Unfathomable things

To Mark, anyway.

I LOVE this record - love it, there, said it. Why? I cannot possibly say. Tony Hadley looking like a preppy bank manager, strings, clichéd sax break, WHITE grand piano, terrible 80s suits, but it just gets me every time.

The single came to light as we were having a massive clear out of vinyl records at the weekend.

Mark: 'I've gone through all of these and wondered if you (really!) want to keep any of these . . .

Ten minutes of shuffling through a stack of 80's and 90's music . . .

Me: 'Sorry, but I have to keep: KLF, Alien Sex Fiend, Yello, Bauhaus, everything by The Cure, Bandulu  - who was that? Blancmange . . . '

Mark: 'The Electric Light Orchestra? What!

Me: 'I know, it's just that track, Mr Blue Sky . . . it makes me feel happy, if I'm ever not . . . feeling happy.'

Not that I need it as I can play it all in my head, along with all this other stuff, but you know, nostalgia and all.
Of course, Mark would have been listening to Ornette Coleman, Egg, Stockhausen and Charles Mingus when I was happily wallowing in sentiment, singing along to Tony in my Morris Traveller, little knowing our paths (me and Mark) would cross and our record collection would become amalgamated, so to speak.

Anyway the records have been stowed away for another few years and I'll take the more embarrasing ones to a shop in Toulouse that sometimes buys a pile knowing there are one or two possible gems amongst the future landfill - or those bendy plant pots you can fabricate.

Think I might follow this with a post of KLF's Justified and Ancient, featuring Tammy Wynette - one of the more wonderful and bizarre offerings of the very early 90s.