50 Songs

or Now That’s What I Call 50!

It’s my fiftieth birthday this year and, for a bit of fun, I thought I’d make myself a mixtape, a playlist of The Fifty Greatest Songs* of My Life…

*OK, so perhaps they’re not objectively the “best” songs that have been written in my lifetime, rather they’re the songs I have enjoyed most or which have resonated with me on some level. There’s also a practical element in that the playlist has been put together to soundtrack a birthday roadtrip my partner Katy and I are taking at the end of November. But that’s another story.

Some of the 50 songs are purely emotional hyperlinks to a time in my life that the music brings alive in a particular way, songs that vividly conjure up places and people dear to me. Some are earworms that ruled my brain for extended periods of time for no other reason than I happened to be especially receptive to being imprinted with music at that moment. Some, particularly the ones nearer the top of the list, are songs I come back to again and again, that are woven tight into the fabric of my life. Reflecting on the process of putting the list together, it’s clear how much the live experience has shaped my love of music – both as a player and performer and as a listener and fan.

I have put these songs in order – not necessarily a Best Of order, but an order that makes sense to me, both as a measure of how long the song has been a part of my life, as well as the depth of resonance it has on me now. There could easily have been another fifty songs here, endless permutations, but to get to this fifty I felt I had to use some selection criteria, namely:

1. Does the song still spark joy?
2. Is it, in the widest possible interpretation of the word, a banger?
3. Can I imagine requesting this song to be played at my funeral.

With all that in mind, here’s the fifty songs with tweet-length commentary to boot.

50. I Got No Common Sense by Ivor Cutler

• Speaks for itself, really.

49. Welcome to My World by Jim Reeves

• I used to think my parents weren’t really music lovers. Music was something they played for vibes at dinner parties. But in Gentleman Jim’s soothing baritone, I hear my Dad’s own voice and know that he savours every note.

48. Alpine Slopes by Dermot O’Brien 

• The music I grew up to. Scottish country dance music meets European polka. I was initiated, aged 7, into the rudiments of accordionism at the stubby grubby hands of sadistic maestro “Wee Joe” Vettriano.

47. Petite Fleur by Acker Bilk

• My accordion tutors hated me playing by ear but in high school my music teacher Mr Morrell was all for it. He gave me a clarinet & a tutor who wasn’t mental. This was the 1st song I learned off a record & my intro to jazz.

46. Don’t Be That Way by Benny Goodman

• I adored the sound BG made on the clarinet more than anything for what felt like years. Weekly trips to the EK music library took me in new directions, with new kinds of music to get obsessed by. My true musical education.

45. Let ‘Em In by Wings

• Homage to the car tapes of our classic orange Ford Cortina estate that took us on countless holidays from Devon to Moray, France to Monkton. I hear that litany of names in the chorus and remember all my brilliant aunts, uncles, lost pals…

44. Labour of Love by Hue & Cry

• Local Lanarkshire pop heroes. Took my brother to see them Nov ’89. Only learned much later the lyric is about Thatcher & her toxic Tory politics that fucked working class areas like ours for generations.

43. You Take Me Up by The Thomson Twins

• Another song about “working”. I was a big fan of these guys. My music teacher was always asking me about the music I was listening to, what it was I was responding to. Dunno. Maybe it was the hair.

42. Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull

• One-legged rock flute! Beards! Men in tights! I became a Tull fan in my late teens after my cockeyed stoner drummer pal Les introduced me. Edinburgh Playhouse ’89 (my first proper gig), then a freebie in Berlin ’91.

41. Willie Stewart by Eddi Reader

• The songs of Robert Burns always seemed a dour exercise in heritage interpretation. Eddi Reader & her band magic them into catchy, dancy, joyful pop songs, which, it turns out, is what they had always been all along.

40. Bağlama Uvertürü by Çetin Akdeniz

• The Keith Richards of the Turkish bağlama. Abiding memory of a line of young Turks dancing down the aisle of a coach barrelling around the twisting country roads of central Anatolia on a school day out. Glorious.

39. S’agapo by Alkistis Protoptsalti/ Goran Bregovic

• “I love you
  I love you because you are beautiful
  I love you because you are you
  I love
  I love the whole world
  Because you live in it”
  
  (Bit much?)

38. Harramt Ahebak by Warda 

• The Belly Dancing Years.
  
  The song translates as the opposite of the one previous. Literally, “I have given up loving you”.

