Category: music

Best song of the year (so far?)

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I know that musical taste is a personal thing, and that some people don’t even look (or listen?) to the music stuff on this blog, but it’s a chunk of my life, so I like to stick it on here. #MMIRIM, remember?

And this latest Baxter Dury track has got me hooked. (Previous Baxter Dury posts are here.)

New album next week, you say? Even more hooked.

Are we allowed to suggest Pet Shop Boys vibes? I think so. But then with that instantly recognisable gravelly voice over the top, that bitter, personal feel, and lyrics like:

An aisle seat on a cheap airline
Trying to get to Lithuania
I think of you to calm my nerves

it could only be Baxter.

Now if we can only get that dreadful stand-in 6Music DJ to pronounce the title correctly, we’ll be golden.

And there’s so much room for remixing here. Give the right people a bit of time and opportunity and I’m going to be pumping this 24/7 in the gym. Doing backflips on MDMA.

(That’s another lyric by the way.)
(And probably not a great idea, healthwise.)

How to listen to BBC 6Music (and all the other BBC radio stations) if you are outside the UK

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Hey, Music Lover! I wrote this back in July 2025. It’s now November 2025 and if you want to use the BBC Sounds app from overseas, pop over to this new UPDATED post to find out how.

The original post continues below:

We knew it was coming.

The BBC Sounds app has closed for me and the other people living outside the UK. I’m sure that you could slip in the back door via a VPN, but the BBC are (allegedly) rather good at spotting those things and not allowing them to work.

The signs of trouble were there this morning when I was in the gym, as the app glitched onto Radio 4 Xtra, and gave me a bit of Steptoe & Son while also still playing Hit by The Sugarcubes on 6Music:

Sample lyrics:

I’ve been hit, with your charm.
How could you do this to me?
You dirty old man!

But mixed messages aside, just a couple of hours later, it really was gone:

Ironically, when I clicked through onto that new app, I found that Radio 4 was about to broadcast this show: 6. The Only Friend That Mattered.

Ouch. Way to rub it in, guys…

But don’t worry. Hakuna matata. Nem panikus.

There’s still a perfectly legal, perfectly straightforward route to listen live to your favourite BBC radio stations – including 6Music, wherever you are in the world: here are the details.

Let me save you some time: here’s the direct link for the 6Music feed through your internet browser. And it’s working for me.
Three dots in the top corner, save as shortcut to your home screen, Bob are your uncle. The logo even looks the same.

Sadly, there is no obvious route to listening on catch-up or for downloading shows for those of us outside the UK. Aside from trial and error with a VPN. And (allegedly again), that can often be rather hit and miss and somewhat tedious. Or so I’m told, etc etc.

I’ve also just tested whether I can still get 6Music on my smart speaker (IYKYK) and yes, even right down here in the far bottom corner of Africa, that’s still working fine. Whether that will continue (I actually don’t know from where it plays it, it just plays it), I just don’t know. Time will tell.

This hasn’t been a clean break: some of the links from the new feed pages don’t work, although the actual feeds are fine. If the site thinks you’re in the UK, it tries to take you to the app, but then the app doesn’t work. There are clearly some issues that need to be ironed out, and whether that will affect our ability to continue to listen from overseas remains to be seen.

Or… er… heard, I guess.

It burns, burns, burns…

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Things that aren’t funny:
– People shooting guns.
– Wanton vandalism.
– Disrespecting music performers.
– Wasting water.

Things that are actually a bit funny:
– All of the above, together.

Don’t believe me? Look at this:

The shot wasn’t quite perfect. And I know that I shouldn’t be laughing, because of all those reasons above. But it is actually a bit funny – and pretty good publicity for the town. And I suspect that the authorities in Kingsland also recognise that, by the way that they haven’t bothered to plug the leak, even after a week of their hero relieving himself from a great height.

200 up

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I added a couple more tracks to my Playlist For A Chilled Braai playlist on Spotify this week, and those tracks upped the number of total tracks on said playlist to 200. Fourteen hours and forty-one minutes of musical accompaniment to your braai, and just the right mix of background and gently upbeat tracks – and just a few old skool memories thrown in – to make your braai’ing experience absolutely perfect.

And no, of course you don’t have to listen to it all at once, but the sheer amount of music on there means that you get to hear something different each time you log in and light up. So hit the save button above, click on shuffle on your device of choice, and have a great evening cooking oor die kole.

You can click through here if you can’t use the graphic above, and you can click through here to see all my other Spotify playlists, should you want to enjoy some different genres and go back in time ever so slightly*.

* Musically, I mean. I haven’t invented a time machine or anything.

Better news

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United back to winning ways?

Yes.

But also…

The BBC has delayed blocking BBC Sounds app for audiences outside the UK.

It comes after a decision made by the corporation meant listeners outside the UK would only be able to access Radio 4 and the World Service via a new audio section on BBC.com.

In a statement the BBC said it is working on plans to “continue to make other BBC stations available to listeners outside the UK” adding that it “will not close BBC Sounds outside the UK until we have confirmed these plans”.

Any backtrack on their plans would be great news for me and the many thousands of BBC listeners worldwide.

I’m not counting chickens, but I am crossing fingers.

(I’m a big grown up boy and I can count things without using my fingers now.)