Two A.M. Too Late or Too Early?

Thanks to virtually a week off , last night I stayed up while 1:30 AM , I think I could have stayed up all night , not sure how I would have felt today but isn't that why party animals only get up in the afternoon , which then means it's easy to stay up all night,

Now if you are partying or at a rave the question in the title doesn't matter , but if you are just at home is 2 AM too late or too early to watch a film , make some coffee or tea or a bacon butty.

I have the dates for my COVID injections and the systems , while a couple of glitches went through fairly quickly , unlike almost all the contracts outsourced to the government's mates and cronies.

I had planned to try a marathon this week , but the thought of maybe spending 12 hours to do 60K steps in 12 hours  in cold weather somehow lost it's appeal. At some point I will go to top my 15.5  miles but that may be at the end of March , but even then it may not happen, we shall see.

I have listened to a lot of music this week and still written nothing . I really need to learn how to use my simple Kindle recording studio as I can't get anything that links up to my computer to use Audacity to record it.

This week's vinyl included Alice Cooper's "School's Out" and maybe their finest album "Killer" , as well has Hawkwind's "XIn Search of Space" and "Space ritual" and as I write this I am listening to "This Time It's Personal" the excellent covers album by Hugh Cornwell and Dr John Cooper Clarke.

But I will share , what is in my opinion Alice Cooper's finest song , the amazing "Halo of Flies" , love the image the title conjures up and the song is eight minutes of aural adventure. I also found this cover's band Pretties For You NYC doing a cover which I also have to share as it is rather good.

Feeling Like Scrooge

 .. after the ghosts has been.

Today has been a very relaxing Christmas Day, and I went out for a couple of walks , and was disappointe dto see the local Spar open , but it is a shop that I would only use as a last resort during the year. I wouldn't use it today as there are few Asian owned stores that are open.

On my walking I wished people "Merry Christmas" and got smiles and "Merry Christmas" in return , which was pleasant and uplifting.

A Whatsapp call with my youngest daughter meant I could see my granddaughter Alexis Leia as well as my son in law and their dog Molly.

Christmas films have been "A Muppets Christmas Carol" and "The Man Who Invented Christmas" both closely knit with Dicken's "A Christmas Carol".

I also spent a lot of time watching videos of Pete Wylie and Ian Prowse on Youtube , composers of the two greatest songs about Liverpool ever , "Heart As Big As Liverpool" and "Does This Train Stop On Merseyside". Either follow the blog tags below or search them out on Youtube.

This week my most played song has been "Remember by Shambeko Wah! (Pete Wylie) and the most played album "This Time It's Personal" by Dr John Cooper Clarke and Hugh Cornwell, that has been this weeks biggest hit on my  Instagram Channel here.

So I will go with a live take of "Spanish Harlem" by John Cooper Clarke and Hugh Cornwell , not exactly seasonal but a great frun record to end the day on.

The Camera Always Lies

 The other week I just did not feel like walking at all, although I managed a few steps , last week I did get back to sort of normal although th eclocks going back has had an effect. Last night I went out in daylight at around 4:30pm , when I returned around 5:30pm I was in total darkness, the dark came nown very quickly and although the weather is cold it's not freezing.

When I go I out I do enjoy trying to capture pictures, especially the skies , simethimes you don't get what you want, but sometimes you get things far more amazing than what you have actually seen. This morning the sky was a gorgeous pink with mackerel cloud effects , but the pictures I took were grey and nondescript. This week I have taken some amazing looking sunrise pictures , and they were nowhere near as good as the photographs that I took.

The thing is I remember photography being film based , you took the picture , then when you finished the film you paid to have it developed and a week or two later you got the results which may or may not be in focus. Now thanks to enormous jumps in technology we have cameras as part of our communication devices and ofthen these allow us almost instant access to take pictures.

The other thing is that if you don't take pictures immediately then the moment is gone, that was never an option with film based cameras.

Another thing is that often see vistas which I want to take a picture of , but the camera cannot capture the faraway image sthat I see like a plane or a bird. The other thing is that the human eye only captures part of what we see and the brain fills in the gaps.

