Writing While Moving

 I’m am slightly in awe of the way we are becoming a TV watching proletariat. Though that’s a discussion for another time. I decided to see if I could do a blog post as I walked and this is the result. I hope my edits manage to make it readable

One of the problems with writing, walking, doing things they always take time.I was just wondering that out on my morning walk could I actually record this and use phone and Google Docs to record my thoughts.

I'm not sure if I can do paragraphs or how to actually make breaks but anyway this is going to be a stream of text which I can then take apart when I actually get home and you know so that we can actually see if this actually works.

I do write about music and that is a big part of my life. When the lock down hit last February or whenever I suddenly spent a lot of time and listening to 6 Music listening to radio and hearing what they had to play and share.

The I also you realised that my CD collection is too big. I mean I've ripped most of it to my network but when CDs are in boxes or even worse in an attic then you may as well just get rid. I've actually got a pile that I've for sale on Discogs now .I'm not looking for money as such, more just to make space ,and as I say, I've got a lot of boxes of CDs but what then happened is that whilst I listened to stuff through my Kindle fire and speaker system, I realised that my radio also had a CD player so I thought well I will listen to some of these CDs I've got for sale because it's very close, while I work.

Then I thought you know so even the ones I have on saleI will listen to those as well and it's progressed so that I spend my working day listening to music on CD.

A lot of people have actually said oh well you're not with the times. You should be using Spotify or a streaming service and yeah I can stream on YouTube or whatever the odd one, there are full albums on there they do get taken down.

I now listen to my CD collection as it  is very convenient and as I say I have lots of CD box sets and I do believe that my purchase of CDs a lot of the time it was more about supporting the artist then actually getting the CD and you know I've not listened to lots of my music.

I probably I have hundreds of thousands of tracks and I know this from ripping them to my digital store. I've also bought albums from Bandcamp recently by Edward II and Jordan Reyne because Spotify does not support artists. Spotify is flawed because there are a few people making a lot of money from it and artists not the ones. If you're an artist trying to break through you are not really going to make all that money you can't. I tried it and I got paid 0.00001 didn't get paid anything because he was too small to pay but basically Spotify make a lot of money.

A couple of years ago daft punk's random access memory what's the biggest selling album and biggest streamed album of the year and they got paid £13,000 . When you can see that the people in Spotify are all millionaires making millions from this it's not the artist who's getting the money.

I'm told that I'm behind the times and I should have a Spotify account and you can get it free with advertising whatever but it's a very bad model for the artists.

The model does not encourage new music.It’s alright it's just using what's there and if there was no new music produced ever Spotify would still go on it would be ok.It would still make money because shall we say the market the market has now got so much music.

 I mean we've got music from a couple of centuries and even just normal popular pop music is like 70 years of Music so Spotify has this huge amount of music for people to actually stream and listen as and when they want and it's convenience but I once actually said that CD was the McDonaldisation of music by its convenience you can actually skip tracks sequence tracks in the order you want make playlists.

The move to mp3 and digital even made that's more convenient and Spotify you don't even have to o that you just let Spotify choose what you want to hear and you know it's a perfect medium for people to actually or the corporations to decide what you want to listen to.

When I was with EE the streaming service was Deezer and I saw an advertisement for it and it was just it just chooses exactly what I want to hear no it doesn't it chooses what it thinks you should hear and that is my problem

I see Amazon suggestions and old you bought this so you might want to buy this which force you to actually do it like listen to it and decide it's not what I want or he might listen to it in here something and decide yeah if it's what I want but you know side of my preferred way is you know when I listen to the radio or walk into a record shop and hear something and think what the hell's that .

Luckily these days with digital radio you can find out what you actually playing with online lists or it shows you on the actual DAB player and the DJ usually tells you.

When I was a teenager when you heard something and then the DJ didn't say who it was or it because they said at the beginning of the song in you came in like 20 seconds in then you know it was a little more difficult and that happened so many times with me where I heard things and I'm going like what the hell is that you know.

Today we've got you got things like Shazam which will recognise music most of the time so you know and then you should have it and then you can actually get it from wherever so there is no need for it for my old site apart from a legacy thing where people wanted to hear know what the music was so many years ago and such an advert you know but again it's just like people who want that it's so few now that the sites not worth maintaining all I've got it on Facebook and if I see a decent advert I will put it on there because the advert will be on YouTube and it's it is one of those things that even with adverts these days there are very few that are worth noting and again if you want music on your device then you got it

So the first song that made me start the Song of The Salesman site was a Guinness advert that used “Burke’s Law” by Prince Buster so I will signoff with that. Though I can’t find it so we will share “Guaglione” by Pérez Prado with the fabulous Dancing Man advert.

