Copy Right?

This is essentially a diatribe on how copyright law is applied when you share on social media platforms such as Youtube , Facebook and Instagram . As yet I have had no issues with Twitter. The thing is I understand if the artist is not getting any benefit for my share , or I am being disrespectful, but where I can I share a link to buy the CD or digital copy.

Instagram and Facebook seem to be the worst, I was under the impression that you could share under thirsty seconds of a song , so I tend to keep the snips to 15-20 seconds although I make it up to minute long in the video sampling multiple songs. This is just like me playing a record for friends and saying “How good is this , take a listen and if you like it buy it”. I am providing the artist and therefore the record company and copyright owner with free advertising.

I don’t share the whole song , although I did in one instance recently “The Son of Noah’s Brother” by The Incredible String Band from “The Big Huge” is only seventeen seconds long. I have not had any problems with that share.

I will admit that more often than not companies are OK.. One of my most viewed Youtube videos is a slideshow featuring the artwork of Dr Faustus portraying the Nick Cave song “Red Right Hand” (the first piece of outside music used in the “X-Files” and later resurfaced in “Peaky Blinders”) in the style of Dr, Seuss.

I contacted Dr Faustus to see if he was OK using the art work but never received a reply , but I included a link in my Youtube post. I have not had a complaint from Nick Cave or his representatives and a lot of people seem to like it from the comments that I get on the post.

However in 2014 I was listening to 6Music and the DJ (which may have been Shaun Keaveny) mentioned that Christopher Lee was 90 and had been making heavy metal albums. I checked this out and was amazed to find that Christopher Lee was descended from Charlemagne , was a Nazi hunter , has appeared in more films that anyone else and much much more. Watch my slideshow to find out.

Anyway this got over 8K views on the first day and was pulled. It turns out it was Youtube and not the copyright owner , Charlemagne productions. I contacted them about it and they said they were fine with it but couldn;t do anything about what Youtube did. I was disappointed because Youtube would not reinstate it despite having the OK from Charlemagne productions.

I therefore uploaded it to my blog , which is part of the same organisation that owns Youtube and it stayed there. 

When Christopher Lee died I noticed some static copies of “My Way” on Youtube , so reloaded my Christopher Lee slideshow and this time it actually stayed up and has eventually become my most watched Youtube video. I am always wary of putting something on Youtube as often videos or slideshows take time to put together and you may publish it and then find it immediately taken down, although I do try to use more obscure music mainly with the aim of getting the music to a much wider audience.

Another thing is that often Instagram / Facebook videos are removed , sometimes years after the original post , then reinstated saying that my appeal has been successful . I never appeal because they never listen when I have appealed before. Also it’s not worth my time , but it's their club , it's their rules.

So I share because I want others to be exposed to good music and I think copyright owners should take this is into account because it will probably increase their sales.

May Tree (May Free Too)

This is my second #maywriteabit post today although I think that's not quite in the spirit of the thing , but here it is. It has a convoluted title and if you read the previous posts yo may understand what I mean , though probably not. Today is a Sunday and for some reason I've been on a bit of a downer , though I haven't a clue why, but it's just been one of those days and I suppose the weather is a major contributor plus the general isolationism of the lockdown, leading to the situations where a lot of little things we used to look forward to we now don't have, however.....

.. when the sun comes out you get an immediately get a lift , or I do.

I'm reading the Christopher Brookmyre book "Not The End of the World" and that is becoming more enjoyable by the page, I like the quip when one of the protagonists Steff heard about the CFC (Christian Family Channel - your average Televangelist thing) he says  "Oh we've got a religious CFC and an RFC  as well (he's referring to Celtic Football Club and Rangers Football Club as he's from Motherwell ... somewhere south of Scandinavia.

..then, maintaining the "Scandinavian" connection, there was Ragnar Lothbrok's Christian Funeral in Notre Dame, Paris in Vikings , I was well impressed with his coffin too. So thanks to the internet and digital connections I do have things to look forward to , it's just sometimes you actually lose sight of things.

It also improves the mood when you hit some kinf of goal like my daily step total which has had a reasonable start.

