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People And Trains

This year sees the 200th anniversary of the UK’s first public rail passenger service driven by steam engines: the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in the north east of England, which began operations in 1825. There had been ‘train’ services before, notably in south Wales from 1807, but those were horse-drawn and were soon superseded in the time of the Industrial Revolution. Amongst many events to…

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Tuesday Tunes 263: It's Still Summer

    After a couple of weeks of variations, I’m going back to the themes of summer and sunshine today. Given that the weather forecast is for storms this week maybe I should have rethought this, but it is still summer here and what would that be in the UK without a drop of rain? So I’m playing you three summer songs and two sunshine ones. As before, only one of these is new here, but they are all…

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Song Lyric Sunday: All Right Now

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song that made a great album closer, as he tells us in his appropriately titled post, The End. The last time we had this theme, back in December 2023, I played A Day In The Life, from The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album, and I did consider playing it again, but only for a moment. That would, I think, have been cheating, and there are plenty…

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A New View Of July

In ‘honour’ of his recent sales trip to Scotland I have posted an end of month review for most months in the past five years – fifty two of them in total. But something strange (to me, anyway) happened with the last one. These posts have usually attracted slightly lower viewing figures than my other offerings, but for the first time ever not one person left a comment. That got me thinking. Maybe…

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Tuesday Tunes 262: Hot

  After last week’s trip to the Moon I thought I’d go back to the list I have compiled of songs about summer, sunshine etc. Only this time there is a bit of a difference: all of today’s tunes have hot in their title, but none of them is about the weather! You’ll soon get the idea, I’m sure. There are some big names in this week’s selection, and they don’t come much bigger than the guys opening…

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Song Lyric Sunday: Time And A Cat

  Jim’s invitation for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, in his post Title Track,  is to play a song that became the title song of an album. In some cases, I guess the song might have been released as a single before the album, thereby ‘becoming’ a title track, but sometimes they just arrive on the album itself. I’ve chosen to play you two songs which fit the category, by one of my favourite…

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A New Family Member

  If you look to the right of the page you’ll find the list of my all time top ten posts. Lurking at #6 is a piece from 2021 called Family And Music. This is actually a reworking of two previous posts from 2018, with an added footnote from 2022. It became something of a magnum opus and it contains a lot of my thoughts about why family relationships are important to us. Newer readers won’t have…

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Tuesday Tunes 261: Moon

  I’ll let you into a little secret, if you haven’t already guessed it. Although these posts appear on a Tuesday (the clue is in the title) I actually prepare them the day before. So while you’re reading this tomorrow it is actually today for me, yesterday. All clear? Good. The reason for saying that is that yesterday (in the UK, Sunday in the US) was the 56th anniversary of the first landing on…

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Song Lyric Sunday: Lady Writer

  The Sophomore Slump. The Difficult Second Album. Just two of the phrases used to describe the trouble some bands and musicians have found in creating a follow up to a successful debut record. And that is what Jim is inviting us to play this week: a song from a second album. Read all about it here. I gave this one a fair bit of thought. After all, apart from one hit wonders just about everyone…

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Tuesday Tunes 260: More Summer Heat

I said last week that I had loads more songs I could play with variations on the theme of summer, sunshine, hot and the like in their titles, and as our current hot spell shows no signs of disappearing just yet I thought I’d play some more of them this week. All of these have been here before in a variety of posts, but as with last week’s set they are all good tunes well meriting another…

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Song Lyric Sunday: I Loved Him Like My Friend

  Song Lyric Sunday this week is for us to play a song that was posthumously released, as Jim tells us in his post Turn Me On, Dead Man. And if you want to know where that came from I’m not telling – you’ll have to to read Jim’s post! I checked the oracle – Wikipedia – and it gives a lot of detail for this, but in the end I decided to go with the first idea that came into my head. I wouldn’t be…

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Listen To The Band: Mary Chapin Carpenter

  Newer readers may be forgiven for not knowing this but I have an occasional series I call Listen To The Band. You can see the series so far in the menu link at the top of the page, and if you do you’ll see that my most recent post for it was last September, the one before that was in June 2024, and before that September 2022. I think that’s a pretty good reason to call this ‘occasional’ – very…

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Tuesday Tunes 259: Summer 2025

    As we in the UK have been enjoying (enduring?) what passes for a heatwave here I thought I’d reflect that in my theme for this week. I have previously taken variations of summer, hot, sun, sunshine and the like as themes, and I’m playing a selection of them again. Most of these have been here before (more than once!), but that doesn’t stop them being good tunes, and a little bit of recycling…

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Song Lyric Sunday: Murders In The Times

  For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song that is based on reality, a theme inspired by Badfinger (Max) of PowerPop. If you don’t follow Max’s blog you really should – his musical knowledge puts mine to shame, and he writes very well about other things too. Jim’s post Understanding Reality gives the background to the theme.. The first thing that struck me about this…

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Caught In June

  As the calendar moves remorselessly on its way, it brings round yet another of my monthly recaps. But at least it keeps me grounded! And for once I’ve managed to find a song whose title fits the bill – if you’re good I’ll play it for you at the end, as long as you promise not to skip all the dross in between. Deal? But I’ll impose tariffs if you break it. And then remove them. Probably. During…

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Tuesday Tunes 258: Still Protesting

  As is my habit, kind of, when I find a good theme I play several sets for it – usually no more than three. As this is my third set of protest songs I guess that means I’ll be looking for a new theme for next week, but for now I hope you enjoy another five songs that tell about something wrong in our world. They will, I am sure, all be known to you, though one may not be a familiar version. But…

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June's New Music

  Over the years I have occasionally shared sets of recent music that I liked, and have done so in both April and May, so it seems a plan to do it again for songs that came out in June. As always, they are a mixed bunch, so I hope you find something among them to enjoy. You may recall that last month I played some songs by Merry Hell, one of my favourite English folk bands, in SLS: Let The Music…