Blip 1500

Well, would you believe it?! I’ve finally reached another Blip milestone!

It’s taken me a lot longer than I originally anticipated but l got here in the end.

There have been many occasions when I’ve wondered whether I should just throw in the towel and quit Blipping altogether, due to my less than regular attendance, but I’ve never been able to give up completely because the lure of Blip is strong and, even though I may not comment on your journals as much as I’d like to, I do visit them regularly and I like to keep up with how you’re all doing and what’s going on in your lives. I still feel very much part of this community and grateful for the people who I’ve met through it, sometimes virtually, sometimes actually in person. I hope to meet many more of you one of these days! I’m also very grateful to all the people at Blip Central who run the site now, and to those who ran it in the past. You’re all fabulous!

For today’s celebratory Blip I thought I’d revive my lockdown series of album cover tributes, which I had such great fun doing back in those anxious and isolated days. Big thanks to M for her help with bringing this one to fruition!

Lucinda Williams (who I blipped way back in 2013 www.blipfoto.com/entry/3211976 ) is one of America’s great musical treasures and her album ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’ (1998) is a stone cold classic which I reckon should be in everybody’s collection! However, I first encountered her music a decade earlier when the revered British indie label Rough Trade (whose founder, Geoff Travis, I blipped in 2017 www.blipfoto.com/entry/2307434458355073948 ), a label best known as the home of many a British post-punk band, released her album - the eponymous ‘Lucinda Williams’ - to great acclaim. It’s an album of the folky, bluesy, country, rootsy, Americana that has made Williams name, and it remains a staple on the Booknerd gramophone to this day. Here’s ‘Crescent City’ from the album for your delectation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv4CAW7idiA

You can see my rather torn and tattered original copy of the album in the Extra picture, featuring Greg Allen’s cover photo. Respect to him.