I've also started watching "20,000 Days On earth" the Nick Cave film which, even though I've had the DVD for years, it took a showing on Film4 for me to record it and watch the damned thing, and very good it is too.

My technological incompetence still can't understand how data is transferred over airwaves, it's a bit like teleportation, is what appears at the receiving end a clone of what was sent? I suppose it is , so if I teleported would it really be me on the arrival pad or just an exact clone and how would anybody know.

Another thing is I use BubbleUPnp on my Kindle Fire to play music, it seems update itself at ceratin points and does not always reflect what it on the network, and as I listen to this the first Neu! album is playing, I think they are the band that initiated "motorik" which is an unchanging almost mechanical beat

And then I started writing this, so all in all , it's actually not a bad day at all.

So I will share with you "Negativland" by Neu! which my dad asked me about in the seventies , he said istarted with drills and then had a great beat. See what you think.

Home Is The New Work

Today I was going to use a bit of my free time to put together a slideshow of "The Murderous Memorandum" by David King, but I am in contact with him and his partner and my friend tattooist Sophia Gourley and sent a message that he should do that given that he is an excellent artist and musician / composer. I shared my Nick Cane / Dr Faustus video which has proven quite popular and you can enjoy it here.

So that means I need to find something else to put my talents to, I am learning a couple of songs which may find their way to my Youtube channel and I have a couple of deliveries scheduled.

I have the first two series of "Orange Is The New Black"  which I am working through and am now on the final series of 30 Rock, but my TIVO disk is still 75% full so my Netflix trial is still on hold and I need to get a week of Now TV to watch series 3 of Westworld and Series 2 of Britannia.

I supposed that influenced the title of the post, and Home Is The New Work. I am wondering if people will have problems going back to an office environment if this ever gets back to normal. The situation has been predicted is so many dystopian future novels, and I am shocked how incompetent the UK and USA governments have been handling this.

As I am writing this I am listening to "Grand Hotel" by Procol Harum, and to be quite honest I don't think I have listened to it before and it is absolutely excellent. Windows Media Player and being at home is allowing me to explore my music collection a lot more than I have in years. iTunes and even MusicMatch were nowhere near as fast , efficient and convenient. People keep telling me a Kindle with Alexa is fine , but it keeps suggesting I get Spotify , and doesn't even reference the stuff I've bought on Amazon , and as for my ripped music , I can forget about that.

So we'll go with the title track from "Grand Hotel" and it is as impressive as it's title. Check it out.

Weird Dreams, John Scott, Ellen Mellor and Nick Cave - - #Oktoberfest #28 - Coffee and TV - Blur

I've just woken up for a sort of weir dream. My friend the excellent comedian John Scott was emailing me songs from the new Nick Cave album "Ghosteen", the title reminiscent of "Ghostkin" a novel by my friend Ellen Mellor , any way John was emailing me three songs at a time and Nick Cave was sending me similar stuff from John Scott. The only thing to trigger this dream is that John has said how goof the album is and the title reminds me of Ellen's book. For a dera this was fairly normal apart from the fact that the only emails I get are spam and demands for money of to renew my web domains.

So that's the dream and now on to #Oktoberfest and I hadn't really thought of any new drink related songs so have to fall back on a reserve which is "Coffee and TV" by Blur  so really I need to get a few more on the list as there is still a week to go in October although that has just reminded me of "Cigarettes and Alcohol" by Oasis so that is not the worst song to include in the sequence, so I am OK for another post.

Strawberry Disappointment

We all make mistakes. Sometimes we act on those mistakes, believing what we are doing is right, even though it does slightly rankle that you are acting on what you believe to be the correct course of action. That happened to me recently.

The Strawberry changed their menu. Instead of the black laminated card (admittedly past their sell by date) we got a printed couple of sheets on a clip board protected by a textured plastic sheet. This didn't look good. My worst fears were confirmed when their excellent Curry Top Chips had disappeared from the menu. Yes it's pub food , yes it's quick , and great value for money and it was always a quick lunch option and it was gone. I thought I have no reason to go back to The Strawberry because they don't have Curry topped Chips.

