Another day gone and lots to look forward. to. We are having some amazing weather at the moment, and there are lots of amazing events coming up in the area such as Monty Python's Holy Grail being shown at St Nicholas' Cathedral , we've had Lee Perry, Primal Scream and the Tall Ships at Blyth
Without thinking I picked up my guitar and played Rebel, Rebel and People Get Ready. Given that I've not played the former for years and latter for months I was quite surprised how naturally it came, that must be what a real musician feels like. Soon after that I saw an ad on Amazon for the soundtrack to Nicholas Roeg's film "The Man Who Fell To Earth" featuring David Bowie which was never released at the time. The thing is it features Stomu Yamash'ta fairly heavily and I've just been listening to Floating Music.
So in what I have just written about there are lots of cross references and tangential connections. Anyway that soundtrack will soon be joining my collection I think.
So I know this is a short post but have a brilliant day , enjoy yourself and just have a totally great time.
I was going to write a post on And Annoyingly but decided to write something positive about enjoyable stuff. I am sick of people defending Donald Trump and attacking Jeremy Corbyn, Corbyn has his faults but is still the best option for a Labour leader. That's all I am going to say.
Maybe I shouldn't go on Facebook, but I do I have interactions with some wonderful friends on there, and then I feel better, and put on some music such as Stomu Yamash'ta's Floating Music. I remember buying it on Island's mid priced label for £1.49 when it came out around 1972, I had seen Man From The East on TV so I bought it and loved it. Just an example of me liking something that no one else in my social circles had even come close to , and when they heard hit they weren't exactly supportive, but that's their loss. It's always good to try new things but I've
never been taken by smooth lounge jazz , but this was a complete
different universe. You can hear a bit of it here and here.
While this may not be the most exciting way to spend the last day of the bank holiday, it makes me feel good and therefore it is good. It is very easy to get sidetracked by negatives but have just booked La Rosa for my birthday as well , and it's my favourite hotel in my favourite holiday place, Whitby. On the phone they know who I am even though it's a year since I stayed there.
I also phoned and spoke with my dad, and over the weekend gave my eldest daughter something towards a Big Daisy Kiss Star Wars hand bag that she wants for her birthday. At least this year I won't forget that. That's inspired me to put up Meco's Disco take on Star Wars and that WILL bring a smile to your face.
Anyway as the sun sets on the Bank Holiday , smile , enjoy yourself and set yourself up for a brilliant week. I have done, so you do the same.
Reading is good for you. It can educate you, inform you and take you places that don't exist, except in the imagination. I love Bill Hicks response when he is asked:
"What are you reading for?"
And then accused of being "one of them readers". You can hear his response here if you don't already know it. During my life I have often been denigrated for reading, having books (or the wrong sort), or not following religiously TV like X-Factor, BGT , Soaps and the like. Even today people still regard readers as something to be avoided.
I can't say I am a fast reader, and sometimes I don't finish books such PJ O'Rourke's "Don't Vote, IT Only Encourages The Bastards. PJ O'Rourke is very right wing, very intelligent, and eloquent talker , a great comedian , but like say Richard Dawkins he can get evangelical about certain views and the becomes a huge turn off for me. The book starts off well , again opposite to my views but well argued, presented and funny and readable. But , in my opinion, it descended into an anti Democratic government / Obama rant about the fact that he shouldn't be taxed or kept in line by government rules so it was donated to the Westgate Ark Charity Shop.
Next in line was Pete Townshend's "Who I Am" , a 500 page autobiography, by one of my favourite artists. All my life I've thought about Jim Marshall of Marshall Amplification fame as an American, and the fact unearthed from this book is that Jim Marshall is actually English. Now this is a very small insignificant fact, but if I didn't read I would probably never have known that, but now I do.
I try to encourage reading in others, my daughters are avid readers, and for the past four years I have given away books for World Book Night, but I am still aware of people who are actively opposed to books.
When I started Primary School, I was able to read, that was my mum who taught me to read, and my girls could read when they started school but some teachers actually berated us for having taught them to read.
