Jan 31: Hope

A touch of Hope from Rush... we could all do with some...

An instrumental piece on acoustic guitar from Alex Lifeson. 

I saw this tour and saw this played live.

What other musical messages of hope would you choose?

Let me know in the comments.

Jan 31: Music Books #2: Karl Whitney's 'Hit Factories'

I blogged about Karl Whitney's 'Hit Factories' book when it came out over on my Cultcha blog - which has provided the inspiration for several of the forthcoming posts on this one, and have been collecting various stories relating to the cultural impact of music on cities since.

Thanks to Susan Pike for the lead to this article at the bottom of the post, specifically on Sheffield, and how its musical scene developed and was connected with the changes in the city, which have been many since the times when the steel industry employed so many (including my father).

Karl also curated a Spotify playlist for the book which you can listen to here. I think having a playlist for a project is an excellent idea, and have done the same myself, including having walk-in music for my GA Presidential lecture, and various other projects.

Well worth a read and this has been helpful in producing some chapters on cities which will be appearing over the next few months, as I focus in on particular cities and the music that they have provided to the world.

In Karl's book he visits a number of cities and in each one particular bands get their moment in the spotlight. 

The chapters feature the following cities:

• Manchester
• Liverpool
• Newcastle
• Leeds
• Sheffield
• Hull
• Glasgow
• Belfast
• Birmingham
• Coventry
• Bristol

I'm working on a series of posts on the cities from the list that I know quite well or have lived in/near and visited frequently over the years. They will appear during the year. 

Some reviews: from John Harris, 

What cities do you think are missing from the list here? 

Which other cities deserve their place on the blog?

I've asked this question earlier in the month, but here's your final chance.

Please suggest them on the Google Form below.

Jan 30: Album cover locations #3: The Beatles

So, this is an obvious one... 

I think a lot of people will have visited this zebra crossing and recreated the scene. I went there in 2016, and have a picture of me somewhere....

I'm happy to add pictures of your visits and recreations... would be good to get a gallery of images.

Jan 30: Tariz Jazeel's Soundscapes

Tariq Jazeel, who works in the Geography Department at UCL has also served on the Governing Body of the Geographical Association and the Council of the Royal Geographical Society. 

On this page he shares a soundscape. This includes references to his favourite pieces of music about which he has written in an academic way.

One of them is the Talvin Singh track 'Butterfly'.

I came across a BBC history of British Asian Music artists.

Tariq Jazeel gave an excellent session at the 2020 GA eConference on this topic, and referred those watching to a Talvin Singh track called 'Butterfly'.

If you haven't heard the track it is here....

Also check out his article from 2005 in Area.

Jazeel, Tariq. “The World Is Sound? Geography, Musicology and British-Asian Soundscapes.” Area, vol. 37, no. 3, 2005, pp. 233–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20004456. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025.

Jan 30: Guest blogger Carl Lee #3: Northern Sky over Ringinglow Road

The third of a series of guest posts by Carl Lee.

“I never felt magic crazy as this”

Twice a week over this past year I have driven from Sheffield to Hathersage in the Derbyshire Peak District and then back again on the ‘high’ Ringinglow Road.

Over the decades I must have driven this road thousands of times and walked across the moors that it traverses hundreds of times. It is a mere five miles or so from my house in central Sheffield.

The road starts in the Sheffield suburb of Bents Green and then takes a steadily rising but undulating straight path on a ridge overlooking the River Porter valley. Past the farm with its field of free range ducks which grow towards their sudden disappearance in mid November, towards the hamlet of Ringinglow, with its old octagonal toll house and the Norfolk Arms pub. 

It then enters The Peak District National Park sliding past Lady Canning’s plantation and the sculptural Ox Stones before the Derbyshire border is traversed and the road surface deteriorates. 

The top of Burbage valley and its brook passes by before the road tops out close by Higger Tor. Then a choice is offered of either The Dale, or Fiddlers Elbow roads to take you down into the Derwent Valley and Hathersage.

I go down The Dale and return up Fiddlers Elbow. It’s a habit I have made this journey in all seasons with the common dominator, apart from when enveloped in cloud or fog, being the sky. 

It is huge. 

On a clear day it stretches for miles to distant Kinder Scout and Bleaklow Hill, even to the Staffordshire moorlands. Coming back towards Sheffield on a sharp, clear winter’s morning the stanchions of the Humber Bridge are faintly visible on the horizon of a vast panorama of sky. And then there is Sheffield clustered in the valley below you.

Driving on these mornings is often accompanied by the radio, Nick Grimshaw or Maconie & Radcliffe on BBCRadio 6, but the song that most encapsulates the love and familiarity I have for this journey is Nick Drake’s ‘Northern Sky’.

Nick Drake is music’s Van Gogh, an artist who only graced the world for twenty six years and by the time of his suicide in 1974 had made only three albums of material, all of them barely making a ripple at the time of their release. From 1969 (Five Leaves Left) to 1972 (Pink Moon). 

Today I think it is fair to say that Drake is acknowledged as one of the greatest British singer-song writers of his generation perhaps of any generation, and that his album Bryter Layter (1971) is his masterpiece on a par as a piece of art with any of the great works of Van Gogh and with Northern Sky a song that is a shimmering pinnacle of plaintive love, for a person? For a feeling? For a place? It can still reduce me to tears.

Nick Drake: Northern Sky

The Ringinglow Road is my northern sky close to the people and places I love. It can also be a place of wild climatic hostility. Several decades ago I stuck my car in a ditch climbing The Dale in mounting snow as a blizzard raged. I reminded myself as I was towed out and home that normally it was a place of bucolic
serenity especially when the heather and cotton grass paint a canvas in August with a soundtrack of skylarks to serenade you. You get the picture I am sure.

In fact I have the picture. It is an early piece by John Holmes Laver (see image below), a Sheffield artist (1880-1950), said to be in ‘grinder school’ of artists (it was a thing back then, but feel free to insert your own joke here) those, like himself, who worked as grinders, or polishers, or silversmiths: the famous "little mesters" of Sheffield but at the weekend walked up Ringinglow Road and into the Peak District to paint the local landscape.

A John Holmes Laver original - image copyright Carl Lee

Laver is a little-known Sheffield-born artist the son of a police constable. He attended Sheffield School of Art where he studied under Austin Winterbottom. He achieved some level of acknowledgement for his art during his life, getting to exhibit a painting at the Royal Academy in 1938, but generally speaking his artistic path was not dissimilar to that of Nick Drake’s apart from the fact that unlike Drake, and Van Gogh, he didn’t become a revered and globally influential artist after his death.

The unnamed but signed painting by Laver that hangs in my hall way is of a view that you take in every time you drive out on the Ringinglow Road. It is about 50 meters into Derbyshire, approaching the bend before the cattle grid. If you have ever driven this road you will know the exact point. I do indeed.

In the distance, across seemingly featureless moorland is Millstones at the southern end of Stanage Edge, and above, a brooding sky that speaks of incoming rain. That is my northern sky come rain or shine. I like to imagine that Laver would have seen, or rather heard, the beauty in Drake’s 'Northern Sky' and hope that he had someone that he could project Drake’s poetic evocations of love, life and, yes place, onto. 

As the Irish band Fontaines DC, who have magnificently covered Nick Drake’s ‘Cello Song’, recently enquired on their most recent album ‘Romance’, “maybe romance is a place?” 

 

If romance is a place, for me the Ringinglow Road and its huge skies stretching out over Yorkshire and Derbyshire have a forever place in my heart.

“Would you love me through the winter?

Would you love me ‘til I’m dead”.

Sources

Bibliographical details on John Holmes Laver.

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 know the Ringinglow Road well, and have travelled up and down it in all weathers...

Jan 29: Life beneath the Soil

There's a world that lies beneath our feet... in the soil.

An album I had when it first came out in 1984, and remember now and again is by the Greek musician Vangelis, who also composed the soundtracks for several films including 'Chariots of Fire'. 

It imagines the life stirring in the soil as a thunderstorm rages and water starts to drip and infiltrate the soil. 

The first movement is the best.

The other movements explore other aspects of life below the ground. Turn off the lights and listen to it with some good headphones on.

Movement 1 (Remastered version)

Soil Festivities was inspired by the processes of nature literally taking place beneath our feet, as a celebration of the springtime cycle of new life.

Here's a challenge for you, let me know other songs about soil...

Jan 28: Protest Songs #3: Streets of Minneapolis

Following my previous posts on the power of music to protest....

A powerful new song from Bruce Springsteen following the events in Minneapolis... 

Jan 28: Out of field thinking

One of the aspects of the work I will be doing over the next year on this blog is to engage with research from "out of field". 

All teachers should engage with subject specific research to add complexity and nuance to their thinking. 

If the sources of information that are used for planning resources are limited, then the resources that are presented to students will not stretch them, or offer opportunities to show what they know first. As a geographer I engage with people from other disciplines: including poets, photographers and artists. My curriculum is also informed by sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists....

I got started on this with a piece by John Schofield and Ron Wright.

PDF download is here.

I will return to Sheffield later in the blog, when I start a series of posts about cities which have a particular "sonic heritage", and will draw on this work.

Reading / sources:

John Schofield & Ron Wright (2021): Sonic Heritage, Identity and Musicmaking in Sheffield, “Steel City”, Heritage & Society, DOI: 10.1080/2159032X.2021.1968227

Jan 28: Trivia Quiz Question #3

Which Icelandic town (population 445) is the name of a track on this album?

