Tubular Bells (because no other title seems to fit really)

So, it’s been a little while again since my last blog. Again life has got in the way a little bit, and while I’ve been leaving you all in peace I’ve been down to visit my Mum. While there I managed to pick up the rest of the full CD collection. So this blog and the next will make up the last of the ‘hand-picked’ selections that I made and from there the plan is still to pick things out at random and hope for the best really. Having (sort of) counted all of the CDs up it now appears that there are around 550-odd other CDs to go at still, and as such there’s a chance that the Internet will have ceased to exist before i get through them all - but that doesn’t deter me in the least. Makes it more of a challenge, but something I am sure I will still enjoy doing. Also hoping to pick the pace up a little and starting posting more regularly again. The feedback that I have received so far has been positive too - so thank you to everyone for their kind words so far.

So on to our CD for this blog which was another selection that simply had to make it into the hand-picked list because it’s a piece of music that I will always, always link back to my Dad and also something that I know I enjoyed listening to as a child (and have continued to enjoy listening to as an adult as well). 'Tubular Bells’ by Mike Oldfield is a very famous piece of music and listening to it even now, I am astonished at how cleverly put together it is and am reminded of many a drunken evening during my childhood (again, not me being drunk) where this would be retrieved from the CD rack and the volume cranked right up.

A lot of people may know this as the music from “The Omen” but certainly to my knowledge only the first 3 or 4 minutes of the track actually feature and I think these have been somewhat over-exposed throughout the rest of my life and it’s only once you get past those initial stages of the first track on the CD (imaginatively titled ‘Part One’ - but also making up the first 25 minutes of the CD) that is starts to really get going and develops into a piece of music that you can lose yourself in. Genre-wise this falls under “Prog-Rock” and as such don’t expect too many lyrics you can sing along to or anything you could dance to - to me this is a real ‘listeners’ piece of music and has to be played end to end to be fully appreciated. Part 2 is a bit more varied and is oddly enough isn’t something that rings as much of a bell (yes… every pun intended there) with me. Maybe once I’d got through my favourite parts I switched off and stopped paying as much attention.

My Dad’s take on the album itself was that it helped Richard Branson (a former indirect employer of mine throughout my career) to start to build his fortune, but that he only achieved this through having ripped Mike Oldfield off. How true or otherwise this may have been isn’t something I’ver ever delved into too much but perhaps some of my own experiences while a (very very very small) part of the Virgin empire go so way to explaining why this resonated with me and why it’s stuck in my mind since then. In any event, I can ever imagine a set of circumstances where I wouldn’t want to listen to Tubular Bells - regardless of its fame or infamy.

My overall favourite part of the album is where, over a bass guitar (I think) backdrop, a range of different musical instruments (starting from grand piano on its own and working through to …. well… Tubular Bells really) play essentially the same tune with each new instrument adding to the overall effect and building to something wonderful. That building up of layers of different instruments is a fascinating process to follow through and noting how each different instrument adds to the overall picture has always appealed to me. Again, my Dad could almost certainly have rattled off each instrument in order at the drop of a hat. Not something I can quite manage yet, but on the off chance that it ever crops up as a pub-quiz question I am determined to try and get them all nailed down in my mind. If nothing else I’m pleased that I knew it started with grand piano and if I couldn’t have worked out the last instrument I think I would have been seriously disappointed in myself. 

Now, I could spend another few minutes or few hundred words trying to ‘sell’ you on how good this album is, but I’m hoping that I’ve enticed you in enough for you to want to seek it out and listen to it for yourself. With all of these music streaming services and systems nowadays I’m sure it can be fairly easily tracked down and appreciated in full. All I would ask is that you don’t simply listen to the first few minutes of it but set aside 50 minutes or so and listen to the full things from end to end. It’s that good that it deserves that I think. Maybe it’s also something that you’ve heard throughout your own childhood and through you life and if so it’s something I’d highly recommend revisiting and enjoying again. So that’s your homework to complete before I publish the next blog I think… See you all next time for the next instalment. 

So far away from me...

