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.

Red

I missed the Lunar eclipse and can't understand why it's listed as a "Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse" , yes because it's red "Blood" but why include the word "Wolf" in there? It seems a pointless addition like when mobile and broadband companies describe speeds of Super Ultra Mega Fast, it's either fast or not. TV manufacturers and broadcasters do the same with picture quality with Ultra and Super HD. Pointless extra adjectives.

There were some amazing red skies this morning, examples on my instagram channel here. I don't know if that was caused by the Lunar Eclipse.There are lots of explanationa on line on how the moon was turned red by the eclipse and that should keep you occupied for quite a while if that is to your particular taste.

This post is unusual in that it has no musical content, though you can always go for Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of The Moon" or Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" as vaguely related, but I just got a bit of video from the Guardian to see what happened, and I am sure that is far more relevant.

Two Suns

When I've been looking for music to share the image of this Pink Floyd song is always there in the selection list, so this has come thanks to Youtube prompting. It is a wonderful song, with a great evocative title "Two Suns In The Sunset" referring to a nuclear blast although the song is anything but based on the music but but the words do tear into you.

It's from "The Final Cut" which I think was Roger Waters finale with the band.

I suppose this song has been haunting me and now I have shared it with you, in it's brilliant bittersweetness of the finality of life, but the song will finish and life will continue but we do need that memento mori to keep us grounded in reality.

It is late on Sunday night and I'm in the basement lounge of the Settle holiday cottage having watched a few interesting programs tonight. I am not sure what tomorrow will bring but I will see Mike Harding, and , weather permitting, may go to the top of Castlebergh Crag above Settle to get some views of the place.

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Music IS a Drug

Today I listened to Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets" and followed that up with XTC's "Mummer" and when "Beating of Hearts" came on I thought wow this is so good, I want more. I had been going thru "A Saucerful of Secrets" thinking how sinister and disturbing "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun" and getting lost in the three part soundscape of the title track, and the songs that close each side "Corporal Clegg" half comedy/half tragedy and Syd Barrett's farewell appearance with the band "Jugband Blues" which seems an almost cut and paste effort but sad realising the burnt out genius that this was showing us, and still is. Evering song is like a pill that makes you want another.

I think "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun" and the title track on "A Saucerful of Secrets"are absolutely excellent but they are improved on in the live versions on the album "Ummagumma". I remember going into a shop that sold records at Lane Ends in Preston and the hipster salesperson told me they didn't sell singles!! I never darkened their door again.

Someone once described Ramones songs as like Smarties, you cant have just one you have to have lots.

So onto "Mummer" and "Beating of Hearts" which when you listen on headphones you get the low frequency hit after Andy Partridge sings "Louder Than Bombers In Flight" every time, you know it's coming, and eventually it finishes and you want the next one "Wonderland" and interlude before the single "Love on a Farmboy's Wages" and it continues on and you enjoy every moment.

I definitely could not be without music, even when I have nothing to play or not player or musical instrument handy, it's still there in my head, sometimes songs and pieces I know, sometimes things I want to rediscover.

I just felt I had to put this down here, before I go and sort out my tea, it was just an idea or a concept and it's an excuse to share this incredible XTC song. Have a great Saturday Night everybody.

Remember A Day

I walked into work this morning as was listening to Thousand Yard Stare's "Live at Electric Studios" and had been wondering who the intro to the instrumental "Petrichor" remind me of, and today realised it was post Roger Waters Pink Floyd, pretty threatening before returning to familiar TYS territory.

The album is excellent but I have been listening to a lot of them this week so decided to to go to Floyd's last album that featured Syd Barrett, "A Saucerful of Secrets" which my friend Harry Clark referred to as "Y D" because of the titling on the cover, which is one of those that you can always lose yourself in wuth it's magu, planets and magical and alchemical devices and colouring.

The secongd song in is the one I took the post title from and still one of my favourites though I first heard it on "Relics" an early cheap compilation featuring a Nick Mason drawn Heath Robinson like cover, another that you can sit andlook at and lose yourself in though it's better to have the vinyl version than the CD or digital version.

I've shared a version used as a soundtack to the Japanese animation "The Wanderer" for you to enjoy.

Pastoral

I didn't really write last week, though I was on holiday, although as I was doing what I wanted I would have expected to write even more. The main thing about a holiday is to get away for the pressure of having to do things although you do force yourself to do things because you are on holiday.

