Hot Blood are a studio project born on the long wave of dance music that clouded the minds of the planet and that soon after will unexpectedly sink like the Titanic. In this case, to make up for the creativity of creating a competitive product on a market that to call saturated would be an understatement, here comes the brilliant idea of ​​bringing horror and specifically vampire themes to the dance hall. The highlight of this vinyl is certainly Soul Dracula: a sticky melody with a super danceable rhythm that still fascinates today in its wonderfully camp nature. It is 100%  cult!

Probably the best piece of recorded music selected for a television programme. Weekend World, a Sunday current affairs show, broadcast in Britain 70s/80s, featured a brief, explosive extract from Mountain’s Nantucket Sleighride, the title track of the US hard rocker’s 1971 hit album. Guitarist Leslie West resented playing it during the band’s early days because of the song’s complex changes, though in time he accepted it as the centrepiece of the band’s shows. Today, it’s widely regarded as a classic example of loud, ambitious early 70s rock.

Nina Simone at her most spellbinding, performing Four Women at a jazz festival in Antibes, 1969. Written in response to the bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, Four Women marked Simone’s emergence as a key figure in the Civil Rights movement, both for the African-American community and for women within that community.

Passion for blues-rock and irony are the main ingredients of this original mix made in Germany, just  waiting to be rediscovered (this video is really something). Positive energy and the ability to make good, solid rock music out of it are rare qualities.  Rockers'n' Lovers, his latest work, is a sincere album to be enjoyed. Quoting the Stones, who have always inspired him, time is truly on his side

No one sounded - or looked - like Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention during the mid-to-late 1960s. Famed for their iconoclastic brand of music, which stretched from doo wop to contemporary classical, they released albums full of studio trickery, such as rapid tape edits and varispeed. On stage, they also incorporated theatrics. Here Motorhead Sherwood plays tambourine - the 60s most underrated instrument - and pork luncheon meat - the era’s most ghastly ‘ready meal’.

November 30, 1968, The Dave Frost Show. The Stones make everyone disheveled with their iconic song. One of Brian Jones' last appearances. To be reverently enjoyed.

This is almost buried Radiohead treasure given that it sneaked out on the bonus disc that came with early copies of the 2007 album, In Rainbows. Originally demoed a decade earlier, around the time of OK Computer, what had begun as a band song was stripped bare for the studio version, with Thom Yorke’s piano and vocal doing all the hard work.m
Last Flowers starts out with one of the great modern opening lines - “Appliances have gone berserk” - sung-sighed over a simple, melancholy piano motif. That, together with acoustic guitar accompaniment, is what anchors Last Flowers; meanwhile, it’s Yorke’s vocal that takes the song forward, sucking the listener ever deeper into emotionally vexed territory. What makes the performance all the more remarkable is that for all Yorke’s wails of despair and sense of bereavement, lyric shafts of light, reinforced by brief passages of major scale uplift, bring hope and redemption to what otherwise might simply be a misery ballad - though a masterful one at that.

Deerhoof are playing Rome in February 2024. They’ve been going for more than 20 years and released more than 20 albums. Yet you may not know them, for they are one helluva band that are at once pop-melodic and math rock/experimental.
This is The Perfect Me. It is fast and furious and comes from their 2007 Friend Opportunity album. It will blow your mind with joy.

On the 12th April 1972, in the middle of the European leg of the tour, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band stopped off at the Beat Club studios in Bremen to film a session for later transmission. Let's enjoy it!