From 77

Yesterday I recording what was going to be my next blog post, but due to a headache and other stuff last night I went to bed early and will try and use that later today.

This morning I have a hospital appointment for my Cirrhosis trial which has been going on for many years and thanks to this making me aware of my situation it means that my body is still fully functioning if not perfect. You can find all the posts on this if you click on the words or the associated tags.

Tomorrow I have a 7:40 doctors appointment which I do roughly each month as it allows me to officially check my weight and blood pressure, and if anyone is going to help you with your weight loss it's a good doctor and practice and mine is Thornfield Medical Group. who I have been with for twenty years and they have always been brilliant. Despite the nefarious attacks of our current government , they and our whole NHS have always been brilliant.

So I now need to get out of the house, the footpaths are frosty, it is cold, and when I finish at the Freeman Hospital, I need to go to work and sort out data for another idiot HMRC made up requirement going back over ten years running on a network is really not fit for purpose.

So again reading "On Some Faraway Beach" I saw "Love Goes To Building On Fire" and that is this mornings share.

Enjoy.

Exclamation Mark

Although I've rightly described David Sheppard's Brian Eno biography "On Some Faraway Beach" as like wading through treacle (I'm just over half way through, the book is also extremely readable. Almost every page throws up something I either didn't know or hadn't noticed.

The band Ultravox were originally called Ultravox! , a homage to the German band Neu! (originators of motorik, and heavy influencers of lots of bands) , the exclamation mark was dropped at some point , possibly when John Foxx left and Midge Ure joined. That was one thing I was unaware of.

During the Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite produced first album Brian Eno was invited to work with Bowie (who had recently been producing Iggy Pop) on his next album at the Château d’Hérouville where Elton John recorded "Honky Chateau" and the single "Honky Cat" was obviously a nod to this.

The thing is this album was "Low" , the first of the "Berlin Trilogy" and while Bowie , Eno and Iggy were between Berlin and the Château d’Hérouville I was unaware and always assumed that the album was fully formed in Berlin.

We will go with the finest song from the Ultravox! debut , "My Sex", it is disturbingly good , with John Foxx's monotone machine voice over a fragmented lush backing.

The Flavour of Drink

I find it odd how manufactures add different flavours to drinks. Whisky (or whiskey) seems always unadulterated but you can mix it with whatever your preferred dilution is. But Gin seems to have many variations like Whisky but when you start adding fruit flavours isn't that a bit odd? But then wine while usually grape based I think can have other fermentations.

Beer and Lager seem again unadulterated , but Stout sometimes has chocolate, and what is this with flavoured Ciders ? Ciders are Apple flavoured , Perry is Pear but when I see every other fruit flavouring cider I do find that odd. They seem to be the new Alcopops.

Then with the soft drink, Cola should taste of cola, not Vanilla, Ginger , Mango , Strawberry or whatever. I drink Coke because I like the taste of Coke. They don't need added flavour. But what do I know.

I mean Fanta is Orange, but now there are so many flavours that I lose count.

So we go with "Drink It Up" by Negativland  from the "Dis-Pepsi" album, you can listen to it all here because it's almost impossible to track down in any form.

2 Early Morning

An early start the morning and there was a lady with a big dog outside the house before 5 am, you do wonder about what others are doing up so early. I know lots of people have dogs and have to be out early to walk there dogs and play with them throwing sticks and balls.

It's funny how when you have to get up early for work you are always tired, but if you are up early on a non work day it's easy to get up before you normally do because you know you can always relax later during the day.

I have been listening to a lot of music over the weekend and was very impressed with the quality of a copy of Al Stewart's "Past Present and Future" but was at first disappointed with "All The World's A Stage" but the solution was to turn the record player up louder and then it sounded good. I remember having the same problem when I got "On Your Feet or On Your Knees" by The blue Oyster Cult. It was heavy metal and it sounded small and tinny, not what I wanted or was expecting. Then I had a lightbulb moment , "TURN IT UP LOUD" , and then it sounded great. My parents were not too impressed, so I switched to headphones and only had it on loud when they were out.

So we will go with "Hot Rails To Hell" from that album, best played loud, great guitar soloing and possibly the best recorded version of this song that the band did.

On The Tip Of My Finger

I wear contact lenses and quite often when putting them it, I drop them or cant find them in their container or hit other problems. Sometimes I think I have dropped one in the solution filled receptacle and come the following morning see that I messed and it's dried out next to the sink. Usually a dip into the solution revives them. Sometimes I find them on the floor, but if you drop them they can go anywhere, down the plughole, stick to your clothes or the side of the cabinet. Today I lost the contact lense for my right eye, I could find it anywhere, and eventually gave up then I got mt left eye lens and noticed the end of my finger was very shiny, the right lens had stuck to it so well that I couldn't see it at first.

Any non contact lens wearer, if you wear glasses or have good eyesight you never hit this problem, but as a contact lense wearer it's one of the many inconvenienced you experience , however these are worth the hassle as the benefits of wearing them against glasses are huge not least of which is they don't steam up when you come from the cold outside into a warm house (ship shops are terrible for that).

Anyway at the beginning of the month, to hit 366 posts for the year I calculated I needed to post 13 posts every 11 days. Actually it's 13 posts every ten days which is roughly four every three days and and today is the fifteenth and this is the twentieth post this month so I am just on track so can actually do it.

Continuing on with "On Some Faraway Beach" it put forward the premise that if a record label had a following, that following would investigate and maybe buy anything that that label produced, this had been true of Atlantic, and was true in the seventies of Island and Brian Eno's Obscure imprint. The only records I have on this are Gavin Bryars "Sinking of the Titanic" and "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet", which was based on a homeless man's singing but features Tom Waits as well.

I also have Brian Eno's "Discreet Music" which features deconstructions of Pachelbel's "Canon" which I will share with you for this post, it's strangely relaxing and relaxingly strange, familiar but alien.

Splitting Ions In The Ether

I am 45% of the way through "On Some Faraway Beach" and we have reached Brian Eno's third solo album, although for some reason I thought it was going to be "Before and After Science" but it actually is "Another Green World", one of the two Brian Eno albums I own on vinyl although he is generally more digital artist, defining this as vertical music rather than the more standard horizontal format (beginning, next , next end).

It is full of great songs and instrumentals but I always loved "St Elmo's Fire" (not the John Parr AOR one which is not too bad) for it's lyrics especially the:

"..and we saw St Elmo's Fire

    Splitting Ions In The Ether"

And a stunning incendiary guitar solo from Bob Fripp follows that line, which many people regard as his finest recorded guitar solo. It does take some beating, have a listen as that is the song that I am sharing. Incidentally St Elmo's Fire is a weather phenomenon often seen by sailors as a positive omen.

This is definitely a very short post but is an excuse to share this wonderful song with you soundtracking a Felix The Cat cartoon.

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.