I have another thirty pages til the end of World of Tiers by Philip Jose Farmer and still feel as though it will never end. I will finish it but not sure if I will start the second volume immediately.
This week I visited the John Marley Centre for the first time and if you wait on this page you should be automatically redirected there. I went to check out Beyond Vinyl and some of their art.
There is too much going on for me, and I know that people will love that but it has really been a slog for me and at nearly five hundred pages the end has been a very long time coming.
I recently found out that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.
The music is "Greed Is Good" by Shakin' Stevens which is absolutely excellent. I caught him playing a Shakin' Stevens Tribute Act in a recent episode of Greg Davies' "The Cleaner".
Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories
I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:
Yesterday I got my new contact lenses and there was a letter saying which lens went in which eye, which I duly followed. After giving my eyes hydration via and eye bath I put the lens in my left eye and it was very blurry but thought it will settle down. I prepared the right eye one but the left eye was still blurry , it wasn't going to settle down. Then I swapped the lens in my left eye to my right eye and I could see perfectly immediately. The letter had got the lenses the wrong way round , so now my sight is perfect.
I had a really odd dream , our work team were having a meeting in a classroom on the corner of the West Road and Clayton Street (it's a cake shop in reality so that might say something). There was my team and a Facebook friend Les who shares a love of Greek Mythology as demonstrated by this story
Ola by boss was writing in chalk on a blackboard and I was having real difficulty seeing , took my glasses off , no difference , but still had contact lenses in. Then walked out and visited a couple of record shops with another friend Sarah , who's birthday party I attended a couple of weeks back. Now there's only one record shop in that direction , Beyond Vinyl , although Vinyl Guru is the other direction but there are the Amnesty Bookshop and Kazbats Den. I didn't buy anything and told Sarah that I needed to get back to work.
I then woke, washed , showered , and when I picked up my phone , the Marvin Gaye song "We Can Make It Baby" came on via YouTube. I have never heard before , it is quite good , but a sort of end to the dream sequence.
Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit in one of his songs wrote that and unusual thing in a dream would be going for a loaf of bread. in the song "San Antonio Foam Party" but all the lyrics are here and they are a literary treasure trove.
Since I started writing on Vocal , that has become my main creative focus. It has a slightly easier interface but posts need approval and have to be between 600 and 5000 words long. There are other caveats such as no religion and quite a few others. So I have a feeling that this year this blog will not be hitting anything like a post a day , although I will be beating my first few years posts.
This is just my second post this month and 85th this year and we are almost half way through 2021, but I have 40 posts on Vocal which you can see and read here.
I feel that a lot of my creativity has gone into the Vocal posts leaving nothing for here.
I also have not listened to 6Music for absolute ages, preferring random choices from my collection and my Discogs store. It is a Record Store Day , but I feel my vinyl collection has as much as I need. I've stated that often the idea of making a record special is coloured vinyl or a picture disc maybe featuring the band. That doesn't cut it for me.
I have a great vintage record player I got from RPM and that makes the vinyl sound awesome, and often it's the reggae that has the best sound, although everything sounds good , and yes there may be some surface noise but as the great John Peel said "Life has Surface Noise Mate!!"
So I will leave you with "Boops" by Sly & Robbie , a song I have digitally on CD and on a 12" vinyl single purchased from Stay Free records in Newcastle. Enjoy my friends.
After going on about the concept of distributed power (posited in the excellent F Paul Wilson book “Legacies”), this morning something happened (that has happened before) when I tried to photograph the moon which looked rather close , so I took a picture with my Canon camera that has a 25x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom (I think the more megapixels your camera has then the better the digital zoom will be) although when you get to very high zooms you need a way of stabilising the camera , just holding your device won’t do it. As an example my Google Pixel 2XL phone had one of the best cameras when it came out but only has a 7x digital zoom.
Anyway back to the initial point of the post. When I downloaded the picture onto my computer I opened it up and in the top left hand corner was an aeroplane which I hadn’t seen when I took the picture. Digital photography has given everyone the chance to take brilliant pictures, and not only that , you can take lots of pictures and choose the good ones to share. Someone remarked on the high quality of my friend Chris’s pictures and he replied (roughly) “For every shot you see, there’s a thousand in the bin”.
