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.