I'm halfway through "Weaveworld" and it's still got me grabbed, maybe because it touches on so many places that are familiar to me while maintaining and definite other worldliness. The thing is, when you revisit a past favourite , there is always that slight feeling that it may not live up to what you thought it would be, although being a Clive Barker tome I feel on fairly certain ground, and it is proving remarkably excellent on this particular revisit.
Of course I am also re reading "Imajica" on the Kindle Fire so it's a double helping for me , which may actually slow down progress, but who cares when it's so enjoyable.
Similarly the purchase of "Confusion" and "Blue Monday" 12" singles whilst in Edinburgh made me wonder whether my favourite New Order song "Temptation" was available in this form , and it is, so that was ordered and arrived today. My second favourite New Order song is "Love Vigilantes" but do I really need that on a 12" single.... we shall see.
So half way through "Weaveworld" made me think of "Halfway Down The Stairs" by Robin the Frog (nephew of Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Show). My mind drifting off in unorthodox tangents again.
In a previous post (here) I referred to Michael Moorcock's "Breakfast In the Ruins" which finished each chapter with an impossible dilemma directed at the reader. I had a dream about a similar thing before I properly woke this morning and here it is:
It's late at night and you are at a bus stop. Your bus is due , you think , but you have a sense of foreboding, you don't feel safe. You can see the next bus stop, about five minutes walk away, there are two dim street light along the way. There is someone at the next bus stop. They may make you feel safer.
So do you:
Stay and wait for the bus? Something bad may happen
Walk to the next stop? The bus may pass you by and the person at the next stop may not be someone who will help you , they may even be the cause of your foreboding!
So just a small dilemma for you to consider this morning.
Last night my local Post Office closed an hour early with zero announcement so I have to go to the one at Haymarket which is just always open and very reliable to detach another CD purchased from me on Discogs.
Clive Barker's "Weaveworld has just visited Newcastle , a hotel in Rudyard Street , there is a Rudyerd Street in North Shields but maybe he just chose a random name rather than an actual place.
A fairly appropriate song is the excellent "Which Way Should I Jump?" by the brilliant Milltown Brothers who also did the them to the wonderful "All Quiet On The Preston Front" ("Here I Stand" see here although this site says it's "Out on Blue Six")
I like Pointless, it's a quiz show that actually demands some intelligence and you do learn things from it. Richard Osman's "House of Games" is similar except in includes "personalities" (most of who'm I don't know) and is extremely good natured because although there are prizes it's done for the fun of it. Rge "celebrity" Pointless game is also done for charity and, again, is very educational and enjoyable, co-hosted by Richard Osman and Alexander Armstrong (President of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society and responsible for some extremely funny comedy sketches as part of the Armstrong and Miller duo with Ben Miller). So that's a hundred words which have nothing to do with what I was going to post about, apart from...
... I awoke from one of the most pointless dreams I've ever had, essentially I was doing something, either laying a floor or lawn on some waste ground under The Tyne Bridge which had a channel running from top left to bottom right towards the Ouseburn. There was a big mirror and records may have been involved and it might have been a carpet. Then I decided that the channel needed to run bottom left to top right so had to take everything up and redo it. It was on the Quayside side (North and Left is West and Right is East and I've just realised on the Gateshead side this would , at one point been a vague possibility. But my work life often means I have to undo things adn also reading Clive Barker's "Weaveworld" could have something to do with it and the carpet and been unwoven and now is being rewoven. But as you can see ultimately pointless.
So I am going to share Armstrong and Miller's streetwise Spitfire pilots with you as it's extremely funny. Although this unrelated pointless site is quite amusing.
I don't do blog posts when I'm away on short breaks although I haven't posted in nearly a week, which is quite a long blogging break for me, but Edinburgh was great but cold.
Edinburgh whilst being the joint capital of Scotland seems a remarkably unplanned city , which just adds to it's interest, and is small enough to easily explore on foot as well as having some amazing buildings and constructions. It's also full of small alleys, high level walks, stone steps and you can usually see some landmark so you can always find your way back if you ever get lost.
