A Quiet Walk

This morning the first half of my walk to work was done without headphones, so it was effectively quiet , just the sounds of nature and the traffic. It is sometimes nice to just have the non silence, although I always eventually need to listen, but more of that later.

I was in Bradley's on Saturday and mentioned and showed them pictures of the CHAT Trust Phoenicx which I decided to route my walk past this morning as you can see here. This was after noticing the excellent notices on the four doors of Dabbawal in High Bridge on Sunday here.

It always gives me a lift to see witty and funny and original window decoration, and this definitely falls into that category.

This post is about harlf the length of the posts I normally do, but when I add this bit and then talk about what piece of music I am going to share it will suddenly self expand and I will have hit my normal 250 word target.

Maybe we can go with the Happy Mondoy's cover of John Kongos' "He's Gnna Step on You Again" (a favourite of my dad's) which the slowed down, baggied up and retitled as "Step On".

On Writing

The thing is, like anything you do, writing is easier the more often you do it. I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but the numer of hits per post have also actually gone up. The "Coincidentally Opencast" post is still the most read one currently and that is getting a lot of hits despite being more about the Happy Mondays and their John Kongos covers and the fact that John Kongos was the first person to use a recorded sample in the single "He's Gonna Step On You Again" . Follow the OpenCast link for video and download links.

I've now started reading Alexei Sayle's "The Weeping Women Hotel" and after the Jordan Ellenberg book I was struck that the pages will be solid text, no diagrams and graphs breaking it up every few pages, but words have the ability to stimulate the imagination, though for some reason I found it a bit odd about about a man writing about a woman's experiences. I'm only ten pages and it has my attention so I am looking forward to enjoying it.

So it's time for another walk to work, it's a couple of weeks since I bought a weekly bus ticket now (and they are good value for money), but if I don't have a ticket I will walk and I get to listen to lots of music.

I now look at people at bus stops and think, "You could probably walk to where you are going".  It's true we have inbuilt laziness programmed into us. Twice in recent weeks I've seen people panic because they have missed their floor by ONE floor, as they press the button then go up to the 7th floor before (I assume returning to the second or third, when it would take them a minute to WALK DOWN to their floor)

I've been selling a few CDs that I don't really listen to on Discogs. The pile I had would probably bring me in fifteen pounds from CEX or a bit more for one of Newcastle's second hand record shops. Amazon wouldn't let me sell CDs but the four I have sold on Discogs have brought in £50 so it's been a success. My store is here.

Given how I have been critical of people not walking , I found some film of Deep Purple performing "Lazy" in 1972 for you to enjoy.


Anyway I'm going to set off again so enjoy your Thursday.

Stepping Out

Today is a bit grey and I am still just ahead of my target for my Million Step Challenge. The thing is we all can do a million steps , eventually, just by walking around, my slight problem is that I still have a target of 10K a day when it needs to be 11K a day, but this challenge allows me to slip back as long as I make up the deficit.

I'm finding some annoyances with my Sony Xperia XA, file management is really awkward and every time you connect to your computer to put stuff onto it it asks how you want to use your USB connection, then often mid transfer will finish the the transfer to ask you what you want to do with the USB connection. Also it wont block spam calls and texts. You have the option of blocking all calls (with some broad definitions like international, incoming and outgoing) but nothing about individual numbers. Apparently there are apps to do these tasks which I will look into.

Also you can copy and delete files using Windows Explorer but not move them , so you have to delete and recopy from the source.

I've managed to watch some TED talks on it and they are fine, but I lost all the downloads I had on the old Samsung Note, but they are all somewhere online.

Anyway it's time to start and see if I can hit 11K steps today (I did 13K yesterday), also I will be visiting Wildflower for lunch today and Fenham Fish Bar for tea , so that should be about 5K steps accounted for , as well as 5K from walking in.

I was going to use Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" but decided that John Kongos' "He's Gonna Step On You Again" was a better option. This is where The Happy Monday got "Step On" from.

It's Friday, It's weekend, have a good one.

Coincidentally Opencast

New OpenCast  Office

Often things happen and because of some other event we notice stuff that we maybe wouldnt have noticed . This week a number of things happened that are sort of tenuously connected and are sticking in my mind because  of the way things happened. It started with an instagram post by a great friend of mine CEO of Opencast Software referring to the Happy Mondays song . This came about when they were asked to do a cover for Rubáiyát: Elektra's 40th Anniversary album. They loved John Kongos' He's Gonna Step On You Again , and covered that , Shaun Ryder lifting the "Twistin' My Melon Man" from a quote from a Paul Newman film.

 Anyway apparently (and this has been verified by the Guinness Book of Records) , He's Gonna Step On You Again by John Kongos is the first commercial single to use a sample (the Africa Drum Loop). So here is its to listen to:

Tokolshe Stalking a Mad Dog

The band liked their cover , re-titled "Step On" so much they released it as a single and covered another John Kongos song Tokoloshe Man. Now listening to Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie they were talking to a guy about the top record covers , and that included the Happy Mondays "Step On" which most people don't realise is actually a cover. Aparently when Kongos was stuck for inspiration he would ring his mum and one of her suggestion was Tokoloshe Man, and the Tokoloshe appeared as a voodoo dwarf in the last series of Mad Dogs.

So if you want a copy of the Happy Mondays Tokoloshe Man you will have to hunt down the album or get Loaded.

There were many other coincidences that happened this week but that's all they were  , but it is sometimes amazing how many things coincide when you dont expect them to