...but I often feel like I'm the only person who will occasionally listen to a bit of Hall and Oates or Deacon Blue.

Or perhaps there are others? No? Just me, then (well, and my Dad obviously)

...'Goodbye Jumbo' pretty often; 'Bang' less so. Whatever happened to Wallinger? He was like a little Welsh Lennon, Dylan and Prince all rolled into one, wasn't he?

And living in Edinburgh, I can testify that plenty of people still listen (and go to see) Deacon Blue.

I feel safe in knowledge that as my cramped overland train slowly crawls into London Bridge that I'm the only confined soul still listening to the Mighty CUD. Carl and the boys never fail to cheeer me up as they pop up at random from time to time.

I've often had similar thoughts regarding this. I often listen to Tim Finn's "Persuasion" and seldom think that anybody else in Scarborough listens to it when I do. However, one day a few years back, I was feeding the ducks at my local pond, when a car drove past with the windows open and the song playing was "Persuasion". I felt like flagging the car down and having a chat with the driver, such was my excitment.
By the way, "Message In A Bottle" is a great World Party song.

Driving through the Glaswegian suburbs, I doubt there are others doing the same while listening to the still excellent postpunk pop of Girls At Our Best!.

This may well be a little obscure, but whenever I travel on American-owned airlines I listen to The Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble, smugly aware that I'm the only person likely to be enjoying North Korean propaganda via the medium of popular music. This amuses me.

I quite often feel I'm the last 'Tramp fan on earth (if you exclude Canada, where they're huge). But then something happens to make you realise you're never entirely alone. I was walking along a street in Florence a few months back when a striking young lady drove past me and parked. From her open top car I could hear the sound of "Fools Overture" from 'Even In The Quietest Moments'. "Bella canzone!", I whispered in her ear. In my dreams.

I absolutely loved your piece on Rush. My teenage years were remarkably similar to yours in terms o f our shared appreciation of a Peart paradiddle. I must confess I never fashioned a Rush pig, but I did paint the 'nude bloke in a star' logo on my school rucksack in Tippex.

Farnham. Doubt there's (m)any.

to looking around the carriage furtively in case anyone else can hear my choice of tunes when I crank the EmmPeeFree player up to 11 for a good blast of Caravan or Cressida, whenever a proggish mood takes me.

That's me, hiding behind The Times, trying not to idiot-dance in my seat or air-guitar along to Nine Feet Underground.

Not an expression you hear every day

but i'm pretty certain i'm the only person in our office listening to The John Renbourn Group

Are we talking the DVLC in Swansea or Black Books?

I have a sneaking suspicion that my daughter might be the only 13 year-old girl with the Television Personalities' ...And Don't The Kids Just Love It album on her i-pod. Her taste is mostly pretty normal for her age, but she has the odd quirk.
It's a great album too.

(p.s. "All By Myself", Rob. You've been watching Bridget Jones' Diary again haven't you. You big girl.)

was co-written with Richard Thompson and his version is just as lovely. Kurt Wallinger was ill for quite a while but I understand he is getting his life back together and if I am not mistaken he supported Steely Dan on their tour down under last year.
I am pretty sure I am one of a pretty small group of British citizens listening to String Cheese Incident but then I know one of you lot will say 'not so'.

..."Recurring Dreams" by the Europeans (who featured Steve Hogarth, who went on to join Marillion, that's about as much as I know about them) - entirely due to hearing a track called "Acid Rain" on the Annie Nightingale Request Show in 1988 (and what a programme that used to be !). Luckily I taped it and then finally found the album on the web last year - it wasn't an unceasing grail-like quest or anything, just occasionally did a search to see what I could find. It occasionally pops up on shuffle and I always wonder how many other people have got it on their iPods. Not many, I suspect.

These are a few of the cyberspace oddities that pop on my MP3 player and regularly get a spin at Cloudbase Mondo.

