Who was it who said "nostalgia is a thing of the past"?
Perhaps the Buddha, because he said that the past must not be hankered after since it's done and gone and there's naff all you can do about it (which really makes taking people to court for crimes they committed more than a nanosecond ago a bit of a non-starter, I would like to be tried in a Buddhist court if I ever do anything really bad: "When did you nick that Martin guitar? Last week? Case dismissed").
Anyroad up, where was I? Ah yes, I was going to say something about the year that's gone.
What a damn fine year it has been:Â loads of great albums and tons of great festivals - far too many for me to list here.
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It will be a matter of no interest at all to any of you (but I will mention it anyway) that I am a very keen (fanatical) fly fisherman.
Like Jeremy Paxman and the late and wonderful George Melly, I have a secret life in which I wear rubber and mess around with bits of fluff and feather which I then chuck at trout in the vain hope that I might persuade one of them to come home, wear a foil overcoat and jump in the oven.
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died a few days back - one of the most remarkable children's authors ever - creator of Noggin the Nog, The Clangers, Captain Pugwash and Bagpuss amongst many others.
He was a life long socialist (no surprise really when you consider that his father, Raymond, wrote one of the best histories of the English working class), and when Bagpuss merchandise started to appear Oliver sent most of the money to Romanian orphanages and to a centre that looked after unwanted cats.
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For the last few months I've had the pleasure of introducing unsuspecting audiences to XTC, via the song 'All You Pretty Girls'.
I first came across XTC through my teenage self's favourite band, . Andy Partridge had produced demos for their album '', before being passed over as producer of the real thing in favour of Morrissey collaborator Stephen Street.
Around the same time, I heard XTC's '' on the radio and decided (mistakenly) that the bloke singing it must be Andy. It was a bit of a shock when I investigated further and was confronted with the seal bark of '' or ''.
Still, having been primed by the more post-punky end of Britpop - particularly Blur and - it was not an unpleasant surprise.
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In the last week, I've become drawn into two discussions/arguments on the internet that have occupied my thoughts.
Both revolve around what belongs in a genre and what doesn't.
The first was about the , won by an English folk act for the first time in ten years.
The second was over the Young Folk Award, won by Megan and Joe Henwood - fine performers of self-written songs, and which I was lucky enough to be a judge of.
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Down in the Smoke for the Young Folk Award Final, we Northerners huddled round a fire we'd made out of the cheap Swedish chairs in our hotel lounge and had a good old moan.
That's one of the great things about being from the North - when in Londonc city you can have a good old moan about everything - particularly the South.
The main moan last night was about the lousy pubs down here.
Then it struck us that - with a few exceptions - the pubs back home were lousy too, so we had a god old moan about them as well...
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My mention of 'classics on plastic' in the last blog brought a flurryette of emails with blogisers ideas of other plastic gems lying vanquished in the great archive of Lethe. (River of Forgetfulness - not Edinburgh)
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I was looking at the mess in my studio the other day: heaps of CDs lay waiting to be filed, more on the floor lay waiting to be listened to.
In a separate work area away from the mixing desk and the microphone was a mountain of feathers, fur, thread and hooks waiting to be turned into fishing flies for a book I'm writing.
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writes:
But in all seriousness, it is such an honour to be a part of this fantastic project with all these superb musicians. And so different from anything I have been involved in previously. The other day whilst was rehearsing her new song for the first half of the show I was blown away. I said to myself, 'I'm sorry I can't take this, it's all too beautiful!'
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