I relented because I couldn't actually remebery what was on the menu bar unspecified toasties and a fish finger butty. So I went in today, checked the new menu and right in the middle of the front page was the  Topped Chips or Baked Potato options. How the hell did I miss that. Yes the menu has had a slight revamp but it still has everything worth having so that definitely made may day, as The Strawberry is an excellent pub and their bar meals are excellent and great value for money.

The lesson to be learned is if something is not exactly what you want or what you think, go back and double check it, you may find you are mistaken and get the result you require more quickly.

Incidentally tomorrow the blog will pass quarter of a million visits, I know a lot are robots, but it's still a success to go with my Christopher Lee and Nick Cave slideshow.s

So the obvious song is Split Enz "My Mistake" a band I saw several times in the seventies who produced some amazing music.

A Wordless Weekend and That Christopher Lee Video

I didn't post anything this weekend. No particular reason although I was in Edinburgh on Saturday, and Sunday was a just plain lazy day although I did get out and do a couple of things as well as cooking Aloo Chole for tea, so that means I have something good, vegan and tasty to eat over the next few days. I've loved it ever since I got it from the excellent Rajnagar as a takeaway, and I still get it, but I now also make it myself as it's a great one pot meal so you don't have much washing up.

The Edinburgh trains going and coming were rammed due to Cross-Country treating their customers like cash cows rather than customers but that is the nature of what happens with privatisation, the bottom line is all that matters is lining the pockets of owners and shareholders by whatever means possible,

On a more positive note That Christopher Lee Video is nudging towards 10K views with 200 likes adn a lot of positive comments. I first posted it in 2014 when I found out he was producing Heavy Metal music and on the first day it hit nearly 10K views before Youtube pulled it. Click on th elink to find out more. But I think it may actually surpass my Nick Cave / Dr Seuss "Red Right Hand" video which is standing around 16K although I have updated it and the upgrade has only 2K views so far, but you can see it here.

So although it's only Monday the week is off to a good start, so enjoy your Monday and Christopher Lee's take on Paul Anka / Frank Sinatra's "My Way" which in my opinion ourt muscles the Sid Vicious version by a long chalk,

.... And The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

My old Bluetooth headphones went the distance and I bought these Emopeak foldable headphones . I am pleasantly surprised at the quality improvement from my previous phones and have been listening to quite a lot of good music. They are a lot bigger than my previous set so don't easily drop into a pocket, but the benefits are worth the inconvenience.

I must say also I am a little annoyed that the blog software no longer does auto highlighting of potentially mis spelled words , so I apologies for spelling and grammar mistakes that appear to be slipping through more frequently these days. The is a spell check button, but that doesn't give the option to add words to the dictionary. I would have though a blog linked dictionary would have been a simple obvious addition.

On Saturday for the first time in ages we went round to Nicolle and Ian's and had a wonderful time (time just flew) and Ian has a small portable Bose Bluetooth speaker which delivers astonishing sound for it's sise and we were treated to an evening of Neil Young songs , familiar and new to me as well as a live version of Nick Cave's "The Mercy Seat" which had featured in the last episode of "Peaky Blinders".

One of the albums I revisited was "The Lamb Lies Down Down On Broadway" by Genesis. It was a double album and very often that is just a sign of self indulgence, but at the the time it was the peak of teh Genesis / Peter Gabriel years. The outside of the cover consisted of half a dozen images related to the libretto , on a white background. Insode was the story (you can find a detaled annotation here) which even on a 12" vinyl album consisted of a lot of small print , based on a dream sequence from Peter Grabriel starting on Broadway and about two brother Rael and John, Rael trying to continually save John and losing himself in the process.

Listening to the ninety minues of music I was surprised how coherent it actually is with lots of stand out songs and instrumental sequences and the lyrics standing up remarkably well for a concept album. I was lucky enough to see it live on stage performed by Canadian band The Musical Box at Newcastle City Hall using the original stage set. I found a live performance of "Back In New York City" by an Italian tribute band called Garden Wall that is definitely worth a watch.

