I’ve written bits and pieces on BBC Radio 2, 4 and 5 comedy shows, worked in the script team for two series of Channel 4’s comedy-drama ‘Shameless’ and am currently working with The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool as part of their script development programme. I am also a songwriter with songs on all major platforms.
What is the favourite photo you have ever taken? What is about it that makes the image so special?
When I was asked this recently, I considered a photo taken of my father a couple of years before he passed away, back when he was still relatively healthy, delighted to be with two of his long-term friends at a blues music festival in 2016 he didn’t think he’d get to.
I also thought of a photo I took of myself at the Grand Canyon in 1987, the culmination of a decade planning the trip across the USA to reach this most majestic of wonders in Arizona.
But the photo I decided on was taken of my niece Laura at Allonby Beach in West Cumbria, UK. At the time Laura was approximately 7 years old and it was taken during a family afternoon walk in early autumn.
Several photos were taken on the day but this particular image just captures a moment when she crouched down as the sun was positioned at a point to create a silhouette and reflecting shadow in the sand.
Laura’s position in the shot also frames the picture nicely to take in the beautiful ocean vista beside her. Surrounded by footprints in the sand, I’ve always thought of the image as Laura considering her own footsteps she will create as she moves forward in her life.
Truth is, she was probably watching the family dog in the distance or wondering how likely it is she is to get an ice-cream. But hey, I’m aiming for something poetic here!
Now approaching her 29th birthday, with a first-class honour’s degree in Psychology and currently halfway through a Master’s degree to be a Physician Associate, it is nonetheless true Laura is creating her own footprints as she goes along.
On this particular day however, these were still to be made, and this is what helps to make it so special for me.
What are the main things that we should be grateful for but are most likely to take for granted? Do we ever even think about them until they are under threat?
When prompted recently to think of five things I am most grateful for it was good to stop and consider those things upon which a rich and worthwhile life is built around.
We’ll all have different answers, and these can change slightly on any given day, but I imagine they would come down to similar basics which we all would suffer from if one were missing from our everyday lives.
So here are my five things I’m grateful for today, right now.
Image from Unsplash
FAMILY
I only have a small family and all except me live around 140 miles away in beautiful Cumbria. It’s true to say we have taken a bit of a battering over the last decade with the loss of parents and a marital breakdown. There have been rough times and challenges remain. The geographical distance between myself in Merseyside isn’t helpful except sometimes when it can sometimes give a bit of perspective.
My family are the first people I think of telling when a song of mine does well or my writing advances, and the first people who will pick me up when I hit a setback or frequent drop in belief.
So family is the first thing I am grateful for, and I would imagine for many of you it will be the same. Or maybe you would substitute friends above family; for you it may be difficult to differentiate between the two.
HEALTH
I live about half a mile from a major hospital and most days I drive past it. When I need to stop at the traffic lights opposite, I can see a little into some of the wards that serves as a reminder that no matter what stresses I have in my normal day it’s still better than being in one of those ward beds.
Good health gives me the strength to earn my upkeep, to see friends and family, to keep fit and in turn feed my mental health, to go to the cinema, see gigs, to write, to go to sporting events. In short, do all of the things that I naturally love to do.
When our health dips life becomes harder, sometimes scarier, and smaller. When health is good, we probably need to be more grateful.
FREEDOM
For us in the Western world, our freedom is arguably the one thing we probably appreciate the least because we’ve not known anything different. The freedom to vote for the principles we believe in, our freedoms to state our beliefs even if they are at odds or even reprehensible to others, to travel, to advance our learning and our earning potential.
I sometimes look to the highly restricted and often brutal regimes of North Korea, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Nigeria and too many other places and can’t help but think we have no real appreciation of how lucky we are.
Where we are born is in many ways a lottery and I try to remind myself often that I am one of the highly fortunate winners.
HOME
According to recent statistics from the Homeless Link , 268,560 households were at risk of or experienced homelessness between 2020-21, a 7.4% increase from the previous year and over 16% from 2018-19.
