If you drive through the Yorkshire Dales National Park, on roads near Malham and other well known locations, you will pass over one or more of the Craven Fault System: where different rock types meet, and where the landscape changes. In some places, the contrast this produces is dramatic, and I remember driving that way numerous times when I used to do more hill walking and climbing, including completing the classic 'Three Peaks' walk.
Craven Faults is also the name of a British electronic artist and producer known for combining analogue synthesizers, electronics and field recordings to create music that draws from ambient music, Krautrock and electronica. The name is taken from the Craven Fault System in the Pennines and much of his music draws inspiration from the landscapes of Yorkshire, where he resides.
I like the description of the artist that is on their Spotify profile.
Half-remembered journeys across post-industrial Yorkshire. On first impression it appears to be a journey through a uniform landscape, past familiar mills, peaks and dales. Until you start to notice the details. The devil’s in the details. It occupies your peripheral vision. It leaves you questioning how you arrived where you did. How did we get here? It almost certainly started in Dusseldorf or Köln. Or possibly The San Francisco Tape Music Centre. It’s not important. The journey to Yorkshire is somewhat hazy. Hansa by the Wall, 1977. Stockholm’s Museum Of Modern Art, 1968. Maida Vale, 1963. Rugby, 1986. It enters Yorkshire via Kingston-upon-Hull. Although, even that isn’t set in stone. It’s not important. It’s important to ask the question every now and then. The answers less so. Banks of vintage equipment. A master craftsman at work in a nest of patch cables within an old textile mill.
The tracks often have a geological aspect to them, or are tied to particular locations within the area.
The journey on Sidings isn’t made with people in mind. It begins in an isolated community which built up around one of the great engineering projects of its age - 14 tunnels and 22 viaducts to open up the north - and finishes at an enclosed field on a moor in 1858. It takes in studios from Los Angeles to Rochdale from 1952 to 1980, while drawing inspiration from the progress in manmade infrastructure and the transport of goods.
The Space Shuttle was a phase of space exploration that is no longer... the current Artemis II mission has been very much in the news with a journey on the "other side".
There were several tragic accidents during its time as the main launch vehicle for NASA.
Members of Canadian rock band Rush were invited to a shuttle launch - the first of the Shuttle Columbia in 1981.
The experience became the final track on their 1982 album 'Signals'.
I had the programme from the Signals tour, and remember reading about this memory from Neil Peart - who always wrote the notes to the tour programmes.
We met our liaison man, who conducted us safely into the "V.I.P." zone (Red Sector A) in the pre-dawn hours. We were due to play that night in Dallas, so we couldn't wait much longer. Finally they announced that the launch would be scrubbed for that day. Well, we ran for the car, and our daring driver sped off, around the traffic jams, down the median of the highway, and got us to the airport barely in time.
The next night we had a show in San Antonio, after which we drove off immediately, clambered into a hired jet, and flew straight back to Florida. This time the launch took place on schedule, and it was SOMETHING!!
I remember thinking to myself as we flew back to Fort Worth after a couple days without sleep: "We've got to write a song about this!" It was an incredible thing to witness, truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I can only hope that the song comes even close to capturing the excitement and awe that we felt that morning.
— Neil Peart in the Signals tour book.
The song incorporates audio from voice communications between astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen and ground control, specifically Ascent CAPCOM Daniel C. Brandenstein and with commentary from Hugh Harris, Kennedy Space Center Public Affairs Officer.
Here they are playing the track live in Montreal, Canada in 1981.
Via Wikipedia.
The song was used as a wakeup song for astronauts during STS-109, which was the last successful flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. It was used again for astronaut Mike Fincke during STS-134, flown by Space Shuttle Endeavour on its final mission before retirement. Fincke described how his friends Greg Shurtz and NASA employee Ken Fisher chose the song because the band was inspired to write it after viewing the launch of STS-1. Fincke went on to say the song was played as a tribute to the Space Shuttle program, which has inspired people around the world.
And here's the Public Service Broadcasting track: "The Other Side" which is the story of the Apollo mission which was the first to do what Artemis II did a day or so ago - and after which astronaut Bill Anders made the classic Earthrise photo that was so important to the environmental movement as it showed the fragility of the Earth... we now have an updated version of that image.
Phil Collins has written several songs which touch on the issue of homelessness.
The first one was from the Genesis album 'Abacab' which was released in 1981 - not their finest hour.
