Bottled It With "26" and Son Palace Discovered - #ALifeInNumbers #26

Today has been a weird day. I am absolutely shattered. I'm still hit with this lurgi but went into work, then came home mowed the lawn and covered the garden furniture. As well as working I got tickets for Goat at the Riverside on Thursday from RPM and was asked to review and push a new CD by Son Palace called Accumulations , so I have been busy and am ready for tea and TV.

As I write this I'm listening to the first track on the Son Palace album , "Joey and Mo", it shounds familiar making me thing thing of Neil Young and The Velvet Underground. The album is short, clocking at 28 minutes , but then so did the first Ramones album. It sounds like "Joe and Mo" is an instrumental and I like it a lot, I need to see if we have a youtube video.

The second track "Page To Pillow" has a pastoral feel, again a guitar based instrumental and the first two songs on this album warrant further investigation and listening.

Anyway the song for #ALifeInNumbers is "26" by Catfish and The Bottlemen who have produced a couple of excellent albums , but this only got in because it was called "26" but it is excellent. It's rock and it's good.

Up to track 3 of the Son Palace album "Feathers Like A Wild Beast", and now I am thinking Nick Drake and Pentangle, but loving the distant dustbin drum sound on "Experimental Move". Anyway if you want a copy get yourself along to RPM in Newcastle, it always amazes me that peopel come up with new music. Now listening to "Accumulation" , all tracks have been instrumental and this just has an eerie edge to it, but could be an out take from "Tubular Bells".

An album I would buy if I didn't already have it, it is beautiful. I can't find them on the net so get yourself down to RPM and get this beauty. I know this has been hijacked , but this album is beautiful

Chicago Bound - #ALifeInNumbers #25

In Transit

When I first started this my mate Andy suggested I could kill three birds with one stone by using Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4" , well I always loved the song and though it could do for number 25 in the sequence. Before they became wimp rockers Chicago (originally Chicago Transit Authority) were purveyors of muscular jazz rock slabs and this was an absolutely prime example, heavy on the brass and sharing a descending riff ans heard in Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker". I don't know who ripped off who but we all know that Led Zeppelin were not averse to uncredited borrowing of other people's material.




I remember Chicago's albums were just numbered although they brought out a four disc live at Carnegie Hall album which will cost you £100 on CD or a tenner as a download here, when a double album as considered stretching it a bit. Also I believe guitarist Terry Kath lost his life playing Russian Roulette.

I was never a big fan of the band apart from this single and when they hit their wimp rock phase they were way past their sell by date for me.

I suggest you research what I've told because it has all just come from my head so maybe needs taking with a pinch of salt, but enjoy this and if you want to really check out Chicago check out their early stuff and expect some serious brass. I found an excellent live take from 1970, and yes I would have gone and seen they , plus you get a brilliant guitar solo from Terry Kath.

Enjoy your Sunday night my friends.

How Many Numbers - #ALifeInNumbers #24

There are a hell of a lot of songs that feature the number "24" but there was only ever one contender for this. I often wonder about our temporal and up to 1970 monetary number collections.

Before we went decimal it was 2 farthings to a halfpenny , two halfpennies to a penny , then you had a threepenny coin and a sixpence and twelve pennies made up a shilling, known as a bob.  Then you had a florin (two shillings) a half crown (two shillings and sixpence), a crown (five shillings) before hitting the ten shilling note (today's fifty pence piece)  going up to the pond (twenty shillings) and the guinea (21 shillings, work that one out). I've probably missed out lots of other coins and number collections.

Then we come into time. Sixty seconds in a minute, then sixty minutes in an hour , that's all good and consistent. Then we have 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week , 28 to 31 days a month, 12 calendar or 13 lunar months in a years or 52 weeks or 365.25 days in a year, that seems a little inconsistent. I seldom speak of my employers, but when I was at Littlewoods time was tracked in deci-days, that is  one tenth of the seven hours and 24 minutes that made up the actual working day which works out at 44 minutes and 24 seconds per unit. It's one of those things where someone tries to merge two systems that are at odds with each other. Malcolm McLaren's "House Of Blue Danube" is an impressive musical example merging 4/4 rock / dance time with 3/4 waltz time featuring Bootsy Collins, Jeff Beck and the music of Strauss.

Half Man

Anyway back to my 24 choice . It's "24 Hour Garage People" by Half Man Half Biscuit from the album "Trouble Over Bridgewater" and while you can get the original version by clicking on the title , the definitive version was broadcast on Andy Kershaw's Radio 3 program in 2002  live from the Brampton festival and is available for download free here along with lots of other sessions and broadcasts.

This song about the drudgeries of a twenty four garage , and the fun you can have with people behind the perspex screen when they decide to be miserable narks , although working in a garage would send me into dark places I think especially if you got annoying customers, but really everybody has to play ball and work together to get the best of things out of situations.

Anyway enjoy "24 Hour Garage People" and if that's not enough check out "House of Blue Danube" before enjoying the rest of your Sunday.

Getting Biblical With Pink Floyd - #ALifeInNumbers #23

This morning it's grey and cold and it's like there's almost a sea fret over Fenham (which I believe is the highest point in Newcastle so we're unlikely  to be troubled by floods.

