Mar 1From Red to blues: Got My Mojo Working by Muddy WatersIan Tasker If you are talking blues standards then they don’t come much more ready-made, boil-in-the-bag than Muddy Waters’ Got My Mojo...
Feb 24The Beatles: I Need You and a personal appeal for Help! Tim Woods What kind of Beatles fan are you? Maybe the obsessive type, the sort who whistles the chorus to Honey Pie without even...
Oct 29, 2021Cowboy: Please Be With Me – and please remember Duane AllmanIan Tasker Today is a day for remembrance, reflection and wondering what might have been, for exactly 50 years ago on October 29, 1971,...
Oct 20, 2021Steely Dan: Bodhisattva and the outfunking of The SkunkRob Steen Bodacious cowboys. Snook-cocking hipsters. Coolest white dudes on the Seventies block. Steely Dan, aka The Dan, are the...
Oct 12, 2021Duster Bennett: Worried Mind and British blues of the vintage kindPhil Shaw Perhaps Robert Johnson’s deal with the devil at the crossroads was to blame for all the blues artists, here and in America, who...
Sep 30, 2021Lindsey Buckingham: Swan Song and the spoils of an inner warRob Steen Lindsey Buckingham has pulled off quite a coup with his latest album. Emulating Sting, not to mention leaving Paul, Mick, Keef...
Aug 19, 2021The Band: In cahoots with Van Morrison for 4% PantomimeRob Steen Freddie and Bowie. Crosby and Bowie. Crosby and Nash. Mahalia and Mavis. Aretha and George Michael. Michael McDonald and Joni....
Jul 29, 2021Jason Mandell: The story behind my song Soul Of America Jason Mandell in Los Angeles There’s a great Julian Barnes line: ‘I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.’ That’s kind of how I felt...
Jul 19, 2021Whitney Houston: How Will I Know and a daughter's dance of delightTim Woods As a parent, you have certain responsibilities towards your children. You need to keep them safe, provide them with a home, put...
May 26, 2021Allison Russell: How a Nightflyer became an angel of the morningNeil Morton Reading the harrowing back story of Allison Russell while listening to her remarkable debut solo album is a humbling...
May 13, 2021Ronald Isley at 80: Behind A Painted Smile lies a voice for the agesPhil Shaw OK, so who’s the oldest singer or musician from the rock ‘n’ roll era onwards still performing? When the question was posed at...
May 10, 2021World Party: Karl Wallinger, Always and the McCartney parallelRob Steen So I sat in the attic, a piano up my nose And the wind played a dreadful cantata (cantata, cantata) Sore was I from a crack of...
Apr 4, 2021Billy Connolly: Everybody Knows That and the ballad yearsShug Hanlan It is impossible to mistake the looks of genuine joy and affection on the faces of the various ‘celebrities’ assembled for...
Mar 29, 2021The Beautiful South: I'll Sail This Ship AloneTim Woods Record sales that topped 15 million. Eight top 10 studio albums, with two reaching No1 in the charts. Twenty-two singles that...
Mar 13, 2021Nick Drake: Northern Sky and the short life of a brighter talentIan Malin Fifty years ago, in the second week of March, an album that now has almost mythical status was released and hardly anyone...
Feb 25, 2021Oasis: Round Are Way, six minutes of joyous, rollicking perfectionTim Woods There are people out there who don’t like Oasis. Plenty, in fact. Some find the constant bickering between the Gallagher...
Jan 31, 20211971 revisited: The Beach Boys and the majesty of Surf's UpIan Malin Meet the New Year. But to paraphrase The Who it’s the same as the old one. This dark lockdown is worse really than anything in...
Jan 31, 20211971 revisited: Carole King and the beautiful legacy of TapestryRob Steen Hyde Park, July 3, 2016. For the first time, Carole King, one of the most successful songwriters of the 20th century, is about...
Jan 27, 2021The Creation: Making Time and the sound of red with purple flashesPhil Shaw ‘Our songs crop up in strange places,’ said Eddie Phillips, lead guitarist with The Creation, who briefly rubbed shoulders with...
Jan 5, 2021Bert Sommer: Jennifer's journey from oblivion to Woodstock folkloreSharon Watts in Beacon, New York The name Jennifer has ‘muse’ written all over it. Just ask Kurt Weill, Little Richard, Tommy Tutone,...
Dec 14, 2020Man Without A Soul: Lucinda gives the Trump era a fiery send-offIan Malin Don’t worry it will soon be over. For those of us still standing anyway. The year the music, and pretty much all entertainment,...
Dec 3, 2020Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Janey Needs A ShooterChris Hewett Those of us who have spent the best part of 50 years surfing the mighty swells of Bruce Springsteen’s music – or, just...
