When I was 17 I worked at a packaging factory, and for various reasons the Managing Director offered me a ride in to town one day (punctured tire on my bike).
When we got into the car he took off his jacket, loosened the tie, put on a torn jeans jacket and turned up the stereo. We listened to the Stones and talked about music for the duration of the trip.
Not exactly what I had expected.
At a garden party last weekend I struck up a conversation with P., a nice chap with a lot of hair. Turns out he's a senior executive at an IT consultancy. It also turns out he's a musician and a fan of the Japandroids.
The first time I heard Franz Ferdinand I had just checked into a hotel room and MTV or some other music channel was on the TV. "Take me out" came on and I remember frantically looking for pen and paper to jot down the name of the band.
They recently released and EP with covers of their own music - one of them is by LCD Soundsystem.
So, here is that cover, followed by Franz Ferdinand covering Britney Spears. And to top it all off, a favorite LCD Soundsystem track. (No, I don't have a favorite Britney track.)
I've been thinking of listing my favorite concert experiences. (I KNOW you care).
Or maybe just sharing my favorite live recordings.
How an act performs live is quite central to my overall rating of that act. Partly, I feel that real musicians should be able to perform live - I mean, you can pull of just about anything in a studio these days.
Also, experiencing an act live often adds new flavors to my perception of the music and the people behind that music.
One act I would have liked to experience live is Leonard Cohen. I had the chance a year or so ago, but (oddly) couldn't be bothered to organise the excursion.
There's something about seeing live acts old enough to be my parents, and that were shaking the world in the 60's and 70's that makes me want to say "oh grow up and get a fuckin life".
Problem is, I'm the one who doesn't have a life... They (the elderly rock stars) are doing just fine.
The first CD i bought was the ablum Floodland by Sisters of Mercy.
I was 17 and worked in a warehouse in a small town near Cologne. I didn't have a CD player so a colleague recorded the CD onto tape so that I could listen to it on my Walkman.
I remember being really amazed by that fact that opera musicians (I assumed) had agreed to record with the dark and mysterious characters in Sisters of Mercy.
When I was 9 or 10 years old some neighours bought a new stereo. As a result, their old tapes sounded like shit and instead of just throwing them away they gave them to me.
A whole bag full of tapes. Tape after tape of recordings with Johny Cash, ELO, Dolly Parton and - the Beatles.
I know I know - half of you are thinking bla bla bla yeah yeah yeah, can't we ever stop talking about those pompous English guys? (The other half are thinking "of course, what else".)
Learning to like and understand the Beatles was instrumental in helping med develop my taste in and fascination of brilliantly written and well performed music. Initially mostly charmed by the earlier albums it took some work getting used to the more advanced music that came from Rubber Soul and onwards.
I remember a dinner party about 10 years ago. A close friend in to hard rock laughed when I attributed most modern music to the Beatles and said "I can't see why everybody is so full of the Beatles! What did they ever do except yeah yeah yeah and do do do?"
I quickly sat him down and played three tracks, in this order:
