Play this when I die!

 

Play This When I Die by Sfcpres on Mixcloud

My 50th birthday, the constant trips to the doctors, the constant pain, and the everyday irritations of this world we live in, have made me consider the end of life lately.
Not that I want it to happen, or even have any real fear of it happening soon, just what happens when it does?
The last thing I'd want is to have some religious nut, spouting away about what a wonderful life I'd led, and how everybody loved me, when in fact, I've been a miserable bastard for most of it, and haven't done much with it at all! A couple of good kids, a decent marriage, and a few compilations left behind on non-biodegradable CDs is all I have to show for 50 years on this planet, so when I go, I'd like to at least have a send of that I can be proud of.
So here it is.
There's some tracks here that mean a lot to me for one reason and another, and those that do know me will know their meaning. So hopefully this will remain out there in cyberspace for a bit longer than I'll be around for, so if there's anyone left behind when I do go - play this!

1

The Somnambulist

XTC

2

So Long Ago, So Clear

Vangelis & Jon Anderson

3

Clair de Lune (Debussy)

Earl Wild

4

Rejoice In The Sun

Joan Baez

5

Solitude (Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

Meryl Streep

6

In My Life

Beatles

7

I Only Want To Be With You

Shelby Lynne

8

My Funny Valentine

Elvis Costello

9

Stars

Janis Ian

10

Aria From La Wally (Catalani)

Wilhelmenia Fernandez

11

I See a Darkness

Johnny Cash

12

Heaven Can Wait

Meat Loaf

13

Feeling good

Nina Simone

14

Q5 Piano Tune

Spike Milligan

 

Beestrax

Here's an odd one...one of my first ever compilations, originally made when I was still young enough to believe that all you had to do to make a compilation was to add together a load of your favourite tracks and copy them onto a C-90 cassette. Simple! No licensing, no rights to clear and you could draw your own cases for them too, and for that professional touch, you could use pics cut out from various magazines. No worries about marketing and creating 'hooks' to hang the album on so that people would buy it! All the complications that arose when creating various artist CDs for a living, just didn't exist (or at least it seemed that way!) Just make up a tape for your own enjoyment. Millions did it!

Over the years several of my friends requested copies of this tape, and it still remains one of my favourite things to listen to. Created from various album tracks and 7" single b-sides (remember them?), the title "Beestrax" was quite clever, at least I thought so at the time! Now lovingly re-created on CDR, I can let this album take me back to my youth, it'll do until they invent time-travel...

TRACK LIST

1. Duran Duran - The Chauffer (Blue Silver)

2. Pink Floyd - Money

3. Everything But The Girl - Never Could Have Been Worse

4. Black Uhuru - Party Next Door

5. Rolling Stones - 2000 Light Years From Home

6. Johnny Mathis - The Last Time I Felt Like This

7. Cocteau Twins - Pepper Tree

8. Focus - House Of The King

9. The Who - Boris The Spider

10. New Musik - Warp

11. Colin Towns - Kate

12. Imposter - Withered And Died

13. Rickie Lee Jones - Weasel & The White Boys Cool

14. Sandie Shaw - I Don't Owe You Anything

15. Juan Martin - Harlequin 1918

16. Nena - Ich Blieb Im Bett

17. Pink Floyd - Sheep Part II

18. ABC - Theme from Mantrap

19. Gerry Rafferty - Why Don't You Talk To Me

20. Elton John - Bitter Fingers

21. Space - Ballad For Space Lovers

OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST MEMORIES

Continuing on from my last blog, I thought I would share with you some compilations that I have made for my own amusement over the years.

One of my favourite programmes of my youth was BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test. A relative late-comer to the programme, I joined at the stage when 'Whispering' Bob Harris was beginning to lose control of, what until that point had been, his own private TV music show. No longer was the programme showing the prog rock dinosaurs of old. The youthful new bands of the mid-seventies were beginning to take a much larger foothold of TV's only real alternative to 'Top Of The Pops'. Although perfectly relaxed with the 'new wave' of music that he now presented, the introduction of excitable Annie Nightingale as co-presenter obviously irked the reserved Harris, quickly forcing him to leave the programme completely. 'Young upstart journalists' David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, and DJs Andy Kershaw and Richard Skinner, alternatively carried on banging in the nails and digging the grave, of this fine TV institution until it lost firstly it's 'Old Grey' pre-title and inevitably it's soul. By 1987 the programme was little more than an overriding title for live concerts and was dropped completely.

The influence of the 'Test' over the years can not be exaggerated, and it certainly introduced me to hundreds of acts that I would otherwise have missed. In 1980, the BBC released an album of tracks that had featured on the programme over the past few years, and the album became a regular visitor to my turntable at the time. Tracks on 'Test Pressing' were;-

1. Police - Can't Stand Losing You
2. Tubeway Army - Down In the Park

3. Willie Nile - Across The River

4. Yellow Magic Orchestra - Cosmic Surfin'

5. Simple Minds - Chelsea Girl

6. John Etheridge & Ric Sanders (credited as '2nd Vision') - Ice Bells

7. Blondie - Eat To the Beat

8. Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons - Shape I'm In

9. Landscape - Sonja Henie

10. Selecter - Missing Words

11. Alda Reserve - Some Get Away

12. Genesis - Please Don't Ask

13. John Cooper Clarke - Beasley Street

A fantastic album that I can recommend to anyone.

30 years later, I found all these tracks along with the theme tune to OGWT;- Stone Fox Chase by Area Code 615, and then went on to create my own album of personal memories of the programme.

Grey Memories:-

1. Patti Smith - Dancing Barefoot
2. Monochrome Set - 405 Lines
3. Devo - Jocko Homo
4. Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
5. XTC - Radios In Motion
6. Frank Zappa - Baby Snakes
7. Bruce Springsteen - Rosalita
8. Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell
9. Ellen Foley - What's A Matter Baby
10. Kansas - Dust In The Wind
11. Elton John - Tiny Dancer
12. Roches - Hammond Song
13. Santana - Black Magic Woman
14. Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
15. Peter Tosh (with Mick Jagger) - (You Gotta Walk) Don't Look Back
16. Frank Zappa - City Of Tiny Lights
17. John Etheridge and Ric Sanders - Dancing Circle
18. XTC - Yacht Dance (Live on 'Whistle Test')
19. Patti Smith - Because The Night (Live on 'Whistle Test) 
20. Al Stewart - Year Of The Cat (Live on 'Whistle Test)