>“For me, a great rock song is a good tune, plus some inspired irritant – a shout, a noise, an enigmatic line, a raucous solo.”

John Pareles – now the chief music critic of the Arts section of the New York Times – wrote that when he was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone in the 1980s.

I clipped it and it’s stayed on my pinboard to this day.

There are songs that – when I hear them – I instantly know where I was when I first heard them. They’re indelibly linked to the taste of the air or the person I was with or the taste of the coffee or the record store I subsequently bought the album from. Or. Or. Or

Tracks that literally stopped me in my tracks

My “Stop you in your tracks²“
#2 in a series of n

I walked into the living room at the Station Road Post Office that Uncle Frank, Dad’s older brother, ran together with Aunt Margaret in Horsforth in 1970

Free was on Top of the Pops.

“Epiphanal” is an overused word, but not in this context. I just stopped, watched and listened.

This song smells like the smoke from coal fires on a damp Yorkshire evening and tastes like Tetley’s bitter. That, and blackberry and apple pie.
There was always one of those in the freezer, just in case I visited.

There still is at my cousin Ruth’s.

All right now – Free [Listen] [Buy]

This what I saw. I’m to this day blown away by Paul Rodgers’ stage presence.

That, and his broken tooth.