Blogging a Tuesday Night's Musical Odyssey

It’s not really live-blogging, per se. But, sometimes, when we don’t have anything we want to watch on television, Nick and I will just run through the CD collection—and that’s what we’re doing tonight.

(Just for the record, it was Nick who suggested it might make interesting blogging. I wasn’t so sure.)

So far, we’ve just finished listening to Elmore James’s “The Sky is Crying”—and before that his version of “Dust My Broom,” but, really, who hasn’t done a version of “Dust My Broom”?—and I’m about to insist on some Billy Bragg.

We’re not drunk, by the way. It just seems as though we are.

Ah, Nick has just brought me coffee at the same time as I’ve started Billy Bragg’s version of “The Red Flag”—I’ve been feeling unusually bolshie after the events of this week. This version has the original music—much more inspiring and martial than the dirge-like version that’s sung these days.

It has whistles and something called a “bodhran”—I’m not sure what that is.

Ah: it’s an Irish frame drum. Apparently. Makes a good sound, whatever it is.

NICK: I don’t think I’ve ever heard the more typical version.
ME: The dirge.
NICK: Yeah.
ME: You’ve watched a Labour party conference?
NICK: Ah . . . no. Of course, the Australian Labour Party’s anthem is “Fuck the Communists,” as far as I can tell.

(I was going to spell that with an asterisk, but my Mam doesn’t read my blog, anyway.)

(Is this the height of solipsism? Maybe—but it’s a fun writing exercise.)

Billy Bragg’s the only artist apart from The Cure that I’ve ever seen twice: he’s brilliant live. That’s why I’m breaking the rules, to play more than one song from this EP.

Ah, he’s just been singing about the “dark satanic mills” in “Jerusalem”—my Dad hates that line, on the basis of the digs in the ribs he used to get when he was a choir boy in the Midlands.

Now Nick’s complaining that I’ve put Duran Duran on. I intend to challenge him as to why he hates Duran Duran, but he’s pre-empted me.

NICK: The only good Duran Duran song is “View to a Kill”—and you can quote me on that.

(Apparently, my spell-checker doesn’t recognise “th” as misspelt—that’s odd. I’ve caught two instances of my leaving the last letter off already: I“ll have to keep an eye on that.)

Whoops, I think Nick’s slipped into a coma—I might have to change the CD.

I wonder if he’d let me play something from Essential Soul: Volume One—note: contains no actual soul songs—if I promise not to play Patches. I love that song: makes me laugh every time. It’s the soul equivalent of the death of Little Nell.

It shouldn’t make me laugh, of course, but there’s a fine line between pathos and bathos.

Nope—couldn’t stop myself from listening to “Patches.” Brilliant.

It’s actually not a bad song, and I am an evil, evil person to laugh at it. It’s got a lovely rhythm, really.

On the other hand, I was raised by a woman who asked me and my sister to write poems for her obituary a few years ago, on the grounds that she wanted to edit them before she actually died. (She wasn’t actually ill, or anything—she’d read a newspaper article about a man whose son had written a poem for the newspaper obituary, and it enflamed her ambition.)

My sister wrote a limerick.

This live version of the Local Hero theme goes on forever, but I’m with Douglas Adams on the subject of Mark Knopfler’s guitar playing.

(I just skipped on to the Admin pages—while listening to “The Ship Song”—and found that someone had found the blog by Googling “Romeo+Juliet+blurbs.” I’m not even sure what that means, but I hope they enjoyed the blog.)

Nick’s just shown me a picture without telling me that it would completely spoil the last two episodes of Doctor Who for this season. If you don’t want to be spoiled, do not click on this link.

For those of you who did click—cool, huh?

We’re up to The Smiths, by that way—just to add a cheery note to the whole evening. Has anyone spotted that I usually get to pick the music on these evenings?

But I have just dragged my best of Bon Jovi album out, just in case we do fancy something a little more up-beat.

Musical tastes is one area where Nick and I do not have a lot of overlap—it’s odd, really, given how similar we are in terms of our tastes in television and movies. (Well, except for the ongoing debate about whether I should be able to watch Battlestar Galactica without bursting into tears.) But we really have next to no overlap on music—except for The Cure. But Nick is the more magnanimous here, because he will listen to some of my stuff, whereas I can’t stand most of his favourite artists.

Oh, I am so not listening to “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”—that’s grim even for The Smiths.

I’m not intending to make this the world’s longest post, by the way. But there is a different challenge to writing down mundane events (almost) as they happen and (hopefully) making them interesting. That’s what I like about the blog: well, one of two things. It makes me stretch my writing and it’s overcoming my distaste about showing my writing to people.

(I have no problem showing thesis drafts to my supervisors—but I’m reluctant to display any other form of writing. Or I was, until I started writing the blog.)

Of course, you can’t trust me—I’ve used the word “solipsistic” more times since I started writing this blog than . . . well, I was going to say “than I have in the 31 years preceding” but a more accurate closing clause would be “since I wrote that tutorial paper on Satre in my second year.”

Nick hasn’t given me many amusing comments so far—I’ll see if Bon Jovi will flush him out.

NICK: Ah, this song [“Living on a Prayer”] would be much better without the talk box. That “whah whah whah”—really annoying.

See?

Plus, we’ve just had a little chat about how “torque” and “talk” are homophones, so Bon Jovi is educational as well as fun.

Of course, now he’s singing along at the top of his voice, and I’m deeply, deeply regretting my choice.

Key change! It’s like Eurovision all over again.

Nick’s just told me that the American Red Cross has spent its entire disaster-relief budget. That’s . . . damn. I don’t even know what to say about that.

I’ve moved on to 1960s’ music, by the way, which has suddenly filled me with a overwhelming desire to listen to “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Hey—it’s not just Liverpool FC’s song (as though it needs to be anything else!) It also has geek credibility: it’s the song that Eddie the shipboard computer sang when the Polaris missiles were heading towards the Heart of Gold in Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Of course, I have it on an album called “Rock and Roll Heartbreakers”—which it really isn’t, even if you don’t associate it with tens of thousands of fans singing it after yet another FA Cup victory.

Is it just me, or is “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” the strangest song to find on the soundtrack of a Western? Even a Western like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

On the other hand, it has led to a spirited debate between Nick and me about whether “outro” is a real word. Nick thinks it is, on the grounds that “intro” is now a word in its own right and not merely a truncation of “introduction.” I think that’s rubbish.

The argument was a stalemate, because Nick brought out “well, in a musical context,” which gave me no grounds for riposte, since I know nothing about music.

But I do know that these are some of the greatest lines in musical history: “Eleanor, I really think you’re groovy. Let’s go out to a movie” and “You’re my pride and joy, et cetera”.

Actually, I think that last line reappeared in one of the Eurovision entries this year.

And on that note—Nick is singing along to “It’s My Party,” which has to be seen (and heard) to be believed—I should stop writing this before it either gets so long that people just skip over it or I’m tempted to use the word “solipsistic” again.