Joy of Communication

There's many ways we can communicate, we can talk face to face, by video call , on the phone, by email, by letter, sign language , graffiti , post it notes, through music and writing (like I'm doing with this blog) , sharing memes on social media such as twitter and Facebook. This is just a very ver short post because ideally I should have left the house ten minutes back, but I thought I would just like to say this.

On my last post my friend Joan asked if I was going to see The Handsome Family. Everything I have heard by them is wonderful and two years ago their "Far From Any Road" was used as the theme to "True Detective" (series one). I thought that the theme would fit well with the titles from "True Blood" so I spliced them together (it turns out both title sequences are 1' 31").

It turns out that the are playing The Sage this Saturday so  there were a few tickets left so I bagged myself a couple.

So I have a great gig to look forward to , at a great venue , thanks to a great friend , and I also may get to see my friends Craig and Sharleen who work at the Sage to.

Have a great day my friends, I have had a great start to the week.

Ten

I've not written for a couple of days , but still feeling absolutely wrecked. I would love a week in bed but that isn't going to happen.

It's been a great weekend spent with friends and enjoying  a lot of vegan and vegetarian food. While I understand the economic benefits of mass veganism, I do enjoy a bacon sandwich. I don't know if that makes me a totally evil person, but I am not going to change in the foreseeable future. Someone once told me that vegetables were really boring, so vegetarian food need to be inventive and enhanced by the use of spices, and this weekends food from The Karma Kitchen, Super Natural and Sweet Memories at Study Cafe

Anyway the weekend has come to an end and as it's ten o'clock on a Sunday night I titled this one "Ten" , so hardly using my brain for that one, although it's probably a score I could use for the food I've had.

Anyway it's time for bed and I could have chosen "Ten"  (the album) by Pearl Jam , or "Perfect Ten" by Beautiful South but I am going for "Call Any Vegetable" by The Mothers of Invention complete with it's Holst - Jupiter sequence. Did you know that the bands name was "The Mothers" but the record company added "of Invention" so the name would be "safer" and not cause offence ... reckoned without Frank Zappa's music....

Sleep well my friends

Days and Banjoes

I'm finding it a bit weird that some mornings it's light but this morning it's dark, I'm sure all is OK and I am just waking, getting up and noticing the morning sky at different times. Yesterday it was light but I was up later as I had a doctor's appointment, but still, due to buses being early AND late , managed to be on the last minutes. Why is it when you're on time the bus comes 2 minutes early and you miss it, then when you wait for the next one it's ten minutes late then the driver insists on taking a ten minute fag break halfway to your destination as other buses sail past.

Still it is Friday and we have the weekend to enjoy, the weather is not too bad , yesterday was cold but bright. It looked like summer outside the office, then you went out and realised it was very old.

I've just been looking through a couple of old blog pages that people have been visiting this week and noticed that some of the Youtube links are no longer there. Some of their draconian copyright removals are annoying. I can understand if people don't acknowledge the original author of the music or are offensive about it, but it still grates about the Christopher Lee video that I posted and they removed after a day (see here)

Looking out this morning and it is quite foggy, so it may be not too warm, and it's an excuse to play Earl Scruggs' "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" this version featuring a banjo solo by Steve Martin (yes that Steve Martin). The piece was originally written in 1949 and has been used in many TV and film chase scenes including "Bonnie and Clyde".

Have a brilliant day my friends.

Dreams of Cream

It's weird. Last night I had a really intense dream , well I think I did and can't remember a thing about it. Last week I had one and at one point was at a Cream gig , but it was Cream in the 1960s ,  they were playing "Spoonful" and Eric Clapton had an acoustic guitar, then he was just singing. I mean "Spoonful" is very bass riff driven but it just seemed very odd.

Another thing , I was just thinking about rock bands aging , and The Who have lost their original rhythm section (Moon and Entwistle) and The Beatles just have  the rhythm section left, so I wonder if they will ever get together, maybe called The Whootles!!

It is strange how my mind wanders at times.

Anyway I am quite tired, so I'm off to bed and you know which song I am leaving you with.

Time To Go Out

I've said that I've not been getting out then yesterday I missed a North East Steampunk Society gathering again but tonight I am going to see Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart at The Cluny. I'm still feeling not up to it, but I would be kicking myself if I didn't go.

I'm also managing to fit on an eye test and a day at work as well. I found a great live in the studio broadcast which I've included, plus my slideshow for Mount Zion. Jah Wobble's music ranges from the completely out there stuff to the absolutely beautiful, so I am so glad to be seeing him tonight.

We're half way through the week so have a good one my friends.

Connections

Well it's wet and cold outside, but just got to thinking how lucky we are. I remember when the only instant form of communication was  face to face or a landline (remember them). Today you can communicate with not just your friends but everybody. About 50 people will read this and this blog has had more that 120,000 page views since it started, and that makes me feel connected to the world and everyone.

Thanks to my phone I can phone anyone in the world if I have their number and we're both in a signal area. I can share photos and videos and even video call on the phone, and my computer thanks to applications like Skype , Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger. When I say I, I mean everyone now has this in their grasps (libraries have free internet access for everyone).

It's a short post but an excuse to play Montrose's version of the Rolling Stones "Connection" which I had on some cheap Warner Brothers compilation in the seventies. It's stuck with me ever since.

Enjoy your Tuesday my friends.

Keep On Keeping On

Last week was very grey then yesterday was actually looking sunny for a while before slipping back into the greyness of the last week and today looking out, I can see all the cars are frosted up. Not the most inviting of Monday mornings, but another week of work is waiting for us.

I had intended to take a walk out to Cow Hill on the Town Moor to take some photographs but was not feeling up to it. Also there's various house related things I need to sort out, and then noticed that my Virgin TIVO box had decided it wasn't recording the first two episodes of the next half season of The Walking Dead but was going to record from episode 3 (well 10 actually cos of the mid season break) onwards, then they seem to have moved The Blacklist onto Sky1 for the next half season and it wasn't going to record that either.

So all that is in hand, but I really need to get some positive uplift into my life, as currently loads of my time is taken by apparent mundanities, the problem being , I think my complete withdrawal from social interaction may be part of the contribution to this because people do inspire me and  give me a lift, even meeting for the odd coffee is good.

The thing is as people get older they seem to almost ossify in their views, what they want to do, and where they want to go. Sometimes an evening in a warm house with a good book or film is more inviting than trying to engineer a social occasion.

I've also not been to any gigs, as I have mentioned previously, and need to get out to see more bands , and there are opportunities to see lots around Newcastle, with venues such as Trillians, The Black Bull and Think Tank? and bigger venues such as The Riverside, The O2, The Tyne Theatre, The Sage, and Wylam Brewery, so it's not as though there's nowhere to go.

In fact I've just checked and Wilko Johnson is playing The Wylam Brewery in April and there are quite a few gigs on before then.

I really must apologise for the down nature of this post I promise to put a smile on my face and do something positive this week and will leave you with Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" just cos it's brilliant , and music is always uplifting and this makes me feel better.