Okay, having left this alone for a few weeks now (life got in the way a little bit, and I haven’t had time to sit down, stick on a CD and babble on about whatever pops into my head for 3 or 4 weeks now) I am back in the groove again. Also, while I was in danger of running out of the original batch of CDs, I’ve now booked a trip down to visit my Mum and pick up the full collection. Plan is still to finish off the handpicked selections first, but from there I am determined to adopt a totally lucky-dip approach. See what gets pulled out from the box (or off the shelves, if we ever get adequate CD storage sorted) at random and go with that.

So that leads on to the selection this time around, and the chance for a little bit of music geekery from me. The CD is “Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits and I happen to know that this CD is both the first CD (note, not LP, cassette or whatever else) to sell 1 million copies across the globe, but it was also (I think) one of the very very first CDs that my Dad bought for his collection. And the very copy that I’m listening to now is that copy that he bought way back when.

The reason I am fairly confident that it was one of the very first harks back to one of my earliest memories (not involving allegedly being pushed into a swimming pool by my sister anyway…) from my formative years. I can clearly remember at some point in 1986 or 1987 my Dad coming home (I think from the local electrical retailer of the day, rather than from any far-flung foreign lands) with a selection of square clear plastic cases that opened on a hinge with little booklets held within one side, and shiny metal discs in the other half. The way that the light formed a little spectrum of colours as you moved the disc around in the air fascinated me so as soon as he left the room (went upstairs I believe) I was over to the CD rack like a shot. I picked one of the cd cases out, being enticed in by the sky blue colour of the booklet and tried to copy the action I had seen my Dad undertake in opening the case up. However, I’d obviously not paid quite enough attention to what he had done, or didn’t possess the hand-span needed to manipulate things in the right way and as such struggled to open the case itself up. At that moment, my Dad came down the stairs and obviously clocked what I was trying to do and sufficiently admonished me for trying to get at his new CD collection, so that was then the end of that little experiment. Does seem ridiculous now that I struggled to open the CD case at all, but given how fussy about avoiding scratches on his CDs my Dad was, I can sort of understand him wanting to keep my clumsy hands off them for as long as possible. And it’s a testament to his attention to detail and scratch-avoidance techniques that a CD that he probably bought 32-years ago still plays without skipping now actually. 

It’s also interesting that while I had in mind exactly what tracks were on this album, and exactly how they sound - that I don’t actually think I recognise all of them by title, and that I’ve become used to hearing ‘radio edits’ of some songs rather than the full album versions. Money for Nothing from this album sounds (and is) very different from the radio-friendly version that they break out on Radio 2 every now and again. And the difference in tracks must, I assume, come down to there having been different tracks put on to tapes for car journeys and things that have become those that I associate with Dire Straits rather than the 9 tracks that make up the album itself. You do still have some that are familiar to me on there of course, but that variation found between the album track and the single versions isn’t something that I’d ever really appreciated before or paid much heed too. It’s also probably very much a dying art in the modern era of downloads, Spotify and so on where people can hear whichever version of whichever track they want instantaneously and without having to give it any real thought. Wow, how much of an old git do I sound there?? 

As for the CD itself, my lovely wife has offered her review of it and has proclaimed it to be ‘very gentle’ and ‘a good soundtrack’. Given some of her other views on some of the other stuff I’ve inflicted on her so far, I think I’ll take that and do agree with her. There is a real range of musical styles on there, from up-tempo more rock-y tracks to some very soothing and gentle songs, all with Mark Knopfler’s slightly gravelly voice running through them and adding a certain intangible element to the music. Also through listening through the CD I think I’ve stumbled across a real hidden gem. If you’ve never heard “The Man’s too Strong” before, I would highly recommend going out of your way to look it out. Just a really powerful, yet beautiful, piece of music to listen to. And of course, if you’re not aware of the title track of the album then that’s another one to definitely seek out and have a good listen to. I’m not usually one for trying to pick our a definite ‘story’ within a piece of music, but for me Dire Straits’ music does almost have that story-telling quality to it and that’s something else to definitely appreciate. So on that now I think I will wrap this one up, and hope that you’re all still enjoying reading these as much as I’m enjoying putting them together for you.

