Two snapshots of Jamaica’s music, each catching styles associated with specific periods. The two CDs of Catch-A-Fire - Treasure Isle Ska (1963-1965) collects 47 tracks originally issued by Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid’s Duke Reid, Dutchess and Treasure Isle labels. Top Ranking DJ Session Volumes 1 & 2 is titled after two vintage compilations – the double CD compiles 44 tracks recorded by Joe Gibbs over 1977 to 1979.

Life is messy and so is Carolee Schneeman’s work. She wanted it that way. Breaking down the barriers between art and life, between inhabiting a woman’s body and using it as primal material, was a key objective.

 “We played the Rolling Stones concert at Long Beach Arena. The Stones came on, and it was the first time that any band had ever done better than us. I was very angry about that.” Randy Holden was The Sons of Adam’s guitarist. He was pretty certain of his own band’s impact in November 1964.

Hailed by Miloš Forman as “the spiritual father of the Czech New Wave”, Czech film director Vojtěch Jasný’s long career began in the early 1950s and spanned five decades. All My Good Countrymen (Všichni dobří rodáci), based on a screenplay originally written by Jasný in 1956, was released in 1968 and won him a Best Director award at Cannes a year later.

In late August 1962, Liverpool’s Swinging Blue Genes were booked to play Hamburg’s Star-Club for the first time. At the opening show of their season, they were booed and the curtain was pulled across them. The audience took against their mix of skiffle and trad jazz. A musical rethink was needed.

Lou Reed went to the Baldwin, New York post office on 11 May 1965 to mail himself a five-inch reel-to-reel tape with 11 recording of songs he had written. The sealed package was registered and stamped, and also signed with that date by a local Notary Public, Harry Lichtiger – a partner at Baldwin’s Nassau Chemists.

“Telstar” was released 60 years ago this week. On 17 August 1962, British record buyers could purchase the second single by The Tornados, a band whose claim to fame until then was being Billy Fury’s back band – their March 1962 debut 45 was fittingly titled “Love and Fury.”

Derived from Delia Owens’s massively successful novel, Where the Crawdads Sing is the story of Kya Clark, a girl from an abusive, broken home in the North Carolina marshlands who raises herself almost single-handedly. The few people she encounters during her strange, isolated development from battered girlhood into a fragile young adult dismiss her mockingly as “Marsh Girl”.

“At all times, the film-makers have attempted to present an accurate portrait of the events depicted and the people involved.” The on-screen statement beginning each of Get Back's three parts acknowledges that definitions of accuracy can depend on points of view.

Jiří Menzel's Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti) was in production while Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague in August 1968. Predictably, the film was banned by the new Czechoslovak regime and it remained unreleased until 1990, though illicit video copies were circulating for several years before.