Tuesday 27 June 2017

Forever


I have some contact lens fluid. A couple of weeks ago it was virtually finished so I bought some more. Each day I use it and each it seeps like it's going to run out, but doesn't, I feel that it's going to go on forever. It's funny how that happens with some things , you think they are finished but they keep going on (like a Take That record or Peter Jackson's take on Tolkein's The Return of The King)

I can't see an end to my medication (until I shuffle off my mortal coil), but my walking is helping a slight weight loss which in turn has allowed me to reduce my insulin intake by 30% (and that in turn will help me lose more weight) but I am still a massive 30Kg overweight and morbidly obese and I know if you asked me to carry 30Kg any distance I would know I had been carrying something.

Still enjoying Rob Young's Electric Eden and found a sort of sad coincidence that resulted in the gestation of two amazing albums, Fairport Convention's "Liege and Lief" and The Band's "Music From Big Pink". Fairport's album was the band's recovery after a horrific crash resulting in the death of drummer Martin Lamble, which affected the band but they spent a summer in a country retreat which gave us the album that was the flagship genesis of English Folk Rock.

The Band had been backing Bob Dylan who was involved in a serious motorcycle accident so the band retreated to a secluded pink house (hence the title to produce an album of seminal Americana by a band led by a Canadian).

However the song I am going to include is Roy Harper's "Forever" as that was the thought that inspired this post, and he is a major figure in English Folk Rock. Have a wonderful Tuesday everybody.

Sunday 25 June 2017

Where Did That Weekend Go?


It's ten o' clock Sunday Night and another weekend where I feel like I've done nothing when I should have done stuff. Friends have been at Glastonbury, and I've just been here. I watched some of the Glastonbury footage on TV.

On Saturday I hardly did much walking , a mere 7.5K steps so I feel incredibly lazy.... and it's work tomorrow.

But yesterday I mowed the lawn and cut back a tree in the garden (still need to dispose of that). I managed to get my recording stuff working using Audacity and my Digitech guitar processor. Then my old laptop died, so I had to kill it properly with a lump hammer before ordering a replacement and setting that up.

Today I did of 15K steps and am now 40K steps ahead of the game almost 2/3 complete on the Million Step Challenge, taking in some video from Cow Hill (where there a lot of Cows , and I could see the full extent of the Hoppings, so Instagram stuff here)

Then my catch up TV included "Lemmy", "American Gods", "Doctor Who", documentaries on Heavy Metal and David Bowie, "Ripper Street" and The Jo Cox "Last Leg Special" which was incredibly uplifting with even Tony Blair and David Cameron being OK ...

So all though I've been pretty anti social (as usual) I have actually done quite a lot this weekend. So maybe I am being a little hard on myself.

While I was walking today Half Man Half Biscuit's "Asparagus Next Left" came on and was followed by another song , which I though was them again, but was actually David Bowie's "Dancing Out In Space" from "The Next Day". Two great songs, so I'll include both of them.

Sleep well my friends

Friday 23 June 2017

Wooden Heresy


Reading Rob Young's "Electric Eden" I'm discovering a lot of interesting things.

Christian rituals apparently don't allow the use of wooden vessels as it is too close to the "pagan" rituals from which they were appropriated. Wood was seen as a vital living spiritual essential in pre Christian Britain. It provided fire , material for weapons, homes , utensils, and was alive and grew and was all around. Omnipresent ... remind you of anything?

Then it got on to human sacrifice, in early times the top dog / king / leader was sacrificed to the gods to ensure a good harvest. So being to leader of the tribe was not exactly a career move with a future. As time progressed slaves / captors were substituted (obviously someone didn't fancy being offed themselves) and when the Romans came human sacrifice was outlawed and animals replaced humans under the sacrificial knife.

Today this has become to Sunday Christian Ritual and Harvest Festival but it's roots are in the human sacrifice practiced by people who came up with the idea that killing the top dog might be beneficial to the community. While I'm not an advocate of extremes putting the Prime Minister out to pasture would be a great idea at the moment, but she's hardly an inspirational or even competent leader, the gods would not be happy with her.

And I suppose this is all leading up to talking about faith which can be very dangerous. Actions being based on arbitrary directions from an unproven source.

I have faith that the sun will rise, that a light will come on when I press a switch, that a letter will appear on my screen when I touch that letter on my keyboard, that my bus will turn up on time (sometimes), because I know there are mechanisms behind it that will cause it to happen. But as for God (well I follow him on Facebook and Instagram) but I have not seen any evidence of God's existence. God may exist but God's existence for me is decidedly unproven, but I am agnostic.

Anyway the song has to be George Michael's "Faith". It's Friday, the weekend is here, and Glastonbury is going to be all over the BBC this weekend and there are some good bands on, and you can watch them on your big telly.

Wednesday 21 June 2017

Six Hundred Thousand and Ice Cream at Closing Time


I passed that mark today on my Million Step Challenge, so I thought I would tell you. Given this morning deluge and thunderstorm I wasn't really expecting to get that much walking in, but I managed to walk all the way into work and post a couple of things on my instagram channel here.

I must say the colours on my Sony Xperia XA phone are sometimes a bit too ultra vivid, but sometimes the pictures and video are amazing. Generally it has been a cheap phone that is doing it's job, but still not up to my Samsung Note 4 (but that gave up the ghost), though I am tempted to go for a refurbished one maybe, but I shall see.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but I was looking at some posts from 2015 and was surprised how brief they were. I'm sure I mentioned this two posts ago, but I was wondering why I couldn't get a post done in ten minutes like I used to and obviously I must be writing more. I like to think that I write at least 250 words, and seem to remember that at school we had to write 100 word essays, but these days I would struggle to keep to 100 words (I think).

In work I do documentation and am a great fan of white space, as I believe it makes the document easier to ready, and therefore it's better for getting information across. I've read books recently that had small writing on densely packed pages and that would have put me off had I not really wanted to read the book (I'm thinking Tom Waits on Tom Waits) and that segues nicely int a song I heard on my ramblings this morning, somewhere in Arthur's Hill, I didn't recognise the voice at first, or in fact during the song. The music , phrasing were wonderful but I had to check and it was Tom Waits singing "Ice Cream Man" from Closing Time

Summer Solstice Discoveries, Rembetika and Surf Music


Today is the Summer Solstice and looking out the window it's raining and we have heavy thunder. I haven't seen any lightning yet, but that's just a matter of time, although the weather is saying it's going to be a hot and sunny day (in the south).

The radio and Facebook are full of the corpfest that is Glastonbury. I think that the Eavis family have done a great job and deserve their success, but so so many people go to Glastonbury because it's Glastonbury and the music seems irrelevant. They then start complaining if this year's Robbie Williams isn't headlining. It's almost like X-Factor, you know what to expect, and sometimes it may not be to your taste. This Friday Radiohead play the Pyramid Stage, a relic from the very first Glastonbury (in concept), and the BBC are broadcasting lots of acts. I've never been to Glastonbury and doubt I will ever go, but these days there are so many alternatives that I don't feel I am missing out.

Just seen my first lightning  followed by crashing thunder.

The main reason I am writing this post is because I was reading Electric Eden this morning and discovered something about "Misirlou". I'd always assumed it was a Greek folk song picked up by Dick Dale and "surfed up". Most peoples first contact to this piece was on the opening to Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction", Tarantino has a way of unearthing great records for his films, think of "Little Green Bag" by the George Baker Selection, Tarantino's inclusion in "Reservoir Dogs" moved it from Sunday afternoon Radio 2 to cool.


But the western gestation of "Misirlou" predates Dick Dale by some years. A guy called Steve Benbow was stationed in Egypt and taught himself guitar to fill his boring days. One of his favourite tunes was a Greek Rembetika song called "Misirlou" (which apparently means "Egyptian Girl". Rembetika is a particularly harsh Greek folk music form so was suited to Benbow's steel stringed acoustic.  I think Benbow recorded it and it was also recorded by Davy Graham as "Miserlou"(sic).

I couldn't find Benbow's recording but found a celebration concert by Peter Oliver.

Whether Dick Dale picked it up as a Greek folk piece or from Benbow's or Graham's recordings I don't know, but if you've read this you now know about it.

SP if you are going out north of Watford take your umbrella and waterproof gear or you may get quite wet. I'm not sure if I will hit my 11K steps today but I did make 15.5K yesterday and am 30K ahead of target.

Have a great day everyone.

Monday 19 June 2017

Monkey F


Yesterday evening I was looking for iced lollies in the local supermarket freezer and for a split second saw a sign the said "Monkey Kiev" or "Kiev Monkey", I looked again and it was Chicken Kiev, I couldn't see any sign of a monkey anywhere, unless you count me.

It got me thinking how many times our brain sees something that isn't there. This probably explains the majority of ghosts and UFOs but people are still adamant that such sightings are real, even though there is no concrete proof. I have had a few supernatural encounters, but everyone could explained logically. I've probably written about before but I'm not going to expand on it here, maybe later.

I am currently melting keeping cool by eating strawberry splits, but that can only last so long.

Anyway this is just a short post on mistakes, so we will sign off with Warren Zevon's "Monkey Wash Donkey Rinse". Sleep well my friends.

Dreaming of Arcadian Driftwood


Just woke up and showered (sorry if that brings unwholesome images to mind), and just had one of those dreams that sticks with you, well a bit of it did. Maybe it had something to do do with how I was feeling over the weekend and maybe done, but the bit that stood out was that I was driving at speed over a long bridge over a river (it may have been the Humber Bridge which I drove over in the eighties when contracting at Smith and Nephew in Hull). The problem was there were a lot of roadworks and in some parts the road was completely missing so you had to drive close to the sides to circumvent the gap or be fast enough to jump it. I did both.

The thing is, like most dreams this was totally impossible. If there were roadworks there would be speed limits and cameras, and you wouldn't have to jump gaps. I suppose that's a little like life, sometimes everything is not as straightforward as you expect it to be, but you generally get on with things and eventually things may settle down  and life can get back to normal. I'm not sure where I was going but I must have succeeded (I often do) and then I woke up.

I was look at some posts from a couple of years back and was surprised how short they were, often just a paragraph or even a sentence! I was sure that I could knock off a post in ten minutes a few years back (last night's was almost an hour of writing and this will be thirty minutes I would think).

I'm currently reading the excellent "Electric Eden" by Rob Young (with all it's mystical references to Arcadia and Albion and other places) and came across a situation that I've seen many times. Cecil Sharp and the English Folk Music Society documented folk music by going out in the field and writing it down.  Field recording technology had been around since the early 1900s and was being used by Alan Lomax to record "in situ" music in the USA which is now online somewhere at The Smithsonian. Bert Llloyd was the UK's answer to Lomax and started recording songs by the people singing the stuff now, not sanitised for mass public consumption. Up to this point there were only four recorded folk folk songs that had been captured, also industrial folk music had been completely ignored. Anyway I suggest you delve further if you are interestd, if you have this you have the whole internet at your disposal.

I've chosen "Acadian Driftwood" by The Band , just because the phrase came to mind and it's a lovely song to start the day with, and I always thought it was "Arcadian Driftwood", you learn something new every day. And yes this post took me more than half an hour to write. Have a good one everybody.