I was in the shower this morning (not an image you want in your head I know) and I read the side of my Lacura Shower Gel that I got from Aldi and it said "Suitable for Vegans and Vegetarians". Then I thought if something is suitable for Vegans then it is also suitable for Vegetarians.
Although there are exceptions for allergic to reactions to certain foods that are Vegan (Nuts etc) no Vegetarian is going to thing I can't have that because it's Vegan , but a Vegan would have to check out something that is classed as Vegetarian to see if it is suitable for them..
Also someone who is an Pescatarian or an Omnivore should not have a problem with a product that is classed as Vegan (barring allergies), although religion could possibly come into it but essentially , if it's Vegan it is suitable for everyone.
I am lucky enough to live in Newcastle and we have a plethora of Vegan eating places, I'll add to this as I discover more but here's the list with links for you to explores:
And here is the gorgeous Peach and Chickpea curry by Jack Monroe , click on the pic to get the recipe.
Yes this is a very short post , and I may expand it for my Vocal writing , but this is one of the things that I use this blog for. I was gonna share some appropriate music but remembered this TED talk debunking all the arguments against Veganism by Ed Winters.
Ed Winters talk is excellent because it brings in the "just because it's legal doesn't make it moral" argument ,well worth your time , and if you fancy some vegan recipes try the books below.
Since I started writing on Vocal , that has become my main creative focus. It has a slightly easier interface but posts need approval and have to be between 600 and 5000 words long. There are other caveats such as no religion and quite a few others. So I have a feeling that this year this blog will not be hitting anything like a post a day , although I will be beating my first few years posts.
This is just my second post this month and 85th this year and we are almost half way through 2021, but I have 40 posts on Vocal which you can see and read here.
I feel that a lot of my creativity has gone into the Vocal posts leaving nothing for here.
I also have not listened to 6Music for absolute ages, preferring random choices from my collection and my Discogs store. It is a Record Store Day , but I feel my vinyl collection has as much as I need. I've stated that often the idea of making a record special is coloured vinyl or a picture disc maybe featuring the band. That doesn't cut it for me.
I have a great vintage record player I got from RPM and that makes the vinyl sound awesome, and often it's the reggae that has the best sound, although everything sounds good , and yes there may be some surface noise but as the great John Peel said "Life has Surface Noise Mate!!"
So I will leave you with "Boops" by Sly & Robbie , a song I have digitally on CD and on a 12" vinyl single purchased from Stay Free records in Newcastle. Enjoy my friends.
Today I have been listening to a lot of music , part of which was on a four mile walk that included posting a CD from a Discogs order to Connecticut in the USA, and decided to play a best of Little Feat , “As Time Goes By”. By the way this post was rejected for an unspecified reason by Vocal.
The first song on the album is “Dixie Chicken” , also the title track of their third album written by Lowell George and Fred Martin. The song itself is just very good but for me the piano lines just know over the perfection line by some way. They almost don’t go with the song but enhance it so much that Bill Payne’s lines just make you want to play it again , although a second Little Feat song always adds to the feast , and a whole album just really is perfect.
Little feat were probably one of the first multi ethnic bands , although to could also cite Santana and The Mothers of Invention, with Sam Clayton an integral part of the band.
Their songs are usually complex but you can sing along with them and all of Lowell George’s guitar work was planned down to the note. I always improvise and therefore often can’t repeat what I actually played but Lowell George was a nailed on musician.
After “Dixie Chicken” came “Willin’” a sparse acoustic piece from their first album but this gets better every time you hear it and Lowell George’s guitar work is wonderful.
Lowell George was always Little Feat’s main man and I learned about him from the documentary on Amazon Prime “Feats First” about his short life , and his lasting musical legacy , six Little Feat studio albums , one live album and one solo album.
The other thing is Little Feat were never a one man band Bill Payne and Paul Barrere were also mainstays and contributed songs , licks and vocals to the overall sound.
I have recently been listening to all their albums while I work and at no point do I ever wnat to skip a song, and even though “As Time Goes By” is a compilation , you could probably put any dozen Little Feat songs together and it would be an absolutely great listen. If you go to their website (they are still going) there is a jukebox on their site to whet your appetite.
