Oh My God

 "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is still on politics but is now on the Creationism vs Darwinism argument. Essentially Creatism is for people who cannot understand scientific concepts. Science always questions itself, religion doesn't. The Bible may have started out with some moral tenets and some of them are still worth following today, but also condones horrible things like slavery, misogyny and murder.

This blog is still getting over three thousand hits a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month, over 80K.  I am now starting to get greedy and need 18K reads before midnight on the 30th to hit 100K in a month. That would need 5K visits a day, and yesterday hit what was probably a high for a day at 3975.

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

The music is "The Four Horsemen" by Aphrodite's Child featuring Demis Roussos and Vangelis from the album "666"

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

The Great and Secret Show

I haven't written much about "The Great and Secret Show" by Clive Barker but am thoroughly enjoying it, although I've read it before , thirty pages from the end I am still not sure of the final outcome. The Great and Secret Show is on the isle of Ephemeris in the dream sea Quiddity which is between the Cosm and Metacosm home of the Iad (the main baddies in this story).

This is the good thing about my memory , I know enough to know it's a great book, but every time I read it , it's like a new adventure, although a vaguely familiar ride. I will probably finish this , this weekend and I have so many other places to revisit

Tonight we have had a thunderstorm shaking the street and houses , a little rain but it seems to have passed.

So I know this is incredibly short , but the heat is just stifling my creative writing faculties, so I will sign off.

This week I have been listening to a lot of reggae but given that Armageddon like nature of "The Great And Secret Show" maybe I will go with "The Four Horsemen" by Aphrodite's Child (featuring Vangelis and Demis Roussos featuring the end of the world scenarios by local North East artist John Martin.

Does Playing Vinyl Increase Your Appreciation of Music?

I've probably written about this before, but was talking with my son-in-law Mark , and daughters Juliet and Kirsty yesterday at an early Father's Day pizza meal at the excellent Dat Bar and Mark and Kirsty were talking about the clarity they got from listening to certain records (the "Blade Runner" soundtrack was an example), hearing things they hadn't noticed before. This is on probably a near perfect set up.

My own set up is a GPO turntable with a Samsung Soundbar with subwoofer which I also use for DVD Audio which also can sound incredible. A particular incredible recording is KirngCrimson's "In The Court of The Crimson King" that sounds incredidle on DVD Audio through a DTS system.

But back to the vinyl premise.andI have witten about it before including a post about the evolution of Music Media here  and all of my vinyl posts are here. and there are a few.

When you play something on vinyl you don't tend to skip songs , especially on albums. This is why I preferred singles when I DJ'd as that meant you knew exactly where you were and didn't risk getting the end of an album track or missing the start of another one , although that did happen more than I'd like. This meant I did have a fair collection of rock and roll and also introduced people to a lot of "B" sides and it was remarkable how many pepleonly listened to the "A" sides often missing some absolute corkers, Bowie's "Queen Bitch" and "Holy Holy" spring to mine and The Rolling Stones "Let It Rock" and "Bitch" which backed "Brown Sugar".

These day I buy vinyl for the whole package and was surprised to see that Velvet Underground's eponymous debut had the "Peel Slowly and See"  yellow banana skin that was missing from by CD box of the same name.

While enjoying the often excellent artwork and covers, I put an album on and it always plays through to the end. It is also great to enjoy the beautiful picture discs with the mandala effect on Curved Air's "Air Conditioning" or the hypnotic Vertigo Swirl which I am still amazed at. It's like you are about to fall in to a three dimensional time tunnel.

Sometimes these albums contain books and incredible fold outs which often don't translate well into CD (Although I do have some excellent CD packages that are beautifully put together).

However a vinyl album seems lest disposable that digital media and makes you feel you have something. The size also gives designers space to work, and  the laser etchings and holograms are more amazing enhancements that couldn't be done on CD and I am still amazed that they have been done on vinyl.

For Father's Day I was given "Exile on Main Street" by The Stones and "Strange Days" by The Doors.

