Lost (in) Music

When Brian Matthew used to do "Sounds of the 60s" he'd get communications similar to "my husband's favourite record is XXXX, could you play it because he has never heard it since 1967 when it went missing in a house move" and more recent Chris Hawkins has a Lost Love feature where people write in with messages akin to "My favourite record as a teenager was XXXX but I haven't heard it since 1990".

Now the thing is we live in a digital age and we can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world instantly if we are both, in some form , online. A benefit of this is that you can usually easily find your favourite record. This blog relies so much on Youtube because you can find virtually everything on there, if I can't find it I will create a slideshow and put the record up there and hope it doesn't get pulled for copyright reasons. Most of them stay and you can check my channel which is a combination of such slideshows and live performances.

The other thing, even if you are not digitally connected, if you are lucky and have one , libraries and record shops can search out music for you, and they would be on the end of a phone. The people who contact Chris Hawkins have no excuse at all, they contact him exclusively by email so are connected.

In the nineties Voiceprint Records based in Houghton-Le-Spring re-released a lot of music digitally. This was a good model because the music was only downloadable so apart from the server and site costs they didn't have to invest in vinyl / cd print runs. There is still music on th eimprint (see below).The problem with digital media is it can be stolen over and over again that applies to video, music and e-publications.

So I should really play a song I have forgotten about, but if I've forgotten about it then I can't remember it so I will just play something that I haven't played for a while, although I want't to also play something fairly obscure which I had difficulty tracking down, but I did on either Amazon or Ebay. That song is "Dizz Knee Land" by Dada from 1992 and it is a great record.The title of the song spelling was changed by the group so as not to interfere with copyright laws, however "Disneyland" is also the nickname for the Orange County Jail.

2112

Actually this is post 2113, the last one here was 2112. I only realised as I was getting towards the end of it and it was all about my eye infection. 2112 was an album by Rush and was pretentious as hell but I always equated Rush with Abba, music generally awesome but lyrics were sometimes very iffy. Abba had the excuse of English being a second language but Rush didn't.

It didn't stop Rush producing some great music and when they reigned back their pretentious side everything was excellent, but even the pretentious stuff , the music still more than stands up. The first song I heard by them was "Finding My Way" from "Fly By Night" on the John Peel show and thought it was Led Zeppelin, they were that good. I must have heard their early albums because I didn't actually by them and generally they were patchy in my opinion, but  the live "All The World's A Stage" changed that which is a live tour-de-force and that was the first Rush album that I bought.

I actually sang "Spirit of Radio" with Spoon and always have difficulty singing rubbish lyrics, "Spirit of Radio" has excellent lyrics, but I don't think I have a recording anywhere of that to see how good or bad I was.

So I really have to included "2112" that took up side one of the album it named. Great music and dodgy lyrics for this Friday.

Eyes Adrift

On Sunday I noticed my left contact lens was a bit curly at the edges but still put it in anyway. By the afternoon my left eye was stinging and I took my lenses out and had to bathe it as it had become very uncomfortable to the point of being painful. Monday and Tuesday I wore my glasses for work and my eye seemed to be better although the aircon at work does dry the eyes out a bit,

Wednesday morning I walked to work ( you can see some of that on Instagram here) with contact lenses back in but when I got into work suddenly I could hardly see out of my left eye and it was also affecting my right eye as well. I ditched the left eye contact lens but was feeling awful and disorientated and got myself back home. At 11:45 I rang C4 Sightcare , my opticians of 20 years, told them the problem, my left eye felt like it was filled with grit or sand, and they asked if I could get it by 12:15 which I said I could. By this time the sun was shining and due to Blackett Street being closed for the Christmas Market I had to walk a fair way to the opticians but I could hardly see due to the bright sunlight and the discomfort in my left eye and nearly walked into a few people.

My optician examined my eye and said the cornea was cloudy, but there was no major problems, although the pressure jets were painful, and prescribed me some GoldenEye Antibiotic Cream. I went home and slept for 5 hours and today has been much the same but the eye in improving. I will probably do without contact lenses over the weekend, although I don't like wearing glasses all day.