Although they didn't move a great deal of music early on they are now regarded as a truly great rock band and it is almost impossible to pigeonhole them , yes they are very unmistakably American, possibly in a similar univers to The Band , they influenced a lot who came after , but their music still sounds fresh and contemporary.
I often hate people who say that music was only good when whatever, I know people who’s musical diet is British Rock between 1974-6 , or eighties power ballads or stuff like Heart or Smooth radio, but basically 95% is always rubbish and it’s up to us to find that 5% good stuff. Little Feat and a veritable gold seam and all their stuff is worth listening two , much like The Band.
I am unaware of a contemporary equivalent but I am sure another will emerge and knock us off our feet so to speak.
So I suggest to listen to “Dixie Chicken” , thanks to YouTube it’s free to listen to , though you may have an advert to navigate , and if you like that I suggest to invest in some of their LPs, you will not be disappointed and please don’t use Spotify and it does not support artists. Buy music from the artist direct if you can , otherwise see if they have a Bandcamp site.
Almost every day when I log on to social media Facebook and Instagram have blocked a couple of old music share videos. I was under the impression that 30 seconds of a song was fine to use if it's not for commercial purposes but I shared some excerpts from the reissue of Led Zeppelin III and that was blocked immediately. It contained three twenty second snippets. I got a similar notice just as quick from "One of These Nights" by The Eagles. This time I submitted a dispute , stating this wasn't commercial , or disrespectful and may result in more sales. The videos have been reinstated but the owner can still have them removed. I recently wrote on this whole thing here.
There is an article on how confusing copyright is here.
I understand that you can't share whole songs , or use them , or snippets commercially , but what I am doing , in my opinion , could be beneficial to the artist.
Most of the video are over six months old , and to be quite honest, I am not too bothered about that because social media is generally in the "NOW" and while the odd person might see and listen to the videos it's not worth my effort to dispute them. Also often I then get notices saying that the video has been reinstated as my dispute was successful , when I did not submit a dispute!.
Although I have not been writing much on here , I've had 14K page views so far this month , but I'm not too sure who is reading what. I once had a run in with YouTube over a Christopher Lee slideshow sound tracked by his version of "My Way".
I'll share one of the songs that were immediately banned that is fully available on YouTube , and that is the wonderful "Journey of the Sorcerer" by The Eagles , as used for the them to Douglas Adams' "The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy".
I have not been posting as much on my main blog , (that is this one), and that was my intention this year but thanks to me writing on Vocal my writing has actually gone up significantly. The thing is there is no checking or approval needed on here and there is no need to hit a minimum word count so I can write as little or as much as I want and not have to check whether it is OK for publication apart from my own visual and grammar and spelling checks.
With Vocal I do get paid for reads though it's a tiny amount but it is a different platform. The format is similar to how I post on here but I do write the initial post using Google Docs which I find a lot faster , more responsive and easier than Microsoft Word , and I am surprised on how slow Microsoft Office apps have become in general. They take an age to start, and sometimes decide to just freeze you out when you are in the middle of something. That is not very good.
I have just finished watching "The Haunting of Bly Manor" on Netflix and while episodes 1-7 were good I felt a little lost at times , but the final two episodes were amazing and the ending , if a little sad, was excellent. I now need to decide on what to pick up next.
I have just realised that my posts on here can be totally unfocused whereas Vocal needs them to be more to the main point to be approved.
I am glad I have posted here and this morning while working have been listening to various things and the one that sticks in my mind is "All Through The City" by Wilko Johnson from the "Going Back Home" album on Chess with Roger Daltrey although it was a classic Dr Feelgood song , and I actually set and ran through the main riff and posted it in Instagram here, but will share with you.
I am actually writing , well typing and not dictating, this draft article on my Google Pixel 2XL phone. Dictating gives me too much editing and fixing, but this is the first article I have done completely on the phone and am surprised that it is basically rather good. Not as convenient as a computer keyboard , but more than adequate and very fit for purpose.
