O Canada

I'm sure I would have liked this record if I'd just come across it on CD, but I love it for its record-ness. Jesse Winchester came from Louisiana and escaped to Canada to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war. The cover of his first record, which came out in 1970, made him look as if he were escaping conscription into the army of Robert E. Lee. Bizarrely, it's on the Ampex label. Robbie Robertson produced it. It's one of the best half dozen things he ever did. On the face of it this song is a straightforward bucolic fantasy. However he leaves her in the end because he can't help doing the wrong thing. Until this week I hadn't played the vinyl for thirty years. I can't tell you how good it sounds.

Sanctus

This is the "Sanctus" from "If..". It's by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin who were a choir put together from Congolese boys by a Belgian priest. Being a public school Marxist, Lindsay Anderson no doubt loved the irony of using them as the soundtrack for the rebellion at his old school. But what makes it work is it's just an unbelievable sound.

Books aren't the only things that furnish a room

There used to be cheap furniture stores where you could buy a yard of books.
Somebody should do the same with LPs.

And it stoned me

Hardly played a CD all weekend. Pretty much all vinyl. Don't know how long this enthusiasm will last but for the moment I can't believe just how much kinder vinyl is to your ears. Dug out the old copy of Van Morrison's "Moondance" that I bought in 1970 after hearing John Peel play "Into The Mystic" (probably the sum total of its UK airplay at the time) and just stood there looking out of the window at the garden through the whole first side. Felt transported, which doesn't often happen.