Music Lists

There was a thing doing the rounds on Facebook a few weeks back where people were being asked to name the top 10 albums of their younger years, the premise being that the music of your youth has a far greater sway over your musical preferences than anything you hear at a later date - which got me to thinking.

I don’t entirely agree with that view, but, before I get into that, let’s start with my list of the 10 albums that, in my younger years, spent more time on my Dansette than any other. In no particular order, they are:-

Who’s Next – The Who

Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

All Mod Cons – The Jam

Le Chat Bleu – Mink De Ville (a flawed but forgotten classic – worth checking out!)

I Don’t Want To Go Home – Southside Johnny & The Ashbury Jukes

Heat Treatment – Graham Parker & The Rumour

My Aim Is True – Elvis Costello

London Calling – The Clash

Colossal Youth – Young Marble Giants

Now, while it is true that I can, with suitable encouragement in the form of an appropriate form of liquid refreshment, probably sing every track on Born To Run and Who’s Next, in order, from start to finish (and this from a man who has absolutely no memory for lyrics – despite having played “The Weight” at most gigs with my band for the past 10 years, I can still only remember the verse that I sing), I really can’t remember the last time that I played any of the above in full. While they most definitely formed a part of my personal musical heritage, I have no burning desire to go back and re-visit them with the intensity and frequency that I used to. They are all most certainly, very fine pieces of music (I will accept no dissent on that point!), but they are more remembered with fondness than played with passion. So, while I get the "music of your youth is very influential" thing, I don't think that you are then incapable of being similarly affected by music  you come across in your later years.

To illustrate that point, I now have another set of 10 albums that I have discovered/re-discovered (some of them coming from a time before I started listening to music avidly) in later years that are more of an influence on my musical taste as the “teenage” list above. And these are:-

Mule Variations – Tom Waits

El Corazon – Steve Earle

Moondance – Van Morrison (way better than Astral Weeks – the World’s Grumpiest Songwriter ™ will never write a better opening five tracks to an album)

The Band – The Band (the motherlode of all Americana)

Nebraska – Bruce Springsteen

Time (The Revelator) – Gillian Welch

Heartbreaker – Ryan Adams

Anymore For Anymore – Ronnie Lane

Pretty World – Sam Baker

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road – Lucinda Williams

Interestingly, this second list does get played regularly – nowadays, I will reach for Nebraska rather than Born To Run, Mule Variations rather than London Calling, Anymore for Anymore rather than Who’s Next. And, arguably, my musical taste (both what I listen to and what I play) is much closer to my older self’s list than the music of my callow youth.

The Return of the Prodigal Blogger

It's been quite a while - and, despite the occasional nudge from my GLW* I have managed to not post a blog for about 6 months. However, I now feel the need to arm myself with virtual quill and parchment and cast my words of wisdom on to the four virtual winds. In fact, my new 2017 self is determined to make this at least a monthly occurrence.

Why the need to start up again? Well, when I started this blog, I envisaged it as a commentary on my transition from 41 years and 5 months of working (not that I was counting) all with the same organisation, and the difficulties that I expected to encounter in moving into a life of gainful non-employment - I had some serious concerns that I had become institutionalised and the seismic jolt from no longer being at work would be significant (and, therefore, would be useful source material for a blog!).

Well, I got that wrong (initially). I slipped into the life of a non-worker with considerable ease. I found a number of activities to stretch me - building a guitar, trying (and failing - but I'm still trying!) to make decent bread, helping out with a number of local charities and other organisations - and had very quickly achieved what I felt to be a sensible balance between keeping myself busy and allowing myself time to do what I wanted. My GLW* commented that, far from taking some time over a transition to retirement, I seemed to carry on without a break in step - once I'd shaken off the hangover from my work leaving drinks, work was behind me and I was home free. Consequently, I felt I had little to write as it was all going so swimmingly.

That was all going fine until Christmas, when I had a bit of a set back, which I take as a delayed reaction to retirement (and, at this point, I really need to apologise to my family for my grumpier-than-normal attitude - looking back, I realise that I was less than perfect company). For a period of about 4 weeks, I felt disconnected and adrift from the world. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it was the hiatus in the activities (volunteering and so on) for the holiday period that suddenly left me with not a great deal scheduled to do. What I seem to have been doing is using my activities as a work substitute to make me feel that I still have some utility, and I hadn't prepared myself for (or recognised the effect of ) a break in that.

