819

Sunday morning, come down to make a cup of tea, that's the time on the oven clock 8:19 , and I'm thinking "I'm Late" . I'm not the White Rabbit from "Alice In Wonderland", although at the end of the month I will be in Whitby and visit La Rosa where Lewis Carroll once stayed and now has a room named after him, and I will probably nip by as I've not been there for over a year.

The weather is still grey and cold although the sun is hot when it shines through. I am vaguely perturbed by the similarity to the weather and the book I am reading "The Pince With The Silver Hand" where the fog, mist and cold accompany the "gods" of Limbo trying to destroy the world by turning it into another Limbo.




I was looking at the number of programs on my Virgin TV recorder, as well as my DVD / Blu Ray collection as well as my CDs and realise that in my case I have bought things just because I thought I should. Part of it is actually supporting record shops and artists but it seems, especially in this digital age,  we have become magpies, collecting things just to have them rather than to continually enjoy them. Downloading and recording are the worst because you have it then and then it just sits there, often not being watched or listened to. It is nice to be able to enjoy something and having it on tap but I am now listing CDs on Discogs some of which are selling at rather inflated prices, but of people are willing to pay then that's what you list it at. The Pirates "Shakin' With The Devil" compilation is selling for up to £56 but I've put it on at a far more reasonaly £20.

There was something else that I wanted to say but it's now gone from my mind, but if it comes back I will just do another post. So what to choose, there's obviously "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, or "I'm Late" from Disney's "Alice In Wonderland" but I am going to go for The Pirates "All In It Together" which I loved as soon as they released it on their seventies reformation. Then I found the video below by "Sons of Pirates". I've not been able to find any more info because there is an American band of the same name but I'm wondering if they are the offspring of Mick Green and Co. Mick Green was also the inspiration for Wilko Johnson. They are probably the Green Brothers, Mick Green's lads here on Facebook.

905

The title is because I saw the time and it's the title of a dystopian Who song from "The Who By Numbers", so obviously that will lead this post. 905 was written and sung by John Entwistle who in my opinion was one of the greatest rock bassists, almost up there with the Motown bassists.

Since Christmas the number of hits per post have gone up slightly although I don't know if I have just been dropped by robots. I find it quite amusing that one of the main refering sites is an esoteric "webcam" site if you know what I mean. I haven't a clue why that should be apart from the same of this blog can be read as Seven Day Sin rather than the Seven Days In which is the initial "mission statement" of the blog which was to record travel, but is now just a diary with an emphasis on music, travel , tech and media.

This year I don't expect to post as much but I do intend to hit 2K posts so that means I need to still do 2 posts every three days.

There is still snow and ice on the ground and it is cold but the sun is shining brightly, and that is always uplifting.

So this is just an inconsequential and short Friday morning post as we speed into the weekend.

Winter is Coming ... Everywhere

Well it is in my life. The final series of Game of Thrones comes with the Night King bringing Winter and turning the world to Ice. I'm currently revisiting Michael Moorcock's  "The Prince With The Silver Hand" in which a "resurrected" Corum battles the Ice and Winter brought by the Fhoi Myore in a freezing Celtic world, and today started off extremely cold before a minor snow storm brought snow to Newcastle. It's still white and there is Ice on the paths.

I don't think I'll be walking to work tomorrow unless there is a major thaw.

This morning in the cold I was listening to Primal Scream's "Dirty Hits" and they are a truly awesome band taking on any style and making it theirs , from Rock and Roll to Gospel to Krautrock to Metal. While "Autobahn 66" has an obvious nod to Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" it's closer in type to Neu!'s Motorik beat, and that is the one I'll share with you tho their catalogue is a veritable cornucopia of brilliance. I particularly love "Kowalski" with it's reference to the film "Vanishing Point", one of my favourites, and I know how they stop him.

So we shall se what the weekend brings.

Numberless

Still waking to fragments of dreams and really feeling that I need a full day in bed, but part of me thinks I have responsibilities at work and another part says I should walk into work, but the dark, and the cold wind is putting me off that. I don't know whether I will or not.

