Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly... groovin’, on a Sunday afternoon, suggested The Young Rascals (later simply ‘The Rascals’. Alas, the group was not sufficiently long-lived to become ‘The Old Rascals’) in their 1967 white soul hit Groovin’… …But how groovy is Groovin’, really? I’d say that its vibe ... Read More...

'Join the accusations, save the bleeding nation, get it off your shoulders, blame it on the Stones,' urged Kris Kristoffersen in 1970....   …but what exactly should we blame on the Rolling Stones? Satanic grooviness, certainly… … because Sympathy for the Devil was the song on which the entire ‘Baggy’ pop movement of ... Read More...

After my foray a fortnight ago into machine music, it's time for some human voices. Here are four singular singers at their finest... West Side Story is the king of the musicals, and nobody has sung Somewhere, the ne plus ultra of doomed-romantic light arias, better than gravelly old bugger Tom ... Read More...

According to Adam Curtis’ documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (reviewed, not glowingly, by Gaw here), mankind is facing an existential crisis brought on by the realisation that computers will not, as we expected, deliver Utopia, but have instead left us feeling powerless in a system we ... Read More...

For someone born in Kent and educated at Westminster School, Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan is pretty damn Irish. If your image of MacGowan as the archetypal Paddy Baddie – a rebellious anti-hero straight out of the pages of a J P Donleavy novel: gap-toothed, black-toothed, staggering blind drunk from the bar-brawl ... Read More...

In the compendium post marking Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday, I claimed that Dylan is a true artist amongst mere approximations; a man pulling stuff out of the ether via a channel that only he can tune in to. But just as lesser footballers than Messi can sometimes score wonder-goals or minor ... Read More...

  Bob Dylan turns 70 today and to mark the event, four Dabbler Dylanists pick a favourite song and explain why he matters. Happy Birthday Bob! Mahlerman -- Thunder on the Mountain ROBERT ALLEN ZIMMERMAN Born: Duluth, Minnesota: May 24th, 1941 Occupations: Musician, Dabbler My, he's as slippery as mercury, but of one thing there is little doubt: ... Read More...

City life is millions of people being lonesome together. Thus spake Henry David Thoreau. The late Gerry Rafferty, meanwhile, noted that “this city desert makes you feel so cold: it’s got so many people but it’s got no soul.” Urban loneliness – the curious sense of being alone in a crowd ... Read More...

The classic rock line-up is of course: Vocalist, Guitarist, Bassist, Drummer. Keyboardists tend to be fringe players. Beyond that, apart from the odd notable saxophonist, if you need some horns or strings to give your record a bit of an epic orchestral sound because you’ve run out of other ideas ... Read More...

For a lazy Bank Holiday Monday afternoon, here, quite simply, are some songs that make me laugh. It was another blogger (I think Peter Burnet?) who introduced the brilliant Why Can’t a Woman be More Like a Man? to my consciousness. Alan Jay Lerner – who wrote the libretto for My ... Read More...