I can vouch for the quality of Willy Vlautin’s novels – I’ve read 3 or 4 and they have been uniformly excellent albeit generally quite bleak.

They never recovered from the poor mans Moodies reference – a self inflicted wound that was just so right on the money. And yet they did write two of the most beautiful Prog ballads in Mockingbird and Galadriel […]

I think gradually reducing your hours really does help the move to retirement. I did 4 days a week for a couple of years which tbh still felt like full time. But then my final job was 3 days a week which really […]

I ummed and aahd about retiring for years and on impulse did it during lockdown last year. To be fair I was 66. I didn’t hate the job but just felt I wasn’t interested anymore. Haven’t regretted it – maybe occas […]

Fabulous

I was listening on R5 Drive and the excellent but curmudgeonly Tony Livesey said something along the lines of ‘it’s taken them 40 years to write that??’. I rather enjoyed the song – I mean at 70 you aren’t going t […]

Not a huge Rory fan but I love this album. Can’t recall why I bought it back in ‘71 but do recall that I was very smitten with a young lady at the time and spent a lot of time feeling wonderfully miserable whi […]

Ive known the Artist Formerly Known As Twang since we were both working on our own first albums and also collaborating some 25 yrs or so ago. I’ve been hearing these songs develop over the last year and more and […]

I was surprised about how upset I was by this news. Back in the late 80s my musical tastes were evolving and folk, roots and world music was starting to dominate my listening. Country was maybe the last strand […]

My favourite Boo album. It’s really a joint release with Gary Clark from Danny Wilson and they did a fabulous gig (Barbican??) around that time.

The astonishing comeback of the Cros continues.Who would have guessed he would still be alive in this century never mind making some of his best music? For me this one is a bit bland in comparison to the luminous […]

I’m another one of those who really want to love BBT but struggle with them and I’m not sure why. Great musicianship and I love the very English feel that seeps through their songs but in the the main they lea […]

Not forgetting ‘From Dusty With Love’ which is just as good as Memphis

As a dog owner of many years I read this post with despair. Bottom line though is that you have to be able control your dog regardless of breed or temperament. Round where I live it’s almost a bylaw that you h […]

Didn’t know about that book ; I’ll check it out.

Im with you there Lodey. Love most of her work from ‘For The Roses’ onwards. I can appreciate why Blue gets those plaudits but its not a Top 5 Joni (for me anyway). Nothing wrong with the songs per se and the […]

Boom Radio is our new guilty pleasure – way better than Radio 2 (ok that bar is pretty low) with a wider variety of music.
I’ll get my coat ….

Wow never seen this before – what a beautiful vs of that song.