The musical equivalent of well-read

The title of this comes from a compliment I once got from Jose. But this post makes me question whether it was really a compliment or not.

During the clear out and tidy up of the roof space (that is slowly killing me)  I came across my CD collection. They were proudly displayed in my room until a few years ago it became apparent there was really no need as everything was on my computer and iPod.

Or so I thought.

Part of the process of the tidy up is to put things into plastic Ikea boxes (or samla in Ikean). As I was putting them in I realised that I had never imported some CDs onto my computer.

[The links are to the You Tube video of the mentioned song for you to hear and remember. I haven't listened to them much past the opening bars. Hope there's no effing, jeffing or inappropriate content.]

Ever keen to right the wrong of BBMak et al not making onto iTunes I set to and spent a happy 6 hours importing and playing tunes from days gone by. I tweeted about it too, mentioned the fact that I was putting on the hits from Nows 29-35 that had previously been overlooked. Needless to say some tracks didn't make it; my iTunes knows of no such artist as Michelle Gayle for instance. But my goodness there were some classics on those Now albums, such as Corona, Rhythm of the Night, The Boo Radleys, Wake Up Boo! (Did they have another hit?), Ini Kamoze, Here Comes the Hotstepper (same question applies), Supergrass, Alright, The Outhere Brothers, Boom Boom. Need I go on?

I found two Brit albums (1997 and 1999 - Billie Myers, Kiss the Rain, Alisha's Attic I Am, I Feel were both nominated. Who knew?!) Mind you, even with those discoveries the only Manic my iTunes knows is of the Monday variety for the Street Preachers will never be on any iPod of mine.

Other CDs I imported were Surrender from Autumn Soul Tour all those years ago (I don't know why, I can still remember singing Better is One Day in parts), Tunes from the Toons (what? It's for the kids!), Cast (bit of Britpop never hurt anyone. Well except possibly the Gallagher brothers) and Travis (for when I want to be depressed). Soundtracks were not ignored anymore, and happily imported is The Thomas Crown Affair, Sister Act, Shrek and Pretty Woman. Good times.

Then I came to the singles box. Oh dear.

It didn't start off well for me with singles. The very first one I ever bought was Boyzone, Love Me for a Reason. Actually, it didn't start of well for albums either, that purchase was Wet Wet Wet, Picture This, no tracks off which got imported during this discovery. Says it all I think. Thankfully it picked up for the firsts, iTunes reveals the first song I ever downloaded, way back in 2005, was Arcade Fire, Rebellion. I get some cool points for that one, right?

Anyway, CD singles. Making on this time I added some classics. Ahem. Who remembers Smashing Pumpkins, Tonight, Tonight? Me, I do! Great strings, shame about the singing. And Fool's Garden, Lemon Tree. Ah the memories of listening to that on my mini hi-fi.

In the box alongside the modern CDs were tapes. Yes, actual cassette tapes offof the eighties. Except I bought them in the late nineties, early noughties. I couldn't play them to listen to them on my computer. I'm sure there's a device I could get on a Sky Mall-esque magazine but no need because the interwebs has reminded me of all I needed. For your musical enjoyment and laughter here are the songs that I bought. With actual money. I haven't heard of any them since.

[Some of the videos won't embed but you can still click through to hear them.]




'It's all about the money. It's all about the dum dum de de de dum'. Apparently those are the lyrics that made Ivor Novello start the awards.



I can only assume, from watching this video, they were some sort of Hanson wannabes.




A bus and a train you say? 'Eighteen wheeler' is probably too hard to fit into a line.



I really don't know what's going on with the flames in this video.

Other cassettes I had from this era included these greats. Sorry.

99 pence?! What a bargain for a piece of chart history.

Again, sorry everyone. I helped it stay at number one.

What was I thinking?!

I will not apologise for this one though.

This is like a badge of honour for any teenage girl growing up in the nineties.

No, it was meant as a compliment and I shall take it in that spirit. You can see why I'm having a hard time though.

From the drafts: Done giving

This should have gone on here on 12 December 2009. Somehow it never made it. But now, now is its moment in the sun!


You know me, I like a laugh and this has been a recent favourite of mine of late.

Driving through Dungiven, you'll see this sign:

Dungiven is so not the place to shop. Any Christmas.

I don't know anyone who would think of doing their Christmas shopping in Dungiven. But as if to prove it just a short drive down the street you pass a shop with these outside.

Looks like something Sky Mall might have.

I'm not even sure where they're supposed to go.

As if they weren't bad enough there's the window display.

Quite a niche market I'd say.

Colorad-snow

See what I did there? Because it's Colorado but there's lots of snow there, especially this time of year. Oh, you got that. Ok then.

