Beyond doubt, my number one, go-to music in my mid-teens was that of Pink Floyd. And I’m very glad that I’ve never grown out of it. I’ve seen Pink Floyd live four times, more than any other act. It would have been five, but like an idiot I gave away a ticket to a show…
Around the time my age reached double figures, singles – 45s (ask your grandad) – cost 6/8d each, which in the new money is 33.33 recurring pence. In other words, you could get three records for a pound. And we did. Every couple of weeks, my brother and I were allowed to order three records…
I’ve been dreading reaching this stage of my Music Lexicon because I’m damned if I can think of an artiste or artistes that I give more than half a hoot about whose name begins with ‘N’. The only group I could come up with from when I was in what passed for my pomp was…
You may not have been expecting this one. Here we are at the halfway stage of My Music Lexicon and so far, by and large, it’s been a litany of guitar-heavy rock, with a dash of folk/protest. Well, it’s what I like. But I have a softer side too, especially for well-crafted songs with lyrics…
We’re not quite halfway through this musical lexicon and we’ve already had a few examples of musical epiphany. However, for sheer power and immediacy there has never been anything to match the very first time I heard Led Zeppelin. By the time we got to the Lower Sixth (first of two years of A-level studies),…
Looking back at my music lexicon so far, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a child of my time – more specifically from about the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies.That isn’t an apology: I suspect that most people’s musical tastes are largely defined by their formative years. Lucky me. As we reach the letter ‘K’, however, while…
The first time I heard (or even heard of) Janis Joplin was on the BBC’s classical music station, Radio 3. Back in 1968, it also brodcast ball-by-ball cricket commentary on England test matches. It being the school holidays and I being a bit of a nerd, I was planning to score the upcoming test match…
The letter ‘I’ isn’t exactly awash with possibilities for a Music Lexicon – unless you genuinely are/were a fan of INXS, which I’m not/wasn’t. Fortunately though, for me there was one standout candidate to fill this particular vacancy – The Incredible String Band. ‘Psychedelic folk’ is a fair enough shorthand description of the Incredibles, so…
Absolutely no problem at all finding something for H in my music lexicon: the incomparable Jimi. Anyone even half-seriously interested in rock music could almost have been forgiven for becoming blasé about guitarists before Jimi came along, breaking through in the UK before his native USA really caught on to him. By late 1966 there…
And so we reach the heart of the matter. The band that this blog derives its name from, the band that this blogger listens to more than any other. So what’s so special about the Grateful Dead? I’m by no means a natural evangelist, but a bit of background explanation might help. The bus came…
the only deadhead in the hameau 