The End Of Entropy

I finished "The Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcockwhich was only 152 pages long and it was different to say the least, jumping physically as well as paradoxically through time.

I am getting a little annoyed with Grammarly which is now indicating things that it thinks might be wrong but are only available in the professional version. I will still keep using it though, but it is annoying.

My next book is a reread of "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen which has started with political and philosophical observations and I know it is thought-provoking and but this may take a little longer than my lost book.

THis blog is still getting over three thousand hist a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Sombre Reptiles" by Brian Eno with some video I took at the Mouth Of Tyne Festival in 2011

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Wandering Through A Parallel Europe

"The Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcock is a wander through a parallel earth, mainly in Europe with trips to Canada and the East. It is only 152 pages long so I expect to finish it this week.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Radio Free Europe" by R.E.M.

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Dancing The Entropy Tango

I am still getting high figures on the blog this month with just over 26K visits this month, there were 7K last month, but 3.5K yesterday. The only thing that I have done is add a nofollow attribute to all my non-Vocal links. The figures are below.

I finished "The Men Who Stare At Goats" by Jon Ronson which is both entertaining, funny and very worrying.

I was thinking of going for another Jon Ronson book but decided to go for "The Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcock as he is a favourite author and this book has provided some input into my Plagiaristic Poetry series. I was surprised to see that he made an album with his band Deep Fix which you can see here

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcock and Deep Fix

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Back Into The World Of Tiers

I thought this was going to be the first month for maybe fifteen years that I didn't post to this blog. I finished "The Prince With The Silver Hand" which is the second trilogy of Corum books which has been described by The Irish Times as a whole new dimension to Celtic Mythology band really did not want it to end, but I knew it had to, but I loved every word I read. 

My next book is diving back into World of Tiers by Philip Jose Farmer which I can tell you nothing about because it is so long since I last read it, but I will share my progress so there may be another post before the end of November.

"Rings of Power"  is also complete as is "House of the Dragon", both of which I have been impressed with.

I also found out that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Music is "World of Tiers" by Hawkwind from Levitation.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. The Never Ending Story - My Directory
2. The Never Ending Music - My Music Directory
3. The Never Ending Poetry - My Poetry Directory
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

The Prince With The Silver Hand

 I finished "The Swords of Corum" and thoroughly enjoyed it even though I first read it as a teenager. I have now started "The Prince With The Silver Hand" which is the second trilogy of Corum books which has been described by The Irish Times as a whole new dimension to Celtic Mythology. 

"Rings of Power" is moving on quite fiercely and I am very impressed with the series. It fits in well with Peter Jackson's vision of "Lord of The Rings" although there are those who still don't like it, but I definitely do.

I also found out that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Music is "Power and The Glory" by Horslips from The book Of Invasions.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. The Never Ending Story - My Directory
2. The Never Ending Music - My Music Directory
3. The Never Ending Poetry - My Poetry Directory
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Into The Realm Of Swords

 I have "The Magic Labyrinth" in the "Riverworld" series and although it was a bit of a slog it was a good read, but I am taking a break from "Riverworld" now. Although this was originally a four-book series it does finish on a cliffhanger and there is then "Gods of Riverworld" to follow it up, but that is another day.

I am impressed with "Rings of Power" and have revisited one of my favourite Michel Moorcock series "The Swords of Corum" and am almost finished  "The Knight Of The Swords" and finding it remarkably easy to read. It is a wonderful fantasy with love, violence and some incredible imagery, some people describe Moorcock as the greatest fantasy author since Tolkien though there are many who could claim that mantle.

This is the first of six books and I know this will be an easy twelve hundred pages for me to read.

I also found out that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Music is "Black Blade" by The Blue Oyster Cult and co-written by Michael Moorcock.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. The Never Ending Story - My Directory
2. The Never Ending Music - My Music Directory
3. The Never Ending Poetry - My Poetry Directory
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

So Behold The Man

I cannot believe I have not posted in here this month , but Vocal has become my priority writing platform now. I finished Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell about his experience in the Spanish Civil War and then read "Behold The Man" by Michael Moorcock.