Numberless is an odd adjective, and I don't know why the word came to me maybe it's out of one of the dreams. It is amazing the number of book, music and film sequences that are inspired by dreams and, see, I ve just gone off on a tangent in the same sentence.

Still could you imagine a world without numbers. There are peoples who's counting system is one,two many. In the TV series "The Prisoner" Patrick McGoohan states "I Am Not A Number, I Am A Free Man", he is No 6!! Which was also a Brand of cigarette favoured by my friends in my teens. Of course I went for No 10 hand half a cigarette and gave them away and luckily never got hooked.

Every aspect of our life is affected or influenced by numbers, I couldn't write this without the various computers involved crunching numbers to allow me to do this. If I go to work by bus I have to buy a ticket which I have to pay for with money and we need numbers to deal with that.

So I'll leave you with the intro to The Prisoner featuring Ron Grainer's theme tune

In A Broken Dream

It's strange how dreams can be vivid, seemingly keeping you engaged all night and then when you finally do wake up you are left with fragments, even though the dream itself captured your imagination. I had gone to sleep last night after watching some of this week's installment of "Black Lake" so that obviously had some bearing on the contents of my dream.

This is what I'm left with, two rooms, in a containment area and whenever the room is occupied or being used there is a green indicating light and whenever it's empty or not in use then there is a red indicating light. The dream had a hell of a lot more to it, but I am just left with these fragments, and by tomorrow they will be gone too. The fact I am writing this here means it actually won't be forgotten as such, but whenever I revisit this post or search on the Dreans label I will come across it in the future.

That obviously made me think of the record "In A Broken Dream" by the Australian group Python Lee Jackson featuring Rod Stewart on vocals and some of th emost amazing guitar work you will ever hear on a chart single. It was a one hit wonder, but once you hear it you will never forget it.

I Won't Watch Black and White Films, Films With Subtitles or Read Books

Obviously not me, but over the years I continually hear this from people, and variations on the same. Anything out of the blinkered area that they see means you (that's me) are a total weirdo. You don't like "Top Gear"? You're weird. You like classical music? You must be retarded. You don't watch X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent? You have no taste in music. You watch Asian language film? You're strange. You listen to German and French bands who sing in German and French? You are mad.

I've had all these reactions from people, and maybe it's why people seldom speak with me, but that's their loss. The fact they are cutting out of their life the films:

• Downfall
• Amelie
• The Seven Samurai
• Casablanca
• It's A Wonderful Life
• Young Frankenstein

....and more

and then the music of:

• Beethoven
• Mozart
• Philip Glass
• Can
• Amon Duul II
• Jacques Brel
• Alan Stivell
• Gong

..... and more

And the fact that people refuse to read for the flimsiest of reasons, missing out on the joy of hooking up your own imagination as someone's words take you on a journey that no film could ever do, I list the music I listen to and the books I read on here. I have finished "There Is No Map In Hell" which I bought just for the title and I discovered what it is like to run 214 Wainwright Peaks in seven days. which you can read about on Steve Birkinshaw's blog here, You might not be able to judge a book by the cover but it was the title that hooked me and though I have zero interest in Fell Running it did hook me.

So I should include a song that is not sung in English, so I'll go with Los Lobos take on Richie Valens' "La Bamba" from the soundtrack of the eponymous film

Tempus

This is Post Number 1800

I don't know if it's an age thing, and maybe that's a sign of getting old, but I oftemn start on something with I know will take an hour or two, but want it completed immediately. This is true of work and walking (understandable) but also watching films and TV progams and listening to albums, which have to take as long as the last.

I always found it amusing that mobile networks sold the favct that you could download a four minute song in two seconds. It still takes four minutes to listen two , and if you don't take four minutes over it then you lose all the pleasure and experience to be gained from giving the song the listening time it requires. It's even more true for albums and films. It is useful if you are downloading before going into a no signal area but that is never the reason pushed as it would imply that signal coverage is not perfect (which it isn't).

It's been a mental week and work and next week is probably going to be madder, I'm sure I will be able to cope.

It is Friday and I am actually feeling tired though it's another early Saturday start with a trip across Slatyford Park to pick up some things from the Post Office Depot. I keep forgetting I could have things delivered to my local Post Office when order stuff from Amazon that won't fit through my letter box, still it does give me some exercise.

I'll leave you with "Shooting Star" by Harper Simon , Paul's lad. It's a few years old but an absolutely beautiful way to leave Friday night ti enter the realms of Morpheus.

Future Islands

Just a quick one about blog targets for 2019. Last year I posted over 300 times (with the aim of beating my previous highest year of 2017 with 264 posts. This year I want to take the blog over 2,000 posts since day one which means just over 200 required this year, that still requires around two posts every three days so i am going to have to find something to talk about. Given that I seldom see anyone these days it does give me an option to say things that people may or may not listen to, but it's always pleasant when someone mentions something that I have written about.

I'm  still reading "There Is No Map In Hell" and it reminds me of "Fermat's Last Theorem" in that it's almost a gripping adventure , with the will he / won't he on almost every page, getting more and more tense as you near the end of the book.

I've also been adding more CDs to my Discogs store here due to the fact that I play vinyl more than I play CDs and listen to most of my music via various digital platforms such as my phone and Kindle Fire and Home Network.

I have bought a hell of a lot of CDs without really getting to know them, but also some have only required a single listen and it's pointless having them boxed up doing nothing.

Anyway, this is post 1799 so I will share Motorhead's take on David Bowie's "Heroes", and it is more than up to scratch. I've seen King Crimson's take which is great as well, and while I am sure there will be versions that don't cut the mustard, this certainly does.

Friday is almost upon us.

There Is No Map In Hell

The title is the name of the book by Steve Birkinshaw that I bought from 3 Peaks Cycles in Settle just because of the title. I didn't look at the back cover or find out what it was about I just bought it. It's about the guys attempt to run ALL Wainwright's 214 Fells in seven days, this was like running two marathons and ascending / descending 35,000 feet each day. Oh, and just to make it really easy he went public to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. I have a couple of friends who suffer from this horrible debilitating condition so that raised Steve in my estimation, he really does care for others.

This whole thing is not a subject that normally interests me and had you said do you fancy a book about a guy running the 214 Wainwright's in seven days I would have taken a pss. The book is large format and around two hundred pages but I am half way through at the moment enjoying the mentons of places and areas I know and finding out on how he powers through the challenges he faces

This book is a prime example of just diving in and trying something that is completely new for you. I could have easily hit a brick wall and discarded it but the narrative of fell running, nutrition , friends and family values and challenges with the added bonus of familiar locations (Steve works for Newcastle University as well) are making this a joy to read. I will resume my re reading program after this, but this is an enjoyable read from a most impressive man.

So something appropriate to accompany this, there's obviously "The Race" by Yello, but I'm going to go for "Man In The Hills" by Burning Spear because the only thing it has in common with STeve is the title and it is a brilliant record. I know it's Monday , but enjoy it, I 'm off  to the doctors and then to deal with something that will be unpleasantly annoying at work.

Steam Powered

I must say I am very impressed with the Steam Gaming Platform. I know there are so many games that run on this but it's great to be able to play the ones that are my level obviously very retro and they cost next to nothing and actually work as they did when first released.

So far I have bought the Quake and Hexen packs which were lest than a tenner for both of them and am considering Doom which again is  a pittance, but all these are veritable timesinks or time vampires. I also got Civilization III for a massive 74p.

I would not regard myself as a Computer Gamer, I have a Nintendo Wii which I use about every six months, and when I see the latest XBox and Playstation Games I know that there is no way I could even start any of those games. These games now have budgets normaly associated with films, with scored soundtracks by major composers. I cannot see where I could put aside the time to actually take part in these games.

I remember buying a Steam Package which contained some amaging graphical games but just couldn't handle all the controls an dthen decided to uninstall it and forgot what my original account was.

Anyway I am really happy with this installation and it should keep me occupied for the odd half hour  when I need a bit of mental relaxation. So the natural music to accompany this (for me) is "It's A Game" by String Driven Thing which was also covererd by The Bay City Rollers.

