Records (CDs) Re-visited 2 - Remain in Light by the Talking Heads

I bought this album on vinyl when I was around 15 I think. It was released in 1980, so I guess I bought it the next year. I remember that I bought it from Rumbelows in Thetford, which was largely an electrical appliance shop that, for some reason, also sold albums. I played this album incessantly after I bought it, but for some reason didn't purchase another Talking Heads album until a few years later - and that was Stop Making Sense.

Remain in Light has remained my favourite Talking Heads album, and is one of those few albums that has a fresh sound even now, over 30 years since its release. It is clear listening to it that The Talking Heads have had a strong influence on many bands that came after them.  I remember how groundbreaking their sound was back in the 1980s. I am not knocking the 1980s - I own a great many albums from that era - but usually you can tell immediately they start which era they are from. They have that particular 1980s sound/flavour - mostly I think it is to do with the way synth is used, but it probably also has a lot to do with the way that they are produced. Remain in Light, for some reason, just does not have that immediately recognisable 1980s flavour. It has a full sound but everything about it - the vocals, the guitars, and everything else marks it out as different. It even has some rap and some spoken poetry! It is also one of the very few albums in my collection where I don't skip tracks - and those are few and far between these days!

As to favourite tracks I am hard pushed to choose a favourite - but if I had to I would go for The Great Curve (which has great backing vocals) closely followed by Once in a Lifetime.

Records (CDs) Re-visited 1 - Synchronicity by The Police

I have a sizeable CD collection and realise that  there are a quite a few of them that rarely get played, so I have decided that I am going to try and listen to one album per day and post about it .

Today's CD is Synchronicity by The Police. I actually wanted to listen to Outlandos D'amour but to my horror discovered that I don't have it on CD. This was the next best thing. There are some cracking tracks on here - although there are also a few that have been so overplayed that it is hard to listen to them any more - Every Breath You Take for example - a track that for some bizarre reason has become known as a love song and is a popular choice at weddings. I say bizarre because it is one of the most stalkerish songs I know.

My personal favourites on the album are Synchronicity (all three versions), walking in Your Footsteps and King of Pain (Sting always was melodramatic). The album was released in 1983 and was their final recording. I bought this album on vinyl when I lived in the commune - probably around 1985, so not when it first came out. Worth listening to for the Synchronicity tracks alone.

10 Guilty Pleasures

A friend challenged me to name my 10 Guilty Pleasures, and like her I am finding it hard to reach 10 - but here goes...in no particular order...

1) Crime novels - I was turned onto Rebus when we were studying genre fiction at art school. I am picky though - I like a crime novelist to be a decent writer too. I like writers like Henning Mankell, Ian Rankin, Kathy Reichs, and Tom Ben...

2) Star Trek - but not Captain shirt-off and your original Trekkies. No I am talking TNG. Yes I know it is cheesy, but there is something hugely comforting about the whole Next Generation universe - and it's not just Jean Luc Picard with his uber sexy voice.

3) Cheesy music - you know the kind of tracks that you don't want to your ipod to play when your poetry group is round. I am talking Abba, The Bee Gees, Adam and the Ants, James Blunt etc. and those tracks where you don't even know who the artist is like "Sleep all Day and Party All Night"...oh well it's out there now...

4) Crisps - chocolate is nice, but if it's in the house I do not feel compelled to eat it. Savoury snacks though, are anther matter - crisps, curry crackers, wasabi peanuts...keep them away from me!

5) Pot Noodle - I get the craving for one of these about twice a year - god knows why - they are full of crap - it must be nostalgia or something...or MSG. But when you get the craving only a Pot Noodle will do, and preferably spicy curry flavour.

6) 70s TV series - The Waltons - yes very cheesy I know but I grew up with it, and in what other TV series can you hear entire poems by people like Walt Whitman? I am sure The Waltons set me on the path to being a writer. Other 70s gems I love are The Wombles, Hector's House, Survivors (you gotta love the BBC), Citizen Smith, Butterflies, Starsky and Hutch, The Tomorrow People and of Doctor Who with Jon Pertwee as The Doctor. 

