Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Little Loser's Lottery: Pt. 1

Dearest friends and followers,

some of you might already know about it, others may not: a few weeks ago Mrs. Loser and me finally managed to adopt our son (who was delivered to us on February 19th). Little man is six months old today and he is - you may well believe me - a bundle of joy, there is no other way to desribe it. But also, as you might imagine, he needs to be watched all the freaking time and when he finally decides to sleep, Mrs. Loser and me do the same within a second. Nights are short and days are long, but I won't complain! Nevertheless this means that I rarely find the time to work on this site these days and I hope you forgive me for that, friends!
Either way: yesterday I dragged him upstairs to the room where my records are and forced him to do his first Little Loser's Lottery: the first record/CD on the shelf he pointed at with his cute little fingers I pulled out in order to play to you. Although he grinned foolishly all the time, I think he did a pretty admirable job and showed excellent taste ... as you might be able to confirm after having listened to this:



[1] from the LP - shelf: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: 'Tender Prey'. On Mute Records from 1988 and I had a hard time whether to play to you 'Watching Alice' or 'Slowly Goes The Night'. Well, I decided to go for the latter, so here's for you: 'Slowly Goes The Night' (mp3).
[2] from the Singles - shelf: The Levellers - 'The Julie E.P.' A four-track 7" in clear vinyl (always nice, but sound-quality-wise rather disturbing, I always think). I chose their version of The Clash's 'English Civil War' (mp3), one of the songs on the B-Side. The record is from 1994, on China Records.


[3] from the Compilations - shelf: 'One Pound 99'. Now, this is a 1985 Beggar's Banquet compilation with rather a fair amount of goodies on it. Not easy to choose which one to play (Love & Rockets' 'Haunted When The Minutes Drag' is as good as Hank Wangford's 'Never Wear Mascara (When You Love A Married Man)' ... I went for this one: The Ramones - 'Bonzo Goes To Bitburg' (mp3).

[4] from the 12" - shelf: Here my very own private expert picked the Inspiral Carpets' 1989 Peel Session - 12", again on coloured vinyl. I chose 'Directing Traffic' (mp3).

[5] from the CD - shelf: A very useful thing this is and I picked it up years ago in a bargain-bin for a few cents: a 4-track-CD called 'Classic Tracks', I have no idea what label it is on, but it seems to be one in a series of CD's that bring together some quite astonishing tracks ... tracks that the editors regard as being 'classic' in one form or another. On it you'll find Nicky Thomas, John Holt, Ken Boothe and - my pick - the fantastic 'Hurt So Good' (mp3) by Susan Cadogan. A real corker in mono, friends ..... and one of my favourite songs ever!

Well, I hope Little Loser found tunes for you all to enjoy. For me he did his job perfectly well and I hope to be able to convince him to pick more records in due course!

Have fun,

Dirk

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fab choice, the little fella has great taste already!

Anonymous said...

I see musical greatness ahead for the Little Loser. No Raffi in those ears. He'll probably be begging for The Clash as his bedtime lullaby.

....really, really happy for you and Mrs. Loser.

a Tart said...

oooh what a joy! and the ramones already! whooooowheee! xoxo

Unknown said...

Delighted for you all.

Just make sure you pick decent babysitters as he gets older....dont want his tastebuds corrupted by chart fodder.

FiL said...

Congrats, congrats, CONGRATS, Dearest Dirk!! So thrilled for the three of you. Endlich!!

I wholeheartedly endorse the practice of starting them early on the good stuff. I used to sing lullaby versions of Billy Bragg, Ramones, and Sex Pistols to get them to sleep when they were wee. It worked a treat!!

Natsthename said...

Congratulations, Dirk and Mrs. Dirk! Have you freaked out when you watched him sleeping and were convinced he was not breathing? If not, YOU WILL. EVERY new parent does it!

Many, many blessings sent your way. Enjoy your new role as parent and all it brings.