Uniform - #AnimalAugust #16

The sky is a uniform grey and it's raining and drizzling a perfect situation for the word "dreich" , not exactly great walking weather or inspirational and certainly not summery.

With the weather being so awful I was wondering if I could hit my 11K steps without actually leaving the house. I know people have done it, but basically the house is about ten steps from side to side, so going from one side to the other and back 550 times would actually do it but I could see that tedium would  hit me very quickly. Of course there is up and down stairs and the rest of the house to use but it's a lot of repetition, which I am not really up for.

Yesterday during a work meeting the sound went off, and I assumed that there was a problem with the person speaking then realised my TV , that provides the sound, and switched it self off which it does after four hours. After several months I found the setting to stop it from switching itself off, but this means I now have to remember to switch it off when I've finished with it.

On my #MusicWhileYouWork Instagram sequence which I started when working from home I am now listening to the Bruce Springsteen "Soundstage" 15CD box , which is still available for around £20 , and while it's a radio broadcast quality , it is still excellent. I'm on CD2 so a long way to go and after this I have a 4CD David Bowie set (The Collaborator) to enjoy.

Still on "Venus on the Halfshell" and though it's dated tongue in cheek , I am still enjoying it, and it is packed full of ideas and observations that are very relevant today.

Over the last week I have binge watched (for me) lots of TV coming to the finale of "Veep" , one and a half series of "Bosch" , which is very good and his apartment and view is worth watching the program for.

"Shortly After Take Off" by BC Camplight has just been played by Chris Hawkins on 6Music, followed by "96 Tears" by ? & The Mysterians which put me in mind of Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs who had a hit with "Wooly Bully" which will do for today's #AnimalAugust .

I'm just wondering whether to have a September sequence based on fruit , but will have to think of a hashtag for that.

Ten Miles

On Friday I'd decided that hitting my 340K steps this May for the rolling Million Step Challenge was unlikely to happen , then yesterday due my local office not taking a Discogs order to go to the USA I walked into town to the Haymarket Post Office / M&M News who did allow me to post the item.

What this meant is , with other perambulations, I walked over ten and half miles yesterday , 23K steps , which now pots me about 2K steps behind schedule, so maybe I might actually make my target , though I'm just over half way through the month, and the reasons I thought I wouldn't make it still stand.

This is also continuing the #maywriteabit thing although I suppose all my May posts fall into that category.

Though this morning I have already covered 5K stepa and that is close to half my normal daily target.

I switched on 6Music and Chris Hawkins is playing "Isolation" by Joy Division (appropriate for these times) as it's the 40th anniversary of Ian Curtis' death. So as I need to get to work we will share that song and if you listen to 6Music today there will be a lot of related things on there for you to listen to.

I think the clip is from the film Control although has spanish subtitles , but wort a watch. Track down the film too.

Lost (in) Music

When Brian Matthew used to do "Sounds of the 60s" he'd get communications similar to "my husband's favourite record is XXXX, could you play it because he has never heard it since 1967 when it went missing in a house move" and more recent Chris Hawkins has a Lost Love feature where people write in with messages akin to "My favourite record as a teenager was XXXX but I haven't heard it since 1990".

Now the thing is we live in a digital age and we can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world instantly if we are both, in some form , online. A benefit of this is that you can usually easily find your favourite record. This blog relies so much on Youtube because you can find virtually everything on there, if I can't find it I will create a slideshow and put the record up there and hope it doesn't get pulled for copyright reasons. Most of them stay and you can check my channel which is a combination of such slideshows and live performances.

The other thing, even if you are not digitally connected, if you are lucky and have one , libraries and record shops can search out music for you, and they would be on the end of a phone. The people who contact Chris Hawkins have no excuse at all, they contact him exclusively by email so are connected.

In the nineties Voiceprint Records based in Houghton-Le-Spring re-released a lot of music digitally. This was a good model because the music was only downloadable so apart from the server and site costs they didn't have to invest in vinyl / cd print runs. There is still music on th eimprint (see below).The problem with digital media is it can be stolen over and over again that applies to video, music and e-publications.

