Ever since I first heard their name, which was long after they broke up for the first time in 1991, I’ve had the idea that The Replacements were the ultimate “critics’ band.”

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Obviously these are just the ones I have read, and I am a slow reader. But I enjoy a good novel, with good characters, and I try to alternate my novel-reading with the occasional non-fiction book.

Looking at the list, it’s only now I notice that while the first (The Bee Sting) is very much an Irish book about an Irish family, the next five all have themes of race.

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Vivian Stanshall was one of those great British eccentrics. I came across him in my teens on John Peel’s radio show, where he regularly narrated extracts from his satirical saga Sir Henry At Rawlinson End.

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There are many things I love about Sault, not least their initial anonymity, their eclecticism, and their refusal to play by the marketing-led rules of the music biz.

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Here’s a trio of songs for Christmas – one for opening the presents, another for after dinner at the end of the day, and one for Boxing Day.

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There’s a compelling argument that we’ve had enough Christmas songs to last a lifetime and don’t need any more. But this one has that same seasonal sense of sadness and nostalgia as Fairytale Of New York.

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Bass lines don’t come much funkier than this minimalist drum-and-bass obscurity by a short-lived mid-’70s band called Spaghetti Head.

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How different rock history might have been if Leaf Hound had formed a couple of years earlier. They might well have stolen Led Zeppelin’s thunder and become rock legends.

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This is utterly heartbreaking. Once heard, never forgotten: Candi Staton’s first-hand memory of one of the worst racist terror incidents in US history, in which four little girls lost their lives.

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