With a phone camera we don't have an optical zoom, so we need a a very high pixel capture to enable the digital zoom , which works to a point, but still is nowhere near as good as the human eye or cameras with optical zoom (which have enabled me to capture images that I couldn't actually see when I took the photograph),

I once had a Sony phone and the camera on that could take some amazingly psychedelic images, which I sort of loved , but was not good fir capturing a normal picture. Apparently my Google Pixel 2XL is one of the best phone cameras, and the number of photographs I take are a testament to that, but I know things are only going to get better in this area.

The word "Camera" appears in a wonderful line in the John Cooper Clarke song / poem "Post War Glamour Girl" and is:

"Glamourous Cameras Clickety Click"

I always thought "Glamourous Cameras" would be a great name for a band as well. So that is the song we will go with on this dreary Thursday.

Apple Venus

Although I am doing a minor cull of my CD collection on my Discogs Store over the last week , while working from home , I have started playing CDs again. Part of the reason is that 6Music during the day is ranging from bland to techno with not much in between. Playing CDs means that I can choose what I want to play.

The main criteria in that the CD is to hand.

This morning I kicked off with "On The Beach" by Neil Young , then 40 minutes later I picked up "The Apple Box" by XTC . This is a box and booklet with the albums "Apple Venus" and "Wasp Star" with accompanying demos albums "Homespun" and "Homegrown" . I wasn't sure that four CDs was a listening option , but I listened all the way through , the albums then the demos , and basically that was an excellent day's listening.

I will share "Stupidly Happy" from "Wasp Star" with you , like many XTC songs , it is highly infectious and uplifting.

Having easily listened through this , I am now eying my other boxes for my music while I work this week such as Public Image's "Metal Box" , "Box of Pearls" by Janis Joplin and "Anthologia" by John Cooper Clarke , this week will be a personal treasure rediscovery.

A Day Not Reading - #Oktoberfest #19 - Starbucks - A

Yesterday I sort of didn't read, I had finished the 400 page "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins which I have passed on to a friend and this morning I have started Philip Pullman's "The Secret Commonwealth" clocking in at close on 700 pages. After "The Illuminatus Trilogy" (800 pages) it seems I have been taking fairly hefty tomes to read.

The odd thing about "The Secret Commonwealth" is that it is the second in "The Book of Dust" Trilogy , the follow up to "His Dark Materials" but "His Dark Materials" is bookended by "La Belle Sauvage" and "The Secret Commonwealth" , this is not a problem , just unexpected.

I'm actually telling a fib because yesterday, as a respite from big books, I dipped into "Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt", poetry by The Bard of Salford John Cooper Clarke which is always entertaining.

#Oktoberfest continues with a brand name that is generally associated with coffee, but sell anything they can these days, that is Starbucks. The song is "Starbucks" by the band "A" from the album "Hi-Fi Serious" who with a name like that are impossible to search for on Google (a bit like "!!!") . The song is more about the company's dodgy employment practices rather than the product but the product association will do for my #Oktoberfest sequence.

Understand Rap - Stormzy Is A Signpost

.. a hell of a lot of people , usually white, middle aged and older, and stuck in the seventies when it was normal to treat non whites as second class. This weekend saw Stormzy headline at Glastonbury much to the annoying of may of the people I've mentioned, but I doubt they gave the amazing spectacle he led and presented more than five minutes.

  This introduction to Rap and Hip-Hop shows that the genesis of this begins nearly a century ago, and to be quite honest I personally think it goes back a lot longer than that , Rap is basically spoken word poetry often with an added rhythm backing which may eventually be seen as a song, but Rap can be just spoken word. It is NOT singing but it IS performance and it IS ART.

The subgenres sort of grate on me as it seems to dissipate the art form, so GRIME is Rap with an electronic 140 bpm a bit faster that the standard disco 125 bpm , but as far as I am concerned it is RAP. A lot of songs can be performed with the most basic percussive backing be it hand claps or foot taps.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company demonstrated this with their "Othello Rap", as do poets such as does John Cooper Clarke with his live performances and this goes back to Beat Poets and well before then to the oral folk traditions.