Hope your Friday is going well.

New Year, New Book

I've finished "swords of Corum" by Michael Moorcock and now taking a break from Science Fantasy (though there is little Science and a lot of Fantasy and it suffers like "Elementary" of finishing off incidents too quickly ("I Killed All The Gods")) , and now I am starting "There Are No Maps In Hell" by  Steve Birkinshaw about his record breaking run of the 214 Wainwright Fells.

This is a book I bought just because of the title when I saw it in the 3 Peaks Cycle Shop in Settle (which also sells book and breakfasts and the people are really helpful. I'm hoping to get back there soon and try their breakfasts. They say never judge a book by the cover, so should you jusdge one by it's title? Well the title sold it to me and the cover is fairly good although completely different to my recent reading.

After this I will be back on Moorcock's Corum books in the "The Prince With The Silver Hand" which is heavily based on Irish Mythology, so looking forward to that as well.

This morning 6Music (John Hillcock) played "Bang The Drum All Day" and it sort of sums the feeling of coming back to work after the New Year for me. It is Friday though, so have a great day.

Bonjour 2019

For some reason I thought it was 2020, probably working in a Finance Department in the Financial Year 2019 for the last eight months. I do believe that tax and accountancy is just an annoying situation where a bunch of ex council pedants make up rules to make life difficult for everyone else.

Anyway less work talk and here we are on the first day of 2019 with my first post before my first sleep of the New Year. I' will go for (like I probably did last year) "New Year's Day" by U2 from the "Under A Blood Red Sky" album that I bought from Woolworth's in Goole when I was on my first contract at Hygena coding COBOL on a DEC/VAX . I was quite amazed when there was all the palaver about the Millenium Bug because I'd been programming since 1980 catering for the millenium, so how come programming in the late nineties didn't see the Millenium coming. Still "Under A Blood Red Sky" is one of my favourite U2 albums which I still play today

Not to worry, we are still here despite the morons in the USA and UK Governments at the moment and sure that we will deal with these like our bodies deal with infections, we will purge them.

Welcome to 2019 everybody.

Goodbye 2018 Hello 2019

Yes it's still New Year's Eve and I have been pondering the decline in visits since the end of October. Up to then I would get 30-50 hits for each post now it's 14-20 for each post with no apparent reason for the decline. However the real oddity is that the overall number of visits is staying at around 2m200 a month , that's roughly 520 a week or 70 a day, and given that I post maybe five times a week that implies more hits than I am getting.

The conclusion that I'm drawing is that Google visit logging is slightly disfunctional. The overal stats show that my most visited page is here with 879 visits (this figure keeps declining) however when I check the individual page it's had 1,899 visits when this one here shows as my second most visited with 679 visits but checking the page it's actually hit 2,114 visits. So really I need to take this fall with a rather big pinch of salt.

So although this is just about blog statistics, it is another excuse to share some rather excellent music with you though I'm not sure what that should be.

One thing with technology is that you don't had the problem of dating your cheques any more, I don't know why that flashed into my mind.

Everyone is posting various New Year Greetings on Social Media and out enjoying parties, and I binge watched Killing Eve, which was a very good way to spend New Year's Eve.

The weather has still been grey and uninspiring so we won't go into 2019 with a flurry of snow, but no doubt there will be noise and fireworks, so maybe I will choose "Fireworks"  by Siouxsie & the Banshees as my 2018 play out song, Happy New Year All.

Possibly Last Post Quiet

Walking to work this morning was very quiet, almost deathly silent. I wasn't sure whether there were any buses running until I hit the third bus stop and there were people waiting and then a bus went in the other direction.

It is New Year's Eve so most people will be getting ready for parties and socia;lising and joining together, but through laziness and apathy I wont be. I find a lot of gathering become very cliquey and if you are not in with a group of people then you get the worst kind of loneliness , the one of being the outsider in a crowd of revellers.

There are times where you just want to be alone and I wouldn't expect anyone to be bothered on my behalf because it's my choice to stay away.

