Couldn't let the Summer go by without mentioning that along with the long days of hot weather it's starting to feel like a Summer from the Sixties.

But first the name Andrew Watt, a 35 year old New York, music whizz kid/record producer gets a mention because he links some famous legends from the past that need no introduction. He worked with Paul McCartney on his album 'Boys of Dungeon Lane', released in May. Check out 'Home To Us' a song duet with Ringo that's about their Home Town, that even manages to include some yeah, yeahs !

I should also say Ringo had a nice single release called 'Long, Long Road' along with a great video. More pure nostalgia ...

So two Beatles records and now a new LP from the Rolling Stones. Andrew Watt, who could be their grandson, produced the 'Hackney Diamonds' album in 2023 and he's at it again on the latest offering from Mick, Keith and Ronnie. And it's a another winner.

'Foreign Tongues' is out now and I particularly like this track all about that 'American Dream', reflecting on how it's not what it once was... 'Ringing Hollow' > some great lines

And from the album, give 'Back In Your Life' a listen. 

Along with those Beatle tracks for the full nostalgia trip ! Summer's here, the time is right 

   

Bit of an 80s party happening this weekend. Madness - you bet !

Welcome to the 'House of Fun' - a UK No.1 hit single in 1982, about a young fellow trying to buy condoms on his sixteenth birthday. It could only be a Madness song !

Along with a video that's very Monty Python-esque. The boy in the song is misunderstood by the chemist, as he asks for the condoms using slang euphemisms.

Written by band members Lee Thompson (saxophone) and Mike Barson (keyboards) and naturally sung by Hastings born Graham McPherson, better known as Suggs. 

Curiously 'House of Fun' was not released in America, however the music video was shown on the then newly launched MTV channel >

PS:

To confirm the 'Prog Prom', mentioned last week, is on tv tonight at 7pm on BBC4. 

   

Tonight is the first night of The Proms 2026. Copland, Gershwin and Ravel launch this season. 

Tomorrow night it's the turn of composers Emerson, Anderson, Banks, Hayward, Hammill, Oldfield, Zappa and Wright: in a Special Prog Rock Prom titled 'A Fanfare for the Common Man'. See the full programme here. 

Many of the featured compositions have been Friday Star Tracks, so it's a popular selection performed by an orchestra and a band comprising of Carl Palmer and Peter Hammill along with Guy Garvey, Jane Weaver and Gruff Rhys. I'm sure you'll know most of the songs included. 

To following the evening's title I've picked today Emerson, Lake & Palmer's version of 'Fanfare for the Common Man'. This is a shorten edit from the 9 minute original, which was the *Aaron Copland composition at the start and end with a 6 minute middle section added by Keith Emerson. Filmed at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. 

NB: This Prog Prom is scheduled for TV broadcast next Friday, 24th July on BBC4 and will be available on the iplayer from then.

One song in the programme I was not familiar with was 'Refugees' by Van der Graaf Generator, so I gave this poignant piece a listen and recommend you do too: (link here) - interesting video also. 

*The 1942 original 3 minute classical piece is basically all 'Fanfare'. Here's a video with some fantastic images - fyi (click on)  

  

World Cup 2026, with an introduction last Wednesday, (scroll down) takes another musical break today.

Aside from the cameras constantly picking out people in the crowd you don't recognise it's been the 'Hydration' breaks that have caused as many talking points as VAR decisions.   

Commercial / Coaching / Music / booing breaks call them what you will they have become a pause of annoyance. And apparently the best way to stop the crowd booing is to get them to start singing, with American stadium DJs quick to get the music playing. 

So you have probably heard ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey and other singalong tunes by John Denver and The Killers and no doubt this track by Bon Jovi.

