This has to be the best music search / play tool so far!

I thought LastFM and MixTurtle were good but Spotify is amazing. So quick. A small download and you need to register but the free version has only modest advertising. Create playlists and you may agree that this is truly excellent and maybe the shape of how we listen to music in the future.

All I need now is a portable version.

Find and browse music

Nice site where you can play a full-length track. Good range of artists and quick search facility. There's a video and radio area too. LastFM has been around a while now and gathered some truly great resources.


Also worth a look is SEEQPOD which seems a little slower but allows iPOD integration and links to a whole lot more stuff you may like.

Don't miss Johnnie Walker 9pm Saturdays

A great idea - Johnnie Walker takes to the pirate airwaves again in this well-produced and realistic two hour delight. With jingles and extracts from his amazing library of recordings and snippets of information it sounds like the real thing and you just know he's enjoying himself.

I loved the 'breaking news' that a new station was to be launched with DJ Simon Dee in 1964, named after John F Kennedy's daughter, followed, of course, by The Fortunes' track which he suggested might be a suitable theme song for the new station.

All the news and excerpts are from the period and it makes listening to the radio fun again.

Previous week's show available on BBC's iPlayer and if you get hold of Total Recorder you can record it too for a few quid.

Or Are We Dancer?

• Human by The Killers

More The Killers music on iLike

So Much For Mary ~ Jon

A big thank you to someone who sent me this picture of not just any old disc but a Radio Station Copy! Amazing. Don' t you just love the internet! I have yet to contact them - yatrecords - and this only just scraped through the filters to reach my inbox, having no message and just the heading JON which, luckily, struck a chord for me before being whisked off into a spam folder.

I see names that could be well-known at that time in the industry but who could also be no-one in particular. C Andrews gets the credit - is this Chris Andrews? Richard Mills and Peter Eden are names I recognise from Deram days with Bill Fay.

Kenny Everett's first show on the beeb

A treat for jingle fans today as BBC Radio 2 replays The Kenny Everett Show from 11 to 1 today. Who else could get away with starting their very first BBC show with the word "oops" after a Capital Radio plug?!

All the original tracks, competitions, observations of those tiny things that people miss (like all the bums in a Four Tops record), comparison of old and new versions and odd timechecks are there and remind you of just how knowledgeable and brilliant he was.

If you missed it the Listen Again feature available on the Radio 2 site will give you another chance. Record it and you'll be able to cheer yourself up at any time. Total Recorder will do the job simply - not free now but the tiny licence fee is well worth paying.

The Kenny Everett Show was first broadcast on Radio 2 in 1981 and it is good to see its inclusion in the 40th anniversary fayre despite being 27. Lots more during the day too. The Oldies Project have stopped the Fab 40 shows but are still streaming tracks from the shows of 40 years ago on Radio London, Big L, and will be running new chart shows again in 2008.

This is their new Sunday programme:
11 AM (UK) - Back from a watery grave Two hours of songs from the Radio London playlist that did not chart on the Fab 40.
01 PM (UK) - 40 years ago
Two hours of new UK releases and hits from exactly that week, 40 years ago
Check The Playlist for both shows.

14 August 1967: When the music died

A few disc jockeys on tiny ships like these brought exciting new music to teenagers in the 1960s and had a huge influence on a generation. In those days, for radio read BBC. Home Service, the Third Programme and the Light Programme. These were the sort of thing your parents listened to, and then only occasionally. The contrast between them and the bright, unscripted and free ranging output of the pirates like Radio London and Radio Caroline was remarkable. These were programmes that you would choose to listen to from start to finish. Jingles, adverts and entertaining intros from djs who played what they liked and knew about what they played. You could hear tracks from the American charts months before they'd ever get played on the BBC. You'd hear tracks that may never reach a Top 40 at all.

You got the feeling that no-one was making much money from the stations, that the individual djs were broadcasting from small boxes aboard an old boat some distance off the coast with little by way of home comforts for their several weeks at a time out there. They cared for the music and shared it with people like me.

The Labour government of the day hounded them and this brought yet another dimension to the huge divide between the generations. Your parents might mumble occasionally about some legislation but seemed always to go along with it. Not so the pirates and we realised that it was OK to object to government, that ministers had views but they weren't necessarily right. I was genuinely surprised that anyone should have been so offended by the pirate stations as to draw up legislation specifically to ban them. I have never believed that they interfered with other transmissions nor that it would not have been possible to permit them to broadcast under some approved licence. But no, on this day 40 years ago, Kenny Everett played the Beatles' A Day In The Life at the end of a brilliant three hour show on Radio London. I shall never forget the incredibly emotional moment as the track's crescendo faded, the needle scratched and bumped to the centre of the disc, a small click as it lifted then another click as the transmitters were shut down.

Radio Caroline bravely carried on with Johnnie Walker carrying the pirate banner high for a few more years but the killing of Radio London, Big L, my best friend and companion, was unforgiveable. I shall never forget.