Classical Gas

I must say I am impressed with the sound of Classical albums on the record player that I got from RPM and was set up my Marek. On holiday I picked the Leopold Stokowski MFP album of Gustav Holst's "The Planets" and the Deutsche Grammophon vinyl copies of the Herbert von Karajan conducted 6th, 8th and 9th Symphonies by Beethoven.

"Mars" from  "The Planets" was the piece that actually got me into Classical Music when Alan Freeman played it on his Saturday afternoon show. At school music lessons consisted of the music "teacher" putting on a classical LP and that was it. Incredibly tedious for kids who's music preference was single an pop songs, although ironically we were fine with Yes, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield subjecting us to twenty minute pieces, but a twenty minute piece of music is seldom instantly catchy.

So just a short post, this and the visits are showing no sign of abating with 1400 visits yesterday and 38K over the last running month. I was hoping to hit 200K visit by the end of this year but today I will hit 220K so that has been smashed.

I've decided to share a take on "Mars" from the 2015 BBC Proms.

The Drugs Don't Work (Very Well)

Or rather, yesterday they worked in the wrong way. My first day volunteering at Oxfam with Brian, Katie , Jan and another girl who came in briefly before I had to leave and may have been called Mary. While going through the basics of what I was going to do I suddenly started getting floaters and bright light lights in my eyes distorting my vision , and getting very trippy . I really had to sit down for a minute before going outside and sitting on a bench. I started to feel a bit better but the sun had gone supernova making even walking impossible for a few minutes. Anyway when I did improve I went back in to see everyone and say goodbye with a view to actually doing something useful on Monday.

I think the reason is some reaction between antibiotics and the blood pressure lowering tablets that I take, although this is the second lot of these antibiotics to tide me over until the minor required surgery (I wont go into that but feel free to contact me if you want to know the gory details).

After that experience the song that comes to mind is the Moody Blues "Legend of a Mind" sbout sixties LSD advocate Timothy Leary, which I've always loved ever since I first heard it on Alan Freeman's Saturday Rock Show.

Katie's Vinyl Door

But before all that it was great talking to all the staff who were really nice and welcoming, and the most impressive thing for me was Katie's vinyl door and the sheet music wallpaper. The music area is small but very interesting and probably has a better selection of music than HMV Harrogate and Shrewsbury. This is one of the things about blogging is how one particular item can throw up some totally random connected thoughts but maybe thats just me.

Anyway if you get a chance to visit the Oxfam Music shop in Jesmond do so, take a selfie by the vinyl door and spread the word. There is some great stuff and the staff are excellent, well apart from me who had to cry off like a proper softy yesterday.




Anyway enjoy your weekend, I'm feeling better and looking forward to another packed week. I thought this redundancy meant you had nothing to do?