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I don’t very often make playlists in iTunes, because I primarily use it to feed my iPod and I don’t mind just listening randomly to everything on that. But I’ve started to listening to iTunes more when I’m working in the office at home, and I fancied something a bit more… tailored.

I started out with a particular feel of song in mind, and manually constructed a playlist around that feeling. It’s not a particular genre, but — for me at least — the songs I chose formed something quite coherent. They weren’t just a random selection of songs. When I came to name the playlist, I realised that I couldn’t put a name to that coherence. In a spirit of curiosity, laziness, and really wanting my playlist to have a name, I’m opening it up to you: Name My Playlist (like Pimp My Ride, but with less chrome and no Hip-Hop).

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On Mr. Bsag’s 40th birthday yesterday, we went to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (UOGB) at the Lichfield Festival. We’d been looking forward to it for ages, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. As I’ve said before, UOGB are musical geniuses. They are also (it turns out) very funny even when not playing their instruments. Near the start of the show, George Hinchliffe asked those of us at the back of the auditorium if we could hear the bass ukulele properly. When we all chorused “Yes”, he replied, “Oh, I am sorry about that”. As they said, they do their own heckling.

I don’t really know where to start, because the whole show was so good. For example, David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” was a very beautiful arrangement, made utterly strange (well, OK, utterly stranger) by various members of the Orchestra starting to sing at least four other songs throughout the course of “Life on Mars”, including “Born Free” and “My Way”. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it did—-brilliantly. They worked the “Ying Tong” song by The Goons into a jazz medley to my delight, and “Silver Dream Machine” by David Essex came complete with appropriate sound effects.

I can also state confidently that you haven’t experienced the full richness of life’s tapestry until you’ve heard a middle-aged white man sing “The Theme from Shaft” (originally sung by Isaac Hayes), backed by the Ukulele Orchestra. They set it up wonderfully with some chat about playing at Cecil Sharpe house, the home of English Folk Dance and Song Society, and spinning a line about the song they were about to play having been collected by Sharpe when he heard it sung by the Great-Grandfather of Isaac Hayes. George couldn’t quite keep a straight face on the line “Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?” because the audience was falling about and protested, “That’s what it says here!”, pointing at the score, but recovered ably, inserting some new lyrics:

What’s the most important part of a coal mine, apart from the coal?

[chorus] Shaft!

No! The Davis Safety Lamp

And then there was the wonderful Cossack style “Leaning on a Lamppost” (George Formby), Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” in the style of a sleazy Vegas lounge singer (breaking occasionally into broad Yorkshire accents), and (you really have to hear this to believe it), a gentle folk song version of “Anarchy in the UK” by the Sex Pistols, with which we all joined in, swaying slightly as if singing “Kumbaya” in church.

They really couldn’t pull this stuff off if they weren’t such wonderful musicians. They get a gorgeous sound out of their tiny ukuleles, and do party pieces like playing a ukulele with a bottle neck, blues style, and having four people simultaneously play one very small uke.

I have only two regrets about the evening. The first was that it was so brilliant, hilarious and enlightening that it went by far too quickly. The second was that they didn’t play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, which I’ve seen them do on video and was a total masterpiece. Oh, well, I’ll just have to go and see them live again.

I’ve got used to putting up with the awful techno dreck that seems to get played in most gyms, so I thought I might be dreaming when I heard Pink Floyd as I started my workout this morning. I rowed to ‘Comfortably Numb’, which seemed utterly appropriate in the circumstances. Obviously someone with taste had broken in to the music system. I had the best workout I’d had for ages, lifting heavier weights and doing better in my aerobic workout. Coincidence? I think not.

Wow. Just wow.

Oh, you were expecting something a little more informative? Well, OK then—-here’s the whole story.

I’ve listened to Kate Bush for a long time, and her music has gradually worked itself into the warp and weft of my life like a sparkling gold thread. I remember walking around suburban Surrey in the rain doing my brother’s paper round, listening to ‘Breathing’ on a Walkman and feeling real fear—-what if everyone I loved died in a nuclear holocaust? ‘Never Be Mine’ drew out the pain of a relationship that was never to be, like putting a poultice on a wound. ‘Get Out of My House’: howling along with the refrain provided catharsis and helped me to reclaim my space after things had gone wrong. ‘Sensual World’: Mmmm. Yes. I could list many more, but you’ve probably got the picture¹.

So I’m an informed, but also somewhat biased reviewer. I’m not uncritical of her work though—-I felt that while some of the ‘The Red Shoes’ was fantastic, other parts were a bit lacklustre. Anyway, a new Kate Bush album is a big thing for me. It’s not only a new thing in my life, but it will probably become part of my life in quite a meaningful way. When I saw the CD lying on the doormat, I was excited, but also a little frightened—-what if it just wasn’t very good?

