Up early - even for me - downtown so if I crash in an hour or two it's okay; couldn't stay up past 9 last night due to my body's demanding I get the sleep here that I didn't get there, that I didn't seem to need there...most likely I will get to sleep earlier than usual for some time...

As you may have guessed, I got a lot of cds while in England, and I will try to list them all here as best I can (they are all at home):

Girls Aloud - Sound of the Underground and What Will The Neighbors Say? - virtually unheard of in North America, which is too bad. They tour arenas in the UK and (without having heard these two yet, obv.) they keep getting better and better. I like girl groups, so I also got Sugababes' Angels With Dirty Faces and Rachel Stevens' Come And Get It too. Only the latter has been played on the radio here, and even then briefly & on one station. All of these cds are much better than Paris Hilton's Tax Write-Off or whatever you want to call it, which is tanking already (you think she would know better than to release a cd in the first place, let alone one at the same time as Christina...)

Easter Everywhere 13th Floor Elevators, Piper at the Gates of Dawn Pink Floyd - Two albums to groove to, obviously, but also more proof that there's an awful lot more to 1967 than Sgt. Pepper; hell, throw in Love's Forever Changes (which I almost got) and you might start to think that the hippies were too stunned by this hat trick of greatness to do anything, never mind drugs...

Fourth Drawer Down and Sulk by The Associates - ie two men from Scotland come to London and have no money but tons of imagination and passion and yeah they kind of freak out, but these are sublime albums and oh, I have them (maybe I still do?) on vinyl. These came out as the New Pop invasion from within proceeded, much to the bafflement of some people and ecstatic reactions of others. Unique, to say the very least...

Loaded The Velvet Underground - Not just for "Rock and Roll" but yeah, primarily. I rebel against having to like anything just because everyone says it's influential, important, if I go back to music from when I was born or very young I want it to be because I like it, not because some panel or editor or broadcaster says I "should" like it. Like the dj on the BBC who was telling me (an Angeleno! well, he didn't know) that Pet Sounds was the best album of all time. To which I want to say, yeah, it's very good, but why can't you mention other Beach Boys albums while you're at it, to give exiles and newbies and so on a clue? (Of course I have Pet Sounds.)

Tissues & Issues - Charlotte Church. Yes, that good Charlotte is all grown-up and here's proof there is life after being a child singing star. I got this, the Rachel Stevens album and one by Girls Aloud at Impulse at Gatwick in a rare case of 3-for-20 where the third purchase wasn't something you bought intending to give to someone else, or only half-heartedly wanted to buy in order to get the deal. (And folks, it was a deal; despite sunny predictions, Church and Stevens eluded us in all used cd stores and were never marked down in new ones, so I couldn't pass the sale up; none of these cds are cheap here, if they are available at all.) I look forward to hearing her and I like her because she's a 'bad' girl but still counts her mom has her biggest critic/supporter. Much more interesting than heiresses being bitten by pets who think they can sing.

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and Gonna Take a Miracle - Laura Nyro. You either know about her and love her or you don't, essentially. Nyro goes places and expresses things with her heart and her guts, from the heart-wrenching to the angelic and back, and that has scared people for some time. I grew up on her first album (1967 strikes again!) though, so hearing her makes me feel at home...though she can still take me by surprise. Gonna Take a Miracle is an album of standards she did with Labelle, so if you haven't heard her it's the ideal place to start, as is her first album...

It seems weird to report that I got the first Constantines album in London but so I did; cheaper there than here, and I wanted to support them there to show that they have an audience. On Sunday we were in a Fopp on Tottenham Court Road and there were many of their cds there, so maybe it worked? Who knows.

Scott - Scott Walker - the first of this great man's solo works, two songs I already know as Marcello put them on a compilation for me back in June. Lush dramatic orchestral pop that makes me cry and is as brief and intense as anything from the Greeks or anyone else whose writing is precise, vivid and moving. He left the US in order to avoid the draft and has been making music ever since, still an expatriate, pretty much ignored by his home country but loved in the UK - I was surprised to see some of his albums at Gatwick...but I shouldn't have been.

More: Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom, Sonny Rollins - Way Out West ("That's easy to find!" "Not when I look for it!"), Sound of Water - Saint Etienne, Just Another Diamond Day - Vashti Bunyan, Hit Parade - The Wedding Present...so much to listen to and tell you about, but the most important music I got was a gift: Escalator Over The Hill by Carla Bley and Paul Haines, a gift from one soul and heart to another, his very favorite album of all time, something to go over and hear and rehear and sink into, just as he listened to Twice Removed and recognized me, I know I will recognize him...