I remember when albums came on vinyl and inside a large 12" square cardboard sleeve, perhaps with additional liners, booklets and other designs which opened out in different ways. The cover design was important as were all the notes, lyrics and other elements of the packaging.
CDs don't have the same magic, and of course many people now stream music rather than owning physical products.
Some album covers have geographical features on them, and there used to be a collection of these which I blogged about some time ago on my old Geography and all that Jazz blog. It's an idea that comes back from time to time.
Do you have ideas for examples of album covers which were quite geographical in their imagery.
This would make a good challenge for students - to find a suitable image and then label it with the feature, although you may need to provide them with some.
Here's an example.
Houses of the Holy (1973) - Led Zeppelin
This was designed by Aubrey Powell, an Old Elean (which means he was a pupil at the school where I currently teach in Ely) and features the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.
More on his work with Hipgnosis later on the blog.
Here's one closer to home for me.
The Stranglers had an album in 2004 called 'Norfolk Coast' and the cover photo by Harrison Funk was taken on the Norfolk coast... at Hunstanton. It was mostly written by their bass player who retreated to Holme-next-the-Sea on the coast in 1999 when feeling disillusioned and wrote a lot of music which became the album.
The cover is shot on the carstone boulders revealed when the tide goes out at Hunstanton near to its famous stripy cliffs.
Sadly, the seaweed which used to cloak the boulders has largely disappeared over the years...
Maps also feature on lots of albums of course, and I shall certainly be sharing examples from the wonderful book 'Maps on Vinyl' by cartographer Damien Saunder which I have on the shelves of my GeoLibrary. More on this to come.
Can you share your favourite examples of geographical features on album covers?
Visit the Google Form here to make your suggestions and I'll add some of them in a later update post.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the passing of David Bowie: a musical icon for many. I remember listening to his music from the late 1970s onwards. My wife saw him play live, but I never managed it.
He is often described as a musical 'chameleon', adopting a number of personas in his music, and also having a successful acting career.
This contains a range of objects (about 90 000) and there is more information on Bowie's career and the creation of some of his most famous songs. I have plans to see it later this year and will be blogging about the visit here of course.
Social media is full of people sharing their favourite David Bowie tracks today.
Here's a track which is not necessarily my favourite, but whose name is perhaps apposite.
For the album, Bowie was asked to contribute by the composers Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. They will be mentioned on the blog a lot. He worked out the vocals after watching an early cut of the film.
There's a long story about that Sunday night, which I may tell at some point during the year. The upshot of it was that one of the friends I went with ended up as part of the production, during a performance of the song 'Budapest', and I ended up with a backstage pass. Much more on songs about cities in future posts..
This is the actual backstage pass that I had that evening over 35 years ago. It's stuck to the box which contains a cassette tape. The tape contains a recording of an American concert, during which Ian Anderson loses his temper with the audience... it's very good.
At the end of the concert we went up to the rooms where the band were going to be gathering after the concert. I actually have my diary from that year still (and a few other years). I shall be drawing on that for memories of other concerts.
Here's what I wrote in my diary:
"There was heavy security... went up to the top of the Apollo and to the Tull only dressing room; met the wives of Martin Barre and Dave Pegg, and a person who'd seen Tull about 300 times. then Martin Allcock [who sadly died all too young] arrived and took several bottles of wine - Martin Barre and beaming Dave Pegg was next - introduced ourselves and thanked him for the concert then met Ian Anderson - he's quite short and talked for about 10 minutes. He said he could never be a teacher when I told him what I did for a job"
I was teaching in King's Lynn at the time and had to drive back there from Manchester via Rotherham to drop off my friends. It was 2.30am before I got home... with teaching the same day.... that was a tiring one.
There's an excellent article on the history and legacy of Watford Gap services, which is due to be demolished to make way for a more modern electric vehicle charging facility to reflect the changes in car ownership. This used to be where bands who had played in London would refuel on the way back north as it was open in the early hours. Many bands met up there..
