Showing posts with label Cat Stevens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cat Stevens. Show all posts

Sunday, 14 March 2021

The Wind

Although temperatures are rising when I am out walking there is a wind that almost takes your face off it is so cold. This makes walking out not very pleasant, although I still try and get out and to hit an avaerage of 11K steps a day.

This week I tried Noom but found it too regimented but was willing to give it a try as it seems to working for certain friends, but after continually filling it information about what I'm eating (the blurb does not indicate this) and the final straw was to get you walking and then work up to a decent amount. It gave me three starting points , 2K , 5K and 10K . I chose 10K because I walk an average of 11K steps a day, but Noom said I had to start at 2K then increase my steps by 300 a day. There was no way I was doing that as it would ruin my normal routine.

So while Noom is fine for a lot of people , it is not for me , like gyms (which I find boring. I am going to go out for a walk after this and hopefully the weather will be a little milder but knowing my luck maybe it wont be.

So music wise we will go with "The Wind" from "Teaser and the Firecat" by Cat Stevens.

Saturday, 20 February 2021

20221

Today is the twentieth of February 2021 , or you could say Twenty - Two - Twenty One like you are counting backwards. Over the last year or so there have been a lot of dates that fall into that category, and no doubt 2022 will provide even more. This is just an observatory post on how dates can appear significant when the reality is that it's just natural progression or coincidence.

One of my vinyl captures is "Numbers" by Cat Stevens and it is one of so many albums that use numbers as their inspirations as well as having a wonderful storybook and cut out cover as part of the package.

Another being "A Grounding In Numbers" by Van Der Graaf Generator, which is the sort of offering you would expect from Peter Hamill and company.

Although I could have chosen these artists to share a song with I am going to go for Ry Cooder's take on  Otis Redding's "634 5789"

Sunday, 9 August 2020

Dreamworks - #AnimalAugust #6


Would this morning from a weird dream sequence. I was in an open plan office with my boss and team and someone started playing loud music but I was on a call . My boss suggested we move to an office (my normal response would be to tell whoever was making the noise to quieten down) , then I wanted a shower but couldn't because there was some guy in the shower bed (that is a bed that you had to sleep in before having a shower) so I couldn't and thought I will have to go home. The dream made no sense at all, although probably influenced by the fact that I listen to a lot of music while I am working from home. One of the things about the dream was to keep on going to get things done which I do normally anyway , but really it's Sunday afternoon , and the dream is almost completely gone from my memory.

This morning I tried to share an article on Facebook , but know I would probably be banned because it would not share the link without the Guardian image. The article is here and the image is not pornographic or offensive but Facebook's algorithms are dodgy to say the least. Her Instagram posts are here. The article's headline is :

"Instagram ‘censorship’ of black model's photo reignites claims of race bias #IwanttoseeNyome outcry after social media platform repeatedly removes pictures of Nyome Nicholas-Williams"

Now if this were a topless white man , nothing would be said.

TV is still providing a lot to watch though I have just finished "The IT Crowd" on All 4 and thought it was great , love the room with all the seventies technology like the 8-Track Sphere and the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore Pet and the Altair 8000 (wasn't that a planet in "Forbidden Planet" ?

So to keep #AnimalAugust, on track I'm going with  "I Love My Dog" by Yusuf Islam as part of a live "greatest hits medley"  ,  when he originally released it he was Cat Stevens , and his is one of the box sets on my #MusicWhileYouWork list ("On The Road To Find Out") while I am working from home.


Thursday, 20 February 2020

220020022020


This is post 2200 on 20/02/2020 . I didn't plan it, it just happened, though I could have planned it, but I didn't. That's a lot of twos and zeroes and no other digits. Numbers can be both fascinating and boring, it just depends on your frame of mind.

Today I dropped into Windows and was tempted by reasonable priced vinyl , a Best of Bowie , "Diamond Dogs" and "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac . I have all these on digital and to be quite honest now I tend to buy vinyl for the sleeve as well as the music. The whole lot would have cost £35. Oh I forgot , there was also Deep Purple "In Rock" , one of my earliest metal album and still, in my opinion , a classic with a great cover, but really my space for vinyl is sort of full.

