I wanted something fun and interesting to read next so have chosen to revisit "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy"Douglas Adams trilogy in five parts which combines wit and intelligent writing. It is a fun and clever read. There is so much in this book full of wacky concepts like the actual book itself, the planet builders of Magrathea and the Infinite Improbability Drive as well as Vogon Poetry.
This is the first of the five books in the trilogy.
Seven Days In seems to be grinding back down to its pre-Christmas number of visits with only just over a thousand today.
If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.
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:
Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
Almost every day when I log on to social media Facebook and Instagram have blocked a couple of old music share videos. I was under the impression that 30 seconds of a song was fine to use if it's not for commercial purposes but I shared some excerpts from the reissue of Led Zeppelin III and that was blocked immediately. It contained three twenty second snippets. I got a similar notice just as quick from "One of These Nights" by The Eagles. This time I submitted a dispute , stating this wasn't commercial , or disrespectful and may result in more sales. The videos have been reinstated but the owner can still have them removed. I recently wrote on this whole thing here.
There is an article on how confusing copyright is here.
I understand that you can't share whole songs , or use them , or snippets commercially , but what I am doing , in my opinion , could be beneficial to the artist.
Most of the video are over six months old , and to be quite honest, I am not too bothered about that because social media is generally in the "NOW" and while the odd person might see and listen to the videos it's not worth my effort to dispute them. Also often I then get notices saying that the video has been reinstated as my dispute was successful , when I did not submit a dispute!.
Although I have not been writing much on here , I've had 14K page views so far this month , but I'm not too sure who is reading what. I once had a run in with YouTube over a Christopher Lee slideshow sound tracked by his version of "My Way".
I'll share one of the songs that were immediately banned that is fully available on YouTube , and that is the wonderful "Journey of the Sorcerer" by The Eagles , as used for the them to Douglas Adams' "The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy".
This piece of writing includes a spoiler in the first paragraph, although if you have read the book “Legacies” it is irrelevant and if you haven’t it is still worth reading.
I am currently reading what I believe is the first Repairman Jack novel and the second “Adversary Cycle” novel by F Paul Wilson. They are the same book “The Tomb” , and that got me thinking of what is the second Repairman Jack novel (not part of the “Adversary Cycle” ) “Legacies” which deals with the concept of distributed power.
Distributed power would enable us to power things over the whatever waves, the same way as we do with television , radio , mobile phones and wifi encept doing things with power. I still don’t really understand how we can transfer music or video in the form of wifi or radio signals to a device and it succeeds. As you transfer whatever space is taken up on the device , so whatever is filling up that space must come from somewhere but we cannot see it.
We know it comes from somewhere and it goes somewhere and when it’s delivered we can use it , so the concept works , but I really don’t know how.
The nearest I am aware of to distributed power are the pads that you can buy to charge enabled devices to charge without plugging in. I suppose we could get worried if the waves were full of electricity variants, getting us scared of being fried like the claims against 5G mobile phone signals.
Imagine a world where everything worked in that way , you wouldn’t need to fill up a car or charge a phone or computer. You wouldn’t have to pug anything in. As I typ this I amd listening to “Small Change” by Tom Waits , the DD player is plugged into a socket and takes power from the wiring in my house.
Imagine no wiring and no plugs , power always available and always on. That’s how we think of our utilities. We expect our water to flow, our lights to come on when we flick the switch , our phone to work when we want to make a call, but we still generally have to plug things in or fill them up to actually use them.
Taking this further, imagine a self filling kettle or meals ready on demand , how convenient would that world be. Would we use the extra time to improve ourselves or would we just watch television and drink beer and wine?
The things we do in life do take effort and time , but I feel if I didn’t have to plug things in and charge my phone or fill up a car, my life would be a lot simpler and allow me to do more and improve myself even more.
So that’s essentially what I wanted to say in this piece and it woul dbe interesting to find out if people have any other examples of distributed power type scenarios and also reasons why we couldn’t have that at our fingertips.
Again listening to Tom Waits’ “Small Change” which seems to be straying into “American Gothic” territory on many songs. His voice and delivery is unmistakable and I am impressed with how hes persona progresses and changes over his albums sequence. I was very impressed with the “Under The Influence” documentary on Amazon Prime and am enjoying revisiting his first five albums in the Asylum box set.
The opening song on “Small Change” is “Tom Traubert’s Blues” was covered by Rod Stewart and the opener on his debut album “Closing Time” “Ol’ 55” was covered by The Eagles so while his vocal style may not appeal to mos tastes , mainstream artists can see how good the songs of Tom Waits are.
Art takes many forms. I believe that for something to be art, it must have an effect , even if that effect is negative. One of the problems is that usually we expect art to be free . It's OK to be free at point of interaction as long as it is properly funded.
I always say that to produce art you just have to call it art. That may sound frivolous but you could call an empty coffee cp art if you present it in the right way.
Also with art once the artist has created the piece then when someone sees it then there is an audience.
Funding can be you paying for art , through taxes or through an entrance fee , but artists have to be able to live if they are to produce at. I keep trying to do things but for some reason don't have the discipline to produce a finished product. I remember as a teenager joining a band on Tuesday for a gig on Saturday then writing and rehearsing and doing the gig , I really need to get that fire back, although it's best when you are doing it with someone else where you can bounce ideas.
I have incredible admiration for people who do thing solo. The inspiration for this post comes from my friend Hildy Harland who , despite the lockdown destroying all her scheduled work is still producing and sharing he art online.
