Minimalism #2 - PIL's Album

Just read an article on PIL's Album , which is probably my favourite. While I'm aware that PIL has been a hurricane of members (49 I believe) with John Lydon it's controlling eye so to speak , I was quite shocked to find who actully played on the album.

"Rise" is still my favourite PIL single , and "FFF" and "Fishing" two of my favourite PIL tracks . This isnt to belittle their other stuff. Anyway....

I was aware of John Lydon's affiliation with Bill Laswell from his appearance as a guest on The Golden Palominos' "Visions of Excess" , but what I wasn't aware of (remember the albums minimalist sleeve art and vinyl origins) was that he'd ditched the original band and brought in a veritalble superstar line up to record the damned thing.

These included Ginger Baker on drums , Ornette Coleman on reeds , Stevie Vai on guitar , and more . This is lifeted from the Wikipedia entry , but you get the picture.

"Produced by Bill Laswell (despite Lydon-fuelled faction and disunion) and with many of Laswell's usual rotating cast of musicians, it also featured guitar solos by Steve Vai, considered by Vai himself to be some of his best work. Jonas Hellborg, solo bassist and at the time, member of John McLaughlin's reformed band, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, played bass on the album. Jazz great Tony Williams and legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker drummed on the album, which also featured Ryuichi Sakamoto of the Japanese electropop group Yellow Magic Orchestra."


Anyway , if you don't have the album, rectify the error of your ways and purchase it now to find out what you have been missing !! PIL are currently in the studio recording their first new material in 20 years!! Below playing Public Image and Rise in 2010!

Mininmalism #1

Minimalism , or laziness has been the order of the month for 2011, this being my second post despite various things happening and the run up to my birthday , but sometimes life gets in the way of things you plan to do . I still need to find a place that will hire me a reciprocal saw to dismember the tree that fell into my garden two weeks back. It's in manageable chunks , and the leaves have bee disposed of , but it needs chopping into fire friendly sized logs.

Some Winter Fuel!

The other thing is that I'd started this post based on some surprising facts about one of my favourite albums , but that will get it's separate post.

Also we've have Facebook's pointless revamp , making it almost unusable , crashing phone applications and stuff like that , making people very irate , not least of them me, I believe the iPhone app is well and truly shafted. Not a good "customer" experience.



I'm also getting more than a little bored with all these groupon clones , such as Voucher Cloud and LivinSocial. Both available from the Android App Store and LivingSocial insists I'm in Wolverhampton and won't let me change it , but is happy to send me offers from the USA and Eastern Europe. I'm all for saving money , but not when it costs me my time and sanity!!!

Oh and A Kindle has entered the domicile. And yes it is impressive but it's not mine, I'm happy with the reader on my Advent Vega!!

Give Me £50 - And I'll Let You Advertise My Product!

I have a problem , a good friend of mine bought me a £30 Fenwicks Voucher and I want to buy a denim jacket . Denim jackets are nowhere to be be seen , lots of winter jackets , Belstaff making a big comeback , but I just want a light jacket I can wear when its warm , then thought I maight get a paitr of jeans with G-STAR plastered all over them - £110!!

So I pay £110 and look like a human version of one of these taxis with Claims-4-U palstered all over them! In the sixties my uncled reckoned no on would be idiotic enough to wear T-Shirts advertising a product or brand. Now it seems it's almost mandatory!! Nike , Reebok , Levis , Paul Smith , Superdry , Tommy Hilfiger.

Everyone expressing their individuality by following like sheep , and paying for the privilege. In the mid seventies Don Revie  and Admiral sportswearcame up with the idea of squeezing more money out of Leeds fans by marketing replica shirts , now the biggest Premiership teams often have four kits a season , thats £200 if you want to keep up.

Personally I go for retro shirts , whicj means you buy what you want when you want , but it must be hell for parents keeping up with the kids wants.

It seems almost all we wear today has a brand that marks you out as a potential sales hoarding for the latest Nike , Prada ,Aramani or whatever. So I'm off to town to buy something , I wonder what!!