I got back yesterday evening and watched two episodes of 30 Rock, two of Veep and the final Frankie Boyle Scotland travelogue and then thought I don't have time to blog and realised how the quantity of choice on television can actually steal your time. The thing is I don't even have Netflix and despite it having lots of series I want to watch , my ivo disk is 90% full and I have Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and the commercial channels hubs to watch so much television that I really don't have the time.
People often tell me they binge watch series, but more than two episodes of anything is too much for me, and then I have two Clive Barker books on the go and music to listen to too.
So as I close off this first March post to go to work , the sun is shining outside, and tomorrow I am going to visit Kirsty and Mark to see and hear Mark's latest record player upgrade and Edinburgh did provide me with four more pieces of vinyl , two New Order 12" singles , "Fans" by Malcolm McLaren and "Gris,Gris" by Dr John so I'll go with "Confusion" by New Order which has one of the cleverest covers I have ever seen, although I have seen similar examples before, but even the guy selling it in Vinyl Villains wasn't too sure what it was, and the remix I'm sharing (cos it uses the cover) was used in the film "Blade".
I'm currently working my way through the discs of the box set "Forever Changing:The Golden Age of Elektra" and there is some damned awful folk music that wouldn't be out of place in "The Wicker Man" (an absolutely brilliant film which Christopher Lee did for free) , but the music improves as you work through the discs. Though there are gems on the early discs and duffers on the later discs.
"Five To One" by The Doors is a great song , vocals excellent and the bass and drums menacingly good, but the guitar and keyboards are just far too light, however on the self produced (with Bruce Botnick) "Riders on The Storm" everything is perfect, and I didn't think I would recognise a song from the rain at the beginning. It sounds so good I am considering buying "LA Woman" on vinyl. Incidentally the following song "The Future Is Not What It Used To Be" also opens with rain and is also rather good and was going to be featured in this post but .....
... then "The True Story of Amelia Earheart" by Plainsong came on and starts by mentioning her Electra plane hit the ocean bed so given that I'm listening to Elektra albums it jumped to the top of the queue. The song is base on and unsubstantiated theory but there is a website dedicated to her here if you would like to find out more.
There was also a great acapella version of "Amazing Grace" by Judy Collins which is worth tracking down.
The older you get , the more stuff you have to revisit. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it doesn't. It happens with places, books , people , films and music. But you always have to try to see if it was as good as you think you remembered it.
The obvious song is the Byrd's cover of Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "Goin' Back" , and the Byrd's always made songs sound as though they were drenched in perfection. I first saw them performing Bob Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man" on Thank Your Lucky Stars around 1965 and loved it , but was shocked by how rough the original sounded. The thing is I eventually came to love Dylan's voice as well and sometimes found The Byrd's covers a little too perfect, as with "Positively Fourth Street" on "Untitled", but it's still good.
Back to what I was originally going to post, I had started to reread "Weaveworld" by Clive Barker. Part of it brings back memories of my time in Liverpool , but two hundred pages in I think that it's as good as when I first got into iit. My memory has always been rubbish (it's why I had difficulty with English Literature and Law, I could remember what things were about and describe them but couldn't remember quotes and cases) so things keep popping up in the book that I had forgotten such as The Rake and even Suzanna, though I remembered Cal, the pigeons , Shadwell , The Scourge and of course The Magic Carpet.
"Weaveworld" still has the magic for me and I am looking forward to enjoying the bits I remember and the bits I've forgotten.
There seem to be a lot of twos and zeroes in posts and dates at the moment and obviously that makes my tiny mind decide to do another post about the veritable plethora of twos and zeros. I suppose it's just the natural pattern seeking human trait, which I have picked up on in the past and hopefully will be able to do in the future.
I've done numerically sequenced post projects in the past such as #ALifeInNumbers which I did when I turned 59 and I'm sure I did one month where I included the day number in the song I chose, but I can't identify it so I must not have set up a hashtag for it.
I'm still relearning my Google Pixel 2XL although it seems to be making noises when I want it to be quiet but two days in, I'm a lot happier than I was withe the Samsung Galaxy A3, which was adequate and did it's job.
