This week I bought Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris's album All The Roadrunning, largely because it was three quid in Fopp and I liked the picture on the cover. The standout track for me is a number called 'Red Staggerwing':
If I was a Staggerwing plane
A Staggerwing painted red
I'd fly over to your house, baby
Buzz you in your bed
Yes, I am slightly concerned by my increasing fondness for country music. I blame Bob Harris.
Second and more festive song o' the week is 'Must Be Santa' from Bob Dylan's Christmas In The Heart. Impossible not to be jollified by the spirited accordion-playing from David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, the spectacle of Dylan singing lines like 'Who's got a big red cherry nose? Who laughs this way: ho, ho, ho?' and his assertion that Santa's reindeer are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.
Thirdly, every shop I went into at lunchtime was playing R.E.M. I was worried that I'd go back to work and find Michael Stipe had died, but fortunately this does not seem to be the case.
And finally, just purchased in Borders' closing-down sale for £1: Angels Dance And Angels Die - the tragic romance of Pamela and Jim Morrison. So ashamed. I only bought it because I was smug about recognising the title as a Doors lyric and plucking it off the shelf.
