Walk This Way

I’ve been walking on a daily basis since March when Fiona got me on the 5000-15000 steps in two weeks challenge. Since then I have been walking an average of 11K steps a day, which has resulted in a little weight loss and a vastly decreased insulin requirement.  Last time I was in Orton I decided I wanted to find The Gamelands Stone Circle, and despite missing it I finally found it.  

At the time I only walked if I wanted to go somewhere. Now I feel that the most important thing is to actually walk a distance whether or not I have a target. So on a daily basis I usually walk to work or into town or a pub, and although there are times when I am tempted to get the bus because I am feeling too tired, I usually force myself to walk a bit further.

On this holiday each day I have been a few thousand short but then thought I could just nip out for a walk round the village and hit my target. While in October I have had days when I have not hit my step target, I have made up the steps in subsequent days and I need to do 14K steps over the next two days to make 340K for October and keep up my rolling three month million step total.

This holiday has had a couple of setbacks , firstly running out of needles for my insulin, spending two hours  trying to get  someone to give me some and everyone having a reason to deny me them, before remembering I could buy them, so I could have saved myself two hours there but all worked out ok.

Then we  had a slow puncture on the hire car, but Enterprise sorted me out with that so all was good again.

The song is obvious “Walk This Way” by Big Red and the Grinners. I don’t know if it’s available commercial but enjoy anyway. Have a great Monday everybody.

Pixelgouster

I just got a new phone, a Google Pixel. Getting a new phone is a bit like jumping off a metaphorical cliff, there's no going back but it's easy to do. I got it as my daughter Kirsty has one and loves it and as Android is Google then you don't get the make or networks rubbish that they install and you can't get rid of...and it looks wonderful out of the box.... but then you start hitting annoyances.

First it uses the bigger USB "C" cable so all the cables I have suddenly become redundant for me , though I need them to charge my bluetooth headphones. Next it doesn't take and expansion card, so I'm stuck with the 32 Gb storage, though my first computer had 3K of memory and my first hard disk had 10 Mb capacity so it's still a lot.

Today the Pacer software, that I use to track my steps, stopped dead. I installed Google Fit which is working fine but Pacer is dead. You have to wonder if Google have something that inhibits rival software, Pacer was fine on the Sony.

Photos are stored in the Cloud , so that will use your data allowance if you aren't on Wifi.

This may sound like I dislike my new phone, I reckon by next week I will be completely won over. It charges quickly, does all the stuff you need to do and I installed music playing software called Vinylage Music Player as Play Music seems to only want a subscription service. Vinylage Music Player makes your digital songs sound like they are on vinyl and I though for a first play I would have David Bowie's "Gouster", ironic because it was never released that I know of and certainly not on vinyl.

It appeared as part of a Bowie box set "Who Can I Be Now" but is still not available standalone. The word "Gouster" appears in "John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)" the album's opener and to Bowie it meant attitude, it's source is from the Latin gustō. Compare Spanish gustar and Italian gustare. Tony Visconti said:

"Gouster was a word unfamiliar to me, but David knew it as a type of dress code worn by African-American teens in the Sixties in Chicago," Visconti explains in the excerpt. "But in the context of the album its meaning was attitude, an attitude of pride and hipness."

"Gouster" was an alternate "Young Americans" and is an excellent soul album. Listening to it, I don't know if it's the software or the phone, but the sound is gorgeous and rich (even with the built in vinyl scratch sounds). I leave your with "Somebody Up There Likes Me" from "Young Americans" and "Gouster", now to chose my music for tomorrow's walk into work.

Happy Trails ....

Still on the Dylan Jones "David Bowie: A Life" and it seems a lot of the articles are about the (insert your superlative here) sex they had with Bowie, although this is like the red top sensationalism, there is zero expansion. If something is fantastic or amazing you say why it is so. I write about things that catch my eye or imagination , but I don't write "I had a fantastic walk to work" or "I saw an amazing band last night" and leave it at that. The only slight expansion is the Angie Bowie / John Bindon / Pricess Margaret situation where obviously something was afoot in the members club.

