Listening to Loyle Carner, music I like very much, Glastonbury set live. An interesting interview with him on BBC Sounds earlier today as well. Genuinely, an honest and good person, I feel. Someone whose vulnerability is worn on his sleeve.
Whilst cooking tea, and after listening to Meka's new album The Rabbit, which I'm playing over - favourite track, The Tower, and, it's all good. I revisited a favourite, Fred Again's Actual Life (April 14 to December 17 2020).
Five years later and the Covid epidemic seems almost forgotten, but Actual Life reminds us of the despair, the fear, the uncertainty. On reflection, with its web samples and the moment it captures, it was, and is, a remarkable musical document of a time that was especially frightening to many people, much younger than myself, who had so much to lose; lives put on hold. If you've never listened to it, maybe a time to dig it out of which ever web service you use and listen (again). Because the album, and its two sisters are historical documents, powerful, and musically intelligent.
And here's the link, where LC sings of family and human connection Actual Life is the antithesis, with its dance beats and and longing for friends, lovers and ordinary activity (we've lost dancing) it is a reminder of what governments have so quickly forgotten. Our health service has not recovered from that shock, not provided with the means or the structures, or the urgency to do so. And rather than urgently mend it, the focus is on money - let's make the poor and vulnerable poorer and more vulnerable; and on war; spend more on "defense". Missiles and nuclear armed jets will not defend against a virus, of that I am sure.
All albums available to buy... on Bandcamp https://bandcamp.com/
