So, by 1967, we’ve got some pop music to listen to. The album that ‘only sold 500 copies but everyone who bought it formed a band’....

I first heard of Wayne Shorter as sax player in Weather Report, when a schoolfriend lent me Heavy Weather. It was only much later that I...

Time for a bona fide jazz classic, an album aficionados always mention alongside Kind Of Blue and Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert. I've had...

All I knew of Mingus was that he seemed to be revered by a 'Bohemian' crowd. In the famous Penguin Modern Poets - The Mersey Sound...

I don't remember the first time I heard Sun Ra, but something kept me coming back for more. Some of it I find completely unlistenable,...

What becomes quickly obvious as I trek through the early 1960s is that it's all jazz. The 'golden age of rock'n'roll' never grabbed me,...

One of the issues with embarking on a project like this is how to choose what CD comes next. For the next batch (well over 60) I’m going...

A Swiss industrial rock band, The Young Gods and their bleak uncompromising noise were introduced to me by a friend about 25 years ago....

I first became aware of Neil Young when Heart Of Gold was a hit in 1972, then forgot about him until an Old Grey Whistle Test appearance...

Robert Wyatt is an artist who, I feel, I liked before I actually heard much by him. In the 1970s I knew very early stuff like Memories...

I had wondered why Glastonbury 1994 made such an impression on me, and on looking it up, it was the first one which was extensively...

Some days Wire are my favourite band ever. First heard at the height of punk, this album has been with me ever since. The simple...

For many people, Scott Walker's appearance on Later with Jools Holland, singing Rosary, was a wow! moment, and I'm no exception. I knew...

I was late discovering Waits. A friend had lent me Rain Dogs and Swordfishtrombones , but they hadn’t really made an impression and it...

My first exposure to the Thompsons was via a John Peel show devoted to the Fairport family and associated artists, and I listened to...

In the late 1980s CDs were expensive and it was a commercial proposition for video rental shops (remember them, kids?) to also rent out...

I quite liked Japan without going overboard on them, and really rated Sylvian’s collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto on Forbidden Colours,...

Didn’t we all do it? Listen to Radio Luxembourg in bed when we should have been sleeping? So there are some songs which didn’t make it...

With a couple of interruptions I’m trying to go through the earliest album of artists I’ve enjoyed enough to buy multiple albums, and...

Burt Bacharach died today. He’s a man whose work I’ve respected and admired, rather than loved. So many of his compositions are old...