The album is definitely worth going back to, and has lost not of it's wonder for me.

With that it's Monday morning, and time for work. Have a great day everybody.

Back

Just back from a great weekend in Epsom and Brighton seeing Lesley, Matt and Nick , and actually getting to see Brighton Pavilion which is an impressive structure and saw a couple of excellent buskers Linos Wengara Magaya & Gary Cove (playing a vague jazz on Mbira and saxophone). You can see a bit of them here on my Instagram Channel.

I walked 15 Km up and down Brighton Beach ( and I'm sure Matt, Lesley , Nick and Fiona walked further) but that's a record using my latest tracking software Pacer (which is still working on my Xperia, which now has a shattered screen due to me dropping it, I did this many times with my Samsong Note 4 , not a scratch, but my Sony , instant screen shatter) . To put the distance into context Matt will run that far if he's eaten something he maybe shouldn't have to burn off the calories :)

Anyway I wasn't really going to write about the weekend, although I have done it now, and have another one in Dalgety Bay next weekend which I am looking forward to , with Scott and Maureen , plus a bit of time in Edinburgh. I do prefer the train to driving.

In Brighton I was wondering if I'd see Nick Cave , but no , there was also a big "Free The Nipple" parade, and great to see people to dress as they want, it wakes me irate when people are ok with others carrying round assault rifles and other weapons, but explode when they see a woman breastfeeding or actually displaying a nipple. It's ok for men to be topless but not women. It's often worsen with the odd asian / middle eastern couple where the man is just wearing shorts and woman is completely covered bar a slit for the eyes. The thing is sometimes nudity empowers people, sometimes modesty empowers people, but it should be their choice and they should not be oppressed and denigrated for that choice. Though I am offended by people who wear face masks in everyday situations, this includes IRA Terrorsist balaclavas, asian pollution facemasks in Newcastle, and niqabs , they all offend me equally.

Anyway less of that and we'll have Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" before I get off to work. I think the #August50 is dead and buried, to hit it I would need to post thrirty times before the end of Bank Holiday Monday (but you never know).

Fire

On Wednesday I ditched the iPad and got a Kindle Fire. Basically the iPad was an excellent device but tried to tie you into Apple and some non Apple apps didn't behave the way I wanted including YouTube and TED. I originally bought it because someone showed me GarageBand, but while that was great to play with, and I managed to record a couple of things, it forced into such things as defining the length of your song before you recorded it, and it took me six months to export my first MP3 after having recording the song. I think it was a space issue and on someone's advice I deleted a load of apps and it finally exported.

I recorded a couple more but, for me it was awkward. So eventually Garageband became something I dabbled with every now and then, and all I was really doing was keeping it charged and updating IOS.

So I got the Kindle Fire and it doesn't like Google apps so can't really use the Google Play Store or Google Docs or NOW TV (which uses some Google Framework). There are ways of circumventing this but I like life easy. I've not yet connected it to Social Media, but have installed TED and managed to print via Bluetooth to my Canon Pixma Printer. It was the first photograph I took with the device , which only has a 2 MP camera, but it was late at night and I wasn't sure what I was doing when taking the picture, but I took it and printed. That's one thing I never did with the iPad (although I never tried).

I've downloaded a Music Studio, which gets good reviews, but will check that out in the coming weeks.

I then played some YouTube stuff using my Bluetooth soundbar for sound and that was good.

Then the biggest plus' which in my opinion has mad the purchase worthwhile already , was the installation of BubbleUPnP which connected to my DNLA Server meaning that my whole digital music collection is available to me. I am now seriously thinking of giving away big chunks of my CD collection.

So far, so happy.

It's Friday, so we need a "fire" related song and the ones that spring to mind are Arthur Brown, Bruce Springsteen and The Pointer Sisters but as usual I'm going a little further afield with Nick Cave's take on "Fire Down Below" from Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinsky's pirate song project "Rogues Gallery".

Adventures in Edinburgh Angels With Bagpipes

I was going to post this earlier in the week , but have been so shattered with work that my mind has not really been working after I walk out. But.. here coes...