I will admit I didn't know any Stormzy songs or pieces but he is just part of the vast tableau of art available to us these day. The Glastonbury performance was a huge production, involving a huge amount of people and planning . Stormzy was the centre , and wrote a lot of the material, but there were bands, fireworks displays, gospel choirs , other rappers and an Ed Sheeran cover in the set.

It was not limited to Grime and Stormzy can sing as well rap.  The set is available for 4 weeks on BBC iPlayer here. After opening with "Know Me From" Stormzy ran through the debut album with extras such as the aforementioned "Shape of You" against a backdrop of digital screens, fireworks and supporting cast. This was an impressive performance regardless of genre and was inclusive not exclusive, and was very watchable and an incredible triumph.

I do hope this performance stays in the digital world so that everyone can experience this incredible performance.

Maybe I'm a bit lazy, not wanting to go to Glastonbury but they certainly know how to stage a show.

If you haven't seen Stormzy , set aside a couple of hours and watch this performance while you can.

Stormzy is a signpost worth following. Grime won't be your preferred option but you will be impressed by what it can deliver. Oh and feel free to watch the "Othello Rap" that is both clever and funny ..... and totally boatless

Get Yer Bloody Lawn Mowed

My lawn does need mowing but it is looking lush and healthy at the moment and I think I will be overdoing it if I try it today, so I will let it continue to be lush. The title is inspired by the title of the latest Half Man Half Biscuit album " No-one Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fvckin' Hedge Cut", the title is starred out on Amazon and I've replaced the "U" with a "V" so hopefully people won't be too offended. The thing is starring things out doesn't hide anything really, people what F**k and Bu**er mean given the context, and it's unlikely the second word will be Butler, Bugker or Butter.

Anyway more of my thoughts on the album, it's much like most of their albums, ie excellent and the instrumentation, playing and productions seems much improved, possibly to the detriment of the lyrics, which are incredibly important in the effect of Half Man Half Biscuit songs sponting the references , connections, ambiguities and hilarities and Shakespearean class word play in there, although Nigel Blackwell may not thank me for that comparison, though him and John Cooper Clarke should be Poet Laureate at some point, two of our greatest populist wordsmiths.

I've chosen "Every Time A Bell Rings" which contains a refrain of the album title, checks in with David Bowie in the first line, takes swipes at Artisan stuff and wannabe cyclist and "It's A Wonderful Life". It's this sort of song that makes them an absolute joy to listen to.

Yes there is darkness in there but it's a sort of loveable darkness, and they are still one of my favourite bands and always will be.

Sometimes there is nothing to write about, well there are a couple of small annoyances but I would rather report on positives than negatives. I have seen examples of how small minded and self centred some people can be, despite me pointing out the positives of their situation but some people are only happy when they are miserable and complaining.

I've been to some brilliant places in Yorkshire this week and the staff in every shop, restaurant and historical site have been absolutely brilliant, an absolute joy to speak to and be in the company of.

Yesterday was a supposed five mile walk round Thirsk which hit a sort of brick wall when we hit a level ploughed field and the directions stated "walk across the field and down to a path". Normal directions state left or right or north, south, east or west unless you are near a hill in which case up or down becomes a valid direction.

The problem is that books are fixed while the state of the landscape can change significantly (like a field being ploughed), the positive out of this was that I ended up doing ten miles again yesterday, and that means I've done ten miles twice this week yesterday and on Monday. I think I normally do thirty miles a week, and that is over fifteen hundred miles a year which seems a lot, but it's John O'Groats to Lands End and back with three hundred miles to spare although to walk round the coast of the UK you would be looking at nearly eight thousand miles , which at this rate would take me six years to do on foot.

Anyway the title of this post is inspired by the poem by The Bard of Salford , John Cooper Clarke which I will leave you with a performance of and the actual poem which you can also see here (as well as all his other poems).

