Dave Fanning's Fab 50, 2008

Just thinking the other day about all the musical Christmas traditions I used to love in the 1980s:

1. Listening to (and voting for) John Peel's Festive Fifty;
2. Buying the Christmas issue of the NME - it was always a double edition with year-end charts and rock stars dressed up as other celebs; (I stopped buying NME when it went from a newspaper to a 'glossy')
3. Tuning my radio and hoping for a decent signal from RTE Radio 2, to hear Dave Fanning's Fab 50 chart, which was also a listeners' choice but a bit less left-field than the Peel one.

Reassuringly, Fanning's Fab 50 is still going, and here is this list which is reproduced courtesy of www.rte.ie.

It can always be relied upon to provide a mix of old rock, 80s and 90s indie, and recent/current favourites.

1 - One - U2
2 - Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon
3 - Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
4 - Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
5 - Bad - U2
6 - With or Without You - U2
7 - How Soon Is Now - The Smiths
8 - There is a Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths
9 - Black - Pearl Jam
10 - I Am The Resurrection - The Stone Roses
11 - Dearg Doom - Horslips
12 - Run - Snow Patrol
13 - Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
14 - Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
15 - Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
16 - Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
17 - Hurt - Johnny Cash
18 - Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
19 - Human -The Killers
20 - Imagine -John Lennon
21 - Gimme Shelter -The Rolling Stones
22 - Kids - MGMT
23 - Viva la Vida - Coldplay
24 - Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
25 - Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
26 - Live Forever - Oasis
27 - I Wanna Be Adored - The Stone Roses
28 - Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
29 - Sweet Child O'Mine - Guns N'Roses
30 - Mr. Brightside - The Killers
31 - A Day in the Life - The Beatles
32 - 1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
33 - Intervention - Arcade Fire
34 - Where the Streets Have No Name - U2
35 - Teenage Kicks - The Undertones
36 - Debaser - The Pixies
37 - Creep - Radiohead
38 - Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
39 - Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade fire
40 - Bullet with Butterfly Wings - Smashing Pumpkins
41 - Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2
42 - One Day Like This - Elbow
43 - Don't Stop Believing - Journey
44 - Fans - Kings of Leon
45 - Time to Pretend - MGMT
46 - November Rain - Guns n Roses
47 - Fool's Gold - The Stone Roses
48 - Enter Sandman - Metallica
49 - Love is Noise - The Verve
50 - Back in Black - AC/DC