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...

"Is it out of line if I was to be bold and say 'Would you be mine'?"

Bought on a complete impulse at the HMV kiosk at Heathrow ("Indecently Rousing" said the Independent on the sticker promo). Then discovered I could listen to it as a featured CD on the inflight entertainment. Back home, listened again lots of times in the car. The sort of play where you let the song finish out before turning off the engine. And then on office iTunes.

This one here is my favorite song of the moment. In that top forty way where you need to hear the song every hour or so. It's endless summer.



Then finally had the presence of mind to check out The Fratellis over at Wikipedia. Turns out: Glasgow.

Told the husband "I know I was intending to wait til you could come with me, but I can't fight it much longer. Next time over, I'm going to Scotland."

Strange Sounds from the MySpace Grounds

The new Dun Ringles CD has arrived! Only 100 copies of this exceptionally pure prog-rock sound from Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides will be made available for the general public.

I was out of my blogging habits when I first met the Dun Ringles (and their much more avante friends The Guireans), so I'll have to quickly summarize by quoting liberally from their MySpace Page:

Band Members - Jason; Lead Guitar, bass, drum progs, keyboards,mandolin, backing vocals Robin;Keyboards, mandolin, accordion, backing vocals Wattie; lead vocals, bass, backing vocals Jon;lead guitar,mandolin, fiddle, backing vocals

Influences - Peatstacks Tractors Salmon Poaching Jethro Tull Horslips Cardiacs Crowded House Jori and Innes Isles FM The Comhairle Queen Deep Purple Blackmores Night The Valtos Outdoor Centre The Castle Grounds

Keeping the flame of Avante Gaelic Obscurist Folk Rock alive in the Outer Hebrides. Two sets of brothers( jason and jon/robin and wattie) fused together by an irrate record company and not allowed out to play until they have played Madison Square Garden at least twice and sold more than 2 copies of Redun from Fonn. Writing idiosyncratic songs about life in the Western Isles is all they do, spending long hours in candle-lit garrets and sipping from bottles of Absinthe whilst wearing fingerless gloves and muttering to themselves like some old geezer from a Dickens novel. Written seven or eight albums worth of songs and amassed a small but fanatical fan base (which also has a branch on Norway!!!!!!!! thanks Irene) whislt trying to keep the wolf from the door. If you want to know about Peatman, the illusive Funky Peatstack, Hump-backed lobsters and many characters of a Stornowegian slant, then this is the band for you.