So I should really play a song I have forgotten about, but if I've forgotten about it then I can't remember it so I will just play something that I haven't played for a while, although I want't to also play something fairly obscure which I had difficulty tracking down, but I did on either Amazon or Ebay. That song is "Dizz Knee Land" by Dada from 1992 and it is a great record.The title of the song spelling was changed by the group so as not to interfere with copyright laws, however "Disneyland" is also the nickname for the Orange County Jail.

Take The Skinheads Bowling

Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I walked to and from work. Both walks were in the dark as it's autumn and the days are still getting shorter as we are still on the way to the Winter Solstice and the shortest day. I did about 18.5K steps which at 2.5K steps per mile is about 7.5 miles. I don't think I will do that today as I need to be at work a bit longer today but I will definitely be walking in , and my step cout is ahead of schedule for the month.

I got to listen to the excellent "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monáe, my favourite album of the last two years, repeating a couple of songs as I played it then finishing off with Marcel King's "Reach For Love" , one of my favourite singles and Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single. That's the great thing about walking, these days (and really since the dawn of the compact cassette) we have the ability to listen to music on the move. Although cassettes are having a revival, the problem has always been their fragility, but they did combine that with convenience. A friend of mine had a cassette player that allowed you to program the playing order, but the fact that it had to fast forward and rewind between songs sort of negated the convenience, but an impressive piece of technology none the less.

The blog is now eight posts away from the annual record (last year I hit 316) so that will be easily surpassed this year and that will probably be it for posting records.

One of the points of this blog is to share music with friends and I was thinking of something by Janelle Monáe or Marcel King, but Chris Hawkins on 6Music has just put on "Take The Skinheads Bowling" by Camper Van Beethoven who once retired to a cabin and recorded Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" (my favourite Fleetwood Mac album and even got album of the week from NME despite being a double album by "dinosaur rockers" in the middle of the UK punk explosion, and the CVB one is good as well). So we will go with "Take The Skinheads Bowling".

Just as I was writing this , my tablet box somehow fell out of my pocket. It is round. I looked down it was nowhere to be seen. I guessed right and it had rolled under the chest of drawers. C'est la vie.

Crunch

I'm really enjoying the final Stephen Hawking book which while I don't understand a great deal of it, it is a great book for stimulating thoughts and while it is not explicitly stated I like the "Crunch Theory" of the Universe that it is a constant state of expanding and contracting from a singularity where eveying contracts to a pin point resulting in a big bang which causes the whole thing to start again. If course this happens over millions if not billions of years and implies that the universe is effectively eternal although at the point of singularity time doesn't exist.

reading a bit further about the singularity it's a place where time , space and everything becomes infinite therefore unmeasurable so I think that also fits with my interpretations.

This post sounds as though I know what I am talking about, I don't really, but things to catch my imagination. So definitely a worthwhile book to have in your collection.

Also this morning I got a mention on the Chris Hawkins Show (about seventy five minutes in if you follow the link) plugging a few local record shops and the fact that I have ordered the forthcoming Sam Fender album.

There's only one song for this post, the scientifically accurate "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python and I didn't realises Stephen Hawking had done a version as well.

Reading Appendices #2 and Discovering Sam Fender

Well I am reading the appendices of "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and it's like nothing has changed. Same mad whirlwind mix or mysticism and conspiracies as well as explanations of I-Ching symbols that I was unaware of, well I assume they are correct despite the fact this is a work of mad fiction. It's not often fictional novels  have a large section of appendices.

This is just a short post to let you know a little more about this book that I thought I was finished with and had finished writing about, but like a box of fireworks you dropped a match in , they've not all gone off yet.

Chris Hawkins played "The Borders" by Sam Fender on 6Music this morning and I've had a natural aversion to Sam Fender because everyone seems to be pushing him. He's also a local lad (North Shields I think, well that's where his studio is). Chris described him as the English Springsteen. After hearing "The Borders" he might not be wrong , and amazing song and the album is on my list to buy, and given my generally paucity of new music buying these days that is no mean thing. Well impressed.

Enjoy your Wednesday.

