Just in case there are any of you out there who are not Having Fun, and who feel in need of something suitably silly to cheer them up, I give you, Christmas in the Stars, an entire album of Star Wars Christmas music, featuring our good friends C3PO and R2-D2. Totally loopy. It is an absurd price these days, but hopefully the samples will amuse.

And just to prove I am not entirely without taste, I have discovered that the Amazon download store has a copy of my all-time favorite Christmas album. This one is almost as old as me, and still fabulous. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s Sound of Christmas. Smooth jazz at its very best. Go ye and download.

In honor of a great victory for people power over the idiots at the BBC, today’s play list will consist of just one song.

Tomorrow we will return you to our usual seasonal programming.

Goddess rest you, Kirsty dear, you are sorely missed.

Here are some music links you may like to follow:

• Elizabeth Hand reports from the Airwaves festival in Reykjavik, including lots of YouTube coverage
• Nokia Asia has produced a new web site showcasing Indie bands, including lots of free downloads
• The Electric Proms are in full swing in London and the BBC has lots of free video

Wow!

OK, so I need to say a little more than that, and I guess to start with I should mention that the acoustics in the Oakland Arena are pretty crappy. It may have been a lot better down in the more expensive seats, but we were up near the roof which is covered in concrete girders, and the sound was very muddy at times. Fortunately I knew most of the songs backwards.

It had been suggested to us in advance by folks at one of the concession stands that Patti’s band were going to play a warm up, but that never happened. Bruce took the stage just after 8:00pm and played for about two hours. He doesn’t jump around the stage quite as much as he used to, but he’s pretty damn fit for his age and he’s older than I am so I’m not complaining. He also played a fine set that included most of Magic and a smattering of favorite songs from earlier years such as “Badlands” and “She’s the One.”

Jonathan and I had been chatting beforehand about which particular old songs we’d like to hear. He went for “Jungleland”, I opted for “Thunder Road.” In the event, neither turned up. And there was a particular song on Magic that they hadn’t played. But there was an encore to come, wasn’t there? Heck, they’d only played for two hours, and the lights hadn’t gone up. Show a little faith.

Aha! Action on the stage. Here comes the band, and much to my relief they launch straight into “Girls in their Summer Clothes.” Fabulous it was too, with the audience signing along to the chorus. Then the band went quiet for a while, before drifting into a well-known melody. Surely not? But there was magic in the night after all. And after a wonderful rendition of “Thunder Road” the band ripped full-tilt into “Born to Run” and “Dancing in the Dark.” What better encore could you ask for? Heck, what other band has a collection of songs that good that they could use in an encore?

That’s it as far as the music is concerned. Many thanks to Jonathan for alerting me to it, and to Kevin for buying the tickets and putting up with my Bruce obsession all week. But there is one other thing I want to talk about.

Bruce Springsteen is best known as a musician, but if you were to ask him to define himself I suspect that pretty high on the list would come the phrase, “a proud American”. He did, after all, produce an album called Born in the USA – something that caused a lot of snickering in Britain when it came out. But for Bruce, as for many Americans, patriotism does not mean, “My country, right or wrong”, especially as there seems to be an awful lot of wrong right now.

There is a song on Magic called “Living in the Future” which I had spotted as a bit of political comment. In classic science-fictional manner it is actually about now, and Bruce took time out during the intro to talk a bit about the song and what he thinks is going wrong with his country. I don’t suppose it would have gone down well in certain parts of Washington, but here in the Bay Area his message was well received.

In addition, Springsteen closes every gig with the song, “American Land.” Although it sounds very much like a traditional Irish song about emigration (including the lines, “There’s diamonds in the sidewalk, there’s gutters lined in song, Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long”) it was written by Springsteen, and he’s in the habit of messing with the lyrics every now and then. I gather that he does this mainly to honor different ethnic groups that have help build America, but today, because the lyrics were being shown on the big screen, I noticed a new change.

There’s a line in the song that goes, “The hands that built the country we’re all trying to keep down”, this being a standard Springsteen complaint about the lot of the working classes. Tonight that line read, “The hands that built the country we’re all trying to keep out.” I don’t suppose that will go down well in Washington either. Long may Mr. Springsteen continue to tweak their noses.

I’ve been listening to the new Springsteen album, Magic, quite a bit over the past few days to make sure I knew the songs well before the concert. There are lots of things you could say about it, most of them complimentary, but the thing that struck me most was how familiar it all sounded. Bruce hasn’t been recording with the E Street Band for quite some time, but now here they are with a brand new album and it sounds like they had never been away. If the pounding beat of “Radio Nowhere” doesn’t tell you exactly were you are, then Clarence Clemons wailing sax on the intro to “Living in the Future” surely will. This is a Springsteen album, and the E Street Band are the best rock band in the world. Still.

What else an I say, except that I’m really looking forward to tomorrow night?

Well, I guess I should commiserate with all of you folks who can’t be there. But because I’m a generous sort, I have scoured YouTube for some consolation. So here they are, playing my favorite track from the album at a gig in Philadelphia. Ladies and Gentlemen, playing “Girls in their Summer Clothes”, I give you, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band!

Much to my delight, the new Cerys Matthews mini-album, Awyren = Aeroplane, was available from the Amazon MP3 store. That meant I could get it straight away, and I only had to pay $5 for it. I’ve been playing it a lot since.

If you are looking for “more like Catatonia” then this is the wrong place to look. The opening track, Awyrennau, and the closing reprise, “= Aeroplane”, are classic bossa nova and are occasionally in danger of slipping into “The Girl from Ipanema” (really, they are, the BBC agrees).

In stark contrast, “Y Corryn Ar Pry'” starts with harmonica and drums and sounds like something Cerys might have found propping up a bar in Nashville, but it too grows sweeping strings part way through. “Trwy’r Drych” is spoken rather than sung for most of the lyrics, which shows the Welsh language off to best effect.

Finally there is “Lisa Lân”, a traditional Welsh folk song. Here’s Cerys performing it on an Irish TV program:

But check out the album version, because it has a drum track that is straight out of a military pipe band, which makes the whole thing more threatening and haunting. It makes it sound less like a simple ballad of lost love and more like some Scottish tale of doomed young men off to fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie.

In summary, five very beautiful songs, fabulous production too, and all in Welsh. This, my American friends, is real Celtic music.

Well, here I am in London. I’ve had a relaxed day traveling and meeting friends in London. But while I have been on the road, Kevin, angel that he is, has been busy. Specifically he’s been busy on the Ticketmaster web site. And as a result, we have tickets to see Bruce Springsteen!!!

Oh, wow! Life is so good.

Looks like our Cerys has had an attack of hiraeth. Shame for her, she sounded very happy last time I saw an interview, though I must admit I worried a bit about Tennessee. Still, there is to be music. A mini-album entirely in Welsh, what’s more. Look, who cares if you can’t understand the words? Many people can’t understand opera when they listen to it either. And if you are going to listen to someone singing in a language you can’t understand, you can’t get any better than Welsh.

Hmm, and Cerys recommends you buy it here. Love the fact that those guys use the English flag rather than the British one to indicate the language. Must remember to do that myself.

In amongst the vast pile of CDs I bought in the now 40% off sale at Tower Records last night was a Best Of compilation by The Strawbs. I remember Dave Cousins’ outfit for a bunch of eclectic singles in the 70s, plus the very silly song that defined pre-Thatcher Britain, “Part of the Union”. However, reading the sleeve notes I discovered that the Strawbs had a long history before they were famous. Believe it or not, they had both Sandy Denny and Sonja Christina as lead singers at points in their history, and their keyboards player was once a fellow called Rick Wakeman. Wow.

So there I was listening to The Book of Invasions and thinking that I really ought to find out if I can get Short Stories, Tall Tales and The Man Who Built America on CD. Tower records, bless them came up good. But much more importantly than that they had news of a new Horslips album. After a 25 year silence. Is this wonderful or not?

As far as I can make out from stuff online, there’s only one new song, but there are a bunch of old songs all recorded with acoustic instruments rather than electric. There are also rumors of a tour. I shall be keeping a very close eye on the band’s web site.

There are a lot of different definitions of the word “classic”, but I can’t imagine any of them applying to a Genesis line-up that doesn’t include either Peter Gabriel or Steve Hackett. Owen Gibson, go to the back of the class.

Last night saw the first broadcast in KQED’s three part series, Keeping Score. Made in conjunction with the San Francisco Symphony, it looks at three compositions that changed the face of classical music. Last night’s program was about Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. There was a lot of good material in it, but I did think that at times the narration assumed rather too much musical knowledge of musical form. It is a long time since I studied such things, and after the program I found this web site rather useful as a reminder. This being KQED, the program will be aired again several times over the next few days. A full schedule, including the other two parts of the series, is available here.

My brain must have finally arrived in California because I have remembered about the BBC’s Electric Proms. The good news is that the broadcasts were indeed made available online. The bad news is that it was only for a limited time. I’ve missed the window for Billy Bragg already. But I did get to watch the Guillemots set last night. It was… strange. They opened up with “Little Bear”, which is an obvious thing to do is you have a whole BBC orchestra on hand, but after that they went into four new and more experimental pieces. At one point Fyfe and the band were leaping around the stage and torturing their instruments wearing animal masks and looking for all the world like they were auditioning for the soundtrack of a movie based on an Angela Carter book. Like I said, strange. Then they played out with “Trains to Brazil” and “Sao Paulo” just to make sure the crowd was happy. I wasn’t too pleased with the video or audio quality, but that’s bandwidth for you. Wish I’d been there.

You can see what’s left of the coverage here.

Update: Well it might say that the Billy Bragg set would only be available until Nov 1st, but I’m watching it now. Thank you, BBC!