Despite some mainstream success the genre prefers to stay rooted in folk traditions and artists tend to frequent their own circles,...

After Dylan, folk singers and their music opened up to pop/rock production techniques and instrumentation, and the songs about the...

Prior to the mainstream success of Bob Dylan folk performers tended to interpret classic songs of the genre or wrote broad-based, topical...

“What draws me to traditional music is that the songs are there to do a job, to tell a story, to make work easier. There’s no pomposity...

During the summer I studied at Music Production at IMW in London. It was largely a taster course although it did come with the sweetener...

You’d think that with a name like thunderbolt it would make life lightning fast – instead I’m getting more of the ‘very very frightening’...

I’ve said before in this blog that it’s not always a pleasure to force yourself to listen to the next album on a list, in a predetermined...

There are 16 albums covered in this blog, and brings me right up to date with all that I’ve listened to so far.  As luck would have it,...

No. 223 I’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU – ROBBIE WILLIAMS (1998)  By the time this album was released Robbie Williams was pretty much back at the...

As a project, the idea of listening through all the entries on the Q250 ‘Best Albums of Our Lifetime’ should be an easy and pleasurable...

Friday night visit to Dukes Bar in central Bristol.  I arrived for a visit with my friends Simon and Gaynor, and Simon and I pop out to...

May 3rd!  May the bleedin’ 3rd! So all of a sudden there I was with 2 months of extreme business and with all best intentions applied I...

In 1988 I was living in Edinburgh in my own flat (well rented) on Comiston Road in Morningside.  I’d left school in 1986, 25 years ago...

Sometimes you can be aware of a band or singer without really having much of a clue about the bulk of the work that they do.  So ask me...

Q Magazine Let’s imagine for a moment, that the period covered in the Q250 was not 1986 – 2011, but 5 years earlier; 1981 – 2006.  Of...

And so, a little later than I might have originally hoped, I’ve completed 10 of the albums from the Q250 – ‘The Best 250 Albums of our...

Q250 Delving again in to the world of the Q Magazine ‘ 250 Best Albums of our Lifetime’ it was a pleasure, and perhaps a relief, to find...

It is pretty clear that unless I still want to be writing this episodic blog content in 5 years time, I’m going to have to get a move...

I decided to tackle the Q Magazine ‘250 Best Albums of our Lifetime’ as a way in to a regular blog, with a vague intention that it would...

Q Magazine I’ve had this idea of reviewing – or at least commenting on the music, TV, film and other media stuff that passes through my...