So yes, Colorado. Good times. Last you heard we'd gone to the skating on New Year's Eve. It was a really fun way to spend it. I'm not the biggest fan of New Year's, all a bit of an anti-climax, but this was cool.

A proper pose from my camera. That's the lakehouse in the background you can see. I've read afterwards the lake provides 8 acres of ice. Needless to say we didn't skate on all of it.

They had these fire pits all around the rink and gave out skewers and marshmallows. Nice.

There were a few ice sculptures around the place, added to the atmosphere.

It's a bear!

But these on the way out were hard to beat. Life size ice sculptures!

We were excited for 2011.

With 2011 underway it was time to get down to skiing. Except that it was freezing. Like I said reportedly -25c. So we took down the Christmas tree instead. It was quite the job actually, being as it was 16ft tall.

We had a competition to see who could find the last decoration on it. And I'm happy to tell you, Princess fans, I won! Thank you, I'd like to thank my mum, my dad and of course, my optician.

So with the tree down and temperatures closer to zero (fahrenheit) we got down to the business of skiing. We were skiing in all new places this year, which was exciting. If we were sad about not skiing in some of the places we loved other years, we forgot about it getting off the first chairlift of the trip.

Ah the Rockies.

I do heart a blue sky.

We were only two days into our skiing adventure when disaster struck, Megann got hurt when she fell. I didn't see what happened exactly. I saw her on the ground, trying to get back up and it seemed to be taking a while, so while I waited downhill I watched a real life rescue of another skier. He was being bundled into one of those stretcher things for ski patrol to take him down. Eventually Megann made it over to me and promptly fell again. I realised something was wrong when I worked out that she was crying and not laughing. I took my skis off and ran up to her and struggled to get her skis off. It was coming close to 4 o'clock and so the lift operators were making their way down. One of them, a girl on a snowboard, stopped beside us. With Megann lying on the ground, crying, and me sitting beside her she asked "Is she crying?".

I replied "Yes, she's crying!"

And with that she snowboarded off into the sunset, as it were. I thought for a second she was off to radio for help and then I realised how the conversation must have gone from her end:

"Is she fine?"

"Yes, she's fine!"

Oops. But who asks a question like that anyway. Wouldn't you say "is she ok?" or "is she alright?". So with the realisation that this girl wasn't off to get ski patrol, we thought about what to do next. The problem was with Megann's knee. That day I had brought with me the tape the physio gave me for my Nadal knee so because Megann thought she could give skiing a go at least, we taped that round her knee and set off. Thankfully we made it down the slope and back home. 

In the morning though, we her knee swollen, we decided that we should take a break from skiing. It didn't affect our lift passes, so it was a lazy morning in the house, a trip to the mall and my beloved Panera.

Fuji apple salad I love you.

The next day, Megann again felt that she shouldn't ski, so I went out on my own. I've never even so much as done a run on my own so this was a whole new experience for me. On my first chairlift up I changed my mind about four times as to what I was going to ski. We chose a good place, with lots at the base for Megann and well, slopes for me. I made Megann videos for her to see what it was like.

Yes, 'a wagon and a jump and a bridge and stuff'.

There were lots of photos of me like this that day.

Or like this.

Although there is a proper one too. The lady that took this picture interrupted my video making to get me to take a photo of her and her daughters so I got her to repay the favour. Plus it gave me the opportunity to explain that I wasn't talking to myself.

Excitingly, we skied at Vail this trip! When I first started dreaming of skiing in Colorado about the only ski places I had ever heard of were Aspen and Vail. Turns out that Colorado have tons of places to ski, ones that you don't need to sell a kidney to afford. But as I was throwing all caution to the wind with this trip this year, what the heck, ski at Vail?! Ok! And my goodness, you need to build up to it, it is huge. Massive. 

Brilliant!

This is me skiing down one of the back bowls. So normally there's the front side of the mountain, and some places have back bowls. Well Vail has a whole other part at the bottom of the back bowls - you don't have to get a lift back up to where you came from! Oh no, you can go to Blue Sky Basin! I love blue skies. I love Vail.

But there are a lot of catwalks to get you places on the mountain. Catwalks were not our favourite. They are slow and not very exciting.

This is on a catwalk. Otherwise known as the slow boat to China. That's Megann in the background. You daren't stop on a catwalk or you'll never get going again.

Who knew Vail was in continental Europe?!

They are just all about winter at Vail.

A chair made of skis! Clever.

Even though (or maybe because) we were skiing in all new places, I kept getting flashbacks of other places we've skied in Colorado. Like a certain run, a chairlift, or the lodge would remind me of somewhere else. At the end of our first day at Vail, I was skiing down to the base and was thinking how I hadn't had that feeling all day, that is was like nowhere else we had skied. Well the clever people at Vail must have realised that too because that's only their tagline (or words to that effect). 'Vail: Like nothing on earth'. Ha!

