Welcome To The Machine

I've just been struck how much machines are encroaching on our working lives. The Luddites smashed the machines during the industrial revolution because they feared that their jobs and therefore their livelihoods would be threatened. The French threw their clogs (sabots) into the machines to wreck them (hence the word "sabotage"). It turned out the Luddites were wrong , the industrial revolution produced great economies of scale for goods that could be mass produced, and generally standards of living improved.

Production lines had people doing repetitive tasks aided (and driven) by machines and wages enabled people to buy goods, creating demand because people had disposable income.Everyone was a winner.

However when I see staff being replaced by autotills at the supermarket (which often break down or don't work) but we as customers have to put up with it because there is no other option. If one doesn't work you move to the next one.

Bookmakers are turning into slot machine arcades, often opened in poorer areas (I have two with five minutes walk where I live), again replacing staff and making existing staff work more than twelve hour shifts often alone. Both these examples I do not see a benefit to the customer or staff only to the business owners.

I don't see myself as a Luddite, but I am worried that a lot more people will soon be out of work with no way of getting back in , and then I see this BBC article on future inequality, read it and frighten yourself because it could happen if we don't do something about the world.

In our own lives think about the phone numbers you can remember. I know my own. That's it. I used to know lots but my phone remembers for me. This is a good use of technology because it doesn't reduce what I can do , it enhances it and that's what the introduction of machines in the workplace should do for people. I also use my phone to measure my steps on my Million Step Challenge, though the app (Google Fit) needs resetting every couple of weeks as it keeps stopping or slowing down .

So I could have gone with The Beastie Boys "Sabotage", will will go for the more obvious "Welcome to The Machine" by Pink Floyd. And remember that alarm clock that wakes you up for work tomorrow, that's another piece of good technology, though I think most of us hate it.

Sleep well my friends

Hot Stuff and No Jazz

I'm talking about the weather. This is summer. It's hot. Walking over parks and fields is great. It sets you up for the day. It lifts your spirits before you hit the often mundanity of the daily drudge of work or whatever.

It's a day for drinking cold stuff, and not really putting a lot of effort into anything but relaxing.

I'm wanting to do things, but feeling absolutely drained. I managed to watch a TED talk on feminism (here) while walking home, dangerous I know, but I didn't walk into any lamp posts or in front of any cars, and gained a few new insights into why we should all be feminists ( you don't have to be a woman).

I'm really wondering whether to take a cold shower , just to cool down before I hit bed. Maybe I will and maybe I won't. Again it's that personal laziness setting in, but who knows , I'm writing this with no shirt on and the window open to keep a little cooler.

So currently listening to Iggy Pop on 6Music who is playing a lot of Charles Mingus, but I won't treat you to any of that jazz. If you like jazz you will have some Mingus, if not you wont.

Wondering what to play and I came upon an illustrated version of "Supper's Ready" by Genesis from the album "Foxtrot" , when Peter Gabriel was upfront and Phil Collins proving what a great drummer he was , and still is. It is very English, probably influenced by Lewis Carrol among others. This clocks in at 23 minutes, and is one of the few pieces that took up virtually  a side of vinyl that I am always happy to listen to from start to finish, though possibly my favourite bit kicks in about six and a half minutes in with some wonderful keyboard and guitar sequences from Tony Banks and Steve Hackett. It is up there with "Close To The Edge" by Yes, "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" by Van Der Graaf Generator and "Echoes" by Pink Floyd.

Anyway enjoy it and check out the other pieces too.

Sleep well my friends.

So Much For May Songs

Games For May - 1967

I was going to post a tune a day in May but I thing two songs in four days has scuppered that idea, although I will maintain the May theme if I can, and today's will be "See Emily Play" by Pink Floyd which features the line "Games For May" the titles of summer events Pink Floyd were involved in around 1967.

