A Little Further

I could write about the incredible ineptitude of the current government and the gullibility of a great deal of the public. When I see some body with a copy of the Daily Mail I am tempted to say "You don't look like an racist nazi" except saw two guys with a copy who actually did look like racist nazis. It's funny how the spell checker wants me to capitalise nazis, I won't.

I am keeping on with this million step challenge despite technology having the odd hiccup. Technology can be amazing but it can also be frustrating, but due to technology I can write this and share this with you, twenty years ago I probably couldn't have done this like this, but now I can. A great help with teh walking is the fact that I am listening to my music collection on random play.

Yesterday I was treated to "Yours Is No Disgrace" the amazing opening track from "The Yes Album", ludicrous lyrics but majestic music which really hit me the first time I heard it. I actually learned to play the main chord sequence from it, but I've since forgotten it, but was always impressed by Steve Howe's playing with Yes. Random play is great although you need to give it a good musical base.

I've included two versions including one from the "Yessongs" live album, so you have twenty five minutes of excellence to listen to.

Middle Of The Night

That's when I thought I would be writing this but I actually slept all the way through (from 11 til 6). Technology has been slightly annoying with Google Fit seeming to stop recording steps , then starting up after I'd erased all the data and restoring everything including the steps that it supposedly hadn't recorded.

Today's weather really doesn't know what it's going to do , it could rain, it might not but that's the weather for you.

Newcastle is full of Rugby fans for the Dacia Magic Weekend at St. James Park, apparently annoying my friend Rachel , demanding odds on short priced accumulators.

Tonight The Late Shows are on across the region , loads of artistic events including lots of events at The Grainger Market where all the cool shops are open til 9 pm. Here's the blurb (hope the links work)

"The Late Shows – supported by Port of Tyne and Sofa Workshop – is a free late-night culture crawl in NewcastleGateshead on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 May 2017. Download the programme brochure. Find out about the free bus services. During The Late Shows, museums, galleries, studio collectives and landmark historical buildings come together to offer visitors one-off events including hands-on workshops, behind-the-scenes tours, performances and parties. It's all about encouraging people to do something cultural with their evening in celebration of the national event Museums at Night."

Anyway I have things to do, it's now pouring down outside so I leave you with The Darts "It's Raining" .... those Rugby players will be getting wet.

After All ... How Good Is The Man Who Sold The World?

One of the good things about walking and having mobile music and random play technology is that as well as hearing tracks from albums that hadn't caught your attention the first time round (Sparks and XTC are currently doing this for me) you are also thrown stuff that you haven't heard in ages because you haven't played the album and it doesn't get radio play.

If you analogised David Bowie's album output to a terrestrial mountain range it would be The Himalayas and in my opinion "Station To Station" would be Everest, and "The Man Who Sold The World" would be K2. Like Station to Station every song is amazing and it has a no skip factor from the eight minute opener "Width of a Circle". Everyone knows the brooding title song covered by Lulu, Nirvana and many others, but a few weeks ago "All The Madmen" came on to my player, which made start to remember how good the album.

The yesterday "After All" came on , an almost twisted Victorian music hall piece that could have come from some Neil Gaiman / Salvador Dali scripted take on Oliver.

Every collect should have a copy of  "The Man Who Sold The World" and "After All" is just another amazing piece of that wonderful musical jigsaw that fits together so perfectly. I was unaware that Tori Amos had also covered it , she makes it a Tori Amos song but for me it loses the sinister aspect of the Bowie version but it made me think I would love to hear a Joanna Newsome take on it.

I spent yesterday afternoon fight with my Windows roaming profile, therefor not actually getting any work done. The positives is that it gave me a reason to speak with the support guys and girls. I am hoping it's sorted this morning, but we shall see.

It's Friday, so have a great day.

#LikeNoOther #6 Its Only A Painted Chariot - The Incredible String Band

One of the good things about doing this Million Step Challenge is that I am listening to part of my record collection on random play and some corkers have come up over the last few days.

 I'm fast thinking that David Bowie's "Man Who Sold The World" is one of his best with songs like "All The Madmen" , "After All" and Width of A Circle" , very dark and sister, and in a similar vein this morning The Incredible String Band's "Painted Chariot" came on.

I must have first heard this when it came out, I'm not sure if it was a single or I heard it on John Peel, but t has a very Celtic Pagan feel to it , like something that slipped away from the soundtrack of The Wicker Man. It starts out as rickety solid folk before descending to an almost hymnal finale. I really haven't heard anything like it before or since, and this morning I thought I need to put this on the blog.