37. Snip Snip by The Tiger Lillies 

• In an alternative universe, I am a lairy old clown in the spirit of Martin Jacques of The Tiger Lillies and I sing a jolly falsetto like this in a never-ending cabaret of doom and debauchery across the world…

36. Start Wearing Purple by Gogol Bordello

• In a different alternative universe, I am dirty old and useless clown in the spirit of Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello and I make gypsy punk party music like this in a never-ending carnival of chaos across the world, etc.

35. La Marée Haute by Lhasa

• “The head is satisfied, but the heart has not enough”. Story of my career right there.

34. Le poinçonneur des Lilas by Serge Gainsbourg

• Referred to by my mum, when I listened to it incessantly at home over a period of months, as “Dipty Troo”.

33. I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango) by Grace Jones

• Russell introduced me to her amazing One Man Show – which I’m immensely grateful I got to see at Barrowlands in ’03. This song, accordions & all, set me up for Astor Piazzolla much later.

32. Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla 

• If my soul was a musical instrument, it wouldn’t have the sound of the clarinet or the saxophone, or even the accordion, but the bandoneon. And it would sing like this. Maybe.

31. Legend by Huun-Huur Tu/ Angelite Bulgarian Voices

• Witnessing this performance at Greyfriars Kirk at the Edinburgh Festival in 1999 was as close to a transcendental experience as I’ve ever had. Utterly utterly incredible.

30. Chicken Payback by The Bees

• Just one of the greatest songs of all time.
  Also, that video.
  Also, RadMac.

29. Three Hundred Pounds of Joy by Howlin’ Wolf

• “Hoy, hoy! I’m the boy!
  I got three hundred pounds of heavenly joy
  I’m so glad that you understand
  I’m three hundred pounds of muscle and man”

Howlin’ Wolf gives voice to my inner bluesman.

28. Accra City Blues by Blitz the Ambassador

• Spent several days googling flights and investigating travel possibilities to Ghana on the strength of a single hearing of this song on 6Music one night. Sometimes the music just finds you.

27. Yekatit by Mulatu Astatqe

• Sometimes the music just finds you (Part II).

26. Life’s What You Make It by Talk Talk

• Sometimes the lyrics just speak to you.

25. Europe Endless by Kraftwerk

• “Life is timeless, Europe endless.”

24. Prenzlauerberg by Beirut

• There was a time, in the mid-to-late 2000s when this band, this album, ruled my world entirely. The songs just dance along ecstatically, one into the next, like an evening revelry spinning through hot southern European streets.

23. Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

• Started playing in bands in the late 80s. Everyone seemed to be into prog, esp Floyd, exemplified by my pal Brian & his pal (who became my pal) Russell. InterRailed across Europe to see this show at the Berlin Wall in 1990.

22. Love & Hate by Michael Kiwanuka

• Just a beautiful, soulful piece of music – that voice, that arrangement – in the spirit of the great soul singers of the past. I met Katy at Kiwanuka’s gig at the Art School in October ’16, the beginning of a great adventure.

21. Real Gone by Sam “The Man” Taylor

• This cured me of thinking I had to enjoy widdly jazz just bcos I was a sax player & absolved me of the guilt of preferring stuff the jazz snobs I knew sneered at. Big blues. Big tone. Big joy.

20. Hideaway by David Sanborn

• In El Paso, my band pal Clarissa gave me a cassette of Sanborn’s music when I was still just a clarinet player – but I was 100% alto sax from that moment on. That sound of his lives in my bones.

19. Tahah by Masada

• Mid 90s Edinburgh, this on repeat for months on my portable CD player. Experienced their unbelievable intensity at Queens Hall in 98, again in Aosta, Italy, in 2005 with Luca & Roberto.

18. Lonely Woman by Naked City

• Zorn’s genre-mashing jump-cut speedjazz has been a gateway drug to a lot of weird shit. And more Zorn, obvs. Visited NYC in ’92 & bought this. Saw him at the Knitting Factory (with Lady Kitay); missed him at the Stone on NYE 2016.

17. My New House by Sonic Youth

• We saw The Fall at QMU a year before Mark E Smith died, their final gig. (He didn’t look well tbh.) Katy hated it. This isn’t The Fall.

16. Rock Music by Pixies

• Another gig with my brother in ’91 at the SECC. They aborted after three songs cos the crowd was going mental and someone down front got hurt when the stage collapsed. The whole thing was terrifying, but also sort of cool.

