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Tom Waits – always in business
Song of the Day: After some sleep and dream songs, a lugubrious song by the inimitable raspy-voiced one is somewhere between surreal dream and nightmare, except it matches the chaos of recent events
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Suicide's Alan Vega and Martin Rev in 1979
Song of the Day: The dream goes on, but where might it lead next? Reaching into the power of nightmares and fantasies, an original by the US electro-punk duo of Alan Vega and Martin Rev from 1979 and two contrasting covers
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From the album cover of The Soft Machine (1968), featuring Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Ray Davies soaring sleep song performed by Marion, a more psychedelic take on different levels of consciousness by those Canterbury pioneers from their first album of 1968
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Pub mates and song collaborators Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Malcolm Middleton songs, let's dip into two by his old Arab Strap friend Aidan Moffat, here joining with Bill Wells, fellow songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with two dark and humorous numbers
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One of several sheet music versions of this popular song
Song of the Day: To mark the mixed weather of spring, let's turn back the clocks to offer out a bouquet, nay a spray, of various versions of this popular song written in 1921 by Louis Silvers with words by BG "Buddy" DeSylva
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Eartha Kitt in Las Vegas in the 1950s
Song of the Day: One flower-based song, three great voices doing their versions, all intense, intimate and intoxicating. Let's drink all of them in, interpreting this song written by James Shelton in 1950
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Minnie Riperton in 1971
Song of the Day: After our previous Manchester late-80s dance tracks, when flower power returned with a new chemical twist, we hark back to another petal-infused and influential song by the vocalist linked to our previous Rotary Connection selection
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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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