Bag

Blanche come here haunted by associations— chiefly leader Dan Miller's with fellow Detroiter Jack White. The pair shared several bands before Jack's vault to fame, and moonlighting Blanchers made up half his Loretta Lynn-backing Detroit supergroup The Do-Whaters. Blanche also supported The White Stripes last year, and bunked with them on this UK trip.

McGhie's solo debut is one of those funk records whose price (circa $600) and legend climbs in inverse proportion to the number of people who've actually heard it. Mercifully, it proves to be worth at least some of the fuss. A Studio One veteran who emigrated to Toronto in 1967, McGhie mostly abandoned reggae (save the fabulously amiable "Cool It") in favour of a grab-bag of funk and soul styles. The Sounds Of Joy have an easy grace, and McGhie makes a decent fist of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix". Militant crate diggers, though, will be weeping over the over-priced vinyl.

Now that Oasis have been written into British rock history alongside The Beatles, The Sex Pistols and all those other elder statesmen they so publicly admired and absorbed, 1984's Definitely Maybe survives as a revered, although sometimes distant, memory. These days when Oasis play Glastonbury, there are waves of excitement but no huge hullabaloo about their perfunctory parade of greatest hits, and their albums have ceased to generate the expectation, the queues around the block in Oxford Street, that was once the norm.

Six volumes of highlights from the Sunday night US television show that was the MTV of its day

Swan song from prolific Dayton, Ohio combo, while frontman flies solo

"O JOY!"IS NOT THE UNIVERSAL response to the idea of a sofa, a bag of toffees, a long weekend and six Marx Brothers movies to sit through. Inexplicably, there are those whose funny bones are immune to the work of Groucho, Harpo and the rest of the crew. When it comes to the Marx brand of sideways lunacy, seems you either get it or you don't. This latest DVD set gathers up A Day At The Races, A Night At The Opera, At The Circus, Go West, The Big Store and A Night In Casablanca.

Cycling fanatics return after five years with a darker, edgier but no less eccentric sound

Two-disc set celebrating Manchesters baggy-trousered dance-rock primates

American Music Club/Richmond Fontaine QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL LONDON Sunday May 23, 2004 Richmond Fontaine take to the stage looking like they've walked out of Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces.

When papa found the brand new bag called The One—the funk beat wherein the first accent hits at the start of the bar—he revolutionised African-American dance music. The next 10 years ('65-'75) were spent honing the most propulsive grooves ever laid down on tape: "Cold Sweat", "Mother Popcorn", "Sex Machine" and their kind. Prior to his golden decade, Brown and the crack unit that was the Famous Flames were an impassioned rhythm'n'gospel line-up.