Rip offs

The Bangles frontwoman on the records that lit her eternal flame: “I always think of music as my drug”

An amiable, occasionally revelatory trip to a place where 
the Stones still symbolise rebellion

I was thinking last night about the first time I saw The White Stripes. It was spring 2001, and I was in LA to interview Queens Of The Stone Age. The night before I met up with Josh Homme, I went to the Troubadour to see this duo who were just starting to be talked about a lot by some of the smarter music business people back home.

I was thinking last night about the first time I saw The White Stripes. It was spring 2001, and I was in LA to interview Queens Of The Stone Age. The night before I met up with Josh Homme, I went to the Troubadour to see this duo who were just starting to be talked about a lot by some of the smarter music business people back home.

Still waiting for that Phil Collins fan to post a defence of his hero. But in the meantime, Paul Holmes has joined in bashing "Tory Frog Prince Collins". "One half-decent Genesis tune, some so-so work on a John Martyn record and a clutch of Sunny D Motown rip-offs doth not a canon make," he writes. Fair point. Thanks also to Chads, who responded to our talk of Bill Fay the other day by mentioning Simon Finn, another neglected, quasi-mystic British singer-songwriter from the early '70s who, like Fay, was redicovered by Current 93's David Tibet. I must dig out his "Pass The Distance" album, which I haven't played in ages, though I seem to remember some of it being a bit quirky for my taste.

Plus a free 15-track CD, Booker T, Sade, War, Caroline and more!

A track-by-track commentary on the band's most explosive tracks

Alt.country trailblazers back catalogue lovingly curated

From the wild, weird world of Parliament and Funkadelic to the cool, smooth sounds of soulful sisterhood

Deep cuts from the decorated dub DJ, reggae guitarist and record producer