I've been getting into work later , essentially with buses disappearing between 8 and 8:30 or just being very slow. I'm sure that that I used to know off blog posts in ten minutes, after all they are just diary entries aren't they?
Recently some of my posts have taken up to an hour to complete, yes they may need links and pictures, and sometimes it's difficult to find just exactly what you want but I really wanted to find out if I could write this and leave the house by 7:30 , I started it at 7:19 , it's now 7:27 , so I am not going to do it , maybe another five minutes,
The music I've chosen is "Where Were You?" by The Mekons which was originally on Fast Records (see what I did there?) and I've bookended it with the live and studio versions.
Oh and it's the 13th , and the number 13 can be lucky , it's just the way you look at things , I'm thinking Bakers Dozen.
Anyway you still have two hundred words of mine to pick over , and yes it's taken me about quarter of an hour to write this, enjoy the music and have a brilliant day.
I started the blog And Annoyingly to vent my spleen and The Red Tops and their readers and supporters and the idiotic right wing and racists, but to be quite honest I find such things a waste of energy hence the fact I have only put up three posts (so far). While I am exasperated by the electorate and public, unless I do something to change it, it is pointless wasting energy getting bothered about it.
So I won't, it is a Sunday and the weather is wonderful, lots of my friends are running in the great North Run and lots of people will achieve a dream today. It's things like that that spark me, make me feel positive, knowing that people are doing something THEY want to do , often for the benefit of others. It's like Jessica Salmon's "Storytelling Of The Ancients" exhibition (which you can watch here) , Jessica put time , effort and ideas into a presentation that was free for the public, and she provided wine and cake. Absolutely wonderful.
Some people spend their life whining about whatever slightly irks them , instead of doing something positive, but then some people are only happy when they or others are miserable. Bad things do happen but you need to try and find something good to hold onto , however difficult that might be.
Ken Loach is making all his films free to view on Youtube , he doesn't need to , but he is allowing people to see his work effectively for nothing. What he will get out of it is a lot of exposure, and deservedly so.
I thought I'd choose The Rolling Stones I'm Free , because most of the time we do have a choice, and if you get the chance take it, don't pass it up.
Anyway go out and be positive and have a great Sunday everybody.
I've just got to page 256 in Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I Am" and again with my recent semi obsession with numbers he's just on about the story and completion on Quadrophenia , the lead single from that being 5:15 . 256 stick out because it's just the number two to the power eight , that is multiplied by itself eight times. If you do the same with one it's still one. One never changes, multiply it by itself or divide it by itself and it's still one. If you go up to 3 then the powers create much bigger numbers 2^8 = 256 but 3^8 is 6,561 , I doubt I will ever read a book with that many pages.
Yesterday the new Nick Cave album Skeleton Tree was released, and it's great that people are still producing things I want to hear, I love the new single and am sure I will love the album when it turns up.
I love seeing new things and meeting new people. My friend Ruth hand invited me to an exhibition, Storytelling of The Ancients, which I didn't realise was being put on by her daughter at the Assembly House on Westgate Road. I started well by going to The Assembly Rooms and then got directed across the road to the correct venue.
The day was warm and the door was open and I walked in , impressed by what I thought were some very nicely executed murals. I then noticed a room with a fireplace, some books of Greek Mythology and a small image of Cerberus on the green wall , Cerberus being the guard dog of the Underworld, but maybe he is there to keep undesirables away.
I then saw that the murals were not murals , but diaphanous constructs that swayed in the breeze and cast shadows on the white wile under a ceiling decorated with greenery which I think was ivy but could have Bacchanalian grape vines.
Jessica then introduced herself and told me about the exhibition and her love of the subject. Apparently Greeks always greet guests with food and wine, and although the wine was finished there was gorgeous vegan raspberry cake , biscuits and soft drinks.
Her friend , possibly Fiona, was also taking photographs and I took some myself as well as a short video, so that I could create a slideshow.
The images included Pandora, Persephone, Oedipus and many others including a wonderful centaur. I've included the slideshow soundtracked by Tangerine Dream's "Sequence C" from Phaedra , so another Greek Mythological connection as Phaedra was the daughter of Minos (see here) which I've used as the video here although you can hear my waffle on the instagram video here.
So a great strat to the weekend, but if you get the chance , do go and see it, and if you are lucky you will get cake.
I am just amazed by the heat, and a pity most of the day has been at work. This is the sort of day you need to be at a beach or in a park and not in work. I just feel I need a cold shower, but five minutes later you need another one. This is the time you need a swimming pool in the back garden. It's definitely not a clothes day and the worst thing it's work again tomorrow.
There are black clouds and blue skies and the atmosphere is oppressive, but I am sure I can find some comfort, at least I am not in work now.
The weather and situation is not exactly causing inspiration so as I am reading Pete Townshend's "Who I Am" I ll leave you with The Who's take on Martha and The Vandellas'Heatwave.
This post consists of a mere 200 or so words, so here I go on again about numbers, but I've said all that is in my head for the time being and if anything else comes upyou know that I will let you know. Well I usually do., don't I.
The weekend is finished and it's time for work, or will be in a few hours. It's been an odd one for me, not really done much but I have rested, watched catch up TV and read quite a lot and written a few blog posts.
I had a rearrangement of my music and discovered a couple of effective duplicate CDs , Best Ofs The Faces and ELP , plus Janis Joplin's Pearl and Big Brother and The Holding Company's Cheap Thrills , all class albums but you only need one copy and the purchases of some excellent box sets have made them redundant.
I think I got the Joplin stuff from Music Zone in The Metro Centre , a now defunct music emporium, but we are lucky to have a decent number of music shops in Newcastle.
Anyway I will be dropping by a charity shop this week unless any of my friends want to improve their music collection and it's given me a chance to include The FacesThat's All You Need , one of my favourite slide driven songs ever.
Siouxsie And The Banshees were never your average sounding Rock, Goth or Punk band and their canon is littered with some amazing out there sounds. The only standard instrument used in Peek-A-Boo barring Siouxsie's voice is the dragging bass and that is not played like any that I have heard before or since, then the almost military drum beat and accordion / melodian driven complex riff sonding like something gestated from Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper).
Another you can't dance to, well not any normal dance, but there are no guitars or pop sensibilities here, in an almost nightmare sequence that implies horrors lurking at the edge of our sensibilities although you feel safe because you know Siouxsie of old. It is similar to Sparks' This Town in the "can't dance" stakes although this does explore a much stranger furrow.
The video is wonderful and this still sounds as fresh today as when it was first unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.
Enjoy the video and if it's not in your collection , why not?