It is called "Man on the Corner". I saw this performed live several times as part of the Genesis live set.
The second was from his album "...But Seriously".
'Another Day in Paradise' has the most obvious lyrics related to the issue...
On writing the song:
“I remember when we played Washington… Washington was almost at a standstill and these people were trying to sleep on the grills where all the hot air was coming up, and you could see that it was in the shadow of Capitol Hill. I thought it was an extraordinary contradiction.”
In my top five films is a film by the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
It's the delightful film 'Amélie' or Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. It was made by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who had previously made several other films which I also loved. It evokes a particular area of Paris particularly well, around Montmartre - I visited a few of the locations when on a recent visit to Paris, including the 2 Windmills restaurant where scenes were shot.
I saw the film for the first time at the Showroom cinema in Sheffield: an arts cinema where I saw many films at the time.
Amelie's soundtrack was composed by the musician Yann Tiersen. I saw Yann play live at the Barbican last year and also attended a Q&A session before the concert started.
I was due to head down to the Royal Festival Hall in June for a special screening of the film accompanied by an orchestra.
However, it was cancelled in March - probably due to a rights issue. Hopefully it will eventually happen.
There are some classic accordion-led pieces on the soundtrack album.
If you have been following the development of the blog - thank you - you will have seen that I've been welcoming guest posts from people sharing their own musical memories. Carl Lee has already provided me with a wide range of posts and more are scheduled in for the months ahead. Several other people have also promised me a post.
This is the first guest post by John Medd, who has kindly sent me some thoughts on some of the music venues we have lost over the years (and continue to lose on a monthly basis).
Imagine a time when there were no arena gigs. Imagine a time when the only way to buy a ticket for a gig was to go to the box office. And imagine a time when town halls, ‘the college circuit’ and Top Rank ballrooms accounted for almost half the country’s music venues. Welcome to the 70s (& 80s).
When a band went on tour 50 years ago they jumped in the van, got the road atlas out and set off in the direction of the nearest transport caff. Or, more latterly, a Little Chef. They would then traverse Blighty’s highways and byways – maybe picking up the odd hitchhiker on the way – and, in no particular order, hope and pray the van wouldn’t break down, that there’d be more than one man and a dog turn up to see them and, at the end of the night, the promoter would pay them. Actually, in respect of those last three bullet points I don’t think an awful lot has changed between then and now.
But all of the above was contingent on the band finding both a venue that wanted to put them on in the first place and also had a budget to pay them.
One group of venues that provided bookings were the Student Unions in Universities and Polytechnics around the country.
However, that’s another story for another day.
Today’s blog post is all about the venues that were once the backbone of any tour but have since withered on the vine: venues that got repurposed, reimagined or, most likely, razed to the ground.
As my point of reference, I dug out one of my old scrapbooks (remember them?) and found some bygone tour dates for an up and coming band called Girl.
They were managed by Don Arden (infamous father of Sharon Osbourne) and signed to the Jet record label.
In 1980 the glam five piece had put out a couple of singles and just released their debut album 'Sheer Greed'.
They’d already supported some big hitters and in April/May were embarking on their first serious UK jaunt as headliners. (Within two years they’d split up; their guitarist Phil Collen jumped ship to Def Leppard - where he remains to this day. Phil Lewis their flamboyant singer – who at the time was dating Britt Eckland – is now the frontman with LA Guns.)
But let’s go back and see where they went in that Spring of 1980. and what has happened to those venues since.
The Marquee Club, Soho – for a London band the Marquee would have made a great homecoming/end of tour gig, but Girl decided to kick things off there. The club, which had moved from Oxford Street in 1964 to the location most people remember on Wardour Street, shut its doors for the last time in 1988 after it was deemed unsafe (they blamed a quarter of a century of noise vibration!). It’s now prime West London real estate in the guise of Soho Lofts and a poncy restaurant. I knew the club well and still miss it dearly.
Then off to Wales and the Troubadour Club in Port Talbot - a basement dive under the Aberafan Shopping Centre. In 2024 after being frozen in time for more than 30 years, they fumigated it and opened it again very briefly for a photographic exhibition featuring many images of the club taken in its heyday.
Malvern Winter Gardens – shut in 1990
St. Albans City Hall – now the Alban Arena.
Leeds Fforde Grene – A pub gig! Alas, it closed in 2004 and is now an ethnic supermarket.
