Dipping into the past

The morning after Burns night: memories of Eddi Reader with Boo, bawdiness and romance

Jan 2022: better late than never. Had I thought of it sooner, there might have been a post yesterday to commemorate the birth of Robert Burns on Jan 25 1759. But then, Wikipedia helpfully states that Burns celebrations may be... Read more →


Loft vinyl: (3) Francoise Hardy and the song she hated but her fans loved

This has had earlier airings but fits the new Loft Vinyl series as snugly as the perfect glove. I am featuring tracks from old LPs released from lengthy exile in the loft, my elder daughter having bought me a turntable... Read more →


Dipping into the Past: John Mayall, Eric Clapton and Rambling on My Mind

Jan 2021 update: the reason I am promoting archived material is that when it first appeared, Salut! Live had a pitifully small readership. It's not huge now but is a good deal larger and I believe there is content that... Read more →


War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. June Tabor ... No Man's Land

August 2021 update: The war to end war. Tell that to the poor bloody squaddies who were sent over and again to fight and die in conflicts long after peace descended in 1918. Watching a recent re-run, on Arte TV... Read more →


Song of the Day Revisited: Tim Hart and Maddy Prior - Dancing at Whitsun

March 2021 update. Colin Randall writes: in a recent post about the Steeleye Span album Sails of Silver, which has been known to divide opinion among fans of the band, I reminisced about my first meeting with the lead singer,... Read more →


What was your route to folk music? Here's John Mayall's part in mine

A former colleague, Bill Stock, once wrote this at Facebook, prompting me to trawl through Salut! Live archives and reproduce, from 2007, the little piece that follows. It was originally published just ahead of a John Mayall gig in the... Read more →


The Byrds: when folk-rock got higher and higher

"John and Michi were getting kind of itchy, just to leave the folk music behind." As every 1960s schoolboy probably knew, the line opened Creeque Alley, a quirkily pleasing Mamas and Papas song which, when not bidding farewell to folk,... Read more →