Back To Everville

Yesterday I noticed a red light on my mouse that I hadn't noticed before. It's wireless so I assumed it was just something I hadn't noticed before. This morning it was dead, needed new batteries. The light comes on when the batteries are about to expire. I'm not sure what happens when the keyboard battery expires, but if an unexpected light starts flashing, I will have a clue.

Last night in The Fenham Fish Bar they have gone back to walk ins but you have to give your name when you order, though was surprised to find they know my surname , but the guy after me was called Steve Martin , so we got chatting about the comedian's banjo and ukulele talents.

I'm over a third of the way through "Everville" and I am now sure that I have never read the book. This is odd as it is by one of my favourite authors, Clive Barker,  and a follow up to another great book "The Great and Secret Show" so why did I buy it but never read it. Although parts of it are in familiar territory and characters are familiar , having just read the first book , and Harry D'Amour does reappear in "The Scarlet Gospels" , so rather than a rereading this is a first time read by one of my favourite authors , so I am certainly pleased about that.

I always like discovering new things and this is like discovering a long lost album by one of your favourite artists or an unknown (to you)  film by a favourite director.

Today looks gorgeous outside so have a planned trip to the Grainger Market before watching football this afternoon then maybe continuing on with the last three episodes of "Vikings".

Music wise I have been listening to CDs mostly this week, though I have misplaced my copy of "En-Tact" by The Shamen but I am going with "Alive" by Steve Mason. When I heard this I thought the voice and sound was familiar , and Steve Mason was also the voice of The Beta Band another of my favourites. The Steve Mason album is "Meet The Humans" which reminded me of Humans , the first Matt Haig book I read because I gave it out for a World Book Night. I had it for sale on my Discogs store but it has now been pulled , definitely too good to sell.

So enjoy your Saturday and I hope you discover something new and brilliant too.

Progress

Just thinking about what we can do now as opposed to what we could do ten , twenty or thirty years back. We used to buy from the local shop, market or high street although big business was giving us supermarkets and hypermarkets and shopping malls.

Our phones are communication devices , we can do video calling , share video as well as text and speech. Thanks to Arpanet and Tim Berners-Lee we have 24/7 to an unbelievable knowledge resource.

Also we used to only have radio , then TV , but although we still have these they also come through digital channels and where there were just a couple of options now thanks to digital , we seem to be unlimited , though the Bruce Springsteen song "57 Channels And Nothing On" sometimes comes to mind , but now that programs are on demand , you can never say there is nothing on.

I remeber having to order anything slightly out of the ordinary from record shops , "No Woman, No Cry" and "Jah Live" by Bob Marley come to mind, but remember being told "We don't sell singles and we only stock the top 20" when asking for a copy of "Ummagumma" by Pink Floyd at a furniture shop that also sold records. These days you can have your music or video immediately as long as you have the ability to pay for it.

Phone advertisements are always promoting the camera abilities of the device, the sound and connectivity is seldom mentioned, though the thing is that they are generally hand held computers, thought we can't use them for transportation ... yet. That's something that always confuses me, when, in Star Trek someone is transported where the atoms are disassembled at point of departure and reassembled at the point of arrival is that just a clone at the point of arrival or the original person , and if the clone has all the memories of the original person , how would it know that it is a clone. The other side of that is that our bodies shed and recreate layers and we are not the same person we were last year. I'm sure that could be the basis of a short story , it is about time I actually wrote one.

I could go one about driverless cars and other vehiles and Smart everything but think it's time to share some music.

Maybe we will go with the Springsteen one , while we have hundreds of channels and streams , a lot of it is filled with rubbish , but a lot of it is the highest quality. You can never say there is nothing on.

An Accidental Hello

Yesterday I received a strange text request from a friend ,  he needed something from someone in the Financial Sector, nothing major and the fact he was just around the corner from me. Now either he has moved or his round the corner is a lot further than mine .While I work with accountants and have worked in banking , I am definitely not a financial sector person. So I called him, immediately receiving an apology as he had texted the wrong Mike S adjacent in his phone list.

The conversation was not short , and we had a great catch up as a result of a mistake. It's very easy to say next week or next month and all of a sudden nothing actually happens. As I get older in some ways I get lazier, almost preferring TV to socialising. I am on the final series of "Vikings" and have finished several others but have others to watch, although I can't bingewatch in reality.

