I don't mean to give the impression that this occasional blog is succumbing to morbidity or nostalgia, but the obituaries of significant figures are coming thick and fast. On Tuesday it was Bo Diddley, yesterday it was Hammond organist Jimmy McGriff, who died on May 24th at the age of 72. I'd been thinking about McGriff recently, having bought a copy of Lisa Tucker's book, Hornsey 1968: the art school revolution. This was a hot item in our local book shop, which is a two minute walk away from the Hornsey main college building where the sit-in of 1968 took place (and which is, coincidentally or not, just being demolished). I was slightly embarrassed to buy it, having seen other men of my age pay for copies and rush outside to see if they could spot their younger selves in the meagre selection of photographs.

Regrettably, it's a dull read: less than 100 pages of main text and 100 pages of glossary, notes and index. Writing with chilly academic distance and grinding devotion to the minutiae of bureaucratic process, Tickner seems to feel there's no need to document much of what actually happened during the sit-in. Worst, she restricts her focus to a few "stars" in either camp. I'd just turned 19 when the sit-in started and got involved. I gave up what I was supposed to be doing in my foundation year at the Tottenham annex and started attending meetings, seminars and all-night film shows, tried to organise a concert, and got involved in some of the practical stuff like buying food for the kitchens. The impact on me was enormous. It influenced my decision to give up art school to become a musician, and gave me a grounding in collective action and self-organisation for later ventures like Musics magazine and the London Musicians Collective. I'm sure the same impact must have been felt by many others, but you don't hear about them in Tickner's book.

But the reason Jimmy McGriff came to mind was because I remembered an occasion during the sit-in when I got the chance to do some Djing. I was listening to soul and R&B, as I had throughout my teenage years and still do, though conscious that the "cool" people had switched their allegiance to white, so-called progressive music. One of the records I played was Jimmy McGriff's "All About My Girl" and that was the track that pushed somebody to complain and tell me that this music was old-fashioned. I suppose I felt angry and just a bit humiliated, so it's an experience that has never gone away. The racial divide in music seems to be getting wider; whatever small attempts I've made to consider music from an equal starting point – black, white, folk, classical, whatever – seem to have made little impression. I don't feel humiliated any more but it still makes me angry.