The Bristol Stool Theory of Music

This theory is based on sound scientific research and the adoption of complex colo-rectal principles to explain one key fact - why singers sound the way they do. Hitherto, arguments over the relative merits of vocalists have been utterly subjective. In a heroic quest to introduce objectivity into the otherwise utterly opinionated and purely subjective field of music criticism, I propose the adoption of the following classification system - The Bristol Stool Scale Theory of Pop.

Long the preserve of medics to classify bowel movements on what could horrifically be called a "sliding" scale of one to seven (from "Hard to pass and nutlike" to "Entirely liquid"), the Bristol Scale has revealed its true application. Ever since Bruce Springsteen first popped a vein (and, it is rumoured, more) when straining for the high notes during "Glory Days" at Wembley Arena in 1985, this theory has gained in credibilty as the one truly scientific way of classifying rock vocalese.

Springsteen's adoption of black jeans as stage wear after a series of unfortunate incidents led members of his band to start referring to him as "Darkness on the Seat of Brown" showed the validity of this groundbreaking research. In line with established scientific practice, however, we must first establish a control, or benchmark for the scale.

Type One - The Bolton Bullet
These small, hard and nutlike stools often require straining from the singer, and may even require breath to be held for long periods before expulsion in an outburst of overwrought exasperation. The passee can occasionally turn purple from the effort, and the result often fails to justify the immense emotional outlay involved. The prime example of the Type One vocalist is everyone's favourite mulleteer, Michael Bolton (pictured left, visibly relieved after a successful bout of pebble dashing.) It is said that our Mike could shatter a car windscreen at a distance of half a mile with the powerful ejection of one of his faux soulful putrid pellets.

See also: Barney from Napalm Death.

Type Two - The Lumpy Bruce
These sausage shaped but lumpy extrusions denote some degree of effort and can occasionally cause visible strain on the face of the afflicted. A prime Type Two stoolee is the originator of the theory, Bruce Springsteen, who can occasionally produce Type Threes or Fours - "The Streets of Philadelphia" was produced after a month long All Bran and banana diet - but is more likely to be found bent forward, heaving like a heifer with a headache.
See also: Joe Cocker

Type Three - The Jaggy Sausage

The strain is beginning to show, but not quite to Bruce levels, as we approach this beauty, so called because of its pleasing mass but possession of just a hint of the unpleasant jagginess which can cause furrowing of the brow. The Jaggy Sausage is the preserve of smooth singers with rough edges. Appropriately, spiky haired trollop tickler Rod Stewart is a perfect example - seemingly effortless vocalising but with a throaty rasp offering just a hint of more craggy exertions. Here he can be seen in the perfect position for squeezing out a jaggy jobbie, and he has even wisely worn spandex to allow himself some extra "give", a true sign of a professional at work.
See also: Otis Redding (He's gotta, gotta, gotta!), Frankie Miller, Paul Rogers ("All Right Now" being a prime example of post jag reflection).

Type 4 - The Smooth Snake
Truly the Prince of Poos, this perfect specimen glides out with all the ease of a velvet torpedo. Needless to say, it tends to provide a lack of emotional "oomph" or any hint of danger and is the preserve of perfectly fed, balanced diet munching popsters with faultless technique but little understanding of what it means to really suffer. In the late 90s the lack of anything resembling rock action saw a plethora of shining examples of this beige wonder.

Fran Healey of Travis can lay claim to one of these, although the undoubted master is Chris Martin of Coldplay, a man so well balanced of bowel that he is often forced to write reminders on his hand to use paper, his ploppers so perfect that he sometimes fails to notice their egress from his apple scented arse. So happy is he with his wonderful toilet habits that it is all he can do to stop himself from "nipping one off" in the most unsuitable of locations, such as here, captured while walking with Gwyneth in Hyde Park and hunkering down to give the ducks a feed they'll never forget. And, given Chris' avowed liking for all things organic and Fairtrade, his eco-turds are often dried, repackaged and available to buy at Coldplay concerts where they bear an uncanny resemblance to Jordan's Fruisli bars.

See also: Bloke from Keane whatever the fuck his name is.

Type Five - The Blurry Blob (or Winehouse)
As we leave the fragrant enamel whiteness of the Martins et al we begin to enter the murky waters of the loose stool brigade. And these waters can get murky. The soft blob presents a pleasing smoothness at first, but hidden behind this facade lurks a world of debauchery and vice of the kind seen in only the more insalubrious of Soho nite-spots. As such, it may appear sweet and innocent at first, but repeated exposure to its ill-formed troubles can lead to rapid deterioration. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the Winehouse Stool. Also in this category is mono-limbed folk booze repository John Martyn, who initially gave this stool its original nickname of the "Solid Air".

Vowels will begin to blur, words will lose definition even as the music remains perfectly sculpted, and before you know it incontinence and shambolic mutterings are all that is left. It marks the start of a slippery slope downhill towards the foul depths of...

Type Six - The Monster Mush
Singers fitting this profile have started to lose coherence in a large way. What in the previous type had seemed on occasion to be a pleasing smoothness has now been surpassed by an ill-formed mess which frequently borders on the incoherent and downright slimy. A great exponent of the "mush" is Shane MacGowan, whose vowels have blended into a foul smelling miasma of Martini and Malboros and who pours out his words with the splattering profligacy of the truly inspired. Unfortunately, such is the stench created by this mushy horror that few people can make out the profundity through the intestinal fug. Rapidly bringing up the rear (so to speak) is trainee musher Pete Doherty, who rumour has it is preparing to move in with Shane to better share fluffy tips.

Type Seven - The Liquid Launch
In an almost Neitzchean coup, Liquid Launchers have passed beyond Good and Evil into a realm of almost transcendent toilet habit. Effortless, floating and possessed of so little gravity that their vocalising cannot truly be called solid in any way, such singers are epitmosed by porky androgyne Anthony Hegarty (of Johnsons fame), a man whose vocals are so liquid that they barely have time to form before they dissolve into soft clouds of fragrant liquidity. Originally, his breakthrough album was to have been called "I Am a Turd Now" but sharp eyed observers pointed out to him that this would represent wishful thinking of the highest order, and redirected him to something more suitably weightless. Here he can be seen lurking behind Jo Whiley (as yet un-rated on the Bristol Scale) in case someone should pass him an oat cake and disrupt his carefully cultivated looseness.

The Court of the Crimson King - Mellotrons Ahoy!

Gonzo rock critic Lester Bangs labelled it a mix of ‘myth, mystification and mellotrons’. Poor old codeine guzzling Lester thought this was a bad thing. He was wrong, of course. Although routinely lumped in with the excesses of progressive rock, In the Court of the Crimson King remains one of the most defiantly adventurous, rigorously experimental and downright strange records ever made.

King Crimson originally formed from the remains of Giles, Giles and Fripp, a folky trio who had cut one poorly selling album (The Cheerful Insanity of…) in 1968. Briefly boasting ex-Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble in their ranks, the band gelled with the arrival of multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald and bass player/vocalist Greg Lake. Assisted by suitably portentous lyrics courtesy of band roadie and light show operator Pete Sinfeld, the band made their debut before 650, 000 people on the bill of the Rolling Stones’ free concert in Hyde Park in July 1969.

The warm reception their appearance gained no doubt inspired them when it came time to record the album later that month. Self produced in an era when such artistic freedom was still relatively rare, it was an immediate success, catching the emergent vogue for progressive music and resonating perfectly with the darker mood beginning to cloud the end of the 60s.

From the crashing chords and distorted vocals of 21st Century Schizoid Man to the eerie textures of Moonchild, In the Court of the Crimson King is a million miles away from soothing flower power homily. Occasionally the music seems to break free from structure altogether, flowing into jazzy improvisation and jarring chord and tempo changes. Sinfeld’s lyrical flights have enough lysergic bite to keep them on the right side of pretentious, perfectly matching the musical foreboding on the doom laden title track.

Unfortunately the strength of musical personalities was too much to sustain. Even as the album was becoming a head favourite, the line-up was splintering, with McDonald and Michael Giles baling out first, disenchanted with the band’s musical direction. McDonald would later re-surface in that renowned band of avant-garde adventurers Foreigner. Greg Lake hung around long enough to record vocals for the band’s second album before following his own particular road of excess into ELP.

Fripp, meanwhile, has kept the Crimson flame alive through the years, continuing to record challenging and exciting records with a variety of line-ups (1995’s Thrak was a powerful return) while collaborating with other maverick talents such as Brian Eno and David Bowie. In the Court... was recently re-mastered by Fripp, restoring the sonic clarity missing from earlier CD pressings.

What's Going On

The album widely regarded as Marvin Gaye's masterpiece almost never got made at all. At the turn of the 70s, Gaye had fallen out of favour at Motown and developed a reputation for wayward behaviour. Traumatised by the death of duet partner Tammi Terrell in March 1970, he had retreated from the limelight and was smoking grass in prodigious quantities.