So this is just about m noticing things and noticing unnecessary correlations and thinking of a song to go with that. It's my second post today , so it can be fairly short I think, though looking at the title it almost looks binary, although numbers are just a shape to represent a concept.
I've heard people say you need to be good at maths to do Sudoku. No you don't , you need to be good at observation, pattern recognition and assimilating that information. I do one Sudoku a week in The Observer and it gives my mind a little work out though every now and then I make a mistake a screw it up, and sometimes I do manage to correct myself.
So as we're talking numbers we can go with "6345789" , my favourite version is the upbeat Ry Cooder version, although It's a great song originally by Wilson Pickett and covered by The Blues Brothers
While the visits to this blog hit half a million this week after 13 years I found that a friend is a part collaborator in The Haunted Palace blog. If you liken my diaristic ramblings to a Gregg's pasty, great if that's what you fancy and like, A Haunted Palace is a three course meal at a Michelin starred restaurant.
Taking it's title from an Edgar Allen Poe poem it has a wonderful gothic look and every post is a long and detailed book chapter on it's particular subject with references and links, a haunted library of dark corners, happenings and imaginings. I've have dipped my toe into it and am impressed by the standards it sets itself , and each article shows me something new that I didn't know.
While we are in the realms of ghosts and the unknown , The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing came to mind for a possible song to accompany this, they are one of my favourite live bands and a Venn Diagram would find a few overlaps between them and The Haunted Palace.
The Haunted Palace was also the name of a 1964 Vincent Price film but it was based on the HP Lovecraft story "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" which I shall have to track down and watch again, as I tended to watch any film based on HP Lovecraft in my youth. A modified version (to avoid copyright issues) is on youtube here.
So we'll go with "This House Is Not Haunted" by The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing which is a wonderful take on things that go bump in the night.
This is post 2200 on 20/02/2020 . I didn't plan it, it just happened, though I could have planned it, but I didn't. That's a lot of twos and zeroes and no other digits. Numbers can be both fascinating and boring, it just depends on your frame of mind.
Today I dropped into Windows and was tempted by reasonable priced vinyl , a Best of Bowie , "Diamond Dogs" and "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac . I have all these on digital and to be quite honest now I tend to buy vinyl for the sleeve as well as the music. The whole lot would have cost £35. Oh I forgot , there was also Deep Purple "In Rock" , one of my earliest metal album and still, in my opinion , a classic with a great cover, but really my space for vinyl is sort of full.
I believe that you should play music, not just have it. I think I bought a lot to support the artist, especially on CD, but I cannot play my CD collection which is why a chunk of it is on Discogs.
I took delivery of a reconditioned Google Pixel 2XL today and I am still relearning it and setting up apps on it. I need to get a protective cover and load some music onto it but I've got the basic apps on it and am well impressed with my buy from Music Magpie, but still slightly miffed that my Google Pixel would be fine if the charging port worked. Still c'est la vie.
So on this numerically coming together I am thinking of the Cat Stevens album "Numbers" which I do have on vinyl, which is beautifully put together and the music is good as well. A definitely worthy part of my collection so I'll share the opening "Whistlestar".
SevenDaysIn has just gone over the half million visit line. Also by tomorrow I will replace the Samsung Galaxy A3 with a Google Pixel 2XL , an older phone but significantly cheaper than a new one with the same twelve month guarantee and not much more expensive than repairing the defunct charging port on my Google Pixel. The really annoying thing is that I have a perfectly functional phone that I can't charge and therefor is NOT perfectly functional any more.
Over the last week my steps have significantly dropped off mainly because of the biting cold weather, which means the bus is a preferable option.
6Music was playing Tone Loc this morning, and I always loved "Funky Cold Medina" so we will share that on this extremely short post, although it still clocks in at around 150 words, a definite novella compared to some of my early posts (like the first "mission statement" one here, but I suppose diary entries can be like that,
... that the blog hits half a million visits. It's taken a long time and after the visits dropped I wasn't sure how long it would be, but given that I'm now polling 150 visits a day and there are 80 more visits required it's safe to say that Wednesday the 19th of February is the day that SevenDaysIn hits the half a million mark. I'm quite surprised that that single sentence consists of over fifty words, though there is something that tells me that at school I used to write 100 word essays, that's like two or three sentences, there is no way that that could be true so I think my mind is playing tricks on me there.