When we used film , you never knew whether the pictures were any good, you had to send the film off to be developed and wait for it to come back and hope that there were some good. This is a great example of how some technology can improve our lot.
As I am writing this Google Docs is checking my spelling and my grammar, another example of improving technology that makes our lives easier. I do remember writing documents and then running a spell checker, and proof reading to hopefully spot any grammatical errors. Modern word processors now do that as you are typing so you can be fairly sure that your text will come out and the end at least fairly readable.
Mobile phones have now become handheld computers. As well as using them to contact people by voice , like our original wired landline phones , we can text , send pictures and video calls. And that’s just the contact bit. We can now use them to access the internet and find out almost anything we want. The internet is an amazing reference library although you have to know how to search and I tend to just use Google although on my work computer it defaults to Bing .
Technology is enabling me to write this article, and I remember when people wondered whether to buy typewriters. I used one as a teenager and while I can use one I would rather use some form of word processor.
Our music has gone from live and written through vinyl storage , magnetic tape , to computer storage and digital media meaning that music and video can be stored and streamed on the aforementioned phones and other devices. Paper books are also published as digital copies, although this was started by Project Gutenberg which transcribed out of copyright and print books onto digital copies which are now available often for free.
Amazon Kindles and other reading devices (you can use your phone for this as well) are great for reference books and very large tomes. A paper book doesn’t need power and sometimes is preferable to an ereader.
One old technology thing I miss is teletext. I would like a text option on my TV, but the amount of real programs on demand probably negates the need for it, but I dod like the fact that you could overlay what you were watching with what you were searching for. Then again I do have my mobile phone to search the internet if I want to find something I need to know.
So the perfect piece of music to accompany this piece is “Good Technology” by Red Guitars. I remember having to buy “America and Me” on vinyl (my favourite record of theirs) , although I did eventually find it on a CD album , so there is more good technology.
I feel I have hardly scratched the surface with this , so no doubt I will be revisiting in the future, then again I might not , but who knows?
I do write quite a lot and when I post something on my blog it does really give me great pleasure when someone reads it and comments on it. People for some reason seldom leave comments on the actual posts, probably because they do require identification.
It would also be nice to be able to monetise my writing but people have to read it and then click and buy through the advertising around it, such as the Amazon music links you can see below in the actual blog post, but I’m not sure whether Google and Facebook steal the click throughs as they would have the technology to do that and would justify it because my blog is sitting on their platform.
Also over the years Amazon have put more and more caveats on sales, such as you get nothing for your own or purchase from people who have a connection to you, so if I buy a present for someone then they buy something through one of my links, I receive nothing. Also, it’s only the first purchase that I actually get anything, so I’ve probably made Jeff Bezos a fortune over the years.
Ten years back I was bringing in a hundred pounds a month from Amazon, HMV and many others, but with the rise of streaming and the demise of online physical music sales plus things like Shazam the end was determined for my Song of The Salesman site although I do maintain it is a very compact format on Facebook
Anyway recently I have seen various platforms that are meant to reward you with reads and contracts. One is Vocal that is on, but does not allow links or personal ads so you will have to visit my actual blog www.sevendaysin.co.uk to see the sort of stuff I recommend in ads. The other is Get Blogged that gives a fixed price for related blog posts but they need to be on specific subjects and I’ve not yet had any feedback.
I’m going to change my blogging method to create the document in Word then paste it into Vocal and my blog and then see how it progresses. It’s going to make it a bit more convoluted but we shall see if it generates any response and interactions.
One of the good things about producing the document using a word processor is that you can keep a constant tab on how many words you have written, which the blogging software does not.
So today has been bright and sunny and this morning I listened to the Lou Reizner production of The Who’s “Tommy” with the London Symphony Orchestra and various guests. I wasn’t impressed with Rod Stewart’s take on “Pinball Wizard” although the arrangement is excellent and Merry Clayton’s take on “The Acid Queen” is wonderful though possibly eclipsed by Tina Turner’s take on the same song in the Ken Russell film. I have listened to all the main versions of “Tommy” that I have on both digital format and on vinyl, and it still holds up in it’s best bits. There are a few awkward instances like Uncle Ernie and the Tommy’s Holiday Camp concept but there are a lot of fine musical sequences which make it an essential listen.
