The Talisman

I am halfway through "The Talisman"  by Jonathan Aycliffe and I thought it wasn't one of his best but I am coming to think it may be close to "The Matrix"  one of his most frightening novels.

It is almost a drip, drip, drip of a slowly tightening screw of supernatural threat and horror.

Lots of unexplained deaths that point to a pre-Babylonian statue which may be of the Devil, a "Rosemary's Baby scenario, and a lot more.

Innocents are targets and with a blind wife in an old house, the possibility of malevolent ghosts I am enjoying this excellent tome.

I have just noticed a book of his that I was unaware of "The Silence of Ghosts" which I will have to get a copy of as he has not written a book that I didn't enjoy reading.

For some reason, Kate Bush's "Hammer Horror" comes to mind although that is far lighter in mood than this extremely scary book.,

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
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

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This is post 2344 , the next will have it's number as the title. We really can't do without numeracy, although politicians are fine without it. The number in the title is the dimensions of the video above. I thought this may be a good starting point for a post , but it's not really, I can't think of anything else to say about it , so I will mention the music that I have been listening to this week.

I started with some Roxette Greatest Hits then PJ Harvey "The Hope Six Demolition Project" , followed by Prince "1999" (which was released in 1982 so more numbers there, and in the PJ Harvey title) , and this was followed by Kate Bush "Director's Cut" which three CDs consisting of "The Red Shoes" , "Sensual World" then reworkings of songs from those albums, it is a very illuminating listen.

My latest is an Electric Light Orchestra box , which  does trace their fall from pioneering musos to prepacked pop purveyors. They are responsible for my second favourite album ever "ElDorado" and Jeff Lynne is a purveyor of some extremely muscular riffs on the earlier albums ("Ma-Ma Belle" and "10538 Overture") , he also revisits The Move's "Do Ya" which is possibly his finest moment , on "A New World Record" which is when they hit paydirt and the fall began.

I'm currently up to "Face The Music" and not sure if I will finish the whole box, but the first five albums are worth the price of admission, maybe on the next post we will find out how far I got.

Two Minutes

The time on my Google Pixel 2XL phone is two minutes ahead of the time on my work and home computers.I am assuming they use a different source for their times because two minutes is a significant amount of time, Unless it's like the clock at The Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that since 1902, the hotel's clock has been set three minutes fast to ensure that the people of Edinburgh wouldn't miss their trains. This is still the case today. The only day that the clock runs on time is on 31 December (Hogmanay) for the city's New Year celebrations.

The weather has been very dreich over most of this week, the sun seems to fight it's way out but then disappears.

"Everville" is still continuing on and after a hundred pages some of the characters from "The Great And Secret Show" have now turned up, although I am still no wiser as to what will happen in the book. I cannot believe I have a book by one of my favourite authors that I haven't read , especially as it is a follow up to a very good book. I will probbly mention it a few more times before I finish it.

Today I have been listening to Hothouse Flowers , Gay Dad and General Fiasco but before I switched the radio off two of my current favourites were spun by Lauren Laverne , one was "Slum Lord" by Baxter Dury and the other was "Take Back The Radio" by Katy J Pearson which , to me, sounds like "Aeriel" era Kate Bush, and that is certainly no bad thing.

This is the thing , there is always great music being produced, it's just sometimes a case of finding it. I would hate to be stuck in a particular time period with my musical taste like so many people I know, although I suppose really they are happy with their choices.

So have a listen to Katy J Pearson  , she is rather excellent.

Every Piece Of Vinyl ....

I was looking at all the books I have,  and was thinking "Will I ever read all of these?" . The same goes for DVDs and CDs . With the digitalisation of music, plus streaming , and the phenomenal fall in price music has become easy to buy without listening to it.

People used to make tapes and that had to be done in real time , but now it's just a playlist and if there is little effort in producing it then there will be little attention payed to it by listener. I see loads of playlists shared each day , but will take more notice of a single song in some format or other.

Digital media is so easy to aquire , put aside for future listening, then never revisit. Books are slightly different in that you may put them aside, but usually you have them displayed in a bookcase or something and always tend to buy them with at least the intention of reading. That is not always the case with digital media, and you can include ebooks with that , so easy to acquire and so easy to forget about.

I have bought very few ebooks but have acquired a lot as many are public domain and available for free or very cheaply.

Back to vinyl , every record I have has been played at least once, and many times more often. Buying vinyl creates a sort of tangible connection with the music, the covers are often an adventure in themselves (thinking Hawkwind's "In Search of Space" and Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" newspaper cover).

I have a few picture discs including Kate Bush's zoetropic picture disc of "Running Up That Hill" and the Star Wars and Jack White " Lazaretto"discs with the etched holograms all of which need lights or strobes to bring out the images, but I can't find the Kate Bush one although I posted it on instagram a few years back, maybe I will try doing it again soon and put it on Youtube.

So what should I share this time, we'll go with "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath because of the Vertigo Swirl which is one of the best simple optical effects I have ever seen , and you don't get that on digital, sometimes it's great to watch the record just  play.

The Newest Great Christmas Song

I was remarking that most of the Christmas songs that get repeated plays on the radio are from the seventies, when it seemed everyone was releasing a Christmas song. Most were decent efforts though I though Kate Bush's and Queen's were not up to their usual standards.

Since then memorable Christmas records have been few and far between, although this may be just due to like of radio play, yest we had "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, "Do They Know It's Christmas" by Band Aid and "Christmas Wrapping"  by The Waitresses, but you seldom get to hear "Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas" by The Eels or "Alan Parsons in A Winter Wonderland" by Grandaddy.

