Every day in the tub I like to listen to music, usually a CD via the player on the landing, and less often from a USB stick plugged into the front of it. With some albums I can be in and out in a few minutes, but there are some that I can’t bear to cut short, so will wallow for the entire duration. The big fave this year has been Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer; flawless from the opening strains of the title track to the closing “Please sign your name on the dotted line” of Americans, it’s an album I have to listen to in full, no skipping, editing or rearranging required.
What album do you just *have* to listen to in full, soup to nuts? What’s the record that currently leaves you prune-like from the tub? Do tell.
It’s usually during this song that the water cools and I consider getting out, then it gets to the breakdown, and I just top up and stay put.
All of them. I can’t not listen to an album from beginning to end.
These days, the only reason I have a bath is to listen to car boot vinyl diaries.
Wow, you must have been extremely pruney by the time you got to the end of the Paul-Heinz Dittrich track on the last one.
You just prompted a memory of listening to cassettes while having a bath. In mid-wallow, you’d really have to dislike something to be arsed enough to reach over, dry your hand, press FF, stop, FF again, stop etc. So I tended to listen to the whole thing as God intended. Even The Beatles White album.
This sounds like a health and safety nightmare, unless your boombox ran on batteries of course. Did you also flip the tape over from the tub?
It does indeed! I’ve only ever listened to the radio while taking a bath – although I recall being able to listen to the TV while in the bathroom of a former palace in Vienna (now a vast hotel). But should I manage to ablute while listening to music of my choice, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” (Wilco) always gets played in full, as does “Crime of the Century” (Supertramp) and “Wish you Were Here”. More recent stuff: “Queen of Denmark” (John Grant) and the last two War on Drugs albums.
Thank you Mr Firefly, for answering the question in the OP. 😃
You’re welcome!
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is great until the hidden track of noise. I assume you don’t really listen to that bit?
I think that might be “Less Than You Think” on A Ghost is Born. I may have endured it once, but never again. And never in the bath.
File under I Can’t Believe I Sat Through That.
@minibreakfast Of course! There was also listening to the radio, but don’t tell anyone, but music in the 70s was mostly *rubbish*. Kids today don’t know they’re born. They don’t know the character-building steely resolve it takes to tolerate the entirety of Another One Bites the Dust while you’re waiting to hear the new one by the Desperate Bicycles.
This thread, despite claiming to be about getting clean, is a cavalcade of filth.
Soup to nuts…. flip it over… top up and stay put… stick plugged into the front of it… opening strains… extremely pruney …. health and safety nightmare….
I don’t come here to read this muck.
I’m happy to do so once I’m here, mind.
I’m pretty sure every single thing you read is a cavalcade of filth, Moosey. It’s a very special gift you have.
Not the only one, lady.
PS. All Janelle albums have to be played to the end. I don’t make the rules. She does.
Good call on Janelle, it’s great isn’t it? Looking throught the library it seems that the most recent example is also in the “lady protest soul” mould: “A Seat At The Table” by Beyonce’s sis Solange always has to be played through. NO hardship, that.
Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” was my bathtime listening choice, back in 1971-3. Just the right length before the water got too cold and, after being used in that surfing movie, with properly watery connotations too.
D’ya know, Mike, the was my thought too, scared to post because only one side. (But who ever got out of a bath to turn a record over?) 20 odd minutes is plenty long enough to prune. Echoes with it’s early plinks, denoting the shock of the heat, is perfect, the early vocal theme denoting the luxuriating in said heat, the searing guitar bit the job of the bath, a swift scrub ‘n’ furtle, ahead of sinking into reverie as dawn slowly and steadily comes up (my favourite bit). Finally a lurch into wakefulness with the reprise of the vocals, up and out. Job’s a good ‘un.
(No marks for whomsoever says who’s Dawn.)
Incredibly, I heard Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” for the first time ever, last week. I rather liked it.
I wasn’t in the bath, though.
I was doing the washing-up.
You could combine bathing and washing up, save water and time!
Is that not normal then?
My coffee cup is certainly improved by the great taste of Matey Foam Bath.
I load up the bubbles and pop on The Smiths’ “The World Won’t Listen”, wrinkling my nose as Oswald Moz-ly trills “Do you a vacancy for a backscrubber?”.
Not really – the bath is for podcasts.
p.s. I bought Janelle’s album for a mate today, so it must like it quite a bit.
