I don't do a lot of dancing to be fair, which is a pity.
I'm a bit self conscious.
This means that the few times I've really danced were when I was a lot younger and with some friends back in Yorkshire and particularly where there was some sort of organisation to the dancing, so that everyone was involved. This means a ceilidh, or organised dance. They are also called 'step dances'.
The dance is explained first and then everyone is left to get on with it...
A band that I have certainly danced to is Blowzabella.
This track is called 'The New Jigs'
I've definitely danced to this one - it's called 'Falco'
And here's a final tune that is part of the set they play.
I'm going to go for this one... turn up the volume!
Rush are the band which have perhaps appeared the most on the blog so far this year. They are about to kick off their come back tour with a new drummer which I have blogged about quite a bit already...
Kid Gloves has been interpreted as a song about growing up and leaving school, but also links with the relationship between the superpowers of the USA and Russia. We need to put on kid gloves otherwise things will escalate into nuclear war... and as long as we have a US President and a leader of Russia who are completely stable we'll be fine....
A world of indifference, heads and hearts too full Careless of the consequence of constant push and pull Anger got bare knuckles, anger play the fool Anger wear a crown of thorns, reverse the golden rule Then you learn the lesson that it's tough to be so cool
It's probably thinking of a situation which was bad, but there was music playing, and that when you hear this song again it reminds you of that time... which can also work the other way.
I have to say I have been relatively fortunate in my 62 years so far compared to many others in that I haven't experienced too many really bad situations...
I'm going to suggest that I'd rather forget a lot of journeys to and from work, particularly through the winter months. I drive the A10 and other roads up and down... and they are dark and wet and potholed and getting worse - and have dangerous drivers who overtake badly, even on foggy mornings. It's a dangerous part of my day and I've had lots of close calls over the years. Sometimes I'm travelling with my wife as she works at the same school from time to time, but mostly it's just me.
I used to listen to Simon Mayo's show on Radio 2, then it moved to Greatest Hits Radio. When this song came on, I always turned off the radio.
To be fair there's quite a few bands I always turn off when they come on the radio: they include Oasis, Tina Turner, Morrissey, Mumford and Sons, T-Rex and a whole lot of others.... and I always listen to my own music when it's just me in the car.
As part of the blog, I will mention places that you might want to visit to see musical memorabilia.
The museum is located in a prime position at the bottom of Laugavegur where it is crossed by the ring road.
Here's a few images of mine of some of the stickers on the outside of the entrance to the museum, which I took on my most recent trip to Reykjavík.
Images: Alan Parkinson
There is an exhibition of Icelandic punk bands and memorabilia and ironically it is situated just over the road from the far more corporate Hard Rock Cafe. Iceland had a big punk scene and some familiar names can be seen in the displays.
Another city which has attracted attention for its musical legacy, particularly in recent decades is Manchester.
In October 2025, the Geographical magazine had a piece on Oasis and their connections with the city.
This is an obvious connection, but the city has given rise to a great many bands and also record labels such as Factory records.
Bands to emerge from Manchester include:
New Order
Oasis
The Smiths
Joy Division
The Stone Roses
Happy Mondays
Image: Street Art near Canal Street, Manchester - Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license
Image: Peterloo Memorial detail: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license.
I have travelled over to Manchester numerous times for some memorable concerts, including Peter Gabriel in the round with the Blind Boys of Alabama, and Pink Floyd at Maine Road (more on that in a separate post).
There were also some early gigs at Manchester Apollo - including the first time I saw the Pat Metheny Group on the First Circle tour.
Elbow have a studio in Salford, and Guy Garvey has a tattoo of a bee...
More than 150 objects are showcased in the display, with a large proportion being obtained after the V&A put out a public call for items last year.
As per NME, the exhibition is split into four different sections.
The first explores how dance halls and cinemas became purpose-built music venues in the 1980s. Featured items in this section include artefacts linked to the iconic Manchester club The Haçienda, fashions from brands like Dr. Martens and Converse, and even the original 1985 sign for the Astoria, which has been loaned by Damon Albarn.
I plan to visit next Monday as I'm in the V&A anyway for a meeting ahead of the RGS AGM and Awards and summer reception.
The second trailer for the new series from the Cosmic Shambles Network called 'For the Record: an incomplete history of music' has appeared today. I shared the first one a while back near the start of this blog.This looks like being an essential watch, and the first episodes come out towards the end of the month - on the day that Glastonbury would normally start (but this year is a fallow year with no festival).
An epic new nine part docuseries from the award winning The Cosmic Shambles Network tackled the history of music like no series ever has before.
Over four years in the making, presenter Charlotte Ritchie (Ghosts, You, Taskmaster) will take you on jam packed journey from the very first sound waves at the beginning of the known Universe to the future of music in a world of steaming and AI.
