Song, by Toad

I’ve mentioned often enough that my Dad, being a Canadian and hence raised on the stuff, brought all sorts of Americana into my early musical consciousness.  He played all sorts of stuff: Neil Young, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Bob Seger, James Taylor, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, The Band, The Holy Modal Rounders and plenty of others.  So for all I think my Mum has probably contributed more groups to my musical family tree than my Dad, I think Dad has probably been responsible for more of the real legends.

He also had a great collection of vinyl, but the whole lot was fairly summarily butchered by the climate when we moved to Singapore when I was about eleven.  The heat and the humidity caused most of it to warp and mould.  It was tragic.  The only thing the old git managed to do was turn his stash of dying records into a series of mix tapes which themselves became seminal documents in our house, due to being ninety minutes apiece of condensed brilliance – a whole collection whittled down to a few tapes.

The one that perhaps captured our imagination the most was the Nostlagia Mix; a collection of the Americana listed above, which just seemed to be bristling with brilliance.  I’ve since tried, using the various internet services available these days, to reassemble these songs, but that only works if you can remember exactly what was on them, which you often can’t.  In fact, it’s often the stray forgotten tracks, rather than the better know and often better loved ones that you still listen to all the time, that give these compilations their texture.  The ones you no longer listen to as often actually become the ones most strongly related to that time, I guess.

Songs like, in particular, Dylan’s Days of ‘49 really remind me so strongly of that tape and that time precisely because I barely ever listen to it anymore.  It’s from Self Portrait, and album I just don’t really listen to particularly, so there are not subsequent memories associated with these songs to override the old ones.

Bob Dylan – Days of ‘49
Neil Young – Heart of Gold
James Taylor – Carolina on My Mind
Jackson Browne – Before the Deluge

Well I didn’t appear in this particular episode of The Waiting Room, and somewhat amazingly the whole thing didn’t go instantly to the dogs, as you might have imagined.

The Waiting Room – Wednesday 30th April 2008

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In fact, DC has sent me a couple of excellent tracks to use in my traditional plug for the show seeing as I can’t do my usual ‘I nearly chose these’ thing.

The first is by a group called Heathers who I’ve never heard of at all, but the real highlight for me was the Fleet Foxes song.  There’s been a fair bit of blog whispering about Fleet Foxes for quite a while now, and I’ve never quite got round to tracking them down and having a listen.  This, it seems, was a mistake.  Just listen below – what a fine song indeed.

Fleet Foxes – Tiger Mountain Peasant Song
Heathers – Bloodpact