If anyone's wondering what's happened to The Cancel Culture Club, we will be back a little later this month with two festive offerings... possibly our last, for reasons I'll discuss more later.
In the meantime, in a belated follow-up to the first edition of that series, when we discussed Gary Puckett's Young Girl, here are a couple of tunes celebrating the virtues of older woman.
First, from his excellent 2025 album Only Frozen Sky Anyway, here's Jonathan Richman with a tale about being a lovestruck teenager obsessed with a "slightly older girl"...
And secondly, also from this year, and sadly from what turned out to be his final album, here's the late great Todd Snider again with a sentiment that many of his male rock star contemporaries might do well to take note of...
No, nothing to do with Michael Elphick. He didn't have an E on the end.
I briefly mentioned Benson Boone as a discovery at the end of last year, after Sam had got me listening to his mega-hit Beautiful Things.
Since then, I've checked him out a bit more. History tells us that he was briefly a competitor on American Idol back in 2021 (although that doesn't carry the same stigma it would over here) before he voluntarily withdrew from the show (respect!) and further went on to build a career on TikTok.
Now that's a stumbling block for me, because I'm with the Australian government in considering TikTok a thing of pure evil... but I suppose artists these days have to wade through whatever sewer it takes to make their mark.
Various sources make lazy comparisons between Benson and Freddie Mercury, based largely on his extravagant performing style, the fact that he's taken to sporting a moustache, and his rather impressive cover of Bohemian Rhapsody, with Anita Dobson's hubby on guitar. But don't let that put you off, Queen-haters out there. Benson's really just a pop star in the old style (80s, mostly), of which I'm starting to see something of a resurgence these days. And he's only 23, so imagine what he might do when he grows up proper.
Unduly maligned Welsh indie band from Cwmaman, formed in 1992 by Kelly Jones and his mates, still going strong today. I thought their first album was particularly strong, but once they stopped writing about Wales and started writing about LA, I lost interest.
Oom-chakka oom-chakka oom-chakka from 1998, by which time the Welsh Stereophonics had already been bothering the charts for at least a year. Didn't seem to bother these guys...
Despite buying both Stone Roses albums and a variety of the Primal Scream records he contributed to, I have to confess I knew very little about Gary Mounfield. Fortunately, I knew when it came to eulogising him that Swiss Adam would do a top job.
There's not much more I can add, except that when you think about the Stone Roses sound, so much of it clearly comes from the basslines. That must make Mani more important than a lot of bass players. Others will doubtless express that better than I can.
It's not a Stone Roses track I've chosen today though, it's this: one of my favourites from Primal Scream... and a tune very unlike the kind of thing I usually go for. Back in 1997 though, I was rather obsessed with it. And I reckon that's all down to Mani...
