JohnVicarysMusicPassions

The great late George Michael had many great songs but this one is as good as it gets From the album Listen Without Prejudice - Praying For Time 1990

There She Goes by The La.s from 1991

1964 The Ronettes Be My baby

Continuing my daily quest to find great songs - 1964 The Zombies She's Not There featuring Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent

A huge hit in the UK by a unknown band - Thunderclap newman rose to the top of the charts in 1969 with Something In The Air

1969 Isley Brothers Behind A Painted Smile What a great song

A huge hit in the UK Everlasting Love by The Love Affair in 1968

1967 Psychedelic rock explodes Cometh The Small faces Huge hit Itchycoo Park- Wow My song for the day featuring Steve Marriott on gtr and vocals

My choice today is Out Of Time by Chris Farlowe a big hit in 1966

Motown in the sixties was life was the best and my choice today is The Four Tops from 1965 and their smash hit Reach Out & I'll Be There

Today I have chosen a song from 1965 = that gorgeous R&B ballad by The Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Loving Feeling

Songs I love from 1973 - hear them all and wallow in nostalgia and memories OR for younger music fans soak up the quality of these 10 gems

Another classic from 1964 The Animals and their huge hit The House Of The rising Sun

Back to the sixties Gloria by Them featuring Van Morrison from 1964

My song today is Hallelujah by Jeff Bucley from his album Grace released in 1994 Jeff Buckley "Hallelujah" Well, I heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? Well it goes like this: The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah...Leonard Cohen Well your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya She tied you to her kitchen chair She broke your throne and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah... Well, baby, I've been here before I've seen this room and I've walked this floor (you know) I used to live alone before I knew ya And I've seen your flag on the marble arch And love is not a victory march It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah... Well, there was a time when you let me know What's really going on below But now you never show that to me, do ya? But remember when I moved in you And the holy dove was moving too And every breath we drew was Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah... Maybe there's a God above But all I've ever learned from love Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya And it's not a cry that you hear at night It's not somebody who's seen the light It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah... Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah... Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah

Herbie Hancock released the album Possibilities in 2005 and invited musical elite to join him on a duet's album - This song captured at The Grammys features Herbie with Christina Aquillera and is a version of Leon Russell's song "A Song For You" It's my track of the day