I'm also quite surprised how the spellchecker on this blog , misses some things and seemingly autocorrects using the wrong word. For instance "bank" became "back" which could prove a little embarrassing.

Anyway today for the first time in months I played a CD. CDs are convenient but actually need to be close to hand and not in boxes or drawers. I ended up playing several starting about nine o'clock and going through til finishing work. I finished with Roxy Music's awesome soundscape "Avalon" which has one of the most unreadable covers I have seen , and on the way included three compilations "This Is Soul" , an Motown summer promo and "Fools Gold" (Chiswick Chartbusters) but I played the Louise Distras "Street Revolution" EP about four times. I met her at The Cluny (see here) and we had a great crack on , so I am going to share "Solidarity" , a live take of the closer from that EP.

Two Minutes

The time on my Google Pixel 2XL phone is two minutes ahead of the time on my work and home computers.I am assuming they use a different source for their times because two minutes is a significant amount of time, Unless it's like the clock at The Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that since 1902, the hotel's clock has been set three minutes fast to ensure that the people of Edinburgh wouldn't miss their trains. This is still the case today. The only day that the clock runs on time is on 31 December (Hogmanay) for the city's New Year celebrations.

The weather has been very dreich over most of this week, the sun seems to fight it's way out but then disappears.

"Everville" is still continuing on and after a hundred pages some of the characters from "The Great And Secret Show" have now turned up, although I am still no wiser as to what will happen in the book. I cannot believe I have a book by one of my favourite authors that I haven't read , especially as it is a follow up to a very good book. I will probbly mention it a few more times before I finish it.

Today I have been listening to Hothouse Flowers , Gay Dad and General Fiasco but before I switched the radio off two of my current favourites were spun by Lauren Laverne , one was "Slum Lord" by Baxter Dury and the other was "Take Back The Radio" by Katy J Pearson which , to me, sounds like "Aeriel" era Kate Bush, and that is certainly no bad thing.

This is the thing , there is always great music being produced, it's just sometimes a case of finding it. I would hate to be stuck in a particular time period with my musical taste like so many people I know, although I suppose really they are happy with their choices.

So have a listen to Katy J Pearson  , she is rather excellent.

Into Everville

Having finished and re-enjoyed "The Great and Secret Show" by Clive Barker I have now picked up the follow up / companion book "Everville" to revisit / reread. Reread? I certainly don't remember any of what happens in the first sixty pages, and while my memory is not that great, I am getting the feeling that I bought this and never read it , because I was reading something else when I bought it. The intro vaguely reminds me of the Hell sequences in "Preacher".

I have an idea of some of the characters who may come into this and after "The Great and Secret Show" I am not sure if this runs in tandem or as a prequel of sequel though it is described as "The Second Book of The Art" .  So I may provide you with updates as I wander through it.

Weatherwise it's very dreich , but I managed to hit my steps for June despite leaving an 11K daily target (which I often exceeded).

Totay I have been listening to the Urban Dance Squad , and having your collection digitally with a reasonable play set up makes it easy to listen to . I'm finding BBC6 Music becoming pretentiously cliquey with a lot of the music being very bland (or sometimes mindless techno - which is fine in the right place - but not for an hour or two in the afternoon) . Having said that Urban Dance Squad or hardcore Dutch Hip Hop but also very listenable, "Deeper Shade of Soul" shows them off brilliantly.

The Inconvenience of Convenience

Last week I bought two albums "Two Sevens Clash (40th Anniversary)" by Culture  and "Kitchen Sink" by Nadine Shah (oddly being released digitally song by song) and after consideration decided to but just the digital version. I didn't buy the CDs because I thought I would be unlikely to play the CD but have played the albums several times since purchase , plus because of the convenience of my digital apps (BubbleuP'n'P and Windows Media Player) I have played several related albums forsaking my normal work soundtrack of BBC 6Music.

I often reckoned that the introduction of CD was a McDonaldisation of music (see my post of music media history from 2015 here) which essentially allowed you to store more music in a smaller place , skip songs , program the order and lots more and was stored in a digital format which does lose a lot of the original sound by letting only hear what we can / need to hear.