LED-ed

Bathroom Ceiling LEDs

A 3.5W LED

Just replaced my halogen light bulbs in the bathroom , for of them . Fitting the restraining clips was an absolute pain , but they use replaced my 50W halogens with 2 x 1W and 2 x 3.5 W LED ones so that should save a little more on the electricity bills, in theory.





Incidentally , wwhen I switched the bathroom lights on the energy usage went down!! Go work that one out!!

The other trouble is I'm insulated , using efficient stuff , and eventually I'm going to hit a wall where I can't do any more , in fact I feel I'm near that now. Except maybe get a wind turbine in the back garden!!

A Record Shop In Hexham!!

The Front of Gojo Records Hexham

A nice surprise today , decided to drive over to Hexham and was shocked to notice on the main drag a shop that appeared to be selling records. On closer examination discovered it was music and video rental as well , and had a small but excellent selection of CDs , good enough for me to purchase two of them , "Game Set and Match" by Nic Jones (they also had Penguin Eggs as do I) ,  and "Yan, Tan, Tehera Methera" by The Bad Shepherds!!

The Bag and the CDs

Enclosed are the photographs of the shop doorway and the bag and CDs I bought. Love the fact that they don't even have the area code on the phone number and they only take cash or cheques. Good to see that there are still shops selling music!

57 Channels and Nothing On ... Does It Matter?

It isn't all that long since we were looking forward to getting Channel 5 , in fact I remember the days before BBC2 (so you had BBC and ITV) . In the seventies we had four channels and Saturday nights were taken up with dross such as Seaside Special and 3-2-1 , featuring irritating presenters and forgettable acts.

The bitching all over the red tops this morning reminds me that nothing much has changed , we have Gary Barlow replacing Simon Cowell presiding over the latest batch of conveyor belt wannabes covering tried and tested standards until Christmas , when the X-Factor winners single takes it's rightful place at number one in the singles chart.

The BBC provide competion in the form of the totally fascinating National Lottery draw , which was OK when it was once a week , now it's about once a day!!

The thing is we now have hundreds of channels to choose from , admittedly most of them screening repeats , especially in the case of Skuy News that is on a 15 minute repeat loop , but the are diamonds to be found such as Sky Arts , BBC4 , BBC2 , Channel 4 , but most of the population on Saturday night are glued to X-Factor oor The National Lottery Draw , and I was thinking , this country could satisfy 95% of the population with two channels. It waould also give them something to complain about such as the repeats , and the use of the BBC License fee!!

It's Not Easy Being Green

I recently attended a "Green Champions" course courtesy of my employer , and a couple of things struck me. A lot of people are committed to going good to recycle , use renewable energy and implement changes that will benefit and sustain our life style.

A couple of scary facts were put forward such as the fact that we have less than fifty years of oil left , and slightly longer with coal and gas . While that's enough to see out most of us , the edge is drawing closer. Steven Tyler , Mick Jagger look alike and lead singer with Aerosmith , made a pertinent quote about life which applies the same to our fossil fuell resourses , "Life is like a toilet roll , the closer you get to the end the faster it goes" !! , and that reminds me , one of their songs is perfectly titled for this situation , "Livin' On The Edge"



Anyway we can see that people and businesses will not embrace "Being Green" , unless it's convenient and financially viable!!

Personally , my own bit is the removal of all incandescent bulbs and the installation of an electricity monitor courtesy of my electricity provider.  This has decreased my electricity usage , although my home IT network is probably racking it up , the problem being if I want my music and film available 24/7 from anywhere in the house then the storage needs to be running 24/7 , though I think that solid state storage will help reduce this in the future , but at a cost.

I also do my bit recycling plastic and paper with my blue bin , and organics via the green bin. Paper either goes in my blue bin or is recycled into logs for my wood burning stove (see here).

I'm looking into the solar panels on the roof thing , which was part of my Green Pledge, but again , this is motivated out of a pereived benefit to me  , rather than being a "Green Champion" .  Still the result is the main thing and if I end up being moore energy efficient , then that is one more little action which makes the world a slightly better place , which can't be too bad.