looney tunes

i have one week of freedom left. this week has been great. i read a book that wasn't for children (The Rotter's Club courtesy of Benoit). I caught up on a lot of sleep and had a week of lovely lie-ins. But i suddenly got the perfect idea for this week's activities. I'm going on a music adventure.
A few months ago (or was it just weeks?) I saw a feature on this lovely little music shop that had come up with the concept for an album club. You subscribe to it and they select 3-10 albums for you each month-- like Book of the Month except it was music. Interesting concept but i forgot the name of the shop.
Now just a few minutes ago I saw this fascinating special on The Sex Pistols. I'm not heavily into punk but it got me thinking that there was so much culture and history and music in this place and i haven't properly taken advantage of being here and beign able to know it first hand. (I've always wanted to find a ska gig but never found anyone to go with me.) Hemmingways, I went on the net to look for that music shop.
In my search i stumbled on a great site-- www.bbc.co.uk. I know what you're thinking: she lives in England, kung di ba naman tangengot at ngayon lang niya na-discover ang bbc. to clarify: long have i loved the bbc. i like the documentaries, the feature shows, the bitchy commentaries... who else will come up with stuff like an antiques road show where you're taught to appraise precious collectable? who else will have anatomy live on monday nights? it's like having discovery channel twice over. but i digress. i was in the perfect mood to look through the bbc website tonight and it has some amazing stuff. this whole set of pages on ska and reggae (sigh) complete with historical context and fashion briefs and a how-to-dance-to section. saya! and i went through pages and pages of info that i didn't need but enjoyed finding out anyway. ah...
but i couldn't find what i was looking for. so i made another search on google for music stores UK and it turned up this great list of music shops, topping it all off with the three majors-HMV, Tower and Virgin. But the rest of it was this list of smaller out of the way places-- and one of these shops was Rough Trade.
the major shops probably have a bigger selection and i'll probably have an easier time browsing through them, but i thought it would be educational to look through the smaller places. a place like RoughTrade, that has services like TheAlbumClub-- might be able to recommend some other ska and reggae musicians worth listening to. i will admit: i'm a terrible music fan. i like the way certain music sounds but i can't sing any of the lyrics and i won't be able to tell you anything about the artists that made them. terrible terrible. i could tell you roughly that i like ska, reggae, afro-cubano music, blues--that's all. if you ask me which regaae artists i like i'll say marley and cliff *blush*. my ska knowledge goes as far as my ska island compilation cd (which is excellent). and my afro-cubano collection consists of the buena vista social club cd's. for shame.
but in the sprit of self-improvement, i'm going in for a bit of self-schooling. i've read up on the rough progress from ska to reggae to dancehall to ragga to-day. i ordered a cd of The Specials (and am seriously considering a Skatalite purchase). i suppose one could say that up till now i've only really lusted after this music. i hear it, i close my eyes to it, i smile wantonly and i dance to it. but maybe it's time i actually got to know it.
will return with news from the melodymakers! whee!