His return to the studio was therefore met with some scepticism by Motown boss Berry Gordy. The first track to emerge was the titled track, which in itself had a convoluted genesis. Written by Four Tops member Renaldo Johnson and lyricist Al Cleveland, it had already been turned down by the Tops and Joan Baez. Johnson and Cleveland persuaded Gaye to record it only by dangling the carrot of a cut in the publishing.

From then on, recording proceeded in a relaxed atmosphere amid clouds of dope smoke. What's Going' On reflected a new mood of dissatisfaction with contemporary America. The promised Great Society had failed to appear and the inner cities were awash with race conflict, hard drugs and poverty. As well as the continued conflict in South East Asia, America was at war with itself.

Some musicians used this as a platform for belligerence, confrontational lyrics and a rising militancy. Gaye, however, took the opposite view. What's Going On was a relaxed, inclusive record, epitomised by the 'brother, brother' opening. Gaye cast his eyes over a range of social ills, from the plight of the ghettoes to the state of the planet. Throughout the message was sweetened by David van DePitte's smooth string arrangements and expertly assembled rhythm tracks, over which Marvin double tracked his vocals. Gaye was partial to protracted bouts of masturbation to rid him of sexual tension and to help achieve a suitably relaxed ambience. Tellingly, the album's themes were all resolutely non-sexual.

However, the relaxed vibe didn't make Gaye easier to work with. He was regularly late for sessions, or missed them altogether. When he did appear it could take hours to nail a good take. Confidence in the album wasn't high, and it took the unexpected success of What's Going On in the single charts to change Berry Gordy's mind and finally give Marvin free rein in the studio.

Gordy, whose reputation was forged in Hitsville USA with a string of classic singles throughout the 60s, suddenly seemed like a man out of time. The album was a massive critical and commercial success, re-establishing Gaye as the company's premier artist even while he drifted further away from the man who was both his boss and brother-in-law. He followed it up with his tremendous soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Trouble Man, before returning to politics of a sexual nature on Let's Get It On. However, What's Going On remains his best.

Scorched Earth - Funk Rock Grooves

I came across this CD completely by accident (a promo copy lying around my office, in fact) and stuck it in the Walkman on the way home, drawn by the inclusion of a few famous names, such as Quicksilver Messenger Service and Ike and Tina. I have to say, it certainly livened up a dull tube journey.

From an era (the late 60s and early 70s) when it seemed it was practically a requirement for every band to get a little funky, this trawl through EMI's vaults throws up a mixed bag, but one which makes for a very enjoyable listen. From the deranged Japanese funk of Sadistic Mika Band (with a break just crying out for sampling!) to the silky funk blues of Quicksilver Messenger Service and the fat horn section funk rock of Alexis Korner's CCS, there's much to enjoy here. But the highlight for fans of Hammond organ is the nearly seven minute work out of Green-Eyed Lady by Denver based one-hit wonders Sugar Loaf, in which the organist pulls out all the stops (literally) over a mesmeric groove vaguely reminiscent of Brian Auger's work from the same period.

Elsewhere, Terry Reid, one of British rock's great lost voices, turns in a creditable version of Donovan's slightly creepy ode to a 14 year old groupie, Superlungs My Supergirl, and you also get a track from the Steve Miller Band before they took off and flew like eagles into FM ubiquity, showcasing Miller's prodigious guitar skills. Also, listen out for the sound of Bob Downes being strangled whilst attempting to play the saxophone...at least that's what it sounds like!

The only sour note is sounded by the bizarre inclusion of Hank Marvin's ill advised foray into psychedelia on Sunday for Seven Days, like your geography teacher trying to get down with the kids.

Like most samplers, you probably won't like it all, but plenty of it is worth having, and might open up a few new seams in your record library. Fascinating stuff, and you get the impression someone at EMI had a blast putting it together. Good effort, whoever you are!

Mind the Soap - Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison

'Hello. I'm Johnny Cash...'

It might not be the wittiest opening line, but it's hard to imagine 'Hello, I'm Mick Hucknall' having the same impact. Similarly there are few live albums possessing such an electrifying ambience. Recorded within the forbidding walls of a maximum security jail housing some of California's most notorious criminals, Live At Folsom Prison may well be Cash's finest moment.

Cash was no stranger to the insides of a cell, mainly for public order and drugs offences. He'd also played inside prisons before - Merle Haggard tells of seeing Cash play in San Quentin when he was an inmate himself - but this would be the first time his performance was captured on tape.

By the late sixties Cash's career was in dire need of a boost. The hits had dried up. His hard living had effectively blackballed him with the Nashville country establishment. It took marriage to June Carter in 1968 to put him back on the straight and narrow. At Folsom Prison was intended to bring Cash back into the public eye, but it wasn't a compromise.

The stripped down rockabilly of the Tennessee Three was a long way from the prevailing trends of the moment in country, and provided the perfect framework for the tales of prisons, cocaine, bad women and worse whiskey. It's still slightly chilling when Cash gets his biggest cheer for the line in Folsom Prison Blues about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die - you can imagine many of the audience having done just that.

At Folsom Prison was released to widespread acclaim, giving Cash his biggest hit to date. Its outlaw appeal enabled his first major crossover into the mainstream. Coming just as many American rock acts, in particular The Byrds, were rediscovering and reinventing country music, it won him a new audience as well as adding to the iconic status he still enjoys today. A guest appearance on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album soon followed, with Cash returning the compliment by inviting Dylan to appear on his television show. A follow up album was recorded at San Quentin prison, but Live at Folsom Prison remains the better, more focussed, set.

The Human League - Greatest Hits

Review originally published on the BBC Music Website. I have to say, I astonish myself with my fairness in this review, as I could quite happily live without ever hearing the Human League again.

There are a number of reasons why we should celebrate The Human League. For starters, there's Phil Oakey's defiantly ridiculous hair style. There's his recruitment of two schoolgirls from the dance floor of a Sheffield disco into the band, like a Jackie photo story made flesh.

There's also their indelible imprint on the landscape of early 80s British pop. Without the Human League there would be no Depeche Mode, no Yazoo, no Howard Jones...

It's unsurprising that this latest compilation plays its trump card immediately with ''Don't You Want Me''. As perfectly constructed as any pop can be, its shifts between major and minor perfectly reflect the emotional turmoil and yuppie angst of the lyric. It's almost matched by the other singles from the classic Dare album, such as ''Open Your Heart'' and ''The Sound of the Crowd''; a perfect marriage of synthesised detachment and romantic yearning.

How odd, then, to find a brace of early singles tucked away at the end of the CD. Pre-schoolgirls and discotheques, The Human League was as po-faced as any band could be. ''Being Boiled'' remains the greatest single inspired by the plight of silk worms ever released. ''Empire State Human'', which finds Phil cleverly rhyming 'tall' with 'wall' ad nauseum, still sounds remarkably contemporary. Screamingly pretentious, of course, and all the better for it.

Even after Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh departed to form Heaven 17, Phil's liking for doomy pronouncements still lurked beneath the pop veneer. Take 1984's ''The Lebanon''. A misguided foray into middle-eastern politics, it may well be their lyrical nadir, their trademark synth-pop swamped in a hideous 80s production.

Although 1986's ''Human'' momentarily revived their chart fortunes, they never equalled Dare. By the 90s, they had committed the cardinal sin of their futurist origins: they sounded dated. Mid 90s singles such as ''Tell Me When'' were largely forgettable. Tellingly, 2001's ''All I Ever Wanted'' is redolent of their earlier, purely electro sound, and marks a return to form.

Now largely confined to the tawdry spectacle of 80s revival tours, The League's best years may be behind them. However, as this compilation demonstrates, they were one of the great singles bands of their era, and proved enormously influential on subsequent electro-pop. And if they failed to equal the sublime pop rush of ''Dont You Want Me'', they can always rest in the knowledge that few ever did.

Rolling Stones - Singles

Originally published on the BBC Music Website in 2004.

The second instalment in this handsomely packaged but vaguely pointless series finds the Stones moving away from blues and Chuck Berry covers and hitting their stride as one of the prime singles bands of their era.

You'll be familiar with the A-Sides, of course. Kicking off with ''(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'', this collection traces the Stones' evolution into perfect chroniclers of their era the pocket psychodramas of ''19th Nervous Breakdown'' and ''Paint It Black'', the social commentary of ''Mother's Little Helper'', the psychedelic whimsy of ''She's A Rainbow''. Classics all, but can there really be anyone who doesn't own most of these already?