                                                  NOTHING

Something is but nothing

Something it is not

Nil plus nil is nothing

Nothings what I got

Nothing on the tele

Nothing going on

Nothing to get worked up about

Nothing by the ton

Nothing times a million

Nothing minus ten

Don’t say nothing to no one

It’s nothing to do with them

Come all the way from nowhere

And now I’m nowhere else

Where nothing is out of place

No one lives

And nothing smells

Talking to no one

It’s like talking to the wall

I give you what I get

I give you bugger all

So have a brilliant Friday everyone as we run into the weekend

The Art Of Not Trying

Last month I wanted to hit fifty posts but failed miserably, only managing thirty. This month I haven't tried , but less than half way through the month (tomorrow is half way)  I have already done twenty five posts. It's like riding a bike or playing live, as soon as you start thinking about it you fall off or forget what you are doing because you are thinking about what you think you should be doing instead of actually doing.

So I know this is hardluy a substantial post (though it's a lot more substantial tah twhen I first started writing), my posts would be lucky to hit a hundred words. These days I probably average 25-300 words. So if I stopped writing now this would be the lot of what you would get from me , maybe with a couple of pictures.

I suppose these days I look for some kind of thread to keep my posts going, like the walking and the fact I joined Newcastle CAN today on the recommendation of my doctor, and had good news from my optician that everything seems stable on the optical front.

Anyway, as I said , this is just a very short post so I will leave you with "Donna" by theBard of Salford and The Head Ex Strangler, because the CD is on top of my playpile. Sleep well my friends.

Sleep Is Good .. Being Awake Is Better

Although sleep is good, it enables your body and mind to recuperate and repair itself, but I do prefer being awake and able to do things. I know I should be in bed but thought I would just write a short post on this.

In John Cooper Clarke's "Beasley Street" , his very dark masterpiece , he describes sleep as "a sneak preview of death" which is a chilling assessment of what is really a natural function. Some animals sleep all winter, and I am sure some humans would like to do that as well.

Rest is good but activity is better. We do have so many sedentary pastimes such as watching TV or someone else do something. Reading at least exercises the mind as does writing. I am now sitting typing at a keyboard and a lot of my working day is taken up in a similar way. I do get up and walk around so I am not going to atrophy at my desk, but feel that is often frowned on by some people.

Tonight I've just read of Chuck Berry's passing , he was 90 and had a good life although he did some bad things and definitely in the 50s and 60s was royally screwed over by the white establishment. I saw him once at Southport Floral Hall, queued for tickets and found out everyone else in the queue was queuing for Gilbert O' Sullivan tickets. A sad loss from a true American poet, the words to his songs stand on their own.

Anyway that gives me an excuse to include a Chuck Berry song "No Money Down" for your delectation from the film "Hail Hail, Rock'n'Roll" , and now I will go to my bed and sleep. I have fourteen thousand steps to do tomorrow.

Sleep well my wonderful friends.

Good Things Do Happen - #ALifeInNumbers #36

Today is a new day. After yesterday's traumas it's time to be positive once more, although there is The Walking Dead second installment next Monday and Preston play Newcastle again on Saturday, but at least they're on separate days and won't be after a day at work. I definitely need some comedy and music to lighten the mood and still have to write a review of the GOAT and Josefin Öhrn gig last week which was excellent, so that's what I need more of, though I am missing a Women In Revolt gig at the weekend , but c'est la vie.

Anyway number 36 in the series is the excellent "36 Hours" from The Bard of Salford, Dr John Cooper Clarke, the guy who helped bring poetry to punks in the 1970s and he is still doing it although he has done an album of covers with Hugh Cornwell here, which I am tempted by , just because it's a great pairing.

Anyway it's time for work and one of my favourite records has just come on the radio (6 Music of course) the beautiful "To Ohio" by The Low Anthem, which I will include because it is so lovely, then I found this collaboration with Emmylou Harris

See - Good Things Do Happen , you need to appreciate them.

Have a great day my friends

I Love Seeing People Smile

I love seeing people smile , I love seeing people happy and I love smiling and being happy. Seeing a smile is infectious , I always smile back and sometimes I smile at people and they smile back at me. Yes the context has to be right  (I watch Gotham and have seen some very worrying smiles) , but a smile does make you feel better.

I know society is not good at the moment and I am hopeful we can progress , I detest spitefulness greed and idiocy which seems to be the modus operandi for the government , but my friends and their friends are positive and pleasant people. I love going into work and the only pressure is to get the job done well and that means that there are plenty of opportunities to smile at work as there are lots of wonderful people that I work with.

