Keep Taking The Tablets

About a year ago I bought a scribbling tablet, sort of an electronic chalk board. At first I was disappointed because I couldn't easily make out what I was writing. I then decided to bring it into work and offer it to my manager for her children to play with.

Then, with the brighter light, I realised that it was a lot more readable and became useful for jotting down useful ideas or notes which once I'd finished with I could dispense with. Usually I used to do this with post it notes or note pads and pens. This means that I am not wasting paper, however little it might me.

These are cheap , fit in a handbag or briefcase, and if you need to keep what you have you can always photograph it. I#ve noticed that some do colour as well so that could be very useful, and yes the kids could be kept occupied with this while expressing their artistic talent.

I know this is not a usual post from me but I suppose it is vaguely in the realms of technology, but these things are genuinely useful.

I wasn't sure how I could fit music into this, then i found this Etch-A-Sketch sketching of Ray Charles soundtracked by his take on "America The Beautiful" . I could never do anything with Etch-A-Sketch which shows how clever and impressive this guys efforts are... the tablets are far easier to draw on.

The Best Record Ever?

We are always seeing polls about the greatest record, album , song , gig ever and people often ask me what was my favourite bit of some performance. My answer is almost always that I can't give an answer. I have a lot of  artists that I like and a lot of albums that I enjoy listening to over and over again but I am always open to new ideas. Having said that if you were to posit that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was the finest piece every written I wouldn't argue against that.

I'm a great fan of Bob Dylan , Van Morrison , Tom Waits , Nick Drake and then I like Yes , Pink Floyd , Pop Will Eat Itself and Genesis . The list is very very long. I love Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland" but while probably "1983" is my favourite song , his take on "All Along The Watchtower" would be my favourite single of choice because it combines Hendrix's voice and playing with some excellent Dylan lyrics. The thing is "Elect Ladyland"'s predecessors are both amazing albums as well.

So I've hardly started and there is so much I could say. My favourite album of all time is Spirit's "Future Games" followed by "El Dorado" by the Electric Light Orchestra. "Future" Games" also contains a Spirit take on "All Along The Watchtower".

Going back to Dylan maybe "Lily,Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts" is by favourite song and is from "Blood on the Tracks" but then songs like "Desolation Row" and "Tempest" are wonderful (and long) songs.

I am also a fan of keeping it simple, and while it's amazing to play a million notes a second, if you can make one note interesting, then that is true genius. The Coasters' "I'm A Hog For You Baby" and "Tommy Gun" by The Clash both contain one note guitar solos. Added to this songs that just contain one or two chords mean that anyone can play them m Van Morrison wrote "Gloria" and Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" gets away with two chords.

I was writing this as an excuse to share The Avalanches "Frontier Psychiatrist" a totally dumbfounding patchwork of samples that solicitors gave up trying to sue for. Is is comedy ? Is it pop? I haven't a clue but it sounds amazing and the video is wonderful too, another example of musical genius and while it is a favourite of mine I really still can't tell you what my favourite is.

Aqualung

Still on a Jethro Tull kick and decided to spin "Aqualung" on yesterday's walk to work. Aqualung is a fine album and full of great songs about Ian Anderson's attitudes to religion and God and obviously he's not too impressed.

The album is great and then gets blown apart by the standout song "Locomotive Breath", which starts out with a piece of more than acceptable lounge piano  before drifting into a little more upbeat driving piano before stopping and hitting you fair and square with that monster three chord riff, as potent as anything you will ever hear. It is so good that it just put's the rest of the album in the shade.

The thing is "Wond'ring Aloud", "Wind Up" and the sinister title track (I'm sure the red tops would have an obnoxious field day if the knew about the second line of that song). It is a great album though, but in my opinion only betterd by "Thick as a Brick" and "Passion Play", but does bear lots of repeated listening.

It seems that Google are ditching Google+ and this combined with Facebook's suppressions means that each post in this blog barely hits double figures for visits and reads, but as I have said this is for me and if others find it interesting then that is good.