Hall and Oates’ War Babies, it’s not a ‘great’ album but it’s one of my favorites, and every song is a joy to sing along to in the bath, which i do….badly.
Albums that leave you prune-like are:
Plum, sodomy and the lash
Damson on the ceiling
Have you anything more currant?
Van Morrison – “Bein’ Greengage”
How about Prince’s Black (Doris) Album?
Anything by Carlos Sultana
…I’ll get me bathrobe
Don’t forget your loofah.
Vandross?
Give me the raisin …
👏👏👏
A fruitful troll through my record collection:
Raisin To Believe (Tim Hardin, Rod Stewart etc.)
For Sentimental Raisins (Ella Fitzgerald and many others)
Don’t Need A Raisin (Beth Orton)
For A Raisin (Dr. Alimantado)
No Raisin (Nick Lowe)
Raisins (Earth Wind & Fire)
Raisins To Be Cheerful (Ian Dury)
Fig Country – One Grape Thing
Mr Mojo Raisin…
Give me a raisin to love you..
Podcasts for me in the bath.
Here comes the sun……
……is equal to the love you make.
….someday I’m gonna make her mine. Rather inappropriate high-speed towelling soundtrack.
Up arrow in the post.
Don’t normally listen to music in the bathroom as I’m like a shower ninja in the morning, and I suspect any loud music/singing along would be met by louder cries of “shut up, dad!”
I did get to have a long bath on Monday following a 12 mile hike and got through the first seven songs on Wilco’s a ghost is born. Each one of those songs are absolutely perfect. I would have listened to the whole thing but for loud shouts outside the bathroom of “shut up, dad” and the like. Some people just don’t appreciate my singing voice.
A Ghost is Born is about one track short of perfection, it’s a long one ….
It’s a British thing this having baths isn’t it?
People tend to have showers down here. Shorter and noisier, esp with an exhaust fan going, so no music.
We have a bath in the house. It’s been used less than 10 times since it was put in 5 years ago. Trying to stop my daughter having showers long enough for a Mahavishnu Orchestra box set is the problem.
We haven’t got a shower. I have a bath every morning. I’ve got used to sitting in the tub at 5am, on a work day looking at myself in the shaving mirror questioning everything about my life.
I look like Tex Avery’s ‘Droopy’ at those moments.
“I look like Tex Avery’s ‘Droopy’ at those moments.”
Tex Avery or no’, I dare say you speak for a number of us, however invigorating is the music.
Apart from when I was at university, I’ve never lived in a house with a shower.
Anyway, standing for ablutions isn’t an option for me these days, and a good long soak at the end of the day is very helpful.
Tonight was disc 1 out of the big Fela Kuti box set. I put it on well over an hour ago and it’s still going. Don’t worry, I’m out! (I also had a cup of tea and a toffee apple while I soaked away my troubles.)
Red hot woman with a toffee apple.
It’s like the Garden of Eden all over again.
“What album do you just *have* to listen to in full, soup to nuts? What’s the record that currently leaves you prune-like from the tub? Do tell.”
….. for us males, shouldn’t that be “soap to nuts” ?
Boom boom, tish!
I haven’t had a bath this year!!
I might just have one the weekend. Two albums that always get played start to finish are
Paul Simon’s Still crazy after all these years and Steely Dan Can’t buy a thrill. Thankfully they were both before the modern fad of 75 minute albums so the prune effect will not be so bad.
We only have showers but we are adding a bathroom soon with an actual bath in it. I want a long one because normal baths these days can’t cope with anyone over 5’3″.
I have a radio in the shower room, either R4, Planet Rock or occasionally R3.
Jan Garbarek & Hilliard Ensemble – Officium.
It turns the bathroom into a cathedral and the sound is molten as I dissolve into the water.
Doesn’t happen very often as we don’t have a bathtub, and the local spa doesn’t take kindly to me taking over the PA system when I’m there.
Officium? Nice choice, Salwarpe.
I (in the company of Kaisfatdad) finally got to see Jan Garbarek live in concert a couple of weeks ago. At 71, he’s still a very cool cat – Jan Garbarek, that is, not Kaisfatdad. Kaisfatdad is also a cool cat, but he’s not 71.
I hope it was a suitably acoustically-primed location, duco01. I bet the mosh pit was a sight to behold.
When I posted the comment last night, I was trying to find the blog I did on the subject. Couldn’t then, can now:
https://salwarpe.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/write-here-write-now-31-parce-mihi-domine/