Crucial Track for 31 May 2025

"Home" by David Byrne & Brian Eno

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When I was a kid, I remember standing on a pebble beach on the south coast with my dad as the Isle of Wight hovercraft glided in to, uh, land. I got pebble-dashed. I loved hovercrafts - I was so excited when my parents sprung for the much-more-expensive-than-the-ferry hovercraft across the Channel to France. I wasn't much older when I discovered ekranoplans - screen-gliders (ground effect vehicles). Something better than hovercrafts, and proper mysterious behind the Iron Curtain. I had just started in secondary school when our biology teacher told us about birds flying in ground effect. That wasn't in my bird-watching book! So I watched the coots and the gulls more closely... Life was, life was hard at that time - but the coots ran across the water, screen-gliding: close but free. I came to hear music in that way: how close were my wingtips to the water?