Festival

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 I have been a fan of Apple ever since Steve Job's introduced me to the Luggable Macintosh in the 1980'S. Yet, for all that I have loved the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, the iMac and all the variants of MacBooks, it is another Apple creation which gifts me joy day after day.

Playlists on iTunes has been my go to place to be surprised by songs picked out from our 19,000+ record collection. Yesterday's high-spot tune was Second Lover by Noah and the Whale, generated from my The Mountains Goats song You or Your Memory.

We came by Noah and the Whale via Johnny Flynn who we saw at a Summer Sunday event in Leicester in 2008 or 2010. He gave us a sampler disk, which took us to him big time. The festival line ups, we were later to learn, were part organised by our own record store here in Louth, that being Mark Merrifield's Off the Beaten Tracks.

Mark says that my music purchases are among the most eclectic of any of his customers. Eclectic being the word my tutor used to describe Joe Jackson's Will Power, again back in the 1980's, on a management course in Stratford-upon-Avon.

My highlight of that course was the jazz night on a boat on the river. Oh that, and meeting the nurse manager from St Helier hospital in Jersey. I don't recall playing any of my music to her, or writing any letters. C'est la vie.

We did see Richard Hawley at Summer Sundae, just after Syd Barratt had passed away, I remember him playing a tribute piece to Syd, which meant he ran on beyond his allotted time slot, which was much frowned upon by the organisers, maybe that's why I can't find him on any of the Wikipedia details.

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