"Behold The Man" combines Heath Robinson Time Travel with the crucifixion and at 124 pages is a fairly quick read which I did really enjoy. There is a little explicit sex but no actual erotica in there. The synopsis reads thus:

"Meet Karl Glogauer, time traveller and unlikely Messiah. When he finds himself in Palestine in the year 29AD he is shocked to meet the man known as Jesus Christ - a drooling idiot, hiding in the shadows of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth. But if he is not capable of fulfilling his historical role, then who will take his place?"

Next up is "The Thurber Album" by James Thurber , a very old Penguin edition . He came out with some good one liners but will see how this pans out.

I have been tasked with reviewing "Workingman's Dead" on Vocal because of this review of Terrapin Station , one of my favourite albums.

I am doing this just before I go to hospital, Because there is zero quality control , it will be very short, but I was worried that the blog was going to miss it's first month in over a decade, but this is here now.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I will include a full copy of "Workingmen's Dead" for your perusal.

Ishtar X

It's a lockdown Easter Weekend. Easter Sunday is one of the two days a year that everything is shut, so most retail staff actually get a rest.  Easter has been linked with Ishtar and Eostre (see this article) and a lot of Christian festivals have been appropriated from non Christian festivals but it's something that doesn't trouble me too much I'm hardly the most religious person in the world and when Christians and Pagan start arguing about things like this they come out as bad as each other.

Coincidentally this weekend I started rereading "Behold The Man" by Michael Moorcock , which is basically about a conflicted time traveller who goes back in time (28 AD) and , well , you can guess what happens. This book is an award winning novel and clocks in at 124 pages (definitely not unusual for Moorcock) and is possibly one of the reasons I though that "The Stand"  by Stephen King could have been told in 300 pages rather than the thousand in the version that I read (I believe there was an extended version as well). Stephen King is an author I never got into, although I like him as a person and love most of the TV and film adaptations of his work (I feel the same about Terry Pratchett)

So I am enjoying "Behold The Man" but will finish it fairly rapidly, and then need to choose a next book to read, so am open to any suggestions but have a huge pile of "worth revisiting" books.

The post title is an obvious wordplay on "Easter Eggs" rather than anything meaningful, so we will go with "Easter" by Marillion which was a great post Fish song, a band that sort of mirrored Genesis, but are still producing some excellent music and never fell into the mainstream pop like Genesis , with the odd exception did.

No Dilemma

In a previous post (here) I referred to Michael Moorcock's "Breakfast In the Ruins"  which finished each chapter with an impossible dilemma directed at the reader. I had a dream about a similar thing before I properly woke this morning and here it is:


It's late at night and you are at a bus stop. Your bus is due , you think , but you have a sense of foreboding, you don't feel safe. You can see the next bus stop, about five minutes walk away, there are two dim street light along the way. There is someone at the next bus stop. They may make you feel safer.

So do you:

• Stay and wait for the bus? Something bad may happen
• Walk to the next stop? The bus may pass you by and the person at the next stop may not be someone who will help you , they may even be the cause of your foreboding!

So just a small dilemma for you to consider this morning.

Last night my local Post Office closed an hour early with zero announcement so I have to go to the one at Haymarket which is just always open and very reliable to detach another CD purchased from me on Discogs.

Clive Barker's "Weaveworld has just visited Newcastle , a hotel in Rudyard Street , there is a Rudyerd Street in North Shields but maybe he just chose a random name rather than an actual place.

A fairly appropriate song is the excellent "Which Way Should I Jump?" by the brilliant Milltown Brothers who also did the them to the wonderful "All Quiet On The Preston Front" ("Here I Stand" see here although this site says it's "Out on Blue Six")

Keep Yourself Alive

One of the things I say to people is YOU are the most important person in your life, to which people tell me I'm wrong and say it's their partner , their children or grand children. My reply is is you have to keep yourself it the best condition to be there for them, if you are not there, their lives would be missing you for love and support , so that's why you have to put yourself first.

There's a Michael Moorcock book "Breakfast In The Ruins" that finishes each chapter with an impossible "What Would You Do?" dilemma, if you follow the link you can see some of the horrible dilemmas listed, and I had misremembered one as "You and your child are taken by a group of thugs and they give you five minutes to decided who dies, you or your child" . The horrible thing with this scenario is that you know that you cannot trust these people and you are probably more able to defend yourself if you chose yourself.

