What are you listening to now? Page 1,432

Lovely Bill....the man who was in the musical wilderness for four decades before getting an unexpected call.

He is currently Britain's most moving elderly musical genius:

3. Bill Fay - Salt of the Earth, 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMP704Kec8c

Music faded away in the last decade as it had threatened to do in the decade before. I have to be careful here, Part of it is how it is. Part of it is how I am and my age and how difficult it is to separate these things as life gets more complex. The "me" bit can be overdone. I am just one small person. I always had an instinct not to be trapped in an era. I am forever open minded but in truth what comes in from others' cultural outputs is not so easy to love. I warm actually to younger people and have empathy with their predicaments and their personal support to me. Often I am in awe of them. But not culturally.

When we - I say we as it always felt like a we but increasingly it became an I - felt music was slipping,.....well, it started in the late 1990s but I am now a little in awe of myself of finding so much in the first decade of the 2000s to like. I did work hard at it with rewards. The appreciation for that effort was actually wide ranging and various. But that is not to say that I didn't declare that there were a couple of true saviours of music in those times. In the UK, it was Rachel and Becky Unthank who immediately thrilled me. From The US, it was the Fleet Foxes. I went totally wild for them and I still adore them. This is an album!:

4. Fleet Foxes - Sunblind, 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osz9DyfbjyQ

5. Contento - Dale Melón, 2020:

Contento: happy, contented. The two expatriate Colombians, based in Geneva which I knew well, who go by the name of Contento like to make people feel happy. Their '20 single is guaranteed to get you all dancing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dutr19ZgWqA

6, Tenderlonious - Impressions

From "Ragas from Lahore: Improvisations with Jaubi", 2020.

Maybe not quite my thing but I admire it and think you might do too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VUSWbWt-uI

I have posted this many times. It is nothing less than my favourite song/video of this year because as soon as it was released I thought it was Britain's main Covid song. And it is. I have throughout my life had three key stereotypes of people in my mind, not that I ever realised it until now. Woman as angel. Well, maybe time and reality take its toll on that one. I think I have to recognise that I am the most terrible dreamer. Older man as security and authoritative. Well, that faded with trauma as I came to realise that was me and no one, least of all women, were having it. And young lads - by which I mean 18/19 ish - who I was so remote from at 15/16 and yet came to identify closely with by that age among very practical dreamers.

I think I still do really, I could have fathered any boy in a realistic way - even earthy - from 0 to 20 but I would have been very disappointed if he hadn't been for nature and maybe music and even an idea of love for community and friendship rather than relationships. I should not have wanted him to be relationship confined. Oh my God. That son is me. Dreams. Ideals. A sense of confinement and how can we negotiate this to which most accept happily their walls. I dunno. This is the single of the year. That it is from Cornwall which as the fantastic Simon Reeve has recently shown is hardly all beauty adds to it in many ways. The Covid cut offness. Ludicrous as it may seem, identify closely with these blokes. It's kind of in the frustrations and the dreams. What it isn't is physical. It's an aura of closeness. I can't explain it anybetter than that.

It's excellent:

Single/Video of the Year......it's from Cornwall:

7. Full Colour - Times Change

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6VLegfx9Dg

So, yeah, blame John of you don'[t like classical music because he started it. I do think it is about time people started to be steered in this area by their all knowledgeable elders. I confess I knew sod all until 47 - just a bit of me singing Copland on disc live at the Fairfield Halls in 1974 - but not a lot. Then, in 2010 and onwards I immersed. Immediately, certain things struck me. For example, just forget Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven etc - a complete load of tripe. So then it all goes 20th Century and when you get in with these kinds of pompous idiots they go oh "so you like cow pat music", blah, blah, blah, blah.

And you say "yes, I do, but I see it as the foliage out of war" and after that you have to push away people who wanted in their destructive cacophony to turn every airy ear hole into a dark arsehole. Whatever you say about liking the truly experimental in the 1960s they go "oh it's too melodic" when there is no melody there. It is just more listenable. Anyways, their get out clause was that post 1990 or something it was all softened to appeal to contemporary audiences, and well if that is your issue of many issues go and do something else. And they go bloody Eric Whitacre and I say "oh I like him and millions do and he has just released a new thing so at least someone is doing something in 2020 other than moan".

Of course, you can trust 85% of blokes with long hair.

Eric Whitacre introduces The Sacred Veil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPpgwUeJb6U

The best NEW classical composition of 2020.

Beautiful!

8. Eric Whitacre - The Sacred Veil - Child of Wonder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3Zha0B6Xak

So the greatest album of 2020 by the greatest singer songwriter of all time and I don't know why I love him so much as he is a maverick while I am so regular. Anyways, the best of his for at least 23 years (Time Out of Mind) or even 31 years (Oh Mercy) and it so bloody outstanding I had to kick the entire village out of my front garden bidet as it came through to me on the sky-plane. Well, because of this and coronavirus. The increase in eroticism in me is marginal but my ear lobes are full of a new renewed joy while the suds from my simple soap now that I am alone in my public ablutions have done absolute wonders for me saxifraga.

