Showing posts with label Steve Hillage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Hillage. Show all posts

Saturday 7 October 2023

Fish


"Life The Universe, And Everything "  by Douglas Adams (#3 in a trilogy in five parts that combines wit and intelligent writing) is over and done with so now I am on with "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" and it moseys along in the same sort of fashion, but is an easy enjoyable read, but the last book did go on about Cricket.


Seven Days In seemed to be grinding back down but 646 visits today is more than ok.

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

The music is "Salmon Song" by Steve Hillage from "Fish Rising" sort of appropriate.

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 on 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

Wednesday 28 February 2018

White February


It's the last day of February and we have had snow. More than usual but hardly enough to bring Newcastle to a halt, though the roads seemed not too filled with motor vehicles. I managed to catch buses and still found time to instagram from Leazes Park as you can see here.

The snow is quite deep , but it is still easy to walk on the footpaths.

One of the strange effects is that the light reflecting on the snow makes it look very light outdoors when all it is is streetlights an dthe moonlight reflecting back up. Snow can be beautiful and amazing at times.

Tomorrow we start into March and I can see that I won't get that much walking done til next week, while in parts the snow is fine to walk on the cold does get to you.

One album I was going to write about and now finally have a chance is Steve Hillage's first solo album "Fish Rising" , whic consists of the dreamy delay guitar heavy "Solar Music Suite" which opens the album before we are hot by the water bubble "Fish" and the ambient guitar of "Meditation of The Snake". Side two hits use with the heavier riff driven "Salmon Song" before more echo delay psychedelia in "Aftaglid". A gorgeously uplifting album and the CD includes "Pentagrammaspin" which I think was a free single given away at gigs and a power trio backing track of "Aftaglid" to satisfy the psychedelic guitar lover in you. Ive just realised that there are three great guitarists (at least) named Steve H , namely Hillage , Hackett and Howe.


AnywayI'll leave you with a live take on "The Salmon Song" from 1977, enjoy.

Tuesday 13 February 2018

Surprise Surprise


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 McVie album. 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.

Sleep well.


Sunday 11 February 2018

Short Circuits


We had a little snow last night and it has been cold today and though it's been a bit of a forced march I managed to do 15K steps today so that's getting back on the road so to speak.

I am really tempted to do a post of maybe ten words, in fact I saw a blog where the person was posting thousands of posts a year (I have done 1500 in ten years) but when I looked each of the posts just seemed to be links, and that was it, no explanation just a link, and thousands of them. Unfortunately I didn't take a copy of the URL so I can't share it with your.

I think most blogs are a form of diary, though mine tends to morph depending on what I'm doing ate the time. Obviously the walking has become fairly important to me and obviously music and books will always be a big part.

Film and TV also are in my ballpark as is Football (real Football not the American Handball game).

This blog is meant to give me inspiration for a book or a novel and my book ended up with 10K words and in a dead end, so I am still hoping inspiration and ideas will come. My friends do help me and inspire me, but this is the only body of written work that I have produced for public consumption.

I said the Jean-Michel Jarre that I had been listening to had encouraged me to listen to mor European music but today was a tiny dip with Steve Hillage's second solo album "L" which featuring a lot a great guitar nodling and thumping covers of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and George Harrison's "It's All Too Much" which appeared on the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack album. One of my favourite moments is when "Hurdy Gurdy Glissando" strays into the monster Maurice Jarre "Lawrence of Arabia" riff , absolutely wonderful, as well as the introduction of Don Cherry to embellish the "Lunar Musick Suite" with his jazz phrasings.

I found a live take of "Hurdy Gurdy Man" for you to enjoy, but the album is definitely worth a visit. Sleep well my friends.