It Starts With a Birthstone...

  Near the start of it all. There's a purity here that's difficult to process.

  A New York vocal  group in the slipstream of The Four Seasons.   

  Italian progressive Rock . 1972. I imagine you own this. It has an irresistible tug. Close your eyes. The years fall away..   

  Deep House. Great to lsten to. Ifid it difficult to write about.

  The Monkees had the best songs. The best writers, The best colour. They had a lot going for them that band. 

  You can use music for many purposes. I'm currently channeling it as something of a restorative. To take me back to times and spaces. P...

  Den Der Hale are playing at The Cimberland Arms this evening.I probably won't go. I have an early start tomorrow and a few classes.to ...

Joni reflects on age. She's by instincts a thoughtful artist with an eye on her place in history. This song was originally on Hejira but...

  I saw Sleater Kinney around this juncture, They were propulsive. Righteous !

 

  We're shifting towards summer. It won't get dark intil half past nine tonight. I've finished my tea and washed up the plates a...

  In some ways this should be a disturbing record to listen to because it's made by a deeply disturbed man who dropped off the radar pre...

  The Walker Brothers could sing the bus tumetable and it would sound divine. Here they sing The Ronettes and it will do. 

  An immediately wonderful grasp om colour, melody and sunniness. Joni sounds impossibly fresh and exuberant here. But there's also a wo...

  Rough Trade are onto this and that's good enough for me. I went across the road just now and mentioned them to Nick the owner of the r...

  'Come out of the cupboard you boys and girls....' It seems like a good time to listen to  London Calling. I hear a lot of people d...

  Bill Callahan is a comforting artist. He goves you the sense that it's stull the Sixties bur with an  added knowing dimension. Some of...

  This makes me think of my childhood. And my beautiful mother who had a great array of summer Sixties dresses. It's all sunlight and yo...

  David Geffen asks Joni for a hit and Joni in tesponse is playful with the form.

  I've surprised myself by falling hard for American Football's self tutled fourth album over the last couple of days. It's spac...

  If you came of age in the Eighties you had a slightly awry perspective on a number of artusts. Elton Jihn, Springsteen, Bowie, Dylan and J...

  The author if this list is Swedush aand naturally has a different perspective. I've never heard of Lucifer's Friend. Pn immediate ...

  The stuff of everyone's youth. At least those if a certain age. Roughly mine. Btian Cant, Toni Arthur, Derek Griffiths, Carol Chell To...

  Charm exemplified.

  Seefeel are a band that graced the pages of the Melody Maker every week in the early Nineties when I used ti buy it and The NME pretty ...

  'When i was young the radio played just for me. It saved me....' Roddy Frame sad a poet's heart and a troubadour's stride....

  Funky loveliness.

 

  Released in 1970. Rather in thrall of The Moody Blues. A band I've always found a trifle soppy but it has had a rich legacy down the d...

  Tragedy and wickedness on an industrial scale. It's difficult listening to a song of such import and essential solemnity. .

  Aldous Harding Train on The Island it seems is the record which will carry me through May. It's almost an act of hypnosis I'm fin...

  I've done my share of slagging. Let's give this a go.I find myself skipping sings. It has its moments. But mostly uts pale imitati...

  This song seems so clearly to be an explicit drug related song that it might well have come with a street map of Soho enclosed, Cheeky Ch...

  Melodramatic wordy, nocturnal Rock & Roll. I lost a good friend who is the biggest Elvis Costello fan I've ever know. He's als...

  Four tracks. Four sides. Over eighty minutes. The third Soft Machine album following the departure of Kevin Ayers. will not be to everyone...

  We're all on a lonely road and are travelling. Looking fir the key to set us free.

  Saturday morning becomes Saturday afternoon. And Jesca Hoop's new album  Long Wave Home  suddenly is a preferable option to.... well a...

  Leesburgh, Virginia's finest. A strange reinvention  of the sixties and severnties Rock & Roll dreams. This is pretty damned excit...

  A record that makes you want to go back in time.

  This is an absurd and wonderful list full of staggering and brilliant records you never knew existed but fall in love with almost immediat...

  Pelt main player takes you back and plays you a lot of Folk Raga drones that weren't a hit before your mother was born. 

  White Denim's 13 sets off as if it's Frank Zappa's crazed nephew. I can't stand Frank Zappa so I'm not hopeful. But I...

  Hissing of Summer Lawns was probably the furst Joni album I bought. When I was about 17. As with many of my acquisitions at that point in...

  I always likes me a good story.

  Sometimes the coffee table nature of much of Joni can turn me off. This is tasteful.   

  My eyes go wide, when I put on a record where it's immediately apparent that there's something at stake, A sense of engagement a d...

  A living dream. This countdown is catching my imagination to an intense, vivid degree.

                                                                                                              'Still looking fir the pas...

  A mythical and tragic figure in Rock & Roll lore and a record I'm pleased to own. It finds its way off the racks and onto my turnt...

  You have to work your way through lists like these to begin to appreciate how vast and inkmowable music is . This is medieval and tender.