I believe that you should play music, not just have it. I think I bought a lot to support the artist, especially on CD, but I cannot play my CD collection which is why a chunk of it is on Discogs.

I took delivery of a reconditioned Google Pixel 2XL today and I am still relearning it and setting up apps on it. I need to get a protective cover and load some music onto it but I've got the basic apps on it and am well impressed with my buy from Music Magpie, but still slightly miffed that my Google Pixel would be fine if the charging port worked. Still c'est la vie.

So on this numerically coming together I am thinking of the Cat Stevens album "Numbers" which I do have on vinyl, which is beautifully put together and the music is good as well. A definitely worthy part of my collection so I'll share the opening "Whistlestar".

Saturday, 20 April 2019

#AprilSongs #20 Another Saturday Night


Resuming the #AprilSongs sequence this gorgeous Saturday morning and I and going with "Another Saturday Night" by Sam Cooke, which was also covered by Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam). Both artists produced some essential songs in their bodies of work so it is nice to actually find this link between them.

Sam Cooke was shot dead in 1964 at the age of 33 by Bertha Franklin the manager of the Hacienda Hotel in Los Angeles. He was shot 30 times in wat the court decided was a "justifiable homicide", ir being black in the USA is still a reasonable excuse to shoot someone. There is one take on it here

The song does have some misogynistic lines, with the assumption of male privilege, but it is a fine tune and was a product of it's time but he was responsible for some extremely powerful songs like a "A Change Is Gonna Come" .

Yusuf Islam is still with us and making music that is still worth listening to.

So time for a shower and then despatching an Eric Burdon CD for a Discogs order and maybe a walk into town.

Saturday, 18 August 2018

Saturnight


I'm sure the title was used for a Cat Stevens compilation in the dim and distant past, in fact it was a Japanese only live pressing from 1976. Here's the description scraped formAmazon:

"CAT STEVENS Saturnight - Cat Stevens Live In Tokyo (Scarce 1974 Japanese-only limited edition 12-track LP recorded at Nakano Sun Plaza in Tokyo in June 1974 & housed in a unique numbered sleeve with world tour dates that year printed on the back with an illustrated inner six-page Japanese/lyric insert & obi-strip. "

The title is a contraction of "Another Saturday Night" the song of Sam Cooke's that he covered and had a biggish hit with.

I am enjoying "The Fourteenth Letter" though people are dropping like flies and there seem to be a plethora of subplots to unravel and get tangled in.

I've also finished the last episode of "Timewasters" and hoping that there is a series two in the pipeline.

It's eleven of the clock on Saturday night so Cat Steven's "Another Saturday Night" would be appropriate, although it shares it's title with a great zydeco compilation by Charlie Gillett which I have a copy of on vinyl.

Sleep well.


Friday, 8 June 2018

I Feel Love


There is a flying ant on the outside of my window pane, and the sky is a uniform grey. It is a Friday morning and 6Music is celebrating women in music with "Hear Her Day" with female-dominated playlists and female  DJs. However due to one thing and another I had to leave this unfinished, but I can now write about what I wanted to write about.

I keep thinking that my vinyl collection is close to complete and then there's always just one more thing, these one more things have included Cat Stevens' "Numbers" for the overal package and book as well as being a decent album, "True Colours" by Split Enz which I didn't know was actually laser etched, I have the single "History Never Repeats" that looks amazing when it's playing and I am looking forward to seeing the album, you don't get that with a CD or MP3 do you?

The third was going to be the Patrick Cowley Megamix of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" all 15 minutes of it on 45rpm vinyl but even I shy away from paying twenty notes for a single. The thing is you can download Donna Summer's Greatest Hits (26 songs) for four pounds so that's what I did, and then ordered a double promo remix vinyl set for fifteen pounds so hopefully, that will satisfy me.

When "I Feel Love" came out in the mid-seventies for the rock and rock and roll cognoscenti, Disco was a dirty word, but me and friends were into German psychedelia and Giorgi Moroder's metallic rhythms on this single made a lot of people listen, who would have normally dissed Disco.

It turns out that the sound was stumbled on accidentally with the note on the synthesiser being played twice with the slightest delay resulting in an amazing sound. This was perfectly complemented by Donna Summer's voice and is perfect for remixing as it's both skeletal but more than powerful enough to stand on it's own. It's similar to the guitar delay favoured buy Pink Floyd and U2, and also the accident in the drum machine pattern that resulted in New Order's "Blue Monday".

So I managed to find the Patrick Cowley Mix on Youtube so I will leave that with you to enjoy.

Enjoy your Friday.


Monday, 28 May 2018

The Numbers Universe


I'm currently reading Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" which I picked up after reading "The Mathematical Secrets of The Simpsons" and it's probably the first book that I've read where I immediately reference the footnotes and appendices as soon as they are referenced in the book. I'm not sure what my fascination with numbers is but I do enjoy exploring the concepts to some of the ideas may cause people to say so  "So What?".

The value of Π (Pi) for instance is essential to be right for all sorts of calculations and engineering constructs. The mechanical clock would not work if Π were not adhered to and more importantly neither would the wheel.

Fermat's Last Theorem is basically:

In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than 2.

And a lot of people will say "So What?" to that but it is an intriguing puzzle that certainly fires my imagination and Simon Singh's presentation of the story certainly keeps my interest up at 100% as it's mixed in with a whole slew or other theories and conjectures taking in Pythagoras, Euclid and of course Andrew Wiles who finally proved the Theorem.

I've also installed Grammarly to see if it can improve my blog writing. It has spooted the odd mistake but also has flagged the theorem an + bn = cas an error so I will see how this progresses. Though this post seems relatively free of howlers.

One of my favourite TED talks ever is a twenty minute talk on prime numbers by an Australian DJ, Adam Spencer. And Grammarly just flagged up an error then so it's just proved it's worth.

Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam as he is now) released an album in 1975 called numbers which was in a nice package which is not available digitally but I will close this post with "Banapple Gas" from the album.


Monday, 14 April 2014

Numbers and Neighbours



I've posted over seven hundred times in this blog and had over sixty four thousand page views. It started seven years ago (apparently seven is the worlds favourite number) so that's roughly nine thousand page views per year 750 views per month on average, although last month I had two and a half thousand page views. The highest numbers come from the USA although maybe some are robots followed by the UK and then Australia.

I'm not bragging (the numbers are quite small), and lot's of bloggers have many more subscribers that I do, although I am sometimes surprised by the people who actually visit my blog. Still sometimes it's quite amazing how the numbers stack up, and if I can entertain someone or make them think or improve someones life in some way then it makes it all worthwhile.

I also use it to record things that interest me, so that I can go back on it , just like a diary, and it means that I can back track and find things whereas before I had the blog I would probably have lost the item in question. I do try to encourage others to start and maintain blogs and it's great to see what people are up to and how they interact with others and they often point me in good directions and set me off on interesting trails.

I've included "Whistlestar" from Cat Stevens'  "Numbers" album that I remember being a fairly expensive package when it came out with lots of extras , and not a little fine music. After he converted to Islam he became Yusuf Islam and is still producing excellent music.

So not my normal blog post, but just something I thought of. This adds to my online history and gives you a little more into your insight about me. I hope your day has been good and tomorrow will be even better,  and I'm already thinking about my next post, which I'm counting on you reading and enjoying. Did you see what I did there? Have a great day.

Oh by they way I've not got my World Book Night Books yet, as the deliveries have been delayed. I'm awaiting an email for them but may get one of my neighbours to pick them up for me. It's brilliant that I know and have excellent neighbours from three houses in each direction. I'm not sure many people can say that these days.


Wednesday, 4 September 2013

Morning Has Broken


Well autumn is here and the mornings are a little darker. The big benefit of this is that you get to see the sunrise , and that is something that lifts my heart everyday. After the dark the light always comes , some people attribute it to God and some to Nature , it does not matter enjoy the spectacle that is presented to you. It is a fantastic way to start the day as that big orange ball climbs the heavens and lights up our world bringing warmth and sunshine to everyone.

Paddington Flare

Fenham
I always love trying to get photographs of the sun , which you are never supposed to do as it can obviously damage your eyes if you are not careful , and the effects on cameras that the sun has is sometimes amazing. If you look through my Instagram galleries  and Weather gallery on Facebook there will be some. I'm sure there will be many many more.


Anyway , time to get ready for work and see what good things this day brings , and have Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens as was) as my song post.