Oh My God

 "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is still on politics but is now on the Creationism vs Darwinism argument. Essentially Creatism is for people who cannot understand scientific concepts. Science always questions itself, religion doesn't. The Bible may have started out with some moral tenets and some of them are still worth following today, but also condones horrible things like slavery, misogyny and murder.

This blog is still getting over three thousand hits a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month, over 80K.  I am now starting to get greedy and need 18K reads before midnight on the 30th to hit 100K in a month. That would need 5K visits a day, and yesterday hit what was probably a high for a day at 3975.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "The Four Horsemen" by Aphrodite's Child featuring Demis Roussos and Vangelis from the album "666"

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

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. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

The Devil Has All The Best Tunes

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.

Dis Pepsi Max - #Oktoberfest #17 - Drink It Up - Negativland

Yesterday I decided I had a motherlode for #Oktoberfest in the songs of Tom Waits, which is obviously true enough, but I don't think I've touched The Pogues, The Dubliners , Thin Lizzy and many others and I saw an ad for Coca Cola and this reminded me of one of my favourite albums ever "DisPepsi" by Negativland and fantastic discontruction of advertising and the Pepsi / Coke war. It is a bit difficult to track down now but it is available at the time of posting on Youtube here. An absolutely essential listen.

It's chock full of subversive tunes that are probably more relevant today that when it came out around 1990, still often played by me and I am listening to it as I type this, "Happy Hero" is so pertinent to Trump, Johnson and Michael Jackson.

The song I've chosen is "Drink It Up" which mainly refers to Pepsi but lists lots of other promoted beverages, but the whole album is an essential listen but I have never heard it on the radio on any station.

So what else?

The blog has hit 20K visits for this month and we are just approaching half way so it would seem it's very popular (with robots). I'm even getting the odd comment (though mostly advertising links) which I may or may not remove.

I have finished "The God Delusion" and is has hardened my attitude to religion significantly but it's time for another book now. I would still accept God if that God turned up and demonstrated that was actually what he was.

Time for Tea.

Fridaying - #Oktoberfest #12 - Malt and Barley Blues - Mcguinness Flint

For some people Friday at finishing time is the best part of the week, you have the night ahead, you don't have to get up tomorrow (or the day after) and work is suddenly a distant memory. However a lot of my friends have to work weekends and the concept of a weekend is gone for them, a horrible side effect of our 24/7 society. I do remember shops shutting for a half day on Wednesday and I think Saturday and everything was shut on Sunday. It didn't really cause a problem but now people expect everything on tap.

That should have really come from technological advancement, but it's just coming from people having to work whenever they are needed and the gig economy. There is a place for zero hours contracts but not as permanent jobs.

Ironic that the Sunday Day of Rest has it's recent existence due to the Catholic Church and this at a time when my tolerance for religion is very thin thanks to the arguments and facts presented by Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion". Religion is like a signal flare in the hands of a child, it may be used to light the way but more often than not it does irreparable damage.

So because i am still run down and suffering from a cold I will leave you with "Malt and Barley Blues" the second single from McGuinness Flint (their first hit was "When I'm Dead And Gone" which would have been appropriate while talking religion), so enjoy this on your Friday night.

My God! - #Oktoberfest #7 - Spill The Wine - Eric Burdon & War

When I started "The God Delusion" it was Richard Dawkins stated aim to polarise my views towards the non existence of God. While my opinion on the existence of God (I'll believe in God if it turns up and does something genuinely miraculous to prove it's credentials, in my 62 years I've yet to see anything) has not changed Dawkins has pointed out the harm that religion has caused over time along with  singular and mass situations from child murder to genocidal wars plus slavery and misogyny as the norm.

Until th World Trade Centre was destroyed I was unaware that Islam and Christianity worshipped the same god, and as has been recently if there was one god there would be one religion. Dawkins book has made me considered my opinion of religion, as while for some people it does provide order and comfort, but for others it is a method of control and  division often used to implement abuse and harm.