I am going to share Merry Clayton's take on "The Acid Queen" which I talked about above.
So now I want to see what happens when I paste this into my blog. It will probably keep the word font (I’ve used Ariel this time) but hopefully it will still be readable to everyone.
The other thing is because I intend to publish on Vocal my posts will be longer, but hopefully short enough for people to still want to read them.
I am half way through "The Keep" by F Paul Wilson and thoroughly enjoying it, with it's second world war setting , links to vampires and HP Lovecraft with the release of Molasar a possible strigoi or as described in the book moroi . Hence the title of this post, it's an easier read than a lot of my recent ones, but it's always good to keep reading, and this is the first in a series of six books , so that's going to be a bout two thousand pages of The Adversary Cycle
I am so glad that we have Wikipedia to at least point you in the right direction when I can't be bothered to expand on what I am writing.
Today I have been listening to "Tommy" by The Who on vinyl , and it shows how magpie like like I have been with my buying. I didn't even know is was an American Decca release. Also disc one consists of sides one and four and disc two sides two and three , implying it was meant to played on a stack deck like you did with singles. I don't think I've seen any new decks like that although I am sure RPM will have some around. The think is singles have a raised edge around the label to ensure the grooves don't come into contact with each other , whereas albums don't (why would you want to stack albums , twenty minutes of music should be more than enough for you).
So we'll go with a live take of the "Overture" from "Tommy" from 1989 . I have ten takes on "Tommy" including I think five live sets from various live albums and was shocked to see the deluxe version of "Who's Next" going for £1200 on Amazon and the extra disc on that has a live take of "Tommy". The thing is you can put any price on anything, but it's only worth it if someone want to buy , and I don't want to sell although if someone was to chuck me a grand I may be tempted
This weekend I have listened to Jack White's "Lazaretto" on CD and the "Ultra" vinyl version. Side one of the "Ultra" vinyl version is a strange and unusual experience. I think I bought it because it was the first laser etched hologram on the runout groove of a vinyl LP , but I also like Jack White and had heard some songs from the LP.
I have the CD as well whicjh means I can listen and enjoy , but the vinyl album doesn't even play in the normal direction , no matter where you drop the needle , it finds it's way to a closed groove at the start of the record.
The angelic holograms are quite amazing , just because they are. You can't get your head round that these are made of light shining on some black spinning vinyl. I was thinking of doing a YouTube video but my Instagram Post is enough. The hologram was designed by Tristan Duke of Infinity Light Science. He also did the Star Wars Holograms as well. You can check out all the videos and the web site.
I have finished "The Outsider" and while , for me, it's hardly an "essential" novel, despite being so short it leaves to with a lot of questions. This is mainly because of the barebones format of describing the experiences of the main protagonist. While part one leads up to the murder, and part two deals with the aftermath , it seems he is actually condemned for not crying when his mother died rather than the actual murder, and although he is condemned you don't know whether there is an appeal. There is an afterword by the author explaining why the protagonist does what he does, but you end up with a lot of questions.
That is no bad thing because you then use your mind to try and figure out why things went the way they did. Too often we expect everything to be laid out on a plate, and that's what we get from most books, but this is different. I suppose "Steppenwolf" also left a lot of unanswered questions but that is a positive aspect for this sort of book.
Next up I am going to revisit "The Adversary" series starting with "The Keep" by F Paul Wilson , which was turned into a film by Michael Mann , but just fell into the basic horror box when the actual series is a lot more than that, although it's purely descriptive unlike the recent volumes I've read.
So moving from the worthy almost philosophical volumes to what academics may see as unworthy horror, but enjoyable. As I write this I am listening to the excellent "Lazaretto" by Jack White and there seems to be a perfect song on there, "I Think I Found The Culprit".
The vinyl copy of the album is unfeasibly so clever it makes it almost impossible to listen to, so I go for the CD,
The vinyl copy also contains the first 3D hologram of an angel in the runout groove which yo can see above. I still can't believe that someone actually thought of that , and then actually did it , and it worked.
