Welcome to the Cloudland Blue Weekly Playlist No 20...
This week, there are over 25 tasty treats on offer in the usual two hour programme and, as always, it's a varied selection...
The track list features music from 2Raumwohnung, Dusty Springfield, Jimmy Winston & His Reflections, The Divine Comedy, John Grant, Broken Social Scene, Pilgrimage, Beth Hart, Deus, The Hollies, Cloudland Blue Quartet (of course!), King Crimson, Ich + Ich, Isaac Hayes, The Graham Bond Organisation, Stephanie Dosen, Pet Shop Boys, Simple Minds, David Bowie and Pink Floyd; with classical pieces by Einaudi, Schumann, Torelli and J S Bach; and some tasty jazz from Eric Dolphy and Paolo Fresu with Uri Caine...
The majority of these popped up on shuffleplay during our Italian holiday. The Torelli, Dolphy, Fresu and Bach were acquired on the trip while the Ich + Ich, Simple Minds, Pet Shop Boys and Bowie were bought post our return...
The Floyd track I thought was just a great way to bring things to a close...
No chat (except my inane commentary below), just the music - hope you enjoy it - let's go...
2Raumwohnung - Besser gehts nicht - 3:34
The track list features music from 2Raumwohnung, Dusty Springfield, Jimmy Winston & His Reflections, The Divine Comedy, John Grant, Broken Social Scene, Pilgrimage, Beth Hart, Deus, The Hollies, Cloudland Blue Quartet (of course!), King Crimson, Ich + Ich, Isaac Hayes, The Graham Bond Organisation, Stephanie Dosen, Pet Shop Boys, Simple Minds, David Bowie and Pink Floyd; with classical pieces by Einaudi, Schumann, Torelli and J S Bach; and some tasty jazz from Eric Dolphy and Paolo Fresu with Uri Caine...
The majority of these popped up on shuffleplay during our Italian holiday. The Torelli, Dolphy, Fresu and Bach were acquired on the trip while the Ich + Ich, Simple Minds, Pet Shop Boys and Bowie were bought post our return...
The Floyd track I thought was just a great way to bring things to a close...
No chat (except my inane commentary below), just the music - hope you enjoy it - let's go...
2Raumwohnung - Besser gehts nicht - 3:34
from "36 Grad"
This, and the Ich + Ich track later on, each feature one of the Humpe sisters, who hail from Berlin and were both, in their day, stalwarts of the Neue Deutsche Welle scene prevalent when I lived in Germany back in 1980/81. Or course they've both moved from Punk/New Wave to pure pop but are none the worse for that...
Dusty Springfield - Yesterday When I Was Young - 3:41
from "Hits Collection"
Great song interpreted by a great singer. Nothing else to say really...
Einaudi - The Earth Prelude - 5:03
from "Islands: Essential Einaudi"
He is much maligned in some quarters but not by me, I am a latecomer to Einaudi's music, which I find, in the main, to be both beautiful and calming. Some may call it simplistic but, sometimes, that's exactly what you need...
Jimmy Winston & His Reflections - Sorry She's Mine - 3:01
from "The Freakbeat Scene"
Cracking rare track from a collection of sixties oddities from the Decca label...
The Divine Comedy - The Wreck Of The Beautiful - 4:58
from "Absent Friends"
As ever, enviable lyric writing from Neil Hanlon...
John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts - 6:04
from "Pale Green Ghosts"
I think I've featured this track before this year but it's worth another listen. Electronic yet not electronic. Wonderful stuff...
Broken Social Scene - No Smiling Darkness/Snake Charmers Association - 5:37
from "To Be You And Me EP"
One of these track that I've bought somewhere,sometime and, somehow, never noticed it until it came up by chance on a random listen. Very much enjoyed this one. Hope you do too...
Pilgrimage - Land Of Ecstasy - 5:24
from "9 Songs Of Ecstasy"
Picked up in a charity shop in Berwick upon Tweed a couple of years ago, I dismissed this at the time as sub-Enigma pap. But, when this popped up in Italy, I realised it perhaps deserves some further analysis...
