Five Sonicbond books. Five legendary catalogues. One enormous musical rabbit hole. 🤘📖🔥

There is a dangerous sentence every music obsessive knows:

“I’ll just listen to one album.”

Absolute bollocks.

One album becomes another.

Then you start reading about the recording sessions.

Then Spotify gets involved.

Then you’re investigating a B-side from 1974 at half past midnight while wondering where your evening went.

Welcome, basically, to the experience of reading Sonicbond Publishing’s On Track series.

The concept is wonderfully simple: take an artist’s recorded output and get properly stuck into the albums and songs.

And sitting on The Riff Report desk this time we’ve got one hell of a musical buffet:

⚡ David Bowie

🎷 Gerry Rafferty

🕺 Talking Heads

🍏 The Beatles

🔥 Deep Purple

Five artists who couldn’t be much more different.

But that’s exactly why reading these books together is so much fun.

Put the kettle on.

Clear the afternoon.

Actually, clear the weekend.

We’re going catalogue diving.

⚡ DAVID BOWIE — CONSTANTLY BECOMING SOMEBODY ELSE

Where the bloody hell do you start with David Bowie?

Folk-pop curiosity?

Ziggy Stardust?

Aladdin Sane?

The Thin White Duke?

Berlin?

Eighties superstar?

Industrial experimentation?

Late-career renaissance?

Blackstar?

Bowie didn’t so much have a career as repeatedly destroy his previous career and build another one from the wreckage.

That’s precisely what makes him perfect for the On Track treatment.

Looking at Bowie album by album and song by song allows you to appreciate just how restless he was.

The obvious landmarks are all enormous.

‘Space Oddity’.

‘Changes’.

‘Life on Mars?’

‘Starman’.

‘The Jean Genie’.

‘Rebel Rebel’.

‘Heroes’.

‘Ashes to Ashes’.

‘Let’s Dance’.

But the joy of approaching Bowie through the catalogue is discovering everything surrounding those songs.

Because Bowie wasn’t merely chasing hits.

He was chasing ideas.

🌟 ZIGGY ARRIVES

Obviously, you can’t spend long inside Bowie’s catalogue without encountering Ziggy Stardust.

And what a glorious bit of rock ’n’ roll madness that was.

Alien rock star.

Apocalyptic mythology.

Glam.

Huge guitars.

Mick Ronson.

Ridiculous clothes.

Perfect.

But Bowie refusing to remain Ziggy is arguably even more important than creating him.

Once the world understood one version of David Bowie, Bowie was already thinking about the next.

That’s the thread running through the entire catalogue.

Movement.

🖤 FROM BERLIN TO BLACKSTAR

Then you’ve got the Berlin period.

Low.

“Heroes”.

Lodger.

Music that can still sound strange today.

And eventually, decades later, we reach Blackstar.

Few artists manage to turn their final record into such an extraordinary artistic statement.

Reading Bowie’s career chronologically makes the scale of that journey almost ridiculous.

There was never just one David Bowie.

That’s the point.

🎸 RIFF REPORT RATING: 5/5 GUITARS

For anyone wanting an excuse to dive back into Bowie properly, the On Track format is dangerous stuff.

You’ll lose hours.

Possibly days.

Worth it.

🎷 GERRY RAFFERTY — MUCH MORE THAN BAKER STREET

Now here’s an interesting one.

Mention Gerry Rafferty and approximately three seconds later somebody will start humming:

DA-DA-DAAAAAA… DA-DA-DA-DAAAAAA…

You know the saxophone.

Everybody knows the saxophone.

‘Baker Street’ has become so culturally enormous that it can sometimes overshadow the bloke who actually made it.

And that’s exactly why a Gerry Rafferty On Track book is worthwhile.

Because there is far more to Rafferty than one sax riff.

🍺 STEALERS WHEEL AND BEYOND

Before his solo career truly exploded, Rafferty had already tasted success with Stealers Wheel.

And yes…

‘Stuck in the Middle with You’.

Another song practically welded into popular culture.

But following Rafferty’s career beyond those obvious songs reveals an enormously gifted songwriter.

Melody mattered.

Lyrics mattered.

Arrangement mattered.

There is sophistication throughout his work that doesn’t always get acknowledged when his career is reduced to two gigantic singles.

🌆 CITY TO CITY

Then comes City to City.

And yes, obviously:

‘Baker Street’.

That saxophone line remains immortal.

But spend time with the album and you discover there’s much more going on.

‘Right Down the Line’ alone deserves far more attention than it sometimes receives.

Rafferty could write songs that felt intimate while still sounding enormous.

There’s warmth.

Melancholy.

