Before Amazon — before the internet even existed — there was the catalogue. For anyone who never had the pleasure, this was a vast slab of glossy paper, thumped through your letterbox like an oversize...

Cleo Laine, SCIF, and a Forgotten Anti-Racist Moment in British Music Cleo Laine died this week, aged 98. I’ll admit it — I was never much of a Cleo Laine fan. Her smooth, polished brand of jazz was a...

I was brought up CofE.  My dad was the Church organist, by Grandad the Church Warden, and we went to Church every Sunday.  We were a bit high church, and I was an altar boy as well as singing in the c...

Kevin Rowland, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, and the Courage to Be Yourself I’m in Ireland, reading Kevin Rowland’s autobiography. Predictably, it’s brilliant — one of the best music autobiogra...

Most fashions of the 1980s have been endlessly recycled. Nostalgia has long since replaced creativity. But one style code still remains largely forbidden territory: the casuals. Pringle jumpers. Sergi...

Back in the 1980s, before the internet and YouTube, it was hard to dig up information about forgotten 1960s bands. Knowledge was at a premium. In 1980, Edsel Records released a compilation called The ...