Bert Sommer: Jennifer's journey from oblivion to Woodstock folklore
Sharon Watts in Beacon, New York The name Jennifer has ‘muse’ written all over it. Just ask Kurt Weill, Little Richard, Tommy Tutone,...
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Thanks for stumbling upon my retirement project and labour of love, Here Comes The Song. Here you'll find the latest blogs from music fanatics about their favourite songs and the artists who wrote them. It really is about the music that moves us...
Man Without A Soul: Lucinda gives the Trump era a fiery send-off
Ian Malin Don’t worry it will soon be over. For those of us still standing anyway. The year the music, and pretty much all entertainment,...
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Janey Needs A Shooter
Chris Hewett Those of us who have spent the best part of 50 years surfing the mighty swells of Bruce Springsteen’s music – or, just...
Elliott Smith: Pretty (Ugly Before), soundtrack to a troubled soul
Tim Woods There are different ways for musicians to be successful. The most obvious is through the charts: No1 singles or albums that go...
The Grateful Dead: The spirit of Brokedown Palace lives on
Andrew R McGaan in Chicago One of the Grateful Dead’s most beautiful songs, both musically and lyrically, is a love song, a sermon, and...
Allman Brothers Band: In memory of Duane and Whipping Post
Exactly 49 years ago today, on 29 October 1971, a long-haired motorcyclist was making his way through the Georgia town of Macon when he was…
Gaz Brookfield: The Old Normal and other new lockdown songs
When Covid19 first struck and lockdown imposed, the West Country folk guitarist Gaz Brookfield – a type 1 diabetic more conscious than most…
Between The Wreck and a hard place: all aboard the Rescue Train
What do you do in times of Covid19 if you are a musician in a rock band? Rishi Sunak might suggest you retrain as a delivery driver…
In praise of songwriters: Rumer and the art of interpretation
Nearly 20 years ago the music journalist Max Bell was invited to a gig of a London-based folk-indie band La Honda in the cafeteria of a…
Isle of Wight 50 years after: the enduring majesty of Baez and Cohen
If you can remember the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, you weren’t really there. That follows, does it not, because the whole crazy, chaotic…
Marvin Gaye: Abraham, Martin and John. Not forgetting Bobby
If the last few gruesome weeks in Britain and America have taught us anything it is that both countries are governed by small men, men who…
Robert Jon & The Wreck: Tired Of Drinking Alone
Every now and then a band comes along that blows your socks off. Robert Jon & The Wreck are that band for me and this track – from their new
Suzanne Vega: Gypsy and a cherished Glastonbury memory
Many of us have a song that evokes a particular time, place or person: that anthem from your youth, or a slushy tune shared with a first…
Gillian Welch: The hush and the hurt of I Made A Lovers Prayer
There is more to the harmonica than meets the lips, to the extent that a careless student of the instrument might blow some serious money on
Thom Yorke: Last Flowers
When the panic swept through England, the scale was measured in loo roll. The supermarket rush for toilet paper evoked the run on Northern…
Jason Isbell: Traveling Alone
Jason Isbell tells an amusing tale about meeting Bruce Springsteen a few years back and being bowled over when The Boss began to sing the…
Sixties discoveries: From The Fourmyula to The Millennium
Nostalgia: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past. But is it possible to be nostalgic for a time you never knew
Paul Simon: American Tune
Churches and cathedrals will remain silent this Easter so there will be little chance to hear O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, a choral work by…
Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson: Alexandra Leaving
If poetry is the ‘music of ideas’ – an intriguing definition of the barely definable, put forward by the writer Peter Whitfield – can music…
Badfinger, sad singer: Day After Day
Has there ever been a sadder, more violent death in pop than that of Pete Ham? Grisly ends are not exactly unique in rock. Think Marvin Gaye
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