Showing posts with label Ronald Reagan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ronald Reagan. Show all posts

Saturday 8 July 2023

Highway To Hell


"How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is worrying more as I read it. The evil of Thatcher and Reagan's legacy is destroying our world. The only thing that matters is profit. Everything is designed to line the pockets of financial institutions, corporations and the rich. In the UK Labour is almost indistinguishable from the Conservatives.

There are good people still here but it is getting harder every day for them to have an effect.

This book is nearly twenty years old and things have got much worse. Lying and cheating are the norms the further up the money chain you go.

Seven Days In is still getting a good number of reads so I expect it to hit 100K visits this month and a million since my first post and when that happens I will share it with you.

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

The music is, appropriately Rick Astley's take on "Highway To Hell" by AC/DC for a bit of fun.

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

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

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

Sunday 30 August 2020

Put The Radio On - #AnimalAugust #20


I sometimes find quiet a bit  for want of a word "not good" or worrying , and putting on the radio on (this morning 6Music) improves things no end. Similarly sometimes television can have a similar effect.

Yesterday I watch John Carpenter's "They Live" featuring Roddy Piper in the Kurt Russel role , and has been described as the best "B" Movie ever . The production values are minimal, but so was "Assault on Precinct 13" which contains on of , for me, the most shocking scenes ever. The thing was , watching the film, which was made in 1988 , I saw a lot of what is happening today , and while the film was aimed at the Reagan (and therefore Thatcher) regimes , it is even more relevant today. It's available for free on Youtube here at the moment.

Yesterday was also National Record Store Day but I completely ignored it , essentially because I sort of have enough records and don't need any more. To buy a record it has to be something special and barring coloured vinyl and picture discs there seems to be very little inventiveness in album cover production today. I may be wrong but I wish someone could show me an interesting album cover that is worth exploring while you listen.

The "Star Wars" John Williams and Jack White's  "Lazaretto" hologram editions are exceptions and they are both in my collection, so there is room to be inventive.

I was also thinking of all the record sellers that have disappeared . In Newcastle there was Hitsville UK , Volume and Spin , plus the national chains Our Price , MVC , Virgin (which briefly became Zavvi) and Boots and Woolworths sold records too.

Luckily in Newcastle we still have a lot of independent in Newcastle which you can see here

#AnimalAugust continues with "Boris The Spider" by The Who and I found a great claymation for it by GawainKnight , though possibly not for extreme arachnophobes.

Have a great Sunday


Tuesday 19 December 2017

Edinburgh 2017 #3 - Vinyl Villains


The final new shop I visited in Edinburgh was Vinyl Villains, just a bit closer to the centre and down the road from Elvis Shakespeare. It opens around 10:30 on Saturday and again the uy who runs it is very helpful and very knowledgeable about his stock.

On Friday night on BBC4 Danny Baker was presenting a seventies show with a rock slant including Brian Eno's "Seven Deadly Finns" the clip you can see here is from a Dutch pop program, but later in the show was Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes" , one of the most vicious and agressively brilliant dance tunes you will ever hear. I loved the video featuring "Boris Yeltsin" and "Ronald Reagan" in a fighting pit , and really that's the way any war should be fought but we all know what cowards politicians really are, they always get someone else to fight for them.

Anyway back in Vinyl Villains  (they are on Facebook too) they had a lot of albums suspended from the ceiling and I noticed a picture disc of "Two Tribes" and thought "That has my name on it". The guy said he thought it was an interview disc but he got his ladder out and brought the disc down to check, It turned out it was "Two Tribes" backed with their take on Edwin Starr's "War" so I parted with a fiver for an excelent slice of vinyl.

Again this place is not too far from Edinburgh centre and will be on my list when I am next there.

I revisited Coda who are just off the Royal Mile and came across Underground Solu'shn next to The Malt Shovel when we were out with Maureen and Scott , but that's one for the next visit to Edinburgh.