Some days things just hit me and make me want to to write about it and my friend,an avid Moody Blues fan, on Instagram shared a picture of a clear vinyl copy of "Moanin' At Midnight" by Hownlin' Wolf. Earlier this year I had linked Howlin' Wolf with The Moody Blues which was a coincidence here and in 2014 wrote about the origins of the song "Smokestack Lightnin'" here. so the disc certainly piqued my interest and I will now investigate further.
The clear vinyl version looks wonderful, though I'm not sure if the wolf in on the vinyl or is seen though the vinyl, but I do like the design.
Another of Howlin' Wolf's songs is "Spoonful" (written by Willie Dixon) , a brilliant loping riff that I first heard on my friend Harry Clark's "Best of Cream" album as a teenager. I listened to my vinyl copy which I picked up from Beyond Vinyl.
This is my third post today so I am a little worded out, although I need extra posts if I am to hit 366 posts this year which is possible. This is post 339 so after this I need to post 27 times in 23 days which seems to be getting further away from me, but I won't let that happen.
So I'm going to share Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" although my favourite take is by Cream from the live "Wheels of Fire" album, but this post is all Howlin' Wolf.
Today I was in the Grainger Market and hears a Christmas Ukulele band finishing off "Let It Snow" , and they sounded quite good but I'd missed that and was expecting them to break into another similarly veined song, but no, they went into one of my favourites "I'm The Urban Spaceman" and did an very jolly version which you can see above (sorry it's phone portrait and not landscape but the sound is good.
They started with Dean Martin and were going to continue with "Rockin' Round The Christmas Tree" and asked me to join in their choir but I had to do a few things but totally enjoyed this pleasant interlude.
Bay Uke are on Facebook here where you can join their group, if you have a Ukulele I am sure that they will welcome you.
Incidentally "I'm The Urban Spaceman" was produced for The Bonzo Dog Band by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym Apollo C. Vermouth.
As I said this is a very short post to record a lovely interlude in my Sunday morning.
One of the reasons I write this blog is as a diary, another is when something happens or grabs my attention that I can , however tenuously, link to a song that I can then share with my readers and listeners, maybe I should try a podcast too, though I'm not sure that the sound of my voice will enamour everyone, an ex boss once told me he couldn't understand a word I said!
Anyway I don't eat healthily, I dislike regimentation intensely (diets, exercise - especially gyms) so obviously I am destined as I age to just get fatter and fatter. I do see some people, and they may have a lot of issues, but I think "didn't you at some point realise you were getting fat". I know damned well I could easily be 30 stone if I didn't constantly say no to certain temptations, although as Oscar Wilde said "I can resist anything but temptation", so I suppose I do think about what I eat at times.
For the second time after a week away in Settle I have lost a kilogram bringing me down to 96.75 Kg (see here on Instagram) that's fifteen stone three pounds in imperial measure. I remember maybe being 13 stone in the late seventies so I have been a lot lighter. The thing is on holiday you normally over eat and indulge and there was fish and chips, big breakfasts , curries , potato salads and a Terry's Chocolate Orange all part of my culinary intake.
So as this has been on about my portliness and weight, I'm going to share the song "The Weight" by The Band, which was pencilled for inclusion in the "Easy Rider" soundtrack, but the producer either had a falling out with The Band and went for a cover of the song by a band called Smith, I've chosen a live take with The Staples Singlers from the Martin Scorsese directed "The Last Waltz", an awesome concert film, well worth watching.
It's a cold sunny Sunday so have a great day everybody.
That's how I feel reading "On Some Faraway Beach" the David Sheppard biography of Brian Eno. Two weeks in I'm only up to page 140 of 450. The thing is the writing is excellent and interesting and unskimmable, you want to read every word. Roxy Music were probably the band I was furthest into combining so many stylish elements visually, lyrically and musically. It's just the typeface and setting makes it difficult to read many pages at one sitting, but I do actually love it.
