Answer

I am enjoying, if that's the right word, "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins but seems to be more against  organised controlling religion and by extension the monotheist "god" which is the focus of most religion. I'm a tenth of the way through the book and think that at some point he will take aim and my own belief that evolution won't waste our consciousness but I have no evidence or reason to believe that, but you can never satisfactorily prove the non-existence of something, and also the fact that we cannot explain something means we have not found the answer. I couldn't really explain how a plane flies but it's not supernatural, magic or the will of god.

Also I wonder if Richard Dawkins would have a problem with people who worshipped the Earth and believed when they die become one with the Earth. He couldn't really argue with the basic premis.

Often religion is a search for "the answer" and two books spring to mind that provide the solution.

The first being Douglas Adams' "Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" which gives that answer as 42 but the tells us you need to know what the question was.

The next is "Venus on the Half Shell" written by Philip Jose Farmer under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, a creation of the amazing Kurt Vonnegut. Basically the protagonist is searching for God to ask, in his opinion, the ultimate question:

Why are we born to suffer and die?

Through many adventures he eventually comes face to face with God and asks his questionand God answers:

Why Not?

A great ending to the book.

And just a thought, why doesn't the Christian God have a proper name? It's like calling your dog Dog (ironically a palindrome of God) and what the heck is the Holy Ghost ?

So what to go with this morning , maybe "Converted" by The Alabama 3 from "Exile on Coldharbour Lane" which my friend Tom glared at me as they broke into the chorus "Let's Go Back To Church* but by the end of the gig even he was converted.

Follow

Just a short post about an odd thing. I didn't really use twitter until Google ditched Google+ and I looked for new ways to share my blog post as Facebook also seemingly stopped feeds. I'm not sure how many I followed or how many follower I had (this blog after twelve years has FIVE followers) so I am not the most popular person on the planet, but I am sure I had about seventy followers and followed a similar number of people.

Every few days I get a new follower but the number of followers I have seems to remain at a constant 77 (just checked it's now 78) which is a lot more than this blog (despite it's now daily 1-1.5K visits (and yes I know a lot will be robots and apparently French people (Merci, Merci pour les visites)  so overall that is a success and it's only since sharing the blog on Twitter that these visit spikes took off. Below are two images showing the spikes and the fact that France is the source of a lot of visits.

Big In France

Big In 2019

So since twitter , Feedburner picked me up and that I think is the main reason for the reason hike in hits. I would like to hit 300K by the end of the year and at the current rate that could happen by mid October , but that is assuming I sill get over 1K hits a day.

So I though I would just post this listening to the Giorgio Moroder album "Deja Vu" , and while it's OK it's not as adventurous as I expected although "74 is the New 24" is quite good and the first song that would fit with the "From Here To Eternity" album which is one of my favourites. That was followed by an excellent take on Suzanne Vega's "Toms Diner" with Britney Spears, which shows it's always good to listen to a whole album. Not as good, in my opinion, as "From Here To Eternity" but more than listenable with some good points.

I've also realised that Giorgio Moroder's moustache is almost as iconic as Frank Zappa's (see below)

So "74 is the New 24" would be a good one to share with you and the video is cool too.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Atheist

I'm currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and the foreword tells me that anyone reading this will be an Atheist if they finish it. This is the sort of evangelical preaching that annoys me about Richard Dawkins. I ton't like being told I am wrong without empirical evidence and I almost want to say I believe in God just to spite him.

I was made to go to church  by my parents until I was ten then it was my choice. I went to Catholic schools and some teachers every week tried to trip you up on what had happened in mass and certain pupils would tell teachers that you hadn't been to Church which resulted in various fors of denigration and punishment.

Jesuits taught me at secondary school and some of them were extremely logical by admitting that only faith could justify their position. That earned my respect because they were fine with people who were "unbelievers" .

Through my life I have come across lots of great religious people and none of them have tried to convert me.

In 62 years I have seen no evidence of God but I am always open to be proved wrong, that's PROVED wrong not told I'm wrong.

And I do have faith, faith that the sun will rise, faith that the light will turn on when I flick the switch, faith that the kettle will boil when I switch it on, a little less faith that I will get a phone signal or Amazon Prime will work when I want to watch a prong.

