The Lincoln Imp and the possibilities of live performance

I have noticed how much of this writing is tinged with the buzz buzz buzz of live performance. Of witnessing [tha fitness] the moment a band, a singer, a this or a that gives you that moment of sincerity and you fall head over heels in love with them again. Or even love them more.

There is a small local public house in Ashby – well not even Ashby – just sort of deposited in a road behind some houses – with a small drag of shops servicing nobody these days. I mean it’s not on Broadway – do you get me? I used to do boxing there – under the bar. All blood, sweat and tears. Leather gloves and Scunthorpe thugs.

I lasted a few weeks.

Head ringing in the ring. All Tom and Jerry birds circling heads – which is something my boys have taken to saying when they pretend or actually hit their heads – ‘can you see the birds, daddy? ‘ Well I have done. Downstairs in that public house. So I packed it in and most likely started listening to Frankie goes to Hollywood on a regular basis. It was always about extremes with me. However, I would venture there again – not down the steps to the ring but across the carpeted backroom – well I think it was a side room – and to the stage – let leash the sounds rehearsed in bedrooms, garages and church halls. All feedback squall, or glitter beat glam and acid modernism – to audiences of ten or more. There was both a sincerity and pomposity in it all. Small time promoters in small town situations – but you felt like Andrew ‘Loog’ Oldham - shaping a scene with a sprinkle of ‘pop’ magic.

It wasn’t just the Lincoln Imp mind you – there was Bentleys, The Crosby, The Royal Hotel, The Bridge, The Wortley or the Baths. There were others as well - local WMCs putting on bands  – all honky tonk C&W and synthesizer duos called ‘The 2 of Us’ or ‘Mirror Mirror’ – our anorak culture from 1985 – 89 wasn’t suited to that really. But I would have my taste at the Snooker club dances held throughout the year as Mandy tottered on heels and I put on a shirt to eat pie and peas and ‘jive’ with the best of them to the latest act booked by Sean Coleman’s dad or mine at a club located opposite a cemetery with my secondary school a stone’s throw away for walks home in the dark.

And each one of us would aim to put on a night of this and that. Some live – some just playing records. Nonetheless the possibility of live performance fuelling our minds with super rock stardom and pure adoration spurred us onward. It was a Scunthorpe scene maaaan. But as I’ve previously stated there is something explosive about sounds happening in the real. When things can fall apart or the edge [not The Edge] in the room gets soaked up in the songs.

I haven’t been to a gig for a while. I was going to go and see The Primitives this week – keep it in the past Alan, keep it tucked right back in the past. And time races by in bedtimes and bottles and kisses and cuddles. I still might go and see The Primitives this week. It’s on Friday at the Borderline – a venue I seem to find myself in once a year – as old artists’ audiences shrink and deplete and only the most ardent are prepared to pay the ticket price. That’s if there any tickets left.

I once followed The Primitives around the North and the Midlands, taking in the heady rush of bass and fuzz, fuzz, fuzz guitar coupled with simplistic rhythms and bittersweet vocals. In an orange Hillman Imp driven by a wonderful friend named Darryl. That thrill of it all – entering a venue – I was 16 at the time all underage and ready for booze and shouting. In a positive manner that is – not a late night Scunthorpe brawl in a tarmaced car park off Doncaster Road. You could smell the cigarettes and spilt drinks worn in from endless nights of energy. It’s what the youth did. Does.

My love of The Primitives live experience stretched to Paul and I hopping on a train down to London for an all dayer at The Boston Arms in Tufnell Park [The Impossibles played too – I think our love knew no bounds for them] Nowhere to stay but up for it anyway – all wide eyed and green – but we managed it – sleeping rough in some school grounds until the first tube trains started running. You do that kind of thing when you’re young – I couldn’t imagine it now – or letting my kids do it. But we did.

And we returned. Safe and sorted.