So when Kurt Cobain died Dave Grohl formed the Foo Fighters, but bassist Krist Novoselic formed Eyes Adrift who I think only made one album which featured a beautiful song called "Inquiring Minds" which I have found a live acoustic version of  but click on the title for the album version, or buy it from the link below. This is possibly the first paragraph I have written that mentions every member of Nirvana.

You can see that my eye is improving because I can actually write a blog post, so things are improving.

A Record - Godbluff

This is post 317 this year, that surpasses last year's total of 316, so any more posts this year will just cement 2019 as my most prolific posting year ever. I have no need to actually surpass that, and this year I wasn't actually trying to surpass last year, but I just did.

This, for some reason reminded me of "Godbluff" by Van Der Graaf Generator, another of my favourite albums, which consists of four songs and is an incredibly atmospheric album punctuated by Peter Hamill's staccato stabbing words and vocals. The NME reviewed it favourably but commented that it needed a format that allowed it to be played non stop (this was mid seventies, 1975). Obviously CD facilitated this but there was the option of recording it to one side of a C90 cassette or if you were posh a cassette player that had autoreverse. Classical music had the same problem, but I play vinyl now and don't mind turning the record over, and also think that twenty minutes is a fine length to listen to a piece of music.

I found a copy of the album, so you can also listen to it non stop now thanks to digital technology or you can buy it on the link below.

This morning I was getting my weekly tablets, and one of the things is that tablets have their own boxes and colour scheme. This morning I notices that my Metformin have changed from a blue compact box to a green long box, the same a s Doxazosin. I had mistakenly pulled out some new Metformin instead of Doxazosin. Now I know we are resistant to change, even when it benefits us, but this is not a good change, I could have been double dosing on Metformin and not getting Doxazosin. Now I spotted it but there may be many who don't do this. I think I may go to chemist and feed this back, you can see here. on my Instagram feed.

It's minus 3 degrees centigrade, cars are iced up, so will be a cold walk to work.

Dry Your Eyes

Over the last two day I noticed the contact lens for my left eye  seemed a bit ruffled round part of the edge and slightly stung when I put them in. Yesterday when I took it out my eye was hurting as though it was was either scratched or there was something under the eyelid scratching it that was moving about.

Also when I was trying to read the eye was was blurry , not looking good.

After much bathing with a warm cloth the eye has calmed down but still seems very dry. On Saturday I would have tried to get my contact lenses in, but even though it's a work day I am going with glasses even though they give me a slight headache if I wear them for more than a few hours, but it will give my left eye a rest.

So really this is an excuse to play another of my favourite songs which I have shared before, but it is worth hearing again, The Streets (Mike Skinner) and "Dry Your Eyes"

In The Middle Of The Night ...

Sometimes you just wake up and feel you want to do something. I can't concentrate enough to read read, and I can't really pick up an instrument an play because it makes noise and disturbs others, I can't put a record on ar watch TV because when I feel like this it's not a headphones moment, so I find that writing I blog post can satisfy the need to do something vaguely creative and run my mind down a bit so I can then slip back to bed and get some sleep.

It is now five am on Sunday morning, but middle of the night can be any time between going to bed and getting up. It's black outside the window, but not particularly cold so I didn't have to get dressed to write this (but I'm sure you didn't really need to know that) but it is also very peaceful.

This week I will hit my annual record for blog posts which will be 317 (this is post 315 and last year I posted 316 times) . That's like 17 posts every 20 days or 26 posts a month which is fairly close to being daily, although some days I have done multiple posts (like yesterday).. I should actually try to see if I can do a lot of posts in a day, although I don't think it would be possible because all these posts are on the fly  about things that interest me, rather than to hit a target, although if a target is achievable I am often tempted towards it.

So I am starting to feel a little tired so I think we simply go for "In The Midnight Hour" by Wilson Pickett and I found this great performance by him and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform "In the Midnight Hour" at the 1999 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, when Bruce Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

A Handkerchief

We hear so much about recycling these days yet still get our milk in plastic or cardboard disposable cartons and use paper tissues instead of handkerchiefs  and when we see  that we need to sort our rubbish into separate containers so that things can be recycled, I think if we reused things there would be little need to recycle thing. Things would be built to last.

I used to work on a farm and bottled milk which was delivered to customers, and went it was delivered the used bottles were returned and then reused. The only disposable part of the operation was the disposable aluminium foil tops.

Now we use disposable paper tissues when I clean handkerchief feels good to touch , and after use can be washed and reused for a long time. I used to like having a handkerchief although you do need somewhere to put it and keep it, but we are generally good at things like that.

Similarly with nappies / diapers, again washing and reusing saves the need to recycle create landfill.

I think a perfect song for this is "Recycled Vinyl Blues" by Neil Innes written at the time of the early seventies oil crisis when vintl prices went up , but also saw the advent of the 12" single, as if 7" wasn't enough.

So just a few thoughts on recycling when we should be reusung.

The Secret Commonwealth

Although I've not really spoken much about "The Secret Commonwealth" by Philip Pullman, it's a 700 page tome and I am about three quarters the way through it, I am thoroughly enjoying it. It's the fifth is the His Dark Materials / Book of Dust sequence and possibly a little less magical and more political.

The events in the book are reflecting the current political situation in the UK and USA while still staying in the alternate reality of people and their daemons. This is at the same time as the BBC / HBO are showing a dramatisation of "His Dark Materials" and that follows the, in my opinion,  excellent "Golden Compass".

The irony is, and I am sure Philip Pullman did this deliberately, "The Secret Commonwealth" in the book refers to the world of magical creatures. The whole series, books and dramatisations is worth investigating, and I am loving all of it.

When I see a seven hundred page book I think will I ever get through this? When you are coming to the end you don't usually think that's the finish line, you just don't want it to finish. There is always the option to go back and two of my favourite book clock in at over a thousand pages, they are "Imajica" by Clive Barker (my favourite book ever) and "Lord of the Rings" by JRR Tolkien. Incidentally when my daughter was 8 she told her teacher she had read "Lord of the Rings". He was a little sceptical about this so quizzed her on it. He then realised that she had read it and had star pupil status.

So what music do we have this grey Saturday morning? We could go with Bo Hansson's  1970 album which you can hear here , but it's a bit elevator musicish. I'm going to going with this Peter Jackson "Lord of the Rings" sequence soundtracked by Clint Mansell's theme to Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem For A Dream" which is well work watching on a big screen played loud.

Documentation

My intention this morning was to walk into work, but I awoke to a deluge, it's dark and cold, so I think it may be a bus journey. Lots of thoughts going through my mind, a bit difficult to put into works because while not bad or downers they are not particularly positive and are the sort of thing that can put you on a downward path if other bad things happen.

It's another day, and another opportunity and I need to start on some documentation at work, effectively redoing documentation I have already written in a new template. Don't you find that often they template takes 75% of the documentation? The good thing about this is it's a single page, which will obviously expand when it's fleshed out.

I'm a great fan of a combination of white space and laconic text in documentation, because then, in my opinion, it's more likely that people will actually read it. Just like instructions for an IKEA flatpack , you think , sod it I'll just do it.

So as the black sky turns to grey the rain seems to have stopped, so why don't we go for "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" surely a rhetorical question by the brilliant Creedence Clearwater Revival.

This excellent video is part of the 50th Anniversary Vinyl Release (on the stripe below) , and I just love the lyrics to the song that opens with:

"Someone told me long ago 

 There's a calm before the storm

 I know it's been comin' for some time

 When it's over so they say

 It'll rain a sunny day

 I know shinin' down like water 

I want to know 

Have you ever seen the rain? 

I want to know 

Have you ever seen the rain 

Comin' down on a sunny day?"

Enjoy your Thursday my friends.

Time Runs

This morning's post was the 13th post this month on the 13th day of this month and I have done many posts about the number thirteen that you can read here so I won't mention that again (this month).

This morning I got up at the normal time but decided to do some washing and had to package a CD and send it off to Germany from my Discogs store. Given that I laso washed and showered got dressed but all of a sudden two hours had gone and I still had to post the CD.

I got out of the house and noticed the bus I needed to catch leaving the stop down from me, however there was so much traffic that I gently strolled to the next bus stop and caught it there.

There are times where no matter how much you plan things run away from you and you have to deal with it, but other times you take opportunities and things fall into place and at the end of the day things fit.

While it's good to be proactive, it's good to be able to be reactive when the situation calls for it.

So I know a short and almost pointless post, but it provides an excuse to include "Time Is Running Out" by Muse, and Muse is always good.

Stille Nacht

Last night, oddly and exceptionally, when I decided in was time for sleep , I thought I don't want anything playing, I just want silence. Normally I have something playing, maybe Brian Eno or some space rock /  Krautrock such as Hawkwind or Tangerine Dream and let myself get lost in the sounds and drift off into the realms of Morpheus.

I know a lot of people who have difficulty sleeping and going to sleep is a bit like riding a bike, if you think about it, you can't do it.

This morning I posted off a CD to Germany and had difficulty writing the letter "ß" as it sort of comes out as a "B" when I write it, but hopefully it will get there.

The "Silent Night" aspect of this post reminded me of two takes on the Christmas Carol by Franz Xaver Gruber one by Can and the other by Sinead O' Connor (from "The Ghosts of Oxford Street" by Malcolm Mclaren, a great album / documentary if you can track it down. My friend Alison just found that it's on All4 here , so watch , learn and enjoy.

I've inclluded both for your enjoyment.

Take The Skinheads Bowling

Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I walked to and from work. Both walks were in the dark as it's autumn and the days are still getting shorter as we are still on the way to the Winter Solstice and the shortest day. I did about 18.5K steps which at 2.5K steps per mile is about 7.5 miles. I don't think I will do that today as I need to be at work a bit longer today but I will definitely be walking in , and my step cout is ahead of schedule for the month.

I got to listen to the excellent "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monáe, my favourite album of the last two years, repeating a couple of songs as I played it then finishing off with Marcel King's "Reach For Love" , one of my favourite singles and Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single. That's the great thing about walking, these days (and really since the dawn of the compact cassette) we have the ability to listen to music on the move. Although cassettes are having a revival, the problem has always been their fragility, but they did combine that with convenience. A friend of mine had a cassette player that allowed you to program the playing order, but the fact that it had to fast forward and rewind between songs sort of negated the convenience, but an impressive piece of technology none the less.

The blog is now eight posts away from the annual record (last year I hit 316) so that will be easily surpassed this year and that will probably be it for posting records.

One of the points of this blog is to share music with friends and I was thinking of something by Janelle Monáe or Marcel King, but Chris Hawkins on 6Music has just put on "Take The Skinheads Bowling" by Camper Van Beethoven who once retired to a cabin and recorded Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" (my favourite Fleetwood Mac album and even got album of the week from NME despite being a double album by "dinosaur rockers" in the middle of the UK punk explosion, and the CVB one is good as well). So we will go with "Take The Skinheads Bowling".

Just as I was writing this , my tablet box somehow fell out of my pocket. It is round. I looked down it was nowhere to be seen. I guessed right and it had rolled under the chest of drawers. C'est la vie.

Mustang Ford

I remember as a teenager wanting the album "My people were fair and had sky in their hair .... But now they're content to wear stars on their brows" just for the cover. The song "Mustang Ford" seems to be a bit of an oddity here but the subject would have been more suited to the electric T. Rex than the acoustic Tyrannosaurus Rex.
I never got the album although my first purchase was a budget FlyBack compilation "The Best of T. Rex" on the Fly label with the four square design. This album is now in my collection on CD and get's the odd play, but the cover is still, in my opinion the thing that drags you into it, it has a lot to look at and extra things keep jumping out at you, Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets" has a similar effect on me.

This post came about because I saw a friend in their Ford Mustang and this is part of the raison d'etre of this blog to record events big and small that actually matter to me. The number of times I go back through this to dig up some extra information.