Acid Jazz artists - Mother Earth and Corduroy
The Sweet - B sides and album tracks
The Damned - BBC Sessions
Roy Budd - Get Carter soundtrack
Bootleg Remixes
The Rezillos
The Mood Mosiac albums
Monty Python albums
Rowan Atkinson live in Belfast
Welsh Rare Beat - Welsh language folk funk comp'
The The - Uncertain Smile

One of my jobs is running a cafe at The Walled Garden At Cowdray, Midhurst, with my wife. She happened to be away on Sunday so I had free reign of the stereo and, having tired of Chopin, put on a compilation tape from my good mate Erik The Dane, a rabid fan of Jimmy Webb and Mickey Newbury. Some innocent customers walked in to be confronted by no less than Buffy Sainte-Marie belting out a Newbury number and I was moved to say to them that this was probably the only cafe in the entire world which was playing a Buffy song at the moment. Made me feel good anyhow.
Likewise I was pondering a few days ago whether I was unique in listening to only Warren Zevon songs on the iPod whilst reading the biography I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. Extraordinarily the Zevon catalogue lasted almost exactly the same time as it took to devour the tome.
Oh yes, do drop in to the cafe and I'll try to find some Word-reader-friendly music to slap on.

There. Said it.

...I was the only driver on the A57 this afternoon listening to Rockpile.

I loved them in the 70's and have very fond memories of The Man with the Bowler Hat - in fact have been pondering buying the reissue for a while now.
I might just go out and do that.

is good too if you can find it. Stackridge reformed recently and are currently doing the rounds.

I bought that gem after a glowing review in the wonderful Let It Rock magazine. It was a bad UK pressing in a stout U.S. Bearsville sleeve. (Always wondered how that happened..) I have rarely troubled my CD version of it but am now prompted to dig it out. Small Town Talk is one of those songs that nobody can diminish. Rick Danko did a fine version.

Marcel King, Reach for Love, great dance record, huge at the Sherpa Discotheque Bottesford, Scunthorpe (thursdays 8.30 - 10.30, Steve Bird the DJ, still playing for the kids of steeltown, god bless him)
On Factory. Genius Record - god knows who Marcel was, but I read somewhere the 12" was an influence on the Ryder brothers.

I am fairly positive that I was the only one listening to the superb Dead Can Dance compilation "Wake" on the train this morning and even more certain that my ears were the only ones lapping up Submarine Fleet's album this afternoon.

...I was passing through the Danakil region of Eritrea, on my way to Assab in the south.

After the novelty of the desolate lunar landscape and the occasional ostrich sighting had worn off, my remaining source of entertainment was a Blur compilation of my own making, which I listened to repeatedly on the cassette walkman I had brought along with me.

I would be willing to bet that I was the only person listening to Blur in the entire country.

probably safe to say there was no one else enjoying That Petrol Emotion's "Chemicrazy" which to my ears sounds better than ever (nothing like a 14 year gap to re-appreciate some records)

Bo Doogley if you havent got it get this masterpiece by Bobby Charles - bloody brilliant.

Picking up the long-lost Scotsmen thread from above, I wonder if anyone else has two Bathers albums on their iPod? I'm pretty sure I was the only person in the country listening to 'Kelvingrove Baby' on their way to work this morning.

Chris Thomson's grumbling and melodrama were not to everyone's taste, but I still dig them after all these years.

Bet I'm the only one still listening to the criminally underrated Jerry Burns album from a few years back. Pale Red anybody? Also, one of my favourites of all time, Fifth Of July by Terry Reid. Discovered on the Saturday afternoon Johnnie Walker show during the mid 80s or sometime around that period.

I still enjoy the album by Brian "Understand". A lovely, jangly understated gem in my opinion. Came out on Setanta in the early 90's. Can't imagine many people travelling on my bus from Sketty to Fforestfach are listening to that very often.

http://takethepills.blogspot.com/2007/12/brian-understand-1992.html

I wonder how many copies of Mr Charles' first album have been sold today on the back of this thread. At least the one I've just bought - there goes my "no rash cd purchases" new year's resolution.

Apologies for referring to a much earlier part of this exchange, but I've got to say how heart-warming it is to discover heavily-stealthed Rush fans lowering their cloaking devices in such a public place: I knew I wasn't alone!
I'm going to cue (queue? What is the right term for lining up songs on iTunes to stream to your hi-fi?) Moving Pictures right now and play it at structural-damaging volume, and it's thanks to you, Rob!
Both my neighbours and I salute you.

...I was probably the only person listening to East Hastings by Godspeed You Black Emperor this evening as I went home...

And I daresay there aren't many notpods with Forever Steven by The Corn Dollies on it.

Or the Brimstone and Treacle soundtrack, which has a wonderful Police song called I Burn For You that I have always loved.