This has been mostly spoken into my phone and recorded by Google Docs so I will blame that for all my mistakes.

Vocalising

 I do write quite a lot and when I post something on my blog it does really give me great pleasure when someone reads it and comments on it. People for some reason seldom leave comments on the actual posts, probably because they do require identification.

It would also be nice to be able to monetise my writing but people have to read it and then click and buy through the advertising around it, such as the Amazon music links you can see below in the actual blog post, but I’m not sure whether Google and Facebook steal the click throughs as they would have the technology to do that and would justify it because my blog is sitting on their platform.

Also over the years Amazon have put more and more caveats on sales, such as you get nothing for your own or purchase from people who have a connection to you, so if I buy a present for someone then they buy something through one of my links, I receive nothing. Also, it’s only the first purchase that I actually get anything, so I’ve probably made Jeff Bezos a fortune over the years.

Ten years back I was bringing in a hundred pounds a month from Amazon, HMV and many others, but with the rise of streaming and the demise of online physical music sales plus things like Shazam the end was determined for my Song of The Salesman site although I do maintain it is a very compact format on Facebook

Anyway recently I have seen various platforms that are meant to reward you with reads and contracts. One is Vocal that is on, but does not allow links or personal ads so you will have to visit my actual blog www.sevendaysin.co.uk to see the sort of stuff I recommend in ads. The other is Get Blogged that gives a fixed price for related blog posts but they need to be on specific subjects and I’ve not yet had any feedback.

I’m going to change my blogging method to create the document in Word then paste it into Vocal and my blog and then see how it progresses. It’s going to make it a bit more convoluted but we shall see if it generates any response and interactions.

One of the good things about producing the document using a word processor is that you can keep a constant tab on how many words you have written, which the blogging software does not.

So today has been bright and sunny and this morning I listened to the Lou Reizner production of The Who’s “Tommy” with the London Symphony Orchestra and various guests. I wasn’t impressed with Rod Stewart’s take on “Pinball Wizard” although the arrangement is excellent and Merry Clayton’s take on “The Acid Queen” is wonderful though possibly eclipsed by Tina Turner’s take on the same song in the Ken Russell film. I have listened to all the main versions of “Tommy” that I have on both digital format and on vinyl, and it still holds up in it’s best bits. There are a few awkward instances like Uncle Ernie and the Tommy’s Holiday Camp concept but there are a lot of fine musical sequences which make it an essential listen.

I am going to share Merry Clayton's take on "The Acid Queen" which I talked about above.

So now I want to see what happens when I paste this into my blog. It will probably keep the word font (I’ve used Ariel this time) but hopefully it will still be readable to everyone.

The other thing is because I intend to publish on Vocal my posts will be longer, but hopefully short enough for people to still want to read them. 

Influential

This week I have been watching a couple of music programs/documentaries that I noticed on Amazon Prime. They were "Tom Waits: Under The Influence" and "Captain Beefheart: Under Review" . I am still working through the Captain Beefheart one, which is an in-depth take on his development and influences with input from band members and music critics.

The Tom Waits one is an interesting one because it concentrates on the influences on Tom Waits' music by giving you potted histories of the artists that influenced him (sorry about the repetition of the word influence there ). This has the effect of introducing you to each of these artists by sharing interviews, live video, music and text.

So we see Jack Kerouac, Frank Sinatra, Lord Buckley, Captain Beefheart (he an Tom have more than a passing visual resemblance)  , Ken Nordine who made his way doing voiceovers but also rapped as well as Kerouac and the beat poets but Nordine was low in his delivery letting the listener have time to take in the verbal images he was sharing. This documentary packs so much into it that you want to find out about the artists who influenced Tom Waits. 

As well as these, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht surface in the "SwordfishTrombones" universe with songs like "Underground" confirming this.

Beefheart's marimba influence appears on "Sixteen Shells" but the sound is undoubtedly Tom Waits.

Waits took things on board and progressed the ideas to make a decidedly Waitsian sound, and in that he has become an influence for many artists going forward, being covered by artists as diverse as The Eagles, Rod Stewart, Screaming Jay Hawkins and The Ramones.

