Cat Stevens launched his career as a teen idol, scoring hits with heavily arranged songs like ‘I Love My Dog’ and ‘Matthew and Son’ in the 1960s. A near-fatal case of tuberculosis and a collapsed lung left him hospitalised, with…
It’s counter-intuitive to include The Smiths‘ most iconic song in a b-side series, but it was first released as the flip side of a single. Recorded in a four day burst of creativity that also yielded ‘William, It Was Really…
Congratulations to all of our participants in last week’s quiz. We had a lot of perfect scores, and a lot of interesting trivia about Tommy Tutone’s ‘867-5309/Jenny’. Tony recorded the fastest time, only taking just over a minute. This week’s…
So far, in this b-sides series, there have been four scenarios in which good songs find themselves languishing on the flip-side of a single. These are: i) When a great song should have been featured on an album, but is…
Welcome back to this week’s quiz. Last week we looked at the covers of the Rolling Stone, and everyone pummelled my meagre score. Several contestants went as far as to score 40/40 – good work Jim S., Rich Kamerman, 2loud2old,…
It’s tempting to conclude that, in the era of streaming, the album is merely a mechanism to garner extra plays on Spotify. But records like Julia Holter’s Aviary demonstrate that the long player is still the prestige format. Julia Holter…
As much as I love The Beatles, their solo careers have always mildly disappointed me. If you put ten years of your life into a burst of creativity, it makes sense that you don’t have much left in the tank…
Hi everyone! Occasionally my blog receives requests asking me to review albums from emerging artists. The rhythm of my blog isn’t really set up for this at the moment, so I’m wondering if any fellow bloggers would like to be…
Congratulations to Jim S. and Rich, who both scored 100% in last week’s Rock song quiz. Rich scored the fastest time, and I think it’s appropriate to quote a line from the Billy Joel album that he recently re-enacted the…
With its dual functions of rhythm and melody, the electric bass guitar is a staple in most genres of popular music. Its role varies between different acts – sometimes the bass is buried deep in the mix, the glue holding…
