Radio Croydon interview - those song choices

I hope some of you were able to listen to yesterday's Brain Tumour Thursday show on Radio Croydon.  If you didn't, there's a link here to the podcast.  Listen from about 1hr 5mins.  Apparently they get upwards of 5000 listeners to the show, so there's some good exposure for Headway North London!  Thanks to Claire and Eileen for letting me loose!

For those wanting to know a bit more about my story, there's a good article here, and there are bits and pieces about my wife and I on the Headway site.

I just wanted to reflect on the songs I chose a little.  Music is such a big part of my life that it took a really long time to come to the final three.  It was also hard because I was trying to choose favourites whilst also being relevant to the topic.  I realised after I'd submitted them that they perfectly reflect the past, present and future.

'Sovereign Light Cafe' is a track from Keane's album 'Strangeland'.  It was released last year and for me, it's the band's best work.  'Sovereign Light Cafe' is the centrepiece of an album that is largely nostalgic, looking back on places and times that were influential and the moments that made people what they are.  It comes from the perspective of adult maturity and experience, of knowing who one is.  The past makes us who we are.  It chimes with me for that reason, but it has added appeal for me because the backdrop is coastal and I too was brought up on the English coast in a slightly downtrodden seaside town.

Darius Rucker was/is the lead singer in an American college band called Hootie and the Blowfish.  They were huge in the early 1990s, and again Hootie are a nostalgic look back for me.  More recently, Rucker has released solo country and western albums and his last, 'Charleston SC, 1966' was released in 2011.  The first track, 'This' is about contentment in the present, an acknowledgement that all sorts of things happen in life and that, right now, despite or because of all those things, I'm okay.  It's a good place to be.

The final track is also fairly recent, from KT Tunstall's 2010 album 'Tiger Suit'.  'Lost' helped me through a difficult time when I needed to make a decision about my future.  For me, the track is a realisation that the path taken is wrong, that she's following the crowd instead of doing what she wants or feels is right - 'what did I do that for - am I am idiot?'.  It's raw and honest, and about choosing the future and having some control over it.  At the time I first heard it, I was uncomfortable where I was, and I did something radical - and have benefited from it since.

I dragged the wife I lost to concerts by all of these artists, and I drag my current wife to them as well.  My 4 year old daughter can sing 'Sovereign Light Cafe' all the way through.  They're important artists to me generally.

I also have a mantra since my wife died - there's no point worrying.  If you can do something about your worry, do it; if you can't do anything about it, then there's no point worrying.  It's worked for me.