Song, by Toad

I know it’s a bit obvious to do a podcast like this so shortly after my birthday, but it gives me the opportunity to ramble a bit and play some classics I might not otherwise have played.

There are so many wonderful songs about growing old, and I actually think I may have missed most of them.  I have no fear of being old, but for some reason it feels a little more immediate this year but I don’t know why.

So goodnight people, it’s been a pleasure.  Sleep well and don’t be too rough on yourselves.  Take Kirsty’s advice and “don’t be too rough on my cold, cold heart; it’s all I’ve got left to me now.”

That may be the smart-arsed line, but the most important line in this song is the bit where she says that “there’s a light in your eyes tells me somebody’s in and you won’t come the cowboy with me”.  It’s such a crucial judgment, isn’t it.  You take a bet on someone, you throw in your chips and you hope for the best.  So if you’re feeling brave, good luck to you.  Look after her, I’ll be there anytime soon.

Toadcast #47 – The Oldcast

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01. The Rolling Stones – Mother’s Little Helper (00.01)
02. The Band – Rockin’ Chair (07.46)
03. Michelle Shocked – Memories of East Texas (11.21)
04. Hafdis Huld – Tomoko (20.57)
05. Baby Walrus – Some Dawns No Bird Will Sing (28.44)
07. Donny Hue & the Colors – The World Came Running (30.25)
08. Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man (34.21)
08. Soko – The Dandy Cowboys (43.31)
09. Kirsty MacColl – Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim (47.04)
10. Neil Young – Old Man (55.09)
11. Jeffrey Lewis – Back When I Was Four (58.12)

I was reading Marcy’s excellent Lost in Your Inbox today and happened across a post of hers that gave me pause for thought, and just a little wistful remembering.

The last few years of my life have been relatively stable. I have been in Edinburgh for about three years, and was in London for three and a half before that, but I haven’t always been so sedentary. In the years preceding London, in reverse order, I managed the following: Cambridge – 18 months, Manchester – 6 months, Montreal – three months, Cape Cod – a year, Glasgow – ten months, Cape Cod – four months, Grongingen – ten months, Glasgow – three years, Manchester – one year, Vienna – three years, Singapore – three years. In other words, over the course of about fifteen years I upped sticks and vanished about fifteen times.

It wasn’t quite as crazy as that, but it was quite hectic, and most of the time it involved abandoning pretty much my entire life and all my friends and disappearing off with no more than a couple of suitcases to my name. Because of growing up in international schools where people changed countries, and hence schools, on a regular basis, I have seen so many disrupted friendships dwindle as well-intentioned letter-writing slowly tailed off. Consequently since high school, whenever I move country I tend to just cut the cord and go.

It’s very, very rare that I stay in touch with anyone from my past actually. Once gone, I tend to just look forward and try and make a life wherever it is that I have ended up and reading Marcy’s words I was reminded of just how many people I have ended up just abandoning to the swirling mists of my past – how many good friendships have been aborted, how many shared things have been forgotten, how much human kindness has gone unremembered.

It’s sad, I suppose, but it’s not a bad thing, I don’t think. There’s little point in stringing these things out beyond their natural lifespan. Most friendships are surprisingly context-dependent and there have been quite a few times when I have known them to have an uneccessary cloud cast over them by ill-advised and utlimately fruitless attempts to keep them going once the environment in which they first grew has ceased to exist. Nowadays I tend to just wrap them up in my history as good, complete entities and let them rest there. Some day a song or a coincidence or a conversation will remind me of them and there will be one of those warm, nostalgic moments where you relive that time for a little while, before setting it carefully back in place and returning to the present.

So it is sad I suppose. Or melancholy. But there’s a warm, happy core to the sadness too, so I still think it’s a good thing in most ways. Ironic, too, that I ended up marrying a girl I knew from high school and hadn’t seen for the best part of ten years by the time we met up again.

Tom Waits – Anywhere I Lay My Head
Michelle Shocked – Anchorage
Gene – I Can’t Decide If She Really Loves Me
Supergrass – Moving
Tom Waits – Shiver Me Timbers

I recently picked up a copy of an album that takes me very precisely back in time to a specific year, a specific place and a specific girl.

I was raised, for the most part, in Vienna and only came to the UK at age 17 to go to university. Because my Mum is from Manchester that is where I went to do my Foundation Course in Art & Design, despite having been offered a place at Wimbledon School of Art which, with crystal clear 20/20 hindsight, would have been a far better choice. After Vienna where I was, compared to the people of all sorts of nations with whom I went to school, extremely English, it was a massive shock to find out quite how English I actually wasn’t, in reality. I also didn’t have the saving grace of being obviously foreign, which gets you quite a lot of slack cut for odd behaviour.

Consequently, it was a pretty horrendous year of rather merciless culture shock. Once I was offered my place at the Glasgow School of Art, in early January, I packed in the course, which I hated, and took a job in one of the local 5 Star hotels (at least my BBC accent, otherwise a liability in Manchester, was good for something). There I met a very intelligent and very prickly and rather pretty Irish girl who I spent the next two and a half years of my life with. She was easily the most musically interested of any of my other girlfriends and we got into all sorts of really good bands together.

She also, as my only ex to actually own any music, took a fair bit with her when we split up. Generally I replaced this stuff pretty immediately, but this one I never got round to buying again until last week. This enforced break meant that when I heard the music again, for the first time in oh, about ten years, all these incredibly vivid memories came flooding back, as it will with music.

So I thought I’d share some songs from Michelle Shocked’s 1988 album, Short Sharp Shocked. It’s a singer songwriter affair with heavily Southern country, gospel and folk influences. One of my favourite songs on the album is Anchorage, if just because of Michelle’s relationship with her friend’s husband: ‘Leroy says send a picture/ Leroy says hello/ Leroy says keep on rocking girl.’ There’s something so generous and real about the picture of friendship she paints, it really has me choking a little and having to hastily remember the aloof, macho image of cool indifference I have so carefully constructed for myself. Ahem.

Have a listen though. It’s interesting: in the light of Jenny Lewis and Neko Case’s recent success with a very similar sort of music it is interesting to hear some of their precursors. And have a little covert sniffle at the loveliness of the songs as we do so!

Michelle Shocked – Anchorage
Michelle Shocked – The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore
Michelle Shocked – Black Widow