This week has been a little fraught to say the least, starting the Million Step Challenge then my Samsung Note becoming unreliable, replacing it with a Huawei P8 that wouldn't run the Barclays banking app (this has been the situation since January with no resolution in sight. Huawei blamed Barclays, Barclays pretend nothing is wrong much like Apple. EE gave me a refund on condition I bought another phone. I pointed out it wasn't actually fit for purpose and they replied "we just sell the phones"


Anyway I ended up with a Sony Xperia XA which was much cheaper and isn't too bad, apart from slow start up. I'm also worried it is not recording my steps properly . What I was sure was 4K steps recorded on the Samsung (home to Denton Burn) was recorded as less than 2K steps. Tomorrow I will walk to the Post Office Depot to pick something up and that should be about 2.2K . If it's less I will know I have a problem.

Anyway if I post another May Song tonight I could be back up to speed tonight, though I am feeling very tired.

So that;s what's happened this week so far, I'm sure it's not finished yet.

Mid Day At The Lost And Found

Today is grey and rainy. This is the sort of day when a five mile walk is not exactly inviting, but it was fine again, although I didn't exactly surpass my target by much , a mere 300 steps at the moment, but that may increase by the time midnight comes around.

Today I found a series of books by F. Paul Wilson , the whole of the "Adversary Cycle" series which were in a bag under the stairs , but missing  "The Touch" which I seem to remember I borrowed from a friend of mine to read, but I'm not so sure if I bought it. Then I thought I'd look for it and I seem to have mislaid quite a few of my Clive Barker novels, including my favourite ever book, "Imajica", plus the excellent L.Ron Hubbard biography "Bare Faced Messiah". I have read these books, and can probably buy new copies if I really want them, but it's strange how finding one thing can spur you into looking for something else.

This is one of the problems with our magpie attitude to stuff, we always want to have although we do not need. My music collection is huge though nowhere near as big as some, and my book collection is also quite extensive.


As I write this I'm listening to some alternate recordings of early Pink Floyd songs, "Matilda Mother" has completely different lyrics but is still good, and "Jugband Blues" is still a prime late sixties music hall psychedelia hybrid. That's a small part of my 5 thousand CD or half a terabyte of MP3 music collection (100K songs , though probably a lot of duplicates).

Anyway this Easter Sunday I have had an Easter Egg, done 10K steps, and found the books above. The weather is rubbish, but you can't have everything, although it would be nice to have. So it's time to see if I can track down those books and if I can't find them , reorder them online.

I've include two excellent videos of "Matilda Mother" from "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" and the alternate version so you can hear what I've been listening to.

So I need now to see if those books are still around, and make my tea (a couple of bacon sandwiches methinks). So enjoy your Easter Sunday my friends, and if you're lucky like me you'll be able to have a lie in tomorrow too.

Time

It's weird, over the last couple of months I seem to have less time to do what I want, often missing out on things so that I can have some me time to recuperate from the exertions of whatever I'm doing during the week. I haven't attended a gig since November and I've forgotten last time I met someone socially, the nearest being dropping in on my friend Krista at her KOTA place in the Grainger Market.

Tomorrow I go to the Freeman Hospital for a Liver Biopsy coincidentally the same day as a friend of mine is there for the start of his chemotherapy, hardly the best conditions for social interaction.

So what do I do , I set up another blog to give out free horse racing tips here. So I'm still looking for things to do, I'm also still trying to sort out recording possibilities with my set up, having discovered how to use the arpeggiator in GarageBand on the iPad, as well as catching up on TV and listening to music, at the moment "Queen" by Perfume Genius , followed by the stunning "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" by Pere Ubu , both stunning records.

I hope this doesn't sound as though I'm complaining, I am making plans to do things and will be definitely more active in the new year. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to sleep and had 30 hour days not taken up with 8 hours of work, but don't we all feel like that.

I'm lucky that work is a pleasant place to work with some brilliant people there, and they also do a great job that I am glad to be a part of.

So what temporally themed song should I choose "Time" by Pink Floyd or David Bowie? I will probably shock you by choosing Coldplay's "Clocks" but the Buena Vista Social Club version.

Have a lovely night my gorgeous friends.

