No Time

Just reading the excellent "Notes on a Nervous Planet" and something came up that applies to me. I continually feel that I do not have enough time to do things (may that's a symptom of getting older) but as Matt Haig points out, we can now communicate faster and more easily than every before, we have rapid travel options , washing machines, lawn mowers , microwaves , etc speed up things that took a lot more of our time than they did before.

When I left EE I didn't realise at first that I didn't have to travel, on general three hours a day to get to and from work. That's fifteen hours a week (I was stopped from working from home before I finished), that's sixty hours a month. Given that the average working week is 37 hours (150 hours a month) I gained more than 20% time by leaving. That is a lot of time.

The problem is life overload, to watch a TV program or a film , still takes as long as it takes, reading a book takes time, listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony takes about 70 minutes to listen to (you could play it at 78 rpm but that would sound silly), but basically we do not really appreciate the extra time that modern life is giving use, and we should do.

Writing this takes time, and reading it takes time (though not as much time as it takes to write).

It is a beautiful Sunday Morning and it's an excuse to share the wonderful Flash Mob take on "Ode To Joy" from Beethoven's 9th . I showed this to the lady in the the Oxfam Shop in Helmsley and she loved it because she said it makes you realise what instruments go together to make this wonderful music.

Where's Wally?

You know that joke about the difference between stupid and being dead, everyone else knows except you in both cases.

The Facebook ban is sort of like that in reverse, I know that I'm banned and therefore can't communicate in any way via Facebook, but none of my Facebook friends do, except the ones who I communicate with via phone, email , Instagram or Twitter, and it is a sort of weird situation. Because my online presence ids there, people ca send me messages, post things on my timeline , tag me or whatever and barring disabling / deleting the account there is nothing I can do.

I can't even use Facebook Messenger.

While I have not transgressed any Facebook rules for three out of the four bans which are here and you can see what I'm banned for in these posts here and here and see what you think.

Basically anything that I personally post can result in a ban, and I cannot challenge it full stop, snd no explanation for the  supposed transgression will be given.

So this is a warning to anyone out there, do not allow Facebook to be your only mode of communication or your Facebook friends will think you don't love them any more. Essentially for everything in life you always need a Plan "B" and luckily I do have communication channels open with friends, it's just that often people don't check their alternatives.

As this is post 1945 I'm going to share "Caledonia" by Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five, which is rather celebratory which is good as WWII came to a  close in that year.

We Are All Nervous

.. to some extent. After finishing "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman, I've picked up "Notes on a Nervous Planet" by Matt Haig. This sort of follows on from his "Reasons To Stay Alive" which addressed how he dealt with his depression, and the book really helped a sadly missed great friend of mine Craig Puranen Wilson who was one of the most positive people that I have met it my life but also dealt with his own demons while helping so many others.

I read "Reasons To Stay Alive" on a train journey down to London for my friend Paul Campbell's 50th Birthday, it took me just three hours and I started thinking "I shouldn't be giving this as a birthday present" and finished thinking what an absolutely brilliant, uplifting and hopeful book. I think I could do the same with "Notes on a Nervous Planet" but am not on a three hour train journey, but it has started very well.

"Notes on a Nervous Planet" posits that anything can make us worried or nervous and how we can deal with that. A lot of that can be answered by the answer to the question:

"Am I in Control Of This?"

If we are we are usually Ok, but it's when we are dependent on things that are out of our control that the worry bomb starts ticking. Today I parked up a hire car rented from Enterprise  to pick up something from the Post Office (a clear vinyl copy of the first Faust album) . If the car gets damaged I am liable for £1,000 excess so that is always on my mind, and it doesn't have to be my fault , and a combination of an idiot parking me in (he was on double yellows) and another one pulling out of a side road without looking could have caused me to be in an accident. I waited til everything was clear so there was no accident but the nervousness was there while it was still a possibility.

Though to put things in context when I was was coming up the A19 in driving rain, I was not worried at all but just wanted to get home, and really , you would think that would be when an accident might happen, and therefore I should be worried, but if you were that worried you probably couldn't drive. You need to have confidence in yourself.

So again , I wasn't going to write anything today but things just trigger something, and given the subject it has to be the opening song from Side 2 of my favourite Alice Cooper album "Killer" , "You Drive Me Nervous". Legend has it that Vincent Furnier changed his name to Alice Cooper after a 17th Century Witch (You probably can find one) but the name was chosen because it sounded wholesome, normal and at odds with the band's raison d'etre.

So Much For Ragnarok

I've just finished Neil Gaiman's "Norse Mythology" and it is an excellent read, not as long or bawdy as Stephen Fry's "Mythos" but no less entertaining.

