0025 - A.P.P.L.E.

I suppose I'm something of a musical magpie - I'm always buying, downloading, listening, but I've never really been part of a scene and I'm not really an expert on any particular music. I've been reflecting on this because until now, A.P.P.L.E. have been to me just a band with a song on a compilation that I might not even have ever listened to when I should be perhaps revering them as anarcho-punk trailblazers. I suppose that's why we have Google...

0024 - A-Heads

Another one-song wonder, No Rule is some absolutely textbook punk from A-Heads. It starts out sounding like it's going to be a bad school band cover of the Jam's That's Entertainment, but quickly gets the ironic intro done before clattering to the end with a sound that, were it recorded in 2002 and not 1982, would be uncomfortably close to Elastica's.

0023 - a-ha

Let me take you back to an earlier, simpler time.  Sunday 22 May, 2005, to be exact. 

It was the last day of the Scottish football season and I went to the pub with two friends - we'll call them Andy and Ronan, since that's their names - to watch the exciting, pulsating climax to another entirely predictable two-horse race in the SPL.

0022 - A-Gen 53

Another band I have just one track by are Austrian punks A-Gen 53. I know next to nothing about them and I'm indebted to YouTube member MikeyRemembers for what little I do know about the band and the song, Stalingrad-Stumpfsinn:

0021 - A Weather

I don't know much about A Weather, other than that they're from Portland, Oregon.  Portland is cool - not that I've ever been there, but their football team is called the Timbers, it's where Clark Gable, Stephen Malkmus and Chuck Palahniuk are from, Linus Torvalds lives there and the city flag is awesome.  That's cool enough for me.

Portland's excellent flag.

0020 - A Taste Of Honey

I have a profound lack of knowledge of the music of the 70s which, to be fair, is not entirely my fault, as I was very young at the time.  I always thought, though, that the one area where I did know the 70s classics was disco.  So I was surprised to discover that the one song I have by A Taste Of Honey, Boogie Oogie Oogie, is not some obscure minor hit of the era, but is actually a bona fide classic that I was entirely unaware of - a US number 1 single in 1978, it also made number 3 in the UK.

0019 - A Smile And A Ribbon

Swedish popstrels A Smile And A Ribbon are the first band on the blog I've actually had some personal dealings with - I offered to loan them a tent in the summer of 2007 when they were playing the first Indie Tracks festival at the Midland Railway Center in Derbyshire, a scenario that could perhaps have led to amusing tales of rock & roll camping excess had they not declined the offer.