Musings of a Multinational Meanderer

Happy New Year! What do you plan to do with the year ahead? It’s traditional to look back on the year gone by and to work out what you want / need to do for the coming months. It’s a time for planning, for resolutions, for looking at yourself, I’ve done my share of introspection, and thought I’d share my findings with you. It’s been very apparent over the past year or so that we’re living in an…

Some time ago, I wrote a post about how I’d realised that I had been using music a way of hiding my true emotions. I also wrote one about having a strong work ethic, which I attributed to my upbringing. Maybe I’ve been looking at things wrongly, and the first post holds a clue to the second. Just as music helped me deal with my emotions when I was a teenager and beyond, what if work did the same?…

Week 52 – TBT 2017 – 68 Guns

Well, here we are at the end of 2017, and I’m happy to say I managed to post a TBT every week of the year. I didn’t miss a single week, and I wasn’t late for one either, so I’m pretty pleased with that achievement. You may have noticed that I’ve not repeated a band either, which was another goal / challenge I set myself. I hope you’ve enjoyed the variety. For the final track of the year I chose…

Week 51 – TBT 2017 – Fairytale of New York

I had a tricky decision to make here, because I love Slade’s Merry Christmas, and I wanted to play something festive in the run up to the festive season. This song just edges it over Slade because it makes me very emotional – and I can’t pin down why. Maybe it’s the fact that Kirsty McColl is no longer with us, having died in an accident at sea. Maybe it’s the sentiments expressed in the song,…

Week 50 – TBT 2017 – Overkill

Wow! Who’d have thought we’d get to the middle of December before Motörhead make an appearance on this list? Without doubt the loudest band I’ve ever seen, and I must confess, when I saw them I only really knew a couple of their songs. I went with my band mates from the first group I played with, 3 Polish lads into thrash metal, for the gig in Oxford. What a night! They just cranked the volume up…

Week 49 – TBT 2017 – Fields of Fire

We’ve just had St Andrews Day, so it makes sense that I choose a Scottish (sort of) band for this week’s entry. The reason I say “sort of” is because, although often referred to as Scottish, only Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson – the guitarists in the band – were Scots. Bassist Tony Butler and drummer Mark Brzezicki were English. Listening to Tony and Mark had a big influence on me wanting to be…

Week 48 – TBT 2017 – Ca Plane Pour Moi

Here’s a question. How cheesy do you like your music? And how cheesy can you possibly make a punk song and its associated video? I think this is the answer! Although singing in French, Plastic Bertrand is Belgian. The song is well known for it’s catchy ooo-ooo-ooo-ooh vocals. As I don’t speak French I’ve been blissfully unaware of the meaning of the lyrics. Nevertheless, it’s a bright, bouncy…

Week 47 – TBT 2017 – Cloudbusting

There’s a very haunting quality about Kate Bush’s vocals at the best of times, and it comes through very well on this song. Perhaps not as big a hit as Withering Heights, Babushka or Wow, but I still really like this one. I hadn’t realised at the time, but part of the video is shot at the Uffington White Horse, probably England’s most famous chalk carving. There are glimpses of Dragon Hill too,…

I came across this video on LinkedIn today. I think it has some incredible statistics. Many of them don’t seem fair to me. The fact that 1 person of the 100 ie 1% of the population controls 50% of the money is one. The facts that nearly a quarter of the worlds population doesn’t have somewhere to live, or that an eighth don’t have clean water are appalling. I guess the question is, what can we do…

Week 46 – TBT 2017 – Tubular Bells

After last week’s trip down memory lane with an electronic classic, I couldn’t ignore this track / album. Known by many as the theme from The Exorcist, this is a vast, soaring piece of work. It’s remarkable for many reasons, not least of which are that this was Mike Oldfield’s first album, he was a teenager when he originally recorded it, and he played every instrument himself. That’s just…

Week 45 – TBT 2017 – Oxygene 4

This track takes back to my school days. I recall the occasions when a TV set would be rolled in to the classroom and we’d sit and watch some programme or other from the Open University or specifically for schools. It would be on the (relatively) new channel of BBC2 – in those days we only had 3 channels in the UK. For some reason this track was often played as a sort of “hold” music while we…

Week 44 – TBT 2017 – Eighth Day

Towards the end of the punk era there were some fairly bleak films made, like Jubilee.  They were gradually replaced – as the music was – by more futuristic, technology driven films and sounds. This track is taken from the film Breaking Glass, which starred Hazel O’Connor. She also sang a large portion of the soundtrack, which in my opinion blends some of the punk ideals with the new (for those…

Week 43 – TBT 2017 – Run to the Hills

This is a bit of a classic from the 80s. With its distinctive riff and incredible vocals, it’s instantly recognisable. For me, Steve Harris doesn’t get as much recognition as he deserves as a song writer but also as a musician. His bass lines are brilliant, fluid and galloping. For someone who plays finger style, it’s unusual to use three fingers rather than two. That’s the secret to his sound,…

Week 42 – TBT 2017 – Transmission

There’s been a lot written recently to raise awareness of mental health issues.  Earlier this year I posted a couple of these TBT articles because rock stars had taken their own lives due to poor mental health, and I thought I’d include this track featuring Ian Curtis, the late singer of Joy Divison, who committed suicide at the age of 23. After he died, the band carried on with new members and a…

Week 40 – TBT 2017 – Justified and Ancient

Try finding this on Spotify or iTunes and I doubt you’ll be able to get the original. But for some reason it’s all over YouTube, which is just as well for us!  As a regular ice cream eater, I thought it would be fun to include a song that has “ice cream van” in the lyrics in my TBT series. The song itself is relatively simple, but has a great riff, and Tammy Wynette’s voice goes perfectly with…

Week 39 – TBT 2017 – Let’s stay together

This one is just for Dee. It’s “our song”, and I love her very much.  I guess Ive been a bit of a blues and soul mood recently, and this song just oozes quality. Such wonderful lyrics and so well sung. And the lyrics are just how I feel about Dee. It’s awesome, just like my lady,  Al Green – Let’s stay together