#AnimalAugust will be "Journey of The Sorcerer" by The Eagles adopted as the theme for The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, and really all artists are sorcerers because they create something where there was nothing , whether it be a paining , a dance , a song or a story.
Apologies if this has been an incoherent ramble , but we need to look out for our artists or else we will just have corporate advertising.
Also if you don't like the art you see , do something yourself.... at the moment I'm just limited to this although there is the odd short story and poem in my many posts.
I had gone to bed , my body is tired but my mind is not , so I 've got up and decided just to post something on the blog , in the hope that my mind will decide that sleep is a good idea as well as my body. When I got up I could hear running water, always a worry , but a tap had not been switched off in the shower room, so that was OK.
For the last two days I haven't felt like walking anywhere, but still done 6K steps a day and for the month I am still ahead of the mark, but I have just not felt like walking. Maybe I am just too used to walking round my area and want somewhere different. On Saturday I did go down Denton Burn and got some good photographs and am toying with walking down to the Tyne , although it's then a long uphill walk back, but it would do me good , and if the weater is OK I may get some good photographs.
I also may track down some more interesting old buildings to visit, we are virtually sited on Hadrian's Wall and I have still never been to Segedunum which may be a trek worth doing one weekend. Vindolanda is a bit further west and definitely not walking distance but here's a video I did soundtracked buy Alex Harvey's take on WH Auden's "Roman Wall Blues"
The "Don't Walk, Boogie" title is nicked from a k-Tel disco pop album from te seventies or eighties. The albums were groove crammed so sound quality was not too impressive.
For the #AnimalAugust sequence , given the Romanesque bits of this post I thought I would go for an Eagle song and that could have been something by The Eagles, "Fly Like An Eagle" by the Steve Miller Band , but thought I would go the "Day of the Eagle" by Robin Trower , ex Procol Harum , but a very impressive metal guitarist fronting his own band after he left. I do have a 4CD set of his stuff and think it may be due another run out.
Right that's probably enough so I will try and hit the sack once more tonight.
It's funny how reading a book can inspire you to write something. I'm still on "Tom Waits on Tom Waits" a part where he's disparaging, to say the least about covers of his songs ("Ol' 55" by The Eagles and "Heart of Saturday Night" by Jerry Jeff Walker. Then I started thinking about covers of songs and even why people start making music.
Everyone starts playing because they hear someone else, since the invention of radio that has been every westerners kick off for making music, and as radio spreads it will be everyone's starting point, if they are going to play, although records and TV are also other sources.
I remember an advertising line that said "No One Sings Dylan Like Dylan" , but lots of people covered Dylan and improved on the original, thing The Byrds' "Mr Tambourine Man", Manfred Mann;s numerous covers "Mighty Quinn" being a big hit, and when they transformed into Earthband they targeted Bruce Springsteen with "Spirits In The Night" and "Blinded By The Light" though still revisited Dylan with "Father of Day, Father of Night" , and then there is probably the best ever Dylan cover, Jimi Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower".
I still love te Dylan originals, but it took me a long time to appreciate them, but all the songs above are improvements on the originals in my opinion, but I do believe no one can out do Tom Waits on a Tom Waits song. Rod Stewart did justice to "Tom Traubert's Blues" and "Downtown Train" and to some listeners they will be better that the originals. I like both but prefer the Waits versions.
Cpvers are generally how musicians and bands start before moving on to write their own stuff, which hopefully will be better than the stuff they were covering . The Beatles and The Rolling Stones started off with covers (and the last Rolling Stones album was all covers) , but that gives bands a good starting point.
Some bands are happy to continue doing that, and they usually find a appreciative audience for mainstream covers.
Anyway that's a lot on my opinion of covers, I will leave you with the Jimi Hendrix cover of "All Along The Watchtower".
Sometimes things you do have unexpected results. I've been taking part in a step challenge , the last day of which is tomorrow when I need to do fifteen thousand steps.That's around seven miles in a day, not a great deal in the great scheme of things but it does mean you have to make time to do these things. Essentially each thousand steps takes around ten minutes of brisk walking , so that means I need to spend two and a half hours walking tomorrow.
This weekend , in order to not be playing catch up , I've got up early each day to give myself a start on the steps , and it's worked OK. Today I did nineteen thousand steps (I only needed to do fourteen thousand) byt set myself a task of walking up Cow Hill and taking some pictures. Cow Hill is not difficult to climb, it's sort of a mound but you get a good view of Newcastle.
View From Cow Hill
Anyway the basic point is, that I have got up earlier, done more walking, done more writing, done more reading , done more catch up TV, done more guitar practice and recording, and more listening to music and I feel very tired, but I'm just wondering if the cause of me doing more is actually the step challenge. It could be. In order to accommodate it I've had to ensure there is enough space in the day.
This is about the fifth blog post I've done this weekend but I won't have time to do one tomorrow morning.
Hopefully after my final day tomorrow, I will still ensure that I do 10K steps a day which will clock in a 4½ miles which I will definitely maintain. Also I may try not lying in at weekends and just going out for a walk. I prefer being off road but on a path. The walk up to Cow Hill was a bit muddy today.
One of the things to maintain this is that you do need halfway decent weather but this weekend has been fairly good.
Tomorrow is going to require a very early start. I want eight thousand steps in before I get into work. That is a tall order but it will mean I've over half way there before I start work.
One of the songs I listened to was Tom Waits'"Ol' 55" which was covered by The Eagles , but I'll treat you to a live version by the great man.