Because of evolution I believe that our minds continue after death, so it doesn't really bother me, but evolution tends to keep the good adaptable bits and in a lot of humans the mind is the most interesting and flexible part.

So "The God Delusion" is four hundred pages and quite a large book so think this will take me about a month to finish.

I'm still getting a thousand hits a day on the blog so the Feedburner thing  (something to do with syndicated content) is still working although a side effect is lots of visits from France for some reason though I can't say I'm complaining.

To go with this I'm going with "Faith" by George Michael just because I like it.

Morning

Is Saturday better than Friday? Friday has the anticipation of the two day weekend combined with the fact that it's the last day of work , whereas Saturday you can get up when you want , you don't have to go to work but you only have one more day before Monday comes around. This is not true for many people who work in retail, banks , call centres and the like so apologies to all those.

I once read of an American car shop who noticed that most of their sales came on Friday afternoon and Saturday so they changed their working week from Monday to Friday to Friday to Monday (that doesn't seem to make sense but it does) so employees went from a five day week to a four day week for the same pay and profits increased. This model wouldn't work for everything but is definitely an example of how you should always look to improve situations in a way that benefits everybody.

As I said I finished "Brief Answers To The Big Questions", the final Stephen Hawking book in around a week and it is a very interesting, easy and thought provoking read which I would recommend to everybody. My next book is going to be "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, a far heavier tome but I do like Dawkins' sensible and logical arguments although he does, ironically, get a bit evangelical at times. Still I will see how it goes.

I;ve been enjoying the single "Ibtihaj" by Rapsody with GZA . I though "Ibtihaj" was some kind of acronym but it's actually the name of Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first female Muslim-American athlete to earn a medal at the Olympics. The chorus, male backing vocals sounds like a eerie Bowie song like say "The Bewlay Brothers". It is a great sound and I heard it again on Radcliffe and Maconie on 6Music this morning but Chris Hawkins has also been playing it.

Take a listen and definitely check out the books.

Enjoy your Saturday.

Friday

Yes it's the 13th and had an early night last night . The Feedburner feed seems to be dropping off but this time may be because I haven't posted for a couple of days through essentially laziness, apathy and tiredness.

Last night I watched at excellently subversive comedy  film called "The Brand New Testament" which relocates God to Brussels and he is nothing but a git , and his rebellious daughter is brilliant , there are some very funny scenes especially after she escapes through washing machine after Jesus advises her what to do is a very small cameo and God's wife follows the evolution of her personal copy of "The Last Supper" painting. Really enjoyed that.

According to the doctor I'm getting old but in very good condition so all is fine on that front.

I could go on about it being the 13th but I've written about that in the past here so today will be just working before the weekend and picking up my pre ordered copy of "Hypersonic Missiles" by Sam Fender on vinyl and signed by the lad himself from Beyond Vinyl.

After yesterday's rain it looks like another summery day though no doubt it will be cold, it is Autumn after all, not Summer any more.

So it's Friday , the weekend is nearly here so what do we go with. As it's the 13th we'll go with Beck, Bogert and Appice's cover of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" for no other reason than I 'm too lazy to think of anything else.

Today could be a lazy day.

Phone

I've just watched a short series on Amazon Prime called "Silent Eye" and it was shot on a Samsung Galaxy S8 (see here) . I remember seeing the film "Tangerine" that was shot on an iPhone and it's quite amazing that we still refer to this devices as "phones" . They can do everything in a hand held package.

I still think they are not ideal for watching a big film, but when they work on normal or holographic projection even that might be just another thing to do. As yet we can't use them to teleport (like Star Trek tricorders and communicators) but how near might that be, although that is something that has always philosophically confused me. If you are teleported then you need to be deconstituted and reconstituted so is the reconstituted you really you?

Obviously reading Stephen Hawking has got me (over) thinking big thoughts, but that is not a bad thing, and I've included "Star Trek Dreaming" by Spirit from "Future Games" for your enjoyment.

Crunch

I'm really enjoying the final Stephen Hawking book which while I don't understand a great deal of it, it is a great book for stimulating thoughts and while it is not explicitly stated I like the "Crunch Theory" of the Universe that it is a constant state of expanding and contracting from a singularity where eveying contracts to a pin point resulting in a big bang which causes the whole thing to start again. If course this happens over millions if not billions of years and implies that the universe is effectively eternal although at the point of singularity time doesn't exist.

reading a bit further about the singularity it's a place where time , space and everything becomes infinite therefore unmeasurable so I think that also fits with my interpretations.