Wish You Were Here

So next album up is (another) greatest hits collection, but this blog is one that I really have high hopes for. I don’t know whether my hand-picked sample of CDs is fully indicative of my Dad’s collection or whether I’ve taken a few easier options and taken certain selections because of specific tracks. Alternatively, of course, my Dad could have just been quite sensible and known that many studio albums contain a few decent tracks and then a load of filler, so chose the brutal efficiency (and money-saving) of a Greatest hits collection over individual albums. Quite what we would have made of things like Spotify had he been in the right place physically and mentally at the right time is something I’ll never know now, but I suspect he would have approved and made great use of it. The knock-on effect would have been further irritation on my Mum’s part of all of the now obsolete CDs sitting around gather dust, which may have been another additional benefit in the ease of my Dad.

Speaking of Spotify (and this is far from a plug for them… although if you’re into music and don’t use it, I think you’re missing out - however other streaming services are available) over the past 6 months or so the good lady wife and I had taken to listening to a lot more music through an Echo (courtesy of Alexa - by way of a number of generous family members back at Christmas) and find it great to get a notion of a song in our heads, and be able to just ask the proverbial genie in a bottle (not a song we’ve listened to yet, by the by) to play it for us. I made good use of this yesterday evening when I got in from work. It hadn’t been an especially good day, and a number of different things were frustrating me and so as I walked into the house and got to the kitchen, having clocked our Echo sitting on the shelf I said 5 magic words that made everything seem a bit better. “Alexa, play Pink Floyd please” (Courtesy costs nothing…) followed by several repetitions of “Alexa volume up”.

Pink Floyd is another band that always seems to have been there in the background playing throughout my childhood. They were another of my Dad’s very favourite bands and their various albums were another of those that cropped up on at least a monthly basis whenever guests were around and drink was taken. I can almost picture the grin on my Dad’s face as he would slide the CD into the drawer, close it and crank the volume up (often using the remote control, and then complaining that there wasn’t a button that took the CD off the shelf, opened the case and put it in the tray, making the ‘open/close’ button a pointless one on the remote). I don’t know whether he ever managed to see them live and in person himself, and know he never made it to their exhibition at the Victoria & Albert museum either, but did report that The Australian Pink Floyd were a very very impressive substitute when he went to see them live.

I’ve also never been lucky enough to see Pink Floyd live, and the closest I’ve been was attending an event back in early 2017 where, as a college project, a number of local students put on a show where they performed a number of Pink Floyd tracks. The event was held in a church in Lincoln (where I now live and work) and it was great. I was invited there by a friend who had a child who was performing and I was really pleased to get the opportunity to go along and experience it all. It wasn’t all that long before my Dad passed away either and I’m fairly confident that part of one of our very last telephone conversations was recounting the events of the concert to him. While he didn’t seem all that interested in what I was telling him (to be fair, he did have a lot of other stuff going on by then - so I can forgive him that) I know that had it been as little as 3 or 4 months prior to that he would have been fascinated and have really appreciated the story and the notion of me having gone along as well as appreciating him imparting some of his music tastes on to me (his ‘son and heir, as my Mum would say).

It’s also a very odd co-incidence that we’ve been having so much hot weather recently (unusual for the British Summer really) as we’ve just passed the one year anniversary of my Dad’s funeral. It was held on 19th of June 2017 at the crematorium in Aldershot near where he and my Mum lived from 1999 onwards (although I will have to be totally honest here, I did just have to Google his name and obituary to confirm that date…) and it was properly hot that day. Being at a funeral, wearing a suit (jacket and all, complete with one of my Dad’s trademark ‘loud’ ties) was the only real option, but really not ideal to be in a full suit when it’s 30+ degrees in the shade. I know that having spent much of my formative years living in places where the day on day weather was “hot and wet, 28 to 32 degrees Celsius” I should have been used to it and been able to cope better, but having been back in the UK since 1998 (20 years now… wow, where has that time gone, by the way) I’m far more comfortable being too cold than too warm. A lot of the day itself is a bit of a blur too actually, although whether that’s down to the sorrow and emotion of it all or just heat-stroke having kicked in early in the day is another matter, one thing I can really clearly remember is the music that was played. I know that I’ve mentioned this already within an earlier blog, but I was entrusted with picking the music for the funeral itself (with a lot of guidance from both my Mum and my wife, as well as indirectly from other important family members so between us and them we pulled the best ideas together). And when it came to the song to have playing as everyone filed in to the crematorium, there was only one real clear choice that stood out to me. “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. Simply the perfect song to dedicate to my Dad at that point in time.

