The dawning of a new year
January 2, 20122011 has been amazing year for me : a year in which I’ve returned to my musical roots, and discovered whole new territories.
Two magnificent gigs at the Liverpool Sound City festival played a part. Seeing Frank Turner at the Cathedral Crypt inspired my Folk Punk 2011 podcast, and thrashing along with Black Lips encouraged me to research my 66 greatest raw & raucous garage rock tunes of all time.
Folk punk and garage rock were to be represented in my end year list, alongside a wide range of folk, blues, bluegrass, country and world music – all stuff that I’d been researching intensively throughout the year for my Vintage Radio roots music programmes. If you’ve not yet seen my 100 songs of 2011 I hope you’ll check it out : there’s a lot of great music, a fair portion of which you’re unlikely to have seen anywhere else.
As 2011 came to a close I assembled a podcast of UK indie & punk from the 1980s. Again this was a real labour of love, revisiting so much of the music that I was into back then, and being reminded of just how good some of it was.
So what can you expect to see on here in 2012 ? I’ve got no route map : it depends on what inspires me. I’ll be looking to bring you some of the best new music as well as sharing with you my journeys into the past. On my 50th birthday in February I’ll be hosting a gig in Liverpool and I hope to find plenty more north west bands and artists that I can promote on this site. I shall be making plenty of use of spotify playlists as well as downloadable podcasts. And I’ll probably pack in the mp3 corner and instead make more frequent blog posts about new music (which may or may not include free mp3s).
