The Tarquin Records All Stars – Do They Know It’s Christmas?
Okay, I haven’t heard the new version of DTKIC?, but all the talk has inspired me!…This is my all time favourite version of the song, recorded way back in 1997. It f[…]

BANDAID 20, first impressions*
What a mess! What a real mess! It sounds like a sixth form jam session. They’ve dispensed with the need for a drum track, replaced the “whur-ur-uh” noises with some sort of nasty synth line, bongo m[…]

Ol’ Dirty Bastard and John Balance, RIP
Not that much connects them in an immediate sense. Seemingly the only reason to think of them both off-hand would simply appear to be the accidental timing of their deaths on Saturday. ODB = famous, sco[…]

I once had a conversation with a rock fan about favourite guitarists: I mentioned Steve Cropper, of Booker T & the MGs, who also produced and co-wrote many of the great Stax recordings, such as Otis Redding’s. This guy hadn’t heard o[…]

Emotion vs Technique in Soul Music and its Criticism
Does soul music have soul, and does it matter?
Hear or read most people praising soul music, and they’ll be hyping certain qualities, while some others won’t get a mention. ‘Soul&[…]

Just what the world needed![…]

“Ob-La-Di is cracking – it’s about gender reversal and other things and is very philosophical – the title means ‘life goes on’ – and it does.” – cheap PR fun at BBC Talking Point.[…]

Nothing to see here…
…but Popular is, how you say, ‘back’. And it has something that Alan tells me I shouldn’t actually call a graph.[…]

The literal mening of “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day”was made clear on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway this weekend. On an evening where half the country was out at an organised fireworks display, they finished off[…]

POP FACTOR: 342 CONTROVERSY RATING: 247
Simultaneously lazy and ballsy, a rum way to end a pop career but weeks away from its brief radio life at least it sounds like a footnote, so not as undignified as it might have been. As a track on one of the[…]