...And Finally This Week...

Master Giles, my young son, is on his school summer holidays.  Having been brought up in an age of CDs and MP3 players, he has been fascinated to learn that music can also be stored on discs of black plastic, to be subsequently "downloaded" by use of a rotating turntable and a pick-up.

Although it took him somewhat longer to learn to use our record player than it did to master the music software on his computer, he is now going through the Giles household collection of ancient vinyl, transferring anything that takes his fancy on to a remarkable device he owns, apparently called an "iPod".

Among the various album covers strewn across the study floor was an original copy of Elvis Presley's first LP from 1956 (called simply "Elvis Presley"), left to me by my late father.

This is not a choice I would have expected, especially as the lad has quite commendably zeroed in on my New Wave collection, becoming enamoured with the music of the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, 999 etc.

I picked up the Elvis album from the floor by the computer where he was seated, doing something arcane to the audio curve of Killing Joke's "Change."

"So you like Elvis?" I asked him.

"Some of it's OK," he replied, waving a non-committal hand.  High praise indeed.

"So what's your favourite track?" I asked him, as I put the record back into its cover.

Master Giles became thoughtful.  "The Wurlitzer Song," he said after a while, a very serious expression on his face.

"Eh? Don't know that one." 

I'm not a huge Elvis fan but I was pretty sure he'd never done one about a jukebox...

"Oh, come on, Dad," he said, still serious. "You know the one..."



Very good.  And deadpan, too. That's my boy...

And if I have to explain it, it won't be funny...

And on that note, have a great weekend folks...

Giles.