Another highlight was revisiting Deangersmith’s ‘Buckle My Shoe’ which is even more powerful today than when I heard it during the pandemic.  The facts about Covid and government overreach are starting to emerge thanks to Elon’s changes at Twitter and Dean Smith was smack on with this track off his Lead Me To Your Taker (Disarm the Corrupt) album released in 2021.  Thanks to fellow Rebel Rock Presenter Tinus Nel I was able to play Dino Jelusic’s brand new track ‘Healer’.  Fresh off the Whitesnake Tour and victorious in his battle with ex-label New Frontiers, Dino is firing on all cylinders. 

Lyrics are hugely important to the music.  I came from a generation that would buy an album, race home with it, often on a bicycle or walking, and with almost religious fervour put the needle on the record.  Then it was time to lie back on the bed or the floor with the lyric sheet on the inner sleeve.  It was always such a letdown when an album didn’t have the words and one of the reasons why I bought so many export albums.  Local albums frequently had a blank inner sleeve with a print of a cassette tape and the words “Home Taping is Killing Music”, I saw it as being punished for doing the right thing.  Instead of slapping it on blank cassettes they ruined the lyric experience for the guys buying the albums by printing that instead of the lyrics.  The reason I know all the words off by heart to albums like Bowies’ The Man Who Sold The World, The Boomtown Rats‘ The Fine Art of Surfacing, everything off the Blue Beatles album, and Springsteen’s Nebraska is because of this delightful packaging innovation that someone at a record company decided to do.  So, whose bright idea was it?