I can’t pretend I was listening to disco music in 1979: I was parading around in a leather jacket festooned with badges proclaiming punk bands and anti-social slogans.

(more…)

In the pantheon of disco music there are two moments that tower above all others. The first is Donna Summer’s I Feel Love – surely the greatest disco song of all time – and this is the second.

(more…)

Linda Lewis was the first female black British singer I ever saw on TV. They were a rarity in the early Seventies – in fact she’s the only one I can think of.

(more…)

Soul singers don’t come much better than Marvin Gaye and this deep cut comes from a session in 1967 – the year he brought us his best known tune, I Heard It Through The Grapevine.

(more…)

Happy Beltane to all the old hippies, from the most famous pop idol to come from my neighbourhood, Stoke Newington.

(more…)

Here’s wishing all my gloomy gothic friends in black all the very best for World Goth Day.. with the help of the patron saints of goth.

(more…)

Soul singer Al Wilson had a hit with this anti-racist allegory before Donald Trump appropriated it 50 years later as an anti-immigration parable. Because he’s an idiot.

(more…)

Peter Gabriel performed A Whiter Shade Of Pale as a punk parody – or was it a tribute? – at Knebworth in the summer of 1978.

(more…)

I know there are people – many people – who hate this prime fillet of cod reggae. They probably hate cricket too. In both cases they are mistaken.

(more…)

I really tried quite hard to like Nina Hagen, the so-called Godmother of German Punk. She was beautiful, glamorous and a little bit frightening – like a grown-up Toyah.

(more…)