30 day song challenge: day 27 – a song that you wish you could play

A lot of the time, I’ll hear a song and think, “With a little bit of time and practice and patience, I could play this.”

Not this, though.

Why Everett True is wrong

Written for Collapse Board

“Mostly only art created by women has any validity. The male experience has been created and recreated so often” – Everett True, 1992

That is such bulls***. It’s like saying that only Tuvan throat singing/rock hybrids have any validity because you don’t get much of that, either. (And, f***, it’s good stuff.)  I don’t flip the sleeve over to check the gender before I’ll listen to the record, any more than I’d think too much about whether they were, say, Turkish. And, yes, a Turkish act does bring a certain flavour to the mix that you rarely get with non-Turkish acts. It’s informed and shaped by its Turkishness but not wholly defined by it because it’s more than that and to reduce it to that is to insult it.

Take Aylin Aslim, for example. I don’t know who she is, but I love her. I don’t have the slightest clue what she’s singing about (though Google translate tells me it’s called “ghoul”). There’s definitely a Turkishness to what she does, but I don’t set out to listen to Turkish folk. I just like this one – her – because she has such a don’t-give-a-f*** attitude and playful energy that makes her an absolute joy to listen to.

Happy New Year!

Like many little girls, I had piano lessons as a child, and reached an acceptable if not exceptional standard – perhaps the story of my life – before I lost interest and picked up the guitar instead. (I never excelled at that, either.)

I had a few sheet music books – Pink Floyd, a mixed songbook with The Beatles and a few others, and of course Tori Amos, since she was synonymous with “piano” when I was in my teens. Cornflake Girl was too hard for me, but Pretty Good Year was fairly easy, and a great way to round off any year. It’s also a fine tune, so here is Tori playing it on Top of the Pops: