Are You Experienced?

This is the post I was going to write on Wednesday night. A week or so ago, for the first time I listened to "Electric Ladyland" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience for the first time as rambled on here.

Axis

On Monday afternoon I was in the tyeside Bar and Cafe and notice a young student guy (rough estimat 14-17) , with vinyl from HMV.  I wondered what it was fearing it my be the new Ed Sheeran or Sam Smith, but when he pulled it out it was "Axis:Bold As Love" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I wanted to congratulate him on his choice of music but thought better of it as it might be for an elderly relative and he might have been an Ed Sheeran or X-Factor fan. The cover of Axis is so striking with it's band as part of an Asian God image.




This then prompted me to revisit "Are You Experienced" and "Axis: Bold As Love" to listen to on my walks. The first album is better but my copy is augmented with singles and "B" sides but I just regard that as desserts after the banquet, as it contains a lot of classics. My friend Harry Clark reckoned that "Third Stone From The Sun" ripped off the "Coronation Street" theme, though Cozy Powell ripped off the Hendrix riff for his hit single "Dance With The Devil". "May This Be Love" is a total beauty with some brilliant speaker panning by the guitar and drums, and the album opens with "Foxy Lady". "Red House" is great blues and is sort of echoed by "House Burning Down" from "Electric Ladyland"

"Axis:Bold As Love" is not as good but still a wonderful album with the amazing anti-establishment anthem "If 6 Was 9" which was used in the film "Easy Rider", "Castles Made Of Sand" and "Little Wing" are two more nailed on classics, and basically if you don't have all the albums I've mentioned in your collection in one form or another , you need to rectify this immediately.

Hendrix studio recordings aren't readily available on Youtube but there are many covers so I've chosen The Pretenders take on "May This Be Love" from their 1990 album "Packed". It's Friday, it's raining , have a great day.

Value For Money

I've just been out to replenish the milk and still ended up buying 2 litres instead of my intended 1 litre. This is because there is only an 11p difference between the bottles, so even if I don't use it all before it goes sour I've probably got more for my money. Tesco sell four packs of Mars Bars and Kit-Kats for a pound, yest single bars are around 80p, so people will spend the extra 20p to get three more bars and a lot of people will end up eating four instead of one, and while it doesn't affect everyone in this way there is obviously some agenda just to keep the population obese. Sorry to whinge about this on a Thursday morning , but due to a ten year virtual wage freeze for most of the country people have to make savings and tighten their belts while corporations and many politicians wallow in ever growing sees of money.

Two guys at the bus stop were talking about bets on the Tottenham vs Newport match last night, expecting a Swansea vs Notts County avalanche. I thought it would either happen or be about 2-0. It was the latter but I didn't actually put a bet on it.

Still I suppose that would be an excuse to replay "Newport State of Mind" but you can check this post from 2015 which has the video ny Alex Warren and Terema Wainwright which annoyed Jay Zed and Alicia Keys but instead I 'll include something else, and thinking about value for money makes me think of the Star Spangled Chestwigs take on Ottowan's "D.I.S.C.O." except as the the Chestwigs you know it's "S.H.I.T.E." but they do mention Iceland . Have a brilliant Thursday everybody.

Nine 'til Five

I know that is most people's working days (well it used to be) but that was my sleep time last night. I was feeling absolutely wrecked. Just did a normal day, came home just put a Ham and Pineapple Pizza in the oven, had that about seven cos I was fasting from eight due to a hospital appointment this morning. Then at nine after two episodes of Mr Robot I was ready to drop, I haven't a clue why.

Yesterday was nice to see the snow, but it was coming down when I was in my sixth floor office so I didn't have to experience the cold , wet and slippiness and by the time I finished it was just cold and dark.

I was going to write a post last night but this isn't it , this is a different one. I also have fragments of a weird dream which involved me being in the centre of Newcastle , going down a brick walkway and being almost too fat to get out of the weirdly shapes other end, being near the Monkey Bar, watching a large aircraft taking off from Gatehead Airport carring a large anchor  to hold down large inflatables in the river Tyne. Just an average day in my head then.

This morning I got up made tea and decaf coffee only to find the milk was turning, so remade using almond milk which is acceptable. I think I am going to have to change my milk buying habits , smaller bottles in future.

Last week I listened to my two favourite Jean-Michel Jarre albums, "Equinoxe"  and "Zoolook". His dad was Maurice Jarre who did some brilliant soundtracks such as "Dr Zhivago", "Ghost" and my favourite "Lawrence of Arabia" . I found Jean-Michel's first album "Oxygene" twee and boring with a rubbish pretentious cover, my attitude has mellowed since it first came out but to me it's a first try, but "Equinoxe" was several steps up the ladder. "Zoolook" used some groundbreaking sound techniques to enhance the listening experience especially on headphones.

So I'll share Christopher Walken dancing to "Diva" from "Zoolook". Have a good Wednesday.

Back To Reality

Have a break, especially in Whitby , is brilliant. In insulates from stuff that you have to do, although I was sure that I wouldn't keep up my 12K a day steps that I need to do to hit 340K in February (only 28 days this month), but I did that and more, hitting 18K on Sunday, but I knew yesterday would cause a dip, as it was going to be up, then driving back.

Luckily I took a full day off so that enabled me to do 15K steps yesterday, so there's not too much pressure for the rest of the month. The weather is possibly going to be cold, so that may affect my walking if if we also get rain and strong winds. Rain without wind means you can use an umbrella, wind without rain is just a question of wrapping up.

I came home to find my TIVO box had gone from 60% to 80% full in four days, slightly surprising on one way, but when you think a film can (with adverts) clock in at three and a half hours, and I recorded a few films, maybe it's not that surprising.

After listening and being impressed by Jem's "Down To Earth", her second album, yesterday on my walks I played her debut album "Finally Woken" which opens with the song that got me into her "They" whith it's sampled vocal motif played on a Fairlight or something and sounding like it's been lifted from one of the BBC favourite vocal groups that would guest on Sunday programs like the Swingle Singers orthe like. "They " is brilliant and is worth buying the album for that song alone. While the rest of the album is not earth shattering it is still well worth investigating with some songs that will stay with you.

I'll leave you with "They" and get wrapped up for the walk to work. Have a good Tuesday my friends, this is the start of my four day work week.

P133A

So had a brilliant weekend in Whitby including two meals at The Magpie Cafe and a walk up to and around Whitby Abbey as well as three brilliant breakfast provided by Matt and Craig at Dillons of Whitby (named after the previous owners dog , theirg current dog is called Florence).

I saw seagulls tap dancing (well that's what it looked like to me) though they were tricking morms into coming to the surface , because worms think tap dancing seagulls sound like rain. Still looked so comical to me. Also a night thousads of seagulls were just parked on the river, but I couldn't get a picture (like I couldn't film the tap dancing ones either).

As we were leaving Whitby the snow started coming down and stayed with us along the A171 but there's been little sign of it in Newcastle, although it's very cold.

The title of the post is because the take away pizza box had a type font that made PIZZA look like P133A adn that's the only reason, things like that do catch my eye.

I've been listening to various albums while surprisingly getting throught a lot of steps (75K in the first five days of February), but unfortuantely missed the "Lux Lives"  Cramps tribute at The Cluny on Sunday featuring my friend Jon Lee as Poison Ivy, so I will leave you with Poison Ivy's rendition of Duane Eddy's "Peter Gunn Theme" (Crampified).

Sleep well and keep warm.

Drive

Last night I went to see Reginald D. Hunter and he told the sad story of Harper Lee. Her first novel "To Kill A Mockingbird" was an instant classic, which but incredible pressure on her to follow it up. How do you top an instant classic? She loast friends especially in the literary world because she was being set up to fail. She tried to write but nothing would pass her own criteria, how could it? Check out this Guardian article and decide for yourself, even better go and look for more information yourself. I personally won't be buying a copy of "Go Set A Watchman". This paragraph is completely based on what Reginal D Hunter told us at The Stand last night.

Today I'm driving to Whitby for a weekend staying at Dillons rather than La Rosa , love both of them though. I'll be stopping at the OK Diner maybe going and coming back due to their excellent service and food.

Yesterday was my first day of February walking, and I need to average over 12K steps a day, which I thought might be a problem but I've started off OK hitting 14K yesterday even though it was very very cold. Today may be different though it's ten past seven and still dark. I've not looked outside to see if cars are frosted up but I will find out soon.

Yesterday I was listening to the second album by Jem "Down To Earth" and was struck by several song and the last one "On Top Of The World" has such a beautiful chorus that I have to share it with you. Have a brilliant day.

February

I've vaguely wondered why February is so short. We have seven 31 day month , four 30 day months and February which has 28 days (29 in Leap Years). Surely we could have five 31 day months and seven 30 day months (February hitting 21 in a Leap Year). I was thinking maybe it's a sort of apology because people tend to be paid earlier in December and then Janauray seems an awfully long month although you don't get the small benefit of the four week February until March. Basically The Romans were to blame (what did they ever do for us?) and originally Februay was the last month of the year, but with various calendrical reorganizations January became the first month of the year (which is odd because the God Janus had a face at the front and back of his head so he could look backwards and forwards so you would expect that to be the first or last month of the year). Anyway here's some links about February:

Wiki
Why it is short

I recently found some John Niven books I was unaware of "Coma", "Old School:Roman" and "Enfant Terrible". "Old School:Roman" dropped through my letter box and I unwrapped it and looked inside and thought my eyes were not reading properly then realised it was a German edition. I checked the orlder (which had been desptched from Germany and the language is listed as German. C'est La Vie I thought, I'll find the English copy but every copy I found was German. John Niven is Scottish. I checked "Coma" - German. "Enfant Terrible" - French.  It turns out these are retitled versions of existing novels, "Coma" is "The Amateurs", "Old School:Roman" is "The Sunshine Cruise Company", "Enfant Terrible" is "Straight White Male". While "Enfant Terrible" is French it has found it;s way into the English language, but why have the German translations got English titles apart from to maybe catch people out.  Luckily I have German friends so it can find a good home but if I were German if I saw an English title I wouldn;t expect it to be a German language book.

Anyway the last of the bands that have covered "Happy" by The Rolling Stones and I'm going for Spirit's "Animal Zoo" from "The Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus" and classic album from Spirit in their first incarnation.

Enjoy the first day of February 2018, the last time it will ever happen my friends.