There are usually times in history when musical scenes reboot themselves, probably starting in the nineteen twenties when recorded music became a thing and we had early jazz , blues and crooners making the way into the public consciousness via vinyl and radio. Gramophones and radios were commercially available and spread to sound through the populace especially in the USA and UK.
Six years ago I published a personal history of musical media from the wax cylinder to today's digital streaming here.
After the war we had crooners , Jazz , Western Swing and the beginnings of Country and Western. Rock and Roll was the first big flash propelled by Bill Haley & The Comets "Rock Around The Clock" the film "The Blackboard Jungle" and the genesis of the teenager as someone who could buy things including music, plus the tribalism of Teddy Boys and the like.
In the sixties there were Mods and Rockers, Skinheads psychedelia , ska and reggae , garage rock but this was just a quite smooth progression , resulting in some major rock bands and an unfeasioble amount of money and pretension. In the seventies we also go glam and all along the mainstream kept morst of the public satisfied as it still does today.
Then punk hit , hating the establishment , and prog rock (but ironically loving Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk") but still referring and eulogising krautock , reggae , sixties garage rock and more, while pursuing a minimalist shoestring sound epitomised by The Buzzcocks "Spiral Scratch" , which is why I was so disappointed by The Sex Pistols "Never Mind The Bollocks" as to me it was a heavy metal album, so sounded good but more metal than punk.
This resulted in lots of small independent music which was eventually absorbed by the big labels.
And since the during the eighties we saw Goth , and Grunge and Baggy at the start of the nineties, and while there is always good music coming through there's been no big band since the mid seventies and no small bang since the early nineties.
So did I miss something or did I just get old? Franks Zappa said that when the old guys were in charge of record labels they would always give anything a shot. Could you imagine a major label releasing "Trout Mask Replica" or even "The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads" today? Sing the young guys moved in it's all about product and markets , not art and music.
So what should I share, I'll go with the Bill Haley song.
Thanks to virtually a week off , last night I stayed up while 1:30 AM , I think I could have stayed up all night , not sure how I would have felt today but isn't that why party animals only get up in the afternoon , which then means it's easy to stay up all night,
Now if you are partying or at a rave the question in the title doesn't matter , but if you are just at home is 2 AM too late or too early to watch a film , make some coffee or tea or a bacon butty.
I have the dates for my COVID injections and the systems , while a couple of glitches went through fairly quickly , unlike almost all the contracts outsourced to the government's mates and cronies.
I had planned to try a marathon this week , but the thought of maybe spending 12 hours to do 60K steps in 12 hours in cold weather somehow lost it's appeal. At some point I will go to top my 15.5 miles but that may be at the end of March , but even then it may not happen, we shall see.
I have listened to a lot of music this week and still written nothing . I really need to learn how to use my simple Kindle recording studio as I can't get anything that links up to my computer to use Audacity to record it.
This week's vinyl included Alice Cooper's "School's Out" and maybe their finest album "Killer" , as well has Hawkwind's "XIn Search of Space" and "Space ritual" and as I write this I am listening to "This Time It's Personal" the excellent covers album by Hugh Cornwell and Dr John Cooper Clarke.
But I will share , what is in my opinion Alice Cooper's finest song , the amazing "Halo of Flies" , love the image the title conjures up and the song is eight minutes of aural adventure. I also found this cover's band Pretties For You NYC doing a cover which I also have to share as it is rather good.
I don't buy much music these days, my collection is huge and I am selling a lot of CDs I bought on Discogs. I've written previously that I have bought albums because I think I should have them . The good thing about this is that the artist get's supported from the initial sale , although subsequent resales don't actually benefit the artist although often money I get from Discogs sales does by music. This week, although I don't need it I have ordered an album by Deodato and singles by The KLF and Roger Williams on vinyl.
The albums I have for sale I have in a stack next to my desk and I actually listen to them to see if they are worth keeping. I think one or two have made me think "Why the hell did I buy that?" but most ate worth listening to. I am currently listening to a five disc budget reggae compilation called "The A To Zion" and it is rather good but it's still for sale.