I am just passing Brian Eno's time with Roxy Music and flowing into "No Pussyfooting" which features two twenty minute drone pieces "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and "Swastika Girls" his wonderful album with Bob Frip and his first solo "song" album "Here Come The Warm Jets". One of the pieces on "No Pussyfooting was accidentally played backwards by John Peel and in the deluxe CD version you have that option as well as a half speed (so double length take.
So included a part of "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and I often listen to this to go to sleep to, no hooks, nothing that grabs your attention but , in my opinion, an amazing wash of sound.
This week I bought three 12" vinyl singles from Skipton Sound Bar. I don't need any more vinyl but one was a blue vinyl take on Ron Grainer's "Doctor Who" theme by Mankind, which you can see here, but I have never heard, and listening on Youtube sounds remarkably sanitised and weedy, The original given to us by Delia Derbyshire in the sixties wipes the floor with it.
I am going to listen to it once I get home but have a feeling it will be dispatched to a trade in The original and subsequent series reboots are all excellent but the Mankind version is so sanitised that it would be rejected by an elevator music soundtrack.
While the Blue Pearl and Shamen records are both excellent it looks like Mankind is the dud, but that's just one of the ways to discover new sounds, you've got to take a chance, and the Blue Pearl one was worth the gamble.
I'm also pleased that the blog is going to hit the 400K visits before today is out, and my hope was that I would hit that before New Year's Eve, seems I've hit it over three weeks to spare.
So this is just a post to record the Mankind single and the visit to The Skipton Sound Bar before my return tomorrow.
Sometimes you just have nothing to say, although that's not quite true, because if you say you have nothing to say then you are actually saying something. I am quite aware I have set myself a target and need to average eleven posts every nine days to hit, so it's hardly an impossible task, like say the Twelve Labours of Hercules.
Today is a particularly grey day and after yesterdays wonderful waterfall walk which was great countryside and chatting with some great people as I walked, often overtaking them, then lagging behind them as I took video and photographs.
Today I lunched with my dad at The Talbot and had turkey and pigs in blankets pie (here on Instagram) and learned about him "avoiding" National Service by going down the mines, sort of avoiding being run over by a car by diving under a train. We were talking about lift mechanisms and he said that the lift wasn't lowered , it just dropped and scared the hell out of him until he got used to it. That would have really done my head in.
Another thing was a comment by a Royal Mail manager who said if you want a job doing get Michael Singleton to do it. It's funny that a number of people I work with say they ask me do do things because they know it gets done quickly. So we obviously have a few common traits.
So what music should I choose for this one, on Tuesday at Skipton Sound Bar I bought a few 12" singles , one was "Naked In The Rain" by Blue Pearl. For some reason the song or band meant something to me, maybe it was one my girls liked but when I played it I didn't recognise it, but it is rather good electro dance, so definitely worth sharing with you, in the M-People / toned down KLF universe.
It's strange how we often have an aversion for paying for things that we see as just there. I thought that about the seven pound entrance fee for the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail, but this is some buildings and a lot of paths, four and a half miles of them, that is a hell of a lot of maintenance, and well worth every penny of the entrance fee.
I was impressed with the village of Ingleton , came to the Waterfalls Trail and walked past the closed cafe / gift shop then through the gateway which reminded me of the entrance to Jurassic Park (on a smaller scale and no dinosaurs) and finally got to the entrance and paid my way and started on my way round.
Although it's only four and a half miles a lot of that paths are very rocky so you need to be careful and sure footed. Eventually you come to the first waterfall and it is worth the effort. You can see some of my video on Instagram here. Although I had plenty of time, the bus back was due at one, and the next one was at three so I was trying to move fast through the final part of the walk but could have slipped easily and fell into the river, but kept on my feet and got the bus which was waiting at the stop.
If I'd missed the bus Ingleton was full of interesting places and may be due a future visit. Also it is heavily featured in the Michael Moorcock book "The Skrayling Tree".
