It never ceases to amaze me that I am still doing this every year, if only the fact that, at my age, I still find new music so enthralling. But anyway, here we are for my 62nd consecutive annual trawl through the year’s new albums in my Album of the Year 2024 – and a very eclectic bunch they have been.

2024 has been a really busy old year, hence no time for other blogs during the last twelve months, a trend I will be reversing next year having ‘retired’ from a number of other commitments in recognition of the fact that life is like a toilet roll – the more you use up, the less there is left!  So apologies that this blog is a little later than usual but, like last year, it is along the lines of earlier ones and covers all aspects of my musical year.

Continue Reading

Well, who would have thought back in 1963 when I drew those first columns in my school roughbook that sixty years later I would be choosing my Album of the Year 2023 ?

When I consider all the music I have listened to over that period, I cannot help but think how lucky my generation are to have been there literally from the start of modern pop/rock music – and that the generations following have kept it all going for our continued entertainment.

Continue Reading

Well, here we are again. Another twelve months of chaos, mostly media-fuelled, has passed us by in the blink of an eye interspersed, I’m pleased to say, with some fabulous albums. Some of them you may have heard on the way, others may be new to you, but I hope that you will enjoy exploring them as much as I have.

So welcome to my Album of the Year 2022 blog, my sixtieth – now there’s something I would never have imagined all the way back in 1963 that I would write, but yes sixtieth – wander through the year’s results from the many taps of my long-suffering debit card.
Continue Reading

The One That Got Away has become a regular feature of my annual blog reviewing my year of music acquisitions. Last year I produced a complete blog for them, there were so many, mainly because of the disfunction to life caused by the 2020 pandemic.  Now, for the second year running, there have been enough ‘late purchases’ to fill a separate blog.

Late-discovery of an album does not just involve the previous year – some escape notice for decades!  And I guess, with 2021 still somewhat disrupted by Covid, especially the continued lack of much live music, it was only natural to search more content on streaming services and the like, opening up avenues of exploration that the busyness of ‘normal life’ would not normally allow.  Hence some of the albums up for mention here are from the last century.
Continue Reading