The True Wheel

This is the title of a song from Brian Eno's "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" which I am currently up to in David Sheppard's "On Some Faraway Beach" . Apparently Eno had a dream of people singing :

"We are the 801

We are the central shaft"

That was the name chosen for the superstar pick up band on his live album, which features a stunning take on Lennon and McCartney's "Tomorrow Never Knows". The 801 thing is documented in this post and you can listen to the song there too, I was going to include "The True Wheel" here but I will choose another song from what is and absolutely essential album.

This week my walking has not been up to par, I'm still ahead of where I need to be but haven't hit 11K steps since last Friday so I need to up my game on that.

Also I've been trying to write this post for two days, being beset by feeling absolutely drained and the blogging software continually locking up, which the label processing seems to cause.

Yesterday I caught a little of the Sky Sports Manchester City coverage by Shaun Goater. He is extremely well spoken with the same slightly unusual enunciation that a work colleague of mine has. I chatted with her today and asked her where she came from, because her and Shaun's accents were identical. She told me she had gone to the same school as him and they were both from Bermuda.

I'm going to include "The Great Pretender" the closing song from side one of the original vinyl album, which runs into an insectoid closed groove meaning that unless stoped the song never actually ends, as far as I know you can't to that with MP3 or CD.

"She was so impressed that she just surrendered"

An album you must own on vinyl for that reason alone.

Forgot

I was going to post this yesterday but got waylaid by other stuff, so I will post it now , even though it is quite late. Yesterday I went to work and convinced I had forgotten something , but wasn't too sure what it was.... until I got in and realised I had left my work pass at home. My work has the most pedantic lost pass process ever, they give you a piece of card that can't be used for anything useful like getting you in through doors, then you have to contact someone so they can escort you to the office, and if you want to go out you have all this rigmarole again.

The thing is visitors get normal passes.

So I went home to get my pass and got into work 45 minutes later than I expected.

On getting home from holiday I received a bowel caner check kit from the NHS which you use to send a poo sample to be checked. This is the second one I've had and even though it's simple, it is a funnily unpleasant experience getting the sample, it can't land in the toilet, then you place it in a tube ans send it back for testing (which is done at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.) so I should know in a week or so the results. This is standard preventative procedure and I'm sure all will be fine, but it's always good to check.

I have friends who have suffered from and been treated for many forms of cancer, and when I was kide cancer was the end, but now people have a far better chance to survive which is great, but I've also lost friends and that is something that is horrible. You have your memories but you no longer have your friends.

I'm sorry this seems to have nosedived but I didn't mean it to, just happy that I am being looked after by the NHS which despite certain people making out that it's free, it isn't, we all pay for it in outr National Insurance and taxes.

So I've gone with Ronnie Spector's take on the great Johnny Thunders song "You Can't Put Your Arms Round A Memory" although I thought it was "You Can't Wrap You Arms Round A Memory" . Either way,  it's a great song so please enjoy, if that is the right emotion for a song about loss.

Stay positive, it's what keeps us going, believe in better.

Back

I'm back in Newcastle and back to work and sort of sad that I'm not still in Settle, but finances don't currently allow me to be on permanent holiday, I am not impressed with the so called "Christmas Village" that has been rammed into Newcastle centre, to me it's just blocking where I can walk and messing up the road system but it does make me more determined to shop locally, especially in The Grainger Market.

Apart from catching up at work I will need to send my Christmas cards this week and must sound curmudgeonly as I see this and Christmas decorations as a chore. I am fine with people celebrating Christmas , went round to my neighbours for impromptu drinks and socialising and love things like that, Christmas can do a lot of good but I do hate the adverts saying that to really celebrate Christmas you need to spend a fortune on Amazon. No you need to socialise , talk to people and have fun.

I am old enough not to need presents and in some ways would like to put a fiver limit of people who want to buy me things.

For some reason the song "Temporary Secretary" by Paul McCartney has been going through my head, love the repeated sequencer motif that runs through it, and this has nothing really to do with this most but maybe it is a Monday Morning record.

Spoonful

Some days things just hit me and make me want to to write about it and my friend,an avid Moody Blues fan, on Instagram shared a picture of a clear vinyl copy of "Moanin' At Midnight" by Hownlin' Wolf. Earlier this year I had linked Howlin' Wolf with The Moody Blues which was a coincidence here and in 2014 wrote about the origins of the song "Smokestack Lightnin'" here. so the disc certainly piqued my interest and I will now investigate further.

Howlin'

The clear vinyl version looks wonderful, though I'm not sure if the wolf in on the vinyl or is seen though the vinyl, but I do like the design.

Another of Howlin' Wolf's songs is "Spoonful" (written by Willie Dixon) , a brilliant loping riff that I first heard on my friend Harry Clark's "Best of Cream" album as a teenager. I listened to my vinyl copy which I picked up from Beyond Vinyl.

This is my third post today so I am a little worded out, although I need extra posts if I am to hit 366 posts this year which is possible. This is post 339 so after this I need to post 27 times in 23 days which seems to be getting further away from me, but I won't let that happen.

So I'm going to share Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" although my favourite take is by Cream from the live "Wheels of Fire" album, but this post is all Howlin' Wolf.

Bay Uke Grainger Christmas

Today I was in the Grainger Market and hears a Christmas Ukulele band finishing off "Let It Snow" , and they sounded quite good but I'd missed that and was expecting them to break into another similarly veined song, but no, they went into one of my favourites "I'm The Urban Spaceman" and did an very jolly version which you can see above (sorry it's phone portrait and not landscape but the sound is good.

They started with Dean Martin and were going to continue with "Rockin' Round The Christmas Tree" and asked me to join in their choir but I had to do a few things but totally enjoyed this pleasant interlude.

Bay Uke are on Facebook here where you can join their group, if you have a Ukulele I am sure that they will welcome you.

Incidentally "I'm The Urban Spaceman" was produced for The Bonzo Dog Band by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym Apollo C. Vermouth.

As I said this is a very short post to record a lovely interlude in my Sunday morning.

The Weight

One of the reasons I write this blog is as a diary, another is when something happens or grabs my attention that I can , however tenuously, link to a song that I can then share with my readers and listeners, maybe I should try a podcast too, though I'm not sure that the sound of my voice will enamour everyone, an ex boss once told me he couldn't understand a word I said!

Anyway I don't eat healthily, I dislike regimentation intensely (diets, exercise - especially gyms) so obviously I am destined as I age to just get fatter and fatter. I do see some people, and they may have a lot of issues, but I think "didn't you at some point realise you were getting fat". I know damned well I could easily be 30 stone if I didn't constantly say no to certain temptations, although as Oscar Wilde said "I can resist anything but temptation", so I suppose I do think about what I eat at times.

For the second time after a week away in Settle I have lost a kilogram bringing me down to 96.75 Kg  (see here on Instagram) that's fifteen stone three pounds in imperial measure. I remember maybe being 13 stone in the late seventies so I have been a lot lighter. The thing is on holiday you normally over eat and indulge and there was fish and chips, big breakfasts , curries , potato salads and a Terry's Chocolate Orange all part of my culinary intake.

So as this has been on about my portliness and weight, I'm going to share the song "The Weight" by The Band, which was pencilled for inclusion in the "Easy Rider" soundtrack, but the producer either had a falling out with The Band and went for a cover of the song by a band called Smith, I've chosen a live take with The Staples Singlers from the Martin Scorsese directed "The Last Waltz", an awesome concert film, well worth watching.

It's a cold sunny Sunday so have a great day everybody.

Wading Through Treacle

That's how I feel reading "On Some Faraway Beach" the David Sheppard biography of Brian Eno. Two weeks in I'm only up to page 140 of 450. The thing is the writing is excellent and interesting and unskimmable, you want to read every word. Roxy Music were probably the band I was furthest into combining so many stylish elements visually, lyrically and musically. It's just the typeface and setting makes it difficult to read many pages at one sitting, but I do actually love it.

I am just passing Brian Eno's time with Roxy Music and flowing into "No Pussyfooting" which features two twenty minute drone pieces  "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and "Swastika Girls"  his wonderful album with Bob Frip and his first solo "song" album "Here Come The Warm Jets". One of the pieces on "No Pussyfooting was accidentally played backwards by John Peel and in the deluxe CD version you have that option as well as a half speed (so double length take.

So included a part of "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and I often listen to this to go to sleep to, no hooks, nothing that grabs your attention but , in my opinion, an amazing wash of sound.

Enjoy.