HERE COMES THE SONG

Every now and then a band comes along that blows your socks off. Robert Jon & The Wreck are that band for me and this track – from their new

Many of us have a song that evokes a particular time, place or person: that anthem from your youth, or a slushy tune shared with a first…

There is more to the harmonica than meets the lips, to the extent that a careless student of the instrument might blow some serious money on

When the panic swept through England, the scale was measured in loo roll. The supermarket rush for toilet paper evoked the run on Northern…

Jason Isbell tells an amusing tale about meeting Bruce Springsteen a few years back and being bowled over when The Boss began to sing the…

Nostalgia: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past. But is it possible to be nostalgic for a time you never knew

Churches and cathedrals will remain silent this Easter so there will be little chance to hear O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, a choral work by…

If poetry is the ‘music of ideas’ – an intriguing definition of the barely definable, put forward by the writer Peter Whitfield – can music…

Has there ever been a sadder, more violent death in pop than that of Pete Ham? Grisly ends are not exactly unique in rock. Think Marvin Gaye

Time for a sheepish confession, or a proud boast, depending on your view. Of the thousands of 7” singles I have bought, blagged, swapped…

Desert Island Discs? Pah. How about a single musical morsel for sustenance, one solitary assemblage of crotchets and quavers with which to…

When Hollywood makes its Donald Trump biopic, which with horrifying inevitability it will, the soundtrack will be by Black Grape. And the…

Don’t get me wrong. As Jewish as I am, I’m all for Noddy Holder roaring ‘It’s ChrisssssssssMAS!’ or John Lennon hoping war is over or Roy…

Launched into the stratosphere with arguably (in my humble opinion, indisputably) the greatest opening riff in the history of rock, Layla…

If the 1960s were the decade of the classic single, the Seventies were the decade of what was quaintly called the album. And for the first…

To some, The Artist Better Known As Prefab Sprout occupies an unthreatened throne. A thousand rave reviews, one Top 10 single. A daring deb…

Frankie Avalon, Johnny Tillotson, Brian Hyland, Fabian, Bobby Rydell: by the mid-1960s many teen idols of the pre-Beatles era were already…

My Girl the Month of May, Dion’s hymn to her, may have been the flipside of a flop but it inspired two distinctive covers by artists who…

It is always pleasing when a songwriter you greatly admire echoes a long-held belief. My contention is that the best songs are the sad ones…

There cannot be a music lover anywhere in the world who does not have direct knowledge of a band who might have made it – could have made…