Stay Free

I don't need any more vinyl, bet deciding on coffee at Meli Cafe near Haymarket, I had to drop into Stay Free Records. I had no intention of buying anything, but Tony is a really canny guy who knows his stuff and we chatted about general stuff , the price of music and what have for what seemed like a very short time but I thought it was later than it was but it wasn't.

Anyway I looked At what was around and there was a Queen flexi disk which I thought my friend Jim may want, the a copy of Al Stewart's "Past Present and Future" for £4 . If there is one Al Stewart album I would have bought on vinyl it would be this. I had also been considering buying "All The World's A Stage" by Rush, and he had a copy of that for £8 . So it was a total foregone conclusion, two vinyl albums on three discs (or is it disks?) both of which were stuff I wanted.

I've also ordered 12" vinyl copies of Television's "Marquee Moon" and "Prove It" from Discogs and think I will ask my daughters to get the album for my Christmas present as I have been considering that.

I need to trim my vinyl collection and Tony has told me to bring some stuff in, so I may do that over the next week of two, but I have plenty to play at the moment so will enjoy my new additions tomorrow morning. So what to share, we had Television the last post, so I thing I will go for Al Stewart's "Nostradamus", one of the reasons I love this is that it is relatively easy to play (or seemed so when I was a teenager, and I reckon I could give it a good stab now if I could remember all the lyrics), I've shared a recent live take but every recorded version is worth listening to.

Every Word

One of the reasons I am finding David Sheppard's "On Some Faraway Beach" slow going rather than hard going is as well as the small typeface and word cramming, I really do have to read every word because skimming immediately loses the sense of what you are reading. In the same way that the human eye / brain combination constructs your vision from limited input I often read books in the similar fashion, but this is definitely not an option with this one. It is engrossing and is continually throwing things up that I did't know about Brian Eno and therefore provides more music to share with you.

Essentially it is reminding me of things music that I love although I need to further investigate "The End" the album by Nico, but I was unaware how impressed Brian Eno was with Television, who's "Marquee Moon" is one of my many favourite albums , combining rock and free jazz stylings with Richard Lloyd's and Tom Verlaine's twin guitars intertwining into an amazing sonic tapestry. The thing is , if free jazz were this wonderful I would listen to a lot more of it.

The Label feature on this blog is still very slow, so I'm not sure what is happening there.

So I am going to share "Venus De Milo" from the album "Marquee Moon" by Television. I found a live version from 2016 and also a demo version from the seventies here.

Five Hours

That's how much sleep I had last night, you probably know why. I just hope I don't fall asleep at work today. Sleep is essential for recuperation, but I have a lot to do so it may be a day of lots of coffee. This will be a short post on a sort of appropriate day, Friday 13th , for what happened last night but we need to be positive, find ways forward and connect with people who matter to us and look out for people who need us and be there when we are needed.

Still on with David Sheppard's "On Some Faraway Beach" and we have reached Eno's involvement in Phil Manzanera's excellent debut solo album "Diamond Head" and the excellent "Miss Shapiro". This si a reason why one should continually read because sometimes you learn new things and sometimes you are reminded of things that you have either forgotten or that have just been pushed from the forefront of your mind.

The older you get, the more you experience, and therefore the more you learn, but your mind has to organise things and if you don't immediately need it, then it get's stored for future reference. Whether it then gets used or recalled is another matter but it is there and David Sheppard's book has reminded me this Friday and it means I can share it with you.

The Labels feature on Blogger keeps locking up, but there is an option to search by word so I will be a little careful with it. Maybe the blog is getting too big, over two thousand posts, imagine that was chapters in a book although chapters do last more than my average of 25o words.. People have suggested I turn this into a book, but that seems a bit pointless as you can just read it here, and also the point of writing this is to spark an idea for a book, although maybe then the writing of the blog is more important in my mind than writing the book. We shall see if it ever comes to fruition.

Whatever happens today have a good one and enjoy "Miss Shapiro" with me,

The True Wheel

This is the title of a song from Brian Eno's "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" which I am currently up to in David Sheppard's "On Some Faraway Beach" . Apparently Eno had a dream of people singing :

"We are the 801

We are the central shaft"

That was the name chosen for the superstar pick up band on his live album, which features a stunning take on Lennon and McCartney's "Tomorrow Never Knows". The 801 thing is documented in this post and you can listen to the song there too, I was going to include "The True Wheel" here but I will choose another song from what is and absolutely essential album.

This week my walking has not been up to par, I'm still ahead of where I need to be but haven't hit 11K steps since last Friday so I need to up my game on that.

Also I've been trying to write this post for two days, being beset by feeling absolutely drained and the blogging software continually locking up, which the label processing seems to cause.

Yesterday I caught a little of the Sky Sports Manchester City coverage by Shaun Goater. He is extremely well spoken with the same slightly unusual enunciation that a work colleague of mine has. I chatted with her today and asked her where she came from, because her and Shaun's accents were identical. She told me she had gone to the same school as him and they were both from Bermuda.

I'm going to include "The Great Pretender" the closing song from side one of the original vinyl album, which runs into an insectoid closed groove meaning that unless stoped the song never actually ends, as far as I know you can't to that with MP3 or CD.

"She was so impressed that she just surrendered"

An album you must own on vinyl for that reason alone.

Forgot

I was going to post this yesterday but got waylaid by other stuff, so I will post it now , even though it is quite late. Yesterday I went to work and convinced I had forgotten something , but wasn't too sure what it was.... until I got in and realised I had left my work pass at home. My work has the most pedantic lost pass process ever, they give you a piece of card that can't be used for anything useful like getting you in through doors, then you have to contact someone so they can escort you to the office, and if you want to go out you have all this rigmarole again.

The thing is visitors get normal passes.

So I went home to get my pass and got into work 45 minutes later than I expected.

On getting home from holiday I received a bowel caner check kit from the NHS which you use to send a poo sample to be checked. This is the second one I've had and even though it's simple, it is a funnily unpleasant experience getting the sample, it can't land in the toilet, then you place it in a tube ans send it back for testing (which is done at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.) so I should know in a week or so the results. This is standard preventative procedure and I'm sure all will be fine, but it's always good to check.

I have friends who have suffered from and been treated for many forms of cancer, and when I was kide cancer was the end, but now people have a far better chance to survive which is great, but I've also lost friends and that is something that is horrible. You have your memories but you no longer have your friends.

I'm sorry this seems to have nosedived but I didn't mean it to, just happy that I am being looked after by the NHS which despite certain people making out that it's free, it isn't, we all pay for it in outr National Insurance and taxes.

So I've gone with Ronnie Spector's take on the great Johnny Thunders song "You Can't Put Your Arms Round A Memory" although I thought it was "You Can't Wrap You Arms Round A Memory" . Either way,  it's a great song so please enjoy, if that is the right emotion for a song about loss.

Stay positive, it's what keeps us going, believe in better.

Back

I'm back in Newcastle and back to work and sort of sad that I'm not still in Settle, but finances don't currently allow me to be on permanent holiday, I am not impressed with the so called "Christmas Village" that has been rammed into Newcastle centre, to me it's just blocking where I can walk and messing up the road system but it does make me more determined to shop locally, especially in The Grainger Market.

Apart from catching up at work I will need to send my Christmas cards this week and must sound curmudgeonly as I see this and Christmas decorations as a chore. I am fine with people celebrating Christmas , went round to my neighbours for impromptu drinks and socialising and love things like that, Christmas can do a lot of good but I do hate the adverts saying that to really celebrate Christmas you need to spend a fortune on Amazon. No you need to socialise , talk to people and have fun.

I am old enough not to need presents and in some ways would like to put a fiver limit of people who want to buy me things.

For some reason the song "Temporary Secretary" by Paul McCartney has been going through my head, love the repeated sequencer motif that runs through it, and this has nothing really to do with this most but maybe it is a Monday Morning record.

Spoonful

Some days things just hit me and make me want to to write about it and my friend,an avid Moody Blues fan, on Instagram shared a picture of a clear vinyl copy of "Moanin' At Midnight" by Hownlin' Wolf. Earlier this year I had linked Howlin' Wolf with The Moody Blues which was a coincidence here and in 2014 wrote about the origins of the song "Smokestack Lightnin'" here. so the disc certainly piqued my interest and I will now investigate further.

Howlin'

The clear vinyl version looks wonderful, though I'm not sure if the wolf in on the vinyl or is seen though the vinyl, but I do like the design.

Another of Howlin' Wolf's songs is "Spoonful" (written by Willie Dixon) , a brilliant loping riff that I first heard on my friend Harry Clark's "Best of Cream" album as a teenager. I listened to my vinyl copy which I picked up from Beyond Vinyl.

This is my third post today so I am a little worded out, although I need extra posts if I am to hit 366 posts this year which is possible. This is post 339 so after this I need to post 27 times in 23 days which seems to be getting further away from me, but I won't let that happen.

So I'm going to share Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" although my favourite take is by Cream from the live "Wheels of Fire" album, but this post is all Howlin' Wolf.