Young rascals

HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO May 14 to 20, 1997 Crosby, Stills & Nash are inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame. Neil Young also gets the call, as part of Buffalo Springfield, while other inductees are Joni Mitchell, The Bee Gees, The Jackson Five, Parliament/Funkadelic, and The Young Rascals.

Pure pop perfectionists have got a ticket to Ryde and they don't care

Lord Percival surveys his manor of song and declares it most fine

When Motown's power trio struck out on their own

"Hippie spiritual" LP is a thing of wonder

I was reminiscing with an old friend over the weekend about The Specials, his favourite band. Our chat brought us to the great 1979 2-Tone Tour that featured The Specials, supported by Madness and The Selecter, a snapshot of which now duly follows.

The singer scores her thirteenth number one -- plus Uncut's chart round up

Brass Monkey(s): Stunning string-laden debut from Magic Alex (and friend).

A fair number of reissues in this one, that I've compiled over the past day or so. But there's also a couple of auspicious new releases just in, that I'll be writing more about in the next few days.

“Good idea this, weren’t it?” shouts Alex Turner from the stage. It was billed as a momentous event and in the end, that’s exactly what it was. Arctic Monkeys have just played the biggest headlining gig of their career at LCC, in front of a deafening 50,000 people and a sea of inflatable hammers. More of which later, as it’s been a terrific day all round.