In October 2025, my son met one of his heroes. He is a big fan of film soundtracks, and in particular the work of Warren Ellis, who plays with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and he met Warren at a screening of film about Marianne Faithfull at the BFI.
Quite a moment for him.
There were also some interesting stories from those who filled in my Google Form ahead of the blog's launch...
Here's a sample from those I've received so far, with thanks to the people who shared them - I'll share some more in due course.
Angus was at school with Tom Robinson
Matt has had a series of encounters, but one that stands out was having a pint with Jarvis Cocker in 'The Blue Bell' in Conwy when he was on holiday there in the late 90's. He also came into the butchers where he worked and ordered a sandwich!
Sandra danced on a table with Chesney Hawkes after a lock in at the university bar
David was a few urinals down from Jon Bon Jovi once
John once burst into Brian Connolly from The Sweet's dressing room to tell him he was a huge fan. He looked at his watch and said, " F*** off, son; I'm on in five minutes."
More to come....
So, who have you met?
Did you have a chat?
Were you star struck?
Please share your celebrity encounters on the Google Form below and I will share some of the best ones in a future post or two depending on who turns up.
There are few cultural universals quite like music. It has the power to invoke the entire gamut of human emotions in a way almost nothing else can. In this groundbreaking docuseries The Cosmic Shambles Network covers the history of music like no series ever has before.
Over four years in the making, presenter Charlotte Ritchie (Ghosts, You) will take you on a fun filled journey from the very first sound waves after the Big Bang to the future of AI music with almost everything in between. Bone flutes and Blues. Neanderthals and Nightingales. Techno and Tabla.
Featuring over 100 exclusive interviews with world leading musicians, scientists and historians, For The Record: An Incomplete History of Music is the ultimate story of the how, when and why of music.
An 8-part docuseries, For The Record: An Incomplete History of Music will be launched on YouTube over Glastonbury Fallow Weekend, starting 25th June 2026, with a bonus episode available to Patreon users.
Presented by Charlotte Ritchie
Produced and Directed by Trent Burton
Featuring Charlotte Church, Nitin Sawhney, Chris Hadfield, Robert Smith, Kelley Jakle, Grandmaster Caz, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Shirley Thompson, Paul Kelly, Natalie Haynes and many many more
Scattered through the year will be songs with a geographical connection on the basis of them being about places... here's the first few of many, and two songs I was listening to when I got the original idea for the blog.
Mark Knopfler and James Taylor sing here about Mason and Dixon: the surveyors who drew up the Mason-Dixon Line.
This is a story song, told in two monologues between Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon as they travel from Great Britain to Pennsylvania for the survey work that created the Mason-Dixon Line in 1763.
The song was inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Mason and Dixon.
Besides providing a wonderful history lesson, it also humanises these people for us; giving us some perspective on their motives and emotions.
I like songs when people talk about their home and bring in some of the little details that only those who know the place will be familiar with: the little vernacular details which bring it to life.
This second song is from an album by Francis Dunnery. Dunnery was the vocalist and guitarist of the 80s band 'It Bites' and has had a long solo career, and also worked as a musician with other acts including in Robert Plant's band and with Big Big Train.
This track is called 'Hometown'. It is from the 2001 album 'Man'.
A live album – Hometown 2001 – was recorded 14 June 2001 at the Whitehaven Civic Hall in Cumbria and released later the same year.
Dunnery's home town is Egremont, in Cumbria. The lyrics reference Murphy's Pies: a bakery on the Market Place in Egremont which has since closed.
The title of his 2005 album 'The Gulley Flats Boys' is a reference to the council estate in Cumbria, North-west England where Francis grew up.
His most recent album and tour through early 2026 is about his upbringing on this council estate.
What other songs can you think of that articulate a close connection to a place?
There is a long tradition of folk music and folk musicians exploring and challenging injustice - whether that be workers' rights, working conditions in the collieries, the treatment of Dust Bowl era migrants, trade unions or the state. I will feature some of these musicians on the blog, including people I saw performing such as Dick Gaughan.