On American Independance Day my song is by Prefab Sprout from their second album Steve mcQueen relesed in 1985 - Song When Love Breaks Down Album Review Steve McQueen (Deluxe Edition) Kitchenware; 1985/2007 By Stephen Trouss; August 29, 2007 8.6 Tracklist 1 Faron Young 2 Bonny 3 Appetite 4 When Love Breaks down 5 Goodbye Lucille # 6 Hallelujah 7 Moving The river 8 Horsin’ Round 9 Desire As 10 Bluebery Pies 11When The Angels In another time, in another place, Paddy McAloon might have been happily productive somewhere between the Algonquin and Broadway in 1930s New York ("I want to be," he once crooned, hopefully, "the Fred Astaire of words.") Or beavering away in an office in the Brill Building in the 50s. Or maybe some place on that off-kilter middle of the road between Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb in the 60s. Almost anywhere, you might have thought, other than Britain in the mid-80s. Some hard-hearted professors of pop would have it that 1985 was the absolute nadir of British music: all the fizz of new pop gone flat, the independent scene a twee shambles. Yet in records such as the Blue Nile's A Walk Across The Rooftops, the Pet Shop Boys' Please, Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, Scritti's Cupid and Psyche 85, and especially in Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen, you have some of the most beautiful, enduring British pop music ever made. For a year or two, just before Live Aid and Q magazine, the challenge of making new pop for grown-ups without being dowdy, smug, or jaded was met, quite superbly. It's this guile and grace that bands like Stars and Junior Boys still yearn for. The Sprout-- it's ironic that a writer so fleet-footed lumbered himself with such a clunking band name-- had debuted in 1984 with Swoon, a record that suggested they were post-graduates of the Glasgow School, taking the Postcard label template to new levels of cryptic wit and elliptical jangle. But as McAloon made plain, his ambitions were far grander. He aspired to the standards of Stephen Foster, Gershwin, Sondheim, Quincy Jones, McCartney; saw himself as a contemporary of Prince rather than Lloyd Cole. He had a grand sense of pop music, and in 1985, that kind of grandeur seemed to be available via producers like Thomas Dolby. McAloon has said that Steve McQueen is Dolby's record-- he presented the producer with a vast archive of songs and asked him to choose his favorites. Yet this is true most obviously in the profoundly 80s sonic palette. Rather wonderfully and typically, it seems that Dolby even chose to play the banjo on the opening track, the country pastiche "Faron Young", via a Fairlight sampler. And the presence on this new reissue of an additional disc of acoustic versions of the songs-- which took longer to record than the original-- suggests that McAloon now feels embarrassed, as though the production has dated or even damaged his songs. I think he needn't be so bashful; one of the defining qualities of the record is its pop ambition, its willingness to engage with its times, precisely by not being a sullen singer-songwriter would-be timeless classic. Imagine if Sinatra had decided that Nelson Riddle's arrangements tied his albums to closely to the early 50s. According to this additional disc, Steve McQueen might have been some perfectly prim and pleasant Go-Betweeny acoustic curio, rather than how it ended up: the kind of record you imagine Elvis Costello might have made had he been signed to ZTT and been ensconced in a studio with Trevor Horn. One thing the new versions do highlight is the astonishing maturity of the songs. Coincidentally, almost all of Dolby choices dated from 1979, when Paddy was 22. Yet they sound all the more appropriate sung by a man of 50. "Life's not complete, 'til your heart's missed a beat," he sighed on "Goodbye Lucille #1", but now when he sings "and you'll never get it back," his voice breaks with the wisdom of another two decades. Ironically, considering the producer's name, it's a record in so many ways about infidelity. Or let's say about the consequences of romanticism. Take that cover: Paddy, looking like a dreamy young D.H. Lawrence, astride the kind of Triumph that would have carried the record's namesake to freedom. But the whole album rails against easy escapism: "Appetite", sung from the perspective of a girl left to bring up the baby of some young firebrand; "Desire As" seeing no escape from a lifetime of new flames; the rueful regrets of "Bonny". And maybe I'm too much a child of those times myself, but it still sounds great to me: the glittering guitar that opens "Goodbye Lucille", the 10cc/ZTT moments of "When Love Breaks Down". Even Wendy Smith's gaseous backing vocals, haunting the record like the ghost of Hayley Mills. In fact it seems to me that instead of stripping back the songs from their 80s incarnations, the additional disc could have more profitably commissioned some original covers. McAloon was, after all, the original Stephin Merritt, so there's no reason why he shouldn't have his own Sixths. You can imagine these songs performed by, oh, Marianne Faithfull, Bryan Ferry, Will Young, Kylie Minogue, Rufus Wainwright, or Antony Hegarty. A handful of these songs have the quality of standards: there's no reason why their real after-life shouldn't begin now.

One of my all time favourite guitar tracks Loan Me A Dime by Boz SCaggs from his debut album released in 1969 featuring Duane Allman

Albums that I downloaded in January with one track for you to listen to from each selection Gruff Rhys Sadness Sets Me Free Track Sadness Sets Me Free 5:23 Sarah Jaroscz Polaroid Lovers Track Jealous Moon 4:25 The Smile Wall Of Eyes Track Read The Room 5:14 Kula Shaker Natural Magik Track Chura Liya (You Stole My Heart) 3:57 Orquídeas, Kuli Orchis Track Te Mata

Back to 1968 - The British band The Kinks released the odly titled Arthur or The Decline and Fall Of The British Empire - This is Victoria

My favourite Bob Dylan album - I ain't a big fan but Street Legal I bought in 1978 and this track Is Your Love In Vain is great

A great song by The Doors 1971 Their last album LA woman and you've guessed it Riders On The Storm

My choice is by Elvis Costello and the Attractions from 1978 album This Year's Model and a song called Little Triggers

I loved The Eagles - My favourite album of theirs is Desperado released in 1873 and the song for the day is Outlaw Man Enjoy!

No One To Depend On by Santana from The Third Album released in 1971