Where would I be without the mighty Dan? This is a band that I listen to almost daily. Every time I do, I hear something new. Sure, they’re clever East Coast jazz-rockers, with a laid back West Coast sound. But read that again: they’re clever! What’s not to love about that? Maybe being English and growing up in the 80s had an influence on me — the US seemed to dominate my cultural reference points. One week I wanted to be in ‘Ponch’ from CHiPs, and the next week I’d be trying to urge my mum to buy me a Miami Dolphins shirt. Steely Dan music seems to represent everything I love about America — it’s funky, clever, inventive, collaborative, confident and sexy.

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Forget Wind of Change. Why Scorpions wasn’t more well-known for Sails of Charon is beyond me. This is my summer jam for 2010.

Philip Norman’s recently released biography of John Lennon, aptly titled The Life, captures the true essence of a man who was a well of contradictions, his peaceful exterior masking an explosive temperament that surfaced far too often for those who were in his inner-sanctum. And it was a virtually impregnable sanctum to crack, unless, of course, you were a fourteen year old kid with a reel-to-reel tape deck. In 1969, a Beatles fanatic called Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and recorded him discussing his thoughts on peace, love, and all things in between. This amazing video is the end result of that conversation: ‘Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message’.

This is Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks backstage in the early 1980s sharing the demo of her new song with her backup singers and make up artist. The final argument for why demos should not be messed with.