We have had over a year now of Trump 2.0 which has dismantled many of the key elements of US society and protections for its landscapes and environment.
The videos coming out of Minneapolis in the last day, and the stance of the government in the face of video evidence is shocking.
Some on social media saw some parallels with an event which happened in London in 2005.
Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead on July the 22nd 2005 by armed officers who were on high alert following the London bombings that had happened just a few weeks earlier, on July 7th 2005 and additional failed bombing attempts the previous day. Mistakes were made in the surveillance and the order that he should be detained before entering the tube station didn't reach the right people in time.
Chris Wood's song 'Hollow Point' explores the lead up to the event, and the 'inevitability' of what would happen despite the fact that Jean Charles wore only a thin cotton jacket. The pace of the song speeds up towards the end as the conclusion draws nearer... there is no stopping it it seems. The rhythm and intonation of the song adds atmosphere and tension. It's an emotional response to the events.
I saw Chris Wood play with Andy Cutting many years ago in a small venue. A lovely evening.
This blog describes the importance of folk music in capturing details of events which will still be sung about in 100 years time... it has a permanence, an oral tradition.
What other songs of protest are you aware of, and which have an impact on you?
Let me know using the Google Form below - more to come on this topic later on the blog...
There are several teachers who I feel are always pushing creative boundaries and challenging themselves, often by adding a personal touch to their schemes of work.
They're the teachers I continue to draw personal inspiration from. I've already mentioned Matt Podbury on the blog within the first week of the year and as we enter the second week, here's another:
John Wilkinson
John is the Head of Geography at St Edwards College, West Derby, Liverpool, and an Honorary Lecturer in the Geography Department at the University of Liverpool.
John started his career tutoring at Lochranza Field Centre on the Isle of Arran. He is currently studying for a part time PhD at the University of Liverpool
The St Edwards College Geography department won The PTI’s Bernice McCabe Award in 2024. John regularly presents CPD for the Prince's Teaching Institute, and also at the GA Conference.
In Autumn of 2023, John contributed an excellent article on his vinyl revival scheme, and even made the front cover of the 'Teaching Geography' journal.
I saw him speak about this at a session at the GA Conference in Sheffield that year. It was great.
It was noticeable that students weren’t entering the classroom to learn about geography, but embarking on a geographical learning journey: they developed as geographers through cultivating the power of popular music. The only non-negotiable is investing in a cache of vinyl records to supply authenticity, awe and wonder to the learning experience.
Through the year we will be marking anniversaries of events: some joyful and some immensely sad. The loss of this musician was particularly hard to take....
I count myself extremely lucky to have seen him perform many times since 1982. He always gave 100% and the musicality of his drumming was beyond parallel. I've seen many great drummers play live, and he was the best.
Here's one of my favourite Rush songs, which we will also return to later in the year because of its theme of alienation in the suburbs, or subdivisions:
He was a part of my life for over 40 years, and Rush have to be one of the bands that I have played the most whether on LP, CD or streamed on Spotify.
I was privileged to see Rush play live 7 or 8 times I think from 1982 onwards, to the final live gig I attended in Sheffield on the Time Machine tour in 2012 - I will always regret not seeing them on the Clockwork Angels tour now....
One of my favourite non-Rush videos is when Peart laid down a drum track for his friend Matt Scannell from the Australian band Vertical Horizon.
The enjoyment of Matt as his friend and hero plays drums for him is infectious, and the drum track is awesome.... There are so many Rush tracks I could embed here... but check this out next...
And then check out Red Barchetta live from that Time Machine tour that I saw.
Along with his music, he was a great traveller - particularly on motorbikes but also on bicycles and he wrote about his travels in a series of books, most of which I have. These were excellent travelogues and observations of people, although he was a very private person. He also wrote lengthy pieces for Rush tour programmes - some of which I still have in my collection of tour memorabilia.
In October 2025, we had an interesting announcement from Geddy and Alex...
I'll not be partaking of this particular musical moment.
