The Jam formed in 1972 in Woking, a satellite town 20 miles from London. Leader Paul Weller formed a three-piece band with bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler. The trio were indebted to the 1960s. Weller played a Rickenbacker,…
Welcome back for another week of quizzing. I thought we’d take a break from album sorting. Your challenge this week is to name the albums, musical terms, artists, and other ephemera starting with D. I scored 16/20, although I…
As a music reviewer, 2025 started quickly. Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny dropped a wide-reaching album in 2025’s first week. Canadian sophisti-pop act The Weather Station released Humanhood in mid-January. Meanwhile, I’m still catching up with 2024, hence the smooth…
Every New Zealand #1 single… 8 Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis Topped the NZ chart: from 17 December 2007 for 5 non-consecutive weeks Leona Lewis was born in London. She attended BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology, the same…
Can you identify the albums starting with K? As before I had to make this one myself. There aren’t as many albums beginning with K, so there are fewer questions than usual. I’m ineligible to enter this week. Congratulations…
Robyn Hitchcock started his recording career as the frontman for the Cambridge band The Soft Boys. Kimberley Rew joined on lead guitar. Rew wrote ‘Walking on Sunshine’ for his next band, Katrina and the Waves – one of the biggest hits…
The success of Rhino’s 1998 Nuggets boxset justified a follow-up. The first volume was US-based, so the sequel covers the rest of the world. Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964–1969 was released in 2001. It…
It’s Waitangi Day, our national public holiday, here in New Zealand. It’s particularly fraught this year, as the far right question our nation’s founding document. Unfortunately, today’s quiz is completely unrelated to such happenings. Can you identify the albums starting…
I’m assuming that nobody cares about 2024 releases in February 2025. But there are still records in my pile that I didn’t get to last year. It’s not a reflection on their quality – these records were all released toward…
Miraculously, two of the most talented vocalists and songwriters in the history of popular music ended up in the same band. John Lennon and Paul McCartney met in 1957 when McCartney joined Lennon’s skiffle band The Quarrymen. They enlisted lead…
