"In 78 Everyone Born In 45 will be 33⅓" was a very clever tagline for a Stiff Records compilation "A Bunch of Stiffs" . For those who need an explanation singles play at 45 rpm and LPs play at 33⅓ rpm and the album was a compilation of singles released in 1978. That got me thinking again about numbers and measures, how inconsistent they are in certain areas . Imperial weight you have 16 ounces to a pound , 14 pounds in a stone, a hundredweight is 8 stone (112 pounds) , then a ton is twenty hundredweight.
For vinyl playing speeds we have 16 (usually for spoken word), 33⅓ for long playing albums , 45 rpm for singles and 78 rpm for singles prior to the seven inch and made out of shellac rather than the more durable vinyl.
I know it's #33 but I am choosing "33⅓" by Jesus and Mary Chain because every time I get the chance to include one of my favourite bands I will take the opportunity, and it gives you more decent music to listen to.
Colin Hodgkinson has always been one of my favourite bass players, and I first heard his cover of Robert Johnson's"32-20 Blues" when I discovered Back Door in the seventies . They didn't have a guitarist but Hodgkinson's bass playing mad up for that. This is a live performance and he still has it, probably the first time I have seen a solo blues piece played on the bass. Most of Back Door's music was saxophone led underpinned by Hodgkinson's bass and are well worth checking out , they even covered "Dashing White Sergeant".
Anyway the weather outside looks grey and I have groceries to buy and friends to meet, so enjoy the rest of your Saturday my friends.
This is the first real cop out and there will be a few more before the end. It's 2 am and I have woken up with a horrible raspy dry cough, so what do I do? I make some milky hot chocolate and write a blog post. I normally post on a Friday but yesterday I was tired in the morning after going to see GOAT and Josefin Öhrn the night before which I will write up on Spoongig here and that should appear over the weekend.
Anyway the copy out is that I can't find a "31" song so the best I can do is "3 In 1" by Lee Perry and The Upsetters (or The Heptones according to the Amazon listing) and Dave Wright may point it out that this is a total cop out , but it's my blog, my sequence and my rules and I need to get back to bed. It's also an excuse to get Lee Perry in here so that's fine by me, I'm just glad I'm not reduced to X-Factor trash , although they tend to exclusively cover other people's stuff anyway so I would always have the original to fall back on.
Anyway enjoy this and by the time you read this I will probably be tucked up in bed. Have a great Saturday my wonderful friends.
Well this is just past the halfway point of #ALifeinNumbers and this is on of the prebooked slots with one of my favourite artists Tom Waits with "Sixteen Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six" or "16 Shells from a 30.6" from the wonderfully named "SwordfishTrombones". If ever you think that the USA is down the drain Tom Waits is one of those people who restore your faith in the artistic brilliance that has come out of the States.
I found this great live take from The Tube in 1985 , absolute genius.
Today is my friend Helen Morgan's birthday. Tomorrow is my friend Helen Morgan's birthday. I have two friends called Helen Morgan , one lives in Africa or New Zealand or somewhere, and one lives in Newcastle, their birthday's are one day apart.
Anyway I'll leave this as a short post, although Preston North End hammered Huddersfield last night so that's two of the top 4 dealt with , only Newcastle United (twice) and Norwich to deal with now and on paper we should be steamrollered. Dwight Gayle cost more than the whole Preston squad but we will see what the situation is in a fortnight.
Have a wonderful Thursday my friends, I am going to see GOAT tonight so going to have my mind blown. See you tomorrow.
What do you do when it's 3:19 am and you feel wide awake. I've had five hours sleep so I am not exactly sleep deprived, but really it's two hours before I need to get up and three and a half hours before I can get into work. Yesterday I was working on a problem and kept running into brick walls but by the time I shot everything down I had the answer and had discovered something I could do with our data warehouse system (actually more like a data garden shed system but that's another story) which isn't documented and may prove to be useless, but may also prove to be very useful.
It's great when you have days like that where you were looking for an answer and when you get it, you have several other pieces of beneficial information. That's what happens when you work in a supportive environment with great people, and most of my working life I've been able to do that. So I suppose one of the things keeping me awake is the fact that I can present these answers and move on to the next goal.
Anyway it's now 3:29 so it took me ten minutes to write those two paragraphs. I certainly didn't know what I was going to be writing about apart from the fact that it would be part of the #ALifeInNumbers sequence.
Last night Newcastle United went top fo the Championship, tonight Preston North End play Huddersfield who were top on Saturday morning , on Saturday we play Norwisch, followed by Newcastle in the EFL Cup, followed by Newcastle in the League so starting last Saturday (when we drew 2-2 with Brighton although Sky are insistent Brighton threw away a commanding 2-1 lead, conveniently forgetting Preston scored the first goal and were in the lead in the match for longer than Brighton were). I won't be surprised if we lose our next four matches, but I won't be surprised if we win them either. I'm not a pessimist and I do expect the unexpected from Preston, under Simon Grayson we have been promoted via the play offs for the first time ever, seen our first Wembley victory since 1938, won a playoff final by the highest margin ever, and in two playoff semi finals at Deepdale seen two of the greatest goals you will ever see period. And thanks to Youtube I can include them below.
It's now 3:41 am, so here's number 29 and what else but the wonderful "29 Palms" by Robert Plant. I've always loved this song and love Percy's solo work, and was amazed when a couple of years back he managed a double CD retrospective called "Sixty Six to Timbuktu" and that came out thirteen years ago in 2003 so he has not been idle since Led Zeppelin released their last album.
So it's now 3:52 so I'm going to go back to bed and get a few more hours sleep. Hopefully you will be reading this after a good nights sleep.
I must be feeling a bit better. I've updated Song of The Salesman and though about buying a VR headset which you can pick up for a few pounds these days , but I resisted for the time being.I also checked out Al Buco in Old Eldon Square for lunch and had a pizza and drink for a fiver, great atmosphere and great value.
Yesterday Chris Hawkins mentioned this sequence on 6Music saying that they had already done it from 1 to 100 and back, but "27" like "26" was chosen due to lack of other options. Most of these songs are from my own collection, and I have to say I am not averse to a bit of Biffy Clyro and "27" is rather good so that's why it gets it's place.
The only 6Music top 100 I can find is here their 100 Greatest hits worryingly topped by Coldplay's "Clocks" which I do admit is one of their finer moments but gets topped by their collaboration with the Buena Vista Social Club on "Rhythms Del Mundo".
The problem with any listing like this is that the further you get from the origin, the more sparse the pickings become. There are still a lot of great songs to come, some which you will be able to predict, some where you will accuse me of bending the rules (my rules incidentally) too far, but I have not and will not put up any song I wouldn't happily listen to.