So what brought this on , again it's finishing "Follow The Music" , the two artists I was waiting to be covered were Harry Chapin and Queen and the latter's first single was "Keep Yourself Alive" which impressed me no end, with the excellent guitar phasing and "No Synthesisers". I was unaware that the band were all degree educated and Freddie Mercury was classically trained. Jac Holzman love the first album but was not impressed with them when he first saw them live, so he wrote them a letter, which they took on board. He remarked how hard working they were and really the rest is history.

The thing is look after yourself because you are very important to the people in your life. I am diabetic and many people have told me they would never inject themselves, they would rather die. I said "What about your family?" and injections are just a tiny prick that you get used to. I still inject five times a day although the amount of insulin is reducing as it the weight (slowly) and I have to sort about twenty tablets a day , and while it is, at worst , a chore, I do this because I want to have a good life, and me having a good life means that everyone who I mean something to will be happy that I am.

So have a great Sunday , Storm Dennis seems to have calmed and there's not been too much damage here, which is good......

Waterfall

It's strange how we often have an aversion for paying for things that we see as just there. I thought that about the seven pound entrance fee for the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail, but this is some buildings and a lot of paths, four and a half miles of them, that is a hell of a lot of maintenance, and well worth every penny of the entrance fee.

I was impressed with the village of Ingleton , came to the Waterfalls Trail and walked past the closed cafe / gift shop then through the gateway which reminded me of the entrance to Jurassic Park (on a smaller scale and no dinosaurs)  and finally got to the entrance and paid my way and started on my way round.

Although it's only four and a half miles a lot of that paths are very rocky so you need to be careful and sure footed. Eventually you come to the first waterfall and it is worth the effort. You can see some of my video on Instagram here. Although I had plenty of time, the bus back was due at one, and the next one was at three so I was trying to move fast through the final part of the walk  but could have slipped easily and fell into the river, but kept on my feet and got the bus which was waiting at the stop.

If I'd missed the bus Ingleton was full of interesting places and may be due a future visit. Also it is heavily featured in the Michael Moorcock book "The Skrayling Tree".

So some appropriate music would be "Waterfall", at first I thought by the Stone Roses, then decided to go for the 10CC song, originally the "B" side of "Rubber Bullets" but later released in it's own right.

Send Me A Postcard

Today I intend to do the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail , I've been coming properly to Settle but only came across it when I also found Scalebar Force last time and so thought it would be worth doing it for  a morning as I do like walking in nature.

Although I don't go abroad these days (I hate queuing, I hate airport check ins, and I also hate driving so always take the train when practical.

Ingleton is a twenty minute bus journey away, and featured heavily in the Michael Moorcock book "The Skrayling Tree" so I'm not sure if any landmarks will show upfrom that book.

Anyway I switched on 6Music and Lauren Laverne (ex Kenickie and went to school with my eldest daughter Juliet) was playing "Send Me A Postcard Baby". Now this is a record I know very well and love but I seriously don't know how it got into my mind-library, and it was only this morning I found out it was by Shocking Blue, more famous for their more famous but more mundane "Venus".

So that's the one we go with today.

666

I've just passed page 666 in "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and was expecting something apocalyptic or at least interesting , but barring Moses crossing the Red Sea there wasn't too much out of the ordinary barring a reanimated Nazi army rising from the bottom of a lake near a rock festival close to Ingolstadt which is fairly normal for that book.

I can only think of two other books that I've read have a page 666 that's "Imajica" and "Lord of The Rings"  and maybe of of Michael Moorcock's Corum collections. I suppose The Bible and Quran also have one.

666 is defined as "The Number of The Beast" and features in many biblical and occult writings and films. as well as being an upside down 999. Aleister Crowley modelled himself as The Great Beast and many metal bands such as Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden , and jazz artists such as Graham Bond tapped into his legacy.

I remember visiting a youth club as a teenager and we brought records and one guy brought the "banned" "666" by Aphrodite's Child (featuring Vangelis and Demis Roussos" and I was well impressed with a lot of the album and have a copy in by collection. "Babylon" and "The Four Horsemen" are well worth tracking down. Click on the name for Youtube links. But we'll go with the more obvious Iron Maiden rampage on this Saturday morning.