I would stay out far past my bedtime in this capital city on many occasions since then – but that was the first time. And all of those fears and teenage trepidation where outweighed by Tracy Tracy singing (We’ve) Found a way (to the Sun) just for me. I know it wasn’t - but it always felt that way. And that’s what I get from those moments when the notes collide and the feedback lingers longer than the producer would ever allow. It’s the live ‘feelin’ – it’s being there. From the small stages in steel towns to aircraft hangers we watched The Cure in time and time again there’s a feeling that goes with the territory that you can’t emulate at home. Paul sent me all the Velvet Underground records sometime last month. Buried within the mp3s was a live album that has Lou and co just rocking uptown with the glamorous and fawning. But you can tell this is a band who are at the top of their game – confident – inventive and not feared to take a risk. Switching from the chug and fug of basic guitars whilst feedback howls and things get spiked up to the simplicity of Mo Tucker sticking with you through it all. And in all of that is a super funked exploration of Waiting for my Man – all fluid and loose with rolling bass and guitar licks. It’s incredible – but not Andy’s vision for the album. I know I wasn’t at the gig – but I can feel it. There’s something special taking place in the room. I’m not certain that always happened at The Lincoln Imp – but it has to start somewhere – so credit to the owners of all those local establishments who allowed us to promote and gloat and float our ideas out there. We might not have quite been the velvets but it was all about experimenting.

Should I go to see The Primitives this week? I think I’m convinced already.

Are you coming down the front?

Here’s the Velvets. It takes a while to get going. But stick with it. This is a faster version than the one on the bootleg album I was writing about above but I think it rolls particularly well.

If it all disappeared

I was reading Ed Vuillamy’s piece for Record Store Day in The Observer last week or even weeks ago – after Emma had finished the crossword [I might be able to recall the various Rephlex releases but I can’t do crosswords – that’s a real mental activity] and in it he details that his attempt to ship his record collection back to ‘dear old Blighty’ ended in disaster. The shipping company having failed to fill in the necessary paperwork pretty much gave the US customs department a right to destroy everyone of his 1600 records [and his books as well – but here we’re just talking about the music].

And in this piece of Sunday filler was an attempt to communicate the essential pull these pieces of plastic have on us. He was replenishing the stock – long player by long player – the same versions – the same labels – not swapping for a digital age – and obviously this chimed with the whole record store day vibe. And it set me [stinkin’] thinkin’ about all that vinyl upstairs, in no particular order and gathering dust – how I would feel if it simple disappeared one day. It’s not that I’d forget it – it would just be gone – not tangible – like the tunes on my phone.

There and not there.

In some ways those tunes up there [in the house – not in the ether] are not physical anymore – they exist in memories and snatches of sounds lodged [way] in my brain [way in my brain] and the act of playing them is lost in the day to day of living. If I am honest I even missed Record Store Day – I forgot amidst the Saturday playing out and the relevant madness of fatherhood – although I had made time for a stop in Reckless Records on Wednesday as I strolled back through Soho to Charing Cross. It was a glance at the racks and weighing up the odds of releasing some of my stock back to the river.

But I had those pangs – that only hoarders feel. It’s hard to give them up. Even the ones that I cringe at when I see a front cover and memories come flooding back of mis-timed dances and chances and unbearable angst and romances. Odd how plastic makes you feel. And part of me couldn’t imagine having to re-build it all – I guess I like to think that I’d just accept it and move on. But deep down I’d be gutted if I lost all my records.

So with it comes the question of what you would save [family accepted – and the cats]. That dilemma of saving the few over the many – hey – we’d all burn together. As Buffalo Springfield melted into LFO and dripped down over My Bloody Valentine and Denim. A whole heap of new genres emerging.

So today I am going to pick one. A simple tune to be plucked from the burning shack or the hands of the US customs. I have always had time for hip hop headz – for listening to beats and the bile that MCs be spittin’. And Gang Starr where clearly way up there in terms of their hip hop credibility – incendiary – you get me? And around the turn of the nineties through G&Ts and Acid Jazz emerged Guru’s take on the Blue Note era – this back to the beginning approach to reconstructing the songs – through risk and improvisation.

And Jazzamatazz at the time was seen to be a whole new way of mining the lineage – the joining of what was hip to the hop of the 90s. Hepcat callin’ from around tha way. On that album is a tune with him, D.C Lee and Ronny Jordan – by rights its call to an obsessive work ethic shouldn’t be a tune worth saving – but somehow it resonates and transports to days sat in The Honest Lawyer and smoke filled rooms and blissful dreams back in that steel town. Of flat fronted trousers and loafers. Loafers – bought on the cheap in Leeds – snakeskin tops with a patent feel, square toed and light. Ankle cut beige slacks a with a Ben Sherman short sleeve red plaid shirt topped with a wrangler press stud untreated denim jacket – no vents – fitted with no real room or movement – so no punches being thrown.