One Two Free Four - #ALifeInNumbers #34

A couple of years ago Pink Floyd took out a court injunction to stop albums being sold as individual songs. While I understand this for an artistic integrity point of view, when you are selling, the aim is to make money, and surely it is better to receive a pound or two for two songs that the buyer wants than lose ten pounds that would have been the cost of the album. They won the case but must have changed their minds because you can buy the songs individually now.

I do prefer putting and album on and listening to all of it , but digital music gave us the skip, repeat and program options  and these days there are people who cannot stay to the end on a three minute song. I remember watching an artist on X-Factor covering "Nights In White Satin"  by the Moody Blues which clocks in at 5 minutes , but the X-Factor version finished at well under three minutes. When I mentioned this to the person who cajoled me into watching it, they said "Yeah they do that with all the songs otherwise you'd get bored" which confirmed my preconceptions that X-Factor had nothing to do with music.

Anyway this was one of those songs that was penned in as soon as I thought of doing this. It's "Free Four" by Pink Floyd from "Obscured By Clouds" the soundtrack to La Vallee by Barbet Schroeder. No reason apart from I have always loved the song with it's slight acoustic riff underpinned my Rick Wright's menacing synthesizer, Roger Water's deceptively dark lyrics and some Dave Gilmour perfunctory heavy guitar.

So enjoy this, it's time to go off to work now. Have a brilliant Monday my friends.

Getting Biblical With Pink Floyd - #ALifeInNumbers #23

This morning it's grey and cold and it's like there's almost a sea fret over Fenham (which I believe is the highest point in Newcastle so we're unlikely  to be troubled by floods.

As a teenager I got of of a bootleg cassette record of a Pink Floyd tour , one of the songs "You Gotta Be Crazy" finished up as "Dogs" on the vastly underrated "Animals" album , the second song was monstrous, even on a second or third generation cassette bootleg, and that was called "Raving and Drooling" (see below for a very early airing) and that became "Sheep" which is the song featured for number twenty three in the sequence. Those two songs are available on the Experience edition of "Wish You Were Here"

Sheep? 23?  What the hell is going on here.

You know I like to go off on tangents and 23 was a problem number like 31, but while reading my Bible (you know that's a joke unless you equate The Bible with Google or whatever book I'm reading) I remembered that "Sheep" contains a take on "Psalm 23".. as you can see Roger Waters amended it slightly, but it would fit in with the other mindless violence in the Bible:

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want 

He makes me down to lie 

Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by. 

With bright knives He releaseth my soul. 

He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places. 

He converteth me to lamb cutlets, 

For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger.

 When cometh the day we lowly ones, 

Through quiet reflection, and great dedication

 Master the art of karate, 

Lo, we shall rise up, 

And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water."

So this was an excuse to include another of my favourite Pink Floyd songs and provide you with ten minutes of brilliant music accompanied by images from the excellent black comedy "Black Sheep".

Enjoy your Saturday even more my friends.

Two To Know - #ALifeInNumbers #2

Right off I've taken a bit of a liberty with this one but the number TWO is important in the song. I am lyning in bed drinking Buck's Fizz courtesy of the lovey people at La Rosa as I write this. This is unusual because I don't normally drink alcohol but it's still my birthday weekend and and I'm in La Rosa.

Anyway the song I've chosen is Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" which contains the line:

"Two To Know"

Two To Know

Syd Barrett's lyric was picked up by the Oxford Book of Fine verse as a particularly fine example of alliteration or some grammatical construct. Amazingly I'd already written about this three years back and it came up in a Google Search here , which shows the benefits of blogging , that I am now referencing my own research on things. I will also use the same video of course as this is number two in a series of fifty nine songs which I will select by hook or by crook.








Anyway that is that, also I have come up with a way of predicting horse racing results using freely available tools and here are four horse for today so you can see if it's working or not.

Yesterday I predicted five out of seven and the other two placed. So if you fancy a flutter here they are:

Todays Tips

Have a brillaint Sunday everyone, I intend to.