There's lots of things in it that are mirrored in Game of Thrones (never ending winter and frost giants) and lots of other genres, but the stories are told in the style of a fireside teller whereas Stephen Fry aligned them with contemporary equivalents, both excellent story telling methods, and I was looking forward to the end game of Ragnarok, the end of all things.

One thing this book brought home to me is that Loki is a particularly nasty piece of work, sort of Joffrey with added intelligent malice. Maybe it's that I think Tom Hiddleston's Marvel take can be endearing at times, although I suppose that engenders the nastiness of Loki, he can be nice as pie as he is engineering someone's murder or betrayal while covering his own tracks and framing someone else to take the blame.

So Ragnarok came and it , to me, was just another story, Fenris Wolf and The Midgard Serpent are Godzilla like figures and too big o seriously defeat, although they are defeated which means that the gods but have suddenly increased in size or the creatures decreased in size. Also it was a case of listing who killed who, more like a shopping list than a battle narrative. Still I suppose that's what you would get if you were sitting round fire.

As I am writing this 6Music are playing a lot of Drum and Bass as though it is some kind of revelatory genre. I've always wondered why Drum and Bass never features any Bass, it's just a fast repeated drum sequence and then songs / pieces are built up over that. I have no problem with it, but it does amaze me how so many people say they don't want to be pigeonholed and then decided they are part of some grouping.

So for post 1943, I'm going back to 1943 for "2 O'Clock Jump" by Harry James which is a decent piece of jazz, although I saw something called "Praise The Lord and Pass The Ammunition" by Kay Kyser and the comments on the Youtube post are frightening (right wing snowflakes taking offence at anything not like them) especially with the song being like a cheery church quire, and almost a justification for Ragnarok. I had originally heard the line on the amazing "Texas Jerusalem Crossroads" by Lift To Experience. I thought the line was blackly funny, and it is until you read those comments.

Living on The Edge of the World

I just wanted to write a post with that title. It doesn't really mean anything to me or my situation but it does sound grandly isolationist, also reminds me of a line from the Bob Dylan song "Joey" that has always summed me up:

"Always on the outside - Of Whatever Side There Was"

I am always on the outside of whatever cliques are going on, always the weird or abnormal one, but if I wasn't I wouldn't be me. I suppose there is a little jealousy in not being included, but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy life. Also not being included does not mean being excluded, which can be very hurtful.

So why am I writing this?

I am still on holiday and actually relaxing and I wanted to get this title down.

Also it's an excuse to share the latest lovely release by Panda Bear "Buoys",though I have apparently bought stuff from them before (see here) and this is the great thing about keeping a blog, you can use it to remember things that you had forgotten, but I'm pretty sure it was Panda Bear Meets Grim Reaper which I will revisit when I get home.

Time for bed soon

Drab Dreams and Diamond Dogs

Another gorgeous day, and this morning I woke at a reasonable time, not six am like yesterday. I've been having some very mundane dreams this week , which seem to be like going to work. Nothing I can really remember, or worth writing about apart from the pure mundanity, although when I woke up I thought that the guitar riff for  David Bowie's "Candidate" was the riff for "Rebel,Rebel" (the Rolling Stones song that they never wrote, or to my knowledge performed). Actually "Candidate" is sandwiched between "Sweet Thing" and "Sweet Thing(Reprise)" and the latter piece plays out in a crunching guitar sequence that perfectly leads into "Rebel, Rebel"

Obviously "Candidate" is not "Rebel,Rebel" but at least it's the same album and fairly close to it. I have a feeling the Feedburner spike is about to come to an end , but it's given me my highest blog activity since I started so that is rather excellent.

That means the song that I am going to feature is the nine minute "Sweet Thing/Candidate" sequence from "Diamond Dogs".

Enjoy you Thursday.

Spilling Wine with Lauren Laverne

Today while driving Lauren Laverne played "Spill The Wine" by Eric Burdon and War on 6Music. This is the third song this week that has been the main song in my blog posts.

I first heard this song from 1970, when I got hold of the compilation "All Good Clean Fun" and the music is recognisable as the War of "Low Rider" fame topped with Eric Burdon's perfectly matched vocals. I recently reacquired the vinyl record, although it also appeared on the vastly expanded 3CD set which is now fairly expenses but a great snapshot or the Liberty / UA (United Artists) label imprints from the late sixties and early seventies.

Lauren has been including a lot of great sixties and seventies music recently, mixing with excellent contemporary sounds on her show. One of my slight problems with 6Music is the semi stagnation of shows,  and the number of ex muso's DJing , but the result is an incredible mix of new music to discover with reminders of stuff that you have forgotten or missed along with some great fun and audience interaction. And really that is a good thing.

I wasn't intending to write many posts this week or this month but this is the eighth so far and  I only need to average ten a month to hit 2K posts on this blog since I started it.

Anyway check out Lauren and any other 6Music show , and you may discover something new or something you had forgotten.