My own favourite though is "Christmas Song" by The Raveonettes (from 2011, yes I know nearly ten years old) , who if you don't know them are a sort of cross between Roxette and Jesus and Mary Chain, absolutely perfection. This is my all time favourite Christmas song...... so far.

Also they didn't stop with that "Come On Santa" is absolutely gorgeous and "Christmas Ghosts" is sheer perfection.

Grey Day To Grey Week

The sky is a uniform grey still, and now the rain has turned up. This is not the most inspiring of weeks, although the fact that in the USA the Democrats have retaken the House of Representatives giving Donald Trump a metaphorical bloody nose (I wonder if he bleeds orange) is a definited bright spot although the Republicans still hold the Senate, just. There's info here thought not sure if it will stay.

I watched this weekes episode of The Walking Dead and there was a major event which should have been a shocking surprise but the Fox announcers kept telling us about it in the ad breaks. It loses it's impact if you tell people about it, but I'm not done with the series yet and am still working through Black Sails and Constantine, and maybe I will watch the film at some point but cant see Keanu Reeves providing as much entertainment as Matt Ryan.

Tonight I am going to see Thousand Yard Stare supporting House of Love at The Boilershop, so it's not exactly a quiet week for me, things are happening and keeping me on my feet.

So hopefuly the clouds will disperse so I will share Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting".

An End Is In Sight

It seems a very long time since I woke up and thought "Bloody hell, It's Twelve O' Clock (Noon)". I am not sure why this is , but it probably stems from when I started back doing 10K steps a day. Weekends are usually days when you can do more, although more steps take more time. I am now 35K steps away from hitting the target of my Million Step Challenge. I was wondering how I would continue exercising after the target had been hit, and was worried I would maybe fall back into becoming more sedentary and therefore lose the benefits that I have gained from doing the walking. We all need goals, if we don't have them then we vegetate and ossify. So I have simply decided to aim for 34K steps a month which should ensure that in any three month meriod I should walk a million steps.

Life is affected by continual change and the need to deal with those changes , which is why so many people railed against Jodie Whittaker as the new Doctor Who. This is the thirteenth regeneration of the Doctor, and every one has caused people to complain that the new Doctor is not The Old Doctor (here's a list and as long ago as 1989 Dawn French , Joanna Lumley and Frances De La Tour were in the running) , though the worst complaints are sexist and misogynistic. The term Doctor is not gender specific, and in the last series Peter Capaldi was guarding a rogue female timelord , they swapped bodies and several times talked about their past and whether they were male or female. Further back there ws the River Song / Amy Pond thread , so you can't say that you were'nt prepared for this by plot developments.

Continuing through "Electric Eden" (40 pages to go so another ending nearing) I also came across more things I was unaware of. Until Kate Bush hit Number One with "Wuthering Heights" in 1978 no woman had topped the singles chart in the UK with a self penned song, so thirty years that took. Then, talking about the video to one of the songs from my favourite album of hers "Hounds of Love" , it was conceived in connivance with Terry Gilliam (my favourite director, incidentally Kate performed the theme song to my favourite Gilliam film "Brazil" which I've included at the end of this post) and featured Donald Sutherland who had been angling to work with Kate, that was "Cloudbusting" often mis spelt as "Cloudbursting". The story behind the song is absorbing to and can be read here.

This is the thing, reading can tell you new things and remingd you of things you have forgotten.

I know it's grey but today I am looking forward to seeing my friend Julie with Fiona and possibly doing an unfeasible amount of steps, or maybe I will just get the bus.

Have a great Saturday my friends.

Is Music Getting Worse? - #52 - 2008 - Utah Saints - Something Good 08

Most of the the musical Odyssey songs have been chosen from the top 100 singles in the UK for that year., but in 2007 and 2008 I have run into a musical brick wall. Don't get me wrong I know that loads of great music was about in these years but these blog posts are written to give a feeling of spontaneity . If you have to research what you like you have a bit of a problem. I do have something special for 2011 if my mind remembers. Music is not getting worse but the cjarts are definitely not looking too good .

I Love Kate

So trawling through 2008 and  I saw this remix from the 90's which includes a Kate Bush sample Cloudbusting (my favourite Kate Bush song)  , which I always thought was called Cloudbursting , but what do I know. Anyway The Utah Saints Something Good is always worth a listen
from

Have a brilliant Tuesday everyone and buy my ebook when it comes out probably about January.

Kate Bush, Matt Haig, Jon Evans, Books and Why You Should Go OVO

I have a date for collecting my books for World Book Night on the 23rd of April. The book I have chosen is Matt Haig's The Humans so I need to get myself a copy fairly rapidly as April is nearly hear. However, many years ago Waterstones had a promotion called "Try Me For 99p" where you could pick up a number of loss leader books for 99p. One of these was The Blood Price by Jon Evans whicj, although not my usual sort of read, is a rivetting , exciting page turner which I would recommend to anyone, although I suppose I can draw certain vague parrallels with what happens in the book. Anyway that's the literary bit.

I've also nearly completed my power switch to Ovo Energy, after being with E-On for years (and having a fixed price deal). The thing that turned me on to them was that when the Big Six said they had to raise prices because wholesale prices were going up, MD Stephen Fitzpatrick implied they were being economical with the truth as he hadn't seen any price rises for two years. Articles here and here . The guy deserves respect and to be quite honest iof you're looking for a switch just go OVO. Their website is here

Oh and the wonderful Kate Bush has announced fifteen dates in London in August, her first since 1979, which will be amazing but the tickets probably sold out last year, full details here . Kate is one of my favourite artists who has manged to just do what she wants on her terms. Her albums are always a pleasure but The Hounds Of Love is still my favourite.

So that's more positives and hope I've given you some food for thought if you are in the UK and thinking about a power switch.