Thursday, 27 December 2018

Grey Christmas


Weatherwise this must be one of the greyest Christmases I have ever seen. Christmas has been fine but the weather has not been too cold and seriously is just plain grey. The good news is that since the Winter Solstice we are getting more daylight, as I noticed leaving a desolate workplace at around four of the clock today.

That always makes me think of F Paul Wilson's "Nightworld" the finale of The Adversary series which kicked off with "The Keep". The shortening of the days doesn't stop when it should and hence the title of the book. Check it out, well check out the whole series, there are six excellent book and "The Keep" was turned in to a half decent film by Michael Mann.

I've been listening to a lot of Jethro Tull recently and decided to put a couple of albums on my phone, but managed to just load up the "Aqualung" out takes, but I have since rectified that. Basically the out takes didn't include "Locomotive Breath" which I included in a recent post when it was used as an opener to "Fargo". So a few Tull albums and my complete Janelle Monae and Jordan Reyne collection have been installed for my listening pleasure.

So who do I choose to share with you, maybe Jordan Reyne who's new album "Bardo" is just out but I will choose the piece that stunned me when I first saw her many moons ago at Think Tank, the hypnotically beautiful and disturbing "Shadow Line".

Wednesday, 26 December 2018

Steam Quake Goofle


I was going to write a Christmas Day Free post yesterday but in the end couldn't be bothered. This morning I realised that I had no games on my PC although I had back up disk images of Quake, Hexen and Doom but the inherent laziness of finding putting a disk in the drive kicked in as well as trying to get the daamned things to run on Windows 10.

So a quick Google search and I find that a whole Quake collection is available on Steam for £8.49. It was really a no brainer. I just saw that I mistakenly spelt Google as Goofle. Isn't Goofle just a great word.

I also realised I hadn't played a game on this computer since I got it over a year ago, so booted up Quake in Nightmare mode and got killed almost immediately , I then retried in normal mode and the machine froze when I was half way through Level 1, but I'm not too bothered, I think it will sort itself out. I also got Civilization III for 74p.

I decided to listen to some of my favourite Punk compilation 1-2-3-4, five disks of brilliance and the first compilation that The Clash allowed themselves to be included on. I was playing from my network set up and then got sidetracked and was playing Marcel King's "Reach For Love" from the Factory Records box about six times. It really is one of the best records ever, and is Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single.

I posted on Facebook that at the moment it's my favourite record ever, so obviously it has to be the Boxing Day song although I am up to "Anarchy In The UK" on the 1-2-3-4 album and every song on that box could probably feature in my posts.

Have a fantastic Boxing Day folks.

Tuesday, 25 December 2018

Christmas Day Too


Well it has been quiet and relaxing. Have exchanged messages and phone calls with friends ad family and done not very much at all, but it is Christmas Day. I've managed to avoid the cheesy Christmas Songs but heard an awful insipid instrumental take on The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" on Classic FM. Classical music does not need to be insipid and soulless but Classic FM like local radio seem to usually go for the blandest fare (or should that be "fayre") they can find.

Look at the take on Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" in the last post, how good it that? And lets face it the list of Classical Music both from the past and contemporary is vast. I remember my secondary school music teacher managed to put me off Classical music because he would just stick an LP on and we had to listen to it for forty minutes. It wasn't built up, or explained, it was just there, and to a teenager, it was not cool.

So I leave you with "Troika" by Prokofiev from his "Lt Kije" suite which provided the motif for Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas". The suite also provide the motif for Sting's "Russians" too ("Romance"), so there is a lot og great music out there to listen to without resorting to sanitised blandness.

I hope you Christmas Day is progressing wonderfully.


Christmas Day


I wasn't going to write anything today but I am having the most relaxed Christmas Day for a long time. Last night we watched Christmas films, "Scrooged", "Muppets Christmas Carol" and "Die Hard"

I had missed the sheer amount of Christmas References in "Die Hard" closing with "Let It Snow" sequing into Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" , the motif of which plays throughout the film, I suppose a reference to the German baddies, but "Ode To Joy" from Beethoven's 9th Symphony is one of the most uplifting pieces of music ever, although as I write this I'm listening to the beautiful "Once I Awakened" by Kevin Ayers from possibly his finest album "Confessions of Doctor Dream", I'd love to share both pieces with you and maybe I will.

Today I have hardly left the house, just to feed my neighbours' tropical fish, and that's a sort of coincidence because I think Kevin Ayers played with Gong who had a song called "Tropical Fish" on "Camembert Electrique". See that's me going off on a total tangent again, but that's the way we generally discover new things, which is usually a good thing.

Well I found a brilliant Flashmob take on "Ode To Joy" and it's wonderful to see the joy in everyone's faces when this is playing, the children loving it, who said classical music can't be cool, fun and joyous. It's possibly one of the most joyously brilliant things I've seen. Watch it, you'll love it.

