Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve been working almost non-stop since I last wrote, and I have to admit that I’m stuck in a cycle of The Carpenters, Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark that I neither want or am able to get out of. Pretty odd! Currently spinning is Petula’s ‘Beautiful Sounds’, a vocal version of a track I know as an instrumental on Michel Colombier’s fine but weird ‘Capot Pointu‘ album.

In other news, I bought an electric piano, so if you hear someone playing and singing along to ‘Let me be the one’ or ‘Rainy days and mondays’ really loudly that’s probably me.

‘Nobody Told Me’ by John Lennon was just playing on the radio. I had forgotten about that song. It’s one of the first songs I remember listening to repeatedly. I remember really liking it and it was totally bizarre to hear it again – lots of strange half-formed images from the past flooded my mind. My feeling about the track now is that while at the age of 5 or 6 it was probably one of the best tracks I’d ever heard, I’ve heard several better ones since!

Still, it’s a track that occupies a certain odd place at the back of my mind. Some of that solo 70s stuff by Lennon was very evocative. I remember being very into ‘Dream #9′ when I was 11 or so. It seemed like the most normal thing in the world to me then, but I can’t imagine my 11-year-old niece listening to that kind of thing now…

I’m just recovering from a serious Carpenters rut. There’s only so many times it’s safe for a person to listen to ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’. I’m obviously a huge fan of Paul Williams, who was responsible for this and many of their other hits. I’ve been listening to his 1988 album recently, and it’s surprisingly good. But I actually chose ‘goodbye to love’ to recommend. Such an amazing recording! And when you follow it up with the version by Wing, the effect is stunning!

I had a couple of days going mad for a Petula Clark compilation called ‘Feelin’ groovy’, but I just recieved the 40-disc ‘Big Band Box’, so that’s all out of the window. GBP 16 including shipping for 40 discs isn’t so bad. There are basically 2-disc sets for 20 different band leaders. I’m only a few tracks into the first disc (Ellington), but I’m already hooked. Check out his ‘Johnny Come Lately (a Strayhorn composition). I’ll review this in some detail in due course.

Thank frig I’ve got my mojo back!

Joao Gilberto makes you happy. Try it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joao_Gilberto_(1973_album).

Here’s a not very radical article about musical taste (the concept, not the site!) from the bbc.

happy new year, by the way. Have been moving house. Lots of exciting music news soon. Currently listening to Jimmy Smith arranged by Lalo Schifrin. Other than that, a lot of Piero Umiliani and Hawaiian music has been going down.

I guess this is good news. How about they do that some more, but with 10 or 100 times the number of tracks?

They’re re-releasing that George Best song…

It might amuse you (ok, it’s not that likely) to know that the picture below is me. My mate James is an illustrator/designer and he drew me for the cover of this book.

a bit sad – this year when it came to make the compilation I do each year for a friend, I kind of came up short. I got together some tracks I’ve enjoyed but it didn’t seem to gel. I’ve been taking less time to really get into music since my work has ramped up. I’ll have to get back into things. But in the meantime I just rely on old standbys. Dusty Springfield, for example. The german Lounge Legends cd, which contains plenty of tracks from 1967’s Where am I going?, is really fantastic. Superb stuff. I would love to get that airy crisp production in the music I make.