Just a simple expression. No more – no less.

And that’s what resides inside No Time to Play

The simple – honest rolling guitar ‘lick’ – kind of endlessly looping back in on itself – just gets me every time. It isn’t quite jazz – I found that hard going to be honest – but maybe when Paul and I started with Love Supreme – it was always going to be a struggle. Nowadays – I get Jelly Roll Morton and the gang – but Coltrane’s strains where a learning curve from the chord changes of the Stooges.

Guru offered that ‘in’ without the spin and for some reason reading that article brought me to saving this tune. It isn’t my favourite – I could most likely live without it. D.C Lee offering up the refrain that we’ve got to keep movin’ everyday. A call to do stuff – make things happen. I guess the physical existence of the thing means it carries some sentimental worth – an object. If I’d just downloaded the code I wouldn’t care so much. I could replace it with a click. However – I know it’s there – upstairs with the rest of the ‘collection’ – running the gamut from mainstream to downstream.

They’ve just released John Peel’s collection online - all ‘Nathan Barley’ and hyperlinked in THE SPACE – amidst home videos and talking heads. We all collect records here – they fascinate us for the sounds on them – not the notes we make about them. Although that’s what I’m doing here – pouring words over sounds. Ultimately we want the music to affect us and no matter how many words we chose to discuss and explain it – you know you just want to put the record on and make up your mind.

But as I said sometimes listening is not enough.

I wonder what John would have saved?

I got a letter this morning.

There’s a long history of rock and the post office – a long history.

I had returned from university and found myself temporarily in charge of a red framed bicycle and post bag. My degree had been in Sociology and Communication Studies and wandering back into Goldsmiths’ to pick up my ‘award’ for best UK animation etc and explaining to my previous tutors where I was currently at I was met with the line – ‘well it is a form of communications I suppose – the post office’.

Yes thank you for the support – it was reminiscent of Casper receiving his careers advice. Still I had to leave the capital [Exit this Roman shell] at that time – I had those empty pockets and I couldn’t afford the beer.

I used to sing to myself when I was on the post round. Post rounds have that kind of freedom. I was living out a Bukowski phase of my existence. The round was a means to an end – the round was clouded in the rounds I’d had the night before.

Bagging up and off into the emerging morning – sometimes wide eyed from the night before or tired eyed from the weekend – that sense of camaraderie and then emerging isolation all thrown into one. Shouting out inanities as letters were thrown in racks and bandied up in elastic and then just you and your bike – riding to deliver the good, the bad and the ugly.

I used to get a whole heap of things through the post.

Having attempted to write [insightfully] about music on the page – and then thrust it on unsuspecting bowl headed youth at gigs and concerts – somehow my late night ramblings as to the power of The Impossibles to change the world or how the next Clouds release would bring down western capitalism had broken into the ether and people would scrawl letters and sellotape fifty pences to card asking for a copy from all over the world.

Letters with suggestions of bands and sounds – places to visit and voices that chimed with mine. It was an indie scene see? All wrapped together with staples and photocopies. It was the Post Office uniting minds and [teenage] dreams [so hard to beat] so that we felt part of a gang – a movement – a wave – even if we walked our sodden towns’ streets alone.

I didn’t by the way – I had friends – real ones.

But postmen – like me - would have to deliver these letters with scrawls about ‘that’s love ba ba ba ba’ or ‘see it glow and paint a rainbow’. Our own S.W.A.L.K as we borrowed Stephen Pastel’s words to give our ideas a voice. It was fun really. And inside these delicate envelopes came outpourings of independence – of fight and fury as we rallied against the world with our band allegiances proudly displayed on our [t-shirt] sleeve or in my case [my college folder – lever arch maaaan] You had to wait for a letter – a correspondence between two minds – feverishly trying to drop a new piece of indie news into a letter. Have you heard Dolly Mixture? Here’s a tape of my band – a friend’s band – my dad’s band. It was counter to all the NME blurgh – it was social networking without technology. It was different. We didn’t ‘like’ one another’s page see – we wrote letters to each other – if we disagreed – we either worked it out in ink – or stopped writing. No flaming or trolling for us. So sounds emerged slowly, with less fanfare. You could argue that it gave everyone time to make a decision about music – about selecting and rejecting – living with the listening rather than flipping and shuffling. You had a cassette from someone – they’d taken some time to tape it – it deserved a listen – a real listen – you were going to have to write back.

