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3 min read
OK, it has been...a while. Things have been kind of crazy all over and my art (and DA) was neglected badly.
In February, my car's transmission took a
- we get by with one car but it makes it hard to wander off after work and take photos. The Olds is now officially my project car, and will continue to be even after I get it back up and running. But for now, I'm working on it as I can.
The entire first half of the year has been busy at work. I won't bore you with the details, but large software projects need to be done right and with good communication company-wide. When those things don't happen, chaos arises. I don't expect it to improve just yet, but it needs to improve. Our office is doing the best it can, and my immediate managers are doing a fantastic job, so there's hope. Someone needs to kick corporate square in the ass, but that's for someone well above my pay grade to take care of.
My home PC decided to follow my car into the Great Beyond. It'll eventually be replaced with something but for now it's my phone and a virtual machine on my work laptop (separation of concerns, my personal stuff and work stuff don't need to coexist). And I hate trying to use DA on my phone.
Also, I've found out that I have hypertension. So, I'm on a quest to lose weight and regain some fitness before my brain explodes or something.
Enough excuses though. The upside of needing to improve my health is that I've committed to getting away from my desk during the day, going to the gym some days, walking downtown others. Of course, I quickly realized I was missing carrying a camera on my walks, so I did. I also, unexpectedly, realized I was seeing potential *color* photos. So, I went ahead and picked up some color film. I've also started scanning the black and white I've shot since last fall; I want to get my darkroom back up, but it could be a while, and if I keep holding out on the B&W work until I can print it, it may be a long wait.
I've also been given an idea for a written piece, so hopefully that'll work out.
Cheers, y'all!
21 year old car, 91 year old camera, brand new film.
In February, my car's transmission took a
- we get by with one car but it makes it hard to wander off after work and take photos. The Olds is now officially my project car, and will continue to be even after I get it back up and running. But for now, I'm working on it as I can.The entire first half of the year has been busy at work. I won't bore you with the details, but large software projects need to be done right and with good communication company-wide. When those things don't happen, chaos arises. I don't expect it to improve just yet, but it needs to improve. Our office is doing the best it can, and my immediate managers are doing a fantastic job, so there's hope. Someone needs to kick corporate square in the ass, but that's for someone well above my pay grade to take care of.
My home PC decided to follow my car into the Great Beyond. It'll eventually be replaced with something but for now it's my phone and a virtual machine on my work laptop (separation of concerns, my personal stuff and work stuff don't need to coexist). And I hate trying to use DA on my phone.
Also, I've found out that I have hypertension. So, I'm on a quest to lose weight and regain some fitness before my brain explodes or something.
Enough excuses though. The upside of needing to improve my health is that I've committed to getting away from my desk during the day, going to the gym some days, walking downtown others. Of course, I quickly realized I was missing carrying a camera on my walks, so I did. I also, unexpectedly, realized I was seeing potential *color* photos. So, I went ahead and picked up some color film. I've also started scanning the black and white I've shot since last fall; I want to get my darkroom back up, but it could be a while, and if I keep holding out on the B&W work until I can print it, it may be a long wait.
I've also been given an idea for a written piece, so hopefully that'll work out.
Cheers, y'all!
21 year old car, 91 year old camera, brand new film.
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Creative Block
1 min read
Yeah, this ^^
But I have actually shot some actual photos in the last week. So, I think things are improving.
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Answer Through Art
4 min read
One from SenoritaBlack here, seems like a neat idea so here goes!
1. Your favourite color?
Green (specifically and a little nerdily, British Racing Green
)
2. Your favourite movie?
Mad Max (1979 original)
(not, exactly, the first result - but the first one at least relevant to the original movie)
3. Your favourite game?
Kerbal Space Program (not that I play it, or anything, much these days! More the "game I played most often most recently)
4. Your favourite series/anime?
Father Ted
Yeah, gonna need to have watched it to get this one #insidejoke
5. Your favourite animal?
Cat.
6. Favourite book/comics/manga?
Terry Pratchett's Discworld books
7. You wish to travel to...?
Yosemite National Park
8. Your favourite genre of music?
Rock
Hey I hit some lit
9. Your interests/hobby?
Photography
10. Zodiac sign?
Libra
1. Your favourite color?
Green (specifically and a little nerdily, British Racing Green
)2. Your favourite movie?
