Oh, I’ve been to ‘discos’ alright – if by that you mean standing around the edge of a Junior Common Room while a distinctly amateur DJ plays loud music and some people dance. However, to the best of my knowledge I have only ever been to one actual ‘discotheque’ in my entire life. It was…
Song Lyric Sunday this week is all about girl groups. For reasons that I have no intention of going into here – or anywhere else, for that matter – this particular song is still capable of producing an almost Pavlovian response in me whenever I hear it. And they weren’t called The Supremes for nothing……
Back in the mid-seventies the Bay City Rollers were the biggest boy band, certainly in the UK and perhaps even on the planet. I had a job in Manchester at the time and they were shooting a video in the theatre of the company I worked for. The place was surrounded by hundreds of screaming…
This week’s theme for Song Lyric Sunday is ‘gospel’. That’s a difficult one for me, as I do not have an iota of belief in any supreme or supernatural being. Better just leave it at that. Dropkick me, Jesus, through the goal posts of lifeEnd over end, neither left nor to rightStraight through the heart…
It’s reggae week on Song Lyric Sunday, and that’s certainly fine by me. I listened to quite a lot of reggae in my teenage years, not least because my brother was (is) a major fan. It’s hard not to be seduced by the hypnotic rhythms. The go-to reggae artiste is the great Bob Marley, of…
Song Lyric Sunday appears on a Monday this time because, you know, stuff… Anyway, the theme is funk and when I saw that, there was only one song that came to mind, entirely due to the funniest scene ever (in my humble opinion) of Malcolm In The Middle as Hal (Bryan Cranston) reveals a hidden…
It’s nice to get back to Song Lyric Sunday after the recent hiatus, which was largely caused by my inability – or unwillingness – to relate to some of the genres being offered up. However, soul I can do – and very few did it better than Otis Redding, particularly in this heart-rending performance. I’ve…
This week it’s rockabilly for Song Lyric Sunday, so it’s time to take one step back from the beginnings of what’s generally thought of as rock ‘n’ roll, to an earlier, (even) more innocent time. With the benefit of hindsight, you can see in what direction music was heading back in the mid-1950s, and this…
This week’s chosen genre for Song Lyric Sunday is ‘swamp rock’. I thought I knew what it means, and my suspicions were confirmed with a quick online search. Naturally, the results of this included a number of ‘best’ and ‘greatest’ lists of both songs and performers. In all honesty almost all of them were new…
Ah, bubblegum: mindless, shallow stuff for kids, dismissed snootily by moody teenagers in its late-sixties heyday. Oh, that would be me then. It would be idle to pretend that I’ve ever been a fan of this sort of stuff, but this, it must be said, is pretty catchy. And the video’s probably worth watching as…
So, ‘Sunshine Pop’ for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday. That’s not a description I’d heard before, although sandwiched between last week’s Yacht Rock and next week’s Bubblegum, it wasn’t too hard to find myself somewhere in the ball-park. Naturally, I googled it and, among other things, the search threw up a list of the top…
“I wouldn’t if I were you” I didn’t need to resort to Google when I saw that the genre for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday was ‘yacht rock’. However, I did have a problem in moving past the mental image of the official video for Duran Duran’s ‘Rio’ (it’s here if by some chance you’ve…
“When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed” This week’s genre for Song Lyric Sunday is New Wave. Well, I’ve a pretty good idea of what that means, although there’s a bit of a risk that it could slide into New Romantic. However, while a band like Spandau Ballet is clearly New Romantic,…
Yee haw. Genre of the week for song Lyric Sunday this time is ‘country’. I think I have a basic understanding of what that is. However, on further reflection there is a whole range of sub-genres, as with last week’s ‘Metal’ (but not like metal obviously). I would not say that I’m a great fan…
For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, the musical genre of choice is ‘Metal’. At least I didn’t have to look that one up, even though it’s not as straightforward as it seems: heavy metal? thrash metal? Saints preserve us, death metal? And even trickier – at what point does rock music become metal. Well, I…
the only deadhead in the hameau 