I Think I'll ......

How many times do you decide to do a trivial task and it turns into a hell of a lot more than you expected. Today was bin day so I thought I'd just empty the bin in the bedroom last night, this then turned into every bin in the house before dragging out the bin to the the street for the binmen's convenience.

Then there was a couple of days washing up to deal with and one small fabric wash turned into three biggish loads which have to be hung to dy after they've finished, but to make room had to take a load of towels off the drying racks to make room.

Then dug dug out my only two unripped Cracker albums, "Kerosene Hat" and "Redux - Greatest Hits" and I use iTunes to rip CDs. Remember in the early days of Java, when every time you wanted to use a Java enabled app you had to download and install the latest 2 Mb installation and this was pre broadband, it was bloody painful. Well that's what iTunes (and probably all other Apple updates) is like today, 250 Mb to give you the same as you had before with probably more advertising.

The I start ripping "Kerosene Hat" and find it has a hundred tracks on it, most of which are blank spacers, decided it would be quickest to rip and then delete.

So taking a lot longer to do things I expected to do yesterday and today.

ALso my lurgi (I'm off to the docs tomorrow) is causing me to fall behind on my walking targets, so September maybe the first month where I fail tohit the 340K target. It's not bothering me too much as I think it's maybe taking energy that should be going towards recuperation, but we shall see.

So I'll leave you with another Cracker song "Low".

Enjoy your Wednesday

Get Yer Bloody Lawn Mowed

My lawn does need mowing but it is looking lush and healthy at the moment and I think I will be overdoing it if I try it today, so I will let it continue to be lush. The title is inspired by the title of the latest Half Man Half Biscuit album " No-one Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fvckin' Hedge Cut", the title is starred out on Amazon and I've replaced the "U" with a "V" so hopefully people won't be too offended. The thing is starring things out doesn't hide anything really, people what F**k and Bu**er mean given the context, and it's unlikely the second word will be Butler, Bugker or Butter.

Anyway more of my thoughts on the album, it's much like most of their albums, ie excellent and the instrumentation, playing and productions seems much improved, possibly to the detriment of the lyrics, which are incredibly important in the effect of Half Man Half Biscuit songs sponting the references , connections, ambiguities and hilarities and Shakespearean class word play in there, although Nigel Blackwell may not thank me for that comparison, though him and John Cooper Clarke should be Poet Laureate at some point, two of our greatest populist wordsmiths.

I've chosen "Every Time A Bell Rings" which contains a refrain of the album title, checks in with David Bowie in the first line, takes swipes at Artisan stuff and wannabe cyclist and "It's A Wonderful Life". It's this sort of song that makes them an absolute joy to listen to.

Yes there is darkness in there but it's a sort of loveable darkness, and they are still one of my favourite bands and always will be.

A New Low

Yesterday I did about 1100 steps, that's 2K under the national average and the lowest I've done since starting my rolling three month Million Step Challenge. For the first time since I can remember I never left the house, and virtually never left  my bed apart from to have a hot bath the ease my aches. For the last three days I've been suffering from cold and 'flu' like symptoms. It's not real 'flu' because I can actually move.

It's three AM and as yesterday was spent sleeping and resting I thought I could just write a blog post to say what has been happening to me.

I was looking through my digital music collection and noticed I hadn't ripped any of my Cracker albums so I will extract them from the box tomorrow and ad them to my digital collection, so I have shared the brilliant "Teen Angst" with you for this post.

I am finding Simon Singh's "The Code Book" extremely interesting about the history of code making, code breaking and the ingenious ways of passing secret messages from the time we actually started to write.

It is amazing how much time we spend online these days, when I switched the computer on it was 2.22 it is now 3.02, and I will soon be going back to bed, though I really do hope that getting up and writing this doesn't knock me back, but it's Saturday morning so I can have a day of relaxation, though hopefully won't hit another all time low on the step front.

Some Lines

Suffering from a cold, runny nose , headache and the like, what certain softies call 'flu' or man 'flu' . It's a cold, a head cold, it's unpleasant and I want it to go away.

