Joy Division Live at Paradiso Club Amsterdam, 11th Jan. 1980 (1990)

If Unknown Pleasures was Joy Division at their most obsessively, carefully focused, ten songs yet of a piece, Closer was the sprawl, the chaotic explosion that went every direction at once. Who knows what the next path would have been had Ian Curtis not chosen his end? But steer away from the rereading of his every lyric after that date; treat Closer as what everyone else thought it was at first – simply the next album – and Joy Division's power just seems to have grown. Martin Hannett was still producing, but seems to have taken as many chances as the band itself throughout – differing mixes, differing atmospheres, new twists and turns define the entirety of Closer, songs suddenly returned in chopped-up, crumpled form, ending on hiss and random notes.

This is a piece of musical history. Buddy Guy, simply one of the greatest blues performers there has ever been performing in front of his home audience, his neighbours, friends and fellow musicians in his own club which was very much situated in the Chicago ghetto. It was 1979. The blues had been pronounced dead by the music industry but in the hands of musicians like Buddy and people running little labels, booking clubs and tours under difficult financial situations there was a pretty healthy heartbeat - it's just that no one was paying much attention! It took a few more years but how things changed! These days things seemed to have slipped back somewhat but nowhere near how things were back then. But why did a revival happen' Because stuff like this was happening - Buddy was cooking that night…

Alexis Korner passed away on January 1st, 1984, and June 5th of that year saw a small fraction of his friends and his band’s alumni pay homage to the godfather of British blues by staging a stellar performance in, of all places, Nottingham. Calling themselves ALEXIS LIGHT ORCHESTRA and led by Jimmy Page, the supergroup also featured such luminaries as Jack Bruce, Charlie Watts and Paul Jones whose mix of rhythm-and-blues and rock numbers was recorded for radio broadcast and well-bootlegged, yet never officially released.