So Behold The Man

I cannot believe I have not posted in here this month , but Vocal has become my priority writing platform now. I finished Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell about his experience in the Spanish Civil War and then read "Behold The Man" by Michael Moorcock.

"Behold The Man" combines Heath Robinson Time Travel with the crucifixion and at 124 pages is a fairly quick read which I did really enjoy. There is a little explicit sex but no actual erotica in there. The synopsis reads thus:

"Meet Karl Glogauer, time traveller and unlikely Messiah. When he finds himself in Palestine in the year 29AD he is shocked to meet the man known as Jesus Christ - a drooling idiot, hiding in the shadows of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth. But if he is not capable of fulfilling his historical role, then who will take his place?"

Next up is "The Thurber Album" by James Thurber , a very old Penguin edition . He came out with some good one liners but will see how this pans out.

I have been tasked with reviewing "Workingman's Dead" on Vocal because of this review of Terrapin Station , one of my favourite albums.

I am doing this just before I go to hospital, Because there is zero quality control , it will be very short, but I was worried that the blog was going to miss it's first month in over a decade, but this is here now.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I will include a full copy of "Workingmen's Dead" for your perusal.

Here In Catalonia

 I am currently reading George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" and am shocked how I have drifted into it , ensnared by Orwell's excellent writing. It's about the Spanish Civil War and everything about this book says a big no to me. Boring ,  1930s War commentary about something that I have no interest in at all.

Then I opened the book.

The text was huge almost unparagraphed slabs , only 250 pages but I wasn't going to get through this. 90 pages later and it is a truly excellent read . It brings out the total boredom of war and just as you are getting as numb as Orwell was the bombs drop , the bullets fly , the lack of resources , the dirt and filth , you are in it.

And it is very readable , I am just surprised how good it is , maybe it is just me.

So to go with it I've included Greenslade's "Catalan" from "Time and Tide".

One of the good things about posting on my own blog is there are no limitations or quality control (as you may have noticed , but you can check out my Vocal writing here , which is subject to quality control.

On The Border

Woke up this morning to thick fog. 

I was dreaming , there was a guitarist and Cher , and he was playing in various styles and she told him to play like Carlos Santana, I thought there is no way he can just play like Carlos Santana without the right guitar and amplification set up.

He started to play and I thought it's nothing like Santana , it sounds like birdsong. This went on for a while and I then realised it was my alarm clock which wakes me up with birdsong. It's the first time for me , I think , that real life and dreams have meshed together so closely . I really don't know if that is a good thing. Is this real life or is it just fantasy indeed?

Obviously the multi style guitarist got me thinking of "Guitar Jamboree" by Chris Spedding , he is a brilliant guitarist but it's just a novelty song.

I finished Tony Hawks' "Piano In The Pyrenees" which turned out to be more about his attempt to build a swimming pool while integrating into the local French community , culminating in meeting up with a former lover. I hope it worked out.

Next book I've nipped over the border with George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia" about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. It is grim and the pages are huge blocks of text making for difficult reading but it is providing an insight into what happened then.

Now to work.

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.

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.