Blue Day in Spring

The jeweller my Mum got her prized opal ring from was a guy called Steve Gilpin... but soon he chucked in looking at stones and created rock as lead singer for "New Wave" band Misex. He'd cut this teeth at Dad's local pub in Lower Hutt singing 70's folk, Paul Simon, James Taylor confessional stuff.

One day in '72 Steve turned up at our house with his first 45 "Spring". He played it to Dad and gave me a copy. I spun that single over and over again on my little blue record player. Suddenly, at age ten, music wasn't something from someplace else, it was real. Hey, I knew someone who created music. "Spring" has long since been lost... I can't find a source anywhere.

Perhaps that's a good thing... better to be left with a classic... "Blue Day".

18 hours in the ear

Most people, it seems, dislike long flights. To ease the discomfort many take the opportunity to catch up with movies... but I find the trade off from the big or half big screen not worth the compromise. Peering at the screen, I feel the pain of the director as his or her widescreen art is squished into something the size of a tissue box.

No, at 30 thousand feet I relish immersing myself in some good reading (New Yorker) and plundering the back corners of the ipod. Sure the sound is compressed, but with your ears popping the engines swishing away, who cares. With any luck, after the meal and a wine, I might fall asleep for a while and wake up to something delectable in my ear.

This happened last week. Halfway to Hong Kong I drifted off in contentment to a When You Awake mixtape and awoke to some John Prine. 5 minutes of cinematic Prine is as rewarding as any 120 minute movie. I managed to fit a few more before touching down.

Here's a version of Sam Stone with another John in the leading role.