Just Imagine

One of the many reasons I never liked the video age (perhaps it has passed?) was less Mr Springsteen’s complaint that it was like ‘painting a moustache’ on your favourite painting and more that it took away the piece of magic any music allowed you – your imagination.

I don’t know how I would make a video for the Louvin Brothers singing ‘In the Pines’ but I’m pretty sure my ‘longest train’ would look a lot different to the next person’s. By the time the video age kicked in properly in the mid 80’s I had to start receiving ‘treatments’ for video plots for some of my own songs. I always liked the scripts which started, ‘I hope to shoot each member of the band individually’  – often the band ended up feeling the same thing. Moving images with music are hard to get out of our heads and the radio allows us some room for manoeuvre.

I love imagining where someone is listening when they send a message in. What are they looking at and where are they hearing? So, I suppose, the listener imagines too in their own way. Many people will chat to me and ask when we record the show, little realising that much of the joy of any given Another Country evening is being able to broadcast live. At this point the collective imagination goes into a top spin as listeners from across Scotland let the music take them some place familiar or to places they can only dream about.

This Tuesday I will bring you a vinyl selection from the new album by Randy Newman called Dark Matter. On so many songs from his back catalogue I’ve allowed myself to dream a little…that back yard with the dog in Rednecks, that bum on the street in I Love L.A. and the reflection of the golden girl in the spectacles of the child killer in ‘In Germany Before The War.’

You and me will both imagine the Music Row hangout of our Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain as he brings us all the latest from Nashvegas and you will perhaps imagine the young Albert Hammond writing and selling songs in Denmark Street which would become the soundtrack to a million lives. There’s a lot of imagining goes on.

Your mind’s eye may like to think what it was like for Orphan Brigade in the caves below Osimo in Italy on their latest adventure – we’ll supply the soundtrack. We will hear some great new things from Courtney Marie Andrews, David Rawlings, Willie Watson and John Hiatt‘s daughter, Lily.

You will be pleased to know there will still be time to hear some familiar voices including The Dixie Chicks, Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash with the Carter Family.

We are back and live from five past nine this Tuesday on BBC Scotland FM. Join me if you can.