...They all made me smile this week.

Avoiding the heavier topics I would usually approach with blogs, this week I want to document everything musical that has made me smile over the past seven days. After excitedly waiting, and subsequently missing the postman, i managed to collect my Sigur Ros DVD – Heima – from the Post Office and can highly recommend it to any post-rock and progressive music fan. With great delicacy the Icelandic collective seem to effortless create beautiful movements of sound, supported by the superb cinematography and editing that makes this DVD a series of epic tracks that could stand alone each as music videos in their own right. The band come across with great modesty and articulation, and my flat-mate has since realised she’s actually a massive Sigur Ros fan…

Following my many blogs that make mention to Sir Paul McCartney and Thom Yorke – in negative and positive lights respectively – I had a little smile this morning when i read that Yorke had snubbed a collaboration request from the not quite so green and liberal McCartney. “I asked Thom to do a duet” Said McCartney “but he said he couldn’t because he only felt happy working on his own and Radiohead’s material.” Not to worry Paul, I imagine Starbucks is not a regular haunt for Thom and the boys anyway.

But my biggest smile of all was reserved for stumbling across a long since archived letter from Elvis to the then President Nixon. While i don’t hold any prejudice against political stance, even in the musical realm where political agenda often seems predetermined against the liberal nature of musicians, to see such right-wing discourse from the King did make me chuckle. Wanting to help America combat things like the drug-culture, the SDS and – now this did make me laugh – “the hippie elements” Elvis went so far as to make suggestions that he be made a ‘Federal Agent-at-large’ in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. No chance of him going undercover really though was there. You can read the letter here and other relevent documents regarding their correspondence and meeting here if you do so wish.

...amazingtunes