After 20 years of teaching in the same school I moved out of teaching and got a job working for the Geographical Association. This meant spending several days a week in Sheffield.
The Killers released 'Human' as a single from their 'Day and Age' album.
I used this as the background music to some presentations for conferences that I suddenly found myself being invited to. This was such an exciting time. After 20 years of going to the same place every day I suddenly found myself travelling all over the country and speaking to large numbers of students and teachers everywhere from Scotland to Cornwall... I've written about it on my GA Presidents blog.
The second release from this album was 'Spaceman' which stands up well nearly 20 years on.
As the year progressed, my mileage built up as I travelled new roads and old roads.
Martin Orford was the keyboard player for IQ for several years. I like his style very much.
His album 'The Old Road' is good, and includes some very interesting guest contributions from John Wetton (who did so much), Nick D'Virgilio (drummer from Big Big Train), John Mitchell (who has played for It Bites and Frost* amongst others) and some vocals from the late David Longdon.
He retired from music after making this album.
We're taking the old road Back to where the seeds of wisdom were planted Leaving the race forever And reject the modern way
And now the grey's devoured the green All cut to waste by great machines In barren cities they conceived With so many people we can't breathe
Seems foolish to look for words That I just can't seem to say In England's pleasant land There's a need for greed I can't understand
This requires some thought about the different meanings a song can have.
It has to provoke some emotions of course, and perhaps be a song that I keep returning to it at different stages in my life... and view differently.
In the end, I went for the Moving Hearts song Tribute to Peadar O' Donnell.
At one point this was down on my shortlist of funeral songs... the uillean pipes here are played by Davy Spillane. I remember seeing him play live a number of times... including in the band that played live at the Riverdance show I saw in the mid 1990s.
When I used to travel up to Skye for climbing trips this always went on in the car as we were driving through some of the more dramatic landscapes of the trip such as Glencoe or past Buachaille Etive Mòr. The album starts with 'The Lark' - a good set of tunes.
A couple years back I found myself kicking back in the rooftop garden of a Marrakech riad. It was within earshot of Jemaa el-Fnaa.
It was the afternoon and the smoky chaos that unfolds as the sun sets on Marrakech’s main square within the walled old city had not yet begun. On the riad’s sound system - on low volume but gently persistent - a culturally appropriate journey unfolded, a compilation of Arabic house music.
With the snow-capped Atlas Mountains off in the distance and just visible through the forest of palms, telephone masts, minarets and heat-haze, Arabic house music hit an hypnotic spot.
It certainly wouldn’t have been anything like what I was listening to when, in 1980 aged 18, I first visited Marrakech. It wasn’t Crosby, Still’s & Nash’s 1969 hippie anthem ‘Marrakesh Express’ but Bob Marley and the Wailers new album ‘Uprising’ that had been released a month earlier, so more of a ‘Zion Train’.
Not a huge amount has changed in Marrakech’s walled Medina over the years; it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Inside the monumental city walls the stunningly beautiful Koutoubiya Mosque overlooks the maze of covered allies, sudden sun-lit squares and walled gardens.
Yet nearly half a century on there are far better restaurants, cafes and riads but also the lasting visible damage of the 2023 Al Haouz earthquake; tumbled down houses, minarets supported by scaffolding and cracking stretched across many an ancient wall.
But what was this Arabic house music?
Signs of earthquake damage.
Shazam wasn’t up to telling me, and as the day progressed I forgot to ask at the riad’s reception. The moment passed.
And as the holiday passed snippets of similar sounds floated past me in the background at restaurants, from boom boxes in the street and in the chic cafes of the new city. Arabic house was clearly ‘a thing’ in Marrakech.
I’d started exploring Arabic influenced music decades back; probably first piqued by the Lebanese singer Dunya Yusin’s voice on Eno and Byrne’s 1981 ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’.
This really resonated with me fresh of the back off a month in North Africa. Then there was Jah Wobble, Natasha Atlas, Omar Faruk Tekbilek (although he was from Istanbul, Turkey) and Page and Plant’s excursions with a full Egyptian orchestra layering an Arabic sway across Led Zeppelin classics, the
album of which, ‘ No Quarter’ (1994), was recorded partly in Marrakech.
I even had a WOMAD inspired Algerian Rai phase and shook my booty to DJ Monkey Pilot and his Whirl-Y-Gig sound system (I’ve still got one of their t-shirts). But that was all more than a couple of decades back and so this smooth Arabic house defined by its use of some traditional Arabic music stylings and instrumentation, and added to a dose of the Balearics that was clearly rooted in the streets of North Africa, became the impetus for me to see what was out there, and what that compilation was.
A key aspect of Arabic music is that it crosses over a huge geographical area stretching from the clubs of Dubai to those of Casablanca and within that are regional differences drawing upon an area’s traditional music. Fortunately musicologists have mapped out the traditional sounds of just about everywhere but not necessarily what is new and bouncing in cafes and on folks’ phones.