5AM Sunday Morning

This is ridiculous. I should be asleep. My body is tired, my brain is tired but my mind is wide awake. So I wasn't sure what to do, so like always when I am not sure what to do, I thought I would come an blog about it. It is could that I can do this and know that I am compos mentis enough to string a few words together, but it is a bit of a pain when I just want to sleep.

I had been dreaming and was in a queue at Boots for some tissues in possibly Leeds, and the serving person was chatting with other servers and trying to serve others before me so I decided to go elsewhere and vaguely remember some huge indoor area like a market or mall  before waking again and deciding to maybe read a bit. I've finished "The White Wolf's Son" by Michael Moorcock and enjoyed the all over the the place swirl of the writing, making for a thoroughly enjoyable read with lots of flashbacks to earlier themes as well as referencing the a area of North Yorkshire where I enjoy going for a relaxing holiday.

I has a slideshow of my last two holidays in Settle and am using the photographs as my computer wallpaper and every one gives me a lift, it is a wonderfully relaxing place. You can see most of the photographs here if you are logged into Facebook.

I'm now starting "How To Be Right: … in a world gone wrong" by James O'Brien which addresses the situation in post brexit-vote / Trump UK via encounters with callers on his radio show. Some of the people he interviews are polarised by the media and unfortunately I hear these sort of things every day, but it is a great read to provide an insight into what is happening in society today. That reminds me of this excellent TED talk by Carol Cadwalladr about Facebook's involvement in allowing untruths about the EU to be spread to push the Brexit agenda.

The music I've chosen for this is the excellent piece of social commentary from the latest Specials album "Embarrassed By You" and I was surprised to see the "Stereotypical" collection which is sitting not two feet from where I am typing going for £225 on Amazon, but as I always say, it's only worth that if you have a buyer.

So enjoy your Bank Holiday Sunday everybody.

In A Parallel Universe

Well I was in bed before nine, but have woken with a dry cough, so I thought I'd post another piece just before midnight. I'm having a Morrison's Solero equivalent that is soothing the dryness and hopefully I can get back to sleep, but I am feeling refreshed after my sleep.

I thought I'd try and read more of the excellent, if swirling, "White Wolf's Son" while listening to the Hawkwind compilation "Parallel Universe" and I started with CD3 which opens with the band's take on "Ejection" which was from Bob Calvert's "Captain Lockheed and The Starfighters" album and I first heard as I walked into a record shop in Preston Guildhall as the opening jet sound crossed the shop very loudly, needless to say I bought it immediately.

I switched my side light on remembering it's only an energy saving bulb , not LED to it took a while to hit full brightness and I read while regressing to my teenage years as "Urban Guerilla" (also covered by Primal Scream) followed, which I think had a radio ban, so another that I bought immediately, and possibly still maybe you won't hear on mainstream radio, then we have selections from the sublime "Hall of The Mountain Grill" album culminating in a live take of Lemmy's "The Watcher".

I will share "Urban Guerilla" with you because it is rather good pop / rock and am now going to listen to CD1 which concentrates on their first two albums and takes me even further back, where I remember paying £1.50 for a copy of "Hurry On Sundown" b/w "Mirror of Illusion" on a Liberty Records single from a guy at a youth club I used to go to. They were the opening and closing tracks from their excellent trippy debut album.

OK it is time to hit the sack once more, it is a school night so to speak.

#AprilSongs #19 Good Friday

As it's Good Friday and some of us have the day off, I thought I would do a Google search for songs about Good Friday and every link was about religion and hymns. Now don't get me wrong, I was expending a big proportion but not everything, and really Good Friday is a bit of a misnomer for who it's supposed to be remembering and what for. Luckily for me, in my collection I have a song called "Good Friday" by The Black Crowes and I found a live take with Chris Robinson doing an impression of The Man.

So this is today's #AprilSongs entry, and today I actually had a lie in until eight o' clock. I still haven't got dressed or showered but I will do as soon as I publish this.

I am still reading "White Wolf's Son" by Michael Moorcock and enjoying it although it does swirl around a bit and points me in the direction of more books by the author that I need to catch up on, but this weekend I am one of the lucky ones to have four days away from the work environment and I am definitely going to enjoy them a lot.

Have a Good Good Friday everyone.