My Life With Rock N' Roll People
As 2025 limped to a close, the usual muddy race for the Christmas No. 1 single took place and the winner turned out to be the subtly titled XMAS from the consistently unreliable, if well-connected, Kylie Minogue who has been troubling the charts with ephemeral pap for some time now. Meanwhile, the top album was a 40-years-old relic from the…
The phrase or expression “Freak Out!” has been around for some time now but this was how I discovered it, on the handsome sleeve of The Mothers of Invention debut studio album. Although not aware of it at the time I must have been drifting in some kind of alternative universe. Released in June 1966, I was at school in…
Cast your mind back to the late '80s and it was a strange period. Rock was rubbing shoulders with indie, new country, dance, hip hop and a major back catalogue scene based around old records being reissued on CD. At the time I was editing a magazine and would receive all manner of advance cassettes, one being Kick, the forthcoming album…
Funny what happens when you decide to do a tidy-up. That large box I kept tripping over was supposed to be full of 90s compilations, mostly repeating each other’s tracks, a hangover from the days when record companies were making their next round of easy money with greatest hits CDs of one sort or another. Then shone a veritable diamond in…