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Although we were away at the weekend, we caught some of the later parts of the Live8 concert. I wasn’t that keen on many of the bands featured—-I was much more excited by the concert featuring African musicians at the Eden Centre—-but I did want to see Pink Floyd. Actually, since it was 24 years since they had last played together, I was a bit concerned that they might be dreadfully, embarrassingly bad.

Obviously that was a foolish fear. Pink Floyd blew away all of the other bands—-even The Who. Their playing was tight and focussed, and the level of passion and feeling they got into the music was—-to use the original sense of the word—-awesome. I hope that the Scissor Sisters were suitably humbled after hearing ‘Comfortably Numb’ done the right way¹. Nick Mason may look like he should be handing out Werther’s Originals to adoring grandchildren rather than sitting behind a drum kit, and Roger Waters looks disturbingly like Smashy (or Nicey—-I can’t remember which was the blonde one), but they still rocked. They are also nice blokes, and have agreed to donate the profits of their increased album sales to charity.

¹ I love my husband dearly, but the closest I’ve ever got to wondering if I’d married the right person was when he said that he quite liked the Scissor Sisters version. You think you know someone… Thankfully, he has since recanted.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d set up a borrowed turntable. The next step, of course, was to buy some vinyl. I haven’t had a turntable of my own since I was a very small child and had a plastic, two-part turntable on which I played the hits from Disney films, so I needed to go out and start a collection. My brother kindly started me off by giving me the excellent album ‘Riot on an Empty Street’ by the Kings of Convenience on vinyl for my birthday. As a newly-recorded album, this was rich and detailed, and the warmth and presence of the medium showed off the delicate vocals and intricate acoustic guitar playing to their best advantage. This was an excellent start.

I headed out to Birmingham’s finest second-hand record shops in search of bargains. There are several good shops, which all have slightly different markets, but my favourite by far was [The Diskery][3], the very place where Steve Winwood used to buy American R&B albums. They have a huge selection in all kinds of genres, their stock seems to generally be in excellent condition, and they are very reasonably priced. After much shuffling through the £1 bin and ‘general rock’ sections, I came away with four discs for a grand total of £11. Another advantage of vinyl is that you can get a lot of music for your money if you stick to second-hand, non-collectable discs.

If you promise not to laugh, here are my choices:

[3]: http://uk.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?pc=B5%206QB&title=The%20Diskery&scale=25000 “Map showing the location of The Diskery”

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After many years of not listening to them, I’ve become enthralled again by the magic of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It wasn’t that I wanted to stop listening to them, but I was introduced to them by my ex-boyfriend in the mid-90s, and when we parted, I was left Penguin Cafe-less as well as boyfriend-less. Having said that, I’m not sure why it took me so long to acquire their albums again, because theirs is a very joyful and life-affirming kind of music. Much of the music I listen to is very difficult to classify (which is part of the reason I like it, I suppose), but the Penguin Cafe Orchestra (PCO) really defies being pigeon-holed. It is somehow instantly recognisable, and wholly characteristic of PCO. Perhaps it’s best to let the founder and proprietor of the Penguin Cafe explain it himself. Sadly, he died of an inoperable brain tumour in 1997, but in his obituary here, I found a quote of his which sums up PCO for me:

“Ideally I suppose it is the sort of music you want to hear, music that will lift your spirit. It is the sort of music played by imagined wild, free mountain people creating sounds of a subtle dream-like quality. It is cafe music, but cafe in the sense of a place where people’s spirits communicate and mingle, a place where music is played but often touches the heart of the listener”.

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Björk is one of those artists whose work you either love or hate; it’s unusual to be indifferent to her. And she’s never predictable. I happen to love much of her work, and I think she’s a stunning jewel among the interchangeably bland voices that make up the majority of mainstream music. Medúlla is an unusual album—even by her standards—as it’s almost entirely composed of voices (there is some percussion and a tiny amount of synthesised material). If that has just brought horrible memories of The Flying Pickets into your mind, you needn’t worry—it’s nothing like that.

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This purchase was inspired by seeing Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings play an acoustic set on BBC4, although I was slightly familiar with Gillian’s work from the soundtrack of ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’. Their virtuoso acoustic guitar playing and gorgeous hamonies blew me away, and—thankfully—the album didn’t disappoint.

Some of the tracks (for example, ‘Red Clay Halo’ and ‘I Want To Sing That Rock and Roll’) have a strong bluegrass sound, which might be off-putting if you don’t like that style of music, but there’s quite a variety of sounds on the album. I love ‘Revelator’, which is sweetly mournful, and ‘Elvis Presley Blues’, which glues itself in your mind for days afterwards. Given that Gillian and David are life partners as well as singing ones, I was quite amused to see what facial expression David would adopt when Gillian sang ‘My First Lover’. I have to say that he was annoyingly deadpan, but he might have been seething inside.

