The Listening Club - 10th July 2016

Good day to you all,

Yet again tapping things out early, as we have guests in the house, @Nessiest is packing to scarper to her homeland for a couple of weeks, and the weather forecast is predicting scorchio, so there's not a moment to waste!

Advance advance notice, also, that Imma gonna be away again for not one weekend but two in a month or so! 14th & 21st of August to be precise, so as usual, if you can help out with sorting this here thing out, give me a shout.

Last week, @JonnyDaPigg got everyone bouncing whilst keeping them guessing with his pick of The Mad Capsule Markets "OSC-DIS". Big thanks to Jonny for the pick, and for flipping the baton across to @MrHig, who's sent this missive across by way of introduction...

"In the beginning was the word.

In 2003 we came to New York for the first time. The East Village was our playground and Alt Coffee and Computers, next to Tompkins Square Park, was our watering hole. Internet cafes were a thing back then.

(Later that year, if I'm right about the time we visited, New York suffered a blackout and places like Tompkins Square Park became gathering places).

In 2005 we came back to New York (this time staying in Union Square) and got married. (I think by now Alt Coffee and Computers was long gone.) It was going to be in Tompkins Square Park but we changed venues. It was unseasonably hot for September, the city in the grip of a heatwave and the humidity clinging to you like a shroud.

We were there in 2008 on the night Obama was elected. We stayed in an upmarket apartment block in Clinton. Clinton used to be called Hell's Kitchen and was dragging itself out of the run-down area it used to be, when nothing was going for it but the docks.

In 2010 we came back for our fifth year anniversary and returned to the housing complex and fountain where we got married. They were showing Ghostbusters up on a big screen in the park. It rained a little but we didn't mind.

(You used to be able to visit quite a few of the Ghostbusters filming locations around Manhattan. We had to visit one, the Municipal Building, to obtain our marriage certificate. I'm not sure the firehouse is in use anymore.)

We visited last year, this time choosing the Lower East Side of Manhattan for our abode. The area has completely changed since we first visited. There's a buzz of excitement. What used to be a lot of clothing stores (before that, tenement blocks for immigrants) has been gentrified and hipsterized.

Manhattan used to be called Mannahatta, back when the Native Americans owned the place.

All these moments are slivers of time, the cities of New York from each trapped in amber. We can visit them whenever we like, in our memories. The City of New York now, today is no more or less real than all the other cities of New York we visited, nor the cities before we were alive, nor the cities of New York to come. A bunch of spins of the planet and there'll be nothing of us, the only constancy the birdsong the accompanies us as if psychopomps on our endless march.

In the end was the word, and the word was 'In the Beginning...'.

Drinking suggestion - Bellini, Umeshu Soda, or Poire Williams."

Right. Direct download is here, and the HearThis stream is...

See you at 8pm BST (GMT+1)