As Georgia Mann introduced this piece, she referred to the younger, pre-beard Brahms as "smouldering", which raised a smile. Looked him up and sure enough, as Georgie suggested, easy on the eye and a certain smoulder to him. BBC educates yet again.

"With gay vivacity" is so much more descriptive than Allegro - brilliant.
Example of this tempo : We Built This City was recorded with gay vivacity.

I'm a graphic designer, and more and more AI shortcuts in Photoshop are eroding the craft and skill of my job, slowly but surely "good" is being replaced by "good enough" and it's killing me slowly via a thousand tiny cuts every day.

What I love about your channel is that I was 15 in 1980, so this was my musical era, I loved music, I now have a rep for knowing all sorts of obscure music/bands... and I have never recognised *any* of the tracks you post 😀 All a discovery. This is joyous, getting Basia/Matt Bianco vibes from it.

Well, that looks like a proper tea 😋 and no mistake. Chickpeas, fruit, rosemary? Tagine? I mean, I could care less what it's called, just looks well tasty. Ideal timing as I start my daily fast 😂

That is an appalling response. Truly. I am now out of breath from the laughing. Thank you.

I'd forgotten how many of these 'medley' singles there were at the time - and we claim today's youth has no attention span 😀 Hazel O'Connor and Tenpole Tudor get a track each on both SH1 and SH2. I was going to be a bit sniffy about Wunderbar being a "Super Hit" but it got to No. 16 😀

That is some excellent indignant honking, well recorded.

Always amazed at the quality of your sleuthing. This is so darn funky - I was nodding along to the quality of the session players drums, bass and guitar, then that sax break hits. This has *got* have been used as a hip-hop break at some point? Another winner from yerself, thanks.

In the plain brown boards? Yes. Helen's extensive and exhaustive research on this indicates that a small number*did* exist for a short while, but have probably have all been destroyed. But maybe somewhere, someday one will be found in an attic/wardrobe/suitcase. Tantalising prospect.

Another 'easy' gem. It's wonderful that so many orchestras could sustain a good living back then - Geoff Love, Mantovani, Norrie Paramor, Ronnie (although I presume this disc is the Decca house orchestra?)
I first read the track list as starting with Hey Joe, before I put my specs on 😀

No idea of Latin myself, but I have an image of John Cleese bellowing at you at swordpoint to determine if you should have used the locative (or something) 😀

You have only to look at how we in England have embraced Chicken Tikka Masala, which is a Scottish dish.

I'd love for the apocryphal story of Jimmy Page on tour scouring local record shops for Zep bootlegs and just taking them, to be true.