Reading should be a pleasure and should be natural and everybody should do do it and encourage others to do to it, but I know for some people reading is getting their daily fix from their Red Tops (I don't want to even mention their name)
But anyway, I think you should pick up a book and , broaden your mind. I've included Mac Barnett's TED talk which is a great reason for reading.
And as this has been inspired by Pete Townshend, I've included this acoustic performance of "So Sad About Us" with Paul Weller , a good version of a wonderful song.
Although the first two songs may seem to have a vague glam rock connection , there's going to be a lot of different stuff on this. I first saw Sparks performing on The Old Grey Whistle Test performing "No More Mister Nice Guy" from A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing which was OK , the most striking thing was Ron Mael's Chaplinesque looks and I liked the album title. More androgynous American rock but nothing special.
Then they signed to Island and gave us Kimono My House , more plays on words and phrases , but the lead single "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us" was totally amazing.
From the opening piano motif you are hit with Russel Mael's falsetto , the a stop with a heavy stop start four note single heavy guitar riff before launching in a streamrollering you in almost Wagnerian style a song that still stands today as one of the most amazing three minutes you will ever hear.
Everytime I listen to it, I don't want it to stop, there's always a change round the corner, and while it may be generally in 4/4 time it's hardly easy to dance to like your normal pop song should be, but it never loses your attention.
You can see it's influence in things like Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and since then Sparks have continued to expand their musical envelops , collaborating with Giorgio Moroder on No 1 In Heaven and are still producing amazing music. Li'l Beethoven is an wonderful album.
This Town was when I though Sparks were special and was revisited on their collaborations album Plagiarism as a duet with Faith No More, Mike Patton providing an amazing foil for Russel Mael. See the video at the end.
Recently they collaborated with Franz Ferdinand as FFS , a major success but you feel the Mael's were in the driving seat, but Franz Ferdinand's angular rock proved a brilliant vehicle for more Mael exploration and play.
It's the middle of the working week and the clouds are dispersing giving way to blue skies and sunshine. Everybody seems to be checking apps on their phones, tablets and computers to see what the weather will be like , I still stick with looking out of the window and if I think it's gonna rain I take my umbrella and if it's going to be wet and windy I take my hat (it's water and windproof).
The weather is a complex thing and while it can be influenced by governments with the right resources, nothing can be guaranteed.
A worrying development is the replacement of grass with plastic at Cowgate near me . In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, but in Earth's ecosystem plants take in CO2 and exhale O2, it's part of the balance of nature. The thing is if all the grass is replaced by plastic it will have a detrimental effect on the environment. It looks nice and new when it's laid but it soon gathers rubbish and I reckon it's going to soon get very tatty and it WILL affect our environment.
Also we see trees being removed . An oak tree may take 50 gallons of water a day. I look at the plants and bushes and trees round my garden. The garden seldom gets too wet to walk on and those plants , bushes and trees are doing very well thank you . Take them away and I have a swimming pool. We are getting more and more floods and a big part of it is tree decimation. Trees can have negative effects , their roots can destroy buildings, roads and footpaths, but they need to be conserved and managed not destroyed.
Anyway I am not a scientist, but these are just some thoughts on stuff I have seen.
A while ago I said I was going to post about songs that basically, to me , were like nothing I'd heard before. I was trying to think of a tag or description and the phrase #LikeNoOther seems appropriate. You may disagree with me, or you may agree. A lot of these songs have become part of the mainstream, often because they were that good, despite challenging the expected musical borders.
The first may seem incredibly obvious, but at the time I thought what the hell , well actually it was a bit stronger than that. David Bowie showing his Lindsay Kemp influence dressed as a clown, cutting between his padded cell and a desolate beach with self referential nods to previous songs, the video is as important as the song, the two being inseparable in my mind.
The song structure does have verses and choruses but still sound alien while retaining pop sensibilities making it accessible to the music buying public. Again this was Bowie showing what could be done cutting and pasting the music back together and producing a timeless masterpiece, giving us Ashes To Ashes.
While this is not my favourite Bowie song, for me it is probably his most important song in his musical canon, I still love it and still love the video, and love the album from which it came.
Can you think of any song prior to Ashes To Ashes that has a similar form or feel?
I don't know whether I have made you think or bored you with this, but there will be more to follow after this, but a Bowie song is always a great starting point.
The worst thing about waking up 45 minutes before your alarm goes off is that you know that by the time you get back to sleep the alarm is going to go off. The other option is to get up, but if you're tired you really want to enjoy your bed and warmth of being wrapped in your duvet. But it's Tuesday morning and you have to get up to get to work.
If you wake up earlier it's worth going back to sleep, but not at 5:15. It does give you a bit of extra day to play with and if I'm tired tonight I can always go to bed a bit earlier.
I'm looking out of the window and it's been raining, which means the lawn doesn't need watering, in fact it is looking very green.
Self Portrait
We have the August Bank Holiday coming up and maybe I'll track down some music event to attend, even though I've missed every one so far this year. Lee Perry is playing Think Tank this Sunday and with Monday off that is a definite possibility.
I saw him at the Riverside and that was just an amazing experience, so that's an excuse to do it again.
Really this post is just a slight moan about waking up too early , but is an excuses to play The Who's 5.15 from their seminal Quadrophenia album and I am currently reading Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I Am" so again I suppose that's me going off on tangents and finding connections between disparate things which links in to my admiration for lateral thinking.
Anyway it's Tuesday morning, so have a brilliant day everyone.
I am often denigrated for not fitting in the boxes that people expect. I don't watch soaps (unless you count the episodes of Doctors that my friend Paul Campbell writes , and he is not your average soap writer) , and the programs I do watch often go completely over the head of a lot of people.
I am a great fan of lateral thinking and love the concepts of Edward De Bono. I was introduced to him during my induction training at Littlewoods nearly 40 years ago. This means often my ideas are dismissed by people because they seem to be not the normal way to achieve a goal.
At school everyone was into Led Zeppelin, Yes, Hawkind, Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad and ELP. I deliberately refused to listen to Led Zeppelin because they were everywhere. I loved The Bonzo Dog Band, Bowie, Pink Floyd,Hawkwind , T Rex and The Sweet. I remember being at a school disco and the DJ had a sense of humour because he segued Jean Genie into Blockbuster. It took the heads on the dancefloor two minutes to realise before they stormed off in disgust. I loved both records , and so did the DJ and if you have any doubts about the Sweet's credentials take a listen to Sweet F.A.
The things is I am open to all ideas and like a very wide range of music. I still know people who won't listen to anything outside of 1972-1976 time period, and there is no point in trying to argue a case for listening to new music.
A while ago I posted a YouTube video of an Enya / Prodigy mash up and a few Prodigy fans were horrified. I could understand Enya fans being horrified but surely not Prodigy fans. This was the Evil Prodigy corrupting the Radio 2 Celtic Acceptability of Enya. I bought Orinoco Flow when it came out and love a lot of the Prodigy stuff and it's funny how people decided I am not a proper whatever because I actually listen and can enjoy most genres.
Again I think the mash up above says a lot about me , I enjoy stuff with an edge , I enjoy stuff that
doesn't necessarily challenge , I enjoy going off into the unknown but I also enjoy knowing where I am going and what I am going to get.
Life is good and if I wasn't like I was I wouldn't have done many of the things I have enjoyed doing, and I am looking forward to many many more.
Anyway this is more rambling on my part, enjoy the rest of your Sunday my wonderful friends.
I really want to go to bed. But I feel I should have written something today, so I have decided to write something now. I may not even get to a hundred words, but then again I might. I remember seeing if I could write two thousand words without having a game plan and I did that.
The human mind , when used correctly is capable of great things. Yes, some people are better than others but we are all capable of doing something that WE think is remarkable because it makes us feel good.
I have learned not to seek others approval or commendations because I know it's unlikely I will get it, and in a country like ours you are only setting yourself up to be shot down/
Luckily the friends I've managed to make do not fall into that group , they see positives and live positively , as well as caring for others , far more than I do.
This is post 1101 and I am just wondering if I will notice post 1,111 as it goes by. I marked post 1,000 and 1,100 so the chances are I will not miss it, because like everyone I do sometimes notice things , as do you. Having said that there have been times when I have nearly missed a bus because I have been looking at something on my phone , or maybe missed my stop because Ive been watching something , reading or sleeping.
Anyway I have managed to write something , it's about nothing in particular and the great thing about writing a blog is no one will tell you to shut up. You can say what you want , which is an enormous freedom. Well the thing is I said I would be lucky to write 100 words but I have hit 400 , so I am great at spouting rubbish , though I suppose everyone has it in themselves to write.
Anyway I have gone on a bit, the weekend is half over, we have Sunday to enjoy and I am going the pick Frank Sinatra by The Avalanches because I love the song and love the video and love the album Wildflower too. I think you should check it out too. This also made me think of Frontier Psychiatrist another favourite of mine so I thought I would include that as well.
Well I am going to hit my bed, I am having a weekend of rest and recuperation and will be totally charged up for next week. Enjoy your Sunday my friends.
I got up this morning and needed lights on everywhere. The days are getting shorter. The Mail and Express blame it n foreigners . Seriously, we're still in summer, the weather has been great , it's Friday which means the weekend is here, so all is good.
This is my 1100th post on here, that's quite a lot , and does provide me with a great online diary of stuff worth remembering.
Recently I started another blog just for me to let off steam here as I do like to keep this one positive,and there are still lots of great things to be positive about. The UK are doing well in the Olympics and the EU actually tops the Olympic table , or it would do if we were part of it.
Anyway, as I said it is Friday, the weekend is nearly here , the weather is great (although skies at the moment are grey) so everything is in place for maximum enjoyment.
I know this isn't a particularly memorable post but 1100 is not a particularly memorable number really.
Over the past couple of days I've noticed a lot of smiles and a lot of glum faces. The people are all in similar situations. I don't know what their situations are but I find even (and maybe especially ) when things are not good a smile makes YOU feel better and it becomes contagious. Generally if you smile and someone , they will smile back at you and you will both end up feeling better.
I know I've written about this lots in the past and I may be repeating myself and you may read this and thing "Oh No he's going on about smiling and being happy AGAIN!". I make no apologies.
I know there are people who are only happy when they are miserable (often centred on Manchester .... only joking) , but it makes me feel much better when people are happy, so maybe I'm being more than a little selfish,
Just a thought one of my favourite albums of the moment is Manchester's Improving Daily by Edward II , and it really is one of the most beautifully produced albums I've seen in my life. It retails at the same price as any other CD but when I got it delivered the package was secured by sealing wax and you can see what it looks like on one of my Instagram Posts here. It really is a beautiful package so I will use a song from it "A Humorous and Interesting Dialogue" that was used in support of the NHS.
But the weekend is almost over , so if you are with someone smile , and if you are going to work tomorrow , smile, and your day will be much much better.
Every smile you give , you will get back in spades. Enjoy my friends.
Last night Preston North End hosted Hartlepool United in the latest incarnation of the League Cup, first round at Deepdale. I use an app called Fotmob and discovered that since 2010 Hartlepool had not scored a goal against Preston and had lost every match by the odd goal apart from one 5-0 defeat. Jeff Stelling is the world number one Hartlepool supporter.
Last night they defended heroically until the 94th minute when Eoin Doyle scored for us as extra time, and a draw loomed. That mus hurt, it would hurt me definitely.
It is good to see partisan , knowledgeable sports presenters , and lets face it I don't like all the 'B' clubs near Preston (Bolton , Burnley , Blackpool, Blackburn) and everyone hates Leeds and Millwall, but it adds to the interest of the program.
So cheer Jeff up and buy his book. I 've included my favourite football song because this is a vaguely football related post so you can enjoy England's Irie by Black Grape.
When I write blog posts I often get sidetracked and end up writing about things that weren't there when I started writing. This is just to see if I can write something reasonably focused.
People have described be as a Corbynista , because I am generally left wing. It's more about caring that people get the best and are not mistreated and stay under the heel of privileged classes. I will expand this in my new blog And Annoyingly but I started out as a Tory voter (my dad still is) , and recently watched an excellent TED talk by a right wing conservative here which rightly points out that in the modern world we need to work together , watch it here it's excellent.
I'm also reading PJ O'Rourke's "Don't Vote, It Only Encourages The Bastards" which again has a lot of useful and pertinent points in there . His one paragraph evaluation of Donald Trump is brilliant which is basically "if he didn't have paroled Enron accountants he'd be worth less than your cat"
The title of the post is just something that came to me and basically I suppose with what I've been going on about is surreally appropriate.
Anyway there is only one song that this post can have, and that's the Bonzo Dog Band's "No Matter Who You Vote For, The Government Always Gets In".
Last week I didn't post much for various reasons (see here) and then got to thinking what is a normal rate of posting things. Almost everybody on Facebook posts something everyday , often several times a day , and often it's just reposting something they have seen and liked. So I post more on Facebook than I do on here.
Usually Facebook is about being in the moment , it's what's happening at the time, and then things get lost and forgotten. People often use it to let off steam or moan about things, and too be quite honest a lot those sort of things I just ignore, though if someone is having I bad time I will contact them and see if can help.
Anyway , in my first year of blogging I posted 6 items , that's an average of 1 post every 2 months (60 days) , here is my first post which I hadn't a clue why I was doing this. The next post was about Krautrock but I had just lifted from a music section on my Song of The Salesman site but then decided not to go further with but I thought the piece had some merit.
I then wrote nothing until I went on holiday to Dublin and decided this would be a travel blog , hence the name. But that didn't take.
Anyway the following year I posted 46 times , almost once a week , and really that should be what I am aiming for and since that time (2008) I have written fairly consistently, about absolutely anything. In 2013 I posted 244 times that's two posts every three days , which is a lot of writing. This year I have posted 66 times and expect to maybe do 100 posts by the end of the year.
Last year I posted my thousandth post (here) which was in the middle in the middle of my Oddysey58 project which was a song for every year of my life which I do intend to somehow turn into an ebook, combining it with another book project I have started but not finished.
My posts tend to get 50-50 views though the biggest one has had over 900 views but is a rubbish post (here) though my most read post ever is on my Spoongig blog about the reopening of The Old Fox in Felling with over 1,100 views.
I chose "In The Meantime" by Spacehog because they had a song called "Millions" but I couldn't find it but I love In The Meantime with it's motif lifeted from The Penguin Cafe Orchestra's Telephone and A Rubber Band.
Anyway this morning started out very grey , but it's now sun shining but very windy, so it's the start to another week and if the weather is anything to go by , it's going to be a good one.
This is just about an email that amused me but because of a minor dose of "political correctness" (ie you can't ask the person who raised the question to clarify what they mean, you must ask someone at your level or lower). This email had gone through about six iterations (it was probably 3 or 4 but 6 sounds better) before it finally came to me.
It was a request for information on how to do something in the email title , nothing major , a simple question , but terminated by a strange sounding TLA , which I think was the cause of the problem.
It went like:
"How do you do XXXXXX EOM"
It was the EOM that was the killer. It was an email and the only thing that meant anything to me was End of Month, so I emailed the originator who told me with a smiley it meant "End of Message" , which meant the the person's question became crystal clear.
That was a bit of computer code being used as a TLA to end a sentence when a full stop or question mark would suffice. No harm was done and it made us all chuckle , but if someone like me hadn't entered the email trail trail , how long would it have gone on for ... or maybe that's why I was included as I often get things sorted. So it was a case of using something in the wrong place at the wrong time which to me is an obvious cue for Dr John's"Right Place, Wrong Time"
An Addendum to my argument is that apparently EOM can be added to the title of an email to signify that it doesn't need to be opened, so it was being used correctly , but no one on the email trail knew what it meant apart from the originator and now me.
It is another beautiful day so enjoy the wonderful weather and have a great Sunday.
,br>
I was just checking my blog and this post a bout the potential closure of Newcastle City Hall here, had been getting a lot of attention. I don't know who from but it's the third most read this week. I also missed the Dictators on Wednesday and Chase Park Festival today (here is my review from last year) , I have been amazingly remiss in my gig planning.
These days pessimists will start talking about Alzheimers , but the reality is that we all forget things, we remember things for no reason and some stuff becomes buried deep , so deep we don't know it's there.
One of the reasons I keep this blog , is the same as keeping a diary , except this is online and anyone can see it, and because of that people look at things that I had forgotten about and causes me to remember and revisit. Sometimes I remember that I had recorded something and then search the blog to find it. It really is a useful tool.
My memory has always been strange . When I did Law and English Literature I could remember all about cases but not the names of cases , and I knew what happened in plays but could never remember any quotations. I usually don't know how to do things but I do know where to look to find out how to do things.
So anyway I thought I would just share that with you and you could always do a random search of this blog , you never know what you might find.....even I don't know exactly what I will find ... and I'm the one who wrote the damned thing.
I've chosen a re-edit of Robert Wyatt'sMemories spliced with the finale to The Blue Angel , and that has led me to a whole new treasure trove of discovery
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Oh and below is Robert Wyatt's take on Peter Gabriel's Biko , and I just love it, one of the most powerful songs I've ever heard and although it sound slight at first , it works it's waky into your psyche . I love Robert Wyatt... and this one of the discoveries that I mentioned.
Well I am very hot and sweaty, I bet you really wanted to know that. This morning I have cut down a leafy bust to fit in te brown bin (I actually cut it last week) , mowed the lawn , put up a shelf that fell off a wall months ago, well I think I have, those rawlplugs weren't working so I hope the no more nails strips will hold, they say up to3Kg each strip but we all know the phrase "up to" includes the number zero. I got that from the Llap Goch Advertisement in Monty Python'sBig Red Bok. Click on the image to read the text a lot more easily.
I've also been and bought a rucksack for of shopping and walked about 3 miles, so I have had a fairly productive morning.
I still didn't want to get up though, but the fact I have doe all this and am writing this blog post is a good sign.
The weather is excellent and there have been a lot of greeting and smiles when I was out, the sun and good weather can bring out the best in people.
The football season has started although for some it will feel as if it never ended, teams complain of too many games and once there is space they organise a tour on the other side of the world or some new made up cup competition. Newcastle lost their opening Championship encounter with Fulham leaving the bottom of the division much to the delight of Sunderland fans. I'm obviously more concerned with how Preston fare against Jaap Staam's Reading.
...is not a way to describe me at the moment. The last couple of weeks I have been feeling lethargic and apathetic. I want to stay in bed late and go to bed early and sleep lots , maybe my body and mind just need rest. I've missed gigs , quizzes , events which people have put effort into and I have not been able to put in the effort.
The fact that I am writing this means I am feeling better and more like my old self and have plans for things like mowing the lawn at the weekend and getting out to see people.
One good thing about this is that it has enabled me to catch up on lots of TV such as Gotham, Wayward Pines , Outcast and up to the end of series one of Penny Dreadful. The thing is TV does take you away from other things , but lots of my friends binge watch and still manage to have a normal social life.
I could blame this on diabetes and maybe that does have an effect , but I wont let it rule my life. This week I've also been doing my own cooking apart from a takeaway last night , plus done a lot of chores round the house , so maybe it's just that that I have been doing other things , but I have definitely been going to bed early and wanting more than my usual lie in in the morning.
When I woke this morning I had the remnants of a dream , I was working somewhere with a protected computer (the protective device had a green flashing light) which hand been taken over by some malicious entity. I suggested the switch off / switch on solution which worked and enabled to get what we needed including a cryptic email from someone called Huffington , then I woke up. This is allowed to make no sense at all as it was a dream.
The other plus is that it's Friday and we have the weekend to do lots of fun stuff ... and lie in. I thought the older you got the less sleep you needed. Anyway I feel fine now and I am pleased that I've managed to write something.
The Dictators "Sleeping With The TV On" is appropriate and still gets better every time I hear it and they are playing Think Tank tonight..... I really should go.