Sitting downstairs this popped into my head for some reason. It has before, but I thought I would formalise it as one of my Non-Poems, just thinking of what we have that we will probably never use, but we still collect:

We have films

We will never watch

We have books

We will never read

We have records

We will never listen to

We have devices

We will never use

........

Or Will We?

What we have

Gives us choice

We Justify it

As Planning

For The Future

..........

I Will

Watch That Film

Read That Book

Listen To That Record

Use That Device

I Will

I Will

I am going through tissues and headachey so will leave you with "Legend of A Mind" by The Moody Blues from "In Search of The Lost Chord" which references Timothy Leary the LSD guru.

Morning Darker

Looking out my window the sky is full of grey clouds scudding across the skyline. Yesterday I was feeling very down, I'm not sure why, but I'd run out of some of my tablets unexpectedly and they were are related to blood pressure so maybe that was something to do with it. Also valious friends are suffering from physical and mental pain and barring supportive texting there is absolutely nothing I can do for them.

Added to this I had various meetings and things that needed to be sorted at work and an, at times, painful hacking chesty cough.

When I got home I got by drugs stash replenished and loaded up with chocolate to ease my throat and started watching "Spectre", which is rather enjoyable but the title song is half decent but ruined by the strangled cat vocals of Sam Smith. Still that was just a couple of minutes at the beginning.

I also finished "The Fourteenth Letter", the debut novel by Claire Evans, I didn't think it was my cup of tea, it wasn;t it was the whole teapot, highly recommended despite recommendations on the back cover from Heat and Good Housekeeping which would have put me off. I suggest to you get yourself a copy.

That's been replaced by "The Code Book" by the excellent Simon Singh, the choice may have been influenced by me watch the brilliant "Imitation Game" the incredible story that showed how the British Government drove the genius Alan Turing to suicide and it's the sort of thing that would happen under today's US and UK governments.

Looking out of the window and there is now blue sky appearing and the clouds blow away.

Spo what to play, maybe Jonathan Richman's "I'm A Little Dinosaur" which is a cuteness injection for a fairly downer post, but I know today wiill be an improvement on yesterday for me, I hope it is for all my friends.

Have a great Wednesday.

Morning Dark

When I left my bed this morning it was dark. I had to put lights on. It was 6AM. Autumn and grey skies are here.

In the shower I seldom want to come out, hot water on your body feels so nice, knowing that when it stops you will be cold and wet and have to dry yourself off.

The other thing is you know it's Monday and have to go to work. Will I walk or will I take the bus? I will start walking but my give up and get the bus eventually.

Yesterday I did 18K steps so that was a bit more than I expected to do, but it was fairly.

I must say I am very impressed by Claire Evans novel, "The Fourteenth Letter"  and although the clues are strewn throughout I didn't see the endgame coming and I still have 25 pages to go, so I'm well impressed with that and I only bought it to get myself free delivery on something.

Also in the last couple of weeks I heard a great song on 6Music called "Chevrolet Van" by The Nude Party. The record is great, but you get some interesting results on Amazon,Google and Youtube when you search for Nude Party.

Anyway have a great Monday everybody.

Observations on The Great North Run Finishing Line

Today we went to give a little moral support to our friend Helen who was partaking of her fifth Great North Run (same as Sir Mo Farah) with her friend Suzanne. The weather held and we were thinking of seeing her off at the beginning, but she was one of around 43,000 participants.

I was surprised to see that the wheelchair winner covered the course in 40 minutes (that's an average of 20 mph) and Sir Mo Farah did it in under an hour therefore averaging 13 mph for the duration of the race.

The organisation was excellent with public transport providing egress and ingress for God knows how many people to the finishing line near Bents Park in South Shields. Given that there were 43,000 participants then each one of those must have averaged say 5 well wishers and support staff so you are probably looking at 200K-250K people in the area.