The thing is I think nothing of playing a vinyl album or single but digital discs are are now a chore , you have to find it , open the case open the player and then either play or select what you want to play. We have been conditioned to get want we want with a click or two. When was the last time you played a CD or DVD? We are all part of the "click" generation.

I am not sure it can go much further, ever song I share on this blog is on Youtube or Vimeo , and as I am writing this I have "Two Sevens Clash (40th Anniversary)" playing on Windows Media Player. When I go down I will listen to some vinyl or maybe watch something on my Tivo , Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Looking outside the cloudy sky is looking very ominous, more thunderstorms on the way.

"Two Sevens Clash (40th Anniversary)" by Culture is an absolutely essential reggae album, I think this is going on my phone to listen to when I walk.

The Great and Secret Show

I haven't written much about "The Great and Secret Show" by Clive Barker but am thoroughly enjoying it, although I've read it before , thirty pages from the end I am still not sure of the final outcome. The Great and Secret Show is on the isle of Ephemeris in the dream sea Quiddity which is between the Cosm and Metacosm home of the Iad (the main baddies in this story).

This is the good thing about my memory , I know enough to know it's a great book, but every time I read it , it's like a new adventure, although a vaguely familiar ride. I will probably finish this , this weekend and I have so many other places to revisit

Tonight we have had a thunderstorm shaking the street and houses , a little rain but it seems to have passed.

So I know this is incredibly short , but the heat is just stifling my creative writing faculties, so I will sign off.

This week I have been listening to a lot of reggae but given that Armageddon like nature of "The Great And Secret Show" maybe I will go with "The Four Horsemen" by Aphrodite's Child (featuring Vangelis and Demis Roussos featuring the end of the world scenarios by local North East artist John Martin.

Attention Span

Midway through series two I gave up on this series because it was getting too complicated for me and wasn't really what I expected. I am now midway though series 5 Part 2 and looking apprehensively at the end of series 6.

My basic problem is that I was Ok with the Vikings , hitting Lindisfarne and Northumbria, but when it started getting further afield with Wessex and Mercia I felt it was losing me. That's my short attention span. However I did pick it up again and now we have seen Paris , Spain , Sicily ,Rome , Iceland,  The Sahara , and back to York, and the introduction of Alfred The Great.

While historical accuracy is more of a very vague guideline and provider of nails to hang a story on, the series has provided some amazing set pieces , extreme violence and great characters . How the hell they sold the character of Ivar The Boneless (you can't use your legs) to Alex Hegh Andersen I haven't got a clue.

It's just a lesson that sometimes you don't know what you are missing if you don't stick with things.

Reading wise I'm still on with "The Great and Secret Show" (on paper) and "Imajica" on Kindle Fire by Clive Barker and enjoying both rekindling the fires of earlier readings with lots of forgotten memories and characters, both excellent books and clocking in at 700 and 1200 pages not exactly short either.

I must say I am enjoying revisiting these books, stimulating my imaginatation.

This morning I have again ditched 6Music andam on my fourth Horslips album which has been a great mornings listening. The albums have been:

• The Táin
• Book of Invasions
• The Man Who Built America
• Aliens

Even though it's one of my favourite albums ever (It was the only album I played for two weeks when I bought it in 1976) , today I found out for the first time it was based on Lebor Gabála Érenn, a collection of poems and prose narratives in the Irish language intended to be a history of Ireland and the Irish from the creation of the world to the Middle Ages. I knew is was based on Irish mythology frollowing on from "The Tain" but never delved further than that.

Given that I started this post talking about Vikings I am going with "America: What Time Is Love?" by The KLF as the video makes me thinks of Vikings, boats , raids and overseas madness.

Wild, Wild Life

One of the many benefits of the lockdown has been the proliferation of wildlife and the cleansing of the atmosphere thanks to the use of airplanes and cars being significantly reduced. So we've seen frogs , bees and butterflies as well as small birds , although there seem to be many more magpies as well and I'm sure I seldom saw more than one a day.

The problem with this is that th ehuman race is so insistent on it's own convenience we will soon be back to the same air and car traffic with the subsequent increase in polutions, although I still often can cross the road easily whithout having to wait for traffic lights.