While the title obviously refers to Christianity , this concept is prevalent 8n most religions, anything that brings us pleasure is wrong, and the right way is whatever the controlling body says is the way , hence subservience. We see it today when raising money for good causes ,where the very rich and powerful give nothing themselves but tell the "lower castes" to give and donate to help the less fortunate. Helping others is a worthy pursuit but when you think Jeff Bezis and Elon Musk could probably eradicate world poverty and not leave themselves short you see the issue I have. On a lesser scale Gary Barlow has evaded tax yet still partakes in money raising events (it gives him exposure) , but Mr Barlow is not "The Devil's Music" , far from it.
This article is very unresearched and is just coming from what's 8nmy head and my past experiences, so apologies for any glaring errors. It also contains a lot of my opinions and, despite what lots of people get on their high horses about, opinions and ideas mean nothing unless they are logically argued and backed up by facts.
However a lot of what is going down here is not provable , I may say I think song A is the devil's music and song B isn't , that is my opinion and thoughts on the subject and you may disagree and since The Devil is not here to question I have to assume and opine.
One of the earliest associations between modern popular music and the devil is that the blues singer Robert Johnson wet to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for being able to play guitar. Enough to damn him in the eyes of the church.
Lots of popular music from the late 1800s which then became fused and influenced by and with African and swing rhythms would often implicitly and explicitly refer to ess ee ecks , an the "great and good" , were very disapproving of that.
This music often came from "the other side of the tracks" that was usually the black quarter , again you start to see the racist elements in the disapproval and terming of "the devil's music".
During the wars soldiers were given time off for rest and recreation which is the same acronym as rock and roll , an African American label for that old ess ee ecks , and around 1951 DJ Alan Freed appropriated it for a musical style supposedly kicked off by Jackie Brenton's "Rocket 88" which , I believe also featured Ike Turner on guitar .
Crooners like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra were also frowned upon in certain circles , though it was ironic that "Rock Around The Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets and used as theme to the film "Blackboard Jungle" sparked riots and wrecking of cinemas , but Haley was a middle aged man with a receding hairline leading a white western swing band , hardly the blueprint for the devil's music.
With media such as radio , television and cinema helping spread the word, or the sound , Elvis Presley , The Beatles and The Rolling Stones outraged many just by their existence , but they covered and were influenced by black music which gave a reason for certain organisations to attack them. When John Lennon said that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus that stoked record burnings and protests in the USA , though to burn them they had to buy them.
The Stones "Sympathy For The Devil" was an obvious candidate for the devil's music.
Heavy Metal and it's various exponents took on Satanic overtones exemplified by bands like Black Sabbath , and then genres such as Black Metal and Death Metal.
Religious organisations also decided that playing records backwards revealed Satanic instructions and messages and this was cited when a young man committed suiced and Ozzy Osbourne's "Suicide Solution" was cited as the culprit, but you don't need to play that backwards and obviously the young man had other problems.
Also in this case Rob Halford of Judas Priest quite rightly said "If we could influence people using hidden messages , it would be BUY MORE OF OUR RECORDS , not Kill Yourself."
There is so much good music and it is always progressing, it takes in all influences.
If you listen to "Tubular Bells" it is an impressive and beautiful piece of music but was used (without Mike Oldfield's permission) in the film "The Exorcist" so does that make it Satanic? I think not but anyone can put any interpretation on what they hear.
The thing is WE have the best music , because WE take inspiration and create music that can be described as how it affects us and others.
I have decided to stop posting my Vocal writing on SevendaysIn. I will continue posting on both platforms but this will be less focussed that the Vocal posts , and more just to record what is happening and to share music and links to books , and not to be too bothered about how many words I am posting.
This week is mainly not doing anything in Thirsk, and spending time away from work, although I have had a nice Whatsapp chat with my lovely boss.
The place I am staying is excellent and has a smart TV that is allowing me to watch whatever I want to, so I have re picked up "Better Call Saul". I find it amazing that now you can go on holiday and take the minimum of entertainment with you because ereaders mean you can take books on a device and it's the same with music and films and TV thanks to streaming services such as BBC iPlayer and All4, so I'm not short of anything to watch although I took an age to work out how to get rid of subtitles off iPlayer. You need to pause the program and then the subtitles icon appears on the pause screen.
So I'm not writing for Vocal so I can share the semi appropriate "Holiday Road" from "Nationl Lampoon's Vacation" by the genius Lindsey Buckingham. I call also reign back my posting on here although my Vocal posts may continue on an almost daily basis.
