So yeah… the December COtM never made it up. I wrestled with the arrangement for many hours, and by the time things were starting to look up, Xmas had already passed. Sorry everybody - next year!

This month, I woke up my inner child and browsed her playlist to choose January’s cover. Too young to know a token ballad when I heard it, at age four this was my favorite cut from Rebel Yell.

I remember the mid-eighties as a time of synths and samplers, with keyboard sounds going in and out of fashion within months. The effect was sometimes cheesy, but more often these sounds gave an emotional, atmospheric quality to the recordings.

Did all the moody colour of Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without A Face” come from the synths? I decided to find out for myself, and so can you!

Click here to listen to my acoustic, synth-less take on the song.

Does the acoustic version keep the original’s emotional quality, change it, or lose it altogether?

You’re welcome to leave your two cents in the comments.

It’s not your imagination - that is French you’re hearing.

My daytime job as a software hawker has me spending most of this month in Switzerland and France. What a good time, I thought, to pay tribute to my favorite French electro-pop duo, Air.

Probably one of the best concerts I ever saw was Air at Le Zénith last year in Paris. All transit was shut down in the city because of a strike, and it was a two hour taxi ride through utter gridlock to get there.

Once we got there, it was absolutely magical. The mountain of synthesizers onstage, the heavenly light show, the pulsing beats, and the fans… Everyone had defied the strike to be there, and the energy was indescribable.

They played all my favorite songs, without exception. When they launched into “Sexy Boy”, the crowd went insane.

Thanks for tuning in every month for these little ditties. I hope you enjoy this one.

A la prochaine!