My initial attempt at book writing floundered and died, and I do admire the people who can actually string together coherent text that grabs and keeps you attention. Clive Barker's "Weaveworld" and "Imajica" certainly do that , although not for the more genteel folk among us but for me riveting stuff.
So this is a latish Tuesday placeholder, which may bring itn one or two more views before I go to bed. I'm not really sure what piece of music to play although I introduced some friends to Barclay James Harvest recently via "Poor Man's Moody Blues" and for some reason the incredibly contrived "Titles" maybe appropriate , wonderful tune, wonderful music but the lyrics are made up of Breatles song titles so it can be deemed very clever or very crass, but I do actually like it.
See what you think and let me know with a comment.
I finished "Follow The Music" who's final chapter was very contrivedly 33⅓ and was wondering what to read next. I sort of wanted fiction, but something I know I'd be happy with so I have gone back to the first Clive Barker book I read, "Weaveworld", it's in a large format BCA edition with "Cabal" (which found it's way into film as "Nightbreed" , an interesting twist where the real monsters are the humans and the "monsters" are ghettoised and persecuted and features David Cronenberg acting as the major villain).
"Weaveworld" was Barker's second novel after "The Damnation Game" although he had produced "The Books of Blood" short story collection. I am currently reading "Imajica" on Kindle (my favourite book ever) but I now know why I was hooked by "Weaveworld" , sixty pages in wit just a glimpse of the magic carpet referred to in the title and part of this is telling me "when you have read this you know you have to read the other books" so it looks like I am unlikely to be reading any more new books for a while.
I was trying to think of a song to go with this and while I could have chosen "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf (great name from the Herman Hesse novel), "The Magic Suitcase" by Carbon/Silicon has been playing in my bed, while the subject matter is a little dodgy (the suitcase contains a bomb, I think) it's a superb song and the second best song on their brilliant debut album.
It's grey Tuesday and time for me to leave the house, but if you need some new book places to visit "Weaveworld" is a brilliant place to go.
One of the things I say to people is YOU are the most important person in your life, to which people tell me I'm wrong and say it's their partner , their children or grand children. My reply is is you have to keep yourself it the best condition to be there for them, if you are not there, their lives would be missing you for love and support , so that's why you have to put yourself first.
There's a Michael Moorcock book "Breakfast In The Ruins" that finishes each chapter with an impossible "What Would You Do?" dilemma, if you follow the link you can see some of the horrible dilemmas listed, and I had misremembered one as "You and your child are taken by a group of thugs and they give you five minutes to decided who dies, you or your child" . The horrible thing with this scenario is that you know that you cannot trust these people and you are probably more able to defend yourself if you chose yourself.
So what brought this on , again it's finishing "Follow The Music" , the two artists I was waiting to be covered were Harry Chapin and Queen and the latter's first single was "Keep Yourself Alive" which impressed me no end, with the excellent guitar phasing and "No Synthesisers". I was unaware that the band were all degree educated and Freddie Mercury was classically trained. Jac Holzman love the first album but was not impressed with them when he first saw them live, so he wrote them a letter, which they took on board. He remarked how hard working they were and really the rest is history.
The thing is look after yourself because you are very important to the people in your life. I am diabetic and many people have told me they would never inject themselves, they would rather die. I said "What about your family?" and injections are just a tiny prick that you get used to. I still inject five times a day although the amount of insulin is reducing as it the weight (slowly) and I have to sort about twenty tablets a day , and while it is, at worst , a chore, I do this because I want to have a good life, and me having a good life means that everyone who I mean something to will be happy that I am.
So have a great Sunday , Storm Dennis seems to have calmed and there's not been too much damage here, which is good......
I grew up with two TV channels. When John F Kennedy was assassinated they replaced "Bonanza" with an old woman playing piano much to my annoyance. It was either that or nothing. I probably went and played out.
