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Post by jk on Jul 19, 2022 10:01:11 GMT
Thread title with apologies to Fairport Convention. This can be from a recent holiday or from one years ago. Two songs I heard recently that in fact bookended the holiday in question were "Justified & Ancient" by The KLF ft. Tammy Wynette…
…and a great song I hadn't heard in ages, ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down":
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Post by jk on Aug 12, 2022 10:42:59 GMT
In 1991, the four of us travelled by car through Germany and Denmark and then took the ferry to Norway to visit friends of ours on their island in a fjord (yes, they owned it!). While washing up at a campsite in Denmark on the outward journey I happened to hear "Colours" (followed by "I Wish It Would Rain Down") from Phil Collins' 1989 album ...But Seriously. Good times!
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Post by jk on Aug 13, 2022 9:01:35 GMT
I remember the first three times I heard Jimmy Nail's "Ain’t No Doubt", before I even found out what it was! The third time was during a holiday trip to the Lake District, in a restaurant where the wine was flowing freely (in my direction, if nowhere else). Many years later I discovered the video on YouTube. It's wonderfully cheesy, although Mr Nail being an actor makes a great job of it. Love this song: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_No_Doubt
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 18, 2022 13:39:01 GMT
I have very few memories of music from vacations, probably in large part because when I was a kid, my family only ever went camping for vacations. So if we had a radio along, there could be some music, but generally it was just the noise of creeks, birds, insects and such.
For some reason I have a very strong memory of an unusual of our trips, though. My guess is that it would have been the summer of 1981 (making me four or five) or 1982 (making me five or six). We had borrowed somebody's pop-up camper--usually we just had a tent--and spent evenings playing the French card game Mille Bornes and listening to the radio.
Two songs came on the radio each night, so that by the third night or so I knew and waited for them. And actually I like them both to this day: Eddie Rabbit's 1980 hit "I Love a Rainy Night" and Juice Newton's "Playin With the Queen of Hearts."
(My other vacation musical memories lean more toward the mid/late '80s metal and rap my brother and I would play on our battery-powered dual cassette decks as we sat in the back of the station wagon, driving across the country to some relative or other's.)
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Post by jk on Sept 20, 2022 11:07:20 GMT
This is one from way back -- 1959, to be precise. I was learning how to ride a bike at the time. Holidaying with relatives in the country, my brother and I were lent bikes to cycle on a car-free road in the area. Once we stopped outside what looked like a derelict house, only there was music coming out of it. Blasting out of it in fact. The song in question was "Ragtime Cowboy Joe", then a US #16 for David Seville & The Chipmunks:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_and_the_Chipmunks
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Post by jk on Sept 22, 2022 20:27:22 GMT
Back to the present...
We were in this UK pub a week or so ago, and someone asked the acoustic band of musicians who were playing there that evening if they knew "Women Of Ireland", adding that it featured in the film Barry Lyndon. They didn't, so they googled it and found this cool version performed in Madison Square Garden on 13 April 2013 by Jeff Beck (guitar), Lizzie Ball (violin), Tal Wilkenfeld (bass) and Jonathan Joseph (drums):
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Post by jk on Oct 9, 2022 9:23:27 GMT
Hitching through France with my girlfriend, later wife, in late '74, I recall hearing "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" at a bar somewhere in the south of the country. I'd just bought this bloke a beer (at his insistence), after which he accidentally knocked mine over ("It's only beer!"). H'mm. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikki_Don%27t_Lose_That_Number
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Post by kds on Oct 12, 2022 15:16:15 GMT
One vacation song that really sticks out for me is REM's Shiny Happy People.
In August 1991, I was a month shy of turning 11 and starting 6th grade. My family and I embarked on our third annual full week trip to Ocean City. And, I swear, every single place we went, Shiny Happy People was coming out of a radio speaking. When we were in the car, Shiny Happy People came on the radio. On the Boardwalk, Shiny Happy People could be heard coming from the shops and snack shacks.
So, that's probably the song I most identify with childhood vacations. And, due to that, it was the lead song on my very first attempt at a summer playlist in 2005.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 12, 2022 15:26:36 GMT
I listened to a few albums on my drive to and from my vacation a few weeks ago.
