Goodbye 2018 Hello 2019

Yes it's still New Year's Eve and I have been pondering the decline in visits since the end of October. Up to then I would get 30-50 hits for each post now it's 14-20 for each post with no apparent reason for the decline. However the real oddity is that the overall number of visits is staying at around 2m200 a month , that's roughly 520 a week or 70 a day, and given that I post maybe five times a week that implies more hits than I am getting.

The conclusion that I'm drawing is that Google visit logging is slightly disfunctional. The overal stats show that my most visited page is here with 879 visits (this figure keeps declining) however when I check the individual page it's had 1,899 visits when this one here shows as my second most visited with 679 visits but checking the page it's actually hit 2,114 visits. So really I need to take this fall with a rather big pinch of salt.

So although this is just about blog statistics, it is another excuse to share some rather excellent music with you though I'm not sure what that should be.

One thing with technology is that you don't had the problem of dating your cheques any more, I don't know why that flashed into my mind.

Everyone is posting various New Year Greetings on Social Media and out enjoying parties, and I binge watched Killing Eve, which was a very good way to spend New Year's Eve.

The weather has still been grey and uninspiring so we won't go into 2019 with a flurry of snow, but no doubt there will be noise and fireworks, so maybe I will choose "Fireworks"  by Siouxsie & the Banshees as my 2018 play out song, Happy New Year All.

Possibly Last Post Quiet

Walking to work this morning was very quiet, almost deathly silent. I wasn't sure whether there were any buses running until I hit the third bus stop and there were people waiting and then a bus went in the other direction.

It is New Year's Eve so most people will be getting ready for parties and socia;lising and joining together, but through laziness and apathy I wont be. I find a lot of gathering become very cliquey and if you are not in with a group of people then you get the worst kind of loneliness , the one of being the outsider in a crowd of revellers.

There are times where you just want to be alone and I wouldn't expect anyone to be bothered on my behalf because it's my choice to stay away.

This also gives me a chance to catch up on films and TV and to read and to record things on this here blog although I think there are maybe half a dozen people who read it now, but even when the vistor numbers flatline I will keep on writing because essentially this is for me and it is under my control.

There is also a chance I will do a last last post before midnight hits and then we start of 2019, which is another year of opportunity for some, and hopefully we can become a more caring society.

We have seen HMV going under again and find it ironic that people bemoan that kids will never know the joy of browsing for records. The fact is HMV is a chain and when it held power it looked to to take out the competition, especially small local independents. I find it ironic that lots of people who are involved in local and independent business (especially arts and music) who are bemoaning this but suddenly become blind to local music shops and venues, preferring chains, Spotify and big venues.

It's like saying I'll never be able to watch comedy again because Michael McIntyre is no longer touring. When your choice of product is narrowed to the ones all over the media it destroys the grassroots.

I'm sorry if this seems a bit ranty but a perferct piece of music for this is The Mekons "Where Were You?" which probably applies to most of us in most situations.

So if this is my last post for 2018 Happy New Year.

Aitchemvee

It looks like HMV are heading for administraion again. Last time their stores were selling anything, but music is still not their core sale product, although it is the core product you associate with HMV. One of the problems is that a great deal of people think that this is the only offline place you can get music. I Newcastle there are half a dozen record shops (listed and linked here)which a lot of people just ignore. Probably the same people who insist on going to Tesco rather than the Grainger Market for food.

They just sent me an email advertising their sale but the site doesn't work. Yesterday I bought two lots of vinyl from Discogs, which is a goldmine for both buying and selling music.

So I thought I would just mention this, it's not particularly important but they are blaming the high street malaise where everyone is shopping online. The thing is online is cheaper and often more convenient but it doesn't provide the interaction you get from a shop, that's for records or anything else. With that interaction you often get extra information and almost get a relationship with the person in the shop.

I don't know their names but I am friends with all the people in the shops I visit., and that takes me back to the shops. While I drop into HMV every now and then they are seldom my first port of call to buy a record, although I have bought from them. The problem is HMV is just another chainstore, it has no customer loyalty,  like any chainstore, and as such people will not be too botherd if it sinks or swims (apart from the employees), so I will share The Buzzcocks' "Why She's A Girl From The Chainstore" which seems sort of appropriate.

Quiet

It is that time between Christmas and New Year where you almost feel you are trapped in Limbo. Prior to Christmas I saw someone chatting about the 12 Days of Christmas with celebrations every day but it is basically Christams and New Year and then the outlet seems to be shop sales.

