Vinyl Release

What's the greatest guitar solo ever? Well, off the top of my head I'd say Jimi Hendrix on his version of Bob Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower', where he makes a number of miraculous stylistic changes and creates mysterious sounds never heard on this planet before or since. Then I'd go for Frank Zappa just letting rip on his dope-growing satire 'Montana' from Over-Nite Sensation. And thirdly I'd plump for Jimmy Page ascending into the stratosphere on Led Zeppelin IV's 'Stairway To Heaven'.

I coulda been a contender, but Revolver did me in. There I was, nine-and-a-half years old, living the high life – well, as high as life could get for a small boy in Salisbury, Wiltshire – and in a band called The Little Beatles. I was Ringo, my friend Keith McArdle was John, Kirsteen, his sister, was George, and Robert 'Bo' Parr was Paul. We wore home-made Beatles suits and Beatles wigs and mimed behind toy instruments to Beatles hits.

One of last year's musical highlights was the release of Summer Of Soul, the documentary lovingly assembled by Questlove about the Cultural Festival that took place on six Sundays between June the 29th and August the 24th 1969 at Mount Morris Park in Harlem, New York.

Say hello to Jesus Malverde. He may or may not have actually existed, apparently sported a handsome moustache, and today he's Mexico's patron saint of drug smugglers. Yup, you read that right. Mexico is such a marvellously messed-up place that it remains highly religious but simultaneously economically reliant on the dope trade.

Prior to the current condemnatory climate where all fake news is regarded as a deadly sin, we often used the word 'apocryphal'. It meant an event of dubious authenticity which was so enticing that, despite the lack of any absolute proof, it was widely and enthusiastically embraced as being true. In other words, we didn't always let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I'm reading a book at the moment called Seasons They Change: The Story Of Acid And Psychedelic Folk by Jeanette Leech. Pretty much on every page there's reference to an artist or band that I've never heard of, which is some going as I like to think I know a thing or two about music. Anyway, with Spotify or YouTube at the ready, over the past few weeks I've sampled the wares of such artists as The Habibiyya, Jan Dukes De Grey, Malicorne and many more.

The twenty seventh of September 1957, the morning after the night before, and the reviews are in... 'The most savage, restless, electrifying dance patterns we've been exposed to in a dozen seasons... a profoundly moving show that is as ugly as the city jungles and also pathetic, tender and forgiving... flaring scores that capture the shrill beat of life in the streets... The astringent score has moments of tranquillity and rapture, and occasionally a touch of sardonic humour… This is a bold new different kind of musical…'