I ‘liked’ a page on Facebook this morning – and then had a quick skip through a ‘deep house session’ on Soundcloud that I was directed to from the page and haven’t really given any of it my attention. I left with little opinion. But when Stephen from Middlesborough wrote and asked again what it was I didn’t like about the tape he sent – I had to return and listen - form judgements and write down my reasons – perhaps this naïve correspondence of hurt feelings and the race to impress shaped my thinking processes – perhaps I just pause for thought sometimes.

You have to take a breath to read - to listen.

Which brings me to this – a simple song – that I discovered through a shared love of anoraks and bowlheads – or should that read rock n roll and anger. And of course Paul’s recommendations too. There wasn’t anything twee in digging The Pastels - it was about the real rock in roll. There’s that simplicity in all The Pastels songs – chugging guitars and heartfelt responses. Melodies that linger and race around your brain.

Stephen and Aggi making beautiful noise and shared cassettes and memories scrawled down on paper making connections.

They’re raising the price of the post. No more time to pause then.

Put away your pens.

Sounds from the overground - solitary rants from the listening man No.3

I have heard the British Eurovision entry by Englebert Humperdink


I played my children a selection of advertisements – including the mighty Opal Fruits jingle – made to make your mouth water


I read about Steve Marriot and felt that utter despair as he crawled into the airing cupboard and not out the front door. However, I did read that he rocked the denim look from 1974 onwards after having put it into the public domain supporting The Who at Charlton Athletics’ Valley stadium.


I watched a documentary about Public Enemy and sang loudly to Fight the Power.


I searched the internet for references to Hard Times in Mirfield and ended up downloading a set by DJ’s Tom Wainwright and Miles Holloway.


I have continued to write lies about George Harrison


I played a selection of live tunes by Echo and the Bunnymen from the early eighties.


I found a load of old set lists from Pale Saints, The Razorcuts, The Pixies, The Siddeleys and The Rosehips.


I read some letters posted to me in the 1980s


I contemplated buying a ticket for The Primitives in May


I found some old photographs of The Housemartins at the Scunthorpe Free Rock Festival.


I uploaded all the Velvets and Lou Reed albums to itunes – I didn’t have the John Cale ones.


I played Metal Machine Music to some students.


I played No bed for Beatle John again.


I downloaded some Andrew Wethearall and Carl Craig sets


I read a Spiritualized review.


And I listened to this after finding it again on a CD in Cancer Research. It is simply an acid grower and it samples Marshall Jefferson. Simple really.

I think I can help you get through your exams

It has been one of those endless swirls of fatigue and the refusal to sleep. Of [high] tension [lines] and mis-directed thoughts as men with suits swamp corridors and judge. It has not been one to relish. And in between all that a daughter growing older with cakes and ponies – so much more real than ideological battles over assessments and attainment.

When I was younger – and was schooled rather than running tings. I rushed heady into the exam period with a fevered joy that Summer lay ahead and I was coming of age – a more positive Kes you could say. I still had an anorak but no bird of prey. There had been a soundtrack to my waking and dreaming hours that had got me through good times and bad – and those periods of indiscriminate nothingness that teenagers have.

I once had a photograph taken with a bootlace tie and my Rock n Roll singles – Paul took one of his Adam and the Ants 45s. A passion he and now my children have today – not taking photographs but Adam Ant. So it will come as no surprise that I had rituals and ways of getting things done.

I would play the same song before every exam. It helped like that. These simple rituals and superstitions. I am an athesist – I have no belief in a God – or an afterlife – but I do get reassured by ritual. It makes no difference – what difference does it make? I had rearranged the ‘dining room’ – sounds grand but it wasn’t – fold out table, sideboard, redundant chairs and nets at the window – into where I would do my revision. I was revising – learning stuff to pass examinations – it’s how you get ahead [I couldn’t get ahead] and I would secrete myself behind the door – fold out table part folded out and work through notes and ideas and thrust myself back into lessons and learning.

Music [and girls] provided the breaks in study. I would let myself play a Sea Urchins song or a Mary Chain screech to satisfy the rebellious spirit I had sort to engender along the final months of the fifth year. I have seen photographs from those final years – it’s as if the teachers felt the weight of the very steel of the town and simply allowed us to be who we wanted – to give us an out. Not regiment and force our compliance – rather let us be – whilst singing words of wisdom from the old wooden desks at the front – let it be. Revision was punctuated by sun and walks and songs and words. It’s what gets me through the day these days. I wasn’t really viewing the revision as a means of acquiring the stuff I needed to answer the papers rather as a reason to treat myself to a tune.

