Column: Working from home with Bruce Springsteen

Like so many other folk across Fife, we’re switching from the office to the living room, possibly for the foreseeable future.

We’re doing a one-day trial run to make sure the technology all works, but with offices emptying by the day, it’s a gimme we will follow suit.

I’ve always preferred to keep the two separate, mainly because getting up and going to work brings with it a routine and a discipline.

If you only have to shuffle ‘ben the room’ to log-on, still in your jammies, while munching on a piece of toast, it doesn’t feel like work.

But that’s the present, and the future.

I’ve already started to browse my Ikea towers of CDs to see what sort of playlist would be most suitable while I work.

So far, it consists entirely of Bruce Springsteen’s Western Stars album – well, both the studio and film versions – and there’s every chance it’ll be played on repeat until it’s time to log off.

In fact, I’m on a third play already.

Every time I get up to change the CD, along comes another sublime track – Stones, the irresistible Sleepy Joe’s Cafe, the magnificent title track, and don’t even get me started on the that soaring version of Rhinestone Cowboy. Within a few bars of each, I simply sit back down at my temporary desk.

It’s maybe just as well. It IS a working day after all, so I can’t spend time shuffling back and forth and spending ages with my head tilted at an awkward album as I scan the CDs which, naturally, are all stored in alphabetical sequence, and in order of release from first to last. Look, it’s a bloke thing ...

I always have music playing when I work late. Our office has resounded to many great artists – objecting to the editor’s playlist is a disciplinary offence – but some genres aren’t compatible.

Heavy rock? Hmm, not really background noise is it –and I subscribe to the Ian Gillan approach to volume which is “everything louder than everything else.”

So out goes the old stuff – Purple, Zep, Rush, Maiden, Sabbath and, er, Nickelback.

Tom Waits? A genius but sometimes just too weird when you’re trying to write a business story.

The other problem with browsing is you come across albums you have no memory of buying.

The Darkness? What on earth was I thinking of?

And on the next shelf down, under ‘E’ I find Eminem’s Marshall Mathers album sitting next to ELO’s Out of The Blue – a slightly weird jump in styles.

In my defence, I did have Out of The Blue on blue vinyl in a gatefold sleeve. A gem to look at and listen to. I still regret swapping it in the school playground for a 12-inch version of Ronnie Biggs and the Sex Pistols doing ‘A Punk Prayer’...

So, in the end, it comes back to Bruce and a clutch of singer-songwriters whose music is a clarion call.

Their numbers vary. I went through a James Taylor phase, and have just reacquainted myself with the glorious Damien Rice, but, for the purposes of my working day at home, I suspect Wandering Stars will share airtime with some Richard Hawley, a little bit of Ray Lamontagne, all topped off with some gloriously miserable, but wonderful Tom McRae.

Ah, but that leaves out Nanci Griffiths – there’s at least nine CDs in a row –and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Oh heck, I’ve just spotted Billy Bragg too.

Perhaps it’s just as well this work-from-home malarkey is set to last for some time ...