• XMAS_JOKE_BOOK
    Hooray! The first Christmas Catalogue has just dropped through the letterbox. Assuming we have 24/7 shopping now, I make it 114 shopping days till Christmas – so get your Skates on!

    While I’m at it might I recommend The Christmas Stocking Joke Book by one Shoo Rayner. Souped up with a new cover and hardly revised after 20 years – A classic! It was a Christmas number three best seller behind Matilda and Prince Caspian when it came out in 89 and featured on Live and Kicking one Saturday morning. I nearly choked on my cornflakes in surprise!

  • This blog is available on Facebook, where I had a few comments about my going digital post, yesterday.

    Nikki, Saviour and Gerry all urged me to hold on to the vinyl because records are so evocative and works of art. But if I’ve not been bothered to listen to them for twenty years, there must be a reason. Anything that I really missed, I have a digital version of. Anything I’m curious to hear again I can find on Spotify, or some similar service.

    Do I really need to keep a hundredweight of unusable cardboard and vinyl in the attic? If I get rid of it, I make everything else rarer and so increase the value of other people’s collections. That’s a social service! It would take the pressure of the rafters in the attic and release a weight feel pressing down on my shoulders too.

    It’s the weight of the past. I’m a different person the the kid that spent all those hours in record shops looking for obscure albums to impress with. I don’t know who I was trying to impress. Anyway, it didn’t work!

    If I do get an album down to listen to again, it often disappoints. Like watching movies again or re-reading a book. I much prefer to keep the memories. The reality is often not as good as the memory.

    I feel really sad when I hear Radio 2 being played by my generation and even sadder when I realise they are enjoying it. I find radio 2 as embarrassing today as I did when I was eighteen. It’s for old codgers. I don’t want to hear Goodbye Blackberry Lane and Vienna played all day long. I want to know that there is something new and exciting out there.

    Admittedly, I find it harder to find new music that grabs me. If I don’t want to listen to Radio 2, I don’t want to listen to Radio 1 either. That would be generational tourism. Radio 6 is anal and blokey. I basically follow if you like this recommendations on Amazon and iTunes and see where the trail leads. That brought me to Karine Polwart, Emiliana Torrinni, Kate Havnevik and Catherine Feeney (I’m a sucker for the female voice!)

    I don’t want to live in the past. Vinyl is a ball and chain that stops you going forward. My generation laughed at those who clung on to shellac 78s – those funny old people who got stuck in the Doris Days forever playing Vera Lyn – but now my generation is stalling in the same way, stuck with the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Motown and Pop. It’s so easy to say, “I’m comfortable. I’m going to stay right here and let the world move on without me.” But I’m not ready to do that.

    “Life is like a hot air balloon. You have to chuck out the deadweight if you want to stay afloat.”

    Who said that? I just did!

  • I’ve just removed my Cds and rd radio player from my studio. I realised that I don’t use them anymore. I get everything on my mac though iTunes, BBC iPlayer and Spotify.

    I suppose this is quite a day, really. Anyone know what I do with all my old Cds? ( not to mention the Vinyl that has been in the attic for twenty years?) My old Cassette tapes are going to the dump. They are just unplayable now. If I try, I end up with lots of wow and flutter before the tape snarls up in the carriage system.