1 San Francisco, 1966-68 Few major artists have surfaced from the Bay Area, but there was a moment when this city felt like the musical centre of a new world. For every local hippie who had learnt to play guitar there was a singer or musician from far away, drawn like moths to the flame. Most members of the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead grew up locally, but Janis Joplin, Steve Miller and Doug Sahm were from Texas. Converting the Fillmore movie theatre into a venue for live music, Bill Graham provided the forum, and invited musicians from around the world to play: Albert King, Cream, Ravi Shankar. Local DJ Tom Donahue pioneered 'free form radio,' Jann Wenner launched Rolling Stone magazine. There would never be anything like it again.
2 New Orleans, 1900-1910 Jazz was born in the brothels of a city where prostitution was legal, but even people who didn't know the details of the music's parentage could feel that there was something lascivious in its unfettered expression of passion and joy. When a mayor was elected to clean up the town, jazz moved north to Kansas City and Chicago, where gangsters held sway for a couple of decades longer.
3 Paris, 1987-2004
The definitive immigrant city, where musicians from the Caribbean, North and Central Africa, and the Middle East are hired to play side by side with open- minded French adventurers, and new hybrids evolve as their rhythms and melodies spark off each other. So many great records have been made here over the past 20 years, beginning with Les Negresses Vertes and Mano Negra.
4 Liverpool, 1961-63
If ever a teenager was in the wrong place at the right time, it was me on a one-night visit to Liverpool in 1961, choosing Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen at the Cavern when, if we are to believe the legend, the city's basement clubs were awash with budding beat groups. Take me back, and next time I'll look for the Big Three, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes or even a combo called the Silver Beetles.
5 Memphis, 1951-56 On Beale Street during the early 1950s, you could have heard some fantastic live music from an R'n'B band calling itself the Beale Streeters, from whose ranks came hit-makers Johnny Ace, Bobby Bland and Rosco Gordon. And there was no precedent for what Sam Phillips dared to do in 1950: open a recording studio accessible to whoever wanted to use it, black or white.
6 Barcelona, 2000-2004
Spanish rock was not a pleasant thought until Manu Chao moved here. Did he inspire the locals or did he simply pull the spotlight towards the city, and there they all were, ready to rock? Acts like Ojos de Brujos and Dusminguet are thriving and in the middle of it all is a man who calls himself Danny the Mad Monkey, a focal point of activity who makes music of his own as Macaco.
7 Detroit, 1959-68
There had been plenty of hit makers from Detroit before Berry Gordy set up his first record label in 1959, but few people could have named them. He stamped his Motown trademark on all who worked for him from the Miracles to Stevie Wonder. Other parts of town shook to a different beat, pounded out by Bob Seger, the MC5, Iggy and the Stooges and teenage bassist Suzi Quatro.
8 Dakar, 2004
There are more hip hop groups in the Senegalese capital than in any other city in the world, and most of them can only dream that they might ever make a record: many make do with just their voices, setting up a ghetto blaster on the pavement to play a backing track. But there's an endless stream of cassettes on sale in the markets and a few groups such as Daara J have made it to CD.
9 New Orleans, 1955-1956
Where the city's first music revolution was led by live musicians, the second was plotted out of sight in a tiny recording studio at the back of a grocery store, overseen by recording engineer Cosimo 'Cosmo' Matassa. Hits by the likes of Fats Domino saw labels in Los Angeles send singers such as Little Richard down to see if this rock 'n' roll voodoo would rub off on them too.
10 St Petersburg, 2000-2004
Two groups in particular call for a visit: Leningrad use the city's Communist-era name and are banned on the radio, their songs either too profane or subversive. A big band, their sound is punk-meets-Cab Calloway. And, when not sounding like a Colombian cumbia outfit, Markscheider Kunst play in a mutant Congolese style, with a bona fide Congolese vocalist.
