Good Things Do Happen - #ALifeInNumbers #36

Today is a new day. After yesterday's traumas it's time to be positive once more, although there is The Walking Dead second installment next Monday and Preston play Newcastle again on Saturday, but at least they're on separate days and won't be after a day at work. I definitely need some comedy and music to lighten the mood and still have to write a review of the GOAT and Josefin Öhrn gig last week which was excellent, so that's what I need more of, though I am missing a Women In Revolt gig at the weekend , but c'est la vie.

Anyway number 36 in the series is the excellent "36 Hours" from The Bard of Salford, Dr John Cooper Clarke, the guy who helped bring poetry to punks in the 1970s and he is still doing it although he has done an album of covers with Hugh Cornwell here, which I am tempted by , just because it's a great pairing.

Anyway it's time for work and one of my favourite records has just come on the radio (6 Music of course) the beautiful "To Ohio" by The Low Anthem, which I will include because it is so lovely, then I found this collaboration with Emmylou Harris

See - Good Things Do Happen , you need to appreciate them.

Have a great day my friends

Copping Out With Lee Perry - #ALifeInNumbers #31

This is the first real cop out and there will be a few more before the end. It's 2 am and I have woken up with a horrible raspy dry cough, so what do I do? I make some milky hot chocolate and write a blog post. I normally post on a Friday but yesterday I was tired in the morning after going to see GOAT and Josefin Öhrn the night before which I will write up on Spoongig here and that should appear over the weekend.

Anyway the copy out is that I can't find a "31" song so the best I can do is "3 In 1" by Lee Perry and The Upsetters (or The Heptones according to the Amazon listing) and Dave Wright may point it out that this is a total cop out , but it's my blog, my sequence and my rules and I need to get back to bed. It's also an excuse to get Lee Perry in here so that's fine by me,  I'm just glad I'm not reduced to  X-Factor trash , although they tend to exclusively cover other people's stuff anyway so I would always have the original to fall back on.

Anyway enjoy this and by the time you read this I will probably be tucked up in bed. Have a great Saturday my wonderful friends.

Tom Waits at the Halfway Point - #ALifeInNumbers #30

Well this is just past the halfway point of #ALifeinNumbers and this is on of the prebooked slots with one of my favourite artists Tom Waits with "Sixteen Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six" or "16 Shells from a 30.6" from the wonderfully named "SwordfishTrombones". If ever you think that the USA is down the drain Tom Waits is one of those people who restore your faith in the artistic brilliance that has come out of the States.

I found this great live take from The Tube in 1985 , absolute genius.

The first thing I heard by him was "In The Neighborhood" , still one of my favourite songs, his songs have been covered by lot's of popular artists such as The Eagles ("Ol' 55" which is penned in for number 55) and Rod Stewart ("Downtown Train" and "Tom Traubert's Blues [Waltzing Matilda]") and no doubt lots of other more mainstream artists.

Today is my friend Helen Morgan's birthday. Tomorrow is my friend Helen Morgan's birthday. I have two friends called Helen Morgan , one lives in Africa or New Zealand or somewhere, and one lives in Newcastle, their birthday's are one day apart.

Anyway I'll leave this as a short post, although Preston North End hammered Huddersfield last night so that's two of the top 4 dealt with , only Newcastle United (twice) and Norwich to deal with now and on paper we should be steamrollered. Dwight Gayle cost more than the whole Preston squad but we will see what the situation is in a fortnight.

Have a wonderful Thursday my friends, I am going to see GOAT tonight so going to have my mind blown. See you tomorrow.

Bottled It With "26" and Son Palace Discovered - #ALifeInNumbers #26

Today has been a weird day. I am absolutely shattered. I'm still hit with this lurgi but went into work, then came home mowed the lawn and covered the garden furniture. As well as working I got tickets for Goat at the Riverside on Thursday from RPM and was asked to review and push a new CD by Son Palace called Accumulations , so I have been busy and am ready for tea and TV.