Complementary Opposition

I am often denigrated for not fitting in the boxes that people expect. I don't watch soaps (unless you count the episodes of Doctors that my friend Paul Campbell writes , and he is not your average soap writer) , and the programs I do watch often go completely over the head of a lot of people.

I am a great fan of lateral thinking and love the concepts of Edward De Bono. I was introduced to him during my induction training at Littlewoods nearly 40 years ago. This means often my ideas are dismissed by people because they seem to be not the normal way to achieve a goal.

At school everyone was into Led Zeppelin, Yes, Hawkind, Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad and ELP. I deliberately refused to listen to Led Zeppelin because they were everywhere. I loved The Bonzo Dog Band, Bowie, Pink Floyd,Hawkwind , T Rex and The Sweet. I remember being at a school disco and the DJ had a sense of humour because he segued Jean Genie  into Blockbuster. It took the heads on the dancefloor two minutes to realise before they stormed off in disgust. I loved both records , and so did the DJ and if you have any doubts about the Sweet's credentials take a listen to Sweet F.A.


The things is I am open to all ideas and like a very wide range of music. I still know people who won't listen to anything outside of 1972-1976 time period, and there is no point in trying to argue a case for listening to new music.

A while ago I posted a YouTube video of an Enya / Prodigy mash up and a few Prodigy fans were horrified. I could understand Enya fans being horrified but surely not Prodigy fans. This was the Evil Prodigy corrupting the Radio 2 Celtic Acceptability of Enya. I bought Orinoco Flow when it came out and love a lot of the Prodigy stuff and it's funny how people decided I am not a proper whatever because I actually listen and can enjoy most genres.

Complementary Opposition

Again I think the mash up above says a lot about me , I enjoy stuff with an edge , I enjoy stuff that
doesn't necessarily challenge , I enjoy going off into the unknown but I also enjoy knowing where I am going and what I am going to get.

Life is good and if I wasn't like I was I wouldn't have done many of the things I have enjoyed doing, and I am looking forward to many many more.

Anyway this is more rambling on my part, enjoy the rest of your Sunday my wonderful friends.

Earth, Wind and Fire

In the seventies when my major musical influences were being formed , my attention was often caught by bands with a penchant for presentation, but most of my grammar school peers were into progressive rock, while the music teachers bored us with classical , and my out of school friends were Teddy Boys and Greasers with a taste for rock and roll and hard country.

Early need to see bands were Hawkwind and Pink Floyd , I caught Hawkwind but never got to see Pink Floyd, both had light shows and multi media aspects to their shows and Hawkwind had the attraction of Stacia an Amazonian Proportioned dancer.

Then I heard about a band called Kiss , masks , flame throwing guitar, fireworks , so I checked out their albums and .... was not impressed. They sound weak , turned out to be bandwagon jumpers and just plain annoying.

EWF

But then came Earth, Wind and Fire. They had mysticism , magic in their stage shows , huge sets , amazing musicianship .... but they were disco. This was totally at odds and messed  with my brain, how could a band that looked and seemed so interesting be a disco band? Seriously.

Well forty years on I bought The Eternal Dance and I will give them a real listen, I have loved some of their stuff but my musical bigotry has stopped me from buying theor stuff.






That changed today so of course I have to include some live footage of the band from Japan in 1988 for you to enjoy. The stage set is very impressive .We didn't have this in the seventies , but we do now.

Enjoy and have a great week

A Purple Bit

Hendrix and Zappa

Yesterday when I was in Stratford I looked at The Vinyl Disctrict app on my Samsung and it came up with Purple Vinyl. HMV is long gone so in Stratford the only source of getting ohold of music is the charity shops. The thing is there were a lot of tourists there, but obviously not enough to support a record shop.

Purple Vinyl Sign

Anyway I found Purple Vinyl close to Shakespeare's birthplace, and they have a Facebook presence here.  The Stratford shop had a lot of Zappa, Hendrix and Pink Floyd stuff nicely displayed and I spoke to the proprietor who told me they were essentially an online operator (check them out here)

I can't remember the guy's name but he was really nice to talk to, and though I didn't buy anything, I'd recommend going along just to see what they have out , or smapling their online selection.

