Girl Groups No 6: the Marvelettes - Playboy / Too Many Fish in the Sea
What a lot of people don't realise was that the success of Motown was initially strongly based on girl groups, first with the very girl...
Girl Groups Week No 5: - the Shangri-Las - Give him a Great Big Kiss / Give us your Blessing / Out in the Streets
The wonderfully named Shadow Morton was the greatest Phil Spector imitator and his great oeuvre was the singles of the Shangri-Las. The...
Girl Groups Week No 4: the Chiffons - When the Boy's Happy (the Girl's Happy too) / Sweet Ta
I'm guessing you've heard ""He's so fine" and "One Fine Day" so in line with the idea of playing some gems which you are less likely to...
Girl Groups Week No 3: the Ronettes - Be My Baby
Aaaah we have finally arrived. 1963, the first release by the Ronettes, mind-blowing, the wall of sound is born. Apparently when Phil...
Girl Groups Week No 2: The Crystals - There's No Other Like My Baby / Uptown / He's a Rebel
So, once the Shirelles had forged the idealogical template, Phil Spector came along and forged the sound. Already a successful songwriter...
Girl Groups Week No1: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? - the Shirelles
Which to begin with, demands a definition. People often use the term girl groups to describe groups like Bananarama and Spice Girls and...
Too Late for Tonight / Early Years - Laura Cantrell
Having had a room full of modern day troubadour men in that bar in Mission Beach, it's only right that we should think about the women that could have been there. We can imagine Gillian Welch at a table in the corner chatting with David Rawlings over a beer, Laura Marling surveying the room, reclining with her back on the jukebox, Emmylou Harris swapping stories with Joni Mitchell as they lean on the bar, and at the back, by the door to the toilets, Laura Nyro singing softly
Step Right Up - Tom Waits
Sorry about the delay. I was wanting to complete the songs by the fraternity of poets in Guy Clark's Mission Beach bar and had come to...
Pancho and Lefty - Townes van Zandt
So also in Guy Clark's Valhalla bar at Mission Beach, as we've said, was "poor Port Worth boy" Townes van Zandt, a great and prolific...
The Lake Isle of Innisfree - Polly Bolton
Since the last post I've been to see Michael Keegan-Dolan's wonderful Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells, a superb, uplifting, multi-textured...