Middlesborough's Rock Garden – in a four-year window it was an intimate little rock club home to punks and rockers alike. It closed later the same year.
Retford Porterhouse – I was there! Home of AC/DC’s first UK gig in 1976 – the owners shut up shop in 1980 and went on to open Rock City in Nottingham – a club I still frequent.
Cheltenham Town Hall – still open.
Blackpool Norbreck Castle Hotel – still open.
Sheffield Top Rank – now the O2 Academy albeit it’s been closed for the last couple of years due to the RAAC concrete scare.
The Boat Club, Nottingham – still open. Led Zeppelin played there. My son’s band Trippin’ Over Wah played there!
Bristol Locarno – from 1961-1998 it was a hotbed for live music. People still talk about Bowie’s gig there in ’72 with The Spiders. Owned by Mecca it was demolished in the late 90s with the O2 now sitting on part of the old site.
Cardiff Top Rank - from 1963-1982 it played host to everyone from The Beatles to U2. Demolished in 2005.
High Wycombe Town Hall – still open.
Newcastle Mayfair– a 1500 capacity ballroom built in 1961. All the great and good played here (The Who, Pink Floyd, The Clash). It was demolished in 1999.
Bradford University – still open.
Exeter Routes – now a Pentecostal Church.
Gravesend Woodville Hall – still open.
Manchester Polytechnic – the campus at Cavendish House was closed in 1982.
Glasgow College of Technology – now Glasgow Caledonian University – no longer a live music venue.
Aberdeen University – the Gallowgate campus was demolished in 2002.
Dundee University – no longer a live music venue.
St Andrew’s University – still open.
Cleethorpes Winter Gardens – a venue whose name alone conjures up a period in time that’s long gone. Roxy Music, Free, the Sex Pistols; they all trod the boards there. It was also a renowned Northern Soul meet up. But the wrecking ball came a callin’ in 2007.
Wakefield Unity Hall – still open.
Abertillery Metropol Theatre - still open.
Folkstone Leas Cliff Hall - still open.
Rickmansworth Civic Hall – still open.
Dunstable Queensway – demolished in 2000.
West Runton Pavilion - a legendary coastal venue. I know Alan wants to say a few words about this place but I feel honoured to have been there before it was razed to the ground in 1986.
So, of the 30 venues that Girl played on that tour, only 12 remain.
60% of the venues have gone.
Forever.
And with the odd exception (I’m thinking of The Marquee), you won’t even find a blue plaque where these proud clubs once stood.
As someone who is passionate about live music and psychogeography this is a double blow. The erosion of culture and architecture is something we should all be worried about, not just musicians. With pubs too closing at an alarming rate, the number of venues available to up-and-coming bands is forever dwindling.
The message couldn’t be clearer – support live music!
John Medd
John Medd is a blogger and photographer with an unhealthy obsession with the 1970s. When not writing about The Sweet over at Are We There Yet? he can be found taking photographs of puddles.
Thanks very much to John.
I shall indeed be saying something about West Runton Club and am going to pay a visit to the site in a few week's time as there's an event I'm speaking at in the neighbourhood.... then I'll finish my piece on the venue.
Before the days when you have your ticket as a QR code or bar code on your phone - even animated for particular gigs.
I'm going to share some of my old ticket stubs which I took some pictures of.
This concert was one of many that I saw Roy Harper perform - sometimes alone and sometimes with his son Nick. I saw him all over the country from the east coast to the west.
Roy is remembered of course on two classic albums.
And also on David Gilmour's self-titled first solo album from 1978, he recorded a version of Roy's song 'Short and Sweet'. Roy recently did a farewell tour, and still sounds good. There are some classic tracks that he has recorded over the years. One of them is 'Commune', which always reminds me of a friend Caroline.
And of course he has to finish with 'Same old Rock' - which featured Jimmy Page on guitar.
The latest in a series of guest blog posts from Carl Lee.
What is the sound of the city?
Can cities ever have a sound?
Something so distinct and culturally resonating that from the first half a dozen bars, a place, an identity, a city sweeps into your mind?
Does the Mersey really have a beat?
Can you trip hop to Bristol, or wallow in grunge on the streets of Seattle?
Clearly songs can evoke places and times.
The Clash made sure you knew that London was calling in the early 1980s, and every Christmas since 1987 we have enjoyed/endured a Fairytale from New York. Maybe you can take a different stance and completely diss a city in song as Randy Newman does with finality about Baltimore:
“Never gonna come back here 'til the day I die.”