Answer in the comments below - 'points' for the first person to provide the answer - more questions each week or two as we go through the year...

Jan 28: New arrival: Tangerine Dream Live at the Barbican in 2024

I'll add a post when new physical media appears in the post - which is not very often due to my use of Spotify, which now has a lossless option for streaming. It's a bit greedy on data...

This is the new release from KScope, distributed by Burning Shed, and has just been dropped off by the postman.

It is a double CD of the 50th Anniversary performance of Tangerine Dream's album 'Pheadra' at the Barbican on the 7th October 2024. The original album was recorded for Virgin Records at the Manor Studios - which will appear on the blog numerous times as the year progresses.

I attended this concert at the Barbican - a lovely venue - with a wonderful view of the concert as it unfolded, with an hour long session based around 'Phaedra' and then a selection of more recent tracks, starting with a banging version of "No Happy Endings".

I look forward to playing this in the car for the next few weeks...

Jan 28: 'You can call me Al'

This track reminds me of training to be a teacher. I remember sitting in the staff room of Withernsea Primary School on a day when I was doing some teaching practice and observations near the start of my course. The radio was on, and this song came on... 

It also connects with me of course, as my name is Al.

The video with Chevy Chase was well done and helped make the song a success.

The track is on a classic Paul Simon album called 'Graceland' which was made with musicians from South Africa. 

It introduced many people to their music such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and was one of the early albums in what could be called 'world music'. I used to buy a magazine called 'Songlines' for many years, particularly when they had cover mounted CDs... which don't seem to be a thing these days quite so much.

The album contains some other well known songs including Boy in the Bubble & Under African Skies.

The making of the album is an interesting cross-cultural story too. There's a long form documentary called 'Under African Skies' which you may be able to watch here.

What are your favourite Paul Simon songs? Let me know in the comments. I like his more recent song 'Wristband' which has a good groove...

Jan 27: A Beatles Lyrics Tour of the World

The Beatles are amongst the most significant and influential musical acts ever, although I've never really played their music yet, but have of course heard a lot of their music over the decades. They are synonymous with the city of Liverpool, and the 1960s, although they went through a number of phases before their last performance on the roof of Apple Records in London on 30th January 1969. 

This was at 3 Savile Row, which was just next door to #1 where the Royal Geographical Society had their HQ between 1870 and 1912.

This map shows the locations of all the places featured in their lyrics.

Take yourself on a tour of lyric locations in The Beatles songs. From Eleanor Rigby's gravestone in Liverpool to Abbey Road in North London, see the locations behind The Beatles lyrics throughout England, France, Russia, India, the United States, and more countries, covering 25,510 miles around the world.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license

Another Beatles map was made by Brendan Conway. Using ESRI's StoryMap it looks at Sgt. Pepper's Places.

Brendan will be making several contributions to the blog as the year goes on - see his other StoryMap posted yesterday.

The inspiration of places had become an integral part of their music. The geographical locations linked to Sgt. Pepper and their other work in 1967 provide the focus for this Story Map.

Jan 27: Teaching Geography - from the Archive

This 'Teaching Geography' article was one that I identified as a relevant source when planning the blog, and will also be added to the planned resource.

It's written by Lucy Fryer and can be read by subscribers to the journal.

Jan 26: Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever

Brendan Conway has produced a series of ESRI StoryMaps. I referenced one a few days ago, but this one is a Beatles themed one - linked to another guest blog post I shall publish in a few weeks' time. The StoryMap format lends itself very well to this sort of exploration.

I may set up a small competition at some point if we get enough regular readers of the blog to create a musical StoryMap for a favourite band or piece of music. Brendan has modelled some good practice here in that regard.

This one is about Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever.

In 2019, with my son, I visited the Dakota Hotel in New York, where he lived, and at the entrance of which he was shot by Mark Chapman in 1980. 

It has also been home to many other celebrities. The views of Central Park are stunning.

We then crossed the road into Central Park and visited an area called 'Strawberry Fields'. 

This mosaic with the word 'Imagine' in the middle often has flowers placed there.

Image: Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license.

Jan 26: 'In the Fen Country'

Any fool can appreciate mountain scenery, but it takes a man of discernment to appreciate the Fens.

An anonymous Fenman quoted in Sir Harry Godwin's 'Fenland' (1978).

I work in The Fens: an area of land which is low lying and flat, and has been created by drainage and land reclamation over centuries, which led to the removal of the water-logged and wilder Fen of the past, and before that it was a sea bed. It's a shifting mutable landscape which has a variety of ecosystems and wildlife.

