I spend a lot of my life with headphones on, listening to Spotify, surrounded by other people with headphones on listening to Spotify. It's like the opposite of a callcentre, we spend our days actively avoiding answering the phone.
Anyhoo - I tried Rdio instead of Spotify but it seemed to assume I was some kind of hipster, and whatever I fed into it as my preferred musical choices it just kept playing Chvrches and the Horrors and Fat White Family and George Ezra and all that crowd, who I kinda like in small doses, but they make me feel like a Dad trying to act too young in front of his offspring’s friends, and not in a good way. Is there is a good way for a grown man to try and act young in front of his offspring’s friends? Probably not.
So Spotify it is, so I can have much more control over my own terrible taste in music. One thing I have definitely noticed is that Country and Western songs have the best titles.
Spurred on by the Best Song Title Ever®, which I banged on about a while back, the amazing Jerry Reed effort ‘She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft’ I have been listening to quite a bit of Country music solely to find the next best song title.
There are some classics in there for sure, ‘If My Drinking Don’t Kill Me, Her Memory Will’, ‘Don’t Come Home Drinkin’ With Loving On Your Mind’, ‘She’s Acting Single, So I’m Drinkin’ Doubles’, ‘Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth, I’m Kissin’ You Goodbye’, ‘If You Don’t Leave Me Alone, I’ll go and Find Someone Who Will’, etc.
The more astute among you may have noticed a theme there. Love, loss and excessive alcohol consumption. I cannot think of any other reason to write and perform a song in front a crowd of complete strangers.
If I wrote a Country and Western song, which I just might if you’re not careful, I would definitely write it from the point of a view of a middle class white guy from Kent who has never been to Wyoming or lassoed a steer in his life.
It would be about the acute emotional distress incurred from catching the 261 bus to work where there’s a beautiful woman who ignores him, but that’s OK, ‘cos he’s happily married, even though there is DIY to be done that he doesn’t want to do, so he eats too much junk food and drinks whisky instead, despite his Doctors warning about his high cholesterol.
This might sound impossible to put to music, but I gotta tell you, those guys can spin a tune out of the longest sentences you ever heard, its remarkable.
I finished the first draft of my novel. Very exciting. It’s about 72,000 words, which I think is quite long enough. Its like when you go to gigs that end up going on beyond 10.30pm – its rude, people have to get home you know, pop star people. If you had bothered come on when the ticket says you were supposed to, then it wouldn’t be 11.45 and the last tube has gone, and now about five hundred people are trying to cram onto a nightbus that only vaguely goes to where they want to end up.
Its OK for you isn’t it, staying backstage with champagne and hookers, you don’t have to get up tomorrow. Or perhaps you have an interview with Ian Grimshaw on Radio 1 at 8.00 in which case you do. Thanks heavens for the private car your record company lays on to whisk you back to your penthouse suite, filled with more cocaine than a human person could ever consume in a lifetime.
I went to see Elton John once at an outdoorsy type of gig once, and I swear to god 15 seconds after he had walked off stage he took off in a helicopter. I bet he was home before I made it out of the car park. At least the gig ended at 10.25. Classy.
Anyhoo - I tried Rdio instead of Spotify but it seemed to assume I was some kind of hipster, and whatever I fed into it as my preferred musical choices it just kept playing Chvrches and the Horrors and Fat White Family and George Ezra and all that crowd, who I kinda like in small doses, but they make me feel like a Dad trying to act too young in front of his offspring’s friends, and not in a good way. Is there is a good way for a grown man to try and act young in front of his offspring’s friends? Probably not.
So Spotify it is, so I can have much more control over my own terrible taste in music. One thing I have definitely noticed is that Country and Western songs have the best titles.
Spurred on by the Best Song Title Ever®, which I banged on about a while back, the amazing Jerry Reed effort ‘She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft’ I have been listening to quite a bit of Country music solely to find the next best song title.
There are some classics in there for sure, ‘If My Drinking Don’t Kill Me, Her Memory Will’, ‘Don’t Come Home Drinkin’ With Loving On Your Mind’, ‘She’s Acting Single, So I’m Drinkin’ Doubles’, ‘Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth, I’m Kissin’ You Goodbye’, ‘If You Don’t Leave Me Alone, I’ll go and Find Someone Who Will’, etc.
The more astute among you may have noticed a theme there. Love, loss and excessive alcohol consumption. I cannot think of any other reason to write and perform a song in front a crowd of complete strangers.
If I wrote a Country and Western song, which I just might if you’re not careful, I would definitely write it from the point of a view of a middle class white guy from Kent who has never been to Wyoming or lassoed a steer in his life.
It would be about the acute emotional distress incurred from catching the 261 bus to work where there’s a beautiful woman who ignores him, but that’s OK, ‘cos he’s happily married, even though there is DIY to be done that he doesn’t want to do, so he eats too much junk food and drinks whisky instead, despite his Doctors warning about his high cholesterol.
This might sound impossible to put to music, but I gotta tell you, those guys can spin a tune out of the longest sentences you ever heard, its remarkable.
I finished the first draft of my novel. Very exciting. It’s about 72,000 words, which I think is quite long enough. Its like when you go to gigs that end up going on beyond 10.30pm – its rude, people have to get home you know, pop star people. If you had bothered come on when the ticket says you were supposed to, then it wouldn’t be 11.45 and the last tube has gone, and now about five hundred people are trying to cram onto a nightbus that only vaguely goes to where they want to end up.
Its OK for you isn’t it, staying backstage with champagne and hookers, you don’t have to get up tomorrow. Or perhaps you have an interview with Ian Grimshaw on Radio 1 at 8.00 in which case you do. Thanks heavens for the private car your record company lays on to whisk you back to your penthouse suite, filled with more cocaine than a human person could ever consume in a lifetime.
I went to see Elton John once at an outdoorsy type of gig once, and I swear to god 15 seconds after he had walked off stage he took off in a helicopter. I bet he was home before I made it out of the car park. At least the gig ended at 10.25. Classy.
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