I saw a 99p Jimi Hendrix BackTrack compilation which they were selling for £30, and was almost tempted as I had had it my original record collection. I now only my vinyl as artefacts rather than to play, and they still feel substantial compared to CD or the ephemera of MP3.

Given the amount of Hendrix they had on display and their name, there can only be one song can't there?

Anyway it's good to see a record shop in Stratford and hope they live long and prosper.

Have a pleasant evening everyone.

Last Night I Had A Dream .... A Very Weird Dream

..and I've woken up exhausted. This was a real dream in which nothing made any real sense while also being vaguely familiar. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with it, but there's nothing major in it, just a lot of weird juxtapositions. Here goes:

I'm at a skating rink or bowling alley meeting up to go to a Syd Barrett (original leader of Pink Floyd) concert (he's long dead and only die hard fans would attend) . When we get to the venue , a small theatre I meet up with hris from work (who is getting married in a couple of weeks and I'm with my daughters and a few other friends. Syd Barrett comes on stage , which is at the same level as the stalls, but he's obviously out of it so I get up, hold him up, and I sing the first song for him , before he's taken away and a tribute concert then takes place.

After the gig we wonder about going for a meal , there are two Mexican / Indian Wetherspoons pubs restaurants, one called the "Droopy Bell" with a logo of a Bell Pepper. We decide on the other restaurant and at this moment are in an area reminiscent of Newcastle's Haymarket. , coming out of roughly where Boots is now (may we'd been to Sergeant Peppers, but the "Bell Pepper" was where the Metro Station is. We decide on the other restaurant

On the way I'm then with a friend who's a pub owner who needs to order some replacement aluminium beer kegs, so while he's doing that I decide to let people know by phoning them. My phone is out of charge, so I look in my satchel and find an iPhone and wonder what that is doing there....

Then I woke up and thought what he hell was that.

Hope it's kept you entertained, and I have another post to do tonight but I need to get off to work. Have a great day everyone and hope I haven't twisted your melons!

By the way all the drugs I take are purely medicinal , honest. And by next blog  post will be number 700!

Let There Be More Light

Well I'm still looking after myself, trying to eat healthily and I haven't touched coke for week, but the weight is only coming down very slowly . But its is coming down.

This morning I had to go and pick up a package for the local Royal Mail sorting office because my friend Jo from Darlington refused to do it for me (only joking), but rather than wait for the bus I walked and almost didn't notice the journey. Well I didn't until I walked back when I realised that the mile and a half walk to the sorting office was slightly downhill, and therefore the walk back was up hill. Still it would have done me good and I didn't really notice it.

The 3w LEDs Fitted and Working

Anyway I was picking up some LED bulbs for my new kitchen light fittings, fitted expertly by my brilliant mate Dave. The fittings had halogen bulbs and basically when switched on were using about a pounds worth of electricity a day. That is fine because you don't have the lights on all the time, but I just fitted the new LED ones and they are using £1 to £1.50 electricity a month even left on 24/7 !!

LED is the lighting to have if you can get it. And that's why I had to use the Pink Floyd song on here.

So a good start to the weekend, I hope you all have a great one .

An addendum to this , if you fit the LEDs and use them for 2 hours a day they will save you a penny a day (each bulb) against halogen. I have 12 bulbs in my house so over the year that'sover £40. No doubt the power companies will have to claw back their profits by increasing prices.

Still Awake Listening To The Rain

Was going to mow the lawn , looked out and it was very wet. It's been raining all night so no lawn mowing tomorrow. Still will have the finales to Da Vinci's Demons and The Fall to look forward to. Of course if I tag The Fall now , it will fall in with Mark E Smith's Mancunian Juggernaut of band rather the  tale of murder , psychology featuring the excellent Gillian Anderson. C'est La Vie.