I hadn't realised how important my activities had become in my post-work world until they disappeared for a period - and when I started getting involved again in early January, everything started feeling a bit better. When you boil it down, I feel the need to be needed - the portrait I carry of myself in my head of a completely independent and self-sufficient person needs a bit of adjustment!

Now that I've got that worked out in my head, I'll still continue to do what I do, but I'll be better prepared for the next break.



That's it for this time, and I promise that next month's missive will be lighter and less focused on the retirement angle. I will wrap up now with my "what I've been listening/reading/watching" selections:-

What I've Been Listening To
I've not been seriously attracted to any new music this past month or so (it's usually not a good time of the year for good music), but I have been exploring some old stuff, particularly on vinyl, as I mentioned in my last blog. Although it's not recognised as one of his best albums, I have been enjoying my vinyl version of Mr. Zimmerman's "Planet Waves", especially as I've recently realised that it is the only official studio release that he did with The Band.

What I've Been Reading
And on the subject of His Bobness and The Band, I got "Small Town Talk" by Barney Hoskyns for my 60th birthday in December. It tracks the history of Woodstock (the town, not the festival - despite being held some 60 miles away, the festival used the name of the town) as an artistic community, focusing on the time that Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison and various other luminaries spent in the town. Fascinating reading.

What I've Been Watching
Retirement has afforded us a great deal more time to get to the movies, and, as we are running up to awards season, there has been a slew of excellent films released recently, My favourite, though, must be Nocturnal Animals - stylish looking, multi-layered plot, and three top drawer performances from Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal and the very wonderful Michael Shannon.


*Good Lady Wife

So - summer happened.....

...and I didn't get anywhere close to living up to my promise of writing more frequently, but that (with a following wind) will be changing. The upside of my self-created absence is that I've amassed a heap of interesting (to me) items that I will share over the coming weeks. First up though is music - or more specifically, the effect that the form in which recorded music is presented affects my engagement to it.

Courtesy of a benign confluence of events (my wife buying me a vinyl record player a little while back, and a visit to the Vinyl Head Cafe in Ramsgate which has a sizeable stock of good condition vinyl for sale, primarily from the 1970's and 1980's), my interest in the remains of my once very large vinyl collection - a good 80% of which went to boot sales and charity shops quite some years ago - has suddenly been re-awakened. I've spent the last few days playing, and enjoying, some old records but the enjoyment isn't just that I have damn good taste and therefore the music will always sound good. It's the ritual of playing an album, the length of time it consumes and the artefact itself that are as important as the musical content.

I don't necessarily hold with the view that "vinyl sounds warmer/better/more organic". I can't afford, am not interested in and am unlikely to buy a vinyl playing rig that will be anything more than mid-range, and, furthermore, the records I have got in my collection have gone the rounds of parties, numerous house moves and inappropriate storage conditions. Consequently, they will always sound sub-optimal compared to CDs or MP3s. My ears have never been good enough been to identify subtle improvements in sound quality - I remember experimenting when I first got an iPod and I couldn't hear any difference between a full lossless recording and a 96K MP3 - but I do know that a CD sounds (to my ears) way better than my rather battered vinyl does. So it's not the audio quality that attracts me (far from it!).

So, here's my opinion.

Playing vinyl involves a number of things - firstly, there's the ritual of getting the music ready. It's only a small thing, but the act of taking a record out of its sleeve and lining up the tone arm is considerably more effort (and a bunch more interesting) than hitting play on Spotify. Of course, the record sleeve and the record itself are things of beauty (well, a lot of record sleeves are - notable exceptions are also available) as is the information contained on them (notable exceptions to this are also available - step forward Led Zeppelin) and the pre-play perusal is part of ritual.

Secondly, the average LP is about 40 minutes in length, which feels to me like just the right amount of attention I would want to devote to listening to a single slab of work by any one band (this is also why I will never again listen to the Tales From Topographic Oceans triple - officially The World's Most Unlistenable Album), and you get a break in the middle to reflect, review and compose yourself before launching into side 2. During the early days of CDs, artists were cramming upwards of 16 tracks on each CD giving some way north of an hour of music, which is way too long to sustain quality and interest. 12 tracks maximum is what you need - 9 or 10 is better!