Here's a piece of music which aims to capture the Fens from Ralph Vaughan Williams.

If anyone out there has a particular interest in classical music and wants to write some blog posts about it they would be gratefully received, as it's not a genre that I know a great deal about it, although I can recognise most pieces used in questions on 'University Challenge' slightly better than most of the teams.

In the Fen Country is an orchestral tone poem written by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams had completed the first version of the work in April 1904, but subsequently revised the work in 1905 and 1907.

This website introduces the piece in slightly more negative terms with respect to the landscape:

The Fens are a bleak, desolate, and relentlessly flat marshland found in East Anglia on the east coast of England. They resemble a slice of the Netherlands, transported from the other side of the North Sea. Their austere mystery inspired Graham Swift in his 1983 novel, Waterland, to ask, “what are the Fens, which so imitate in their levelness the natural disposition of water, but a landscape which, of all landscapes, most approximates to Nothing?” 

Alluding to the oppressive, stale air which rises from this swamp land, Shakespeare’s King Lear, in cursing his daughter, exclaims, “Infect her beauty, You fen-sucked fogs, drawn by the powerful sun, To fall and blister!”

Here's a digitally enhanced film which has been shared on the Fenland on Film YouTube channel. 

You will find out more about the Fens by watching this.

If you know of other pieces of music which are connected to The Fens and Fenland, let me know in the comments. I can think of one particular song, but I won't be mentioning that one... not yet anyway...

Jan 25: Most memorable concerts #1 - some contributions

When I set up the blog, I created a Google Form to collect contributions. I'm still keen to collect more.

One question I asked people was about their most memorable concerts.

There's a good range of both bands and venues so far.

Here's a sample from the responses so far - keep them coming!

Samantha: My best, most memorable concerts were seeing Foo Fighters for the first time at the Stadium of Light, Oasis in Manchester, Coldplay in Hull in 2025.

Matt Podbury: Pulp at the Bikini in Toulouse (1500 people), David Bowie - Stratford upon Avon around 1995/6. Bjork - same venue as above, Queen & Paul Rodgers - Sheffield 2003 and Mariza - Rio Loco Festival Toulouse

Jade: Ian Brown in Thetford forest was magical. Lily Allen at Cambridge Corn Exchange was fabulous. These were my earliest gig memories growing up.

David: In 1972, at Sheffield University, I saw on three consecutive weeks: Led Zeppelin, Status Quo and Wings. More recently, I saw a concert of Paganini and Vivaldi in Venice; and a concert of Smetana in Prague. Both were fantastic, but largely due to the location of each. So, appropriate.

John Medd: Generation X at West Runton Pavilion, 2 December 1978. (I went with my friend Riggsby - it was his 18th birthday and we went down the front leaning on the stage.)

West Runton Pavilion is a legendary venue: a small place in North Norfolk, a long way from most places.. this is worth a post by itself... now there's an idea... coming soon!

Ian Ford: The Saw Doctors supported by The Undertones at Halifax Piece Hall Summer 2025 was memorable. Beautiful night and a really interesting venue. And The Undertones' sound check was going on just as we arrived at the car park next door so we got two for the price of one. 

The Piece Hall is a really great venue...

Runrig at the Dominion on Charing Cross Road. I’m about 1990. Ian Bayne and Calum MacDonald coming down the front to play the spoons on An Toll Dubh. Tom Robinson Band supporting. Everything that’s good about trad music.

I saw Runrig about this time, in Sheffield - a great live band, with Donnie Munro as lead singer.

Skerryvore at Bury St Edmund’s Apex 18 November 25 - the night that Scotland qualified for the World Cup finals. At the start of the encore they were in the playoffs. The band had been following the score all night - as had much of the audience. They scored twice during the encore to win and qualify directly for the first time in ages. Cue 'scenes' both in the audience and on stage. A whistle player checking his phone whilst playing and a large Saltire waving at the end.

Aidan: The most memorable would have been Black Sabbath at Ozzfest 98 at Milton Keynes Bowl, or BB King at Louisville Palace Theatre.

Here's a bit of Sabbath from that event...

 

Catherine: my husband arranged for us to have a night away when our first child was very young - we flew to Glasgow to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. A more recent memorable concert was YungBlud at the Eden Project - I had such a great time there with my daughter - the mist came down over the domes and it was quite ethereal!

James: Arcade Fire in Manchester at the Apollo in 2007. A flawless performance. The Vines in Newcastle circa 2004. A band that were somewhat chaotic live. They were either fantastic or terrible. Luckily I saw them on a good night. Kings of Leon in Newcastle. A few gigs between 2003 and 2005. I could tell they loved being in Newcastle. Their gig at City Hall was incredible. Their glances and looks at each other on stage portrayed both their excitement and shock at the intense crown reaction. An incredible gig.