Hats off to Rave Club Morocco Collective who are a one-stop shop, vertically integrated operation
dealing with everything from artist management and recording to party organising.
In Morocco a key source of inspiration has been the blend of Sub-Saharan African, Berber and Arabic influences such as Gnawa music, a traditional genre that has been elevated to being of UNESCO intangible cultural heritage importance.
Gnawa is famed for its live performance, which are often trance-like with the invocation of spirits and obviously drawing on traditions beyond Morocco’s predominantly Islamic culture. In Essaouira on the Moroccan Atlantic coast an annual Gnawa festival is held with leading artists such as Asmaa Hamzaoui performing both traditional Gnawa with its focus on the guembri, a camel-skin covered bass lute and qraqab, large metal castanets. Most evenings in Jemaa el-Fnaa several groups are playing Gnawa and that imbues the square with its evocative soundtrack whilst hungry locals eat, snake charmers charm, hustlers hustle and camels and tourists idle past.
Another side of Marrakech is to be found outside the walls of the medina; modern Marrakech with its wide boulevards, chic 5 star hotels and night clubs where the beautiful people party and leading the party today is Amine K, Marrakech resident, international DJ and perhaps the highest profile Arabic
House DJ around.
He has quite a distinct vibe, clearly ticking all the house music boxes but layered across it is a distinct Moroccan feeling created by dipping into the countries traditional Gnawa, Chaabi and Berber sounds.
After a fair bit of musical exploring I have come to the conclusion that the elusive house mix that my riad was playing, or something incredibly similar to it, is probably one of Café De Anatolia’s Arabic house mixes. There are plenty of these mixes on YouTube to choose from and they often come accompanied with some rather dramatic drone footage of Arabic landscapes from deserts to bustling
towns. Even if it isn’t one of these mixes they do take me right back to the frenetic bustle of Jemaa el Fnaa, the narrow lanes of Marrakech’s medina, the chic cafés of the new city, piercing sunlight and the lofty peaks of the high Atlas Mountain in the distance.
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.
This is an album which includes a lot of maps and the story of a journey which was due to span the globe but ended in tragedy.
The album concerns the final voyage of America’s pioneering female “aviatrix” Amelia Earhart.
In 1922, aged just 25, Earhart flew higher than any woman before her, and in the years that followed she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, setting multiple speed and distance records. In 1937 she announced that she would circumnavigate the globe in her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra aircraft. She crossed the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
She left Papua New Guinea to fly to Howland Island in the Central Pacific but never made it, instead ascending to the level of myth reserved for the bravest adventurers.
In the same year, Laurie Anderson also released an album about Amelia.
The latest in a series of blog posts from Carl Lee. I hope you are enjoying them as much as I am... this one starts on the coast of India back in the late 1980s, when I was just starting my teaching career.
From Goa to John Lewis
In 1988 I found myself heading south from Mumbai on the night-train to Panaji, the state capital of Goa on the west coast of India.
Goa had been a Portuguese enclave, once part of the ‘Estado da India’ that also covered trading ports from Gujarat (Diu) to Kerala (Cochin), with roots as far back as the early 16th century. On India gaining independence from the British Empire in 1947 Goa remained a part of Portugal until 1961 when the Indian army invaded and seized control.
Yet it was not until 1987 that Goa became a full state within India.
Since the late 1960s, Goa had been an integral part of the over-land hippie trail.
To some it was the final destination after Kabul, Kashmir and Kathmandu. An under-ground culture of beach-based hedonism developed, fuelled by hashish from the 3Ks.
I would be disingenuous if I did not admit at this point that such hedonism was part of the attraction of Goa as I headed south on the train, and the fact that it was one of the few places in India you could get a cheap cold beer.
Christmas was coming and Goa was beckoning.
I stayed for 6 weeks; co-renting an old, falling down, Portuguese colonial house from a nun, with its own well and ‘pig toilet’ (don’t ask). It was under a palm grove on the edge of the village of Vagator, a couple miles north of the ‘legendary’ beach resort of Anjuna with its hippie market and full moon parties. I was looking forward to going to a full-moon party and getting down to some Bob Marley, maybe a bit of soul and funk. What I wasn’t expecting was what I initially disparagingly called Italian electro-disco but later found out was some of the very early roots of acid house music. When was anybody going to put some reggae on?
In the quiet rural Goan nights, finding a party wasn’t difficult - just head towards the thumping beat. And it was that beat, a repetitive four on the floor 120 to 150BPM, which jarred my musical sensibilities. On the beach at Vagator parties kicked off at sunset and rolled on way past sunrise. In such matters I was seriously lightweight - I only knew that they went on post sunrise because they kept me awake, woke me up, or we’d bump into the spaced-out stragglers as we sauntered down to the beach for breakfast.
The disparate nationalities that were drawn to the Goan beach-party scene at that time were primarily European, a fair number of Australians and a surprisingly large Israeli contingent. Plenty of life’s flotsam; its damaged, its wayward, its idealistic and hedonistic was washing up on those Goan beaches but what they were listening too had legs way beyond the sand.
