It Starts With a Birthstone...

  Rather Coldplay-ishl We have Coldplay for these moments,

  Jesus & Mary Chain came to UEA ehere I was in the middle of my glorious first year experience. But I didn't go. I suspect I didn...

  The Bronx understand the essence of being in a Rock & Roll band . That it's a license and a liberty but also a  responsibility and...

 

  The NME was a place to learn about music. In a small corner of the Albums Reviews is a write up of a George Jones collection by veteran s...

  Sister Sledge went down this week. TBH Lost in Music should never go down in the charts. It's as powerful as hypnosis.

  Heavy Rock of this kind is a pleasure denied me .It just never struck a chord and still doesn't register I'm afraid . Let's ju...

  XTC were strangers to the singles charts and Top of the Pops from this point onwards. But Grass hits big here.  

  Morrissey has established his attitude and stance on virtually everything. Let's face it he did so within pretty six months of taking ...

  Last night I sat in my living room in near darkness with a beaker of tea and bar of chocolate and listened in complete stillness to Greg W...

 

  Ten love songs. Fifty minutes. An album sleeve that looks like an abstract painting in a modern gallery. The fuel of love is the thing tha...

  ?!?

  What Pop Music is there for. For risk takers and statements that go beyond the ordinary. Our cultire allows for it, A song for Nelson Mand...

  First off. Good title but I started off on this without high hopes. A general modesty and lack of ambition was my fear having listened to ...

  Like Benny Hill and Bee Bumble before him, Tackie Mackie makes novelty records.' You can tell this is not going to be a good review. ...

                                                          'I don't know the answer to that question. If I knew I would tell you...; ...

  Domestic Bliss ? Surely an oxymoron A vain imagining. But in this case it happens to be the latest album from Voka Gentle a band for Londo...

  Dim all the lights. If you insist Donna. Eternal summer. Let's get on the dancefloor. A tune that makes you feel like your transported...

  'Don't you tell it to the breeze . Cause she will tell the birds and bees . Then everyone will know. Because you told the babbling...

  A new last thing at night series. A Miles Davis related CD with the latest issue for the centenary of his birth ,

 

  It's always album time roind here. This ome doesn't particularly appeal to me. It seems to invent a new shade of artificial. I fee...

  One of the most effecting of Pretenders songs. Apparently written for John McEnroe.

  Arch shape shifting and allusions of Mittel Europa and decadent themes. The late Seventies and early Eighties were a wonderful period for...

  The Magnetic Fields I imagine are a point of obsession for many but I've never particularly beem drawn into their orbit. There's l...

  Remember Sports? I'll say I  do. And not fondly frankly. Trailing round on Cross Country afternoon runs at the back of the pack with t...

  One evening at Titanic in London, NME journalist Simon Witter catches and is blown away by a pretentious band from Birmingham on Phonogram...

  Kind of preposterous right from the off. Makes Punk seem inevitable. Everything is essentially an act of grandiosity and show. I listened ...

  Bill collecters at my door. What can you do for me. ... It's always the same.Gwen has the bottom line and the tune has it all.And off ...

  There was always some cool Reggae tune like this in the charts. It was one of the great features of the times.

                   Emo. So everything but the kitchen sink. Strong on intense feeling. A paucity of tunage,

  It's Friday morning and like little Jack Thorner I'm sat in the corner. Alright, hold your horses. I'm not eating my curds and...

  Pop Singles were art statements with power chords. Take this. It's a song about loneliness and misery. It didn't break into the To...

  I know my limits, I'm not outside of society, I'm just drawn to its cultural margins. So I've always been slightly wary of the...

  I don't really need much to be happy. Or at least content. Work done mid way through a Thursday afternoon. A couple of good lessons ta...

  Every generation needs its moment when things spin out of control and the angry youthful masses get their chance to spin out if control an...

  'You were pushing 100 down the 62. ....you don't want to live in shadows the rest of your life...' I certainly don't ! Cur...

  I don't use the term 'Genius' lightly   but in the case of Ray Charles it's difficult to know what else to do. 

  The kind of record you pretend to have been into since it came out in 2000. Even though actually you're hearing it for the first time ...

  Some are incredibly dismissive of the reformed Roxy but this is incredible on any number of levels. The ladies on the harps. Ferry's c...

The Leeds Velvet Underground get into gear.   

  'Baby you're my Ringo Starr,,,' The Rats are back ! No kids . I'm not talking about the Boomtown Rats. I mean Chicago'...

                             The charts were always full of this kind of knowing end of the pier stuff . 

 

  Janet Jackson parked in the Top 10 pretty much globally for much of 1986and istening through to it niw it's pretty clear why.. 

                                                        Tales of being brought up by the street. 

                                                                                                      'Birds that scream fir territory c...

  Great things about youth . Sitting on the sofa wearing your shades with your besties. Making a melodrama out of absolutely everything . Wh...

  So two True Blue 's on here. It was a basic expectation of Madonna album that it was jam packed with hit singles gold. That something ...