So some appropriate music would be "Waterfall", at first I thought by the Stone Roses, then decided to go for the 10CC song, originally the "B" side of "Rubber Bullets" but later released in it's own right.
Today I intend to do the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail , I've been coming properly to Settle but only came across it when I also found Scalebar Force last time and so thought it would be worth doing it for a morning as I do like walking in nature.
Although I don't go abroad these days (I hate queuing, I hate airport check ins, and I also hate driving so always take the train when practical.
Ingleton is a twenty minute bus journey away, and featured heavily in the Michael Moorcock book "The Skrayling Tree" so I'm not sure if any landmarks will show upfrom that book.
Anyway I switched on 6Music and Lauren Laverne (ex Kenickie and went to school with my eldest daughter Juliet) was playing "Send Me A Postcard Baby". Now this is a record I know very well and love but I seriously don't know how it got into my mind-library, and it was only this morning I found out it was by Shocking Blue, more famous for their more famous but more mundane "Venus".
For some reason this song title has mean going through my mind.As far as I know it's a one hit wonder (actually it's not Karel Fialka had another hit with "Hey Matthew" which my mum loved because it reminded her of my nephew) and while it is a decent pop song, very rooted in the eighties (not necessarily a bad thing) , and I probably have a copy of it.
The thing is the title got me thinking of how impressed I am with how contact lenses work, they're flexible plastic , stick to your eye (sounds horrible when you have never had to do it but becomes very easy and natural once you get the hang of it) and sometimes they don't go on properly but then slide round until your vision becomes perfect. How amazing is that,it does amaze me every day.
So this post gets this out of my head, and allows me to share this song with you,I know it's fairly short, but that's the nature of a diary you write what you need to.
I said that I had to do 46 posts to hit 366 for this year but this is post 331 so I only have 35 more to do, so that's probably about nine thousand words which is less than I expected.
So I'll leave you with "The Eyes Have It" by Karel Fialka which is almost impossible to track down is physical or digital form these days.
There are lots of ways to instantly connect with people today and most of the time it is instant only determined by whether who you are connecting with are not doing something else. Tonight in Settle I saw an impressive sunset which I shared on Instagram and therefore Facebook and my eldest daughter saw and loved it.
Sharing photographs with friends and sharing them with the world can introduce you to more people and potential friends. Although I lose count of the amount of social media options that we have, but as a kid my options were phone call, letter writing and face to face and that was about it.
I have friends in Scotland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, The USA and Canada and probably lots more countries, and now the ability to instantly contact most of them if I should want, and they can contact me, and this option is open to anyone who embraces digital channels.
We can still write letters and call via landlines, and face to face is still the best way to communicate and is my preferred option.
On the blogging front I'm hoping to hit 366 posts by New Year's Eve ,if I don't do it this year I probably never will. I know I used to post some one line things but now I tend to do 250-300 words per post so that's going to be eleven thousand words before the end of the year, though if I could start writing the novel I want to write I would be producing that many words a day at least.
So what song should I share with you? Given that we should treasure our past and embrace the future I'm going to go with "Five Years Time" by Noah and the Whale which I love every time I hear it.
Humphrey Bogart is the only person I have ever seen who could light up a cigarette and still look cool. This might be an odd intro to a blog post but it is highly relevant as it's inspired by the book I am reading, "On Some Faraway Beach" the Brian Eno biography by David Sheppard.
It is just talking about the first Roxy Music album , and although the songs mostly follow the standard rock time 4/4 time format with solid rhythm (the longest vowel-less word I know) backing from Graham Simpson and Paul Thompson most of the songs don't contain standard choruses. I'd never really noticed it before but it is true , and if you have a copy listen to it and if you haven't got a copy get one.
The closing song on the album is Bryan Ferry's wonderful tribute to Bogart, "2HB" (nothing to do with pencils) but it is a great song and I just wanted to share that this frosty Monday morning.Ferry also did a solo version so I will share that, the song and the soundscapes and sentiments are so perfect.
