Sometimes I despair and wonder why I bother. Today for example, I went to the library with Gee and he went in first while I waited in the lobby with Rox. When he came out he commented that all the time he had been in - about 15 minutes - one member of staff had been sat at a table in the middle of the front desk area, reading a newspaper while her colleague dealt with library users. Not only was she still sitting on her arse when I went in, but when I approached the desk to ask something, she didn't stir and I had to wait for her co-worker to finish dealing with another patron. I wanted to say something but why should I? Add to that, when I picked up a DVD I had ordered I noticed I was the first person to borrow it, it being a new release. The young man (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Bill Oddie) stamped the new label IN THE MIDDLE, UPSIDE DOWN and WITH THE WRONG DATE. He then changed the date and stamped it the right way up this time but still in the centre of the label - no wonder there is so much wasteage in the council. The final straw was that I noticed they had a display of books by that charalatan Derek Acorah and other fakes like Gordon Smith plus books on tarot, all under a notice that announced they were "PYCHIC STORIES". I pointed out to "Bill" that in a libary they should at least be able to spell "psychic" and was met with a weak laugh and a shrug. Don't get me wrong, I love my wee local library and it's great that I can order almost any book and hire out DVDs for a week for £1. I can see however how so easily this one could be justified for closure - apart from a few members of staff, they are all torn-faced grumps who seem to be in out of the way of the traffic or until they can claim their pensions. It irks me because I would love to work in a library but vacancies are as rare as hen's teeth because of wasters like these.
In a brighter note, today's music is courtesy of another young woman singer. I have no excuse for the plethora of women in my 25 days of music, except that a) I am a woman and b) I like to hear other women sing. Caitlin Rose is from Nashville and she has been compared to Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline but I feel she has a sound all of her own which i think you will like and not dismiss as "country". As ever, enjoy xxx
Today's blog is brought to you by Beecham's Cold and Flu Powders with extra honey, lime and cider vinegar and garlic on toast. Yes folks I have acquired yet another cold so am hitting it with heavy artillery so I make no apologies if you get a whiff of salad dressing or are a vampire. I hear on the news that the budget for the London Olympics has been doubled from £40 million to £80 million with only 9 months to go. I am once again astounded that a country so close to flatlining, as one of my Twitter pals described it to me, and that is asking everyone to be canny can find that sort of money to spend on what is frankly a luxury. Being a lifelong undevotee of sport in general and the Olympics in particular which to me is an ongoing junket rife with corruption that has nothing to do with sport anymore, I am spitting mad that this happens in the same week that patients who are undergoing chemotherapy as part of their cancer treatment are now required to participate in "fitness for work" tests in order to receive benefits. Honestly this country is going to Hell in a handbasket - our private medical files are going to be made available to private medical companies, our teenagers are being made to work for £53 a week full-time for companies like Tesco who are appearing like Triffids on every corner (we have 2 within walking distance and I mean large supermarkets, not their express shops) and a film has been made about Margaret Thatcher which although I have heard paints her in her now declining years with dementia will no doubt lionise her political years and not show her out to be the horrendous politician who tried to grind we Scots under her jackboot with the Poll Tax (and failed!). To brighten my mood and cheer us all up as Winter reminds us of her presence, here's another wee tune for you. Today it's the turn of the excellently monickered Holcombe Waller who comes from Portland, Oregon (a real hotbed for new and exciting music I reckon) via California. He is a performance artist as well as a musician and I think you'll like what he has done with this interpretation of Buffy Sainte-Marie's song about her birthplace xxx