I still maintain if the leaders of the world were to go skiing together there'd be less war.

Sky Mall Christmas special

You really have been very patient, I have been hideously late with my root through Sky Mall but, finally, here it is. But as we're nearly in the season I thought it would be nice to make this one a Christmas themed one. Oh yes, Sky Mall class is for every occassion!

Outdoor decorations

Now, I know you are thinking about how to go that extra mile with your Christmas decorations. Sure there's a tree inside, cards up, perhaps even a banner or some streamers. But how do you make it seem like Christmas from the outside in? Let Sky Mall help!

Oh look! What's says Christmas more than a little deer family?! You're right, probably reindeer or something. But deers, deers are good too. Look, they've got 'Mother', 'Baby', and oh...can't help feeling a little bit sorry for the one named 'Medium' though.

Sky Mall laughs in the face of 'Santa Stop Here' signs. A 14 foot inflatable Santa train is what you need.

So often Christians feel that Christmas has been high-jacked by all the Santas and snowmen and the real reason has been forgotten. I think you'll agree that this glowing manger and little baby Jesus for your front garden will put a stop to that. Form an orderly queue now.

That's right, the candy cane archway is listed under improvements. What a winter wonderland!

But everyone on my street has inflatable snowmen, moving Santas and little baby Jesuses Sky Mall. How do I make my house different? Ah ha, light projection reindeer! Golly, thanks Sky Mall!

Hard to buy for people (aka awkward buggers)

Sky Mall really is the best place to start for those difficult people in your life that don't need anything/aren't interested in anything/have no clue what they'd like. Let your fingers flick to find the perfect present!

Cooking hot dogs can be so troublesome don't you think?! Not with this pop up hot dog toaster!

Come on! Who doesn't want to make their bed that bit more comfortable?!

This one is labelled carefully for the wine enthusiast. I can't think of a wine enthusiast I know that wouldn't like these reindeer stoppers! Thank goodness they're back.

Know an entertainer?! Say hello to the instant doorway puppet theater! Endless hours of fun to be had with this!

Outdoorsy sportsfan to buy for? Look at these cute Forest Faces! That's right, they're the latest craze in outdoor decor, and can't you just see the appeal? And did you spot the pun...'who are the trees rooting for'! See what they did there? Rooting, tree roots. Ho ho! Bonus points to you Sky Mall!

Has a coffee table ever been so...kitsch?

Excuse me Sky Mall. Did you not say Forest Faces were the latest craze in outdoor decor? I think you have done a disservice to our meerkat friends here. And just think of them beside the lions, or the sumo wrestler, the yeti...

Who doesn't want to fall asleep under the some sort of dodgy picture of themselves/their children. That's the way I want my memories perserved!

But yet again Sky Mall, yet again...

You've managed to prove that you're not all tat and crap! You do sell something slightly worthwhile and something that I actually kind of want! A heavy duty Christmas paper storage bag. And I see it's for all my wrapping needs, what with space for bows and everything! Sure beats that old Yellow Pack Tin Foil cardboard box we stole from Stewarts circa 1990 that we used for (I wish I was joking) ten years.

42 days and counting...

Seriously, who buys this crap?!

It won't have escaped your notice that I got a fair few flights recently. And what does flying mean?!

Sky Mall!

So here we go with another round of crap!

Are you kidding me? As if the prospect of moose head on your wall wasn't bad enough! You're supposed to put up a dinosaur head! Nobody will believe you killed it you know (unless you're Jeff Goldblum...maybe).

No, now you're kidding me. A sumo wrestler garden sculpture?

This, quite frankly, is taking the piss.

If you had this with this you really would look quite the nobbit.

Forget about the door screen Sky Mall, where can I get that outfit?!

Of course, the welfare of aging pets was once again taken care of.

But there were three main problems that this issue dealt primarily with. Problems we've all had I'm sure.

1. Unsightly litter trays

Does it help with plant growth?

I wouldn't want my handtowel in the same room as the litter tray, let alone in the same unit!

2. Packing shoes

Five pairs of shoes in just one pair?! I never thought it possible! But it is, all with the simple switch of a sole.

Shoes are so bulky aren't they? Not these fashionable articles though! They flatten and fold!

3. Cleaning high up

Wowzer! Look at all the attachments!

But wait! Which one Sky Mall, which one?!

There was, however, one thing in the entire magazine that I thought was cool.

Sleep suits in adult sizes!

I managed to restrain myself from ordering one. I don't think I could bear the indignation of 'Sky Mall' showing up on my credit card. They might think I got the Garden Yeti.