#181 – Jesca Hoop’s Got A Free Song For You

Jesca Hoop, showing off a pretty sweet hat

It’s all in the title really… Jesca Hoop, the Northern Californian girl living in Manchester whose music Tom Waits described as “like going swimming in a lake at night”, is giving away a song over at her website for free. All you need to do is enter your email and then BAM!, you can be the proud new owner of her latest song ‘Born To’.

It’s from her upcoming album called The House That Jack Built,

#180 – Record Store Day Special

It’s very nearly one of my favourite days of the year. It’s a day when people are encouraged not to just click the ‘download’ link next to the song they’re listening to, but to put on some trousers, shoes and other going-outside necessaries, totter down to the local (preferably independent) record store and pay in circular bits of metal and rectangular bits of paper for a – wait for it – physical copy of said song.

Now bear with me. This isn’t some new-fangled idea that some hipster came up with, but it’s what people used to do in the now-distant past. A past where we weren’t handed  everything on a silicon platter. A past where a shop used to sell music to adventurous teenagers, smelly hippies and the occasional 50-something who still thought Pink Floyd were the best thing ever, but was still willing to listen to the latest release from that little-known band their mate was telling them would be the ‘next Rolling Stones’.

Or something like that. These shops were great. My favourite one was called Beano’s, in Croydon (just by Surrey Street market, in case you’re interested) and they used to have three floors of second-hand CD’s, records and tapes. Yes, actual tapes. (If you’re unsure what a tape looks like, please see here.)