It dawned on me just the other day that I was probably the only person in the world at that moment walking his dog and listening to Street Hassle by Lou Reed - the two activities don't really go together somehow.

There's a fine line, isn't there, between feeling part of a select bunch of people, and feeling like you're totally on your own. Listening to Robyn Hitchcock for example, I know there'll be a handful of other people doing the same and that gives me an additional feeling of...what is it? Affirmation? I don't know.

But there's an Irish band called A House who have, so far as I can tell, 20 fans now, and who had maybe one hundred or so when they put out their albums ten or so years ago. When I listen to them, I feel enormous sadness, sadness that it's only me who believes their stuff was just fantastic and that they're not even big enough to be cult.

oh dear, looking through this thread I keep seeing stuff I play all the time - Caravan, Jimmy Webb, Mother Earth. my whole itune library seems to be shouting; "You're on your own, ou're on your own." Especially when something from the brilliant canon of Richard Harris pops up: Jimmy Webb concept songs by someone who, quite magnificently, can't sing properly. Forget McArthur Park, The Yard Went on Forever that IS a song....

that I really love The Incredible String Band

Let's hear it for The Fat Lady Sings!

... are a re-discovered favourite. I had their album 'Telescopes' on tape when I was at university (but no idea what happened to the tape after then).

I happened across a repackaged album of theirs '# Untitled Second' a year or so ago - and delighted that I did.

Is there anyone else apart from me who still listens to them?

How about Miranda Lambert, Sugarland, Little Big Town. All country artists selling big time in the US (especially Sugarland) and unnoticed over here.

Just to balance this madness I too have Godspeed You Black Emperor on the pod, although it's Lift Your Skinny Fists etc.

last Friday I found myself listening to The Strawbs 'Hero and Heroine'. Now that Dave Cousins certainly had a 'singular' voice, which, when married to the.. ahem.. 'racy' lyrics made listening to the whole thing a rather furtive experience.

Still can't decide whether I actually enjoyed it or not.

Am I the only person on earth who owns a (Japanese) CD copy of Adrian Gurvitz's 1979 LA-Friendly Disco-Lite Toto-Happy Sessionman-Workout pre-Classic-In-An-Attic album Sweet Vendetta?

I bought a cassette copy of this album in WH Smiths in, say, 1982. Subsequently, it might as well have become jammed in the car tape machine. A year ago I stumped up £18 for a Jap CD edition. I already own three vinyl copies. Each time that I see a copy for sale (in whatever format), I'll buy it. Of all of the (10,000-plus) albums in my collection, this record has probably been played the most. More than Blood On The Tracks, more than Dark Side Of The Moon, more than Sgt. Pepper.

It ain't why, it just is.

On a critical level, It's not even a very good album. But I love it and I think that it is a seriously flawed masterpiece. So there.

clogs up the M56 between Chester and Manchester most days who knows the ad-libs of Tom Waits "Nighthawks At The Diner" off pat?

Just pulled out their debut for a listen a few weeks ago and can safely say I was the only one who when it was over changed to The Woodentops classic Giant.

Oh happy times.

Anyone still play Giant?

Rob Fitzpatrick go the whole hog, get on the World Party Website and get Karl Wallanger rehabilitated and back from his OZ tour with Steely Dan.

I didn't realise that the whole band piddled off and joined Robbie Williams for Karl's "She's the One" and then practically cribbed the Egyptology title, turning it into Escapology.

And then the record company go and pay the man £80million smackers and leave our man in limbo......

Anyway in the words of Billy Idol "he was famous once" and had a Q album of the year etc.

And in 1990 in The National in Kilburn Wold Pary rocked. Like the Stones! Whooo Whooo..... Way Down Now.

Travelling home on the bus last night Immaculate Fools self-titled track came on. Sounded brilliant. Anyone else ever like this band?

Pilot. I wasn't around to appreciate their genius when they were making records but christ almighty, "The Best of Pilot" (compiled MagmaTimes Productions 2008)is surely the powerpop motherlode!

Lee Griffiths rather wonderful Armchair Anarchy...although why it should be ignored by the masses is one of life mysterys....also often to be heard drifting though the cemtery office to cry's of who the heck is that The Residents Warner Bros album various Jackie Leven, Lupin Crook, to name but a few. Oldies but goodies, 10cc the great unchampioned Manchester band,