Nostalgia...

Monday and Tuesday I take the youngest offspring to school so instead of a four minute commute in the car I get a fifteen minute circular route, yes I know life is tough for me but I'm bearing up.

Last night as I rummaged around in the garage, the garage that is still full to the roof, from the back to the front, of Whites Removals boxes with just a narrow path winding its way through the stacks, one day we will have sorted out the inside of the house and then we'll need to decide which of this extra stuff was worth bringing from the old house and which of it should really have joined the other mountain of stuff that went to various charity shops and/or the tip.

However, last night Jodie insisted that I install the speaker system to the computer in her bedroom so that she could once again blast out her selection of what is jokingly referred to as music from her Napster connection - so out in the garage I went looking for the speakers and the cable link.

While out there and after opening forty or fifty boxes I found some assorted cd's that I'd forgotten about and in that very box I found a cd that I'd definitely forgotten about - a "twin" cd containing both of Rod Stewarts first two solo albums, "An Old Raincoat Will Never Let You Down" and "Gasoline Alley", 1969 and 1970 respectively.

The cd went in the car this morning and during my 15 minute circuitious route to school and back I wallowed in nostalgia in tracks from the "Old Raincoat" album - how much simpler life was in those days when if you wanted to listen to your music collection you had to sit within listening distance of your record player at home, and how much simpler was it back then to produce a "progressive" album - the "Old Raincoat" album has lots of strange guitar breaks and an overwhelming bass line on all of the tracks, in fact the bass is massive right across the album and a couple of the tracks actually have bass guitar solos - how many music tracks have you listened to where the bassist gets a solo ?

Its all in the name of "progression" of course and in the late 60's all serious music artists who weren't called Englebert Humperdink were experimenting with sounds and instrument combinations that have long been disgarded as "strange", but still, its great to drift back there and have a listen to what is quite a dark album by comparison to the shite that Mr Stewart has released since - Gasoline Alley on the other hand is much less experimental, has some very basic but nonetheless good rock tunes on it and two incredible ballads that have never received any recognition at all - "Lady Day" and "Jo's Lament", wonderful stuff, I could cry with the nostalgia of it all.

I must root around in those boxes again some time and see what else I can dig up from the record collection, I know for sure that theres a really early Joe Cocker album languishing out in the garage somewhere.