Music
I love dipping back in to old compilation albums and discovering early efforts by two or three bands who went on to become big names. Stevo’s first compilation, Some Bizzare Album, uncovered this one.
This week saw the 91st birthday of Willie Nelson, veteran pioneer of Outlaw Country and still turning out two or three albums a year without any notable loss of quality.
I admire the fact he was still writing at 88, and he can certainly spin a good yarn after all those years. But, oh man, John LeCarré’s latest spy saga is filled with excruciating anachronisms that make the 21st century seem like a foreign country.
If dance music was rock music, then this tune, Waters Of Nazareth by French dance duo Justice, would be its Smoke On The Water.
Here’s a new playlist for the end of Spring and… hopefully… the start of Summer. There’s seminal hip-hop, hardcore techno, primal punk, vintage soul, vintage folk-rock, funk, country and Congolese rumba. And probably more besides.
Pete Wylie had his finest moment – and biggest hit – when Wah! released The Story Of The Blues at Christmas 1982, and reached No.3 in the charts.
Charley Crockett is a new name to me, though I feel I ought to have heard of a guy who’s made 14 albums in nine years. His hybrid of country, blues and soul taps into that sound forged at Muscle Shoals in the late Sixties and Seventies, with smouldering horns and searing blues guitar matched to a country twang.
Blue Cheer was never been anything more than a name to me – a late-Sixties band that I’d never actually heard. Now that I finally have… well, fucking hell!
Mel Day first came to fame at the age of 77 as a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent. Now he’s made a brilliant slice of Deep Soul with Tito Lopez Combo.
There was a time when the demise of a Moody Blue might have made headlines; at least in the music press. This week the death of keyboard player Mike Pinder – the last of the original members – passed almost unnoticed. But not by me.