July 27, 2025

Broke out XTC’s “Oranges and Lemons” from back in ’89 earlier this week as the weather called for something that wasn’t my latest in the car, the slog of old school Deep Purple, in all their iterations.

Now for reference, I don’t listen to music any longer except in the car, 25 minutes at a time, Lilly, my six speed old man CD playing (ask grandma or grandpa about CD’s) girl. Love ya ol’ bluesy heavy metal but you can only go so far and you can be a bit dull. Are you loud, yes, loud is good, has always been good (sorry Ma, I’ll turn it down) especially with open windows, but are you bright and bouncy and lyrically damning and compelling and biting enough for sunny days? No, that you are not.

I’ve been a music only in the car for the longest time now where I used to be an always in the foreground or at least in the background as a subtle soundtrack of days. Should I worry that things are falling off, that once loves have been so easily discarded like baseball (not my doing) or relationships for instance? (reasons) or more, just altered?

I don’t know and I probably should be a little concerned that I don’t really care I guess. I mean I like to hear new things, usually at work where we sometimes build spots with new music, but at this point in my oldness I have my comforts and going back to Deep Purple or The Rainmakers or The Silencers or Alan Parsons or Bob Mould or XTC works just fine for me. I just don’t really feel the need to invest myself in anything new, I’m pretty full in that old regard, though I do look forward to something new from MonaLisa Twins at some point, the only “new” that has caught my fancy in the longest of time.

No, I’m good, I have words and cats and my sister has cats, they sing well enough at my feet at the crack of stinky can or on a set of stairs, one of them just needs to learn how to play guitar or even bass … not drums though, I don’t wanna have to hit a broomstick on a wall like a cranky old landlady.

Including an Arthur … apologies, I kinda talk pretty loud …

“Really Steve, you don’t say”

“What?”

… something I am always reminded of in videos but then forget when taking a video. But ya gotta love his eventual southern belle-esque turn of disdain here, a “Why my Lord, I neva …” the only thing missing being him holding a dramatic paw up to his face.

Now back to XTC and “Oranges and Lemons” their “Sgt Pepper” or from the artwork their “Yellow Submarine” (every band wants to have their own). I had the hardest time trying to decide which tune from it to present in this post as this album is just perfect, and I have only come across a handful or so that would meet that “perfect” mark for me, filled with so many great choices of tune and so many that even sing to our current times from 36 years ago and with Arthur’s disdain.

(writer’s note to self: This isn’t Facebook numbnuts, you can put more than one video here… Oh, right …)