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.

(more…)

Obviously there’s no ‘good’ way to die but to lose your life in a house fire, as Jill Sobule has done, must rank among the most unfortunate and unpleasant of all. (more…)

You may not have heard of him, and neither had I, but Wizz Jones was a pioneering figure in British folk: a man described by Bert Jansch as “the most underrated guitarist ever.”

(more…)

David Thomas regarded this as the nearest he ever came to writing and performing a straight-up pop song. Which tells you all you need to know about the Pere Ubu frontman, who has just died.

(more…)

Max Romeo’s career spanned the early days of ska through rocksteady to fiery roots reggae with a political conscience, peaking in the mid-’70s.

(more…)

It’s so sad to learn of the death of Blondie’s drummer Clem Burke, another of the Class of ’77 who has left us far too soon. Is this his finest moment?

(more…)

RIP Val Kilmer (1959-2025)

The night I met Val Kilmer was, weirdly enough, at a Mazzy Star gig at the Union Chapel in London. OK, it wasn’t actually at the gig, and I didn’t actually meet him, but we were both there at the same time that night in 1996.

(more…)

The thing about soul – soul in the musical sense – is that you’ve either got it or you haven’t. You only have to listen for a moment to know that Jerry Butler, who died this week, had soul.

(more…)

I’ve never been a jazz-funk fan and the vibraphone would be very low on my list of favourite instruments, ranking alongside the flute and just above the ukelele. But I’d have to make an exception for Roy Ayers.

(more…)

In a month when we lost some big names in music – Marianne Faithfull, Roberta Flack, Rick Buckler of The Jam – the death of Bill Fay may have passed without much attention.

(more…)