Though not in anyway about football, I can see why it was chosen, with lyrics like: 

"hold on to what we've got"
"We'll give it a shot"

And "we're halfway there" - all rallying cries of encouragement to take back on to the field of play.
All together - 'Livin' On A Prayer'

 

WORLD CUP 2026

As the Football World Cup progresses to the Quarter-Final stage, time for a breather and some musical reflection. 'Life is a Highway' is the song used for the excellent ITV introduction titles. The lyrics 'All night long', have in some cases been quite literally that ! (from a watching perspective)...

The song is from the movie ‘Cars’ and is played by the American Country Music band Rascal Flatts. The original composition, from 1991 is by Canadian Tom Cochrane. Here's the full track FYI - click link

  

A I (as in Artificial Intelligence):

Plenty of discussion this week about this. A recent newspaper article spoke about various Apps that allow you to easily create your own songs, along with this quote "As an artist I'm a bit frightened - these songs sound really good".  

A friend had made such a song for their husband's birthday, With personalised lyrics and a catchy tune which was extremely good. Then my wife using Suno: a generative artificial intelligence music creation platform, made a song for me: 'My Favourite Partner in Crime'😃*

Then a few days ago I read about the streaming platform: Tidal, that had updated its policies with regard to AI and that music generated by the technology will no longer be monetised on the platform !

And this brings me to music I heard on a YouTube channel under the banner 'Crossroads Records'. There's literally dozens of videos all very similar in structure. It even has a menu guide by listing featured instrumentation:- Reverb-Heavy Electric Slide Guitar - "Train-Whistle" Harmonica (Call and Response) - Deep Hammond B3 Organ & Minor-Key Piano - Slow-Drag Brush Drum Rhythm. 

See what you make of today's track ‘The Last Train from Memphis’ with guitar playing [like Gary Moore] and soulful singing, however no mention at all of artists names playing these instruments. So I'm pretty sure it's AI. 

Is it therefore about enjoying the sound of the music or the ethics of it's origin ? How do you feel ?

* A Link to this song is available upon request. Just ask. 

NB: SUNO Inc. has been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for copyright infringement, and thousands of musicians have signed a letter demanding that the company cease using copyrighted music in their training data. Suno does not disclose the dataset used to train its artificial intelligence.

  

10 years ago, on the morning of June 24th, we all woke up to the result of the UK referendum on EU membership. And the phrase 'Brexit' embedded itself into our lives. I think I can safely say the 90s music that was labelled 'Britpop' was significantly more fun. 

So if the result from that morning came as a surprise, today's Star Track artist may also be somewhat unexpected. It's Robbie Williams ! With a single from his chart topping album 'Britpop', released earlier this year (see what I did there). 

Sounding like Liam and Oasis, the song 'All My Life' did not enter the UK Singles Chart but made No. 44 on UK downloads and No. 50 on UK sales charts ! Whatever that means ?
The single come out at the time of Robbie's ‘Britpop’ album release. Which made No.1 on the Album Chart Top 100, but then disappeared after just 3 weeks ! So you could have easily missed it. How different and transient charts are nowadays. Take it away Robbie >

   

I really like it when this happens...

A couple of weeks ago, after my Folk filled 'Star Tracks' in May, I got an email from Roy Maggs. He'd enjoyed them and asked if I'd heard of the singer Kate Wolf. I hadn't and promptly gave a listen to the songs he suggested I check out. And so here we are today.

One of those songs 'The Redtail Hawk' from a live release in 1983 is just wonderful. 

Kate Wolf, who sadly passed away in 1986 aged just 44, performed with Nina Gerber from 1979 and a number of her songs have been covered by Nanci Griffith and Emmylou Harris among others.

‘Redtail Hawk writes songs across the sky’ - is a song written by George Schroder and is the main part of the track ‘Pacheco / Redtail Kite’. As a 9 minute mood scape, it's 2 mins of 'Pacheco' then we're into Kate singing 'The Redtail Kite' with some fantastic mandolin playing from Nina Gerber, a violin solo from David Balakrishnan, while long time collaborator Bill Griffin is also on the track.
'Pacheco' refers to Pacheco Pass on Highway 152 which runs east - west between the San Joaquin Valley and Highway 1 south of Santa Cruz. Yes, we're going to sunny California ! And Sonoma gets a name check too. 