Now go on, there's plenty of Christmas to enjoy, go and share the joy, smile and have fun.


Monday, 24 December 2018

And Sometimes Things Do Work Out


After two weeks an order from Aldi has turned up, taken in my my neighbour, causing musch annoyance for Aldi Customer Service as Yodel and then Parcel Force refused to follow basic instructions either because they can't be bothered or they like coming out to not be able to deliver to our house, but all is good now. It amazes me that these delivery companies, with all the useful technology available, cannot sort out a time to do just a single delivery. Basically most people are likely to be in before 8AM and after 6PM so if your deliver times were based between 6 and 8 and then 6 and 10 you could give the drivers a shorter working day and reduce the number of times you have to return for failed deliveries.

This weekend I also finally got to catch up with my great friend Mike O'Brien at Mog on the Tyne the Cat Cafe in which he is involved and found out about all the issues getting it off the ground despite Council kerfuffling and of course talking about , music and lots of other stuff. There's some video and pics on my instagram feed here. 

The night was over to The Doll at The Black Bull to see the impressive Moron-o-Phonics supporting Penetration, but for the first time ever I left a gig before the band I had gone to see came on. The room was packed , and the sound was good but where I was there were several big blokes very much worse for wear from the drink. While there were no problems as such, the amount of falling over and spilt drinks gave me cause for concern so I thought it better to leave. Still I caught the complete Moron-o-Phonics and that was worth the price of admission, and I caught a minute of them here.

So it's Christmas Eve and for the first time this month I actually walked into work, and managed so photographs. The weather is mild so that makes it easier, and I listened to the Cosmic Rough Riders and Thousand Yard Stare on the way in , and December's 340K target which looked in doubt earlier in the month, will definitely be hit.

Michael Moorcock's "Swords of Corum" is extremely entertaining, and far better than the Hawkmoon / Runestaff books that I finished previously although it is still light Science Fantasy but in my opinion rather good.

The sun is shining, and that is always positive, and that just made me think of "Sunchyme" by Dario G which is an incredibly uplifting piece for this Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas everyone.




Friday, 21 December 2018

I Shot A Man In Tesco ... Just To Watch Him Die


Over the last couple of days I've been listening to "90 Bisodol(Crimond)" and been slightly taken aback by it's sheer quality and brilliance. Saying that, you can probably apple that to most Half Man Half Biscuit albums.

I once said that whatever Bowie album you are listening to is your favourite Bowie album after listening to "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)"  (post here) and in the HMHB canon "90 Bisodol(Crimond)" certainly lives up to that.

There are a couple of songs that are maybe not quite as good as the rest, but still great none the less and or me these are "Excavating Rita" and "Something's Rotten In The Back of Iceland" and they are crammed full of excellent wordsmithery and litererary references, and these are the least good bits of the album, which emphasises how good it really is.

"The Coroner's Footnote" and "RSVP" are both lovely tunes with a very dark twist where you don't know whether to laugh or grimace. I just enjoy.

In the middle of the album (running wise) is "Descent Of The Stiperstones" (I think it should be spelt Styperstones for some reason) which is the big song on the album, and excellent off kilter Crossroads narrative ("The Crazy World of Arthur Brownlow"). For some reason I though this was the closer but no matter, there is a lot of great stuff still to come.

The title is taken from a great line in "L’Enfer C’Est Les Autres" and that line playfully plagiarising a line from "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash, and this album is a really great end to end play. The finale "Rock and Roll Is Full of Bad Wools" (I still don't know what that means) is a right on swipe and the majority of plastic football fans that have grown up thinking it the top six of the Premier League, Real Madrid, Barcelona , PSG or any team with money and it does mention Roots Hall.

Have a brilliant Christmas everyone, Yule love it.

Thursday, 20 December 2018

Xeronius


Another made up word, although it may be real. Sometimes Google is a positive. Turns out there are bands, artists , twitter users with that name but no definition, but a name wouldn't have a definition.

I heard some lyrics to a "Christmas" song on 6Music this morning which were essentially:

"I Hate This Time of Year
 It's Dark and it's Cold
And I Feel I'm Getting Old.."

To me that doesn't exactly give me positive vibes, quite the opposite. I don't think it'll be on my Christmas playlist. The song is "Home Alone, Too" by The Staves and can be listened to here (a radio session).

I decided to watch the final episodes of "Electric Dreams" Channel4's series based on Philip K Dicks' short stories, and"The Father Figure" played like and excellent Stephen King story, "Autofac" featured the wonderful Janelle Monae (her "Dirty Computer" is my album of 2018) in a post apocalyptic Amazon scenario which featured, for me, a brilliant twist. I am currently watching "Safe and Sound", with the chilling exchange:

Q: "Have your ever seen a terrorist attack?"
A: "They're on the news feed all the time"

You can see them on all 4 here.

So I think to accompanty this pre Christmas post we got to have more Janelle Monae, haven't we.