Big Brother

Something happened yesterday, I'm sure it was just coincidence, but it may have been something else. I had been listening to David Bowie's "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)" and "Ashes To Ashes" had been playing when I got on the bus, and descided to watch a TED talk about waste in the fashion industry (see the bottom of this post) and it was very illuminating. I finished the talk and resumed listening to the album andit started palying the song "Fashion". Now this follows "Ashes To Ashes" but I cannot be certain that that song had finished. It probably had but I can't help thinking of the phone apps that require access to everything on your phone for no apparent reason.

This is like when you look for something online, then the cookies allow whatever you've been looking for to influence the adverts that appear around the page. You will probably see it on this blog.

Then there are the devices like Alexa and Google Home which have the ability to record everything they hear (in sometimes misinterpreting what they hear). There was the murder case where the authorities asked for recordings to be made available (see here) and think about the implications of that.

The Fiona was telling me how her and a friend were talking about handbagswhen her friend said she was certain that our phones were actively listening to us as later her feed started including what they had been talking about.

While we complain about government and local authority intrusion it seems that we are happily surrendering our privacy to corporate entities that certainly don't have our best interests at heart, the just want our money or preferably to to put us in debt to them to creat a permanent subservience.

The thing is that gives me an idea for a story the opening line of which is "Could We?", which hopefully I will turn into a least a short story if I put my mind to it.

For me the natural accompanying song for this is the menacing "Big Brother" the real closer from David Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" . It's a rainy monday but have a good day.

Big Blue Ball

I am quite surprised that I have managed to hit my step target for February. 10K steps a day til the end of the month would see me well past the mark. There have been a few bitingly cold days where I have been forced to take the bus but most days I have passed the 12,250 mark that I set my self.

I picked out a Peter Gabriel collaboration album called Big Blue Ball that he recorded with numerous artists between 1991 and 1995 over three weeks at the Real World Studios and finally mixed and released in 2008.  The Wiki page is here.

I picked it up digitally when I subscribed the Emusic when they had an excellent subscription model. They are still going but their model became too corporate for me but I am glad they are still going.

The album opens with  "Whole Thing" with Peter Gabriel leading the voclals and closes with the title track, taking in middle eastern and celtic resonances on the songs and pieces. I left you with the titles song but they are all on youtube, but if you want to buy the album it's here. Further information is available on the official Real World site here

Below is the story (part one) if you want to investigate further.

Incidentally this post will take my blog post page views over 150K views in the eleven years I have been posting.

Swings and Roundabouts

The saying goes "what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts"  or something like that, though it never made any sense to me. I can possibly apply this to my walking. Some of the time I gained from taking redundancy in my last job is now swallowed up by walking.

So in theory I lose time by walking, although the reality is that when I walk I then can't do other things. I do at times consider using the Mobike bikes but then I think I would probably be quicker walking, and walking does give you the ultimate mobility freedom, but I fancy trying a Mobike, maybe in summer.

The other thing is that I use my phone to record my steps and then enables me to listen to music, so I am revisiting so many albums, and thanks to my Emopeak headphones I am hearing detail that I never noticed before like band banter on live albums.

One album I listened to was La Dusseldorf the eponymous debut album by Klaus Dinger's band that he formed after Neu! split around 1975. It features a lot of motorik beats (similar to Neu!) but is more commercial and less industrial. There is a Wiki page here.

I'm going to share the whole album with you so you can experience it , but you can but their stuff as well. Anyway I am tired now so time for bed. Sleep well.

Weatherbeaten

Yesterday was the first time this month I've done less than 10K steps (8.5K) and the simple reason for that was that the wind was so cold it felt like it was burning my face off. So I wimped out and jumped on a bus. It puzzles me how extreme cold effectively feels like extreme concentrated heat, it burns and it hurts. Yes you can put up with it but you do feel as though damage is going to be done to you, so in situations like that I always go for the definitely safer options. So yesterday I was definitely beaten by the weather.

Weatherbeaten sounds like an English Thousand Yard Stare title , they have a habit of running two words together, examples being "Wideshire", "Halfsize", "Comeuppance" and "Halfsize". So the y are the obvious choice for todays post and we will go with "Comeuppance".

There is quite a lot of their stuff available on Youtube and they were giving away their back catalogue digitally recently. I did a slideshow for "God's P45" which I've also included below , although I got a recent copyright notice for it, but that's Youtube for you.

Pancake Valentine

After Pancake Tuesday we now have Valentine's day which is just another commercial opportunity. Again it's a traditional thing where people exchange gifys and tokens. I was under the impression that Valentine cards were sent by secret admirers so you didn't know who the card or gift was from but greetings like "To Girlfriend / Boyfriend / Husband / Wife etc" sort of take the secret and mystery out of it and a Tesco £3 red rose hardly shows a great deal of thought.

I've always wondered who certain shops were targetting as they advertise their "cheap perfume from £1" or the like.  If the main criteria for buying a present is that it has to be cheap then I would be looking and making something or doing something that was free. This is not getting at people who can't afford things (and everybody should be able to afford things but Western Society is now built on keeping people poor so they can be sold credit and kept under the thumb by corporations on starvation wages), but less of my political ranting.

Here is the Wikipedia take on it and the first thing I think of on Valentine's Day is the "St Valentine's Day Massacre" EP by HeadGirl (Motorhead / Girlschool) named after the notorious event in Chicago in 1929 (you know the date) , so on the cold cold morning it has to be their cover of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates "Please Don't Touch".

Have a rather good day everyone and wrap up well.

Surprise Surprise

I often wander into to record shops and sometimes drop into HMV. It has improved since it went belly up but still seems to be selling to disparate a swathe of goods, but on Sunday I noticed a Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie album. It was a ridiculous £5.99 and so I bought it, knowing that the genius of Buckingham would guarantee some essential listening and while McVie is not part of my essential canon , this comprised a mjor part of the talent that was Fleetwood Mac.

I put it on and the first two songs are Buckingham killers. I've not looked at the songwriting chedits so correct me if I'm wrong but "Sleeping Round The Corner" has a to-die-for chorus, the songs like "Feel About You" and "Red Sun" confirmed that this indeed is an essential purchase, and they both still have it.

I'd said I was going to load some French music to listen to on my walks and one of those was "Camembert Electrique" by Gong , led by Daevid Allen an Australian ex-pat living in France along with Dider Malherbe (Bloomdido Bad-de-Gras), Gilli Smyth (Bambaloni Yoni) , Steve Hillage (Stevie Hillside Village) , Tim Blake and others. I bought it as a Virgin Reissue for 49p in my teens and loved it. Sometimes when you revisit albums from your youth they sometimes don't live up to the memories.

This sorted exploded in my head , a little introductory silliness before the killer riff of  "You Can't Kill Me"  the whole album lets the music melt into each other with spacey glissando guitars and incredibly complex tunes that grab your attention. "Mr Longshanks" seems like a silly throwaway but ther is major playing going on in that, then "Dynamite" and Celine" are enjoyable if challenging and laid back piences. "And You Tried So Hard" is another stand out.

Both these albums have taken a lot of my time ofver the past couple of days and they are both worth spending some time on.

I'll include a song from each one for you to enjoy.

Sleep well.

If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day

I've just noticed it's Pancake Day so what other record could I have as the lead than "If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day"  by Half Man Half Biscuit.  It is one of my many favourites of their songs from the excellent "Cammell Laird Social Club" album and obviously very appropriate.

I've never been a fan of pancakes, always a bit bland for me like butternut squash. You can use them for bulking things out but you always have to add something.

I'm glad to see that the cars aren't frozen up this morning so the walk into work should not be as cold as it has been.

Actually after the last post, I wanted to to mention another album I listened to yestereday, "Apocalypse Girl" by Jenny Hval. The album is as disturbing as the cover (click through on the title to see) and at times very explicit.  When I started I was thinking this is just talking over noise, but the more you listen, the more you grow into it, so on the second listen the noise that was "Kingsize" becomes the song or piece that is "Kingsize".

Soundwise this is a less accented Bjork but possibly more challenging. By the time I had listened to the album I had been won over so I will be exploring more of Jenny Hval. She is someone to be approached with an open mind but definitely rewarding.

OK now time to get off to work, and no pancakes for me today.