One amusing interlude is when Bowie invited Glenn Hughes (then with Deep Purple) up to his room. Basically Bowie kissed Glenn but that was definitely not Glenn's taste.

Then we had the really interesting encounter with Amanda Lear. Bowie had seen her on the cover of Roxy Music's "For Your Pleasure" clad in leather and was disappointed with her look when she arrived. But they chatted ad she became aware of holes in his eductation and introduced him to Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" . Now that is interesting, as the look of "Metropolis" influenced Bowie possibly directing him towards his Berlin period.

Amanda, Bryan and a Cat

Quicksilver

Yesterday I listened to "Happy Trails" by Quicksilver Messenger Service. When I first saw the cover I couldn't make out whether the guy was riding toward you or away from you. It was years before I finally got the album and realised he was riding toward the artist.

The album basically consists of three extended workouts and two short songs including the throwaway coda of the title track.

Side one is an extended workout of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" which starts out well but loses it's way losing the threat of the original in some saccharin west coast vocalising.

I walk 47 miles of barbed wire

I use a cobra snake for a necktie

I got a brand new house on the roadside

Made from rattlesnake hide

I got a brand new chimney made on top

Made out of a human skull

Now come on take a walk with me Arlene

And tell me who do you love?

Tombstone hand

And a graveyard mine

Just 22

And I don't mind dying

It's still worth a listen, but is rescued by the introduction of "Mona" another Bo Diddley song which lasts for seven minutes and this one does not let up.  "Calvary" is a psychedelic spaghetti western theme and these three pieces make the album essential listening.

Anyway it's time to get out on the road, so enjoy your Tuesday everybody.

Darkness

It's twenty to seven and looking out the the window it is black, it is Monday and I really need to walk to work not having done much walking over the weekend. I have had the Beastie Boys ("Stake Your Rump") and The Stooges ("1969") spun by John Hillcock on 6Music so all is not doom and gloom. I am hoping it won't be as cold and windy as last night.

I was reading about how Lewis Hamilton, despite being the most successful Formula One driver ever is not universally loved.I find this similar to the Andy Murray situation in tennis. Murray is the most successful UK tennis player since Virginia Wade, but when he won Wimbledon the press missed her out of UK successes (she's a woman) and Murray is Scottish so still not as acceptable as Tim Henman. Same with Hamilton, and could I suggest it's partly media racism. Both of them also do things that the UK press hate... they do their job and succeed, which the press find very difficult to denigrate, so when they run out of insults they ignore them.

Personally I find both sports tedious (F1 is going round in circles sounding like a mosquito, and tennis is stop start and goes on for too long like cricket and American Football), but love Murray and Hamilton for their attitude to their sport and the way the treat the gutter press.


The Brexit and Trump victories have also validated open racism and misogyny, which the red top media perpetrates and its subscribers lap up the hate and spread it often defending the rags becuase of the crosswords or sports coverage.

I today found out about Princess Margaret's allegend liaison's with gangster John Bindon, there is a documentary listed here but I suggest you google to find out more as all the links were to gutter press websites.

So what song for this morning, it has to be "Darkness" by Van Der Graaf Generator, as at ten past seven it's still black outside. Try and have a great Monday, it will get lighter .... I hope .

Light On - Light Off - Light On - Light Off

I have a couple of solar security lights at the back, a lot simpler that wired one and easily fixable to the wall (you can get 'em from Amazon here) They do what they're supposed to , but when it gets windy (supposedly with #StormBrian) and movement from bushes and trees can set them off , over and over and over , and the poeple that get it are my neighbours at the back. Havin said that , I get theirs too so I suppose we balance each other out. We don't use the back rooms for socialising musch so it's not a huge hassle , but there isn't much you can do about the weather and the lights are functioning as they are supposed to.

The wind is getting up and it's actually cold, and I can imagine this stopping me from hitting my daily steps target, though the reality is is that I will see it as just another challenge, which I will succeed at.

