Category: Off the Beaten Tracks

LAST week we left Dr Feelgood in the early 1970s playing their first gigs together in the area around their native Canvey Island. In those early days there were three … Continue readingThe Feelgoods Factor Part 2

THIS week we paddle our battered time-travelling canoe into the Thames Delta of the 1960s, to visit that strange part of Essex known as Canvey Island. Although it is mainly … Continue readingThe Feelgoods Factor

LAST week we left the Beach Boys on the crest of a wave with Pet Sounds, an album which changed the face of popular music in 1966. Brian Wilson’s next project … Continue readingThe Beach Boys come of age: Part 2

WHILE their early hit songs about surfing and girls have their charm, the Beach Boys don’t really interest me until 1966. That was when Pet Sounds changed the face of pop music. … Continue readingThe Beach Boys come of age

FOR the hard-up music lover in the late Sixties and early Seventies, budget-priced sampler albums were heaven-sent. For just a few bob you could travel through a record label’s roster … Continue readingThe joy of samplers

THE description ‘laid back’ could have been invented for Michael Nesmith. He turned up to an audition for the Monkees on his motorbike carrying his dirty laundry in a sack … Continue readingMichael Nesmith, country heir

ALTHOUGH the folk-rock group Trees failed to sell a lot of records during their short lifetime, many rail travellers will be familiar with the sound of their vocalist Celia Humphris. … Continue readingThe roots of Trees

THERE are some striking parallels between Britain’s Nick Drake, whose profile I concluded last week, and the American Townes Van Zandt. Both were born into wealthy families in the 1940s and enjoyed … Continue readingTalk of the Townes

AT the end of my second column about Nick Drake, he was dead from a drug overdose at the age of 26 having spent his final months in self-imposed squalor. How … Continue readingNick Drake: Now we rise

I HAVE often seen it claimed that side two of In the Land of Grey and Pink by Caravan is the peak achievement in all of Seventies progressive music. I can’t disagree. … Continue readingTo Hatfield, via Caravan