Wow, can it really be three months since my last post? I did say I needed a break. We’ve been immersed in music for the last few weeks – a road trip to Canberra for the National Folk Festival. We were invited to participate in a special concert to celebrate the Alistair Hulett award. Alistair was a well-known leftie songwriter who died in 2010. His family set up a trust to administer an award to…
Given that a lot of my Facebook friends are musicians (and jazz musicians at that), you could get into an endless debate about who is or was the best. Moreover, one could have a lengthy dialogue about what is jazz and is it the same as blues? It’s not hard to find lists of the top jazz singers of the 20th century. Pundits frequently put Louise Armstrong on top of the list, closely followed by…
By Guest writer Lyn Nuttall Introduction by Bob I did say last week I’d be serving up items from the FOMM archives while I’m away, but could not resist this post by Lyn Nuttall, curator of the website Pop Archives (Where did they get that song?). The other day some bloke tweeted, “Anyone remember Dionne Warwick?” Dionne Warwick answered, “Doesn’t ring a bell.” When I wrote about a Top 20 hit by Sydney singer…
While my friends in New Zealand were still at school, I was making apprentice wages, spending almost all of it on records. Our small town didn’t have a record store as such, but the local department store stocked the latest pop records. At the time, LPs were pressed at a factory in Wellington owned by His Master’s Voice (HMV). My copy of ‘Please Please Me’ (The Beatles), for example, was issued by Parlophone in Mono….