As I write this I'm listening to the first track on the Son Palace album , "Joey and Mo", it shounds familiar making me thing thing of Neil Young and The Velvet Underground. The album is short, clocking at 28 minutes , but then so did the first Ramones album. It sounds like "Joe and Mo" is an instrumental and I like it a lot, I need to see if we have a youtube video.

The second track "Page To Pillow" has a pastoral feel, again a guitar based instrumental and the first two songs on this album warrant further investigation and listening.

Anyway the song for #ALifeInNumbers is "26" by Catfish and The Bottlemen who have produced a couple of excellent albums , but this only got in because it was called "26" but it is excellent. It's rock and it's good.

Up to track 3 of the Son Palace album "Feathers Like A Wild Beast", and now I am thinking Nick Drake and Pentangle, but loving the distant dustbin drum sound on "Experimental Move". Anyway if you want a copy get yourself along to RPM in Newcastle, it always amazes me that peopel come up with new music. Now listening to "Accumulation" , all tracks have been instrumental and this just has an eerie edge to it, but could be an out take from "Tubular Bells".

An album I would buy if I didn't already have it, it is beautiful. I can't find them on the net so get yourself down to RPM and get this beauty. I know this has been hijacked , but this album is beautiful

Downs and Ups and The Graham Norton / U2 Connection

This has been a weird week , exhausting and I was looking forward to a quiet weekend , but that's  unlikely to happen , although it's all my own fault, I could stay in and not oversee so work stuff, but really where's the fun in doing nothing.

The Schooner

The other thing Australia and Pirates (see the Mac Barnett talk)  and the Middle East have cropped up quite a lot this week from various sources such as the brilliant TED talk about books that I've included in this post. Tonight the is a Nick Cave night at the Tyneside Cinema Cafe, on Sunday a U2 tribute band on at The Schooner (I assume it'll be a standard tribute although with the Schooner you might expect a Joshua Trio  - which I believe included Graham Norton though I may be wrong -
type tribute), then on Monday night it's GOAT at Newcastle University.



Also it's my birthday next week and have been tasked with writing my best ever blog post, though best is a very subjective adjective although I have it planned out, but it will be personal and substantial , this is a fun challenging gauntlet to pick up. My current most read post is here and the irony is that if you click through to see what it is it will become even more read. While it's a reasonable post , I don't think it's my best post so far , although to be quite honest I haven't a clue what that is.

Anyway it's time for work so I will sigh off now , have a great Friday and a great weekend.

Thunderstruck By Bagpipes... another installment Fighting With My Left Hand

Its's been a SAD day, that's SAD as in Seasonal Affected Disorder, as you know I seldom let life get me down, but today's weather has been mostly grey skies and not exactly warm, just one of those days where things don't really inspire you to get up and go.

This week I have two hospital visits, the first of which I'm not looking forward to because it will cause discomfort (and related to the cirrhosis diagnosis a couple of weeks back) , the second will be fine because it's the end of an observational period on my liver that has included two biopsies, but the consultant and nurses I've had looking out for me have been brilliant. I love the NHS.



The same consultant, because he is so good , spotted that I may have nerve damage in my left arm that resulted in the op and that seems to have majorly improved my control and strength in my left arm. I'd set my sights on learning to play AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" until I checked out the tab and found that's it's all played on the second ('B') string m so after ten minutes I'd made a decent stab at that on acoustic guitar (with a lot of buzzes and clicks) , so I need something a little more challenging, though I still think the Red Hot Chilli Pipers version on bagpipes is well impressive.

Uneasy Listening

Then I found a friend who with her husband has gone through traumatic times recently, but her little girl has started school , he husband's band (Omnihility)have released a new album and she is going for a dream job so lot's of positivity there which is brilliant.

I've done lots of walking about today, so have got some exercise, and actually had an enjoyable day.

U2 and iTunes gave us their new album whether you wanted it or not and it's playing at the moment and is fine, if just another U2 album, but really it's just a marketing exercise.

I've got another three weeks before a holiday in Ampleforth and have some gigs coming up , including GOAT, which I am really looking forward to.

Anyway enjoy what's left of the weekend , I certainly will