Showing posts with label J Geils Band. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J Geils Band. Show all posts

Tuesday 7 April 2020

Good


The weather is nice and I think things are improving with the lack of vehicles and planes travelling. Wildlife is more prevalent and things look good. I would like a lot of things to stay like this.

I don't particularly like working from home as the days are much longer and I end up eating while working , something I generally don't do in the office, but I listen to a lot more music and that is another good thing.

There are some people who are only happy when they are miserable and have something to complain about, but you can always find something wrong , look for the things that are right. I was tempted to use the Smiths "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" which I once had as my ringtone for a good friend Lee when I was at EE , a great character and great at pretending he was grumpy. He definitely wasn't.

I haven't ridden a bus for two weeks although surprising I have kept almost on target with my step count. With this weather that is very easy to do while working my way through "Monkey Island" by the J Geils Band , which is a very listenable album.

One song that has caught my ear on 6Music is "Crocodile" by Melt Yourself Down with it's insistent driving saxophone motif, and I kept hearing and didn't even know who the band were, well now I do, and so do you.

As I post this I noticed my boxed set "The Smith Complete" is priced at £1200 on Amazon , who the hell would pay that much for a CD box?

Sunday 29 March 2020

Synchronicity on Monkey Island


I am currently reading "Cabal" (AKA "Nightbreed") by Clive Barker and a priest appeared who is being blackmailed by a ne'er do well and was thing how technology can date both film and writing . The priest says "I burned the negatives" the ne'er do well replies "I made copies". A similar situation underpins "The Righteous Gemstones" except the technology is iPhones and hard drives. That series is wonderful black comedy in which everyone bar none is utterly beneath contempt, absolutely awful in self righteous right wing Christian way.

While going out for a little shopping through hail, snow and rain I decided to play an album I hadn't listened to for many years, "Monkey Island" by the J Geils Band "Monkey Island" was also a favourite game of both my daughters many years ago in the days of efficient code when a game could fit on a single floppy disc.

The album does contain some great songs , "I Do"  is a particularly good rock and soul example and the album features some great harp / harmonica from Magic Dick (why was a harmonica called a harp or a mouth organ) but the title track is nine minutes of epic story telling with an absolute killer chorus. I found a live version from 1977 at Winterland and the intro takes up almost half the song. I think the studio version is better , but this is good.

This is a revisitation of something I know is good, unlike the "Grand Hotel" by Procol Harum which I was unaware how brilliant that still is , so it will be getting a lot of revisitations.

Enjoy , and Monkey Island the game is available on Steam for around a tenner.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

200



This is my 200th blog post this year, so I can still obviously use a keyborad. At some point I want to try and dictate a post into my phone on some microphone and put it up unedited to see if it makes sense. I've still got around sixty days left this year so possibly expect to finish on 240 or 250 posts.

I was hoping to do the Pickering to Whitby steam train run , but just checked the timetable and the winter one kicked in this week, which means no midweek trains. C'est la vie.

Either Facebook or Google have stopped allowing the use of Youtube or embedded images when I post a link to Facebook, which is annoying. I didn't want an image of me for each post, I wanted something relevant to the actual post. I will research into why this is happening.

Anyway, the holiday is continuing with much relaxation, watching The Wire, Game Of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire. I now have lots of technology at my disposal so I can download stuff off BBC's iPlayer so I caught up with the excellent Orphan Black on my iPad as well as a program on The Who's Quadrophenia.

Orphan Black
As I type this I'm listening to the J Geils Band using my Samsung Note phone as a music player, though just switched it to the wonderful Penguin Eggs by Nic Jones, an album that should be in everyone's collection.

The thing is where I am in Ampleforth I don't have a mobile signal, so that means another form of total relaxation. It's sometimes nice to just cut yourself off, although I'm obviously posting this, and keeping abreast of the times using the BBC site and posting on Instagram as well so people can see what I'm finding interesting. Well I'm going to put an image on here and a John Cooper Clarke song that I loved from the first moment I heard it, with some great lines and a soft porn soundtrack, take a listen. Everyone have a wonderful day everyone.