My choices for “Album of the week” have become rather irregular. For six weeks in a row I managed to pick a different album each week, listen to it far more than I usually listen to a single disk, and then Blog about it. The reasons for starting the sequence were explained in this piece… Continue reading Album of the week: #9 “Sunrise” (Elvis Presley)
For the third weekend in a row, here are the questions and answers from the BBC Radio 2 mid-morning quiz Pop Master for the week just ended. There are 10 rounds of 10 questions, for the five days up to Friday 17 April 2020. On the radio, each Bonus Question features a brief clip from… Continue reading Pop Master questions, week ending 17 April 2020
This piece from last weekend listed the questions from BBC Radio 2 mid-morning quiz Pop Master for the week ending Friday 3 April. Here are the questions and answers, 10 rounds of 10 questions, for the week just ended (Friday 10 April 2020). On the radio, each Bonus Question features a brief clip from a… Continue reading Pop Master questions, week ending 10 April 2020
After a gap of three weeks, for reasons explained in this piece, I have chosen another Album of the week. It was the title that appealed to me: “One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This”, by the New York Dolls. The album passed me by on its release in 2006. I came… Continue reading Album of the week: #7 “One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This” (New York Dolls)
Last month, in this piece, I wrote again about the BBC Radio 2 mid-morning quiz Pop Master. That piece included links to previous Blog posts about the quiz and a couple of recent questions. Here, for the first time, I offer a full week’s worth of questions and answers, 10 rounds of 10 questions, for… Continue reading Pop Master questions, week ending 3 April 2020
For the last six Wednesdays I have been posting “Album of the week” pieces, for reasons explained in the first of them, here. This time last week I was thinking of having a sabbatical (six weeks on, one week off), partly because I couldn’t think of a new album that I wanted to explore. I… Continue reading Album of the week: postponed, in favour of live news
Last weekend, on his BBC Radio 2 show “Pick of the Pops”, Paul Gambaccini played the UK chart from 1968, 52 years ago. “The Legend of Xanadu” by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich was at #1, having just replaced “Cinderella Rockafella” by Esther and Abi Ofarim. “Lady Madonna” by The Beatles was the… Continue reading This week in 1968: a chart full of girls’ names
Last week’s Album of the week was “The Wheat Album” by The Rutles. It prompted memories of “The White Album”, as the Beatles’ self-titled 1968 release is usually called. I planned to make Jay-Z’s similarly-named 2003 release “The Black Album” my latest Album of the week, having bought a copy from a local charity shop… Continue reading Album of the week: #6 “Shadows in the Night” (Bob Dylan), not “The Black Album” (Jay-Z)
During the life of this Blog I have referred many times to Pop Master, the mid-morning quiz on Ken Bruce’s BBC Radio 2 show, broadcast on weekdays. I have mentioned, more than once, that it is the most listened-to slot on UK radio, apart from breakfast shows. For nearly three years (since April 2017) I… Continue reading Pop Master analysed, again, and the death of a quizzer
The Rutles might have passed you by. They never had a hit single or album and they rarely performed live. They were a spoof band with origins in a mid-1970s TV comedy show here in the UK, “Rutland Weekend Television”, hence the first part of their name. As their nickname “The Prefab Four” suggests, they… Continue reading Album of the Week: #5 “The Wheat Album” (The Rutles) [And memories of Neil Innes RIP]
The Compartments 