Shelter is one of the basic requirements of life all that should be available to all. Sadly, as we see from these figures; and for a myriad of different reasons, this is not the case.
For every day of my life, I have had a warm home to return to, four walls and a roof.
It may be need of a little TLC but as I walk through my front door each day I should consider all those for whom this a significant blessing currently out of reach.
MUSIC
Some people don’t like music. They don’t really get it. Professor Steve Pinkman once described music as ‘auditory cheesecake…as far as biological cause and effect is concerned, music is useless.’
Erm, pardon me?
Music, to quote sadly passed songwriter John Miles, was my first love, and it will be my last. It gets me dancing embarrassingly around a kitchen, it lifts my mood instantly at the end of a crappy day, it helps make tedious jobs bearable, it takes me back to a time and to people no longer in my life and makes them feel within touching distance, and it has me singing with strangers.
Image from Unsplash
Dementia patients who may not recognise the names of their own offspring can suddenly pick long-ago written lyrics out of the air and recite them in melody word for word. If that isn’t a biological cause and effect, tell me what is.
Music is an indefinable, inexplicable, ever-giving fountain of joy.
So, those are the everyday blessings I should be most grateful for. What then, are yours?
When I was a teenager, which of course covers the years when we are fully cocooned in school, to the years when we are released to the ‘freedoms’ of getting a job and actually earning money, we make many wrong choices and waver between undeserved confidence to unnecessary insecurity.
I was more the latter, in truth. The undeserved confidence was reserved for my unquenchable imagination were I was the superhero of endless scenarios that had grown-ups and females my own age enthralled by my feats of daring-do. In reality it was more staying in my room and daring-don’t.
Image via Pixabay
It’s easy to look back and think of what changes I would have made and to what advice I would give my teenage self. However, prompted by a suggestion to do so by my blogging site WordPress for Bloganuary, here are nine things I would have said to my sensitive, insecure, self-absorbed but caring teenage self that may have helped a little…
1 -To go for what I want and not for what people tell me to do, but to realise it takes hard work and dedication; that way people can see that you are serious.
2 -To try that little bit harder in school. To tell my English teacher that I love English more than anything else and ask their advice about what I should do about that.
3 -To talk to my mother, a former proofreader and avid reader in general about what I want to do, and ask for her input and support.
4 – Football is great, but not make it the main thing in your life, it will always be there. When I got offered a photography apprenticeship at 16 I turned it down simply because it would require me to attend weddings on a Saturday and thus prevent me from watching football, a decision I have regretted to this day, despite all the great football memories.
5 -To stop unfavourably comparing myself to others.
6 – Stop worrying about being thin.
7 -If I’m interested in making music, I have to learn to play the guitar or piano, and not give up so easily.
8 – To handle my finances much, much better
9 – Don’t be afraid of living
That last one is hard because at 17 I lost my mother quite suddenly to cancer. This impacts on all of your life and can make you fearful at a young age of what may be around the corner.
But it shouldn’t make you tentative about making everyday decisions to the point of crippling indecision, something that haunted me for years.
However, how many of us as teenagers would take advice anyway? Especially when it’s from someone pertaining to be our older selves sent to give us advice? And aren’t we told not to talk to strangers?
Maybe a question may be what advice will be giving ourselves in ten or twenty years time, and how will the experience of mistakes we have made in the past impact on the choices we make during that time?
Even the more casual friendships can bring colour and humour and help with perspective. The banter (the type that is convivial and teasing and not the Yorkshire Cricket Club racist brand), can help us to not take ourselves too seriously and lighten our moods amid the stresses and strains of everyday life.
The deeper, long-term friendships can get us through the rockier periods; grief, physical, emotional and psychological hurt, periods of self-doubt, fear and anxiety. They can also be a voice of balance when we veer too far from reason and into a potential path of harm or self-indulgence.
