100 000 page views - thanks for visiting

 

Aug 13: 500 posts

I've added my 500th post to this blog. 

Not bad since I started it on the 1st of January. Some of them were guest blog posts this time round. Thanks to Carl Lee, Brendan Conway and Sandra Patterson for their contributions, with more promised. 

Thanks to everyone who's visited and read a post too.

Please consider adding your own memories whether as a comment or via the Google Form. If you use that as a search phrase you can see all the posts where there's a chance for you to add your ideas as a Google Form.

Here's a song featuring the number 500.... sing along!

Jul 24: Music websites: The Vinyl Historian

This is an excellent website from Jamie.

Pages include:

- A look at the AIR studios on Montserrat that I blogged about earlier

- A look at the evolution of Genesis

They also visit some classic musical venues.

Source: https://thevinylhistorian.com/places

Jun 14: Just for one day

The track 'Heroes' is taken from David Bowie's album. We can all be heroes, just for one day....

Why not be a hero and help out the development of the blog by filling in one of my Google Forms.

Songs with cities in their titles.

Songs about our changing climate or environmental damage.

Your favourite protest songs.

A song with a colour in the title.

A song with a number in the title.

Let me know which bands your streaming algorithm throws up when you type in the letters A - Z

Your favourite film soundtrack music

Tell me about the first gig you attended.

Share album covers which feature geographical features of some kind... human or physical.

Have you ever been to the Glastonbury Festival? Please tell me all about it....

What are your memories of Live Aid in 1985 - were you there? Did you watch? Whose performances can you remember?

Please share the locations and images of music related street art that you've seen...

Please share your favourite, oldest or most interesting tour t-shirts in your collection.

What are the best TV theme tunes?

And finally, if you're feeling particularly helpful... fill in the original form from the start of the blog. This has about a dozen questions.

Apr 6: Film Soundtracks #4: Amelie

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.

Check out this Behance film poster.

There is also an excellent review here.

What are your favourite film soundtracks?

Not too late to answer that, and other questions on the link here.

Mar 23: 10 000 page views

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. 

Thanks for reading...

Feb 10: Spotify Playlist - the first 10 hours is complete

I've been adding every song that gets mentioned on the blog to a Spotify playlist. 

Hopefully this will grow to be an essential playlist to expand your musical horizons...

There are now 100 songs and over 10 hours of musical delights to dig into...

Jan 14: Film Soundtracks #1: 'Magnolia' - Aimee Mann

As I continue this blog, I'll also be mentioning particular film soundtracks of note with cross postings from my Geography in/on Film blog.

This can be viewed here.

Spotify is a great way to access new music. As I subscribe, I like to get my money's worth and have been known to spend as long as 10 hours a day listening to music while working on writing. Sometimes I'll have a bit of a binge on a particular band or follow the various algorithms which suggest other similar music, or start a radio station based on an album.

Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson has one of the best film soundtracks there is, with major contributions from Aimee Mann (with Jon Brion) along with tracks by a few other bands including Supertramp. This is an anthology film, with a long running time.

Aimee Mann is one of my favourite artists and I have followed her music for around thirty years.

Here's the album as a Spotify album embedded below, particularly helpful for those who subscribe.

One of the key tracks from the album is 'Wise Up'. 

Warning: the clip below may contain spoilers for events in the film.

Another song from the film "Save Me" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, which it lost to "You'll Be in My Heart" from the Disney movie Tarzan. By way of introduction to a live performance, Mann has referred to "Save Me" as "the song that lost an Oscar to Phil Collins and his cartoon monkey love song."

Mann has occasionally dedicated her song to Collins in several different venues, albeit in jest.

Source: Wikipedia

Extra film trivia challenge

In which film does Aimee Mann plan an anarchist who loses one of her toes?

Answers in the comments. No prizes, for fun only.

So what are your favourite film soundtracks?

Let me know using the Google Form below... I'll share some of the responses in a future post...

Arriving in January 2026 - a World of Music

I've been working on preparations for a new 365 project blog: a post a day for a year, which will appear here from the 1st of January 2026, and its time to get more people involved if you have a few moments.

I've completed several of these 365 projects before, including my GeoLibrary blog, Geography on/in Film and Fieldnotes from Iceland.

This blog is going to be on the theme of music and its geographical connections in the broadest sense, including how it connects us to specific places or moments in time, captures landscapes and emotions or forms part of our cultural geography. 

Most people have some personal connections to particular musical genres or musicians.  

Few people go through life without music in it... we pick music for giving birth and saying goodbye for the final time; the 'first dance'; 'our song'... travelling music... music to get us to sleep or get us going in the morning.

Music provides comfort, enjoyment even personal moments of ecstasy. It can lead to obsession and collections and also provoke anger. It can be political and radical or anodyne and mainstream and called "elevator music" for its blandness.

The creation and consumption of music has an environmental, economic and social impact on the planet: From Taylor Swift's billion dollar plus ERAS tour, to a folk performer in an upstairs room in a pub.

Every generation has its opinions on the music of the past, and the new music that is emerging and becoming popular. Music or noise? "What's that you're listening to?".

We've also seen other changes to music over the decades.

• Different formats - the decline and rebirth of vinyl (and even the cassette tape)
• The rising price of concert tickets and the replacement of cardboard tickets with stubs to print your own or show me them on a phone screen... complete with animations in the case of AXS.

• The hybridisation of music to create new genres.
• Our consumption of music from the physical product in our hands to streaming and skipping from track to track - not the ritual of playing all of Side One then all of Side Two.

I've created a Google Form which I hope you'll help me with by completing as much of it as you can. It includes some of the areas that I will explore through 2026.

Thanks in advance if you feel able to help me out. 

Click the link here to open the form. 

On this version there is an opportunity for you to add images you've got of favourite concerts, tickets, t-shirts, memorabilia or anything else you'd like to share. Dig out those old ticket stubs or programmes, or creative maps of world tour routes.

I've made another version which is embedded here and can be filled in: