Here’s one of those early-’60s pop oddities – Sandra Barry & The Boyfriend’s – featuring a singer and band who became better known much later.

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“Life is unfair,” sings Sarah Nixey. “Kill yourself or get over it.” As pop choruses go, it’s a dark one; as dark songs go, Child Psychology is even darker.

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There are two great songs in the pop canon that go by the name of Hallelujah. Leonard Cohen got there first and Jeff Buckley breathed new life into it, but The Happy Mondays came up with their own new song.

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Soft Cell’s biggest hit was the inevitable play-out song at the funeral of Dave Ball. It was never going to be anything else.

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Sandie Shaw followed up her first chart topper in 1964 with Girl Don’t Come – originally released as the B-side of her next single.

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Ray Charles had a hit single in 1963 with his version of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman’s classic song, No One. (more…)

I have to confess I didn’t know the singer of this Northern Soul favourite, Bobby Garrett, was the same ‘Bob’ in Bob & Earl, who sang the mega-hit Harlem Shuffle.

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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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There was a time in the mid-Nineties when The Auteurs and their main man Luke Haines seemed like becoming the next big thing.

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This is the second version of Pixies’ song Wave Of Mutilation (aka the “UK Surf” version) that appeared on the B-side of Here Comes My Man.

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