The Great Gatsby

 

I have finished "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen and it is worrying that charlatans have their hands on the power in the world. It is a book that everyone should read.

I don't know about you but there are so many books in my house that I haven't read and I wanted some fiction and didn't realise that we had "The Great Gatsby" by F Scott Fitzgerald.

I wrote a Vocal story called "The Great Catsby" that you can read below.

Also Leslie West of Mountain was a great guitarist and a very big man and I think he had an album or nickname called "The Great Fatsby"

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Theme From An Imaginary Western" by Mountain.

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

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. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

A Break From Riverworld but There Are Wind Whales

I have finished "The Dark Design"  the third book in the "Riverworld series but before setting out into "The Magic Labyrinth," I thought I would take a detour with another Farmer novel "The Wind Whales of Ishmael".

It is only 130 pages long but has no chapters, just a single piece of text that runs over those pages. Chapters enable you to take a break, and while 130 pages could be read in one sitting I am a slow reader.

The story is a futuristic science fiction sequel to "Moby Dick"

Music is "Nantucket Sleighride" by Mountain

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

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

When You're Thick .... As A Brick

One of the problems with a  great deal of "progressive" music is that often the pieces stretched out for sometimes mind numbing length with obvious classical pretentions, although ironically the collections of songs together often created a uniform thematic piece thin "Wee Small Hours" by Frank Sinatra, "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia" by The Who and "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd weren't averse to stretching out musical pieces to twenty minutes ( a side of vinyl) and I remeber Mountain stretching out "Nantucket Sleighride" over two sides of "Twin Peaks" one of their live excursions.

The seventies punk movement was a kick against this, but even these bands eventually got hit by self indulgence and some songs definitely strayed past the ideal 2'59" limit, which is not always a bad thing. I love the Ramones, Garage Punk (about my musical level) but I also like a lot of progressive music often just thinking I will never ever be able to play that.

My favourite pair of Jethro Tull albums are "Thick as a Brick" and "A Passion Play" and today I was listening to the former as I walked into work. You can hear and understand every word Ian Anderson and teh band sing, often a criticism by "adults" that "you can't hear what they're saying", and for me the music holds my attention throughout the forty or so minutes you are listening. It brings in many moods from acoustic pastoral to agreesive jazz spliced rock and keeps you on board for the whole ride. At no point to do you want to leave. Dance music it is not but would have filled any seventies mosh pit.

I must say it does actually make a walk go musch faster when you are listening to great music. Although Ian Anderson has apologised for it, "A Passion Play" is very close to "Thick as a Brick" and is another album I have been listening to quite a lot recently.

Basically good music i good music and it is stupid to limit your listening because you don't approve of a particular genre. It may be just that my taste is unusually eclectic that I do enjoy album length pieces but The Buzzcocks "Love You More" was only 1'30" on it's original release and that is just just as good as "Thick as a Brick" and both are in my collection.