This also gives me a chance to catch up on films and TV and to read and to record things on this here blog although I think there are maybe half a dozen people who read it now, but even when the vistor numbers flatline I will keep on writing because essentially this is for me and it is under my control.

There is also a chance I will do a last last post before midnight hits and then we start of 2019, which is another year of opportunity for some, and hopefully we can become a more caring society.

We have seen HMV going under again and find it ironic that people bemoan that kids will never know the joy of browsing for records. The fact is HMV is a chain and when it held power it looked to to take out the competition, especially small local independents. I find it ironic that lots of people who are involved in local and independent business (especially arts and music) who are bemoaning this but suddenly become blind to local music shops and venues, preferring chains, Spotify and big venues.

It's like saying I'll never be able to watch comedy again because Michael McIntyre is no longer touring. When your choice of product is narrowed to the ones all over the media it destroys the grassroots.

I'm sorry if this seems a bit ranty but a perferct piece of music for this is The Mekons "Where Were You?" which probably applies to most of us in most situations.

So if this is my last post for 2018 Happy New Year.

Aitchemvee

It looks like HMV are heading for administraion again. Last time their stores were selling anything, but music is still not their core sale product, although it is the core product you associate with HMV. One of the problems is that a great deal of people think that this is the only offline place you can get music. I Newcastle there are half a dozen record shops (listed and linked here)which a lot of people just ignore. Probably the same people who insist on going to Tesco rather than the Grainger Market for food.

They just sent me an email advertising their sale but the site doesn't work. Yesterday I bought two lots of vinyl from Discogs, which is a goldmine for both buying and selling music.

So I thought I would just mention this, it's not particularly important but they are blaming the high street malaise where everyone is shopping online. The thing is online is cheaper and often more convenient but it doesn't provide the interaction you get from a shop, that's for records or anything else. With that interaction you often get extra information and almost get a relationship with the person in the shop.

I don't know their names but I am friends with all the people in the shops I visit., and that takes me back to the shops. While I drop into HMV every now and then they are seldom my first port of call to buy a record, although I have bought from them. The problem is HMV is just another chainstore, it has no customer loyalty,  like any chainstore, and as such people will not be too botherd if it sinks or swims (apart from the employees), so I will share The Buzzcocks' "Why She's A Girl From The Chainstore" which seems sort of appropriate.

Quiet

It is that time between Christmas and New Year where you almost feel you are trapped in Limbo. Prior to Christmas I saw someone chatting about the 12 Days of Christmas with celebrations every day but it is basically Christams and New Year and then the outlet seems to be shop sales.

I would love 365 days of celebrations where everyone had a good time, looked out for their fellow man and no ne wanted for anything but unfortunately it's not like that. Commercialisation drives us to spend more money while ensuring we are paid less, and then complains that people are not spending money. People spend what they think they can afford.

This morning on my walk in I saw some amazing skies as the sun rose, examples on my Instagram feed are here. I have completed my steps for December 2018 although at the beginning I was thinking I might not make it, but the weather has become much milder and listening to music on the way in is excellent. Today I listened to Jordan Reyne's new album "Bardo" which is hypnotically dark and beautiful, much as I expected.

There are no video's for the new album yet so I have chosen "Bite" from "The Annihilation Sequence", all her albums are worth experiencing and available as a digital pack from Bandcamp.

Grey Christmas

Weatherwise this must be one of the greyest Christmases I have ever seen. Christmas has been fine but the weather has not been too cold and seriously is just plain grey. The good news is that since the Winter Solstice we are getting more daylight, as I noticed leaving a desolate workplace at around four of the clock today.

That always makes me think of F Paul Wilson's "Nightworld" the finale of The Adversary series which kicked off with "The Keep". The shortening of the days doesn't stop when it should and hence the title of the book. Check it out, well check out the whole series, there are six excellent book and "The Keep" was turned in to a half decent film by Michael Mann.

I've been listening to a lot of Jethro Tull recently and decided to put a couple of albums on my phone, but managed to just load up the "Aqualung" out takes, but I have since rectified that. Basically the out takes didn't include "Locomotive Breath" which I included in a recent post when it was used as an opener to "Fargo". So a few Tull albums and my complete Janelle Monae and Jordan Reyne collection have been installed for my listening pleasure.

