It's Tuesday 9th July, 2013. That means it's Harkive day, where I am to attempt a record of all the music I listen to from start to finish. It's a bit of an eyeopener. I was expecting to hear a lot of music today anyway, given the reviews I'm currently working on and the fact that it's Tuesday, which means I get at least 2 hours' travelling to and from 5-a-side football with an MP3 player for company. Scheduled for the listening booth are the new Zomby album 'With Love' and a double-mix compilation from Tiefschwarz for Renaissance. Both of these have just been released. I'm also planning to listen to some Benjamin Britten for the centenary blog Good Morning Britten that I'm running, devoted to his life and work.
Yet somehow the vast majority of the music I hear throughout the day turns out to be passive listening. I had forgotten just how much music comes to me this way, either while having a coffee before work or just by sitting at my desk. All day we listen to BBC 6 Music in the office, which is always a plus, but it does mean you hear well over 100 songs every day without even realising it!
The musical day begins with the standard BBC TV themes - jingles for programmes before the 6:00am news and the BBC Breakfast jingles themselves. Then I'm out the door and on the bus from Forest Hill to Central London, listening to the Zomby album. This keeps me occupied with a rich variety of beats and riffs spread over a double album, lasting all the way up to my arrival in Trafalgar Square and ultimately a coffee at the bottom of Regent Street.
This is in Pret A Manger...where the music changes abruptly to the jazz-funk standards that appear every day on their pre-planned playlist. The Blues Brothers' Shake Your Tail Feather' is one of these. I'm not sure what most of the tunes are, but I seem to have got to know them word by word, beat by beat. Unmistakeable, though, is the constipated voice of Mumford & Sons, singing not just 'I Will Wait' but another one that sounds just the same but with an even faster banjo. Time for work!
6 Music drifts in and out of focus at work, but the things I really notice are the Longpigs' 'Far' - the Sheffield band of the '90s are pretty popular lately - and an old session track from Amy Winehouse, my favourite song of hers - 'Stronger Than Me'. Later on the euphoric rush of the Stone Roses' 'Ten Storey Love Song' tramps all over Johnny Marr's 'New Town Velocity', while Phoenix's new single 'Trying To Be Cool' becomes the latest earworm of the day.
At lunchtime I'm writing up a piano concert I saw on Monday evening, given by Louis Schwizgebel at the City of London Festival. It leads me to YouTube, because I haven't got a clue what the encore was! All I know is that it was in G minor, and sounded like Liszt or Beethoven. I hear snippets of both composers' works before finding what I'm after - it's the song 'Erlkönig' by Schubert, arranged by Liszt - so I get half a point I guess!
Back to 6 Music for the afternoon, where one track in particular leaves its mark - 'Pendulum' by Pure Bathing Culture, which leads me to Pitchfork where it's available for free download. It's a reall warm, sunny piece of music that suggests they might like Fleetwood Mac or the Cocteau Twins.
More playlist stuff in the afternoon - Donna Summer 'I Feel Love', Rolling Stones 'Paint It Black, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Despair' - a record the station is pushing heavily at the moment. Back on to headphones then, where I listen to Benjamin Britten's 'Friday Afternoons', a set of poems to be sung by childrens' choir. Radcliffe and Maconie are still on 6 Music, so we get Savages' 'Shut Up', where singer Jehnny Beth sounds unnervingly like Geddy Lee of Rush, and then Black Sabbath in their new incarnation with 'Loner'. The shows switch, so now we're listening to Steve Lamacq and the unrelated music of The National's new single 'Sea of Love', more uplifting than their previous record, and the drum & bass stormer that is Aphrodite's 'All Over Me'. Then a record that I must have heard several hundred times in all, but now manage to almost completely blank, The Verve's 'Bitter Sweet Symphony'.
Out of work at 5:40 - and straight in to the first of Tiefschwarz's two mixes for Renaissance. This one starts coolly but spreads its wings pretty quickly, so once I've completed the walk from work to Euston train station it's really worked up a head of steam. By the time I get to Harrow for football we're done.
Out of football and up to Rayners Lane for a beer and a pizza. There's no music in the pub - it's a Wetherspoon's, so they don't play any - but once we get into the charmingly old fashioned pizza place the strains of Capital Gold can be heard. Making a mark are the Village People's 'YMCA', The Mamas & The Papas' 'California Dreamin'', The Monkees' 'Daydream Believer' and, given that it's a hot Tuesday night and we've just played football, The Small Faces' 'Lazy Sunday', which feels quite appealing right now!
Leaving football (and the pub) at 11:00, it's back on to Tiefschwarz and the second mix. As so often with these pairs of compilations the second mix is the more aggressive, and it holds my attention all the way back to near Crystal Palace at midnight. The musical day is over!
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