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Manchester's Hacienda in 1988
Song of the Day: After yesterday's classic Orb track, another club classic, this time from 1988 and synonymous with the acid rave scene of Manchester's Hacienda, but also the offbeat sample Derek and Clive aka Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
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Rotary Connection, featuring Minnie Riperton and Charles Stepney (right).
Song of the Day: How to move from bluesy road tunes to this elaborate jazz-soul number at the peak of the psychedelic movement? Partly because this band also backed Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters
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Chet Baker - lost in music in the 1950s
Song of the Day: The world wide web will be awash with Valentine's songs today, so here's one too - a jazz standard but with a darker edge, embellished with extraordinarily beautiful trumpet and voice of Chet Baker
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Howling, growling, tenderly looming: Tom Waits is a moon poet
Song of the Day: On this day of this rare astronomical eclipse event, and after a series of other lunar-related songs, we come to an artist who has, across the course of his career, described this celestial body in around 100 different ways
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Over the moon and far away: Can in 1973 and their cover for the album Soon Over Babaluma
Song of the Day: Continuing the lunar theme, and extending to the outer limits of experimentalism after Moondog and Captain Beefheart, the sequence also ties in with the German band also highly influential on the late Mark E Smith
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Moondog in Manhattan
Song of the Day: After Captain Beefheart, could there be any musical figure more influential, eccentric, strange and innovative? Louis Thomas Hardin, aka the Viking figure who for years silently stalked New York's 6th Avenue, is a strong contender
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Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet – musician, artist, visionary.
Song of the Day: With the recent passing of The Fall's Mark E Smith, and all the songs, tributes and stories that have followed, it now seems only appropriate to follow up with music Smith loved by one of his major influences
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Hugh Masekela, 1939-2018
Song of the Day: A triple tribute to the sadly departed but hugely influential South African trumpeter, composer, singer, cornet and flugelhorn player, and leading anti-apartheid campaigner
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Amy Winehouse
Song of the Day: The voice, the lyrics and the timing – tears don't get much more moving than this – a double from the much missed singer who had many downs, but undoubtedly hit the heights with her Back to Black album of 2006
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Frank Zappa: masterful, mischievous invention
Song of the Day: How could there a more joyful, eccentric, evocative and infinitely inventive opener than this, on album described by Zappa as "a movie for the ears" – 1969's Hot Rats?
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Ella Fitzgerald
Song of the Day: It had to be this for 31 December, with that divine voice in a 1960 recording, originally written by Frank Loesser in 1947. Looking forward and back, in gorgeous melancholy. Happy 2018, everyone.
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From Atlantic single cover, 1962.
Song of the Day: For those facing what is often an arduous, weather-affected journey, travelling home after a Christmas visit, or waiting for their beloved to return with this 1962 classic
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Chrome Hoof. From another time, another place …
Song of the Day: Another selection made on the hoof, and today we're really pushing to the outer reaches of experimentation with the strange fusion of dance, psychedelia, prog-rock, jazz and electronica provided by London group from their second album, 2007's Pre-Emptive False Rapture
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A Tribe Called Quest's original quartet
Song of the Day: Two superb tracks that span the career one of the genre's most revered groups, from 1991's album The Low End Theory to 2016's We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service
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The Pharcyde. 1992-95 was a golden age for hip hop.
Song of the Day: Two songs from the first half of the 1990s, for many still the golden age of hip hop, exemplified by the innovative south central Los Angeles rappers who also worked with J Dilla
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From the video for Let There Be Horns
Song of the Day: Echoing yesterday's great drum break, let's now celebrate the work of the Ohio multi-instrumentalist and hip-hop artist, who is behind the theme tune to Mad Men, and so much more
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Nat King Cole
Song of the Day: The opening vocals and style of yesterday's 3WW by alt-J, "There was a wayward lad" may spark a musical echo, this beautiful 1948 recording by the jazz pianist and singer, written by the original 'hippie' eden ahbez
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Fats Domino
Song of the Day: A tribute to the sadly departed New Orleans pianist, and singer and songwriter, who reached the ripe old age of 89. This more-than-appropriate number for today was co-written with composer and arranger Dave Bartholomew, released in 1955, and, while a sad song, still exemplifies the joyful charisma and technique of the great performer
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From the cover of Nicolette's album Let No-One Live Rent Free in Your Head
Song of the Day: Alongside Tricky, another collaborator who appeared on Massive Attack's 1994 album Protection, Scottish/Nigerian Londoner Nicolette Love Suwoton's slightly forgotten gem from her brilliant second LP Let No-One Live Rent Free in Your Head, is a sensual mix of electronica, pop, jazz and and trip-hop, yearning for an apolitical utopia
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Dick Dale with the Del-Tones in 1962 with his left-hand Fender Stratocaster
Song of the Day: From a mysterious 19th-century Egyptian song via jazz piano, easy listening to the king of surf guitar, from Dick Dale to the Bikini Beach band, let's trace the history of this tremendous tune
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