I hope I’m not tempting fate by posting this on the day my team head out to Bavaria in search of victory against freshly deposed 11-time German champions Bayern Munich.

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Here’s a sweet slice of Northern Soul to warm the cockles of the heart on the longest night of the year. Listen carefully and you can hear the guitar of future Fleetwood Mac member Bob Welch.

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I thought I knew everything by The Rolling Stones but I’d never heard this song from Their Satanic Majesties Request ’til this morning, when it was chosen on the radio by Thurston Moore.

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I’ve just heard this song for the first time – only half a century after it first came out. And… wow. It’s a spellbinding, heartbreaking account of a loveless marriage and the effect it’s had on the life of their unwanted child.

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You’ve got to feel sorry for Fred Neil. The obscure Canadian folkie recorded definitive versions of three great songs that went on to become standards – and all three were made famous in better versions by three other artists.

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The mysterious Rubin only recorded a single side in his obscure music career – but it became a Northern Soul classic. (more…)

If you were a black kid growing up in postwar Detroit, there’s a good chance you would sing in the school choir and the church, and end up in a doo wop group before graduating to RnB and soul.

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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.

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Is it heresy to suggest that this is not only one of the best Velvets covers but arguably a better version than the original? Especially when you learn that it was recorded in a tent. By a bunch of GIs. In the middle of the jungle in Vietnam.

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I don’t think I ever heard the name Levi Stubbs until Billy Bragg wrote and sang a song in the mid-Eighties called Levi Stubbs’ Tears. Even then I doubt I realised who he was.

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