Walking Off The Walking Dead - #Oktoberfest #16 - Jockey Full Of Bourbon - Tom Waits

I've finally given up on The Walking Dead as it seems to have drifted too far from it's main concept. Yes it's post apocalyptic and things can go off it so many directions but I am still vaguely wondering what happened to Rick when he was spirited off in that unknown helicopter. I'm not that observant so I may have missed something and the latest series started and it was like I couldn't remember where I was in it and the zombies are just an embellishment rather than the result of what caused this situation. No doubt people will be able to enjoy it and I didn't stop watching because it was bad, but because it had run out for me.

One of the problems is there is some much excellent television and only a limited amount of time. There is nothing wrong with ending a series, I'm thinking "Game of Thrones" , "Black Sails" and "Breaking Bad" but I have now picked up "Vikings" and "Preacher" and with "His Dark Materials" on the way I think my television time is spoken for well into 2020.

For some reason I thought I could hit a record number of annual posts this months by instigating #Oktoberfest but I still have to post 43 more seventeen days to go , so three posts a day is not going to happen but I will likely complete it in November.

So the #Oktoberfest song today is "Jockey Full of Bourbon" by Tom Waits from "Raindogs", and it was Hannah Berry (Comic Laureate) on here Paperback Writers show on 6Music yesterday who played it and reminded that if I need songs about drink Tom Waits provides a rich vein to mine. I had been having problems trying to think of songs related to drink but I am sure I can hit another 15-20 by the end of the month.

It's a greyish Monday but go out and hit the world.

Morning

Is Saturday better than Friday? Friday has the anticipation of the two day weekend combined with the fact that it's the last day of work , whereas Saturday you can get up when you want , you don't have to go to work but you only have one more day before Monday comes around. This is not true for many people who work in retail, banks , call centres and the like so apologies to all those.

I once read of an American car shop who noticed that most of their sales came on Friday afternoon and Saturday so they changed their working week from Monday to Friday to Friday to Monday (that doesn't seem to make sense but it does) so employees went from a five day week to a four day week for the same pay and profits increased. This model wouldn't work for everything but is definitely an example of how you should always look to improve situations in a way that benefits everybody.

As I said I finished "Brief Answers To The Big Questions", the final Stephen Hawking book in around a week and it is a very interesting, easy and thought provoking read which I would recommend to everybody. My next book is going to be "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, a far heavier tome but I do like Dawkins' sensible and logical arguments although he does, ironically, get a bit evangelical at times. Still I will see how it goes.

I;ve been enjoying the single "Ibtihaj" by Rapsody with GZA . I though "Ibtihaj" was some kind of acronym but it's actually the name of Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first female Muslim-American athlete to earn a medal at the Olympics. The chorus, male backing vocals sounds like a eerie Bowie song like say "The Bewlay Brothers". It is a great sound and I heard it again on Radcliffe and Maconie on 6Music this morning but Chris Hawkins has also been playing it.

Take a listen and definitely check out the books.

Enjoy your Saturday.

Crunch

I'm really enjoying the final Stephen Hawking book which while I don't understand a great deal of it, it is a great book for stimulating thoughts and while it is not explicitly stated I like the "Crunch Theory" of the Universe that it is a constant state of expanding and contracting from a singularity where eveying contracts to a pin point resulting in a big bang which causes the whole thing to start again. If course this happens over millions if not billions of years and implies that the universe is effectively eternal although at the point of singularity time doesn't exist.

reading a bit further about the singularity it's a place where time , space and everything becomes infinite therefore unmeasurable so I think that also fits with my interpretations.

This post sounds as though I know what I am talking about, I don't really, but things to catch my imagination. So definitely a worthwhile book to have in your collection.

Also this morning I got a mention on the Chris Hawkins Show (about seventy five minutes in if you follow the link) plugging a few local record shops and the fact that I have ordered the forthcoming Sam Fender album.

There's only one song for this post, the scientifically accurate "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python and I didn't realises Stephen Hawking had done a version as well.

Reading Appendices #2 and Discovering Sam Fender

Well I am reading the appendices of "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and it's like nothing has changed. Same mad whirlwind mix or mysticism and conspiracies as well as explanations of I-Ching symbols that I was unaware of, well I assume they are correct despite the fact this is a work of mad fiction. It's not often fictional novels  have a large section of appendices.

This is just a short post to let you know a little more about this book that I thought I was finished with and had finished writing about, but like a box of fireworks you dropped a match in , they've not all gone off yet.

Chris Hawkins played "The Borders" by Sam Fender on 6Music this morning and I've had a natural aversion to Sam Fender because everyone seems to be pushing him. He's also a local lad (North Shields I think, well that's where his studio is). Chris described him as the English Springsteen. After hearing "The Borders" he might not be wrong , and amazing song and the album is on my list to buy, and given my generally paucity of new music buying these days that is no mean thing. Well impressed.

Enjoy your Wednesday.

Sing Me A Song That I Know

This morning I turned on the radio (Chris Hawkins on 6Music) and heard an absolute gorgeous brass riff playing, but also thought it sounded familiar and the surrounding song wasn't. The surrounding song was "Summer Girl" by Haim, a band I can take or leave but this is definitely a song that I would talk.

The song that it brought to mind was "Sing Me A Song That I Know" by Blodwyn Pig  ( a band formed by Mick Abrahams after he fell out with Ian Anderson and left Jethro Tull)  which I heard on the Island compilation "Nice Enough To Eat" . The brass intro , to me , was incredibly captivating and has , obviously , stayed with me to this day.

I think for this post, the first Monday in September 2019, I should share both songs with you and they are both worth four minutes of your time. I am so thankful that Youtube allows you to listen to music effectively for free, yes there are adverts, but they have to make money and the artists have to be paid. Also because Youtube is video based that tends to command your attention better than a normal streaming service and I haven't heard any artists complain about the Youtube business model.


So listen to both on these songs and enjoy, I certainly did.

Quarter Of A Million

I've hit quarter of a million visits on the blog since it started, and while I don't write a lot on each post, fairly bite size chunks, it is an improvement on when I started. I have lots of friends who started blogs that have then lapsed, a few of my favourites that you see on the right hand side of this have not been updated for a hell of a long time. Often people write extremely long essay type pieces which  take time to put together (which often we don't really have) and then sometimes people see a huge chunk of text and it just turns them off, even though the subject or writer actually interest the reader.

I have been criticised for writing documentation at work, because there is not enough writing on each page (never for the actual content). The thing is white space actually draws people in because they see that they can read and take in what's on that page. I'm not sure about others but I find all my documentation useful because it's easy to find and take in what you need to know but that is just self recommendation.

"The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is severely blocks of non stop text, so very intimidating, but it has managed to draw me in and keep me hooked but that is a definite exception to the rule

Also while these blog posts might be seemingly slight on a computer browser, when viewed on a mobile device they become reasonably digestible articles, not too long but but not throw away.

So Graham Parker's "New York Shuffle" is playing on 6Music , and it's a brilliant reminder of the wonderful Graham Parker who is still making great music. Thanks for that Chris Hawkins.

New Targets? Well I can probably hit 320 posts this year, which will be another record and well within my grasp and unexpected as I was aiming for 200 posts this year. It is possible I may hit 300K visits this year but that's dependent on stuff beyond my control , also I'd like to see the Christopher Lee video hit 50K visits as it hit 30K this year.

Fifty Shades of Grey

That's the colour of the sky this morning. As you can tell I have not got that much to write about. Listening to Huw Stephens on 6Music but a lot of the music is just passing me by but was impressed by a new one by DJ Shadow (ft De La Soul) "Rocket Fuel" so some good has come of me switching on the radio this morning.

So basically it's go out , pick up train tickets , go to work and that's my Thursday.

I have ordered "Another Green World" on vinyl to complete my Roxy Music related collection (first album , "For Your Pleasure" and "Viva" all from Vinyl Guru in Newcastle) and they sound a lot better that I thought even with the slight paint mark on "Editions of You" (it was second hand and cheap and plays fine). It's amazing what watching a Brian Eno documentary can cause you to do, while it's not exactly advertising but it did influence me and "Another Green World" is coming via Amazon Prime.

There's a little Roxy on my Instagram posts here and here


So we obviously go with "Rocket Fuel" this morning.

Double Dutch

Again I switched on 6Music  and "Double Dutch" by Malcolm Mclaren on the Radcliffe & Maconie show and it is one of the most uplifting records you will here. "Double Dutch" has (ironically) two meanings:

1. unintelligible language. 
2. the jumping of two jump ropes rotating in opposite directions simultaneously.

The second being the subject of the Malcolm McLaren song which is obviously included here. It is a Saturday so for people like me there is no work, but I am sure that I will find plenty to do.

Currently "The Illuminatus Trilogy" has veered into HP Lovecraft territory in which a protagonist stumbles into a church with rats running between pews and a rusted marble altar, it's not rust it's blood, so obviously not High Church.

That takes me to "Fleabag" which I finished watch ig last night, superb cast and writing and only six episodes in each series so I will continue with "Parks and Recreation" on the Amazon Prime subscription. I am quite surprised, but it's a good business modell to make money, how many people have Netflix , Now TV and Amazon Prime subscriptions but never watch them.

So time to get off now and wander round

Turtle Power

Switched on 6Music this morning and Chris Hawkins was playing "Gravel-Pit" by Wu-Tang Clan which for some reason reminded me of  "Turtle Power" the theme from the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, which was a surprisingly excellent song and the film wasn't that bad either.

My daughters Juliet and Kirsty were huge fans and the action figures were very difficult to get hold of, but I remember walking into Asda at Boldon just before Christmas and there were two huge baskets filled with the figures. Christmas was sorted, sometimes things do unexpectedly drop into your lap.

So it's Friday and this is effectively my diary entry to fine the Partners In Kryme song should ever want to listen to it, so just a very short post before I get off to work wondering if I've got that record, it's probably somewhere in my digital collection and that has just reminded me of a couple of streaming service surveys that i've seen.

Basically streaming music is being pushed in many forms , including podcasts and the like. The thing is when you stream music or video you have to remember that if you are not on wifi then you are using up or paying for your data and this is what the various communications companies are pushing. From an artists point of view the Spotify business model doesn't work but most of my friends are aghast when I say I don't have Spotify. Apple Music, Amazon and the rest will all devour your data.

I had a chuckle at the latest EE 5G advert advertising "Hannah" from Amazon Prime where Kevin Bacon says you can download it in seconds when the girl says she hasn't got time. If the network is that good why not stream, the data use would be the same. Also while you can download something in seconds it still takes 90 minutes to watch and generally it's better to watch on a big TV that a relatively little phone, I'd rather watch on a fifty inch screen than a five inch screen.

So now it's time for work.

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

 

Well I Didn't See That Coming

Sheet lightning , thunder , torrential rain, Bojo the poundshop Drumpf as Prime Minister, and now the rain has stopped , hopefully Bojo will too.  Today is forecast very hot and sunny so that should be a bit of summer to enjoy apart from being at work.

It is very hot already and it will be in the office.

The radio is still full of Moon Landing related programmes and articles, and Professor Richard Wiseman is doing spots on the Chris Hawkins Show on 6Music about the whole "Apollo Mindset" where Mission Control planners were all very young (early twenties) and got this done because they didn't know it couldn't be done.

So it's so hot that I really can't write any more but  maybe we should go with "Saturn 5" by The Inspiral Carpets.

Early To Bed

Just a short post to say how good it is to go to bed early and actually sleep well. That sort of happened last night night and I've woken up to bright sunshine and blue skies, so even though it's Monday and I have to go to work and I have a hospital appointment for some cardio scan, although I think this is just due to the fact that I mentioned that sometimes when walk up inclines I get a bit of tightness in my chest. It's not anything that I consider being a problem but doctors know better than me mostly.

Chris Hawkins has the entertaining Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy (they did the theme to 'Father Ted' among other things)  talking about Dublin as well as playing songs from the new album "Office Politics".

Though I slept well I did wake from some complex dreaming and very often if that happens and I decide to have ten more minutes I fal back into the dream often to find out what happens, which is actually irrelevant  because most of my dreams make no sense at all.


This is post 1957 and 1957 is the year in which I was born, so I found Lonnie Donegan performing two of hits hits from that year "Cumberland Gap" and "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O" which is always a good way to start a Monday.

Have a good one.

Fantastic Day

That was the record playing on the Chris Hawkins show when I switched on 6Music this morning. The rain has stopped and it's a Friday so that is a great initial start today and it's up to me to enjoy it and make it better.

I must have used that song before, but remember hearing "Favourite Shirts" by Haircut 100 and thinking it was extremely similar to "I Zimbra" by the Talking Heads. Haircut 100 were never one of my favourite bands but they and Nick Heyward came up with a few cracking songs which prompted me to buy a combined best of.

