Theme Thursday: Soft

I was initially stumped by this week's Theme Thursday, Soft. Believe it or not I was about to post photograph of a strawberry from my garden, which accidentally came out in soft focus when I was trying for a detailed close-up. However, something made me look up from my computer screen and I caught sight of The Doors - Soft Parade. Of course once I'd noticed this, great albums by each of The Soft Boys, Soft Cell and Soft Machine all sprang to mind, now leaving me with a decision of which to post for this week's theme.

The Doors - Soft Parade, c.1969

Bizarrely, well bizarrely to me anyway, I chose The Doors - Soft Parade. I didn't choose this because it's my favourite Doors album or because it has some standout tracks. I chose it because when I looked at the track listing I cannot honestly say I know any of the tracks, so the reason for choosing it is that I'm now listening to it to refamiliarise myself with it.

    

This week I have mostly been listening to The Holy Modal Rounders

Trying to manage 4 blogs simultaneously, I tend to find that one of them gets left for a few weeks. This has definitely happened to this blog as recently my focus has been going into my vintage postcards blog and my In Search of Space blog. So, it's about time I put this right. Over the past few weeks I've been reading Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk which has opened my eyes to some great music from the late 1960's and early 1970's so far. I've even managed to track some of it down and am now the proud owner of The Holy Modal Rounders 1+2. I was a bit 'nervous' buying it as I thought that the tracks I'd heard on lastfm may not be representative, but it is a really great compilation ... slightly quirky, as I guess it was meant to be, but great nevertheless.

Other recent purchases include the excellent Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica, Sandy Denny - Sandy, Nico - Chelsea Girl, and Bert Jansch - It Don't Bother Me. All of these are brilliant albums, even the Nico one which again I was a bit 'nervous' about as she tends to polarise opinion (bit like marmite I guess) and I have read some fairly harsh reviews. But, as with marmite, I like Nico.