Another of my favorite Beach Boys tracks, 'warmth of the sun' is a haunting ballad, sung astoundingly beautifully (Carl Wilson does the lead vocals) over a twangy picked electric guitar. From the astounding album 'Shut down vol. 2' which also gave us 'Don't Worry Baby'! 6 years ago I thought that the Beach Boys were pretty much 'Surfin' USA and other surfer hits'. I'm glad I was able to get beyond this - there's so much to discover!

Stunning version of this old standard. Jimmy Scott's voice is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful things in the world. I've never heard anybody else who could channel so much pain into a song. Regardless of your feelings toward David Lynch, you have to respect him for rescuing Scott's career from obscurity.

I'm a sucker for Hammond organs. And no place is that more true than in spy tv & film scores. Here is a cut which really swings from one of the genre's masters, Lalo Schifrin.

"Strange fruit hanging/from the poplar tree"...one of the most haunting songs ever written. Holiday recorded this song about a lynching several times throughout her career, but this original version features a performance so intense that it is impossible to beat.

A superb, achingly beautiful song which, to my knowledge, never appeared on a Beach Boys album, and was merely a studio outtake. The track opens with an incredible dense wall of harmonized vocals, and emotive lyrics ("I miss you darlin, I miss you so hard"). Later, the rhythm changes, and it becomes (to my taste) slightly cheesily rocky, but not so much as to ruin the song, which still rates as one of the Beach Boys' finest.