Anyway it looks like another Pink Floyd tune has found it's way into June's Tunes as my friend John posted about the album More the soundtrack to the 1969 film by Barbet Schroeder. The track is the main theme is which is one of my favourite uses of stereo panning along with Jimi Hendrix's "May This Be Love" the opening track from the second side  of "Are You Experienced" . Anyway if you have headphones I suggest you stick them on now , turn up and drift away:

The Moon In June

This was one of the songs that I had down for the June's Tunes. Obviously it could be used any day , but less obviously it is probably a tune most of you don't know. Always loved Soft Machine , but lots of you will know Karl Jenkins and maybe even Robert Wyatt - banned from performing on top of the pops because he was in a wheelchair and it might disturb sensitive viewers. He actually was on once with a stellar backing band featuring Nick Mason (Pink Floyd) , Fred Frith (Henry Cow) and may others when he covered The Monkee's I'm a Believer . It may actually be already on this blog (check the Robert Wyatt tags). Oops it's not but I will actually post about it soon.

Anyway summer is still with us and is likely to be here all week.

Happy days

Two To Know

Today its the second of June and was thinking of something to do with the day for the June's Tunes task , and my first thought was Sunday Morning by The Velvet Underground , well actually it wasn't , it was U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday , both fine songs but I am trying to keep off the obvious track , and for some reason Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" came to mind.

The reason for it is the phrase "Two Too Know" , which actually found its way into the Oxford Book of Fine Verse , despite the song being controversial as it was about a man who's "strange hobby " was stealing ladies underwear from washing lines at night for his own nefarious purposes. The wiki link is here.


Anyway in the rest of the news , the weather is good , and I way have a wander along to day two of the Green Festival as the weather is gorgeous again. Just realized over the last two weeks the weather has been gorgeous over the weekends and rubbish during the week , just what you want for any normal person.

Still Fighting With My Left Hand, Record Store Day Highlights and What Is Good Music?

Well still the docs are looking for clues for why my left couple of fingers don't work properly , though it's coming back slowly I think. Today I had an MRI scan which is not very nice when you are a closet claustrophobe like me. I requested some music and got "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd that approximated the length of time of the scan punctuated by the undustrial techno soundtrack of the scanner itself. One improvement is they give you a little periscope so you can see that there are people about if you choose to look , but I can't recommend the experience. Still that one's over with so now wait for two weeks to hear what the prognosis is.

A lot of people have been saying how good the Daft Punk / Nile Rodgers collaboration "Get Lucky" is so I thought I should give it a listen. ... and it is very good , but really this what all mainstream radio should meet in terms of quality , however it didnt knock me off my feet , but is certainly a record I'd like to hear on the radio.


My biggest surprise was the Paul Weller single Flame Out! put out for National Record Shop Day. This DID knock me off my feet . Sounding like Public Image Limited with another singer , certainly not your average Paul Weller song , this is the sort of thing that we want more of . And the B Side is a fine song as well. That really did perk up my weekend.

Living In The Past

It's funny how we have a hankering for old things and things to remain as they were / are, when a lot of the time the new stuff is actually far better than the old stuff. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note phone , but I want an emulator on on it so I can play the games I enjoyed on my Amstrad CPC computer. I downloaded an emulator but it just crashes my phone . C'est la vie.

I bought an alarm clock that emulates Tetris , and believe me you dont snooze with it , that alarm has to be switched OFF.

A lot of the music I have on my players id the stuff of my teenage years such as Hawkwind and Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull. Having said that I am a hige fan of convenience. and use both the ridiculous 48 GB capacity , plus Deezer and Youtube to allow me to play what I want when I want.

There have been recent things about returns to cassette tape even . Cassette was brilliant in its time , but was fragile , didnt last , and I would never dream of using a cassette again except to extract so rare music or something. The good part is that you have to do it in real time , which is a lot more personal that knocking together a Spotify or Grooveshark playlist , but those platforms  enable you to share music and Grooveshark does let you upload stuff that it doesnt have. Any way heres some old Bok Demo's from the mid 70s.