Another increase is the number of people out running , although they may have been there before when I was office based, but I was out last night and the noise was so great I was glad to get off the estate I was on and into  the greenery and woods , but then I hit the A167 and then there was traffic noise pollution.

Today I have turned off the radio and am listening to my own music collection which I am playing on my Kindle Fire using BubbleUPnP and I downloaded the 40th Aniversary copy of "Two Sevens Clash" by Culture which differs significantly from the thirtieth anniversary one (barring the origianl album) but the track order seems to be all over the place. I am going to look at this later and it may need some manual adjustment, but the album is full of great songs.

I'm now listening to Caravan & The New Symphonia and was slight surprised to find what "The Dog, The Dog He's At It Again" was about, although it should have been obvious.

So I will leave you with "Wild Wild Life" by The Talking Heads from "True Stories" . Enjoy

The Insidious Evil of Contact Lenses

This morning I lost a contact lens trying to put it in my left eye. Usually if I drop them I eventually find it but to today absolutely no sign. Looked round the sink , on the bathroom cabinet and floor, it does amaze me that when you drop something it can go absolutely anywhere.

Given that my right and left are out of sync I decided to ditch the right one as well well and open new ones but was worried that maybe the left one was actually in my eye but had slipped behind it.

That has happened to me once before and I didn't realise until it reappeared on a hospital visit. I tried inserting the left one but it felt that there was already something there, although this was probably psychosomatic  caused by by attempts to take out a contact lens that wasn't there..

Decided to go with my glasses then checked my phone and noticed an odd reflection. It turned out the lost contact lens was stuck above my palm at the bottom of my index finger, and there is apparently no name for that bit of the hand, like as Vivian Stanshall said in "Sir Henry At Rawlinson End" - "There ids no name for the back of the knees".

So that's my start to this beautiful Saturday morning when the 2019/20 football season restarts in empty stadia , but it is a good sight to see even if it's just on TV.

Chris Hawkins on 6Music is playing a Rolling Stones cover of Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" . I was one of the backing singers and in the Gospel Choir support when Solomon Burke played The Sage ten years ago, see here .

This weekend will see lawn mowing , Roman Temple visiting and football watching and we need a song to go with that don't we. For some reason Johnny Clarke's "Rockers Time Now" was in my head yesterday,  it's an absolutely great song , perfect for today, so we'll go with that.

#LikeNoOther #11 - Nadine Shah

I think this is #LikeNoOther #11 though I  may have missed one out as it's ages since I posted in this series. Nadine Shah has released a new album and the new album "Kitchen Sink"  (though just a thought Kitschen Sink would be a great album or book title)  doesn't let up.

Her music is not exactly danceable , but sounds like it doesn't conform to any norm. It has a highly percussive framework  which she and her band use to build the songs, and you finish every one thinking what the hell was that, I need to listen again.

Nadine , as far as I am concerned, falls in the same sprawling universe as all the other artists who have appeared in this series, but my immediate touchpoints are:

• PJ Harvey
• Siouxsie Sue and The Banshees
• Captain Beefheart
• The Incredible String Band
• David Bowie
• Ethiopiques
• Tom Waits

There is a hell of a lot of original music around and it always amazes be that a combination of 12 notes can continually be moulded to give us something new and original. Nadine Shah continues to do that on every sone her and her band produces.

Watch and listen to the new single and your musical listening horizons will expand.

I've seen Nadine Shah twice and was very impressed both times. Her music is is as I've described and she has a very engaging stage personality as well so well worth going to see her, here are a couple of my reviews with some more video.

Hazy

Since the weekend the sky has been a uniform grey with mist almost to ground level. This has burned off for the last two afternoons revealing sunny blue skies, but my phone's weather app showed an icon that looks like waves , so I was thinking Tsunami? Flood? ... apparently it actually means hazy so that means I can rest a little more safely.

It's now after work and the sky is still grey. I will go out for a walk and visit a local Roman Temple, the weather is at least conducive to walking which is good. I've managed to keep my steps up this month.

Today I opened a pack of toilet rolls that I bought when lockdown started and everyone was panic buying, throughout this lockdown I have never gone short of anything , I noticed shops that have sold out but always found alternatives close by, while a lot of people I know were telling me how impossible it was to get things. The irony being they all own cars so in theory can go anywhere , whereas I rely on public transport and shanks pony.

