Conspiracy, Autocorrect and 1984

I went to write this post there was this link to a Messianic Bible which apparently proves that English Bibles are flawed and this proves that Jesus (Yeshua) is the true Messiah. I though the Jews were still waiting for the Messiah. Can't say any more but it's a bit like saying the Hebrew Spiderman comic corrects the errors of the American Spiderman comic.

I'm not sure why the ad came up apart from the face that I have been including a lot about "2023" by The Jams and "The Illuminatus Trilogy" by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea (which is shaping up to be rather good (lots of conspiracy theories based on actual conspiracy theories in a vaguely underground detective novel.

The last nigh I met with Chi Onwurah very briefly after autocorrect on her email told me to meet her at "campervan" opposite the Tyneside Cinema. What she thought she had sent was Ampersand which is in Commercial Union House for the fortnightly Labour Party meeting , but I will catch up with her properly in next couple of weeks to talk about my various issues with the current state state of the Labour Party , but also how we address the "idiocracy" that belies every word of the right wing media.

Maybe given all this, and the fact that "Space Oddity" is playing on the radio , we'll go with "1984" by David Bowie because your devices ARE watching and listening to you. I found this very hard edged live take from a 1973 NBC TV Special from The 1980 Floor Show which produced the album "Diamond Dogs" as the George Orwell estate refused permission for Bowie to use 1984.

Twitteringmore

Facebook is definitely finished on my phone but I feel I am getting too much political stuff on Twitter, well that has replaced the stuff I used to see and share on Facebook. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but it's nice not to let Facebook really track me as such, so no check ins or film sharing as such. I use twitter to share my blog posts as not many people read them on Facebook and Twitter gets me more (robot) attention. Twitter does however open my eyes to a lot of political stuff that I then try and check from other sources, and I do enjoy Mike Harding's posts which are often funny but always with a serious point, and Matt Haig's posts which are always helpful.

I do share the odd positive or funny picture but I am just waiting for my three month ban, as Facebook doesn't play by it's own rules.

I don't know if this will be a short or long post, but I got a couple of classical vinyl albums today (Bizet's "Carmen highlights" and Elgar's "Enigma Variations") from a charity shop and hopefully that will satisfy my vinylisation for a while. IT is good to just put and album on with no remote option and let it play, and that applies to classical and contemporary albums.

I also need to mention this is post 1984 and 1984 was the year my youngest daughter Kirsty was born and she has turned out to be talented, well adjusted , sensible with a reasonable taste in music, books and media , taking after her elder sister Juliet in many respects while being chalk and cheese in some areas. However as sisters and daughters they are as perfect as you could expect.

While I love "Carmen" I also love "Carmen (L'Oiseau Rebelle)" Malcolm McLaren's "Fans" , his take on the theme from Bizet's opera, which is a much harder edged piece but extremely listenable and that's what we shall go with.

Post 101 - When I First Heard Joe Strummer

I just realised that  this is post 101 this year and I can't let this go by without it's Joe Strummer and George Orwell connections. I've probably done this before (follow the related tags) but what the hell. I've now started to wonder whether I will hit 50 posts this month, it means three posts today and three tomorrow but the #AprilSongs sequence will account for two of those, and this will account for another one so it looks like I might almost match last years #August50 where I did 54 posts , but that is definitely going to stay as my highest number of monthly posts.

Anyway back to the point of this post, I first heard Joe Strummer singing the song "Keys To YOur Heart" with his band the 101ers when John Peel played it. It appeared on the excellent Chiswick Records which was similar to Stiff (when Indie meant Indie) in being independent and similar to Stiff featuring New Wave, Punk and Pub Rock with others in it's eclectic spread, but I bought the record straight away. While not as attack minded as The Clash it is still a great rock record.

The band took their name from George Orwell's "1984" where Room 101 was where you were subjected to your greatest fear. I remember that scaring me as a kid when I saw the fifties BBC adaptation with Peter Cushing (you can watch it here) with the rat cage helmet contraption.

So that is how I first got into the music of Joe Strummer.

Time Sharing

When I started first in programming at Littlewoods we were given access that used a "Time Sharing System" which we were told would make it seem as though we were the only person using the system. It was a lie of course but we dealt with it.

In life we often have to work out how to share time between work , chores , stuff that needs doing , time to be alone, do what you want and rest , and spending time in a social environment with friends, family and loved ones. I try to load mine in favour of the last two, but each of these groups can also be subdivided into sub groups.

Today I have to go to work so that's eight hours out of my day , after six hours sleep, ninety minutes of getting up and showered and writing this, then an hour to walk in to work , to try and hit my 11K for today, but I need to get the bus home as I have a delivery from Iceland coming. How mundane is this post? Still these things may be the highlights of some people's lives.

Ideally aim to do what you want and enjoy , and be happy. Life is difficult and confusing at times, but if you do things you want, then life improves wonderfully.

So before I leave , here's #ATuneaDayinMay , what more appropriate that The Buzzcocks "Boredom" from the "Spiral Scratch" EP. This allows me to have a brief rant on the genre of "indie" music. Many "indie" bands are on major labels, so how can they be "indie". It's 1984 doublespeak (which the governments in the UK, USA and Russia seem to use as a matter of course where the words used mean the opposite of their real meaning) . "Spiral Scratch" however was real "indie" , the Buzzcocks first release which they organised end to end. Ironically in this digital age we all have the technology available to record and release stuff from our own bedroom or office.... and that is still on my "To Do" List.

I decided to include the whole of the EP for you so you have eleven minutes of real "indie" music.

Anyway, have a great Monday everybody.

Two Eight Four

It could be a house number, it could be a bus number , it could be any number. It's the first three number in the powers of two with the last two's positions swapped. Although this is essentially a diary so that I can keep a track of things that catch my imagination it was also meant to be a source of inspiration for a book which is still nowhere near completion.

It's also another example of how my mind flies off at tangents influenced by things I see hear or read. Wire's album "154" was named because they had just played their 154th gig.

284 is the page I've reached in Tony Morley's "The Age Of Bowie" that started as a sort of biography but is now using David Bowie's albums as an almost stream of consciousness narrative. It's also up to the album "Diamond Dogs" which was a soundtrack to to Bowie's "Nineteen Eighty Floor Show"  which was meant to be his take on George Orwell's brutal "1984", but the Orwell foundation would not grant him permission to use the book. He still included a track on the album called "1984".

Last year I did a musical sequence call #ALIfeInNumbers in which I included a sequence of 59 songs containing, in one form or another, songs with 1 to 59 in their titles or prominently in their lyrics.

When "Diamond Dogs" was released John Peel played the whole album on his Friday night show. I taped it, loved it and bought it the next day. I remember they airbrushed out the dogs you know whats on Guy Peellaert's excellent cover, but the video I've included has the unretouched version.

The piece I've included is the "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing(Reprise)" sequence which ends with a brutal speaker swapping guitar sequence before a complete stop heralding "Rebel Rebel", probably the best Rolling Stones song they never wrote.

It's a Bank Holiday Weekend, It's a Beautiful Day, have a brilliant time my friends.