Mad Max (1979 original)
(not, exactly, the first result - but the first one at least relevant to the original movie)
3. Your favourite game?
Kerbal Space Program (not that I play it, or anything, much these days! More the "game I played most often most recently)
4. Your favourite series/anime?
Father Ted
Yeah, gonna need to have watched it to get this one #insidejoke
5. Your favourite animal?
Cat.
6. Favourite book/comics/manga?
Terry Pratchett's Discworld books
7. You wish to travel to...?
Yosemite National Park
8. Your favourite genre of music?
Rock
MusicMusic
Life is music.
One long song.
With different sounding.
Music define us.
It makes us who we are.
It shows us our purpose.
It guide is through the darkness.
Giving light in despair.
Showing kindness when no one does.
It's our best friend.
It will never leave us.
It gives us hope.
Light and joy.
In moment of need is there.
Making us happy.
Never abandoning us.
When the world turns its back on us music doesn't.
Music is alive in all of us.
It lives with every melody.
It lives within our souls.
We may hear it with our ears.
But we feel it with our souls and hearts.
Denying music means denying life.
A world without music is a sad place.
It's doomed and lost.
No light would shine upon our souls.
But as long as we have music everything is alright.
Every single thing in this world listens to music.
Even the smallest sound of the birds is music.
We must cherish it.
We must protect it.
We must love it.
We must enjoy it.
In a world of desperation music is redemption.
Music is glory!
Hey I hit some lit
9. Your interests/hobby?
Photography
10. Zodiac sign?
Libra
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Deadwax
5 min read
It was inevitable really.
I know how it goes; I get an itch and eventually, must scratch it. A notion that there is something I need to get, or do. I pushed back on thoughts of switching to using a "traditional" double edge razor, brush and soap for some time, finally succumbing a few months ago. Of course, I'm glad I did succumb. Great shaves for low cost, and a bit of craftsmanship thrown in for good measure.
Some years ago, it was setting up a darkroom.
Well before that, it was getting into the American car scene while in the UK.
Thing is, it's like a gut feeling thing. Once that itch sets in, it's probably best just to give in to it. I've yet to obey that pull and find myself regretful or disappointed.
Anyway, for a long while now, I've been teetering on the brink of getting back into listening to music on vinyl. As convenient as streaming music and day-long playlists are, it has really left me feeling disconnected from the music. I'd almost stopped listening except for in the car, and for someone who has hundreds of CDs and some semi-expensive playback equipment I made the effort to drag across the Atlantic, that's a sad state of affairs.
The itch set in real good this time. I found myself searching for music on YouTube, but specifically played on vinyl. There are a great many such channels, but you're watching a record spin around on a screen while listening to that sound (which has been run through a computer, turned into a stream of binary data, mangled and compressed by a YouTube server, then run through another computer to get to my ears.
It's just not the same. Like the difference between watching in-car race footage versus driving an actual car, spiritedly.
I knew I was in trouble when I started hunting Goodwill to see if anyone happened to have donated a decent turntable. I knew I was done for when I found a couple of classical LPs which looked interesting and bought them. And then I saw it. The Craigslist post.
Two days later I had a humble but serviceable Denon at my desk in work, and decent headphones hooked up through a small amp.
Now, Goodwill is a dangerous place for someone who has a turntable and likes classical music. 25 cents per LP. And, it turns out, box sets got charged at the single LP price too. Beethoven's entire 9 symphonies for a QUARTER? Uh, yeah. That. And half of the discs in that set look to have never been played. One Tchaikovsky piano LP turns out to be a 1953 pressing. It sounds shockingly good for a 63-year old LP (just for perspective, the modern LP as we know it, microgrooved 33-and-a-third RPM on vinyl, only came into being around 1948. A scant five years before this pressing.)
I'm not just into classical though. My musical tastes run the gamut. So this quickly advanced to "hey, I bet there's somewhere which sells used LPs". Turns out there are 3 such somewheres, including the place I found the turntable. Yesterday, picked up several albums at one place downtown. I forgot how much fun it could be to just browse through shelves of music like that; something we've kind of lost out on with the mad rush to downloading all the things.
