Retrospective: Ears Wide Open

Just recently I've been making mention in this Far Place of one or two of the CDs I picked up on our European jaunt, so I thought I'd go the whole hog and spill the beans on the entire cache. This won't take much time as I consciously, manfully, somewhat ruefully, kept a grip on my wallet, not so much because I couldn't afford to throw the green stuff around, but rather due to the fact I don't consider myself as having done anything like justice to the music I already own. (And this guilt is multiplied when it comes to DVDs. I don't own that many, but I'm far from having viewed all of what I've got.) Another relevant point here was not wanting to overload our baggage on the way back. I can rely on Noi to do that anyway with all our other purchases.

So the number of CDs purchased added up to a paltry eight, one of these being a 3 CD and another a 2 CD set. Of these, two were of the spoken word variety - the Naxos Selections from The Faerie Queene (with three CDs) and Great Poems of the Romantic Age (with two.) A chap named John Moffat reads the Spenser and he is excellent. I'm familiar with his voice from a couple of my Penguin audiobooks, two collections from their poetry anthologies series. Somehow he manages to sound quite old fashioned in a dignified sort of way which suits The Faerie Queene well, but he's also got a surprising range of 'voices' for characters and does great justice to the denizens of the faerie kingdom. Fortunately the grudge-nursing system in the bedroom seems to find the set acceptable so at the moment this constitutes my late night listening.

The other six CDs contain some super music. There's the Eno and Fripp couple I got in Paris regarding which I've previously waxed lyrical. Then come four that cost a measly twenty quid in total, picked up in HMV as they carried 2 for 10 quid stickers: Paul Weller's 22 Dreams, which I bought along with Neil Young's Living With War; and Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago, along with which I snaffled the Bobster's Another Side of Bob Dylan. I'm uneasily aware that drawing attention to the price(s) makes me sound like a cheapskate, but since this is no great secret I can cheerfully admit to it. In defence of what musical integrity I have left, I'll just say this is all stuff I've wanted to get for some time.

On the DVD front, by the way, The Blue Planet was the big buy, but I also found a copy of Danny Boyle's Millions which I've been keen to get hold of.

When we were in England and France I didn't have that much chance to listen to all this as we generally let the girls play 'their music' in the car(s) or on available stereo systems (which were in short supply.) So we got more than our fair share of Beyonce, JLS, Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas and the like. (Hope I got the names right.) But I must say, I rather enjoyed bopping along to their stuff. I've never really held with the idea that music is not what it used to be. Most of it sounded pretty cheerful to me. I think it's ears that deteriorate.