Spent a couple of days in Edinburgh last weekend , grabbing first class travel on the train which gave a bit of extra leg room and a sandwich. Noticed that there was a special James Martin menu... breakfast consisted of an orange or a banana or a yogurt , that obviously took a lot of thought. I wonder how much they paid for that? Anyway that's being picky.

Got to Edinburgh and found the Premier Inn Hub, and that was excellent for a short term stay, big telly , big bed , shower and a 24 hour bar kitchen.

It was close to the Royal Mile but we went the other side of the tracks to eat at and enedd up at Shezan near the playhouse , which despite being busy found us a table and served up to excellent food, though they were surpised that I didn't have rice, naan bread or poppadums with my meal.

We also ate at The Dome which is an impressive building, the food and staff lovely but the only thing that grated was the rope barrier at the entrance (to keep the riff raff out I suppose) , Saturday night was at the excellent Angels with Bagpipes(booking essential and they don't need a rope) and The Abbotsford Arms was great on Sunday, it looks impressive inside and is welcoming and the food great too.

I was glad to see Fopp and Coda still full of life and these are not the only record shops in Edinburgh, but were the only two I got to visit while I was there relieving them of their last three Nick Cave Complete Lyrics books.

I was tempted to buy a set of bagpipes but the shop wasn't open when I visited it, much to the relief of my neighbours, though bagpipes played correctly are brilliant, and only people with no taste would disagree.

Anyway I thought I'd just write this to remind me of some of the good stuff that is in Edinburgh.

There are some huge buildings there, and I did get 3/4 of the way up The Scott Monument and you can see some of the video I shot here.

I thought I would leave you with some fun bagpiping from a Pipe Band, Have a great night my friends

256

I've just got to page 256 in Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I Am" and again with my recent semi obsession with numbers he's just on about the story and completion on Quadrophenia , the lead single from that being 5:15 . 256 stick out because it's just the number two to the power eight , that is multiplied by itself eight times. If you do the same with one it's still one. One never changes, multiply it by itself or divide it by itself and it's still one. If you go up to 3 then the powers create much bigger numbers 2^8 = 256 but 3^8 is 6,561 , I doubt I will ever read a book with that many pages.

Yesterday the new Nick Cave album Skeleton Tree was released, and it's great that people are still producing things I want to hear, I love the new single and am sure I will love the album when it turns up.

The Vertigo Swirl In Action

I ordered a copy of Rod Stewart's Gasoline Alley album and Black Sabbath's Paranoid single as I wanted some vinyl with the original hypnotic Vertigo Swirl label. I do like the look of vinyl playing and the Vertigo Swirl does look good. I got a copy of Split Enz "History Never Repeats"  on laser etched vinyl which you can see here.

Anyway it's Saturday and I am going to get back to watching Casino Royale , which is enjoyable. You all have a great Saturday everybody.

I just found this unaccompanied performance by Rod, absolutely brilliant.

1111

Well this is post number 1,111 that's one thousand one hundred and eleven in words. Sometimes I've missed significantly numbered posts and this is only significant because it's a load of ones. It's come on a Friday and just in time for the weekend and this is one of those posts (like most of them) where I'm going to waffle on about nothing significant.

Most of the posts probably come in about two hundred words although when in Craster I did sit down and write two thousand words to see if I could ever be a writer. I suppose it showed that although I did it when I sat down to it, I can't be bothered to do it on a permanent basis, and part  of that I suppose is that I just have a select audience , not a mass audience. Most posts tend to get about 50 views, with the odd ones that have hit over a thousand and many that have no views.

My Nick Cave / Dr Seuss take  on Red Right Hand (none of which is my work , I just put them together) is now closing on ten thousand views. Red Right Hand was the first non commissioned piece used in the X-Files and as such is a favourite of both my daughters , who while having different musical tastes both love Nick Cave.

Anyway it's now time to pack up and get off to work.

This post clocks in at 250 words so it's about average, I can't remember how many words essays had to be at secondary school but I think I would be struggling to hit the required number of words for an assignment, but this is just  like a diary so some days will be a lot, and some days there'll be a little.

