The Doors perfectly captured the mood of those last days of sunshine before the days get shorter and the leaves start to turn and fall.  (more…)

RIP Val Kilmer (1959-2025)

The night I met Val Kilmer was, weirdly enough, at a Mazzy Star gig at the Union Chapel in London. OK, it wasn’t actually at the gig, and I didn’t actually meet him, but we were both there at the same time that night in 1996.

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Lana Del Rey must wonder who she has to fuck to win a Grammy Award. Once again this week she walked away empty-handed.

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Once upon a time there was a band called Jefferson Airplane fronted by a former model called Grace Slick. But before that Grace was in a band called The Great Society and the Airplane had a singer called Signe Toly.

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La Luz sound as if they should come from somewhere by the sea in sunny SoCal but actually come from rainy Seattle… though they did once record an album in a California surfboard shop, and now live there.

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Looking at a list of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s string of hits in the mid-1960s, I find I only know one of them… this summertime classic.

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Summer songs don’t get much more summery than this trippy number by Jonathan Wilson, leader of the latterday Laurel Canyon revival.

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Dawes move into new territory with their eighth album, a decade after I discovered them on a sweltering summer night in London. (more…)

Here’s a lost masterpiece blending jazz, funk, blues and soul – and psychedelia – by The Loading Zone, a long-forgotten late-1960s band from San Francisco. (more…)

Another lost classic from the funk vaults, The Watts Breakaway is just one of many musical achievements of Johnny Otis. The singer is Delmar ‘Mighty Mouth’ Evans and the guitarist may well by Johnny’s equally well-known son Shuggie Otis. (more…)