Naturally, having a freaking *turntable* at my desk has raised some very interested looks and started some conversations. One of which sent me toward the nearest Barnes and Noble.
I was skeptical. Last time I was in there looking at music, they had a tiny little vinyl section with maybe a half dozen albums. Last night, it seemed like a good third of the music-and-movies section was devoted to vinyl, both new music and new pressings of classic albums. Clearly, this vinyl resurgence I'd bean hearing of is a real thing.
I get why, though. There's just something about the whole process. Looking for the records, in a real store. Unwrapping the package. All the big, beautiful artwork. The actual disc. All tangible, real things. And the sound, on a decent system, really is fantastic, especially with the new pressings that are absent of years of dirt (really need to clean those older ones up now!)
From a practical point of view, I am now listening to more music than I have done in quite a while. I chose to keep the setup at work, because that's where I'm most likely to be listening to music now (we have an open plan office, it's almost a requirement to have something to drown out the constant babble of conversations). I'll be buying more new music (my B&N purchases were Green Day's "Revolution Radio" and Radiohead's "Moon Shaped Pool", both recent releases); I literally haven't bought new music in years, until yesterday. This can only be a good thing (except, perhaps, for my bank balance; but I would have found some other way to spend that anyway!).
By the way, "Moon Shaped Pool" is a gorgeous album. Physically and sonically. But, I have always liked Radiohead, so I may carry some bias.
Why "deadwax"? The run-out at the end of a record, between the music and the label, is known as the "deadwax". Usually has some ID information stamped on it. Sometimes, whimsical messages (this seems to be a thing with Radiohead on vinyl). I never knew that, in all the time I've listened to music on all kinds of formats. So there ya go!
I know how it goes; I get an itch and eventually, must scratch it. A notion that there is something I need to get, or do. I pushed back on thoughts of switching to using a "traditional" double edge razor, brush and soap for some time, finally succumbing a few months ago. Of course, I'm glad I did succumb. Great shaves for low cost, and a bit of craftsmanship thrown in for good measure.
Some years ago, it was setting up a darkroom.
Well before that, it was getting into the American car scene while in the UK.
Thing is, it's like a gut feeling thing. Once that itch sets in, it's probably best just to give in to it. I've yet to obey that pull and find myself regretful or disappointed.
Anyway, for a long while now, I've been teetering on the brink of getting back into listening to music on vinyl. As convenient as streaming music and day-long playlists are, it has really left me feeling disconnected from the music. I'd almost stopped listening except for in the car, and for someone who has hundreds of CDs and some semi-expensive playback equipment I made the effort to drag across the Atlantic, that's a sad state of affairs.
The itch set in real good this time. I found myself searching for music on YouTube, but specifically played on vinyl. There are a great many such channels, but you're watching a record spin around on a screen while listening to that sound (which has been run through a computer, turned into a stream of binary data, mangled and compressed by a YouTube server, then run through another computer to get to my ears.
It's just not the same. Like the difference between watching in-car race footage versus driving an actual car, spiritedly.
I knew I was in trouble when I started hunting Goodwill to see if anyone happened to have donated a decent turntable. I knew I was done for when I found a couple of classical LPs which looked interesting and bought them. And then I saw it. The Craigslist post.
Two days later I had a humble but serviceable Denon at my desk in work, and decent headphones hooked up through a small amp.
Now, Goodwill is a dangerous place for someone who has a turntable and likes classical music. 25 cents per LP. And, it turns out, box sets got charged at the single LP price too. Beethoven's entire 9 symphonies for a QUARTER? Uh, yeah. That. And half of the discs in that set look to have never been played. One Tchaikovsky piano LP turns out to be a 1953 pressing. It sounds shockingly good for a 63-year old LP (just for perspective, the modern LP as we know it, microgrooved 33-and-a-third RPM on vinyl, only came into being around 1948. A scant five years before this pressing.)
I'm not just into classical though. My musical tastes run the gamut. So this quickly advanced to "hey, I bet there's somewhere which sells used LPs". Turns out there are 3 such somewheres, including the place I found the turntable. Yesterday, picked up several albums at one place downtown. I forgot how much fun it could be to just browse through shelves of music like that; something we've kind of lost out on with the mad rush to downloading all the things.