And before each exam I would take the trusted walkman – I think it was a Boots one – it recorded as well -and play Handsome Devil so that Morrissey would ‘help me get through my exams’. Marr direct guitar matching the bursts of knowledge stored in my brain – all ready to come tumbling out in ink and showed workings when I sat at those lonely seats with just me and the paper and pen in my pocket. This tradition continued through my A-levels and most possible my degree – but I was wrapped up in fog and fury by that time.

But I still had my walkman.

There is more to life than books you know – but not much more.

At this stage in my life.

I had somehow gotten on to the stage – and was awaiting my turn to jump off.

As I have stated previously – I am not a friend of the mob but here I was indulging in sheep like behaviour. A push and a shove and the stage is ours. But here I was – on stage – well I had stepped up a foot or so as the crowd had surged and shook to the twin guitar action from Blake and McGinley and everything flowed into that moment of bewilderment and sudden realisation that I was amidst the group. Not performing but most likely ruining some else’s enjoyment. To feel self conscious at this point – does not make for a good exit. To catch the eyes of your friend and be certain that this was not what we ‘did’ only added to the awkward nature of it all.

I once tried to get onstage whilst Morrissey sang of our adolescent ills – but was harangued and prevented by burly Scottish men in shiny bomber jackets. It wasn’t that the bomber jacket had taken off as a fashion accessory de jour in Scottish cities and streets – this was Showsec and boots and snarled faces and grimaces.

To be fair they saved me the embarrassment of stumbling on stage and dancing awkwardly – or attempting to strike up a conversation whilst Johnny jangled to the left all white demin jacket and seaman’s cap.

When I was younger and what was then a regular concert goer – as ticket stubs seem to testify - there was a hardly a week without some live action. You get me? And without fail there would be a moment of sloppy looking youth jettisoning themselves from stages into the arms of the crowd – in an endless tide of arms and holed jumpers. I never really had the urge to want to do this – to impinge myself on proceedings in that way. I was more with the Keith Richards school of thought – get off my stage you fucker – and understood why you would use the telecaster to keep them at bay.

There’s a thing about the stage. Its openness and space – where performers come to share their wares with easily excitable audiences. Unwritten rules that say that you can look but don’t step up front – this is not where you are welcome. Those moments when you heave yourself up and glance at the setlist for the night – knowing what’s coming next but enjoying it even more because of that dramatic irony. Or shout at some roadie to pass the list to you after the lights have come on and revealed the stage as a mess of leads and dust – no glamour just organisation.

But here I was caught in a moment of youthful exuberance – as Snub TV cameras filmed the chaos. It had been one of those oddly organised bills – the Manics opening – all sprayed shirts that made them look like militant darts players – as me and McGee talked about the Clash and honesty. I didn’t appreciate the Manics at that point – it turned out they were an honest bunch. Then Swervedriver - another band with guitars and voices. I can’t remember Swervedriver if I’m being truthful. I saw them several times – none of it sticks. Finally the Fannies making music with harmonies and guitars. Slowly igniting a change in the right direction for all independent [bowl]heads.

Whatever happened at that concert resulted in me somehow bridging the artist and audience divide. I have a friend who talks about his brother’s love of The Specials and how they transcended the whole rock ‘n’ droll thing of performer and those to be performed at. How Terry Hall would simple have a look that reinforced that there was no difference – that The Specials were both me and you – and we were all welcome to a moment in the lights. Norman Blake didn’t exactly welcome us on the stage – but he didn’t kick me off either – I just sort of shuffled my way back –to the beer sodden floor and where I felt I belonged. I do remember watching Iggy Pop – on television – simple work the crowd into a frenzy – a unit – a platoon that he commanded. It was one of those supercharged moments where you could see the 60s Iggy in his eyes – all confrontation and hostility. But it resulted in lots of middle class white kids – kinda bopping with boots to Asheton’s guitar growl. All off kilter and really knowing they were ‘part of something’ – you know like it was a Glasto moment and Kitty and me were like soooo near Iggy and …and…..and.

The crowd wouldn’t spit on them in 1969. But Iggy handled it. Inviting them on. Stopped the show. Told them to get off. Which they did. You know you’re only visiting the stage. It’s not yours.