The B-sides for the most part don't measure up to the glories of their flips, but there's still much to cherish here for Stones collectors. Many of them find the Stones harking back to their blues roots, whether it's on the Slim Harpo style stomp of ''Who's Driving Your Plane'', or the more laid back ''The Spider and The Fly''. There are also a couple of lesser pop gems, such as ''I'm Free'', memorably revived by Bellshill indie chancers The Soup Dragons, and the airy fairy ''Dandelion'' from their brief flirtation with flower power. The latter, of course, was only a B-side in the UK - in the US it reached the top 20 in its own right.

Personally, this reviewer is a big fan of The Stones psychedelic phase - there's something gloriously incongruous about hearing Big Bad Mick forsaking his butch blues boy act for songs about love, flowers and rainbows. ''2000 Light Years From Home'' remains the perfect flip side to the marmalade skies of the benign flower power revolution, it's swirling mellotron and ominous bass riff carrying the song into dark nebulae of alienation and loneliness.

Altogether, it's a great collection of music, but whether you want to fork out over 30 quid for some nice packaging is another matter. If you do, you'll probably end up burning them all onto a couple of CDs anyway - the music's certainly worth the effort.

The History of Psychedelia - Part One

Originally written to accompany Radio 2's 2003 documentary, more details of which here.

Pop critic Jon Savage makes the case that whereas American psychedelia was informed by radical politics and the experience of war in Vietnam, UK psych took a very different approach. On The Beatles' It's All Too Much, George Harrison intones the subject to 'show me that I'm everywhere then get me home for tea.'

It's this cheery domesticity which defines British psych - a fascination with childhood as a lost age of innocence, Edwardian fashions and a hankering after the pastoral idyll. Add in a healthy dose of fantasy from the likes of Tolkien, Lewis Carrol and the Wind in the Willows, soak in LSD and you have the perfect recipe for a right old freak out.

Hence, you get Pink Floyd's Mathilda Mother, in which a child asks his mother to keep reading stories to him, or The Penny Peeps celebrating the joy of their Model Village. There are plenty of magicians and witches floating around too, reflecting a general curiosity about the occult. And of course, there are plenty of veiled drug references, such as The Smoke's My Friend Jack (who eats sugar lumps - whatever can they mean?).

Sgt Pepper remains for many the definitive artefact of the Summer of Love, and its influence was all pervasive. All over Britain groups plying their trade on the hard edged R'n'B circuit swapped suits for Edwardian jackets, grew their hair and proceeded to sing the praises of blowing your mind. Witness the change in The Move, whose I Can Hear the Grass Grow retains an R'n'B snarl but perfectly reflects the sensory overload of the acid trip. I Can See For Miles by The Who also filters their trademark power chords through a lysergic haze, to quite stunning effect.

The back to nature element of psychedelia was perfectly suited to sitting on rugs strumming acoustic guitars and singing about gnomes. Marc Bolan, unable to find success with John's Children, adopted a bongo player and started singing about fair maidens and unicorns to audiences of stoned students and John Peel. Donovan released the Sunshine Superman album, the title track of which perfectly captured the sunny optimism of the day, while Season of the Witch hinted at the darkness at the heart of the LSD experience.

But perhaps the purest expression of British psych's folky contingent was Glasgow's Incredible String Band. They evolved out of the Scottish folk scene, but they gradually began to incorporate what we'd nowadays call World Music influences, filled with spaced out lyrics, and odd time signatures.

And then of course there's probably the other crowing glory of British psychedelia - Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The Floyd, nice middle class boys one and all, quickly became the house band at the hip UFO club. Led by the mercurial talent of Syd Barrett, their trademark improvisations and pulsating light shows made them a popular attraction. Piper… remains a stunning album, balancing whimsy and dread in equal measure and featuring some truly stunning guitar playing from Barrett, who would later suffer a nervous breakdown apparently brought on by a prodigious diet of LSD.

Marmalade Skies
Of course, British psych inspired its fair share of dross and pastiche. By 1968 the charts were filling with records which virtually parodied the worst excesses of the movement. Even the staunchly bluesy Rolling Stones got in on the act with the "Their Satanic Majesties Request" album, right down to the pseudo Pepper cover sporting Mick in velvet wizard's hat.

As the sixties waned, the sounds got harder and heavier, paving the way for progressive rock and the dawn of the dreaded concept album. As flower power gave way to power to the people, the wide eyed wonder of early psych seemed ridiculous as the barricades went up across Europe.

Still, there were still those for whom the naïve delight in experimenting both with sound and drugs held allure. Hawkwind kept the flame in the 70s, and periodically other artists, such as Julian Cope, would sing the praises of trippy classics. XTC even recorded an entire LP of prime 60s psych as The Dukes of Stratosphere in 1986.

By the late 80s dance culture was the true successor to psychedelia. Rock bands were quick to pick up the new mood - The Stone Roses were closer in spirit to classic 60s acts such as The Byrds than they were to any of their 80s contemporaries, right down to their penchant for backwards guitars.

Today, psychedelia is just another element in the great cultural melting pot. Although the hippy philosophies may inspire chuckles, the spirit of experimentation, playfulness and refusal to accept the boundaries of contemporary society still attract acolytes.

History of Texan Music

Originally written for BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music's coverage of the South by Southwest festival in 2004. See original website here.

Although Austin is the hub of the Texas music scene, the state's musical heritage draws from a deep well of disparate influences, including singer-songwriters, bluesmen, skewed acid-rockers, Tex-mex accordionists and every shade between.

Texas only became part of the USA in 1845, and its music is often characterized by an independence of spirit and approach and a multitude of influences, not least that of its large Chicano community. Tejano music, or Tex-Mex, remains hugely popular and has various styles, such as Conjunto, a fast paced, accordion led dance music exemplified by the work of musicians such as Flaco Jiminez.

In the 1930s Texas gave birth to Western Swing, an amalgamation of country, jazz and blues typified by the legendary Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. It was enormously popular in the late 30s and early 40s, not least at dances throughout the state. Latter day revivalists such as Asleep at the Wheel and Hot Club of Cowtown keep the Bob Wills flame burning today.

TEXAS COUNTRY
Although Nashville emerged as the dominant force in country music throughout the 40s and 50s, Texas had plenty of homegrown country talent to draw upon. Ernest Tubbs was the first big star of Texas Honky Tonk, scoring a national hit with 'I'm Walking the Floor Over You' in 1941 - his success drew other singers in his wake, such as Lefty Frizell, Johnny Horton and George Jones.

Always a much rougher and readier proposition than its Nashville counterpart, Texas country music would re-emerge in the 1970s, this time focused around Austin. Drawn by its more liberal attitudes, hippies congregated on the city and started listening to country music at such celebrated venues as the Armadillo World Headquarters, now sadly demolished. Willie Nelson became the focus of the so-called Outlaw country movement, but Texas also spawned a plethora of talented singer songwriters.

Foremost among these were Guy Clarke and Townes Van Zandt, whose poetic narratives owed much to the folk tradition and who proved enormously influential on such artists as Nanci Griffith and Steve Earle (from Austin and San Antonio respectively). Most of them would be drawn by the lure of Nashville, but by and large would fail to match their critical standing in commercial terms.

TEXAS BLUES
It's a story familiar to most Texan blues musicians, many of whom found fame in Chicago or Memphis. However, the roll call of talent is remarkable. In the 30s there was Lightnin' Hopkins and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and in the 40s T-Bone Walker revolutionized blues guitar. He was followed by such luminaries as Albert Collins. Freddy King was another great Texan blues player whose fame was largely built outside of the state, although he did die onstage in Dallas 1976.

Texas remains a hotbed for bar-band blues - the epitome of this style is ZZ Top, the self styled 'little old band from Texas' who rose to ubiquity in the 1980s with a series of iconic videos and a merging of synthesizer pop and gritty blues rock. Austin was also home to Stevie Ray Vaughan, the white blues prodigy so revered by his native city that a statue of him was erected there after his untimely death in 1990. Stevie's brother Jimmy also found fame with The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

TEXAN ROCK
Perhaps the most famous Texan rocker remains Buddy Holly, who galvanized popular music in the late 50s before the fateful plane crash. Other notable Texan rockers included Bobby Fuller, who recorded the definitive version of I Fought the Law, and rockabilly legend Ronnie Dawson.

One of the most influential of Texan rock musicians was Doug Sahm, who, as leader of the Sir Douglas Quintet in 1965 released the classic garage rock stomper She's About a Mover. Sahm would flit between genres and bands over the years, alternating between Tejano, roots-rock and straightforward country, before his early death in 1999.

Texas also spawned its own peculiar brand of psychedelia, in particular Austin's deranged acid evangelists The 13th Floor Elevators, led by Roky Erickson. This fine tradition was upheld in the 80s and 90s by Austin's Butthole Surfers, whose mix of sludge metal riffs and surreal, twisted humour could be truly terrifying. Lately, Texas' reputation for rock has been upheld by the thunderous Lift to Experience and the neo-prog rock of The Mars Volta.