I would love 365 days of celebrations where everyone had a good time, looked out for their fellow man and no ne wanted for anything but unfortunately it's not like that. Commercialisation drives us to spend more money while ensuring we are paid less, and then complains that people are not spending money. People spend what they think they can afford.

This morning on my walk in I saw some amazing skies as the sun rose, examples on my Instagram feed are here. I have completed my steps for December 2018 although at the beginning I was thinking I might not make it, but the weather has become much milder and listening to music on the way in is excellent. Today I listened to Jordan Reyne's new album "Bardo" which is hypnotically dark and beautiful, much as I expected.

There are no video's for the new album yet so I have chosen "Bite" from "The Annihilation Sequence", all her albums are worth experiencing and available as a digital pack from Bandcamp.

Grey Christmas

Weatherwise this must be one of the greyest Christmases I have ever seen. Christmas has been fine but the weather has not been too cold and seriously is just plain grey. The good news is that since the Winter Solstice we are getting more daylight, as I noticed leaving a desolate workplace at around four of the clock today.

That always makes me think of F Paul Wilson's "Nightworld" the finale of The Adversary series which kicked off with "The Keep". The shortening of the days doesn't stop when it should and hence the title of the book. Check it out, well check out the whole series, there are six excellent book and "The Keep" was turned in to a half decent film by Michael Mann.

I've been listening to a lot of Jethro Tull recently and decided to put a couple of albums on my phone, but managed to just load up the "Aqualung" out takes, but I have since rectified that. Basically the out takes didn't include "Locomotive Breath" which I included in a recent post when it was used as an opener to "Fargo". So a few Tull albums and my complete Janelle Monae and Jordan Reyne collection have been installed for my listening pleasure.

So who do I choose to share with you, maybe Jordan Reyne who's new album "Bardo" is just out but I will choose the piece that stunned me when I first saw her many moons ago at Think Tank, the hypnotically beautiful and disturbing "Shadow Line".

Steam Quake Goofle

I was going to write a Christmas Day Free post yesterday but in the end couldn't be bothered. This morning I realised that I had no games on my PC although I had back up disk images of Quake, Hexen and Doom but the inherent laziness of finding putting a disk in the drive kicked in as well as trying to get the daamned things to run on Windows 10.

So a quick Google search and I find that a whole Quake collection is available on Steam for £8.49. It was really a no brainer. I just saw that I mistakenly spelt Google as Goofle. Isn't Goofle just a great word.

I also realised I hadn't played a game on this computer since I got it over a year ago, so booted up Quake in Nightmare mode and got killed almost immediately , I then retried in normal mode and the machine froze when I was half way through Level 1, but I'm not too bothered, I think it will sort itself out. I also got Civilization III for 74p.

I decided to listen to some of my favourite Punk compilation 1-2-3-4, five disks of brilliance and the first compilation that The Clash allowed themselves to be included on. I was playing from my network set up and then got sidetracked and was playing Marcel King's "Reach For Love" from the Factory Records box about six times. It really is one of the best records ever, and is Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single.

I posted on Facebook that at the moment it's my favourite record ever, so obviously it has to be the Boxing Day song although I am up to "Anarchy In The UK" on the 1-2-3-4 album and every song on that box could probably feature in my posts.

Have a fantastic Boxing Day folks.

Christmas Day Too

Well it has been quiet and relaxing. Have exchanged messages and phone calls with friends ad family and done not very much at all, but it is Christmas Day. I've managed to avoid the cheesy Christmas Songs but heard an awful insipid instrumental take on The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" on Classic FM. Classical music does not need to be insipid and soulless but Classic FM like local radio seem to usually go for the blandest fare (or should that be "fayre") they can find.

Look at the take on Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" in the last post, how good it that? And lets face it the list of Classical Music both from the past and contemporary is vast. I remember my secondary school music teacher managed to put me off Classical music because he would just stick an LP on and we had to listen to it for forty minutes. It wasn't built up, or explained, it was just there, and to a teenager, it was not cool.

So I leave you with "Troika" by Prokofiev from his "Lt Kije" suite which provided the motif for Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas". The suite also provide the motif for Sting's "Russians" too ("Romance"), so there is a lot og great music out there to listen to without resorting to sanitised blandness.

I hope you Christmas Day is progressing wonderfully.