When do you do it?

Last Sunday I had an hour of total pleasure.

I dropped my eldest at a drum lesson and had to wait for her. I took my iPod and sat and waited for her while she was in the studio with Alun, her teacher and my first teacher.

I know tht some of the music purists say that the quality of MP3s is not as good as MP27s or whatever but I really can't hear the difference and I'm quite happy with a decent pair of headphones and a white box full of MP3s. So I sat there and I listened to a variety of songs.

I listened to some old Squeeze songs. An English band that never got the success I and many others think they deserved. They did one album, called "Some Fantastic Place" with Pete Thomas, Elvis Costello's regular drummer. If you like drummers who play for the song then Pete Thomas is one of your chaps. He's a top session guy and has played for many others too.

I listened to "Wishlist" by Pearl Jam, a song that has the most orgasmic guitar solo ever. I probably should have cited the solo as the one piece of music that comes close to moving me to tears in Theena's music quiz. Then I had a quick listen to "Learn to Fly" by the Foo Fighters. It's easily my favourite of their songs, mostly because I used to play it in the best covers band I've played in, and probably ever will play in. It's just a kicking song and, every time we played it, I became a certain Mr Hawkins.

Then it was "Heart Shaped Box", one of Kurt's less well known songs and then I moved on to Soulwax's album "Much against everyone's advice". Check this CD out, it's so good that those youth would probably call it bad. The same covers band that did "Learn to Fly" also used to do "Too many DJs", Aah I'm getting all nostalgic now. Come back MLC.

After that the 12 year old came out triumphant form her lesson.

"How was it?"

"Ah usual, easy really", she answered. Despite hardly any practice, pah! is all I can say on it.

It struck me though that I don't get or make the time to really and properly listen to music and this was the first occasion when I have done it for a while. I have music as a permanent feature in my life but I rarely sit down and listen for pleasure. It might be in the car, when it's background to me driving. It's on at work all day but again it's lurking in the background. If it's music that I'm playing drums to then I enjoy it immensely, but in a much more participative way than just listening. If I'm learning a song then I'm listening in a more concentrated and probably less enjoyable manner.

All in all I'm sure that music is a bigger element in my life than it is in many other people's life. But I need to "listen" to it more. I need to make that time to sit down and clear my head of shit, stop work, not be driving and not worry about the phone ringing and just listen to the food of love for the pure pleasure of it.

That's my latest thing. What's your?