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It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues

Paul Myers

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Long John Baldry is considered the father of the ‘60s British blues movement. Drawing on intimate...

T.Rextasy - The Spirit Of Marc Bolan

Danielz

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The story of a fanatical Marc Bolan fan who took his obsession to a completely different level! This...

Rory Gallagher: His Life and Times

Marcus Connaughton

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Rory Gallagher is a hero and icon of rock music. He inspired guitar players from The Edge to Johnny...

Just a Minute: The BBC Radio 4 Comedy Panel Game: Series 76

Paul Merton, Full Cast, Nicholas Parsons and B.B.C. Radio comedy

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Eight episodes of the ever-popular BBC Radio 4 panel game hosted by Nicholas Parsons - including two...

Elton John FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Rocket Man

Donald Gibson

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In a career spanning five decades, Elton John has sold over 250 million records worldwide and has...

Jonathan Donahue recommended Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley in Music (curated)

Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley

1969 | Rock

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"The avant-garde comes to the mainstream. At the time, Terry Riley was an avant-garde composer. He still is, but he's probably more so known for his work in the late '60s. Indian music at the time was coming into focus because of The Beatles and psychedelic music. So his compositions - especially this one - were really hypnotic, very mantra-esque. I think Terry Riley influenced more in a pop sense than in a rock sense, and I think A Rainbow In Curved Air has probably equal influence to Sgt. Pepper's. And you can quote me on that! It's obviously where The Who got the name 'Baba O'Riley', where the band used synthesisers - that's from Terry Riley. We cut our teeth in Buffalo, NY, in the early '80s and in that time the place was at the height of avant-garde. They opened a music school where they featured all the greats - Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Tony Conrad - just a ton of avant-garde composers, who later became more famous. It was such a central point for the electronic avant-garde movement, one that hadn't been around since San Francisco in the late '60s. It influences everything that Grasshopper and I do. We have strange polarities of the melancholy, romantic side of us. Then we also have the avant-garde side of us. The rock & roll side of us is probably the least prominent in our music. One of our albums, Snowflake Midnight, is also our homage to that bygone era of electronic music. Once you put it on, you think, ""Oh that's where all that William Orbit and Moby stuff comes from."" If you look all the way back, that's Terry Riley. It was the beginning of synthesisers, arpeggio synths also, which eventually became modern dance music. It was his motif of making it more hypnotic."

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Frank Black recommended The Good, The Bad and The Queen by The Good, The Bad and The Queen in Music (curated)

The Good, The Bad and The Queen by The Good, The Bad and The Queen

2007 | Alternative, Pop, Rock

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"I never really listened to Blur much or many of the other Damon Albarn projects, but I was on tour and kept running into Dangermouse. He was on tour and we were playing a lot of the same festivals. He may even have given me a copy of this record. I remember being in Adelaide in this lonely hotel, drinking a bottle of red wine alone at sunset and listening to this record and being completely mesmerised by it. I love the whole thing. I love Dangermouse’s glitchy, hip-hop Beatles production ideas. It’s just a really great recipe: the whole thing. I spoke to him about making that record but I almost don’t want to know what it involved because it’s so magical to me. I’m totally into Paul Simonon’s bass playing. Even though it’s not a reggae record, courtesy of him it has some of that kind of soul. And Tony Allen’s drumming is wonderful. It almost sounds like military drums. It’s very angular. It doesn’t swing. It sounds like ‘Let’s attack, let’s attack.' At the heart of this record, you have really simple rock & roll performances, but the production brings a lot more detail to it. I’ve worked pretty briefly with Dangermouse on something in the past. I enjoy his personality a lot and I’d sure as hell like to work on a record with him one day."

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