Topper put on a CD by Dennis Rollins as we were on the way down to Brian‘s place to make the film. He’s a jazz trombonist in a very similar vein to Courtney Pine (Dennis Rollins, that is; Topper is a network engineer with designs on becoming a film producer, but is more likely to end up as a pornographer), and one of the tracks on the album was a cover of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. It wasn’t exactly a good cover, because it used the trombone to replace the vocal part (rule #1 in the instrumental covers rulebook: don’t ever get an instrument to play the vocal line unless you want it to sound like lift muzak) and I thought it was something by Gabrielle at first. But it reminded me of what a great song Fast Car is, and got it stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend.
Cathy and I left the pub just before closing time on Sunday to go and find out what times the trains back to Welwyn were. We had some time to kill, as my lift from the station back to Brian’s flat was still at the cinema, so we went back to Cathy’s flat for a coffee and to work out which side of the international dateline the Pitcairn Islands fell. As I was hanging up my coat, Cathy put on some music: a Tracy Chapman CD, the first track of which was Fast Car.
It’s just nice when life all fits together like that.