Marc: Seeing The Pogues in 1991 when I was living in Germany was an experience that I won't forget.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions! Please get involved!

Jan 25: Northern Lights

Is it possible to capture the 'sound' or visual spectacle of the Northern Lights in musical form?

Jan Garbarek - All those Born with Wings is an excellent album with Jan's sax and the usual bandmates... and one of the best CD covers there is... showing a display of aurora. On the ECM label, which will also be showcased elsewhere on the blog.

From this album, check out the 3rd piece which perhaps best captures the atmosphere.

Suns of the Tundra - Aurora

A track on the 'Bones of Brave Ships' album from Suns of the Tundra, which tells the story of Shackleton's famous 'Endurance' expedition.

Apart from having a name which references a type of ecosystem, they also have chief examiner and top geographer Simon Oakes on lead guitar and vocals, adding to their geographical (and musical) credentials.

Why not head to the band's Bandcamp page. This is a good place to order their music too in various formats.

Lyle Mays - Alaskan Suite - Northern Lights, Invocation, Ascent

A track from Lyle Mays' debut album, and one of the finest albums there is.

Here's part of the three part movement...

I remember listening to this very loud while sitting on the shores of Loch Slapin on Skye. We'd been down to the Suisnish peninsula - an area cleared of crofters during the clearances, and across the loch was Bla-bheinn as the moon came up...

If you get the chance to go to Iceland during the winter months please do. 2025 saw a solar maximum of activity and some remarkable displays. 2026 will hopefully be just as good - January has certainly started out well.

Here's a picture of mine from 2024, taken at Laugarvatn.

Image by Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license.

Have I missed other musical attempts to capture this remarkable phenomenon? 

Let me know in the comments...

Jan 24: Protest Songs #2 - some extra suggestions

Back on January the 18th, I introduced the idea of protest songs, with a few examples and asked readers to suggest others that meant something to them.

Two other songs have been suggested by blog readers, who have used the Google Form that was added to that original post. It's not too late for you to add your own suggestions.

John Medd suggested 'Does this train stop on Merseyside' by Ian Prowse (which has also been recorded by Christy Moore). He says:

"It's a song for the downtrodden the world over; not least the Hillsborough victims."

It had an impact on John Peel.

The song's lyrics reference a number of observations on the city of Liverpool. 

Listen to it here:

The BBC article explains the significance of the lyrics:

For Elvis Costello, some of the song's charm lies in Prowse's "acute sense of the history of the city".

There are references in Does This Train Stop On Merseyside? to the Atlantic slave trade, of which Liverpool was the home; the influx of Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s, and the events of 15 April 1989, reflected in the lyrics "Yorkshire policemen fold their arms while people try and save their fellow fans".

Prowse adds: "For people of my generation. Hillsborough was the central event. I had so many friends who were survivors, I could not write a song that's talking about Liverpool without including that.

"For the city it was a double tragedy: there was the horror of 97 people losing their lives, then there was the city being smeared in the media.

"There's still righteous fury about that in the city, and although the truth has come out, there's never been any justice really."

It is well worth checking out John's own blog, where he shares his own music, and musical thoughts.

Matt Podbury suggest a song by Randy Newman called 'Political Science'.

Matt says:

"Cold War and America's relationship with the rest of the world. I use this to introduce superpowers. They never recognise the name, but recognise the sound of his voice from Toy Story!!"

The first verse:

No one likes us, I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
And all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens

Got an idea for a protest song? Fill in the form on the original post please, or add a comment, or use the contact form on the right hand side.

These songs take the Spotify Playlist - which can also be accessed on the right hand side to over 6 hours of excellent tunes, and we aren't even at the end of January yet.

Jan 24: Guest blogger Brendan Conway #2: The geography of 'Life On Mars?'

The classic song 'Life On Mars?' by David Bowie was first released on the classic album 'Hunky Dory' in 1971. 

It features piano by Rick Wakeman.

What are the geographical aspects of the song?  

How might Life On Mars? have been inspired by BBC controversy?

Spoiler alert: Life On Mars? isn’t really about Mars! It was actually about escaping from the perceived banality of suburban life to search for other, hopefully more interesting places. 

'Life On Mars?' presents a cynical perspective about such aspiration, with acerbic views on the American Dream ‘It's on America's tortured brow; That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow’ and the impact of mass tourism on destinations: ‘See the mice in their million hordes; From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads.’

Why did David Bowie pick on tourism and why these particular places? 

It seems that he was influenced by a high profile BBC television programme of the time called 'Holiday', which was launched in 1969.

David Bowie’s real name was David Jones. 

