Give love each day...

Playlist
Allan Holdsworth – Against the Clock (Disc 2)
The Beatles – Solo Singles 1969-75 (Disc 1)
Various – Super 70’s Rock (Disc 1)
Gallagher and Lyle - Breakaway

A packed day today so a long post...

Got home fine by midnight last night having collected Anne and met all her work chums. There’s something weird about being the only sober person in a stowed out pub full of dancing drunk people on a Friday night....

Up at 6 and listened to solo singles by the four Beatles, recorded from 1969-1975. I wonder why EMI haven’t had this idea yet – there are some great tracks there and the juxtaposition of styles carries on from the type of thing you had with the White album – although the standard of song-writing is slightly better since these are all hit singles...

Some lovely coffee and to the computer to compile a compilation for Meg the Black Cat’s ex-mum, Julia (I wasn’t married to Julia, she just used to have Meg the Black Cat as her pet)...

Whist doing this I updated my “Monthly Top Albums” blog, closing off September and starting October...

Julia wants something reminiscent of the music used on the soundtrack of the film “Grosse Point Blank”, which seems to be a late 70’s early 80’s mix of punky stuff, new wave stuff, poppy stuff and disco-ey stuff...

My first ports of call were my self made compilations “Now That’s What I Call Music” which trace my favourite music from 1959 to 2003 (hmm, need to update that soon...)

Then to my trusty box sets, “Best of the Seventies” and “Best of the Eighties”, then those four 4CD Sunday Times box sets I bought for £2 each a few months ago at a record fair...

Part of the remit is also to use tracks which Julia won’t necessarily know, so I also looked to the “Trojan UK Hit Singles” reggae box set...

Before I knew it, I had a “Shortlist” of over 80 tracks and almost 5 hours...

I’ll come back to that project...

Left the house at 9:45 and drove to Valvona & Crolla (Est 1934) for breakfast...



Anne had the largest bacon roll I’ve seen in a long time, which went someway to combating her hangover, while I partook of a roll with some country sausage which was red, hot and very tasty indeed...

Despite the bill being around double what we normally pay at Pattisserie Florentin, it made a pleasant change...

We’d parked in Montgomery Street, where we lived in this flat from 1983-87...



After breakfast we walked the length of our old street to Easter Road and to the Lothian Cat Rescue shop where I’d seen the Ikea CD holder on Thursday...

They were reluctant to part with it as it was an integral part of their window display but I told them it was a “name your price” scenario. I offered £10. They said that’d be great. So I upped the price to £12 (for the cats) and also bought two CDs at a stupid price of just 50p each – “The Best of Roberta Flack” and “The Best of Blancmange”....

Then back to the car and dropped the CD holder and CDs into the boot and walked uptown. We met Anne’s brother Keith and his partner Maureen on the way and we walked together to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery - a rather impressive building...



Anne and I went in and visited the current exhibition – a retrospective of the photojournalism of Harry Benson

It’s not art of course, just photos of famous people, which is what makes it really – it’s like a large room version of Hello magazine featuring US Presidents and their wives and film and music stars of days gone by...

Ordinary photos of extraordinary people...

To FOPP and, despite having been in yesterday, I bought Spiritualised’s “Amazing Grace” for just three squid....

Almost bought Elbow’s last album but remembered I have the one before that which I’ve never really listened to properly – also toyed with a couple of jazz discs and a book on the making of the Beatles’ “White Album” but stopped myself from buying...

I’d arranged to meet Phil (Dr Prog) at the record fair at 2 and went in half an hour early as Anne went off to shop for “stuff she likes”...

Bert Muirhead, one of Edinburgh’s longest standing record dealers had a stall and it was good to see him again, as I’ve not spoken to him for years and had heard he’d had a stroke. He seemed in fine fettle and certainly not as grumpy as his old reputation would have painted him (a deserved reputation it must be said!)..

Between us, Dr Prog and I bought 5 discs from Bert – I added “The Glory of the Baroque”, a compilation by the band Bread (I love their track “The Guitar Man”) and “Breakaway” by Gallagher and Lyle – a guilty favourite for me from the late seventies – to my collection...

Dr Prog progged out on two Pallas discs...

After the fair we met up with Anne and walked down to Leith Walk to find a pub in which to watch the Scotland v France game. We caught most of the Wales v Slovakia game which the Welsh lost 5-1, the score line didn’t reflect the play though but that’s football...

The first half of the Scotland game saw the home team defending stoutly but having trouble keeping the ball for any length of time. The French had the ball in the net twice, both goals being correctly chalked off for off side...

In the second half the Scots opened up the game a little and, with around twenty five minutes or so to go, managed a goal from a corner - here's rather a blurry picture of the celebrations, you can see goalscorer, Gary Caldwell's number 8 on the TV screen.......



Amazing stuff. We counted down the minutes to the final whistle and endured three minutes of injury time, during which we were sure the French would equalise – but they didn’t...

And to add to the jubilation, England, who have probably the easiest group in the competition could only draw 0-0 at home to the mighty Macedonia!! Oh dear...

By comparison, we have both this year’s World Cup finalists in our group – indeed in the last 18 months we’ve drawn with champions, Italy and now we’ve beaten runners up, France...

What a glorious day for Scotland...

By now Dr Prog’s brother, John had joined us and we walked back up the road and said goodbye to Anne who took the car home while the three musketeers headed for a Thai buffet restaurant over the road from the Playhouse where we were off to see Yes alumni Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman in an acoustic setting...

The meal was very tasty though Dr Prog was getting a bit agitated as we paid the bill and headed over to the theatre as it was getting close to 8pm, the start time...

The concert was very enjoyable indeed, with both players seeming very relaxed in this setting. Anderson sang and played occasional guitar and, as a longstanding Yes fan, it was fascinating to see him play what ultimately became complex songs in the hands of the whole band, in the way in which he must first have presented them to the group...

It must be said, re his guitar skills, that he makes a little go a very long way (to his credit though, he did play some piano too during his solo spot....



Wakeman’s piano skills on the other hand are almost without equal in the prog rock world of course and they were absolutely to the fore tonight as the music provision fell squarely upon his ample shoulders...



Tonight was the first night of their UK tour, and it showed, but, despite a few fluffed lines and miscues, the duo carried off the show in style, laughing and joking between themselves and with the audience and, unlike the non-prog rock world impression of serious earnest, now not so young, man practising their craft, they were definitely not taking themselves too seriously...

The set included three new songs and at least three further excerpts from new pieces each of which melded into more familiar material early in the evening...

Highlight for me though, was to hear Jon Anderson sing “Give Love Each Day”, my favourite song from the last Yes album, 2001’s “Magnification”, with just his own guitar accompaniment. Sublime...

During the interval, I met up with old friends Paul Reynolds, home on leave (he’s a marine engineer) and Martin Lennon (better known as Edinburgh Evening News reviewer Martin Lenon – he was at the gig on business but a big Yes fan nonetheless)...

Despite my still iffy ankle, I actually ran for a bus to take me home and was back at Crispycat Towers by 11:15 for the football highlights...

A very long, but very enjoyable, day...

Highlight of the Day : Scotland 1 France 0 / Anderson Wakeman