Both documentaries feature the very articulate John French, "Drumbo" drummer and guitarist with various incarnations of Beefheart's  Magic Bands,

"Captain Beefheart: Under Review" concentrates on Beefheart and his music and bands, and while challenging, is a great primer for the music, how he reinvented the standard song structures resulting in sounds that are most definitely challenging to the ear.

So what songs do we go with? Well, for Tom Waits it's "Sixteen shells from a thirty ought six" and Captain Beefheart "Big Eyed Beans From Venus". If you can watch the documentaries , but check out the music. You never know, you may discover something you like.

On a side note, if you do blog, you can earn a little pin money by advertising various things like the music links below and AdSense to the right. , or direct links such as tattoo style fonts online, which have some snazzy music-related fonts to feature in your work.

I am still writing "Mitarantula" so again, that might be another repository to use some eye-catching fonts, although just on the front page rather than the whole book or document. The right font in a book can drag the reader in or throw the reader out. 

Good fonts should be easy to read and should not put the reader off. I think most of this is plain Ariel.

Coincidentally ... Ken Nordine

A couple of days ago on my Instagram #MusicWhileYouWork sequence i shared some of "Stay Awake" a collection of off the wall takes on Disney classics and the opener "Hey Diddle Dee Dee, An Actors Life For Me" from "Pinocchio" featured a spoken rap by someone called Ken Nordine who I was sort of unaware of but I, and you, have probably heard his voice.

His perfect enunciation was ideal for voice overs and "Dispepsi" by Negativland features a lit of uncredited adverts and I am sure that Nordine is in there. 

You can listen to him in the video above but while a lot of the beat poets hit the listener hard and fast , Nordine gives the listener time think and absorb the words and idea.

In the documentary "Tom Waits: Under The Influence" Tom Wait's influences' get mini documentaries themselves and Nordine has his and was active until his death in 2019, a very well spoken man and someone who I will be investigating further as he takes listening in another direction.

It's not everyone's taste, but I am glad to have discovered someone else that stimulates my imagination.

Take a listen and see what you think.

/

Keep Reading

I am half way through "The Keep" by F Paul Wilson and thoroughly enjoying it, with it's second world war setting , links to vampires and HP Lovecraft with the release of  Molasar a possible strigoi or as described in the book moroi . Hence the title of this post, it's an easier read than a lot of my recent ones, but it's always good to keep reading, and this is the first in a series of six books , so that's going to be a bout two thousand pages of The Adversary Cycle

I am so glad that we have Wikipedia to at least point you in the right direction when I can't be bothered to expand on what I am writing.

Today I have been listening to "Tommy" by The Who on vinyl , and it shows how magpie like like I have been with my buying. I didn't even know is was an American Decca release. Also disc one consists of sides one and four and disc two sides two and three , implying it was meant to played on a stack deck like you did with singles. I don't think I've seen any new decks like that although I am sure RPM will have some around. The think is singles have a raised edge around the label to ensure the grooves don't come into contact with each other , whereas albums don't (why would you want to stack albums , twenty minutes of music should be more than enough for you).

So we'll go with a live take of the "Overture" from "Tommy" from 1989 . I have ten takes on "Tommy" including I think five live sets from various live albums and was shocked to see the deluxe version of "Who's Next" going for £1200 on Amazon and the extra disc on that has a live take of "Tommy". The thing is you can put any price on anything, but it's only worth it if someone want to buy , and I don't want to sell although if someone was to chuck me a grand I may be tempted

... on a Magic Swirling Ship

More weird dreaming yesterday except as usual everything in the dream was mundane , like being in people houses , going for a drink in a small field , being in Oswestry (Oswestry? I don't think I've ever been or ever need to go , not that I have anything against Oswestry). Dreams can be boring at times.

Today I went to get a bit of shopping and now I have a painful shoulder / chest. I did have t take off my rucksack part of the way back, but at a quick estimate the weight of the shopping was about 15Kg which I carried for around two miles. It's amazing how bottles of milk , water and Prosecco do carry some weight.

Anyway this is a short post mainly inspired by the title line that came into my mind. I have been listening to Bob Dylan's "Biograph" this week and I first heard the line when The Byrds played it on "Thank Your Lucky Stars", and that hooked me. When I first heard the Bob Dylan version I was less impressed thanking he couldn't sing or play. I persevered and Dylan's delivery grew on me. The early stiuff sounded rough but the words took you into magic.

Lot's of people still don't rate Dylan, but like Terry Pratchett his sales must be a huge comfort to him. I only ever liked "Mort" by Terry Pratchett , but that's just me , and people tell me that I am missing so much. I did enjoy the TV adaptations and am similar about Stephen King , find most of his books a grind but TV and film adaptations are great and I think the guy is great.

The "Magic Swirling Ship" is a great analogy for our dreams and the places books and music take us and for me that is just a brilliant image. In itself it's meaningless, but let your mind loose on it and it can be anything you want.

Tommy Can You Hear Me?

I had a dream in which a lot happened last night but the only specific thing was me chucking a pint of water over Donald Trump who was sat in a sink. I don't know if it's related to the fact that there are some tea spoons being bleached in a pint glass by the sink down stairs or what, but the dream involved country roads , cottages , buses and the aforementioned incident.

This is my sixtieth post this year , so that is averaging fifteen posts a month , although there is a lot of April to go so I am expecting maybe two hundred posts this year.

This week has seen me listening to a lot of music and realising that I have ten copies of  "Tommy" by The Who in one form or another and the Ken Russell film sort of set a blueprint for decent pop videos with Elton John's "Pinball Wizard" and Tina Turner's "Acid Queen".

I have the original , orchestral and film soundtrack but all my live Who CDs have a live take of  "Tommy" included , including "Who's Next". So it's gotta be Tina Turner's "Acid Queen" to play out with.

So Lazaretto

This weekend I have listened to Jack White's "Lazaretto" on CD and the "Ultra" vinyl version. Side one of the "Ultra" vinyl version is a strange and unusual experience. I think I bought it because it was the first laser etched hologram on the runout groove of a vinyl LP , but I also like Jack White and had heard some songs from the LP.

I have the CD as well whicjh means I can listen and enjoy , but the vinyl album doesn't even play in the normal direction , no matter where you drop the needle , it finds it's way to a closed groove at the start of the record.

The angelic holograms are quite amazing , just because they are. You can't get your head round that these are made of light shining on some black spinning vinyl. I was thinking of doing a YouTube video but my Instagram Post is enough. The hologram was designed by Tristan Duke of Infinity Light Science. He also did the Star Wars Holograms as well. You can check out all the videos and the web site.

Watch the video and be impressed.

Easter Coincidence

It's Easter Sunday and I 'have just started rereading "The Keep" by F Paul Wilson, which I have happily dived into and one of the characters in it is called Oster which I believe is modern Dutch for Easter and I am sure my friend Bas will confirm it or correct me.

There is a lot about the origins of Easter here  essentially in English-speaking countries, and in Germany, Easter takes its name from a pagan goddess from Anglo-Saxon England who was described in a book by the eighth-century English monk Bede.

Ostara (1901) by Johannes Gehrts.
.Spring feasts were held to honour
the Anglo-Saxon goddess
Eostre/Ostara

"Eostre was a goddess of spring or renewal and that's why her feast is attached to the vernal equinox,"
according to University of Sydney Professor Carole Cusack

In Germany the festival is called Ostern, and the goddess is called Ostara.

I always find it odd that the Christian celebration of something so important to them ia avery moveable feast , while stuff like Christmas is actually fixed.

So I wasn't really going to write anything today but I think Mott The Hoople's "Roll Away The Stone" is sort of appropriate, don't you.

Finishing The Outsider

I have finished "The Outsider" and while , for me, it's hardly an "essential" novel, despite being so short it leaves to with a lot of questions. This is mainly because of the barebones format of describing the experiences of the main protagonist. While part one leads up to the murder, and part two deals with the aftermath , it seems he is actually condemned for not crying when his mother died rather than the actual murder, and although he is condemned you don't know whether there is an appeal. There is an afterword by the author explaining why the protagonist does what he does, but you end up with a lot of questions.

That is no bad thing because you then use your mind to try and figure out why things went the way they did. Too often we expect everything to be laid out on a plate, and that's what we get from most books, but this is different. I suppose "Steppenwolf" also left a lot of unanswered questions but that is a positive aspect for this sort of book.

Next up I am going to revisit "The Adversary" series starting with "The Keep" by F Paul Wilson , which was turned into a film by Michael Mann , but just fell into the basic horror box when the actual series is a lot more than that, although it's purely descriptive unlike the recent volumes I've read.

So moving from the worthy almost philosophical volumes to  what academics may see as unworthy horror, but enjoyable. As I write this I am listening to the excellent "Lazaretto" by Jack White and there seems to be a perfect song on there, "I Think I Found The Culprit". 