Sing Me A Song That I Know

This morning I turned on the radio (Chris Hawkins on 6Music) and heard an absolute gorgeous brass riff playing, but also thought it sounded familiar and the surrounding song wasn't. The surrounding song was "Summer Girl" by Haim, a band I can take or leave but this is definitely a song that I would talk.

The song that it brought to mind was "Sing Me A Song That I Know" by Blodwyn Pig  ( a band formed by Mick Abrahams after he fell out with Ian Anderson and left Jethro Tull)  which I heard on the Island compilation "Nice Enough To Eat" . The brass intro , to me , was incredibly captivating and has , obviously , stayed with me to this day.

I think for this post, the first Monday in September 2019, I should share both songs with you and they are both worth four minutes of your time. I am so thankful that Youtube allows you to listen to music effectively for free, yes there are adverts, but they have to make money and the artists have to be paid. Also because Youtube is video based that tends to command your attention better than a normal streaming service and I haven't heard any artists complain about the Youtube business model.


So listen to both on these songs and enjoy, I certainly did.

Quarter Of A Million

I've hit quarter of a million visits on the blog since it started, and while I don't write a lot on each post, fairly bite size chunks, it is an improvement on when I started. I have lots of friends who started blogs that have then lapsed, a few of my favourites that you see on the right hand side of this have not been updated for a hell of a long time. Often people write extremely long essay type pieces which  take time to put together (which often we don't really have) and then sometimes people see a huge chunk of text and it just turns them off, even though the subject or writer actually interest the reader.

I have been criticised for writing documentation at work, because there is not enough writing on each page (never for the actual content). The thing is white space actually draws people in because they see that they can read and take in what's on that page. I'm not sure about others but I find all my documentation useful because it's easy to find and take in what you need to know but that is just self recommendation.

"The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is severely blocks of non stop text, so very intimidating, but it has managed to draw me in and keep me hooked but that is a definite exception to the rule

Also while these blog posts might be seemingly slight on a computer browser, when viewed on a mobile device they become reasonably digestible articles, not too long but but not throw away.

So Graham Parker's "New York Shuffle" is playing on 6Music , and it's a brilliant reminder of the wonderful Graham Parker who is still making great music. Thanks for that Chris Hawkins.

New Targets? Well I can probably hit 320 posts this year, which will be another record and well within my grasp and unexpected as I was aiming for 200 posts this year. It is possible I may hit 300K visits this year but that's dependent on stuff beyond my control , also I'd like to see the Christopher Lee video hit 50K visits as it hit 30K this year.

Turtle Power

Switched on 6Music this morning and Chris Hawkins was playing "Gravel-Pit" by Wu-Tang Clan which for some reason reminded me of  "Turtle Power" the theme from the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, which was a surprisingly excellent song and the film wasn't that bad either.

My daughters Juliet and Kirsty were huge fans and the action figures were very difficult to get hold of, but I remember walking into Asda at Boldon just before Christmas and there were two huge baskets filled with the figures. Christmas was sorted, sometimes things do unexpectedly drop into your lap.

So it's Friday and this is effectively my diary entry to fine the Partners In Kryme song should ever want to listen to it, so just a very short post before I get off to work wondering if I've got that record, it's probably somewhere in my digital collection and that has just reminded me of a couple of streaming service surveys that i've seen.

Basically streaming music is being pushed in many forms , including podcasts and the like. The thing is when you stream music or video you have to remember that if you are not on wifi then you are using up or paying for your data and this is what the various communications companies are pushing. From an artists point of view the Spotify business model doesn't work but most of my friends are aghast when I say I don't have Spotify. Apple Music, Amazon and the rest will all devour your data.

I had a chuckle at the latest EE 5G advert advertising "Hannah" from Amazon Prime where Kevin Bacon says you can download it in seconds when the girl says she hasn't got time. If the network is that good why not stream, the data use would be the same. Also while you can download something in seconds it still takes 90 minutes to watch and generally it's better to watch on a big TV that a relatively little phone, I'd rather watch on a fifty inch screen than a five inch screen.

So now it's time for work.