Here's a well conceived tribute video from Hudson Music... gives a flavour of his legacy and drum technique.
As we are at the birth of this new blog, this is a programme made for Radio 4 and presented by Jude Rogers,who was featured on the 2nd of January because of her book on the importance of music to our lives.
This looks back at when music first started.
How did we come to develop a range of sounds which became music and mixed with our voices?
Details:
The ancient West Kennet Long Barrow burial chamber near Avebury in Wiltshire was built around 3650 BC. Its cave-like spaces, formed by vast rocks, are the setting for Jude Rogers’ exploration of how Neolithic people of that time might have made music.
We can’t know for sure of course, but music, ritual and dance are universal features of human life, and so it must have been even in pre-history. So what might be the links between prehistoric music gatherings and dance music culture today? A rave in the cave?
Jude is joined by Professor Rupert Till from the University of Huddersfield aka Professor Chill, a DJ and electronic music producer who knows about sound frequencies in ancient sites, and Letty Stott, a musician and PHD student who can get a tune from a conch. Historical context is provided by Dr Ben Chan, a highly experienced archaeologist from the University of Bristol who works at Avebury nearby.
We also hear from Ritta Rainio in Finland, whose research into prehistoric pendants culminated in a wild dance in a costume of rattling elk teeth. Artist and musician Jem Finer tells us the story of the Gurdy Stone.
Meanwhile musician ‘Spaceship’ Mark Williamson is hard at work recording sounds inside a neolithic tomb in Anglesey.
I'm pleased to say that you will be able to find out more about the work being done to populate this blog at the GA Conference in 2026 - by which time there will be 3 months-worth of posts to share.
I'm going to be co-presenting a session with Matt Podbury.
Matt Podbury and I are putting the band back together...
Our session at the GA Conference 2026 has been accepted and we've teamed up for some musical improvisation... this one's in 9/8....
Here's the details, we submitted, which will appear in the programme in due course:
Musical Geographies: Sense of Place and Storytelling in the curriculum
Music is a dynamic, everyday phenomenon that connects billions of people, places, and cultures. It offers a powerful lens through which to understand the world and our place within it. From local rhythms to global genres, music, and its associated visuals provide students and teachers with meaningful insights into diverse environments which help shape their worldview.
For this collaborative lecture, Matt Podbury and Alan Parkinson are putting the band back together!
Matt will share how an idea to showcase his vinyl collection evolved into a rich, three-week unit on the Geography of Music for KS3 students. This explores themes such as sense of place, landscape and emotion, and the role of music in shaping our cultural identity, and addresses how music can be both a unifying and divisive force. Students design and produce their own vinyl LPs to end the unit.
Alan will share his new collaborative World of Music blog, which charts a year long journey through curriculum resources and collaborative pedagogy around music and its meanings; a playlist of ideas for teaching everyday geographies.
You will gain practical ideas, resources and inspiration for incorporating music into your own geography curriculum.
In November 2024, I was fortunate enough to attend Practical Pedagogies 3 in Cologne. Particularly as I'd already been to Iceland that half term which meant two trips away from family. It was another cracking event organised by Russel Tarr and hosted by a school just outside of the city, with provocations and entertainment by Hywel Roberts. The 2026 event is now open with a call for sessions.
"To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world – and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.”
Marshall Berman
One session I went to at Practical Pedagogies was by my friend Matt Podbury: who is also a colleague of the organiser Russel Tarr at the International School of Toulouse, where he teaches geography.
He had been trialling a new unit on music and its connections with our emotional landscape. This includes a look at favourite music, emotional music and lyrics, sense of place and also the connections with landscapes. It's a chance for younger students to be introduced to some of the classics as well.
For Matt that meant Pulp (with connections with Sheffield where he used to teach) and Queen.
The session was really nicely put together and presented. We will also come back to Sheffield again later in the blog as it has a great musical heritage.
Matt finished by showing a tool called SUNO, which is an AI tool that generates a musical track or song in just a few sentences, based on the prompts it is given.
