It Starts With a Birthstone...

  Nice and mellow start to a cold Thursday. An album, called Heaven on the Faultline is due a few months down the line.

  A song about a modern footballer. Difficult to get behind entirely in these wholly corporate times for the game but the footballer in ques...

  Consistent achievers over a number of years.

  'Mozzer's very own Hatful of Hollow.'

  'Rowland was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and finding out that he was one of those people not psychologically designed for fame...

  January is rarely the most rewarding month for new Rock and Roll releases and 2021 seems unlikely to buck this particular trend. But speak...

  Regrettably, within a couple of years Duran Duran and their ilk were everywhere. This remains my favourite of their songs.

  'Not Neil and Chris's most popular album but perhaps their most admired.'

  'A slight song but a mighty way of singing it...'

  Sun Drift sound like a band, playing to one another, sat round in a circle in a recording studio, like The Byrds, or erm The Beatles. Pure...

 

  The elusive Lucian. Also some rather wonderful spoken Polish narrative.

  One of the great, discreet political statements.

  'Rattling, charging guitar-drives that form the missing link between The Who's I Can See For Miles and Franz Ferdinand's Take ...

  'Their first definitive three track single.'

  The new song that's pricked my ears up most this year. From a debut album which will arrive in March.In their own words ' splittin...

 

  Simple Minds came to full fruition in 1982 with New Gold Dream. Here was an early indicator of exactly how glorious that would be a year e...

  'This album is hip hop's most directly rebellious and politically charge tract.'

  'From The Meaning of Life to The Meaning of Love.'

  Chris Brokaw, once of Codeine, has a new album out, from which this is an immediate standout. Sounding like a Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo ...

 

  The 33 1/3 series is a thing of beauty in itself, particularly tending to the needs of music obsessives like myself. Each entry focuses on...

  Bonnie claims John Prine's original for her own.

  Peter Sarstedt is now almost entirely known for Where Do You Go To My Lovely nowadays which comes across as something of a novelty record ...

  Definitive one hit wonders. Still love that guitar sound. Plus the utterly meaningless but menacing lyric.

 

  'Once in a Lifetime is one of the greatest things I know. Same as it ever was.'

  Pioneering Chilean Garage Band. This, their best known song, replete with machine gun rattle came from their groundbreaking 1967 album Kal...

  I saw the Dolls, (well Johansen, Sylvain and some hired hands), about ten years ago. They were great. The old songs stood up very well and...

  One for the Godmother of Rock Criticism.

  1982 was really the year of ABC. But they gave an early indicator of what was to pass.

 

  'That's Entertainment is the perfect place to leave the period's most feted singles band.Weller was never as good nor relevant...

  I can tell you little about Carousel Rogues except that their name is cool, they hail from Maryland they are now based in Nashville and th...

 

  Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks, (who broke away and became The Band), played this for Caryl Chessman a convicted robber, killer and rapist...

 

  Coming up again on the This is Uncool series shortly. One of the funkiest Indie guitar tracks ever made. From Davie Henderson, who Marc Ri...

  'The stoopidest thrill-funk album of all times,the ultimate in liberal baiting, blaxpoitation.'

  'Horns were big in 1981 but Reward is where they were biggest.'

  Jason Roy a musician from Grand Rapids, Michigan and essentially the driving force behind The Soods is responsible for a noteworthy, wistf...

  Haunting, Sixties flecked tune.

  A novelty essentially. But it rode into the charts on the wave of synths and hung around for a long, long time. Also, I rather liked it.

  'Doolittle is something like the perfect rock'n'roll album.'

  'The rap in Rapture is the only one that is not cringingly embarrassing .'

  Described as a 'West Coast Belle & Sebastian', by The Guardian,  an attractive proposition in my book. A perfunctory listen to...

  Lead singer and guitarist of The Senseless Things.

  The two songs thius far released from the forthcoming Jane Weaver album, Flock, are promising indeed. Heartlow, (here), and The Revolution...