To celebrate Samhain – or Hallowe’en if you prefer – here is my latest autumnal playlist. We start and finish with radically different versions of Ghost Town, from almost 45 years apart. In between there’s something old-but-new by T.Rex and more Glam from Sparks and Suzi Quatro. Plus a lot of steamy early-’70s funk and jazz-funk, and some Soft Cell in tribute to my old pal Dave. 

Lankum transform The Specials’ Ghost Town into an otherworldly Irish folk-drone-techno banger for a new generation. (more…)

Siouxsie Sioux channels her inner Shirley Bassey to sing the best Bond theme never to appear in a Bond movie.

(more…)

Dave Ball was one of the least starry rock stars I ever met. It’s probably why we became mates.

(more…)

Ace Frehley, aka Space Ace, aka The Spaceman, was the creator of countless heavy rock riffs – and solos – in his role as lead guitarist of Kiss.

(more…)

I have to confess I never really paid much attention to the rise of D’Angelo, wrongly filing him away as a smooth R&B crooner of bedroom ballads.

(more…)

Midlake made their breakthrough in 2006 with Roscoe, the lead tune from the Texas band’s second album The Trials Of Van Occupanther.

(more…)

Sparks star in a typically entertaining and eccentric video opposite Rebecca Taylor (aka Self Esteem) for their new single Porcupine.

(more…)

The days are growing shorter, the nights are drawing in and, as Jim Morrison put it, Summer’s Almost Gone. So what better way to start a September playlist than with The Doors’ elegiac tune? And what better way to end it than with that Adrian Sherwood remix of Saint Etienne? In between there’s everything from vintage rockabilly and folk to fingerpicking guitar and French hip-hop, and tributes to those we lost in September, from Supertramp, Blancmange and Pentangle to Robert Redford.

A “new” T. Rex song from 1975 is released to mark what would have been the 78th birthday of Glam idol Marc Bolan.

(more…)