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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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Heavy metal: American guitar pick coins
Penny for your thoughts? Spare a dime? Money may often be on anyone’s mind, but this week we’re spinning a theme in particular all about coins, incidentally or centrally in a song lyrics. Will your suggestions come up heads or tails?
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Pride: coming out from black and white
Coded 30s black blues to a 1950s Mexican diva, 1970s and 80s politics to full on out dirty disco in 2021, this week’s guest playlister Pop Off! celebrates a personal birthday with Gay Pride parade that goes beyond the obvious anthems
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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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Slide away …
Literal or metaphorical, mechanical, electrical or psychological, it’s time to switch your attention to these sorts of manual controls referred in song lyrics, and see what turns on and pushes those 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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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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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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Retro chanteuse: the fabulous Yola
The opposite of cover versions, some new songs sound like they’ve come straight from a time machine from decades before. This week’s guest music timelord, Dr philipphilip99, presents playlists recreating pasts with a perfect retro fit
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Get on the retro (dance) floor …
This week we look back to look forward with artists who wrote new songs with a style from the past, ignoring their zeitgeist and harking back to a former era or decade though musical stylings, choice of instruments, lyrics and more
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Handing out key advice …
Reported or direct, the practical or philosophical, the benevolent or biased, critical or contradictory, from parent to child, expert to novice, or general, this week it’s all about useful instruction, ignored or taken and ideally as detailed and unusual as possible
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Koko Taylor: fun at work …
From various locations – in the bar, on the beach, down the street, and many forms – reggae to soul, rock to new wave. From a huge wave of fun nominations guest picker Olive Butler has a blast with brilliant set of playlists
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Jumping for joy? Goats. See the brown one? Reminds me of when I was a kid …
It comes in so many forms that this week’s topic has to mention fun, or its synonyms specifically, from getting your kicks to seeking your pleasure or leisure, frolic or merrymaking, carousing or joy. Let the games begin!
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Ignored and alone, down in the tube station at midnight
This week it’s time to dig deep and broad for new names that rarely get a mention, certainly never make the charts or win prizes, sell much or get the recognition they deserve. Let’s refresh the synapses of musical hive mind knowledge
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Now they all come together …
They’re big, and fierce, and beautiful; unpredictable, wild and exhilarating. And that’s not just those big, stripy cats. We’re also talking about this amazing ambush of playlists, picked from a wild jungle of brilliant suggestions by guest Severin
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Welcome to the Bar, says the Siberian
As myth or monster, pet or predator, symbol of beauty, death or power, tigers fire the imagination with their looks and behaviour. But how do they spring out of the musical jungle, literally or metaphorically?
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How to putt it? Fiddling while Rome burns …?
Whether genuine or feigned, in love, politics or the natural world, it’s as all-pervasive as gravity, and with a pulling power just as immense. So tugging against it, what bigger form of attention-seeking is there than writing and performing a song? But how do songs deal with indifference?
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