Holy books were written by women and men to provide a way to implement their desired methods on people's way of life. I was also surprised to find out Mormon was as much a made up religion as Scientology ( a tax evasion by L Ron Hubbard) .

Ian Anderson on the cover of "Aqualung" in the text to "My God" put it perfectly.

"And In The beginning, Made Created God; and in the image of Man created he him"

Aqualung

So with that, I move on to #Oktoberfest and an appropriate piece would be "Spill The Wine" by Eric Burdon and War.

Have a good Monday everyone.

Alarm

Is there anything more disappointingly annoying than waking up warm and in the dark, checking the time to see it's one minute before the alarm is meant to go off, then do you wait, switch it off , get up or what? I waited.

Continuing on "The God Delusion" and the treatment of atheists is absolutely disgusting bry religious zealots and idiots. We are seeing this is the USA today where Christianity has been engineered as a power grabbing money making machine and woe betide anyone who questions it. One example was an atheist who wanted to protest against a faith healer who was telling diabetics to throw away their insulin and cancer sufferers to stop their treatment and pray for a miracle. He contacted the local police department about protection from the faith healer's supporters and was threatened in no uncertain terms by everyone in the police department because he was questioning "god's work".

I keep using a lower case "g" for god because in my sixty one years I have yet to see any evidence of a god, though seen plenty of evidence of the harm caused by religion.

It looks like another cold but bright day today and I was surprised to see that I was up to series five of "Parks and Recreation" so still 55 episodes to go but a lot nearer the end than I thought, and thoroughly enjoying it.

So this weekend Sky Arts are screening a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the film of "Quadrophenia" and to be honest I have never watched it, although I love the album and thought the classical version with Alfie Boe in the was very good. I will be recording all the Sky Arts programs and will get round to watching the film which one of the many unwatched films in my DVD collection.

So we will go for a live take of "The Real Me" the opening song from the the "Quadrophenia" album.

Truly Original

Can anything be truly original.?

This question is usually asked about art forms and will have been debated and answered by people far more qualified and intelligent than I. If you ask the question on Google you get this list but I am just going to put down a few of my thoughts on this.

The question came into my head last night and I started wondering about it.

Science (I know that's a huge umbrella) is probably the main area where someone can be truly original in methods for discovering existing things and creating new ones, but it still works within an existing framework.

Religion is usually based on some kind of moral code with an off world figurehead and an on world leader group. AGain based on a defined framework.

Then we come to art. Thom Yorke once said Radiohead were going to dispense with melody, but I still hear tunes in their work. Surrealism takes us away from the norm but it still anchors itself in familiarity. If it didn't you could not connect with a desired audience.

That is usually the point of everything, is to share and connect in some way, whether to benefit, control or make money.

Sometimes simple board games require true originality (I'm thinking Edward De Bono's "L" game), but again they start with the defined framework of a board.

All art is a rearrangement of existing letters of the alphabet and grouping them into words, and in music you have a set number of notes augmented by sounds from nature and electronic devices , and as soon as it becomes liked it becomes familiar and becomes part of the framework.

This is just a few thoughts with no real conclusion and is not very original but I just wanted to put this down.

For some reason Roxy Music's second album "For Your Pleasure" has come to mind and while I was thinking firstly "Editions of You" with Brian Eno's synthesiser sol , I then ping ponged between the sinister title song and "The Bogus Man" and I will go for the latter with the 2011 tour visuals.

Friday 13th ... You Better Run, Rum, Run

 I really wanted to write something positive about the number thirteen. The thing is humans are conditions by society, parents , whatever to believe in superstitions. Single magpies, black cats , and lot's more.

I was thinking along the lines of a baker's dozen where an extra loaf was thrown in, in case one was not up to scratch.