This post sounds as though I know what I am talking about, I don't really, but things to catch my imagination. So definitely a worthwhile book to have in your collection.

Also this morning I got a mention on the Chris Hawkins Show (about seventy five minutes in if you follow the link) plugging a few local record shops and the fact that I have ordered the forthcoming Sam Fender album.

There's only one song for this post, the scientifically accurate "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python and I didn't realises Stephen Hawking had done a version as well.

Books

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is finished and I had my eyes on three books to read next:

1. How To Stop Time by Matt Haig
2. Brief Answers To Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
3. On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno by David Sheppard
4. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

That was roughly how they had ordered themselves in my mind so of course I chose "How To Stop Time" by Matt Haig. I started reading it and thought this sounds familiar, I then dipped into the various parts of the book and it came back to me. I have read it before. It's a great story, pure Matt Haig , but I don't need to read it again. I either must have another copy or I have given it away to a friend or charity shop. I'm sure someone else will benefit from this great book.

So next on the list was the Stephen Hawking book , his last published work and it is remarkably refreshing even with the forewords from Eddie Redmayne and Professor Kip Thorne the Hawking stars writing.... about stuff I do find difficult getting my head round but the analogy I have to use after "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is like I've been swimming in the weeds and rubbish at the bottom of an undredged canal, yes it's interesting and keeps your attention but is probably the lyrical equivalent of bog snorkelling, then coming to the Stephen Hawking book is like surfacing ing into clear , warm water that brings joy if unfamiliarity. There is still work to be done but it has become a lot more inviting and pleasurable.

The book is only 230 pages so will be finished this week but everything I have read by Stephen Hawking is always easy to read if not to understand. It makes you think and that is always and pleasure.

For some reason the song "Back To Life (Back To Reality)" came to mind so obviously that is what we will continue with on this beautiful Sunday.

Streams

On twitter I keep seeing a poll for what is the best streaming app, Spotify , Amazon or Apple Music (or whatever it's called this week). There are lots of other similar more genre specific apps like Pandora, and people often want to share their Spotify playlists with me.

I don't do Spotify or any other music streaming service. Someone makes a lot of money from streaming and, unless you're Ed Sheeran or Adele, it's not  the artist. Daft Punk's "Random Access Memory" was the biggest selling album of that year and they made about £13K from streaming which might have paid for a lunch break.

People often like the "if you like that you'll like this" option, but that is so open to abuse, and let's face it payola has been around since records were first sold.

Most people listen on mobile devices and the unseen cost for that is streaming uses data, so if you are not on free or unlimited wifi you network provider can start coining it.

Also if you expect your streaming service why not listen to a radio station and trusted DJs and shows. The last I heard artists got paid £50 if their song is played on the radio. I don't know if it's the same now or the same on all stations but it's a damned sight better than streaming rates.

Also given that often today's youth can't listen to more than 20 seconds of a song how do you remunerate for part streams? Many years ago Peter Gabriel was involved with a company call "WE" who's plan was to set of a system where you paid a nominal small fee to listen to a song. I objected to this as if I like music I want to buy a single or album and play it in perpetuity.

Youtube seems to be OK, it's generally free with on ads, and I don't hear artists complaining about it so they must be getting adequate recompense or you would see music being continually pulled. However video uses a lot more data than music does so this can be another money spinner for mobile phone companies.

I done several posts related to this (click on the first Spotify link to see) but this is my own history of recorded music and this talks on how music should be rewarded.

Last week I heard Sam Fender for the first time, yesterday I ordered his debut album and this is about how I heard it on the radio.

If streaming is your bag that's fine but I will stay with radio, visiting record shops , gigs and enjoying music I buy.

Reading

Nearly finished the appendices of "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and if anything they are madder than the main part of the book itself. Conspiracies and mysticism fantasy with maybe the odd sprinkling of truth with recognisable names and images. I has been a wild and wacky ride and hopefully this will be the last time I mention it, but probably won't be because of the links and influences it has over so much music and writing that are in my admittedly large and eclectic sphere  of stuff that attracts my attention.

