Looking Back - Travelling Tunes

In the interests of full disclosure, and because I like lists, here's what I brought back from Manchester on the music front: Tales From Topographic Oceans by Yes (already the subject of a confession in a previous post); Arthur Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire by The Kinks; The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic; Lennon's Plastic Ono Band; Springsteen's The Promise; K.T. Tunstall's Tiger Suit; All Delighted People and The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens; and, gulp, the Original Movie Soundtrack of Grease. The last of these was a birthday present for the missus. Honest.

No spoken word stuff this time. It's largely dried up in the shops. The Waterstone's on Deansgate used to have several shelves devoted to the same, as did HMV. Now it's hard to spot. I suppose interested parties obtain it on-line. In fact, generally the range of books available seems to have been reduced. Fewer philosophy shelves at the aforementioned Waterstone's, for example, though, in fairness, the poetry section has not shrunk.

But, going back to the music, I was pleased to note that the big HMV in Manchester is making some kind of attempt to provide a fair range. I was heartened to find the Traffic, Yes and Kinks' CDs there and could have bought a few more if I'd had room in the luggage - though not the full catalogues by any means.

I'm a bit concerned by my retreating into the past though. That's why I bought the K.T. Tunstall disc, to get something reasonably current that I wasn't familiar with. I heard her live on Radio 2 and was quite impressed so I thought I'd give it a go. Toe-tapping stuff, but a bit light. I may see what Fifi thinks of it. It's nice that the BBC goes out of its way now to promote live coverage of bands.

And, of course, you can't get more current than the wildly eccentrically creative Mr Stevens. The Adz album is like a huge, multi-layered cake of extraordinarily sweet delights. Everything seems to be in there, including the tuneful kitchen sink. Does this kind of thing ever win Grammys? Does it need to?