I think I’ve gone off on a little tangent this time, but I think we’re back on track again now. I believe I was talking about yesterday evening and me having instructed the one true ruler of our house (I think I’m fourth in the pecking order behind Alexa, Niki (my wife) and the cat these days although the chickens and guinea pigs may have something to say about that) to kindly play me some music from Pink Floyd. Now, there are a lot of songs of theirs that are well-known and many that are great and I would have happily listened to any of them really, but as if possessed by a higher power, Alexa knew just what I needed to hear. As I said, I did have to ask her to crank the volume up a few times as I couldn’t make out what song had been chosen as things sounded a bit muffled but then I heard the first 3 distinctive acoustic guitar notes from “Wish You Were Here” and the ill-feeling and malcontent of the day just faded away that little bit really. 

I don’t really know what made me pick out Pink Floyd to request either, come to think of it. Not anything I’d heard on the radio that day (or even this week) that caused an ear-worm to form for me or anything anyone had said that put the idea into my head. As my work colleagues from yesterday can attest to, the only thing on my mind after work was getting a Thai takeaway - which nearly happened, but we ended up with a Chinese due to the unique opening hours of eateries in rural Lincolnshire!) So it just came out of the air really, and who am I to argue against things that I can’t explain? Just to add one final piece to the coincidence puzzle here too, when I came to pick the next CD off our book-case to write this blog - wouldn’t you know it… “Echoes - The Best of Pink Floyd”. Some things are just meant to be, I guess. Disc 2, Track 10 couldn’t come around soon enough for me this evening really… 

So, I’ve managed to write more words in this blog than in any of the previous ones and as yet I’ve made basically no mention of the CD (nor Judith Chalmers… which given the title is quite and achievement for me I think) or any of the tracks. Anyone would think that the original concept of the blog is flawed or something. But I’m not sure that it actually is, after all it’s my blog, run under my rules (and hey, you know they can be as flexible as anything can’t they). I know that Pink Floyd will crop up again throughout this journey somewhere too and on that day in those circumstances a different memory or set of emotions will be evoked within me and we’ll see what comes of that, I’m sure I’ll be able to keep talking about them if needed. Maybe I’ll just try and hide a number of different track titles from the CD throughout the blog and send a prize (choc-ice anyone…) to the first person who finds them all. Shine on you Crazy Diamonds!

I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told...

So (after a small delay - had a busy weekend last week) the next cab off the proverbial rank is “The Simon and Garfunkel Collection” so yet another greatest hits compilation that’s found its way into my Dad’s stack of CDs. And another choice that’s interesting for a number of reasons really. Mostly, the music of (Paul) Simon and (Art) Garfunkel is something that I would tend to associate more closely with my Mum than my Dad. Back in around 1991 or so, she used to drive around the mean streets of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in a green Peugeot 504 (nicknamed the Green Goddess - which once took on a petrol tanker at a roundabout and came out of the altercation unscathed!) and within this car she had a tape deck. She didn’t have a mass of different tapes to play though - but the ones that spring to mind were a Michael Bolton album (that went ‘missing’ when she took the car in to be serviced), a compilation of songs with the word ‘Night’ in the title somewhere as tape 1 and the word ‘Love’ as tape 2, and then Simon and Garfunkel. I know I’ve mentioned before that sometimes a particular sensation takes you back to a particular place, time and mood - and for me Simon and Garfunkel’s music will always take me back to being 11 years old, boiling hot but genuinely living through some of the greatest days of my childhood and being driven around in something that looked like this.

So, the obvious next question to ask is how this all ties back in to a memory of my Dad really. And oddly enough (as many memories of my Dad too) it relates back to drinking, pubs and in this instance specifically pub quizzing. My Dad was a huge fan of a pub quiz, and took great pride in having a knack of not winning a quiz, but instead coming second (in many cases earning as good a prize as the ‘winners’ of the quiz, without gaining the added burden of having to set the next quiz). For those who know me, just imagine me being raised in an environment where having random knowledge about everything and anything would come in handy - how different would I have turned out?? 