I'm also updating by friend Bob Armstrong's website and he does some amazing landscape paintings which you can see here. So enjoy Tyrannosaurus Rex and Bob Armstrong's amazing paintings on this cold bright Sunday.

98.3

Coming back from holiday I weighed myself. No I am terrible at dieting and eating the right foods and taking exercise (although by stating this means that I am aware of this) so I expected to have increased weight. I was surprised to see that I weighed in at 98.3 Kg (that's 15 stone 7 lb imperial) which is the lowest I've been for over thirty years, I just wish that this could continue with as little effort as I've given it in the last week.

I know lowering my weight is better for me but I am very easily tempted and of the opinion that life is to be enjoyed as much as possible which sometimes means going outside the recommendations. Having said that a nurse once told me that I should not eat fruit and should only eat celery and turnips. Hardly inspiring, I ignored her.

I do like eating things that taste nice and think that when you do eat it is for the taste not the actual consumption. This morning I have had a couple of small cold satsumas which were very pleasant , and the fibre is good for bodily functions but the most captivating part is the taste on your tongue and in your mouth.

So this is just a short post to mark another slight drop in my weight. I know a lot of people join organisations such as Weight Watchers and Slimming World but really just go and see your GP they will weigh you and advise you and if you are in the UK that is "free" (paid for by your National Insurance and taxes).

For today's song we'll go with Tom Waits' "Eggs and Sausage"  which I do enjoy every now and then.

Pen Pals

I seldom write to anyone anymore. I mean really write with a pen on paper. The closest I get is addressing CDs that I sell on Discogs.  I used to send postcards to people of places I visited, but now it's Instagram videos, which in a way are more personal and effectively instant but in some ways I miss putting pen to paper.

The thing is a letter or a postcard is closer to you that digital communication , but digital communication can give an immediate closeness that paper can't. Telephone is great especially with the advent of the mobile , and then video calling  can  enable you to share even more. My eldest daughter sent my dad a video message on his eigtieth birthday because she was working and couldn't make the party. While a birthday card is nice the video message really amazed my dad.

We have so many ways to communicate, but it is nice to write every now and then, and I don;t know if that is just me being selfish. There are lots of people who generally shun technology so pen and paper is the general default mode of long distance communication. We have had the telephone for over a hundred years so that has always been relatively immediate.

So maybe the song we go for is "The Word / OM" by The Moody Blues the closing songs from "In Search of The Lost Chord" probably my favourite of their albums. Yes it's pretentious taking in sixties hippie culture references but I like it and so I will share it with your.

I've also noticed there's a Children In Need Covers album which is on the strip below , which you can buy or just chip in at the web site.

True Romance

Today has been a quietish day meeting with my dad for lunch and hearing a lot of good music. Some of this reminded me of my favourite film of all time, which I still love watching the Quentin Tarantino scripted Tony Scott directed "True Romance" which in my opinion has everything, cracking soundtrack, amazing cast including Dennis Hopper as a good guy and amazing face off with Christopher Walken's Sicilian gang boss, Gary Oldman as an albino negro drug lord and a Mexican stand off to end it with and all this interwoven with the Christian Slater / Patricia Arquette love story, oh and Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis.

I cannot believe that I haven't mentioned much of this film in the blog, but maybe once or twice.

The theme that Hans Zimmer, "You're So Cool", borrowed from Carl Orff's "Gassenhauer" (used in "Badlands") constructed as a children's piece to be played using very basic instruments. It is one of my favourite pieces of music and off course that is what you will get with this post.

There was a lot more good stuff that I heard today but that will be fuel for my next few posts.

The blog has just passed 350K visits so 400K by the end of the year is a distinct possibility, and half a million by the end of March could possibly happen.

It is late and I do have to get back to Newcastle tomorrow, but enjoy the start / end mash from"True Romance" , it still gives me goosebumps.

Packing In Lollipops

Today has been a busy but relaxing day. My first goal was to photograph the Ribblehead Viaduct . The problem was that I had a thirty minute window to take the photo's shortened by the fact the outward train was ten minutes late then I misread the return time which knocked another ten minutes off my free time. If I didn't catch the return train then I'd have a two hour wait for the next one, and the distance to the Viaduct was downhill and probably would take twenty minutes so my compromise was to take photographs from the car park of the Station Hotel and from the platform of the Station which you can see here on my Instagram feed.