Once again - mega-apologies for the tardy posting. I was up at 6.30 a.m. to have a shower then walk the dog IN THE SNOW! After that I had to go shopping for provisions - nothing is bleaker than walking around a shopping mall at 8.55 a.m. practically on your own, listening to tinny Xmas muzak. This was mean old me maximising my all day ticket on the bus - all in all I was on 9 separate buses today. I've also been to the gynaecologist - boys look away NOW - thankfully I don't have a prolapse but I do have a weak pelvic floor so am being referred to another physio and have to return in January fo a scan as I still feel like I have been kicked in the ladyballs. I still have the thyroidal blues too so am a sad wee bunny. Tonight was also the last night of my class - I was too tired and scunnered and also too poor to go for drinks so I came home. Highlight of the day NOT was listening to Women's Hour on BBC Radio 4, which seemed to have fallen into some kind of alternate reality where the majority of us aren't tightening our belts so far that we look like some kind of corsetry fetish convention. They had some women on who apparently is an expert Xmas cook and had all these f*cks phoning up asking about how long they should cook a goose in their Aga and whether to stuff a brace of pheasants with foie gras or chestnuts. WTF? I was so shocked I nearly stabbed the radio while diceing some celeriac for ratatouille! (By the way, I am a vegetarian and I cook shit like that all the time - the celeriac was 99p from Lidl). The tree remains in the loft and I was completely unmoved by the Xmas lights and slush in the city centre so the grinchy-ness continues. I have written exactly one Xmas card. Today choon is from another lovely wee lass singer - and she's Scottish too! Enjoy the vocal delight that is Smoothieforme aka Holly and keep warm and dry wherever you are xxx
Sorry folks - not been online or on Twitter much. I'm having what I think is a thyroid-related downer - I feel really tired and blue. The Xmas tree that was supposed to go up today is still in its box in the loft and my poor tribe are making their own dinner. I wish I was tech savvy enough to post the beautiful music that I heard from my grumpy bed as my lassie practised songs for her Standard Grade Music practical prelim exam tomorrow (for non-Scottish readers - this is a practice or "mock" exam for her official exams in May 2012. Standard Grades are equivalent to English 'O' levels and are the first level of Scottish high school exams. Highers are next, which she will need for university). She is singing "Secret Love" from "Calamity Jane" and "Once Upon A Dream" from "Jekyll And Hyde" (her music teacher likes his musicals!). Anyway, to cheer me up and hopefully you here is a song from a lovely young Texan woman named Sarah Jarosz. I hope it lifts you too xxx
Today I come with a confession. Remember back to day 1 when I was bemoaning my parents' meagre record collection? They used to buy these multi-disc collections from Readers Digest or ones that were advertised on TV with sepia footage of little kids running around in gingham and denim every Xmas. Well, I actually listened to some of them and from there I do have a certain fondness for what is often mistakenly called "country music". I prefer to think of it as being more akin to a distallation of the nearest thing the USA has to a folk music - the songs of the white, blue collar working people. One of the first "albums" I ever had of my own was one I picked up from somewhere on cassette by Waylon Jennings and believe me, I played to to death. That led me into listening to Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. I love the albums that Johnny Cash did latterly with Rick Rubin and I have a song on my iPod that Loretta did with Jack White. I know that "country" can be seen as terribly cheesy - I remember Billy Connolly on one of his albums doing a pastiche of the typical country song where things go from bad to worse which he called "My Granny Died At The Fountain In Lourdes - A Hunchback Pushed Her In" - and especially here in Scotland we have had our fair share of people like Sydney Devine who realy went into that side of it. I'm proud to say though that I do now have an appreciation for bluegrass, Americana, folk roots, whatever you want to call it and towards the end of the month I will be sharing music by a man I do love. For now though, here is a wee bit of Scottish home-grown music from a really nice couple called Paul Bain and Claire McArthur and their band Raintown. Enjoy xxx
Well, here it is. Sorry this is a bit late in the day but I had to accompany my good friend Anthony to a dental clinic as he was having several teeth removed and needed a responsible person to take him home. All went well and a decidedly woozy albeit unintelligible Anthony is fine although I wish I'd had the presence of mind to video him as he was gurgling about stormtroopers!
Anyway, song 2 comes from someone I have only come across this year - Neko Case. I'm happy to admit that I heard this song during an episode of one of my favourite shows "True Blood" and it has really nice if sad lyrics. So here it is and I hope December is going well for you so far xxx
Pinch, punch – first of the month! I had a wee idea yesterday to do a sort of Advent Calendar this month (I know, I know – it’s not Grinchy but it’s my blog and I’m allowed to break the rules!) but instead of chocolate, which I wish I could give you all, to share some of the music I’ve stumbled across in 2011 and hopefully bring you something that is new to you.
