Comfort shopping

[j4]

Music, first. I went to Fopp in search of Eliza Carthy's "Red", because I couldn't find my ripped copy this morning, I wanted to listen to it, and if I like something enough (and I do, I do!) I prefer to have the real thing.

Obviously, though, I can't go into Fopp and just buy one CD. Which invariably means that I come out with a bizarre collection of stuff. The chappy at the desk only looked slightly askance at me for this lot:

• Eliza Carthy, "Red"
• "Calendar Girls" OST
• Suede, "Head Music"
• Captain Beefheart, "Doc at the Radar Station"
• Erasure, "Hits!"
• Jacques Loussier, "Toccata/Play Bach" (2 CD set)

But I suspect there's enough there to draw disparaging comments from at least half of my readers; the jazz snobs probably despise Loussier, the indie kids will laugh at me for being completist enough to want to listen to Suede's death throes, the rockers and metal-heads will mock me for being soppy enough to want Beth Nielsen Chapman's "I find your love" (which is why I bought the Calendar Girls soundtrack), and everybody will quite justifiably laugh at me for Erasure.

Music may be the food of love, but I needed LUNCH. Sainsburys are back in my good books now as I managed to find a Thai Green Chicken Wrap; also bought raspberries, malt loaf, 85% Lindt (for medicinal purposes!), pasta for dinner, an Innocent smoothie (they're so expensive but dammit they're also so nice), two cans of coke, and two avocados. The avocados are medicinal as well, actually. And the coke, too. Honest.

To complete the comfort-shopping thing, I let myself be seduced by a gauzy red silk shirt with ruffles and a ribbon-lace-up front. God only knows when I'm going to wear it, because I don't go out any more, I don't need to look sexy, I don't feel sexy. But it is very pretty, and maybe one day I will wear it. And it was only cheap, unlike the shiny black Prada collarless jacket with the rubber pocket-trim and collar trim which is only 100 quid despite being brand new with labels still attached showing the RRP of £1330 ... eBay eBay eBay ... NO, NO, NO. Oh, and I didn't buy the very very short grey pleated skirt, even though it was cheap, because I actually took the time to try it on & it didn't quite sit right on the hips. So I can feel virtuous about not buying another stupid thing that doesn't fit me.

Sometimes all we can do is look after the little things.

Comments

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Looks like a perfectly reasonable set of CDs to buy to me.
But then, I listen to music with dustbins in, so who am I to talk? :)

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

Ned's Atomic Dustbin?

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Bizarrely, given my age, I've never actually heard the Neds.
(I was speaking, of course, of the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten, who on at least one occasion really did use (plastic) dustbins as drums. :)

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

Not Stomp then? ;P I haven't played any Ned's in ages. I love the sampled Dead Poet's Society.

[j4.livejournal.com]

The Neds were mostly crap, but "Not Sleeping Around" was kind of good at the time, in a sub-Wonder-Stuff kind of way.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

The avocados were two for a pound, so that's okay.

[j4.livejournal.com]

How did you know that?? SCARY AVOCADO STALKER!!!!!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

well, if people are to be ridiculed for liking Erasure, I end up on the barricades with you.

One of the cooler things about being married to someone of the order of ten years older than you is the number of things you half-remember that they taped off the radio and have on ancient uncatalogued mix tapes. [ which reminds me, I have been meaning to look up bands for the stuff on the tape I sent you; send me the tracklist and I'll fill in the artists ? ]

[nja.livejournal.com]

Nobody's going to laugh at you for Doc at the Radar Station, though. My favourite Beefheart album. Sue Egypt!

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't say it's my favourite, but it's still a belter, and it's impossible to laugh at people for owning Beefheart albums, though it's a moot point when it comes to "Bluejeans And Moonbeams".

[nja.livejournal.com]

Trout Mask Replica is my Official Favourite Album of All Time (though the Fall's This Nation's Saving Grace is too, sometimes), but that's not so much an album as a way of life. B&M has "Pompadour Swamp" and "Same Old Blues" on it, and "Observatory Crest" and the title track are OK if you can swallow Beefheart as romantic crooner.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Erasure is Ace. So no laughter here.