So who do I choose to share with you, maybe Jordan Reyne who's new album "Bardo" is just out but I will choose the piece that stunned me when I first saw her many moons ago at Think Tank, the hypnotically beautiful and disturbing "Shadow Line".

Steam Quake Goofle

I was going to write a Christmas Day Free post yesterday but in the end couldn't be bothered. This morning I realised that I had no games on my PC although I had back up disk images of Quake, Hexen and Doom but the inherent laziness of finding putting a disk in the drive kicked in as well as trying to get the daamned things to run on Windows 10.

So a quick Google search and I find that a whole Quake collection is available on Steam for £8.49. It was really a no brainer. I just saw that I mistakenly spelt Google as Goofle. Isn't Goofle just a great word.

I also realised I hadn't played a game on this computer since I got it over a year ago, so booted up Quake in Nightmare mode and got killed almost immediately , I then retried in normal mode and the machine froze when I was half way through Level 1, but I'm not too bothered, I think it will sort itself out. I also got Civilization III for 74p.

I decided to listen to some of my favourite Punk compilation 1-2-3-4, five disks of brilliance and the first compilation that The Clash allowed themselves to be included on. I was playing from my network set up and then got sidetracked and was playing Marcel King's "Reach For Love" from the Factory Records box about six times. It really is one of the best records ever, and is Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single.

I posted on Facebook that at the moment it's my favourite record ever, so obviously it has to be the Boxing Day song although I am up to "Anarchy In The UK" on the 1-2-3-4 album and every song on that box could probably feature in my posts.

Have a fantastic Boxing Day folks.

Christmas Day Too

Well it has been quiet and relaxing. Have exchanged messages and phone calls with friends ad family and done not very much at all, but it is Christmas Day. I've managed to avoid the cheesy Christmas Songs but heard an awful insipid instrumental take on The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" on Classic FM. Classical music does not need to be insipid and soulless but Classic FM like local radio seem to usually go for the blandest fare (or should that be "fayre") they can find.

Look at the take on Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" in the last post, how good it that? And lets face it the list of Classical Music both from the past and contemporary is vast. I remember my secondary school music teacher managed to put me off Classical music because he would just stick an LP on and we had to listen to it for forty minutes. It wasn't built up, or explained, it was just there, and to a teenager, it was not cool.

So I leave you with "Troika" by Prokofiev from his "Lt Kije" suite which provided the motif for Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas". The suite also provide the motif for Sting's "Russians" too ("Romance"), so there is a lot og great music out there to listen to without resorting to sanitised blandness.

I hope you Christmas Day is progressing wonderfully.

Christmas Day

I wasn't going to write anything today but I am having the most relaxed Christmas Day for a long time. Last night we watched Christmas films, "Scrooged", "Muppets Christmas Carol" and "Die Hard"

I had missed the sheer amount of Christmas References in "Die Hard" closing with "Let It Snow" sequing into Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" , the motif of which plays throughout the film, I suppose a reference to the German baddies, but "Ode To Joy" from Beethoven's 9th Symphony is one of the most uplifting pieces of music ever, although as I write this I'm listening to the beautiful "Once I Awakened" by Kevin Ayers from possibly his finest album "Confessions of Doctor Dream", I'd love to share both pieces with you and maybe I will.

Today I have hardly left the house, just to feed my neighbours' tropical fish, and that's a sort of coincidence because I think Kevin Ayers played with Gong who had a song called "Tropical Fish" on "Camembert Electrique". See that's me going off on a total tangent again, but that's the way we generally discover new things, which is usually a good thing.

Well I found a brilliant Flashmob take on "Ode To Joy" and it's wonderful to see the joy in everyone's faces when this is playing, the children loving it, who said classical music can't be cool, fun and joyous. It's possibly one of the most joyously brilliant things I've seen. Watch it, you'll love it.

Now go on, there's plenty of Christmas to enjoy, go and share the joy, smile and have fun.