There’s something horribly prophetic in the lyric of Gil Scott-Heron’s song The Bottle: “Look around on any corner/If you see some brother lookin’ like a goner/It’s gonna be me.”
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Quincy Jones came up with the song named after the Japanese arthouse porn film that gave me one of my most memorably horrible experiences in a cinema. (more…)

The Meters defined the sound of New Orleans funk on this instrumental back in 1969. It’s still winning new friends in movies today. (more…)

The life story of Waylon Jennings is the stuff of country music legend. And it’s all true, from his youth picking cotton in Texas to teenage radio DJ to playing bass with Buddy Holly – giving up his plane ticket on that fateful day the music died. (more…)

After becoming a star with Harvest, Neil Young got back together with Crazy Horse for Zuma, creating the epic guitar extravaganza of Cortez The Killer. (more…)

Once in a while you come across an old tune you’ve never heard before by a musician you’ve never heard before and it’s so great you can’t believe you didn’t know it. Like this slice of psychedelic soul. (more…)

You hear the word ‘classic’ bandied about a lot but Express Yourself is a solid-gold soul and funk classic of the first order. (more…)

The Shirelles were still in their teens, fresh out of Passaic High School in New Jersey, when they became the first black girl group to top the US charts in 1960. (more…)

Roy Ayers’s song Everybody Loves The Sunshine is the quintessential summer groove, guaranteed to brighten any day. (more…)