Texas, particularly Austin, still maintains a thriving live music scene. All of the above influences can be heard somewhere in Texas on any given Saturday night. Who knows, the Texan music sensations of tomorrow could be limbering up in a back street bar even now…

David Bowie - Low

The first of the famous Berlin trilogy (followed by Heroes and Lodger), Low sails across an icy sea of electronics and experimentalism, simultaneously setting the post punk agenda and redefining Bowie’s artistic persona.

Bowie had already started moving in a new direction on his previous album, Station to Station. Burned out, paranoid and wracked by the delusions which would culminate in his infamous Nazi salute at Victoria station, Bowie left the narcotic netherworld of LA and relocated to Berlin. He gave up the coke, sobered up and re-energised his muse, with a little help from Brian Eno and his oblique strategies.

Eno provided much of the impetus for Low’s sparse, glacial synthesiser textures, but his experimental working methods were an equal inspiration to Bowie, who would eventually be credited as playing 12 different instruments in addition to his vocals.

The opening tracks mine a vein of dense, robotic funk. The sprightly Sound and Vision contrasts its shimmering keyboard cascades and danceable beat with Bowie’s deadpan vocals, and its extended intro confounds DJs to this day. Always Crashing in the Same Car welds heavily treated guitars and whooshing synthesisers to a gloomy chord sequence and an anguished vocal about a life going nowhere.

The second half of the album displays Eno’s influence to its fullest, foregoing songs altogether for dark swathes of instrumental ambient unease. Warzawa perfectly captures the bleak Eastern Bloc feeling of that ill fated city, which Bowie had visited in 1976. Art Decade is less intense, but no less interesting, and clearly shows the influence of Kraftwerk. Low would later be recast by composer Philip Glass into an orchestral work, and there certainly is something of a glacial grandeur about the closing instrumentals.

Low was a brave move away from the mainstream, showing Bowie had lost none of his facility to anticipate trends. Its marriage of cold synthesisers, doom laden vocals and stark, angular electronic noise would prove enormously influential on the post punk movement, not least Joy Division, whose first incarnation, Warsaw, took its name from the Low track. Bowie is currently undergoing one of his occasional critical renaissances, but his Berlin trilogy remains, for many, his last period of truly satisfying work.

Black Sabbath - Volume 4

The next time someone asks you (as often happens these days) just what this beast called Heavy Metal used to be, hand them a copy of this.

Although we're currently being swamped by legions of large trousered Americans sporting goatees and angst, nobody does Metal quite like the British. And if one band can claim to have laid the blueprint for this much maligned genre, it's Black Sabbath. Maybe it's something about Birmingham, but there are few bands who sound so monumentally, well, pissed off.

Volume 4 is widely held to be the point at which the original line-up of Black Sabbath began to lose the plot. They had spent most of the early 70s on a punishing tour schedule, and the drug habits of the various members were becoming the stuff of legend. Recording the album in a rented Bel Air mansion in LA, with a constant supply of cocaine, groupies and booze, didn't help. The album was originally going to be titled Snowblind (for obvious reasons), but record company pressure resulted in the more prosaic moniker. That said, the spirit of Columbia's famous export is rife in the grooves, with a sleeve credit for the 'Great Coke Cola company of Los Angeles.'

Despite (or perhaps because of) this chemically fuelled excess, Volume 4 stands up as one of Sabbath's most musically cohesive albums. Tony Iommi contributes his usual quota of demonic riffs, notably on the thunderous Supernaut and Under the Sun, the latter featuring a fine example of his dropped tuning style. Geezer Butler's bass rumbles at industrial volume alongside Bill Ward's jazz inflected drumming, while above it all wails Ozzy Osbourne with trademark depravity. Elsewhere Iommi was keen to explore lighter textures, such as on the piano led ballad Changes and the acoustic instrumental Laguna Sunrise.

If you feel like an uplifting listen, don't put on Volume 4. If, however, you feel like tasting something of the dark side, coated in the kind of music which could whither James Taylor's eyebrows at fifty paces, you can't do better than this.

Aztec Camera - High Land, Hard Rain

The early 1980s were a great time to be a young pop musician in Glasgow. Punk came late to the city, but when it did it galvanised a host of bands. At the centre of the scene was Alan Horne's pioneering indie label, Postcard. Although it was initially formed to accommodate the mercurial talents of the Edwyn Collins-led Orange Juice, Horne's ambitions stretched further than promoting the be-quiffed crooner. With typical hubris, he saw Postcard as a Scottish version of Motown and set about recruiting other acts, such as Josef K, the Nectarine Number 9 and Paul Quinn. One of Horne's other discoveries was Roddy Frame, a 16 year old guitar prodigy from East Kilbride, a faceless new town on the southern outskirts of Glasgow.

Horne's ambitions weren't matched by business acumen, however. Orange Juice were the first to jump ship, heading south into the arms of a major label. Frame's band, Aztec Camera, released two singles on Postcard, before following Edwyn and co. south and signing with Rough Trade. Postcard folded soon after. By the time High Land Hard Rain was released, Frame was the sole remaining member of the group. For all the upheaval, it is a remarkably assured record for someone so young. Although many of the songs resemble the jangly guitar pop which was the current vogue, most notably hit single Oblivious, Frame's prowess as a guitarist consistently subverts cliché, throwing in jazzy chords which take the expertly crafted melodies into unexpected areas.

Frame's relative youth may explain the album's lyrical preoccupations with affairs of the heart, but he approaches them with a witty, wry turn of phrase which immediately marked him as literate new voice. References to Keats, T.S. Elliot and Joe Strummer also helped attach a degree of refectory friendly cool. The romantic disillusionment of We Could Send Letters recalls Elvis Costello, while Down the Dip betrays Frame's early schooling in folk music. Incidentally, trivia fans, the title of the latter refers to The Diplomat, a pub in Frame's native East Kilbride.

Frame would take a few years to hit commercial paydirt with 1987's Love, but its slick transatlantic pop sheen lacked the emotional resonance of High Land...Frame still records as a solo artist, still displaying the consummate skill and artistry with which he made his name, but for many this will remain the best example of his prodigal talent.

Between Hunger and Debauchery - Toys in the Attic

Aerosmith is as much of an American institution as the Smithsonian (although that august body may not contain any exhibits of a greater age.) Toys in the Attic is one of the reasons why.

Throughout the 70s, they were America’s premier home-grown hard rock band, only matched for popularity by greasepaint goons Kiss. However, it wasn’t an easy ride. Reviled by critics, they were dismissed as second rate New York Dolls or Rolling Stones clones, largely thanks to Steven Tyler’s ample lips rather than their music. Their eponymous 1973 debut bombed outside of their Boston hometown and it was only some frantic wheeler dealing and a punishing touring schedule that allowed them the chance to make their second, Get Your Wings, in 1974.

Get Your Wings introduced the band to young producer Jack Douglas, who refined the raw r’n’b of their debut and tightened their arrangments. It was the start of a mutually beneficial relationship, which would reach a creative zenith over the next few years.

Drugs and booze were already an integral part of the Aerosmith lifestyle by the time of Toys in the Attic. However, the band was still sufficiently focussed to turn in its strongest collection of songs to date. From the breakneck thrash of the title track through to the orchestral bombast of the obligatory closing ballad (You See Me Crying), the album is riotous delight of bluesy rock and roll.

Unusually for hard rock bands, it provided Aerosmith with two hit singles. Walk This Way would introduce Aerosmith to a new audience when it was rerecorded with rappers Run DMC in 1986, but the original is far superior – a sassy, streetwise strut built around Joe Perry’s dynamite guitar riff and Tyler’s lascivious vocals, written on the stairwell wall of the Record Plant studios. Drummer Joey Kramer had learnt his trade playing with James Brown cover groups, and it shows.

The other stand out track, Sweet Emotion, builds on a haze of marimba and Tom Hamilton’s looping bass line, before launching into another classic Perry riff and finally expiring in a Yardbirds style freakout. A storming cover of Bull Moose Jackson’s Big Ten Inch Record, the lyrics of which left little to the imagination, served to remind listeners that Aerosmith was rooted in the blues. Presciently, No More No More cast a jaded eye over the rock and roll lifestyle which would eventually overtake the band.

Toys in the Attic’s immediate success allowed them to indulge themselves to the full. It quickly gave them their first gold record, boosting sales of their first two and placing them in rock’s premier league. Astonishingly, despite their excessive lifestyle, Toys was followed within a year with the equally classic Rocks. Subsequent albums, such as 1977’s Draw the Line, had their moments, but by then Tyler and Perry were spending more time chasing the dragon than seeking inspiration. By then, a new breed of hungry young metal acts, such as Van Halen, were poised to take their crown.

