I have decided to stop posting my Vocal writing on SevendaysIn. I will continue posting on both platforms but this will be less focussed that the Vocal posts , and more just to record what is happening and to share music and links to books , and not to be too bothered about how many words I am posting.
This week is mainly not doing anything in Thirsk, and spending time away from work, although I have had a nice Whatsapp chat with my lovely boss.
The place I am staying is excellent and has a smart TV that is allowing me to watch whatever I want to, so I have re picked up "Better Call Saul". I find it amazing that now you can go on holiday and take the minimum of entertainment with you because ereaders mean you can take books on a device and it's the same with music and films and TV thanks to streaming services such as BBC iPlayer and All4, so I'm not short of anything to watch although I took an age to work out how to get rid of subtitles off iPlayer. You need to pause the program and then the subtitles icon appears on the pause screen.
So I'm not writing for Vocal so I can share the semi appropriate "Holiday Road" from "Nationl Lampoon's Vacation" by the genius Lindsey Buckingham. I call also reign back my posting on here although my Vocal posts may continue on an almost daily basis.
I saw a video by Pete Wylie recently where in a preamble to performing "Remember" by Shambeko! Wah he explained his reasoning behind the various name changes for the various incarnations of Wah! over the years which you can see here.
There's been two Fleetwood Mac's taking their name from Mick Fleetwood and John McVie but formed and led by Peter Green in their first incarnation, there was then a transitional period (read here) and eventually Mick Fleetwood met the duo Buckingham Nicks , and Lindsey Buckingham became the bands driving force with admirable support from Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie producing "Rumours" and "Tusk", the latter being my favourite Mac album and was remade by Camper Van Beethoven .
I also love the Buckingham Nicks album which I think is only available as a bootleg CD for some reason but you can hear why Mick Fleetwood wanted them in Fleetwood Mac.
The point of this post is given that Peter Green formed the band why was it named after the drummer and bassist? I mean Green Manalishi would have been a great name for a band though that was the last song that he recorded with the band.
I will share the Buckingham Nicks album which is available on YouTube with you so you can judge for yourself.
In October 1979 an AOR band released an album that was reviewed by the NME. The band was Fleetwood Mac, sitting duck targets for the punk driven NME ethic at the time. Even worse this was a double album, the absolute eptome of self indulgence for the bloated dinosaur rockers of the time. This was shooting fish in a barrel.
Meanwhile somewhere in the USA record execs listened to the follow to the multi million selling "Rumours" and saw their bonuses going up in smoke.
The NME review was shocking in that it acknowledge the absolute brilliance of this double album, driven by the eccentric genius of Lindsey Buckingham with huge contributions from Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood. It was album of the week, this was as unexpected as Brian Clough taking over Leeds United.
I bought the album and totally loved it, and still play it today , end to end. The advent of CD and digital means that you can listen without haveing to flip the vinyl, but music is excellent and it doesn't matter what the medium is.
In 2003 Camper Van Beethoven decided to cover the whole double album (see here) and I was listening to this excellent cover when I was drifting off to sleep the other night. As "Not That Funny" was playing I thought that sounds like Camper Van Beethoven on "Take The Skinheads Bowling" before realising who I was actually listening to.
After yesterday going on about Roman Numerals I thought what is the Roman Numeral for Zero? It turns out there isn't one, but medieval scholars used the word "nulla" to signify zero. In IT we used to be familiar with the concept of "null" (and those who know what they are talking about still are).
Zero is the numeric representation of no items, as in "I have zero pounds in my bank account", but it is a numeric value, it is one less than one or one more than minus one, though this summation could be done with any numbers. The formula:
x - x = 0
is always true, though mayb Stephen Hawking, Andrew Wiles or someone else could possibly dispute that successfully with me.
Null on the other hand is a complese absence, it cannot be used in computation whereas zero can, and will often cause systems to crash if returned as an answer. Null is the bane of any programmer's life, in that it is often valid but you can't actually do anything with it, and no doubt I will come across it in some calculation today.
I'm still feeling absolutely shattered and despite have nine hours in bed last night after watching Black Sails and Nightcrawler, I didn't feel up to walking into work, so though this would be the first time in a long time that I walked into work having done less that a thousand steps.
Then I decided to get off the bus at the BBC and walk down Barrack Road from there thus giving me a couple of thousand steps.
I thought I'd include "Countdown" by Lindsey Buckingham from his album "Out of the Cradle" as I love the song and it's vaguely numerically themed.
This morning I have a routine hospital appointment at The Freeman and the weather is still good so I am going to walk it. The problem is that the route doesn't really have any buses so if I am running behind time I haveto walk faster, and that's not really a bad thing as I do want to keep my steps up and this will definitely do that.
I was discussing the best Fleetwood Mac album and a lot of people go for "Rumours" but mine is "Tusk". When it came out in the middle of the seventies punk explosion an AOR "dinosaur" releasing a double album (the ultimate self indulgence) did not bode well for a good response from critics. The NME made it album of the week and it was noted that the Warner executives probably saw their bonusses going up in smoke when they heard it. The songs are all killiers and Lindsey Buckingham's out there genius along with the songwriting and voices of Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks backed my the rock solid musicianship delivered an indespinsible brilliant album.
The songs are so go good that when Camper Van Beethoven were stuck in a remote cabin, they recorded and released their take on "Tusk" and, while not as polished it is still an outstanding album with a mad ten minute take on the title track which is what I will leave you with.
