If there was a hell
February 4th, 2012
This is the music they’d play there:
Every now and then though, just to give you false hope, they would play this:
Category: Music
Who knows where the time goes
January 27th, 2012
Memo to self: do not listen to maudlin Sandy Denny songs when already feeling a bit blue. This and Meet on the Ledge can always get me.
I never really rated Fairport Convention, or Richard Thompson or any of the other English folk rock acts until recently. Too quiet, too earnest, too embarassing to like if you’re not an aging baby boomer. All prejudices I had to rid myself off before I could get to appreciate these sort of artists. I’m glad I did, even if it hurts sometimes listening to these songs.
They said there’d be snow on Christmas
December 24th, 2011
Sandra was never much impressed by prog rock dinosaurs like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but despite this
greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas was one of her favourite Christmas songs. It’s the melancholy she liked.
Categories: Music, posts interesting only to me, video
layaway
December 18th, 2011
Via Metafiler comes a story that restores some of your faith in humanity. In America there’s a tradition of layaways, setting aside something you want to buy but don’t have the money for just yet and pay for it in installments, after which you can pick it up. It’s old enough that the Isley Brothers could make it into a metaphor for delayed love and thanks to the crisis it’s gotten a new lease on life. Layaways are popular, especially this time of year, to pay for Christmas presents.
But of course, if you’re poor enough to need to pay for Christmas this way, you may end up never quite getting all the money you need to pay off your layaways. Which is where an army of secrets santas has come in, as all over America anonymous people have paid off layaway tabs for complete strangers:
— Indiana. “An anonymous woman made a special trip to the Indianapolis Super Kmart and paid off the outstanding layaway balances of several customers, according to ABC affiliate station WRTV-TV6.”
— South Carolina. ” ‘Probably two weeks ago, we started seeing people coming in asking to randomly pay off strangers’ layaways,’ Terry Northcutt, manager of the Mount Pleasant Kmart, told Mount Pleasant Patch. It adds that “so far, eight shoppers have come in to pay off stranger’s layaways, and as similar stories across the country are reported, Northcutt expects to see more.”
— Nebraska. “Dona Bremser, an Omaha nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her that someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son,” the AP says. “I was speechless,” Bremser told the wire service. “It made me believe in Christmas again.”
What makes this so good is not so much that this solves anybody’s problems, as that it brings some cheer to people who can use it the most. I’ve never been really poor myself, though I’ve been skint sometimes, but I imagine that one of the most awful bits of being poor is having that feeling that you’re not allowed to have nice things, a feeling that must be even worse at Christmas time. Having some stranger pay for your presents this way, without expecting anything in return or wanting publicity for it, in short without having any of the trappings of charity.
Not fair
December 11th, 2011
To have them on during the Strictly results show.
Categories: Music, posts interesting only to me, video
Four weeks ago now…
December 5th, 2011
What do you do after you met, lived with and lost the love of your life? Other than write maudlin posts on your blog that is?
No idea, but it has been four weeks since Sandra died, almost a month since she was cremated and that means I can shortly pick up her ashes — another milestone I’d rather not have reached so soon.
Last Saturday I spent part of the afternoon listening to another of Sandra’s favourite bands, Steely Dan, whose brand of mellow, technically perfect, coked up yacht rock is not quite the sort of music you’d think she’d enjoyed when you know she spent most of the seventies trawling record stores for import funk and dancing to northern soul at the Wigam casino, but she did. What she liked was how mellifluous they sounded, the calm perfection of their sound. She hated any sudden loud noises, discords, anything that jared and whatever you think of Steely Dan, their music always flowed and flowed smoothly.
Perfect late night reading music, with a glass of whisk(e)y or cognac and a good book, a cat somewhere and a roaring fire.
Categories: Music, posts interesting only to me, video
