Janis Joplin - eternal star

If you like this, can I please recommend Saint Jude.
I have a thing for soulful vocals over big tunes.

You just don't get raw talent exuding from modern music TV in the UK. The closest is Jools Holland's Later show on BBC, but something just a little younger, about real music, would be perfect.

I tweeted The Sea, who are doing well in Europe and USA with their authentic massive rocking pop sound that straddles both centuries. They have recommended a Danish band, Thee Attack. I recommended Popskull and Hedoniacs back to them. The rise of timeless sounds with muscle in their riffs, can only be a good thing.

I woke up this morning and needed to hear guitars sing...

went and found me some Buddy Guy making love instrumentally...

it also makes me smile, thinking of one of my favourite films ever, The Blues Brothers.

OK. I'm set up for the day now. Yesterday had a fantastic conversation about how a lot of youngsters are turning away from sure-to-get-noticed neat hair cut, afro beat dub step indie grindie in Skins cast wear, to the 20th century rootsy rock n roll sounds. Its something really different from what is everywhere else now, I guess. So come on, baby don't you wanna go...

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Up Above My Head

THIS

is rock n roll

Sister Rosetta Tharpe makes me feel like summer time.

The kind of rock n roll that apologetic "indie" could never be, but the spirit that lives on as independence. Go guitar queen, go.

USA. We're not in Shropshire any more!

I am so lucky to have family and extended family all over the world. I have enjoyed travelling and visiting over the last month. I am heartened to find that every day music fans USA also pine for more rock n roll, delighted to find Red Gorilla Fest at SXSW and amused that people who cant make it to the midlands (or possibly other parts of London) to see new bands, have come to Texas to catch people who have played a whole five or six miles away from them before. It was all very exciting and rather than rattle off a list of names as you are obviously supposed to do, I just liked the whole experience especially some of those Red Gorilla moments - seemed to be on the wavelength of starter fanzine writer like myself.

H.

The UK Music Charts need a S.P.A.M. filter. Fast.

I started banging on in the end of January blog, but its not just me with a hankering for something more real. Of course there is less rock in the chart. The Radio 1 etc playlist is as unimaginative and dumbed down as all the other weapons of mass distraction as the world goes through a frightening era on the news. Recently I spent an afternoon with family members. We are all music fans with different tastes but I came to realise that we need S P A M filters on our charts.

Soul Free? Passionless Auto-tuned? Manufactured?

Perhaps the X Factory charts could contain karaoke and conveyor belt pop that gives parody videos on YouTube the number of views that some new major label artists even can only dream of.

34,000 views and counting for the above.

A teenager with a profound knowledge of Katy Perry (whose "I Kissed A Girl" is actually a fantastic pop classic), Justin Bieber, Lily Allen, Sisqo,Rihanna etc and her grandmother were watching 4Music TV UK chart show run down. Much of it had taken the sick danger of hip hop, fused with the slick marketability of pop to create a safe, bank clerk's car soundtrack, of what I suppose is hip pop. The beats were great, don't get me wrong, but the sampling and "featuring" of the majority grew tired for me. Great original music is still possible.

Even Oldplay, Unkeane, Snore Patrol and the rest of the Snoozepop bands have actually got SONGS. This was brought home by the teenager remarking on how good the adverts tunes were. This, dear heart, is because they were a nifty  lyrical prose fest married to hooks you could fish whales with. So even after a pensioner's lifetime they still sound immediate and fresh with a singalong factor.

Grandma noted that one video seem to be quite long. "This is a different song now", explained Teenager. Myself, Young-ISH adult, kept quiet. I'd not noticed either, that the bland tune had been followed by a weak one.

Grandma remembered Top Of The Pops starting with the break from Whole Lotta Love by Led Zepellin. Teenager was wowed by the classic rock and pop on the BBC 4 documentaries.

A 21st Century Take on this from new and wonderful rock band Hedoniacs;

Possibly scare the pants off most day time radio play lists, but why? Riffs don't kill people, weapons do.

It is still possible for real people, using nothing more than their song writing skills, vocal abilities, musicianship and charisma to make a crowd fall in love with them. LIVESTARS.

Beyonce, Duran Duran, Adele, Cee Lo Green, Amy Winehouse, Dizzee Rascal, Lady Gaga et al are great pop stars, but without the dynamics of The Pixies, Nirvana or Mona, there wouldn't be enough light and shade. A high percentage of the great 20th century classics are too dangerous for day time play. Radio 1 has burned the bridges that connected it to Radio Caroline excitement. The main thing about Tamla Motown wasn't just how fantastic everybody looked (still cool) but the sounds that are now woven into the fabric of our Western lives.

Crazy - being a song case in point.

I feel that "Pass Out" by Tinie Tempah will last like this, but he was on that very chart show that Grandma and Teenager were watching and I cant remember the song (tho Ellie Goulding was in the video for some reason).

Dubstep, pubstep, whatever. I don't want a new music only station, I like to hum along often. There are 37 artists so far on the Star Soaked Music 2011 Tips List - just three more and I'll have my own Top 40. Not only that, but, sweet vindication!, its February and they actually are all moving and shaking.

The #nmeawards didnt trend last night I noticed. It was a bit too London for me, and thats the capital of Rock N Roll as far as I'm concerned. Besides with Libya, New Zealand and a crumbling UK (its actually the Disunited Queendom, surely?) its not exactly the Brits/Grammys and would have probably fared better coming before them. Or even celebrating its own scene before its proved itself.

I assure myself that if I mixed those onto a playlist culled from a hand picked selection of Brit Award winners, national BBC Radio stations / Xfm playlist stars and some of the Great Escape, City Showcase, God Is In The TV and Artrocker tips that StarSoaked Radio would be listenable for many Grandmas and Teenagers alike.

Mick Jagger pays homage to Solomon Burke at The Grammys 2011

Sir Mick. Grammys 2011. (Incidentally upstaging Lady Gaga, who arrived in an egg carried high above heads, with this performance).

The Grammys is about all kinds of music and they are both around now, and really happening. That's certainly something good for 21st Century music.