On the way we'll look at everything from birdsong to blues, jazz to jungle and pianos to prehistory. Featuring over 100 exclusive interviews with world leading musicians, scientists and historians, For The Record: An Incomplete History of Music and including rare archive interviews, this the ultimate story of the how, when and why of music.
This nine part series clocks in at over ten hours, all free for you to enjoy, starting over the 2026 Glastonbury Fallow Weekend, 25th June with four episodes, then weekly.
A bonus tenth episode will be available for Patreons.
Presented by Charlotte Ritchie
Produced and Directed by Trent Burton
Featuring Charlotte Church, Nitin Sawhney, Chris Hadfield, Riki Lindholme, Ann Druyan, Kelley Jakle, Grandmaster Caz, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Shirley Thompson, Paul Kelly, Natalie Haynes and many many more
From the exhibition guide.Music reflects and feeds emotions. It inspires, comforts, offends and entertains. Music awakens memory and punctuates our present. The Music is Black: A British Story traces the roots and routes of music that has descended from African musical practices and gone on to influence and transform British identity over the past 125 years. It explores where Black music in Britain since 1900 has come from - tracking an ever-evolving sound shaped by British colonialism, transatlantic enslavement and voluntary migration. From lovers rock and Brit funk, to 2 Tone, jungle and grime, this exhibition reveals the creation of Britishborn Black music genres and how they have impacted lives across the country and beyond - how we speak, dress and view the world. The Music is Black is a story of Black struggle, resilience, creativity and joy. It is a story of us all.
As with yesterday's challenge, there's plenty of options here.
I decided to go for the first track off the Magnolia soundtrack by Aimee Mann.
A film made by Paul Thomas Anderson - who made last year's 'One Battle After Another'.
This is actually a cover of a 1968 song by Harry Nilsson.
I've created a Google Form which I'll leave here. This will hopefully collect some other responses as we go through the month, and I'll share some of them here later in the year.
And here's a bonus song from the progressive rock band Frost* who have appeared elsewhere on the blog. A song called 'Numbers' played live at Dingwalls in 2017... great playing and time signature...
There's plenty of songs that I could have gone for here. This is an easy way in to the challenge, although the challenge is thinking of one that you particularly like or stands out in some way.
I'm going to go for quite a challenging one: 'Red Sector A' by Canadian band Rush.
The vocalist, bassist and keyboard player is Geddy Lee.
It's worth reading Geddy's autobiography: 'My Effing Life' which goes into a lot more detail on this. You can listen to it if you have Spotify.
Neil Peart, the lyricist describes the writing of the lyrics to the song:
I read a first person account of someone who had survived the whole system of trains and work camps and Bergen-Belsen and all of that (...) through first person accounts from other people who came out at the end of it, always glad to be alive, which again was the essence of grace, grace under pressure is that through all of it, these people never gave up the strong will to survive, through the utmost horror, and total physical privations of all kinds.
...I wanted to take a little bit out of being specific and, and just describe the circumstances and try to look at the way people responded to it, and another really important and to me really moving image that I got from a lot of these accounts was that at the end of it, these people of course had been totally isolated from the rest of the world, from their families, from any news at all, and they, in cases that I read, believed that they were the last people surviving.
What are your ideas for songs with colours in the title?
I've made a Google Form to capture some of your ideas.
I'll leave it up a while and share the results later in the year and update the post as well.
The latest in a series of guest posts from Carl Lee.
“Maybe Romance Is A Place”: That Wet Island out West
You could probably have a month of blogs eulogising the breath and depth of Ireland’s musical heritage. Where would you begin beyond the obvious contenders such as the Boomtown Rats and U2? Should the focus be on traditional Irish music and how far should you trawl, into the 19th century or even further back in time, into the years of British colonial push and shove, bloodshed and dispossession.
I was well versed in such matters from a young age with one Dublin born, Scottish descended, grandparent. His death certificate states ‘labourer’.
For me the first Irish artist I ever saw live was that fellow Irish labourer but of the Fender Stratocaster, Rory Gallagher. This was back in the late 1970s at Friars, the rock venue located in Aylesbury Civic Hall. He’d learnt his chops in The Fontana Showband, a band who from 1961 to 1965 played the hits of the day in ballrooms, civic halls and pubs across Ireland, sometimes everyday bar Sunday. They were grafters. However, music moved on and so did Rory, eventually he formed the band Taste, and then he set off solo with a touring schedule that is probably unheard of these days. It is estimated that he probably played over 2000 gigs, so if you hadn’t seen him in the 1970s you probably didn’t go out much.
