Bill's Top Tips: #1 Save Yourself a Tenner

Mrs Blunt and I have always had a bit of a soft-spot for Bryan Ferry (easily the best thing to come out of Washington, County Durham since the A1231 road to Sunderland). Who can forget his rollicking version of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall?", which reached number 10 in the UK charts in 1973?

It was on the strength of this memory of a fine interpretation of a Dylan classic, and a review by Ian Gittins in the Guardian a couple of months ago which gave it 4 stars, that I yesterday bought Ferry's new album, Dylanesque. An entire CD devoted to re-working of Dylan classics.

On paper, it would seem like a winner: the marriage of Brian Ferry's smoky voice with the piercing intensity of Bob Dylan's lyrics. If so, then it was a marriage made in hell. This album, I am sad to say 'sucks'.

Ferry's vocals sound lame at best and pedestrian at worst - they are delivered with all the passion of a semi-comatose teenager who has been invited to 'wake up and smell the coffee' by his mother, but who has decided, instead, that he'd prefer an extra couple of hours under the duvet.

Only one track verges - almost - on the reasonable: Ferry manages to breathe new life into a wonderful (and not much known) Dylan song Make You Feel My Love.

But one swallow does not a summer make. Today, I'll be doing something I've never done before in my life. I'm taking the CD back to the shop. Not because it's scratched, or won't play on my car's stereo system (which has happened before now with an odd CD or two) - but simply because it's a pile of pants.

Today's top tip, therefore, is to save yourself a tenner by avoiding this CD like you might a rare and virulent strain of botulism that you found on your doorstep.