This is probably an outlier as most songs about cities or a sound associated with a city are seen as positive affirmations of the local culture and place.
Some go further, with Jarvis Cocker’s X-rated homage to his home city Sheffield, ‘Sheffield Sex City’ of which, it might be observed, is more concerned with his idling smutty thoughts whilst in the housing benefit queue than the existential qualities of the city of Sheffield.
Jarvis’s mate, and occasional musical collaborator, Richard Hawley has probably got a better stake in being considered, if not the sound of Sheffield, at least its preeminent musical chronicler in the 21st century.
As Hawley himself has said of whether Sheffield has ‘a sound’, “it doesn’t really matter what type of music people make, what matters is that people are eager to play, to make music.”
For Hawley music is a craft, something that needs to be honed and practiced. And some places, and times, are better at providing the opportunities to craft away, whatever the genre of music.
In the late 1970s and 1980s a generation of musicians honed their craft whilst living on welfare benefits, Jarvis and Hawley amongst them. Local pubs provided them venues, an eco-system of support was developed, a market forged and sometimes fame found.
In 1986, Sheffield Council opened the first municipal recording studios, Red Tape Studios, to support musical aspirations in a building that also housed recording studios owned by members of local bands the Human League and Comsat Angels. They were trying to create a burgeoning local music scene. In the next street was The Leadmill, Sheffield’s most famous music venue that at that time was a Sheffield Council supported charity.
Image: Picture Sheffield.
Ownership of those private studios and the Leadmill has changed over time but Red Tape Studios remains as a local resource for aspiring musicians in Sheffield.
As Fender proclaimed on stage in his home city "this region is the best region in the whole damn country".
Developing music craft is not the same as creating a distinctive musical sound that has a clear, unambiguous association to a particular place, even when lyrical references of a place and its culture litter the songs of artists singing about their experience in their home towns, cities and regions.
Take away Sam Fender’s distinctive Geordie voice and the sound could also be the sound of Springsteen’s New Jersey, a continent away.
The Arctic Monkeys are another case in point. In their early days they may have sung about the fact that “You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham” but today they are clearly more New York City than Rotherham, and their mantle of South Yorkshire’s working class troubadours has well and truly been usurped by The Reytons who actually are from Rotherham, and very proudly so.
When The Reytons played to 20,000 in Rotherham’s Clifton Park in July 2024 it was a gig they had organised themselves like virtually all of their career to date.
Putting out their own music, managing themselves, organising their own tours and not bowing down to a global recording company. They were the ‘Kids Off The Estate’, where ‘Clifton Park was like Disney Land”, coming home to prove a point that music, certainly their music, was a thing intrinsically rooted in their home even though their sound was not too dissimilar to that of many acts around, Sam Fender for example, who weren’t Rotherham estate kids.
So the sounds of the city are many and can also sound like the sounds of somewhere else.
But then there is New Orleans, and Nashville, and Havana, Cuba. All flies in my rhetorical anointment.
Maybe the notion that anywhere can have a distinctive beat, melody or tone is simply nuanced and complex, like the world of music itself.
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.
Is there a country whose musical influence you should dig into a little more, or one that's your favourite and you think more people should know about?
I asked people on my Google Form at the start of the blog.
It's not too late to make your own contribution to the project.
Carl Lee's guest blog posts have ranged over many countries and continents so far, with many more to come as I have another five ready to post and some more in the pipeline...
Here are a few suggestions:
Samantha: Iceland - this will get a lot of attention on the blog, particularly on those days when I find myself in the country...
Angus: I saw Ravi Shankar at the Royal Albert Hall (with Yehudi Menuhin) and the Carnegie Hall ( Ali Akbar Khan).
Matt: Portuguese Fado music - something that Carl Lee blogged about previously with the work of Rosalia.
Sandra P: Sonita, an Afghan rap artist. I learnt about her last year when I attended a concert on the Peace Line. She then visited my school and I read her book. She is an inspiration to everyone; once a child bride, must helped her move to America and study, now she is an advocate. She won an MTV award
Jade: Afrobeat is a great genre to go out dancing to, look up artists from Nigeria to get you started such as Davido, Wizkid and Burna Boy. Good fun and gets you moving!
I remember seeing Abdullah Ibrahim / Dollar Brand and his trio (from memory) playing live at a small venue in Sheffield many years ago.
