Corbyn, Country Joe and John Peel

I've been reading a lot of comments on Twitter about how extraordinary the crowds have been for Jeremy Corbyn's public meetings, and how this demonstrates his popularity. And there's been something nagging away at my memory, which I've only just identified.

It's a story that comes originally from Jonathan Green's very fine oral history of the 1960s underground, Days in the Life, though this condensed telling is from my own (much less fine) book My Generation:

'The underground was terribly small, and very, very localised,' remembered disc jockey John Peel. Puzzled by the apparent lack of success of the debut album by Country Joe and the Fish, 'I said to the record company, "Why isn't this in the charts? Everyone I know has a copy." But what I didn't realise was that it was the other way around: I knew everyone who'd got a copy.'

And I have a fear that something similar may be the case with the Corbyn surge.

Glam - Eno and the Winkies

When Eno left Roxy Music in the summer of 1973, it seemed like the end of a beautiful rivalry. The artistic tension in the group between him and Bryan Ferry had made for two extraordinary albums, and it wasn't clear that either would survive creatively without the other.

In the event, both immediately went on to better things. Roxy's third album, Stranded, was their best ever (and their first no. 1), while Eno's solo debut, Here Come the Warm Jets (1973), is a thing of beauty forever. It appeared that glam rock had gained a new star.

To promote the record, Eno recruited the group the Winkies to be his backing  band and went out on a British tour. It lasted just five dates before he suffered a collapsed lung and abandoned live dates for ever. Lying in hospital, he concluded: 'I decided that I didn't want to be a star - the kind of figure Bryan became.'

During their brief time together Eno and the Winkies recorded a radio session for John Peel in February 1974, and this is their version of 'Baby's On Fire' from Warm Jets. It's very good.