So yes - Simon and Garfunkel and pub quizzes, their influence and impact on my childhood and their related stars all came into alignment one evening last year when I attended a charity quiz at the Pilgrim Lounge at Boston United FC’’s ground. Having persuaded/dragged my good lady wife, some colleagues from our work places and significant others along to the quiz we were presented with the usual range of round titles (Current Affairs, Sporting Numbers, TV, Film etc etc.) and having to pick the round to play our Joker on. Now, having clocked that ‘Simon and Garfunkel’ was one of the rounds I was quietly confident that, given my childhood exposure to their music that we might do okay in that round, but naturally kept schtum about this knowledge for fear of the team relying on me and us ending up with egg on our faces.

Predictably this was an error in judgement really. As it turned out, I think I managed to suss out 8 of the 10 answers required and the other team members had stabs at the other two and when it came to the answers being read out and the scoring being completed - we achieved 10 out of 10 in that round. Tragically, we instead used our Joker on one of the other rounds (may have been Sporting Numbers - which was a horror show, by the way) and (almost as though it were meant to be) I think we finished second on the quiz. Dad would definitely have been proud of that one. While we didn’t get any sort of a prize, we did avoid the awkward situation that would have been presented when faced with the expectation of ‘donating’ our winnings back to the relevant charity (as every previous winner of said quiz has done, and as announced by the compere of the evening) - for some reason the team seemed dead sent against this notion. Another fond memory of that night was the sheer rage that resulted from our table not having any luck at the raffle, and coming away empty handed. You never truly know someone until you’ve heard them cursing the nature (and the organisers) of the raffle simply because they didn’t get to win a box of choccies!

Now, on to the music (as I suppose I ought to make mention of it somewhere in this, it being the point of the blog and all that). My good lady wife is somewhat unimpressed with this one - reckoning it to sound rather dated and very much ‘of its time’. Now, I might struggle to argue against that but again, the songs put me back to a happy time for me in the early 90’s and even from that far back they are clearly ingrained in my mind now as when I worked in retail I almost constantly had the tune of “Keep the Customers Satisfied” stuck in my head. And there are some great lyrics hidden away in the songs too. Who can hear the words “Hello lamppost, what you knowing? I’ve come to watch your flowers growing” and not smile (other than my wife apparently…). And I can almost guarantee that at least some of the songs will be familiar to you - whether through knowing the original or having heard a cover of one of them (Chris Eubank is a big fan of a cover of ‘Cecilia’ that was done by Suggs from Madness by all accounts, so it’s worth checking that one out on Youtube if you can). Mrs. Robinson is another classic as well, and Bridge Over Troubled Water is an amazing piece of work. So if you’re unfamiliar with the work of Simon and Garfunkel, there are worse ways to spend an evening then going through some of their stuff and seeing what strikes a chord with you. 

Now, I realise that my timing of this blog may be deemed a little bit poor - what with it being father’s day and all that, but I haven’t put this one up to bring people down or make people feel bad for celebrating fathers. In many respects this is my way of doing the same thing. While during much of this life I know that my Dad enjoyed having some obscure knowledge and taking the chance to show it off a bit in a social environment, towards the end one fo the things that he did lose fairly early on after his diagnosis and treatment began was some of his sharpness and some of his memory recall too. But even before that, I picked up on the odd time that he’d slip up - but I suppose I just put it down to old age rather than actually suspecting that anything else untoward was going on up there for him. But undeterred I do try and keep up the family name and try and attend pub quizzes regularly and often think of my Dad when taking part - but always try and not take it too seriously. It’s all just a bit of fun in the end, right? 

To my Father, this rendering of his idea.

Okay, with all due respect to my previous blog and to the work of Cat Stevens, this CD is the first of my Dad’s collection where there’s a real strong connection and association that I hold between the music and my Dad. It’s interesting to me that in all the times I’ve listened to it before now, and all the times that I’ve pored over the CD inlay booklet that comes with it, that I’ve never seen the dedication held within it. “To my Father, this rendering of his idea” is subtly tucked away on the inside cover of the booklet and having not noticed it in all (at a guess) 28-ish years of my being aware of this CD it seems suddenly very poignant that I’ve now seen it while undertaking this project.

