With apologies to those who hate the Swedish behemoth of beat. Oh, and the end of A Passing of Wind is nigh…

I know a lot of people hate Spotify with great vituperation (doesn’t pay musicians, or doesn’t pay the right musicians enough) but I’ve always thought this was to misunderstand or abuse the whole streaming concept. For me, it’s like radio – a way of discovering or rediscovering artists and records, and then investing in them. Usually, in my case, by buying CDs. Note to self: go to more gigs in 2025.

I mean, the artist gets more from each Spotify play (yes, a minuscule amount) than from the sale of a second-hand LP or CD, and there’s no shame attached to those who pay sometimes hundreds of pounds for a particularly rare lump of vinyl (please, NOT ‘a vinyl’ or ‘vinyls’), cassette or CD. Yes, CDs are coming back as desirable objects of reproduction. Because, I think, we like to buy, invest in, own music-as-artifact. We hoarders do, anyway. And then there’s the question of sleeve notes. I want to possess, read about, unfold-the-gatefold, look at the pictures and generally have a record. to that end, I have been partially re-organising my collection of CDs and LPs, and firing up an old and massive hifi system. It’s in the loft, which is why I now have a bad back to add to my various health hiccups.

Anyway, here’s a deep-winter playlist, loosely inspired by four books: Amanda Petrusich’s It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways and the Search for the Next American Music (phew, some title, but a brilliant travelogue/history through the weirder corners of Americana).; Joe Boyd’s magisterial, epic, and very, very long And The Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music (you can find several Spotify playlists dedicated to this book alone), and two books about The Band: Barney Hoskyns’ Across the Great Divide: The Band and America and John Niven’s terrific novella Music From Big Pink, which is probably the best thing ever written about rock’s most enigmatic outfit. the recent death of The Band’s organist, Garth Hudson, means that all the group’s original members are dead: a thought I found, to say the least salutary.

I have invested more in a single CD package this last fortnight than I ever have before, and that was thanks to Amanda (who is the New Yorker’s pop and rock scribe) mentioning Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which I am approaching as if it was/is a holy relic. which it is. More to come on that in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, I have finished the first and somewhat messily ridiculous draft of A Passing of Wind, Episode 7: the finale. It’s nonsense, of course, but hopefully it’s mildly entertaining and will be with you in a day or two. Salmon farmers beware!

Speak soon. More Viking fire festivals to come but he big Lerwick Up Helly Aa is over (watch and listen to my commentary on the procession and burning here…skol!