After The Noise
Everything Is Equal
Monday 13 April 2026
Saturday Evening Drive Home – Cambridge United 4–0 Notts County (2026)
Elton John & Stevie Nicks – Stolen Car (2021)
From The Lockdown Sessions. Fantastic album. Mind you, Mr Dwight could fart in a paper bag and I’d lap it up.
A bit of Elton is never a bad thing. Still going, still making music, still sounding like he means it. No slowing down, no soft landing. Just keeps turning up. 79 years young, bless him.
It’s been one of those days. A good day. A very good day. Magnificent.
Up early, over to Nottinghamshire to my sister’s, then on to the match. A lot of miles, a lot of walking, and now the two-hour drive back with everything starting to settle.
Worth it though.
Cambridge United 4–0 Notts County. Proper job. Promotion right back on.
Funny how quickly it flips. From that sinking feeling the other day to this. Football doing what it does best. Dragging you about, then handing you a day like this.
The track fits it.
There’s something about that pairing. Elton’s weight, Stevie Nicks’ voice drifting through it. It just sits nicely after a long day. Doesn’t push too hard, just lets the moment carry on.
Feeling tired and wired in equal measures. Still replaying the goals in my head. 4–0 against a promotion rival. After the disappointment of throwing away four points over Easter, everything clicked today.
Three up and our keeper (rightly) gets sent off. Handling outside the area. Amazing how one result changes things.
Bromley on Thursday. Another massive one.
That mix of noise and quiet starting to level out. Hurtling up the motorway with Elton and Stevie warbling away. Elton understands the euphoric thrill of when football goes right. And also understands how utterly devastating it can be when it all goes wonky.
Miss Nicks almost certainly doesn’t understand or care.
Long one. Good one.
PJ Harvey – Dear Darkness (2007)
There’s something slightly on the nose about Dear Darkness coming on while I’m flying up the A1(M) in the dark, heading towards that glowing northern paradise of Doncaster.
Night driving always feels a bit different. Quieter, but not calm. Just you, the road, and whatever’s going on in your head.
There was a time I’d be chain-smoking through a drive like this. One after another, window cracked, ash everywhere. Couldn’t imagine doing it without a cigarette.
Now I just… don’t.
Still feels strange saying that.
This is the first car I’ve owned where I’ve never smoked. That alone tells you something’s shifted.
Got White Chalk on. Not an album I know that well, which somehow makes it fit better. It leaves space. Doesn’t crowd the drive.
I’ve always loved PJ Harvey. Properly loved her. Back when Rid of Me came out, I even thought about sending her a tape of my own songs.
Didn’t, obviously. Bottled it. I’m sure she would have had better things to do than listen and reply to my letter in the old days of snail mail.
Probably for the best. The world was spared.
Still, she’s one of those artists that stays with you. Doesn’t matter how often you dip in and out, it always feels like it connects again straight away.
There’s something about her music here. Sparse, slightly eerie, but never empty. It suits the road. Suits the dark.
Football still buzzing in the background as well. That strange mix of exhaustion and energy after a good result. It lingers longer than it should.
I don’t do many drives like this these days. Makes it feel slightly out of time. Like something from another version of life.
But it works.
Road stretching out. Music sitting just right.
Everything held together for a while.
Leonard Nimoy – A Visit to a Sad Planet (1967)
This is where the playlist decides to get clever.
Flying up the A1, early evening turning into late, and suddenly I’ve got Spock talking to me over some slightly warped, groovy 60s sci-fi sounds.
Completely normal.
I had that compilation album with William Shatner back in the day. Proper oddball stuff. Loved it. No idea why, but it stuck.
Originally, a single from his debut album, all done in character as Spock. Classic cash-in!
This one, though, I don’t remember at all. Which somehow makes it better. It just turns up, does its strange little thing, and leaves you trying to work out what just happened.
There’s something about hearing this on a motorway that makes it even more surreal. Long stretches of road, steady speed, headlights drifting past, and Nimoy calmly delivering… whatever this is supposed to be.
It shouldn’t work.
But it kind of does.
That’s the strange beauty of this playlist. No planning, no structure. Just things appearing next to each other that have no business sharing the same space.
And yet, here we are.
Spock on the A1(M).
Me, completely fine with it.
Kool & the Gang – Let the Music Take Your Mind (1969)
Finally, some order restored. Actual, undeniable funk.
Early Kool & the Gang. 1969. Same year I showed my ugly face on planet earth. Clearly a vintage worth preserving.
Straight away, it’s there. Bass locked in, horns punching through, that loose, slightly chaotic groove that only really works when it’s done this well. Funk levels pushed to a very respectable 11.
Flying down the M62 towards Manchester, and for once, no irritation. No commentary about drivers doing baffling things. Just road, wind, and this doing exactly what it says on the tin.
