The first gig I ever saw was by a Welsh rock group called Man, in May 1974.

(more…)

Here’s another infectious party in your ears. There’s not much to it but there doesn’t need to be, beyond that fat beat, the funky bass, the jagged guitars and the constant exhortations to Get Down. Apart from that soaring soprano sax that keeps on taking it higher. (more…)

I don’t know where I was in 1974… I mean, I do, but I was listening to Bowie and T.Rex, Slade and The Sweet. So I had never encountered William DeVaughn. (more…)

James Brown invented funk in 1965 with Papa Got A Brand New Bag, a song he memorably described thus: “The title told it all – I have a new bag.” (more…)

James Brown channels his anger into a revenge fantasy in the influential funk classic The Payback, much sampled by hip-hop artists in later years. (more…)

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.”
(more…)

During the seven years of my youth in Germany, I don’t think I heard a single note of music from my adopted country. The year I left school that changed. (more…)

Marlena Shaw’s spellbinding live version of Woman Of The Ghetto from 1974 transforms a tribute to African-American women into a civil rights anthem.

(more…)

I’m posting this to sum up the wettest May in memory – in the hope that the act of doing so I will immediately banish the never-ending deluge. (more…)

Barry White’s only chart-topping single started life as a country-and-western tune before he gave it a disco makeover. (more…)