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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…

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Tuesday Tunes 257: More Protest

  As last week’s set of protest songs seemed to be well received I thought I’d go with some more for this week. Unlike last time, though, these aren’t all from the US: I’m bookending the set from there, but the three in the middle come from elsewhere. After all, variety is supposed to be the spice of life, isn’t it? So here goes with some more songs about things that are wrong with our…

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SLS: Travelling In Panic

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play something from a concept album, as you can see from his post, Central Theme. I had a pretty good idea what a concept album was – to my mind, an album with songs built around a theme – but the Wikipedia page on this muddies the waters horribly, and their list of such albums is long and in many cases nowhere near what I had thought. Oh…

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A Little Quirky Music

From the band’s website   After the serious theme I chose for this week’s Tuesday Tunes I thought I’d go for something fun for my midweek post. This one kind of fits in with my occasional Under The Covers series, but the band in question also writes and records their own songs, and I’m going to play you some of those too, so I’m not including this in the brand (he said, rather pompously!). If you…

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Tuesday Tunes 256: Protest

  Seeking a new theme for this week, after four weeks of work songs, one candidate seemed to be a natural. Several of my American blogging friends have posted recently about the state of affairs in their country – some with tunes, some without – and after the weekend’s vanity parade and the many more, hugely better attended, counter events under the ‘No Kings’ banner, it seemed to me that protest…

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Song Lyric Sunday: Bursting Out

  This week’s Song Lyric Sunday invitation is to play something from a live album. Read all about it in Jim’s post Performing Showcase. For me there could only be one choice for this: an album I bought on its release in 1978, played to bits, and love to this day. It was like a ‘greatest hits so far’  by the band. Who were they? If you missed the clue in the header picture, they were Jethro Tull,…

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Sad Vibrations

  I was preparing something else for this week’s midweek post but the sad news of Brian Wilson’s passing has changed that. I’ve already seen several tributes to the man and his music, and no doubt there will be many others, but it wouldn’t feel right for me not to add mine. I’m not going to go into a long description of his life, the troubles he went through with his mental health and his…

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Tuesday Tunes 255: Even More Work

    I don’t usually run one of my mini-series for more than three weeks but as work has been such a fun thing I thought I’d go round one more time and pick up a few of my favourites that I haven’t yet got to. As before, only one of these has work in its title, but two are about specific jobs, while the others offer more general comments on the theme. So here we go. One of those general ones is…

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Song Lyric Sunday: From The Hip

  This week’s invitation to Song Lyric Sunday is to share a final song (live or recorded) played by a band or artist. This sounds to me to be a bit like last week’s theme, but Jim’s post Last Piece Played explains all. My first thought was to go with Tom Petty and American Girl, which he played to close his final show a week before he died, but I suspect that others may choose that and have…

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Rounding Up May

    It’s that time again, isn’t it: the beginning of a new month and my opportunity to remind you of what you saw, missed or tried to avoid on my blog last month. There’s no escape – here comes that reminder! In total I landed in your inbox fourteen times during May, all but three of which were music-related. ‘Twas ever thus! I’ll go through the music ones first, and come back to the others at…

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Tuesday Tunes 254: Still Working

  As there are so many suitable songs for it I’ve decided to go with a third week of work as my theme. This time, I have two songs which have work in their title, though neither of them is actually about a form of labour. But the other three definitely are about what people do to earn a living, so I’m keeping some kind of balance. And the two work titles are from a couple of my favourites, so I’m…

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Song Lyric Sunday: Saw It Written

  A song from a final album – that’s what Jim is inviting us to play for Song Lyric Sunday this week, as you can see from his post Everything Comes to an End. There are plenty of reasons as to why an album became the final one for an artist or band, such as break ups or retirement, or the lead singer going solo, but of all the reasons I think that death counts as the most final of all, and that…

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New Music May 2025

  Late last month I shared a few tunes that I had recently found on YouTube, some new music that I was enjoying. I’ve done this previously, but not regularly, and as it was well received I thought I’d do it again with a selection from the month just coming to an end. There are some of my favourites here so I think it has been a lucky month for me – unlike last time no one is appearing for the…