Aerosmith’s 80s comeback, minus the drugs, has been a truly remarkable tale of rock and roll redemption. In particular, 1989’s innuendo laden Pump (1989) was a stunning return to form. But, perfectly poised between hunger and debauchery, Toys in the Attic remains their finest hour.

Number One Underachievers - "Grand Prix" by Teenage Fanclub

The recent release of John Dower’s Britpop documentary, Live Forever, merely served to reinforce Teenage Fanclub’s status as a band to cherish over the vapid tomfoolery of the Camden mafia. Grand Prix emerged smack in the middle of Britpop, but was overshadowed by the Fanclub’s more successful Creation labelmates, Oasis.

Whereas Britpop harked back to the swinging London for its inspiration, the Fanclub, being Scottish, had little urge to wave the Union Jack and perform bad Ray Davies impersonations. Instead, they drew inspiration from the harmony laden likes of The Byrds and Big Star, even going so far as to name a track after Gene Clark. Signed to major label Geffen in the USA, their signature sound of chiming melodies overlaid with loud guitars and gorgeous harmonies won huge acclaim on 1991’s Bandwagonesque. Friend and Geffen label mate KurtCobain even proclaimed them his favourite band.

By the time of Grand Prix, Cobain was dead and grunge was no more. 1993’s Thirteen had met a critical backlash, and original drummer Brendan O’Hare had been fired. He was replaced by ex-Soup Dragon Paul Quinn, whose solid drumming gave new power to the rhythm section.

All this turmoil must have spurred the band on, as Grand Prix also boasted their most consistent set of songs. Norman Blake’s Mellow Doubt is an acoustic classic, while he shows off his Crazy Horse credentials on the jokily titled Neil Jung. Raymond McGinley comes into his own on About You, which kicks the album off in fine style, while Gerry Love contributes the power pop classic Sparky’s Dream.

David Bianco’s production allows the songs to cut through, losing some of the band’s previous scuzz for a more polished approach without sacrificing their charm. The band’s love of vintage guitars and amps pays dividends in what is one of the 90s great guitar albums, filled with ringing arpeggios, crashing power chords and perfectly formed fuzz-toned solos. It’s unashamedly retro, but sonically up to date.

Unfortunately, poor marketing meant Grand Prix would fail to recreate the buzz of Bandwagonesque. The band’s reluctance to play the usual record company games and decidedly non-showbiz approach didn’t help, even as it endeared them to their fans. They recently released an acclaimed best of, which is reason enough to rediscover their finest moment.

Are You All Sitting Comfybold? - "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" by The Small Faces

As Ratty in Wind in the Willows memorably remarked, there’s nothing quite like messing about in boats. It’s a sentiment which gave birth to one of the most celebrated British albums of the late 60s.

When writing for The Small Faces’ second album for AndrewLoogOldham’s Immediate label stalled in the heady summer of 1968, the erstwhile svengali dispatched the boys on a boating holiday along the upper reaches of the Thames. In between scenes of general hilarity and the occasional collision with the well heeled boating fraternity, all fuelled by copious supplies of joints, LSD and frequent stops at riverside pubs, the four lads managed to squeeze in some songwriting.

What eventually emerged was a concept revolving around the adventures of a character called Happiness Stan and his quest to find out what happened to the moon when in waned. None of it made any sense whatsoever, of course, but that’s hardly the point. Once in the studio, the basic tracks were further embellished with horns, mellotrons and strings, lubricated by Immediate’s promise of total artistic freedom and the production skills of GlynJohns. Finally, the story was fleshed out by Stanley Unwin’s delightfully garbled narration. Unwin even managed to incorporate some of the band’s trademark hipster lingo, Stan’s exclamation of ‘Where at, man! Blow your cool!’ being one notable example.

The whimsy of the Happiness Stan tale was balanced by some of the band’s tightest and most focussed songwriting in tracks such as Afterglow (Of Your Love) and Ronnie Lane’s hard rocking Song of a Baker. The instrumental title track made further use of the phasing technique first heard on the classic ItchycooPark single in 1967, while McLagan got a chance to shine on Long Agos and Worlds Apart. Lazy Sunday may just have lain the blueprint for the entire Britpop movement, although the band hated it after it pigeonholed them as cheeky cockney geezers. A more salacious take on the English music hall influences came with the tongue in cheek (and elsewhere) tale of East End lady of the night Rene.

Years of honing their chops on a punishing gigging schedule meant the musicianship throughout was superlative. Marriott’s guitar is on fiery form, his controlled feedback on Rene’s long fadeout being particularly noteworthy. Lane and Jones can possibly lay claim to being British rock’s greatest rhythm section, and McLagan’s Hammond is a heady blend of psychedelic swirl and dirty R’n’B.

Unfortunately Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake’s success, both artistically and commercially, spelt the end of the band. Marriott in particular felt stifled, and when subsequent singles such as The Universal stiffed it was only a matter of time before he quit. The other three enjoyed further success with Rod Stewart and RonWood taking Marriott’s place in The Faces, while Marriott formed Humble Pie. Good as they were, neither party was able to top this endearing, good natured and perfectly formed classic.

Fear and Loathing in Wimbledon - Lou Reed's "Transformer"

When Lou Reed left the Velvet Underground in 1970, it seemed rock and roll's loss was accountancy's gain - he found employment with his dad's accountancy firm. What's more the minute sales of his debut solo album were hardly likely to trouble balance sheets at his record company.

It no doubt came as a relief to Lou when David Bowie, then at the peak of his Ziggy success, offered to produce a new album. Transformer was aptly named - it would change Lou Reed from shadowy cult figure to (albeit unusual) pop star, and also become possibly the best album ever inspired by New York, even though it wasn't recorded there.

In July 1972, Reed moved to London and rented a house in Wimbledon, an area not renowned for its abundance of low life cross dressers and drug users. Recording commenced at Trident Studios, overseen by Bowie and his trusty guitar sidekick Mick Ronson, who also lent his trademark crunch to several of the tracks. Also involved where Beatles associate Klaus Voorman and ace session man Herbie Flowers, whose double tracked bass line on Walk on the Wild Side practically made the song, even if credit was never fully given for his contribution beyond the standard session fee.

Lyrically, Reed's obsession with the seedier side of New York street life can be placed in a tradition exemplified by novels such as Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn. Reed saw his work as a celebration of the dispossessed, saying "I always thought it would be kinda fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn't met before, or wanted to meet." By comparison, Bowie's flirtation with gay subculture smacked of affectation when placed against Reed's harshly realistic portrayals.

Transformer eventually hit number 13 in the UK charts, helped considerably by the success of …Wild Side, a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic after its release as a single. It brought Reed the wider audience that had been denied the Velvets, and also contained many of his most enduring songs, such as Perfect Day and Satellite of Love. The former took on new life in the 90s in a BBC ad campaign, hardly suiting its genesis as a thinly veiled ode to heroin which had informed its appearance in the Trainspotting soundtrack.

Reed would return to the Big Apple for inspiration again and again - most notably on 1989's New York, which saw him using the ills of the city to mount a withering attack on contemporary American society - but Transformer remains his most popular album. Informed by the mainstream sensibilities of Bowie and Ronson, it hit the top 30 on both sides of the Atlantic and is the Lou Reed album every home should have.

Okay Dokey Computer - Radio dread

1997 was the year the last nail was driven into the Britpop coffin amid a blizzard of coke and egos. Oasis released the bloated Be Here Now, and New Labour sounded the death knell by declaring Britannia cool like some kind of funky geography teacher trying too hard to get with ‘the kids.’

But at every party there’s always a shy bookish type who slinks away to look angst ridden and quote poetry. In that sense OK Computer was the perfect album for the times. While the Gallaghers were proudly parading their philistinism, Thom Yorke was getting cosy with Noam Chomsky. And that extra H! How arch…

The Bends had finally shaken off the one-hit wonder tag Radiohead had been saddled with after the success of Creep. But it was still a fairly conventional rock record, despite the occasional lapse into weirdness. With OK Computer the band were determined to rewrite their own rules.

The initial impetus came when they recorded a brace of songs, Talk Show Host and Lucky, with engineer Nigel Godrich. Lucky was recorded on the hoof for a charity record, and the experience was so enjoyable that the band asked Godrich to build them a portable studio which they could use whenever the inspiration took them. Freshly inspired, they wrote a clutch of new songs, many of which were premiered live on a support tour with Alanis Morissette.

Sessions eventually ended up in the country mansion of Jane Seymour, where recording was punctuated by midnight croquet sessions. However, the songs reflected darker vibes. The ominous opener, Airbag, built around a drum loop recalling DJ Shadow, was originally titled Last Night An Airbag Saved My Life. The epic Paranoid Android was stitched together from three separate songs, its obscure lyrical allusions filtered through storms of angular guitars and moaning choruses.