Books and Records and Ali G

Well I've jusst finished the excellent Tony Benn biography by Jad Adams , discovering lots of things about someone who must be close on the most respected politician ever. The book is surprising readable obviously helped by it's subject mater or an caring idealist , a stunning orator who had the intelligence outspeak opponents without ever getting flustered. His encounter with Ali G / Sacha Baron Cohen  showed him taking matters seriously rather than pandering to sreotypes resulting in Sacha Baron Cohen writing to Benn thanking him for being the only person to react with skill and integrity to Ali G's inane stereotypical questioning.

Anyway this means I've started "A Little History Of The |World" by Ernst Gombrich which is the book I've chosen to distribute on World Book Night on Tuesday April 23rd 2013 on my train back from work between Darlington and Newcastle. The preface tells of the genesis of the book which is entertaining in itself , I was going to tell you about it but the copy on the Amazon page does that very well , so I'll include that here:

"In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in twenty-five languages across the world. Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savoured and collected. In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colourful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind's experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history."

I've said it previous posts why I chose the book and have started reading it , and finding it well written , in terms a child could understand, really a book that should be in every household especially if there are young children. It is the sorting of book theat stimulates interest and inquisitiveness and will inevetibly have them asking "Why?" in a good way.

Three days before that it's National Record Shop Day which will mean long queues out of RPM , Reflex and Beatdown in Newcastle and bands playing and street entertainment and chasing limited editions onf vinyl artefacts worldwide.Every year it's getting bigger and better , and as for the demise of record shops , don't believe a word of it , the best ones are still with us . I was recently surprised to find excellent record shops in York and Bakewell , and as long as a shop is welcoming and able to adapt they will attract customers. Often people complain about the cost of music and I point outthis fact:

In 1975 Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here in an unfeasible shrink wrapped plastic bag, containing postcards etc (maybe that was Dark Side of The Moon which did contain posters and stickers). Anyway I'd just left school and was geeting job seekers allowance which was £3.25 .... the same price of the new Pink Floyd album. Needless to say I didnt go out that week.

So if albums had kept pace with Job Seekers Allowance the cost of an album would now be around £60 !! I recently took deliver of The Blue Oyser Cult's Columbia Album box set (17 discs) which cost me £46 and that was funded by a MyVoice voucher and Hilton Honors voucher so I didnt rwally even pay for it. So music today is better value than ever.

Do We Still Have Two Ears? Dre Says We Do!

Well at least Dr Dre thinks so , thouagh iPod Dock manufacturersseem to be going for a big ingle speakers . Music doesnt mater you would think.

I rememebr mono listening to singles on a Dansette , the coming of stereo my mums radiogram then my unit with two wired speakers that I could place anywhere. Then we had the short lived quadrophonic phase. The only one I ever saw was an accountant who bought a system and all he had to play was a couple of MFP albums !  Like spending ten grand on a home cinema system and only having The Blair Witch Project to demonstrate it in!!

I think it was Virgin who promoted quadrophonic as music for people with "four ears" . Pink Floyd had a device called the Azimuth Co-Ordinator which was a joystick device for controlling to position of sound within a four speaker system.

We now have 7.1 Home Cinema Systems for film , but music seems to be lucky to get stereo , when 5.1 mixes give the listener incredibly detailed sound . The first King Crimson album "Court of The Crimson King" sound phenomenal , enabling the listener to [ick out individual sounds while still enjoying the immersion of the whole experience.

Anyway while Apple were pushing white tiny in ear headphones , Dr Dre went the other way , with full on logoed headsets allowing the users to display their affiliation , and how much they have spent. Dr Dre has not released an album in ten years but his mentoring of the likes of 50 Cent and his very expensive exclusive Beats headphones are expanding musical and appreciation and his huge bank balance.

I won't be buying a pair but it is one of the music things that I do do approve of, far better than the enormous plague of single speaker iPod docks !

Oh I've just noticed this is my 100th post this year , I was wondering if I would make it . Although this was helped by my "Post A Day In May" thing.