Category: Off the Beaten Tracks

IT IS often the case that a personal life in crisis can result in some of a musician’s finest work; Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and Joni Mitchell’s Blue … Continue readingDavid Bowie: Low and behold

THIS week, a long-overdue salute to that most enduring of songwriters, Randy Newman. For more than half a century he has been making us smile and sob, sometimes simultaneously, with … Continue readingRandy Newman, master craftsman

IF HE had listened to his music teacher’s advice, we wouldn’t be listening to Bill Dalton now. At 16 his school report read: ‘William is musically incompetent.’ Discouraged, he went … Continue readingBill the conqueror

MY choice this week has frequently been described as one of the greatest albums of all time, and the best by a female artist (how long before records by males … Continue readingBlue: The confessions of Joni Mitchell

THERE were many embarrassing moments in my journalistic career, and some still have the capacity to make me cringe. One such came on a Sunday in 1976, at the July … Continue readingWill the real John Martyn please stand up?

WITH gloom all around, politically and weatherwise, and spring seeming a long way off, here’s a ray of aural sunshine to brighten up your day. The Innocence Mission represent love, … Continue readingThe age of Innocence (Mission)

DURING the 1960s, there were few cosier corners in the world of television than BBC Light Entertainment. Middle-of-the-road singers such as Val Doonican, Petula Clark, Nana Mouskouri, Bobbie Gentry and … Continue readingJimi wrecks the Lulu show

A FEW weeks ago I looked back fondly to the late sixties and early seventies, when every decent-sized town had at least one record shop. Most places also had a … Continue readingWhere Beatlemania began – and I slept through it

FOR those who remember Talking Heads, it’s usually because of David Byrne, the flamboyant front man in the ‘big suit’ who gurned, crooned, shouted, whooped, sometimes gibbered and always demanded … Continue readingHead Girl: Tina Weymouth

WHAT a choice set of comments on my post about Brinsley Schwarz. Author and former Kursaal Flyer Will Birch reminded me that he wrote about the ‘hype of the century’ … Continue readingThe best little record shop in the land