What Song Is Your Current Soundtrack?

[TheGreenGoblin]

[Karearea]

I Love A Rainy Night ~ Eddie Rabbitt [3:12]

[TheGreenGoblin]

Eddie Rabbitt

A classic, that made it onto the Springbok hit parade...

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

[Karearea]

Hymn of the Cherubim ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky [7:38]

[TheGreenGoblin]

I feel another book purchase coming on.

Musicians from Bob Geldof to Robbie Williams and Lisa Maffia reveal what they did – and how they felt – after the hits dried up and the crowds vanished

Nick Duerden writes in The Guardian ...

In her classic memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv Albertine recounts not only the time she spent as a punk during the 1970s in her pioneering band the Slits, but also documents her life after the band had ended. This is unusual. Most music books don’t venture into this territory, tending to stop when the hits stop, thereby drawing a veil over what happens next. The unspoken suggestion seems to be that, were it to continue, the story would descend helplessly into misery memoir.

“The pain I feel from the Slits ending is worse than splitting up with a boyfriend,” Albertine wrote, “This feels like the death of a huge part of myself, two whole thirds gone … I’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to do; I’m cast back into the world like a sycamore seed spinning into the wind.”

I loved Albertine’s book, and it was this one paragraph in particular, I think, that propelled me into writing my own book on this very subject: the curious afterlife of pop stars. I wanted to know what it’s like when that awkward next chapter begins, where anonymity replaces infamy, and the ordinary reasserts itself over the extraordinary. The life Albertine forged for herself after punk was complicated, as life tends to be. She returned to education, studying film; underwent IVF; and endured both illness and divorce. But she never fully let the music go, because musicians mostly don’t; they can’t. I finished her book convinced she was a hero.

But then perhaps all pop stars are? They’re fascinating individuals, compelling and gifted, not short of self-confidence and, yes, occasionally a little odd, too. Artists may not always be the best people to operate the heavy machinery of adulthood, but they remain tenacious, driven and inspirational. They dared to dream, and then went out and made that dream come true.

But falling back down to earth, in this business, is an inescapable certainty. Like sportsmen and women, they peak early. A songwriter once told me, citing Bob Dylan, that “artists tend to write their best songs between the ages of 23 and 27”. Despite his enduring success, Dylan has suggested he couldn’t write the songs he wrote in his 20s in his later years, at least not in the same way or with the same instinct, largely because, after that early momentum has fizzled out, things settle down into simply the thing that you do, with all the humdrum ennui associated with that. So what’s it like, I wondered, to still be doing this “job” at 35, and 52, and beyond? What’s it like to have released your debut album to a global roar, and your 12th to barely a whisper? Why the continued compulsion to create at all, to demand yet more adulation? Frankly, what’s the point?

And so, armed with a batch of potentially indelicate questions – because who likes to discuss failure? – I began to reach out to musicians from various genres and eras, those who hadn’t died young, but were still here, still working, to ask them what it was like in the margins.

A great many never bothered to respond. Others enthusiastically agreed, only to later bail out. The guitarist from one of America’s most stylish modern rock acts, someone whose skinny jeans no longer fit quite as well as they used to, was initially keen, but cancelled at the last minute because, his manager informed me, “his head just isn’t in the right place to discuss this right now. It’s a difficult subject.” Those who did speak, however – 50 in total, from Joan Armatrading to S Club 7; Franz Ferdinand to Shirley Collins – were endlessly revealing and candid in a way they would never have been at the peak of their fame. I sensed they enjoyed the opportunity to talk again, to be heard above the din of Ed Sheeran and Adele and Stormzy. All were humble, replete with wisdom, resolute. (Many were divorced, too; at least one was high.)

They’re the true Stoics, I realised. We could learn a lot from them.

Full book review here...

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/ ... isa-maffia

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

The mention of Linda Lovelace, in an amusing, if somewhat ironic, or even sarcastic exchange (heaven forfend), elsewhere, between two of ops-normal's grandees, made me think, not of the infamous, but salacious prawn star and her tell all tale of hot meals eaten, but of Lovelace Watkins, the black soul singer, who, improbably, had a huge hit with this number in South Africa at the height of apartheid, even actually touring and performing, at specially selected venues, in front of "mixed race" (gulp) audiences!

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

[Karearea]

Mr. Spaceman ~ The Byrds [2:10]

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

That excellent version of The Eagles Desperado (a coupe of posts back) got me to thinking of these classic 70's albums from Jess Roden...



and this one too...



Good vibes, and a sudden realisation at 03:50 hrs that one can use Azure Bastion to obviate the need to use RDP, thus securing a Idaho based client's VM... sometimes the noodle works far better with the vinyl needle, in the wee hours...

Immediate positive response from the USA as well, despite it being 22.10 there. They have a good work ethic over there.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Good music from a better time...



With Sandy Denny...