I’ve loved Mexican music for a long time and the first time I heard it was on Ry Cooder’s 1976 album Chicken Skin Music. And the songs that stood out were the ones featuring the accordion of Flaco Jimenez.

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Sad to hear of another rock’n’roll death, this time of George Kooymans, lead guitarist and co-founder of Dutch rockers Golden Earring.

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Heavy metal was never my music and Black Sabbath were never my band. But Ozzy superseded the genre he and his mates invented.

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It’s ironic that Connie Francis unwittingly reached a new generation when this song went viral on Tik Tok in May – two months before her death at the age of 87.

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This was the song that sent Dave Cousins and his band of former folkies The Strawbs into the pop charts for the first time early in 1973.

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Another one gone: this time it’s Keith Dobson, aka Kif-Kif of Here & Now and World Domination Enterprises.

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The word genius gets bandied around rather too much when it comes to musicians. But few would dispute that Brian Wilson was a genius.

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Rick Derringer was one of those names that I heard a lot growing up, without ever being able to place him or recognise a particular song.

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If James Brown was the godfather of soul, then Sly Stone was the wayward genius of a younger brother who followed him into the family trade.

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With a name like The Electric Prunes, whose founder and front man James Lowe has just died, they could only have been a late-Sixties band from California.

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