.....on the Storm

The rain is gently hitting the window pane and it's dark outside , although the back neighbour's security light  which is on permanently and has been for over a year (must cost a fortune) , and was wondering what book to read after "Special Deluxe" by Neil Young.

Another which was destined to go straight to a charity shop without me reading it. This would have been ironic as it has an Oxfam sticker on the back which means I probably bought it from Oxfam when I was working there pricing music after I left EE, so that is like five years back. The book is "Riders on the Storm:My Life With Jim Morrison and The Doors" by John Densmore the drummer with the Doors.

Like the Neil Young book I am very apprehensive about this and it starts almost like a modern gothic horror story, but more than readable. Now I lump Jim Morrison with Shaun Ryder and Morrissey , partially responsible for some amazing music (and some rubbish) sometimes great on stage but you wouldn't want to socialise with them for any length of time. Also Jim Morrison's lyrics were often incredibly pretentious , but pretentiousness can sometimes result in great music if you don't take it seriously (think "The End" and "Horse Latitudes") .

Anyway the book has now morphed into Densmore's early life and how he learned the piano and the the drums (separately in marching bands)  and is rolling along nicely.

No doubt I will report more as I go along and it means I get to share some Doors with you. They took their name from a William Blake line:

"There is the Known

And The Unknown

And In Between

Are The Doors of Perception"

So I'll go with "The End" as it is probably my favourite Doors song.

No Parlez

This is the second post about albums where the CD was an extended version of the vinyl artefact. Prior to his solo career Paul Young hand been in excellent voice as the lead singer of the Q-Tips and possibly with the awful Streetband and their awful single "Toast".

"No Parlez" contained some decent covers such as "Wherever I Lay My Hat, That's My Home". "Love Will Tear Use Apart" and "Love of the Common People" , but the stand out for me was the cover of Anthony Moore's "No Parlez" , and I have featured a few Anthony Moore songs on this blog , check here, Anthony Morre collaborated with Peter Blegvad in Slapp Happy as well as Henry Cow so off the commercial spectrum but still managed some great singles.

Then I though of the phrase "No Parlez" and thought although we are more connected than ever, there was a couple on the train up to Edinburgh who spent most of their time texting on their phones rather than speaking to each other, and this is something you see more often than not, people preferring the company of their device rather than the company of real people. Sometimes I am guilty of this too though I will excuse it by saying I am looking up something or trying to find something out.

Still my preference is for face to face conversation and today I received the first video message on my phone from my 83 year old dad, being cajoled by his girlfriend's daughter to reply to a video that I sent her. Technology is great at times but it should be used judiciously.

So Far Away

When we got hit by CD I noticed something about two particular albums "Brothers In Arms" by Dire Straits  and "No Parlez" by Paul Young. I'll talk about the latter in my next post, but the CD versions of these albums were longer than the vinyl versions, taking advantage of the fact that due to compression and dropping of frequencies you can fit up to eighty minutes of music on to a CD (though I believe a Mission of Burma one actually exceeded that).

Basically the songs were just longer than the vinyl release, the ideal length for a vinyl album is about 18 minutes a side, and making it louder shortens that, the early Led Zeppelin albums have virtually no run out as Jimmy Page wanted the maximum effect from his production. Again Todd Rundgren brought out a sixty nine minute vinyl album "Initiation" which came with a warning to use a new needle each time you played it (that may be an urban legend but you get the point).

Anyway "Brothers In Arms" while a decent album , I only liked every other song on it and particularly the opener and closer. I first heard Dire Straits playing the excellent "Sultans of Swing" laid back but with stunning guitar work from Mark Knopfler.

The opener is "So Far Away" and got me thinking, thirty years ago , everyone I knew was on this island apart from a couple of relations who had departed for the antipodes. When I went to Mexico around the millenium someone told me that a bus from the Texas border to Mexico City took 24 hours. Mexico is BIG , but our maps show it as this little isthmus joining North and South America. Someone also mentioned about flying across Australia taking seven hours to fly! In Britain I don't like travelling by train for more that three hours (though some journeys are far more pleasant than others).

Now thanks to social media and the internet I am in contact with with people around the globe (remember messaging a friend to see if he wanted to come to a gig, he replied he had moved back to India) and the main problem is the time differential, but it does bring us much closer together in a way we couldn't imagine even in the nineties.

So another day , and another walk towards work.

Sweet Pea

Day one back at work passed without incident, although still have a cold and feel weak but that's it. I had intended to finish at four but due to our new rubbish IT set up and a sheet to check 250 statements took twenty minutes to open, pre upgrade it was instant.

Anyway the reason I wanted to post this is to share the song "Sweet Pea" by Tommy Roe , which I discovered as the "B" side of "Sheila". "Sweet Pea" was also the name of Olive Oyl and Popeye's baby (also known as Sweepie) which then made we think were Popeye and Olive Oyl married? But that's a complete aside.