15. Spanish Key by Miles Davis

• My greatest gig regret was not going to see Miles at the SECC in 1990, a year before he died, choosing instead to see a trio of randoms called The Pointy Birds. By all accounts I didn’t miss much, but still. Miles fucking Davis.

14. Make it Rain by Tom Waits

• Tom opened with this at the Bourla Theatre, Antwerp, when I saw him there in 2004. I’d say it was an unforgettable experience – which it absolutely was – if only I could remember the actual concert…

13. Nude by Radiohead

• I avoided them for years, thinking they were too “obvious” a band for me to like lol. Then they found me during a break up and stayed with me all the way to a rebound in Vancouver. This song came in at the end of all that.

12. Women of the World by Jim O’Rourke

• More Cutlery.

11. Fireworks by First Aid Kit

• Apparently, it’s about “the goals and demands you put on yourself in life and how they can break you down to emptiness & loneliness.” Whatever. I will forever associate their angelic voices with Katy & I decorating our new living room.

10. Graceland by Paul Simon

• I was so excited by this when it came out. It just opened up so many musical worlds. Listening to it again, it’s easy to forget what a perfect piece of genius this album is.

9. Jacket Hangs by The Blue Aeroplanes

• Bought the cassette on a whim from Our Price and instantly became a fan4lyfe. Again with Graham, back-to-back gigs at King Tut’s, him very underage. We swaggered and swanned, let our arms rotate like helicopter blades.

8. Home by David Byrne/Brian Eno

• There’s a lot of David Byrne songs I could have included but this is the one that found me when I knew I had found, in Katy, the person I would finally make a home with. It – all of it – still fills me with joy, love, hope.

7. Lean on Me by Bill Withers

• It was a toss up between this one and Lovely Day, which became the theme song to Sophie’s 6th birthday last year. But my God, the power of this song and the grace with which he carries it…

6. Amsterdam by Jacques Brel

• The force of nature that is Brel’s voice was introduced to me by my wonderful flatmate Victoria in Girona. That voice, those songs, subsequently tore through my life like a hurricane. I’m still picking up the debris.

5. Go Or Go Ahead by Rufus Wainwright

• A couple of previous relationships had introduced me but it never really felt like Rufus was my guy – until I met Katy and we both sort of re-discovered him. Excited to see him in Amsterdam next year.

4. Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads

• And you may find yourself
  Living in a semi-rural location
  And you may find yourself
  With a beautiful wyfe
  And a smol sectional concrete outbuilding
  And you may ask yourself
  
  WELL HOW DID I GET HERE?

3. Ana fil houb by Lili Boniche

• In Arabic it means “I’m in love”, as I have been with this song since I heard it played at a beach bar in Dahab in summer 2003. Deliriously, passionately, tragically doomed love. It’s all I ever want in a piece of music.

2. I Believe in You by Talk Talk

More about this song here…

1. A Doughnut in My Hand by Ivor Cutler

• The song lends itself well, I find, to making up your own verses and is endlessly adaptable to many different situations. You should try it.

Thanks for joining me on my journey through my fifty best songs. You can watch/ listen to the entire playlist, below…

Gullible Travels – for Russell

There’s nothing like the death of a dear one to make you ask all the big questions.

Why do we do what we do?
How do we know who we know?
Why do things die when they die?
How does friendship survive?
How does love thrive?
What’s the point of doing anything?

The older I get, the longer I live, the more I think that the point of living is simply to make life that bit more bearable for other people.

You don’t know it, my friend, but you kind of showed me that. Not just for me but for countless others who knew you and loved you. You had an amazing talent for looking after people. You even made a living out of caring.

You took people in to your heart, your home. You gave them your time, your space, your energy, even when it cost you, even when it irked you, even when it pained you. Whoever it was, you always had your eye on their angle of vulnerability, and you did what you could to make it better.

Now we’re all taking in the news that you’ve gone. Suddenly and without fuss or fanfare you just slipped away quietly one night, hoped we wouldn’t notice. But we noticed. We’re going to be noticing for a long time that you’re no longer with us.

You were always such a plotter, a planner, a schemer. There was always a project to be getting on with, always a new destination to be setting off for. When we met that time back in East Kilbride at the end of 2015, some twenty years since the last time, it was the day before my birthday and everything was up in the air with both of us. I remember saying to you how much I had always admired this aspect of you, that you were always so firmly future focussed.

And suddenly we were the best of friends again, swapping music crushes, sudden pashes, flash-in-the-pan fads, new raves, old faves. Like twenty years were nothing. I assumed from that point on we’d stay friends into our old age, checking in, hanging out.

It was music that made friends of us back then, at that draughty old rehearsal studio out in the country lanes by Auldhouse. It was music that brought us close, that started conversations, that led to deep discussions long into the night.

You had my name listed as “Sax” in your phone (was that the joke? “Sax in ma phone”?) which made me laugh, even though I haven’t played the thing in earnest in years. For me, Russ, you were all about the bass.

There’s so much music in my life because of you. Things I’d never have listened to in a lifetime have become lifelong companions because of you. There are bands who are indelibly stamped in my mind with your passion and enthusiasm, like a rock n’ roll tattoo. There are songs that conjure places, people, gigs, jams, days spent wandering, nights spent smoking menthol cigs in cars and bars in East Kilbride, Glasgow, London, New York, Boston, Worcester MA.

It’s impossible to list every single piece of music that magically sings of you, but here’s a few things kicking about my shelves at home that conjure you as I best remember you.

Supertramp
Supertramp (1970)

You liked proper proggy muso music. Long songs, extended solos, big looping bass lines. I only really knew Supertramp from their hippy-haired Top of the Pops hits; you were all about their early stuff, which I grew to love. Try Again was your favourite, you said, and my first entry point into your musical universe. Weird, trippy, slightly gothic, melodic, mellifluous and emotional.

But it was there in the air that we share in the twilight
Humming a sad song, where was our day gone
But in the dark was a spark, a remark I remember

Where The Eagle Flies
Traffic (1974)

It’s really all about that one song, Dream Gerrard, and that incredible wah-wah tenor sax. I remember buying a wah-wah pedal for £25, using it a couple of times on my own horn in the rehearsal studio then eventually passing it on to you (who made much better use of it). The song appeared on one of the mix tapes you made that I played a lot, which also contained another Traffic track that’s quintessentially you – The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys – as well as a song you wrote and recorded yourself, called Gullible Travels, which I liked a lot.

Gullible travels
Baby’s gone and papa’s dead
Gonna leave this place now
It’s cold and sick
And I’m feeling blue
cos I’m leaving you

You were amazed I even remembered the song, never mind quote the chorus to you…

Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars
Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians (1988)

I’m not usually big on lyrics, as you know. I’m paying more attention to them now though, especially the first song of this album, What I Am, and I wonder if the reason you loved it so much was because it seems to sum you up so well.

I’m not aware of too many things
I know what I know if you know what I mean

What I am is what I am
you what you are or what

Or maybe it was just the wah-wah solo. I remember you describing me once as a “Bohemian”, which I thought was preposterous. But by East Kilbride standards, though, I suppose both of us probably were.

Queen
Queen (1973)

I’m thinking, obviously, of the first track, Keep Yourself Alive. It’s a rather cruel and ironic title given the circumstances, but I bet you’d allow yourself a chuckle. Or even a LOL. I never got on with Queen, though God knows you tried to win me to the cause. I eventually bought this album at your insistence and listening again now I think I hear something of what you heard. Adrenaline pumping hard-rockin bombast, a bunch of guys acting as if they were already superstars, doing wildly inventive things with guitars, and a massive flouncing fatally flawed show off in the middle of it all. It’s basically your anthem.

Moving Pictures
Rush (1980)

Another key piece of genetic material in your musical DNA. Not hard to see what appealed to you about this triumverate of turbocharged neo-prog hyper-rockers. And the 1991 Roll The Bones gig was a big one for us.

Again, the lyrics in the first track, Tom Sawyer,  seem to say meaningful things about you.  I don’t know. Pick a lyric.

Don’t put him down as arrogant
He reserves the quiet defense
Riding out the day’s events

Always hopeful yet discontent
He knows changes aren’t permanent
But change is

The world is, the world is
Love and life are deep
Maybe as his eyes are wide

Ritual de lo habitual
Jane’s Addiction (1990)

We played the bejesus out of this. Manicmetal. Mischief music. The song about shoplifting caught your ear by accident late one night on MTV, you passed it on like a flu bug. Every few days another track became a fevered favourite. Like we’d invited a pyromaniac worm into our ears. You’ll find this weird, but I always think of the song Of Course… as being about you and me. I have no idea what the song is actually about, but these lines spoke to me of our relationship: simultaneously close and aloof, affectionate and brusque, concerned and indifferent. Like brothers in music.

When I was a boy,
My big brother held on to my hands,
Then he made me slap my own face.
I looked up to him then, and still do.
He was trying to teach me something.
Now I know what it was!
Now I know what he meant!
Now I know how it is!

Varmints
Anna Meredith (2016)

You used to send me things in the post. Ruth Gordon’s autobiography appeared one day – the Harold and Maude actor you had a massive thing for. You were so delighted to have found it from an ebay seller halfway across America. There was the card you made from a photo you’d taken congratulating me on a new job. Mostly it was music, of course – Future Islands, Tame Impala, couple of other things, chief among which was this album by the Scottish artist Anna Meredith which I grew to love enormously. I bought tickets for her band show in March at the CCA that I wanted you to come to but by then you were doing the First Bus thing and you couldn’t commit the time. Things moved so very quickly after that. The year passed in a blur and I saw you only a couple more times.

The Anna Meredith thing was so typical of you in so many ways. You were so open to new and interesting stuff. For every Rush or Bryan May gig we went to, there was an equivalent Ornette Coleman & Prime Time or John Zorn. And as much as you loved big bombastic cockrock, you could be just as passionate about female artists – Joni Mitchell, Ricky Lee Jones, Tracy Chapman, Oleta Adams, Aimee Mann.

Only latterly I found out we had a shared love of St Vincent. Now, since you’ve gone, I keep returning to her song about love and loss and New York. It always transports me to our week there in 1993 when you were heading to Worcester, MA, to begin a career in care and I was off on a transcontinental train trip.

All the things we did. That first sunset taxi ride into Manhattan from JFK, taking in that breathtaking skyline – a waterside city the height of the clouds, the colour of rust and diamonds. Staying at the Chelsea Y. Endless wanderings. Walking downtown to Battery Park from 110th St. Dinner in the Dojo. Tasting tahini. Camp Kiwago. Nights with Carolyn. Seymour’s house full of whales in Jersey. Then returning the next year when you were settled in Worcester and the madness of all that.

I was in New York recently and the wide city streets still ring with those memories.

She sings,

I have lost a hero
I have lost a friend

and boy do I know it.

Real Gone

Tom Waits
Anti (2004)

The first time I saw Tom Waits in concert was on the 2004 Real Gone European tour.

I belong to a now semi-defunct group called the Zornlist, which back then was a pretty lively discussion and information sharing forum which allowed people from all over the place – mostly Europe and the US – to post stuff about John Zorn and the various genres of music his output crossed. Which is a lot. From free-improv to cartoon scores, hard bop to hardcore, modern classical to radical Jewish music. His roster of regular collaborators is a tower of talent that would make you giddy and includes the guitarist Marc Ribot, a regular collaborator with Tom Waits since Rain Dogs.

One of the guys on the list posted about a ticket that he was selling for the upcoming Tom Waits tour. I was lucky and got in first. I could have high-fived the sky. I was going to see Tom Waits. If I could get to Antwerp for Saturday 13th November, the ticket was mine. The seller was honest with me, said he he was going to ask twice the ticket price, which meant the gig was going to cost me €200 before I had even booked a flight or thought about a hotel room.

But fuck it. This was Tom. Fucking. Waits. The only other musician I would travel to a different timezone to see was John Zorn. It was totally worth it. A bargain, even…

There was just the tiny detail of the transaction to take care of.

At the time of the gig, back in 2004, Paypal and the whole business of paying for things online was a bit unclear to me and still considered to be plenty risky. Before the ticket seller and I had worked out how to handle the transaction, I asked around – a few friends, a couple of business savvy pals, some guys I knew who worked on web stuff – about how to go about securing a concert ticket from a guy who lived in Belgium whom I’d never met. Everyone basically sucked their teeth and narrowed their eyes. They were all like, “So, how exactly did you meet him? An email list? Right. And how much is he asking?  Wow, really. And what’s his name?”

They all thought I was winding them up.

“Rob Alert”.

Guy with a comedy rip-off merchant name (tho spelled in a Flemish way with many more letters than syllables) whom I didn’t know, couldn’t vouch for, who could’ve been a bullshitter, could’ve been a scammer, lived in Belgium wanted to sell me something online that I could only redeem by travelling about 800 miles.

Basically, you can probably guess, I was on my own.

Happily, however, we came to a pretty straightforward agreement. No Paypal, no Western Union, no bank transfers. If I was willing to make my way to Antwerp, he was willing to sell me the ticket. We just agreed to trust each other.

Call me sentimental but I wish there was more of that in the world.