There were many charities represented, and Helen was running to raise money for St Oswald's Hospices and you can text STOS18£5 to donate £5 to them,

The Red Arrows did a start of race fly past over Newcastle as the runners went over the Tyne Bridge and did a full display after most of the runners had finished. You can see my short far away footage here.

On leaving the number of buses for travellers was phenomenal, and the queues for the Metro and Ferry were extremely long. Luckily Suzanne's sister came and picked us up although we walked a fair way to meet her, but she probably saved us about six hours of queueing, an absolute angel.

Although the organisation was excellent I was surprised that there was absolutely no Mobil Phone Company presence. Duracell were sponsoring and had charging points, and I'm with EE who generally have the best Network coverage, but the sheer number of people meant that they shut down data services and calls were limited to Emergency. I don't know if other providers were the same but I would have thought for such an important event there would have been a presence with signal boosting towers, but there was nothing.

This meant that I couldn't post any video at the time and it may have stopped people from texting donations as well, because that sort of thing is a spur of the moment thing and  once you leave then it's forgotten about. So EE and probably all other mobile phone companies copybooks are blotted, but the day was a huge success and charities did benefit from huge contributions.

Blakk and Whyte

Today I shared a couple of posts with The Half Man Half Biscuit(HMHB) Appreciation Society on Facebook, because I'd been listening to Half Man Half Biscuit this week, and the likes and visits on those two posts are like ten times my normal number of visits. I think there are maybe twenty of my Facebook friends who visit my blog regularly and the rest are just robots but the visits today have really gone through the roof for me.

Maybe I don't put myself about enough, although I always hope that my titles and preamble will tempt in visitors, although that's obviously not working.

I love it when people read my stuff and make (ideally positive) comments about my stuff. Yesterday I wasn't going to write about Burt Reynolds and today I didn't expect to be writing about this but I am.

I expect this post to get maybe twenty or thirty hits but that's what I'm used to. It would be nice to have a million followers but I just have three, not very many for a twelve year old blog is it.

Today I saw an amazing young band called Trilogy busking in Northumberland street. I took a minute of Instagram video here so you can see how good and young they are, even younger than The Strypes and General Fiasco when I first saw them. They literally blew all the other buskers off the street very impressive.

So I will leave you with The Strypes covering The Beatles' "Taxman", the opener from "Revolver", in their youth , sleep well my friends.

Eno Collaboration

I was going to write this yesterday but with Burt Reynolds (see last post) leaving us I thought that more appropriate. Anyway I have been listening to a lot of Half Man Half Biscuit this week and started with "And Some Fell On Stony Ground" through "Achtung Bono" to "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road".

The first album is is an excellent ragbag collection of non album songs including a banjo driven version of "Trumpton Riots" retitled (appropriately) "On Finding The Studio Banjo".

However it also contains the single version of "Eno Collaboration" and the last album contains, well,  the album version. Nigel Blackwell's dexterity with lyrical apposition is so brilliant on this singalong classic that I had to share it with you as one of the #SongsYouveNeverHeard and if you take the time to listen to it you will love it. Lines like:

"I know Bono and he knows Ono and she knows Eno’s phone goes thus:

Brian’s not at home, he’s at the North Pole

but if you’d like to leave a weird noise”

You can read the full lyrics here.

Enjoy your Saturday everybody

Even Burt Reynolds in that Black Trans-Am ......

We lost Burt Reynolds yesterday to a heart attack. Very sad as most of his films were great fun and he had a wonderful sense of humour as well as great comin timing, and on obvious model for actors such as Tom Selleck (also excellent and fun, brilliant in "Runaway" which featured Gene Simmons of Kiss and an excellent villain).

Anyway when Bruce Springsteen released "The River" it contained a plethora of amazing songs, one of which was "Cadillac Ranch" which is a public art installation in Amarillo Texas, created by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels,members of the band Ant Farm, full details here.

