Talking Heads’ second album tends to get unfairly overlooked. Probably partly because it came so soon after their debut, and partly due to being sandwiched between their landmark debut 77 and the masterpiece that followed with Fear Of Music.

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News today that Moldy Peaches have reunited reminded me of this oddball hit from the film Juno. As someone says in the comments: “The voices are SO cringey. The lyrics are SO corny. Yet the song is SO perfect.”

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Has there ever been a more perfect match of a song to the opening scene of a movie? It’s impossible to think of Saturday Night Fever without the bouncy rhythm of Stayin’ Alive coming into your head.

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There are few stranger bands than The Residents, as much a performance art project as a pop group, rom their experimental avant-garde image to their experimental avant-garde sound.

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Of the three or four times I saw Joy Division, oddly the occasion I remember most is the time I didn’t. Because I couldn’t get in.

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The Glaxo Babies may be the most underrated band of the immediate post-punk era; or all time. They certainly deserve to be celebrated in the pantheon of Bristol bands alongside The Pop Group, Portishead and Massive Attack. 

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The Pop Group never sold many records but their legacy has been huge in their influence on other bands. Nick Cave, whose band The Birthday Party was very much in their image, acclaimed this song as their masterpiece.

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RIP Wilko Johnson (Dr Feelgood, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, The Solid Senders) 1947-2022. Gone but never forgotten.

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John Otway is one of those great English eccentrics this country occasionally produces, like Vivian Stanshall and Syd Barrett. In a career spanning half a century he’s had just two hit singles, 25 years apart. This is the first of them, with his musical partner Wild Willy Barrett.

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