One from the past... The Stone Roses go dance

I Am The Resurrection. In my mind, this song will always stand as the pinacle of everything the Stone Roses were about. In its full eight minute long version, it represents a towering accomplishment of musicality and skill, blending influences and sounds to create a riotious stormer of a track that still sounds just as fresh and innovative now as it did twenty years ago.

On one hand you have the first part of the song, the part you still hear played now and again on the radio - this in its own right is a cracking bit of Brit-pop. The hooks are all there, added to a stomping beat - the very ultimate in toe-tapping bliss from the heart of Madchester.

And then there is the immense instrumental outro. As the first part ends, slamming into that infectious bassline, you're reminded that the Stone Roses were as much a band for the dancefloor as they were for the sweaty indie venues and crowded fields of stoned revelers. Which draws me on to the 'Extended 16:9 Ratio Club Mix' which originally appeared as the A-side of the single's 12" release.

You need only look at the current midweek Number One - Wretch 32's Unorthodox - to see the Stone Roses' dance heritage in full health, the tune sampling as it does the band's iconic Fools Gold riff. But listening to the 12" extended mix of I Am The Resurrection, the dance vibes are just as strong here too. The beat gets a few tweaks, the bass is brought forward in the mix. Whereas the original was certainly danceable, that side of affairs felt secondary to the big, beating rock heart of the track; the mix places that emphasis firmly back on the other foot. 1992 or 2011, this remains a bloody good track.

The Stone Roses reunion - will they/won't they... (Probably not)

In terms of reunions everyone would like to happen, The Stone Roses rank pretty highly. They also rank highly on the list of reunions that are probably not going to ever happen. With The Sun reporting this morning that Ian Brown and John Squire had officially 'buried the hatchet', we all got rather excited at the prospect of hearing all those amazing hits live again. The band quite literally were the resurrection in this instance.

But by the afternoon Mani had thrown cold water on it all, declaring "Please fuck off and leave it alone. It isn't true and isn't happening". As far as dismissive statements go, this is pretty amazing. Imagine if the likes of Take That had said this through all those years of being questioned if Robbie was going to come back...

Now, as much as part of me would love to see a Stone Roses reunion happen, there's many reasons why it would be a disappointment on just so many levels. Ian Brown has released some great music as a solo artist down the years but it has never reached the heights of the Roses themselves at their best. But if the band were to reform, would there be any guarantee they wouldn't go down the route of releasing a rather disappointing 'comeback' album... It's impossible to know. Of course, it could be amazing, but when you've released one of the most definitive albums of all time in the form of their self-titled debut, it's one hell of a tough job to attempt to recreate even a fraction of that quality.

The Stone Roses came to bookmark a particular sound and moment in time. That late 80s/early 90s period was their kingdom, and they were its rulers. No one else came close in terms of the sound they were producing. To try and recreate that sound in 2011 just wouldn't feel right. It'd be like unearthing a lost treasure and expecting it to still gleam with the magic that made it so special in the first place; the trouble is that time is the greatest enemy when it comes to things like this. It's just not as simple as saying 'Let's get back together' and expecting to slot effortlessly back into the world.  Music has moved on, the world has moved on. The Stone Roses greatest moments still sound amazing to this day, but let us leave them as they are; memories, encapsulated in their very own fragment of time, forever reminding us of one of the greatest bands of all time.

Charity shop time machine to the past...

I'm a regular visitor to my two local charity shops, which, rather conveniently, are located about 50 metres apart from each-other on the high-street. I'm not sure what the staff think of me, spending ages carefully checking through every single CD in the rack, but over the past two or three years I've been going to them, I've uncovered some long-since deleted singles and bargain-price albums from my favourite artists - in the process saving me an absolute fortune in having to buy them from Ebay.

My latest purchases were:

Depeche Mode - Ultra
New Order - The Best Of
The Stone Roses - Second Coming
Now That's What I Call Music 37

The first three are all some of my favourite bands of all time. And finding these albums at two quid a go, I just had to have them. Sure, I already have the tracks on my iTunes (and in the case of Ultra, a re-released deluxe edition), but there's something inherently beautiful about purchasing the originals. In their slightly scuffed cases and with the little price-tag sticker on them, they are so much a part of the 90s - the era seems to seep out of the very CDs themselves. Buying them in this way, you are getting more than just the music - here you have a little time-capsule, a link back to the past, a window into the world in which these albums first appeared.