It does help that the weather is generally summery at the moment , I woke up early and , the sun is streaming through the window although I am still very tired so will be going back to bed after this.

Steffen .. Exit Stage Left with two chairs

There have been a lot of free concerts in South Shields and tomorrow UB40 play Bents Park in South Shields , I tried to get to The Proclaimers and Lindisfarne the other week but I was a bit late and the gates were shut, and there were still huge queues outside , and I was amazed at the number of people complaining that the gates had been shut . It was very popular and public safety is paramount. Oh and my friend Steffen Peddie is playing The Customs House tonight ... now he WILL make you smile (and laugh loads).

Anyway I chose UB40's Sing Your Own Song as it always makes me feel good , and I hope it does the same for you.


Anyway , the weekend is just starting , so smile lots and enjoy other peoples' smiles. It's a simple concept and I know some people are only happy when they are miserable (Usually Mancs and soap opera characters... try Coronation Street and Eastenders, although I have met some brilliant Mancunians in my time such as John Cooper Clarke and others)

Coincidentally ....Two Johns

Am I Going To Hell?

Today has been a day of coincidences. I always have a chuckle when people say "things happen for a reason" yet can't give an actual reason for what happened. That's just coincidence, and often you can use it to link together totally disparate places people and events, so I'll tell you about today, although part of these linked coincidences started nearly forty years ago in 1977. But there's a lot of disparate threads that really have no connection but just happened to coincide.

Punk 45

Anyway yesterday I bought an excellent book of punk single covers called Punk 45. It's enlightening to see how many of the artists looked on the sleeve of the early singles, Sting, Iggy Pop and Gary Numan look recognisable but young. It's also a fairly hefty tome but great to browse through and big enough to read without the aid of a magnifying glass.Today I needed to go into town to pick up some train tickets and some bits to update my sound system.






When I got to the bus stop it was sunny and there was a young lady there sort of singing , I assume to what was on her phone. She turned round and said what a nice day it was and then saw the caption on my T-Shirt and seemed to take it quite seriously, telling me that god had a place for me in heaven and hell was for the evil angels. We chatted on and she was happy and pleasant but a bit forceful, and then the bus didn't turn up, so I spent nearly thirty minutes in some verbal jousting. I didn't want to upset as she was going to a christening, but just said everyone should live morally and look out for others and stay happy, so we left on good terms. The christening was in Byker, home of part of the next thread of coincidence.

Suspended Sentence - Check The Line Up - John Scott!

A couple of years ago I went to see John Cooper Clarke at the O2 Academy in Newcastle and was very impressed by the MC on the night , Mr John Scott. I was so impresses with Mr Scott that he was the second best thing I saw that night,  but then sought out further gigs, and am really pleased he's on regularly at venues such as The Stand.

John is from Byker, so that's the thread I mentioned before, but was looking at the line up for John Cooper Clarke's first single.....

......and the guitaris is John Scott. Now the John Scott I know would have been about 10 at the time so was either a child prodigy on the Manc scene or it's a different guy.







Now certainly people could tie all these facts together to mean something , but I know it's all coincidence.


So basically I've had a great weekend and I hope you have too. If you can get a copy of the book do so. I've included so youtube footage of the two Johns for you to enjoy.

Sun Daze, Madchester and The Heed

A Corner Of The Garden

Well it's Sunday, eight ante meridian or thereabouts and its another gorgeous day. The garden has been done so today can be fairly relaxed , just to enjoy the weather. It's May and it looks like summer is here. Who knows it may even be party time.

Madchester

I always find that sunny weather does uplift you , although if it was like that all the time would I really appreciate it? May thats why my friends in New Zealand and Australia are always so upbeat generally, while people form Manchester (where always rains) tend to be miserable (only joking , though Oasis, Happy Mondays and Joy Division while producing some great music are not the sort of people you would want to spend any time with, although John Cooper Clarke is great fun but he's from Salford). Though it's funny how a simple thought on what a nice day it is can digress into thoughts on the Madchester phenomenon.