When I was writing about my Dad, I mentioned that he always encouraged me to have a broad taste in music. I have tried to stick to that through my life, making the effort to listen to something fresh and new to me when ever I could and never dismissing something out of hand just because it was pop or mainstream, jazz or classical. It always got (and still gets) my hackles up when I met someone, usually an older adult who would say something like “They don’t make music like they used to” and then extol the virtues of the likes of Frank Sinatra or The Beatles. Let me say that I have nothing against Frank – I enjoy some of his output, even if he was a bit of a twat. As for the Beatles – I dislike them intensely. “But how can you say that?” people ask me and seem to be personally and mortally wounded in the way that they would never be if I said I don’t like any other band or singer. Well, as you all know, I was born in the late 60s so I missed out on all of the Merseybeat music. I don’t think it’s an accident that the kind of music I like from that era veers more towards the likes of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, although I can state quite categorically that they weren’t my parents’ favourites. Allow me to digress a wee minute – again it has always mystified me that, as people who grew up in the 50s and 60s that my parents’ music collections were so sparse. I remember going through their “record collections”, which amounted to maybe a dozen singles and not many more albums and being surprised that they had so little – maybe 2 Beatles, one Mamas and the Papas, their “song” (“You Were Always On My Mind” by Elvis Presley, which in a sad way was sort of apt for them) and a few novelty records. Their album collection tended to consist of really random things like collections of military band music, boxed sets of back catalogues from Readers Digest of country music and again really strange things like “A Tijuana Christmas”! They had nothing from the early 1970s, even though they had at one point somewhat uncharacteristically run a disco for local teenagers on a Sunday night in the local tenants’ association hall – it was called the PADA club (for Parkhall And District Association) and each week for about a year or so I remember going along with them (I was about 5 or 6) and learning to dance “the Bump”. It was really popular and I recall how my Dad had made flashing disco lights (he offered to make me some when I was a teenager but I was too cool sadly for 3 bulbs in a foil-covered box by then). I have no idea what happened to all the records they had – I guess they had to leave them with the association but they didn’t seem to buy any of Bowie or T-Rex for themselves. Anyway, back to the bloody Beatles. I did try to listen to them but they were just another group to me and were old hat when I was growing up so nobody I know really listened to them. In 1985, one of my then boyfriends lent me a book by Pete Best who had been the original drummer. Maybe looking back on it, it was slanted and maybe he was disgruntled but it influenced me enough then and still does to see them all as not very nice people, especially John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I do think that their individual output after the band broke up was nothing special and I don’t think any of them, particularly Lennon, deserve to be lionised in the way that they are. It brings me back to what I was saying about how I feel that some people get “stuck” with the music that affected them most when they were growing up. I‘ll be the first to put my hand up and admit that, despite my fondness for them now, I wasn’t aware of the Clash and disliked the Sex Pistols and “punk”. My liking of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet embarrasses me now although I still listen to Adam Ant, especially his new stuff. I always hearken back to a quote from the movie “The Breakfast Club” where Ally’s Sheedy’s character Alison says, “When you grow up, your heart dies.” – I think that can also mean that some people think that when you “grow up” your taste in music dies and you have to listen to Susan Boyle, The Travelling Wilburys and Radio 2 or Smooth Radio. I have vowed to myself that if I ever stop listening to new music, then it’s Soylent Green time for me. I do pride myself that I currently have 787 songs on my iPod ranging from Lady Gaga to Dusty Springfield and the Wu Tang Clan to Steve Earle. So I’d like if I may to share from now up to Ickmas some new tunes that I like. I hope that you will indulge me because it means that I am committing to blog EVERY DAY for the next 24, including weekends. So without any further ado, here is today’s tune. I’m going with some new stuff from an old favourite. Kate Bush (see, the titles of these blogs have meaning!) has a new album out “50 Words For Snow” and I have been listening to it on Spotify and from that here is