7) Kindle - I said I didn't want one - in fact I was vociferously anti. I was given one as a present and was almost instantly converted. I still buy and read books - and poetry doesn't really work on the kindle, but the kindle has given me a new lease of reading life. It is great for BIG books, it is great for going away, it means slightly less book clutter in my house, you can get lots of free classics, and, most importantly you can make the text bigger which means I can now read comfortably in the evening when my eyes are tired. 

8) odd and retro crockery - I have 70's vortex plates, a Rob Brandt Crushed Cup, and a siletti silver milk carton milk jug -  I love them.

9) My retro style turquoise trim phone - I love it -i t looks good, it feels good and actually it is much more comfortable to hold and talk on than the modern all in one jobbies.

10) 80's films - The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, desperately Seeking Susan...you know the kind of thing. Best watched on your own in your comfiest clothes and under a blanket.

Current Playlist in no particular order;

1. Don't Deny Your Heart - Hot Chip
2. The Time is Now - Moloko
3. Shadowplay - Joy Division
4. Under the Westway - Blur
5. Drive - Incubus
6. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - Arcade Fire
7. Higher and Higher - The Blackout
8. What the Water Gave Me - Florence and the Machine
9. A&E - Goldfrapp
10. How We Operate - Gomez
11. I Feel Better - Hot Chip
12. She's Lost Control - Joy Division
13. P.E.T.R.O.L - Orbital
14. I'll Haunt You - Seth Lakeman
15. Chocolate - Snow Patrol
16. Graceland - Paul Simon
17. Thank You - Led Zeppelin
18. Life in a Northern Town - Dream Academy
19. Aint no Love in the Heart of the City - Whitesnake
20. It's No Good - Depeche Mode

Current reading

Right now I am reading a novel by Padrika tarrant called "The Knife Drawer."  Tarrant gave a reading from the novel at Cafe Writers in Norwich last year and it made me go out and buy the book. I won't give too much away about it here as I have been asked to write a review of it for Peony Moon, but I will say that it is dark, disturbing, riveting and quite unlike any other novel I have read - I would highly recommend it, you will never view mice or cutlery in quite the same way again.

Holiday Reads

Holidays are a good time for reading and so far this holiday I have read two novels and I am now half way through a third one. The first two were crime novels - Kathy Reichs and Ian Rankin - relatively easy reads. The book that I am reading now is the surprise hit though. It is called "The History of Love" and is by Nicole Krauss. It was a spur of the moment purchase at the local charity shop just a few days before we came away. I was desperate for books that I could take away and leave behind once I had finished. This is a book I might take home again though - it is an original story and beautifully written.  It is a joy when one comes across a treasure like this by chance. The story is too complicated to explain here and I wouldn´t do it justice as there are several plot threads and the story is complex but if you are interested then you can look inside here

A non-literary post about notebooks and writing

On hearing that the new copy of The Rialto would be hitting my doormat any day I now, I decided that maybe it was time I finished reading the last copy. I tend to dip in and out of journals and sometimes they end up sitting in a pile somewhere for a while before I read them properly. In his editorial introduction to Rialto 71 Michael Mackmin describes how he has piles of notebooks dotted around his house. Me too I was shouting (in my head of course!). 
I am a compulsive buyer and hoarder of notebooks - I have little heaps waiting to be used. I am fickle with them too - I don't just use one notebook at a time. I have one A4 on the go, which is where I try and write my morning pages and then I have two or three smaller ones of differing sizes that I take out with me. I go for nice covers these days (I'm sure notebooks were plainer when I was younger) - but I don't like them too pretty or girly or with things stuck on.  My current favourites have some kind of groovy retro owl print on their covers.  If there was ever some kind of disaster I would have enough notebooks to keep me going for ages; and there is no way they would get used as toilet paper either: take the novels first!  It strikes me as odd that they never have a character obsessively writing in a notebook in post-apocalyptic dramas like Survivors. I would be scribbling away in the corner every chance I got.  
I have always written - I wrote as a child, I obsessively wrote (bad) poetry through my teens, in my twenties I wrote a collection of short stories and more (bad) poetry. I have written on hillsides in Devon, in pubs and cafes, in other people's houses, in cars and on trains, in communes, in bed, in Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, Italy, France and Greece.  For me it hasn't been about the audience - although now I finally am getting one that's nice too - I would write whether I had one or not, hence all the notebooks, I am a writer through and through.http://www.therialto.co.uk/pages/