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Keyboard lollypops: Classic Hohner melodicas
This simple mouthpiece-and-keyboard reed-free aerophone has an analogue charm that can bring a surprise solo or drone texture to a song. But where does it appear and when does it work best?
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Is this your town? Hit the streets and let the music play …
A huge subject, population, history and rich culture, how can you capture this great city in song? Londoner MussoliniHeadkick presents a fabulous set of lists spreading far and wide, especially south and east, inspired by last week’s topic
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Reflections on the Thames, Westminster - by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1880)
From inner London’s famous sites to the suburbs, its a melting pot of people, culture and music, of fame and fortune, fires, pioneers and history’s rebuilding. It’s time to go metropolitan and capture this great city in song
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Anoushka Shankar’s family tree traces through the sitar’s sound
Indian classical to the ‘67 Summer of Love, psychedelia and into the beyond, this beguiling instrument has coloured eastern and western music for decades. Guest playlister Nicko plucks out many magical sounds from last week’s theme
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Crossing cultural boundaries: Ravi and daughter Anoushka Shankar
What’s that sound? It is most associated with a master of Indian classical, but this week we also explore how the sitar has crossed into western and other genres, including electric and electronic recreations
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All the big current seven on one postcard, but how many make it into view in songs, as well as many others?
Is it your lifetime ambition to visit them all? But what about those of the Ancient World, not longer around? Inspired by last week’s topic, guest playlister ShivSidecar takes us on a wonderful musical journey through time and geography …
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Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza
Ancient or modern, long gone or still standing, man-made or even natural, these sites are monuments that inspire universal awe and imagination, and bring us together. But how are they captured in song?
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What’s Gorn on here, then? Kirk and a famous old foe …
It’s time to boldly go beyond our planet to explore songs about and inspired by other planets, stars and galaxies, real or those of science fiction, and ideally those are imagined to be, or were once inhabited
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Aesop Rock, master of the mini sub-claws …
It’s a creative, freeflowing form that may well be as much crafted as straight from the imagination, but also one that distorts narrative and logic. Inspired by last week’s nominations, guest ajostu presents an associative, brainstorming set of lists with a real ‘vibe’
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A rare moment of peace for Marilyn Monroe’s restless mind - reading James Joyce’s Ulysses at Long Island, in 1955
It’s a literary narrative technique capturing our chaotic minds and random flow of thought processes, often with non-linear sense of time, free association, saturated with sensory experiences with strange rhythms, but how is it used in song?
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Time for some picks …
African to bluegrass, Haitian to jazz, classics to the unexpected, this resonant instrument has a long history. Guest of the week Uncleben brings the fast and the melodious in a set of fabulous picks inspired by last week’s topic
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Banjo player, 1856 by William Sidney Mount
It may immediately make you think of The Beverly Hillbillies or Deliverance, but this bright, resonant, plucky instrument has a long history with origins in another continent, and spans many stories, cultures and genres
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A carpet of cherry blossom
Fleeting but spectacular, their mutable beauty is annually inspirational, and with ideas budding from last week’s theme, guest of the week ParaMhor picks a splendid spread of musical colour
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Sakura saturation: a cherry blossom avenue
Their brevity very much integral to their beauty, they are simple yet also complex in their burst of colour. These flowers of stone fruit trees have been inspiration for artists, poets and songwriters for centuries
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Spin the music: this week’s playlists pull in a swirl of superb stories
Yaaaaar, me hearties! Troubled waters to dire straits, the world is full of hazardous seas from bad weather to human folly and war. Inspired by last week’s topic nominations, guest Captain Marconius tells many a rich tale with his canticle pickings …
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Strait of Hormuz …
Filled with stories, history, myth, trade, and conflict, these potent stretches of water sometimes connect two seas or basins, continents, cultures and east and west, and are filled with danger. So how does song capture these many passages, channels and sounds?
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The incomparable Fela Kuti
Famous classical composers to a certain theoretic physicist, as well as a wealth of unusual skilled people, this week guest Loud Atlas takes a sparklingly talented turn picking playlists from from the latest topic and song nominations
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Christ on a bike! There’s always one …
Cultural counting as a figure of superstition and bad luck, it can also have other associations, but whether number, name, place, amount, date, age or more, this week it’s time find your significant thirteens in song as we head through a new Friday 13th
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Zeugma and more … Elvis Costello & The Attractions
It’s a figure of speech in which a word applies to two or more others in different senses, giving a concise form of wordplay. Inspired by last week’s topic nominations, guest playlister magicman picks out many sparkling examples and more
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The yoke’s on you, Dad …
On this celebration day of the written word, let’s embrace the many songs which lyrically use a word to govern two or more other words or phrases in a line or sentence. It comes from the Ancient Greek meaning "a yoking together". Time to pull out words and pints …
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