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. The Never Ending Story - My Directory
2. The Never Ending Music - My Music Directory
3. The Never Ending Poetry - My Poetry Directory
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag

 

Well I Didn't See That Coming

Sheet lightning , thunder , torrential rain, Bojo the poundshop Drumpf as Prime Minister, and now the rain has stopped , hopefully Bojo will too.  Today is forecast very hot and sunny so that should be a bit of summer to enjoy apart from being at work.

It is very hot already and it will be in the office.

The radio is still full of Moon Landing related programmes and articles, and Professor Richard Wiseman is doing spots on the Chris Hawkins Show on 6Music about the whole "Apollo Mindset" where Mission Control planners were all very young (early twenties) and got this done because they didn't know it couldn't be done.

So it's so hot that I really can't write any more but  maybe we should go with "Saturn 5" by The Inspiral Carpets.

Early To Bed

Just a short post to say how good it is to go to bed early and actually sleep well. That sort of happened last night night and I've woken up to bright sunshine and blue skies, so even though it's Monday and I have to go to work and I have a hospital appointment for some cardio scan, although I think this is just due to the fact that I mentioned that sometimes when walk up inclines I get a bit of tightness in my chest. It's not anything that I consider being a problem but doctors know better than me mostly.

Chris Hawkins has the entertaining Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy (they did the theme to 'Father Ted' among other things)  talking about Dublin as well as playing songs from the new album "Office Politics".

Though I slept well I did wake from some complex dreaming and very often if that happens and I decide to have ten more minutes I fal back into the dream often to find out what happens, which is actually irrelevant  because most of my dreams make no sense at all.


This is post 1957 and 1957 is the year in which I was born, so I found Lonnie Donegan performing two of hits hits from that year "Cumberland Gap" and "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O" which is always a good way to start a Monday.

Have a good one.

Fantastic Day

That was the record playing on the Chris Hawkins show when I switched on 6Music this morning. The rain has stopped and it's a Friday so that is a great initial start today and it's up to me to enjoy it and make it better.

I must have used that song before, but remember hearing "Favourite Shirts" by Haircut 100 and thinking it was extremely similar to "I Zimbra" by the Talking Heads. Haircut 100 were never one of my favourite bands but they and Nick Heyward came up with a few cracking songs which prompted me to buy a combined best of.

That is one of the issues with CDs is that they became so cheap that you end up buying a double CD (possibly over two hours of music for a three minute song) , I have been guilty of that many times. I wouldn't have bought it on vinyl, although my vinyl collection is a bit like a beard, it grows slowly but does need trimming to keep it in tip top condition. You should always be able to quickly find what you want to play.

My walking recently has been fragmented, partly due to the weather, but I am still keeping up with my rolling million steps every three months, and it is startling how many people seem surprised by it. Though Matt Haig made me laugh when he said "I used to just go for a walk, now I get worried if I don't hit my 10K steps a day".

So that's a few snippets to think about as you enjoy your Friday.

Let It Rain

The sky is grey and it's raining. I normally like rain but at the moment it's a threat because I have an intermittent roof leak  that I have been waiting three weeks for the roofer to sort out. He's an OK guy but  not as quick to deal with this as I'd like.

I'm reading Matt Haig's book and one of the things we should listen to to relax and unwind is rain and waves, things that you hear but are constant but don't grab your attention but give your mind a relaxing bed to sleep on, it's a good idea. Youtube has some sequence of up to twelve hours of natural sounds (waves, rain etc) that you can put on and fall asleep to, check here.

When  I was starting to write this Chris Hawkins played "Sometimes" by James which brings up rain and waves and water in its lyrics and I will share that with you this morning.

I often go to sleep listening to lots of music, Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon" is wonderful because like natural sound there is nothing that grabs your attention. The night before last I listened to Alice Cooper's "Killer" and I got through most of that. Last night I put on three Weather Report albums  ("Heavy Weather", "I Sing The Body Electric" and "Mysterious Traveller")which is excellent jazz instrumental but fell asleep before the first piece had finished. I got up three times to go for a wee (I am old and diabetic and it was one of those nights but that is life) but each time chose a different Weather Report album and went straight back to sleep.

I think I will also include "Birdland" which was going to be my original piece for this, but we can have both.

