Showing posts with label Cream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cream. Show all posts

Tuesday 18 August 2020

PAYTV - #AnimalAugust #12


I've been binge watching TV again , this time "The Rook" on Virgin . When I first started watching it was on Virgin's UHD channel , but when I hit episode three it said I had to upgrade to continue. Needless to say I didn't though apparently it's STARZ production , though "Ash vs The Evil Dead" was included in the package.

Amazon Prime is similar , you pay for the Prime package , and you see some programs advertised and when you select you have to take out another subscription to another provider. It's like charity and lottery adverts, there are more and more spring up and if it keeps on like this we may have to go back to buying DVDs.

I also get annoyed that pay channels carry advertisements on th elive feeds, I don't mind advertisements on say All 4 as I see that as my price of admission, same with all commercial channels.

I am grateful for the plethora and cornucopia and good television programs available, this is from someone who grew up with a choice of two TV channels. Also when you watch recorded items you can fast forward through adverts , and when you watch Sky or Amazon Prime Streams you have no adverts so to speak (possibly some short ones) .

To be quite honest I do watch very little live TV which means , apart from All 4 and other commercial streamers I am not usually troubled by adverts so generally things are good , although you do get some very good adverts.

So what should we go for #AnimalAugust ? Well "Toad" by Cream is playing , essentially a Ginger Baker drum solo bookended by a solid simple heavy riff , the live version has a bit more guitar work in it , but Ginger Baker's drumming is the star here.

Sunday 8 December 2019

Spoonful


Some days things just hit me and make me want to to write about it and my friend,an avid Moody Blues fan, on Instagram shared a picture of a clear vinyl copy of "Moanin' At Midnight" by Hownlin' Wolf. Earlier this year I had linked Howlin' Wolf with The Moody Blues which was a coincidence here and in 2014 wrote about the origins of the song "Smokestack Lightnin'" here. so the disc certainly piqued my interest and I will now investigate further.

Howlin'
The clear vinyl version looks wonderful, though I'm not sure if the wolf in on the vinyl or is seen though the vinyl, but I do like the design.

Another of Howlin' Wolf's songs is "Spoonful" (written by Willie Dixon) , a brilliant loping riff that I first heard on my friend Harry Clark's "Best of Cream" album as a teenager. I listened to my vinyl copy which I picked up from Beyond Vinyl.

This is my third post today so I am a little worded out, although I need extra posts if I am to hit 366 posts this year which is possible. This is post 339 so after this I need to post 27 times in 23 days which seems to be getting further away from me, but I won't let that happen.

So I'm going to share Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" although my favourite take is by Cream from the live "Wheels of Fire" album, but this post is all Howlin' Wolf.

Saturday 3 August 2019

Anyone For Tennis?


This is nothing about tennis, which is a game I find generally tedious (I can't play or hit a return serve), although Wheelchair Tennis actually does command my total respect, I cannot play being reasonably fully mobil and these girls and guys do it from a wheelchair, how absolutely amazing is that.

The Bok had a song called "Tennis" but I don't have a recording of that, maybe I should try and recreate it, but this is just about the Cream song which is one of those Cream songs that is like nothing else Cream did and I like it and actually think it's good. There are others like "Pressed Rat and Warthog"(the "B" side) that are just plain silly, and I suppose lots of bands tried and keep trying completely different sounds to the point of taking on alter egos to either be able to play more intimate gigs aor see if it's just their name that sells.

"Anyone For Tennis" is the Theme from the film "The Savage Seven" (a biker film lost in time but available on Amazon.com) and was recorded during the "Wheels of Fire" sessions and released as a single and on the album soundtrack. It was written by Eric Clapton and someone called Martin Sharp

I don't know why I wanted to post this, possibly because I saw a "Best of Cream" (which doesn't feature the single) in Beyond Vinyl but it's Saturday , it grey , and it's the first day of the Football season, so all is reasonably good.

I keep looking at posts I've done and often notice spelling and grammatical mistakes and more and more I think I am being wrongly autocorrected rather than mistyping, or maybe I am just being paranoid. The latest was a post which had "their" instead of "there". Now given that I am a bit of a grammar stickler myself that is not a mistake I think I would make but autocorrect might.

I know it's short (this post) but see what you think .

Sunday 6 August 2017

Jumping In The Deep End


Well I've moved everything and now need to think how either WordPress or Joomla will benefit me. Both use a MySQL Database so that means that maybe I should get TOAD to get the hang of that. Seeting up Joomla I can't find the database , and even logging into the databse causes a timeout. I really thought I was past this but it looks as though I'm not, it's piqued my interest.

It's like jumping in at the deep end and I am not sure I am able to swim, but this is a possibly foolhardy way of finding out. I am going to leave it a day just in case overnight updates have to take place as that so often has to happen.

As well as all this I am trying to write , both words and music and get the hang of the technology. I just want to simply record things , not set op input channel and assign inputs to them , but maybe I will get the hang of it and get the sound on sound sorted out.

