The Only Two Lou Reed Songs You Know

Still reading "David Bowie:A Life" by Dylan Jones and obviously Lou Reed features fairly heavily. I think Bowie produced his first two albums, the second of which was the very successful "Transformer" which always struck me for the male/female Reed representations on the back cover.

Lou Reed Transformed

Someone said that everybody only knows two Lou Reed songs:

• "Walk on the Wild Side" and
• "Perfect Day"

And they know the first for Herbie Flowers brilliant bassline that he got paid £30 for and managing to
get the line about "giving head" past the BBC censors, and the second for the Children in Need version that was released featuring everybody in the world.

As you know my memory is rubbish and I realised I didn't actually know many Lou Reed Songs myself despite having a lot of his albums. Apart from the two about these are the ones that I can think of (And I'm not including Velvet Underground songs which I am fine with), but I'm wondering do Lou Reed songs not stick with you ? Here's the ones I can remeber:

• "Satellite of Love"
• "I Love You Suzanne"
• "Vicious" (probably my favourite)
• "Christmas in February" (I think)

And that's about it. "Berlin" I think had a title track and "Metal Machine Music" was just Part 1 - 4 (a contractual obligation album of beeps which I was surprised RCA released.

So How many Lou Reed songs do you know. I'm going to include the back cover of  "Transformer" so now I can see some of the songs I've forgotten, and I think I know wht I forgot some of them.

Anyway it's Friday, the weekend is here, so have a great day.

Books To Read

I've been finding it difficult to keep up with the walking, basically due to personal laziness. The thing is the last couple of days I've done more than my required steps to keep my rolling three month million steps going and keep thing am I obsessed or am I focussed and is there a difference. The thing is I know it benefits me physically so I know I have to keep doing it, and I will keep doing it as long as the weather is reasonable , and if it's not I will find another way of keeping up. I have Fenham Community Pool less than ten minutes walk away.

It's funny , while I am not an avaricious reader , I am reasonably well read. I am proud to have passed that on to both my daughters, Kirsty is always reading and recommends some good stuff and Juliet had read "Lord of The Rings" by the time she was 8. Her teacher at her new school didn't believe her so gave her a grilling, and she answered every question he asked. He was well impressed. It's a book I have a few copies of and have read about five times even though it consists of six different books, and often released as three separate books. I was introduced to Tolkein at secondary school and "The Hobbit" was one of the first books we had to read and most of the class loved it. A great introduction and great preparation for "Lord of The Rings".

My favourite book of all time is Clive Barker's "Imajica" , incidentally another book that is often split into three separate volumes. I love it, it has everything you could want from a twisted fantasist spanning five dimensions with magic , horror and lots more.

There are two books that everyone is assumed to have read and be familiar with that I have not touched. They are:

• "Catcher In The Rye" by JD Salinger and
• "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac

It's something I am going to do something about before the end of the year. I am currently reading "David Bowie: A Life" by Dylan Jones which is essentially a chonological compilation of interview snippets, but still interesting to get an idea of Bowie, although the number of people who come on the when appeared doing "Starman" on Top of The Pops their life changed and nothing would ever be the same again seems a bit far fetched to me. Yes Bowie was innovative but he was also a magpie and loved attention, and this got it in spades.

It can't happen again because at the time most of the population watched Top of The Pops religiously, now we have the internet, and so many ways of communication and finding an sharing information that were not available at the time.

Incidentally at my second ever gig somewhere in Ingol someone asked us to play it, and though I'd never played it before we managed to do it!! 

A lot of people these days can barely listen to two minutes of a song.

So it's obvious what I will leave you with isn't it.....

For Openers

In my last post I wrote how a rubbish opening song ("Dr Music") can seem to ruin an album ("Mirrors" by The Blue Oyster Cult). The album is actually quite good but that is the opener and it is just generic tripe rock so you expect more of the same, luckily that's not what you get.

Today I listened to "A Grounding In Numbers" by Van Der Graaf Generator and that doesn't have a great opener, but neither is it bad, "Your Time Starts Now" sets the mood for the album which at times is overly complicated and contrived but that's just VDGG, and it contains a lot of brilliant sections and sequences., but the main point is that the opening track sets the scene and mood and you are happy to go along with the flow.

The Blue Oyster Cult's "Cultosaurus Erectus" is another case in point. It opens with another Michael Moorcock collaboration , the stunning "Black Blade" and while the rest of the album cannot live up to that scorching six minutes of mystic guitar and sequencer magic, you are still on a high from being hit by that opener. The amazing cover of the giant fossilised dinosaur and  the tiny spaceship also helps to set the mood.

This morning I started on Pink Floyd's  "A Saucerful of Secrets" which opens with a basic fast bass riff easternised by string bending by Roger Waters before lapsing into a more sedate almost pedestrian three note bass sequence (borrowed by Argent for "Hold Your Head Up"), but again you are hooked. I will write more when I finish listening again but it is a wonderful album.

So I will leave you with "Black Blade" m, before watching a little catch up TV. Enjoy my friends.

One Song

This was to be about how sometimes an album is worth buying just for one song. Today I listened to that album which opens with a turgid plodding rocker called "Dr Music"and then next is the song that that made me buy the album.

The song was the first collaboration between Blue Oyster Cult and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock based on his book "The Winds of Limbo". The song is "The Great Sun Jester" and is a mix of perfect dynamics, a swirling maelstrom of guitar and keyboard arpeggios and lyrics that stay true to the book. In my opinion as close to perfection as you can get.

Remember this is in the days of vinyl where skipping tracks was awkward.

But listening to the album "Mirrors" , the following track , "In Thee" is not bad and the title track is also good. "Moon Crazy" is more than acceptable and "The Vigil" and "I Am The Storm" are good but not classic. "You're Not the One (I Was Looking For)" a less vicious take on "I Am the One You Warned Me Of"from their absolute masterpiece "Imaginos", and "Lonely Teardrops" complete the album.

So really one I'm saying now is that one song can singlehandedly destroy and album. Trim "Dr Music" and you have a good album with an absolutely amazing opener. That's what I will treat you to and theis night of Friday the 13th........

..... and everything is Hunky Dory

The wind is blowing outside and it's dark outside, but it's Friday and the weekend is almost upon us. Last night I sampled the Vegan delights of Grumpy Panda a Vegan American Diner in Gateshead, possibly the only independent eaterie in the center of Gateshead. It's competition is a Nandos and the Wetherspoons pub The Tilley Stone , althe The Doll At The Black Bull also does excellent food, and that is abrilliant music venue where I was at last night watching the wonderful Liquer, a brilliant Cure tribute band (dee review here)

Anyway yesterday's album on my perambulations was David Bowie's "Hunky Dory". From when it was released, the cover of this albym put me (and may other people) off, Bowie's grainy face and yellow hair in a reclining posture, but close up just put me off.

The album is just jam packed with stunning songs, hit singles, and the only two that don't do it for me are "Eight Line Poem" and "Song For Bob Dylan" and they are just silver among the gold. The three chord attack of "Queen Bitch" which I heard played often at discos was the "B" side of "Rebel Rebel" (what a pairing)m "Quicksand"'s amazing imagery always captured, again a "B" side of "Rock and Roll Suicide". The you have "Kooks", "Changes", "Life on Mars" the list goes one, if you haven't got a copy then you should have one. The album closes with "The Bewlay Brothers" another lyrical adventure culminating in an Anthony Newley-esque descent into hel coda.

Anyway it's getting lighter outside, time to brave the weather and set off for work. Have an amazing weekend my friends. Mine started last night.

Dark Mornings

I always try to be positive, but can't get away from the relentlessness of nature, this time the fact that as summer fades it's darker and colder in the morning. The good thing is that the light usually eventually comes but it brings with it more instances of the aptly named TLA, SAD. My only worry about this is that it may affect my target to keep up my rolling three month million steps following completing the Million Step Challenge, which I have to thank Fiona for getting me into (with first the 15K challenge then pointing out the Million Step Challenge) as it has improved my diabetic situation no end, so even for that one fact it is essential that I keep doing it.

As I have said I don't do regimented stuff, but walking gives me the opportunity to dynamilcally change what I do while still benefitting from actually doing the exercise to benfit myself however slightly. The problem is if it's dark , cold , windy and raining it might get a bit difficult, although since I started this I have only had one day where I have walked less than 3K. Apparently the average person walks about 5K steps a day , so that means a lot of people do a lot less than that as I do 11-12K a day, and a friends of mine over the last year has been averaging 30K a day (my most ever is about 24K).

As I've said before I cannot recommend Pacer highly enough to track my steps, which since I installed it has not had any problems.

Anyway tonight I am going to see Nadine Shah at The Sage, am tempted by a Cure tribute (Liquer) at The Doll at The Black Bull on Thursday and am going to see Nick Helm at The Stand on Saturday courtesy of my great friend Jon Raine.

It's still dark, but time to set off for work, so will leave you with "Seven and Seven Is" by Love, a raucous slice of garage punk (maybe not what you would expect from Love) which just came on the 6Music now, and I thought I know that that song , but what the hell is it. Now I know.

Running Out - Power and Signals

 Was just thinking habout how reliant we are becoming on mobile devices and how companies are pushing us to become more reliant on mobile devices. We can use them to pay for things, watch things , communicate in a number of ways but they are reliant on two things, power and a decent signal. So you may have your phone phone and think you can use it as your bus ticket, pay for your overpriced coffee or whatever but if the battery runs out then that's you stuck. Similarly of the signal drops then you may be stuck again although some apps provide on device data.

I use my Sony Xperia XA for recording my walking and yesterday went out without it. Incidentally the Pacer software since I installed it has only possibly failed to record properly one, and that may have been my fault, so I am well impressed by it's reliability.  This was one of the few times I have returned to get hold of my phone , mainly because I wasn't sure if I'd left it in the house or actually lost it. I piced it up and the power was on 12% . By the time I got to my destination it was still going on 2% power but must have switched off soon after. I didn't have a back up power pack and although I have one power cable which I could have used to recharge it on the bus, it was in another jacket.

Sometimes a pen and paper is actually better, and although I have the Kindle app on my phone and an actual Kindle Fire they are still dependent on power and signals.

I'm not sure what the answers are to these first world problems, unless someone makes distributed power a reality. Imageine how cool it would be if power was as distributable as a radio , tv or mobile signal. We would truly be a wireless society then although even more vulnerable to losing the source of keeping us up and running.

This could possibly be even extended to replacement body parts, imagine a heart running on distributed power. but I am really flying off  into the outer reaches of science fiction here and I am no Brian Aldiss, and I was introduced to the concept of distributed power by another of my favourite authors F Paul Wilson. I think it was Legacies. one of the excellent Repairman Jack series.

Anyway it's Sunday and I need to relax , so it has to be "The Power" by Snap. Have a good day everybody.