Cadillac, Cadillac, Long and dark, shiny and black

 Anyway one of the verses in the song ran like this:

"James Dean in that mercury '49
Junior Johnson runnin' through the woods of Carolina
Even Burt Reynolds in that black Trans Am
All gonna meet down at the Cadillac Ranch"

Reference to one of the many cars that Burt trashed in his movies, I'll let you find out which one and you can let me know. I also found a great Cadillac slideshow soundtracked by the song sto share with you and remember a wonderful actor by.

Nothing Succeeds Like A Toothless Budgie

A favourite line of a decent maths teacher of man "Pop" Moulding but also the sort of line you would expect to hear in a Half Man Half Biscuit somg. I do find it interesting how when you listen to one album by a band you want to follow it with another by them. I was listening to "And Some Fell On Stony Ground", a collection of odds and sods which is still hugely entertaining with gems like "Lock Up Your Mountain Bikes", "Hair Like Brian May Blues", "Blood on the Quad" and culminating in the hilarious thirty seconds that is "Vatican Broadside".

This made me think , how do radio stations check songs for offensiveness, does someone have to listen to them and check the lyrics or do they have software to do it. I once got banned from Yahoo for sharing "Vatican Broadside" because Slipknot fans complained about it!

Listening to that made me follow it up with "Achtung Bono" which must be up there with their best, every song is funny and brilliant. "Bogus Official" doesnt start promisingly but soon picks up and it contains the wonderful "Joy Division Oven Gloves". I could list every song on here as being brilliant but I seriously suggest you get yourself a copy of the album. Also including "Vatican Broadside probably includes this in the #SongsYouveNeverHeard sequence.

You will have  abig smile on your face and who can ask for more than that from the Bards of Birkenhead.

Old Posts

Well this week has been a little successful at work and managing not to do that much walking then I realised that it's only Tuesday. I was looking through past posts and found that I had recorded the fact that Anthony Newley co wrote "Feelin' Good" and recorded a decent version of it himself which you can listen to here

This is one of the reasons that I keep blogging, reading that post makes me think I can write something that is useful, perhaps not tonight, but every now and then I can, and that thought will keep me writing.

Although I am almost embarrassed by the brevity of some of my old posts, although if it's just a diary entry then you may not have to write all that much, just that something happened or caught your eye or ear, and maybe post a picture or some video.

I wasn't actually going to write anything tonight, but it is quite early, so I though maybe just share a few lines with you.

I am still enjoying "The Fourteenth Letter" but am now on the home straight and it has been far more enjoyable than I expected, but I am quite a slow reader, but am now eyeing up my text book to read.

So as I am going back I'll share my slideshow from when I took part in lighting Hadrian's Wall soundtracked by Ash's "Shining Light".

Jah Live

This shows just how easily I am distracted. I switched on the radio this morning and Mary Ann Hobbs was playing Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier". This threw my mind back to the mid seventies, when after getting into Bob Marley and The Wailers through seeing their performances of "Stir It Up" and "I Shot The Sheriff" on The Old Grey Whistle Test and buying the absolutely sublime live single "No Woman, No Cry" I must have heard on John Peel, there were few other music sources at the time though Johnny Walker and Alan Freeman played good stuff, put he played "Jah Live" which I had to have.

The 'B' side was "Concrete" , "Jah Live" in Dub so I've included that as well.

This was fairly difficult to track down though my DJ friend John Allan who had a record shop at Lane Ends, Preston managed to source me a copy. He was an absolutely top man but I believe died in a road accident. Any I used to often exasperate him with hard to get singles that I'd heard and maybe I might try and get a copy on vinyl as reggae and ska do lend themselves to playing on vinyl.

I know this is a short post, and if Mary Ann hand't played that song I wouldn't have written it, but it is a chance to hear a Bob Marley song that you have probably never heard.

I have a walk to Wylam to do, you enjoy your Sunday my good friends.

I Was Going To Write A Poem Today

Of course I'm not exactly a writer, not even close but several lines came to mind and this is a snippet

Fat bloke on a mobility scooter

Wheezing as he lights a second tab

Moaning and coughing 

As he tries to hail a cab

The "Sorry Not in Services Bus" 

That almost mows you down

These are everyday things

You see when you hit the Town

I'm surprised I remembered that much, but I've written it down now, and these are the dangers of wandering around the Clayton Street / Newgate Street area on a Saturday morning.

