I did something amazing at the weekend. I played a tape. A cassette. It was by Paco de Lucia, the Spanish guitarist. The tape was given to me by my aunt a long long time ago. She used to like to educate me on a lot of artistic stuff. She took me to see The Last Waltz, a documentary on the amazing The Band. She took me to see Stop Making Sense by the equally amazing Talking Heads. She used to work in the movie business. She took my brother Mat to the Moscow Film Festival where he stood next to Robert de Niro at a party.
I’m not a Luddite. New technology is cool and exciting. Tapes… so last weekend I put the damn thing into a tape player and waited for the music to start. Out comes this humongous, undescribable crackling noise, the mother or all hisses. I reached down to turn the whole thing off… at which point I realized it wasn’t tape hiss, it was the audience applauding Mr de Lucia as he walked on stage.
Ahem…