The mash-up of electro, house and trance sounds that were being explored by those pioneer Goa DJs proved to be influential on the birth of acid house and its multitude of sub-genres that blossomed in the UK from 1988 onwards. It even spawned its own sub-genre ‘Goa Trance’ which had a particularly strong following in Israel with acts such as Astral Projection, Infected Mushroom and Astrix to the fore.
Geographer Arun Saldanha’s 2007 book ‘Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race’ ethnographically deconstructs the Goa dance culture through the prism of a materialist theory of race, which Brown University academic Masha Hassan extended with her 2025 analysis entitled “India’s Right-Wing Raves: Hindutva, Zionism and Psychedelic Trance’.
You can waste an hour or so looking back on these Goan beach parties on You Tube with this one of ‘Goa trance party at Vagator, Goa 1992’ being pretty much as I remember, albeit four years previously.
Goa trance party at Vagator, Goa 1992
Wild abandon on the dance floor where nobody cared what shapes you were throwing, and tracks that went on and on until they changed and you had not really noticed. Look closely and you’ll see that this is broadly a ‘Western’ event with locals relegated to servicing events: chai, food and taxis.
The burgeoning dance music scene that exploded across the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s became a significant cultural game-changer as well as having significant social impacts. It was open, accepting and crossed ethnicities and classes.
It was not long before dance music escaped its under-ground transgressive vibe; the illegal raves in fields, warehouses, Castlemorton Common, SMS messages and the wave of ecstasy.
By the early 1990s dance music jumped up everywhere, the charts, in the high street clubs and was cemented in popular culture when Primal Scream’s 1991 album ‘Screamadelica’ won the inaugural 1992 Mercury Music Prize.
Here's the track 'Movin' on up'.
In 2025 the much-anticipated John Lewis Christmas television ad referenced those heady days of dance music frenzy to a generation now much more grown-up.
A father and his son on Christmas Day, hesitant around each other, make a connection through the gift of Alison Limerick’s 1990 floor-filler of a groove ‘Where Love Lives (Come On In)'.
A track artfully selected by John Lewis’s ad company for maximum emotional impact. The father drops the needle and is taken back to those hedonistic dance floors of the 1990s when optimism was still in the air. Limerick's track was so explosive at the time blowing up clubs all over the world that early acid house DJ Danny Rampling said of in 1992 ‘that it will still sound good in 20 years’, and he is not wrong.
Hear it for yourself with the classic club mix.
It’s a bit more melodic than the squelchy beats and bleeps of the early Goa raves but its connection with them is clear.
From spaced-out raver to ‘centrist dad’. It’s a journey many have probably made.
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.
Route One is available to stream on Spotify (and elsewhere)
It is available in various versions.
It's a promotional film for the new music by Sigur Ros, and was a 24 hour long continuous trip around the ring road which runs around Iceland. I watched it for the first few hours on and off, and the vehicle headed on familiar roads in the SW of the country close to Iceland. When I woke up, it had moved round to the East and the landscape was more rugged and the road surface poorer.
This was a wonderful way to spend a few hours listening to the continuous music… and watching Iceland roll by.
This is an excellent way to explore the landscape of Iceland, particularly the south coast - and the sections driven in better light.
The music is split into pieces which are named after a geographical location in latitude and longitude. Copy and paste these into Google Maps to see the place where the band had reached on their journey.
Through the year we will be marking anniversaries of events: some joyful and some immensely sad. The loss of this musician was particularly hard to take....
I count myself extremely lucky to have seen him perform many times since 1982. He always gave 100% and the musicality of his drumming was beyond parallel. I've seen many great drummers play live, and he was the best.
Here's one of my favourite Rush songs, which we will also return to later in the year because of its theme of alienation in the suburbs, or subdivisions:
He was a part of my life for over 40 years, and Rush have to be one of the bands that I have played the most whether on LP, CD or streamed on Spotify.
I was privileged to see Rush play live 7 or 8 times I think from 1982 onwards, to the final live gig I attended in Sheffield on the Time Machine tour in 2012 - I will always regret not seeing them on the Clockwork Angels tour now....
One of my favourite non-Rush videos is when Peart laid down a drum track for his friend Matt Scannell from the Australian band Vertical Horizon.
The enjoyment of Matt as his friend and hero plays drums for him is infectious, and the drum track is awesome.... There are so many Rush tracks I could embed here... but check this out next...
And then check out Red Barchetta live from that Time Machine tour that I saw.
Along with his music, he was a great traveller - particularly on motorbikes but also on bicycles and he wrote about his travels in a series of books, most of which I have. These were excellent travelogues and observations of people, although he was a very private person. He also wrote lengthy pieces for Rush tour programmes - some of which I still have in my collection of tour memorabilia.
In October 2025, we had an interesting announcement from Geddy and Alex...
I'll not be partaking of this particular musical moment.
Here's a well conceived tribute video from Hudson Music... gives a flavour of his legacy and drum technique.