He is a South African pianist and composer who is in his 90s...
It includes a poem by Simon Armitage, who reads it aloud as part of the piece and Josephine Stephenson completes it.The piece is a collaboration between Simon and British composer Erland Cooper, the Scottish Ensemble, and Josephine Stephenson.
A piece called Blossom: a CV has blossom as a pavement artist, a magician, a sculptor, a ballet dancer. But the climate emergency makes an appearance: “When the weather turned / And the seasons unravelled / Blossom was a weathervane.”
The poems in the book Blossomise were used as lyrics for five songs by Armitage's band LYR.
The poetry and music were commissioned by the National Trust to create an annual celebration of blossom and raise awareness of nature's role in our lives.
More from LYR in another post as they have a new album coming out shortly...
Their best selling single, and made it to #1 in the USA.
It is a rare Van Halen song in that the lead line is from a synthesiser rather than Eddie Van Halen's guitar.
I remember going to a christening in an upstairs room in a pub in my home village near Rotherham.
There was an uneven wooden floor to the room, and the DJ decided to play this song. Of course, every time the lyrics said 'Jump' we all did, and the record skipped on about 30 seconds. The whole song was over in less than a minute and the DJ wasn't impressed.
Of the song, Van Halen said:
"We did it very quickly. Seriously, I think that we probably spent more money on pizza delivery than we did on the video itself."
This track is by the German rock band Rammstein, known for their massively over the top stage shows.
Their 2019 track, which marked their comeback after ten years of no new music, was accompanied by a nine minute video which takes a bit of explaining. There were also some band controversies.
Warning: the video contains some violent imagery and the links contain a few rude words
It is a history of Germany, starting in Germania Magna in 16 AD according to the caption.
More details on the imagery in the video in the Wikipedia article above.
The lengthy music video sparked controversy; its dark, violent, and macabre style—typical of the band's aesthetic—features various events from German history, including Roman times, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the Middle Ages, witch hunting, the November Revolution, the Golden Twenties, Nazi book burnings, the Hindenburg disaster, the First and Second World Wars, the Holocaust, the Weimar Republic, the Red Army Faction, and the division of the country into West and East Germany; it also features science fiction scenes set in outer space, cannibalism in which people eat Germania, the personification of Germany, and a bank robbery featuring lead singer Till Lindemann crossdressing as Ulrike Meinhof. The Afro-German actress Ruby Commey appears as Germania throughout the video.
If you get the chance to see a live performance, take it...
There are not many songs with the word "geography" in them, and even fewer that are called "Geography teacher".
CMAT's 2025 song is called just that though...
“Geography Teacher” is one of the sadder songs on CMAT’s newest album, “If My Wife Knew I’d Be Dead,” with a banjo being one of the main instruments. CMAT explains to Genius that, “my producer had a banjo and I started playing it and he was like, ‘I didn’t know you could play the banjo.’ … At the time, I was playing ‘Geography Teacher’ like a lot of other songs on the record, and he was like, ‘Should we not just do ‘Geography Teacher’ on that?’ We tried it, and it was perfect.”
What other songs or albums have geography in the title or lyrics?
Gabriel explained that he decided to orient the lyrics around prisoners of conscience after viewing an Amnesty International television program related to the topic. Gabriel drew from reports about the plights of political prisoners in Europe and Latin America, particularly the multiple arrests of Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa during martial law and Amnesty International's efforts to free dissidents interred in mental hospitals. Gabriel occasionally prefaced live performances of the song by mentioning the work of Amnesty International.
This organisation, supported by Gabriel works to support political prisoners.
On an earlier album he explored similar issues with his track 'Biko'.
"You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher"
He ends his live concerts with this song.
The song was also covered by Simple Minds on their album 'Street Fighting Years'.
Via Wikipedia
In 2021, a version of Biko was recorded and released through Playing for Change in honour of Black History Month, 40 years after the song's initial release. More than 25 musicians from seven countries joined Gabriel on the recording, including Beninese vocalist and activist Angélique Kidjo, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello.
Everyone has musicians they listened to a lot some years back, but not quite as much now... and then when they listen to them again they remember how good they were.
One of my (many and varied) guilty musical pleasures is the music of John Denver: the stage name of Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.
He was a fascinating person with a great many interests, including the development of aircraft, which ultimately led to his early death.
When I was younger I had a certain look of John Denver with my long blonde hair and round glasses.
You will have seen my picture in Year 7 if you came to any of my lectures in the last ten years or so as part of my Everyday Geographies series of lectures leading up to and after my GA Presidency.
John was a superb live performer who my dad got to see play live - at Sheffield City Hall - but I never had the chance. I played the live album recorded around that time hundreds of times over the years.
He has written some classic tunes which have hundreds of millions of Spotify streams, and many of them will be familiar to people.
Many of them link to his interests in environmental conservation.
Calypso was inspired by the work of French adventurer Jacques Cousteau, who invented the 'aqualung' and travelled the world making films.
His work was the inspiration for Wes Anderson's film 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizou'.
He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
You might say he found a key for every door
When he first came to the mountains his life was far away
On the road and hangin' by a song
But the string's already broken and he doesn't really care
It keeps changin' fast and it don't last for long
But the Colorado rocky mountain high
I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky
The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye
Rocky mountain high
John Denver performed at a special Wildlife Concert.
The seventh stanza describes the despoilation of the mountains:
Now his life is full of wonder but his heart still knows some fear
Of a simple thing he cannot comprehend
Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more
More people, more scars upon the land
I recommend that you check it out.... and this is just a tiny sample of many more songs whose lyrics speak to a desire to protect the Earth and its wild places.
You will of course have heard Annie's Song too....
John Harris is a journalist who writes for the Guardian and other places.
In 2025, he had a book published which was a sort of biography of his son and the importance of music to their lives. It's subtitled 'A story of love and connection in ten songs'.
The author explores the connection that he made with his son, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3.
The title is also the name of a song by Paul McCartney.
The structure of the book is based in 10 chapters around 10 particular songs. In this respect it is similar to the book I mentioned on the 2nd of January by Lucy
Two of the songs in the book are by The Beatles. (There is also one by Nick Drake and two by Kraftwerk).
A review by Tim Clare here describes all you need to know about this powerful book and the power of music to bring people together and overcome personal anxieties and challenges.
"his initial doomy grief gives way to a constellation of admiration, fear, humour, awe and, of course, love."
Here's the author speaking about the book at a 5x15 session
We'll feature plenty of examples of music that aims to do just that over the year ahead.
Duncan Chisholm's album is a wonderful evocation of 'The Black Cuillin' on the Isle of Skye.
I visited Skye numerous times from my late teens through to my thirties. I stayed in a number of different self-catering cottages from Glen Brittle to Broadford to Duntulm to Tarskavaig and elsewhere. Most of them had a view of the sea or the mountains, or both.
One of them was on a promontory overlooking the Talisker distillery looking down on the village of Carbost and the distillery itself, and then a distant view of the silhouette of the Black Cuillin.
Here's an image of me and a friend Simon before we headed up to tackle the Cioch: a classic location which will feature in a future post.
Duncan's albums are available to stream on Spotify and elsewhere.
Here's a track that you might like:
Also Martyn Bennett has captured the mountains on his album from
Martyn Bennett will certainly be featured on the blog quite a bit... he was such a wonderful musician.
Check out his interpretation here. Listen until 21".03"
A piece of music by Martyn Bennett was chosen by the cyclist Danny MacAskill.
Here's his video where he cycles along the Cuillin Ridge, including conquering the Inaccessible Pinnacle - somewhere else I've climbed in the past with my friend's Simon and Caroline (and others).
And here he is on the Dubh Slabs, accompanied by Arcade Fire's music: 'No Cars Go'.
As Danny says of this adventure:
I am a big fan of rock climbing and have been inspired by the various men and woman who set new routes and test themselves on some amazing faces around the world so I set out to find some challenging Slab Rock routes on my home Island of Skye with an aim to ride them in a continuous line and test what was possible on my bike. The remote Dubh Slabs rising out of Loch Coruisk in the heart of the Black Cuilin ridge provided some of the steepest terrain I have ever ridden as well as an amazing back drop for the film.
The Cuillin were also captured in poetry by the Gaelic poet Sorley Maclean.
Other musicians who have 'had a go' include The Tannahill Weavers (although there were the Cuillins of Rhum), Archie Fisher and Moira Kerr.
The song was specially commissioned by the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative for the Great Exhibition of the North in 2018.
Kate Rusby is a folk singer from near Barnsley who has released a number of wonderful albums, and has an instantly recognisable voice.
I have seen her playing live several times, most recently in Norfolk, with the wonderful Andy Cutting in her band.
