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Get on the retro (dance) floor …
This week we look back to look forward with artists who wrote new songs with a style from the past, ignoring their zeitgeist and harking back to a former era or decade though musical stylings, choice of instruments, lyrics and more
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Handing out key advice …
Reported or direct, the practical or philosophical, the benevolent or biased, critical or contradictory, from parent to child, expert to novice, or general, this week it’s all about useful instruction, ignored or taken and ideally as detailed and unusual as possible
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Koko Taylor: fun at work …
From various locations – in the bar, on the beach, down the street, and many forms – reggae to soul, rock to new wave. From a huge wave of fun nominations guest picker Olive Butler has a blast with brilliant set of playlists
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Jumping for joy? Goats. See the brown one? Reminds me of when I was a kid …
It comes in so many forms that this week’s topic has to mention fun, or its synonyms specifically, from getting your kicks to seeking your pleasure or leisure, frolic or merrymaking, carousing or joy. Let the games begin!
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The great guitarist Peggy Jones, aka Lady Bo - vastly underrated and in the shadow of her beau, Bo Diddley
Picked from a vast array of suggestions, 24 excellent artists from the past and present, hidden or strangely unsuccessful, emerge into our spotlight and become happily less undervalued, thanks to two superbly inspired playlists by guest Nilpferd
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Now they all come together …
They’re big, and fierce, and beautiful; unpredictable, wild and exhilarating. And that’s not just those big, stripy cats. We’re also talking about this amazing ambush of playlists, picked from a wild jungle of brilliant suggestions by guest Severin
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Welcome to the Bar, says the Siberian
As myth or monster, pet or predator, symbol of beauty, death or power, tigers fire the imagination with their looks and behaviour. But how do they spring out of the musical jungle, literally or metaphorically?
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How to putt it? Fiddling while Rome burns …?
Whether genuine or feigned, in love, politics or the natural world, it’s as all-pervasive as gravity, and with a pulling power just as immense. So tugging against it, what bigger form of attention-seeking is there than writing and performing a song? But how do songs deal with indifference?
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The tide has brought in John Cooper Clarke …
Highs and lows to ebbs and flows, literal, littoral and metaphorical, specific locations, mudflats and estuaries, wildlife, mudlarking, shorelines and coasts, this week it’s all about the movement of water in and out, and what that is all about
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Don’t kid yourself. Secret necking …
Cheatin’ hearts to stray cats, liars and game players, this week it’s all about the drama, dalliances, the deceit, the sexy secrecy and risk, the partial or unfolding perspectives, repression, sacrifice, romance or the full tragic, explosive reveal
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It’s no illusion: Imagination becomes reality at this week’s Song Bar body politic
Affectionate punches to bootylicious body talk, blank expressions and other bodily connections, after waves of physical communication from Song Bar nominations, guest pejepeine’s big gesture is to pick perfect playlists
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Elvis. Introduced a whole new language of hip …
Involuntary or practised, revealing or hidden, this week from waving to winking, leaning the lying, aggression and domination to love and tenderness, let’s look out for songs that express these gestures in titles or lyrics
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Flesh out the music? Things are getting extra mouthy …
Downright scary, but also popular, are they society’s ills eating itself, or its ills eating society? Spanning the globe, with tasty flavours and takes from the UK to the US, Latin countries, Japan and the Caribbean, guest playlister Marco den Ouden takes a brilliantly big bite
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It’s our Fifth Birthday. Take a slice …
Five years! To celebrate, this special topic is both literal and metaphorical, the mechanism that makes us click, capturing the magic of the coin-operated machine that expresses our bar-based love of music in song choices
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The march of progress …
There are different perspectives of looking at the two-steps-forward, one-step-back dance of history. Cul-de-sacs to cowardly reverses, let’s explore songs where going backwards in life can be good, bad, or a mixture
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Billy Mackenzie: a life on the edge
From a thin razor to wide borders on the fringes of the world, from mental thresholds to frenzied fault lines, all inspired by many nominations on last week’s topic guest playlister Maki takes the topic to the musical cutting edge
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Blow by blow: Greek god of the wind Aeolus
It's time to catch a breather. Singers or instrumentalists, acoustic sounds or artificial effects, inhaling or exhaling, this week it's all about the sounds, involuntary or otherwise, of air passing before, after or or sometimes during notes
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Portrait of Laurence Sterne by Joshua Reynolds, 1760. Sterne’s revolutionarily divergent meta-novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, became a huge influence on great 20th century novelists from James Joyce to Italo Calvino and Thomas Pynchon
In the spirit of Laurence Sterne’s wonderfully original novel, and inspired by a hive mind of nominations, guest guru Uncleben embarks on a marvellous meandering journey of deliberate divergence to explore a self-referential mirror-hall of lyrical meta
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Getting right into each other: ABBA
Songs about themselves. Does this sound loopy? You’re right. It’s all about the self-referential to any aspect of a songs’s own music, structure, instruments, format, lyrics and more. Droste effect? Mirroring? It’s all about the song
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And this bird must sing …
Hope, fear, dreams, resolutions, giving the finger to 2020, but a welcome thumbs up to 2021? However you feel about this new chapter in the calendar of our lives, it’s time to express it in the form of song suggestions
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