Finally , nearly halfway through "Coldheart Canyon" we get to properly find out what "The Devil's Country" is about. It's been a great read getting there , covering lots of stuff I had forgotten about ,but now I am there. I probably won't tell you what happens but I do recommend the book.
This incidentally coincides with my first time in the office (just to clear my locker so they can rearrange floors) since lockdown began. I just emptied my locker and was in and out in less than ten minutes, ironically coming back home to actually start work.
I did walk into work and saw some amazing skies , and the moon was also very clear, the days are getting shorted and it is dark by five pm so my walking my be curtailed although today and yesterday have been fine. The problem is when I work in the office I always go out for a lunchtime walk , but at home I just tend to work through.
Today's listening has been the first official live Bruce Springsteen plus his first two studio albums , which has been another rather good listening day , with some great songs, and this time no repeats.
So music wise we'll go for "Devil's Sidewalk" by Graham Parker , although Neil Young also has a song with the sleep well and the dark nights draw in people.
Today I will see my grand daughter , Alexis , for the first time so a walk over to my daughter and son in law's will do for my step count on the day after Halloween. Although there are grey clouds scudding across the sky it is a pleasant walk across the central motorway skirting Cow Hill through the Town Moor.
Last night I bought a tub of sweets for Halloween , but due to lockdown, of course , there were no groups of kids out so I have a tub of chocolate to myself that will obviously go down very well. Today is All Saints Day or All Hallows Day or Hallowmas (hence the day before was Hallow's Eve or Halloween) , although this is another Christian theft to replace the Celtic festival of Samhain. While I know lots of good people who are practicing Christians , the history of Christianity is one of total control of the populace and that permeates society today cherry picking the constantly rewritten Bible to forward their controlling agenda.Jesus would not be pleased and I could see a thieves in the temple scenario ensuing if Jesus returned.
Now who'd have thought that Jello Biafra would cover a song by two ex members of Mungo Jerry. Paul King and Colin Earl left Mungo Jerry to form the King Earl Boogie band and penned and released "Plastic Jesus" which Paul King must have raked in a lot of royalties from the myriad covers, so I've included two versions. The Mojo Nixon / Jello Biafra is available for download but the King Earl Boogie Band original is only available on the Dawn singles collection (at the moment £1.29 on Amazon) . Have a wonderful day everyone.
My reading , as it often does, has taken me back to Clive Barker and "Coldheart Canyon" . Title wise I think it's pretty awful sounding like some sixties doomed romance soap , and maybe that was the intention. While I remember the basic premise of the book , finding "The Devil's Country" I don't think I am giving anything away by mentioning that.
There are adverts for "The Secret Garden" on Sky at the moment and that has vague reminders of what is happening in "Coldheart Canyon" , as well as Halloween references which given that it's Halloween tonight , is another coincidental link. Thanks to the lockdown I doubt there will be any trick or treaters out tonight although today has been rather miserable weather wise.
My listening this week has included "The Business" by Madness which is early singles and rarities, but is enhanced by lots of interviews about the history of the band, that was followed by the eight disc "Smiths Complete" box although three of the discs are compilations so there are a lot of repeated songs , but all rather excellent. This was after finishing the Bruce Springsteen "SoundStage" box which was five concerts over fifteen discs and again a lot of repeated takes on songs but all worth listening to.
Next week I have my first Bruce Springsteen box which is all the studio albums up to "Born In The USA" and that will probably be followed by the live 1975-85 box , so next week will be another Springsteen binge.
As I've mentioned "The Secret Garden" and Bruce Springsteen that's the obvious song that I need to go with , even though it's not on the albums I'll be playing next week. I'm using the video from the film Jerry Maguire.
The other week I just did not feel like walking at all, although I managed a few steps , last week I did get back to sort of normal although th eclocks going back has had an effect. Last night I went out in daylight at around 4:30pm , when I returned around 5:30pm I was in total darkness, the dark came nown very quickly and although the weather is cold it's not freezing.
When I go I out I do enjoy trying to capture pictures, especially the skies , simethimes you don't get what you want, but sometimes you get things far more amazing than what you have actually seen. This morning the sky was a gorgeous pink with mackerel cloud effects , but the pictures I took were grey and nondescript. This week I have taken some amazing looking sunrise pictures , and they were nowhere near as good as the photographs that I took.
The thing is I remember photography being film based , you took the picture , then when you finished the film you paid to have it developed and a week or two later you got the results which may or may not be in focus. Now thanks to enormous jumps in technology we have cameras as part of our communication devices and ofthen these allow us almost instant access to take pictures.
