Agatha Christie's Parrot

I'm sure lots of others have said it, but every time I see Agatha Christie's Poirot advertised I think Agatha Christie's Parrot. I wonder if she ever owned a parrot, not that it actually matters.

But in a fairly relaxing day among other things I have been continuing with "Follow The Music"  and after a mainly business orientated section (ie for me boring it hit me with several surprising bands and connections.

Firstly we had the MC5 , extremely revolutionary and anti corporate, with two versions of "Kick Out The Jams" one starting with the original "KOTJ MotherFvckers" and the other "family friendly "OTJ Brothers and Sisters" which caused major issues when the Hudson's Department Stores got the wrong batch causing no end of too and forth repercussions (buy or borrow the book to find out).

The there was Iggy and The Stooges as well, who lasted two albums with Elektra but another out there band who turned up to record their first album with five songs. They were sent away to get some more.

Now I was under the impression that both these bands were on CBS but that must have been the British releases. Similarly Queen were on Elektra in the USA but on EMI in the UK.

I shouldn't have been so surprised as I have a copy of the first ever (to my knowledge) rock picture disk, a German Elektra compilation called Hallucinations / Psychedelic Underground which has these bands plus The Doors and others and you can see it here.

The final and most surprising were the middle or the road AOR band Bread led by David Gates who Jac Holzman knew from his work with Captain Beefheart. I never knew that. This is why reading is such an adventure. You always find out new things.

Obviously there is a plethora of songs I could choose but as it's Sunday night before another working week we'll go with The Stooges "No Fun"

Quietjin

For some reason I either dreamed or thought that "Quietjin" was a solution to a scrabble word, but it's not , just a deactivated twitter account and there are various results from Google and DuckDuckGo and there is Quietjin1 on twitter. Quietgin was another option although Quieting is a valid word. There are some weird words or letter combination that online Scrabble allows and some oddities it does not allow. Words like XI , XU , QI , ZA , ZO which I am sure you would get questioned on in real life Scrabble.

I find Scrabble more like Tetris in that you are trying to fit words into spaces which get harder as the game progresses. It's more about observation than literacy. Anagrams are easy enough to solve, but once you have the solution you have to find somewhere on the board to fit it in. Usually when I play a word I work out what my next play will be and hope my opponent doesn't take my place.

It's similar when people say that you need to be good at maths to do Sudoku , it's just again about observation except Sudoku gets easier as you progress through the puzzle. Although generally Sudoku uses numbers you could use any symbols at all, although when you see one that doesn't use numbers you get slightly disorientated because you are used to using numbers.

I used to play with about ten people on Facebook Scrabble and that is generally the main reason I stayed on Facebook , but it's down to two of the first people I started playing with. Others have dropped off and when I have tried to start a new game  the game has not been reciprocated although according to Scrabble these folk are actually playing.

The visits to the blog have dropped significantly and it's down to a more realistic one hundred a day, though I may just hit half a million by the end of February, so that is not an impossibility, and if not February I will hit it in March.

This Sunday morning is grey and rainy, not the most inspiring, but I have lots to do today while also trying to relax before what will be a very intense week at work, but that does make the days fly by, there is nothing worse than having nothing to do, and I do love having problems to solve, hence the enjoyment of problem solving puzzles such as Scrabble and Sudoku.

So a fairly obvious song is "Games People Play" by Joe South (although it's been very widely covered) , but enjoy your Sunday everyone. The melody was appropriated by eurotrash poppers Dan The Banjo Man in the seventies (listen on th elink.

Enjoyment

The first Rod Stewart album I bought was "Every Picture Tells A Story" and that was so good I wasn't sure about the follow up. I seem to remember the album and lead single "Maggie May" both topped the American and UK charts simultaneously in the days when you had to move product to actually get a chart placing.

The follow up "Never A Dull Moment" was possibly even better with some gorgeous songs and the excellent lead single "You Wear It Well" plus many others including "True Blue", "Lost Paraguayos" and a storming take on Sam Cooke's "Twistin' The Night Away" with a cracking drum break from , I assume , Kenny Jones. The Faces were always around for the early Rod outings.

Rod Stewart is one of the all time finest interpretive singers and he could write a good song himself.

His early albums contain some great songs and covers, check out "Gasoline Alley"

For the creative finale came with "Atlantic Crossing" which was when he hit paydirt, although he has still produced the odd gem. It is quite amusing when no one knows our favourite artists and we complain because they don't get the appropriate recognition, and then when they do it hit the big time we complain that they sold out. Let's face it we all do what suits us best.

So this brief Rod Stewart appreciation is topped by "You Wear It Well" and that's for everyone that does.

Leaf Mouse

It looks like the feedburner feed has finally fizzled out two thousand visits short of half a million, c'est la vie , I 'm surprised it has gone on as long as it has. The half million will come , just not as quickly as I was expecting.

Tonight I was out walking and heard a noise near my feet and thought it was a mouse or rat. On closer inspection it was actually a leaf! I may have been influenced by the rodent I saw aon West Cliff at Whitby. Who knows what can twist and lead our minds. I also saw and disposed of a huge spider in the kitchen tonight, I've seen bigger, but not that often.