I've been quite amazed how hot it was this afternoon almost like Summer had invaded Autumn like when Winter invaded Spring and Summer. As I say to people , Weather is Complicated.

Darkness is falling and the nights are drawing in though I'm not sure what tomorrow might bring, probably more good weather, which is always a good thing.

I'll leave you with "The Aubergine That Ate Rangoon"  from Hawkwind's "Astounding Sounds,Amazing Music" album, a bit of laid back mental music that actually fits with the #SongsYouveNeverHeard sequence.

The title is a steal from "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago" a title that I knew and thought it was a book or play, but is actually another song by Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band and was actually penned by Norman Greenbaum of "Spirit In The Sky" fame. So that's a song that I have never heard and may be sharing it with you tomorrow.

Just had a quick listen on Amazon preview and it's about an Alien Invasion and fairly close to a jug band versionSheb Wooley's "Purple People Eater" so I won't be sharing it with you tomorrow.

Sleep well my friends.

I Know

We're now into September and I won't be posting as much as I was for #August50, I actually posted 54 times last month, almost two a day, but for some reason the song "I Know" by Gary Wright's Wonderwheel came to mind when I was making coffee this morning. This is a song that has stuck with me since 1972 when it came out though for some reason I didn't buy it at the time.

Gary Wright was a member of Spooky Tooth and at some point parted ways to form Wonerwheel, and later found solo success with the excellent "Dream Weaver" which you will have heard unless you musical diet is X-Factor, Local Radio and Britain's Got Talent.

I found a live take of this which looks VERY 1970s but it is still a fine song for inclusion in #SongsYouveNeverHeard.  Although as I'm writing this the title track of the Arctic Monkeys' album "Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino" is drawing to a close and when I first heard it I wasn't too sure but now I think it is. The benefits of listening to Mary Ann Hobbs on 6Music. Recently I was surprised to find out her age and the fact that she is married to Miles Hunt of The Wonderstuff!

The spell checker has just suggested Tranquility should be spelt Tranquillity, that is strange or maybe not.

It's the first day of September, Autumn starts here, and the grey skies are clearing so the weekend is looking good.

Fire On High

I first heard this as the 'B' Side of "Livin' Thing" . It is the opening track to the great Electric Light Orchestra album "Face the Music". I remember being impressed by the Electric chair cover, although the album was anything but grim.

It's actually quite a monstrous sound and shows fun, ingenuity and brilliance that seemed to desert the band in later years producing insipid pap such as "Mr Blue Sky" and "Xanadu".

ELO did produce my second favourite album ever "Eldorado"  and this song was the opener from the follow up "Face The Music" which contained some excellent blue eyed soul as well as this over the top sound storm. It is another one for the #SongsYouveNeverHeard sequence although it may one that you have forgotten.

The ELO were formed to continue where the Beatles finished with "Strawberry Fields" but when Roy Wood left it did become Jeff Lynne's vehicle.

So this is my last post for August 2018, and it is time to hit my bed now.

Enjoy this.

Orange Clawhammer

Another for the #SongsYouveNeverHeard series, I first heard this as an unaccompanied sea shanty style song on "Trout Mask Replica", still one of th emost amazing albums you will ever hear should you be able to get your hands on a copy.

Then I got hold of an NME compilation CD which had a version with music, including a harmonica. The only accompanied version I can find features Frank Zappa on acoustic guitar which you can hear here.

The song inspired an eponymous Beefheart tribute band and their site is here.

It is incredibly powerful and once you hear it it will stay with you forever, one of the many gems left to use by Don Van Vliet.

I know this is a very short post, but I would love to know what YOU think about it.

Enjoy your Thursday.