On the other hand, No Surprises was recorded live, with a minimum of overdubs. Fitter Happier did away with the guitars altogether and replaced Yorke’s voice with a synthesised catalogue of modern worries. Yorke’s lyrics dealt with alien abduction (Subterranean Homesick Alien), globalisation (Electioneering), fear of air travel (Lucky) and other such cheery topics. In fact, big selling rock albums hadn’t ploughed such resolutely despondent furrows since the heyday of Pink Floyd.

The buying public weren’t dissuaded, however. Greeted by a wave of critical admiration, OK Computer became the Radiohead’s breakthrough album in the US, making them the only British rock band apart from grunge wannabes Bush to beat America on their own terms. Within a couple of years it was also topping all time best album polls throughout the press, even as some commentators berated the band’s more prog rock tendencies. Still, we can’t hold that against them, can we?

Trip Hop Through the Tulips - Portishead's "Dummy"

One of the most influential - and imitated – records of the 90s, Dummy was also, for a while, the dinner party music of choice for hip households. It also came to define the occasionally maligned genre of trip hop. A dark mix of slow scratchy beats, self made samples and the eerie torch singing of Beth Gibbons, Dummy virtually defines the Bristol sound of the early and mid 90s.

Geoff Barrow had originally started his musical career playing drums in dodgy rock bands before discovering the joys of turntables and samplers in the late 80s. He later found work as an apprentice engineer at Bristol’s Coach House Studios, just as the city’s Wild Bunch collective was blossoming into success with Massive Attack and Soul II Soul. It was a chance meeting with singer BethGibbons while attending an Enterprise Allowance scheme in 1991 that led to the formation of Portishead.

With help from Massive Attack manager Cameron McVey, Barrow worked on demos which harnessed his burgeoning studio skills to Gibbon’s smoky, torch singer vocals. The addition of seasoned jazz guitarist Adrian Utley to the line up leant the project a new focus, spurring Barrow on to create his own samples which he would then manipulate to create the band’s trademark dense textures.

Musically the album drew on influences as diverse as Barrow’s beloved hip hop, late night jazz and film soundtracks. The then current vogue for retro-chic (which found Bacharach and John Barry back in fashion) was echoed perfectly in the LaloShifrin sampling single Sour Times, while Isaac Hayes provided the source for Glory Box’s distinctive descending bass line.

All this musical inventiveness would have mattered little without the eerie, emotive vocals of Beth Gibbons, whose performance drew comparisons with such icons as Billie Holliday. Gibbon’s and Barrow’s reluctance to entertain the press only added to the group’s mystique, although Gibbons maintained there was no tortured artist behind her performance. Whatever, the record’s spooky, mellow charms struck a chord with critics and public alike, winning it the Mercury Music Prize and a place in millions of homes, not all of them hosting dinner parties…

The Personal Touch - John Martyn's "Solid Air"

“I got bored with the folk/acoustic thing,” said John Martyn. “You can’t keep churning that out, it stifles innovation, kills the personal touch.”

Solid Air was certainly a personal album for Martyn, and certainly it was innovative. A moody masterpiece, it blends folk, rock and jazz into a heady and evocative mixture, and marks the point at which Martyn finally wrestled free from his folkie origins into altogether more interesting territory.

The atmospheric title track was written as a tribute to Martyn’s friend and Island label-mate Nick Drake, who by this point was already in the grip of the depression which 18 months later would claim his life. “Nick was a beautiful man,” said Martyn, “buy walking on solid air, helpless in this dirty business, an innocent abroad.”

The song itself makes full use of Danny Thompson’s sliding bass and the delicate wash of vibes and drifting sax, and became a favourite of the chill out set in the 90s, bringing Martyn a whole audience. However, the album contains a wealth of other great tracks, not least the valedictory “May You Never”, which remains a staple of many folk club repertoires to this day, even surviving an assault by Eric Clapton.

Martyn was also becoming increasingly interested in the use of echo and fuzz effects to enhance his signature snapping guitar sound, applying them to great effect on a cover of Skip James “I’d Rather by the Devil”. Elsewhere, songs such as “Over the Hill” and “The Man in the Station” dealt with themes of separation and loss, the latter casting a weary eye over the lot of the traveling musician.

Solid Air was a major hit from Martyn, making him a popular concert attraction at home and in the States. It also allowed him to feed an appetite from excess which has since become legendary. Further great albums followed, including Inside Out and One World, which found Martyn moving further into jazz and rock territory, but Solid Air remains the one the critics – and fans – keep coming back to.

"Myth, Mystification and Mellotrons" - In the Court of the Crimson King

Gonzo rock critic Lester Bangs labelled it a mix of ‘myth, mystification and mellotrons’. Poor old codeine guzzling Lester thought this was a bad thing. He was wrong, of course. Although routinely lumped in with the excesses of progressive rock, In the Court of the Crimson King remains one of the most defiantly adventurous, rigorously experimental and downright strange records ever made.

King Crimson originally formed from the remains of Giles, Giles and Fripp, a folky trio who had cut one poorly selling album (The Cheerful Insanity of…) in 1968. Briefly boasting ex-Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble in their ranks, the band gelled with the arrival of multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald and bass player/vocalist Greg Lake. Assisted by suitably portentous lyrics courtesy of band roadie and light show operator Pete Sinfeld, the band made their debut before 650, 000 people on the bill of the Rolling Stones’ free concert in Hyde Park in July 1969.

The warm reception their appearance gained no doubt inspired them when it came time to record the album later that month. Self produced in an era when such artistic freedom was still relatively rare, it was an immediate success, catching the emergent vogue for progressive music and resonating perfectly with the darker mood beginning to cloud the end of the 60s.

From the crashing chords and distorted vocals of 21st Century Schizoid Man to the eerie textures of Moonchild, In the Court of the Crimson King is a million miles away from soothing flower power homily. Occasionally the music seems to break free from structure altogether, flowing into jazzy improvisation and jarring chord and tempo changes. Sinfeld’s lyrical flights have enough lysergic bite to keep them on the right side of pretentious, perfectly matching the musical foreboding on the doom laden title track.

Unfortunately the strength of musical personalities was too much to sustain. Even as the album was becoming a head favourite, the line-up was splintering, with McDonald and Michael Giles baling out first, disenchanted with the band’s musical direction. McDonald would later re-surface in that renowned band of avant-garde adventurers Foreigner. Greg Lake hung around long enough to record vocals for the band’s second album before following his own particular road of excess into ELP.

Fripp, meanwhile, has kept the Crimson flame alive through the years, continuing to record challenging and exciting records with a variety of line-ups (1995’s Thrak was a powerful return) while collaborating with other maverick talents such as Brian Eno and David Bowie. In the Court... was recently re-mastered by Fripp, restoring the sonic clarity missing from earlier CD pressings.

The Dark Majesty of Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division

Punk rock took a while to filter out of London into other parts of the UK, but when it did the results where often more interesting. Take Joy Division, for instance. The band had come together in the wake of the Sex Pistol's gig at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in 1977. Initially trading under the suitably doomy moniker of Warsaw, they recorded a debut album in 1978 for RCA, but production problems led to it being scrapped. They reconvened with producer Martin Hannett in April 1979, and recorded Unknown Pleasures in less than a week.

The band, relative novices in the studio, were treated as a blank canvas by Hannett, whose production swathed the instruments in his trademark harsh metallic reverb and augmented Steven Morris' metronomic rhythms with drum machines. The overall mood of darkness is powered by Peter Hook's driving bass lines and Bernard Sumner's jagged guitar, apparently influenced by the decidedly non punk Black Sabbath. Above this eerie soundscape floats the spectral baritone of the late Ian Curtis, whose lyrical themes dealt in existential dread and pessimism, the darkness at the heart of the modern urban experience. Ironically for a band so associated with the recession hit post-punk years, Curtis was a Tory voter.

Enormously influential, not least on U2's early sound, Joy Divison would only record one more album, the glacially monumental Closer, before Curtis' untimely suicide. With Unknown Pleasures they created a template that would spawn hordes of angst ridden, black clad doom merchants in long overcoats, but few of its imitators matched its disturbing power, which still sounds defiantly strange and vaguely unsettling today.

Bryter Layter - Sad Genius

Nick Drake's image as a paralysed depressive serving as a conduit for existential angst is never proven more wrong than with Bryter Layter. The best part of a year in the making, it called on the talents of some of the biggest hitters in the UK folk rock scene. Richard Thompson, Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks from Fairport Convention contributed, and the incomparable Joe Boyd produced it. It was even graced by the presence of an ex-Velvet (John Cale, who arranged and played on Northern Sky and Fly). Drake's performance was incredibly assured for someone so young - he was just 21 when recording commenced.

The commercial failure of Five Leaves Left, Drake's previous album, had stung him deeply. As Joe Boyd told a BBC documentary in 1998, Nick was determined to make his next record even better. To this end, Boyd was given free reign to experiment with new arrangements and groups of musicians.

