Best of British October 2018

Clark Datchler is best known as singer/songwriter in the successful 1980s band Johnny Hates Jazz. His most famous songs with the band include the international hits ’Shattered Dreams’, ‘I Don’t Want To Be A Hero’, ‘Turn Back The Clock’ and ‘Heart Of Gold’. ‘Shattered Dreams’ reached #2 in the US and Japan, and went top 5 throughout the rest of the World. It has now been played 3.7 million times on US radio alone. The album ‘Turn Back The Clock’ entered the UK charts at #1 and went triple platinum. To this day, it is regarded as one of the seminal albums of the decade.

British saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer John Surman turned 80 in 2024. During six decades of laudable achievement, he has recorded and performed in dozens of configurations from solo to big band, chamber quintet to orchestra conductor. Words Unspoken is Surman's first ECM date since 2018's trio offering, Invisible Threads. It marks a reunion with the remarkable, Oslo-based American vibraphonist Rob Waring. Award-winning British guitarist Rob Luft (whose solo albums on Edition have won international praise) and Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen balance the quartet. The bandleader brought some sketches into the studio and passed them out without specific instructions as to who would play what when. He wanted the recording to sound like the band created it spontaneously by wedding modern jazz, avant improv, and folk music in the moment.

At this point, the band was best-known as a British blues unit. Slowly but surely the band was becoming more acclimated with a production style that was reminiscent of the California pop sound. With the majority of the blues and psychedelic behind them, Mystery to Me finds Fleetwood Mac in a more ruminative vein…

Greatest Hits is a compilation album by the British rock band Queen, released worldwide on 26 October 1981. The album consisted of Queen's biggest hits since their first chart appearance in 1974 with "Seven Seas of Rhye", up to their 1980 hit "Flash" (though in some countries "Under Pressure", the band's 1981 chart-topper with David Bowie, was included). There was no universal track listing or cover art for the album, and each territory's tracks were dependent on what singles had been released there and which were successful. Greatest Hits was a commercial success worldwide. It received further boosts in sales following the death of Queen's lead singer Freddie Mercury in 1991, and the release of the biographical film Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018.