Day 43: "Eye to the Telescope" - KT Tunstall (2005)

Like everyone, I like to feel that in some way I cut my own unique path through the jungle that is the modern musical landscape.  There's enough variety, interest, undiscovered superstars and forgotten gems for pretty much everyone who likes music to have a similar project to this one;  very rarely is the same set of circumstances going to be what brings two people to the same album.  But sometimes the wave of the zeitgeist is too strong;  a collective moment suddenly puts thousands of people into the same path, and as a result, a musical sensation is born, even if only briefly.  The story of how I came to own this album I am sure is the same as a whole lot of peoples.

listen to me here

Let's just handle this business right from the jump.  This album is a pretty great female-led acoustic folk rock album.  Odds are, you already knew that.  

Like a lot of music fans, I've been a fan of the "Later... with Jools Holland" shows for a long while. They tend to be a great way to get introduced to new music you might not have heard of, while at the same time showcasing established bands and honouring veteran performers.  It's a great show and I've seen some amazing performances on there.

Nothing I've seen on there has elicited quite the reaction from me that this performance did.  I watched it again before writing this and it still gives me goosebumps.

What's even more amazing is she wasn't even booked to appear on the show until 24 hours before it was recorded, when Nas pulled out and she was asked to come in last minute to fill the last band slot. She went on, recorded one of the best displays of pure musical talent on live TV, and her album sales skyrocketed as a result.

Now we've covered the facts, its time to take a sharp right turn into personal territory.  Don't worry folks, there is a link here I promise.

To say I've had a complicated relationship with my Dad might be underselling it slightly.  Don't get me wrong, this isn't some Angela's Ashes tale of childhood abuse and trauma, in fact far from it.  My Dad may have been away for some portion of my teenage years, but being the son in a military family had pretty much made that seem like the norm.  He could be genuinely terrifying to be around when he was irritated, or, you know, just existing sometimes (my friends during my teenage years certainly found him to be an intimidating presence).  He'd also had a fairly extraordinary life, from the musician who nearly made it big in the 60's to the Air Force veteran sergeant, travelling the world, working with the British Embassy during the cold war and been a part of the first Iraq war for nearly 2 years.  He was an almost impossible figure to live up to, which for a long time was the centre of my existence - I was the classic cliche, another son seeking his fathers approval.

This wasn't helped, I am sure, by a couple of things.  Even when I was a teen, we didn't relate very well.  I'm fairly sure my Dad would have liked me to be a rock n' roll musician, partying the night away with a girl on each arm, rather than a card game obsessed nerd who gave up on trying to learn the guitar, in part because of how frustrated he got when I didn't immediately perform to the level he was expecting.  When my younger sister was old enough to be interested in, and showed a talent for both musicianship and rebellion (and no interest in being a nerd like her older brother), focus shifted away from me, for good or ill, almost permanently.

As I grew up and moved out, my sister continued to be the focus of attention.  By the time I was in my early twenties and her in her late teens, she was mainly what my parents would talk about, generally as a result of her careening from one life-altering disaster to another in front of my parents while I, by comparison, was the stable, normal one.  Generally there were no fistfights on the front lawn on my parents house because of who I was dating;  nor was there any need to quietly pay thousands of pounds of damages to my landlord to avoid serious legal implications, for example.  My parents chased my sisters disasters as they happened;  I was left to quietly cause, and then resolve my own.

If all this sounds a little like sour grapes, it's not - well, not any more.  I'll admit to harbouring some resentments at the time, but her constant demands on my parents attention at least afforded me room to become independent.  I made some terrible decisions of my own accord, and faced them on my own, and went through the process of fixing them on my own, which was probably the best lesson I learned in my twenties and thirties.  It also let me assess who I was and how I related to my parents as adults, rather than as a dependent.

It was probably around the time this album came out that my parents were planning their retirement to Spain.  They were in a position financially, so they thought, to sell up, cash out, and leave the country for warmer climes, putting 1,367 miles between me and them.  By that time the gulf in distance between me and my Dad was pretty wide;  if we talked books, or tv, or sports, or politics, we never saw eye to eye.  He considered my tastes too highbrow, to intellectual;  he liked programs with Dom Joly in and I couldn't understand how any human being could do that and still be sane.  

We'd not really had a conversation for a couple of months at the time KT Tunstall appeared on Jools. With her performance giving me goosebumps, I immediately thought of my Dad.  I remembered years earlier, when I'd seen The Wildhearts on Top of the Pops in 1994, and the first thing I did when I saw my Dad that weekend was go up to him to ask him if he'd seen it, and he said to me before I could get a word out "Did you see that band on Top of the Pops this week?"

I phoned my family home the next day, and spoke to my Mum, who was always the go between for us. We talked smalltalk about the upcoming move to Spain, and then she said "Hang on, your Dad wants a word...."

I waited as the phone was passed over, and then I heard him come on the line and say "Did you see that girl on Jools last night?  My god wasn't she good?"

I haven't spoken to my Dad for about 15 months now;  things went from bad to worse after my 40th birthday party last year, which is a story for another time.  

Maybe we are both just waiting for another great performance on Jools to bring us together again.