There's a lot of reasons given why thirteen is bad, such as Judas being the thirteenth one at the Last Supper. But surely Jesus was the odd one out as he wasn't an apostle. We have twelve calendar months , but thirteen lunar months and the word lunatic is derived from Luna and the phases of the moon that brings out a change in certain people , not always for the better.

If you search the internet for "Lucky 13" you will come across albums by Bert Jansch and Neil Young although nothing about why 13 should be considered lucky.

Today is also Friday which is not deemed good for travel and combining it with 13 you have not a great omen for travel. Also it snowed today, so making it more likely that drivers would have an accident. Friday the 13th is also the name of a horror film series (here) and also it's the title of albums by The Damned, The Misfits and The Stranglers.

The song I will give you is "Run,Run,Run" , the opening track from "A Quick One" by The Whoabout all those reasonless supertitions, which I am sure you will identify with. Time for bed now, sleep well

Sunday Service - #57 - 2013 - David Bowie - The Next Day

Was woken up this morning by the sound of seagulls. I'm not in Whitby I am ten miles inland from the coast. I went out and it's grey and raining slightly . It's Sunday morning and I do have a lot to do today , deliveries to take and people to see and thinks to dispose of. It is November and we have had a bit of sun , but days are getting shorter. In fact this morning I got up and was wandering round and half an hour later had to start switching the lights on.

Seen some newspaper headlines this morning, which are absolutely exasperating makes me want to start my Mr Angry blog , but I don't do anger so I will calm down and do something positive, but it amazes me that a government can always find money to pays it's arms dealers but not to look after the people who effectively put it into power. There rant over.

The Next Day

The Odyssey reaches 2013 year 57 and it that year David Bowie released an unannounced album The Next Day , his first in ten years. It had not been particularly done in secret , it's just that no one apparently noticed , and it was an absolutely excellent album, well worth buying and everyone with any sense went out and got their hands on a copy. I've chosen the title track and apologise if you have to log in to see the video as it contains religion , BDSM, blood and lots of other great fun stuff. It's the first time I have seen the video despite buying the album when it came out and like almost everything Bowie does I am very impressed with it.



I also loved the recycled cover art of The Next Day referencing "Heroes" (possibly his finest song).

His next album Blackstar comes out in January but you can download the title track and pre order it now here.

Have a fantastic Sunday everyone.

The Porridge Fairy

I never know how to spell porridge, if you follow the link it lists a few alternatives (porage, porrige, parritch, etc.) so that could explain my confusion , so it's not just the fact that my IQ is less than my show size. Anyway today one of those series of events came together to cause a particular  non situation.

Faerie Tales

Breakfast

I started cooking my breakfast of organic porridge and also made a cup of tea. When I'd measured the stuff out I elastic banded the bag an chucked it in the cupboard. This was stuff I'd got from the excellent Mmm in The Grainger Market ages back and very nice it is too. Anyway I then noticed that the milk in the tea had curdled, and I'd used the same for the porridge , so chucked it away and went back into the cupboard for more oats .... and there were none there!! I thought I saw the bag but it was noodles. Then I finally found the errant bag and it was hidden behind some cans of beans and pulses. How did that happen?


Unless someone ..... or something moved it! Well actually what happened is I threw the porridge bag a bit harder than I though and there was a gap behind the cans where it landed.

Then I thought about the similarity with faith, haunting and magic situations where people don't want to really know the answer and in most cases are just too lazy to find it. It's the basis for atrology , psychic charlatans and religious fraud like Creationism. Oh I cant think the Devil or God or The Fairies did it. Derek Acorah and Most Haunted play on this situation. I mean this are as as valid.

• My car has stopped, God must not want me to go to worker so he stopped my car: 
• NO - You've run out of Petrol!
• The lights have gone out, Satan has plunged us into darkness: 
• NO - A fuse has blown or you've not payed your bill
• The porridge has disappeared from the food cupboard, the porridge fairy must have moved it:
•  NO - you chucked it in there too hard and it went to the back of the cupboard

Fairies

So anyway that's what happened this morning , but the sun is shining brightly this morning just in tome for a great weekend. Have a fantastic Friday everyone and have an even better weekend.