A Kaleidoscope of Rainbows

Well I've hit all targets for this month, but will still be walking into work today. Last night I was searching for something to listen to and Neil Ardley's "Kaleidoscope of Rainbows" popped into my head, a wonderful piece of music despite the odd trumpet noodling interludes but the introduction, which I am sharing with you "Prologue/Rainbow One" is wonderful.  The descending bass line against the rising vibes is sheer perfecton.

Although this is in the jazz universe, Neil Ardley is described as a composer who works with jazz musicians.

Kaleidoscope of Rainbows uses the five-note scale of Balinese gamelan music and has been seen as an early example of world music and features composition and improvisations. Neil Ardley, who left us fourteen years back gives an overview here and if you want to listen to the complete album it's on Youtube here.

This has been a decent week and September will start with a walk to Wylam with my daughter Kirsty, son in law Mark and Fiona on Sunday, so September shouldn't be a problem for hitting my walking targets. I am just waiting for the first moth when I don't hit my target but then again it'll probably never happen, I will always try and make sure that it does.

Yesterday I had tea with my friend Krista who runs Kota based in Commercial Union House and that was just lovely to catch up  and we are going to do lunch. We were talking about how we always make vague dates that we never keep and she got out her diary and we nailed it down.

Visit the Kota link, there are some wonderful things there including a lot of Moomin based items.

Enjoy your Thursday my friends.

Seventeen Hundred

I thought I would post this just to hit seventeen hundred posts since I started posting, breaking the #August50 target, and sharing another #SongsYouveNeverHeard to make it worth reading and listening to.

There is a hell of a lot of great Antipodean music and my favourite band from down under are The Saints, but I also love Split Enz, Crowded House and Midnight Oil. I completely missed out on AC/DC in my teens / early twenties but they are a perfect example of how to last while staying exactly the same. Similar to the UK's Status Quo who really lost it when they tried to change their twelve bar sound, although my favourite two Qho songs are "Mystery Song" and "Accident Prone" which do deviate slightly from their normal formula.

The #SongsYouveNeverHeard that I am going to share with you is the excellent "S'cool Days" by Stanley Frank which was backed by the equally excellent "On A Line", one of those perfect singles like The Beatles "Paperback Writer" backed with "Rain". All I know about Stanley Frank is that he is Australian (I think ... and yes I know how silly that sounds) and that is about it.

Another for you to enjoy.

Fifty Up

This is my fiftieth post this month. I suppose the quality of a lot of these posts has not been up to my usual standard, though that's not very high anyway. I know a lot of my friends read the posts but find it odd and virtually no one leaves any comments . positive or negative on the blog, although my friend Julie leaves a lot on Facebook.

Still the main point of this blog is to keep a diary and store memories for myself, it is a fairly selfish endeavour and therefore by extension is fairly selfish to expect people to leave comments. Life does take it's toll and even leaving a short comment can sometimes take a lot longer than you think it will.

When I share these posts on Facebook (where most of my interactions come from) I tend to give a short resumé of wat's in the post, I don't know if that puts people off.

Given that each post will be around 200-250 words this month has seen me put down 10K-12K which is enough for a short novel, although this will be short on interesting narrative but high on  interesting music content.

I am wondering if I can hit 300 posts this year, which should only require twenty posts a month, which is obviously more than feasible given that that has been my lowest monthly total this month (in June) and this is post 221 this year.

My next project will be #SongsYouveNeverHeard which I will start with this post and continue til the end of September, I would love you to leave a comment letting me know if you have heard the song, if you like it and any other thing you like.

So how do we start this .. Earle Mankey's "Mau Mau" which I heard once on John Peel and then never again. I tracked down a vinyl copy on Ebay about fifteen years back, and still love the record. I wrote about it here, and also created a Youtube slideshow featuring among other thing my dog as a teenager Simba and my first dog when I left home Jasper.

Earle Makey was a guitarist with Sparks but that about as much as I know about him. Also don't you think Russel Mael looks like Freddie Mercury on the cover of "A Woofer In Tweeters Clothing" ? Enjoy.