When You're Thick .... As A Brick

One of the problems with a  great deal of "progressive" music is that often the pieces stretched out for sometimes mind numbing length with obvious classical pretentions, although ironically the collections of songs together often created a uniform thematic piece thin "Wee Small Hours" by Frank Sinatra, "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia" by The Who and "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd weren't averse to stretching out musical pieces to twenty minutes ( a side of vinyl) and I remeber Mountain stretching out "Nantucket Sleighride" over two sides of "Twin Peaks" one of their live excursions.

The seventies punk movement was a kick against this, but even these bands eventually got hit by self indulgence and some songs definitely strayed past the ideal 2'59" limit, which is not always a bad thing. I love the Ramones, Garage Punk (about my musical level) but I also like a lot of progressive music often just thinking I will never ever be able to play that.

My favourite pair of Jethro Tull albums are "Thick as a Brick" and "A Passion Play" and today I was listening to the former as I walked into work. You can hear and understand every word Ian Anderson and teh band sing, often a criticism by "adults" that "you can't hear what they're saying", and for me the music holds my attention throughout the forty or so minutes you are listening. It brings in many moods from acoustic pastoral to agreesive jazz spliced rock and keeps you on board for the whole ride. At no point to do you want to leave. Dance music it is not but would have filled any seventies mosh pit.

I must say it does actually make a walk go musch faster when you are listening to great music. Although Ian Anderson has apologised for it, "A Passion Play" is very close to "Thick as a Brick" and is another album I have been listening to quite a lot recently.

Basically good music i good music and it is stupid to limit your listening because you don't approve of a particular genre. It may be just that my taste is unusually eclectic that I do enjoy album length pieces but The Buzzcocks "Love You More" was only 1'30" on it's original release and that is just just as good as "Thick as a Brick" and both are in my collection.

Smokey Joe's

I was in town and passed Smokey Joe's and thought of the Coasters' (also known as The Robins) "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and when I was looking for the song on youtube found there was a musical of the same name celebrating the songs of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller which I have shared below. Not all the songs are to my taste but it does illustrate their impressive song repertoire. It is just song after song with dance routines and is very slick and impressive.

I really just wanted to include The Coaster's take on "Smokey Joe's Cafe" which was also covered by Buddy Holly for some reason, but that's what happen's with good songs, and Holly also did the definitive version of Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man". Oh and Paolo Nutini does a fairly decent take on it.

See how mind works, it starts with a single idea then I start of picking up other tangents, though getting from The Coasters to Chuck Berry via Buddy Holly is not necessarily that far of a detour and it is definitely a pleasant one.

The video below is playing and I am mightily impressed with the song "Keep On Rollin'" which I have never heard before., then it segue's into "Searchin'" absolute genius.

So I was only going to mention Smokey Joes , but watch the musical, it is mightily impressive.

Shadow Spider

I don't know if it's getting older but I seem to misread a lot of notices and signs. One interpretation is that I'm losing it, the other is that my perception is getting sharper because I am noticing it. The title of the post is from a misreading of a book title on Facebbok.

There's a card at work that says "Thanks" but the "Th" looks like a "W" to me. Maybe that's just my dirty mind.

I once saw a "Go Ahead Northern" sign and read it as Gonorrhea, again some indication of the workings of my mind. The thing is I realise my mistake immediatly and just see it as funny. In a way it is enriching my life with extra (if mistaken) language and words. I suppose Shakespeare must have used this and played with it, although I find some of his plays (especially "Romeo and Juliet") far too wordy.

Sometimes it's a visual thing so you get the words with LI in that look rude such as FLICK and CLINT which seen in the wrong light can cause a little consternation.

Carry On Films also exist for innuendo and mistaken meanings although barring "Carry On Cleo", "Carry On Up The Khyber" and "Carry on Screaming" most of them fall flat for me.

I am just going to put a list of my mistaken reads here which I may update as I find more. It's a bit
like the Clint chocolate cake:

• "Go Ahead Northern"  -   Gonorrhea
• "Thanks" - W@nks
• "Clint" - C*nt
• "Give The Gift of Cinema" - read Cinema as Enema (Seen in Tesco)
• 
  

So what song should go with this, sometng literary and wordy, although all songs contain words, and there are so many songs that have mis heard lyrics such as "Kiss The Sky / Kiss This Guy" from "Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. Although I've used it before I've going to go with "Wrong" by Archers of Loaf one of my favourite ever tunes which I first heard on "The Speed of Cattle" and perfect for me contiually getting words and phrases wrong.

1812

This is post number 1812 and as such need to ibnclude the "1812 Overture (with Cannons)" by Tchaikovsky. Interestingly "Night of Fear" by The Move was based on the main "1812 Overture" riff.

It's almost a week since my last post and one of my #August50 posts came up in my feed where I did mange to post over 50 times in August 2018. I don't expect to do that this year, although I once saw a blog that had thousands on one line link posts each day. I am not too sure of what the point of that was.

I'm just back from another weekend in Whitby managing to scoff lots of fish and chips at the Magpie Cafe and picked up a pristine copy of Can's "Tago Mago" from the MIND charity shop. he album was also inspired by the occultist Aleister Crowley, which is reflected through the dark sound of the album as well as being named after Illa de Tagomago, an island which features in the Crowley legen, which was a surpise to me.

I was once listening to a compilation CD curated by John Lydon and walked in and was listening to something which I though was maybe a remix of The Stone Roses "Fool's Gold" , but it was, in fact "Halleluiah" by Can. I have seen numerous spellings but that's what it is on the vinyl album. I do have it on CD as well (40th Anniversary) but the vinyl copy is something well worth having, and, as I said, was a charity shop bargain.

There are a few places in Whitby to pick up Vinyl such as The Whitby Bookshop, but most places are aware of their worth.

So this is my first post in February, and we shall see how many I do this month. It's really just about noticing things and being bothered to write things down.

A Big Freeze

I don't know if it's me getting older or what, but the frosted white cars and rooves and the biting burning cold this morning just made me want to get into the warm again. As a kid I'd be wanting snow and would go out in a T-Shirt and make snow angels. That would definitely not happen today. Is colder or is it just because I am older and more susceptible to the cold. I really don't know.

Another unrelated thing is that we have a new security entry system where I work amd it makes a two beep or three note noise when you go through whatever door or barrier, and those three notes trigger a musical sequence from Jethro Tull's "Passion Play" every time I come in or leave. While I think "Passion Play" is rather good I could do without it playing in my head every time I walk through a security door or barrier. It's an almost Pavlovian reaction to the three notes and it just happens every time.

Last night Newcastle United beat Manchester City 2-1 and my local branch of William Hills were offering 50/1 for that result, but I thought it would just be money down the drain. It turned out that my actual bets were the ones that actually lost . C'est la vie.

The lack of cloud is what's driving the temperature down, though we have had no snow .... yet. So I think maybe I need to share a bit of "Passion Play" with you although "Frozen"by Madonna was a possibility as well as "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" by Bruce Springsteen, but we shall have a bit of "Passion Play" that is not "The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" which I featured in this post here.

I Can Put A Tennis Raquet Up Against My Face And Prentend That I'm Kendo Nagasaki

It's a line from my favourite song on the Half Man Half Biscuit album "McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt" which was the name of three retired footballers called on to save a Football team in the "Golden Gordon" episode of Michael Palin's "Ripping Yarns". The song is "Everything's AOR" and will of course accompany this post.

It's my dad's 84th birthday and the older someone gets it's more difficult to get birthday presents, especially when his main hobby is working, although he has a penchant for post boxes and boxing. I decided to get him a copy of "There Is No Map In Hell" by Steve Birkinshaw which I bought just for the title and found to be an excellent book seeing what some people can force themselves to do against seemingly impossible conditions.

The weather has been incredibly cold and during January absolutely not conducive to walking although I have managed to keep up my target steps so I am still exceeding my million steps every three months and I will start February in Whitby so I am not sure taht will be a good or a bad thing. Whitby is great for walking but if the weather is not good that may discourage me from actually doing my required steps.

Kendo Nagasaki was a wrestler in the sixties and maybe still is but I remember watching wrestling on a Saturday afternon at my grandmas with Kendo, Mick McManus , Jackie Pallo and others too numerous to mention. It was all staged of course as it still is in the numerous wrestling francises going on today. The link to the Kendo Nagasaki (there are/were many) portrays him as a mystic an dhypnotist as well as a wrestler, so not a one trick pony. The tennis raquet gives a similar effect to the samurai mask worn by Kendo in the ring.

So that's my Monday so far ..... now what's yours?

Ulysses, James Joyce and Japan

I don't know what brought this into my mind apart from the fact that I was having a dream and couldn't remember who wrote "Ulysses" though the names James Joyce, WB Yeats and WG Grace slipped through my mind, so I did know but my mind was telling me I didn't. These days scaremongers so often try to equate forgetfulness with Alzheimers and Dementia.

I remember THAT passage beimg screened on the BBC much to "Angry from Purley"'s disgust, and also seem to remeber my parents having the book , and mee seeking out THAT passage to read over and over. This was the days before video recorders and catch up TV and colour was a luxury. The thing with books is that you can always re read them, if you enjoy them or need to concentrate on the meaning.

I am now thinking I should get myself a copy as someone recently described the book as the greatest in the English language. Maybe on Kindle or Aldiko though , in fact I may have a copy in my ebook library that I acquired a while back.

The Japan part of this post comes from the fact I sold a CD on Discogs yesterday but the guy hadn't paid (shipping is generally added automatically), then I saw that the despatch address was Japan! Internation Stardard shipping is about a fiver and takes five days, International Economy costs four pounds but takes up to 56 days. I charged £4 and sent Standard as you can't be waiting two months for a CD can you. The album was Donovan's "Sunshine Superman" so another Irish connection there.

So I have to go with one of my favourite Donovan songs "Season of The Witch" which is one of the songs on the "Sunshine Superman" album.

Enjoy your Friday everybody.