Naturally, having a freaking *turntable* at my desk has raised some very interested looks and started some conversations. One of which sent me toward the nearest Barnes and Noble.
I was skeptical. Last time I was in there looking at music, they had a tiny little vinyl section with maybe a half dozen albums. Last night, it seemed like a good third of the music-and-movies section was devoted to vinyl, both new music and new pressings of classic albums. Clearly, this vinyl resurgence I'd bean hearing of is a real thing.
I get why, though. There's just something about the whole process. Looking for the records, in a real store. Unwrapping the package. All the big, beautiful artwork. The actual disc. All tangible, real things. And the sound, on a decent system, really is fantastic, especially with the new pressings that are absent of years of dirt (really need to clean those older ones up now!)
From a practical point of view, I am now listening to more music than I have done in quite a while. I chose to keep the setup at work, because that's where I'm most likely to be listening to music now (we have an open plan office, it's almost a requirement to have something to drown out the constant babble of conversations). I'll be buying more new music (my B&N purchases were Green Day's "Revolution Radio" and Radiohead's "Moon Shaped Pool", both recent releases); I literally haven't bought new music in years, until yesterday. This can only be a good thing (except, perhaps, for my bank balance; but I would have found some other way to spend that anyway!).
By the way, "Moon Shaped Pool" is a gorgeous album. Physically and sonically. But, I have always liked Radiohead, so I may carry some bias.
Why "deadwax"? The run-out at the end of a record, between the music and the label, is known as the "deadwax". Usually has some ID information stamped on it. Sometimes, whimsical messages (this seems to be a thing with Radiohead on vinyl). I never knew that, in all the time I've listened to music on all kinds of formats. So there ya go!
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25 songs
11 min read
So SenoritaBlack tagged me on this, and since I enjoy music and have a rather...uh...*eclectic* taste in such, I couldn't possibly pass it up. Some of the descriptions might be a little lengthy. Sorry 'bout that, it's how I roll.
Also, maybe an extra song or three stuffed in there.
1. A song from your childhood: The Beatles "Twist and Shout". Yes, I know, I was born several years after The Beatles broke up and a full decade after this made its debut. But my childhood music library was made up almost entirely of the combined libraries of my parents. This was the last track from the band's 1963 UK debut album "Please Please Me" which once belonged to my uncle, then somehow found its way into my parents' collection, from which I claimed it as my own and played the snot out of it for the next 15 years or so. Not the fabulously valuable first or second pressing, not that it's anywhere near mint anyway between my then-young uncle scrawling "Beatle Forever" all over the back of the sleeve in ballpoint pen, or my youthful mishandling of the LP, or approximately eleventy million plays on really cheap, nasty playback equipment. Shortly before moving to the US I made a recording onto my computer and burned a CD of it, crackles, skips and all.
2. A song that reminds you of your most recent ex: Pushing it a little to call her an "ex" as we had one very weird date and then she got a bit Glenn Close on me because I didn't reply to her texts within 30 seconds. While I was in work. But "Disillusion" by Badly Drawn Boy was playing when we "broke up". Funny how the soundtrack to life is often at least somewhat apropos.
3. A song that reminds you of one (or both) of your parents: For dad, it would have to be The Fureys with Davey Arthur performing "Red Rose Cafe". My parents, and particularly my dad, weren't big music listeners after I was born (I assume they were before, see #1). But this was one of a handful of songs which my dad *really* was into. They'd come home from a Saturday night out and if the mood caught him, and it often did, on would go this tape. And he'd turn it way up. Then mum would fuss at him for playing it too loud, and he'd just sort of get a mischievous look and turn it up more. And she'd turn it down little by little when he wasn't looking, only for him to turn it back up again! My mum...I tend to connect her with Philomena Begley's version of "(Love Was) Once Around the Dancefloor". Loves her country-and-Irish, she does, and saw Philomena perform a number of times locally.
4. A song that calms you down: Dead Can Dance - "The Host of Seraphim". Powerful, moving, dramatic, but nicely positioned in mood, dark but not gloomy. Gets me quickly to my "centered" place.