So, for those of you who didn’t suss out my little clue at the end of the last blog, and for those of you who haven’t clocked the cover art either - I’m going to spend a little bit of time talking about Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. In terms of finding connections back to my Dad, this one was an easy selection to make. It’s one of a handful of pieces of music that I can always remember being there, being played on any occasion as deemed appropriate (or otherwise) by my Dad and usually played at too high a volume as well. My Mum tells a story of one of my sister’s school friends coming to visit us, and my Dad (possibly under the influence of one or two cans of Anchor Beer (the local brew in Malaysia)) putting this on, to leave Candace (I think her name was) absolutely bewildered and “shit-scared”. And that sums my Dad up to a T really - an appreciator of the things that he liked and enjoyed and willing to share them with anyone, regardless of the circumstances or their reaction to it. 

The general story of War of the Worlds has been retold in many different ways to varying levels of success. H G. Wells wrote the original book on which the variations are based back in the late 1800’s and (in)famously Orson Wells (no relation…apparently) did a radio broadcast in the USA in 1938 retelling the story that was reportedly so realistic that widespread panic broke out. Just imagine Americans over-reacting to something, eh? Would never happen these days in the modern era of social media and whatnot, would it? Equally famous (but a lot worse) was the Tom Cruise film that came out in 2005. Not even Morgan Freeman doing the voice-over could save that one apparently. Equally, Jeff Wayne himself re-imagined parts of the show and has done a couple of live tours in the past 10 years or so. While many of the original cast are no longer around, they’ve found some adequate replacements in general and some very creative ways to replace elements of the cast. I also attended a live show in 2005 or 2006 which was quite the experience.

The album itself takes the form of a fairly conventional ‘musical’ and uses the facility of a narrator (voiced by Richard Burton) to move the story along and bridge the gaps between the different tracks that tell the story. To give a broad summary of the actual story, aliens (well, martians - even though the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one) descend on Earth, take over and a war between the humans and the martians breaks out. Although one of the tracks taken from it was released as a single (“Forever Autumn” by Justin Hayward… but more on him later), you really do have to just set aside a good couple of hours and listen to this one from end to end to fully appreciate its majesty and to take in the full impact of the story. 

There was some amazing talent involved in producing the album as well. Not only Jeff Wayne himself composing the music and his mother Doreen adapting the original book into the story told (the aforementioned Justin Hayward aside), but when you add in Phil Lynott (of Thin Lizzy fame, another favourite band of mine and my Dad’s), David Essex and Julie Covington (who came from a more traditional ‘musical’ background) everything just sort of clicks and the result is (in case it wasn’t already clear) one of my very favourite things to listen to now. To anyone who says that musicals aren’t cool, aren’t their thing and are somewhat pretentious, I would say that a single listen to this one would smash those perceptions.

For me though, Richard Burton is the real star of this show. While it seems a bit of a disservice to a piece of music to heap the largest praise on someone who ‘only’ narrates the story, he really is the glue that holds everything together. From his opening monologue (which still sends tingles down my spine whenever I hear it) through to his move from narrator to character when interacting with other individuals within the story it’s just an incredible piece of work. Hard to believe that someone simply reading words from a piece of paper could overshadow all of the other musical talent around him, but he does it with ease. 

Now Justin Hayward has cropped up a couple of times in this blog already, and I’ve sort of got to take a bit of an aside here. Again, it all comes back to a memory of my Dad. Justin Hayward was a member of the Moody Blues (and I’m sure there’ll be some of their stuff hidden away in his collection somewhere, so we’ll get to them when the time comes) and for whatever reason my Dad was (potentially just in jest…?) never really a fan of his. I remember sitting watching a video of a Moody Blues concert (potentially “A Night at Red Rocks”) with my parents and my sister, picking up on my Dad not liking Justin Hayward and taking great glee in joining in with berating him (Justin Hayward - not my Dad). For some reason I recall one of the other band members playing one of those guitars with two necks and thinking it was hilarious to point out that the rest of the band obviously had to work double-duty to cover for Justin’s ineptitude and overall lack of talent. Some might say that my humour hasn’t improved in the time since then either, come of think of it.