It was the third version of his touring band that I saw, with drummer Ted McKenna and bassist Gerry McAvoy, and they had honed a harder edged rock sound by then (I guess they could afford a bigger soundsystem) with his trade mark battered Fender Stratocaster leading the charge in a high octane stage performance. His relentless touring led to a complete burn out and he died after a liver transplant in June 1995 aged 47. A very talented Irish musician. He really put the hard graft in and in that he reminds me of my Irish grand father
I sincerely hope that my current favourite band, who also just also happen to be Irish, learn the lesson from Rory and don’t burn themselves out. This is the Dublin band Fontaines DC, who are four albums into a run of carving out contemporary classics from all sorts of musical directions.
I first stumbled across Fontaines DC during the first Covid lock down in June 2020 on Later with Jools Holland with their isolation filmed ‘A Hero’s Death’. It jumped out lyrically and musically. A breath of optimistic cheer in a dark time.
“And don’t give up too quick
You only get one line, you better make it stick
If we give ourselves to every breath
Then we’re all in the running for a hero’s death”.
Now generally speaking I’m quite fluid in what I listen to but for 12 months I absolutely battered the discography of Fontaines DC, from their first single, the retro punk of ‘Liberty Belle’, to the stadium rock blast of the most recent “It’s Amazing To Be Young”. I may have over-done it. I even bought one of their Bohemians FC third strip sponsored football shirts. Yet, I’ve never caught them live even though they played Sheffield at least three times since a 2018 gig at the Leadmill.
And now I probably won’t, as they are a festival and stadium band now, two types of venues I’ve never particularly warmed to and now I am hesitant at the cost of such endeavours.
But never say never.
Fontaines DC are of course unquestionably Irish, singing on occasion in Gaelic, calling an album ‘Skinty Fia’ and waxing lyrical about the ‘Dublin City Sky’. There is also an attitude that shouts out ‘Irish’; an insouciance, and ease meshed into existential whimsy, and sharp social observation. They’ve got attitude.
Irish musicians have never been short of attitude from Sinead O’Connor, Shane McGowan, Bono and of course the great Thin Lizzy front man Phil Lynott who was in a constant state of rock n’ roll cool; shades, leather trousers, upper-lip snarling, and all the ‘fuck you attitude’ that only a black-man raised in working class Dublin could muster after being asked to cover “Whiskey in the Jar’ to initially break the charts in 1972.
By 1978 Lynott had his revenge with one of the best live albums of the 1970’s, ‘Live and Dangerous’.
<My friend Simon says that Thin Lizzy were probably the loudest band he ever heard in his concert-going life... Alan>
Listening back to 'Live and Dangerous' brings to mind something the literate, crafted Irish nu-country artist CMAT sings. “I feel so rock n’ roll but I look like a secondary geography teacher.”
I can’t help but imagine who it was who taught her geography at secondary school in County Meath just north-west of Dublin and deserved this scathing put down from Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson as it would have said on the school register?
Still, at least another of CMAT’s acid tonged victims, the chef Jamie Oliver, managed to get a foothold in the humour when he stars in the official video of CMAT’s 2026 hit ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’ playing the drums almost in a manner as frenzied as CMAT’s dancing.
No country is so tightly inter-twined with Britain’s musical heritage whilst still retaining its own identity and diversity as Ireland and this has been sustained over generations stretching back to Victorian times, when Irish labourers dug and built much of Britain’s infrastructure.
So many British families have Irish lurking around their DNA, myself included, a healthy dose that could capture me an Irish passport if I was so inclined; I’m not.
And I will admit it, I have never been!
China yes, Australia even. But not yet a short hop over the Irish Sea to the wet island way out west. A lifetime's oversight that really needs sorting.
But no matter. Plenty of Ireland: its history, culture, and importantly its music, has made it into my life already.
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
I had to wait for quite a while to get to this month, when I'm going to do the 30-day song challenge.
Feel free to think about and share your own contributions to this feature during the month of June. As always there'll be a few extra posts unrelated to the challenge as well.
"Yeah, just walk about and try and get a feel for a place rather than have some arbitrary tick list of, you know, things I’ve got to do or my life isn’t complete because…oh well, that doesn’t really work for me. Like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve done New York’. Who’s “done” New York? Nobody’s bloody done New York, don’t be ridiculous."
J Willgoose Esq. on his plans when visiting New York
J Willgoose Esq is the songwriter and guitarist/keyboard player for the band 'Public Service Broadcasting'.
This excellent post outlines the recording of the band's album 'Every Valley' in South Wales - the location for the album's concept and narrative about the growth and decline of the coal industry and its impact on the local communities and the people who make them.
Here's one of the standout songs from the album, which is all excellent.
I was intrigued to see his name appearing on the speaker list for the PTI Geography Symposium which takes place in July.
Music can be seen as an example of "imaginative geographies" in that piece of music.
I am looking forward to the session that will take place on the first day of the Symposium.