That meant bringing back Nick's Cambridge friend, Robert Kirby, whose string arrangements had blessed the debut. Danny Thompson, whose jazzy stylings on bass had underpinned Five Leaves Left, was replaced for the most part by Dave Pegg, who along with Dave Mattacks leant the album more of a rock feel on some tracks. John Cale, so the story goes, called up Joe demanding to work with Nick, and virtually kidnapped him until they had concocted a suitable result. Cale's mournful viola playing and tinkling Celeste became highlights of the album.

Drake would later strip his music of the lush arrangements on his third album, the bleak Pink Moon. But on Bryter Layter Boyd makes equal use of craft and accident to create something ineffably beautiful. Chris McGregor's startling piano solo on the slyly self deprecating Poor Boy is a live first take - the jazz pianist happened to be dropping by the studio on other business, and was persuaded to sit in, with remarkable results. Listen to the clip below for evidence.

It's sometimes remarked that Bryter Layter is Nick's city album, as opposed to the pastoral tones of the debut. An atmosphere of urban alienation certainly hangs over At the Chime of a City Clock, with it's meandering sax . During the making of the album Nick was living in Hampstead, a shadowy figure on the London folk scene. It was during this period, according to his mother Molly, that Nick's youthful introspection soured into the crippling depression which eventually claimed his life in 1974.

Perhaps the benefit of hindsight causes us to read more into the lyrics than we should, but there is a tangible sense of an observer on the edge of reality in them, sitting on the fence watching the world pass by. This detachment lies at the heart of the album's best known song, Northern Sky, once called the greatest love song ever written by the NME.

Of course most people know the story. Bryter Layter was another commercial failure, stymied by zero airplay and Drake's reluctance to play live to promote it. Failure hit him even harder this time, and frustration turned to depression. Drake is the quintessentially English cult hero - his appeal doesn't lie in monumental drug use, excessive womanising and compulsive hellraising. Instead, he's renowned for being young, gifted and miserable. But then, these days, Drake is often no more than a lazy journalistic shorthand for anything acoustic and slightly fey (preferably sung by earnest young waifs from Bergen or Oslo or some such Nordic locale with unruly fringes and ill fitting polo necks). Any new listener's perception is coloured by Drake's status as the #1 pin up boy for clinical depression and its particular sepia toned English variety. And yes, his music is quintessentially English, even if Drake's idiosyncratic guitar tunings often move him far from his native folk tradition. In their dedication to craft, structure and precision, Drake's songs are every inch the product of a society built on deference, restraint and suppressed emotional turmoil, particularly in the genteel middle class background from which he emerged.

However, listening to Bryter Layter or any of his albums, free from the clouding influence of Drake's tragic biography, all that is left is the art, passion and spirituality at the heart of it all. It's this which gives Drake's music, for its delicacy, a gravitas missing from the countless imitators, and which explains why his records sell more today than they ever did in his lifetime.

Sweetheart of the Rodeo - Country Classic

With the current fascination for all things alt.country, it's a fine time to revisit one of the early classics of the genre. Sweetheart of the Rodeo was a brave excursion for The Byrds into what was widely held by the rock community as a genre characterised by hick attitudes and boho sentiments, the kind of things the younger generation were busy rebelling against.

However, country music had always been in the Byrds sound - bassist Chris Hillman had played with bluegrass groups before joining the band - and could be detected on many of their previous albums such as The Notorious Byrd Brothers from January 1968. There, country shared space with psychedelia and space rock, but by the time Sweetheart was made, the band had all but jettisoned them in favour of a return to what Roger McGuinn saw as the roots of American music.

McGuinn's original plan was to create a history of 20th century music, from jazz and folk right up to modern synthesiser experiments. Traditional country was supposed to be the starting point for this expedition. However, under the influence of new recruit Gram Parsons (ironically hired as a jazz pianist) the concept never got further than the country. Parsons found an enthusiastic ally in Hillman, and the pair set about turning McGuinn away from his original plans, embracing their new direction with the passion of zealots. The songs were largely drawn from a mix of classic country artists such as The Louvin Brothers and Merle Haggard, a brace of twanged up Dylan covers and the odd folk tune. Despite writing many of the band's classic songs on previous albums, neither McGuinn nor Hillman contributed any original material. Parsons, on the other hand, brought the achingly beautiful Hickory Wind and the mildly rocking One Hundred Years From Now.

The album marked a turning point for The Byrds. They became the first rock band to play at the Grand Ole Opry, and were set for tour of South Africa when Parsons quit, ostensibly in protest at the apartheid regime. His vocal contributions to the still unreleased album were removed, although they would later resurface on CD re-issues. He was later joined by Hillman, the pair going on to form the superlative Flying Burrito Brothers, before Parsons left once more to pursue his vision of "Cosmic American Music" before overdosing in 1974.

McGuinn, the sole remaining original member, would lead ever changing line-ups of the band through a succession of increasingly patchy albums before finally calling it quits. Sweetheart of the Rodeo marked the last time the band was truly groundbreaking. It also proved, however unintentionally, to be their most influential album, marking a retreat from psychedelic excesses to a more comforting terrain which was visited by Bob Dylan on Nashville Skyline and by The Band on Music From Big Pink. Eventually even those psych visionaries The Grateful Dead would make country influenced albums. The path started by Sweetheart of the Rodeo also led directly to the blow dried cocaine country of The Eagles, but why hold that against it?

Phil Lynott - An Appreciation

Phil Lynott was the coolest rock star who ever lived. Fact. Let's examine the evidence...

Apart from the recorded legacy, of which more later, there is his remarkable biography. Misfits often find a home in rock and roll because basically they can't do anything else. But then again, it's easy to imagine Roger Daltrey working as a truck driver, or Noel Gallagher lugging bricks. You can't imagine Phil Lynott ever doing a proper job, though, can you? No matter how much you delve into your fevered imagination, there is no disputing the fact that Phil Lynott was born to be a rock star. The trousers, the hair, the rake thin physique; it's perfect, even before you add the voice and the bass.

And as for the misfit, how about being an illegitimate half caste in a 1950s Dublin which was closer to the 1850s in many ways? Upbringings don't get much tougher than that. The fact that Phil's race was never an issue in Lizzy's fame shows how he overcame prejudice with dignity and authority by virtue of just being the coolest motherfucker that ever walked the earth. You can't argue with the evidence.

Thin Lizzy have never had the credit they deserve from the British press, possibly because of the fact that they weren't British, despite the Observer's Music Monthly voting Jailbreak into their top 100 British albums, conveniently avoiding the fact that only one quarter of the band was actually British (and he was a Scot!)It's a bit like when Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize and the mainstream UK media fell over themselves to call him a British poet, despite most of his work being informed by Ireland.

The Irishness of Lizzy is what makes them unique, and why no other bunch of metal meatheads has ever come close to what made them great. Lurking beneath the leather trousers and the rock anthems was a romantic sensibility which manifested itself in the melodic swirl of the harmony guitar lines, the wordplay of Lynott's lyrical flights and the subtle minor/major shifts within his songs.

For an example, listen to Cowboy Song, possibly my favourite Lizzy track ever, combining as it does all three of those traits into one life affirming burst of melodic rock. From the understated opening, with Phil's voice drifting like smoke through a desert campsite, through the ecstatic stampede of Gorham and Robertson's guitar solos, right up to the inarguable declaration that "A cowboy's life is the life for me", Cowboy Song is quite simply one of the greatest rock songs ever written. It's romantic, it's upbeat, but at the same time the inclusion of a sighing D flat Minor chord lends it an ineffable air of sadness as we realise Phil is out there all alone, riding the range from gal to gal, a realisation only slightly tempered by knowing that this is the only way it can be. Phil's still out there somewhere, riding the range for all of us.

I have realised, the older I get, that I fucking love Thin Lizzy for the reasons cited above. While you can only enjoy lots of hard rock with irony filters firmly in place, there is nothing ironic about Thin Lizzy. They are the purest expression of what it means to be in a kick-ass rock and roll band, doing what you think is great, writing songs which are anthems without really trying and speaking with a poetic soul that isn't contrived or pretentious. Phil loved Irish literature, the history of heroes which permeated his celtic heritage, and wasn't afraid to take it onto the world stage without apologising for who he was or where he came from. I can still listen to those records nearly 30 years since I first heard them and love them just as much.

I'm older now than Phil was when he died his tawdry, tragic death, so unbefitting a vagabond such as he. That in itself makes me sad. Maybe he would never again have reached the heights of that great Seventies tryptich of Jailbreak, Johnnie the Fox and Live and Dangerous, but at least he would have been around with a sly wink and a decent tune. Who knows, maybe he would have made a great writer.

I keep thinking of the words which opened Phil's first single..."Glad you could all make it, 'specially you, Skinny Lizzy..."