My Million Step Challenge is over 92 days so I need to hit just under 11K per day, Today is day 18 and I have hit 210K steps so far so I am still on target to hit it. I was going to catch a bus this morning but kept on walking listening to the Incredible String Band and visiting a herd of cows on Nunsmoor (see here for video evidence).

Anyway I intend to be in bed a little earlier than last night, but enjoy  "Painted Chariot" and sleep well.

Wake Up

This is post number 1300. It's a gloriously sunny day. I will probably walk into work.

I love the light on the leaves of the trees, and I often try and capture that in photographs, though surely you can only see so many green leaves but every combination is different, it's the same with clouds. The number of times I've thought, that looks amazing, and two minutes later I decide to take a picture and it's gone. Clouds are big things but very volatile, and when you see that combination of cloud and light you need to capture the moment, although it will be there in your memory.

Imagine if you could photograph your memories or imagination, now that would be an amazing thing and I think it's probably not that far away. As I mentioned in my last post we now have the technology to do things on tap. The film Tangerine was filmed on iPhones, I don't know about the editing and stuff, but you could make a movie with your hand held device.

The film Monsters had all the special effects and CGI done on an everyday PC, so YOU can make your own film too. I've just noticed there's a follow up Dark Continent so need to check that out, both Monsters and Tangerine are great films.

We live in an age where we have the ability to do amazing things.

So for some reason "Amazing Journey" from Ken Russell and The Who's "Tommy" came to mind so that's what you get today. It contains some amazing imagery,

Enjoy yourself today , enjoy the sunshine and do something amazing.

Wide Awake

It's almost midnight and I am wide awake but shattered. I finally finished watching The Fall, and managed almost 11K steps today. I didn't intend to write anything, but thought maybe I could have a midnight themed #ATuneaDayinMay , I mean there are load of songs with a midnight or night time them aren't there....

The first that comes to mind is "Midnight Rambler" by The Rolling Stones then you have "Midnight Rider" by The Allman Brothers both very worthy songs, and both favourites of mine. I remember I was going to do a post about Half Man Half Biscuit but that's just fallen by the wayside at the moment.

I've just had a decent payout from TopCashback which I took as an Amazon voucher and have spent some of it on a Digitech guitar pedal processor thing which you can see here. It's funny whenever you put a link on the word here Blogger messes up the link processing.

Hopefully this will make me do something with my home recording set up, which is probably better than a lot of bands had in the sixties. My basic problem is having the discipline to do it all on my own. I have an idea of the sound I want and need to actually create some recordings before I can think of playing live again. Another problem is that I am not a musician, I am undisciplined , but I used to record a lot of solo stuff to tape, it;s just getting the hang of my digital tape recorder. I have a lot of fragments recorded , so it's just a question of putting them together and getting stuff done.

Anyway, it's now crept past midnight so we will go with The Rolling Stones "Midnight Rambler" as that's what I am doing now, midnight rambling when I should be sleeping.

Goodnight mes amigos.

Time Sharing

When I started first in programming at Littlewoods we were given access that used a "Time Sharing System" which we were told would make it seem as though we were the only person using the system. It was a lie of course but we dealt with it.

In life we often have to work out how to share time between work , chores , stuff that needs doing , time to be alone, do what you want and rest , and spending time in a social environment with friends, family and loved ones. I try to load mine in favour of the last two, but each of these groups can also be subdivided into sub groups.

Today I have to go to work so that's eight hours out of my day , after six hours sleep, ninety minutes of getting up and showered and writing this, then an hour to walk in to work , to try and hit my 11K for today, but I need to get the bus home as I have a delivery from Iceland coming. How mundane is this post? Still these things may be the highlights of some people's lives.

Ideally aim to do what you want and enjoy , and be happy. Life is difficult and confusing at times, but if you do things you want, then life improves wonderfully.

So before I leave , here's #ATuneaDayinMay , what more appropriate that The Buzzcocks "Boredom" from the "Spiral Scratch" EP. This allows me to have a brief rant on the genre of "indie" music. Many "indie" bands are on major labels, so how can they be "indie". It's 1984 doublespeak (which the governments in the UK, USA and Russia seem to use as a matter of course where the words used mean the opposite of their real meaning) . "Spiral Scratch" however was real "indie" , the Buzzcocks first release which they organised end to end. Ironically in this digital age we all have the technology available to record and release stuff from our own bedroom or office.... and that is still on my "To Do" List.

I decided to include the whole of the EP for you so you have eleven minutes of real "indie" music.

Anyway, have a great Monday everybody.