Schumann - Piano Sonata #3 In F Minor, Op. 14, Var. 4 - 3:07
from "Schumann - The Complete Piano Works"
You can't go wrong with a wee bit of Bob Schumann in the programme...
Beth Hart - If God Only Knew - 3:48
from "Leave The Light On"
I shouldn't like this but, for some reason, I do. I think its the tremelo/vibrato in her voice that gets me...
Deus - Magdalena - 4:58
from "The Ideal Crash"
Great inventive Belgian band who've never received the recognition they deserve...
Torelli - Sonata A Cinque, Grave - 2:38
from "The Art Of The Baroque Trumpet, Vol. 1"
A version of this is on the "Baroque Music from Bologna" disc purchased this week in that very city...
The Hollies - Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress - 3:19
from "Distant Light"
A favourite of mine from 1973/74 - what many people might term a guilty pleasure but I don't feel guilty in the least for enjoying this. The B side of the single, "Cable Car", is, possibly, even better...
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Blend - 4:04
from "Soundingfall"
Aha, as ever, one of my own pieces. I listened back to a couple of CBQ albums in the very early hours one morning in Florence and particularly enjoyed hearing this track again. Lyrics written in Canada, incorporating ideas from a piece by Alistair Cooke from his series "Letter from America", which I was reading at the time...
Eric Dolphy - Eclipse - 2:45
from "Tre strumenti per un genio"
A track from a Dolphy compilation picked up in a Bologna flea market...
Paolo Fresu / Uri Caine - Roberto Strepitoso - 4:52
from "Think"
...while this was from a disc acquired under similar circumstances in Ferrara...
King Crimson - Requiem - 6:38
from "Beat"
Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew at their manic best, over further improv from Tony Levin and Bill Bruford - my favourite track from this 1982 LP..
J S Bach - Concerto For Two Violins In D Minor, BWV 1043, Largo Ma Non Tanto - 6:30
from "Masters of the Baroque"
A beautiful piece of writing from the hand of one of the all time masters...
Ich + Ich - Vom Selben Stern - 3:49
from "Vom Selben Stern"
Second of our German contingent today and a single taken from the LP of the same name - picked this up in the local British Heart Foundation shop for a couple of quid - a quite unexpected find indeed...
Isaac Hayes - Good Love - 5:19
from "The Ultimate Isaac Hayes 1969-1977"
You can't beat a bit of Ike...
Graham Bond Organisation - Have You Ever Loved A Woman? - 4:53
from "There's A Bond Between Us"
...or some British blues from Graham Bond and friends...
Stephanie Dosen - Vinalhaven Harbor - 3:22
from "15 Years Of Bella Union Records"
I had no idea of the background of this young american singer songwriter but was hooked when this turned up on shuffleplay...
Pet Shop Boys - Everything Means Something - 4:51
from "Elysium"
Three tracks from purchases made in HMV's bargain basement this week. PSB are up first, with a track from what I'd thought was a lacklustre album. On listening again though, I have now declared it to be "no bad"...
Simple Minds - Theme For Great Cities - 5:51
from "Celebrate: 1979-1984"
Great instrumental from my favourite period of Simple Minds - before they went all stadium on me...
David Bowie - Drive In Saturday - 5:22
from "VH1 Storytellers"
The original of this was the Exec Producer's and my music for our first dance at our wedding in 1983. It was only a few years later, when I tried to learn it, that it dawned on me that it is indeed a waltz. Very apt, albeit in retrospect...
Pink Floyd - In The Flesh? - 3:20
from "The Wall"
Watching a bootleg vid of Roger Waters' Wembley performance of "The Wall" from last year, took me back to the original LP. This is a brilliant opener and, paradoxically, I think it's also a brilliant closer for today's programme...
Hope you enjoy the podcast and will pop by again next week...
Watching a bootleg vid of Roger Waters' Wembley performance of "The Wall" from last year, took me back to the original LP. This is a brilliant opener and, paradoxically, I think it's also a brilliant closer for today's programme...
Hope you enjoy the podcast and will pop by again next week...
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