Oh the other good news is that Gateshead are in the Conference Play Off Final against Cambridge, so that's one team that the whole of the North East will be behind today, hopefully they will be back in the league after an absence of 50 years. Theres a big do on at The Black Bull and the scenes will be incredible when Gateshead do the business. OK so I now got sidetracked into football, as you may realise I can get easily led astray! But here's a song for The Heed from the magnificent Rezillos.



   

Anyway I hope everyone is having a great weekend and taking advantage of this lovely weather. Enjoy the rest of your weekend

I Can Resist Anything But Temptation

Nothing much to speak of today. I'm just wondering how short a post I could get away with writing. I think possibly my first "Hello" post was the shortest one. Today has been one of those days planning stuff for next week , remembering things I need to put in my book and wrestling with various Microsoft products to try and get them to behave reasonably.

Eventually I always succeed , it's just that sometimes you need a different take on things, there are always positives and good things if you look in the right places. It's very easy to find fault , Ibut I find it just as easy to find the good in things. I don't do negatives, leave that to others.

I remember I worked for a while in Manchester and found that there were a lot of people who were only happy when they were miserable! There were still a lot of good people there but the weather wasn't too good but they never had to worry about a hosepipe ban. Anyway this post has now outstripped my first post so is a more that reasonable stopgap on this blog. I need to post a pictures and some music and maybe talking of Manchester it should be a band from there . We recently had John Cooper Clarke, so I think I'll go with my favourite New Order Song "Temptation".

"I can resist anything but Temptation"

Books Are Good

Oscar Wilde

A Brand New Day - I Will Tell You Nothing

It's 6:30 am and today has the potential to be a disaster , but let's face it so do most days and they usually turn out to be good. I feel I'm jumping in a the deep end with something that HAS to be done and the sooner I get into it the better. Unfortunately I can't say what it's about but I know you will all send me your best wishes and I know I will come out of the other end probably battered but intact.

I do find it amazing that I can write about something giving no indication what's it's about , but shall we say it's as necessary and annoying as filling in a tax return. So it's not anything like last week's ECG thing.

Anyway because I've told you nothing I'm going to include The great John Cooper Clarke's poem "Nothing" as a YouTube clip and as text: Enjoy:

Nothing by John Cooper-Clarke

"Something is but nothing
Something it is not
Nil plus nil is nothing
Nothings what I got
Nothing on the tele
Nothing going on
Nothing to get worked up about
Nothing by the ton
Nothing times a million
Nothing minus ten
Don't say nothing to no one
It's nothing to do with them
Come all the way from nowhere
And now I'm nowhere else
Where nothing is out of place
No one lives
And nothing smells
Talking to no one
It's like talking to the wall
I give you what I get
I give you bugger all"

The Sopranos - Selling Music

I 'm quite amazed and the number of artists who have benefitted from the exposure of having their music featured in an episode of The Sopranos. Obviously you have the Alabama 3 theme tunes "Woke Up This Mornin'" from Exile on Coldharhour Lane , though apparently someone else absconded with the profits.




Then the final episode featured Journey's Karaoke favourite "Don't Stop Believin'" , though in a disturbing sign of the times I've seen this song credited to Glee!!



Then I  was at an Al Stewart concert and he mentioned that his bank balance and benefited from the use of his song "Time Passages" in an episode.



The latest I've heard is John Cooper Clarke's "Evidently Chickentown" featuring . I's amazing tgat the series can be so influential , though it is totally brilliant!!

John Scott - Brilliant Comedian

A couple of months back I went to see John Cooper Clarke at the Carling Academy and he was MC'd by a great Scot from Byker . Emailed the Carling and got sweet FA back, but at a birthday bash at the Hyena Cafe in Newcastle on Saturday night he was the support (should have been the headliner. Anyway found this quiet vid on youtube , turn up your speakers , enjoy and if you get the chance to see him , GO!!



Cant find any DVDs or recordings so just go and see him.

"Easyjet , Primark with Wings!!"

Apparently he runs the Horses Mouth Comedy Night at The Chillingham Arms in Newcastle according to this two year old BBC article. And here's a bit more about him.