My mother went to school with someone named Axel Tulip. Whether he later went on to form a skiffle group called Guns & Tulips is lost to history.

It’s three kittens having a fight on a piano keyboard, then transposed for guitar, isn’t it?

I would occasionally listen to Jazz on Three on Radio 3, and material like this would occasionally pop up. One act, […]

The song was a significant US hit in 1972 by a group named King Harvest, who were a bunch of ex-pats living in Paris. Even then it was a cover, as it had been written by the brother of a King Harvest member, and […]

When HP had two factories either side of the A38(M) in Aston, there was a vinegar main linking the two sites hidden in one of the overhead gantries.

The UK entry somehow has five writers. One of those five also co-wrote the Swiss and German entries as well. And another co-writer is performing the Swedish entry on the night.

Bit of a swizz, isn’t it?

Mine’s Obvious Phishing-scam the whatever, bizarrely!

Why do people constantly fall for things like this?

Certainly not this one:

This was Saturday night prime-time TV almost forty years ago.

Like most of this type of material, it’s simply being released to keep these recordings in copyright in the EU. If not released this year, anyone would have the rights to put this stuff out come the first of […]

It’s a compilation of the material that Warners own the rights to. Essentially most of the albums Fat Albert Rotunda, Mwandishi and Crossings from 1969 to 1972.

Sorry, tied up with various things, including a laptop repair. Will try to get something out by the weekend.

The instrument backing Vera here is a Hammond Novachord played by Arthur Young. The Novachord was an early synthesiser, using over 140 valves to generate its sounds. The machine went out of production not long […]

Listened to this last night. I’ll try to post more on this tomorrow when I’ve more time, as there’s a few things I’d like to add.

Not only does Horse With No Name use just two chords, you only need to use two fingers to make either of them in standard tuning.

Stopped reading as soon as I saw the words ‘Gregory Porter’.

We’re getting into modal music here – no chord changes, just playing over specific scales. If there are chords at all its just modulating between two related ones, such as A minor and C major.

See Indian music […]

I recognise the second song – it’s a cover of Doc Boggs’ ‘Oh Death’, one of the songs he recorded during his 60s folk-boom rediscovery.

It was also covered by Kaleidoscope (the US band featuring David Lindley) […]

Of course!

The ‘holy grail’ recording must be the session that they did backing ‘Wally’ from Rory Storm & The Hurricanes on a set of standards whilst out in Hamburg. Pete Best didn’t take part, but the Hurricane’s drummer […]

I was on Counterpoint a few years ago. I have enough classical knowledge to get by, and enough of almost everything else too. My only sore point being show tunes!

I sales through the heat. I was ahead at the […]

One of the Sea Hornet variants was really ugly – it had a second cockpit built behind the main one for a radar operator, topped with a small teardrop canopy, and an extended thimble shaped nose to hold the radar.