...oh with a sausage, have you ever been to Liverpool!!?

I have no idea what it means or why it's a brilliant lyric for the song. It just is.

Any more examples of meaningless words that hit the ball out of the park?

The Stranglers - London Lady

A happy Monday to you all. I came upon this little gem today and thought I would share it with you.

Sensitive playing by all (even Cozy), with special mention for bass player Clive Chaman. Enjoy

Apparently rock riff-master Tony Iommi has been diagnosed with lymphoma, so it looks like he has a battle ahead of him.

His Black Sabbath bandmates - with whom he has recently been reunited to record a new album - have asked for fans to send ''positive vibes''

I wonder if rock and roll bands will still be given the same reverence they are today, and whether Brazilian concert-goers will still go crazy ape-shit for the music of three Canadian geezers:

Yes it is 2012 where I am - Happy New Year everyone!

I just read that legendary blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin died at the weekend. As the man responsible for classic blues riffs (eg Smokestack Lightning) that inspired many of our own guitar heroes, we ought to pay our respects.

RIP Hubert

I bought an iPod for a friend and loaded thousands of tracks onto it in the summer. I've just added some more via iTunes but I when I check the pod's music list, only the new music appears. I fear I may have sync'd it wrongly and erased the whole bloody lot. The iPod is sync'd to the same desktop computer as when I originally loaded it.

I have looked on the net and there are sites offering software that claims to be able to retrieve lost songs. Do they work, or does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks

The Word’s commander of coding Fraser Lewry moved among us last night, joining Word Readers Austin, Nick, Steve and Andy for an evening of music and rugby banter.

Steve told of his time working on NZ music magazine Rip It Up. Andy revealed the climactic effects of listening to Basement Jaxx at the Big Day Out. Several Pironis later, Austin’s love for Depeche Mode and Gary Numan was undimmed. We discussed the hazards of swapping trousers with John Bonham; Rob Fitzpatrick’s Rush Pig and how, for children of a certain age, Ron Mael was Hitler.

All of which left little time to discuss the rugby, or if Mike Tindall should invite some dwarves round to meet the family. We did agree, though, that for the purist, the only acceptable RWC final is New Zealand v Wales.

Here’s a photo of our little gathering

l to r: Steve, Austin, Andy, Fraser and Nick

El Hombre's Kraftwerk thread has prompted me to post this, since I discovered it only today.

I have been listening to this album (Angel's Egg) for nearly 40 years and so it's kind of bizarre to suddenly find there is footage from the time of them actually playing it. Wonderful stuff.

I am just filling in an application for a China visa. The company I am using to process this is called 'Visa Butler'.

It's got me wondering whether they chose the name as a tribute to 'Geezer' Butler, the bass player of heavy rock pioneers Black Sabbath.

and I'm sure there must be other examples out there.

We appear to be going through a phase of reconciliation between artists.

I have just been reading about how the famous literary feud between Paul Theroux and V.S. Naipaul has come to an end, after they shook hands and spoke, for the first time in 15 years, at the Hay Festival.

Earlier, I watched, with a lump in my throat, as David Gilmour appeared atop The Wall at Roger Waters' O2 show.

And then there is the apparent rapprochement between Ian Brown and John Squire.

So Massive, which other artists should get over themselves and realise life is too short to hold a grudge?

No, this is not a confession of mid-life infidelity and how my life has unraveled. Just a trivial tale about the fatal demise of one of my favourite records.

Having rediscovered the joys of vinyl, I find that the back cover of Something/Anything by Todd Rundgren has been badly marked by being pressed against the zipper on the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers.
(younger readers, if they've bothered to read this far, may care to note that the jeans on the original album had a proper metal zipper).

Worse, because the zip handle protrudes so much, it has marked the vinyl and has rendered the track Torch Song (a beautiful ballad) unplayable.

So if you have an old copy of Sticky Fingers, you might want to make sure it’s not doing similar damage to one of your favourites.

The photo here shows the impression of the zip rising up through Todd's chin and the more serious damage done to his eye. What a pisser.

I had Quadrophenia on the turntable today. It sounds great, especially "I'm One"; Townshend nailing the upstart Mod's need to be seen as a Face.

My teenage children are going through that whole thing of agonising over how distressed their jeans should be. So it seems fitting to have a thread about that adolescent need to be cool, or at the very least, to have the right clothes.

Any suggestions?

For most people who were young in the early 1960s, their first exposure to jazz would have been hearing Dave Brubeck's Take Five on the radio. And for anyone who, like me, went on to become a drummer, Joe Morello's swinging rhythms and melodic sensibility would have been a formative influence.

RIP Joe

It is many years since I last put a vinyl LP on a record deck. But having just acquired a turntable I went out yesterday and bought some albums. There's an excellent second hand emporium nearby and with the half hour I had to browse, I picked up the following:

Troubadour - JJ Cale
The Hissing of Summer Lawns - Joni Mitchell
Wind & Wuthering - Genesis
Show Some Emotion - Joan Armatrading
Boston - first album
Dancing In The Dragon's Jaws - Bruce Cockburn

So, vinyl fans, what are the albums that really stand out for you as an audio experience?

In HD no less. The original series, narrated by Kenneth Clark was, along with The Ascent Of Man, one of the landmark series commissioned by David Attenborough in the 1970s.

It's showing at 10pm tonight on the BBC.