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Ivor Cutler was an eccentric Scottish poet whose chronicles of Life In A Scotch Sitting Room became popular during the punk era after being championed by John Peel.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this fellow and his home-made guitar, fashioned from a cigar box, had been unearthed deep in the Mississippi Delta. You couldn’t get further from the truth. William Adamson is just one of the alter egos of Rob Gallagher, former acid house DJ, underground poet, new age rapper and lead singer of acid jazz combo Galliano – the first act to be signed to Talkin’ Loud in the late eighties.
Merle Haggard’s self-penned number from 1974 has all the elements of the perfect Christmas song – a sad, sentimental, yet optimistic lyric, and a cracking tune.
Like most of us, I imagine, I spent a lot of time watching the telly over the course of this year. These were my favourites and I think they demonstrate pretty clearly why anyone who wants to “defund the BBC” is an idiot.
RIP Terry Hall (1957-2022).
The Specials were part of my youth, and I saw them several times, including that magical first time with Madness and Dexys and The Selecter all on one bill in 1979.
These guys were never more than a name to me – a name synonymous with psychedelic San Francisco acid rock. So too the name of their virtuoso guitarist John Cipollina.
Some time in 1979 I was at a gig at the Electric Ballroom when a sharp-dressed man with a prematurely balding dome and pallid complexion walked past me. He was not a looker by any means, but he had a stunning girl on his arm. I recognised him as Joe Jackson; and his debut single came instantly and inevitably to mind.
Considering rule one of punk was to adopt a convincingly anti-social working-class persona, Rikki And The Last Days Of Earth made a rookie error. They had the look – all leather and spiky hair – and they were certainly early adopters, releasing their first single in May 1977.
I’ve had this terrible seven-inch EP by lower-league punk group Riff Raff in my collection for nearly 45 years and I had no idea until literally just now that the singer is Billy Bragg.
Of all the crimes committed in the name of music, few deserve a capital sentence more than this 1979 performance by Punishment Of Luxury. As you would expect from a group who had the truly terrible idea of marrying punk to its polar opposite, prog.