Anyway, I digress… For me this album is simply something everyone should listen to at least once a year. I’d make it part of the National Curruculum, to be honest. I know that some people out there will feel this is excessive, that the album is flawed and that the second CD/disc/part is a lot weaker than the first - but there is still some great stuff on there. Anything where Phil Lynott plays the part of a Parson who has been driven mad through the events unfolding around him can’t be bad really. So I really can’t recommend this one enough. I’d imagine (or hope, at least) that most people of my generation have encountered it through relatives of my Dad’s generation. And I can easily see that in the future that it will in turn be passed on and down the line or at the very least I hope that it will. 

The Very Best of... my second blog

To steal a line from Alan Partridge, and doctor it a bit “What’s your favourite Cat Stevens album?” “…The Very Best of Cat Stevens”. Now, this may be being slightly facetious (a trait that is likely to continue throughout many of these blogs I think) - but I sort of had to start with this album really. To have done anything else just wouldn’t have been right. Now, to those of you thinking that my title for the blog is a tribute and an indication of my ‘coming out’ as a closeted Ronan Keating fan, here’s a quick lesson for you… While Ronan may have been able to write many of his ‘greatest’ hits - he wasn’t actually responsible for “Father and Son”. Instead it was written back in the 70’s and originally (and best) performed by Cat Stevens. Knowing this (and being a bit of a smart-arse when it comes to music trivia, and life in general) and knowing that the song title fit into a convenient pun to base my blog title around everything just sort of fell into place.

In all honesty, there isn’t a huge link between this album and my Dad in my mind. It isn’t one of the ones that he would regularly play at family occasions, celebrations or weekends when he had had a little too long ‘wine-tasting’ at a local supermarket (Cold Storage in the basement of a shopping centre on Orchard Road in Singapore that doesn’t appear to be there any more - according to Google Maps anyway, but was between Lucky Plaza and Paragon…). I do know that he always really enjoyed the music of Cat Stevens though, and took a particular interest when it came to his (Cat Stevens’, not my Dad’s) conversion to Islam, name-change and the influences that had on his later music and his later life (probably mostly annoyance that his name-change impacted his ability to get through Airport Security in the USA - but feel free to Google the story behind that for yourselves)

So, on to the music it is then… What should anyone expect if they’re hearing this album for the first time? In many ways there will be some familiar songs, whether it be through a song from the album being covered by someone else in more recent times, to songs cropping up in school assemblies (that may just be me and an indication of some of my schooling though). But even if you’ve never heard any of the songs before, I’m confident that there’s something in this album for everyone really. One of the great things about Cat Stevens was his ability to tell a story through a song. Not just put words down on paper and fit some nice-sounding music around them - but to really get to the heart of a story behind a song and bring that through in the music.

If I were forced to categorise the music itself, I would say that it fell closest to being ‘Folk’ music - but don’t let that put you off (if it does) as there’s a broad spectrum of appeal to enjoy. Whether it be a heartfelt ballad like “Wild World” or “The First Cut is the Deepest”, a more upbeat and cheery song like “(Remember the Days of the) Old Schoolyard” or a couple of my personal favourites in “Peace Train” and “Father and Son” (had to be really, didn’t it??) it does make for really easy listening. She probably won’t thank me for saying this, but I’m currently sat in the library of our house (I know…) with my wife and she had dozed off not through boredom (I hope) but just through the calming and relaxing nature of the music itself. The album lends itself to both being gentle background music if you’re in the middle of doing something else, but also stands up well enough on its own to be the main focus of attention. 

While the concept of having a hidden gem on a ‘Very Best of’ album seems a bit of an odd one, there are a couple of songs on here that I don’t really remember hearing all that much in the past so, to me, they qualify. Second last track on there is “Sad Lisa” which for some reason reminds me of (and don’t judge me here) things like “Hazard” by Richard Marx, “Unforgiven” by Metallica or “Pretty Ballerina” by The Left Banke (now there are 3 songs that shouldn’t ever have been put alongside each other, but there we have it…). But really, every song on here is great, with no filler material in there. Yes, I did mostly pick this one out as a way of explaining the pun behind the blog title - but having sat and listened to the album again it really it a cracker. Under-rated and under-appreciated in the modern world I would say - and Cat Stevens probably is too.

And as a little teaser for the album that the next blog will be based around… “No one would have believed…” that I’d have picked out the next cd that I did. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this one, and that you’re also looking forward to the next.

