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Ace solos …
What will be turned? High rollers to full houses, this week the deck, and the record player, is stacked with wonderful winners as guest George Boyland plays his hand from a selection of nominations from last week’s topic
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But … who’s the ace?
Queens, kings, aces and jacks, jokers and dealers, tricks and games, winners and loses, gambling, risk, and making the best of the hand you’re dealt, this week it’s time to shuffle the musical pack and see what’s in hand on this theme
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JJ Johnson
From classical to Dixieland to New Orleans early jazz, swing, big band, bebop to modern jazz, pop, funk, rock and more, it’s time to bone up, slide in and have a blast with your suggestions on this great, often unheralded instrument
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Crane at sunset
Music on the magic of flight to the feathery movement of mythology and morality tales, beautiful murmurations to deadly war munitions, guest playlister Marco den Ouden marvellously spreads his wings from a vast array of song nominations
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Hum that tune …
Birds to insects, bats and angels to Icarus and aeroplanes, myth and reality, metaphor and literal, it’s time to let your musical imagination take flight and soar with the senses in songs that feature these supreme super-limbs in lyrics
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Ice work if you can get it …
Things are really hotting up, so it’s time to lower the temperature a bit. Whether that involves cooling off on your insides or outside, physical, visceral, mental or metaphorical, let’s cool off with some songs on the subject
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The Specials. A most atypical and brilliant band …
Band member types to black racial stereotyping, standard gender attributes to cultural cliches, this week our guest writer Loud Atlas explores all the standard norms and from a huge choices picks playlists are outstandingly atypical
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Stereo-typing
Which type are you? Portraying or satirising, explaining or exploding, this week we explore these social generalisations about race, gender, age, nationality, class or profession as expressed in song lyrics or even musical style
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Airing the sound: MOMA’s Music Gallery
It’s a private view where all are invited. Led by our expert guest curator EnglishOutlaw, chosen from a range of musical hanging fruit, welcome to the grand tour reopening of an entirely unique grand expo - a canticular spectacular
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Some of the Horniman Museum’s many musical instruments
It’s time to show off your best and most collectible nominations about venues of art and artefacts, whether that is the building, the people, or the interacting with the items within, from grand palaces to tiny garages
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Very fruitful: Little Richard
It’s time to come out with our own Song Bar gay parade – songs exploring, expressing the experience from confusions and problems, all the way to coming out and celebrating gender, difference across the sex spectrum
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Don’t adjust the dial. Stay tuned. All the buttons and songs are on this week’s Song Bar radio
Click! Radio to romance, computers to transport, even death and destruction, those switches are primed for all occasions, so stay tuned for super songs picked by guest Marco den Ouden from nominations that push all the right buttons
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Oumou Sangaré
People, circumstances, oneself or even death, there’s a huge sense of calm, relief and relaxation around this week’s beautifully benign and wisely accepted playlists, chosen by guest tincanman from a massive influx of nominations
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Rising and setting …
Distant hillsides to sea sunsets, skylines and vapour. trails to massive events, this week’s playlists are a thing of timeless beauty, picked by guest ajostu from an ocean of nominations, stretching far and wide across the musical globe
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The open road … all the way the vanishing point …
It’s the inspiration for so many album covers, not to mention songs, and also an idea of infinity we never quite reach. From literal or metaphorical and lyrical, this week we reach for that imagined line where land, or sea, meets sky
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Enter a dome of mesmerising drone ….
You’ve got your ticket, now click to enter this special event, a festival of continuous sounds, otherworldly music that crosses the realms of pop, folk and other forms filling five special fields and domes, curated by guest organiser MussoliniHeadkick
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Velvet Underground, including John Cale and Lou Reed
It can be minimal, relaxing, and meditative, or disturbing, loud and challenging, but in its purest form or within any genre, drone music, played or sung, centres on a single sustained note or long chord that dominates the entire song or piece
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Roses of many colours decorate this week’s lists …
Whether wild or cultivated, on western plains to eastern mountains, country gardens or inner city, guest flower picker AmyLee creates a bloomin’ marvellous bouquet of music to display a fabulous selection of aural and lyrical colours
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Red and white Rosa Osiria
Romance, death, pain or beauty, petals or thorns? In titles or lyrics of song, literal or metaphor, as symbols or even as names, including also instrumentals, it’s time to gather musical blooms inspired by this particular flower
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The Happiest Days Of Your Life: Margaret Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell and Alastair Sim (1950)
Quiet please! Are you listening? It’s the last day of school, and at assembly headteacher Uncleben gives out advice to pupils departing the building for the final time. It’s a wealth of worldly wisdom, rich in detail, and perfectly delivered from a huge influx of song suggestions
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