Further listening links >

There is a 'live' video performance (without the violin solo) of 'Redtail Kite': Click Play

And I'd recommend her song ‘Across the Great Divide’: Play 

Also a video of this song performed by Nanci Griffith with Nina and guests: Play

Kate Wolf also sings a great version of Jackson Brown's 'These Days': Play

  

Continuing from last Wednesday (please read the intro first):

The Bevis Frond gig in Hastings is tomorrow night. And I've been refreshing my memory and making additional notes. I can't be accused of not doing my homework !

I've some must listens and a Star Track. So here's 'Six of the Best' (click on each arrow to listen):

➤ 'He'd Be a Diamond' *(Song covered by Teenage Fanclub)

➤ 'Lights Are Changing' (Sounds like The Byrds) + a great acoustic version, search 'Aterpe Sessions'

➤ 'The Strangers Mirror' (11 minute slow track into some blistering guitar solos)

➤ 'Mr. Fred's Disco' *(great lyrics, like "Don't smile your crown shows up in ultraviolet light")

➤ 'Through the Hedge' *(organ based melody and smouldering guitars)

➤ 'Coming Round' *(Power chords, an encore track)

"Everyone has a favourite tune. Is this yours" ?

From the 2011 album release 'The Leaving of London' this is 'Johnny Kwango' - who was a professional wrestler and was on British TV when Wrestling was popular.

 

* Denotes tracks currently on the 'live' setlist.

.... there are of course lots more where these came from. 

I hope you like The Bevis Frond as much as I do. 

  

An alternative (and occasional) music posting highlighting something out of the ordinary.
Perhaps of limited appeal, unconventional, experimental or just far-out !
Call it what you like (or switch it off, if you don't like). 

Back end of last year I came upon this band. I'd never heard of them before and the track 'You’re On Your Own’ did more than just catch my attention. Then I found they were playing a gig in Hastings accompanied by the following blurb "The Bevis Frond (guitarist and songwriter Nick Saloman) have become the UK's leading underground psychedelic rock band. Their music is an iconoclastic collision of distinctly British psychedelia, space-rock, grunge, slow-burning soulful laments, even grizzled folk and more occasional moments of sublime pop genius."

All this from one band was summed up by the fact they'd released something in the regions of 29 albums since their debut in 1987. I freely admit that at first I became a bit obsessed with The Bevis Frond, trying to get to grips with such a varied and extensive catalogue of music. Not only was I liking a lot of the songs but I found that Nick Saloman, a Londoner, was now a Hastings resident, and the extensive recorded output was through his own and various other independent record labels. Going some way to explaining why I'd never heard of him and why 'underground' perhaps best categorises him if you too don't know the name.

Describing the 2018 LP 'We're Your Friends, Man' The Progressive Aspect website says of the aforementioned song - "The longest track here is the 13 minute album closer 'You’re On Your Own', one of Nick’s trademark Neil Young-duels-with-Jimi beasties" !

As I personally delved deeper into the music I was hearing influences from Elvis Costello and Tom Petty vocally to The Jam, Procol Harum, the Cure, Pink Floyd and Hendrix. Weird and wonderful, odd subjects and song titles and 'stoned-out' lengthy guitar jams all the way to sensitive folky numbers. No wonder my head was spinning - so let's play the track I came in on and go back to those liquid light show psychedelic days of yesteryear. 

(This reminds me of the very first FMS Star Track 'Maggot Brain' by Funkadelic) > 

 

Today is just an introduction... 

Friday I shall list other favourites leading to a Star Track, which will be a distinct contrast to this Bevis Frond track. Nick Saloman is a man of multiple hats and the wealth of material available can be overwhelming at first. 

... to be continued