I love dipping back in to old compilation albums and discovering early efforts by two or three bands who went on to become big names. Stevo’s first compilation, Some Bizzare Album, uncovered this one.
This week saw the 91st birthday of Willie Nelson, veteran pioneer of Outlaw Country and still turning out two or three albums a year without any notable loss of quality.
I admire the fact he was still writing at 88, and he can certainly spin a good yarn after all those years. But, oh man, John LeCarré’s latest spy saga is filled with excruciating anachronisms that make the 21st century seem like a foreign country.
If dance music was rock music, then this tune, Waters Of Nazareth by French dance duo Justice, would be its Smoke On The Water.
Pete Wylie had his finest moment – and biggest hit – when Wah! released The Story Of The Blues at Christmas 1982, and reached No.3 in the charts.
Blue Cheer was never been anything more than a name to me – a late-Sixties band that I’d never actually heard. Now that I finally have… well, fucking hell!
There was a time when the demise of a Moody Blue might have made headlines; at least in the music press. This week the death of keyboard player Mike Pinder – the last of the original members – passed almost unnoticed. But not by me.
When I first heard Domino on The Cramps’ landmark debut Gravest Hits EP, prompting the birth of psychobilly in 1979, I had no idea it was a Roy Orbison song.
When The Adverts invited Nico to play her first gig in four years in April 1978 not everyone was excited as me to see the Velvet Underground’s iconic chanteuse in the flesh.
The first time I heard this I was knocked sideways. I expected experimentation from Brian Eno and David Byrne, but My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts took it to a whole new level.