To say
the last couple of months have been full on is something of an
understatement.
It
started with our trip to Canada and Alaska which is now already
starting to feel like a distant memory. Mrs Darce and I, together
with eight other friends, took in Calgary-Banff-Jasper by road,
boarded the Rocky Mountaineer to Vancouver, spent a few days in
Victoria, then cruised into Alaska, and finished off in Vancouver.
Fantastic scenery, bears, whales, glaciers, and almost uninterrupted
sunshine – we were so lucky with that. “Just wow” was an often
used expression. A trip of a lifetime... but maybe we will do New
Zealand next!
I
returned to an intense three weeks at work as a new computer system
was implemented. A lost weekend, and plenty of late evenings. Still
snagging now.
During
the new system shenanigans I managed to get way with Mrs Darce for a
day as we celebrated our 30th(!) wedding anniversary.
Then, last weekend, we drove our daughter and a car full of her
belongings over to Germany.
Stop the
world! I want to blog!
While we
were in Vancouver I managed to slip away for an hour or two and dip
into a couple of record shops – I was lucky that they happened to
be only 10 minutes walk from our hotel. Vinyl and Beat Street are
both on West Hastings. Vinyl was, frankly, overwhelming. Crammed with
record bins crammed with records and seemingly every available floor
space also covered in more stacks of records. Much of it was actually
filed by genre – and micro genre – but in the end I still didn't
really know where to start. It needed more time than I had so I
decided to withdraw gracefully. A block up was Beat Street which had
a good selection. It was there I found an album in the right
condition and price I had been on the look out for a while –
Phyllis Hyman's debut album from 1977. I have waxed lyrical about
Phyllis before, and have been a fan for many years. I had overlooked
her debut album until recently though. It has plenty of strong
tracks, One Thing On My Mind
is the one that initially drew my attention though, it was written
and originally performed by Evie Sands. I featured Evie's version
here some time ago... just a minute, when was that? Exactly one year
ago to the day! Spooky!
Phyllis'
life story is a sad one, she was diagnosed bi-polar, and ultimately
took her own life in 1995.
She was
a beautiful woman blessed with an equally beautiful voice, in fact
I'm sure she would have matured into a superb jazz singer. But you
could hear her pain, there was a deep melancholy in her voice I
think, and I am often moved to tears when I listen to her. (Looking into her eyes there is a sadness there too isn't there?)
Press repeat!
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1 comment:
Good to have you back Darcy
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