The other thing is that if you don't take pictures immediately then the moment is gone, that was never an option with film based cameras.
Another thing is that often see vistas which I want to take a picture of , but the camera cannot capture the faraway image sthat I see like a plane or a bird. The other thing is that the human eye only captures part of what we see and the brain fills in the gaps.
With a phone camera we don't have an optical zoom, so we need a a very high pixel capture to enable the digital zoom , which works to a point, but still is nowhere near as good as the human eye or cameras with optical zoom (which have enabled me to capture images that I couldn't actually see when I took the photograph),
I once had a Sony phone and the camera on that could take some amazingly psychedelic images, which I sort of loved , but was not good fir capturing a normal picture. Apparently my Google Pixel 2XL is one of the best phone cameras, and the number of photographs I take are a testament to that, but I know things are only going to get better in this area.
The word "Camera" appears in a wonderful line in the John Cooper Clarke song / poem "Post War Glamour Girl" and is:
"Glamourous Cameras Clickety Click"
I always thought "Glamourous Cameras" would be a great name for a band as well. So that is the song we will go with on this dreary Thursday.
I vaguely knew that the the clocks changed this weekend but I wasn't sure if they went forward or back. So I thought I would look it up on that internet thing and it would tell me. Well it told me what daylight saving was but not what to do with the clocks. Eventually I did find the information I wanted but that's the problem with search engines , you need to be in tune with how it searches and be exact in what you state what you are looking for.
For the first time in my life I've realised that this is actually a twenty five hour day, and although my clocks say it's nine o'clock we have have ten hours so far today. Also most digital devices update themselves so you you know what time it is but you have to manually changes your unconnected devices , so that's my watches that still work , three clocks and the cooker which I reset yesterday.
I remember, many years back, getting through to Monday and not realising the the clocks should have been changed. I remember Catweazle being surprised that we let ourselves be effectively ruled by an alarm clock. When I searched Catweazle on Amazon one of the first thigs that came back was "Whips and Exorcists!" (see below) , god knows why, though the normal search is free of such things.
The twenty five hour day concept reminds me of "The Eighty Minute Hour" short story by Brian Aldiss where the powers that be control all timepieces and slow them down when you work and speed them up when you are doing things that you want. Does that sound like real life?
So the song I've gone with is "Hard Times" by the Human League , great minimalist eighties synth that mutates into it's original source "Love Action"
Took the title from a Daniel Easterman novel, although just referring to the early morning darkness on my walks this week, and not what actually happens in the novel. Last week I did little walking this week it's been a lot.
This week my main network hard disk died so need to sort another one so that I can listen to music round the house , the backup drive is doing fine but a bit smaller. We expect things to last forever but they don'yt always.
There is no real sign of this lockdown ending so we have sort of drifted into an alternate reality, mask wearing , and avoiding contact, I'm not sure when I'll see any friends again, and I still remember the last friend I had physical contact with was Sophia which was a hug as we finished a lunch at Snackwallah.
The working from home has enabled me to catch up on a great deal of music, although I am barely scratching the surface of my own music collection, and my own collection while large is a mere dot on the universe of music.
One other thing is that I have managed to curb my chocolate addiction , I have had two 100g bars courtesy of The Co-Op and Morrisons for my birthday , and they were very nice but I have not felt a desire for any more. Tesco didn't give me one.
So it's late at night , and my posts have been sparse this month , so song time . One of the songs that impressed me was "Season of The Witch" from the album "Bang Bang You're Terry Reid" , also a rather good album, so that's what I'll play out the week with.
The most important thing that happened this weekend is that I became a grandad to my grand daughter Alexis , mother , father and Alexis looking great, but due to social distancing not sure when I will see her in person , but thanks to modern communication methods I certainly don't feel cut off, and looking forward to seeing her grow up with her great mum , dad , aunt and Molly the dog plus great grand parents who are still enjoying their own lives and will be pleased to welcome this new addition to the family.
People have asked if I object or feel old being a grandad , and it's just a special state of play , it's like getting older , these things happen , and all they are is a new experience. When I was a kid grandads were old geezers like the one Clive Dunn portrayed in that god awful song , but I fgo with that saying:
"You don't stop playing when you get old, You get old when you stop playing"
And I have never stopped playing and don't intend to, and I am sure that Alexis will be a major addition to family like. I've told my daughter and son-in-law to have faith in themselves to do the right thing, because bringing up a child can't be done by numbers.
So one song came to mind for this , and that's "Family" by Spirit from the album "Son Of Spirit" which is a short but very uplifting album full of songs I love and this is one of them , although not available to download.
