You can’t mistake vocalist Roger Chapman’s distinctive voice. A Family signature.

Family: In My Own Time

This was the song that introduced Kate Bush to the world.

And over forty years later I finally got round to reading the book which inspired it.

Kate Bush: Wuthering Heights

Another 1970s songwriter gone.

Writing a love song, or at least a good love song, is a difficult trick to pull off. That Bill Withers managed to tread the line between enuine feeling and mawkish sentimentality on the right side speaks of his talent.

He had very few hits but the songs for which he’ll be remembered in the UK, Lean on Me, Just the Two of Us, Lovely Day and Ain’t No Sunshine, do just that. Lovely Day is one of the few examples of a feel-good song that is pitch perfect.

The last of those four seems more appropriate to mark his passing though.

Bill Withers: Ain’t No Sunshine

William Harrison (Bill) Withers: July 4/7/1938 – March 30/3/2020. So it goes.

The lead singer of Eddie and the Hot Rods died suddenly earlier this month. The Rods were a kind of precursor punk band more or less superseded by the likes of the Sex Pistols when they came along. Their brief heyday was in 1977 when this song – released under the name The Rods – became their biggest hit.

The Rods: Do Anything You Wanna Do

Barrie Masters: 4/5/1956 – 2/10/2019. So it goes.

Here’s that song containing the phrase “a twelvemonth and a day” which I mentioned a couple of posts ago.

Produced by Mike Batt this is Steeleye Span’s folk rock* take on a traditional 19^th century song apparently interpolated with lyrics from another song from the same era, Farewell He.

Steeleye Span: All Around My Hat

*Wikipedia seems to differentiate folk rock from electric folk.

Well here we go again. RIP Dale Griffin, the drummer from Mott the Hoople.

I thought I’d go for something a bit less obvious than the David Bowie song that gave them their big break.

Here is the group playing live:-

Mott the Hoople: All the Way from Memphis

Terence Dale Griffin, (“Buffin” Griffin) 24/10/1948 – 17/1/2016. So it goes.

A bit of festive cheer for the coming of 2016.

After all, 2015 wasn’t so hot was it?

Happy New Year everybody.

George Harrison: Ding Dong, Ding Dong

The roots of both ELO and Wizzard are evident in this, the last of the hits by Birmingham band The Move, which by this time had lost original members Carl Wayne, Ace Kefford and Trevor Burton and reeled in Jeff Lynne from The Idle Race. ELO’s first single 10538 Overture was released only a month or so after this.

The Move: California Man

It’s that time of year again. I was in a shopping mall yesterday and over the tannoy came the sound of I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day. It was the nineteenth of November!

Still, it got me to thinking about the band that recorded it, Wizzard, a project that Roy Wood had (ahem) moved on to from The Move following a brief stint with the earliest incarnation of ELO.

I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day never made it to no 1, among other things having the relative misfortune to be first released in the same year as Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody. I don’t suppose Roy Wood will complain. The residuals he gets every year for I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day must keep him in mince pies well enough.

This was the world’s introduction to Wizzard. Their first single.

Wizzard: Ball Park Incident

Another example of Al Stewart’s lyrical eclecticism.

This one is about the Great Patriotic War.

Al Stewart : Roads To Moscow