Indeed I am.

Other Lizzy Related stuff

Scott Gorham Interview
Review of Thin Lizzy's Greatest Hits

Russell Brand

From Russell Brand's official biography on the Radio 2 Website...

Russell made his theatrical debut aged fifteen, in Bugsy Malone as Fat Sam. An education at Italia Conti stage school led to a three-year scholarship at the drama centre in Camden where, in his spare time, Russell began performing stand up in pubs around London. He reached the final of the prestigious Hackney Empire new act of the year competition and his political rantings caught the eye of Time Out’s Malcolm Hay who dubbed him “Essex’s Bill Hicks”. "

Oh sweet Jesus. Italia Conti stage school? A three year scholarship at the drama centre?

Essex's Bill Hicks?

Jesus suffering fuck almighty. The jury awaits the Essex Bill Hick's views on the sucking of Satan's cock that is Big Brother's Big Mouth and the trenchant political satire that made his Brits appearance so cutting edge.

Gillian! Mah Keech!

Isn't Gillian McKeith the most loathsome little anal parasite you've ever clapped eyes on? She's the most unhealthy looking health freak you could ever see, too. I've just watched her with a mixture of appalled fascination and loathing as she bullied a bunch of big fat biffers into eating her insipid mung bean concoctions day after fucking day until they probably shat rose petals.

I note that she is no longer "Dr" Gillian McKeith - was this because the American institution where she got her "Doctorate" is the kind of place which e-mails you a diploma to print out at your leisure? Well, I'm not guessing, but I'd be probably be more trusting of the guy with the big pointy hair out of Doctor and The Medics. Not that I'd let him examine my copious effluent, mind you, never mind write fucking books about it

Who would have thought they would make television out of some twisted little quack looking at the rancid stools of overweight women? Well, they did. Freak show masquerading as public service, and filed under the same category as "How Clean Is Your House?" , "How Septic is Your Cludgie?" and "Fat Camp".

Watch it and weep, for the apocalypse is surely on its way.

The Glesga Banter

Had an American complain to me about the weather in the West of Scotland today, but cheerfully say that global warming will sort that out. When I pointed out that the effect would eventually mean the gulf stream being deflected south and Britain having a climate like Greenland she seemed less than enthused. Mind you, she is from LA, where, as Bill Hicks pointed out, they don't have weather.

The foul weather isn't the worst thing about Glasgow, though. Since moving back to live here after many years elsewhere, I can't help but noticing a certain arrogance has crept into the place. Like those people who try so hard to be cool and then tell everyone about how cool they are, it's all a bit, well, uncool.

Last year there were Mockintosh banners all along the length of Great Western Road advertising Glasgow as "Scotland with Style", annointed with some stick thin bimbo in black dress who probably has never experienced the delights of the Stonner Supper , branded the most dangerous meal in Scotland. Something in this smug, self serving little slogan riled me, way down inside, like a freshly swallowed thistle, as it fluttered from a lamp-post in front of that temple to fashion that is Wintersgill's Saloon. Perhaps it was the usual gathering of tubercular smokers gathered at the door, heaving up vast gobbets of lung tissue onto the spattered pavement as they wheezed on their stylish Regal King Size. Perhaps it was the shameless display of catwalk panache displayed by the young gentleman in this season's must have shell suit as he whipped his boaby out in the doorway of a nearby close and sprinkled some of that stylish pish onto the steps (or should that be "pishe?").

I am all in favour of civic pride. But fuck me, this was just like getting reminded that you didn't have the most stylish set of trainers at school. Some dreadfully trendy ad executive is sitting somewhere trying to appeal to even more dreadfully trendy little wankers who will flock here to populate more dreadfully trendy wank emporia playing bad music and selling unpronouncable beers at unforgivable prices. Afterwards they will all go home to their hideous rabbit hutch homes in Glasgow harbour where they can gaze out over the handy moat of the Clyde at the run down streets of Govan and listen to the folk upstairs playing happy hardcore through the gyprock ceilings as the sun sinks slowly behind the high rise prisons.

We are all being sold another lie, just like in the 50s and 60s. Only this time, the slums have got plasma screens.

Comic Relief Relief

Why is it that everywhere I look these days I see Russell Brand? This wouldn't be bad if I could actually look at him without feeling the urge to strangle the shaggy haired cunt with a length of razor wire...

It's Comic Relief time again, so we can't get away from these unfunny bastards polluting our collective conciousness, all in the name of charity. As if that makes it alright for The Sugababes and that other bunch of micro-talented strumpets with a penchant for beating up cloakroom attendants to drag Walk This Way into the gutter outside TV Centre and beat it to death with outsized Red Noses.

And what does Lenny Henry do for the rest of the year? Bake doughnuts for that tedious wife of his? I am sure he is a perfectly nice chap, but let's face it, he reached his comedy zenith with Algernon Winston Razmatazz, didn't he?

Also on the subject of charity grin-a-thons, is it only me who finds the tendency of BBC Newsreaders and weathermen to dress up inappropriately (often in drag) to re-enact some feeble pop video faintly disturbing? The next time I am being told about the latest atrocity in Darfur or car bomb in Iraq which has scattered the body parts of 25 toddlers across some dusty marketplace, I may well find it hard to get the image of Huw Edwards prancing around dressed in suspender belt and bra out of my mind to make way for some gravitas...

Of course, if you want to donate, so so here - Official Comic Relief Website

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

I found myself listening to The Ramones blasting through the aforementioned Tom Waits song this morning. While a unacknowledged highlight of their twilight years, it also seemed to have a certain poignancy now that three of the original Ramones have prematurely gone to that great Bowery Bar in the sky.

Approaching, as I am, my late thirties, I am stricken with regular bouts of age anxiety, and hearing Da Bruvvers set me to thinking. So much of my generation's outlook has been moulded by pop culture to the extent that we tend to define ourselves against our idols. Strangely, if we see them constantly we never notice them aging, in much the same way as we don't notice changes in our siblings. Only when you look at pictures from long ago and make direct comparisons do you see the change.

It's the same with our own faces. We like to think we look at the same person in the mirror everyday, but the creep of age is imperceptible, like erosion on the sandstone of an old tenement building. Inspired by my Ramones encounter, I'm currently listening to loads of old punk records - at the moment Dancing the Night Away by The Motors is chuntering along on a wave of gob and guitars - and reflecting that my earliest musical memories were of punk, which evolved into the mass consciousness just as I was becoming aware of music beyond my parents' Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan albums. Jon Savage, in his book England's Dreaming, is at pains to point out the sheer alien-ness of the 1970s to today's culture (although Savage was writing in the happy clappy dayglo early 90s) and I have to agree, although being nothing but a lad at the time I wasn't really tuned into the Ballardian despair of the times, being more concerned with Action Men and 2000AD comics. Still, looking back at the cultural forces which shaped the music of the day, you can't imagine the same thing happening again.

Going back to the Ramones, the day punk lost any anti-establishment credibility was the day people like Ferne Cotton started wearing their t-shirts. The fad for recycled band t-shirts, which at its apotheosis saw Robbie Williams declaring how he was rich beyond his wildest dreams while wearing a Shout at the Devil-era Motley Crue t-shirt, seems to have died down, but it represented what, for me, was a worrying trend. Everything was fair game for nostalgia, as long as we all adopted a knowing mask of irony. The fact that Mr Williams wouldn't have known a Crue album if it jumped up and fellated him in the back of a tour bus is neither here nor there. It's all just fashion, and fashion fades.

But a preoccupation with irony, in which we're encouraged to take nothing seriously and strip mine our collective memories for artifacts with which to furnish the bachelor pads of our post-modern minds, has the effect of making us take nothing seriously. The reason I, and many other people my age, eventually grew to loathe The Darkness, was because they treated it all as a big joke. What they failed to grasp was that even at their most ludicrous, most heavy metal bands take what they do very seriously indeed, as do their fans; even while Angus Young is duck walking in front of a giant inflatable naked woman you can see that he means business.

When I was younger, we lived through music. It defined your identity. Friendships were forged based around what albums you could swap with people. You'd sling an armful of records into an old HMV carrier bag and head off to your mate's house and make a point of listening to them. I'm not one of these old farts who maintains that vinyl had a certain charm and the art of the compilation tape is just as worth keeping as the skills of a stonemason, but it was a very serious business. I love my iPod as much as the next 30-something techno geek, but I can't help but feel that this obsessive need to share everything, with everybody, all the fucking time, has diminished what it was that made music interesting to many people of my generation. The fact that it was something you only shared with your mates was what made it special, as it was what made you special, at least in your own eyes.

All this online stuff has done has made us six year olds swapping football cards again to fill our empty albums. If music is just about filling up empty spaces, then it will go the same way as all those Pannini albums once the season is over - dumped beneath the bed if it's lucky, or else thrown out with the old comics.