A good friend is someone we build shared memories with and also share our closest confidences, and is ready to forgive when we occasionally take them for granted or step too far across the boundary. A friendship that encapsulates all of those ingredients is priceless and needs to be cherished.
What happens then when a cherished friendship suddenly gets damaged beyond repair?
Indeed, what happens when, as in my recent experience, three of my friendships implode over a relatively short period of a couple of years?
Have those friendships, all long-term and therefore seemingly strong and familiar, simply all ran their course at coincidentally a similar time?
It’s right to acknowledge straight off, that I am the common denominator in all three cases, and all three friends don’t know one another. Just me. So be free to make up your own mind on that one! But it is a serious jolt to the psyche, to think a trio of invested friendships have all stopped in their tracks.
SHOUT IT OUT OR STEW INSILENCE?
Only one of my three friendship breakdowns have had the drama of argument, of throwing back the shackles on a to and fro of disagreement to a divide that can’t be bridged.
So is argument better, even if it leads to separation? Does it at least feel as though we were both passionate enough to shout/talk it through? Does that have more value than something that just fades away, or, as in one case, closes the door immediately after an apparent line has been drawn?
Image courtesy of Pixabay
Writer Mariam Khan wrote recently in the i Newspaper that during Covid lockdown she lost a long- term friendship not due to a big, anger filled argument but because of a series of small misunderstandings that grew bigger due to not being able to see one another face-to-face in an attempt to talk things through.
And the lack of face-to-face conversations that Covid has enforced has had an increased negative impact on friendships, with the University College of London reporting more than 20% of people have had some kind of relationship breakdown during the pandemic.
THE DESTABILIZING SHIFT
Friendships are built very much on balance. Sometimes that can mean a balance that leans slightly in one direction and it can operate somewhat successfully on that level for years. However, when suddenly, or even gradually, the equilibrium is shifted back even slightly it can expose crack lines beneath the surface that may not have anything directly to do with the friendship but can have a massive impact upon it.
In my experience a movement in one direction can unintentionally cause someone to feel more acutely aware of frustrations in their own life that the friendship had previously served in some way to balance out.
But the notion that anyone’s life needs to stand still or keep quiet about changes and/or progress we make doesn’t serve anybody well. Eventually those changes will out and the relationship can be the casualty.
As I try to reconcile myself with the loss of these friendship’s I am grateful for their place in my life and I don’t regret them for a second. And I am fortunate enough to have other attachments with people that are still standing the test of time.
However I have also become more increasingly aware how quickly things can change, and how much importance should be placed on their preservation.
One of the downsides to having to promote my songs or blogs is the need to do exactly that – promote.
I’m not a promote type person. My moniker is not Promotion Paul. At school my fellow pupils would never have voted me as Pupil Most Likely to Promote.
SOCIAL MEDIA SUPERMAN? OR JUST A SHY BOY IN A CAPE?
However, since I somewhat accidentally started song-writing again I have needed to stand up and shout; just a little, to get my songs heard. And believe me, there are a lot of artists out there doing a lot of shouting, on a multitude of platforms, be it streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud, or video channels like YouTube and Tik Tok. So much shouting and of course, so much singing. And so many, many songs.
DRESSING UP FOR A PARTY OF ONE
I spend a great deal of time developing a song, making it as strong as I can, and spend hours and expense in a studio getting it as close as possible to how I’ve heard it in my head. I’ll spend considerable time on a video, an essential element for any new song to attract people to it. I’ll put the video on You Tube, and the song released on all major streaming platforms.
Yet when I announce the song on my song-writing Facebook page I’m tentative, almost apologetic. I limit the number of posts about a new song, worried in case the people who have liked or followed my Facebook page get sick of hearing about it. There is actually some sense to that, even though I’m trying to reach new audiences.