There will be no remote skipping when I listen to these albums and I will enjoy every minute. I thought I would treat you to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" to show you the Vertigo Swirl.

Enjoy your Friday.

Greeks and Pizza - #ALifeInNumbers #28

I must be feeling a bit better. I've updated Song of The Salesman and though about buying a VR headset which you can pick up for a few pounds these days , but I resisted for the time being.I also checked out Al Buco  in Old Eldon Square for lunch and had a pizza and drink for a fiver, great atmosphere and great value.

Anyway for number 28 we go to Vangelis and "28th Parallel" from "1492 Conquest of Paradise" , like most of his stuff you will be sure you have heard it even if you haven't . He's already appeared in this sequence as a member of Aphrodite's Child at Number Four.

Well it's time for tea so enjoy your Tuesday night my friends.

A Greek Apocalypse - The Four Horsemen - #ALifeInNumbers #4

The Number of The Beast

I thought I would do this before bed, but I had this in mind for number four. The slideshow is one I put together featuring the work of the North East's greatest artist John Martin. His works are often huge featuring apocalyptic images and I thought a perfect soundtrack would be the relentless "Four Horsemen" from the album "666" by Aphrodite's Child a Greek band which featured Vangelis and Demis Roussos.






The song has a relatively peaceful , but threatening intro before launching into five minutes of relentless attack. Some of their music was almost embarrassingly trite (check out "Break") , but "Four Horseman" cuts the mustard all the way. It's one of those songs that you would buy an album for. The rest of the album has some good bits , some awful bits but really should be in your collection.

I know this is a sort of early installment but I do have another 55 songs to actually choose and write about, and I know it's going to get harder with every step forward. At the moment I am just let my brain and memory throw out the suggestions and I will let you know when I have to start looking.

I will of course be looking and noting potential future songs as I go along, so hopefully I wont hit a proverbial brick wall, but you never know. Then I will probably find a way to bulldoze straight through it.

Anyway that is number four and now it's time for bed for me.

Goodnight my brilliant friends.

Perfect Weather

Deluge at Night and Hot Sun during the day , yeah I know that's too many capitalised letters. A t the moment life is going very fast and lots is happening and fitting things together is an absolute challenge but a good one to have. It's always good to have plenty to do.

My bookpile is growing faster than I can read , my play pile is growing faster than I can listen , my songs to put together are growing and I still haven't recorded my first one and I want to do versions of of a few songs just to prove that I can actually play them.

Today is another challenge , in a good way . Keeping positive and believing that things will go the way I want. I discovered a problem with my surgey's on line app and they were thankful for my input and are now rectifying things. At work I've been told I'm delivering stuff they have been waiting 12 months for.

Sodom and Gomorrah

I'm spreading knowledge and yesterday I saw an amazing light boxed version of John Martin's Sodom and Gomorrah and The Laing . Spoke with a lovely couple in their seventies who first of all thought I was an expert on the great man because I told them about him , although they knew of his importance and origins. They were also impressed with my phone too.

Loving life at the moment and I know it will get much better.

Heard from great friends around the world about their love of books that they share with me , which also gave me a huge lift.

The music is the Four Horsemen by Aphrodite's Child which featured Demis Roussos and Vangelis.

Anyway you all have a great day

Some Positives

I know I haven't been too positive on my posts and have been ignoring certain things. So I got the Nintendo WII out and did the Tennis and Boxing , before finding it was seventy four days since I last used thing. I'm just a pound lighter so the good news is I haven't put on weight. It's too easy to put things away and just forget about them and we should never do that , I am atrocious for doing it.

The second thing was installing RunKeeper on my phone. This product looks like it actually works. I have no intention of taking up running, but walked about a mile and burnt 130 calories according to the app.

I included the Chariots of Fire  opening , because it's one of the most archetypially English musical pieces , obviously composed by a a Greek (Vangelis) , and also one of the lads on the beach was a trainee for me when I was at Littlewoods back in the day.

Anyway enjoy what's left of the weekend, another week awaits ...