A Walk Across The Rooftops – The Blue Nile
The title track came hurtling through an old fashioned one-piece earphone attached to my Da’s wee transistor radio I used to sneak to bed for Mark Cagney’s Nightrain. Showing me vintage there. The radio was later confiscated by my Irish teacher when she discovered I was using it as a life-support machine in her class. Was just stepping into my teens and devouring all the music I could get me ears on. Cut to our school tour months later…Golden Discs on Middle Abbey St. (RIP). A Cure album in one paw, The Blue Nile in the other, just enough dabs for one. Plonked the former back on the shelf and a lifetime’s soundtrack was born. Paul Buchanan was designed by nervous angels with a caffeine habit and a fondness for getting their harps out in the dead of night.
Hatful of Hollow – The Smiths
1985. Electricity has recently arrived. Wow. Motor cars, battery powered sheep, and now electric carving knives men can buy as presents for their wives at Christmas. People are euphoric, wild with excitement. Meanwhile, in my brother’s bedroom I delicately place a two-pence coin on the record player needle to help its journey over that scratch in the middle of the first line after Johnny Marr’s clinker of a lead-in. “Punc…tured-punc…tured-punc…tured”. Rarely works. Always needs slight pressure from the index finger to get it past check-in. Too much pressure and it’s fucked. “Punc-tured (holds breath).. bicycle on a hillside desolate”. And we’re off (checks naff hairdo in mirror)
The Lion & the Cobra – Sinead O’Connor
I remember it, Dublin in a rainstorm. Sitting in the long grass in summer, thinking we were cool freezing our balls off. We were so young then I thought that everything we could possibly do was right. I know different now.
Closing Time – Tom Waits
London by night. A room in a house in a street in a city where the neons stay lit longer than the dreams of most dreamers washed up there. The re-grouping is complete; time to return and find the one willing to waltz around to Little Trip to Heaven. Any old kitchen’ll do.
Boxer – The National
I think you’ll like this, she says, handing over a copy to him, correct ink pen used to delicately write the track-list. One misfit chaperoned two others home through an album of sonic anxiety played out through four speakers crisscrossing the country in opposite directions. Was it the second meeting or third? The album sounds like 1:30am behind the wheel on the open road, getting blinded by the headlights of your on-coming thoughts and the realisation of what might be. They share a tiny kitchen with enough space for bad dancing.
department of speculation 
Excellent choices and memories. The Blue Nile takes me back – I was a little too young to be a fan but my older sister played that on loop at night when I was trying to sleep. Even now it can bring on instant relaxation!
Oh. Squeal. Colliding with a fellow fan unleashes my latent mania. (Latent might be stretching it). They transcend description. You should check Paul Buchanan’s solo album, if you haven’t already. 🙂
Will do. Think he was interviewed recently on Anton Savage, if memory serves me right. It probably doesn’t
You’re awfy evocative when you get going with your music 🙂
Yer too kind.
Tonight’s Catastrophe reaped a solid.. 9.
Haven’t seen it yet!!! The Kid said that because I didn’t like it last week, we should watch Father Ted instead….torn loyalties or what!!! We watched the Father Stone episode…
Fear not, I think I’ll watch it again. The laughs are likely to sound as genuine as if it were the first time. It’ll be like I hadn’t watched it before either.
Have got about halfway through before the internet died. Probably just as well I let the Kid watch TV about bad weather…rather than watch this. He’s not quite ready for this much education
Haha. It was always the other way around in our gaff. Quick! There’s Da! Change over!
Have we got our comments in a twist again??! I was thinking that this week’s catastrophe was too much information for the Kid 🙂 Me and you are going to have to get ourselves in the same room/time zone.
Oh no, I got ya. You’re right, it was certainly unflinching in its sexual upfrontness. I was laughing thinking back to when the filthy stuff would be on the telly and we’d have to swiftly change channels whenever a fully fledged grown up landed in the room. Usually my Da with the solemn declaration of “that’s not very appropriate”. In that instance, the man was making the woman a cup of tea. Deviants.
Finally saved up enough internet to watch the rest. Yup, back on top form. I loved the friend stalking – and Rob was amazing at the put downs in cinema queue. Roll on Tuesday!
Too right. “You’re a chiropodist” No-one is spared a ribbing. I don’t mind the migration North London since they got stuck in to taking the piss out of it. More!
Absolutely 🙂 And fillums I won’t see til they turn up on C4!
Jake Gyllenhaal ends up in a wheelchair. Oops. Sorry.