It Starts With a Birthstone...

  'four insolent looking post teens. a cache of monosyllabic song title and just over half an hour's worth of stripped down rock ...

  Television weren't the only band sporting a remarkable twin guitar attack strategy in 1975.

  In some ways I must be like an elephant. I never seem to forget. Memory is one of the primary driving factors that inspire me to and keep ...

  Keyboardist in Dexys MK 2 & 3. Outlines the regulations and the demand to be totally committed and to sign up for the whole Dexys inte...

  Sometimes it makes sense to listen to the drummer's album. Dennis Wilson. Beach Boys heart throb Friend of laughing Charlie Manson. Al...

  Queen I will always think of as an older brother band as my older brother had Queen, Led Zep and Black Sabbath albums. I now have his Led ...

  I've sold my copy of Loveless . I realised it had always made me feel sick and I wouldn't miss it . I have no plans to sell my cop...

  Jeffrey Lewis, New York's Anti Folk Poet rolls on with The Even More Free Wheelin Jeffrey Lewis another referential and sly album of s...

  I have the Best of The Four Tops on my record player. It's half past seven in the morning. I suspect I'll keep listening to it unt...

  I just had a rather golden forty five minutes with this album. My work was done by lunchtime and the day was mine.  I've just reconnec...

  'where Jethro Tull grew into one of the 70s most popular groups...'

Shelton, a driving factor in Mark II Dexys came from Secret Affair and fitted snugly into their ranks as an abstainer from drink and drugs. ...

  Nazareth seemed like Tartan marauders to an unschooled, no nothing pup like me. In front of afternoon kid's TV shows. . 

  I saw Talk Talk walking across Leicester Square in the mid Eighties. It's a nice and very special memory. I've put Spirit Of Eden ...

  It's difficult to distance music appreciation from personal experience.That's inevutably what we wrap oir tastes and judgements ar...

  Sleek. State of the Art. The musical equivalent of Total Football. Teamwork.  

                                                        Great record. Highly unfortinate cover.

  Slade do the gentle romantic smut that served them so well.

  The youngest of the early Dexys, their drummer,  and the last man recruited. Formed a tight rhythm section and firm lifelong friendship wi...

  'There's no proof that Woodstick ever, hppened in the first place!' What can you get for twelve quid these days. Well you coul...

                         You say Alice Cooper! I say thanks, but I'm quite happy with The New York Dolls !

  This is a joy.  People don't realise. What it felt like to hear these songs as they came out. But listening to this as I prepare for m...

  London quintet pencil's six track EP Bohemian Clutter's is conclusive evidence if it is needed that forming a band is one of the ...

  Don Van Vliet homed in on a single genre - Delata derived Chicago blues - which he remade and remodelled extensively.

  Evocative. It just feels intensely hot.Oblique and inspired. 

  Keyboardist who replaced Pete Saunders when he left Dexy's to go to university. Not lacking in confidence. Leek worked with George Mar...

  Last night I came in from  long day in the hit sun and listened to Suede's Suede before having my supper and turning in. Today I find ...

 

 The first record I reviewed when I started this blog back in 2013 wben I began this journey unto the unknown.       'The first thing yo...

  'For the best part of the last century,  Albania was isolated in a brutal communist dictatorship. When Communism fell in 1990  people ...

 

Nina is mandatory. I've just had a hot, hot bath and put a Nina on to keep me company . As the steam rose and the sweat gathered I resol...

                     'Half an hour from the county fair and the rain came pouring down...' I know some who prefer Moondance to As...

  Mid Seventies daytime Radio One sensuality.

  'Fourteen songs about seven people, ywo houses a motorcycle and a locked treatment facility for damaged boys...' Saill town Americ...

  Along with Geoff and Jimmy, the third part of Dexys lead instrument. The brass section. More the willing amateur than the other two pros. ...

  I like a bit of Cure. This one came at the time I'd drifted away from that sound and mood but I've found myself drifting back over...

  Canadians Preoccupations kicked off in 2015 as Viet Cong. A name change was deemed sensible, so as not to offend the sensibilities of of t...

  'dramatically raised the bar..' Whether this is a good thing or not is in the ears of the beholder.

  The history book on the shelf. Is always being rewritten by the winners . Or something like that. 1975 is now generally viewed as the calm...

  Some of the mist interesting artists are throwback ones. Those who go back to the source. Skip the Sixties and tap into the Roots of Rock ...

  Roots Reggae was a fundamental part of my musical up bringing. A fundamentsl part of the musical fabric of the UK in the seventies and eig...

  'It's time that the tale were told.'   You had to work hard in the Eighties. If music was your main obsession and you were hun...

  I was told recently. By an excellent friend I have known since I was 15 that I have an excellent memory. He put it in stronger terms than ...

  Tenor Sax of the Young Siul Rebels. Learned his chops with the Geno Washington Band. The guiding musical spirit of the early Dexys horn se...

  I listened to a Sonic Youth record yesterday and it reminded me how deftly they can crack open the visible and the unknown worlds and vent...

  The Slits were unprecedented and opened up a new mineshaft. Incredibly brave but also playful and sinuous. This was an exmple of women usi...

  If You Asked For a Picture , Blondshells' second album. Dreamy 90s Indebted Art-Rock. Sabrina Teitlebaum interrogates mid -20's he...

  Sonic Youth are a band that established an attitude, approach and sound early, reached their own summits in the mid eighties and maintined...

 Keyboardist in the initial line up. Spent his late teenage years in Dexys before opting for a Literature degree at UEA.He was a bit of an o...