Born in south London in 1947, he was in the vanguard of the 'baby-boomers', the generation born between 1945 and 1965. This demographic tsunami became a key driver for change in music, fashion and demand for consumer goods and services including tourism. 

The young David Jones was a bit of a trend setter, making his first TV appearance in 1964 at the age of 17 in an interview with Cliff Michelmore who at that time was one of the best-known personalities in the UK. Michelmore anchored the popular BBC current affairs programme 'Tonight' which ran a report about the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men, recently founded by David Jones and a few of his friends.

Less than four years later in 1969, at the height of the Space Race, David Bowie wrote 'Space Oddity'. 

The title of the song was a pun inspired by the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Apollo 8 mission which took the first human beings around the Moon at Christmas 1968. 

In July 1969 'Space Oddity' was rush-released as a single to coincide with the Apollo 11 mission which took human beings to walk on the Moon for the first time. 

The song gained further profile when it was used by the BBC as background music during their coverage of the key moon landings which were coincidentally anchored by the omnipresent BBC stalwart Cliff Michelmore.

Also in 1969, the BBC launched a lifestyle consumer series called 'Holiday 69' (later shortened to just 'Holiday') on the 2nd of January, providing viewers with an audio-visual respite from the depths of the British winter. 

Yet again, it was anchored by his 1964 interviewer Cliff Michelmore. 

The programme was extremely successful, running for 38 years until 2007, becoming the longest running travel series on UK television, with Michelmore leading the presentation until 1986. Such programmes would regularly attract millions of viewers, at a time when there were only three TV channels to watch in the UK until 1982 and no satellite TV or Internet. 

'Holiday' offered viewers vicarious experiences of tourist destinations which at the time were just becoming attainable as places of escape. As Michelmore reflected later ‘it was a bit of sunshine in the middle of the winter, even though it was in black and white!’. 

More recently, the BBC has courted controversy when presenters express opinions about current affairs, attracting accusations of bias, but such incidents are nothing new. 

The very first Holiday programme attracted international criticism when Cliff Michelmore reported about sewage on beaches in Ibiza and referred to it as 'this septic isle'. 

A diplomatic row with General Franco’s Spain ensued (Cliff Michelmore reflects on the 'Holiday programme'). 

In another programme a few weeks later on 6th February 1969, viewers were invited to find out ‘what it is like to hire a boat on the Norfolk Broads’. (from the BBC's Genome project).

David Bowie would probably have been aware of the Holiday programme and the controversy over the Ibiza coverage. So it’s no coincidence that he chose Ibiza and the Norfolk Broads to reference as places of escape. 

The programme would also have attracted David Bowie's attention because the theme music used was 'The Castle' by the US American psychedelic rock band Love, taken from their 1966 album Da Capo. Love was led by Arthur Lee, who was an influence on Bowie's early work.

Further details about the geographical places linked to Life On Mars? are available in a story map created using ArcGIS Online: 

Life On Mars? The geography of Life On Mars?

Postscript - by AP - via Wikipedia

The original theme tune for the series was Love's "The Castle". Subsequent theme tunes in the mid-1970s included Hugo Montenegro's arrangement of Lalo Schifrin's theme to the 1968 movie 'The Fox', a cover of the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun", and Part One of Jean Michel Jarre's Equinoxe.

Gordon Giltrap's "Heartsong" was used as a theme tune from 1978 until the end of the 1985 series. 

This is the one I remember the best.

In 1986 it was replaced with "The Holiday Suite" written by Simon May, who also composed the EastEnders theme. This proved unpopular, and was replaced on Holiday '87 by a further Giltrap composition "Breaking Free" which also only lasted one year. For Holiday '88-'91 they used a third Giltrap composition "Holiday Romance".

In 1992 Paul Hardcastle composed a new theme, titled "Voyager". This theme was used throughout the 1990s and 2000s until the programme came to an end after 37 years in 2007.

Jan 24: Keith Jarrett's Köln masterpiece

One of the greatest albums of all time, and still the bestselling solo jazz album – and the bestselling solo piano album – of all time, selling more than 4 million copies to date - I have one of them.

It was recorded on this date, back in 1975. 51 years ago today!

There will be a few posts which will be posted on the anniversaries of particular events and this is one of them.

The story behind its creation is also fascinating. It very nearly didn't happen, and the piano it was recorded on had some serious problems which Jarrett overcame, and which contribute to the unusual sound and arrangements on the album. He was exhausted and hungry when he performed.

Jarrett himself has strong feelings about the recording.

I visited the venue where it was recorded in 2024 when I was in Köln for an educational event. 

The city has connections with other bands including Kraftwerk - we will return to them later in the year...

A documentary has been made about the circumstances under which this piece was recorded. The trailer for it is here. I would like to go and see the finished film if possible.

