Gabor Szabo - Stormy

Hungarian guitarist makes smooth, summery version of Classics IV's - er - classic. Perfect for sunny London spring day. The whole album, 1969, is great, by the way.

The Marathons - Peanut Butter

Crazy instrumental - and very cheaply made, by the sounds of it.

Blab Happy - Never No More

Yet more Blab Happy action on YouTube. Bit of a curate's egg, this song, though it does have some nice harmonies and chiming 12-string in the outro

The Seeds - Pushing Too Hard

Sky Saxon and The Seeds get intense on a show called The Mothers In Law. The last word in mid-60s garage rock. One of the commenters says they'd go back to 1966 at the drop of a hat. I know what they mean.

Jacques Dutronc - Les Cactus

Another great freak-out (thanks again Phil). Who says the French can't do rock/pop?

The Mops

Find out about them via WFMU's Beware of the Blog. They were part of the Japanese answer to western beat groups - "group sounds". I love the lyrics of I'm A Mops: "I don't care about that / Cos I'm just a Mops!"

In this clip from the later 60s they rock out in an agreeable MC5-ish way.

Blab Happy - Inside Out

Someone unknown to me or drummer Jez has put this on YouTube, and said nice things about us ...

Bo Diddley RIP

Reflecting on Bo Diddley after reading various obits and appreciations today, it’s clear that his contributions to rock’n’roll were mighty and many.

He pioneered the use of electric guitar effects: “reverb! Tremelo! Distortion!” marvels the Washintgon Post today.

He presaged gansta rap with his boastful and often lewd lyrics – his very first record was called “Bo Diddley” and his own name was a recurring theme. His only US top 40 hit, “Say Man”, was one of many duets with his female vocal foil, Norma-Jean Wofford aka The Duchess – unusually, he had women in his band. Other tracks saw him trading good-humoured insults with his sideman Jerome Green.

Plus: he looked great! That square guitar. And in his heyday, he out-wiggled Elvis, apparently. The cover of Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger (1964) is one of the all-time great LP sleeves (I recall gazing awestruck at it when Ray's Jazz had it on the wall in their old Shaftesbury Avenue home).

As if that wasn’t enough, in 1957 he played guitar on Wyatt Earp by the Marquees, a Washington vocal group featuring a young Marvin Gaye. He also played tour support for the Rolling Stones in 1964 and the Clash in 1979 – groups who covered his songs included the Yardbirds, the Who and the Pretty Things (who based their whole approach on Bo).

But above all – or more accurately beneath all, there’s the Bo Diddley beat: bomp-pa bomp-pa bomp, bomp-bomp. There can’t be many artists who’ve invented their own rhythm. And what a primal, propulsively sexy beast the Bo Diddley rhythm is. Here are some records (not necessarily endorsed by 50p Bloke) that owe their existence to Bo’s beat:
• Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away
• (Maries the Name) His Latest Flame by Elvis Presley
• Johnny Otis's Willie and the Hand Jive
• I Want Candy by The Strangeloves
• Magic Bus by The Who
• 1969 by the Stooges
• How Soon Is Now by the Smiths
• Faith by George Michael
• U2's Desire
• Bruce Springsteen's She's the One

If anyone can think of any more, please post a comment below.

Tyrone Davis - Can I Change My Mind

Can I Change My Mind was Tyrone Davis’s finest moment, a life-affirming record. Davis’s heartbreaking vocal reaches the emotional extremes but avoids histrionics – a masterclass in true soul singing. The golden rule: don’t over-emote.

Carl Davis’s warm production was responsible for some terrific Chicago soul in the late 60s, including gems by Young Holt Unlimited, Barbara Acklin but with a loping, jittering guitar line and buoyant brass courtesy of Carl Davis’s house band, Pieces of Peace.

Davis was never cool enough to hit pop paydirt; he was 30 when Can I Change My Mind was released. But he is, to my mind, the finest soul singer bar none.

I first heard Tyrone Davis via an esteemed former colleague at PA, Andy Lemon, who kindly made me a series of treasured compilation tapes (this was the era of cassettes) containing some highlights of his impeccable record collection.

Kraftwerk 1973

Me and the lovely Mrs 50p Bloke saw Kraftwerk in 2004 at the Brixton Academy. Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter were the only two from the classic 'Werk line-up. But reading I Was A Robot by Wolfgang Flür, it's clear that it was always Ralf and Florian's band. And Kraftwerk live are still simply phenomenal, and in fact seem to have spent the last 20 years simply honing and fine-tuning their gizmos to deliver the hits as technologically perfectly as possible. In that respect, it's probably a better show now that it was in their 70s-80s pomp.

But even if Kraftwerk are a two-man operation, it's Interesting to see this clip from 1973, which shows them minus Karl Bartos, who was yet to join, and also without the mid-20th century animations and graphics. The newly-joined Flür is there, though, nervously tapping his homemade electronic drum pads. He describes the excitement he felt at this performance in his book - required reading for any Kraftwerk enthusiast, despite the comments posted by YouTube viewers.