Let the music take your mind.
It does.
Past the Haribo factory, which feels oddly appropriate. I’ve never noticed it before. Something sweet in the air, even if it’s mostly fuel and optimism.
The drums stand out on this one. Not always what you think of first with them, but here they’re doing real work. Cutting through. Little bursts of groove underneath everything else.
Bass thumping, horns landing in those tight little jabs, vocals half-shouted, half-urging you along.
It’s not complicated. It doesn’t need to be.
Just a deep groove, repeating its message until it sinks in.
And on a stretch of road like this, with nothing getting in the way, it lands perfectly.
For a few miles at least, everything lines up.
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – Cool ‘N’ Out (2001)
This feels right for the road.
Bit of Strummer as you’re cutting across the M62, lights everywhere, one town bleeding into the next. Bradford somewhere off to the side, or maybe I’ve already passed it. Hard to tell. It all blends into one long stretch of glow.
Joe Strummer. Gone far too early. You always circle back to that. The last album released in his lifetime.
Those last few years with the Mescaleros felt like he’d settled into something. Not chasing anything, not trying to recreate the past. Just pulling everything together. Bit of dub, bit of reggae, bits from everywhere. It all sits in there.
It’s loose, but in a good way. Like he finally stopped fighting the shape of things.
You can’t help thinking about what might have come next. The near-miss of a Clash reunion hanging in the air at the time. Whether that would’ve worked, or just been another nostalgia run. Hard to know. Feels like he’d already moved beyond that.
This suits him better.
The road keeps going. Town after town, lights stacked on lights. Then eventually it thins out. Moorland opens up, everything darkens, quietens.
That’s the hope anyway.
For now, it’s just movement.
Strummer in the background, still sounding like he means every word. Because he does.
John Coltrane – Spring Is Here (1963)
“Spring is here,” says Coltrane. Not literally, because he doesn’t do vocals, but you get the vibe.
Not on this stretch of the M62, it isn’t.
It’s still doing its biblical impression. Rain, wind, spray everywhere. The kind of weather that makes you question every life decision that led you onto this road at this exact moment.
And then this comes in.
“Welcome to jazz club, nice!”
Coltrane just cuts through it all. That saxophone behaving like it has absolutely no interest in motorway problems. Just going for it. Proper late-night jazz club energy dropped straight into a moving car.
It’s brilliant.
You find yourself drifting with it, which is exactly when you glance down and realise you’ve crept up to speeds that would make a traffic officer very interested in your evening.
Cruise control back on. Let’s behave.
Roadworks appear, because of course they do. Narrowing everything, slowing everything, just as you’re starting to settle into the rhythm of the drive.
Somewhere between Oldham and Rochdale, the lights of civilisation creeping back in properly now.
And then, because the night hasn’t quite finished with you yet, I overtake the bizarre sight of a Range Rover limousine. I kid you not. Top marks for most bizarre vehicle of the whole journey.
A stretched version of the world’s most committed “I have arrived” vehicle. Someone important in there, or someone who very much wants to be.
Bloody hell, Coltrane was dead at 40. Even younger than Strummer.
The rain starts easing off. Not stopping, just stepping back a bit. Enough to breathe.
Coltrane keeps going. And I can see the heady lights of Manchester in the distance. Almost home.
After a day like this, it’s exactly what you need.
Nearly there now.
Herbal tea and decaf waiting like a reward for surviving it all.
And the “we won 4–0” smile beaming across my face as I watch Arsenal lose at home to Bournemouth on Match of the Day.
A Certain Ratio – Bootsy (1986)
Factory Records doing what Factory Records did.
A Certain Ratio always felt like one of Tony Wilson’s big hopes. All the right ingredients. The look, the sound, the attitude. Just never quite broke through in the way others did.
Which is strange, because this is good. Really good.
Proper groove to it. Funk sitting underneath everything, pushing it forward without making a fuss about it. You can hear the influence straight away. Bootsy in spirit, if not in name alone.
And that female guest vocal sounds familiar.
None other than Corinne Drewery, before she became famous in Swing Out Sister.
It does sound like Factory Records territory. Same kind of detached, slightly distant feel. Not trying to dominate the track, just drifting through it.
Ironically from their last album for Factory, Force.
By this point, I’m basically home.
Sat-nav stripped right back. One arrow. That’s all I need. None of the overblown dashboard nonsense screaming information at me. Just enough to get me where I’m going.
Funny how that becomes important. Less noise. Less clutter. Same journey.
The track fits that.
Loose, unfussy, just doing its thing. You wonder why they didn’t get bigger, but then again, maybe this was always where they were meant to sit. Slightly to the side of it all.
Still going. Still sounding right.
And that’s enough.
10pm and home. A triumphant day.
END OF LISTENING LOG
The Listening Log 