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ANNOUNCEMENT: Please check out my new site here. It will take some time, but eventually I plan to move all the content from this blog to the new site. 


Welcome!

I aim to bring you my views, reviews, videos, photographs and comment on a wide range of music, focussing on what is available on the web. My musical tastes are eclectic in the extreme and too long to list. I like to search out rare and deleted recordings, and although I support the indie ethos I like to to stick a pin in the balloon of indie snobbery by showing that there is some good commercial stuff out there too. I welcome and encourage any questions or comments on any of the stuff here and I will try to reply to everyone.

UNSIGNED BANDS

For coverage of new and unsigned bands / artists go to my other blog, "The Vibe Detective" 


Regular Features

Some of the GREAT PERFORMANCES I have found on youtube.

All you need is a webcam, a song and a bedroom or toilet to sing in - here is the proof: YOUTUBERS

Links to some great WEBSITES/CHANNELS 

Just click on the relevant labels on the right. 

Playlists

All my public Spotify playlists can be found here. There are mixed playlists, a "blog playlist" featuring music by many artists on here, and a many other goodies. If you haven't already done so you will of course need to sign up to and download  Spotify, which I can strongly recommend. This used to be free; I'm not sure if it still is but the Premium service is worth a tenner a month. If you need an 'invitation' to join I will provide that if I can work out how to do it...let me know via a comment.

Latest Favourite Videos


A lovely track From Nerina Pallot's album 'Year Of The Wolf':




STATES OF EMOTION are four youthful, passionate, song writers, hell bent on providing a sound drenched in anthemic melody to unite the masses. Set against an eerily optimistic backdrop, the Essex quartet thrive on a combination of melodic guitars, pounding skins and pulse raising vocals to produce a sound that's ship set sail from English shores a long time ago. Creating a sound this unique at a time when the British music scene is at its diverse best can only represent a band with an unpredictable but explosive future. With a compelling unity that has come from playing music together since the age of 14, these groove laden southern upstarts will be able to send shudders from the spit & sawdust venues of a city near you to the rapture of the most illustrious festivals. (From their MySpace site)'




The organisers of The Brit Awards 2011 decided that the focus should be on music. Not exactly a revolutionary idea, you might think, but the show was a big improvemnet on last year's effort. Here is Adele's performance:




Bad Cop with 'Daylight', from the Lake Fever Sessions Next Big Nashville 2009 Showcase:





Since it pre-dates digital cameras and phonecams there's not a huge amount of live footage on the web of punk bands from the 70s. This is from a German TV doc, "Punk In London" (1977) and gives a pretty good idea of what those gigs were like. The Jam, with a very youthful Paul Weller, bash out "In The City":





Luke Haines with "The Rubettes". Not literally "WITH The Rubettes", if you get me. It's the title of the song. It's a good song, too:




BBC6MusicSaved!

See the report in The Guardian here.

Even if its DJs don't always appreciate my requests (see below, and thanks for the shout-out Lauren) BBC6Music is just about the best radio station on the planet at the moment.

It seems that I made the only "bad request" on Lauren Laverne's 6Music show today. Oh well, I suppose all publicity is good publicity: