I've just been listening to the Yard Act album on Apple. People whose views I respect tell me it's fantastic. I'm not seeing it yet, I'm giving it another spin. I like it, like. It's good. It's clearly good. But not earth shaking. It's not doing anything I haven't heard elsewhere in other forms.
But that opinion may change. And not everything needs to be earth shattering. If it did, I wouldn't have been talking about Matt Monro would I?
(There's something in the way I type that surname. It constantly comes out as MOnro and I have to edit. As anyone will attest, I'm not interesting in editing myself, in speech or writing.)
I nearly spoke about another Matt MOnro album yesterday (See? It's done it again. Or I've done it again. Blaming the keyboard for my typing is like believing that VAR is a system rather than a bloke in front of a telly who just happens to be about as good at his job as the bloke in the middle who he's advising) I've a Matt Monro album that's purely Matt sings the songs of Hoagy Carmichael. Which is obviously a glorious thing. Hoagy was a genius. Wrote Stardust, wrote Georgia On My Mind, was Ian Fleming's vision of James Bond. That'd be enough for anyone wouldn't it? That's a life with achievement and legacy right there. But no, Hoagy also wrote I Get Along Without You Very Well.
(Worth pointing out at this juncture that I've literally only just realised that Hoagy didn't write the words to most of his greats. 'Just' the melodies. So he's not responsible for "Though I dream in vain, in my heart it will remain, my Stardust Memory, the memory of love's refrain" but *is* responsible for it having a melody that we can hum along with. So, still great, obviously.
Here's Matt doing Hoagy (and a bit more):
You don't have to listen to it.
What shall we move to? That bag of singles (which the cat now thinks is a seat of some kind)? Yeah, let's. Let's see where we go.
(This is all time killing here. It's 11:42am, PMQs is at noon and we're supposed to have the Sue Gray report - which wasn't coming out at all last night - by the time we hit PMQs. A resignation would be a lovely thing. For a while. Until they elect the next inept embarrassment.)
George McCrae. Rock Your Baby.
I could claim that this was a random pull. It wasn't, I was playing it a couple of days ago. It's just effortless, isn't it? Everything about it feels summery, George's vocals are lazy, sumptuous, easy, graceful. It's one of those records that just 'tastes' like the seventies. Tastes like Count Dracula lolly ices and the sunshine of the ady you first heard it. I'm guessing 72? Feels like Pontins in Blackpool, brown flares, shirts with overly extended collars.
It's not, it's 74. I was two years out. Which basically makes the fashion choices, holiday destination and lolly ice choice remain accurate. Probably add to that the classic Adidas three stripe T-shirts in brown with white trim and orange with black trim (very much the Holland colours for the glorious team that decorated that summer's world cup finals - Cruyff, Neeskens, Johnny Rep) to that list. Probably find out they actually came from 77 and I'm out on that but it's all over 40 years ago and everything condenses as we move further from it.
Holidays in the seventies were, for us, always Pontins. Always relatively close to home. The idea of travelling abroad unheard of for a family holiday: school trips, yes; European finals, yes. There was never a family holiday abroad. We were almost going to 'Go Continental' in 1980 but headed to Newquay instead. Which is fine, Newquay in the early to mid 80s was a wonderful place.
George McCrae then. Something's nagging at me, I'm sure he's linked to something bigger. I'll actually check this. Now. In real time.
No, he's not. Although the backing band on this is apparently KC & The Sunshine Band. Had no idea, may have to reappraise those lads.
(Hold on, PMQs in three minutes, need a coffee for this.)
Well that was a waste of time, wasn't it? NO sign of the Sue Gray report- which will undoubtedly wend its way to the weekend and then first we'll hear of it is when 'someone' from the cabinet leaks it to the Sunday Times. As per ever.
A packed house. Starmer - who I don't rate at all, an utterly ineffectual leader, a leader whose pointlessness brought me to leave the Labour Party - managed one decent hit, one moment where his previous employment at the top of the CPS demonstrated clearly that the decision to turn the investigation of the Downing Street parties into a criminal one was extremely serious and that there were actual facts backing this up.
And the Johnson went for his glib, school bully persona again. Playing to his back benches, making unfounded claims about some mythical good that his party was doing while the house jeered and barracked.
Two things proved in this current parliament:
1) The way our governing chamber discusses politics is an antiquated joke, PMQs is a mockery, a shambolic mess
2) This country desperately needs Proportional Representation as the backbone of its electoral system. I was first taught about PR in MR Stebbing's Govt and Politics lessons in the late seventies. It's a long conversation and it needs to become serious. The way we practice politics in this country needs to become a serious proposition.
Which, with an eighty seat majority bought by lying to people about the imaginary benefits of the stupidest political ideal ever foisted on a populace, isn't going to happen for at least another three years.
In the meantime, what are the rest of us to do in the face of this?
Continue pointing out the inadequacies at the top, hope others listen and take joy in the small moments of art that make us happy.
On the 23rd of October ten years ago, I was supposed to write here for the final time. I was writing up until my 50th birthday then stopping. Job done. The task I'd set myself at the start of 2013 complete. Obviously that didn't happen. I enjoyed it too much, had too much to say. But, in time, it dwindled. I didn't feel the need to write here as I had so many other things to write elsewhere - - aside: I intended to write a 'What Happened Next' piece here for my 60th. Started it, semi-planned it, was going to talk about everything that had happened after the blog/partly because of the blog. But other things came up and I wasn't convinced people would be that interested. So I didn't. And none of that is the point. None of it's the reason I'm back here for this one. J's cousin, Paula, bought us a book: a notebook, lined empty pages and a pocket at the back for memorabilia (of the paper kind, snow globes would have been an issue), nicely bound, impr
Note to self: yesterday was about a single, it played at 45rpm, change the speed. Full on John Peel "this one plays at 33" moment there. Which didn't benefit Michael Stipe in any way at all. "We're REM, from Athens Georgia. This one's new." They were all new, we knew nothing about them other than the whispers that were coming out in the music papers. (Aside: J's on a video call in the living room, Daisy's in with me; she's currently hiding either under the banjo on its stand or behind the Rickenbacker in its case. Both are worrying me. i am, quite ironically, having kittens here. See what I did there? Dad jokes all over the place.) REM were one of the groups that made me want to own a Rickenbacker. These and The Church more than The Jam or The Beatles strangely enough. Back to the point. The radio wasn't playing REM in 83. Not that I recall. (Another aside, I'm writing this while watching/listening to PMQs - we've just had a Tor
Sunday morning. Nothing opening at breakfast time, lots of things not opening all day as it turned out, so we went for a walk. A long walk. A long walk to another state. Down to the Mississippi, along the Mississippi, to the 'Big River Crossing'. A bridge over the river. A one mile long bridge from Memphis in Nashville to West Memphis in Arkansas. Jumped over the state line, mid-river. Got to the other side, put our feet on the soil of Arkansas, turned round, walked a mile back. Genuinely brilliant and worth every second. Found ourselves in an Exxon station, in the middle of very little, waiting for an Uber. An Uber to take us out to McLemore Avenue and the Stax Museum. Which was, and I hate to say this because it's Stax and everything that came out on Stax is brilliant, massively disappointing. It's on the site of Stax, in the way that the Cavern is on the site (almost) of the Cavern. It looks like Stax. In the way the Cavern looks like the Cavern. But it's no
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