To cast or not to cast...

Playlist
Andrew Hill – Compulsion
John Surman – Glancing Backwards
Allan Holdsworth – Against the Clock
Girls Aloud – The Sound of Girls Aloud
Various – This is Reggae Music 1960-1975
Pet Shop Boys – Performance

Track of the Day
Desmond Dekker and the Aces – 007 Shanty Town (2:33)


Nice trees this morning on my walk down the road...



To FOPP at lunchtime today for the first time this week and could not resist their offer of Trojan 3CD Boxes for just three pounds each, snapping up five and taking my total of these wee gems owned to nineteen...

Track of the day is Desmond Dekker’s “007 Shanty Town” which, according to the Trojan Box Sets website, appears on a goodly number of the compilations and so I thought would be reasonably representative...

Also partook of FOPP’s £5 offer on the Trojan 4CD box set of “This is Reggae Music : The Golden Era 1960-1975” – which includes the Dekker track...

19 discs for £20 – not bad value methinks...

Now I am thinking of starting a Reggae Club....

Another thing I’ve been swithering about recently is a podcast venture for Cloudland Blue, inspired by Mr Sid Smith...

When I first started buying records around 1971/72 and over the next few years, I used to make up my own charts and, with the use of my dad’s wee portable cassette recorder, I would record my own “radio shows”, introducing the records I was playing and talking about them in between...

Probably no bad thing that none of these tapes exists, but there’s no real difference between what I was doing then and making a podcast now – although obviously it’s all a bit more high tech these days and there would of course be the very slim chance now that someone other than me might actually hear it...

So, if someone else might hear it, I’d probably need to bone up a bit on what I was playing, so as not to sound like a daftie in between the tracks...

And, unlike the old days, where I would just chat into a strategically positioned microphone whilst digging out the records and playing them, I suppose these days I’d collate beforehand, all the tracks I was going to play, put them into some programme on the PC, record all my links separately and perhaps put some background music behind my dulcet tones to avoid the dreaded “dead air”, then splice everything together...

Then I’d have to convert the file to MP3 and upload it to my online server then post it up, either here or, perhaps, on a new “Podcasts” blog...

I’ve always wanted to be a DJ and, it would seem, now I can be (and so can anyone else I suppose, given the technology) but, hmmm, a lot of work, considering only a couple of people might listen (judging by the plays so far of all the “tracks of the day” I’ve posted this month) but, like this diary, it might be an interesting historical document (for no one else other than me of course) were I to go back and listen at some point in the future...

And it would provide a chance for readers to hear the music I’m listening to – but why would they – they have their own collections presumably, for which they may well have paid good money and want to enjoy – but then what’s the point of music radio then?

So, I have twelve tracks ready to podcast, should I find the time – my methodology for choosing what to play? Well, I’m leaving that to chance – 3 tracks each from the Rock & Pop, Jazz, Classical and Compilation Jukeboxes respectively, chosen completely at random by each machine’s shuffleplay facility...

Anyhoo – this evening I returned home carrying my FOPP booty and Anne was already home and preparing a giant lasagne with salad and garlic bread and our good chum Chris-with-a-C was also at Crispycat Towers, enjoying Girls Aloud’s greatest hits CD...



An excellent evening ensued with some top reggae tunes from 1960-1968 soundtracking much drinking and carousing prior to a superb meal....



Of course, Meg the Black Cat joined in as usual...



Then we enjoyed the ribald humour of Mr Frankie Boyle on the DVD purchased at Xmas....

We ended the evening with some Pet Shop Boys, as Chris set off into the night to travel back to the kingdom of Fife and the chef took a well earned snooze...



A good day...

Highlight of the Day : FOPP bargains, Anne’s cooking, good company, Frankie Boyle, PSB...