Although my CD is slowly shrinking via my Discogs store I will be buying the new Nadine Shah album "Kitchen Sink" , here music is like nothing else , all the instruments are so percussive and she is one of the few artists who I have a complete collection of. I am also going to download the 40th anniversary version of "Two Sevens Clash" by Culture, I have the original in digital format so will do the same for the anniversary edition.

As this is named Hazy I will share "Hazy Jane" by Nick Drake.

Hmmmmmmm

This morning I thought about not showering, there was another part of my brain that said get in, you need to be clean for the day , but the thought was worrying, if fleeting. I always want to shower , and love being in there but hate drying myself and then having to get dressed.

One of the things about working in lockdown or being furloughed you aren't under any pressure to look your best (and I never look good anyway) and if you are furloughed there's only so much non work you can do.

My lawn is currently getting long, but I am deliberately doing it to encourage wildlife although it will be trimmed this coming weekend.

The sky today has been a uniform grey , my phone app says hazy, so it is not the most inspiring.

I have now finished for the day

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the release of Alfred Hitchcock's  "Psycho" so maybe we can go with Elvis Costello's "Psycho" which was the "B" side of "Good Year For The Roses" from the album "Almost Blue".

Enjoy.

Afoot

I have been using some comfy trainers for my walking and this week I pulled out an old pair that feel as though I'm walking directly on the road, but actually make walking much more productive and easier. The comfy ones I suppose are almost like walking on grass whereas the "uncomfy" ones are actually more suited to the job of walking.

Since I've decided to keep to the 11K steps a day target , whatever the month , it's been a lot easier to meet the targets and I am not halfway through this month but already 30K steps up (mainly due to walking into town to post a couple of Discogs orders to Spain and Sweden) , so maybe this month I will hit my target again.

This week I binge watched (for me ) "Space Force" on Netflix , the episodes are only thirty minutes and there were only ten episodes  and I was very impressed by it. I am also up to series five on "Vikings" which just seems to spread further and further round the world with every episode.

The weather is is still dreich and as such is not very inspirational , I've had the guitar out and looking at using keyboard to provide bass rhythms but still no nearer producing anything. Part of this is that I want by backing to to be instant and also get distracted by TV , listening to music and reading , although they should be providing inspiration rather than distraction. I am not good with self practicing.

I wasn't sure what  music to share but last week heard this Nina Simone take on Bob Dylans' "Just Like Tom Thumbs' Blues" , the thing is Dylan's voice often put's people off but I think that people will listen to Simone's version. I obviously love the original but this is a song that can transcend the performer, bu t this is and awesome performance.

Listen all the way through , I challenge you to be unimpressed.

I Now Have A Top Three

I am always positive, looking for positives in any situation. As I was make breakfast , porridge and coffee, I ran out of milk. This meant I had to go to my local shop to get more milk, but in the process added 600 steps to my daily sep count , which is always good.

Anyway back to the point of the post.

On my morning walk I decided to listen to "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monae, which I was so impressed with that I posted this two years ago. and every time I listen I am floored by the album. It now joins "Future Games" by Spirit and "El Dorado" by The Electric Light Orchestra in my top three albums ever. I do like music and have eclectic taste and if I were to choose top artists it would probably be David Bowie and Bob Dylan.

I have included the Emotion Picture that contains most of the album , and is a great piece of science fiction music culminating in th ewonderful "Amercans" . The album has lost none of it's joy and power since I first heard it , and it's so good I never skip a song , similar to the other two albums in my top three.

It is an amazing , joyful and thought provoking piece of work and is always great to listen to and always lift my spirits.

This also shows that there is always great music being produced, and while often it's cited that the music you hear between the ages of 14 and 16 shapes your whole future tastes , I think that you have to keep an open mind and listen to everything.

Also you don't have to be yound to produce great music , age can educate you and I thing that Sparks are  still one of the most at the edge original band still going.

So keep a very open mind and let the good stuff flow into you.

