Listening to, Mostly

Simon has the copyright on "mostly been listening to," so this is my version.

I haven't played music in my car much, lately. Sometimes you need a break from it. I have instead engaged in positive self talk and listened to Radio Bloke.

Positive self-talk has paid off in the following ways:

1. I found 55p outside the shop down the road last week.

2. I won £10 on the National Lottypede

3. I found another 5p outside the shop down the road today.

The shop and chip shop down the road are frequented, on some days, by Young People from a technical college. These people have a certain threshold, below which it is not considered worth the effort to bend down and pick up a coin you have dropped. Even for 50p, it is not cool to bend down in front of your peers. I wonder how high the threshold goes, and wonder if it might, one day, stretch to a pound.

Ker-ching, is what I say.

Anyway. This week in the car:

• 1, 2, and 3. Trisha Yearwood: Jasper County; Sara Evans: A Real Fine Place; Faith Hill: Fireflies. All 2005 releases from Top Country Singers. They're all okay. Ms Yearwood, as previously noted, has the most class; Faith Hill is a tryer, for which she should not be knocked; and Sara Evans' production sound is a little on the shrill side, even without a headache. The opening track, "Coal Mine," is a particular stinker, and should have been left off the record. For her part, Ms Hill should have steered clear of "Mississippi Girl."



• 4. The Wallflowers: Bringing Down the Horse. This is a great record, and I wish I'd bought a proper CD instead of wasting money on compressed iTunes versions. The lyrics are pretty good; Jakob Dylan's voice is pleasant; and "One Headlight" is a modern classic.



• 5. Ricky Gervais podcasts, volumes 6 and 7. This is the world's most popular podcast, apparently, so you don't need me to tell you about it. The first one was very funny, the others, not as much for me. I don't tend to watch things like The Office and Extras. I find them a bit cringeworthy, like Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, back in the day. Gervais sitting round with Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington remind me of the boys at school. They weren't the school bullies, but they were a bit of a clique, and they did use to pick on people, about the same things, over and over again. People would get landed with something, like a theme tune or stupid name, and they would have to put up with it for years, learn to love it in some cases. They didn't pick on me, particularly, but I did find them deeply unattractive. One of the ironies of the Gervais podcast is that he frequently makes a fool of himself whilst making a fool of Karl. Explaining, "People who live in glass houses..." for example, he explained it incorrectly. Which is a kind of Super-sized irony, if you think about it.



• 6 and 7 - Home made compilations. One of them was on good guitar music, which we blogged about a long time ago; and the other was one in a series of snapshot moments, stuff from CDs I have bought in the months leading up to the compo. I tend to scribble Serenity on them, and a number, so I know what they are. They're not me picking favourite tracks, or best tracks, but fair-to-middling tracks that deserve more listens than the whole album would get. Sometimes they work really well, like this one. There wasn't much on it I would put on a "best of..." compo for a friend, but in the collection works better than the sum of its parts. As such, it was probably the best thing I listened to all week.



• 8. Vince Gill - Next Big Thing. Now, I'm going to have to do a cut-down version of this one, or put a few onto a Serenity compo, but by the time this reached track 17, I was ready to kill myself. Gill's smooth, soulful voice makes for pleasant driving company, and his fine guitar playing is especially in evidence on this, but 17 tracks in anyone's company is enough to make me suicidal. T O O L O N G ! ! ! Still it is worth a cut-down version, and the 11th track, "From Where I Stand" is a beautiful example of the genre of song in which the singer says, "Thanks for the offer, and I'd love to, darlin', in any other circumstances, but I just can't, because if I did then I wouldn't be the kind of man you'd make that kind of offer to, if you see what I mean."
  
  "From where I stand / There's a golden band" etc.