Showing posts with label Mike Oldfield. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Oldfield. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 March 2020

Didn't Feel Lonely Til I Thought Of You


Yesterday I got home before six pm but had to put the lights on . The house was in darkness as the the lights come on around seven. Admittedly it was cloudy and rainy and the rain was coming down hard, but even so it was still a surprise to me. This morning I have to get off to the Post Office for another Discogs sale , it is strange as CD sales seem to go in spurts the stop and then come on again.

Morning Moon
This morning the sky looks blue and almost cloudless and the moon looked very clear in the sky so I leapt out and took a picture.

Unfortunately when I use the 50x Optical Zoom I can't keep the damned thing steady so a halfway decent picture is a plus. The one to the right is one that came out OK.

It's a thing with eyes and cameras, the camera can never capture the detail that the eye sees, although sometime it manages to capture things that the eye can't possibly see. A very odd conundrum that I don't have any intention of working out at the moment.

Yesterday I was listening to a Best of Kevin Ayers compilation , one of his bands (The Whole World) featured Mike Oldfield on guitar and was struck how, like with most artists, the early stuff is the most interesting and adventurous, although I did move onto my favourite album of his "The confessions of Doctor Dream" which I never tire of , featuring the excellent (no departed) Ollie Halsall on guitar, who's advice of  practicing with heavy gauge strings and play with light gauge I took , and in a very hot venue my guitar kept going out of tune, and I had to retune as I played. Afterward I was complimented on my on the the fly tuning / playing.

So in memory of Mr Halsall and Kevin Ayers both now gone , one of my favourites "Didn't Feel Lonely Til I Thought Of You", I found a live take for you to enjoy, with some excellent guitar duelling.

Friday, 5 May 2017

Sometimes The Plan Just Falls Apart


It's that thing called life. On Monday I started my Million Step Challenge, but my phone started playing up , which I was using as my tracker. My printer failed so I bought a new "small footprint" one, and I bough a new phone. The new phone had a major flaw so I got another one, which seemed to be doing the business, but yesterday I took a walk down to Denton Burn and I thought my phone wasn't tracking my steps, well the S-Health app on my Sony Xperia XA phone wasn't.

A walk to the Post Office depot this morning proved it wasn't tracking correctly last night, and today it stopped again (it's more that 200 steps from Wildflower Cafe back to work, even if it is downhill, and it recorded 800 steps to get there, though with my old phone it recorded closer to 1500 steps. So my step recorder doesn't seem to be working, so I will have to choose another pedometer app. For the first time in two months I haven't hit 10K steps in a day according to the app. Still it's another challenge to get that sorted.

Then my printer, and it is very good, but obviously some new previously unknown definition of the word small, but I have managed to deal with it and fit it in with all the other stuff on my desk.

That's life , if stuff were guaranteed it might become very boring. My life is certainly not that (although it may seem that way to you).

Anyway it is late for me, although I will probably wake up in a few hours, but one of my #ATuneaDayinMay, is Kevin Ayers' "May I" (in English this time, I let you have the French one on Monday) , but if I remember rightly this features a young Mike Oldfield on guitar.

Sleep well my lovely friends.



Monday, 17 October 2016

Bottled It With "26" and Son Palace Discovered - #ALifeInNumbers #26


Today has been a weird day. I am absolutely shattered. I'm still hit with this lurgi but went into work, then came home mowed the lawn and covered the garden furniture. As well as working I got tickets for Goat at the Riverside on Thursday from RPM and was asked to review and push a new CD by Son Palace called Accumulations , so I have been busy and am ready for tea and TV.

As I write this I'm listening to the first track on the Son Palace album , "Joey and Mo", it shounds familiar making me thing thing of Neil Young and The Velvet Underground. The album is short, clocking at 28 minutes , but then so did the first Ramones album. It sounds like "Joe and Mo" is an instrumental and I like it a lot, I need to see if we have a youtube video.

The second track "Page To Pillow" has a pastoral feel, again a guitar based instrumental and the first two songs on this album warrant further investigation and listening.

Anyway the song for #ALifeInNumbers is "26" by Catfish and The Bottlemen who have produced a couple of excellent albums , but this only got in because it was called "26" but it is excellent. It's rock and it's good.

Up to track 3 of the Son Palace album "Feathers Like A Wild Beast", and now I am thinking Nick Drake and Pentangle, but loving the distant dustbin drum sound on "Experimental Move". Anyway if you want a copy get yourself along to RPM in Newcastle, it always amazes me that peopel come up with new music. Now listening to "Accumulation" , all tracks have been instrumental and this just has an eerie edge to it, but could be an out take from "Tubular Bells".

An album I would buy if I didn't already have it, it is beautiful. I can't find them on the net so get yourself down to RPM and get this beauty. I know this has been hijacked , but this album is beautiful



Saturday, 15 October 2016

A Slapp Happy and Henry Cow Challenge - #ALifeInNumbers #21


Love The Cover
There were a few options for number 22 notably "22" by Taylor Swift and "22" by the brilliant Lily Allen as well as 22 Dreams by Paul Weller , but I have stuck with "22 Proverbs" by John Greaves and Peter Blegvad , members of Slapp Happy and Henry Cow respectively , who produced so excellent challenging music in the seventies. I remember laughing at the cover of "Legend" and buying "Concerts" for the amazing line drawn cover.










I had read that Henry Cow had produced some of the most complex music committed to record but it certainly wasn't what I was expecting, although they were on Virgin Records this was not Mike Oldfield territory, you can see Henry Cow's influence in the music of The Fall. Slapp Happy were more influenced by 30's Berlin and the two bands collaborated on "Desperate Straights" and "In Praise of Learning". It was not a surprise that Greaves and Blegvad collaborated on "Kew Rhone" and drafted in Dagmar Krause on vocals for "22 Proverbs" and we have a live rendition here.

I don't think you will be up dancing for this and it may be a way of getting rid of unwanted guests, but I love this sort of stuff. It demands your attention, and let's face it, anyone who thinks music comes from iTunes or Spotify will last about five seconds.

Have a great Saturday my friends.