I'm not sure what will be next and have a number of disparate tomes lined up including Richard Dawkins, Matt Haig and Brian Eno but they are just three of many, I could easily go for something else and at some point want to reread "Imajica"and "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" or even "Bored of the Rings" although like Spike Milligan's "Puckoon" that starts out brilliantly funny but does eventually fizzle out

So after that brief literary interlude I'll leave you on this Saturday morning with the vaguely literary connection of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" which recalls Lewis Carroll through a drug fuelled tango time haze.

Darkness

That's what I woke up to, and it wasn't particularly early , the day shortening seems to have come fairly quickly this year. Last night I needed to go out for milk at nine o'clock and it was dark (and wet). Also there seems to be a hell of a lot of snails on my drive this year and I keep accidentally stepping on them. I've nothing against snails and would rather not squash them but if they wander around my normal walking areas then that's going to happen.

Although it was dark when I woke it now looks like a summer's day although I suppose this is really Autumn now, as we're into September and I managed to forget another friend's birthday but got reminded by Facebook.

I keep forgetting names and obviously that concerns me about dementia when I cant remember things, especially names, but I still am able to recall a hell of a lot stuff and often the stuff I couldn't recall always surfaces eventually. I also am always able to recall how to find things although I make great use of Google and reference books as well as working things out for myself.

I use the illustration of music. When I was born you had Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley , Chuck Berry as well as the really commercial rubbish and a few others. The following decade added The Beach Boys, Stooges , Doors , Beatles , Kinks etc but we still had the  artists from previous decades. And every year more is added to what we already have, and that means that things will get forgotten even sometimes when you want to remember it. There will always be a way of finding out what you need to know.

So on this sunny Thursday we shall go with "Baggy Trousers" by Madness (for the line about squashing snails)  and that is another great band who are in my collection and I enjoy listening to.

Reading Appendices #2 and Discovering Sam Fender

Well I am reading the appendices of "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and it's like nothing has changed. Same mad whirlwind mix or mysticism and conspiracies as well as explanations of I-Ching symbols that I was unaware of, well I assume they are correct despite the fact this is a work of mad fiction. It's not often fictional novels  have a large section of appendices.

This is just a short post to let you know a little more about this book that I thought I was finished with and had finished writing about, but like a box of fireworks you dropped a match in , they've not all gone off yet.

Chris Hawkins played "The Borders" by Sam Fender on 6Music this morning and I've had a natural aversion to Sam Fender because everyone seems to be pushing him. He's also a local lad (North Shields I think, well that's where his studio is). Chris described him as the English Springsteen. After hearing "The Borders" he might not be wrong , and amazing song and the album is on my list to buy, and given my generally paucity of new music buying these days that is no mean thing. Well impressed.

Enjoy your Wednesday.

Reading Appendices

I know I was on the last leg of "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" have finally met the subject of the final book "Leviathan" then way before the end the book ends! It's been a wild kaleidoscopic ride (and I know that probably isn't a correct metaphor, even if it is a metaphor) but here I was at the end.

So I have still nearly ten per cent of the text to go through that consist of the appendices which I suppose is unusual for a work of mainly fiction with the odd drops of reality and even truth in there, so I still probably have a week's reading to go.

Is this a book I will keep? I'm not sure. I've loved reading it but I'm fairly certain this is a one read book for me and not something, for me, that I can dip in and out of, but I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to go off on a mad literary ride. I'm not sure what book I will read next, maybe something with a more stable narrative.

Also this week I have been, for me, binge watching TV taking in Catch-22 , Parks and Recreation, Carnival Row and Scamalot.

September is a 30 month so I need to slightly up my daily steps but that's going OK after last month fairly smashing it. I'm just wondering if I could maybe hit half a million steps in a month, which would require me to hit 17K steps a day so maybe that's not really an option as I am generally to lazy.

The sky outside is grey, the heating is on , there are seagulls crying which indicates rain but we are at the first Tuesday in September.

In that past month the blog has now had 30K visits thanks to Feedburner picking it up again and I'm glad that I have a new top post which is here. thankfully replace this, which was stuck there for years.