Thought the rather excellent Bastard Fairies would be an appropriate song for today.

Sunday Sermon:Pitch Black Into Naked Religion

Apologies for this being slightly ranty rather than positive, although it's just some things that have recently crossed my mind brought tho the fore by last nights dream. Given the nature of the post I thought Randy Newman's "God's Song" would be appropriate.

I slept well last night,, but woke up from a dream that I remembered some of. It didn't finish, and nothing bad happened but it was a pre disaster scenario which could be dealt with with certain precautions. This is the dream as it happened. Basically I was is a Pitch Black scenario (Pitch Black being the best sci fi "B" Movie since Alien starring Vin Diesel as Riddick). I was in the deserted outpost building with the knowledge from diaries that were strewn about that the previous occupants had been wiped out by the inhabitants of this planet. I was with a group of people who sounded like eastern European Bond villains, and they had returned from a reconnaissance trip with what looked like tatty Russian dolls about two feet high. I knew from the diaries that these were eggs of the vicious creatures that had destroyed the previous occupant. I said that we had to get the m outside immediately. Then the argument started.:

Them: "How do you know they are dangerous?"
Me: "Look at the evidence, theres been violence here and the diaries have drawings of eggs and descriptions of the creatures that hatched and probably killed them all"
Them: "How do you know that these are the same"
Me: "Even if they're not we should err on the side of caution, leave them outside then we are safe and we can observe with a lesser amount of danger"
Them: "We think they are cute, so they're staying"
Me:"That is not a good idea, being cute in a hostile environment is not an sensible objective stance to take"
Them:"They're staying, we think they'll be fine"
Me: "What do you base that on?"
Them: "The look cute"

Then I woke up, and thought , this argument is a lot like religious faith (Mainly Creationists)  vs  Science. Science always questions itself and that's how truths are discovered, and extreme religion uses this to deny science while refusing to question it's own belief. I know it was a laboured tale to illustrate a basic point but I've met many religious people who use it as a moral supportive code and do not force it others or question others beliefs. My problem is when religion is used as a bludgeon to spread ignorance (ie Creationism).

The Lovers

Anyway the second vaguely religious point was something I noticed from this Facebook post here.  When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden they were happy, God was happy and all was great until Satan got Even to eat the apple and they discovered SHAME and started wearing makehift clothes which got God angry and he chucked them out of the Garden. So using that scenario wearing of clothes is and obvious sign of Satanism , because God wanted us to be naked.

David

So why is there such a furore when we see a nipple, willy or pussy or bum?  If God's will were to be carried out we should all surely be naked. Actually there is the practicality of weather and keeping dry and warm, and let's face clothes can make a person with the most unappealing body look good. It's that that if we see someone "exposed" there's far more uproar than a knifing or shooting, so if you do see someone either laugh, appreciate or ignore, don't act like a Daily Mail reader.

OK that's my Sunday Sermon , have a brilliant day everyone, I'm enjoying my holiday (and fully dressed)

Coincidentally ....Two Johns

Am I Going To Hell?

Today has been a day of coincidences. I always have a chuckle when people say "things happen for a reason" yet can't give an actual reason for what happened. That's just coincidence, and often you can use it to link together totally disparate places people and events, so I'll tell you about today, although part of these linked coincidences started nearly forty years ago in 1977. But there's a lot of disparate threads that really have no connection but just happened to coincide.

Punk 45

Anyway yesterday I bought an excellent book of punk single covers called Punk 45. It's enlightening to see how many of the artists looked on the sleeve of the early singles, Sting, Iggy Pop and Gary Numan look recognisable but young. It's also a fairly hefty tome but great to browse through and big enough to read without the aid of a magnifying glass.Today I needed to go into town to pick up some train tickets and some bits to update my sound system.






