Musical and geographical offerings from GeoBlogs: a 365 blog project for 2026.
GTA6 is coming out in November.
It is the most eagerly anticipated game perhaps, and also has a huge budget.
Those who are familiar with the game will know that as you play and drive around you can tune into the radio and there is plenty of music to accompany the game. Tangerine Dream have previously provided some of the music for earlier versions of the game - and I have heard some of that performed live.
The first six tracks on the soundtrack album have been released.
Pink Floyd have a strong association with Cambridge.
Founding members went to local schools.
This website unpicks some of the locations they are connected with as a sort of walking tour of the city.
Band members Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour were raised in Cambridge, and many of their Cambridge friends, including girlfriends, roadies and album cover designers Storm Thorgerson and ‘Po’ Powell, became part of the Pink Floyd extended creative family. In London they met up with Nick Mason and Rick Wright. But while students, here in Cambridge—they forged the unique Pink Floyd sound against the backdrop of the late ‘60’s counter-culture and succeeding decades.There are connections with particular places in the city and songs:
King’s College Chapel, which has a lawn in back where Roger Waters said inspired “the lunatic is on the grass“, (from the song Brain Damage) and Pink Floyd played a May Ball gig—Which “... went down quite well. Everyone was pissed,”One of the places where they are linked with is a pub called The Flying Pig - just further down the road.
Back in 2022, there were fears that the pub would be demolished.
For a long time there was a plan to try to save the pub. It is now in an incongruous position, dwarfed by the huge redevelopment behind it.
The final link of course is with the album 'Animals'. More to come on that in December...
Quite an acronym... and one which was important for the promotion of a series of bands.
The new wave of British heavy metal (often abbreviated as NWOBHM) was a nationwide musical movement that began in England in the mid-1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. Editor Alan Lewis coined the term for an article by Geoff Barton in a May 1979 issue of the British music newspaper Sounds to describe the emergence of heavy metal bands in the mid-to-late 1970s, as punk rock declined amid the dominance of new wave music.A release date has been set for Peter Gabriel's new album. It's a very small gap between albums and also the longest album.
A reminder of better times and worse times.
A reminder of the COVID era...
And a reminder of Taylor Hawkins.
Foo Fighters - Times like These - dedicated to teachers...
This is my favourite version of the song.
I had it on my iPhone some years ago when it first came out and also on an iPad.
The app costs £3.99 and can be purchased on the app store.
A newer version of the app is also now available. This allows background play, which means it will carry on generating music when not opened. There is also the option to stream the music via Airplay to a device.
Kenneth has been creating a map a day all year so far, using AI to create them.
Here's his US music map and further information about today.
I hadn't ever heard of this place in Poland, but one of my favourite live Tangerine Dream concert recordings, which I have in my Bandcamp account, was recorded here.
I had a look for it on the map.
It's a city in Poland.
Check out the album... you can find tracks on YouTube, or look at the Bandcamp account, where you can listen to it, and pay for a permanent high quality download - as I did.
Just don't ask me how to pronounce it.
Here's Kiew Mission from the album....
It's a city that I've been visiting each year for some time as we break the journey on the way down to Devon. We stay in the same hotel and always have a good time there. I've also been to the University quite a few times over the years to lead sessions for PGCE colleagues and others.
There is a Rough Trade records shop in the city which is a focal point for many.
Just outside of the city is Portishead, where I have also stayed. It's a nice marina area, and there is a band which took their name from it.
Music is also represented in the street art which can be found in certain districts of the city.
Here's one of Portishead's more famous tracks: Glory Box.
Gary Numan shared a picture on his social media of him sat on some steps, one of which had his name on them, along with lots of other musicians and bands' names on the other steps.
I was intrigued at where this might be, and discovered that it is at the fairly newly redeveloped venue called
I visited this summer and took my own pictures of some of the groups featured.
Images: Street Art and Portishead Marina Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license.
As we approach the three-quarter mark on the blog, here's a diagram that was shared by Geomorphology Rules on Facebook of a soil pyramid complete with punning soil types....
Source unclear...
If you recognise where this is from please let me know...
I particularly like 'We silt this City'....
Also let me know of your own ideas for further soil related song puns.
Peter Gabriel has been sharing videos all year - each new moon - as a new song is released from his O/i project... following his 2013 project to do the same for i/O.
Here he talks about music as a cathartic process.
When I was initially developing the idea of the blog, I did some searches for academic papers on a musical / geographical theme. I came across a paper on the music of Joy Division (the precursor to New Order - who have also featured on the blog).
This is perhaps their most famous song.
It is from an album called 'Unknown Pleasures'. This has a very well known album cover.
One of them was worn by Paul Whitehouse in an episode of 'Gone Fishing'.
This academic paper explores the urban connections
Remember that in the days before the internet, you discovered what was happening by reading NME, or Sounds, or other music magazines. Your choice of magazine said something about you.
Q Magazine was founded by journalists and presenters Mark Ellen and David Hepworth in 1986.
They were involved with another magazine, and I have already posted a musical memory from Brendan Conway, which is worth repeating here:
In early 1985, I was invited to help make some ‘youth’ programmes for County Sound, a Surrey radio station. An arrangement was made for me to interview Mark Ellen who at the time was editor of Smash Hits and a regular presenter of The Old Grey Whistle Test. Later that year he was a co-presented for the Live Aid TV broadcast. I went up to the Smash Hits head office in Carnaby Street where Mark was kind enough to spend an hour of his day talking to me and answering my esoteric questions, all recorded for one of the programmes we made later. While in his office another of the journalists brought me a cup of tea and joined the interview for a few minutes. It was Neil Tennant. Unbeknown to me at the time, he was just about to leave Smash Hits because he had just secured a recording contract with Chris Lowe as The Pet Shop Boys.I had lot of issues of this magazine, and it was thanks to Q that I discovered 'Til Tuesday and Aimee Mann, for example.
At the time, taking a gamble on a new band could be a costly mistake.
Any other memories of Q magazine and bands you discovered through its pages?
Earth Run was an album released in 1986 by Lee Ritenour.
He used an early guitar synthesiser called a SynthAxe.
On the track Sanctuary you can hear this guitar being used. It has an interesting tone, which was then developed further by Pat Metheny and others.