So what is this all about then?

Basically, for those who don’t know me or my story - my Dad passed away on Thursday 25th May 2017 following an 18 month battle with a malignant Brain tumour. We didn’t always have that close of a relationship, but I always looked up to my Dad and in many ways wanted to be like him and most of all wanted him to approve of me, of my life and of the choices that I made. One of the big things that we did bond around and have in common was a shared love of music though. When I was a lot younger, my Dad had a vast collections of vinyl records, which he then donated to a neighbour when a short-term trip to some far-flung foreign land turned into something a little more long term (I suspect I’ll touch on a lot of this throughout the future blogs, so I won’t go into all the detail now). However, by that time the world had started to move on to CDs anyway and he set about rebuilding a lot of that old collection again in this new-fangled format (that I’m sure would never die out and be replaced with anything else…). 

As part of his legacy, I have managed to get hold of his old CD collection and my intention is, as a tribute to my Dad, to go through each and every CD, listen to them, pass comment on them, share memories that the music sets off and just generally get a load of things that are in my head out there into the public domain to share with whatever audience I get. At last estimate there were around 400 CDs in his collection (nobody has counted yet, but I suspect I will at some stage) crossing a broad range of genres, eras and overall levels of quality (I’m sure there are some hidden gems in the collection) so I’m hoping that it’ll be interesting to people to see what sorts of things crop up and will maybe be tempted to check them out themselves too. With the advent of the Internet and music streaming specifically, I’m sure most things will be easy enough to track down these days. 

It’s interesting to me that I’ve chosen to set about this task in this way, when i think that as a child I often struggled to write anything of significance down (a combination of really poor hand-writing and an overall lack of imagination when it came to thinking about what to write). I remember being about 10 or 11 and being asked to write a story to fill a side of A4 paper, and when it came down to the last few lines I took      to      really      spacing      out       my       words      to      get      to     the       end! But all that’s changed in more recent years, I’ve had brief stints as a reviewer of unsigned bands (mostly ones found through MySpace for those of you who remember that) for a very short-lived free magazine called Salvo and was for a time a ‘blogger’ for one of my old teams in an old job of mine too. So overall I’ve become a lot more accustomed to making use of the power of the written (or typed…) word than I ever imagined I would be when I was a child. I used to often be accused of talking too much when i was younger too, and that seems to have died off a bit so maybe the written word is just my “inside voice” escaping in a different way. As anyone who has worked with me over the last 15 years can attest to, I’ve got a bit of a penchant for a long wordy e-mail when the mood strikes me so I’m sure that at times people wish I’d talk more and write less.

So why music? Other than the aforementioned link back to my Dad and his CD collection I think I’ve just always found that sensory reaction you have to different stimuli fascinating. Whether it be a certain smell that takes you back to a specific time and place, seeing something in a new way or hearing a great piece of music and getting tingles I’m still often taken aback at how powerful all of our senses are. Towards the end my Dad definitely started to lose his power of sight and his hearing, but one of the last things I did to really help him out was to dig out an old CD player and some headphones and put together a collection of his (or my…) favourite CDs to keep him entertained as much as possible while he was in hospital. A small gesture in a lot of ways, but something I’m very pleased that I got the chance to do for him. Also, I was entrusted with picking the music that played at his funeral and spent a good couple of hours trawling through Youtube coming up with different suggestions (both serious and joke ones) with a mix of happy and upset tears being shed. 

And I guess that in itself is the combination of factors that have lead me to this point really. The CDs are all there and waiting, and I’ve made a few initial hand-picked selections to start off with, but as we get further into this and I (hopefully) get a bit of a clearer idea of how this is all going to go I’ll start dipping in totally at random and seeing what comes out. Variety is the spice of life and all that - and I’d like to think that my Dad didn’t buy any CDs that are that dreadful. Having said that he was a bit of a notorious wind-up merchant at times, so if he did have an inkling that I was ever going to undertake this task, I’d fully expect him to have found the worst CD in the world and snuck in into the collection somewhere. 

So I’m hoping that this has enticed you to follow in my journey through music and memories that you enjoy reading my thoughts as much as I’m going to enjoy putting them out there for you all.