So what song for today. I really haven't a clue but as the KLF are the reason I am reading "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" we can go with "Justified And Ancient" their mash up with Tammy Wynette.

Enjoy your Tuesday.

Sing Me A Song That I Know

This morning I turned on the radio (Chris Hawkins on 6Music) and heard an absolute gorgeous brass riff playing, but also thought it sounded familiar and the surrounding song wasn't. The surrounding song was "Summer Girl" by Haim, a band I can take or leave but this is definitely a song that I would talk.

The song that it brought to mind was "Sing Me A Song That I Know" by Blodwyn Pig  ( a band formed by Mick Abrahams after he fell out with Ian Anderson and left Jethro Tull)  which I heard on the Island compilation "Nice Enough To Eat" . The brass intro , to me , was incredibly captivating and has , obviously , stayed with me to this day.

I think for this post, the first Monday in September 2019, I should share both songs with you and they are both worth four minutes of your time. I am so thankful that Youtube allows you to listen to music effectively for free, yes there are adverts, but they have to make money and the artists have to be paid. Also because Youtube is video based that tends to command your attention better than a normal streaming service and I haven't heard any artists complain about the Youtube business model.


So listen to both on these songs and enjoy, I certainly did.

September Scamalot Coincidence

    

September is upon us and someone yesterday that summer is over. Not from my window it isn't. Blue skies and bright sunshine, and I might even mow the lawn and go for a walk after breakfasting and reading the papers with the crossword and sudoku to have a stab at.

This is an unusually extremely short post just to mention James Veitch , who I first came across on TED, then went to see him at The Stand in Newcastle, bout his book, and found his take on scamming funny, entertaining and informative.

I was then surprised that he has a series on Amazon Prime called "Scamalot". The episodes are two or three minutes and are in fact presentations of sections from his live show and is book "Dot.Con" both well worth your investment.

In August I actually did 420K steps which is approximately 140 Km or 90 miles and 20% over my monthly target

I've just noticed that this is post number 2023 , and "2023" is the novel by The KLF that then got me into my current read "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" . Life is full of noticeable coincidences.

So time to sign off with this first post of September.

666

I've just passed page 666 in "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and was expecting something apocalyptic or at least interesting , but barring Moses crossing the Red Sea there wasn't too much out of the ordinary barring a reanimated Nazi army rising from the bottom of a lake near a rock festival close to Ingolstadt which is fairly normal for that book.

I can only think of two other books that I've read have a page 666 that's "Imajica" and "Lord of The Rings"  and maybe of of Michael Moorcock's Corum collections. I suppose The Bible and Quran also have one.

666 is defined as "The Number of The Beast" and features in many biblical and occult writings and films. as well as being an upside down 999. Aleister Crowley modelled himself as The Great Beast and many metal bands such as Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden , and jazz artists such as Graham Bond tapped into his legacy.

I remember visiting a youth club as a teenager and we brought records and one guy brought the "banned" "666" by Aphrodite's Child (featuring Vangelis and Demis Roussos" and I was well impressed with a lot of the album and have a copy in by collection. "Babylon" and "The Four Horsemen" are well worth tracking down. Click on the name for Youtube links. But we'll go with the more obvious Iron Maiden rampage on this Saturday morning.

Quarter Of A Million

I've hit quarter of a million visits on the blog since it started, and while I don't write a lot on each post, fairly bite size chunks, it is an improvement on when I started. I have lots of friends who started blogs that have then lapsed, a few of my favourites that you see on the right hand side of this have not been updated for a hell of a long time. Often people write extremely long essay type pieces which  take time to put together (which often we don't really have) and then sometimes people see a huge chunk of text and it just turns them off, even though the subject or writer actually interest the reader.

I have been criticised for writing documentation at work, because there is not enough writing on each page (never for the actual content). The thing is white space actually draws people in because they see that they can read and take in what's on that page. I'm not sure about others but I find all my documentation useful because it's easy to find and take in what you need to know but that is just self recommendation.

"The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is severely blocks of non stop text, so very intimidating, but it has managed to draw me in and keep me hooked but that is a definite exception to the rule

Also while these blog posts might be seemingly slight on a computer browser, when viewed on a mobile device they become reasonably digestible articles, not too long but but not throw away.

