Let’s celebrate the Commonwealth Games like they did – with some miusic from Birmingham. Not Sabbath or The Streets, and not the organisers’ choice of Duran bloody Duran. Not even UB40 or my preference, Steel Pulse. (more…)

When I was 14, before Bowie and Bolan, Slade and Sweet, I was a big fan of an English group called The Strawbs. I haven’t listened to them in years. (more…)

Rodrigo y Gabriela: Echoes – new single

Be-Bop Deluxe filled a Bowie-shaped hole in my musical education after Aladdin Sane. I loved them despite – no, because of – the obvious similarity. (more…)

I have fairly strong feelings that comedy and music should be kept well apart. Otherwise you end up before long with Ernie and Shaddap You Face. This is the exception. (more…)

What do you do when your elderly parents have had the same handymen all their lives and now those old family retainers are reaching retirement age? An unfortunate event sets Tim Cooper thinking glumly about a rather different future. Read here. (more…)

Chuck Brown is surely not the only convicted murderer to have a hit record, but his crime lends a certain macabre cachet to his place in pop history. (more…)

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Dawes move into new territory with their eighth album, a decade after I discovered them on a sweltering summer night in London. (more…)

Deep Southern soul music doesn’t get much better than this version of These Arms Of Mine by James Carr from 1968. (more…)