Music Meme

Maniac Mum tagged me to take part in this meme.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.

Hmmm. Well, the thing is, my tastes in music are somewhat... eclectic? A would just say weird, but every one is entitled to their own opinion. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I've decided that you're jut going to get it as it is.

Which may actually go a long way towards providing a highlight to the fevered state my brain is in most of the time.

One of the tunes currently ringing around my head is The Fratellis' Chelsea Dagger, a reminder of the Year 5 residential last month. Imagine a conga line of 10 year olds: "Da da-da da da dad-da da da da..."



As a complete contrast, I have been writing reports (now finished, and handed in on time, hurrah!) to a lot of Ralph Vaughan-Williams. I first heard his work as a child in primary school, and I'd forgotten until recently how much I liked it. Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tullis is lovely, as is The Lark Ascending, but I thought I'd treat you to this, the first movement of the English Folk Song Suite. One of the things I love about RVW is that, although not religious, he loved uplifting Church music and created some lovely arrangements for a popular hymnal from some of the music from the bawdiest folk songs that he had discovered!



One of the albums I am repeatedly playing at the moment is Freedom Fields by Seth Lakeman. I still haven't got to see him live yet, so here is a live performance of Lady of the Sea.



I love live music, and I never get to see enough of it. The last band I went to see as the Proclaimers, and I'm still giddy from it, even though it was nearly a year ago. There are many Proclaimers songs I could list, but this one is possibly my favourite (well, today, anyway).



A few years back, I dabbled in the music industry myself. No, seriously. A and I invested in a company that had been set up to make and promote a CD made by a London based band, Clear, that my friend played in. The band got some airplay on local radio stations, and even onto the soundtrack for the Channel 4 series Teachers, but unfortunately, the chance to give up the day jobs never came. Shame really, because I really liked their music. This was their first release, "Johnny Marr Was A Mistake", apparently a quote from some guy who thought that guitar music was dead, and that Marr, unmistakeably a genius, was in fact a bizarre anomaly. Eejit. I have a couple of copies of the album this appeared on, Coming Around, and one lives permanently in the car for those times when I end up driving in a bad mood. It invariably cheers me up. N, I hope you don't mind me sharing this, but finding it on YouTube was a gift, especially since I'd only ever seen stills from the shoot.



But Clear was not my first venture into the music business. Oh no. I have actually notched up a Top 10 single. Well, a B side anyway. Long time readers may remember me mentioning John Otway in the past, and in the early part of 2002, around a thousand people made their way to Abbey Road studios (A and I included) to see a small gig and take part in a recording of one of his live set highlights - The House of The Rising Sun, which has evolved over the years into a set piece of audience heckling. This became the B-side to his second hit, Bunsen Burner, which we managed to hype up to Number 9 for his 50th brthday in the October of that year. This video was recorded downstairs at the London Astoria on the night of the Abbey Road recordings and I am actually somewhere at the back of that crowd. This is another song that never fails to raise a smile and I have fallen back on it a lot during the assessment period this year.



And finally, because Boggy Marsh has recently been on Wake Up to Wogan, the theme to this top show is now firmly embedded in my mind - scroll to the fourth parchment to hear it in all its glory!

Of course, being a meme, I have to tag people, so I tag Scarletti, Stomper Girl, Hanna, HansuN and my friend Lou. And I know that's not 7, but I don't care!