So Graham Parker's "New York Shuffle" is playing on 6Music , and it's a brilliant reminder of the wonderful Graham Parker who is still making great music. Thanks for that Chris Hawkins.

New Targets? Well I can probably hit 320 posts this year, which will be another record and well within my grasp and unexpected as I was aiming for 200 posts this year. It is possible I may hit 300K visits this year but that's dependent on stuff beyond my control , also I'd like to see the Christopher Lee video hit 50K visits as it hit 30K this year.

Strawberry Disappointment

We all make mistakes. Sometimes we act on those mistakes, believing what we are doing is right, even though it does slightly rankle that you are acting on what you believe to be the correct course of action. That happened to me recently.

The Strawberry changed their menu. Instead of the black laminated card (admittedly past their sell by date) we got a printed couple of sheets on a clip board protected by a textured plastic sheet. This didn't look good. My worst fears were confirmed when their excellent Curry Top Chips had disappeared from the menu. Yes it's pub food , yes it's quick , and great value for money and it was always a quick lunch option and it was gone. I thought I have no reason to go back to The Strawberry because they don't have Curry topped Chips.

I relented because I couldn't actually remebery what was on the menu bar unspecified toasties and a fish finger butty. So I went in today, checked the new menu and right in the middle of the front page was the  Topped Chips or Baked Potato options. How the hell did I miss that. Yes the menu has had a slight revamp but it still has everything worth having so that definitely made may day, as The Strawberry is an excellent pub and their bar meals are excellent and great value for money.

The lesson to be learned is if something is not exactly what you want or what you think, go back and double check it, you may find you are mistaken and get the result you require more quickly.

Incidentally tomorrow the blog will pass quarter of a million visits, I know a lot are robots, but it's still a success to go with my Christopher Lee and Nick Cave slideshow.s

So the obvious song is Split Enz "My Mistake" a band I saw several times in the seventies who produced some amazing music.

2019

This is post 2019 in the year 2019.  This year my aim was to hit 2000 posts since I started blogging, I ended up doing that last month here.  I was thinking that maybe this would be another record posting year but this month posts have dropped off so it may or may not happen, we shall see.

Today has been a very hot Bank Holiday but that is nothing to complain about, though tomorrow is a return to work for a four day week.

Over the weekend I was completely cut off from music apart from listening on the train journeys to and from Scotland and was thinking I haven't played "Rain" by The Beatles on the new RPM record player.. The rumour is that Paul McCartney's bass on the original single was so heavy that it caused the needle to jump. I have a re released single but will try that before work tomorrow morning.

I've dipped back into the swirling currents of words that make up "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and still finding it entertaining as I pass the three quarter level. Totally mad with probably some snippets of truth to be taken with large doses of salt.

So on the burning day I think "Hot Hot Hot" by The Cure from possibly my favourite album of theirs "Kiss Me,Kiss Me,Kiss Me" would be good to sign off with.

Drinking Cherry Cola in Unmarked Cars

I don't know what put this into my head , possibly the fact that the BBC (and virtually all the media, see here) had reported that the outcome of the meeting between Angela Merkel and that dangerous clown Boris Johnson was that the UK had thirty days to sort out the brexit backstop when what she had said was a sarcastic comment that it might be thirty days or two years to sort out the backstop, but I cannot find any trace of that , all the media just mentions the thirty days, but really these days , generally we can't trust what's being said.

This made me think of when the BBC were so anti product placement that songs had their lyrics changed to ensure they weren't banned from the radio. One example was the Kinks "Lola" which was fine addressing gender fluidity in majorly homophobic times but Coca Cola was an absolute no no and had to be changed to Cherry Cola, the irony being that there is now Cherry flavoured Coca Cola (and lots of other atrocious flavours) , I wonder if "Lola" gave them the idea?

The when Mott The Hoople were going to call it a day David Bowie gave them "All The Young Dudes" which kicked off their singles sales bt was only approved when the line "And Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks & Sparks" became And Wendy's stealing clothes from unmarked cars"  although eventually the original words were restored.

Again the censors didn't like that but let though:

"But she never lost her head 

Even when she was giving head"

again addressing trans and sexuality in Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side"  a hit single from the Bowie produced album "Transformer".

So I'll leave you to savour "All The Young Dudes" but seriously check out the rest of the songs.