Walking out now is treacherous because of the iced up pavements, and what that has meant that I am sure I am doing far more steps per whatever measurement you care to put forward because if I try to walk normally I'd end up flat on my back.
The thought of walking tiny steps made me think of one of my favourite Elvis Costello songs , and to be quite honest that's the only reason for this post. Elvis Costello's real name is Declan McManus , and Declan McManus plays for and scores quite a few goals for Dunfermline Athletic. Also I believe Elvis Costello's dad was an Elvis impersonator and sang the R White's Secret Lemonade Drinker advert.
It shows the way my mind works in that a post about the perils of walking on icy footpaths takes left turn into the connection between Elvis Costello , Dunfermline Athletic and R White's lemonade.
I normally aim for about 250 words in a post , but this is less than half that , but is also my second post today, plus it's quite late and I really need to go to bed. So this is me signing off.
Today I will start the #AnimalAugust sequence , which is basically every post will feature animal related music in band name, song , record label or something else.
Apropos of nothing I was looking at album covers on the internet last night and there are various lists of album covers. Like many things because we are no probably into the seventieth year of album cover design , there are lot of examples good and bad, and was shocked to see glaring omissions and seemingly bland inclusions.
Some of my favourite album covers are a lot more that the front cover (I'm thinking Barney Bubbles and Storm Thorgerson / Hipgnosis ) and sometimes you do get a single striking image but a lot seem to be covers that are just there because the artist is very successful and famous.
I do buy vinyl albums mainly for the covers, or some uniqueness about them, but my preferred vinyl listen is probably reggae , although I also like electro disco , and finally got a copy of "En-Tact" by The Shamen which can be picked up very reasonably on Discogs .
Some of the iconic covers that stand out for me are the first Elvis Presley album which influenced "London Calling" by The Clash , Andy Warhol usually gets two mentions for "The Velvet Underground and Nico" the front cover of which only features Warhol's name, and "Sticky Fingers" by The Rolling Stones , both quite complex designs although deserving of their place in any list.
At the bottom this post will be twelve of my favourite album covers which you can click through to Amazon to check out although it may go through to the digital copy, there should be links to the vinyl copy.
Sometimes Picture discs can look good , I'm thinking the mandala effect on "Air Conditioning" by Curved Air, and there are some with zoetropic designs which look impressive under the right conditions , plus the laser etched 3D holograms which are often impressive, first seen on Jack White's "Lazaretto" I believe.
Then you have the Vertigo Swirl which is simple and hypnotic and worth buying any piece of vinyl so you can sit and watch it.
Vinyl , because it is bigger gives more options for creativity.
If you would prefer to support your local record shop check out these in Newcastle from this post here:
Today has been a quietish day meeting with my dad for lunch and hearing a lot of good music. Some of this reminded me of my favourite film of all time, which I still love watching the Quentin Tarantino scripted Tony Scott directed "True Romance" which in my opinion has everything, cracking soundtrack, amazing cast including Dennis Hopper as a good guy and amazing face off with Christopher Walken's Sicilian gang boss, Gary Oldman as an albino negro drug lord and a Mexican stand off to end it with and all this interwoven with the Christian Slater / Patricia Arquette love story, oh and Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis.
I cannot believe that I haven't mentioned much of this film in the blog, but maybe once or twice.
The theme that Hans Zimmer, "You're So Cool", borrowed from Carl Orff's "Gassenhauer" (used in "Badlands") constructed as a children's piece to be played using very basic instruments. It is one of my favourite pieces of music and off course that is what you will get with this post.
There was a lot more good stuff that I heard today but that will be fuel for my next few posts.
The blog has just passed 350K visits so 400K by the end of the year is a distinct possibility, and half a million by the end of March could possibly happen.
It is late and I do have to get back to Newcastle tomorrow, but enjoy the start / end mash from"True Romance" , it still gives me goosebumps.
I do like wordplay and it's amazing how much you can rearrange the letters in the name "ELVIS" , so "Elvis Lives" has an anagrammatical pair. I chose the title because I saw a book on one of Fiona's piles called "Evil Eye" and then it set my mind off, as things do, I am easily distracted.
Today has been very much a do nothing day, and I spent a lot of time just listening to vinyl while I did a crossword , Sudoku and read a bit more of 2023. I still feel tired and this week apart from work have an eye test and my annual diabetic review.
As the sun goes down, I do feel really tired for some reason , when I should be rested an energetic. My walking has been fine with 13K done today, but that is hardly very far, not even three miles. So that is definitely not the reason.
So as I titled it EVIL EYE and the started on about Elvis maybe we should have my favourite Elvis song , and I could go on about the Turkish Nazar charm for warding off the Evil Eye.
