Extremes

Yesterday while I was out and about I noticed how many places you can charge your device now, although I wouldn't be too happy about leaving an iPhone X at a charging station in Eldon Square, although they probably don't have Apple's latest non standard connector so that situation is probably a non starter. The iPhone X is probably the first extreme on this post costing above a thousand pounds. Most buses and trains also have a pluf for charging as well, although I find amausing how many places still have Wifi without internet access or demand you agree to terms and conditions every time you sign in . They already know who you are so whay do you have to keep agreeing? It's like Apple's Terms and Conditioons.

Today I  connected up my OVO Smart Meter to mi Wifi so I can now see how much I'm using at any time. It does save me submitting readings but I am a bit wary of how the data will be used by them, also it's a daily remeinder of how much things are costing.

Anyway yesterday I was listening to "Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine" by the Cosmic Rough Riders which is still a brilliant listen which opens with four absolute standout songs. One of them however is a pure evil control scenario which has an awesome tune but worrying lyrics about control, which follows on from The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and Peter Hammil's "I Will Find You" and you may be able to surmise the scenario from the title "The Gun Isn't Loaded". The protagonist controls the victim because they do not have the full picture, and how many times to we see that in everyday life. The  lyrics make feel uncorfortable but I have to listen because the music is so wonderful.

It's not a bad lyrics scenario like Rush or Abba sometimes hit , Abba having the excuse of being Swedish , and Rush are Canadian , but bothe produce some amazing music sometimes let down by lyrical ineptitude but that's something for another post.

One of the other standouts on "Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine" is "Glastonbury Revisited" probably my favourite song about Glastonbury, and it is lyrically to polar opposite of "The Gun Isn't Loaded", full of hope , love and inclusivity. I've had the CD for close on twenty years and still still sounds as good today as when I first heard it.

I'll include the two songs from the album which are extremes in the lyrical sense, and I will soon be taking myself off to see Jerry Sadowitz for the first time ever, which I suppose is another extreme.

Enjoy your Thursday night.

Lyrical Logic

Yesterday I really didn't want to get up. I feel the same today, I would love to lie in but at 6:30 AM I am showered, dressed, taken drugs and writing this, so normality is resumed, sort of. Last week I didn't do much listening to music but on my walk to work yesterday I was listening to Pink Floyd's "Meddle" and was struck by how sometimes the sound of lyrics is more important than logical analysis of them.

A prime example of this is Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak". The opening couplet is:

"Tonight there's going a jailbreak

Somewhere in this town"

Well the clue is right in front of your eyes, it's highly likely to be at the prison / jail. Still a brilliant song though.

One track on "Meddle" , "Fearless" has a similar construct:

"You say the hill's to steep to climb

 Try Me .......

You choose the place and I'll choose the time"

But again a wonderful song managing to incorporate the Liverpool Kop singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" so I am fine with the odd bit of lyrical non logic.

"Meddle" is probably the album that made Pink Floyd my favourite band as a teenager, and contans my favourite Pink Floyd song "Echoes" which took up the whole of ide two and is twenty two minutes long and was used for an amazing surfing sequence in the film "Crystal Voyager", a perfect combination of music and visuals and when the coda comes you really just want it to start again, for me it's that addictive still.

The album opens with "One of Thes Days (I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces)", which comes in quietly on a breeze before going into a five minute two chord instrumental assault. "A Pillow of Winds" gives respite before the gorgeous "Fearless" described above.

"San Tropez" and "Seamus" wind the side down before the wonderful "Echoes on side two. You can tell I still love this album.

Anyway it's time for another walk into work. Have a brilliant Tuesday everybody and I will leave you with the "Crystal Voyager" "Echoes" seqience and "Fearless". If you have time watch both.

Awake

It's 30 minutes past midnight and I'm sort of wide awake, Part of me wants to sleep and part of me wants to do things. It's not really practical leaving the house or getting the guitar set up, and I don't really want to watch TV (having caught up a bit on American Horror Story and The Walking Dead) so I thought well maybe I will just put something don in the blog.

The wek in Orton I had plans to record stuff and possibly write stuff but ended up doing what I was supposed to do , relax, rest , see my dad, catch up on some TV (the excellent "Deadwood" , well series one) and do a bit of walking and enjoy the countryside around Orton. The cottage is quiet and relaxing and still doesn't habe Wifi although most local pub such as The George , The King's Head and The Black Swan do , but I still managed to trash my data, but that's part of what you do when you are away.

Anyway I am back now and have written a few words, and hopefully it will have moved my mind a bit closer to being able to sleep. I hope to be going to the Tyneside Cinema later today to see  "The Death of Stalin" which should be great fun.

I leave you with a cracking version of "In The Midnight Hour" by Wilson Pickett with Bruce Springsteen, but I'm not sure you can buy this version, but thanks to Youtube you can listen to it.

Sleep well my friends , and I hope my my mind will rest for a few hours now.

Sixteen Miles an Hour

Yesterday we took a trip to Ambleside from Orton. Checking on Google Maps the distance is sixteen miles, but the actual distance is further but due to hills and lakes in between the route is a little more circuitous than the direct sixteen miles and takes closer to an hour to navigate.

It’s not a difficult journey but the sixteen miles does stick in your mind as you drive down the M6 waiting for the turn off to hit the south end of Lake Windermere. While in Ambleside we tried the vegetarian Italian Restaurant, Zeffirelli’s and Fellini’s also home to a cinema.

We spoke with a couple and the man said he’d been eating there for twenty years and it had taken him five years to realise that the restaurant was vegetarian.

Today is the first of November and another start for my step challenge. Quite surprisingly I’ve managed to hit 11K today so that’s a good start although I should have hit 11.5K but a 500 step deficit is hardly insurmountable.

Anyway the data on my Google Pixel seems to me draining and a rapid rate. I’m not too sure why although the tethering has used 2 Gb so it’s probably Windows that decided to do an update, so I may have to buy a data add on, but at least EE have created a few more sensible add ons so it won’t cost a huge amount if I need to buy some extra.

Anyway it’s time for bed, so I will leave you with “Let’s Eat” by Nick Lowe. Sleep well.

Walk This Way

I’ve been walking on a daily basis since March when Fiona got me on the 5000-15000 steps in two weeks challenge. Since then I have been walking an average of 11K steps a day, which has resulted in a little weight loss and a vastly decreased insulin requirement.  Last time I was in Orton I decided I wanted to find The Gamelands Stone Circle, and despite missing it I finally found it.  

At the time I only walked if I wanted to go somewhere. Now I feel that the most important thing is to actually walk a distance whether or not I have a target. So on a daily basis I usually walk to work or into town or a pub, and although there are times when I am tempted to get the bus because I am feeling too tired, I usually force myself to walk a bit further.

On this holiday each day I have been a few thousand short but then thought I could just nip out for a walk round the village and hit my target. While in October I have had days when I have not hit my step target, I have made up the steps in subsequent days and I need to do 14K steps over the next two days to make 340K for October and keep up my rolling three month million step total.

This holiday has had a couple of setbacks , firstly running out of needles for my insulin, spending two hours  trying to get  someone to give me some and everyone having a reason to deny me them, before remembering I could buy them, so I could have saved myself two hours there but all worked out ok.

Then we  had a slow puncture on the hire car, but Enterprise sorted me out with that so all was good again.

The song is obvious “Walk This Way” by Big Red and the Grinners. I don’t know if it’s available commercial but enjoy anyway. Have a great Monday everybody.

Pixelgouster

I just got a new phone, a Google Pixel. Getting a new phone is a bit like jumping off a metaphorical cliff, there's no going back but it's easy to do. I got it as my daughter Kirsty has one and loves it and as Android is Google then you don't get the make or networks rubbish that they install and you can't get rid of...and it looks wonderful out of the box.... but then you start hitting annoyances.

First it uses the bigger USB "C" cable so all the cables I have suddenly become redundant for me , though I need them to charge my bluetooth headphones. Next it doesn't take and expansion card, so I'm stuck with the 32 Gb storage, though my first computer had 3K of memory and my first hard disk had 10 Mb capacity so it's still a lot.

Today the Pacer software, that I use to track my steps, stopped dead. I installed Google Fit which is working fine but Pacer is dead. You have to wonder if Google have something that inhibits rival software, Pacer was fine on the Sony.

Photos are stored in the Cloud , so that will use your data allowance if you aren't on Wifi.

This may sound like I dislike my new phone, I reckon by next week I will be completely won over. It charges quickly, does all the stuff you need to do and I installed music playing software called Vinylage Music Player as Play Music seems to only want a subscription service. Vinylage Music Player makes your digital songs sound like they are on vinyl and I though for a first play I would have David Bowie's "Gouster", ironic because it was never released that I know of and certainly not on vinyl.

It appeared as part of a Bowie box set "Who Can I Be Now" but is still not available standalone. The word "Gouster" appears in "John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)" the album's opener and to Bowie it meant attitude, it's source is from the Latin gustō. Compare Spanish gustar and Italian gustare. Tony Visconti said:

"Gouster was a word unfamiliar to me, but David knew it as a type of dress code worn by African-American teens in the Sixties in Chicago," Visconti explains in the excerpt. "But in the context of the album its meaning was attitude, an attitude of pride and hipness."

"Gouster" was an alternate "Young Americans" and is an excellent soul album. Listening to it, I don't know if it's the software or the phone, but the sound is gorgeous and rich (even with the built in vinyl scratch sounds). I leave your with "Somebody Up There Likes Me" from "Young Americans" and "Gouster", now to chose my music for tomorrow's walk into work.

Happy Trails ....

Still on the Dylan Jones "David Bowie: A Life" and it seems a lot of the articles are about the (insert your superlative here) sex they had with Bowie, although this is like the red top sensationalism, there is zero expansion. If something is fantastic or amazing you say why it is so. I write about things that catch my eye or imagination , but I don't write "I had a fantastic walk to work" or "I saw an amazing band last night" and leave it at that. The only slight expansion is the Angie Bowie / John Bindon / Pricess Margaret situation where obviously something was afoot in the members club.

One amusing interlude is when Bowie invited Glenn Hughes (then with Deep Purple) up to his room. Basically Bowie kissed Glenn but that was definitely not Glenn's taste.

Then we had the really interesting encounter with Amanda Lear. Bowie had seen her on the cover of Roxy Music's "For Your Pleasure" clad in leather and was disappointed with her look when she arrived. But they chatted ad she became aware of holes in his eductation and introduced him to Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" . Now that is interesting, as the look of "Metropolis" influenced Bowie possibly directing him towards his Berlin period.

Amanda, Bryan and a Cat

Quicksilver

Yesterday I listened to "Happy Trails" by Quicksilver Messenger Service. When I first saw the cover I couldn't make out whether the guy was riding toward you or away from you. It was years before I finally got the album and realised he was riding toward the artist.

The album basically consists of three extended workouts and two short songs including the throwaway coda of the title track.

Side one is an extended workout of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" which starts out well but loses it's way losing the threat of the original in some saccharin west coast vocalising.

I walk 47 miles of barbed wire

I use a cobra snake for a necktie

I got a brand new house on the roadside

Made from rattlesnake hide

I got a brand new chimney made on top

Made out of a human skull

Now come on take a walk with me Arlene

And tell me who do you love?

Tombstone hand

And a graveyard mine

Just 22

And I don't mind dying

It's still worth a listen, but is rescued by the introduction of "Mona" another Bo Diddley song which lasts for seven minutes and this one does not let up.  "Calvary" is a psychedelic spaghetti western theme and these three pieces make the album essential listening.

Anyway it's time to get out on the road, so enjoy your Tuesday everybody.