It Starts With a Birthstone...

B-side to A Lighter Shade of Pale  and more typical of what their contemporaries were doing at the time.

Duran Duran. Who'd have thunk it! Old Simon Le Bon's eminently punchable fizzgog leering out at you from this blog. I'd cer...

Mary Hopkins does Sparks and remarkably it sounds just right for her.

A nice thing to hear coming out at you on a balmy Sunday morning As the DJ commented, a touch of Bobbie Gentry here.

Food makes Song of the Day for the second time in a row. his time dessert. From the classic era of synth duos. This was their biggest h...

It was a hot Friday night. No regulars n Rosie's apart from me. Big groups of dressed up women making a pit stop before a night o...

It's interesting to listen to the also-rans of previous eras who time's passing has almost covered over from collective memory....

And then later, one of the real regulars of Rosie's who doesn't usually put on the jukebox played some songs. We got a bit of M...

A beautiful evening in my local. Beer was involved. Can't remember exactly what I put on but there was The Jags, Funkadelic and thi...

The Lush post yesterday has brought on a Shoegazing phase. Here is the movement's supergroup comprising Miki Berenyi and Chris Acla...

Fast forward seven more years .It's that album again. The first thing I wrote about on here.The NME review.

Fast forward two years. Originally intended for Rumours , but left off at the last minute, an indication of just how strong that record...

Interesting to look back at those on the Bowie / New York Dolls conveyor belt who ended up left there. Brett Smiley was a protege of An...

I love the moments when I'm sitting at my desk as the evening darkens when I suddenly hear something new, at least new to me, comin...

An early nineties Melody Maker live review of Lush that captures the rough and tumble of seeing bands live then. I saw them round about...

Winding down yesterday afternoon at work, I was listening to The Rockingbirds first album. They're a London based Country and Weste...

The B Side of I'm an Urban Spaceman, their big moment in the Pop Sun. This was their other side. Literally in this case.

Interesting to hear this song so late, just before I drop off coming out of the wires. Too late to comment on it now, put I'll get ...

Because I love Tom Verlaine. Here's a comic strip picture of him with Lou Reed for good measure. The song is by a fairly generic la...

Because it's been going round my head since I woke up this morning. Good a reason as any.

Just a beautiful thing to hear last thing at night before it's time to go night night, sleep tight! The last thing I hear before my...

This was also played on Kim Gordon's show, but it's an extraordinary piece of music and deserves posting here though it's q...

Kim Gordon, substituting for Iggy Pop the other night played a very interesting set of records, including Dave Brubeck, Chopin, The G...

Originally a Bob Marley song on Rastaman Vibration.  

Another old school rocker. Always worth hearing how things sound in French. Second song in that language today. This is barely differen...

This series is on a roll. Like a batsman, (cricket reference for overseas readers), opening his shoulders having finally reached his ce...

More Sunday morning fare. Fund myself listening to the audio commentary of Withnail & I, where this is played over the opening cred...

Just right for a Sunday morning. A bit of pedal steel 'geetar' from Sneaky Pete Kleinow with Gene Clark intoning on top. Really...

For the leftfield and obscurist for the sake of it, this may be an ultimate discovery. A French female singer from the mid-sixties in t...

A beautifully realised pop record. Named after the regular cries of the old market stall holders directed towards her as lead singer El...

You could probably make some case for Hank Williams writing the first modern pop songs. He definitely had an incalculable influence. In...

Where the band got their name. From 1977 album Pure Mania.

From Cinerama, a Dave Gedge offshoot from The Wedding Present . For Gina Lollobrigida and why not? She brightens up the page. There she...

This went on last night. Intended to shock I imagine and it probably did so when people first heard it. not any more of course now The ...

The great lost San Francisco band of the mid sixties. Less overtly psychedelic than a lot of their better known contemporaries. Taking ...

It must be an ageing thing but I have more time for Elton John, (well let me qualify that, early Elton John), with every passing year. ...

And while we're in the realm of fey eighties indie-ness, here's a song from typical janglers from those times, with a singer wh...

Well it is a fine day, Something of a heatwave in England at the minute. I'm listening to this and it takes me unerringly back to t...

One of the performances of this year's Glastonbury came, for me, from this lot. Particularly wonderful was Run Christian Run  but I...

You could do worse than choose to do what I've just done, moving onto the second half of the afternoon as the sky unaccountably clo...

The Replacements are a strange one. Their reputation is huge but so much of their recorded output was poor. I never saw them live so ca...

Well it is and songs like this sound better on days like these.

Death on a slightly larger scale here. From Harvey's genius 2011 record Let England Shake.

Anita Ward is probably known for one thing and it's Ring my Bell.  There could be worse fates as it's a pretty good record. It ...

It does you know. Fortunately, it's summer right now. B-side to Don't Go back in...1982 (off the top of my head) .