I first came across the blues through this image. It was on the front cover of King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. II, a collection of recordings by Robert Johnson, which by the miracle of twentieth-century production and distribution systems had made its way from the 1930s Mississippi Delta to 1970s Whitstable public library.Read More
Category: Lists
Better than the Beatles
It is with not a little relief that I have set aside a half-written, half-baked philosophical post on who can say what and decided to write some lists instead. It’s summertime, and the brain needs a holiday. Arbitrary listings of the purely inconsequential are the answer. I’m going to start with the Beatles. I likeRead More
The singer and the song
It’s time to consider singers. I have produced a series of posts on musicians: on guitarists (strictly speaking guitar solos), bassists (strictly speaking bass lines) and drummers. Each has come with a top ten of personal favourites. To complete the ensemble we must have a singer. Other contributors might have been considered – keywords, rhythmRead More
The drummer
Having written blog posts on the guitar solo and the bassline, I had been planning a follow-up on drum beats. The need to do so now has been triggered by the sad news of the death last month of the greatest of all drummers – sorry, but I will brook no argument here – JakiRead More
Covering Bob
I’m on working on a new web project which is close to going live, but it’s meant that writing on the web, including this site, has been a bit on the quiet side. But while I’ve been working on said project I’ve been having fun listening to Bob Dylan cover versions. It started when IRead More
19 favourite Bob Dylan songs
Well, it’s summertime, the Olympic Games are in full flood, and my mind is on holiday. So I can only set aside the usual sort of cod-philosophical post for the time being, and instead revert to lists. Maybe a series of lists. I’ve not produced any lists for ages, and they’re easy (or so itRead More
Forgotten films of the 1980s
The other night I watched Housekeeping, for the first time in some twenty-five years. It’s the first film that the Scottish director Bill Forsyth made in America, and though it was warmly received by critics at the time, it had few of the trademark comic qualities that made Gregory’s Girl and Local Hero so popular,Read More
My spine is the bassline
A while back I had fun putting together a list of favourite guitar solos that was determinedly different to the usual sort of list of these things. Now here’s another such list, this time looking at basslines. There’s an argument to be made for the electric bass guitar to have been one of defining inventionsRead More
19 delightful things about second-hand books
Pristine books are rare in second-hand bookshops. Instead the books you find there each bears the marks of their past lives. Online second-hand stores grade their wares with descriptions such as ‘nearly new’, ‘good as new’, ‘used’ and ‘fair’, but though a fresh book is special, so is one that shows its age. It showsRead More
19 annoying things about second-hand books
I have spent an inordinate amount of my time on this planet in second-hand bookshops. I discovered them as a home-from-home when a teenager, and travel about this land with a map in my head of where the nearest such shop can be found. Quite apart from the endless need to keep up the supplyRead More