What I like about the track is that it is told from the perspective of a tree into which a couple carve their initials when they are young... and the tree keeps their secret through their life.
It's a reminder of the different time scales of trees compared to humans.
Baile Funk. From the Favelas of Rio to the Met Life Stadium
Content advisory: may contain some content which is not for sensitive ears and eyes. In fact there's no 'may' about it...
The 2002 Brazilian film ‘City of God’has, as its narrative backdrop, the development of the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Cidade de Deus from its inception in the 1960s through its evolution into one of Rio’s most violent and drug-infused favelas.
The music in the film soundtracks this historical development; Carl Douglas’s 1974 hit ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ andJimmy Bo Horne’s disco shakedown ‘Dance Across The Floor’ and - sound tracking the film’s contemporary denouement - the Camillo Rocha and DJ Yah remix of ‘Batucada’.
Some of the brutal action goes down on the dance floor of a baile, the Portuguese phrase for a dance party.
Two decades plus on from the brutal drug fuelled violence of 'City of God' one thing has changed and another has not. The brutal drug fuelled violence continues and if anything has got worse.
However, the soundtrack of the favelas - the poor, often-informal housing, dominated by an African-Brazilian population whose marginalisation is writ large in a nation that was the last to outlaw slavery in the Americas, has moved on. Today it is ‘baile funk’ that echoes through the alleyways alongside the automatic rifle fire. And this sound is starting to make an impact worldwide with stars such as Beyoncé showcasing it.
Baile funk, is really known as funk carioca, but its popularity has seen it adopt the name of the dance parties that were an essential part of where it sprung from in Rio’s favelas with their massive sound systems, multi-cultural dance floors and a spirit of resistance against poverty, inequality, racism and police brutality.
The sound is a mash up of Brazilian rhythms, electronic music and hip hop that was cooking away in Rio’s favelas through the 80s and 90s.
Lyrically it references poverty, black pride, violence, sex and social injustice.
A good starting point to grasp the structure of the sound is Cidinho & Doca’s Rap da Felicidade, which introduced the style to a wider Brazilian public in 1995.
Or you could catch an actual baile funk gig at the YouTube site of Furacão 2000 a record label, production house, baile organiser and DJ crew from Rio de Janeiro who have been hugely influential in the popularisation of baile funk.
It was Furacão 2000 who launched the career of Anitta, a platinum-selling record artist, songwriter, actress and all-round Brazilian cultural personality.
In 2024 Anitta took her Baile Funk Experience out on a worldwide tour with a supporting video to showcase the style you could expect. I think it is fair to say that if you speak Portuguese then we are in the territory of ‘parental guidance advisory’, but you can see that from the video.
The video also makes constant references to Rio’s favelas; the street football, the chaos of the cables and scooters skittering down narrow streets.
It a production that makes Beyoncé appear chaste and it won MTV’s 2023 Best Latin music Video, all eight minutes of it.
The Baile Funk Experience visited the O2 Forum in Kentish Town in late 2024 to recreate the ‘authentic’ baile funk party.
Six years previously Anitta had sold out the Royal Albert Hall albeit with a far less raunchy and more mainstream show called ‘Welcome to Brazil.’
Beyoncé - a new music billionaire - is also a baile funk fan. She played tribute to the genre in her Cowboy Carter World Tour that edged its way through some of the world’s largest stadiums across 2025.
The song ‘Spaghettii’, which begins with the line: “Genres are a funny little concept aren’t they?,” is reworked in a baile style in the live show.
Beyoncé shimmies across the stage with her gang of dancers who throw down baille funk shapes as she raps across the sparse beat. It is certainly a long way from the scuffed streets and ascending favelas stretching up Rio’s hills, to the lavish production and gargantuan scale of Beyoncé’s World tour.
Beyoncé Spaghettii live from Met Life Stadium New Jersey, 2025
Yet it is a journey that Rio 'soundtrack to the urban poverty of the favelas is able to make.
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.
OK, so what can we think of when the topic is songs about food...
This could include parody songs of course, such as "Weird Al" Yankovic's 'Eat It'.
The Lancashire Hotpots come to mind first of all....
"Eggs, sausage, chips and beans" anyone?
The Fast Food Rockers were short lived...
I used to play this at the end of lessons when I taught about food.
Everyone join in!
A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut McDonald's, McDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut McDonald's, McDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut
The Everly Pregnant Brothers also came up with this parody song.
