Right, pin back your lugholes, listeners, because I've got a real treat for you this week. Set aside the next 45 minutes and press Play on this video of Rodrigo y Gabriela in Seattle, 11th May 2014. But, first, turn off the phone, send the wife out shopping, gag the kids and muzzle the mutt.…Read more Rodrigo y Gabriela
rock
Gotta Serve Somebody
Normally, I choose the music first and it suggests a theme. This week it's the other way around. The theme is sleaze, and the track I've chosen to illustrate it is Bob Dylan's Gotta Serve Somebody from his 1979 album, Slow Train Coming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC10VWDTzmU This week a British Member of Parliament, Owen Paterson, resigned after…Read more Gotta Serve Somebody
The Man In The Garden
The LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden This little ditty dropped into my Spotify Release Radar playlist this week. It's from a new double album release called Little Eden, and it reminded me that The Bevis Frond has not yet featured in these pages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xry1bbx864 The theme of…Read more The Man In The Garden
Mercury Music Prize 2021
This year's shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize was announced on 22nd July. The prize celebrates albums by artists from the UK and Ireland released in the qualifying year. According to its website it is "the music equivalent to the Booker Prize for literature and the Turner Prize for art". Allowing for some understandable self-promotion…Read more Mercury Music Prize 2021
Roots
Roots by Vincent Van Gogh Many years ago now there was a regular light entertainment program on the radio†. It included a series of comedy sketches, one of which purported to answer listeners' questions on just about any subject relevant to contemporary living. There might be questions on important issues in art or politics, for…Read more Roots
Rabbit Hole
Cyberspace is full of holes - rabbit holes that lead to wierd and wonderful places. From the familiar safe haven of Spotify I suddenly found myself tumbling through the subterranean halls of pop music, immersed in the stream of a recent release with hardly a sniff of hip hop. How wierd is that? The sounds…Read more Rabbit Hole
Lucky Dip
Hear My VoiceLiquid EvolutionLord It's a FeelingThe Gift of LoveClocks For this post I'm offering an assortment of easy-on-the ear pieces: three songs and two instrumentals. Click on the images above to enlarge the picture; click the caption to go to the corresponding YouTube video. Alternatively, all five pieces have been collected as both a…Read more Lucky Dip
Symmetry
We all know what symmetry is, don't we? If we take this lovely picture of the dome of the Sheik Lotfollah mosque in Isfahan, Iran and flip it horizontally the resulting pattern will be indistinguishable from the original. There are several other operations we could perform that also leave the pattern unchanged - we might…Read more Symmetry
Karta & Kompass
Urtidsdjur's self-titled debut album, originally released only on vinyl, is now also available on streaming services. To coincide with this milestone the band has released a video of the Karta & Kompass track. As you can see, their unerring navigational skills have brought them to their destination in high spirits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnFnilOaU1Q The figure on that…Read more Karta & Kompass
Unchain My Heart
Unchain My Heart was written by a guy called Bobby Sharp (about whom I know nothing more). It was recorded by Ray Charles in 1961, by Trini Lopez in 1963 and, of more relevance to this post, by Joe Cocker in 1987. Here's a somewhat muted video of Joe Cocker's version. I recommend you turn…Read more Unchain My Heart
Crotchety Man 