Frustration.

Beauty.

And a distinctly human quality running through his writing.

That’s where the On Track approach pays dividends.

It encourages you to move past the hit.

🎸 RIFF REPORT RATING: 4½/5 GUITARS

A brilliant reminder that Gerry Rafferty deserves to be remembered as a songwriter, not simply “the bloke from ‘Baker Street’”.

And yes.

You’ll still hum the saxophone afterwards.

Impossible not to. 😂🎷

🕺 TALKING HEADS — THIS AIN’T NO PARTY… ACTUALLY, IT SORT OF IS

And now everything gets weird.

Beautifully weird.

Talking Heads are one of those bands that sound immediately recognisable while simultaneously being difficult to describe.

Punk?

New wave?

Art rock?

Funk?

World music?

Dance music?

Yes.

Probably.

David Byrne and company created music that could be deeply strange while somehow remaining ridiculously catchy.

That’s a trick.

🧠 ART SCHOOL MEETS THE DANCE FLOOR

Early Talking Heads material has that wonderfully twitchy nervous energy.

‘Psycho Killer’.

That bassline.

That vocal.

That feeling that something slightly uncomfortable is happening.

Then the musical palette expands.

Brian Eno enters the picture.

Rhythms become increasingly important.

Textures multiply.

And Talking Heads become something considerably bigger and stranger.

🔥 REMAIN IN LIGHT

Then you hit Remain in Light.

Bloody hell.

This is exactly the sort of record that benefits from a song-by-song examination.

Layers.

Rhythms.

Loops.

Guitars.

Voices.

Ideas everywhere.

And sitting right in the middle of that world:

‘Once in a Lifetime’.

You may ask yourself…

How did a song this weird become this famous?

Because it’s brilliant.

That’s how.

🕺 STOP MAKING SENSE

And then there’s the live experience.

Talking Heads were never simply four people standing around playing songs.

By the time you reach the Stop Making Sense era, the whole thing becomes theatre.

David Byrne.

Big suit.

Lamps.

Running.

Dancing.

Absolute scenes.

Talking Heads proved intelligent music didn’t have to stand in the corner looking miserable.

It could dance.

🎸 RIFF REPORT RATING: 4½/5 GUITARS

A fascinating catalogue that becomes even more interesting when explored chronologically.

Warning:

May cause spontaneous terrible dancing in your kitchen.

🍏 THE BEATLES — FOUR YEARS THAT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE

We’ve already spent some time with Sonicbond’s exploration of The Beatles, but putting the band alongside these other artists reinforces something remarkable.

The speed of their evolution was completely ridiculous.

Take:

‘Love Me Do’.

Then take:

‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.

Four years.

FOUR.

Some bands take four years deciding on a new drummer.

The Beatles went from early-sixties pop to psychedelic studio experimentation in roughly the time it takes certain modern bands to finish one album cycle.

🎸 FROM BEATLEMANIA TO REVOLVER

Early Beatles records are packed with energy.

‘I Saw Her Standing There’.

‘Please Please Me’.

‘She Loves You’.

‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’.

Then things start shifting.

A Hard Day’s Night.

Help!

Rubber Soul.

And eventually:

Revolver.

Suddenly you’ve got:

‘Taxman’.

‘Eleanor Rigby’.

‘I’m Only Sleeping’.

‘For No One’.

‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.

The studio has become an instrument.

The Beatles aren’t simply performing songs anymore.

They’re constructing sounds.

🧠 WHY THE FORMAT WORKS

There are approximately nine billion Beatles books.

Possibly more.

Nobody has counted them all because whoever attempted it disappeared somewhere around shelf seven.

But the appeal of the On Track approach is straightforward.

It puts the attention back on:

THE MUSIC.

And with The Beatles, that’s where it belongs.

🎸 RIFF REPORT RATING: 4½/5 GUITARS

Accessible enough for newer fans while offering committed listeners another excuse to revisit one of popular music’s most absurdly productive periods.

Stick Revolver on.

Sorted.

🔥 DEEP PURPLE — TURN EVERYTHING UP

Right.

Enough subtlety.

Someone find a Hammond organ.

We’re going Purple.

Deep Purple’s catalogue is perfect territory for this sort of book because the band’s history is basically:

Mk I.

Mk II.

Mk III.

Mk IV.

People leave.

People return.

People leave again.

Somebody probably rings Ritchie Blackmore.

Everything gets loud.

😂🔥

🎸 THE CLASSIC LINE-UP

For many fans, the magic words remain:

Ian Gillan.

Ritchie Blackmore.

Jon Lord.

Roger Glover.

Ian Paice.