I remember depressingly little about the gig. I think he maybe started with Make it Rain? I couldn’t tell you much more than that. I don’t even think reading the setlist on the Eyeball Kid blog could help shake loose a few memories. No wonder people make bootlegs.

I remember quite a lot of detail either side of the gig, though. The early morning flight to Amsterdam, reading the Saturday Guardian from cover to cover on the train to Antwerp. I had to buy razors from a Turkish man in a Spar because I’d forgot to bring one and he only sold packs of cheap shit Bics. There was the market. The place was scented with vanilla from the waffle sellers. I had a pretzel. I scouted the venue. I walked around Antwerp and found it familiar/strange. The accents sounded like home, full of hard consonants. I had a really quiet room in the hotel I checked into, then fell asleep watching Monk on BBC2 in my room with the volume on low.

Then I met Rob and there was the whole rigmarole of getting the ticket. Tom Waits and his management made an admirable effort to beat the re-sale market. You could only get the ticket itself on the day of the gig. The buyer had to have ID that matched the details supplied at the time of purchase. You could only buy a maximum of four tickets for the gig and your guests had to be in attendance at the time of collection in order to have a wrist band strapped to you. It meant that everyone in the audience was a True Fan, not just a bunch of schmos on a corporate jolly.

So I met Rob at the theatre, gave him his €200, got my wristband. We went in like a couple of kids on a blind date.

I remember how beautiful the venue was. I was amazed it was in a theatre. Waits could have sold out any stadium, any mega venue. I couldn’t believe how tiny it was. This is what they mean in the music press when they talk about an intimate venue. We were sat in the 6th row from the front, a few seats in from the left hand aisle. I was a bit overcome by the whole experience, safe to say.

The gig passed in a blur. I knew I was having a “bucket list” kind of night. I wanted to hang on to every note, to be able to quote every ad lib quip, to mime every contortion, to recall every single signal from Waits and his band that meant I wasn’t listening to a recording but watching and listening at close range.

But I couldn’t. This stuff slips away like liquid soap. I do remember the incredible bar we went to afterwards, next to the cathedral, that was full of religious statues from old churches and that sold beer in these weird test tube looking glasses. I remember enjoying myself a lot and enjoying Rob’s company.

But I don’t really remember much about the show. Nor do I remember the busker singing Tom Waits songs outside the venue, but two friends of mine knew for a fact that there was one. These friends didn’t know each other but they both knew Raymy. I had met him, briefly, years before at a jam session, through the first of these friends, a fellow sax player and improviser. He was a bit mad, carried a box of musical toys with him, had albums worth of songs on cassette that he tried to sell to people. I met him again, years later, through the second of these friends, a girl I was seeing at the time, when I got to hear about his adventures on the Real Gone tour.

Basically, the story goes that Raymy couldn’t get a ticket for any of Waits’s European shows, so he decided he was going to follow the tour schedule and busk outside each venue before the gig in the hope of attracting the band’s attention and a) gaining admission. b) acquiring memoir material, and c) actually meeting the Man himself.

When I met Raymy I learned that he had written a book about it and was totally outraged that no-one wanted to publish it – so he published it himself. You can read about it here.

I had a day in Amsterdam the next day which I spent walking in circles for about eight hours. It was my favourite time of year. November. Cold, clear, crisp evenings. Blue skies. I walked until the sun went down and everyone’s windows were lit up like mini tableaux, scenes from a thousand lives.

I bought a book in a beautiful big busy bookshop called What Should I Do With My Life? which, as much as I enjoyed it, failed to give me the momentous epiphany I realised I’d been seeking when I bought it. It was the same when I answered the Zornlist post from Rob. I felt then, as I kind of still do from time to time, that my life had gone wrong somewhere, taken a wrong turn, and I was looking for the way back.

I had booked an early flight home which I managed to miss. It wasn’t to be for the first time, either. I literally arrived at the check-in desk as the flight was leaving. The airline sales woman couldn’t believe I had been so stupid and contemptuously took €100 off me for the next flight back to Glasgow. I had an awkward conversation with my boss too, as I was going to miss my two classes that afternoon that I was timetabled to teach at the college I worked at.

I saw Tom Waits again when he played in Edinburgh in 2008. I had a new job by that time, and a new girlfriend. I hadn’t answered Po Bronson’s question, but it felt like I was making a reasonable attempt.

The Edinburgh gig was in a theatre again, albeit a much, much bigger one. The same security measures applied, and then some. Tom was exceptional, as he always is, but don’t ask me to remember anything from the gig.

I wonder if he’ll ever tour again.