5. A song that is often stuck in your head: This changes continually, but the most current is the "Time Warp" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's just a jump to the left...
6. A song that reminds you of a best friend: "Stars" by Sixx AM. Because best friends can also be people who you have never met IRL.
7. A song that reminds you of Summer: This one is going to be very obscure, unless you happened to be in the UK during summer 1986 (in which case, I am *so* sorry for reminding you of this one, please forgive me). The 1980s in the UK were notable for a number of things, some good, many not so much. Firmly in the "not so much" category are the novelty summer dance craze records which were a thing for several years. I guess when you have 3 TV channels, Thatcher as PM, and you fully expect Soviet nukes to end your young life with only a 4 minute warning, you get your kicks where you can. I'm citing "Agadoo" by Black Lace here as an example, but despite actually wearing out the stylus from repeat playing that particular 45 one evening in 1984, it's not the one which sticks in my head as representative of summer. Ooooooooooohhhh, noooooooo. My psyche couldn't be so humane as to recall something that's only superficially awful. Instead I get to associate summer with a spoof of the genre: "The Chicken Song" by the cast of Spitting Image. Spitting Image needs a story all of its own, but the gory details, and a very fuzzy YouTube video of the song, are out there if you're brave or foolish enough to look. If you're smart enough to not go hunt this one down online, the summary is: political/cultural satire TV show with foam rubber puppets does a song satirizing a summer musical craze, reaches number 1 in the charts and stays there for 3 weeks, everyone everywhere plays it. "And though you hate this song, you'll be humming it for weeks." Yeah, try 30 effing YEARS, you utter, utter bastards!
8. A song that reminds you of your first love: Does a pre-teen crush count? In that case, Waylon Jennings "Good 'ol Boys" because that was the theme tune to the Dukes of Hazzard, and there's a reason those shorts are called "Daisy Dukes".
9. A song that makes you hopeful: Cass Elliott - "Make Your Own Kind of Music". It's OK to be me, quirks and dents and scratches and all. Remembering that always makes me feel hopeful.
10. A song by your favorite band: I have so many "favorite" bands. Where to start? Motorhead, Metallica, Coldplay, Radiohead, Therapy?... but I'm leaning, right now, toward a song by Stiff Little Fingers - "Each Dollar a Bullet" off their 1991 album "Flags and Emblems", a more trad/folksy sound for the punk rockers but no less cutting a critique of Northern Ireland's Troubles than their earlier and very-much-punk-rock "Suspect Device" or "Wasted Life", say. I've been playing a lot of SLF recently.
11. A song on the soundtrack of your favorite movie: My favorite movie is probably "Mad Max" (the original 1979 version) which doesn't have much of a soundtrack (though supercharged large displacement V8 motors make their own sort of beautiful music if you're a petrolhead
). I also enjoyed "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" though, and it *does* have a soundtrack which includes Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit".
12. The last song you heard: OK, wrote this answer last because I am listening to music as I write this. Playing as I proof and submit this is Highly Suspect "My Name Is Human". Google Play's "Beast Mode" delivers yet again, I'd not even heard of this band before. Yay new musics!
13. A song that reminds you of a former friend: Back in Ireland I was in a car club centered around American, customized and hotrodded cars/motorcycles. I was good friends with the club chairman, but he was the overzealous type and rubbed a lot of the members the wrong way. Eventually it led to him leaving, trying to take a number of members with him, and perhaps the worst falling out I have ever had with a friend. Before it all went wrong, several of us took a trip to England to visit a major car show one summer. As I recall we flew in and rented a car. Unfortunately, we had one tape with us - a compilation of Golden Earring tracks. By the end of it, we had heard "Radar Love" so many times...over and over and over (and over). There were other songs on the tape, but that one seems to stick in the mind. Weirdly, I had *never* heard the song before then, but afterwards, I have heard it on a fairly regular basis all sorts of places. It will forever be connected to that trip through the East Midlands, and with a former friend.
14. A song that reminds you of your current significant other: "Nothing Else Matters" - Metallica. One of many "our songs" (we have a triple album, not just one song!) but listen closely to the lyrics and tell me they don't fit with a 5-timezone, one ocean, 3000 mile apart long-distance relationship. "So close, no matter how far. Couldn't be much more from the heart. Forever trusting in who we are. And nothing else matters."
15. A song you love singing along to: Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell". All sort of quiet and moody and then WHAAAAAAA YEAH SCREAMS MADNESS!
16. A song that has made you cry: It's Davey Arthur and The Fureys again, this time with "The Green Fields of France" which is itself a mild reworking of Eric Bogle's "No Man's Land", broadly the same though the Fureys version changed some wording (for the better IMO) and completely swapped two verses in order. Two reasons: the first is that it was my dad's other favorite song, so hearing it always reminds me of him. The second is because it carries a very strong anti-war message which we apparently haven't learned from 100 years on since the mud and death of the Battle of the Somme and that "whole generation that was butchered and damned". Even reading the lyrics gets me right in the feels. Especially today, of all days (98th anniversary of the WW1 armistice)
17. A song that makes you want to dance: The Village People - "YMCA". I can do the letters and *everything*!
18. A song that you love but rarely listen to: "Brothers In Arms" by Dire Straits. I love multiple songs off this album, with the title track being beautiful and haunting, but *ahem* don't actually own the album at least not in a form I can play back now my tape deck has shuffled off into the Great Beyond. It's high on the list of "must haves" when I finally, inevitably, cave in and get a turntable.
19. The first song alphabetically listed in your Ipod/Iphone/MP3: "Abort" by Zan Lyons. Strange electronica. Or possibly "01 Game of Thrones - Kings Landing.mp3" because disorganization.
20. The last song alphabetically listed in your Ipod/Iphone/MP3: "Zoolookologie" by Jean-Michelle Jarre. It's electronic, it's French (so it's weird to the power of two), and it just occurred to me that my entire digital music collection is neatly bookended by two very strange yet entirely different electronic music pieces.
21. Your favorite song: Ah, again, so many options and subject to change now and then. Random pick from many: "Saturn V" - Fu Manchu - oooh that bassline... *quivers*
22. A song that someone has sung to you: The 5th Dimension - "Wedding Bell Blues" - by my then-fiancee-now-wife, who was keen to seal the deal Also helped her that "Bill" and "Paul" both fit in one syllable so the words could be tweaked.
23. A song that you cannot stand to listen to: Spice Girls "Wannabe" because I was in the UK when that one broke big and it checks the boxes of "utterly annoying sound" "vapid lyrics" "manufactured band" and "LET'S PLAY THIS A MILLION {redacted} TIMES ON EVERY {redacted} RADIO STATION EVER!!". BRB. I need to go find my center again... *plays #4*
24. A song that you have danced to with your best friend: Warning! Soppy romantic stuff: I consider my wife to also be a best friend. So, I'm picking the song we had our first dance as a married couple to. Which would be Westlife - "I Wanna Grow Old With You" (I know...a boy band. Please don't judge us )
25. A song that you could listen to all day without getting tired of: The Prodigy "Diesel Power". Preferably loud enough to vibrate the windshield (and I only have rear speakers working in my car now so that takes a bit of sonic effort!) If I'm driving around I could literally play this thing on loop the whole time and be a happy camper.
Also, maybe an extra song or three stuffed in there.
1. A song from your childhood: The Beatles "Twist and Shout". Yes, I know, I was born several years after The Beatles broke up and a full decade after this made its debut. But my childhood music library was made up almost entirely of the combined libraries of my parents. This was the last track from the band's 1963 UK debut album "Please Please Me" which once belonged to my uncle, then somehow found its way into my parents' collection, from which I claimed it as my own and played the snot out of it for the next 15 years or so. Not the fabulously valuable first or second pressing, not that it's anywhere near mint anyway between my then-young uncle scrawling "Beatle Forever" all over the back of the sleeve in ballpoint pen, or my youthful mishandling of the LP, or approximately eleventy million plays on really cheap, nasty playback equipment. Shortly before moving to the US I made a recording onto my computer and burned a CD of it, crackles, skips and all.
2. A song that reminds you of your most recent ex: Pushing it a little to call her an "ex" as we had one very weird date and then she got a bit Glenn Close on me because I didn't reply to her texts within 30 seconds. While I was in work. But "Disillusion" by Badly Drawn Boy was playing when we "broke up". Funny how the soundtrack to life is often at least somewhat apropos.