We're in a 28 day February which means and increase in the number of steps I have to take to hit my monthly 340K steps, but I did it last year and this year shouldn't be a problem either.

It is Friday which is good, and I will share you the Fargo into that uses "Locomotive Breath" to stunning effect., but get yourself a copy of the album if you don't already have it.

When You're Thick .... As A Brick

One of the problems with a  great deal of "progressive" music is that often the pieces stretched out for sometimes mind numbing length with obvious classical pretentions, although ironically the collections of songs together often created a uniform thematic piece thin "Wee Small Hours" by Frank Sinatra, "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia" by The Who and "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd weren't averse to stretching out musical pieces to twenty minutes ( a side of vinyl) and I remeber Mountain stretching out "Nantucket Sleighride" over two sides of "Twin Peaks" one of their live excursions.

The seventies punk movement was a kick against this, but even these bands eventually got hit by self indulgence and some songs definitely strayed past the ideal 2'59" limit, which is not always a bad thing. I love the Ramones, Garage Punk (about my musical level) but I also like a lot of progressive music often just thinking I will never ever be able to play that.

My favourite pair of Jethro Tull albums are "Thick as a Brick" and "A Passion Play" and today I was listening to the former as I walked into work. You can hear and understand every word Ian Anderson and teh band sing, often a criticism by "adults" that "you can't hear what they're saying", and for me the music holds my attention throughout the forty or so minutes you are listening. It brings in many moods from acoustic pastoral to agreesive jazz spliced rock and keeps you on board for the whole ride. At no point to do you want to leave. Dance music it is not but would have filled any seventies mosh pit.

I must say it does actually make a walk go musch faster when you are listening to great music. Although Ian Anderson has apologised for it, "A Passion Play" is very close to "Thick as a Brick" and is another album I have been listening to quite a lot recently.

Basically good music i good music and it is stupid to limit your listening because you don't approve of a particular genre. It may be just that my taste is unusually eclectic that I do enjoy album length pieces but The Buzzcocks "Love You More" was only 1'30" on it's original release and that is just just as good as "Thick as a Brick" and both are in my collection.

Smokey Joe's

I was in town and passed Smokey Joe's and thought of the Coasters' (also known as The Robins) "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and when I was looking for the song on youtube found there was a musical of the same name celebrating the songs of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller which I have shared below. Not all the songs are to my taste but it does illustrate their impressive song repertoire. It is just song after song with dance routines and is very slick and impressive.

I really just wanted to include The Coaster's take on "Smokey Joe's Cafe" which was also covered by Buddy Holly for some reason, but that's what happen's with good songs, and Holly also did the definitive version of Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man". Oh and Paolo Nutini does a fairly decent take on it.

See how mind works, it starts with a single idea then I start of picking up other tangents, though getting from The Coasters to Chuck Berry via Buddy Holly is not necessarily that far of a detour and it is definitely a pleasant one.

The video below is playing and I am mightily impressed with the song "Keep On Rollin'" which I have never heard before., then it segue's into "Searchin'" absolute genius.

So I was only going to mention Smokey Joes , but watch the musical, it is mightily impressive.

Shadow Spider

I don't know if it's getting older but I seem to misread a lot of notices and signs. One interpretation is that I'm losing it, the other is that my perception is getting sharper because I am noticing it. The title of the post is from a misreading of a book title on Facebbok.

There's a card at work that says "Thanks" but the "Th" looks like a "W" to me. Maybe that's just my dirty mind.

I once saw a "Go Ahead Northern" sign and read it as Gonorrhea, again some indication of the workings of my mind. The thing is I realise my mistake immediatly and just see it as funny. In a way it is enriching my life with extra (if mistaken) language and words. I suppose Shakespeare must have used this and played with it, although I find some of his plays (especially "Romeo and Juliet") far too wordy.

Sometimes it's a visual thing so you get the words with LI in that look rude such as FLICK and CLINT which seen in the wrong light can cause a little consternation.

Carry On Films also exist for innuendo and mistaken meanings although barring "Carry On Cleo", "Carry On Up The Khyber" and "Carry on Screaming" most of them fall flat for me.

