Motown in 1969? We’ve got to have some Marvin!
B-sides are allowed, aren’t they?
So let’s have this song, which was later to give Paul Young a UK No.1 single…

Re: “Tracey’s 6 years older than me and raised 7 miles away.”

1. After a quick bit of googling, I can say that Tracey’s 8 months younger than me, and raised 6 miles away.
I’ve read a couple of excerpts from t […]

Always nice to see McCartney’s Hofner ‘violin’ bass!

I feel there must be a Bee Gees single on this 1969 thread. So let’s have “First of May” from the colossal “Odessa” album.
And guess who’s introducing the band on this clip, pop pickers? Not arf!

Re: “You’ll be re-enacting classic European Cup finals on FIFA next.”

I hope no one ever re-enacts the 1986 final (Steaua Buchareest 0, Barcelona 0).

A roots reggae train might be a nice idea, too.

Departing from: Babylon
Destination: Zion

For safety reasons, the Conquering Lion of Judah might have to be kept in the luggage van.

I always get a little nervous when I come across the word ‘paradigm’ or ‘paradigmatic’, because I’m never entirely sure what it means …

“He also rarely revisited the experimentation of The Gift era in The Style Council.”

Yes, with the possible exception of the “Modernism: A New Decade” album, although admittedly that was initially rejected by […]

Re: I declare that this is the only top 5 single to use the word “awfully”.

You may be right, Mr Celebration.

The only other song that I can think of off-hand that contains the word ‘awfully’ was indeed not […]

I think I’m right in saying that the term ‘woke’ was first coined by the African American writer William Melvin Kelley (1937-2017) in his 1962 essay “If you’re woke, you dig it”.
In the past year, Kelley’s novel […]

This week I watched “Andrei Rublev”, Tarkovsky’s film about the great 15th century Russian painter of religious images in the Orthodox Church. Now that guy’s work really was iconic, in the original sense of the […]

From the OP:

“Hope it is better than the underwhelming Townes album. I mean how could a devoted friend and fan do such a boring album of songs by one of the greatest Americana songwriters ever?”

Erm … I’ll […]

And the name of that ə character that is pronounced like the ‘a’ in ago is the “schwa” or mid central vowel sound. I just thought I’d mention that. That schwa phoneme comes up everywhere in English!

Nice idea. Enjoyed that!

Erm … isn’t that Slade single called “Merry Xmas Everybody”, rather than “Merry Christmas Everybody”?

Re: the Foxwarren album
I didn’t read any reviews of this in the English-speaking media. The first time I read about it was the very positive Dagens Nyheter review by Kaisfatdad’s mate, Nils Hansson.
I bought […]

Hi Mr Cat,

I have only two Lau/Kris Drever albums, namely:

Lau – the Bell That Never Rang
Kris Drever – If Wishes Were Horses

They’re both really good, of course.

What should I go for next?

Hmmm … yes …. that Graham Parker ‘Squeezing Out Sparks solo and acoustic’ might be quite interesting …

I’ve been reading stuff about popular music for about 43 years now, and do you know what? I don’t think I’ve ever read a bad word about Curtis Mayfield or his music. If there are any Curtis haters out there, then […]

And also not the 1,880,000 of Wham’s “Last Christmas” – and that didn’t even get to No.1 in the UK singles chart!