3. A song that reminds you of one (or both) of your parents: For dad, it would have to be The Fureys with Davey Arthur performing "Red Rose Cafe". My parents, and particularly my dad, weren't big music listeners after I was born (I assume they were before, see #1). But this was one of a handful of songs which my dad *really* was into. They'd come home from a Saturday night out and if the mood caught him, and it often did, on would go this tape. And he'd turn it way up. Then mum would fuss at him for playing it too loud, and he'd just sort of get a mischievous look and turn it up more. And she'd turn it down little by little when he wasn't looking, only for him to turn it back up again! My mum...I tend to connect her with Philomena Begley's version of "(Love Was) Once Around the Dancefloor". Loves her country-and-Irish, she does, and saw Philomena perform a number of times locally.
4. A song that calms you down: Dead Can Dance - "The Host of Seraphim". Powerful, moving, dramatic, but nicely positioned in mood, dark but not gloomy. Gets me quickly to my "centered" place.
5. A song that is often stuck in your head: This changes continually, but the most current is the "Time Warp" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's just a jump to the left...
6. A song that reminds you of a best friend: "Stars" by Sixx AM. Because best friends can also be people who you have never met IRL.
7. A song that reminds you of Summer: This one is going to be very obscure, unless you happened to be in the UK during summer 1986 (in which case, I am *so* sorry for reminding you of this one, please forgive me). The 1980s in the UK were notable for a number of things, some good, many not so much. Firmly in the "not so much" category are the novelty summer dance craze records which were a thing for several years. I guess when you have 3 TV channels, Thatcher as PM, and you fully expect Soviet nukes to end your young life with only a 4 minute warning, you get your kicks where you can. I'm citing "Agadoo" by Black Lace here as an example, but despite actually wearing out the stylus from repeat playing that particular 45 one evening in 1984, it's not the one which sticks in my head as representative of summer. Ooooooooooohhhh, noooooooo. My psyche couldn't be so humane as to recall something that's only superficially awful. Instead I get to associate summer with a spoof of the genre: "The Chicken Song" by the cast of Spitting Image. Spitting Image needs a story all of its own, but the gory details, and a very fuzzy YouTube video of the song, are out there if you're brave or foolish enough to look. If you're smart enough to not go hunt this one down online, the summary is: political/cultural satire TV show with foam rubber puppets does a song satirizing a summer musical craze, reaches number 1 in the charts and stays there for 3 weeks, everyone everywhere plays it. "And though you hate this song, you'll be humming it for weeks." Yeah, try 30 effing YEARS, you utter, utter bastards!
8. A song that reminds you of your first love: Does a pre-teen crush count? In that case, Waylon Jennings "Good 'ol Boys" because that was the theme tune to the Dukes of Hazzard, and there's a reason those shorts are called "Daisy Dukes".
9. A song that makes you hopeful: Cass Elliott - "Make Your Own Kind of Music". It's OK to be me, quirks and dents and scratches and all. Remembering that always makes me feel hopeful.
10. A song by your favorite band: I have so many "favorite" bands. Where to start? Motorhead, Metallica, Coldplay, Radiohead, Therapy?... but I'm leaning, right now, toward a song by Stiff Little Fingers - "Each Dollar a Bullet" off their 1991 album "Flags and Emblems", a more trad/folksy sound for the punk rockers but no less cutting a critique of Northern Ireland's Troubles than their earlier and very-much-punk-rock "Suspect Device" or "Wasted Life", say. I've been playing a lot of SLF recently.
11. A song on the soundtrack of your favorite movie: My favorite movie is probably "Mad Max" (the original 1979 version) which doesn't have much of a soundtrack (though supercharged large displacement V8 motors make their own sort of beautiful music if you're a petrolhead
). I also enjoyed "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" though, and it *does* have a soundtrack which includes Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit".12. The last song you heard: OK, wrote this answer last because I am listening to music as I write this.