Nov 29, 2020Elliott Smith: Pretty (Ugly Before), soundtrack to a troubled soulTim Woods There are different ways for musicians to be successful. The most obvious is through the charts: No1 singles or albums that go...
Nov 10, 2020The Grateful Dead: The spirit of Brokedown Palace lives onAndrew R McGaan in Chicago One of the Grateful Dead’s most beautiful songs, both musically and lyrically, is a love song, a sermon, and...
Oct 28, 2020Allman Brothers Band: In memory of Duane and Whipping PostExactly 49 years ago today, on 29 October 1971, a long-haired motorcyclist was making his way through the Georgia town of Macon when he was…
Oct 21, 2020Gaz Brookfield: The Old Normal and other new lockdown songsWhen Covid19 first struck and lockdown imposed, the West Country folk guitarist Gaz Brookfield – a type 1 diabetic more conscious than most…
Oct 19, 2020Between The Wreck and a hard place: all aboard the Rescue TrainWhat do you do in times of Covid19 if you are a musician in a rock band? Rishi Sunak might suggest you retrain as a delivery driver…
Oct 2, 2020In praise of songwriters: Rumer and the art of interpretationNearly 20 years ago the music journalist Max Bell was invited to a gig of a London-based folk-indie band La Honda in the cafeteria of a…
Aug 27, 2020Isle of Wight 50 years after: the enduring majesty of Baez and CohenIf you can remember the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, you weren’t really there. That follows, does it not, because the whole crazy, chaotic…
Jun 14, 2020Marvin Gaye: Abraham, Martin and John. Not forgetting BobbyIf the last few gruesome weeks in Britain and America have taught us anything it is that both countries are governed by small men, men who…
May 22, 2020Robert Jon & The Wreck: Tired Of Drinking AloneEvery 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
May 20, 2020Suzanne Vega: Gypsy and a cherished Glastonbury memoryMany 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…
May 3, 2020Gillian Welch: The hush and the hurt of I Made A Lovers PrayerThere 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
Apr 13, 2020Thom Yorke: Last Flowers When the panic swept through England, the scale was measured in loo roll. The supermarket rush for toilet paper evoked the run on Northern…
Apr 7, 2020Jason Isbell: Traveling AloneJason Isbell tells an amusing tale about meeting Bruce Springsteen a few years back and being bowled over when The Boss began to sing the…
Mar 27, 2020Sixties discoveries: From The Fourmyula to The MillenniumNostalgia: 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
Mar 26, 2020Paul Simon: American TuneChurches and cathedrals will remain silent this Easter so there will be little chance to hear O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, a choral work by…
Mar 18, 2020Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson: Alexandra LeavingIf poetry is the ‘music of ideas’ – an intriguing definition of the barely definable, put forward by the writer Peter Whitfield – can music…
Mar 8, 2020Badfinger, sad singer: Day After DayHas 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
Feb 17, 2020Richard Dawson: Two Halves and a singular voiceTime for a sheepish confession, or a proud boast, depending on your view. Of the thousands of 7” singles I have bought, blagged, swapped…
Jan 12, 2020The Police: Every Little Thing She Does Is MagicDesert Island Discs? Pah. How about a single musical morsel for sustenance, one solitary assemblage of crotchets and quavers with which to…
Jan 2, 2020Black Grape: Dadi Waz A Badi and the Trumpian parallelWhen Hollywood makes its Donald Trump biopic, which with horrifying inevitability it will, the soundtrack will be by Black Grape. And the…
Dec 12, 2019Lindisfarne: Winter Song, Alan Hull's timeless cri de coeurDon’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…
Sep 22, 2019Eric Clapton: Layla (and Other Assorted Love Songs)Launched into the stratosphere with arguably (in my humble opinion, indisputably) the greatest opening riff in the history of rock, Layla…
Aug 27, 2019Joni Mitchell: Dark majesty of Shades Of Scarlett ConqueringIf 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…
Aug 6, 2019Paddy McAloon: Keeping alive the spirit of Prefab SproutTo some, The Artist Better Known As Prefab Sprout occupies an unthreatened throne. A thousand rave reviews, one Top 10 single. A daring deb…
Jul 9, 2019Dion & The Belmonts: My Girl The Month of MayFrankie Avalon, Johnny Tillotson, Brian Hyland, Fabian, Bobby Rydell: by the mid-1960s many teen idols of the pre-Beatles era were already…
Jul 9, 2019Anatomy of a classic cover: My Girl The Month Of May by The Alan BownMy 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…
Jul 4, 2019Gretchen Peters: Arguing With GhostsIt 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…
Apr 24, 2019Unlucky Starrs: What might have been for a band called InterviewThere 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…