And I'm tempted by the Calendar Girls soundtrack for the exact same reason as you.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted by the Calendar Girls soundtrack for the exact same reason as you.

AFAIK it's not on any of BNC's own albums, so I wouldn't feel terribly guilty just mp3-ing that one track; it's not as if I'd be doing her out of album sales.

[goes and checks]

Oh, bugger. It is. Which means I could have just bought this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001XQDQ6/qid=1095260350/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-8081069-4692447), which would have been Much Better.

I'll still rip that track for you if you want though.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

That reminds me, I've promised to rip a copy of my Nearly Dan album for a Danhead up in CompSci, in exchange for some obscure Fagen outtakes. Only even if I do, I can't remember his name, and I only bump into him by accident about once a year.
Hmmmm.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Nearly Dan?

My dad gave me his Steely Dan Greatest Hits tape last time I was visiting. It's only a pirate copy, but hell, the music's still great, and I listened to it in the car all the way home. And spent the whole tape going "Oh, yeah, I do know this one". I think he must have played it a lot when I was little & I just sort of subliminally absorbed it.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

Nearly Dan are an SD tribute band from Macclesfield/Buxton-ish. Not bad. I have the Tshirt and everything. They have an album that was recorded live at Ronnie Scott's. Must see if they have any more... and then there's Stealing Dan... and the Hoops McCann Band... and Walter did production for China Crisis... and...

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

They never recorded anything as good after "All Around My Hat" though.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

I spent my entire lunch-hour looking for tasteful giftwrap (that is, neither easy-tear tweeness nor cop-out Art Lite). Nearer my grave to me, etc.

The only surprise is that you didn't own those CDs already.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Paperchase is your friend. Buy plain giftwrap in bold colours, accessorise with contrasting/complementary ribbon, sequins, whatever you think you can get away with without looking too gay.

Or wrap in newspaper and say "What the hell, you were only going to rip it off anyway".

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

without looking too gay

Now why would anyone want to do a thing like that?

Er ... football.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Er ... football.

Ooo, you're so butch.

[juliet]

I concluded a year or so ago that I'm not going to buy giftwrap any more, because newspaper (or pretty pages from the Guardian Weekend magazine, since we buy that occasionally anyway) does the job perfectly well & doesn't seem such a horrendous waste (both financially & environmentally). I might back down from this for Posh Occasions (someone's wedding or something, I guess), but Christmas & birthdays newspaper is fine. No one has complained yet.

I love Loussier.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

the jazz snobs probably despise Loussier,

Excellent; I'm not a jazz snob!

Re: I love Loussier.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I always worry when I like jazz that it's The Wrong Jazz...

This is just brilliant, though. I just don't know why nobody played me his stuff when I was being forced to play Bach on the piano as a kid. My musical tastes might have turned out very different indeed. (Though actually I suspect they'd have just reached the same point by a different route.)

Re: I love Loussier.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Some might not say Jacques Loussier is jazz at all, but his interpretations of Bach are thoroughly enjoyable. File next to the Swingle Singers and _their_ take on Bach from about the same time, and next to the wondrous Wendy Carlos and her synthesised Bach, which is the kind of music that makes you want to down some Moloko Plus, tolchock a few chellovecks and come back with a couple of devotchkas in tow for some of the old in-out-in-out.
As for the "wrong" kind of Jazz, well everyone knows it's Kenny G and his ilk. The kind of music that is labelled as "smooth" jazz, "smooth" meaning "bland" as in "Tetley's Smooth".

Re: I love Loussier.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Some might not say Jacques Loussier is jazz at all

Watch me not care. :-)

Though it's funny, it really is only jazz that I have big musical insecurities about. Everything else, I can just like or not like, and even (in some cases) talk intelligently about; but apparently you can't "understand" jazz unless you play it, and I just ain't got that swing.

Kenny G and his ilk

Ah, yes, musak.