It's the same with books and music, I know people who have little or no personal music or books in their lives and at some point I didn't have much.
This has come home to me using the Samsung A3 until I replace my Google Pixel. I had so much music on the Pixel that I didn't really know what to play some days. It's the same with TV channels , I have over 200 to choose from as well as on demand TV and over 400 video discs, as well as so many books I could start my own library.
Reading "Follow The Music" I decided to load the CD from it plus the five discs from "Forever Changing " in to the small SD card on the phone to listen to in sequence. It's strange having too much choice is almost as bad as having no choice at all or a limited choice, but it's always better to have the option of too much of what you want.
But listening to these albums , I 'm not thinking of what should I listen to, I'm enjoying the six albums that I have to listen to , and means that I can appreciate them as they should be, Having said that there is some awful stuff mixed with some subliminal stuff but I am still on the early folk so we have Tim Buckley and Tom Rush mixing with people I've never heard before, but is all great to listen to.
When I've finished these I'll replace them with another few albums. Sometimes it is good to limit your choices, but then again you want to be able to choose what you limit yourself to.
Tomorrow I have a work photography session, I offered to be in the crowd and they've asked me to run it, so that should be interesting.
So what song should we go with , it has to be one from the current album, we'll take Judy Collins' "Tomorrow Is A Long Time" which I first heard excellently covered by Rod Stewart on "Every Picture Tells A Story" and it is a wonderful song penned by Bob Dylan and covered by many.
I said I write about anything , and I have no writing targets, but this morning as I put in my contact lenses I was still amazed how they actually work. Today was almost seamless lenses in , one perfect vision, in slight irritation , so took it out and put it back in. I started on contact lenses thirty years back with hard lenses, I have never felt more uncomfortable and at the same time euphoric that I could walk round and see without glasses.
Someone once said to me that I wore contact lenses out of vanity. I told them it wasn't. I have 20/20 vision with them in, they don't get wet when it rains, and don't steam up when you go from cold to warm environments.
When I moved to soft lenses (I had considered laser surgery but they told me once it was done I would have to wear glasses for reading and it would cost me two grand, slightly pointless as I didn't want to wear glasses permanently and pay for the privilege), I heard stories about people who lose them in their eyes, get them stuck to their eyes and can't get them out etc. I lost one and it reappeared about three days later and I didn't feel any irritation.
It just amazes me that I put them in and then I can see. It amazes me that they adjust to my eye and that I can then see. Who thought that instead of glasses you could stick something on your eye (a horrible thought until you actually do it and get used to it) . Apparently the idea was first mooted by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1580, but there's a fair bit about on Wikipedia here.
Also why does bad weather seem worse at night. Last night was rainy and windy but this morning seems to have quietened down. Monday night I was walking home and got hit by rain and stinging hailstones and when I looked at what was playing when I got on it was "Stormy Weather" by Echo and The Bunnymen. Last night it started snowing when I was walking back though I am now listening to the free CD that came with "Follow The Music" with 26 early Elektra folk and blues tracks some taken from vinyl. Some are embarrassingly trite but some are very good like Judy Collins cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" and Phil Ochs "I Ain't Marching Anymore" which what will go with this morning , an excellent anti war anthem.
Yesterday was a bit weird, we've had a bit of the latest global warming caused storm but it was fine walking into work listening to Echo and The Bunnymen's "More Songs To Learn and Sing" and with every song that came on wondering how this band were not the biggest draw in the world at some point.
At the weekend I was thinking this month I was maybe averaging one post every two days , then I realise on Sunday night I'd done seven in nine days and this will make it eight in eleven, but if I feel like writing I will do.
Walking home someone reckoned it was fine walking weather , which it was, though a bit blowy, until I got off the bus route, then the hailstones started coming down, the wind was blowing and they were cold and stinging and I had no umbrella (that would have just been destroyed by the wind) or protective headwear, but you just have to keep walking , about half a mile through an annoying hailstorm. It could have been much worse and getting into a warm house was most appreciated.
