart (we’re heading towards the time of year when Bob The Builder can beat Westlife to No1, so anything can happen), so this has a good chance of doing quite well. If nothing else, it makes you smile and (thank heavens) it’s not another limp and boring ballad like

UNBREAKABLE

Westlife

I beg to differ. The secret is to fold the disc enough times.

RETRO

New Order (box set)

So, this is it then. This has been rumoured to be happening for years now and finally London Records release a New Order box set. And get it wrong. The problem is, there’s a lot of New Order stuff that’s never made it onto CD (for example, the 7” versions of their Factory singles and the extremely rare remixes like Evil Dust) and this would’ve been a good time to rectify that. Instead, we get a selection of singles like Regret, Fine Time, Blue Monday, a CD full of album tracks (!) – a waste of a CD if ever I saw one – a CD filled with remixes (fair enough, some of these haven’t been released before that I know of) and a CD devoted to tracks recorded live – not a bad idea actually, as New Order don’t put out much in the way of live material. It’s worth buying because there is some new stuff here and I’ve seen it advertised for under £20, but this box set is far more notable for what isn’t on it than what is.