The vinyl copy of the album is unfeasibly so clever it makes it almost impossible to listen to, so I go for the CD, 

The vinyl copy also contains the first 3D hologram of an angel in the runout groove which yo can see above. I still can't believe that someone actually thought of that , and then actually did it , and it worked.

Reading The Outsider

 I haven't quite finished "The Outsider" and to me it is like something  that would be a set school text. Although the second part of it has taken a very unexpected turn, so I am still turning the pages and not sure exactly where it's going. I am glad I kept with it although I can't agree with JG Ballard's verdict on it though I would not dissuade anyone from picking it up and reading it.

I have finished the excellent "Apparitions" on Amazon Prime and am just surprised it didn't continue, but it then took me into "Harry Price: Ghost Hunter"  which also look excellent and in a vaguely similar vein, so that will be something else for me to watch.

April has not been a good start on the steps front as after two days  I am 5K steps down , that's about two miles, though having said that I did do 20K steps on the last day of March which was about 8.5 miles.

Given the things I've gone over in this post "The Words That Maketh Murder" by Polly Jean Harvey seems a pretty appropriate song.

April Fooled

It's the first of  April , the day before the Bank Holiday and the start of a new Financial Year, and it's been a busy day but maybe time for a lie in tomorrow.

I'm two thirds of the way through "The Outsider" by Albert Camus and am yet to see why JG Ballard thought it was such a great novel, it has forty pages to prove me wrong. It is readable and while it's not exactly predictable there is very little mystery , things happen in a linear narrative Part One dealing with the lead up to the murder and Part Two with the aftermath.

I've been sifting through my CDs today and rediscovered Tonto's Expanding Headband who consisted of  Malcolm Cecil  and Robert Margouleff . TONTO was an acronym for "The Original New Timbral Orchestra" and their work was similar to what Wendy Carlos was doing with classical music on the Moog.

I was recently playing "3+3" by The Isley Brothers and Cecil and Margouleff were producers on that album too.

From The Perspective of an Outsider

 "Always on the outside,

Of Whatever side there was"

Is a line from Bob Dylan's "Joey" from "Desire" which has always applied to me, and I have just finished the 116 page "taraNtula" and starter "The Outsider" by Albert Camus described by JG Ballard , my favourite author , as one of the most important novels of the twentieth century "A beach murder....blood and sand" so I obviously cant resist that, and this clocks in at 118 pages and I will finish it before Goof Friday is out even though I am a slow reader. 

"The Outsider" is a far easier read that "taraNtula" because it follows a normal narrative rather than teh stream of consciousness outpouring of the Dylan novel, which although short has still taken me the best part of a week to finish. I enjoyed it, as it is anything but a normal reading experience.

"The Outsider" is moving along nicely and is a convenient point on the way to my next book, but is going along nicely and will see it it makes me want to read anything more by Mr Camus.

Today I went for a walk with my daughter Kirsty and granddaughter Alexis and on the way to the town moor I noticed the perspective of buildings that seemed to move from left to right as I walked forward in an apparently straight line. These included the Civic Centre , the RVI, St James' Park and the Freeman Hospital. It's all perfectly natural but still a little disconcerting.

While it's only a small thing it does give me an excuse to share "Perspective" by Peter Gabriel from the "Scratch" album , his second solo outing

The Loquacious Calvinist

I haven't a clue why that phrase was in my mind on this last day of March , the last day of the financial year , on this sunny morning. It is probably that the last two things that I have picked up to watch have religious overtones.

"Apostle" on Netflix featured Dan Stevens and Michael Sheen and is a very claustrophobic kidnap tale based at an isolated Highland Island community  reminiscent of "The Wicker Man". It also disturbing and in parts gory and in my opinion spoilt by the vague mystical / science fiction unexplanations of what is going on. Reminding me of the finale of "Night of the Demon" a great , worrying horror film , spoilt by the studio insisting on the appearance of a rubbish monster at the end. I can't find any way of watching it except on Netflix but here is the IMDB link.

"Apparitions" is a six episode BBC series from 2008 that I found on Amazon Prime, from an idea by Martin Shaw and features him as an exorcist , so comparisons with the film there, but it's extremely good and certainly blurs the lines between good and evil including potential possession of a serial rapist by a saint and a lot of police involvement. Again there is a high gore content and don't get too attached to anyone but I am finding it gripping and Martin Shaw is always watchable and the appearance of Neil Pearson and a Prison governor is also a plus, but I always think he's not totally serious because of the "Drop The Dead Donkey" connection.  You can always find fault with anything, byt this is a fr=great series.