Anyway as I write this TOAD is downloading and after that I am going to bed, so I'll leave you with Ginger Baker's "Toad" performed by Cream.

Sleep well my friends.



Friday 4 August 2017

Random Precision


Yesterday my rando play played three consecutive tracks from the Van Der Graaf album "Present" starting with the opener "Every Bloody Emperor" and finishing with "Nutter Alert", this was followed by a couple of Spirit songs thwn that awful Cream song then two Stone Roses songs. At first I thought it had slipped off random play but as I was walking and I like the album I was OK with it.

A couple of months ago I was talking with Juliet and Kirsty and about how people don't really understand the concept of "random". She had provided a "random" data sample, then the requester came back and said they wanted data from Area "A" , Area "B" , well each area they covered. Kirsty pointed out that that this wouldn't be a random sample if you started applying criteria.

Jordan Ellenberg point to an American Lottery result where the same numbers were selected two draws in a row. In a true random selection 1,2,3,4,5,6 is just as random and likely as any other. Ellenberg points out that the improbable is highly probable. The nature of random is that it may appear ordered, it's not, but our minds always try to order things, and see logical patterns, and we can see logical patterns where the probability is just complete randomness and even chaos (think reading tea leaves and the I-Ching which is basically throwing sticks. You can add divination by cards like Tarot (I do have two Tarot decks but they are just works of art), which again uses randomness to determine fact, which really is not a practical or logical path to go down.

Well we are at Friday , and the real Football season starts today whith Sunderland playing Derby and Nottingham Forest take on Millwall. It looks sunny, but it looked sunny yesterday. I will walk into work today and listen to more random music

Thursday 3 August 2017

Tom Waits,Cream Sours and Stone Roses



One of the great things about walking with music on random play is that you get to rediscover music you have forgotten, discover new music, and the odd time uncover some complete rubbish.

While Cream  were a great and groundbreaking band, with a plethora of great songs there were the odd rubbish ones ("Pressed Rat and Warthog" springs to mind, I 'm not sure if Pete Brown was responsible in part for this monstrosity) but today a horrendous almost scat jazz thing came on. I thought I'll give it time. I wish I hadn't. It's called "Hey Now Princess" and it's at the bottom of this post if you want to risk it.

Luckily that was followed by The Stone Roses' "Waterfall" which is one of my favourites of theirs, although there were a few of their songs , many of which sound like "I Wanna Be Adored" , but one came on called "The Foz" which I thought was actually Tom Waits , and then eventually I got a real Tom Waits song , the excellent "Singapore" and then I found an excellent youtube version soundtracking some "Pirates of The Caribbean footage.

So that's the second post today, and I did manage to hit 15K steps , and enjoy so reasonably healthy food as well,

Have a lovely night



Thursday 16 February 2017

Dreams of Cream


It's weird. Last night I had a really intense dream , well I think I did and can't remember a thing about it. Last week I had one and at one point was at a Cream gig , but it was Cream in the 1960s ,  they were playing "Spoonful" and Eric Clapton had an acoustic guitar, then he was just singing. I mean "Spoonful" is very bass riff driven but it just seemed very odd.

Another thing , I was just thinking about rock bands aging , and The Who have lost their original rhythm section (Moon and Entwistle) and The Beatles just have  the rhythm section left, so I wonder if they will ever get together, maybe called The Whootles!!

It is strange how my mind wanders at times.

Anyway I am quite tired, so I'm off to bed and you know which song I am leaving you with.

Sunday 25 September 2011

Minimalism #2 - PIL's Album

Just read an article on PIL's Album , which is probably my favourite. While I'm aware that PIL has been a hurricane of members (49 I believe) with John Lydon it's controlling eye so to speak , I was quite shocked to find who actully played on the album.

"Rise" is still my favourite PIL single , and "FFF" and "Fishing" two of my favourite PIL tracks . This isnt to belittle their other stuff. Anyway....

I was aware of John Lydon's affiliation with Bill Laswell from his appearance as a guest on The Golden Palominos' "Visions of Excess" , but what I wasn't aware of (remember the albums minimalist sleeve art and vinyl origins) was that he'd ditched the original band and brought in a veritalble superstar line up to record the damned thing.

These included Ginger Baker on drums , Ornette Coleman on reeds , Stevie Vai on guitar , and more . This is lifeted from the Wikipedia entry , but you get the picture.

"Produced by Bill Laswell (despite Lydon-fuelled faction and disunion) and with many of Laswell's usual rotating cast of musicians, it also featured guitar solos by Steve Vai, considered by Vai himself to be some of his best work. Jonas Hellborg, solo bassist and at the time, member of John McLaughlin's reformed band, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, played bass on the album. Jazz great Tony Williams and legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker drummed on the album, which also featured Ryuichi Sakamoto of the Japanese electropop group Yellow Magic Orchestra."


Anyway , if you don't have the album, rectify the error of your ways and purchase it now to find out what you have been missing !! PIL are currently in the studio recording their first new material in 20 years!! Below playing Public Image and Rise in 2010!