Then another thought pops into my head , this is post 1985 so what about "1985" by Wings from the "Band on the Run" album and we'll leave my favourite Elvis song for another time.
Today is the thirtieth anniversary or the World Wide Web as we know it, and it came into my head that my two wonderful daughters are both older than the Internet, which obviously means that I am as well by another twenty five or so years. I was born just as rock and roll really hit with Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry.
A definition of the Internet comes from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):
"The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge."
Tim Berners-Lee came up with the protocol for accessing the Internet as we do today and can be read about via the W3C link above. This is a development of Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network developed by the US Defence Department), and had been put forward by many artists and science fiction writers.
The Who's "Lifehouse" project (which was scrapped and salvaged as "Who's Next") posited a population connected by "The Grid" so in some ways this was an inevitable development, and now we are are connected by mobile devices and computers and smart devices.
People install "smart devices" in their home such as Amazon's Alexa , but that is a step too far for me even though I have a Kindle that has Alexa on it, although it has never been able to answer a question that I have asked it and cannot play my music, apparently only able to access Spotify playlists, and I don't touch Spotify.
I wasn't going to write anything until I saw the anniversary on Google, so I am going include a Chuck Berry song performed by Buddy Holly which you can listen to and watch thanks to Tim Berners-Lee's development of the US Defence Department's prototype.
This morning I bougght some water from Tesco and for once used one of the auto checkouts. For weeks the echoey voice on many of them has disconcerted me and I've dicussed this while chatting with the real staff and had a laugh about it. This morning it sounded like it was on helium as well as echoing, sounding weirder than ever.
This comes on top of the Poundland ones that great uyou using the voice of Elvis, which is also very offputting, wondering if next they're going to have some hologram greeter to freak you out even further.
This reminded me of The King, an Irish Elvis impersonator who had an album out called "Gravelands" featuring covers of songs by artists who have since deprated this mortal plain such as Freddie Mercury of Queen, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, (apologies for spelling errors) and it is a more than listenable album, so I'll share his take on "Whiskey in the Jar".
It's the last day of Glastonbury and the person who has got most publicity out of this is Kanye West. Befor I start Kanye West has never bothered be either , some people enjoyed the set others didn't , He continually self promotes and part of his spiel for this performance was that Rap is the new Rock and Roll and therefor he was the biggest Rock Star in the world. Well there's a classic of moving the goalposts into the next county to fit your argument ....
Prior to the festival , I was continually moved to laughter by the idiots who wanted Kanye West removed from the bill , probably because he's not "Rock" enough . The thing is Glastonbury is not a "Rock" Festival , it is a festival , in fact probably the biggest festival in the world. People don't go for the acts , they go because it's Glastonbury , and there is so much on , that if you don't like something there will something around the corner that you do like. If you work out what you get for the cost of your ticket, you probably are a very good deal. Complaining about Kanye West is like complaining that Harrods stock Tibetan Yak's Milk Cheese in gold laminated wrapping. I made that up but you know what I mean. The Eavis Family could have sold tickets for the festival five times over, it is a huge financial success and that's what you have to remember. So it's pointless complaining about Glastonbury because it's gone beyond criticism. If you want a more grass roots festival , there are thousands on round the country: Here are five:
..and that is barely scratching the surface...there are half dozen happening on Tyneside this year and lots more throughout the country.
Any back to Kanye West positing that Rap is the new Rock and roll. It isn't . When someone says A is the new B they are immediately on the defensive implying their new product is inferior to the old product, you hear it all the time in film , writing and music, and the nearest example of that being true was Bruce Springsteen being described as the new Bob Dylan. Rock and Roll has developed essentially as melody based over , usually , a 4/4 time signature evolving from blues and folk music.
Rap is different in that it is not sung , it is spoken or shouted over a rhythm. If you wanted you could say that Rap is music for those who choose not to sing. This is no bad bad thing. It's a development of spoken word poetry with roots in the fifties Beat Poets developing through the sixties and becoming it's own form utilsed across all cultures. Pop Will Eat Itselm and Eminem are examples of white rap, then you have Goldie Lookin' Chain , Welsh Charver Rap , as well as the roots rappers such as Wu Tang Clan , NWA , Fugees , Wyclef Jean.
I've just dropped a sprinkling of names showing that Rap is not the new Rock and Roll it is it's own beast and it's all the better for it. You get the odd cross pollination such as Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" especially the reboot with Run DMC ,or theElvis.
sanitized but fun "Ant Rap" by Adam and The Ants, but I'd rather Kanye had declared himself the King of Rap , because he can never take the crown from
