What song would you use to describe your current relationship?

This song sums it up.

Not at all connected with my current relationship, but I had a friend, Kathy, who was from Philadelphia. She was once, in hospital, in a bed next to someone who said she was a friend of the Stylistics. The group came to visit, and Kathy was joshing with them, saying "you're not The Stylistics", and eventually "prove it"....so she ended up with the Stylistics singing to her in a hospital bed.

I never knew what Kathy was in hospital for....but it may well have been worth it

Describe music that reminds you of a specific place you've traveled.

I've been to a few places as more-or-less a 'music tourist' - I've been to Memphis, and Liverpool, and bits of Ireland. I think you could argue that that was more the place reminding me of the music rather than vice versa.

So there are two choices where it's very much the other way round.

I worked for a few years for Sony and we had some sort of conference in Dublin. From memory I think around half the presentations started with a video soundtracked by either 'Beautiful Day' or 'Vertigo'. I like U2...but it got rather wearing.

Anyway, the song for today is the theme to a 1970s slightly naff, and very, very English BBC sitcom.

I was stuck in a hospital in New Orleans for a few days in the early 1990s and I had nothing to read apart from the Times-Picayune. The paper had a three-page spread about Are You Being Served?

Reading about the show wasn't how I was expecting to be spending my time in New Orleans

Apple doesn't seem to have the original theme, but it's a good song (better and more amusing than the show tbh) and Matt Berry does a good version.

Let the good times roll!

What song do you associate with your biggest accomplishment?

This makes me think of Kid #2

What song makes you feel understood when no one else does?

This is off-prompt...but the prompt set off a train of thought that led me to this song.

What's a song you initially disliked but now love?

This isn't a song I disliked, but it's from a genre I initially disliked

As a teenage punk rocker I thought of Jamaican music as songs for drippy hippies, but then I saw a couple of local-ish reggae bands, and then 2 Tone happened and I changed my mind

I think this was on the first reggae record I bought

What song feels like a secret between you and the artist?

This song reminds me a bit of the Pogues. It seems to be reaching back in time to fuse some older music with a sort of punk rock, without really having that tradition to fall back on

It was a great single, but it's so secret that it's only available on Apple music in a live version

What song makes you think of your childhood home?

A strong memory of my first home was coming downstairs to hear the news that John Lennon had been murdered

This is maybe my favourite of his solo songs...and it fits a bit with where we lived

What’s your favorite track one on a debut album?

A difficult one for me because I've always tended to listen to singles, or to cherry-pick from LPs

I liked this one though

What’s a hidden gem you wish more people knew about?

I have to pick a song by Child #1

It's a feature of being a parent that eventually your kids get better at some things than you are. In my case the kids are massively better than me at two things I'd really like to be good at - music and sport, respectively

Another song from a summer when I was a kid

Also a hit in the long hot summer of 1976.

The Wurzels were a folk band who had a couple of novelty hits.

They were mainly I think from Somerset, which is to the west of where I'm from....but the accent is much the same 😀