This morning I link I have lost a contact lens in my left eye, I can feel it there as I write, so I have to just wait until it works it's way round to the front and then I can see properly. It is annoying typing with one eye blurred but this is only the second time in twenty years of soft contact lens wearing that this has happened , so nothing major.

When I started this I pulled out a random cd "Triologie" a best of Trio. I believe that "Da Da Da" was made as a bet with their students and became a worldwide hit, so I am going to share this minimalist anthem with you. The Wiki page is here.

"Trio was part of the Neue Deutsche Welle (or NDW); however, the band preferred the name "Neue Deutsche Fröhlichkeit", which means "New German Cheerfulness", to describe their music."

The Weight

I was quite surprised when I converted my weight from kilograms to stones and pounds,  My weight is not really going down although I am hardly ballooning, but I remember being close to twenty stone and always feel that's roughly where I am. Sometime it the last two years I dropped below a hundred Kg which was a big landmark for me and have been trying (not very hard) to get below 95Kg.

Although I am diabetic , I love chocolate and sweet stuff although as I get older certain things I used to find irresistible now don't hold as much attraction for me , such as fried breakfasts and most meat although I am still OK with fish.

Anyway this morning I weighed 94.6 Kg and when I converted it to stones and lbs it came out as 14 stone 13 lb which is a lot less that the twenty stone that I think of myself as. The 209lb still seems a lot to me and I have to get under 200lb / 90Kg , just to do it which meats losing another five Kg or ten lb. When I got hit by 'flu' or COVID about fifteen months ago I dropped to 92Kg but then put it on when I got better.

Given what I've already lost I don't see the 90Kg as impossible , and it's not all that far away. 

So I know this is a short post on a sunny Tuesday morning, and the obvious song is "The Weight" by The Band. Incidentally it was included in the film of "Easy Rider" but due to contractual wrangles the version on the soundtrack album was replaced by a version by the band Smith, who I have never heard of before or since. The scene from "Easy Rider" is on Youtube, and beautiful thee minutes of roadtrp thru The NAVAJO NATION (US 89 North to US 160 East to KAYENTA,then US 163 to MONUMENT VALLEY,AZ/UT) feturing Peter Fonda , Dennis hopper and I think Hack Nicholson riding pillion

Did Anything Happen To Music .. or Did I Miss It?

There are usually times in history when musical scenes reboot themselves, probably starting in the nineteen twenties when recorded music became a thing and we had early jazz , blues and crooners making the way into the public consciousness via vinyl and radio. Gramophones and radios were commercially available and spread to sound through the populace especially in the USA and UK.

Six years ago I published a personal history of musical media from the wax cylinder to today's digital streaming here.

After the war we had crooners , Jazz , Western Swing and the beginnings of Country and Western. Rock and Roll was the first big flash propelled by Bill Haley & The Comets "Rock Around The Clock" the film "The Blackboard Jungle" and the genesis of the teenager as someone who could buy things including music, plus the tribalism of Teddy Boys and the like.

In the sixties there were Mods and Rockers, Skinheads psychedelia , ska and reggae , garage rock but this was just a quite smooth progression , resulting in some major rock bands and an unfeasioble amount of money and pretension. In the seventies we also go glam and all along the mainstream kept morst of the public satisfied as it still does today.

Then punk hit , hating the establishment , and prog rock (but ironically loving Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk") but still referring and eulogising krautock , reggae , sixties garage rock and more, while pursuing a minimalist shoestring sound epitomised by The Buzzcocks "Spiral Scratch" , which is why I was so disappointed by The Sex Pistols "Never Mind The Bollocks" as to me it was a heavy metal album, so sounded good but more metal than punk.

This resulted in lots of small independent music which was eventually absorbed by the big labels. 

And since the during the eighties we saw Goth , and Grunge and Baggy at the start of the nineties, and while there is always good music coming through there's been no big band since the mid seventies and no small bang since the early nineties.

So did I miss something or did I just get old? Franks Zappa said that when the old guys were in charge of record labels they would always give anything a shot. Could you imagine a major label releasing "Trout Mask Replica" or even "The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads" today?  Sing the young guys moved in it's all about product and markets , not art and music.

So what should I share, I'll go with the Bill Haley song.