That lineup produced some absolutely monstrous music.

In Rock.

Fireball.

Machine Head.

And songs?

Oh, come on.

‘Speed King’.

‘Child in Time’.

‘Fireball’.

‘Highway Star’.

‘Space Truckin’’.

And yes…

We’re going there.

💨 SMOKE ON THE WATER

DUH DUH DUHHH…

DUH DUH DU-DUHHH…

There.

Half the world’s guitar shops just banned us.

😂🎸

‘Smoke on the Water’ might contain the most famous guitar riff ever written.

And familiarity sometimes makes people forget something:

It’s an absolutely brilliant riff.

Simple.

Heavy.

Instantly identifiable.

Rock music distilled into a handful of notes.

🎹 JON LORD — THE SECRET WEAPON

But Deep Purple wasn’t simply Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar.

One of the things that becomes obvious when revisiting the catalogue is just how crucial Jon Lord was.

That Hammond organ.

Distorted.

Aggressive.

Huge.

Lord could go toe-to-toe with Blackmore and make keyboards sound genuinely dangerous.

That guitar-versus-organ attack became one of Deep Purple’s defining characteristics.

🌈 LINEUPS, CHAOS AND COMEBACKS

Then you’ve got David Coverdale.

Glenn Hughes.

Tommy Bolin.

Breakups.

Reformations.

More lineup changes.

And decades of music.

Deep Purple aren’t simply the band that recorded Machine Head.

Their catalogue stretches enormously beyond that classic period.

A song-by-song approach encourages listeners to explore precisely those less obvious corners.

And that’s half the fun.

🎸 RIFF REPORT RATING: 5/5 GUITARS

Turn it up.

Then turn it up again.

If Jon Lord’s Hammond isn’t making the furniture vibrate, you’re reading it wrong.

📚 WHY SONICBOND’S ON TRACK SERIES WORKS

The biggest strength connecting all five books is simple:

They make you listen.

That’s the whole point.

Great music writing should send you back to the records.

And these books repeatedly do exactly that.

You read about Bowie.

Suddenly Low is playing.

You read about Rafferty.

City to City goes on.

Talking Heads?

Remain in Light.

The Beatles?

Revolver.

Deep Purple?

Machine Head.

And before you know it, the neighbours have filed a noise complaint and you’ve accomplished absolutely nothing else all weekend.

Perfect.

🎸 FIVE ARTISTS — FIVE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WORLDS

That’s perhaps the most enjoyable thing about putting these books together.

Look at the musical journey:

⚡ David Bowie — reinvention, experimentation and artistic fearlessness.

🎷 Gerry Rafferty — beautiful songwriting hiding beyond enormous hits.

🕺 Talking Heads — nervous art-rock transformed into rhythmic brilliance.

🍏 The Beatles — astonishing evolution at ridiculous speed.

🔥 Deep Purple — riffs, Hammond organs and glorious hard-rock thunder.

There isn’t one definition of great music here.

That’s what makes it brilliant.

🤘 THE RIFF REPORT VERDICT

Sonicbond’s On Track series understands something that music obsessives have known forever:

Sometimes we don’t want another celebrity biography telling us who argued with whom in a hotel in 1978.

Sometimes we want to talk about the bloody songs.

Why does that riff work?

Where did that album fit?

Why did the sound change?

What forgotten track deserves another listen?

What happened when the lineup changed?

And why, forty years later, are we still putting these records on?

That’s where these books earn their shelf space.

They’re companions.

Guides.

Rabbit-hole generators.

And potentially serious threats to whatever productive plans you had for Sunday afternoon.

Read one chapter.

Play one song.

Then another.

Then another.

Suddenly you’re standing in the kitchen at midnight playing air Hammond organ to Deep Purple while David Byrne’s big suit waits patiently for Monday.

We’ve all been there.

Probably.

😂🤘

🏆 THE RIFF REPORT ON TRACK SCORECARD

DAVID BOWIE
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸 5/5

GERRY RAFFERTY
🎸🎸🎸🎸½ 4½/5

TALKING HEADS
🎸🎸🎸🎸½ 4½/5

THE BEATLES
🎸🎸🎸🎸½ 4½/5

DEEP PURPLE
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸 5/5

🏆 OVERALL SERIES VERDICT: 4½/5 GUITARS

Five fascinating journeys through five wildly different catalogues — entertaining, accessible and dangerously effective at making you abandon everything else and start playing records.

Our advice?

Buy the books.

Grab the headphones.

Cancel your plans.

And prepare to disappear down the rabbit hole.

📚🎸🔥🤘

The Riff Report — Proudly Welsh. Proudly Loud. Zero Apologies.