A Blessed Mixtape

Unless you've been lying under a rock for the last few months you will know today is D-day here in the UK. And even though I have very little with royalty or the institution of marriage, I couldn't resist the whole royal wedding fever while making a new Spotify mixtape for TwentyTrackTape...

BY ROYAL (DIS)APPOINTMENT contains 20 songs that cover all aspects of marriage: courtship, persuasion, parents' disapproval, objection, going to the chapel, the punch up at the wedding, solidarity, regrets and divorce.

Of course The Dixie Cups are on it with their Chapel Of Love, as well is Morrissey's Will Never Marry. There's Hot Chip's ode to monogamy and some good advice on marriage from Jimmy Soul and Smokey Robinson's mother. As I'm not the romantic type there a quite a few songs about divorce on it, including a song by Marvin Gaye, who recorded an entire album about his split from Anna Gordy (as part of their divorce settlement Marvin had to pay an extensive percentages of royalties of his next album to his ex. Consequently he made Here, My Dear, 14 songs about the deterioration of their marriage).

Especially for those of you who don't have Spotify, I'm treating you to a couple of the 'high lights' of my mix:


The Shangri-La's - Give Us Your Blessing. Get it here (YSI).
The Shangri-La's are one of my favorite girl groups. The girls sing like their chatting to each other, and lots of their songs are a bit sinister with sound effects dramatizing the mood. Wedding bells, a thunder storm and car crash can be heard on this song about two teenagers who run away because their parents don't approve of them tying the knot and crash themselves to death.


The Five Du-Tones - Divorce Court. Get it here (YSI).
A hilarious song that reenacts a court session. Especially one of The Five Du-Tones singing the wife's lines in a high pitched voice, and the husband breaking out in tears at the end!


Barrington Levy - Quick Divorce. Get it here (YSI).
Another song set inside the court. The reggae singer begs and pleas the judge to dissolve his marriage as fast as he can.

The hardest part of making this compilation was to limit it to 20 songs. I would have loved to included a Latin version of Frank Sinatra's Love And Marriage as sung by Peggy Lee, or I Cried All The Way To The Alter by country singer Patsy Cline or any song by The Wedding Present. But alas for them! Also my beloved Mirah didn't make the cut with Til Death Do Us Part, but I will share it with you here.


Mirah and Golden Bears - Til Death Do Us Part. Get it here (YSI).

And if this song was on Spotify it would have definitely made the list. More sound effects!

Roy C - Shotgun Wedding. Get it here (YSI).

Listen to the whole BY ROYAL (DIS)APPOINTMENT playlist on Spotify by clicking HERE. Chick here to visit my Spotify profile.

Wie schön das ist

It's 19.00 and I'm ready for bed. My eyes are droopy and the skin below them is a dark shade of purplish blue... I am recovering from a fantastic weekend. Friends of mine got married on Saturday, but the celebrations lasted the whole weekend! It was a special day for a number of reasons. Of course it was special to see my friends getting married, but there were a lot of details that made this wedding an extraordinary one: the fantastic setting of Cardiff Castle, the cake and the stunning wedding dress (both made by the bride herself!), the Dusty Springfieldesque hairdo’s of the bridesmaids, the beer (smuggled across the German border by two of their friends) and last but not least the ORIGAMI FLOWER ARRANGMENTS (also made by the bride herself!!).


For the party they’d booked the EXCELLENT Klezmer Kollective, an 8-piece outfit from Cardiff. Their music led to wild and ecstatic dancing by all guests (as you can vaguely see on the picture above)! As there weren’t any DJ-facilities the couple had asked me to put together some compilation cd’s for the evening and night. Because the now-husband is German and the now-wife is Welsh I dug up songs by German and Welsh artists and some odd covers in either German or Welsh, some of which I’ll share with you here. I especially love Motown ‘auf Deutsch’, they sing with the cutest accent. Sehr süß!

Marvin Gaye - Wie Schön Das Ist. Get it here (YSI).

The Beatles – Sie Liebt Dich. Get it here (YSI).

Marty Roos - Blauer Montag. Get it here (YSI.

Tom Jones – Ring Of Fire. Get it here (YSI).

Alex Warren and Terema Wainwright - Newport Ymerodraeth State Of Mind. Get it here (YSI).