Thirdly, I have noticed that, for me, ubiquity of music creates a deterrent effect. For instance, I recently got a six month free trial of a Spotify Premium account. Total number of songs listened to on Spotify during that time - 15, and 3 of those were songs I wanted to learn for an open mic session. By making music entirely available and frictionless, I find I lose interest and very quickly disengage. Make me work (even if it's only digging out a platter and giving it a spin), and I've made enough of a positive choice to listen to the album all the way through.

I won't be ditching my MP3's (it's the only option I've got for listening when I'm on the move), but I'm certain that I will be choosing vinyl as my preferred listening mode at home from here on in.....

Yeah, I Know.........

It's been a bit of a while - turns out that this being retired malarkey takes up all of your time (who'dathought?).....

So, since my last missive, and now that I consider that I am a fully paid up retired person, what pearls of wisdom and sparkling insights have I unearthed? Quite simply they are:-

1. What's work?
Despite my expectations that there would be a huge sense of dislocation for me (especially after being with the same company for over 40 years), my fears that I had become somewhat institutionalised were entirely unfounded. I've not thought about work, I've not missed the responsibility (I've certainly not missed the stress, the commuting or the politics!) and the fact that the budget that I now look after has a considerably fewer number of zeros on the end compared to the accounts I was responsible for while in work matters not one jot. In light of this remarkably smooth transition into retirement, from my next blog onwards, I will endeavour to stop referring to my previous life at work - that was then and this is now.

2. I Like Doing What I Want To Do
Within reason (and the reach of my pocket), the freedom to do the things that I want, when I want (take in a movie in the afternoon, wander down to the seafront for a coffee, go out for lunch with my GLW) is hugely liberating and enjoyable. Although I managed to pack in a fair few activities when I was working, I was always conscious of the fact that I had to pick and choose what I was able to do and I often had to make hard choices about missing things that Jacqui and I both wanted to do.

3. There's A Lot To Do
In addition to the stuff that I've been meaning to do for the past few years (mainly related to re-decorating and repairing various parts of the house - which has moved on leaps and bounds in the past 3 months), I've been sticking my nose in to a number of things. I'm now a member of the local film club (which shows a varied - in all senses of the term! - selection of independent and foreign films), I've started helping at the Town Shed (see http://www.broadstairstownshed.org.uk/ for an explanation of what this is), I've signed up for a guitar making course which starts in September (don't hold your breath - the classes are only once a week, so it is likely to be a good couple of years before I get to the finished product), I'm giving guitar lessons to two of my neighbours and to an acquaintance who I met at one of gigs and I'm just about to start with my first crack at home brewing. And, of course, we are trying (and, on the whole, succeeding) to keep up the "Fun Fridays" routine that we started when I dropped down to 4 days a week working back in October last year.

4. It's All Good
Yep - it pretty much is. Looking back, I almost feel annoyed with myself for having taken the whole "my work is important to me, and defines part of who I am" schtick. While I can understand how, in certain jobs (teaching, medicine and other essential services) that may well be the case, the 20-20 vision that I've now got from hindsight tells me that, for a lot of jobs in the big old corporate world, that's a complete bunch of old tosh. At least I have my health and (hopefully!) quite a few years left in the tank to enjoy the "all good" part.

So that's it from me for now (apart from a promise to check in a bit more regularly from here on in - honest guv!) - the next blog should feature reports from my brewing experiences, and I'll also be venturing back in to the world of breadmaking (tried it a couple of times back in April and just got it all wrong!! - time for a re-match methinks).

Before I sign off, a little update on the "What I've Been..." front

What I've Been Reading
Slowly working my way through the substantial pile of books I got for Christmas, and I've just finished "A Matter Of Life And Death - A History of Football in 100 Quotations" by Jim White. Informed, irreverent, insightful and very funny - if you have any interest in football (and, being a Charlton supporter, you could say that that is questionable), I can highly recommend it.

What I've Been Watching
Even more subtitled stuff - we've just finished a French drama called Disparu (Disappearance). Taut, twisting and with some great performances from the central characters (the parents of the teenager who has gone missing), and a wonderfully grumpy police detective. Catch it on catch up if you can.

What I've Been Listening To
Courtesy of the death of Dave Swarbick, I started to dip my toe into the rather substantial Fairport Convention pool - until two weeks ago, I can't recall having knowingly listened to a complete Fairport album. I started off with Liege and Lief - and having got much further. Blimey - what an album? I'll get on to the rest later, but I'm astonished that I'd not heard (or appreciated) this beforehand,

Till next time......