The Who, Who's Next. I mentioned elsewhere that it had been years since I'd listened to this one. Great album. I'm not sure it's quite my favorite Who album (Tommy), but I think it may well be the best one.
Nick Drake, Bryter Layter. This one sprang to mind within the past few months where someone pointed out that a few of the Beach Boys' side musicians (Ed Carter, Mike Kowalski) were involved, a fact I'd either never known or forgotten. This one never actually felt very good to me despite my really enjoying Pink Moon. It's still not better than Pink Moon, but I really appreciate it much more now. As I said elsewhere, it also lept out how much it must have inspired Belle & Sebastian, a band I strongly disliked back when I first bought Bryter Layter 20-something years ago but love now.
Joni Mitchell, Blue. This is one of those all-timers I bought around 2000 when I felt like I ought to have all the great albums, but frankly I never listened to all that often. When I listened again a few weeks ago ... I didn't like it. At all. Maybe less than before. It just didn't resonate with me at all.
Belle & Sebastian, If You're Feeling Sinister. This is one of those B&S albums released at a time I didn't know them well but didn't like them, but like a lot more in hindsight. I still think they would have benefited from stronger production, such as what they got from Trevor Horn a few years later on Dear Catastrophe Waitress. This one doesn't sound great, the arrangements aren't always tight, and the songs drag on a bit at times. But there are some really good ones in there.
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Post by jk on Oct 13, 2022 11:44:52 GMT
I have very few memories of music from vacations, probably in large part because when I was a kid, my family only ever went camping for vacations. So if we had a radio along, there could be some music, but generally it was just the noise of creeks, birds, insects and such. Not quite camping (it was a caravan) but your mention of a radio reminded me of hearing this then-current UK hit version of "Angela Jones" by Michael Cox on a transistor radio during a family holiday in 1960. Curiously, Cox sings the chorus in swing style and the verse in straight quavers, whereas the instrumental track is straight throughout. Mind you, this is a Joe Meek production (never knew that), so who knows what Joe got up to after MC and the musicians had done their bit? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cox_(singer)
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 13, 2022 12:04:20 GMT
One other thing occurs to me as music from vacations. Another way music was involved when I was a kid and we were camping was that my dad would bring his beautiful old Martin acoustic and some evenings as we roasted marshmallows, etc., he'd bring it out and accompany people in singalongs. Most of what he'd play were '50s ballads and early '60s folk songs, which were the soundtracks of his and my aunts' and uncles' youths, as well as just some evergreen campfire singalong songs. (I recall "There's a Hole In My Bucket, Dear Liza" which I found hilarious.)
But the other reason I bring it up is a memory that has stuck with me since I was probably about 4-5 years old. When asking for requests, I wanted to hear "Page 5." Nobody knew what I was talking about. The adults looked at one another, shrugged, asked me for clarification. "Page 5!" Finally a sang a little bit: it was the liturgy from our Lutheran hymnal. It began--as you might guess by now--on page 5, and the pastor would always say "please turn to page five..." so that's all I knew it as. So it was just the (English language, being Lutherans) introit, kyrie, gloria, etc., little call-and-response melodies or brief pieces that would normally be interspersed with the pastor's or congregation's recitations. Not exactly great campfire singalong fare.
What can I say, I was four or five years old: I didn't know many songs!
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Post by jk on May 19, 2023 18:31:00 GMT
Lovely to hear this while visiting during our brief holiday in the country earlier this week. "My Little Town" sounds like nothing else in PS's catalogue -- there's something very seventies about it! (Actually, the entire album is pretty cool.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_Crazy_After_All_These_Years
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on May 19, 2023 20:19:25 GMT
Lovely to hear this while visiting during our brief holiday in the country earlier this week. "My Little Town" sounds like nothing else in PS's catalogue -- there's something very seventies about it! (Actually, the entire album is pretty cool.) I like that song very much. It does sound more 70s-like than most Simon & Garfunkel songs...it was recorded/released in 1975. An interesting fact about "My Little Town" is that it appeared on both Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years album AND Art Garfunkel's Breakaway album.
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Post by jk on Jul 4, 2023 14:43:11 GMT
Heard "Lollipop" on the first day of a long weekend in the sunny south of NL, along with "Big Girls Don't Cry", the original of "Why Do Fools..." and many others: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chordettes
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Post by jk on Jul 31, 2023 13:36:37 GMT
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