9A. Bobby Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways. )

I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqJNgO5Caf4 :

9B. Bob Dylan - Murder Most Foul.

In fact, in fact, when you listen to this - the longest track in his entire career since the early 1960s - you - well, I - go back to the religious albums of the late 1970s, and back to Desire, 1976, and then my personal favourite Blood on the Tracks, 1975, and then it is to the 1960s which are generally regarded as his heyday.
This is up there - it's absolutely up there with them - and on hearing the album for the first time it was just about the only time this year that I burst into tears not with sorrow but ecstasy and joy and gratitude.

A masterpiece from a genius!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18

9C. Bob Dylan - Key West (Philosopher Pirate):

So prettily adorned, so full of humanity, so full of atmosphere and words.

Bobby is 79....how lucky we have all been for our lives to have coincided.

Like being born in the time of Shakespeare.

This is BCG and we know what the "B" stands for and rightly so.

I have an unwritten essay. It's in my head. "Bob is so surprisingly British". I hope to write it sometime.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-oOCo1Y1bw

The Dooleys - Honey I'm Lost:

Just testin'........

Five of these people are now grandparents.

Two live as winter plants beside my pyracnatha.

The eighth is an ornament on my sideboard which is about to go fully digital.

A genuinely true story:

This is the truth. I like to say that I have been entirely dope free for the whole of my life. I might as well have been as I only tried it twice and then I wasn't sure what it entailed. The second was for Donovan appearing with the Happy Mondays and it made me feel thoroughly sick. The first was in my first year at work when as someone who never ever got off with a woman we all went out for a night on the tiles. Somehow, I ended up walking the pavements with Sarah, presumably thinking I would get my wicked way, and she produced a substance behind the petrol garage which I barely took. Then she disappeared like a genie in the night.

The following day all hell broke loose in the offices. Someone had reported she had been openly taking the stuff in the pub and I genuinely had no idea. Did anyone know anything about this? Like an utter fool, I confessed that we had ended up behind the Esso where I had failed to get into her underwear. The next thing the ;police were brought in. As luck would have it, the key police bloke who was involved was the father of a woman who was one of my best friends in the workplace. Later, I would be the godfather to her second child. By her own account, he was crackers and she could wind him around her little finger while knowing genuinely that Horseradish was a nice guy who didn't do illegal stuff. Which I didn't and never did.

Anyways, she tipped me off before he arrived to discuss it all with senior managers that he himself had been busted by other police officers. They had been called to a lingerie and sex video manufacturers locally on the basis of allegations that the building was operating a prostitution racket. Basically, it was a brothel. And when they arrived, they were astonished to find this woman's father - senior police - there in his dressing gown beside many without bras . So consequently that case was dropped but it was useful for me to be primed. I don't think our paths ever met and in truth I was too druggy in my head for anything unlawful. I said that stuff of that nature would send me totally over the edge. Which obviously it would have done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX3RcUM9JPc

Ooh look....it's lovely Paul McCartney:

We All Stand Together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PMiP90ntZ8

Your typical eclectic mix there Horse

" For example, just forget Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven etc - a complete load of tripe"

Somewhat controversial but it's all a matter of taste,I suppose.

Quote: john tregorran @ 23rd November 2020, 1:46 AM

Your typical eclectic mix there Horse

" For example, just forget Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven etc - a complete load of tripe"

Somewhat controversial but it's all a matter of taste,I suppose.

View original

Hah.......well, I am not saying they were bad blokes.

It is just that when I brought Shostakovich in to help them at the Ox Blood Boot Gym and Big Lurve and Humanity Sauna on the Balls Pond Road, none of them accepted my instruction to stick to five a side.

A lot of Germans though,they'd be good at penalties.

Quote: john tregorran @ 23rd November 2020, 6:50 PM

A lot of Germans though,they'd be good at penalties.

View original

Hah, yes, John........I sense this is one of the forum's universal love threads.

To complete my ten 'cos I only got to nine, it is time to move on to a 92 year old god.

First, an old one of his - one of the greatest songs of all time - performed by him in 2020.

And then one of the first songs he has penned in 15 years, performed by someone else.

10A. Burt Bacharach - A House is Not a Home, 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4mOEADryLg

10B. Daniel Tashian - Burt Bacharach's Bells of St. Augustine, 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyRvMeC89Oo

Apparently his favourite song was "Alfie"
I imagine by Warwick and not Cilla

Quote: john tregorran @ 23rd November 2020, 10:15 PM

Apparently his favourite song was "Alfie"
I imagine by Warwick and not Cilla

View original

I think he's done Alfie in 2020 too? It is a strong song. Cilla is so histrionic on it and rather nasal and I completely take that point but on the other hand, Cilla was Cilla and while musically and even in personality she was not for me I kind of like her in a way for having been a British institution. She falls into the sort of category for me which goes along the lines of "if he/she made millions of people happy, due respect as many do the opposite". Of course, dear Des O'Connor has just departed and he is also in that area.

This one - I am not 100% sure about it - but it's interesting:

Stevie Wonder - Alfie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMQ_Hj7_mxc

Echo and the bunnymen- lips like sugar

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-TAlS7J9Ofk

Absolutely brilliant song