For tea I had got some prepared stir fry vegetables that implied it was hot and there was a sauce. There was no sauce so chucked the stuff (peppers , carrots, cabbage , beansprouts , water chestnuts and onions and more, in the pan with olive oil then added some brown sauce and sriracha sauce to give it some but . Five minutes later it was in the dish and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought I would need something else, but I didn't eat anything else and didn't feel hungry so that was a success and will be having more. You can see me cooking on my instagram feed here. To me it looks very tasty, and it was.
Last night the wind and rain were blowing and this morning looks grim so I'm not sure if I can walk into work (well I can but the bus option is very tempting) we shall see.
Music on this Tuesday will be "The Cutter" by Echo and The Bunnymen though any song from that album would be perfect.
I'm sure lots of others have said it, but every time I see Agatha Christie's Poirot advertised I think Agatha Christie's Parrot. I wonder if she ever owned a parrot, not that it actually matters.
But in a fairly relaxing day among other things I have been continuing with "Follow The Music" and after a mainly business orientated section (ie for me boring it hit me with several surprising bands and connections.
Firstly we had the MC5 , extremely revolutionary and anti corporate, with two versions of "Kick Out The Jams" one starting with the original "KOTJ MotherFvckers" and the other "family friendly "OTJ Brothers and Sisters" which caused major issues when the Hudson's Department Stores got the wrong batch causing no end of too and forth repercussions (buy or borrow the book to find out).
The there was Iggy and The Stooges as well, who lasted two albums with Elektra but another out there band who turned up to record their first album with five songs. They were sent away to get some more.
Now I was under the impression that both these bands were on CBS but that must have been the British releases. Similarly Queen were on Elektra in the USA but on EMI in the UK.
I shouldn't have been so surprised as I have a copy of the first ever (to my knowledge) rock picture disk, a German Elektra compilation called Hallucinations / Psychedelic Underground which has these bands plus The Doors and others and you can see it here.
The final and most surprising were the middle or the road AOR band Bread led by David Gates who Jac Holzman knew from his work with Captain Beefheart. I never knew that. This is why reading is such an adventure. You always find out new things.
Obviously there is a plethora of songs I could choose but as it's Sunday night before another working week we'll go with The Stooges "No Fun"
For some reason I either dreamed or thought that "Quietjin" was a solution to a scrabble word, but it's not , just a deactivated twitter account and there are various results from Google and DuckDuckGo and there is Quietjin1 on twitter. Quietgin was another option although Quieting is a valid word. There are some weird words or letter combination that online Scrabble allows and some oddities it does not allow. Words like XI , XU , QI , ZA , ZO which I am sure you would get questioned on in real life Scrabble.
I find Scrabble more like Tetris in that you are trying to fit words into spaces which get harder as the game progresses. It's more about observation than literacy. Anagrams are easy enough to solve, but once you have the solution you have to find somewhere on the board to fit it in. Usually when I play a word I work out what my next play will be and hope my opponent doesn't take my place.
It's similar when people say that you need to be good at maths to do Sudoku , it's just again about observation except Sudoku gets easier as you progress through the puzzle. Although generally Sudoku uses numbers you could use any symbols at all, although when you see one that doesn't use numbers you get slightly disorientated because you are used to using numbers.
I used to play with about ten people on Facebook Scrabble and that is generally the main reason I stayed on Facebook , but it's down to two of the first people I started playing with. Others have dropped off and when I have tried to start a new game the game has not been reciprocated although according to Scrabble these folk are actually playing.
The visits to the blog have dropped significantly and it's down to a more realistic one hundred a day, though I may just hit half a million by the end of February, so that is not an impossibility, and if not February I will hit it in March.
This Sunday morning is grey and rainy, not the most inspiring, but I have lots to do today while also trying to relax before what will be a very intense week at work, but that does make the days fly by, there is nothing worse than having nothing to do, and I do love having problems to solve, hence the enjoyment of problem solving puzzles such as Scrabble and Sudoku.
So a fairly obvious song is "Games People Play" by Joe South (although it's been very widely covered) , but enjoy your Sunday everyone. The melody was appropriated by eurotrash poppers Dan The Banjo Man in the seventies (listen on th elink.
