Category: Off the Beaten Tracks

LAST week we examined the career of Blondie, who sold forty million albums worldwide. Today we have another female-fronted band, but this lot would have been chuffed to sell forty thousand. … Continue readingHappy Slappy

AS I mentioned last week, when I saw Television in Manchester in 1977 there was another New York band on the bill. They were loud and raucous, and fronted by a peroxide-bobbed … Continue readingGentlemen prefer Blondie

OF all the rave reviews I have read over the years, the one that sticks in the mind most is Nick Kent’s hyperbolic two-page celebration of the debut Television LP, Marquee … Continue readingPrime-time Television

ONE of my better musical investments of the last twenty years was a CD box set – Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions 1967-1969. This comprises six discs and includes … Continue readingFleetwood Mac on Blue Horizon

TODAY’S choice has been described as a diamond geezer, national treasure, England’s greatest lyricist, working-class hero and a right pain in the backside. In a 2003 BBC poll of Great Disabled … Continue readingJukebox Dury

THE scene is heavy-metal guitarist Nigel Tufnel’s music room. He is showing film maker Marty DiBergi a Marshall amplifier on which the dials all go up to eleven, rather than … Continue readingSpinal Tap go to eleven

REGRETS, I’ve had a few, music-wise. One that springs particularly to mind involves the visit of the band Little Village to the Crystal Palace Bowl in south-east London on July … Continue readingCooder’s Story (Part One)

HALF a century after they began, Steeleye Span are still going strong. They have gone through more personnel changes than you could shake a maypole at, yet Maddy Prior continues … Continue readingThe roots of Steeleye Span

THERE are many groups named after foodstuffs – Cream, Hot Chocolate, Orange Juice, Bread and the Cranberries to name but five – yet I can think of only one inspired … Continue readingLemonheads you win

THE adjective ‘precocious’ could have been invented for Jackson Browne. At an age when most of us were still worrying about acne and failing to revise for exams, he was … Continue readingA Jackson Browne study: Part One