One song "Honey Hi" has a lot of car horns and shouting and this was very disconcerting as I was trying to cross a four lane road intersection while listening to it. Who knows what will happen today.
Right off on my walk to the hospital, have a great day everybody.
The snow is here and it has made it difficult to walk, although this morning I wandered through Leazes Park and posted some Instagram video and pictures here. I was speaking to aguy who pointed out that our winter weather these days lasts a couple of days at most but it used to be that these spells lasted weeks , so we actually quite lucky.
I've been feeling really tired over the last few days , totally drained, not sure why. I don't feel bad but was in bed at eight yesterday and will be by nine today. I've actually not been walking as much due to the weather, could that make me feel tired? It is a bit weird.
I decided to listen to Lindsey Buckingham's "Out Of The Cradle" and was shocked by the neo classical guitar intro pieces to several of the songs on the album. For me the two stand out pieces are "Don't Look Down" and "Countdown", and I will include the latter.
I do regard Lindsey Buckingham as a musical genius and the vide below shows him simultaneously playings the bass , rhythm and whole song on a single guitar, which has to be seen to be believed.
Anyway I di feel tired so will now take to my bed.
I often wander into to record shops and sometimes drop into HMV. It has improved since it went belly up but still seems to be selling to disparate a swathe of goods, but on Sunday I noticed a Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McViealbum. It was a ridiculous £5.99 and so I bought it, knowing that the genius of Buckingham would guarantee some essential listening and while McVie is not part of my essential canon , this comprised a mjor part of the talent that was Fleetwood Mac.
I put it on and the first two songs are Buckingham killers. I've not looked at the songwriting chedits so correct me if I'm wrong but "Sleeping Round The Corner" has a to-die-for chorus, the songs like "Feel About You" and "Red Sun" confirmed that this indeed is an essential purchase, and they both still have it.
I'd said I was going to load some French music to listen to on my walks and one of those was "Camembert Electrique" by Gong , led by Daevid Allen an Australian ex-pat living in France along with Dider Malherbe (Bloomdido Bad-de-Gras), Gilli Smyth (Bambaloni Yoni) , Steve Hillage (Stevie Hillside Village) , Tim Blake and others. I bought it as a Virgin Reissue for 49p in my teens and loved it. Sometimes when you revisit albums from your youth they sometimes don't live up to the memories.
This sorted exploded in my head , a little introductory silliness before the killer riff of "You Can't Kill Me" the whole album lets the music melt into each other with spacey glissando guitars and incredibly complex tunes that grab your attention. "Mr Longshanks" seems like a silly throwaway but ther is major playing going on in that, then "Dynamite" and Celine" are enjoyable if challenging and laid back piences. "And You Tried So Hard" is another stand out.
Both these albums have taken a lot of my time ofver the past couple of days and they are both worth spending some time on.
I'll include a song from each one for you to enjoy.
This post is nothing more than an excuse to play on of my favourite Lyndsey Buckingham songs , "Countdown". While I wanted to hit my thousandth post on this blog this year, I thought the option had gone had gone , but a flurry of posts last weeks means maintaining a post every other day will actually hit the target.
The other thing is that I'm still enjoying Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History Of Time" . As you know I am not very intelligent , so reading this book is like a night out with your clever mates. My mate Colin , when he goes to see Newcastle United play always has a Judas bet , so that if Newcastke lose he has money in his pocket , and if they win he's also happy.
Stephen Hawking had a bet that if Black Hole's didn't exist his friend would by him four years of Private Eye (if they did exist Hawking's forfeit was a subscription to Penthouse) I think Hawking won though by the very nature of it's existence you can't actualy prove it's there.
And with that little mind twister it's time for bed .
I came up with the name for this blog as a travel blog about places I'd stayed, which maybe is a bit ambitious as I don't travel very far. I detest flying , not for the actual flight , but for the endless queuing and excuses for delays, plus the fact the flight is usually a miniscule part of the journey unless , say, I were going to Australia.
Anyway the place we were it was Orton in Cumbria, just off the M6 but very quiet and very relaxing. It is also about a mile away from the Tebay / Westmorland Farm Services which are the benchmark for Motorway Service Stations. The now have one on the M5 and one on the M74 planned. While the prices are Motorway Service Station levels, the service, location and food on offer is the best you will find on a Motorway (In this case the M6).
The cottage is a converted barn and can be seen here , and has everything you need although the village is still waiting on broadband and the mobile signal is a little erratic. This meant that for the first time I ran out of data on my EE contract , and due to the stipulations and expense of buying extra data I decided I didn't need it. Of and after 2 messages with a URL to buy the extra data , their app then stops letting you see your data information so you couldn't buy any if you wanted! But it wasn't a major hassle , there are lots of places that let you hook into wifi including the aforementioned Westmorland Farm Services and the excellent Kings Head at Ravenstonedale, which sounds like somewhere from Game of Thrones.
We ate at the excellent Black Swan which is well worth a visit if you are ever in the area, this is one of the meals I had , runny scotch eggs, gammon , garlic cheese potatoes, tomatoes and green stuff. There's also images of the giant meringue on my instagram feed if you want to try and fine it.
The countryside is very relaxing and great for just walking and doing not much out of contact from mobile phones and the like, and the great thing about staying in Orton is that it has a post office that sells 99% of stuff that you actually need, then there's the George Hotel which does food and drink and the people are really pleasant in there, and then you have Kennedy's Chocolate factory where you can buy almost anything made of chocolate , including boxes of chocolates made out of chocolate.