It's got me thinking , how few words could I get away with, if I were Yoko Ono I could have a blank post and give it a title, and that's not a bad thing. For something to be art you just have to say that it's art.

With that thought I am going to be out the door now. Have a brilliant Friday everybody.

Halloween is Gone.November is Here and a Tenuous Link between The Toon and Nick Cave

Janus Looking Forward and Back

Well it's the ninth month (of the Roman calendar) and one of those where they'd run out of gods and politicians to name them after (it's been like that since September and will stay the same til the new year when Janus hit's us). The good news is it's Saturday and though it's five am I've had a decent night's sleep despite another early night.

Last night we had a few trick or treaters which were all young kids accompanied by their parents which was nice with on young witch deciding she wanted a tour of the house. They were all well costumed and very well behaved.




Although I find the initial concept of Halloween great fun , it's essentially adult and there's nothing cute about it.  While dressing up as a vampire or zombie can be great fun I wouldn't want to be one or live in a world populated by such creatures.

A friends of mine asked why women had to make their Halloween Costumes sexy , well all I would say is that it's personal choice, and you can still have a great costume without displaying any flesh, but the main thing is to have fun. There's a local Goth Night called the Charnel House and they published some pictures which I used for a slide show of one of the Spoon recordings from a long time ago which I have included as the video for this post , and it contains a lot of different costumes , but more to the point a lot of people having fun and enjoying themselves.



Added to that Newcastle fans are on a high after dumping Manchester City out of the League Cup . City did put out their second string , but their second string was still multi million pound buy internationals , Newcastle put out their second string with a lot of names I hadn't heard of. A Very impressive win. I've just realised I need to include two more videos because of this ( the match and The ShireHorses Nick Cave misappropriation)




Anyway, it's Saturday, I'm going to have a major rest because my body feels like it's been beaten with big sticks , so I think I'll be lounging on the settee watching catch up TV, and still enjoying the weekend. Take a leaf out of the Charnel House crowd's book and have a brilliant weekend everybody.

Downs and Ups and The Graham Norton / U2 Connection

This has been a weird week , exhausting and I was looking forward to a quiet weekend , but that's  unlikely to happen , although it's all my own fault, I could stay in and not oversee so work stuff, but really where's the fun in doing nothing.

The Schooner

The other thing Australia and Pirates (see the Mac Barnett talk)  and the Middle East have cropped up quite a lot this week from various sources such as the brilliant TED talk about books that I've included in this post. Tonight the is a Nick Cave night at the Tyneside Cinema Cafe, on Sunday a U2 tribute band on at The Schooner (I assume it'll be a standard tribute although with the Schooner you might expect a Joshua Trio  - which I believe included Graham Norton though I may be wrong -
type tribute), then on Monday night it's GOAT at Newcastle University.



Also it's my birthday next week and have been tasked with writing my best ever blog post, though best is a very subjective adjective although I have it planned out, but it will be personal and substantial , this is a fun challenging gauntlet to pick up. My current most read post is here and the irony is that if you click through to see what it is it will become even more read. While it's a reasonable post , I don't think it's my best post so far , although to be quite honest I haven't a clue what that is.

Anyway it's time for work so I will sigh off now , have a great Friday and a great weekend.

Mr Cave's A Window Cleaner Now!

Woke up this morning (sounds like a blues song , doesn't it), and the pavements outside were white and the skies were grey. This week is going to be busy again with trips to London and a concert at The Sage to fit in, but it's only by doing things that life is interesting.

This afternoon 6Music played an excellent Nick Cave song that I hadn't heard before that seemed appropriate for the apparent inclement weather which we may soon be getting.

This weather , short days and lack of sunshine doesn't make for the greatest of inspiration.

Also I seem to be downloading a lot of TV to my Samsung Note via BBC iPlayer , which is fine but this eats into the time I should be reading or maybe watching TED talks , although it does leave more time to do things when I am at home.

Anyway still lots to do, but wanted to share this great Nick Cave song , and hope you are ready for the week ahead.