The Odd Price of Music

I am selling CDs I'll probably never play again on my Discogs store and am sometimes surprised at the prices that things actually go for, although you can price at any level and it's only good if you actually make a sale, but on my latest additions there were a few surprises:

• The Cramps "Off The Bone / Songs The Lord Taught Us" around £4
• Roger Daltrey "Moonlighting" up to £60
• Louis Jordan "The Anthology" £30

I could obviously unload via CEX or Music Magpie and get 20p a CD if I'm lucky, but I use Discogs to sell and price and sometimes get several times the original purchase price.

Again the thing is I might see a CD priced at £250 on Amazon like "The Handy Wah Whole" but you have to want to sell the item AND you need a buyer. Sometimes these things come together and you find a buyer, I remember selling a copy of "Anarchy In The UK" for £25 in the early eighties after they went from EMI to A&M to Virgin and then bought the LP for a couple of quid leaving me twenty pound to the good.

I tend to love the music rather than the format and as long I can listen to it then that's OK by me.

I do realise that I have bought records mainly to support the artist, resulting in a very large collection that is now subject to a very slow cull, I don't need to sell it , and any CD that is priced less than two quid goes to the charity shops.

I'm not sure how much these are on Amazon but you can see on the list below.

It's quite early but I am feeling a bit iffy like I'm coming down with something, hopefully a night's sleep will sort me out.

Every Piece Of Vinyl ....

I was looking at all the books I have,  and was thinking "Will I ever read all of these?" . The same goes for DVDs and CDs . With the digitalisation of music, plus streaming , and the phenomenal fall in price music has become easy to buy without listening to it.

People used to make tapes and that had to be done in real time , but now it's just a playlist and if there is little effort in producing it then there will be little attention payed to it by listener. I see loads of playlists shared each day , but will take more notice of a single song in some format or other.

Digital media is so easy to aquire , put aside for future listening, then never revisit. Books are slightly different in that you may put them aside, but usually you have them displayed in a bookcase or something and always tend to buy them with at least the intention of reading. That is not always the case with digital media, and you can include ebooks with that , so easy to acquire and so easy to forget about.

I have bought very few ebooks but have acquired a lot as many are public domain and available for free or very cheaply.

Back to vinyl , every record I have has been played at least once, and many times more often. Buying vinyl creates a sort of tangible connection with the music, the covers are often an adventure in themselves (thinking Hawkwind's "In Search of Space" and Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" newspaper cover).

I have a few picture discs including Kate Bush's zoetropic picture disc of "Running Up That Hill" and the Star Wars and Jack White " Lazaretto"discs with the etched holograms all of which need lights or strobes to bring out the images, but I can't find the Kate Bush one although I posted it on instagram a few years back, maybe I will try doing it again soon and put it on Youtube.

So what should I share this time, we'll go with "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath because of the Vertigo Swirl which is one of the best simple optical effects I have ever seen , and you don't get that on digital, sometimes it's great to watch the record just  play.

Dreich

A good description of this Saturday morning Dreich which if you follow the link you will get the definition. It's grey, wet and cold, the wind and rain beating aginst the window panes. And that's it.

While I do enjoy a shower, I just want to come out ready for the day , but hate having to dry myself, apply deodarant etc before you can actually get dressed. I've known people who say that deodorant is just a trick to con more money out of you , not the sort of people to get too close too.

One of the main problems I have with lockdown is the lack of physical contact with people, although I still have contact via phone , social media , and video apps , but to compensate for this I speak to people when out for walks (while maintaining social distancing)  and have spoken with a lot of people although I will probably never see or speak to them again.

In the time I've been writing this the sun has started to poke through so it may turn out to be a decent day , but we shall see how it goes.

Lots of ideas are going through my head , thinking about a podcast / radio show as it used to be that music couldn't be included in podcasts , but the BBC has a lot of shows / podcasts that do include music, but I first need to grab some software to do this , although I could just record in analogue form, but we shall see, and it may go like many of my other purported projects and never get started, although I do know I can do things when I put my mind to it otherwise I couldn't do a job.

We're in June and we should be well into summer weather but you have seen how I've described it, although we have had some great weather this week so I'm just trying to think of some music to share, and then I found this father/daughter quarantine take on "The Time Warp" from Richard O'Brien's "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" which in my opinion is one of the most fun things ever.. Watch this , you may love it. My daughters love The Rocky Horror Picture Show and loved the computer game on the old Amstrad.

Enjoy