Xeronius

Another made up word, although it may be real. Sometimes Google is a positive. Turns out there are bands, artists , twitter users with that name but no definition, but a name wouldn't have a definition.

I heard some lyrics to a "Christmas" song on 6Music this morning which were essentially:

"I Hate This Time of Year

 It's Dark and it's Cold

And I Feel I'm Getting Old.."

To me that doesn't exactly give me positive vibes, quite the opposite. I don't think it'll be on my Christmas playlist. The song is "Home Alone, Too" by The Staves and can be listened to here (a radio session).

I decided to watch the final episodes of "Electric Dreams" Channel4's series based on Philip K Dicks' short stories, and"The Father Figure" played like and excellent Stephen King story, "Autofac" featured the wonderful Janelle Monae (her "Dirty Computer" is my album of 2018) in a post apocalyptic Amazon scenario which featured, for me, a brilliant twist. I am currently watching "Safe and Sound", with the chilling exchange:

Q: "Have your ever seen a terrorist attack?"

A: "They're on the news feed all the time"

You can see them on all 4 here.

So I think to accompanty this pre Christmas post we got to have more Janelle Monae, haven't we.

Clouds and Total Football

Looking out of the window and there is an amazing cloud formation overhead. Here's my nstagram post.

Well it looks like the site visits have taken another dive, c'estla vie. The last two nights I have gone to bed early and this morning I was wide awake at 2:30.

I had woken from a dream but the dream was very influenced by the book I'm reading Matt Haig's "How To Stop Time" which is certainly a page turner but the main protagonist is possibly the most depressing since Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant. Both characters have a heavy burden but it does become wearing in the way it's presented., although other charaters do provide the hope and lighter sections.

The rain has taken a break so I may be able to walk into work to day and listen to some good music.

Today is the first round of the Carabao Cup and Preston North End are playing Morecambe, and on 6Music Chris Hawkins has just played "Total Football" by Parquet Courts so it has to be that doesn't it.

Have a good day everyone.

Answers on a Postcard

Remember that for competitions and requests? This morning I emailed John Hilcock standing in for Chris Hawkins on 6Music and got a positive response withing five minutes. There are some ways we have progressed. John was asking about songs about Dallas and I immediately thought of  Dallas by Steely Dan, one of their finest songs, but they rated so lowly that it's never had a digital release.

The Matt Haig Book is a little weird with the main protagonist thinking about ending his life but finding a reason to continue. I saw a meme about suicide that it doesn't stop the pain it just passes it on to others, and that is something that I am sure would stop me were I ever in that black a place. The number of good things in, and peripheral to my life of worth looking forward to. Enjoyin TV and holiday s with Fiona and friends, seeing Juliet's amazing fodcreations when as a small child pizza was a base with cheese and ham, no tomato, going to gigs and meeting up with Kirsty and Juliet and Molly, Mark's music and car perfection talks and his continual excellent taste in music, phone calls to my dad who can still be a curmudgeon, and then all my friends in Newcastle and Preston.

If we sit down and started writing a list of what we have to look forward to most of us would only stop when our arm started to ache.

So it's back to work today, and I am even looking forward to that, there's a lot aI could complain about but far more positive things.

So I am  sure I was going to write about about more things and a couple of years back I started an #August50 target to hit 50 posts in a month. When I first tried I hit  30, though the most I've done in a month is 43, but I could probably hit 50 this August so I'm going to set myself that target to do it. It's still less thatn two posts a day. I once saw a blog which had hundreds of posts each day, but each post was just a link to anther site. Very strange.

It's grey out but there's lots to look forward to, including mowing the lawn one evening this week, the football season has started, Preston won their first match despite missing two key players, and  my friend Krista is back from Finland so it is going to be a great week.

Have a good one everyone.

Frontier Man

I was going to call this post "Manic Depression" but I thought that it might lead people in who might think it might provide insight into the condition, but of course it wont be, but then Chris Hawkins played "Frontier Man" by Gruff Rhys from the new album "Babelsberg" and that has already provided "The Nightmare of Existence" title a couple of posts ago, and therefor has to be the featured song today. It is a definite grower with gorgeous lyrics and a wonderful video. The album has been ordered.