I'm lucky enough to be on holiday in one of my favourite places, Settle, and thanks to the internet and technology I can share time and pictures with all my friends all over the world.
Today has been relaxing wandering around Settle , down to the Ribble and up Castlebergh Crag sharing pictures and generally feeling good knowing that I can share all this with my friends.
The cake was well and truly iced when I switched on the TV and the film"Local Hero"w as playing, one of my favourite feel good film, which has a perfect Mark Knopfler soundtrack which is an album I never tire of. The album reminds me of the film and the film makes me feel good and it is good to share these things with friends.
Also I handed a found wallet in to the local police station. It looked like it had been stolen and emptied but it had photographs which may have been important to the owner. The lady police officer looked and said I know those children I drop it into them, so that made me feel good.
We should appreciate all the things that make use feel good and try our best to do more of those things.
So for this first post in December I'm going to go with Mark Knopfler's "Going Home / Wild Theme" from the film "Local Hero". If you haven't seen it .. see it and get a copy of the soundtrack.
I know it's the day after Black Friday but until last year I didn't know why Black Friday was called Black Friday. I'd always assumed it was something bad like the Black Friday stock market crash of 1869 or the Black Monday one of 1987 and the Black Friday of 1989, and this was reinforced by the Steely Dan song I'm going to soundtrack this with from "Katy Lied".
But now Black Friday is the "sale" to mark companies going into the Black,except really we know that isn't true, it's just another "sale" to offload the crud that they couldn't sell at full price to make way for "new stock".
The thing is something is only a bargain if you wanted it anyway, I knew a guy who bought industrial coffee makers each Black Friday which was going to cost a fortune in running costs. I said I got my beans freshly ground at Pumphreys, and I have a cafetiere and that more than does me, though I'm hardly a coffee aficionado.
This month this blog has had over 50K visits, I'm not sure that'll happen again though I said that last month when I went over 40K so who knows.The post a day for this year is something within reach and if I don't do it now I won't do it so in December you will see days with multiple posts like today.
So I will leave you to enjoy a little Steely Dan (and if you want to know the origin of that check out "The Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs.
Sometimes the odd things cause me to write posts. Yesterday I was walking to work and the path was littered with puddles so it was difficult to keep in a straight line as I didn't want soaking feet and there were people walking slowly in my direction and towards me and they were trying avoid puddles as well.
The ideal thing when you are walking is that you keep to the defined path, but everyone was all over the place, at want point I had to walk outside of the parked cars on the main road.
This reminded me of an instrumental piece that I bought in the early seventies called "Floating Music" by Come To The Edge and ensemble featuring and led by percussionist Stomu Yamash'ta and I bought it as a mid priced Island release because of the beautiful cover. It was also the first album that I bought when I started recollecting vinyl.
The piece was "Keep In Lane" and the premise was that the instruments kept in their own lanes but played at different speeds overtaking and being overtaken but keeping to their own path. Whatever the concept I think it is an excellent piece and you can judge for yourself. I still love it and a digital copy often accompanies me on my walk. "Keep in Lane" is eighteen minutes into the video as I could only find it as part of the complete album, though the whole of it is worth listening to.
This is the final post of November 2019, it's a bright frosty day and I am now packing and waiting for a taxi to take me to the station to take me to Settle , Christmas Lights and the Pigs In Blankets Pie at The Talbot.
"TURKEY AND PIGS IN
BLANKETS PIE £10.95
Turkey breast meat and
bacon wrapped sausages
in gravy
Today people often try and share Spotify playlist with me. I don't contenance Spotify, it's not my inner Ron Swanson but the fact that it's not a business model that rewards almost all the artists who are on it's available catalogue. I suppose the other thing is that as a teenager if I wanted to share music with friends it required recording records in real time, at first recording via microphone and later when I got a job a music centre which recorded directly from the radio.