Secondly, on my return to Settle, I walked to The Hoffman Kiln which is a remarkably eerie experience to walk through. I haven't a clue what lime burning entails but it seems a huge physical enterprise for the production of lime. You can see my walk through it here. There's more information than I can tell you here.

Vinyl From SCAD

When I came back to Settle I visited the S.C.A.D. charity shop, and ended up buying three vinyl LPs. I don't need any new vinyl but there was a Weather Report eponymous album that I've never seen before, some Debussy (Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune is one of the most beautifully creepy pieces ever), Vaughn-Williams and Delius.

One of the things is this blog does enable me to share music with friends all over the world, and I love when I do mange to share something new with them to increase their experience.

Sometimes it's something you like, sometimes it leaves you cold but it can be like food, I am not a fan of most Thai food and am picky about sushi and it is the same with music.

So what should we go with? Well I have seen a lot of fifties vinyl, including The Chordettes "Lollipop" which is always good to share with friends.

Enjoy

Fireworks

I got up this morning for a quick walk round and get fresh air , and saw a fading rainbow over Giggleswick (you can see it here) which was wonderful but like many atmospheric events you have to photograph them now or else they are gone.

I then noticed the date and it's the fifth of November , Guy Fawkes Night

"Remember, Remember

The Fifth of November

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot"

We could do with Guy Fawkes today methinks ....

But that made me think of the song "Fireworks" by Blue Oyster Cult from their "Spectres" album which a lot of people put down for being too polished, but it is full of great songs and is worth having in your collection, I have all their albums and that is one of the stand outs.

Today will be a trip to Skipton to visit The Huntress of Skipton Castle Woods as I always do when I came here.

I know this is a short post but I need to be getting on my way to catch the train to Skipton.

Restarting The Wire

I've just restarted watching "The Wire" picking it up at the start of series 3, and it is a stunning series. My friend Nick had to turn on subtitles to understand the streetspeak though I have managed the first two series without subtitles.

Along with "Breaking Bad" and "The Sopranos" this occupies the pinnacle of episodic TV, essential watching for anyone who likes entertainment that stimulates and stretches your mind.

All these programs also feature impeccable featured music and an unusual feature of "The Wire" is that each series features a different take on Tom Waits' "Way Down In The Hole" as the theme song. The list is below and they are all here.:

• Season 1: The Blind Boys of Alabama 
• Season 2: Tom Waits 
• Season 3: The Neville Brothers  
• Season 4: DoMaJe 
• Season 5: Steve Earle

So we go with The Neville Brothers take as that's the series that I am watching now.

Late Again

For the first time since I can remember I woke and got up at nine am today. I am almost always up around six like clockwork and I know I am on holiday but that came as a bit of a surprise to me. I thought the older you got the less sleep you needed but that doesn't seem be the situation with me.

It is good to get enough sleep, and you need your sleep, it is not a good idea to do without. Sleep repairs the body and promotes good stuff happening in there. If you don't get enough sleep then it does affect you, although I expect it is different for everybody , but it is nice to be in bed and be able to enjoy the feeling.  The TED talk from Matt Walker below is extremely informative on this.

So a perfect song for this post is "Late Again" the song that introduced me to Stealers Wheel ( Joe Egan , Gerry Rafferty and band , the saxophone is glorious, I wonder if it was the same guy who played on "Baker Street" ) who I saw performing this on The Old Grey Whistle Test as a teenager.

Most people know Stealers Wheel because "Stuck In The Middle With You" was used for THAT scene in Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs", one of Tarantino's inspired musical selection that wonderfully litter all his films.

So I know it's Monday afternoon, and the fact I am not at work means I can write this and communicate with the whole world. That's one of the pluses of writing your own blog , there is no one to tell you not to do that, although maybe sometimes you do need that.

So watch the TED talk and enjoy the excellent Stealers Wheel song on this Monday.