I was thinking of writing a (science) fiction story as a post with the title "The Probability Conundrum" bas on the fact that everyone expects something to happen whether it be good or bad, based on fact or heresay (or heresy ... I wonder if those two words are related) and then do those people cause the expectation to happen abdor does it just happen ... eventually, and also could people make things happen for other people if they knew someone was expecting a particular outcome.

I wasn't sure where I would go with this but there's some bits here that I may pick up on one day.

It seems the tags on posts are working again so I've added a few for this post, which I hadn't really planned to do as it is past eleven on a Friday night and also this year I don't intend to post as much.

I've also stopped posting on Mewe but maybe I will post this on there and see if visits pick up.

So a song to go with this, maybe "Science Friction" by XTC which is a song from my long ago youth, but still worth a listen. This is one of the things about getting older , your back catalogue of experiences and likings increases with everything you do , or it should, and it certainly does with me.

Ok almost time to hit dreamland and see all my friends there.

Fair To Middling

Last night I finished watching Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar", it's taken me a week to do it and I don't know what I was expecting, but when it started I thought "I thought this was film about space exploration". Well it's Christopher Nolan and is a wonderful, touching and mind bending film, yes things happen that you think that's far fetched, but when you suspend your disbelief it is an absolutely brilliant film.

I am more than half way through the Elektra story by Jac Holzman "Face The Music" and we are still following The Doors. The importance of The Doors to Elektra is emphasised by the back cover of the book that has fourteen album covers, four of which are by The Doors, other bands and artists get one. It's still interesting and readable but a lot of this I know from The John Densmore book but that's bye the bye.

I also got through a few pages of my favourite book "Imajica" on my Kindle Fire and otherwise did nothing. Is reading and watching film efficient use of my time? Who knows but it is enjoyable.

I was thinking that this was about beginnings , middles and ends but the Thousand Yard Stare song "Fair To Middling" (a phrase from my youth) came to mind, and as they are one of my favourite bands I will share that with you, although that was the name of the album so we'll go with "0-0 After Extra Time" or "No Score After Extra Time" depending on who's reporting the title, still appropriate in this FA Cup replay week.

I also want to do a Youtube video of me playing Tom Wait's "In The Neighbourhood" and "Does This Train Stop on Merseyside" by Ian Prowse / Amsterdam . I know I can't match the originals but the songs are both simple and wonderful.

Favourites

Favourites is one of those words where the American spelling misses out the "u" , like colour or neighbour . The thing is often the American spelling is more accurate than the English version, I think Aluminum / Aluminium is one such example. Anyway this is a digression.

Staying with Matt and Craig in Dillons I found that as well as their normal excellent service and welcome they'd upgraded their TV's to Smart TVs so there were lots of options to watch catch up TV (such as "The Thick of It" on BBC iPlayer from episode one which although it is only fifteen years old gets dated by the plethora of CRTs and flip phones , though the dialogue (American dialog ? ) is still sharp as ever.

Coming home I started on "Veep" another Armando Iannucci driven series as manic, sweary and brilliant as "The Thick Of It" part of the new excellent Sky Comedy channel, and followed that with a few episodes of the excellent "Miracle Workers".

The book I am reading "Follow The Music" has just covered the signing of The Doors to Elektra but the book itself is far too big to conveniently carry , so I bought a similarly sized book for my Kindle Fire "Imajica" by Clive Barker which is my favourite book of all time and was drawn into that and read twn chapters over the weekend and on the train back so that is another favourite I now have on the go (again).

Meanwhile the TIVO box is filling up with recordings and I am working my way through Christopher Nolan's excellent "Interstellar" which is rather amazing despite a lot of heartrending moments caused by the bending of time in space travel through black holes.

So today is back to work and I may walk to work although it is quite cold.

Another five thousand visits and this blog will have had half a million visitors which is a sort of milestone, although when I think I cover more than a million steps every three months that number does pale into insignificance.

So what song should I share this morning, the only band I have mentioned are the doors but I was also mentioning how technology can make film and TV look dated (but don't let that stop you watching because it is the dialogue that makes it essential viewing) so we will go with "Living In The Past" by Jethro Tull.

Lost Connection

Got to Whitby and the charging port on my Google Pixel died on me, so it was a case of slowly watching the woer drain until it died. An new port will be about sixty pounds but of course I was away in Whitby with no other form of connection to so many things. I have my Amazon Kindle but that is reliant on a wifi connection and  while there are numerous connection options it's not a phone and is hardly portable.

The cost of a refurbished Pixel 2 is only a hundred pounds more than the Pixel itself , and the reason I want to stay with the Pixel is that it keeps pace with Operating System Upgrades so my Pixel is on Android 10. I bought an old Samsung Note that could only take up to version 4 so a lot of the apps I need wouldn't work and didn't  do 4G, so went back to CEX and exchanged for a Samsung A3 which was smaller and goes up to V6 and does 4G. It's a bit smaller and slower but does the job and is a decent holding handset until I get a new on or the Pixel fixed, though a second hand Pixel with a 12 month guarantee is around £90 so not much more than getting this one fixed.

If I had been in Newcastle I'd have probably found somewhere to fix it but when you are on holiday it's a little more difficult, although life without a phone is not impossible.

So it's now finding options and finding my way back to work tomorrow.

Ezra Furman's "Lousy Connection" seems fairly appropriate don't you think for this first February post. Oh and I need to install twitter on the A3 to share this.