In writer/director Anthony Simmons' words, Peter Sellers gives "a great gut performance" in the 1973 film The Optimists of Ni...

Just found this clip, below, on youtube of Dave Gilmour's beautiful performance of Don't, the song associated with Elvis Presley, f...

Very sad to read that Jerry Leiber (above, left)  is dead. Click here for a link to a 2001 interview with Leiber and Stoller at the NFT ...

There hasn't been much to add to this series of posts about Bowie's early influences lately, but idly looking through post 16, ab...

If you have explored further than the most recent posts in this blog, you will know that it was set up to archive posts from a doo wop me...

As Julien Temple's documentary Ray Davies: Imaginary has just been repeated on the BBC, it's once again briefly available on BBC ip...

This is to alert UK readers that the PBS documentary about John Lennon's final years, LENNONYC,  has just been broadcast on the BBC - a...

A DVD has recently been issued of Leonard Rossiter's last sitcom, Triipper's Day, written by Brian Cooke. It will, I imagine, sell ...

This is to draw readers' attention to a DVD which features a selection of clips from films and TV shows in which Freddie "Parr...

Click below to hear two songs by Alastair Dougall, he of the ode to Phil Cording and Cheapo, which can be downloaded for free at bandcamp:

[Last update: October 8th 2011. I have read that an official DVD of the gig is to be released at some point, and some of the clips embedded...

Have been thinking more about the Donovan Albert Hall gig tonight (above, same location in 1973) . Not entirely unexpectedly, no mysterious...

The post "Cheapo Cheapo Records - the Complete Story" seems to have attracted a lot of attention. It was assembled fr...

Saw American Hot Wax today for the first time in about thirty years. Enjoyable enough, although more bitty than I remembered. There are goo...

 I mentioned the sitcom Nightingales in a recent post about BBC 4's new series The Night Shift. Originally broadcast on Channel 4 in th...

Still in new (or newish) sitcom mode  - I can't pontificate about doo wop all the time - I'd like to put in a word for PhoneShop, ...

As a further contribution to this blog's intermittent series of non-musical posts, allow me to draw youir attention to The Night Shift,...

If you are reading this around the time of its being posted you may be able to catch Matt the Cat's Juke in the Back radio show dedica...

  Delighted to see that at long last Alan Klein's Three Coins in the Sewer can be found on youtube. Recorded in 1962 when there was a c...

This is to bring readers' attention to a radio play about the singer and activist Paul Robeson by Annie Caulfield whch will be availabl...

It may not have been Ken Campbell. Well, no, it was Ken Campbell, obviously, but it may not have been Ken Campbell, is what I'm s...

Having referred to The Yellow Balloon in the previous, entirely frivolous, post, perhaps now would be a good time to restore a modicum of s...

Remember that Alan Yentyob documentary about Bowie? That's right, in the long-ago when Yentob didn't feel the need to interpo...

Suppose I ought to let readers know that Donovan will be performing the whole of the Sunshine Superman album at the Royal Albert Hall on Fr...

One of the better sketches in the variable BBC comedy series Big Train - in fact, the only one which has stayed with me - imagines a heav...

[read details about kickstarter campaign for new Peter Skellern CD here - 8th March 2024 is last day to pledge .]

Normally around this time of year I attend a work-related lunchtime event in the West End then beetle off to root around in Cheapo Cheapo R...

More details about the translated Cheapo, taken from the blog of "specialist branding agency" Underscore. The owners appointed u...

Saw this for myself tonight, already knowing it was inevitable, as I had seen, a few days after the last entry, signs of some kind of count...

I'm delighted to report that Alastair Dougall (above) , the Brighton-based singer songwriter who composed the lament for Cheapo Cheapo ...

Stately is, I think, the word to describe this 1955 recording by the Orchids on Parrot Records: the tempo feels unrushed, processional. ...

Do you remember the BBC children's show Crackerjack and its tradition (at least before Chas and Dave gave them a theme tune composed wit...

Unlike he whose mortal remains swirl in infinitesimal pieces around the east coast of Scotland, I'm not any kind of a Northern Soul exp...

Yes, echoing the title of a film by his idol, let George be the one to taunt you with visions of what might have been, specifically the pri...

That it may have been inevitable doesn't make the death of Gerry Rafferty any less sad. I got to know his work through his second H...

This isn't really to do with music - or only with music as an incidental ingredient - but I feel compelled to write something about Pe...

Time has now been called on our John Lennon songwriting competition (see post here , but it's academic now). I have to report that as...

Have just finished watching the above BBC TV documentary about Ray Davies and a review in the Independent, readable here , gets it roughly ...

As a reluctant nod to the season, herewith Christmas Prayer, a lesser-known Valentines track from 1955 - at least it isn't on th...

 I see from the magic of statcounter that someone who googled the above question today was directed to the Gnome Though...

I can't pretend I listened to every single edition of Mark Lamarr's BBC Radio 2 show Shake Rattle and Roll - too much non-Carl Perk...

This is to alert readers that Ian Whitcomb's peerless radio show has moved from Luxuria to XM 24. My post about his Luxuria programme, ...

For a while I though it was so obscure there might not be an image of the above album cover online, but of course there was. I bought it,...

If the title of this post has already made you think of Dion and the Belmonts' Teen Angel ("Our love is young,/Now we are one...