One particularly nice aspect of the work was the creation of physical artefacts which were in the form of LPs. Matt had sourced blank white LP sleeves, and also some cheap €1 vinyl records. It also helps that he has a sizeable record collection dating back to the 1990s which he could use to model what we was hoping for.
The unit also had an element of emotional geographies about it.
Give it a look... and a go...
I've created a great song with Suno... it will appear later in the blog.
And Matt will be reprising this workshop in a joint session with me at the GA Conference in April 2026.
Carl will be contributing regular posts as we go through the year exploring a huge variety of alternative musical genres, well away from the beaten track... thanks in advance to Carl for expanding my personal musical horizons.
When Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.IA,the London born (of Sri Lankan heritage) singer, rapper and musician, released her debut single ‘Galang’ in August 2003 it was a 500 copy limited edition white label vinyl.
It blew up.
It is now a way-marker on Britain’s musical trajectory.
With its opening line ‘London Calling, speak the slang now’ the song became an early 2000’s anthem to the street life of the city of London, but the roots of the tune's sound lay partly some 170 miles north of London in the South Yorkshire city of Sheffield. This is where it was recorded: in a small ‘home-grown’ studio sitting just off the city’s London Road.
It was here with Russ Orton and Pulp’s Steve Mackey aka ‘The Cavemen’, that the clanking beat of Galang was honed onto MIA’s Roland CC-505 composition.
The Sheffield clank is a sound that helped shape Sheffield’s musical identity in the late 80s. When the aptly named Sheffield musical collective ‘Forgemasters’ released in 1989 the seminal ‘Track with No Name’, which is widely credited as being one of the first techno records to gain any recognition in the UK, the clank was the rhythmic pulse of the track.
This was also the starting point for Sheffield’s Warp Records, (the 'Track with no Name' having catalogue number Warp 001) that has evolved into becoming a leading film production company aside from having a back catalogue of techno, drum and bass and abstract beats second to none.
As Winston Hazel, an original member of Forgemasters and celebrated Sheffield DJ, sets out, place was intrinsic to the evolution of this sound and Winston also insists it is spelt ‘clank’.
“The drop hammers from the Don Valley used to ricochet 24 hours a day. The sound used to bounce up the Valley and bounce off the hills and every hill you heard it from had a different resonant sound, and when the 700 ton drop hammer went off you could feel it in the air. You’d hear the sound at night-time, you’d go to sleep to it, and wake up to it and whenever you went into a studio to make music you had recognition of that. You’re a product of your environment and your music is as well”.
My dad: Alf Parkinson was a steelworker throughout this period, working at Templeborough, Steel Peech and Tozer and Meadowhall, then over to Parkgate. I remember dropping him off to work with my mum in the 1970s and seeing the sparks from the blast furnaces spewing out as he walked up the slope and into the mill. (AP)
MIA is also very much a product of her environment as well.
Born in South London and then raised in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, after her Tamil activist parents moved back to Sri Lanka, eventually the family returned as refugees from the brutal civil war that engulfed Jaffna. MIA’s sound is a fusion of those experiences and places and draws on the hybridity of music that filled the streets of South London.
Although some might hesitate to afford Galang with its up-front sass, bleeps and clanking a deeper musicality the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer unlocks its rhythmic melodies in virtuoso fashion.
Iyer is not only a Harvard Professor of music and celebrated jazz pianist but like MIA his family’s roots are in Sri Lanka’s Tamil community, in his case transposed to the USA.
On his 2009 album 'Historically' he hammers his way through a masterclass of syncopation, rhythm and flow as he lays out Galang’s propulsive core minus any lyric content. It is startling modern jazz.
Yet MIA’s lyrics are central to the song's essential sense of place.
This is multicultural South London, mashed up and drawing on a myriad of musical influences and with MIA’s practiced Tooting drawl. It really couldn’t have been from anywhere else – except it was,
Sri Lanka via Sheffield and then marinated in South London's streets and clubs. “Girls say what what.”
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.
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