According to my Sunday newspaper, there are many inspired ways that others have re-shaped their lives during Lockdown. They have taken the opportunity of home-working to do more than merely endure lockdown, but have imaginatively strived to “improve as human beings”. Even our Prime Minister has seemingly hauled himself from his death bed to be become a father again and had time to lose a stone and a half running around the garden of Buckingham Palace. I almost choke on my cornflakes as I hear of writers who have knocked off three new screenplays, sofa to 5K adopters who’ve lost 5KG and others’ teenage children who have learned complex SQL Programming from scratch. While trying to contend with the sheer bloody awfulness of a critically disrupted market for my own profession [see here for the gory details], I have mainly been focused on harnessing all the diplomacy skills of Boutros Boutros Ghali, just to keep Wave Your Arms towers from turning into the trigger zone for World War III. Ashamedly, I have read less than I’d hoped, walked millions of steps (though never really troubled the ECG monitor on my Apple Watch) and realised my business book called GLUE, ready to fly in February to the editor, now looks tame and under-cooked given the shit-storm most organisations are going to face in the next couple of years.

The one thing I did do successful though was go full-on for nostalgia.

Again, the BLOG got a hint of that in April [see link here], and without the patience to sit still and re-watch Lord of the Rings Extended Editions or The Godfather Trilogy, I simply donned the headphones and went elsewhere for a different kind of playlist. There are are some 30 million songs on Spotify. Despite all my efforts, I found myself repeatedly drawn to a handful from the 1970’s and 1980’s; a kind of mellow, easy listening groove – a bit like Magic Radio, if you know the vibe. Songs that are memorable, hummable and would offend no one. There are a few more modern gems not mentioned here – but essentially this was the playlist: on repeat, shuffle, repeat for 14 weeks. The playlist is here. I’m still not bored. This is why.

The Only Living Boy in New York, Simon & Garfunkel

Simon & Garfunkel’s America is probably in the running for “the best song ever written”, but this melancholy wonder made more sense, when in April I watched the scenes on TV of Times Square, Wall Street and Fifth Avenue with absolutely no one there – like a scene out an apocalyptic movie.

Tin Man, America
Still in America, I discovered Tin Man. I’m not sure how I went 50 years on the planet not realising that “Oz didn’t give nothing to the Tin Man”, but these guys did and what a line! It gets stuck in your head.

State of Independence, Donna Summer

The John and Vangelis version of this almost made the list, but it’s the Donna Summer cover version that raised it to another level of sublime. It’s refrain ‘Shablamidi, shablamida” sounds profound and wonderful – perhaps some Indonesian cultural shout of joy, but no, John Anderson said more simply “That just popped up. Shablamidi, Shablamida. It just popped up and I sang it.”

Johnny and Mary, Robert Palmer

This time the original made the playlist, but the cover version by the extraordinary Placebo is marvellous too. It’s a song without a chorus, or bridge, or a middle-eight. But the repetitive beat and verse plays out a sense of two lives yearning for meaning while a couple under one roof disaggregate. “Johnny thinks the world would be right if it would buy truth from him | Mary counts the walls”. As a narrative, it’s not been topped since LCD Soundsystem wrote All My Friends thirty years later.

Dreams, Fleetwood Mac

The film Sound City, by Dave Grohl, features the story of how a floundering and directionless Mick Fleetwood stumbled across Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham in the studio room next door and Fleetwood Mac (as most of us know them) was born. The band’s story and the complex relationships that followed are more famous, but just for a moment, pause and just listen to the bass + Fleetwood’s drumming in the first 60 seconds of this masterpiece. They make space and time suspend, framing all the focus on Nicks’ voice and Buckingham’s guitar.

You’re So Vain, Carly Simon

On our wall we have a painting of a Sicilian hill town by a British artist called Mike Bernard. Hidden beneath the paint and collage of old newspaper clippings he uses for texture; there is a just discernible picture of Warren Beaty. He may well also be the unnamed ex-lover so torturously described by Carly Simon. But more amazing than the lyrics with which his vanity is shamed, there is the chorus to the song. In the backing vocals, alongside Simon’s is Mick Jagger. I never knew that, but once heard, you can never not hear it again without hearing Mick singing “don’tcha, don’tcha, don’tcha”.

Wrapped in Grey, XTC

One of the most beautiful ‘call to arms’ for creativity, art, self-expression and individuality, ever penned. It was so good that the band’s record company pressed it as a single, then bizarrely never released it, creating a Prince/Sony style impasse between band and record label. It was not for another decade until they took the soundscape here and produced their masterpiece Apple Venus.

Open Here, Field Music and A Day In the Life, The Beatles

To Andy Partridge of XTC, Wrapped In Grey sounded like Burt Bacharach, or The Beach Boys. To me it feels inspired by A Day In the Life, which I have loved for years. But then I discovered a recent newcomer - Open Here by North East band Field Music. Play these three together, in any order – from very different bands in different decades, across 40 years of British pop music and tell me there is not something special in the water of these Isles?

Golden Brown, The Stranglers

Dave Greenfield was the keyboardist and singer with the Stranglers. He died in May 2020, during lockdown at the age of 71. He reportedly contacted COVID-19 while in hospital for a heart condition. When I started to write the Wave Your Arms blog in 2008, it was an enjoyable distraction, writing about films and music and “the narrowing range of artists I could still see live, before they died.” And I guess that’s the problem with nostalgia. You go looking in the past for heroes and time catches up with your heroes, as well as the villains. One less hero.

PS. Someone found the perfect way to create a tribute for Greenwood, video-casting Dave Brubeck and band magically covering the Strangler’s ¾ time wonder. Watch this and DESPITE EVERYTHING that is going on…try not to smile.