In some ways I still cringe about that moment. I had gone to the concert with James – I returned with James.

We did not discuss the stage incident – it would never repeat itself.

Teenage Fanclub: Everything Flows with me somewhere in the audience.

I’ll play mine if you play yours.

The snow came tumbling down last month. I was out and about getting wet, wet, wet as the metropolitan city ground to a halt and I ended up staying over at a top soul brother’s residence.

Not getting home to the kids.

I guess there’s a presumption that because it’s the city you can get straight home – that somehow the snow won’t wreck the plans of commerce and pleasure. But it does and it will. So stood drinking and discussing George Harrison’s Electronic Sound and the reverb set ups created by Larry Levine – we didn’t notice that the snow was settling that little bit faster and traffic was slowing up and coming to a standstill – The Pineapple can have that effect. It’s a wonderful public house The Pineapple – a stone’s throw from the Imperial War Museum.

Back in Scunthorpe – getting home meant a walk if it snowed – wet trousers and cold feet – falling over and falling in love as you negotiated the ice around Britannia Corner and over the railway bridge. Through bends and drifts hands held and helping hands. Here it was wet concourses and low level announcements – basically a mild apology but a certainty that you’re not getting home.

No headphones – just cold ears and the beers that I’d drunk swishing inside – well cider – you know me – I am a cider drinker.

But as we were wont to do in that flat – we played music. Not overly loud – you know we’re in our forties – we get on with our neighbours – we’re not a bunch of ravers – diddlee di di sharing tunes and experiences late into the night with brandy and cigarettes. Over the years I have found myself in rooms with friends playing songs that cheer the heart as the head begins to hurt. Those morning moments that lead to a find that stays with you forever – where once it was 7 inch singles revolving on stereos or 12 inches on 1210s – it’s mostly digital digging that we’re doing – but with the same outcomes.

Richard played me Nilson. I played him Euros Childs.

We marvelled at the simplicity of music to bring us to our knees. It seems that music has a habit of running at you head first in the dark – when it’s different outside – when the curtains are drawn and you know you should be sleeping. It’s that hazy appeal as your head fights the inherent tiredness creeping into your bones but you feel alive as the tune brings a rush of energy sweeping through those old [and in this case cold] limbs. And this post could be about so many of those late moments – in cars, in clubs, on tapes and vinyl as people played tunes that would you would never tire of listening to.

But this one is about the mamas and the papas.

Paul and I used to travel to Leeds and other northern towns in search of heady inspiration. And as we would often be found waiting – after Kaleidoscope Pop had shut its doors – for a milk train to take us back to the old town we would sometimes end up at kind soul’s house. Two Scunthorpe waifs and strays – avoiding the return to the industrial streets and skies. That house was invariably on Harold Avenue – the home of pop – past the menacing streets of Sutcliffe’s stalking to inviting cups of tea – or take out bottles and Big Star’s Third or Dinosaur’s first. We sat and talked with like minded fellows about this and that – as tiredness crept in but the tunes would flow and somehow I knew I would make it in on time to college the next day – because I had heard ‘Kangaroo’ and that would keep me going – as it still does.

But Ian of Pale Saints placed a simple greatest hits record on the downstairs dansette – and out of the speaker came that simple strum and build of Twist and Shout. Yet this wasn’t the cacophony of Lennon and company in full leather and volume. No this was all delicate chiffon and corduroy and harmony and yearning. I don’t think at that point I had quite got the mamas and the papas – but in that sleep deprived moment – it worked. And I haven’t been able to escape it since.

The simplicity in slowing it all down and turning that twisting and shouting into romance and wanting – as John Phillips tells us that she’s got him going – like she knew she would. And the harmonies build and fall and lap over one another until we’re wrapped right inside the song. That walk for the train as the dawn exploded in Leeds was a joyous one as Mama Cass rang in our ears and our hearts.

Whenever I’m stuck as to what should come next on a compilation tape [ok – CD – we don’t make tapes anymore or should it be some sort of ‘playlist’] then this seems to worm its way on to it. Too be honest it’s obvious why. Those late night moments hang around – I find I can’t do them anymore. I mean it took days to recover from my night ‘on the town’ with Richard and small children waking in early hours means that listening in daylight can be hard enough.

So here’s to the beauty of one person playing something different to another. It’s called sharing and the world is a better place for it.