This track was released in 1985 and appeared on the album 'Dog eat Dog'.
The album was co-produced by Thomas Dolby. It had a very synthetic sound with Fairlight synthesiser, which provided a distinctive sheen on albums by Kate Bush and Mike Oldfield at about this time, with lots of samples, and was a long way from Joni's earlier style, although her voice was a constant.
Joni Mitchell was another artist who really came to my attention during my time at Huddersfield Polytechnic.
The lyrics are downbeat and connect the famine in Ethiopia with the unsustainable practices of people in the USA and elsewhere.
Hot winds and hunger cries
Ethiopia
Flies in your babies' eyes
Ethiopia
Walking sticks on burning plains
Betrayed by politics
Abandoned by the rains
On and on the human need
On and on the human greed profanes
Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Every Sunday on TV Ethiopia You suffer with such dignity Ethiopia A TV star with a PR smile
Calls your baby "it" while strolling through your tragic trials
This Rolling Stone article placed it amongst the best songs of the year. It's certainly an 80s sound, and at odds with Joni's earlier work.
So, is this better than the much discussed lyrics of Band Aid's 'Do they know it's Christmas' - which will certainly be appearing on the blog towards the end of the year when it's more appropriate to discuss it perhaps.
And here's Joni at Wembley Arena in April 1983 - I know a few people who went to this show...
It's 1981 and I'm in Liverpool - in Toxteth to be precise...
I've come for a party with some friends. There are still bricks in the streets from the riots some months earlier. The party is in some sort of gym near a church from memory. It's a bit hazy and the situation looking back is a bit sketchy...
This song is played by someone on the record player... and then it is played again and again...
Well, it's a small milestone, but one to celebrate. Perhaps with a few small beers.
We're coming up to three months blogging on music, and I've just passed 10 000 page views - something I can get in just one day over on LivingGeography.
It doesn't tackle the theories of ridge push and slab pull, or the issues with relying on convection currents.
Instead, as this analysis suggests:
"....it metaphorically explores the dynamics of love over time, comparing romantic relationships to the slow, inevitable movement of tectonic plates. The song captures how love, like continents, gradually changes and shifts, sometimes leading to separation.
The reference to “the eastern coast met the western shore” symbolises two individuals from different backgrounds or lives uniting. The imagery of land masses fitting “like a glove” suggests a natural, perfect connection between two people.
The “glacial measured motion” metaphor suggests that while the change is slow, it is steady and unstoppable. “Fault lines” here symbolise the underlying issues or differences that cause a gradual divide."
He has recently co-authored a book called Cities in the Metaverse, which tracks how digital technology is transforming the way we think about cities. The album, Place and Space, is an accompanying piece which functions as a fun way into the timely subject matter. Heavy on synthesisers, arpeggiators and four-to-the-floor kick drum, it’s the sort of euphoric trance many would sooner associate with a festival than a lecture theatre.
One of the other co-authors of the book that inspired the album is Duncan Wilson, also of UCL. I worked with Duncan and other organisations on a project called DISTANCE some years ago. I was working with Helen Leigh and other colleagues at Explorer HQ on a project exploring the Internet of Things and how it could be taught in schools. This was back in 2013.
It's over 15 years since I went to Latitude festival with the Mission:Explore team. This followed an earlier visit to Glastonbury in the same year.
We were working in the children's area running our missions, entertaining young people amongst the festival goers with our subversive take on the festival and its surroundings. Once we'd finished our shift, we were free to enjoy the music. On the 2nd evening, I headed over to the tent where Jonsi from Sigur Ros was going to be performing that evening. I caught a set from American band Yeasayer who were excellent. I then noticed someone wandering in a familiar tasselled jacket and realised it was Jonsi, and had a brief conversation with him. It was just after the launch of his 'Go' album, which remains one of my favourites.
Later that evening he gave the most amazing performance in this tent, and I was up front as the music unfolded. It remains a musical highlight.
For a taster, catch the track on this film here...
In 2025, Jonsi released the album 'First Light'
It features a lot of natural sounds such as birdsong...
“Writing this music at a time of manmade global turmoil and unrest for a video game. I imagined First Light as a momentary fantastical, over-the-top, utopian world where everyone and everything lives together in everlasting peace and harmony. Choosing beauty over disorder, hope over fear, our universal divine angel guardians watching over us and connecting us all as one through love, melody, and music.”