Jan 23: Ticket Stub #2: Whippersnapper

This stub had my name on it so I could collect it at the box office. Holmfirth is a small village in West Yorkshire which is well known for being the location for the filming of 'Last of the Summer Wine'. This gig took place in 1993. I guess this was a Friday when I was up in Yorkshire as I was teaching at the time - it may have been half term. Whippersnapper were a folk band who featured the well-known violinist Dave Swarbrick (from Fairport Convention, who passed away in 2016 following earlier reports of his death in a newspaper obituary column in 1999), Chris Leslie (who would go on to join Fairport Convention) and two musicians from a band called Dando Shaft: Martin Jenkins [who has sadly since passed away] and the wonderful guitarist Kevin Dempsey. I think I saw them about 15 times in all in small venues across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire.

I had a few recordings of theirs on cassette tape back in the day.

There are no recordings of theirs still available in formats other than cassette or LP sadly.

There are a few poor quality recordings from concerts.

Kevin Dempsey is still active and has played with a number of other bands, including Uiscedwr. He has a Soundcloud page.

This is one of the songs that he used to sing with Whippersnapper... lovely... 

Kevin Dempsey · 1-05 The Maid From Coolmore

Jan 23: Exchanging corn for concerts

I live in an area of the world which has its fair share of Corn Exchanges. These are buildings where were formerly places where grain prices were decided, and exchanges or trades made. A lot of the wealth of East Anglia came from such trades.

This BBC article explored the way that many of them have become music venues.

They include Cambridge Corn Exchange, which has featured on this blog several times - I have seen many bands there over the years - including Steve Hackett, Marillion, Salif Keita, John McLaughlin, Jan Garbarek, Richard Thompson and many others.

At King's Lynn's Corn Exchange, I've seen bands including Kate Rusby and Capercaillie.

Image: Steve Hackett at Cambridge Corn Exchange - image Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license.

Do you have a Corn Exchange in your town or city which is used as a concert venue?

Who have you seen there? Let me know in the comments.

Jan 22: Hugh Lupton: 'One in a Million'

Hugh Lupton is a master storyteller. He has been telling them for decades all over the world.

I have a wonderful little book that he wrote: 'The Dreaming of Place' which is all about myth and landscape, and full of insight and delight. It's published in Norwich by Propolis publishing.

From this collection spanning his career, including fiction, poetry, reviews, articles, talks and praise-songs, what emerges is a broad account of why our species remains so deeply connected both to the stories we tell and the land we inhabit; the relationship all peoples have with the landscape around them and how it shapes societies and the way they communicate. 

This is a story as old as Earth itself.

Drawing on his vast knowledge of folklore and legends from around the world, as well as an unrivalled experience of live storytelling, Lupton shows us how stories — always formed on the breath before the page — have nourished, taught and guided us for millennia.

You really should get a copy of this book.

Chris Wood's music will feature a number of times on the blog. He has toured by himself, and also with the wonderful melodeon player and musician Andy Cutting, and with the band 'The Imagined Village', who will also appear later on the blog.

I bought a cassette tape of Wood and Cutting's early album decades ago. 

Just checking and it was around 1990 when I saw them play together for the first time.

I also saw Andy playing with Blowzabella and solo since, and also in Kate Rusby's band. He's a wonderful musician.

Hugh wrote this masterful song about love in a chip shop that is 'One in a Million'. It is performed here by Chris Wood, recorded live at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival in 2009.

If you haven't heard this before, prepare to shed a tear.

It's a reminder that the real songwriters don't always get the full credit as people assume that the singer wrote it...

Jan 21: Crown Lands and indigenous people

One of the most exciting personal musical discoveries of the last few years has been Crown Lands. 

The duo are inspired by Rush and Led Zeppelin and other similar bands, and their name references the land which was illegally taken from the indigenous people as North America was colonised and they were marginalised in their own country, and worse...

Cody Bowles is the drummer and vocalist in the band. 

The luxuriantly bearded Kevin Comeau plays guitar, bass and keyboards - including a double-necked Rickenbacker.

They have produced a number of tracks which link back to the origins of many Canadians, and protest about the forced changes that took place for many as well as exploring the violence against indigenous people - continuing to this day with recent discoveries of unmarked bodies at former schools for indigenous children.

They also explore the murder and disappearance of thousands of indigenous women and girls, which was the subject of a national enquiry.

The End of the Road references the Highway of Tears.

And my introduction to Crown Lands was this amazing piece of music... complete with double-necked Rickenbacker and top quality riffage...

Think they can't play that live with just the two of them? Think again :)

People are going to listen to you, so you may as well say something that matters. I don’t play rock and roll to talk about rock and roll, I play to talk about things that matter to me.

Kevin Comeau

Jan 21: Trivia Quiz Question #2

Which European capital city was the name of a track on this album?

