Music To Wake Up To!

I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, but our guests give great comments about the type of music we play during breakfast.

We were playing the Beatles one morning, and a couple mentioned they had seen them in concert in 1963 at Hammersmith, London.  Amazing. But they said that they hardly heard a note of all the screaming going on around.

We are quite keen to play a lot of Scottish music by some of the most wonderful young singers from Scotland with their modern take on Scottish folk songs.  Artists such as Julia Fowlis, Siobhan Miller, Iona Fyfe (pictured below), Gnoss, The Staves, and our old favourites, Capercaillie.  We get many guests asking for the names of these musicians so that they can play them in their own cars and, as someone mentioned, to cement the memory of a place by its music. 

We like playing Spotify’s (name your favourite band) Radio playlists, a compilation of bands that sound like your fav.  We have nearly exhausted Johnny’s playlist of great bands – Super Tramp, Genesis, Led Zep, Deep Purple, some Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac.  I try to throw in The Eagles, but he isn’t too keen on them.  And we’ve exhausted the 1970s and 80’s top hits, so the Radio lists are very helpful.  A nation which appears to like John’s rock music choices are our German guests and we get lots of comments about our music choices from them, mostly of their appreciation of leading rock bands from back in the day.

Last week we had an American couple stay with us and that morning we played Fleetwood Mac radio, and America’s Ventura Highway, came on. (Is there a more lovely opening to a song?)  I love this song and their A horse with no name.   The American guy mentioned that he loved the band America and when he was a student in the early 80’s his college in Pennsylvania had booked them for an end of year celebration and what a memorable concert it was.  And he said that the following year his college booked Huey Lewis and the News, literally just before they went massive in 1983, or he thinks they would never have got them.  

As he was from Pennsylvania, I asked him what he thought of Taylor Swift, the new music love in my life.  And he said he wasn’t a ‘Swifty’, but his wife liked her, and they had been on Rhode Island a few years ago and unbeknown to them had accidently come across Taylor Swift’s beach house there, which she sings about in ‘The Last Great American Dynasty,’ and which magnificently sits high up on the beach overlooking the sea with lots of security signs around it.

Earlier in the year we had a couple stay with us who were off to the Islay Jazz Festival, and really enjoyed hearing us play Gregory Porter with his jazz undertones that put a spring in their steps, before getting the ferry from Kennacraig to Islay, on what was a beautiful sunny morning.  

I do think that it is music that makes the world go round.