I didn't realise that the compact cassette first appeared around 1965 (comprehensive Wiki history here) , I thought it was a Sony invention because of the Walkman which allowed music on the move.
To create a cassette you had to record in real time, the playlist was just the initial plan, even when MiniDisk and CD superseded cassette it was still real time although CD recording speeded up significantly but there is still the production and labelling of the CD to do.
In October 2016 when I was 59 I started the #ALifeInNumbers which ran into November that year and I've referenced often since I did it. I haven't burnt a CD for ages and am not sure if I can use iTunes to create playlists (I'm sure you can but it's such bloatware that it is more about trying to make me buy things that actually play music), I may try that soon and then I need to print the CD label (as I still have a printer that can do that!).
I have just remembered that I can use Youtube to create playlists such as this two song ska one here , I used to do mixes on Grooveshark but their model wasn't sustainable, but I am going to investigate Youtube further.
I was going to list some significant records for me to pad out this post but here are a few, and maybe I will create a playlist at some point:
Abba - The Visitors & Happy - The Carpenters , two of my mums favourites that I still love
Lights Out - Jerry Byrne & Sea Cruise - Frankie Ford , two that remind me of my missed friend Chris who we lost to lung cancer
Negativeland - Neu! , I was shocked when my dad asked me if I had this record asthis was way out of his comfort zone
All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix , if I only could have one record this would be it, Hendrix playing , Dylan's words
Hound Dog - Elvis Presley - apparently the first record I ever liked (aged 3)
Jig A Jig - East of Eden - The first single I ever bought
Come On - Chuck Berry - one of the first songs I played and sang live and I would be condent of doing it now
Egyptian Reggae - Jonathan Richman - The first instrumental cover I played live
I could go on and on but I'll stop and share "Happy" by The Carpenters (incidentally the title of my favourite Rolling Stones song , and they - the Stones - covered Chuck Berry's - Come On).
Oscar Wilde famously said "I can resist anything but temptation" and I am definitely the same, and the latest one is that this is post 322, and another 44 posts means that for this year I will have averaged more than one post a day. While I hopefully put quality over quantity, I started the year slowly but it April I posted fifty times that's like four every three days, and in August 2018 I posted 54 times for my #August50 sequence, so although I have trashed a December sequence, I may come up with one because I don't think I'll get the chance to do this ever again because of may inherent extreme laziness. 44 posts in 35 days is most definitely doable, nut we shall see whether I do do it.
Reading "On Some Faraway Beach" by David Sheppard is difficult. The writing and subject matter is excellent but the text is so small and dense that when I look at it my my screams, well not quite screams but becomes avers to, but I start reading and then I want to keep reading. It's just each time I open the book the format tries to push me away. It mentions "Musique Concrète" and a precursor and influence on some of Eno's output and this also is a perfect description for the effect the book seems to have on me. I was also surprised to find out that Brian Eno's surname is his family surname (though I knew of his brother Roger Eno) but it's a contraction of the word Huguenot so that's something else that I have learned.
I've decided to included "Deserts" by Edgar Varese which is mentioned as an example of Musique Concrète, it is challenging and in my opinion interesting, I'm listening to it as I finish this off. I do like pieces that grab my attention, but it would certainly clear the house at a party, but it's a piece I was unaware of til this morning and has piqued my mind to explore the genre further..
I would definitely give it a try but I know a lot of people will dismiss it as rubbish, but, in my opibion, the function of all art is to have an effect and this certainly does.
Surprisingly this month is already the highest monthly hit rate for a month since I started and effectively this seemed to be kicked off my the demise of Google+ , because I looked for another way of sharing my posts and tried MeWe that doesn't really seem to have taken off but provides an easy way to copy the link post which I shared on Twitter. That then seemed to kick it off. Under google posts, generally a good visit count would be 100 , average about 50 but when Google+ went I was lucky to get 20. Facebook doesn't really seem to help although a few of my friends visit via that link.