Answer in the comments below - 'points' for the first person to provide the answer - more questions each week or two as we go through the year...

Jan 20: Voyager - music beyond the solar system

Although the blog is called 'World of Music', this post is out of this world... and millions of miles into space....

I've blogged previously over on my main blog: LivingGeography about the space probes Voyager I and II, which left the solar system a while ago, having been originally launched in 1977.

It has featured in one of the early Star Trek movies and elsewhere. 

It carries a Golden Record and graphics which provide details on the location of the Earth and sounds and images representing life on earth.

The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. 

To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim.

You can find out what is on the Golden Disc on this website.

There is a full list of all the music featured on the disc.

The progressive rock band Big Big Train have a track called Voyager, which is all about the space probe. Check it out here.

Some selected lyrics:

Heading further out
To reach uncharted shorelines
Setting sail for the distant stars
The wonder of new worlds
Beyond the next headland
Over the far horizon
Out into the open skies
To find out what we are
How far we've come
How far we can go

Lyrics: Gregory Spawton

Jan 20: Album cover locations #2: A Single Man

Through the year, I shall post some extra posts on some days with an image of an album cover. 

The question is, what location is shown on the album cover?

Here's the second one.

Kudos to the first people to add the location of the album cover photo as accurately as possible in the comments. 

Bonus points if you have recreated the album cover pose in the same exact location.

Jan 19: Guest blogger Carl Lee #2: Fado – a traditional music with a modern future

Here's the second guest blog post by Carl Lee, following his earlier post on the Sheffield clank.

Fado – a traditional music with a modern future.

Like so many cultural expressions across and within nations and people, origin stories are often contested, and Fado, the mournful ballad music so intrinsically associated with traditional Portuguese culture, is no exception.

What is clear is that this was a music that grew out of working class communities around the docks of Lisbon, in the early 19th century. It was music of loss and regret, of homesickness on travels to the new world and nostalgia for better times. Up beat and optimistic it is not, with Fado drawn from the Latin word fatum widely translated as meaning fate.

Some suggest Fado’s roots are longer than the early 19th century with it coming to Portugal from its colonies, or from Andalucía’s Arabic tradition. Whatever its cloudy origin story Fado is now a central part of Portuguese culture, so much so that it has been awarded UNESCO intangible cultural heritage status - see January 15th post - and tourists to Portugal soak up its repackaged authenticity in bars and clubs across Portugal, not simply in Lisbon.

Unsurprisingly for a music that grew up in a working class culture, instrumentation in Fado is not extensive with the Portuguese 12 string pear-shaped guitar being prominent. This made Fado a music that required little in the way of resources to deliver and its popularity moved out of the bars of Alfama, the port district with its narrows streets clustered around Lisbon cathedral up the hill to the more bourgeois neighbourhood of Barrio Alto and its more bohemian sensibilities. 

Throughout the 20th century Fado was becoming music not just of the working class but also of the growing middle classes and even aristocracy. It then broke out of Portugal in the 1940s with the international recognition of Amália Rodrigues, sometimes know as ‘the queen of Fado’.

Rodrigues grew up living in poverty in the docks area of Lisbon but through her voice, honed in the Fado bars of her city, she became a worldwide star, with acting credits, performances across the world and with Portugal’s leading poets vying to write lyrics for her to sing. Rodrigues' most famous song was internationally know as ‘April in Portugal’ which referenced the central Portuguese university town of Coimbra where a separate tradition of Fado was developed by students, more formal with less poignant longing but a retained sense of nostalgia for past better times. 

'April in Portugal'

When Amália Rodrigues died aged 79 in 1999 3 days of national mourning was declared in Portugal.

Although so much Fado today is performed in tourist venues, with a side helping of traditional Portuguese cuisine, it remains central to Portuguese national identity and younger artists such as Carminho have become stars of the genre albeit a genre that now draws in other influences such as pop and jazz.

What may take Fado to a new global audience is the Spanish singer Rosalia whose critically acclaimed 2025 album ‘Lux’ includes a Carminho fado song ‘Memoria’ which Rosalia sings in Portuguese. The lush production and classical music framework of Lux has been much admired with lavish praise coming even from the Vatican whose spokesperson acknowledged the album’s themes of religion, enlightenment and spirituality.

Rosalia - 'Memoria'

Memoria is the penultimate track on an album that is sung in 13 different languages from Japanese to Arabic. It is a Fado that dwells on how much we change over time and whether we remain ‘true’ to whom we were, or are.

“Siempre que me acuerdo de aigo.

Siempre lo recuerdo un poco diferente”

When I remember the past it always changes a bit.

Sources

History of Fado

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.

More to come on Rosalia's Lux album in a future blog post.