While the singles charts continued to be full of songs by “x featuring y”, where x=someone I haven’t heard of and y=someone I have vaguely heard of, there were some interesting albums this year. It was especially good for albums by the sons of other musicians, with albums by Ian Dury’s son Baxter, Neil Finn’s […]

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2010 was a bit of a blur for me. A busy year. There was a general election in May and I was standing against Francis Maude in Horsham. Although there was almost zero chance of winning (Fortunately. I don’t think I would like to be an MP!) I wanted to put in a good effort […]

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I couldn’t pick anything other than Bonkers by Dizzee Rascal for the 2009 slot on my playlist. We are big fan of Mr Rascal (As Jeremy Paxman once called him) in this house. In fact our grandson is named after him – his real name of Dylan Mills and not his stage name of Dizzee […]

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There have been several milestones or turning points in how I interact with music. There was the point where I started owning it so I wasn’t completely reliant on whatever the radio played, there was the portable tape machine letting me listen on the move, there was the MP3 player, and then the download which […]

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Some time last year I decided to put together a playlist with one song from each year of my life. Some time later I decided to write about it here. I expected that I would be writing about the tracks themselves, what I liked about them, why I picked them and so on. What has […]

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In 2005 we got to hear the Kaiser Chiefs’ album, Employment, that was eagerly anticipated after a couple of big singles in 2004. The anticipation was displaced to Arctic Monkeys who released I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor but made us wait until 2006 for an album. Meanwhile Franz Ferdinand were already on […]

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Yes I am looking to ‘world music’ for this year’s entry on the playlist. Not that I bought a lot of it this year. All I can think of is Angelique Kidjo’s Oyaya! album and Rachid Taha’s Tekitoi album. The Kidjo album was continuing her homage to Latin music. I really prefer her more African […]

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Music has always been an important part of my life. Its a source of entertainment but also emotional support, distraction, inspiration and excitement. I had wondered whether, when I turned 40 towards the end of 2002, I would continue to get enthused about new music or just retreat into the old favourites and leave modern […]

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I think that 2002 was a good year for music. Looking at the albums I bought I can see they are split between ones I got from the market stall in Lower Marsh and ones I would have had to go up to Tower Records for. Or possibly I was getting some from the Internet […]

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