But it’s also counter intuitive; if people have signed up for my Facebook page it’s because they are happy to hear about my songs, right? Nope, not in my head. In my head they are simply being polite – even though most people who now follow me don’t actually know me and therefore have made the decision to follow me for the simple reason they like my music. But try telling that to my mixed-up sense of logic.
THE WHISPERING BLOGGER
Similarly with blogging there is also the need to get your blog read among all the others saying ‘read me, read me!’ – though usually a lot more politely than that. Blogs don’t tend to shout; they suggest, which suits me better.
But still there is a need to let people know you have published a new blog and for the likes of myself there is the constant voice in my head asking; are people going to be interested in what I have to say? Indeed, what do I have to say? And who do I think I am, thinking people would spend several minutes throughout the noise of a day reading my words, considering my opinion, reading about my life?
But if I’m sure about one thing, it’s that I’m not the only one who has misgivings every time they publish a blog, post a song into the world or give out a part of themselves out for praise, criticism or indifference.
THE POWER OF THE ALTER EGO
It’s almost a prerequisite of anybody who writes to be somewhat introverted, living life from the outside looking in. And so stepping into the limelight and actually saying ‘hey, look what I’ve done, look what I have to say’ is sometimes a strain. A big strain. And if this is met by disinterest then it is even more keenly felt, it just underlines the voice of doubt.
In Susan Cains book Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, she refers to a college lecturer who lives an out-going, constantly conversational life but who is, by nature, introverted. His gregarious persona is actually that – a persona. He finds his required way of engaging with the world exhausting, yet to do his job successfully he knows he needs to engage, not withdraw. In fact, he does it so well most people who knew his true nature would, he says, be shocked.
Maybe there is something to be said for developing an online identity that’s more about confidence with just a hint of brashness. There is certainly enough advice out there about how to target song audiences and get more streams and You Tube views, should anyone choose to get strategic about it.
But for me, authenticity and a nice dose of doubt feel more comfortable. Certainly, in the blogging community my experience so far is of a lot of people just helping each other out and there is a virtue in developing a following organically and in smaller degrees. This can work for music as well as blogs.
It would appear then that I have talked myself into continued reservation and tortured hesitancy. Maybe I’m just addicted to it.
Or maybe I should write a blog about it, and wonder whether or not to tell anyone…
A song of mine, Your Truest Faith, has just been selected for the playlist of internet radio station South California Singer-Songwriter Radio based in Rosemead, near Los Angeles. It’s probably not a career-changing moment but for myself, who saw the California singer-songwriter scene of the late 70’s and 80’s as the holy grail for anyone with enough ambition and musical snobbery to be a ‘real’ songwriter, it’s a significant thrill.
As the rest of the UK, went from Punk to New Wave, I, never a compass towards rock ‘n roll cool at the time (except for a growing obsession with the East Coast hard-edged grittier sound of Bruce Springsteen) absorbed myself in artists such as Jackson Browne, John David Souther and Dan Fogelberg who represented the high temple of introspective, melody driven songwriters.
Dan Fogelberg, Jackson Browne and John David Souther
Along with these came Don Henley and Glen Frey, the creative driving force of The Eagles, the band who eclipsed everybody from the area in terms of global identity and record sales.
Glenn Frey and Don Henley
My romantic notion of Los Angeles took in warm summer evenings and endless highways, the perfectly pitched harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and even my favourite British singer-songwriter at the time, Elton John, sang songs of the American west penned by the lyrics of his musical partner Bernie Taupin.
Indeed, Elton’s American breakthrough came at a run of gigs at the LA Troubadour in 1970, heavily featuring songs from his recently released Tumbleweed Connection album. It was actually at the Troubadour that Elton shed his skin as a folk singer-songwriter, kicking away his piano stool to leap into the air on the song Burn Down The Mission, thus reincarnating himself as the rock performer that would go on to fill huge stadiums to this day.
Well I’m no Elton John. Or Jackson Bowne. My little song will be played three times daily for the next week in the International Section of the show, it will no doubt then disappear into the ether filled with independent artists trying to get their songs heard amongst the powerhouse of streaming madness.
