Oh I am finding this hard but.... here goes. this is what I bought this year although some of it is old.
The Optimist ...Turin Breaks New day at Midnight ....David Gray By the Way.......Red Hot Chilli Peppers 18...Moby Come away with me...Norah Jones Spirits Colliding.... Paul Brady Elton John greatest hits. Not to forget stuff given to me such as Boo Hewardine, Jeb Loy Nicholls, MTV Unplugged. and some French songs by Frances Cabrel. My friends describe my musical tastes as "patchwork". Joni, as always reigns supreme with it impossible for me to choose a favourite album. I found myself appreciating Jazz through her, I began to like Bob Dylan because of her, I spent my early teens entranced by her voice and learned to play acoustic guitar (you can fit lots of her songs to C,G,Am if you have no chance of anyone putting the real Joni on)... One of my favourite tv skits ever was on French and Saunders where Ralph McTell was in court, being prosecuted for his impossibly complicated book "101 songs for easy guitar" and was being tried by Dawn French. Ranged as expert witnesses were such guitar luminaries as Lemmy, Mark King,..(?)Gilmore... Oh loads of people (please remind me someone). They came on, played exerpts from their songs and then were invited to play the same song from the book...."and now WITH the book" became the mantra..and were unable to do so.It was hilarious. All the time this was going on Ralph stood in the dock looking smug until asked to do "Streets of London" he played it and then was asked "and now WITH the book" and failed miserably. It was the funniest thing and if you have never seen it try and find someone who has it on tape........ Back to Joni and me. When Walkmans first came out I bought one (and lived off beans on toast for a month after) I had a tape of Blue and went off to a favourite hill to sit and submerge myself in the scenery and some class music... It is a lesson in restraint not to sing along isn't it? So taken was I, with the loudness of the music in my head, I totally forgot I was outside, on a summers day and that no-one else could hear what I could. My totally free-spirited rendition of Little Green cleared a pic-nic table nearby and the cows that had been looking interestedly at me moved away..... All happening in front of me and I had not the faintest idea why.I just thought it a little strange... It took a couple of other tracks before someone tapped me on the shoulder and, I removed the headphones. "please don't sing". Ah well...... I have one more lovely tale to tell of music enjoyed outdoors. In 2000 I went skiing in Val Thorens with a friend ofmine. I do not ski and had proved the point on the first day by ripping my cruciate ligaments and so was resigned (OH BIG SHAME) to cafes and bars with views over the best scenery in the world (possibly). I had gone back to the car for my pain killers and decided, while I was there to relax in the sunshine with the car doors open, the CD player on and Vaughan Williams Lark Ascending on the go. It was a blazingly sunny day and I sat there just away with the music... and maybe some painrelief but who cares...its a beautiful piece of music... As the final note ended a shadow dropped over my eyes and I thought it was my mate back from his king of the downhill stuff... NO it was a beautifully dressed man wearing one of those hats with a little feather in the side. He had on wonderful lederhosen (those shorts things in leather with braces) and was standing there with a pen and paper. "hallow" he said in rather clipped tones. "Ve are from Austria. Voss iss diss music pliss?" so I wrote it all down and gave him the correct way of saying the name and helped him understand the piece and its allusion to summer on the Sussex downs... a place you have to visit if any of you come over to England.. and he was really happy.. I asked him why he liked it.."Oh is not for me.. is for my vife... she is shut up for ze holl 15 minute, end I want buy it for ze long journeys" and with that he clicked his heels and walked away.......... Music is a universal unifier isn't it!!! All good things to all who read this and look up for along the horizon the sky growns brighter... Lucy Np... Moby We are all made of stars.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