Other's like "Meet The Humans" by Steve Mason (ex of the Beta Band) were so good that I pulled it from the store. I have the attitude that if you put something in a box or drawer that that's it , it's not going to be played, but yesterday I was listening to a Randy Newman box and after the five excellent discs of his Americana I remember I had a couple in the "N" box , and next to those two was an NWA compilation , so three discs for that box actually got played yesterday.
The main reason I am writing this is that I got a missive from Jordan Reyne on Bandcamp about her new album Chapter Zero . Jordan does not put her music on leech like streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music that make a fortune for their owners but pay the artist a pittance. I cannot see how the model can properly work, but for almost all artists it doesn't so if you share a Spotify playlist with me you go down in my estimation.
Ever since I saw her opening for The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing at Think Tank? (see here) six years ago she has remained the most impressively original artist I have ever seen or heard. She is also a very approachable person , and her set that day was so stunning that I bought three CDs on the spot. So a new album is always an essential purchase , and buying from Bandcamp ensures that artist gets fair recompense for their work.
I am looking forward to hearing the new album and you gat a digital copy of all her work here for about thirty quid. Not only is she a musician she puts together videos for her songs on her YouTube channel here. You will be impressed.
Though it's the opener from here last album "Bardo" , "Then They Came For You" shows her video creation skills off, and is a song for our times.
Today is the twentieth of February 2021 , or you could say Twenty - Two - Twenty One like you are counting backwards. Over the last year or so there have been a lot of dates that fall into that category, and no doubt 2022 will provide even more. This is just an observatory post on how dates can appear significant when the reality is that it's just natural progression or coincidence.
One of my vinyl captures is "Numbers" by Cat Stevens and it is one of so many albums that use numbers as their inspirations as well as having a wonderful storybook and cut out cover as part of the package.
Another being "A Grounding In Numbers" by Van Der Graaf Generator, which is the sort of offering you would expect from Peter Hamill and company.
Although I could have chosen these artists to share a song with I am going to go for Ry Cooder's take on Otis Redding's "634 5789"
It is still cold , so cold that the snow gets a bit slushy during the day then freezes at night. The lowest I've seen is minus eight degrees centigrade and friend in Dalgety Bay have reported minus fourteen degrees centigrade.
Walking out and most of the snow on footpaths has turned to ice, it's the middle of the and the temperature is zero , freezing. It isn't snowing but it is cold, with the only sign that this is over , the fact that most of the snow on the rooves has gone.
This is just a very short post , the day before Valentine's day and it is the thirteenth. Strange how sending a Valentines card to someone you don't know turns you into a stalker in todays environment , and I am sure there is a great horror story in that situation . Someone gets a card from a stranger and that marks them as the next target. That could destroy the Valentine's card industry.
St Valentine was a clergyman who was martyred but is also the patron saint of epilepsy. Wiki details are here
So what song do I share?
I know it's the day before but I know the Motorhead / HeadGirl / Girlschool "St Valentine's Day Massacre" EP is on YouTube in full , so we will go with that. The lead song on the EP is a cover of "Please Don't Touch" by Johnny Kidd and The Pirates. I find it slightly odd that the CD copies are now selling for more than the vinyl copies if you check out the links below.
The actual massacre is described thus:
" 1929 murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang that occurred on Saint Valentine's Day. The men were gathered at a Lincoln Park garage on the morning of that feast day, February 14th. They were lined up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants who were dressed like police officers. The incident resulted from the struggle to control organized crime in the city during Prohibition between the Irish North Siders, headed by George "Bugs" Moran, and their Italian South Side Gang rivals led by Al Capone.[1] The perpetrators have never been conclusively identified, but former members of the Egan's Rats gang working for Capone are suspected of a role, as are members of the Chicago Police Department who allegedly wanted revenge for the killing of a police officer's son"
At the weekend was talking about my favourite New Order songs and my top two I thought were "Temptation" and "Love Vigilantes". Fiona pointed me towards the Guardian's Top 30 New Order songs and I checked out "Your Silent Face" from "Power Corruption and Lies" which is absolutely beautiful, so that has joined my other two favourites , it's apparently a homage to Kraftwerk's "Europe Endless" which I will now have to check out.
When I was listening I thought the synth strings were familiar and think they were lifted for "Sunchyme" by Dario G , which also samples "Memory of a Free Festival" the closer from "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.
