Buried Treasure

The love affair started with ‘Flaming Desire’. The single got played on the radio at least once, possibly more, and had me swooning with its propulsive rhythms, swirling synths and croonerish vocal – a weirder version of Blancmange, Yazoo on speed.

Robert Palmer passed away in 2003 at the shockingly young age of 54. A massively underrated artist who wrote and produced so many great songs, the fact that he died without much comment or celebration of his life was a crying shame.

Tangerine Dream have released a lot of albums. The German electronic pioneers were so prolific that nobody quite knows how many LPs there are, though it’s thought to be around 160, all told.

Given the world we live in now, you might think an album called ‘Messy Century’ would be a prescient political statement.

There are two types of Beatles fan in the world.

The track titles alone sound like long-lost episodes of early 1970s ‘Doctor Who’.

Serge Gainsbourg wrote music for lots of people.

My introduction to Wes Anderson’s ‘The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou’ began when a friend passed me the film, newly-released on DVD. “You are going to love this,” he said, excitedly.

Few music discovery anecdotes start with “I was rugby tackled by a man in a cinema because he liked my T-shirt”, but discovering Lancashire oddballs Element starts like that for me.

The trio of Dot Allison, Ian Carmichael and Jim McKinven released a solitary album. There was apparently a second, but it never saw the light.