That is one of the issues with CDs is that they became so cheap that you end up buying a double CD (possibly over two hours of music for a three minute song) , I have been guilty of that many times. I wouldn't have bought it on vinyl, although my vinyl collection is a bit like a beard, it grows slowly but does need trimming to keep it in tip top condition. You should always be able to quickly find what you want to play.

My walking recently has been fragmented, partly due to the weather, but I am still keeping up with my rolling million steps every three months, and it is startling how many people seem surprised by it. Though Matt Haig made me laugh when he said "I used to just go for a walk, now I get worried if I don't hit my 10K steps a day".

So that's a few snippets to think about as you enjoy your Friday.

Let It Rain

The sky is grey and it's raining. I normally like rain but at the moment it's a threat because I have an intermittent roof leak  that I have been waiting three weeks for the roofer to sort out. He's an OK guy but  not as quick to deal with this as I'd like.

I'm reading Matt Haig's book and one of the things we should listen to to relax and unwind is rain and waves, things that you hear but are constant but don't grab your attention but give your mind a relaxing bed to sleep on, it's a good idea. Youtube has some sequence of up to twelve hours of natural sounds (waves, rain etc) that you can put on and fall asleep to, check here.

When  I was starting to write this Chris Hawkins played "Sometimes" by James which brings up rain and waves and water in its lyrics and I will share that with you this morning.

I often go to sleep listening to lots of music, Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon" is wonderful because like natural sound there is nothing that grabs your attention. The night before last I listened to Alice Cooper's "Killer" and I got through most of that. Last night I put on three Weather Report albums  ("Heavy Weather", "I Sing The Body Electric" and "Mysterious Traveller")which is excellent jazz instrumental but fell asleep before the first piece had finished. I got up three times to go for a wee (I am old and diabetic and it was one of those nights but that is life) but each time chose a different Weather Report album and went straight back to sleep.

I think I will also include "Birdland" which was going to be my original piece for this, but we can have both.

Spilling Wine with Lauren Laverne

Today while driving Lauren Laverne played "Spill The Wine" by Eric Burdon and War on 6Music. This is the third song this week that has been the main song in my blog posts.

I first heard this song from 1970, when I got hold of the compilation "All Good Clean Fun" and the music is recognisable as the War of "Low Rider" fame topped with Eric Burdon's perfectly matched vocals. I recently reacquired the vinyl record, although it also appeared on the vastly expanded 3CD set which is now fairly expenses but a great snapshot or the Liberty / UA (United Artists) label imprints from the late sixties and early seventies.

Lauren has been including a lot of great sixties and seventies music recently, mixing with excellent contemporary sounds on her show. One of my slight problems with 6Music is the semi stagnation of shows,  and the number of ex muso's DJing , but the result is an incredible mix of new music to discover with reminders of stuff that you have forgotten or missed along with some great fun and audience interaction. And really that is a good thing.

I wasn't intending to write many posts this week or this month but this is the eighth so far and  I only need to average ten a month to hit 2K posts on this blog since I started it.

Anyway check out Lauren and any other 6Music show , and you may discover something new or something you had forgotten.

Living Without Clocks

This is post number 1939 , 1939 was year in which my mum was born (four years after my dad who was born in the same year as Elvis Presley) . My mum was vivacious, full of life and very supportive and fun. She had me reading before I went to primary school and her and my dad always just told me to do my best, and that was good enough. There was no criticism when I just got 5 'O' Levels and 2 'A' Levels. We lost her in 1989 to a stroke and heart attack, but she is still with me  for her attitude and support thirty years on. She never saw the internet although was proud that I had inveigled my way into IT without the normal required qualifications.

So on to the main point of this post. We are always tied to clocks and time to catch buses, trains and planes , get to work and lots of other things. On this holiday clocks are not to the fore,although there are clocks around the cottage, there is nowhere I need to be for a certain time, apart from to be out of the cottage and get the car back to Enterprise for 11 O'Clock on Saturday.

I think of Catweazle who was confused as to why we lived our life ruled by timepieces. The reason is it gives us a framework to work as a big team, but it is great to dispense with that every now and then. It does relax you when you don't have to do anything or be anywhere for any particular reason.

i-toc

I was going to look for a piece from 1939 but Lauren Laverne has just put on "May You Never" by John Martyn on her 6Music show and that just seems so perfect for the moment.

Of the thing about whether it's the lack of drugs or just tiredness when I just don't want to getup in a
morning,this morning I stretch , got up , shaved , washed and showered, checked my watch, thought it said eight o' clock but it was only seven o' clock (that's my i-toc , that gives me a rough idea of the time) so it's not the lack of drugs, it's just that I'm tired, because this morning I am not tired, and was wide awake before I took my drugs.


It looks lovely outside , so another nice day awaits.

Missing ... Not Missing

This morning I switched on 6Music and an excellent take on Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" was playing. I was surprised because it was on Lauren Laverne's show and she is usually techno heavy, so I assumed it must be a modern song, but no, it was by Them and I had recognised the voice of Van Morrison.

So what am I really missing from Facebook? Playing Scrabble, seeing what friends are up to photowise (but I do catch a lot on Instagram) and posts from God (but again I catch a lot on Instagram)., also there's a few pages / groups that I share and update but a thirty day rest won't harm them.

I have a feeling the Feedburner effect is tailing of a little but I am still getting 1,300 hits a day so I thing that June should see me hit  40K in June which is fairly startling as I haven't really done anything different.

Today is meant to be grey and showery although it did start off very sunny, and , as yet, there's been no rain so fingers crossed.

So I will leave yo with the piece that I first heard this morning, "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" by Them. Have a good Tuesday everybody.

Focus On The Good

Working from home yesterday which meant I could listen to whatever music I wanted , although I did end up listening to 6Music for much of the afternoon. The issue with the Garden Waste payment was dealt with when I phoned Newcastle Council to tell them their site was down. They came back with the evergreen excuse "Oh You Know, Computers". I didn't bother pointing out that that you shouldn't make something public when it doesn't actually work, I then paid over the phone and that did work (hopefully).

Focus On The Good

Anyway I saw a post from my Facebook friend Raul Kohli (The Newcastle Brown Male, brilliant comedian) which was a short piece by Scroobius Pip eulogising appreciating the good  rather than going on about the bad. Too many times people just whine and moan about things, but while you have to deal with the bad, it should not become the main point of your life, although I see lots of people who are not happy unless they are miserable ad have something to complain about. I suppose the phrase "A Pessimist is Never Disappointed" does hold true.

This means I finally worked out a title for this post, and it's really to give priority to the good things in like like friends and family, socialising , music, theatre, film and good tv, and good food.




If you do focus on the good things in life it makes it easier to deal with the less savoury aspects of it. I've said it before that I always look for positives in disappointing situations. You miss your bus, it means you can walk to the next stop and get a little fitter. Though I know people who then say "What if it's raining?" or "What if it means you'll miss your train?" , to the first I would say stay under the bus shelter or run to a bus shelter, to the second I would say you should have caught an earlier bus.

You can always find fault with any situation, look to find the positives of you situation and build on them. I've included  "A Letter From God To Man" by Scroobius Pip which gives a little food for thought.

Stay Happy.

Feedburner and Interrupted Dreams

It looks like the huge increase in visits is due to being picked up by something called Feedburner which is some kind to data feed. I'm not sure if this is permanent, although I wont complain if it is. I'm not sure if this is as a result of me sharing the blog posts on Twitter or including a link with my most visited Youtube slideshow. , 26K views and featuring Christopher Lee, so it could have been any one of those. Twitter has resulted in a few retweets and also I tried MeWe after Google dropped their social sharing although I do not think that has resulted in any visits. I use it to post on then stipe the post to post in Twitter on my phone.

This morning I woke at 5:30 and thought I had quarter of an hour to enjoy, but fell back into an unspecified dream and the was rudely awoken by the alarm going off seemingly about thirty seconds later. That's is the problem with falling asleep when you are about to get up. It always amazes me that often at night sleep refuses to come, but when you have to get up, especially for work, sleep is so, so welcoming.

I'm over halfway through Stephen Fry's "Mythos" and thoroughly enjoying it and am now thinking about which book will come next.

So what should I share with you tonight, Huw Stephens featured Caught By The River and from that Jeff Barrett's Labe's first single release was "Under Dubwood" by The Dubwood Allstars featuring the tones of Richard Burton and the music of King Tubby (think it was used for Ali Baba by John Holt)