Gillian and David’s voices and playing dovetail beautifully together, without them even looking at one another. I wonder what it would be like to have a lover you could harmonise with so sweetly? I’m a bit jealous.

When I wrote about Sufjan Stevens’ later album Seven Swans, Shinsplints commented that I should also try Greetings From Michigan. I was very sceptical that I was going to like it as much as Seven Swans—which I love with a passion—but I was curious to see what it was like.

I’ve now listened to the album about three times in less than 24 hours, and I’m completely captivated. It has all the delicacy of his next album, but also a sense of loss, alienation and the slow decline of a once-great State. I’m sure that I’ve just made it sound depressing, but it’s anything but that. Even in the most quietly despairing songs, there’s a tiny hope that things might get better, and also that there are people around who care. From ‘For The Windows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilani’:

I was dressed in embarrassment I was dressed in wine. If you had a part of me, will you take your time? Even if I come back, even if I die Is there some idea to replace my life? Like a father to impress; Like a mother’s mourning dress If you ever make a mess, I’ll do anything for you.

Sufjan has a kind of quiet rhetorical fire, even though that seems like a contradiction. Actually, I think he is a contradiction. Many of the titles—such as ‘Oh Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head (Restore! Rebuild! Reconsider!)’—read like the exhortations of a 1950s union leader, or one of the earnest, burning people who rage against the dying of the light at Speaker’s Corner in the rain.

I would find it almost impossible to single out a few tracks for special mention—they are all so strong. ‘The Upper Peninsula’ features a wonderful Hammond organ going on in the background and lyrics about the poor of America (“I live in America/with a pair of Payless shoes”. ‘They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black’ has a really odd time-signature, which reminds me a little of some of the work of Lalo Schifrin. It does amazing and beneficial things to my neurons, simultaneously lulling me and waking me up.

It’s a really superb album, and I highly recommend it, whether you have heard any of his work before or not.

If you happen to have a fairly long and dull walk to the train station in the morning, can I recommend a track that will put a groove in your step? ‘Zig Zag Wanderer’ by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band (from the album Safe As Milk) is just such a track. The funky bass riff in the middle will make you play air-bass and will undoubtedly get you some funny looks from other Beefheartless commuters, but it’s worth it for the smile that will be on your face for a few hours.

I make no secret of the fact that I think Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields is a song-writing genius, and this new album hasn’t altered that opinion at all. He has a lugubrious baritone voice that renders his wonderful lyrics as wistful or deadpan hilarious as appropriate. He reminds me a lot of Noel Coward or Morrissey, with the same quicksilver turn of phrase or quirky rhyme.

‘I Thought You Were My Boyfriend’ is a sad, bitter little song about a breaking up:

The joke’s on me againI know you don’t love meYou know I don’t careKeep it hidden betterDid I say the world was fair?

My favourite so far (after a few listens) is ‘I Wish I Had an Evil Twin’:

My evil twin would lie and stealAnd he would stink of sex appealAll men would writheBeneath his scytheHe’d send the pretty ones to meAnd they would think that I was he

Put those great lyrics together with catchy, bouncy tunes and you’ve got an album that sticks in your mind tenaciously.

Sometimes it isn’t clear why you choose a new piece of music. When you go into a record shop and pick up a CD by an artist you’ve never heard of before, what makes you give it a listen? I had never heard of Sufjan Stevens before, but something about the album cover intrigued me, and I listened to it in the shop. Even through the one working working channel on the headphones (what do people do to headphones in Virgin?) I could tell that I would love it.

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This was a birthday present (well, bought with birthday money, but it amounts to the same thing). I’m a huge fan of Lisa Gerrard, as I’ve mentioned before, so I was keen to get her new album with Patrick Cassidy. It’s a very spiritual album, with many of the tracks taking their lyrics or theme from religious works. There’s a version of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic (’Abwoon’), a prayer carved into the choir stalls of the Church of San Damiano in Assisi (’Psallit in Aure Dei’), and the feel of the whole album is reflective and reverential. For an atheist/agnostic, I’m strangely drawn to religious music of all denominations. I might not share the Faith, but I’m drawn to the passion (with a small ‘p’) and serenity embodied in religious music.

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I usually recommend albums when I like almost all of the tracks on the album, but this is a bit different. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t dislike any of the tracks (I find Sinéad’s voice so extraordinary that she could make a nursery rhyme interesting). ‘Mandinka’, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Just Like U Said It Would B’ are all great tracks, though the heavy 80s synth sounds are a bit dated in places. But I love this album for one track—’Troy’.

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