One of the days we did the Dalemain Loop which is a six mile part of the larger Ullswater Way , taking in Dacre and Pooley Bridge before returning to Dalemain Hall. There's some images here if you want to see.

Dalemain Hall contains a hell of a lot of marmalade so i helped myself to a couple of jars, and the people there are very helpful.

In Pooley Bridge I had some coffee and cake at Granny Dowbekin's and later visited The Crown next door for some excellent food. Granny Dowbekin's had an excellent range of food including a decent spread of vegan options.

The Crown's food was excellent including courgette fritters which you can see here.

At one point we were walking along the river and a bird took off and it reminded me of the sound effect used in Pink Floyd's "Grantchester Meadows" which was part of the Roger Waters solo section on the studio section "Ummagumma" so I will include that for this post.

A Million Bright Ambassadors of Morning

It's Friday Morning and the Transfer Window is shut. It's cloudy but the sun is fighting through. I really don't think the #August50 is a goer. while I've walked a long way today I've got an ache in my side and think th eweather is draining me again.

Yesterday I was hoping for a decent amount of posting but couldn't get the inspiration to write, and that's what I feel with this post, and if  I keep hitting a brick wall like this then I can't really do it.

I could possibly post a video or a link but I do like to write around 250 words to ensure that I am actually saying something. However there is not much I have to say.

Over the last couple days on my walks I have revisited my favourite ever album, "Future Games" by Spirit, and while it doesn't contain any of my favourite songs, even by Spirit, overall it is a brilliantly complete album, a veritable film for the ears.

That was followed by possibly my favourite Pink Floyd album, "Meddle" which does contain my favorite Pink Floyd song "Echoes" which takes up side two of the vinyl incarnation of the record. This was also used for a great part of the soundtrack to the 1973 Australian surf movie "Crystal Voyager". The title of the post is a line from "Echoes".

So I did manage to find something to write about, and the weekend is a little bit closer so things are now looking good.

Enjoy yoursef.

Speed

I'm sure that I used to be able to knock off a blog post in ten minutes, but these days it can often take an hour ,or sometimes thirty minutes. When I see what others write I thin, for me, that would be about a days work if I could actually concentrate on it for that long. Just vaguely timing this I'm actually writing at about a line a minute, although the actual post is on a wider screen so that's not as many lines therefore when I'm writing I look and think "That looks a decent post" then when I publish it I think "Is that all?".

The weather is still excellent although my walking this month is only just keeping up with what I need to do, and next month may be extra difficult because of the time I need to take off walking for the Liver Biopsy, though having said that my last one must have been last year so I must have coped with that, or maybe it was two years back. I need to check that out

So this was to check if I could actually do a fast blog post. This one is going to be about 250 words havingg taken basically ten minutes. Maybe I am just gettiing less efficient or more inefficient, who knows?

I need to choose something new to listen to on the way to work but not sure what that will be. As on the last post I mentioned Alice Cooper I was going to leave you with "The Ballad of Dwight Fry" from "Love It To Death", a very scary song and an example of why early Cooper albums were so good, but then I saw this amazing animation from "The Diary of Tortov Roddle" by Kunio Kato,(check here for original) for Pink Floyd's "The Narrow Way" , the Dave Gilmour solo piece on the studio disc of  "Ummagumma", maybe Dwight Fry tomorrow.

As you can see I've got totally sidetracked and gone of on a tangent because I just saw something interesting that I wanted to share and remember, so this blog has almost tripled in the time it has taken me to produce. C'est La Vie.

It's the middle of the week, enjoy yourselves.

I Feel Love

There is a flying ant on the outside of my window pane, and the sky is a uniform grey. It is a Friday morning and 6Music is celebrating women in music with "Hear Her Day" with female-dominated playlists and female  DJs. However due to one thing and another I had to leave this unfinished, but I can now write about what I wanted to write about.

I keep thinking that my vinyl collection is close to complete and then there's always just one more thing, these one more things have included Cat Stevens' "Numbers" for the overal package and book as well as being a decent album, "True Colours" by Split Enz which I didn't know was actually laser etched, I have the single "History Never Repeats" that looks amazing when it's playing and I am looking forward to seeing the album, you don't get that with a CD or MP3 do you?

The third was going to be the Patrick Cowley Megamix of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" all 15 minutes of it on 45rpm vinyl but even I shy away from paying twenty notes for a single. The thing is you can download Donna Summer's Greatest Hits (26 songs) for four pounds so that's what I did, and then ordered a double promo remix vinyl set for fifteen pounds so hopefully, that will satisfy me.

When "I Feel Love" came out in the mid-seventies for the rock and rock and roll cognoscenti, Disco was a dirty word, but me and friends were into German psychedelia and Giorgi Moroder's metallic rhythms on this single made a lot of people listen, who would have normally dissed Disco.

It turns out that the sound was stumbled on accidentally with the note on the synthesiser being played twice with the slightest delay resulting in an amazing sound. This was perfectly complemented by Donna Summer's voice and is perfect for remixing as it's both skeletal but more than powerful enough to stand on it's own. It's similar to the guitar delay favoured buy Pink Floyd and U2, and also the accident in the drum machine pattern that resulted in New Order's "Blue Monday".

So I managed to find the Patrick Cowley Mix on Youtube so I will leave that with you to enjoy.

Enjoy your Friday.

Frontier Man

I was going to call this post "Manic Depression" but I thought that it might lead people in who might think it might provide insight into the condition, but of course it wont be, but then Chris Hawkins played "Frontier Man" by Gruff Rhys from the new album "Babelsberg" and that has already provided "The Nightmare of Existence" title a couple of posts ago, and therefor has to be the featured song today. It is a definite grower with gorgeous lyrics and a wonderful video. The album has been ordered.

"On The Frontier of Delusion,

  I'm Your Foremost Frontier Man"

What I was going to say is often the way I tend to do things is either I do lots of things at once or else just fall into a lethargy. Maybe this is just a way of recharging batteries for the next burst of creativity. LIke this weekend two gigs, a Steampunk Fair, three blog posts on Sunday but I still didn't mow the lawn.

It  doesn't mean I'm depressed but I remember Spike Milligan talking about the condition saying it was either the black dog or 100 mph creativity. This sounds similar to Bipolar where you are high / low (I think). I'm sorry if I seem to be trivialising this, I'm definitely not.

Manic Depression is also a great Jimi Hendrix song from is debut album "Are You Experienced" , which is another reason why the title came into my head, so that is one to cue up for a relisten. Anyway it still looks cloudy out there and a little cold, but it is time to set off for work, and hope you have a great Tuesday.

I'm still confused as to why generally MP3 downloas are more expensive than the CD (which comes with a free download) although "Set Fire To The Stars" is a tiny £1.79 for twenty three songs as opposed to a tenner for the CD. Whatever music is still incredibly good value for money.

When Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" was released it cost £3.25. I was on the dole at the time and my JSA was £3.25 a week. So if albums had kept pace with JSA you would be paying £80 for the ne Gorillaz album.

Think on that.

#TenAlbumsInTenDays #4 - The Book of Invasions - Horslips

I'd got into Horslips through "The Tain" an album based on a story from Irish mythology which Michael Moorcock had lifted from for his Corum section of the Eternal Champion series (which I must attempt to re read).

"The Book of Invasions" got a five start NME review but I was at the record shop on it's day of release and got it home and put it on. This had never happened before but that album was the only thing that was on my record player for two weeks.

There were flashes onf Thin Lizzy (who also were lovers of Irish Mythology) in there, as well as the Irish folk tunes mixed in with the mythology, maybe it just hit me at the right time, but it is on the player as I am writing this, and maybe it's a little under produced but every song that comes on you love listening too and also can't wait for the next one.

Like a good book or film , you don't want it to end. Almost every song is like that and definitely the album makes you feel like that.

It's an album where every song flows into the next one , the same as say "Dark Side of The Moon" by Pink Floyd, you don't skip songs on this.

I found a slideshow for the album which clocks in at forty minutes but it is difficult to choose one song from this essential part of the music I love

March Final

It's after ten and this is my last post for March 2018. The weather has been miserable and I couldn't do that much walking although I hit my target for March.

I'm fifty page from completing "The Catcher In The Rye" by JD Salinger an have decided it is worth the effort of completing it, but it's a bit like cleaning gutters or unblocking a drain. It's not pleasant but has to be done. The protagonist is not pleasant. If he were in the UK today he would read the Daily Mail and vote Tory without being articulate eno0ugh to give a reason why. He always finds a reason to despise people especially if they are not well off. He himself is provided for by well to do parents that he is still, for want of a better word, a git. This book makes you think of how to deal with annoyances like Holden Caulfield, a privileged nobody who believes the world owes him whatever he wants. I haven't finished the book so I may be completely wrong in my evaluation, but if you take this book on don't expect to feel better after reading it.

Yesterd I took deliver of "Suffice To Say: The Complete Yachts Collection" on Cherry Red Records  masterminded by Henry Priestman the music behing The Christians. I've moaned that The Yachts had never appeared in digital format apart from the odd track on compilations, but now that has been rectified and I ordered it from the excellent Action Records in Preston, and it really is an excellent set.

It's funny that I was thinking twent quid for three CDs is expensive but it really isn't. In 1975 (I think) I was on the dole and my JSA was £3.25 a week (it was subsidised by undeclared lump work so I could actually live) . Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" came out  and was priced at £3.25. So if albums had kept in line with JSA we'd be paying £80 for an album.

So I will leave you with "Yachting Types" and you can buy the albums mentioned below.

Complete Demotivation

On Monday, after a great weekend I really couldn't motivate myself to do anything. I don't know if it was the overcast weather and the fact that the footpaths were iced up, but I couldn't even be bothered to walk very far and so caught the bus home and into work (not in that order obviously).

Work is fairly pressured but it's the work that is causing the pressure and normally that is a great motivatorm but not on Monday. Of course the other factor was that it was Monday and combine that with potential SAD then you have a fairly toxic situation. I got home and couldn't be bothered cooking or even getting a takeaway so made a tomato sandwich, swithced on the TV feeling really drained and tired, watched fifteen minutes of The Simpsons then went to bed .... and slept all teh way through to six o' clock Tuesday morning.

The weather is still grey skies and not great but after a busy day yesterday dealing with some exasperating people I have come up with a solution to part of a project at work which I expect to get completed today.

The thing is that how I felt on Monday must be a small part of how people suffering from Depression feel all the  time magnified God knows how many times with lots of additional dark feelings. I am lucky, on Monday I knew that I would feel better soon. If you suffer from Depression you do not have that luxury.

Anyway it is now Wednesday and yesterday I was listening to "Ritual De Lo Habitual" by Jane's Addiction and thought it was a time to listen to a different band, which contains among others the brilliant "Been Caught Stealin'".

I decided to choose Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother" which was co composed with Scottish eccentric avant garde composer Ron Geesin. It features some amazing melodic brass, and this giveds me an excuse to share this wonderful live cover at Théâtre du Chatelet somewhere in France. I'm not certain but I think Ron Geesin is on keyboards on this. It is is nearly half an hour and is and uplifting and exhilarating piece and maybe contributed to my good mood yesterday.

It is Wednesday  so enjoy yourself everyone.

March Swirling In

The sky is grey and featureless and the snow is swirling and getting a little deeper. It's cold but not so bad that you can't move out there. Buses and cars are are fairly frequest on the roads. Buses are finishing early but you have to think that the drivers have to get home after they finish.

I am really sick of hearing "The Beast From The East", it's a bit more snow that we are used to that's all.

Anyway I have been listening to Pink Floyd's "Obscured By Clouds" the soundtrack to Barbet Schroeder's "La Vallée" .

They had previously soundtracked another of his films "More" ,the Main Theme countaining some amazingly atmospheric stero panning which sounds wonderful on headphones.

"Obscured By Clouds" opens with heavy synthesiser bombs before treating us to some excellent songs "Wots.. Uh The Deal" and "Free Four" are two favourites of mine, but "Stay", "Childhood's End" and "The Gold It's In The" make the grade as well.

Careful With That Axe Eugene - Five Words and a Scream

This morning I went to the local Post Office depot to pick up an item "too big" for my letterbox. Because it was early it was a walk across the park and down Stamfordham Road and I got there ten minutes early.

The album I was listening to was the live disc of Pink Floyd's "Ummagumma" and for the firsy yime I noticed that the rhythm is provided by the guitars, with the drums used more as a musical embellishment whereas on most rock songs it's the other way round, especially on a lot of modern songs where rhytm machines and sequencers are used. I remember when I bought it as a teenager from a record shop at Lane Ends in Preston, the rather haughty guy dismissed me with "We don't sell singles" instantly displaying his musical ignorance. Needless to say I never revisited that shop.

The second song, although it's not really a song more a jam piece and it goes on for a hypnotic eight minutes. The lyrics consist on the title whispered once followed by a scream, and that's it. Then I started thinking (over analsing of course) what was this about.

Was it a murder?

Was it a suicide?

Was it an unsatisfied plea for mercy?

The singer is the one who screams so is he the victim or does the singer take  multiple parts?

All this from five words and a scream.

I've included the version from "Live at Pompeii" for you analysis although this has a few more words in it, some Roger Waters indulgence.

Anyway this is far too deep for a Saturday morning, have a brilliant day everbody.

You Don't Have To Save Up For Music Any More

This is is quote from David Bowie about the way music has become ubiquitous, easily available, effectively free if you want to steal it and even if you buy it you can buy a brand new CD or download for the price of a pint of beer or glass of wine.

I think part of this is that if you got into music as a ten year old, you didn't have an income except maybe a paper round. I remember working for a week for my dad and getting a "Best of T Rex" as a reward from my dad.

While music was available on the radio and when cassettes became available you could tape stuff that you heard, but there was no digital catch up, and if you missed stuff it was missed. Given that I was a fan of a lot of European music often the only way to get an album was to send off a postal order to an import company such as Virgin when it was good and richard Branson actually did some good work. Then you would wait a week or two and eventually the postman would drop it off at your house.

When you get older you get an income and that makes things more affordable, but the digital revolution means we don't have to wait, it's on Vevo or Youtube and you can often download it for maybe a pound , or free if you have certain software.

When Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were here" was released I was claing the eqivalent of Job Seekers Allowance and that was £3.25 a week. "Wish You Were Here" cost me £3.25. If albums had kept pace with JSA we's be paying £80 for an album and I'd still have to save up for it.

These days the combination of cheapness and ubiquity means that music is freely and easily available to everybody in mainstream society, and maybe that sort of taks away the preciousness of it for most of the population.

I  was never a big fan of the Gallaghers but "Holy Mountain" by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds is really good and just to illustrate how easy it is to share I've included in this post but if you do want to buy it, it's here.

Have a great Tuesday everybody.

Lyrical Logic

Yesterday I really didn't want to get up. I feel the same today, I would love to lie in but at 6:30 AM I am showered, dressed, taken drugs and writing this, so normality is resumed, sort of. Last week I didn't do much listening to music but on my walk to work yesterday I was listening to Pink Floyd's "Meddle" and was struck by how sometimes the sound of lyrics is more important than logical analysis of them.

A prime example of this is Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak". The opening couplet is:

"Tonight there's going a jailbreak

Somewhere in this town"

Well the clue is right in front of your eyes, it's highly likely to be at the prison / jail. Still a brilliant song though.

One track on "Meddle" , "Fearless" has a similar construct:

"You say the hill's to steep to climb

 Try Me .......

You choose the place and I'll choose the time"

But again a wonderful song managing to incorporate the Liverpool Kop singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" so I am fine with the odd bit of lyrical non logic.

"Meddle" is probably the album that made Pink Floyd my favourite band as a teenager, and contans my favourite Pink Floyd song "Echoes" which took up the whole of ide two and is twenty two minutes long and was used for an amazing surfing sequence in the film "Crystal Voyager", a perfect combination of music and visuals and when the coda comes you really just want it to start again, for me it's that addictive still.

The album opens with "One of Thes Days (I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces)", which comes in quietly on a breeze before going into a five minute two chord instrumental assault. "A Pillow of Winds" gives respite before the gorgeous "Fearless" described above.

"San Tropez" and "Seamus" wind the side down before the wonderful "Echoes on side two. You can tell I still love this album.

Anyway it's time for another walk into work. Have a brilliant Tuesday everybody and I will leave you with the "Crystal Voyager" "Echoes" seqience and "Fearless". If you have time watch both.

Saucery

Another album I revisited last week was Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets" . My mate Harry Clark always used to refer to it as "Y D" because of the lettering on the cover, which really does pique your interest and draw you in , even though it was just a single sleeve. The astological, astronomical and majikal diagrams, planets and bottles the tapestry wizard and the band photo all made me wonder what was happening inside, and  it really is a cornucopia of sixties psychedelia and Englishness (brass bands and Kazoos, Waters' war obsession "Corporal Clegg")

PinK Floyd = Y D

The album opens with "Let There Be More Light" with it's manic easternised, three note bass intro with slides into the pedestrian ponderous main riff  for theis first slab of space rock on the album. "Remember A Day" follows, a gorgeous Rick Wright song featuring a wonderful rising piano line, and this gives way to the ominous suicidal "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", dark but brilliant. "Corporal Clegg" rounds off side one, which is a more shall we say normal song despite the kazoo led coda march.

Side two starts with the twelve minute title track which has three sections, the first the most ominous part of the album, just sound an noise before morphing into a drum section from hell but finishing with a gorgeous organ based section (also knowwn as "Celestial Voices", possibly influenced by Vaughn Williams.)

"See Saw" follows and like "Corporal Clegg" is a fairly standard formayt song before the closer "Jugband Blues" Syd Barret's final outing with the band, which is a gorgeous jumble sale of sound and a fitting finale complete with brass band.

I've included the "Celestial Voices" from the "Live at Pompeii" film. Enjoy your Saturday evening.

For Openers

In my last post I wrote how a rubbish opening song ("Dr Music") can seem to ruin an album ("Mirrors" by The Blue Oyster Cult). The album is actually quite good but that is the opener and it is just generic tripe rock so you expect more of the same, luckily that's not what you get.

Today I listened to "A Grounding In Numbers" by Van Der Graaf Generator and that doesn't have a great opener, but neither is it bad, "Your Time Starts Now" sets the mood for the album which at times is overly complicated and contrived but that's just VDGG, and it contains a lot of brilliant sections and sequences., but the main point is that the opening track sets the scene and mood and you are happy to go along with the flow.

The Blue Oyster Cult's "Cultosaurus Erectus" is another case in point. It opens with another Michael Moorcock collaboration , the stunning "Black Blade" and while the rest of the album cannot live up to that scorching six minutes of mystic guitar and sequencer magic, you are still on a high from being hit by that opener. The amazing cover of the giant fossilised dinosaur and  the tiny spaceship also helps to set the mood.

This morning I started on Pink Floyd's  "A Saucerful of Secrets" which opens with a basic fast bass riff easternised by string bending by Roger Waters before lapsing into a more sedate almost pedestrian three note bass sequence (borrowed by Argent for "Hold Your Head Up"), but again you are hooked. I will write more when I finish listening again but it is a wonderful album.

So I will leave you with "Black Blade" m, before watching a little catch up TV. Enjoy my friends.

Afternoon Light

Today we have had dark clouds a smattering of rain and I have the light on because it's dark out side. It's not three o' clock yet. I can see a touch of blue sky in the distance, so no doubt in quarter o fan hour it'll be a bright summers day , and right enough it is, so I can switch my light out.

I've succumbed and had a smart meter fitted so my power supplier, OVO, know what I am using every minute of the day.

My DNLA server has been playing up a bit, but it's now finally working. I'm not sure what the problem is as I think Window 10 is deleting applications at random, so the music was just not moving but maybe it was taking it's time to find the actual file even though it had the file name indexed.

I actually wanted Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother", but I've made do with my favourite ABBA song "The Visitors", and wonderful driving piece of dark paranoia, and you can dance to it (if you can dance and feel so inclined, I can't and don't).

So anyway this is just a very very short post about what you manage to do while having a Smart Meter fitted. I was shocked about how much they had to put in a replace to get it working, although the gas meter was obviously a bit complex.

Anyway I now have "Atom Heart Mother" playing on the sound system, so my Kindle Fire and Soundbar set up is now working which is a good thing. I love the sound of Roger Waters' bass on the introduction to the 23 minute incredible piece influenced by Scot Ron Geesin with full brass band and choir, and rather than share the Floyd version with you I'll share a live cover version by some French musicians that is quite amazing, it's at the Théâtre du Chateletand features Ron Geesin on keyboards.Ron did a film soundratck for a film called "The Body" with Roger Waters.

Enjoy this sunny afternoon my friends... the weekend is almost here.