I am tempted to track down a 12" vinyl copy of "Your Silent Face" but it was not initially a single so that may be a no go (like "Love Vigilantes").
So a very very short post but I will share both songs with you so you can check them out.
This is post number 200 this year , not my most prolific year, but a sort of milestone post and it's about a definite milestone album.
In 1977 Culture released a remarkable reggae album "Two Sevens Clash" . The title obviously referred to the year in which in was released, and while it sort of is an album that anyone with any taste should have in their collection this post is about the odd anniversary reissues of the albumes.
The first one is , as you would expect , a single album opening with "Calling Rasta Far I" and continuing through the album to become as essential as any Bob Marley or Burning Spear albums , that's not dissing those artists but showing how special this one is.
The Thirtieth Anniversary version drops the opener for some reason , then adds dub versions of album tracks, resulting in a still brilliant album , but surely they could have kept the opener. I am listening to this version as I type this, and I am thinking of maybe asking for a vinyl copy as a Christmas present.
Most recently I purchased a download of the fortieth anniversary version, which is less than a fiver for an absolute classic and consists of two discs, the original album with "Calling Rasta Far I" restored as the opener and second disc of dub versions , reworkings and extra songs. You can listen yo snippets of the albums on the Amazon links below , and it is a wonderful album to listen to.
There is further information on the Wikipedia entry and something I didn't on the origin of the title:
"Singer Joseph Hill said "Two Sevens Clash," Culture's most influential record, was based on a prediction by Marcus Garvey, who said there would be chaos on July 7, 1977, when the "sevens" met. With its apocalyptic message, the song created a stir in his Caribbean homeland and many Jamaican businesses and schools shuttered their doors for the day."
So another reason why you should listen to it , and why it should be in your collection, I am gonna line up the 40th Anniversary version for my #MusicWhileYouWork on Instagram tomorrow.
I have also discovered another set "La Passione" which could be a Christmas present as it's another well presented set with good reviews and given my reevaluation of the first of these sets will be a worthy addition to my collection.
The first one I didn't think I liked. The presentation pack is wonderful but thought the music was a little too sixties stylised. It consists of a book with lots of photographs and some of Chris's paintings (he is a great artist) , two ten inch vinyl albums and three vinyl replica CDs.
Yesterday , thanks to the excellent RPM supplied record player (close on two years old now) I played the first vinyl album , and while very Shadows influenced you can tell it's Chris Rea, and it sounded a lot better than I expected. I am listening to my digital copy as I type this and it is extremely listenable, and you can sort of spot the songs that the tunes have been lifter from, but that is no bad thing, it just adds another level of enjoyment to the listening, and The Shadows are always a great starting point (two of my favourites are "Apache" and "Wonderful Land" and Hank Marvin was responsible for the killer intro to Cliff Richard's best ever record , his debut single "Move It").
As this progresses it becomes more and more contemporary Chris Rea rather than Chris Rea being The Shadows.
"Santo Spirito Blues" is a book with two film DVDs , accompanying CD soundtracks and a stand alone CD bearing the title of the collection. I haven't yet watched the films but the "Bull Fighting" is extremely Spanish influenced guitar and orchestral music and very good.
The biggest surprise is the half hour "Santo Spirito" CD which sounds like "Wish You Were Here" era Pink Floyd with overlaid accordions, shockingly and unexpectedly excellent and will be on my player a lot more often. A very impressive package.
"Blue Guitars" is an absolute tour-de-force, 11 CDs each with a different blues style all composed by Chris Rea and performed by him and the band , plus a DVD and page upon page of excellent Chris Rea art pieces. When this was released it was about £30 , which is less than £3 a CD, the art book alone is probably worth that. You will pay £60 for a copy on Amazon and there may be copies on Discogs as well.
11 CDs provide about eight hours continual listening and then you have a DVD to watch and an artbook to enjoy. The amazing thing is that this was produced in under two years and I still enjouy dipping into this today.
Hopefully people will check this out, and Chris Rea is an artist who still produces impressive album packages in this digital age. Although you can download the MP3 copies , you really want the physical copies to appreciate how good they are.
