A Month Curated by A Ten Year Old #7

Glue – Bicep (2017, Ninja Tune Records, Taken from ‘Bicep’)

Other than the band Air (and possibly Massive Attack), who are as I have already mentioned my daughter’s favourite band, there is more music by Bicep than anyone else on this playlist.  The reason for this is that Bicep, by and large, soundtracked the impromptu Olympics that was held at No Badger Towers throughout the first lockdown of 2020.

Of course, the original plan was not about having an Olympics in the garden.  It was about making sure our daughter got some fresh air and exercise during the lockdown.  So as my wife and I tried to recreate a school day at home, we decided to build a temporary obstacle course in the garden.  It started on our patio and involved jumping across logs, dribbling a football in between some hastily arranged flowerpots, throwing some soft balls into various buckets that had been recovered from underneath bushes and out, splashing through a paddling pool filled with water and fairy liquid, and finally squirting a target (that would be me) with a super soaker water pistol.   Spacehoppers, skipping ropes, and a frisbee (until it got stuck in a tree) were all utilised as well. 

My daughter would each day try to smash the course record, which she would then declared to be the world record (because in terms of times around that obstacle course, the quickest time was the fastest time anyone in the world had been round it – so it was a world record, right?).  At first she was slow and cautious but by the end of the hour’s P.E class she would be flying dangerously around the garden, leaping like a gazelle from log to log and swinging from a shabbily constructed rope walk between two dying trees.

The obstacle course and its different stages fast become individual events and before long we had our own household Olympics going on.  Spacehopper races quickly became the highlight of day (and still to this day are a popular Sunday afternoon event at NBR Towers), the waterpistol shoot developed into a full on water pistol battle.  I would be armed with a tiny free waterpistol given to me by the band Cable when they were promoting some single of theirs, everyone else armed with something that could shoot a pigeon out of a tree.  The football dribble turned into a penalty kick competition and so on.  At the end medals would be given out as Bicep’s bouncy music blared away in the background.

Seventy – Cable (1996, Play It Again Sam Records, Taken from ‘Down Lift the Up Trodden’)

Atlas – Bicep (2020, Ninja Tune Records, Taken from ‘Isles’)

Let’s spin the random song generator and see what comes up next….Ah….Ms Swift, we’ve been expecting you.

Welcome to New York – Taylor Swift (2014, Apollo Records, Taken from ‘1989’)

Taylor Swift was the first popstar that my daughter genuinely adored.  I’m not sure why this came about I suspect it was through the elder sister of her best friend but anyway, my daughter used to dance around the lounge to ‘Welcome to New York’ (which I think she heard for the first time in The Smurfs Movie’) and ‘Shake It Off’.

Shake It Off – Taylor Swift (2014, Apollo Records, Taken from ‘1989’)

Tomorrow – John Legend