Labi Siffre was a West London boy but paid tribute to a beauty spot in Staffordshire on his song Cannock Chase.

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I’m familiar with Odetta as the voice of the Civil Rights Movement back in the ’50s and ’60s and I know Martin Luther King called her the Queen of American folk music. But I’d never heard this ’til now.

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It was when The Clash invited Joe Ely to join them on tour in 1980 that I began to understand the parallels between punk and rebel country music.

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If you’d asked me what I thought about Demis Roussos, this would not spring to mind. I would not have answered with a king of disco. 

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Veteran reggae outfit The Twinkle Brothers reached an early peak in their career with this rockers favourite, Rasta Pon Top.

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PragVEC were one of the first of the post-punk bands to emerge in London in 1978 and sounded unlike anyone else at the time – or since. (more…)

Still digging into early-Seventies soul, I have to admit I’d never heard of Brick and consequently I’d never heard of their disco and jazz hybrid that they called “dazz.”

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In 1977 I was listening to a solid diet of one-chord wonders, varied only with a weekly dose of Top of the Pops to find out what the rest of the country was listening to while I pogoed.

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This nine-minute extravaganza is essentially an extended guitar solo, much like Funkadelic’s extraordinary Maggot Brain. And just as good.

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Jazz-funk was never my thing, conjuring nightmarish visions of George Benson and Level 42, but it did provide a moment of Pleasure in 1979.

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