I think "Sweet Pea" was also covered by Manfred Mann , but also got me thinking how the vinyl single used to be the main selling item, the thing to have, and you you at least got a "B" side and sometimes two or three songs on the "B" side. However lots of people bought singles and never listened to the "B side. I remember my mum bought "Brown Girl In The Ring" by Boney M which when it started dropping down the charts the record company flipped (the "B" side was "Rivers of Babylon") and my mum bought another copy because she seldom listened to "B" sides .... she wasn't the only one.

It seems now we've gone through albums and the youth of today are now just streaming single songs and sometimes not even whole songs, their impatience makes them skip to the next one after twenty seconds of whatever they are hearing. Digital music makes things instantly available but also instantly disposable as it's always available 24/7 .

Anyway I finished "Special Deluxe" by Neil Young in less than a week, and it is very readable although finishes with a final forty page chapter full of hope and despair , hope that we can save the world by using renewables , but governments are in the pockets of corporations who see fossil fuels as a quick buck and electorates believe the lies rather than look for facts. This book is well worth reading.

So another day starts........

Getting Better?

I think I am finally over the 'flu' , still weak , but I felt like this last Monday. The problem is I want to be back to 100%, my mind wants me to be there but my body keeps letting me down. I have been resting but also finding any excuse to do things and then after I do, I wish I hadn't. Yesterday was spent in Edinburgh with a ninety minute train journey each way and walks to and from the station to Grey's Monument.

So basically today is going to be a first try back at work this year, with all the month and quarter end stuff to catch up on, though the reality is that I have just lost two days so it's hardly amajor problem.

I'm still getting through "Special Deluxe" by Neil Young and didn't really know about the existence or benefits of biodiesel, although big fossil fuels I think have destroyed that, same as they are trying to do with all renewables. The Earth provides us with Solar Power (I know that's the sun) , Wave Power and Wind Power all of which is effectively free and will be as long as our Solar System keeps going. Fossil Fuels need to be stopped in their tracks.

So anyway I have another thirty or so pages to go on "Special Deluxe" so I will have finished it in less than a week. Also this year my steps are progressing well after missing my December 2020 target by 16K steps , which was still a creditable effort given the last week and a half that I couldn't even get out of the house.

So we'll go with "Getting Better" by Shed Seven a song we once covered with Spoon.

Now time for work.

Special Deluxe

I don't read fast .. at all ... but I am , for me, tearing through "Special Deluxe" by Neil Young. As I've said this nearly went straight to the charity shop but it is very readable. Also it has a lot of blank separator pages and pages containing one of Neil's drawings of one of his cars , so it's not really 375 pages of print to read. It does give a great insight into his musical history and his incredibly difficult family background and you do find a lot that maybe you didn't know. I have certainly learned a lot.

The really odd thing is that this book (a $30 American important seems out of print in the UK unless you want to go for the CD version at £167, though it is readily available on Amazon.com , very strange. And even stranger is that two days ago it was out of print today you can get it at a very reasonable price.

I was originally going to title this "Skinning Satsumas" which has been a big part of me try to get myself out of this 'flu' situation but obviously that is just a fleeting instance.

I also want to be a little more relaxed in my posting this year, so I don't expect anywhere near the posts I made last year. So another Neil Young song for us

Long May You Run

My intention is thot to post as frenetically this year as I did in 2019, but to still maintain my diary of observations. I am still suffering from being hit by the 'flu' making it difficult to work or concentrate or do anything, although my mind is generally fine, but body not up to doing what my mind wants to do. My mind will say  "Yeah you can walk to the supermarket" so I will do that then be so shattered I need to take the bus back, except around this time it's Saturday or Sunday service so I walk back and then think I should have just stayed in bed.

New Year's Day I finished "On Some Faraway Beach" the David Sheppard biography of Brian Eno and despite the dense and difficult to read typeface it was an absolutely excellent read, often pointing me to revisit / rediscover / visit and discover music and artists.

So what next .....

I often buy books that are on sale or cheap that have some potential interest for me, one of these was "Special Deluxe" by Neil Young. I love Neil Young's music and my voice has been compared to his, there's a couple of Youtube examples "Love Is A Rose" and "Rockin' In The Free World" if you want to check me out, but this book almost went straight to the charity shop as it is Neil Young writing about cars. Cars have little interest to me, but I needed a next book and thought give it a whirl.

Typeface was good so easy to read, and same number of pages as "On Some Faraway Beach". The concept is Neil Young's life and the cars in his life with illustrations by him (which are cute) and a chronology of his musical development as well as the cars and his growing up. He is certainly an engaging  writer and I am nearly a hundred pages in after two days and loving it.

Pre preface are the words "Long May You Run" that is a good wish to anyone and anything you likeand was a favourite of mine by the Stills Young band, so that is the song I will share with you, and the book is great by the way.