As a teenager I got of of a bootleg cassette record of a Pink Floyd tour , one of the songs "You Gotta Be Crazy" finished up as "Dogs" on the vastly underrated "Animals" album , the second song was monstrous, even on a second or third generation cassette bootleg, and that was called "Raving and Drooling" (see below for a very early airing) and that became "Sheep" which is the song featured for number twenty three in the sequence. Those two songs are available on the Experience edition of "Wish You Were Here"

Sheep? 23?  What the hell is going on here.

You know I like to go off on tangents and 23 was a problem number like 31, but while reading my Bible (you know that's a joke unless you equate The Bible with Google or whatever book I'm reading) I remembered that "Sheep" contains a take on "Psalm 23".. as you can see Roger Waters amended it slightly, but it would fit in with the other mindless violence in the Bible:

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want 

He makes me down to lie 

Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by. 

With bright knives He releaseth my soul. 

He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places. 

He converteth me to lamb cutlets, 

For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger.

 When cometh the day we lowly ones, 

Through quiet reflection, and great dedication

 Master the art of karate, 

Lo, we shall rise up, 

And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water."

So this was an excuse to include another of my favourite Pink Floyd songs and provide you with ten minutes of brilliant music accompanied by images from the excellent black comedy "Black Sheep".

Enjoy your Saturday even more my friends.

A Slapp Happy and Henry Cow Challenge - #ALifeInNumbers #21

Love The Cover

There were a few options for number 22 notably "22" by Taylor Swift and "22" by the brilliant Lily Allen as well as 22 Dreams by Paul Weller , but I have stuck with "22 Proverbs" by John Greaves and Peter Blegvad , members of Slapp Happy and Henry Cow respectively , who produced so excellent challenging music in the seventies. I remember laughing at the cover of "Legend" and buying "Concerts" for the amazing line drawn cover.










I had read that Henry Cow had produced some of the most complex music committed to record but it certainly wasn't what I was expecting, although they were on Virgin Records this was not Mike Oldfield territory, you can see Henry Cow's influence in the music of The Fall. Slapp Happy were more influenced by 30's Berlin and the two bands collaborated on "Desperate Straights" and "In Praise of Learning". It was not a surprise that Greaves and Blegvad collaborated on "Kew Rhone" and drafted in Dagmar Krause on vocals for "22 Proverbs" and we have a live rendition here.

I don't think you will be up dancing for this and it may be a way of getting rid of unwanted guests, but I love this sort of stuff. It demands your attention, and let's face it, anyone who thinks music comes from iTunes or Spotify will last about five seconds.

Have a great Saturday my friends.

Going Schizoid - #ALifeInNumbers #21

One of the problems with the early numbers in this sequence is realizing the good stuff I've missed. For 20 I could have had "20th Century Boy" by T. Rex, but "20 Flight Rock" by Eddie Cochran is still a great so that's fine. I have the songs mapped out to 41 at the moment with a few scattered between there and 59, and the original premise for 21 was "21" by The Eagles from the album "Desperado".

Coming home however the perfect, for me, 21 song came to mind, six and a half minutes of monstrous jazz rock that the Rolling Stones had to follow in Hyde Park in 1969, not other than "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson featuring the psychotic and psychedelic lyrics of Pete Sinfield, Greg Lake on vocals and Bob Fripp on guitar. This is still an incredible piece and it always amazes me. I bought the album "Court Of The Crimson King" on DVD to listen in full surround sound , and though it's close on fifty years old it sounds stunning. I managed to find the Hyde Park broadcast but the album should be in your collection.

Time for bed now, though this is not music to fall asleep to.

Life At The Top (of a building) - #ALifeInNumbers #20

This record was released in year I was born from the classic film "The Girl Can't Help It", I think this excerpt actually cuts something out of the middle as this clocks in at 1' 26"  and the recording I have are 1' 45" . "Twenty Flight Rock" is an Eddie Cochran classic with a comedic element based on a broken lift. Incidentally the first song in my sequence last year (Odyssey58) was the title track from the film by Little Richard which you can see here.

I remember working for Yorkshire Water Board in the 1980's and in one of my times there I was on the eleventh floor, only one lift worked and the clocking machine was on the top floor. I still waited for the lift, though one day there was a fire alarm and we had to walk back up, I had to take a rest around the seventh floor. The thing is they called out the fire brigade but due to the location of the building the fire engines could get near but couldn't actually deploy their ladders!.

Another thing was that if you looked at other buildings when the weather was windy you could see the building moving , a very weird feeling.

Another event was that the building was next to a big car park which was the ruined site of some demolished buildings, this was around 1985 and this has all been redeveloped, Every fortnight after signing on there were a couple who shall we say engaged in congress in a secluded corner of the car park , overlooked by Yorkshire Water Board's twelve story building. The thing is a lot of people on my floor rushed over to the window every time until a manager must have complained. On the last time I was called over to watch five pairs of police men and women converging on the unsuspecting couple. This was a police force who "didn't have the manpower" to investigate my car being broken into. That was the end of their liaisons.

Anyway back to the music, I am sure there are lots of "20" songs , but I can only choose one. When I hit "25" there are two that I want to use, but I can only have one, c'est la vie.

Anyway I think I am in a fit state to resume work, so will be going in tomorrow and the recuperating further over the weekend. Have a wonderful evening my friends.