Playing as I proof and submit this is Highly Suspect "My Name Is Human". Google Play's "Beast Mode" delivers yet again, I'd not even heard of this band before. Yay new musics! 13. A song that reminds you of a former friend: Back in Ireland I was in a car club centered around American, customized and hotrodded cars/motorcycles. I was good friends with the club chairman, but he was the overzealous type and rubbed a lot of the members the wrong way. Eventually it led to him leaving, trying to take a number of members with him, and perhaps the worst falling out I have ever had with a friend. Before it all went wrong, several of us took a trip to England to visit a major car show one summer. As I recall we flew in and rented a car. Unfortunately, we had one tape with us - a compilation of Golden Earring tracks. By the end of it, we had heard "Radar Love" so many times...over and over and over (and over). There were other songs on the tape, but that one seems to stick in the mind. Weirdly, I had *never* heard the song before then, but afterwards, I have heard it on a fairly regular basis all sorts of places. It will forever be connected to that trip through the East Midlands, and with a former friend.
14. A song that reminds you of your current significant other: "Nothing Else Matters" - Metallica. One of many "our songs" (we have a triple album, not just one song!) but listen closely to the lyrics and tell me they don't fit with a 5-timezone, one ocean, 3000 mile apart long-distance relationship. "So close, no matter how far. Couldn't be much more from the heart. Forever trusting in who we are. And nothing else matters."
15. A song you love singing along to: Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell". All sort of quiet and moody and then WHAAAAAAA YEAH SCREAMS MADNESS!
16. A song that has made you cry: It's Davey Arthur and The Fureys again, this time with "The Green Fields of France" which is itself a mild reworking of Eric Bogle's "No Man's Land", broadly the same though the Fureys version changed some wording (for the better IMO) and completely swapped two verses in order. Two reasons: the first is that it was my dad's other favorite song, so hearing it always reminds me of him. The second is because it carries a very strong anti-war message which we apparently haven't learned from 100 years on since the mud and death of the Battle of the Somme and that "whole generation that was butchered and damned". Even reading the lyrics gets me right in the feels. Especially today, of all days (98th anniversary of the WW1 armistice)
17. A song that makes you want to dance: The Village People - "YMCA". I can do the letters and *everything*!
18. A song that you love but rarely listen to: "Brothers In Arms" by Dire Straits. I love multiple songs off this album, with the title track being beautiful and haunting, but *ahem* don't actually own the album at least not in a form I can play back now my tape deck has shuffled off into the Great Beyond. It's high on the list of "must haves" when I finally, inevitably, cave in and get a turntable.
19. The first song alphabetically listed in your Ipod/Iphone/MP3: "Abort" by Zan Lyons. Strange electronica. Or possibly "01 Game of Thrones - Kings Landing.mp3" because disorganization.
20. The last song alphabetically listed in your Ipod/Iphone/MP3: "Zoolookologie" by Jean-Michelle Jarre. It's electronic, it's French (so it's weird to the power of two), and it just occurred to me that my entire digital music collection is neatly bookended by two very strange yet entirely different electronic music pieces.
21. Your favorite song: Ah, again, so many options and subject to change now and then. Random pick from many: "Saturn V" - Fu Manchu - oooh that bassline... *quivers*
22. A song that someone has sung to you: The 5th Dimension - "Wedding Bell Blues" - by my then-fiancee-now-wife, who was keen to seal the deal
Also helped her that "Bill" and "Paul" both fit in one syllable so the words could be tweaked.23. A song that you cannot stand to listen to: Spice Girls "Wannabe" because I was in the UK when that one broke big and it checks the boxes of "utterly annoying sound" "vapid lyrics" "manufactured band" and "LET'S PLAY THIS A MILLION {redacted} TIMES ON EVERY {redacted} RADIO STATION EVER!!". BRB. I need to go find my center again... *plays #4*
24. A song that you have danced to with your best friend: Warning! Soppy romantic stuff: I consider my wife to also be a best friend. So, I'm picking the song we had our first dance as a married couple to. Which would be Westlife - "I Wanna Grow Old With You" (I know...a boy band. Please don't judge us
)25. A song that you could listen to all day without getting tired of: The Prodigy "Diesel Power". Preferably loud enough to vibrate the windshield (and I only have rear speakers working in my car now so that takes a bit of sonic effort!) If I'm driving around I could literally play this thing on loop the whole time and be a happy camper.
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