I'm having an 80s day today i think. It started last night when i came across Video Killed The Radio Star on iTunes. The 30 second clip plunged me instantly back into my high school years. The odd thing was, i don't recall liking the song much back then.

Even odder is the fact that i can't actually remember much about the songs i did like. So many of them, songs i listened to over and over again on tapes we made at home of the Top Twenty countdown, have faded away entirely.

A few have stuck, perhaps because they're…

I was just playing a track called Self Portrait, on which the great jazz drummer Max Roach shows just how much subtle beauty a drum kit is capable of in the hands of a master. This reminded me of the night i saw him live at the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago. He was old and arthritic, yet behind the kit he seemed to transcend infirmity and reach into some other place entirely. I still get mocked for it but for ages afterwards all i could talk about was the way he touched those cymbals of his…

It's amazing how much free music is there to be had (legally) via the Net. The garageband site is one such watering hole.

A lot of what is available isn't all that amazing, but every now and again I have come across artists that I love - and which I probably would never have encountered otherwise. Mostly these have been electronica artists: Lyua Dust, Airbag Killex, Extronica, Trout and A Brilliant Career for example. I suppose Green Man and Tujiko Noriko could also be filed under this category too.

There have also been a couple of folk/acoustic…

One good thing leads to another they say. I was browsing www.emusic.com, looking for music featuring Anindo Chatterjee and remembered that i'd heard him accompany the sitarist Purbayan Chatterjee a few years back at the South Bank Centre here in London. So, i searched for the latter and came across an album. This didn't feature Anindo Chatterjee on tabla as it happens. However it introduced me to an entirely new (for me) artist, the violinist Kala Ramnath. In fact, although listed as a Purbayan Chatterjee album, Samwad is actually a collaboration.

From there it was but one short step…

I was just thinking recently about a conversation i had with a friend some time back. He maintained that although Zakir Hussain might be the greatest tabla virtuoso, Anindo Chatterjee was actually the better musician. He said that when he listened to Zakir Hussain he found himself admiring the man's technique, whereas with Anindo Chatterjee he was just caught up in the music.

I like them both and i'm not a great one for choosing, but if i had to then i think i'd go for another tabla player entirely: Bikram Ghosh, whose solo table album Talking Tabla i…

Completely gave up on last.fm a couple of months back because my password kept becoming corrupted. In the end i just deleted the scrobbling software in frustration.

It's odd, logging back on now - with yet another new password - and seeing my charts frozen in time. Surprising how you listen to the same stuff for a time and then quite suddenly move on to something else. I'm still listening to Á Túr, although not so much. But whereas before i was obsessed with Arabic pop music, now i rarely listen to it at all - apart from my…

I am signed up to iLike as well as last.fm. To be honest, this whole concept is new to me, so i just wanted to see what the differences were. last.fm is huge and detailed: i love the diversity and the interactivity (is that a word!?). Also, i love using tags to create my own "radio stations". Oh, and the journal facility! But sometimes i find it just too overwhelmingly huge.

By contrast, iLike (www.iLike.com) feels very small and cosy. Also, the average age of the users seems older (or that's my impression). It's more adult and polite. Although, that…

One of my very favourite albums is (or as i should say, was) Women Hold Up Half The Sky. That was her very first album, back in 1987 or so. I liked it all, but the track i loved best was called Hurting Inside, the final track on the album, a very sad taking-leave-of-love song. (Note: last.fm can't even *find* the track on whatever database they use. Sigh!)

Ruby Turner has made many albums since then, but none of them have ever had the magic of that first one, as far as i'm concerned. So why is that first…

Hey, i've just noticed, the band has two different pages, one with their name spelt with the accents: Á Túr and one with it spelt without them: A tur.

I wonder if all the people who listen to them (under either name) are aware of the Smekkleysa group here on last.fm?

I'm a bit mystified about how this tagging business is supposed to work, because i've tried to tag Raya Hilal repeatedly without success, nor do my plays of her track Jayee Ala Bali ever seem to update her scrobble count.

I've also tried to tag Davod Azad, so i'll have to see if it works any better on his page. I've written a basic "bio" for him, although it's not really a bio, just the very few things i know about him. But better than nothing, surely?

There are always loads of people at his concerts. Surely, one of…