"On The Frontier of Delusion,

  I'm Your Foremost Frontier Man"

What I was going to say is often the way I tend to do things is either I do lots of things at once or else just fall into a lethargy. Maybe this is just a way of recharging batteries for the next burst of creativity. LIke this weekend two gigs, a Steampunk Fair, three blog posts on Sunday but I still didn't mow the lawn.

It  doesn't mean I'm depressed but I remember Spike Milligan talking about the condition saying it was either the black dog or 100 mph creativity. This sounds similar to Bipolar where you are high / low (I think). I'm sorry if I seem to be trivialising this, I'm definitely not.

Manic Depression is also a great Jimi Hendrix song from is debut album "Are You Experienced" , which is another reason why the title came into my head, so that is one to cue up for a relisten. Anyway it still looks cloudy out there and a little cold, but it is time to set off for work, and hope you have a great Tuesday.

I'm still confused as to why generally MP3 downloas are more expensive than the CD (which comes with a free download) although "Set Fire To The Stars" is a tiny £1.79 for twenty three songs as opposed to a tenner for the CD. Whatever music is still incredibly good value for money.

When Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" was released it cost £3.25. I was on the dole at the time and my JSA was £3.25 a week. So if albums had kept pace with JSA you would be paying £80 for the ne Gorillaz album.

Think on that.

Bitey - We Are Here To Drink Your Beer!!

That was a word Chris Hawkins used to described the cold this morning. The laminate kitchen floor was so cold that I had to put slippers on.  Outside the cars are frozen up and I am considering walking into work today. The sky is clear so it will be interesting to see the sunrise this morning. The roads are clear and on Saturday they were frosted up , and we did have snow flurries during  Sunday night.

Yesterday I was walking past the Westgate Ark Charity shop on Two Ball Lonnen I had noticed they now have cats in the window, and couldn't resist taking an instagram video that you can see here. A lot of people seem to like it and it is cute as hell.

I'm currently clearing recordings frome my TIVO box in anticipation of taking delivery of a V6 box, although as Yodel are delivering it I haven't a clue when I will get it, but rumours have it that it's an improvement on the TIVO box.

Anyway I'm sort of prepared for the bitey weather out there, though luckily I have the option of catching a bus if it really does get too cold.

I wimped out from seeing Alestorm last night but I'll include their video for "Drink" for you to enjoy as I get wrapped up and ready to continue my walking into work to deal with whatever awauts me when I get there. The Alestorm video will definitely wake you up.

"We Are Here To Drink Your Beer!!"

I know it's Monday, but be positive and have a great start to the week.

The Day After Yesterday

Yesterday we woke up to a decent snowfall, two or three inches deep in parts as I walked into work. We had sun and the snow started to melt. By the time I walked down Barrack Road the footpath was like slush driven slide. Because it was still so cold the melted snow started turning to ice.

I don't know if it's age or my lardy weight but despite a decent pair of boots I could not negotiate even slight iced slopes, each time having to find an alternative clear path which involved extra walking. This wasn't me being safe rather than sorry, it was me being forced to take a (slightly) different route to get to where I want. The final one being the path from Rosie's bar near the start of the Town Wall to the front door of Citygate. I could,t go on the path and the grass was reduced to a slippery muck, luckily the footpath round was level and partially ice free. Having thought about it no one else was walking on that slope either.

It's like the feeling you get on the bus when you are starting and the bust (apparently) slams on or goes violently round a corner , and I have difficulty keeping upright. Again is this old age or is it just that buses (I still think it should be spelt - or is it spelled - busses, the joys of the english language, I'm English and can hardly spell.

This morning looking out of the window ther is still a decent white snow blanket, though this will now be infused with ice so the walk to work may not be so comfortable. I will tell you tonight how it went.

February will mean increasing my daily steps by 10% to 12,250 steps a day but so far this month I am averaging more than that (12,650 a day at the end of yesterday).

Chris Hawkins played "Calling All The Heroes" by It Bites and that reminded me of the excellent "American Life In The Summertime" by Francis Dunnery http://amzn.to/2DpHDAvafter he left the band, which is what I'll share with you twenty three years after it's release.