CRYSTAL DAYS

I was on an underground train in Toronto yesterday. I was wearing a t-shirt that featured a silhouette image of Will Sargent. A young kid - maybe 20 years of age or so - obviously on his way to some sort of club while I made my way home to a cup of tea, an early night and a few more pages of The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven by Alan Warner, stared at me as he waited for the train to pull into his destination.

'Cool shirt.' he said. 'The best band to come out of Liverpool' he added.

And who am I to disagree with the youth of today??

song : Echo & The Bunnymen - Show Of Strength

song : Echo & The Bunnymen - The Killing Moon (Jo Whiley Session version)

I again apologise to regular readers if there's any frustration about the lack of posts appearing here, and also for the fact that so many of the songs are a tad obvious. I'm still unable to access only a few hundred songs that are on the back-up portable drive I have with me in Toronto, and I still don't know how I managed to fail to load everything that's on the hard drive on the PC back in Scotland - such as the many great and unusual Bunnymen songs I have on vinyl.

Another fresh experience awaits me tomorrow evening - I'm being taken to my first ever hockey game. It's a pre-season friendly between Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators. Given that my favourite football teams back in the UK lost again for the second successive Saturday, I'm sure I'll jinx the Leafs to a setback defeat.

There is of course only one tune that can be dedicated to this historic event in my life:-

song : Super Furry Animals - Ice Hockey Hair

And finally for this evening, a little bit of self-indulgence.

Some 10 years ago, there was a band called Foil. They hailed from the Edinburgh area, although in truth the members were drawn from all corners of Scotland. They released a handful of singles and two albums on an offshoot of Mute Records. They reminded me a lot of Husker Du/The Pixies, and I was quite taken by them. I was introduced to the band by my mate Jacques the Kipper who had gone to school in Buckie (a small fishing town in the far north of Scotland) with the singer Hugh Duggie (his real and admittedly unusual name).

You will all know that over time, friends and acquaintances can somehow lose touch with one another as family life, bringing up kids and moving jobs all change tour circumstances. That's what happened with Jacques and Hugh.

But the other day, Mrs JtK went to a meeting in Edinburgh, and there on the list of folk around the table was one Mr H. Duggie.....of whom Mrs JtK had heard a lot but sadly had never met.

A few minutes later, she had Hugh's phone number and e-mail, and now two great old friends of times long ago will be meeting up again.

song : Foil - Are You Enemy?

And of course there is also only one song that can commemorate this particular event, which I would post if I had it on the portable drive - so if you want to listen to Chance Meeting by Josef K, you'll need to head over to The Video Villain where I've posted a clip.

Ciao.