But for a few days the song will be heard in a smattering of homes and on phones and maybe the odd car stereo system in California. And for the kid from a small town in northern town in England who used to look to the far away golden horizon of the musical canyons of LA, the feeling will be sweet.
The insecurity around releasing a song can be creatively traumatic. What if it’s rubbish? What if I’ve inadvertently stolen it? What if I love it and no-one else does? Can I still change my name and live in an igloo without any internet connection?
Putting a song onto streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music and possibly an accompanying video is the somewhat glossy, shiny end of an often uncomfortable process filled with errors and doubt punctuated with shots of exhilaration. My new song ‘New Day Coming’ took ten months from conception to release and is a perfect example of such a process.
The structure of the song changed several times. I loved it then abandoned it. The theme was clear then I felt like it needed more ambiguity. The lyric got written then re-written several times. Crossing out and insane scribbling that meant nothing to anyone but me became my mad creative template.
The original and later much changed lyric scribbled and altered by a madman…yours truly
Then two nights before the recording my mood was low and something didn’t feel right. The lyric to the third verse and second bridge got radically re-written. Then the original third verse remained but I keep faith with the new second bridge.
Going into the studio the middle-eight section of the song that I was never quite happy with gets quickly re-written in the studio with guidance from producer and musical magician John Kettle.
Then the recording begins and the doubts fall away. The sound of guitars and drums bounce and crash around the studio walls. Unusually for me I start texting people about how well it’s going. The song that started as a melody in my head on the motorway several miles from home in early September 2020, is suddenly coming alive on 4th June 2021.
Over the next few days my initial euphoria gets dampened then re-lit again. I decide to release it on my birthday, July 5th. I work on 13 versions of a video to accompany its release, artwork for streaming platforms, social media.
Of course all of this and the song may be a damp squib, met with indifference. I’m a tiny tiddler trying not get swallowed up by the sharks. And with anything that is personal to yourself, emotions are fragile.
But now it’s out there, fending for itself in the crazy world of streaming and promotion, just trying not to be ignored. And if it’s not ignored by too many people, and is liked by some, it has all been worthwhile.
So here is the video. It’s unlikely it will cause Ed Sheeran to lose any sleep but it’s come a long way from the crazed scribbles of a few months ago. Hope you enjoy.
Sitting in traffic on Tuesday morning it was hard not to get lockdown nostalgia. The hour- long delay to my journey brought about a reminder of a world it was easy to think lay in the distant past. It was my first traffic jam for over a year. Yet it felt so depressingly familiar.
The day before another, shorter delay had been brought about by three cars involved in a triple prang. No more than that, no gore or blood-fest, just three drivers walking round frustrated that the day ahead they thought would be straightforward would now involve police statements, undriveable cars and swapping insurance details with people who otherwise would have been strangers zipping alongside them at sixty-plus miles an hour.
Yet the delay wasn’t caused by the physical intrusion of the cars involved, but by the dozens of cars slowing down to get a better look at the unremarkable sight of smashed- in headlights and crumpled bonnets and boots. Despite a year of millions of lives lost, jobs and businesses being destroyed and the heroism of the few to protect the many, it seems it hasn’t quenched the thirst of drivers slowing down to get a good eyeful of other people’s misfortunes.
In someways it seems already that not every outlook has been changed or perspective realigned.
JETLAG DEPRIVATION
On the BBC last week I saw a young man being interviewed at an airport as his expected holiday had been curtailed by the government deciding to put his country of destination on the amber list. “I believe you haven’t been on a plane for two years?” asked the reporter in a tone that suggested a hardship equivalent to incarceration in a Turkish prison cell. “That’s right”, replied the young man solemnly. A nation wept…
These still are of course, relatively early days. Much of a return to our previous lives are to be celebrated. Seeing family and friends is wonderful and makes us feel more complete. Little things like going for a coffee somewhere and watching the world go by. I’ve just bought tickets for my first gig for this coming December and I relish the thought of seeing the first outdoor performance of the local theatre group Imaginarium Theatre in early July.
