When I was a boy, my father, a plasterer who in his spare time played fiddle, banjo and accordion, would regularly invite his fellow musicians back to our house — often after the pubs had shut. Having had a drink and a bite to eat, they would sing for their supper.
Daryl Hall has a similar [...]

The Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, with the footballer Tony Adams as guest editor, had an item on football songs. They were all even more tuneless and witless than they seemed when first released. The only football song worth listening to, of course, was written by a woman: England 2, Colombia 0, by [...]

What Jools Holland calls “the marvellous harmonious sound of The Duke & The King”. And it is. I’d never heard of these guys – “a glam-soul-folk quartet from New York” — until I found them mentioned in a column by Laura Barton. See ‘Great music for great railway journeys’, below.

Desert Island Discs is a programme that encourages introspection and self-indulgence. The illustrator Jan Pienkowksi turned it on its head this morning. His first disc was the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby, chosen not for what it meant to him but for “all the lonely people on all the other desert islands”.

Once a fortnight — shame it’s not more often — Laura Barton writes the Hail, Hail, Rock’n’Roll column on the back page of The Guardian’s Film & Music section. Last Friday she was reflecting on what the river, the road and the railway have given to rock music.
That set me thinking about what I’d choose [...]

The top 40 travel songs of all time? There are quite a few of my favourites in the selection by the team at World Hum. But what did they throw out so they could keep in two by John Denver? Come on, guys! Still, plenty to enjoy as well as to argue with. Here’s their [...]

In an age when newspapers are folding or turning into multimedia “content” providers, there can’t be much of a future as a paperboy.  Unless, of course you’re Eli “Paperboy” Reed, who with his band the True Loves played support to James Hunter at the Arts Theatre in Covent Garden last night.
What a voice! Reed’s a [...]

At an editorial meeting this afternoon, one of my colleagues, for a reason I can’t remember, had us reeling off names of the greatest lyricists in rock. Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman all got mentions. But what of the younger ones? What of Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, whose writing was championed recently [...]

That Springsteen goalscorer’s slide I mentioned in an earlier posting — here is it is on YouTube:
 

“So, who was good?” I was asked on coming back into the office after reviewing the Isle of Wight Festival for the Telegraph.
Iggy Pop, I answered immediately. I own one Stooges album, Raw Power, which hasn’t had a lot of play and probably won’t get much more. In terms of sheer spectacle, though, I [...]