Thursday, December 10, 2009

lost in france?

Every year I put together a compilation of the my favourite songs of the year to send to my sister as a Christmas present. She has three kids and lives in France so I tend to think that the musical treats which I obsessively pore over on an almost daily basis are pretty much denied to her.

Whether she's bothered about this of course is a different matter. I'm not sure to what extent she's just being polite but she always says thank you to me for sending it. She does now and then pick out the odd track for a special mention so I've no doubt she listens to it. At least once.

Anyway, tonight I've been looking at the iTunes playlist of tracks which I've been adding to during the course of the year. I've burned them to CD and will be putting them in the post to France over the weekend.

I'm listening to them as I type this, and damn, there are some great songs, if I say so myself. Many of them I've already banged on about in these pages, others not. See what you think:
OR: You can Spotify 'em here.

16 comments:

Cocktails said...

Perhaps you could create a Spotify playlist for them too?

Hoops Hooley said...

Good point. I'll have to find out if Spotify is available in France.

Cocktails said...

Actually I was selfishly thinking of myself as well!!

Hoops Hooley said...

I'm on to it!

Wanderer said...

Good work doing a list.
Funny that you very kindly link everything off to YouTube and now we want a Spotify playlist as we want things even easier (yes, I wondered about it too!).
Looking back I notice that only in 2006 we weren't even treated to YouTube links with the end of year lists - guess it shows how far things have progressed so quickly.

Cocktails said...

It's true Wanderer, I've definitely fallen prey to technology. We would all have been happy with a C60 and a list once upon a time.

Hoops Hooley said...

Here you go then folks.

There are a few tracks which aren't on Spotify (Eno/Byrne, Bassey, Howling Bells, Simphiwe Dana) but I've already added a couple and there might well be more before 31st December...

Cocktails said...

This is great - thanks very much. And even better I have just this afternoon discovered that I can run music out of the computer through the amp, as well as the other way round. In other words, the whole house has been listening to your selection.

Love, love, love that Empire of the Sun track. And what came first that version of Mercy or Duffy's?!

Hoops Hooley said...

I'm pretty sure the Duffy one came first, though it sounds as if it should be the other way around, doesn't it?

The Empire of the Sun track is not the only of these which I picked up from Radcliffe & Maconie's evening show. Glad you like it.

I sort of hesitate to mention this after recent "too much music" discussions, but now you've got Spotify plugged in for all and sundry to hear, The Word Magazine have put together huge Spotify playlists for each year of the "noughties". Probably too much to get your head round, but maybe worth dipping into on a kind of "shuffle playback" basis? I've started on 2000 tonight and have already picked up some great stuff which I must have missed at the time...

Cocktails said...

No!!!!!! What are you trying to do to me?!

Hoops Hooley said...

Hmm yes, was half expecting that reaction. Pretend I never said that...

Anonymous said...

will have a listen later. stan

Sister in France said...

We've listened to it twice already mate and I'll be playing it on the school run from tomorrow onwards...

Am loving the Prefab Sprout tracks.

PS What's Spotify? ;-)

Hoops Hooley said...

Greetings Sister in France! Didn't think you'd spot this! Sorry about the unoriginal Bonnie Tyler reference. Glad you're liking the tunes anyway.

I just checked and Spotify does seem to be available in France. It was originally free but now it costs £9.99 a month (not sure how the currency thing works your side of the Channel). You download some software to your pc and get access to loads and loads of music basically, old and new. You can stream it but not download it so you can play it on your pc but not anywhere else. You can make your own playlists too to share with others (that's what I'm rabbiting on about above). It's great and is saving me much money on CD shopping! See http://www.spotify.com/en/ or http://www.spotify.com/fr/.

A bientot!

Sister in France said...

All sounds a bit modern for me and I don't think our old computer could cope with it either...you'll just have to keep making those CDs for me! Talking of which came across High Fidelity on telly late one night last week - excellent film and John Cusack too!

Hoops Hooley said...

Love that film. Jack Black is great in it. He's gone a bit downhill since he started doing rom-coms...