And ………we’re back.

Apologies for the lengthy delay, but I’ve just returned from a 3 week trip to China to visit my daughter who is working in Suzhou – an amazing experience and one that we hope to repeat next year.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, now that I’ve had the first couple of weeks honeymoon period of retirement, followed by the China trip, the real process of actually being properly retired starts now. First up on the list of retirement activities will be a stab at beer brewing and some bread making – watch this space for updates, pictures and (maybe!) tasting notes.

It is now a little over 6 weeks since I handed in my company ID card. Admittedly my mind has been pretty fully occupied since then with the immediate post-retirement flurry and then the trip to China, but I can quite honestly say that it has been considerably less of a wrench to leave work than I initially thought (and feared) that it would be. Apart from sending an email yesterday to one of my ex-work colleagues to get an update on a big contract renewal that I was working on at the time that I retired (it’s all going fine, by the way), I have had no contact with work and, more importantly, I have not thought about work at all since the day I walked out of the door. I was always very careful to compartmentalise work and social/family life (with very little crossover between the two) and, by pure luck, that seems to have been a strategy that has made the move into non-employed status that much easier.

I’ve yet to really find a schedule that fits with this new chapter of my life, but it will come with time and I don’t intend to rush it (and time is what I’ve got plenty of). We recently met up with some friends who were camping nearby (Graham and Sheila - both also retired) and, while relaxing in the sun enjoying a beer and a glass of wine, Sheila mentioned that “this was all good” – she didn’t just mean that particular moment, but in the wider sense that we were all fit and well, unencumbered with work, financially OK and able to take advantage of a sunny day with friends.

Yep – life is good…….

I'm Kind Of Getting Used To This...

The beginning of week three of my retirement, and the sky shows no signs (yet) of falling in. I've still not launched fully in to the big list of retirement activities, as we are shortly disappearing off to China for three weeks to visit our daughter who works in Suzhou and I didn't want to start anything that would then need to go on hold.

However, I can add the following to the list of "things I've noticed" that I put in my last blog. When I was at work, my day was governed in half hours - half hour for a conference call, half hour for a meeting, half hour to prepare for a presentation etc. Each day was a patchwork of 30 minute blocks of time. Now - boy, is it different! I'm measuring time in days ("I need/want to get this or that done today" rather than "I need/want to get this or that done in the next 30 minutes"). The sense of freedom is quite liberating (and a bit scary), but it feels, with each passing day, that this is how life should be rather than the harum-scarum existence I had previously been used to.

See you in three weeks when we return from foreign climes.....

Early Days

So - the fuss and celebrations are all behind me now, and I've completed my first week as an officially retired person. Does it feel any different - not yet (still seems a bit like a holiday), and I'm in a bit of a hiatus as, in a bit over a week's time, we're off to China for three weeks to visit our daughter, so I've been loathe to launch myself in to any of the "what I will do when I retire" list until we return.

However, I have noticed a few significant changes (apart from the lack of an alarm clock going off at stupid o'clock every weekday):-

• My head is no longer full of that constant work-related chatter (must remember to send off that email; what should I do about that contract negotiation; where can I get hold of a specialist in asset management etc.), and consequently, I find that I can think a lot more clearly - and (heaven forfend!) I'm actually paying attention to everything that Jacqui says.
• That Sunday evening "it's work tomorrow - I need to mentally gird my loins for the upcoming chaos and madness" feeling has gone. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed my work, but I used to have to wind myself up ready for the working week, which meant my mind went to another place from late Sunday afternoon onwards.
• My do list has shrunk dramatically - it may be blindingly obvious (duh!) but I've now got way more time than I thought possible to do all those things that I'll get around to some time - not only that, but I have the time to do them properly, rather than rushing to fit it all in to a weekend.

Early days yet, but I think I may well get used to this more quickly than I thought. And do I miss work? At the moment, not one single bit........

And to close off, number one in an occasional series of "What I've Been Reading/Watching/Listening To":-

What I've Been Reading
The mighty David Hepworth has just published "1971 - Never A Dull Moment", which holds the premise that, following the break up of the Beatles in December 1970, the following year marked a sea-change in rock music and contained more ground-breaking, seminal and just extraordinarily fine music than any other year. Whether he's right or whether he's wrong, it is (as you would expect) a more than entertaining read - and having listened to chunks of the accompanying Spotify playlist, he's got a more than valid point.

