Signing off for the next few days. Wishing peace and blessings to you and your loved ones. Merry Christmas folks!

Lest we forget 2025… Some incredibly influential figures lost to us over the last twelve months. No room to include them all sadly, but here are sone who will be very sadly missed.

“I saw the world Spinning like a toy Hate seems so small Compared to it all So why don't you do joy?” youtu.be/GI_So-7Mhyg?...

A bit much maybe?

Ladbroke Grove Sound System. London, 1981. Photo: Janette Beckman via British Culture Archive

‘In Paradisum’ - Gabriel Faure (from Requiem), Ensemble Musique Oblique. Because it’s just the greatest… youtu.be/MoDEnItkc6I?...

Syd Barrett and Libby Gausden, 1961. (From Laughing Madcaps Group via FB. H/t to Armando Boris Jara Vejerano)

Robin Friday.

#ChristmasGrinch It’s The Least Wonderful Time of the Year Would You Like To Kill A Snowman? Shite Christmas

‘Tritons’ by Rupert Bunny, 1890. Inspiration for Robert Forster’s song ‘The River People’. (Art Gallery of New South Wales)

Ghost Riders. #Suicide #CBGB

LXC

I miss the old Morrissey lyrics.

Will always stop what I’m doing to listen to this; much to the chagrin of a dog who is already alarmed at how late the morning walk has become.

Regenstein Library, University or Chicago. Designed by Walter Netsch, 1968

Don’t know if it’s been colourised, but lovely to see a colour pic of The Sonics, taken during a photo session c.1965. Found over on FB (Rock N Garage Bands group)

Gena Rowlands, A Woman Under The Influence.

Setsuko Hara, Late Spring.

Cloris Leachman, The Last Picture Show, 1971.

Liv. Persona, 1966.

Falconetti, The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Anne Wiazemsky, Au Hasard Balthasar, 1966.

Dita Parlo, L’Atalante.

Photo: Evgeny Kashirin, USSR, 1967.

Having been born on this day in 1957, I am somewhat susceptible to tv adverts we see at this time of year, ones that use the festivities of the 1970s as a means of evoking nostalgia for Christmases gone by. I think this one may have gone a bit too far however.

St Mary’s Cathedral, Tokyo. Kenzo Tange, 1964.

Bamboozled by this all day. Vivid memories of seeing Public Enemy and Cowboy Junkies on successive nights in Glasgow in 1990. Looked it up and they actually played the same night (March 28), the CJs @ the Pavilion, PE @ the Barrowland. Def saw both gigs, so can’t work it out at all.

Celtic squad audition for Get Carter.

Japan (Karen, Jansen, Sylvian) c.1974/5. Pic courtesy Timothy Smith via FB.

#NowPlaying “We were the swinging 60’s – the world of the Beatles. The Folk Mass broke new ground. We sang the Mass in English for the first time and the style was our style.” Frances Gordon If you like the idea of the Catholic Mass sung in the style of Belle & Sebastian/Vashti this is for you.

Hadn’t listened to this in so long. Sounds like the greatest album ever made tonight and it’s not even close. Doesn’t even matter what shape it comes in - the track sequence and sleeve often vary. But…Big Black Car, Kangaroo, Holocaust, Blue Moon, Nighttime, For You, Take Care. Outrageous songs.

Damo Suzuki. Sylvie Lèbre, 1972

This would have been passed off as downmarket satire twenty years ago. Mediocre, because something like this could never REALLY happen in a million years. Yet, here we are.

This is both disgusting and expected. The Scumbag-in-Chief

Nico & Iggy, still from the video for Evening Of Light, from The Marble Index LP. Directed by François de Menil, 1969.

Wonderful shot by Joe Mackenzie from around 1964/5, part of the current GOMA exhibition of Glasgow photography.

Cameron Winter played Carnegie Hall last night, and Paul Thomas Anderson & Benny Safdie were onhand to film it. See video & the setlist www.brooklynvegan.com/watch-camero...

Man, you’d think it’d be hard enough being a PL manager without commissions to write political tomes. Mind you, it’s probably more rewarding writing about politics than coaching Spurs.

They’re lookin’ at you. #MC5

Remembering Frank Sinatra on his birthday. Now playing his remarkable Watertown LP from 1970 ▶️ open.spotify.com/album/1r6CYU...

Ah, the mystery of the colour control on the Seventies TV set. Hours of useless fun sliding that up and down. Particularly good during the World Cup when you could set those Brazil shirts ablaze with the colour set to max. The perfect accompaniment to the distorted time delayed commentary.

The scything guitar. The delirious vocal. ‘Joe The Lion’ - David Bowie Pic: Robert Fripp, Colin Thurston, David Bowie & Brian Eno, recording “Heroes” at Hansa Tonstudio 2, Köthenerstrasse, West Berlin 1977. (Christian Simonpietri) youtu.be/Z9nIt_40kcU?...

Folks, if you’re looking for music on Bandcamp Friday- new National Park songs are released today on cassette/download/streaming. Today 100% goes to the artist if you were thinking of picking this up. nationalpark.bandcamp.com/album/solo-d...

OTD 48 years ago Jane Suck and I wrote the post punk electronica manifesto New Musick in Sounds. I’m still very proud of this: we caught something in our fevered queer brains. Note the very early (the first?) use of the term post punk. Articles included Kraftwerk, Eno, Devo, TG, the Residents, Ubu

A new instalment of INVENTORY is available now via the @backlisted.bsky.social Patreon. Sign up as a Locklistener today, see the books, films and albums of 2025 through a glass darkly, support the podcast. This week: C.O.B., Spirit of Love (1970). www.patreon.com/backlisted

Lyons Street, Sheffield 1969. Photo: Mick Jones, via British Culture Archive.

Such a beautiful song. youtu.be/wQGUYgNhQa4?...

Elegiac musical finale to ‘Say Nothing’ - sublime. Arp & Anthony Moore - Wild Grass II (for Robert Wyatt) youtu.be/J_G5OsfoBTc?...

Been wanting to scribble something for a while about Ann-Margret. This piece will appear in the January issue of Shindig!