I am just going to put a list of my mistaken reads here which I may update as I find more. It's a bit
like the Clint chocolate cake:

• "Go Ahead Northern"  -   Gonorrhea
• "Thanks" - W@nks
• "Clint" - C*nt
• "Give The Gift of Cinema" - read Cinema as Enema (Seen in Tesco)
• 
  

So what song should go with this, sometng literary and wordy, although all songs contain words, and there are so many songs that have mis heard lyrics such as "Kiss The Sky / Kiss This Guy" from "Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. Although I've used it before I've going to go with "Wrong" by Archers of Loaf one of my favourite ever tunes which I first heard on "The Speed of Cattle" and perfect for me contiually getting words and phrases wrong.

1812

This is post number 1812 and as such need to ibnclude the "1812 Overture (with Cannons)" by Tchaikovsky. Interestingly "Night of Fear" by The Move was based on the main "1812 Overture" riff.

It's almost a week since my last post and one of my #August50 posts came up in my feed where I did mange to post over 50 times in August 2018. I don't expect to do that this year, although I once saw a blog that had thousands on one line link posts each day. I am not too sure of what the point of that was.

I'm just back from another weekend in Whitby managing to scoff lots of fish and chips at the Magpie Cafe and picked up a pristine copy of Can's "Tago Mago" from the MIND charity shop. he album was also inspired by the occultist Aleister Crowley, which is reflected through the dark sound of the album as well as being named after Illa de Tagomago, an island which features in the Crowley legen, which was a surpise to me.

I was once listening to a compilation CD curated by John Lydon and walked in and was listening to something which I though was maybe a remix of The Stone Roses "Fool's Gold" , but it was, in fact "Halleluiah" by Can. I have seen numerous spellings but that's what it is on the vinyl album. I do have it on CD as well (40th Anniversary) but the vinyl copy is something well worth having, and, as I said, was a charity shop bargain.

There are a few places in Whitby to pick up Vinyl such as The Whitby Bookshop, but most places are aware of their worth.

So this is my first post in February, and we shall see how many I do this month. It's really just about noticing things and being bothered to write things down.

A Big Freeze

I don't know if it's me getting older or what, but the frosted white cars and rooves and the biting burning cold this morning just made me want to get into the warm again. As a kid I'd be wanting snow and would go out in a T-Shirt and make snow angels. That would definitely not happen today. Is colder or is it just because I am older and more susceptible to the cold. I really don't know.

Another unrelated thing is that we have a new security entry system where I work amd it makes a two beep or three note noise when you go through whatever door or barrier, and those three notes trigger a musical sequence from Jethro Tull's "Passion Play" every time I come in or leave. While I think "Passion Play" is rather good I could do without it playing in my head every time I walk through a security door or barrier. It's an almost Pavlovian reaction to the three notes and it just happens every time.

Last night Newcastle United beat Manchester City 2-1 and my local branch of William Hills were offering 50/1 for that result, but I thought it would just be money down the drain. It turned out that my actual bets were the ones that actually lost . C'est la vie.

The lack of cloud is what's driving the temperature down, though we have had no snow .... yet. So I think maybe I need to share a bit of "Passion Play" with you although "Frozen"by Madonna was a possibility as well as "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" by Bruce Springsteen, but we shall have a bit of "Passion Play" that is not "The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" which I featured in this post here.

I Can Put A Tennis Raquet Up Against My Face And Prentend That I'm Kendo Nagasaki

It's a line from my favourite song on the Half Man Half Biscuit album "McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt" which was the name of three retired footballers called on to save a Football team in the "Golden Gordon" episode of Michael Palin's "Ripping Yarns". The song is "Everything's AOR" and will of course accompany this post.

It's my dad's 84th birthday and the older someone gets it's more difficult to get birthday presents, especially when his main hobby is working, although he has a penchant for post boxes and boxing. I decided to get him a copy of "There Is No Map In Hell" by Steve Birkinshaw which I bought just for the title and found to be an excellent book seeing what some people can force themselves to do against seemingly impossible conditions.

