Motown Invasion

If you didn’t get to see The Motown Invasion on Monday night on BBC 4 then you
can watch it again with iPlayer. Its a documentary revealing what made Motown special
in Britain through the lens of two decisive moments in 1965 – the Motown Revue UK
tour and the Sounds of Motown Ready Steady Go! television special.

The Saviour of Radio

Obviously I’m not talking about the pie munching, fat faced, motor mouth of Radio One’s daily ear poison, Chris Moyles. We all know that the true saviour of radio will always be the late, great, John Peel – but since his passing in 2004, the FAM collective have been spinning their dials to the left and tuning in to Radio Two.

Ok – before I completely write off Radio One, I’ve just had  a look at their line-up and there are a couple shows I still enjoy. Giles Peterson and Rob Da Bank for example – and I’m sure there’s stuff worth a listen on the world service, but I haven’t tuned in to that since Joe Strummer’s days. The intention of this post was of course to pay homage to the educational programmes of Mark Lamarr. 

Shake Rattle n Roll, Beginners Guide to Reggae, the Hip Hop ones he sometimes does, Alternative Sixties and the show that’s currently hogging the I-Player, God’s Jukebox. Such an amazing source of musical wisdom, Lamarr has learnt me so much good stuff over the years. One such recent discovery are psychedelic R&B funksters, the Crackles. From the look of their myspace page, they are new on the block and we hope to see them swingin’ on stage somewhere real soon.

Smitherz

Stones Throw European tour

In these hard economic times it’s been difficult to justify spending bag loads of cash on a big night out. However, when we saw that the Stones Throwers were in town, we all scraped the barrel and went along to Cargo for a blast of Californian sun.