#TenAlbumsInTenDays #4 - 4,5,6 and Record Store Day 2019

The last three I've posted on here I haven't recorded on the blog, although it is really a Facebook thing, but I do like to remember stuff that I've done. Someone asked me recently what my first #TenAlbumsInTenDays post was and thanks to this blog I could tell them fairly quickly it was "MAn In The Hills" by Burning Spear.

The last three posts have been FFS (the Franz Ferdinand / Sparks collaboration, an odd pairing at first sight but a brilliant album) , the "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monae, my favourite album of last year, and "Catching A Tiger" by Lissie which I posted today.

It is good to think about albums that you have maybe not played in a while, and the Facebook sequence allows you to hopefully share albums new to friends and friends of friends on Facebook. All these albums are worth your time and thanks to Social Media and streaming platforms you can often listen almost immediately. I remember having to order imported records from Germany or wherever and then wait two weeks for it to be delivered.

Tomorrow is World Record Store Day 2019 when lots of limited edition vinyl and in Newcastle we have lots of Record Shops  that will be stocked up for the day, as well as hosting many live bands on the day.

Here's a list of local record shops I'm aware of in the town centre:

• RPM
• Reflex
• Beatdown
• Beyond Vinyl
• Vinyl Guru
• 586

plus special mention to Oxfam at Jesmond ( I used to work there briefly and the manager Katie knows her stuff , Pop Recs in Sunderland and there are record shops in Durham, Hexham and Gosforth,  and if you are pushed HMV is not bad for a high street shop.

So enjoy your weekend.

#AprilSongs #12 Friday Night

This starts off sounding like a Pink Floyd song, or even The Who's "Love Reign O#er Me", from the absolutely brilliant debut album by ex Beach Boy Dennis Wilson "Pacific Ocean Blue". An extremely brooding piece, and nowhere near the best song on the album but it  is still an excellent listen. The intro lasts for over a minute of a three minute song (think the intro to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond") so the song itself is almost over before you realise it, and that is so good because it really drags you in although you don't actually realise it.

So that is number 12 in the #AprilSOngs sequence, and my only problem with this is that it almost looks like a technical manual rather than a diary entry, making the blog look very uniform and only talking about music related today (and today is Friday).

So it is Friday and it is a nice day and time for work.

Have a good one.

#AprilSongs #11 Thursday's Child

Up to 11 now and for this Thursday am going with David Bowie's "Thursday's Child" the opening song from his "hours" album. I've found a live take from Paris 1999 for your delectation. "hours" is not one of my first division Bowie albums but , like all Bowie albums it's definitely worth diving into.

I'm having things done to my roof and am working from home, so this is just a short marking post. Probably the shortest post that I have done since I started blogging, but sometimes you just have to accept that you don't actually have enough words to actually fill up the page. Actually if you take the time you can always find words to just put on the page, maybe I could write a very short story with each post such as a man who has lost a cat and found a packet of cigarettes, benough enough of this madness, it's time to return to normalcy.

Enjoy your afternoon.

#AprilSongs #10 Wednesday Morning 3AM

It's looking cold out this morning, well it is April, and the weather is British. As it's Wednesday the #AprilSongs installment is "Wednesday Morning 3AM" the slightly subversive title track from Simon and Garfunkel's 1965 debut album. I  have always loved Simon and Garfunkel even though Paul Simon stole Martin Carthy's arrangement of "Scarborough Fair" and they produced a remarkable body of work, with Simon producing an amazing body of work after they split.

Art Garfunkel is a wonderful interpretive singer but reliant on other songwriters, but I suppose you could say the same of Rod Stewart.

I recently bought an ebook on how to get lots of readers for your blog and essentially it said don't write for yourself, write for a target audience so that may explain why my readers have dropped to single figures, as essentially it's a diary which features things that catch my attention. I'm not going to change and am quite happy that this blog enables me to go back and find things that I remember recording and sometimes find things that I forgot about recording. So it is doing the job that I want.

So off we go to work once more,

#TenAlbumsInTenDays #4 - #3 - Soused - Scott Walker and Sunn O)))

I've actually found an album from this decade though Scott Walker has been making records since the 1950s but when I heard "Brando" from "Soused" I was actually stunned. His collaboration with drone noise masters Sunn O)))  is definitely not easy listening, and the only tangible link you have with The Walker Brothers is the voice.

I've written a few posts about Scott Walker and he did become the epitome of an artist well documented in "30th Century Man". The fact that he made challenging music up to the end will no regard for commerciality was incredibly creditable and , to my ears listenable.

So I know this is a short post because I don't want to just repeat what I posted in my other posts (which you can check out if you wish and have time) but it really is an awesome and amazing album.

#AprilSongs #9 Tuesday Morning

I'm still waiting for my roof to be sorted, and need to have a shower before work, but after last week's "Tuesday Afternoon" by The Moody Blues we will go with "Tuesday Morning by The Pogues.

I don't know if you know that the Pogues take their name from the phrase "póg mo thóin" which is apparently Irish for "KIss My Arse" but at the time no one was sure if "Pogues was Kisses or Arses and "Pogue Mahone" was the seventh album by the band (wiki entry here) , but the Oxford English Dictionary lists Pogue as "Kiss" here.

"Tuesday Morning" is up there with The Pogues best and if you have never heard it take a couple of minutes not and enjoy it. There is so much music we never even hear, often by our favourite artists, and often we concentrate on two or three albums, and this is a discovery for me thanks to me doing the #AprilSongs sequence.

This proves that it's good to set up the tiniest of projects to force yourself to do things, and the main reason for doing this is that I want to hit two thousand posts on Seven Days In (Not Seven Day Sin as some people have pointed out) and I wasn't really posting enough this year, and April should put me ahead of the curve. I've also been nominated for #TenAlbumsInTenDays and am posting those as well, plus my appearance on The Chain, so there is every possibility that I may hit fifty posts this month, unlikely but you never know.

#TenAlbumsInTenDays #4 - #2 - The Last Post - Carbon Silicon

My initial plan was to choose albums from this decade, but I've gone back to the last decade for this one, but I'm still in the most recent century and millenium. When I heard "The News" from "THe Last Post" it was one of the most exhilarating and hopeful songs I'd heard though it was released at a time when things were improving and looking great.

The album was a collaboration between Mick Jones (The Clash,Big Audio Dynamite) and Tony James (Sigue Sigue Sputnik which I always thought was Zigue Zigue Sputnik) but that's just me showing my musical ignorance.

So I know this is just a short post on today's #TenAlbumsInTenDays post but it is another excuse to share "The News", though I also love "The Magic Suitcase" as well, but it's a great album well worth a listen.

So it's Monday morning , time for work, and I hope you have a great one.