Latest posts

I’ve always regarded jazz-funk as the devil’s music, something for which I primrily blame George Benson’s scat singing along to his guitar. And Level 42, obviously. (more…)

Break-up songs don’t come much more devastating than The End Of The World, which gave country legend Skeeter Davis her only UK hit in 1963. (more…)

Butthole Surfers – Pepper

17th April 2021 · 1990s, 1996

You can probably tell from their name that The Butthole Surfers are not for everyone. But the Texas noisemongers were very much for me. In parts, anyway. (more…)

You’d expect a song by David Byrne to be quirky but even by his own eccentric standards this one is… let’s say idiosyncratic. (more…)

Here’s another tune I remember fondly from my childhood in the Seventies – but this version is recorded in 2021 and released today. (more…)

With his big hat and catchy tunes, George Strait was my gateway drug into what the old joke calls my two of my favourite types of music – country and western. (more…)

Brian Eno – Third Uncle

13th April 2021 · 1970s, 1974, Music

When we think of Brian Eno we usually think of the cerebral egghead who makes ambient soundtracks, or maybe the Glam guy from Roxy Music.
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Filmed in a downpour against leaden skies and the synthesised diesel roar of a motorway, this rave anthem – another list song – lives up to its title. (more…)

Jim Carroll’s tragic song, People Who Died, commemorates the friends he lost to drugs during an early life catalogued in his teenage memoir The Basketball Diaries. (more…)

John Grant – Marz

10th April 2021 · 2010, 2010s, Music

Another list song. I first heard this marvellous melancholic tune when I went to see a quartet of new artists at a Bella Union showcase, billed as A Summer Evening at the Union Chapel in 2010. (more…)