It’s 1980 and Top of the Pops is on we had a lot of John Lennon videos after his terrible murder, ABBA still dominating and luckily for us all St Winifred’s School Choir had given us the joy of There’s No One Quite Like Grandma so a man dressed as a pirate with a white band of make-up painted across his nose made me sit up. My dad had died that year, and we spent a lot of time at my grandparents, and my grandad was not impressed by a man in make-up I seem to remember. I just

Eels had made a huge impression with their debut album so their record company must have been excited when the band delivered their second record. However, there was a problem lead man Mark Everett’s sister had committed suicide, his mum had terminal cancer and this brought up memories of him finding his father dead when he was just nineteen, they were not getting a party album. What they did get is sixteen songs delivered in under fifty minutes that showed the excellence of

So, @AdrianTudorDr asked me to review two records and first was The Housemartins, magic love them and listened many a time the other request was Oysterband, you know what’s coming, yep not got a clue. Usual read of the internet and they formed in 1976, so they have been around for the bare fifty years and I had no idea and they have released twenty four albums (they were previously known Oyster Ceilidh Band and Oyster Band) and their website is telling me that they have ret