The weather has been incredibly cold and during January absolutely not conducive to walking although I have managed to keep up my target steps so I am still exceeding my million steps every three months and I will start February in Whitby so I am not sure taht will be a good or a bad thing. Whitby is great for walking but if the weather is not good that may discourage me from actually doing my required steps.

Kendo Nagasaki was a wrestler in the sixties and maybe still is but I remember watching wrestling on a Saturday afternon at my grandmas with Kendo, Mick McManus , Jackie Pallo and others too numerous to mention. It was all staged of course as it still is in the numerous wrestling francises going on today. The link to the Kendo Nagasaki (there are/were many) portrays him as a mystic an dhypnotist as well as a wrestler, so not a one trick pony. The tennis raquet gives a similar effect to the samurai mask worn by Kendo in the ring.

So that's my Monday so far ..... now what's yours?

Ulysses, James Joyce and Japan

I don't know what brought this into my mind apart from the fact that I was having a dream and couldn't remember who wrote "Ulysses" though the names James Joyce, WB Yeats and WG Grace slipped through my mind, so I did know but my mind was telling me I didn't. These days scaremongers so often try to equate forgetfulness with Alzheimers and Dementia.

I remember THAT passage beimg screened on the BBC much to "Angry from Purley"'s disgust, and also seem to remeber my parents having the book , and mee seeking out THAT passage to read over and over. This was the days before video recorders and catch up TV and colour was a luxury. The thing with books is that you can always re read them, if you enjoy them or need to concentrate on the meaning.

I am now thinking I should get myself a copy as someone recently described the book as the greatest in the English language. Maybe on Kindle or Aldiko though , in fact I may have a copy in my ebook library that I acquired a while back.

The Japan part of this post comes from the fact I sold a CD on Discogs yesterday but the guy hadn't paid (shipping is generally added automatically), then I saw that the despatch address was Japan! Internation Stardard shipping is about a fiver and takes five days, International Economy costs four pounds but takes up to 56 days. I charged £4 and sent Standard as you can't be waiting two months for a CD can you. The album was Donovan's "Sunshine Superman" so another Irish connection there.

So I have to go with one of my favourite Donovan songs "Season of The Witch" which is one of the songs on the "Sunshine Superman" album.

Enjoy your Friday everybody.

Tangence or Tangience

Both real word, click on Tangence or Tangience to see the definition. They came into my head because I was just again thinking of the tangential nature of almost everything to do with me. On Sunday's Post here I started on about getting up early, though my slow CD clearance via Discogs which took me on to my favourite Pirates song which led to me discovering  Sons of Pirates and then chatting with Mick Green's sons via Facebook. Almost like a Pinball game of events and connections.

Talking of Pinball, I was in The Strawberry today and they have a Kiss Pinball machine!! I mean what's that about? KIss were always the worst bandwagon jumping poodle rockers with the perfect business model of being facepainted so everyone was replaceable. The ultimate corporate toy rock band.

So I could have shared something by Kiss, but when you are talking Pinball it can only be Elton John's take on "Pinball Wizard" in Ken Russell's feature length pop video masquerading as a film (loads of highlights though such as Tina Turner's "Acid Queen". YOu also get The Who on stage too and those hilarious boots.

Red

I missed the Lunar eclipse and can't understand why it's listed as a "Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse" , yes because it's red "Blood" but why include the word "Wolf" in there? It seems a pointless addition like when mobile and broadband companies describe speeds of Super Ultra Mega Fast, it's either fast or not. TV manufacturers and broadcasters do the same with picture quality with Ultra and Super HD. Pointless extra adjectives.

There were some amazing red skies this morning, examples on my instagram channel here. I don't know if that was caused by the Lunar Eclipse.There are lots of explanationa on line on how the moon was turned red by the eclipse and that should keep you occupied for quite a while if that is to your particular taste.

This post is unusual in that it has no musical content, though you can always go for Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of The Moon" or Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" as vaguely related, but I just got a bit of video from the Guardian to see what happened, and I am sure that is far more relevant.

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