What I've Been Watching
We seem to be going through a bit of a purple patch with TV drama, but I 'd just like to commend two things - a piece of Scandi-noir - "Follow The Money" - which has been keeping us gripped, and the homegrown "Line of Duty", which is now on series 3 and is showing no signs of ageing - in fact, by tying the plotline from series 2 into series 3, it has leapt up the "must watch" scale. Also worthy of a mention is The Big Short - I've read many books about the 2008 financial crash (and the rampant greed, idiocy, arrogance and incompetence that accompanied it) and so I'm pretty well versed in a lot of what went wrong and why (basically, it was all down the aforementioned greed, idiocy, arrogance and incompetence) - however, this film follows the few people who foretold the crash, and what they did about it. Well worth catching.

What I've Been Listening To
As noted above - David Hepworth's 1971 Spotify playlist. Not only are there more brilliant tunes per inch than you could sensibly wish for, the fact that, in 1971, most of these people were kind of making it up as they went along makes the music all the more astonishing.

Till next time......

So. Farewell then....

After a grand total of 41 years, 5 months 23 days of working in the IT industry – and, in fact, for the same company – I’m about to call it quits. I’m just heading into the office for the very last time to hand in my company effects – PC, phone, ID card and so on – and , I’m half expecting that they’ll rip off my badges and buttons, break my sword, and drum me out of the fort (those of you of a certain age will get the reference).

I will then meet up with a sizeable band of work colleagues to mark the passing of this particular milestone by drinking myself to a standstill.

And then the adventure starts….

Aha!! (and not in an Alan Partridge way...)

I had one of those moments yesterday, when I realised what it was that was causing me to feel a little anxious and unsettled about giving up work. Obviously, I will miss the people I work with (well, some of them..!) and the intellectual, commercial, contractual and logistical challenges that arise more regularly than you would think possible in the boring old world of corporate IT outsourcing, but I now know the one thing that will really leave a hole.

Being in demand.

Yesterday, I got a request to join one of our senior consultants for a day's workshop up in Edinburgh with a prospective client. As the day in question was the day before my retirement, I very politely declined and, in a very professional manner, found someone who could do the gig in my place. However, what struck me was the fact that I got a small (but noticeable) buzz out of the fact that I was being asked to attend purely because of my knowledge and experience. It may come across as being rather egotistical (those who know me well may be entirely used to this!) but it's the "we want you to help us because you're good at this" that I think I will miss way more than I thought. It's taken me a long time to get to "elder statesman" status and that's a big thing to relinquish.

So - the task ahead is to find something else (other than the boring old world of corporate IT outsourcing) that I can be really good at.......

The Finish Line Is In Sight

It’s now 10 working days to the fateful day, and (at last!!), my workload is really tailing off. Major milestones that I have passed since my last blog:-

·         I have finished my last ever monthly sales and revenue forecast review session (by my reckoning, I have done over 400 of these in my working life)

·         I have written my last ever performance appraisal for one of the team who work for me (I can’t begin to guess how many of these I’ve written over the years)

·         My inbox has a total of 4 (count ‘em – 4!!) messages in it waiting to be dealt with

·         My diary for next week contains the grand total of 7 appointments (that was the average for a single morning previously)

·         I’ve just dumped a couple of my work suits – I skipped my usual “buy two extra suits at the start of each year” this time around, and have been eking out my current set of suits, hoping they will go the distance. I noticed that two of them are a little worse for wear, and, courtesy of extended usage, have some additional ventilation in the “gentlemen’s area” so they have been consigned to history. The remaining three should see out my final days.  

Come the end of next week, I will have also completed my last visit to my client in Huntingdon (being as I live in Broadstairs, that’s a journey I will be immensely pleased to never have to experience again!), and then it will a gentle run down of tidying up some administration, tying up a few loose ends, going through the pointless farrago of an exit interview (I’m retiring because I’m old and my pension is sort of where I need it to be – what more do you need to know?) and being on hand to deal with any last minute queries before I finally hand in my phone, company credit card, PC and ID card (oh, and my last expenses claim!). However, the one thing I am really, really looking forward to is telling LinkedIn to bugger off and leave me alone…..