The thing with ladbaby, and their Christmas 5 x number 1s , it probably was the best song of the year:-)

Is the latest Rolling Stones album new music or old music? I like bits of it but it could be an album they made in the 70s. There are always some good new people but for me they are mostly working in old genres, e.g. Keb Mo or Elles Bailey.

There was that guy that did sausage roll based covers for Christmas No. 1 for a few years I think last year he agreed to stop doing that.

Trigger😀- do 'novelty' songs like that get into the charts these days? Last one I can think of was maybe Gangnam Style, which I quite liked, or Baby Shark, which I heard about 10 seconds of before the off button was deployed.

50s 60s,70s and 80s that is all, love greatest hits radio

A4E - I hear plenty of Ezra Collective on 6, and Femi Koleoso also DJs regularly on the station. I saw Knats at Green Man and they were excellent - great playing and more humour than I'd expected. Shook the hand of the singer/poet afterwards and said how much I'd enjoyed their performance.

(That link was a tongue in cheek reminder of how good many 80s songs were rather than an instruction for you to shaddap you face.)

That's not true RP I grew up in the 80s when every single song was an absolute banger [Link]

I agree Alan, and I would run a mile from any 'controlling' group. I just see 'most modern music is crap' posted quite a lot by people who wouldn't want to admit that loads of the popular music that was around when they grew up (so not 'modern' in their terms) was also crap.

People get hung up on latest music, films, comedy and books. The truth is anything that floats your boat is great for you. But in whatever form, great art is great art.

RP - good choices (of course…), and I agree, there’s so much great new music, it’s just knowing where to find it - 6Music is one of the best places to find it. For anyone into jazz, if you haven’t already heard Ezra Collective or Knats (“Geordie jazz”), try them…

[Link] I think the 'big' clubs may already have the discarded (& hidden) gems market covered.

I genuinely don't think I would recognise an Ed Sheeran song if it came on the radio.

Spit, you must be listening in the wrong place. I'm 64 and listen to 6-8 hours of radio (mostly 6Music) every day. A lot of it compares very well with what I've listened to since Radio1/TOTP from the 1960s onwards. My favourites at the moment are Angine de Poitrine, Madra Salach, and Bodega. I've seen them all live in the last month and they were all brilliant.

I hope the club do suitable tributes to Paul Strank online, in the programme and especially a minute's applause.

Thoughts are with the Strank family. Very long term sponsors of the club and obviously equally long term supporters.

Sheeran and most modern music is crap

My daughter saw this band a couple of weeks ago in Islington, thought they were brilliant [Link]

I'm hearing that Paul Strank died from a heart attack

Not sure I’ve ever heard one of his songs all the way through. Mostly because of off buttons. Not much modern music is anywhere near palatable.

Ed Sheeran’s Kent house [Link]

Saw Ed supporting Bruno Mars at an early iTunes festival at the Camden Roundhouse. Pretty decent he was too.

CW - presumably she was playing for the A-Team…?

I once met Ed Sheeran at a Wimbledon hockey match his wife was playing for the opposition

I once saw Ed Sheeran play to about ten people - he’s come quite a way since then… Not my kind of music, but he seems popular…