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As you will have read above (we hope), James Sparks will be talking about Bach's Goldberg Variations at the Spitalfields Music Festival. James says of Glenn Gould's interpretation. 

"Variations 3n+2 are all of this type (n=1,2,..,9) - two melodies, fast, one in each hand, with crossing of melodies/hands in every conceivable way you can imagine!"

Disco (or D-I-S-C-O as the song has it) has its critics. Music for people who don't like music being one barb. However, nothing beats a good hook and More, More, More more than delivers.

With the summer party on the horizon, let Chuck get you in the party mood. There are one-hit wonders and no-hit wonders and Chuck might just fall in to the latter category though this song has cult status among the Northern Soulters and has been covered by the likes of Dexy's Midnight Runners.

Written and recorded by Jamaican artist Junior Murvin in protest at police and gang violence in his home country, this song became a success in the US and UK and an anthem of the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival in London which broke out in to riots. The Clash also recorded a version as part of their fusion of reggae and punk.

See second Bulletin item.

Popular music has often borrowed from its classical colleagues, and even from poetry, but often with mixed success. But in this 1939 song by Hoagy Carmichael all falls in to place. The main melodic theme is based on the Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor by Frédéric Chopin and the lyrics are based on a poem by Jane Brown Thompson. There are many versions. In this one by the Lew Stone Band, vocals are by British crooner Sam Browne.

Band names are so familiar we rarely stop to think what they mean, if anything. The Beatles? The Bee Gees? But that's not the point, of course, and most of them probably didn't give it too much thought. However, there's no doubt the Cure chose well.

Erich Korngold was an Austrian-born composer who fled the Nazi regime for America where he made a living composing film music while also continuing to produce a range of 'classical' works.

This song is one of four songs about Shakespearean characters and plays, in this case Desdemona, ill-fated wife of the ill-fated Othello (it's a tragedy in case you were wondering), 

Some record labels are more well-known than many of their artists - Motown, 2 Tone, Def Jam. Stiff Records were one such example during the independent label boom of the 1970s with artists such as Elvis Costello, Devo and, in this case, Wreckless Eric. Eric is still going at 67 though no doubt a little less 'wreckless'. 

Film music, and musicals, can be an acquired taste, especially when the strings get going, and the strings are certainly being pulled in this song by the Sherman Brothers from the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins.