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Musical Surprise · Mar 30, 06:13 AM

Tonight, while cooking, I stuck the Al Stewart classic “Year Of The Cat” in the player, and was surprised, again, by just how good this music sounds…

not just the intelligent writing, exemplary playing blah blah

but the overall sound of the recording

which reminded me of a morning in early 1982, in Wedding, Berlin, unexpectedly a surprise, cash came in the post, so I decided breakfast out was in order… a cafe near the wall, still there today (cafe not wall)... I was early, alone, and the waitress stuck Year of The Cat on the turntable… I hadn’t heard it in years, and sat, surprised that such an old, and frankly untrendy at that moment in time, set of songs could be, well, played, and that I found them so moving…

I was transfixed, good coffee, good food, the weak spring sunshine mounting the window and that surprisingly good sound carrying me into the future..

reminds now me that when I first heard that record, would it be 1976? that was a superblast of surprise into the charts and my hearing, that something so intellectually broad, with such a wide and tasteful instrumentation and yes, that sound, could exist in the public sphere

well, that’s something music can do isn’t it, when it speaks, it cuts through all the dross, hopefully…

a bit like being three years old again, and hearing Petruschka for the first time,

but that’s another story

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