Welcome to the RPM Seven Day Soundtrack, week ending Friday 8th March 2024. Another week's sound selections from the collective...over to...

Tony -

"Here's my submission for the week. Sun's out but it doesn't brighten the pain of my car insurance renewal quote. Best wishes to all you RPMers."

Jayne -

"Thank you RPMers for your great selections so far this year."

Kevin -

John -

"Hi RPMers. Here are three tracks I've listened to in the past seven days..."

David -

"Inspired by Nina's choice of a David (Soul) track on St. David's Day I went off in search of "David" tracks this week. Here are 3 tracks from albums I hadn't played in a long time. Incidentally they are all fine live performers too."

Dave -

"Hi RPMers, hope all's good with you guys. Here’s my 3 this week."

Piers -

"I started out the week by buying another Olivia Cheney album, (a pre release CD and download of her new album 'Circus of Desire' which is playing as I write.)  OC's songs really are very good and I expected to include a track or two, but somehow one thing lead to another and I got distracted... Also on Monday Jane and I went to the Maddermarket Theatre to see Spiers and Boden. I was a little surprised that right from the start  they 'covered' several songs that I have been playing with my friend John.  A tune that they didn't include but that John and have been doing lately is one that I have been singing.  Blind Blake’s ‘You Gonna Quit Me Baby’ (which Bob Dylan also covered as  ‘As Good As I Been To You’). Now that I have pretty much got my head around what I want to do with it I thought that I should take a listen to some other versions. That got me thinking about covers and how you make a song your own.  

The trail eventually lead me to re listen to one of my favourite late Byrds albums ‘Farther Along’ for their version of David Giffin’s Lost My Drivin’ Wheel  and that in turn lead me to  ‘ThunderByrds’ for McGuinn's take on 'American Girl'. (Which I posted in the distant past I believe)

But on the way I hit a huge stumbling block -  Blind Willie McTell’s ‘Broke Down Engine’ 

I couldn't post this week without the original by Arthur Blake, and then how could I leave these other two out? So Olivier will have to wait!"

Nina -

"Hi folks. Hope you're all well.

Happy International Women's Day! Here's to happy everyone every day.

It was St Piran's day on Tuesday, both these days are in my choices + a track I heard for the 1st time in ages this week."

"Thanks to Tim's tips I'm currently stood watching Gong in Falmouth, with Ozrics to follow. They sound great! Tragically tiny crowd.. Expect some of theirs next week.

Cheers!"

Tim -

"It's a book and music tie-in this week," music as mentioned in 'Killing Floor', the first of Lee Child's thrillers featuring Jack Reacher his 'righteous avenger for our troubled times'.

I'd steered clear of Lee Child's books assuming them to be trashy detective novels...but when I saw in the local charity shop his book 'Killing Floor' (a Howlin Wolf song played by Hendrix), and saw it was the first in the series (I love reading book sequences in order), plus the initial story premise is that our hero Reacher gets off a Greyhound bus in a town in the middle of nowhere searching for the trail of the long dead blues legend Blind Blake, I had to give it a go.

There are a bunch of blues artists referenced in the novel; John Lee Hooker, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Canned Heat, Albert King, but here's the first mentioned in the book..."

"And here's the second song entwined into the narrative...while Reacher is locked up in the local police cell...

'People spend thousands of dollars on stereos. Sometimes tens of thousands. There is a specialist industry right here in the States which builds stereo gear to a standard you wouldn't believe. Tubed amplifiers which cost more than a house. Speakers taller than me. Cables thicker than a garden hose. Some army guys had that stuff. I'd heard it on bases around the world. Wonderful. But they were wasting their money. Because the best stereo in the world is free. Inside your head. It sounds as good as you want it to. As loud as you want it to be.

I was leaning up in my corner running a Bobby Bland number through my head. An old favourite. It was cranked up real loud.'..."

"And how does one while away the hours on a stake out...?

'It was a good long wait. I was uptight about the time ticking away, so I sang to myself. I went through every version of Ramblin' On My Mind that I knew. Took me thirty-five minutes to run through every version of that old song.' 

....Now you know."

"So, was 'Killing Floor' any good? Absolutely! Best thriller I've read for ages. Jack Reacher is a cross between Philip Marlow, Sherlock Holmes and Jason Bourne, so there's some sharp reasoning going on but also some extreme violence. But because the writing style is very much influenced by Raymond Chandler, as in short, simple uncluttered sentences cut through with a wry sense of humour, the violence doesn't come across as gratuitous. It just is, and it keeps you turning those pages, of which there are 425, waiting for the bad guys to get their comeuppance....which they most certainly do. I'd read it in two days straight. Nothing else much got done. Didn't matter. Recommended."

'Til Next Time...