It’s been a while since we did one of our Six Degrees of Kevin Shields episodes, so to honour the new year, we are looking at musicians born on New Year’s Day to start proceedings. There are a few potential starters for this honour; Joe McDonald , the ‘Country’ one in Country Joe & the Fish ; Morgan Fisher, keyboard player with Mott The Hoople ; Ari Up (John Lydon’s stepdaughter) of The Slits ; Brody Dalle (Bree Robinson), the Australian born singer with punk band The Dist

It is time for another of our geographically themed playlists - and this time we focus on the large, mysterious continent of Africa....

The history of Muscle Shoals as a hotbed of artistic creation is an interesting one, where one studio became two, and totally put this...