This weekend I have been feeling run down, probably due to my 'flu' jab, and tomorrow it's back to work so I am sure that I really need to get some sleep, that is the way to help your physical frame to recuperate it's powers, so I will choose a piece for you.

It's quite funny how people often see pieces of music quite differently, Richard Osman of "Pointless" stated that teh ELO's "Mr Blue Sky" was the greatest "British" song ever (and we're not talking nationalism here we're talking identity), personally I think it's awful, contrived and formulaic from an ELO past their sell-by date. Maybe something by The Kinks or Beatles might fit that bill, and the ELO have a lot of better songs in their catalogue.

So I will leave you with a Beatles cover of "The Inner Light" ("B" side of "Lady Madonna") by The Grip Weeds. Enjoy it and sleep well my friends.

Saucery

Another album I revisited last week was Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets" . My mate Harry Clark always used to refer to it as "Y D" because of the lettering on the cover, which really does pique your interest and draw you in , even though it was just a single sleeve. The astological, astronomical and majikal diagrams, planets and bottles the tapestry wizard and the band photo all made me wonder what was happening inside, and  it really is a cornucopia of sixties psychedelia and Englishness (brass bands and Kazoos, Waters' war obsession "Corporal Clegg")

PinK Floyd = Y D

The album opens with "Let There Be More Light" with it's manic easternised, three note bass intro with slides into the pedestrian ponderous main riff  for theis first slab of space rock on the album. "Remember A Day" follows, a gorgeous Rick Wright song featuring a wonderful rising piano line, and this gives way to the ominous suicidal "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", dark but brilliant. "Corporal Clegg" rounds off side one, which is a more shall we say normal song despite the kazoo led coda march.

Side two starts with the twelve minute title track which has three sections, the first the most ominous part of the album, just sound an noise before morphing into a drum section from hell but finishing with a gorgeous organ based section (also knowwn as "Celestial Voices", possibly influenced by Vaughn Williams.)

"See Saw" follows and like "Corporal Clegg" is a fairly standard formayt song before the closer "Jugband Blues" Syd Barret's final outing with the band, which is a gorgeous jumble sale of sound and a fitting finale complete with brass band.

I've included the "Celestial Voices" from the "Live at Pompeii" film. Enjoy your Saturday evening.

Slightly Suffering

Yesterday I had my 'flu' jab and it's hitting me this morning. So like the sensible person I am I was up at six o' clock to walk to Post Office to pick up an unknown package which turned out to be a copy of Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Brain Salad Surgery" (or Brian's Salad is in the Surgery as the NME named it) on vinyl, which I wanted for the wonderful HR Giger designed sleeve (which apparently he was never paid for see here). The album is not that good , but the cover is wonderful.

Anyway I got there ten minutes early so walked up the A69 and instagrammed a bit of  Hadrian's Wall which I knew was there but I'd never got the chance to photograph before, so I instagrammed it here

It's Saturday and there's no sign of #StormBrian, and I am ahead on my step target, and I have been listening to a few more albums, on of which is "A Trick of The Tail" by Genesis. It was the first one without Peter Gabriel so possibly didn't bode all that well, and you can hear Phil Collins' influence taking effect although the album is still excellent. One thing that people forget about Phil Collins is that he is an excellent drummer , and also was an accomplished actor and you can hear that on the vocal stylings of "Robbery Assault and Battery".

The Album is bookended by "Dance on a Volcano" and "Los Endos", really two parts of the same piece , featiring a vicious backing to the verses which bears little relation to the melody but is still a brilliant aural assault and worth the price of admission alone. "Dance on a Volcano" slipps into the creepy dream state of "Entangled". Many of the song feature some excellent instrumental codas, and the title track is the penultimate song on the album,was inspired by Tony Banks reading William Golding's "The Inheritors" which described an alien visiting Earth and the reaction to it.

So I will leave you with "Dance on A Volcano"  but the album is worth getting hold of. Have a brilliant Saturday everyone.