Anyway after sharing on Twitter I was picked up by Feedburner and since then I have had more than a thousand visits a day, still very few comments, so maybe it's all robots, though I would love to see comments from friends. Yesterday I had 2,600 visits , that's more than one a minute which is impressive.
I finished "The Secret Commonwealth" by Philip Pullman and although I am a very slow reader I always have a book on the go, and while my last few books have been fiction, I have a lot of music biographies and commentaries still unread. I briefly considered "Tarantula" by Bob Dylan which I have read several times, and for me is an easy enjoyable read being a stream of consciousness based narrative by Dylan. I decided to take "On Some Faraway Beach" by David Sheppard , the biography of Brian Eno.
When I opened it I immediately baulked, 450 pages of of tiny unrelenting text, books like this really do initially put me off and need to be special to keep me on board. I'm on to chapter two so it is actually a goer and will be my book for the next few weeks.
Today I am also going back to contact lenses so that's another restart for me, and at the moment the lenses feel absolutely fine.
Looking out the window it's still dark grey and featureless, but every day is another day of potential to discover and do new things. The David Sheppard book opens with a quote from the brilliant Edward De Bono who's books and methods taught me a hell of a lot:
"“The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all. ”"
... and I suppose that just hooked me into the book. Many of the chapters are named after Brian Eno songs and pieces, so we will go with the creepily ominous "The Great Pretender" from "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" a truly wonderful album.
This morning I slept through , almost ten hours. It does help when you have switched off your alarm, but again it was a surprise and probably good for me.
When I decided to write this I had one chapter to go in "The Secret Commonwealth" but as the final chapter was only ten pages I could not resist finishing it off. This books has a lot of parallels with what is happening in the world today and there is a touching tribute to the Grenfell disaster (caused by our government getting rid of safety standards to improve profitability) but that's by the way. At 700 pages this is a hefty read and is only part of the "His Dark Materials" / "Book of Dust" double trilogy, and like all great books I did not want this one to end, so I now have to wait til my next birthday for the final installment which I am now actually waiting for.
The last two days have been so grey that I don't think I have even seen the sun. Today is mist rather than rain but yesterday was very rainy.
It is a Sunday morning here an the last week in November.
I was vaguely toying with the idea of posting a good Christmas song each day in December but I sort of did this here in 2013 and after going on about Rush in post number 2113 there was this post in that sequence which was virtually on the same subject with the same points, so I do repeat myself but who remembers what they said on a day six years back.
Music wise I'm going with The Cascades "Rhythm of the Rain" due to this inclement weather, but it's a great song and I found a more than decent live take. Obviously the band have aged but they are in fine form and still sound great.
In the sixties bands imagined they had a shelf life on two or three years and often that was true, but for others they found they could go on and on until they are physically removed from this mortal plane. The Rolling Stones , The Who and The Beach Boys are three that come to mind.
I am not a fan of Strictly Come Dancing but caught a bit of it tonight in which Kelvin Fletcher and Oti Mabuse danced to a cover of Frank Wilson's "Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do" which is one of the greatest singles ever, and a staple of the Northern Soul circuit.
At one point this was the most expensive vinyl single ever sold worth over £25,000 according to this article although thanks to digital such as MP3, CD and Youtube anyone can listen to it and thanks to reissues anyone can own a vinyl copy a;though not the Motown copy of which only three copies may be in existence.
Part of the reason I am writing this, is that although I have the song on several compilations and can listen to it on Youtube I think it might sound great on my record player, so I am considering buying a copy. The cheapest I've seen one is £3.49 plus postage but I will decide whether to do it after posting this. I can get it from Amazon by Monday but that will be a bit more expensive.
On a separate not the visits to the blog are slowly increasing and think that this month will be another record and expect to easily hit 400K visits by the end of the year and maybe half a million some time next year.
So you know what record this is, enjoy it , and below are links to buy from Amazon plus some Northern Soul compilations. Listen to it and I am sure you will want your own copy too.
