I read every word and sentence. If the meaning and context does not convey itself immediately, I will go back and read it again and again until it does. I read quite a lot of older fiction (including Dickens), so the relatively arcane style can be a challenge. But for me, reading is not only about pleasure, it is a learning experience and I'm happy for a book to take as long as it takes.

What is tartan if nothing other than cloth with a woven pattern ? What I have read about it is that during the Jacobite rebellions, chiefs liked to look as unworldly as possible with the patterns they wore - and the usually wore multiple different patterns too. These same chiefs were often European educated and perhaps had to work on their street cred with their warrior clansmen.

Weaving a complex pattern is time consuming and expensive, so why would they take such time before the invention of proper looms or without a chief with the money to pay for it ?

Clans had emblems and heraldic arms anyway, so they would have sufficed for identification purposes.

The file, The Outlaw King, goes some way to repairing the damage with not a kilt or tartan in sight. Not very good otherwise unfortunately.

Okay then, I definitely recommend it for a rainy day, or perhaps a serene starry Moonlit night would be better. Always Returning is one of those tracks that brings a tear to the eye.

Can I give a shout out to Apollo ?

The ideal album for Enossification would have been Melt for sure. It is surprising Eno didn't feature on any of his albums given that Fripp was prominent on the 1st 3 and produced Scratch. But they were clearly going in different directions.

Eno went towards Ambient while Gabriel went for a more industrial sound up to Mask at least. But in fairness to Melt, it was already an excellent album and I guess you could draw a contrast with Bowie's Scary Monsters. Melt for all its electronics is quite a sparse album while Scary Monsters is rich and layered.

One favourite bit of Eno trivia.

He recorded Taking Tiger Mountain... at the same studio and same time that Genesis were recording The Lamb... album. Gabriel being an admirer invited him to contribute and he duly provided some ethereal touches to what was already a very trippy album.

He is the only non-member to have a writing credit on a Genesis album (check out The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging). However, his influence seems to pervade the album more generally - there are 2 short ambient songs.

However, Eno needed a drummer to work on Mother Whale Eyeless and Genesis offered up Phil Collins (he stated he felt like a prostitute). It obviously went well because Collins would also play on AGW and B&AS.

I would define AGW as proto-ambient, with a foot in the Progressive camp (most of the musiicans were from that genre). Completely agree that it's a perfect album. Could argue there is some inspiration from the Harmonia album that came out a year before, which Eno effusively praised. After AGW, he would produce an album with them.

But Eno's 4 non-ambient albums in the 1970s are all classics and each so distinct in their own style.

Eno was an influence on BoC (along with Mike Oldfield curiously enough).

Before an unnecessary argument breaks out, I grew up in the UK, Scotland and Glasgow in particular. So rather more austere in comparison to a middle class US family.

I completely accept that taking the kids out to the pizza/burger joint was probably regular in the US. Interesting, but our perception back then was that US kids were spoilt brats. But I wouldn't now - it's just an indication of how standards changed.

Might also add, I attended a school where corporal punishment was normal, but curiously no one questioned it. We were just urchins that needed fixing, and besides, it toughened you up. Looking back, that value is quite shocking and such practices were banned in 80's (it had to go to the European Court though).

To be honest, if you went back to the 60's or 70's, let alone the early 19thC, you would consider child treatment cruel by current standards. This is not any reference to abuse scandals, but actually what was considered normal and decent then. Parents smacking their children and teachers carrying out corporal punishment was acceptable and considered even necessary. Take a child out for a burger or pizza would be considered spoiling them.

It's only logical that the further we go back in time, the more standards seem more shocking.

I think the early industrial revolution period perhaps imposed unique pressures, not least that exploitation of the weaker was considered morally good. Even so, we don't care for children out of a sense of morality, but because we have an in-built biological programming to do so. I think what the moral standards of the early 19thC did, ironically with so much Christian virtue, was to dehumanise the weak and vulernable.

Not counting any long songs (>10mins), as they take up so much album space, they don't really count as endings.

Robert Wyatt - Little Red Robin Hood Hit The Road

Wishbone Ash - Throw Down The Sword

King Crimson - Reqiuem (on Beat)

Playlists mostly. I've been listening to music for more than 40 years, so I've had plenty of album listening discipline. I feel like I've earned the right to indulge in playlists.

When you look at it, music for the most part was driven by commercial pressures for most of its existence, with a brief period when artists wrenched control in the late 60s and early 70s.

New Wave was actually quite commercial in nature, but it rather focused on simplicity and was also deliberately raw. The early 80s saw an embracing of technology and the result was a more polished product based on the same relative simplicity of New Wave. At the time, it seemed fresh and appealing, but the result is that it has not aged so well.

I think artists only started to assert control from the 1990s onwards when it became much easier to record and publish music. With streaming sites, it became even easier. It is very noticeable that bands from the 90s onwards seem a bit more experimental again and that quirkiness that defined the 70's seems to have returned again.

Didn't know you were from Brazil. During lockdown I was listening to some of your country's music, Arthur Verocai, Azymuth. That may be the less commercial stuff though !

Easy to forget that even at the start of the 80's, it was only 13 years after Sargeant Pepper, and at the end of the most turbulent period in the history of Rock. You could call it the classic period for the genre, when artists were at their most experimental, creative, but also indulgent. Some of the music became so artistic that genuine questions were asked about how such artists could appeal to the typical demographic.

There was a reset in the late 70s, with Punk and then New Wave, where songs were rendered rather more economic, but it was still remarkably edgy and rebellious, retaining a lot of that irreverent spirit of the late 60's (even if the artists were reacting against that period).

The 80's therefore heralded a somewhat sober period musically (even if artists were high on coke, it didn't manifest itself in their music, unless we're talking about those endless electronic drum beats). Commercial pressures were brought to bear of course, but technology also played a huge part, in allowing quite moderately talented musicians to sound quite professional (talking about you lot, New Romantics).

Suddenly, what was novel and inventive in 73, could be ripped off quite easily in 81. Roxy Music should have made a fortune suing all those working class UK bands for plagiarism.

The artists of one decade tend to reject the values of the previous one (with a few exceptions who were heralded as prophets, like Bowie), so a lot of what was considered admirable in the 70s (see above) was considered taboo in the 80s. Out went long songs and solos. And don't even try to fuse with Jazz (which of course was declared 'dead').

So, we have the confluence of three prevailing forces. Increased commercialism (record sales were higher), better technology that could make amateurs sound half decent and a value set that firmly rejected a lot of that was innovative.

Where I will give the 80s some credit though. I think it was the first era where we trully started to hear international musical themes permeate the mainstream. e.g. Talking Heads. And by the end of the decade, nostalgia was back with a folk revival and even a touch of the psychedelic. It would be the 90's (and the Post Rock rise) before Prog was given any credit though.

Now - this is obviously a contentious topic, so I'd like to just state that this is a just a rambling comment from myself that has been churned out without much thought. I came of age in the 80s, so I should adore this decade, but I don't. When I started listening to music, I was very much drawn to the 70s. Therefore, perhaps some of the frustration of my youth has manifested itself here. I have no doubt there was a lot of excellent music in the 80s (e.g. Talk Talk) for all that I have ranted against it.

I genuinely talk like this and few if any friends.To hell with them I say.

It's not done me any good whatsoever. If anyting it may have hindered me. I am better read than most, if not all of the managers I reported to, and they have exacted harsh revenge for my obvious intellectual superiority.

I should probably be less arrogant in fairness.

People that become friends very often find that they have similar artistic tastes. You find the friend first and then the artistic sharing follows.