Thursday, January 03, 2008

Best of 2007 (2) "You've got no eyelids and sweet Ella loves me so..."

Heathrow Airport, once you've made it past the ticketing counter, baggage check and overturned anthill that is the security gate, has its charms. For one thing: alcohol is sold at several venues, including a passably accurate Irish bar, 24/7. The same cannot be said for the airport in Atlanta, as I discovered to my chagrin this last summer.

But, with hours to spare before the trans-atlantic flight home, a round of impulse buys at that HMV kiosk. Email written shortly after on one of the many little "five-online-minutes-for-one-pound/two-Euro" Internet stations:

I'm certainly in the Heathrow terminal bound for San Francisco. Just across from me a group of college-age kids are sharing an acoustic guitar and singing whatever comes into their mind. One of them with beard and bandanna just did the old Four Non-Blonds anthem from the early nineties "What's Going On" ("Twenty five years and my life is still/Trying to get up that great big hill of hope...")-- which I'll admit to liking even after saturation airplay back in the day.

I can't believe I just described the early nineties as 'back in the day!'

Allowed myself a brief shopping spree in the terminal kiosk of HMV records and here's what I scored

--The Fratellis - Costello Music ("Indecently Rousing" says the Independent on the sticker promo and that's good enough for me!)
--Fields - Everything Last Winter ("2007 will surely be theirs" enthuses NME)

Both of these purchased on instinct based on album artwork that they might be worth checking out

and then:

--Sting - Songs from the Labyrinth featuring the music of Elizabethan songwriter John Dowland

From the moment I saw it, I said "But of COURSE Sting would have to do a John Dowland album!" Not that I'm much of an expert there, but Maddy Prior and the Carneval Band did something with Dowland some time ago and it was such a lugubrious track on the otherwise sprightly CD I had to research further. Read up on him in Wikipedia. And now: perfect. Sting. John Dowland. What more could a publicist want?

Off to grab one last pint. The only nice thing about airports is that all proper times for civilization are abandoned and people can breakfast whenever they want, drink cocktails whenever they want, and sleep whenever they want!


Sting? The Fields? Yeah, I think I listened to those CDs a couple of times.

But the Fratellis? Oh yes...



And it's alright, she'll be sucking fingers all night
Wearing those shoes, oh any excuse to go to the gang fight
And oh she's alright, everybody says she's uptight
Sick in the head, first in the bed
So easy to be Friday's wonder


That's what I'm talking about...

3 comments:

Ann ODyne said...

"So easy to be Friday's wonder ..."
great line.

Bad girls put clean sheets on the bed before they go to work Fridays.
Really bad girls ... don't.

I had tea with Maddy Prior at the Hyatt House on Sunset one time.

Watching a comedy on TV the other night and a character was bragging about having dinner at Madonna & Guy's ... "it was a lovely night until Sting got out his lute".

HahaHaaaaaaaaaa

Miss Templeton said...

That's a great line! I am finally getting time to read everything and I see we've met on Facebook and I have a Maddy Prior story too. (Have I shared?)

I even have a Sting story. Though only a 'Sting's House' story, with a photo or two. I visited Highgate the day in October 2002 after a terrible windstorm knocked down trees all over the place. The tour guide rounded the corner with "And here we have...a very expensive car crushed by a tree."

Ann ODyne said...

Funny Tour Guide ... and funny you should say 'storm' because the reason I am here is to say I hope you have come through the bad CAL weather OK.
It made the news here of course.

A year or two back, my ex weathered an Alabama cyclone/hurricane and refused to be evacuated with everybody else in his area. No bravery of course, just impossible to evacuate with the five precious guitars and the Gibson Florentine.
Priorities.