Yet what of those things we’d forgotten about that we’d like to see confined to a previous life? Will those lessons we should have learned about out the need to curb our manic, all-encompassing mass consumer-driven indulgences and the need to protect the vulnerable be slowly swallowed up as we hunger for a full and expansive life again?
Have enough of us learned the hard, fundamental truth of our own fragility?
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
It would be of course, unrealistic to expect a global, complete epiphany were every soul we meet is changed and chastened sufficiently to radically change their lifestyle. And certainly many are facing genuine reopening anxiety regarding the gradual return of post pandemic life,and the calm public acceptance of the government’s decision to delay full reopening of society does point towards a shift in people’s outlook.
It will be interesting therefore to see how many of us in a few months’ time; should the control of the virus continue well enough to allow such freedoms to unfold, feel the urge to hark back to this calmer, overall more reflective period we have all been tiptoeing through.
Lockdown nostalgia. Whoever thought that could be a thing?
I came late to alcohol. Domestic circumstances, of which I won’t bore you to drink with, meant I was 25 before I was hit with the pile driver of my first hangover.
I was the lyricist in a two-man song writing partnership with composer Bob Mouat, and we had generated interest from a couple of London publishers and a young band from the Sunderland area. The publishers, eager to hear our songs in front of a live audience decided to travel to the north-east to the band’s local sell-out gig.
So, there I was, a deep-thinking, sensitive lad who’s previous drinking indulgence had been two pints in the local that had left me unreservedly giggly, suddenly being pumped with pints of Guinness simply for being ‘with the band’.
This was followed by a long and winding road trip to the after-show party in a packed car that included two pot smoking publishers and me with a liver trying desperately to process vast amounts of alcohol it was ill-equipped to deal with.
Long story short, my after-show party was spent face down on the lawn vomiting for Olympic Gold while praying for the blessed release of death. Thankfully, God wasn’t listening.
Ever since I’ve had an uncomfortable relationship with drink. We’re a little like cousins who see each other at family funerals and christenings and like to stay friendly but know essentially they have nothing in common.
But I’m a writer. Booze and the tortured soul of the writer go hand in hand, surely? Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, the list goes on, and on.
Novelist supreme William Faulkner. Don’t let the pipe and the ex-Army style moustache fool you – this guy could seriously put it away
SOZZLED WITH THE ‘IN’ CROWD
However slow alcoholic saturation does not, most free drinking writers agree, make for great work. Even that great literary lush Earnest Hemingway declared of alcohol ‘the only time it isn’t good for you is when you are to write or fight’. Does it however, oil the wheels that lead to commission heaven?
A good writer friend of mine from TV and radio once conceded she had got at least one job through “getting bladdered with the right people”. Indeed, when attending a meeting for finalists in the Red Planet Prize I recall Tony Jordan; writer and co-creator of shows such as Eastenders, Life on Mars, Hustle, declaring that he only wanted to work with writers he could ‘get pissed with’.
Maybe drinking stamina is subconsciously linked to a greater understanding of the excesses and vices of the human psyche, suggesting an ability to write flawed and ultimately more interesting characters. Conversely it could be argued that astute observation can benefit from social distance, a sense of looking in from the outside.
LIGHTWEIGHT AND LONELY
So, what about someone like myself, who is to drinking excess what Piers Morgan is to subtlety and sensitivity? Should I feel left out? Should those of us with a proud lightweight drinking status ever fear that it hampers our chance of a commission?
Well only if you’re looking for an excuse. Because ultimately all that matters is what we put on the page. Of course it does.
But then the cold, hard sober truth is that some extreme networking doesn’t do you any harm. Beat ’em or join ’em, one way or another.
Right, there’s a shandy over there with my name on it. Time to mingle.
In the meantime, a link to a Paul Ariss and Bob Mouat song from back in the day, written, as I recall, stone cold sober.
There’s a school of thought that says a that a book should look like it’s been read. By that I mean read and downright enjoyed. As a consequence, any tea, coffee or general everyday stains and physical scars are merely evidence that the book was a constant daily companion, treated like a friend and had access to all areas. Yes, including the bathroom.
I was once offered a book to borrow that looked like twenty-four hours in Chernobyl would make it more user-friendly. Damn good read though.
The opposite view is that any book needs to be revered and protected with obsessive zeal. The spine of a book, whether hardback or paperback, shouldn’t be bent further than is absolutely necessary to read the text and should never, ever, be read whilst eating or drinking.
I’m not sure what the rule is regarding reading in the bath or seated on the toilet but I would imagine such a prospect would lead book purists to justify lynching without trial.
AND THE VERDICT IS…
Of the two I probably lean towards the first point of view. I have a small cloth cover which is ideal for placing the book in when I take it on a journey, but generally I don’t stress if a corner of a paperback has become a little bent or the cover of my hardback is a little frayed.
A little chocolate on a preface? Not a problem. A little jam in a crucial chapter? Bring it on. The only hard and fast rule I have is against turning over the corner of a page as a marker. That’s why God gave us book markers people. It’s what separates us from the animals.
THE VINYL COUNTDOWN
People used to have a similar approach to vinyl album covers. There were those who frankly used to treat the gatefold albums with artwork by the likes of Roger Dean better than their girlfriend.
Every inch of the cover would be analysed like religious text, and thanks would be given to the Gods of Progressive Rock, at whose high temple would sit Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer and Genesis, among many others.
The album itself; maybe an hour later, would be lifted from the cover slowly and reverentially, using just the tips of the fingers and the inside of the thumb and placed on the turntable (after the gentle dusting from a suitable cloth) with a surgeon’s precision.
Then the needle would be placed on the vinyl at absolutely just the right place. All put together it was basically an audio version of foreplay (something else the girlfriends probably rarely got).
For me however, the ultimate expression that an album was loved was when it looked like it had been around the block a few times. Admittedly I did have plastic covers for many but mostly these would tear on the seams and only gave token protection.
SISTERS ARE PLAYING IT FOR THEMSELVES
This was especially true for me, with two younger sisters with similar tastes in music who would regularly ‘borrow’ my albums. Often these would be recovered days later amongst the debris of discarded make-up, blouses and skirts. I still have to this day an album by Bad Company that is virtually unplayable due to hairspray contamination. Still got it though. Happy days.
But then again, I favour the lived-with album sleeve. I was reminded of this recently when I got out my copy of The River from Bruce Springsteen. I recall vividly the day I got it home, with all the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning.
It was new, crisp, unblemished and beautiful. And, best of all, it was a double album. Oh my God, a double feast of new Springsteen songs!
I turned it around looking down the track listing of songs I’d not yet heard, but knew they were going to be friends I would travel down the road with, both in a metaphorical and actual sense. ‘Ties That Bind’, ‘Sherry Darlin’, ‘Two Hearts Are Better Than One’, ‘Independence Day’, the list went on. And on.
Forty-one years later and we’re still travelling down that long, adventure filled road. The album cover betrays the years; frayed, torn, the inside covers coming away despite the odd repair attempt with a Pritt stick. A couple of tracks have jumps on I still expect and would somehow miss if they were no longer there.
Yet somehow this all fits for an artist from urban New Jersey championing characters damaged and flawed, patched up yet somehow ready to go again. This was not an album made to be looked at and admired like a piece of art, it was street tough and built for whatever the journey threw at it.
But whatever your point of view, whether you like your books and old vinyl tattered and torn or pampered and pristine, unlike the soulless world of Kindle or music streaming, at least you own something worth caring enough about to keep.
SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS 