Friday 17 August 2018

Friday Night


"Blackness Within Blackness
Shadows Within Shadows
Darkness Within Darkness
Hidden and Sightless
This is Life For Some ......."

I'm not sure what brought that on, reading "The Fourteenth Letter" may have done it.

It's Friday night and I am ready for the final episode of "Timewasters" the rather excellent spiky, jazzy, time travel comedy with class lines, lots of laughs taking on institutionalised racism and sexism with more than a little good music.

I think they have been influenced by Post Modern Jukebox but the comedy quality an dthe music is totally spot on, so I'll include a clip from the series and  a take on Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" by PMJ , ironically returning almost to the Stevie Wonder original ("Past Time Paradise" from "Songs In The Key Of Life").

Finding Timewasters is a little difficult but there may be a legal option here.

So I suggest you sample all of these musical and visual treats, you will feel much improved by them.

Sleep well.

Friday Morning


I was thinking August would be difficult to keep up my steps because of my Liver Biopsy at the start of the month, but surprisingly that's not actually been an issue hitting 20K steps on a couple of days and sitting with a 30K step surplus and close of play yesterday.

I was also thinking that #August50 was an impossible target but after this post I only need to post 18 more entries before the end of the month and we still have two weeks to go, so that's nine posts in each of the next two weeks which is more than doable (is that a word? and how many times have I asked that question).

The problem with doing an hour's walk it that it takes an hour of your time and  to hit my 11K a day that does take two hours and i often think that could be better spent doing someting else.

On my walk to work I am always looking for photo opportunities and vary my routes, but always in the direction of work (essentially Newcastle City Centre) from home. I seldom deviate from this direction except when I have to pick someting up from the Post Office, and to be quite honest I prefer traversing parkland to urban areas.

Walking is a simple form of exercise and anyone can do it and make it interesting. I always found gyms soul destroying but others swear by them, but it's different strokes for different folks.

Today on my walk in I kept with Mike Nesmith and listened to "Tropical Campfires" for the first time, and though it covers some standards such as "Brazil" and "Begin the Beguine" more than adequately the original stuff is excellent, I particularly liked the instrumental "One". Specific late period Mike Nesmith songs are difficult to find on Youtube (ie they are not there) but I found this full concert from 2012 at Union Chapel for your enjoyment, which includes a few songs from "The Prison"

While it is grey , it is Friday and we have a wonderful weekend to look forawd to. Enjoy




Aretha IS Aretha


It was sad  that we lost Aretha and I've seen lots of "RIP" Aretha posts on Facebook, and people suddenly people doing the Facebook sadness as though Aretha were a close family member. It was the same with David Bowie, George Michael, Freddie Mercury and Lemmy and any artist you can think of.

All of a sudden their artistic output is halted.

Thanks to human brilliance and science and things like Facebook ,we can share our memories and listen to Aretha's sing and even watch her perform anywhere we are on our phones, tablets and computers.

I shared her Blues Brothers sequence singing "Think" which summed up  a small part of her brilliance, but she had a brilliant range of singing styles.

I feel for her family, and they will be grieving quite rightly, but her fans should be celebrating what she has done for them ,and enjoy the music she made because all of it made you feel uplifted and feel better. That's what music does for you and and song featuring Aretha will make you feel good.

I will leave you with her collaboration with George Michael, the appropriately titled "I Knew You Were Waiting For Me" .

Have a great Friday and enjoy some of Aretha's music. Remember the wealth of great music she has given us.

Thursday 16 August 2018

Reading The Garden


Tonight when I got home, I decided to read and listen to Mike Nesmith's "The Garden". It's surreal and follows on from The Prison, The narrative is fairly simple and the story can be read as you listen to the album. The narrative is split into chapters that take as their influes seven paintings by Monet:

  1. The Artist's Garden of Giverny (1900)
  2. A Bend in the Epte River, Near Giverny (1888)
  3. Vertheuil in Summertime (1879)
  4. Valley of the Petite Creuse (1889)
  5. Poppy Field in a Hollow Near Giverny (1885)
  6. Wisteria (1920)
  7. Waterlilies and Japanese Bridge (1899)
The album clocks in at 55 minutes but it does seem to pass more quickly than that, or it seemed to for me. The Wiki page is here.

While you don't have to have read "The Prison" itis referred to many times in "The Garden" and it does help if you have experienced "The Prison" fully.

I enjoyed both, though I don't feel I have to reread either but can still enjoy the excellent music.

There isn't too much from either album on youtube so I have included the opener from "The Prison" to give you a taste.

Link Past Geek Talent


I often get requests from people to add me to their networks on Linked In and I usually add them no problem, mostly they are recruitment wallahs , but today took the opportunity to trawl though my network list and cull cetrain people, mainly people who didn't have a photo or who have crossed me since we linked up.

The big surprise was the number of people who I had just forgotten about, and the surprising titles of some who I actually have friendships with and respect for.

I remeber after my redundancy at EE that I was really happy about (though not how they were after) I spent a couple of months with Geek Talent who had a brilliant recruitment concept that used social media connections including Linked In to create relationships between you and recruitment targets They've come a long way since then and were using a lot of software which I found impressive but felt I was swimming the deep end, but the people I worked with knew their stuff and could translate any ideas or notions that I had into something that was actually useful. Their site is worh a visit to find out more about the.

Rather than a music video I've included a video about Geek Talent featuring among others my friends Dominic (the MD) and Keith.

It is surprising how a Linked In request sent me off on a tangent to write this post.



First Visit To The Garden


A while ago I bought "The Prison" a book and album that should be read an litened to together. I read and listened on the train journey to Edinburgh and was quite surprised that I finsihed the book as the last piece of music finished and we rolled into Edinburgh.

I bought the follow up, "This Garden" but as yet haven't done the read / listen thing. On my walk to work this morning I thought it may be nice to listen to the (largely) instrumental album and it was particularly appropriate on my walk through parts of Nunsmoor (some pictures here), although my headphone power ran out halfway through the penultimate piece "Wisteria".

I may actually try to read the book tonight just to see what the experience is like. While Mike Nesmith is a far better songwriter than book writer, it is a engaging concept , and as I have mentioned previously done particularly well withe Camel's take on Paul Gallico's "Snow Goose". I would encourage you to try all three of these, each one will only take you around forty minutes and will definitely treat you to a new concept of enhancing your reading.

We have a lot of cloud, but some blue sky. Enjoy your Thursday.


Let Forever Be


Finally finished "How To Stop Time" an easy / hard read but with an upbeat ending so happy about that, and now I've started on "The Fouteenth Letter" by Claire Evans. It doesn't look like the sort of thing that I normally read but has started very well and I shall inform you how it progresses. I have started other books and films that have an explosive start and then you spend ages waithing for something to happen and nothing ever does. YOu do need something to keep your attention, and the Matt Haig book certainly does that.

I don't know if it's me or my computer or my ISP but everything seems to be getting much slower, possibly due to the number of adverts, and the number of security bits that then they try to bypass. I don't want to stay logged in to most sites, especially not Paypal or Facebook, and I don't want Firefox or Chrome to remember my passwords either.

I've just listed some more CDs on Discogs as I need to make some more space and I do have digital copies of most of my CDs. I've just list a lot of Paul Weller if he's your thing. On the one hand it's difficult getting rid of stuff but you have to think if you are not going to play them again then someone else may have them.

It's the same with books and DVDs, if you are not going to use then make room, space is good.

The stuff I don't think will sell quickly are dropped in to Charity shops, mainly the Westgate Ark shop round the corner from me.

So another day like many other days, skies are grey ,but yesterday I sorted a couple of major work things, then came home and watched an episode of Gotham and Black Sails before retiring to bed. Bruce Wayne's car is getting more and more Batmobile like every week.

I have some web updates to do for Bob Armstrong and Woodlands Plants and at Art exhibition Ivelina Goverdovskaya: "Work in Progress" at Arch 16 to attend tonight so not a lazy day today.

For some reason (maybe talking about art) the excellent Michel Gondry video for The Chemical Brothers "Let Forever Be" came to mind, so I'll sign off with that.