When I got to the bus stop it was sunny and there was a young lady there sort of singing , I assume to what was on her phone. She turned round and said what a nice day it was and then saw the caption on my T-Shirt and seemed to take it quite seriously, telling me that god had a place for me in heaven and hell was for the evil angels. We chatted on and she was happy and pleasant but a bit forceful, and then the bus didn't turn up, so I spent nearly thirty minutes in some verbal jousting. I didn't want to upset as she was going to a christening, but just said everyone should live morally and look out for others and stay happy, so we left on good terms. The christening was in Byker, home of part of the next thread of coincidence.

Suspended Sentence - Check The Line Up - John Scott!

A couple of years ago I went to see John Cooper Clarke at the O2 Academy in Newcastle and was very impressed by the MC on the night , Mr John Scott. I was so impresses with Mr Scott that he was the second best thing I saw that night,  but then sought out further gigs, and am really pleased he's on regularly at venues such as The Stand.

John is from Byker, so that's the thread I mentioned before, but was looking at the line up for John Cooper Clarke's first single.....

......and the guitaris is John Scott. Now the John Scott I know would have been about 10 at the time so was either a child prodigy on the Manc scene or it's a different guy.







Now certainly people could tie all these facts together to mean something , but I know it's all coincidence.


So basically I've had a great weekend and I hope you have too. If you can get a copy of the book do so. I've included so youtube footage of the two Johns for you to enjoy.

Goodbye 2013 - Hello 2014

Well it's the last day of December and thought I'd best post this before the day disappears. For some reason the lyrics to George Harrison's "Ding Dong" came to mind, extremely simple and a fitting end to my seasonal song a day for this December. I don't think this song has appeared on any Now! compilation , but really I'm not bothered as I love the sentiments:

"Ring out the old
Ring in the new
Ring out the old
Ring in the new

Ring out the false
Ring in the true
Ring out the old
Ring in the new"

So I hope we have all learned from our 2013, and can look forward to 2014. One of the people I've been most impressed with is Pope Francis. I'm am not religious even though I was baptised, brought up a catholic and taught by Jesuits (most of who were very reasonable and always willing to hear the other persons view).

So going forward , Be Nice, be kind to others , help others less fortunate than you if you can and keep being positive. Hope your 2014 is a major improvement on your 2013 however good that was. Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year!

Christmas , 911 , The Gulf Wars and Good Will To All

On 10th September 2001 I landed in Mexico , on the 11th The World Trade Centre was demolished by suicidal hijacked jet airliners. These events precipitated the second Gulf War , and gave George Bush and Tony Blair and excuse to cause carnage in the gulgf and send our soldiers to their deaths in the name of freedom, which seemed to mean curtailing our own freedoms to keep us safe from the latest bogeyman Al Quaeda and Osama Bin Laden.

Anyway This caused me to take some notice , after all this war was played out on television for all to see and was scarily weird because all Bill Hick's routines about the first Gulf War were eerily pertinent to the second!

Q: How do you know they got weapons of mass destruction?
A: We got the receipts !!

Thanks for that one Bill

Also I didnt realise till that point that both Christians and Islam worship the same God!! Their main prophet was a different guy , Islam had Mohamed and the Christians have Jesus, so what the hell were the Crusades about.

These days it's the fundamentalist few who screw it up for everyone , at this time , well all the time you should "Be Nice" , "Love Your Fellow Man" and the world will be a better place . Look out for each other , stop worshipping power and trying to control others and the world will be a better place despite what the Dail Mail and Express tell us.

All my Muslim friends enjoy Christmas and join in , and if Diwali means I get nice stuff and get to enjoy myself with friends then thats a great thing!! All the restaurants have Christmas menus regardless of origins yet politically correct left wingers say we cant mention the "C" word for fear of offending others. Christmas offends no one but idiots

It's a week before Christmas but we who are Ok should enjoy ourselves , count ourselves lucky and help others if we can. Be of good cheer and may your God go with you , even if He is Richard Dawkins!!!