One of The Best Songs Of The Year

Adele- Someone Like You (Live in Amsterdam)

This song has gone through my head lots this last few days. Something to do with the time of year.

The Friday Before Christmas

It’s the Friday 23rd December. I am at work although not much is happening. Even if something did happen I’m not sure I could summon up any enthusiasm for dealing with it. I am feeling mellow, and all pre Christmassy. You know when you are waiting for the Big Day and really are happy to let everything else slide (diet, exercise etc) until the New Year.


I’ve not run for almost a fortnight now- I hate running in the dark so have put a couple of pounds on. I am not worried about this. Come the end of January I am moving to an office 5 miles away from home. I can get a Bus straight there but I plan to walk/run/cycle/bus there and back. That should keep me fit.

Merry Christmas

It's not quite Christmas but we are nearly there. Our son is home from Bordeaux and asleep. Our daughter is, as I write this, on the train from Doncaster after spending a couple of days with Sailor Boy.

This song is by Cinerama.. Merry Christmas to you all.

Christmas Song- Cinerama 

Inspirational

After months of not featuring this series here I am posting two songs in a short time. This is what comes of having too much time on your hands and hooking up your turntable to your PC.

This song is a particular inspiration to me. When I fist heard it I was unemployed and living with my future wife in the cockroach infested concrete jungle of no hope council flats that was the Hulme estate   in Manchester.Times were so tough – even tougher than they are now- to paraphrase the song.  

I heard this song played, I think, by Janice Long, in late 1982 and Pete Wylie’s tale of rejection and refusing to accept it made me realise that I wasn't alone and that there was away through it all.  I still listen to this song often and it always moves me. I have on occasion found myself quoting it when speaking to people. This is not just pop music, this is proper art.

This song  also made me  read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which if you haven't read then you should.

The Story of The Blues (12") - The Mighty Wah

Bleak Midwinter

The first snow of this year's winter is falling.It's grey and cold.Economic news is depressing, the most depressing its been since I was a young man. You wonder how your children will survive in this new world order of austerity and no work for the young. This Government seems to have  run out of ideas  and now keeps simply keeps repeating the cuts cuts cuts mantra. On the other side we have the two Eds and their spend spend spend mantra which we already know didn't work.  Neither side seems to be able to move on. 

Capitalism is in crisis but where is the change going to come from? The answers are in history. Good article by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian yesterday on that subject. Economics though is like religion you either believe or you don’t and  the other side  is damned to hell for eternity.


What I do know though is that we borrowed too much, paid too much to too few , regulated the financial sector too lightly, went to war too quickly, exported manufacturing jobs too readily  and  thought too easily- because we were told- that boom and bust had ended.  

Another Song You Should Hear

This song popped into my head the other day. I dug out the vinyl and played it. Still so powerful 30 years on. Maybe it is all the reports into the riots, blaming the Police and their "oppression" that made me think of this. As a middle aged, middle class white male I never have any problems with the Police. Even as a youngster my contact in suburban Hertfordshire was minimal and mainly confined to a couple of times when names were taken for being young and out late at night. I work closely with the Police in my job and my impressions of them are that they are decent men and women , not too bright mostly but very world weary and cynical.

I was moved to hook up the record player to the PC and make this the first song I have transferred from vinyl  for your enjoyment.

I saw Linton Kwesi Johnson the year this came out (1979). My memory is more of Rico and the brass section than the rather serious and sombre Mr Johnson who looked ill at ease performing his poetry to a mainly white audience at The Marquee.

This pre dates rap and is closer to "toasting" that many reggae artists did at the time. The song is from the album Forces Of Victory which is well worth buying. 

I didn't  know what happened to Linton Kwesi Johnson after this so I Googled him here.

Sonny's Lettah ( Anti Sus Poem)- Linton Kwesi Johnson

STRIKE!

It has been a long couple of weeks since my last post. My wife came down with two  very heavy colds, one after another, which made her (more) irritable and grumpy. To be fair she hasn’t been well since she had the flu jab in mid November.

Late autumn in North East England has settled into its grey, damp darkness. This time last year we had the snow. I am sort of missing that. At least it was bright and sunny with beautiful Clear Blue Skies. Now we have darkness in the morning, and darkness from late afternoon.

I am running home from work at least twice a week still. This is good and I have put on only half a pound since the Kielder marathon. We are coming up to food fest time of year so I need to be careful I don’t overdo it during December.

My daughter is working hard at college on her degree. My son has been his usual uncommunicative self but says things are fine in Bordeaux .

This week is strike week for us so an interrupted week.I don't mind working longer, I don't even mind (much) paying more towards my pension. I do ,however, object to my extra contributions going to reduce a deficit I didn't create. It's a pay cut really on top of three years of a pay freeze with 4-5% annual inflation. 

Is It Too Soon For that Christmas Feeling?

 

I only ask because work wise things have slowed down as if Christmas is next week not still 5 weeks away.

 

The wife and I went for our first Christmas foray into Town on Saturday. Fairly busy but no one as yet has the mad look of panic in the eye.

 

The busiest road in Newcastle (in my opinion) runs by my office and that has already started to have the mid morning Christmas tail backs. I suppose for those of us lucky enough to still be in jobs in the pubic sector and the North East there is only one more pay day before Christmas and two years into our pay freeze we need to spend over a longer period rather than leave it all til December.

 

Daughter is back from Portsmouth and from welcoming sailor boy back to Blighty after seven months at sea. Our son is in Bordeaux and has booked his flights home for Christmas so we know he is coming home but not sure for how long.

 

Not started listening to Christmas music yet but have discovered Smooth have launched a Christmas radio station playing only Xmas hits. No ads. Wife is already watching the Sky Christmas Movie Channel

 

But I’ll hold off on the Ho Ho Ho for a few more weeks. 

Technology Changing

We all accept that things change in the world of technology. 25 years ago CDs made vinyl old hat overnight. And 10 years ago Apple revolutionised the small portable  Walkman digital music market with their IPod and  CDs suddenly seemed old fashioned.

Before the late 1990's the majority of people only had access to the Internet at work and then mostly for emails. We bought our first PC  Christmas 1999 and had a dial up connection via AOL. The memory on the PC was 8GB! My current desktop has 250gb and I have a separate external Hard drive with an additional 250gb and I still worry about running out of space for my “must have" data! And near universal Broadband has made dial up almost obsolete. I can take my laptop to Costa or Starbucks and numerous other places and browse the Net  on their wireless service for little or no cost and at  speeds undreamed of 15 years ago.

My new (Smart) HD TV has access to the Internet (wireless connection to my router) and I watch BBC iPlayer and HD You Tube videos on my 42” TV from the comfort of my armchair.Picture quality is superb

Even mobiles (and my kids cannot comprehend how we managed before mobiles especially when I tell them that my first mobile was issued after much pressure from me via work only in 1993)have changed too and it is commonplace to access the internet on them. In fact I can often be found watching You Tube music videos on my  HD TV Googling the band’s website on my wife’s Blackberry.

What has brought this all on is a couple of recent Skype chats with our son who is in Bordeaux. Now I know Skype is not new and in some senses old hat but it still impresses me. Growing up and watching Dr Who and Star Trek we dreamed of this sort of technology and now here it is. I wonder how soon before we get “beamed up” to our destinations rather than drive/fly?

So there we were sat in our kitchen in suburban Newcastle, me, the wife, sister and brother in law chatting to our son in suburban Bordeaux. Sound quality as good as most phone calls, picture quality more than acceptable (we could see that his spots had cleared up). Via his Web Cam (built into his laptop) he gave his Aunt and Uncle a tour of his apartment and we all sat there in Newcastle marvelling at it all.

Then we signed off and ordered a curry from the local excellent takeaway which got delivered to our door. It's not just technology that has changed

Funeral

Today I went to a funeral. A  friend’s Mum died last week. She had been ill for a while but death is still always a shock despite it being the one thing that we know is going to happen to all of us.


I hadn’t seen her for years but she was good to me and my wife when we were young.

RIP, Mary

Letter From My Holidays

Last weekend was the annual family get together in Norfolk. This was a better one than last year because we didn’t stay in the usual caravan site but in a cottage in the nicer part of Hunstanton. The weather was good.We also went to the pub lots and drank more. Alcohol always makes these situations more tolerable.


In all honesty I don’t dislike my family I just don’t really feel I have much in common with them socially, politically or even lifestyle wise. They are all Daily Mail readers which tells you all you really need to know.

After the weekend we drove down to my sister-in-laws and stayed overnight before catching a flight to Bordeaux to see our son. He was mildly pleased to see us but again if I'm honest that’s about all. It's truism that parents love their children so much more than the children love them.

 Bordeaux is a nice place but obviously not a party town despite its 5 Unis and large student population. Food and wine were good though.

We went to St Emillion, a place I have long wanted to go to because of the wine. Our trip has rekindled my wife’s enthusiasm for red wine which is a good thing cos I am sick of Sauvignon Blanc.

Going to this medieval village and a tour of Chateau Souchard made me think of this song.

Explanations are not required- just two bottles of St Emillion.


Mercury- The Wedding Present

Another Song You Really Should Hear

I have let this supposedly occasional series slide into almost an annual series of posts.

I can’t pretend to be a massive fan of Leonard Cohen but he has always been there, in the background, popping up every now and then on the radio ( for example Lauren Laverne’s show on 6Music the other day) . Normally  they play  Hallelujah or Suzanne, rarely these days this particular song.Sometimes I put this album on, but not that often. I should listen to him more than I do because the man is very good.

This song reminds me of sitting one Sunday evening  circa 1979 in the local town cinema with a crowd of hippies watching the movie of the same title, shown as the first part of a double bill where Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii was the main feature. The air was thick with patchouli, cigarette and dope smoke rising like a mist from the mostly long haired denim clad audience.

I had my number three haircut, Fred Perry and Desert Boots and 501s on. God knows what they made of me.

This is modern day poetry . 

A Song By Leonard Cohen

Keep On Running

I ran the Kielder Marathon on Sunday. My finishing time was a bit of a disappointment at 5:23:24 but after the first few miles I knew I wouldn’t be breaking any records. The course is described as “undulating” in the publicity,and the signs around the course saying “Steep Incline” and Steep Decline” weren’t lying. The switchback route zig zagging up a “mountain” at around the 20 mile mark was particularly taxing.


I completed the half marathon distance in 2:20- which is what I was aiming for. I had run a disciplined race thus far. I hadn’t set off too fast.Unlike my only previous Marathon in Manchester 10 years ago when I completed halfway in a record breaking (for me) 1:55 and paid the price in the final third. I knew I would slow down in the second half but did not anticipate how much the hills were taking out of me and how much my legs would hurt.

My run/walk strategy turned, in this part of the race into a walk and occasionally run strategy. As it turned out many other runners were in the same situation and at times the course was more like a walking event rather than a running one. I was aching and my IT band in my left leg was causing me some considerable distress especially around the knee and big toe areas. I had to stop three of four times to stretch it out to get some relief. The pictures of me approaching the finish line are not particularly flattering as I look, to be frank, old and knackered. And I was.

Did I enjoy it? Will I do it again? Yes and possibly yes. It’s billed as Britain’s “most scenic” and at one point between 15 and 17 miles the scenery was breathtaking. Otherwise the driving rain and wind sort of dampened my enthusiasm for it as a spectacle and the weather conditions ramped it up as an endurance event. It was without doubt the most challenging physical thing I have ever done and I feel proud of myself for having completed it.

There were nice touches at the end,- a silver space blanket wrapped round you as you entered the finisher's Marquee. Good quality T shirts, towels, goody bag and a bunch of bananas (!) were given to you as you walked through to collect your baggage.Someone hung the medal around your neck and massages were available as were tea and coffee and cake from Falstone Village WI. My wife can recommend their Lemon Drizzle cake.Organisation wise it was as good as it could be bearing in mind the remote location.

We stayed in nearby Bellingham at the Riverdale Hall Country House Hotel. That was nice if a bit pricey. Food and service were excellent.

Alone Again

Another afternoon spent waiting for a delivery. Never sure why I cop for these, although if I'm honest I'm not complaining- it means I get to listen to lots of music that I don't otherwise get a chance to listen  to. So, here I am, cup off coffee in hand , digestive biscuits on the desk, Media Player on shuffle, cruising the web.

I  recently checked the download figures for all the songs I have posted on this blog. The Mighty Wah! are coming up strong on Be Bop Deluxe's Maid In Heaven with a couple of dozen downloads in the last two months. Here is the post, if you haven't checked it out yet.

Media Player has shuffled to Faith Brothers and their classic song Fulham Court. This song describes what it feels like to live on a run down estate "the dumping ground of the borough" and is probably the only song ever released that mentions rent arrears.
Faith Brothers- Fulham Court

Autumn Leaves

The son flew out to Bordeaux a month ago now to start his 4 months stint at the Uni there. His journey started on the Sunday at 8:30pm when we dropped him off at Central Station. He arrived at Kings Cross at Midnight and then made his way across town to London Bridge where he caught a train to Gatwick. He got there at 2am. His flight was at 7:45 am. He arrived in Bordeaux about 10.15 (their time) and got to his hotel by midday. Hassle and he said he was knackered but this was the cheapest way of getting there apparently.


He found somewhere to stay after 10 days looking (staying in cheap hotels) and seems quite cheerful when we have spoken and Skyped. We are off to see him in late in October for a couple of days.

For a week or so, what with the daughter being in Malta it was just me and the wife. Although of course the dog was there. The house was quiet and it felt like something (or someone) was missing but we couldn’t quite put our finger on it. I suppose it is the start of a new way of life and learning to think about ourselves first again rather than putting the children at the centre of our lives. After twenty years that feels weird. There is just more time available. Now the biggest question is what to do with that time.

Of course my daughter came back and started college so life went back to a sort of how it has been since the son went off to London two years ago. She is staying at home at least for the first year so it’s like she is still at school in a way. We are feeling our way to a new relationship with her as an adult and that is sometimes not easy. One thing about life though and that is  it is always changing.

The weather has been amazing this week with temperatures in the high 20s C. better than most of our Summer. Its strange to walk in the heat of the sun and see the pavements and Moor covered in the Autumn debris from the trees.

Music wise got a new 16 GB mp3 player so playing lots of stuff on shuffle. Brett Anderson’s new album has caught my attention- heavy promo on 6Music has seen to that -and I may buy it. I haven’t downloaded my 30 tracks from EMusic this month which is unusual but I still have a couple of weeks to go. I’m not enthused by anything but I did hear this band Tribes on Sean Keaveney’s show this morning and it made me prick up my ears. A great guitar sound -yes not highly original but young and passionate.


REM have split up. Not my favourite band, but a band responsible for two great concert experiences at T in the Park and Ballado a few years back. Live they were excellent even if on records they were sometimes lacking in inspiration.

A Great Great North Run

Here I am sat at the PC feeling pretty chuffed with myself. Not only did I make it round in under 2:20 , I smashed my prediction of 2.17 and in fact completed the run in 2:12:45
I felt good, the temperature was good (not too hot, not to cold- just the right amount of rain to cool things down).The band playing on the first roundabout over the Tyne Bridge before the Felling bypass played The Blaydon Races as I approached followed by Keep Your Feet Still Geordie Hinny as I departed down towards Gateshead Stadium. What more could you want? And I was home in about an hour of finishing. To add icing to the cake we came back via the Tyne Tunnel. I have never been through the Tyne Tunnel and I was quite excited by this unexpected route home. 

All in all today was a good day.

Yesterday was good too. We Skyped with our son in Bordeaux. Our first experience of Skypeing. (if there is such  a word)

Great North Run 2011

Another year and , come this Sunday , another Great North Run. What with all my extra Marathon training I am expecting an improvement on last years time- which was itself an improvement on 2009's time.

I'll stick my neck out and say I will do it in 2:17. I am actually hoping for faster but feel like I have a cold coming and I had to stop and walk on a run home from work earlier in the week as I felt so crap. In any case way I will enjoy the race and the build up - actually I hate the build up but you know you're not allowed to say that really.

This year of course this isn't the culmination of my training.That is still 3 weeks away in the cold and damp of Kielder when I take on the Marathon for only the second time. That is a challenge I am going to enjoy even if it almost kills me. I have lost a few extra pounds this year with all the additional training so I am the lightest I have been for a long time. This should see me in good stead for this Sunday's run and the Marathon.

Onto other news ,daughter is back from Malta- with a tattoo!!!! Can't really say much as the wife has one. Sailor Boy eventually turned up so she came back very happy.
Son is in France in Bordeaux starting his year abroad. He has just sorted himself out some accommodation after 10 days in a hotel. The wife is still on the Dukan diet and has now lost 10 pounds.

The dog is still, well, the dog.

In The Navy

My daughter flew to Malta to meet her on/off sailor boyfriend. Everything is sorted at 4pm on Monday (when she flew) but by 7:30 pm when she landed in Malta all leave had been cancelled and he wasn’t coming. Cue much tears on the (expensive) phone call home. From talking to people who have been in or who have had relationships with people in the armed forces, this sort of thing happens all the time.


She has decided to stay for the week regardless with the other WAGS if only because the earliest flight she could get back to Newcastle was the one she had booked anyway and flights to other destinations were full. So a couple of hundred quid (for spends)from us later and she is settled and lessons learned about future booking of meet ups with the lad in question i.e. don’t until he is actually docked and running down the gangplank in full On The Town style.

Phew!

Second bit of good news in the last two weeks. Daughter is now going to study Dance at Newcastle College. Maybe not what we would have chosen for her, but it was either this or Gap Year and three years of 9k+ loans.
The wife is not particularly happy and this has caused some rows between us but that is life. Glass half full, I say.

Summer Update

Well the remortgage is now done and finished and we are saving a tidy sum in monthly payments. This is a relief. Finances have been hard these last (almost) two years since my wife’s redundancy but we are still here.

We were feeling flush so bought ourselves new garden furniture set (after three years of deliberating) and a 40” Samsung HD Smart TV - the internet on the telly- whatever next. I have been watching You Tube videos of The Wedding Present latest gigs and the new songs. The TV is also 3D enabled. You can probably tell I am impressed by all this.

The wife is following this new diet The Dukan Diet. She is living on oat bran, yoghurt , cottage cheese and fish with the occasional lettuce leaf and bit of cucumber. Bizarre but she has lost half a stone in two weeks.

My daughter’s A level results were good ( A & two Cs) but not quite good enough for her first choice Uni or her insurance offer. So, a mixed bag of emotions in the house.

She has been offered places in Liverpool (Hope not John Moores) and Uni of East London but is reassessing what she wants out of further study. Looks like she might be staying at home for a while at least- I have ambivalent feelings about that.

The son is back in LDN after his German holiday-a week of which was in Majorca – but iwill be back home shortly before starting his year abroad in September.

A couple of Sundays ago the wife drove me to Blackpool to see Posh lose 2-1. Made up by Posh trashing Ipswich 7-1 on TV last weekend!

Music wise not much. I am listening to 6Music on the way to and from work. I am missing Radcliffe and Maconie on Radio 2 during the evening. I don’t get to listen to their 6 Music afternoon show as I am at work – but just realised I can listen again on the iPlayer on the new TV!!!

Bank Holiday weekend and the sister and brother in law are up – so a mixture of drinking eating and arguing. And I have to fit in a 20 mile run

Explosions In The Sky

I am excited. This band are touring the UK in a few months and today I bought a ticket to see them at The Sage, Gateshead. The acoustics at this place are second to none as I can vouch having seen Nick Cave, Yo La Tengo and my daughter (!) amongst others perform there. So thank you  email alerts from Ticketmaster for alerting me to this. Something to look forward to. Check them out here .

Another bit of excitement was caused by receiving an e mail from Embrace. They are back in the studio and writing and recording new stuff. Six years after their last album I wonder if they can still do it. I hope so.

Sunday Morning

The daughter is back from Thailand for a couple of weeks before she goes to meet her sailor boyfriend (it's back on- I know, these young things) in Split. Before then we have the joys of A level results.My fingers and toes are crossed for her.

The son is temporarily back in London before jetting off to Hamburg to see his mate. He might be back for a few days towards the end of August before he goes on his year abroad.

Me and the wife have finally got the remortgage sorted and the deal should be completed by the end of the week. Not much music at the moment that has grabbed me although I am enjoying  Sleigh Bells'Treats and Hope And Social 's latest Sleep Sound . This is released again on a pay what you want basis and available from their .http://www.hopeandsocial.com/

Saturday Night

On my own in the house. Daughter in Bangcock, son in Austria, wife out at the theatre.

Been off work, went down to sister in laws in Weller country. Relaxing time was had by all.

Marathon training is getting harder. I have to run 18 miles tomorrow- that's at least 3 and a half hours so an early start for me as I would like to have some of the day to relax. 

Ran the Great North 10k a couple of weeks ago in 58:45, almost three minutes faster than last year so the extra training is paying off. 

The Good Post I Promised

Remortgaging is still ongoing, we are down to leg measurements and the size of my c*ck and that Girl On The Phone keeps ringing back. Still, anyway here is the really  good post I promised.

From early 1977 to December 1978 I loved this band and thought they could do no wrong. They were political and from the street and they knew what it was all about. Then they released the second album and although it was OK it wasn't great. Nevertheless I would probably have stuck with them but unfortunately for The Clash at around the same time, All Mod Cons was released and my allegiances started to shift  to The Jam. I could identify much more with Weller's description of outer suburban London boys and his songs portrayed a world I half knew and aspired to.

But in December 1978 I saw The Clash two nights on the trot at The Lyceum and they were great -everything I wanted them to be from one of the greatest bands of all time. Luckily for me and you, they recorded the gigs and here it is.  The sound is raw and they are a bit all over the place at times but it is an excellent reminder of how good this band were.

Nine months later I was back at The Lyceum to see the March of The Mods tour. I had seen Secret Affair and Back To Zero at The Marquee and had discovered The Teenbeats and  by the August of 1979 I was  a New Mod., suit, Hush Puppies, Desert Boots, Fred Perries,, the lot. Nine months now can go by in a blink of an eye but at 18 nine months is  a lifetime.

Of course The Clash redeemed themselves  musically with London Calling later that year but by then it was too late.

3 Weeks Later

I know- it's been a long time. But I still feel the same, do you miss me?

Sorry about the absence of posts, I will be back shortly with  a good one. Honest,

Long Hot Summer

I don't know about the long bit but it has definitely been ridiculously hot these last few days.

I am still in the middle of sorting our finances and the rather tiresome process of remortgaging. The whole process is  different to the last time we did this 5 years ago.. Back then I wandered into my local Bradford and Bingley and asked if they would lend us some more money. The only debate was how much more money they would lend and a sort of negative bidding process with the  B&B offering more and me saying actually I don't want that much. I do remember leaving the office thinking this can't be right and I wasn't surprised they went bust a couple of years later.

Anyway, this time round it is rather different. The girl on the phone keeps on ringing back asking for more and more information- leading to frantic hunts for photo id, payslips proof of residency etc followed by hurried photocopying and special delivery letters containing details of my life just in the hope we get a better deal.

Still this is sort of a make or break for us- 15k a year down on salary since my wife's redundancy in 2009 - down to the last tranche of her redundancy money, failure to get this deal could mean selling the house or worse.

Bit of a quiet time in the house. My daughter is in her bunker-i.e. bedroom- revising (we hope) for her A levels. My son is not yet home although he is returning this week sometime “for the summer” Oh Joy.

Work is pretty flat at present nothing much on the go and I am trying to sort out our finances longer term- not something I enjoy doing but it has proved quite sobering.
My running is going well with minimum aches and pains. I am tired though and am going to bed earlier.

On the self sufficiency front the potatoes are growing well, my apple tree has about a dozen apples. Sadly no plums or pears this year. On a more positive note the tomato plants are doing well.


Music wise I am listening to 6 music on the way to and from work and whilst out with the dog during the week and when I am running. So I am listening to a lot of 6 music. I have been impressed by Sleigh Bells, impressed by Nemone on a Sunday morning and super impressed by Marc Riley in the evenings during the week. Steve LM on the Drive Time show of course is still great and I even quite like Sean Keaveney in the morning – although his constant whingeing about being tired is a put off. For God sake man you have a dream job playing music for a living shut up whingeing and just remind yourself each morning how damn lucky you are.

Saturday

During the week my father in law walks the dog during the day and I walk him in the evening. At the weekends I walk him twice.

Of these walks Saturday's are the ones I enjoy most. That is mainly due to two BBC Radio programmes which are (almost) for me worth the Licence Fee alone.

Saturday morning's walk across Nuns Moor is soundtracked by Radio Two's Brian Matthews' long running Sounds of The Sixties show. I love this programme as it plays so many tunes I remember as a (very) young lad growing up and songs that  I couldn't possibly remember and were almost certainly never played in my house.  I have discovered some great songs I never knew existed on this show and even on dull wet and windy days such as today this programme brings a smile to my face and a warm feeling in my heart.  Listen to it on iplayer if you've never heard it.

At night I listen to BBC Radio Newcastle's Beat Surrender programme.  Those of you of a certain age might conclude quite correctly from the title that this plays music from a certain period. ( for those of you too young to have guessed that, well go ask your Mum or Dad). Indeed on this show you are guaranteed to hear The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Jam , Buzzcocks, Joy Dvision and sundry punk/new wave oldies like tonight and Eddie and The Hot Rods, Martha and The Muffins,Big Audio Dynamite, The Ruts, and occasional Prince Buster and other ska songs. Sometimes they play  current local bands such as The Vinyl Jackets. You can listen again to this one on line as well.

Fundraising

I have contributed to two fundraising events this week. The first was simply a donation to someone cycling from  Lands End to John O'Groats's for charity. The second involved me and the wife going out for a meal.

My daughter is off to Thailand and Laos for a month In July after she finishes her exams. This is a  trip organised through her school by World Challenge. Part of the deal is that she has to raise at least some of the money herself and do community work whilst she is out there.


Her World Challenge team organised a fundraiser at a local restaurant this week( luckily the owner’s son is a friend of hers) and that is how we ended up eating out on a Monday night.

South East Asian ( principally Vietnamese) cuisine doesn’t figure very highly on my list of must eat foods but I admit I was pleasantly surprised by the venue, and the quality on offer. Here is a link to the website.

The venue is in a newish part of Newcastle off the Boulevard called Waterloo Square,I had a very nice Pad Chai with vegetables and tofu for my main after some spicy squid rings with  plum and tamarind dips. It's not particularly cheap (we had a fixed price menu of £20 for three courses) but it's not outrageously expensive either. For what its worth, if you are in Newcastle and want to go out for a meal I would recommend it.

Fergie Is Our King

A long emotional and tiring day yesterday. A journey down  and back from Old Trafford on trains full of Huddersfield fans. Hopes and dreams alive and bursting into bloom  3 times in a few short minutes. Nearly 15 minutes of nail biting tension and then a whistle and it was over. Posh are back in the Championship at the first time of asking.

This is not the time to ponder our fate next season.

We are Boro, we are Boro 

Long Weekend

Bank Holiday weekend another extra day off. Yayy!

Sunday is the Play Off Final- I am getting excited about this. Hope we win convincingly not by penalties or because Huddersfield are crap. Us fans will be outnumbered 2-1 by the look of things and win or lose I will be on the train home with a lot of Hudders fans -can't avoid it train goes through Huddersfield- so I will be generous in my assessment of them in victory or defeat!!!.

Up the Posh!!!

Posh We Are

An exciting time. I was at London Road to see Posh destroy MK Dons in theLeague One Play off Semi Final second leg last Thursday. The London Road end went mental and we were on the pitch at the final whistle. I was still buzzin when I got off the train at Central Station at 2:30 Friday morning.

This Sunday we are in the Final at Old Trafford ( shame its not Wembley- thank you UEFA). Me and my son will be there. Its 11 years since we saw Andy Clarke score the winner at Wembley.A couple of promotions and several relegations later we hope Craig Mackail Smith scores the winner at Old Trafford and we get back in the Championship. And this time we stay there.

United we all stand

Songs You Should Hear-Maid In Heaven

The return of my occasional series is highlighting a song that has been downloaded the most from my online selection. I haven’t ever posted it here so it must be downloads from people searching for it online. Hence my belief that this is a song that people really want to hear.

 

Its not particularly obscure, not particularly hard to get hold of in CD or vinyl form, but it is a particularly great song.

 

Be Bop Deluxe were my first big musical crush. I was obsessed by them between 1974 and the end of1976 and the punk storm that blew most things away (for a while at least) . I still have a fondness for Bill Nelson ( the inspiration force of the band) and check his website (here) out regularly and have been known to buy his increasingly  esoteric solo output . I have written about him before  so won’t repeat myself. But he is  a genius. He can make that guitar sing.

Maid In Heaven- Be Bop Deluxe

Cloud Cult

I have been meaning to write something about this band for ages. It is a band I discovered via a music Blog. I downloaded the track, loved it and promptly bought all their stuff available on their website. So there DMCA, music Blogs are promoting artists and bringing them to people’s attention not destroying them. Now I can’t claim to do this with every track I downloaded but if I really fall in love with the music I do buy the product. So for me, it’s all about the art. Blogs are just another way of getting your art seen and heard by more people.

Anyway to the band in question.Their music sums up all that is good about mixing classical instruments with guitar bass and drums. There is a space in the songs that to me reflects the open spaces of where the music is conceived. Craig Minowa's voice is not technically perfect (like another singer whose band I also love- Danny McNamara of Embrace) but it fits perfectly with the music.

It helps that heir website is slick and upto date and you can stream their songs on the player. It helps that they include lots of personal stuff that draws you into them and gives another dimension to their work. It helps that they are concerned about the environment and take steps to ensure they are as far as possible not polluting the world.

I hope to see them one day. I really like them. I think you will too.

 No one Said It Would Be Easy- Cloud Cult

R.I.P. Poly Styrene

 

I know I am a little late with this but nevertheless Poly Styrene’s death from cancer is still making me come to terms with both getting older and wondering who will be next to go  amongst people who have had at the very least a musical influence on me.

 

Poly’s band X Ray Spex were the first band I ever saw live. I was 16 years old and had discovered John Peel and punk. 

It was 1977 and half term. Me and my mate Michael decided to go for a day out in London . Reading NME on the way in we learned that X Ray Spex would be playing at The Marquee that night. I had heard  Peel play the  debut X Ray Spex 12”  ( Oh Bondage Up Yours! b/w I Am  A Cliché )in his shows several times so I knew what sort of music we could hear.

It was 75p admission and we figured if we skimped on paying the train and Tube fares and didn’t eat much we could afford it. So we rode the train the twenty or so miles into London dodging the  guard , walked confidently through the tube stations and found ourselves in Leicester Square and  as night fell made our way up Wardour Street . 

This was pre id , pre obsession with under age drinking days so we got in without as much as a second glance even despite not looking remotely like punks ( I was still wearing flares for god sake as my parents wouldn’t shell out for new jeans)

 

We bought ourselves a pint of something or other ( it was supposed to be beer but to this day I’m not so sure) and waited amazed that here we were in the famous venue waiting to see a real proper punk band. The club was half full of  punks, the sound system played all the new punk standards and then  X Ray Spex came on.

 

It wasn’t the best gig I've ever been to ,the band weren’t the most proficient  but the energy and chaos shown by both them and the audience had a profound effect on me and Mike. Poly’s voice was powerful and full of raw emotion and soared above the music effortlessly. They were short of material and played some songs twice. The whole set couldn’t have been more than half an hour long.

 

 I was hooked on  music and live music especially  from that point on.

 

We missed the last train home and I was grounded for a few months but it was worth it. It was also the first of many visits to The Marquee over the next two years. 

Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons in The Boy Looked At Johnny reckoned Poly was the future of music. For whatever reason she wasn't . That doesn't matter because  although I never met you Poly  you left a  impression on me that remains as clear  to me today as it was all that time ago. And Mike if you're reading this, I hope you remember that night as vividly as I do. 

The world is poorer without people like Poly.  RIP

 

 

 

April

Today is the Royal Wedding Day- so an extra day off for me. Whoopee!!!

This song has nothing to do with The Wedding but has everything to do with the month. I have posted about this band before. They are pretty good. Here is a link to their website and this song below is from the album of the same name released last year on a pay what you think it's worth basis. 

April- Hope and Social

Another Post

Out of the habit again of posting. This is partly due to work being extremely busy due to handover of new properties and also the lighter nights and my vegetable growing plans have taken up most of my time. Anyway who wants to be indoors when the sun is shining?

 

Marathon training has begun as well which is quite tiring. Although I am pleased to find out I can run six miles without any effort at all this early in my running calendar. I normally don’t get up to a six mile long run until July time Although it also proves that I haven’t been pushing myself these last few years and would explain why my weight has not dropped below 14st for 10 years. Since my last marathon in fact.

 

Lesson learned. I am obviously a slow learner.

 

Anyway, I have been listening to a lot of Idlewild these past weeks. I love Roddy Woomble’s  voice- and his solo stuff is worth listening to-  although sometimes the band are a bit leaden. I have seen them live twice. Which for me is pretty good- both times they were excellent, my comments notwithstanding. 


This song was made available to people who bought their last CD- Post Electric Blues

 

 Take Me Back In Time (Demo)- Idlewild

Passing Through

Sorry too busy to stop and chat. Will catch up with you in a couple of days. Promise.

Back For Easter

Our son has returned from London for a few weeks. He hasn't been home since Christmas. My wife is very happy to see him.

Old Man

Well it finally happened. I officially became old last week. By officially old I mean I celebrated my 50^th birthday. Well, celebrated maybe a slight exaggeration although me and the wife did go out for a meal at our old favourite Loch Fyne. 

 

But now I think – what should my reaction be as a 50 year old to life? Does my age give me a greater insight into the trials and tribulations of life? Can I now say without a hint of irony “Well, of course in my day……”

 

 I am planning on running a marathon this year and is that a good idea now I’m officially old and my health could go at any minute. Will I look at techno gadgets and say what's the point of that? What’s wrong with a pen and a piece of paper. Why don’t people just talk to each other any more etc etc

 

Or is 50 the new 40 and I can leave the corduroy trousers in the wardrobe for a few years yet?

 

Emotional Turmoil

 

My daughter and her boyfriend have split up. Cue much tears and wailings in the house over the last week. I am strangely not perturbed by this at all. Of course I don’t like to see my daughter upset and I hate her ex for upsetting her like this but I am not really moved by it all. At least not in the same way that my wife is who is fretting about our daughter,  laying awake at night worrying about her wellbeing  and has got emotionally involved in the situation. Is it a man woman thing? 

Or am I just a cold hearted bastard?

 

 

My Favourite Dress

There isn't much I can say about this song.It means too much to me. It is a song I have listened to probably at least once a week for over twenty years. And at certain, emotionally stressful times over the last twenty plus years I have listened to this masterpiece every day.

If you haven't heard a song by The Wedding Present before , listen to this , because it pretty much sums up David Gedge's output. Yes the sounds are better produced these days but this song and its two guitars bass and drums,  plaintive vocals and subject matter  is what it has always been about.

For me it is one of the best songs of the last 50 years.

My Favourite Dress- The Wedding Present

Musical Regrets- Northern Soul

One on my musical  regrets is never going to Wigan Casino or Blackpool Mecca ballroom when I had the chance and was  a student in Manchester in the late Seventies early Eighties.

 

I came to Northern Soul relatively late. Growing up in the Sixties and Seventies Motown was on the radio a lot  and later even Tony Blackburn kept the soul flame burning on his post Radio 1 shows on GLR. Growing up I ‘d seen the crossover hits mimed along to on TOTP but it took The Jam and the track Non Stop Dancing on their first album to really stimulate my interest in Northern Soul.

 

If there were any all nighters in my Hertfordshire market town home I never heard of them them and  anyway by the time The Jam came along  there seemed to be just so much new and exciting music to listen to  I didn’t have  a chance to pursue a new found interest in obscure-  and  at the time ,I thought, uncool, music, seduced as I was by other  Weller, Foxton Buckler songs  and The Clash and reggae and all the stuff John Peel played.

I got into the Mod Revival   through '79 and early 1980  after being blown away by the music and images on The Jam's All Mod Cons album and  so I kept an interest in Motown and Northern Soul.

In reality though it wasn’t until  1983 and the move  back down to the South and  into London and  where I discovered all the pirate stations playing soul music,  that I started to research Northern Soul in detail.  Compilation albums were easy to get hold of (still are).Some of the sound quality was (is) naff as most were(are) analogue recordings straight from the 7" vinyl and some of the songs are so poor they really do deserve to be obscure. 

But some of the songs are the epitome of good quality honest no nonsense dance music and  if you play some of them loud, really loud I defy you to not want to perform some daring moves in your living room. Or even just tap your feet.

 

This is one of my favourites.   A classic northern soul voice and sound.

 

In Your Spare Time- Cindy Scott

Day Off

I was off work today.It was a nice sunny day but still quite cold. We went out for a drive and ended up in Amble via Tynemouth and Druridge Bay. Blue skies all the way. A sort of day that makes you feel good.
Bands like The Wedding  Present make me feel good even when the sun isn't shining and the skies are overcast and grey like they have been for weeks here.
I discovered this live concert from 2006 whilst tidying up my music files. This is a concert filmed for French TV. I've got the DVD somewhere and here is the audio in full as broadcast.

Its excellent sound quality is only slightly marred by the over enthusiastic clapping at the start and end of each song.

Of course every decent music blogger knows  Gedge is a genius. This collection of songs from his career only goes to prove it.

Le Trabendo Session- The Wedding Present

Sunday Morning

It's Sunday morning.

 The wife is at a Zumba session (the latest get fit craze for women -mostly-sweeping  the gyms and village halls up and down the country apparently). Me and the dog have been out for a longer than usual Sunday walk. He is asleep at my feet whilst I post this entry. The daughter is in Doncaster with her boyfriend and my son has probably just gone to bed as he was out last night.

I am listening to some Jazz. Dave Brubeck to be precise.Currently listening to Kathy's Waltz from the Time Out album. This album was the soundtrack of my childhood. Listening to it brings a nice warm , happy glow to this miserable , cold and overcast March morning.

My wife has got another year's contract , albeit doing a different job, with her current employer. So financial disaster has been averted for the time being. Maybe this wont be an annus horribilis? Fingers crossed.

Enough of that, it's time to Take Five

Long Time No Post

I haven’t posted this last week or so, partly because I have been busy with life in general  and partly because I haven’t felt the need to share thoughts or opinions or indeed music, with you all. This inattention to my craft means I will never get to be a “Blog of Note”.

 

I could easily post a song each day which would undoubtedly get the page views numbers up but that would mean it was just another music blog and I was trying to be a bit different. This lack of focus which I have previously mentioned is another reason why I will never be a “must read Blog” Not that I am bothered by that either.

 

It was my daughter’s 18^th birthday on Tuesday gone. She is now all grown up with a boyfriend in tow. Her one concession to her departed childhood was in the fact she wanted a Barney cake for her birthday from these people who had made her sixteenth birthday cake and my son’s 18^th cake which I wrote about at the time.(see here). We took the day off went to Francescas for lunch and she went out in the evening with her mates. My children are now adults, it’s a weird feeling.

 

It is a big family gathering at the weekend. My son, whose birthday is this Friday, was meant to be coming up as well but he has decided not to come up after all, much to my wife’s disappointment. Still sister and brother in law are coming  up to celebrate Harriet’s birthday anyway.

 

Now its only three weeks until my 50^th.

Sunday Night

My daughter is performing at her school show at Dance City   tonight. My wife has gone, I haven't. We left it a bit late to get tickets and we could only get one. Can't say I am too disappointed. She is only in three pieces which would have meant sitting through about 1 hour of stuff I'm not interested in. There will be many more performances to sit through if she gets onto one of the dance courses she is applying for. Lucky me.

So , here I am in front of the PC, listening to music, very loud. Media Player is on shuffle and it is currently playing Sugarbabes  Overload. (An acoustic live version- which is actually very good)

On The Road

We took our daughter to an audition at Liverpool's John Moores University yesterday. It was a 9 am start so we got up early and set off at 5.15 am. Traffic was heavy around Liverpool and my wife took a wrong turn once so we got there a bit late- just after 9am.

 

The campus is in South Liverpool and was very pleasant and suburban. The campus looked like an old teacher training college and later a bit of Goggling confirmed that it in fact it had been. In fact I was a bit surprised by how nice this part of Liverpool , Aigburth,  was. Not at all like my memories of Liverpool or how it is portrayed in the media.

 

The prospective students were mostly  girls, mostly  local to Liverpool and the North West (judging by the accents) and mostly  looking like extras from Hollyoaks with Jordan style hair and make up. There were a handful of parents there; who we guessed mostly had not gone to Uni themselves.

 

Whilst she was in her audition classes we went to Sudley House  which was a pleasant hour and we also went for a walk along the Mersey which was only a short distance away. I have only been to Liverpool once before and I had forgotten how big a river the Mersey is. It makes the Tyne look like a stream.

 

Anyway after a very perfunctory presentation, the daughter's audition classes and a shambolic tour of campus and  demonstration of current students work (not impressed) we were away home by 2pm, driving past the Halewood plant and John Lennon Airpor which has the  slogan Above Us Only Sky on it's welcome sign. This made us laugh. My daughter took a picture and put it on her Facebook page.

 

This is the only audition/interview we are going to with her  which is probably a good thing. Both as ex students and  parents we are pretty critical of what is on offer and although I am sure the staff and tutors etc are all competent, lovely people we were not impressed by the campus or the course as judged by the presentation – by a bloke who looked a bit like Stuart Maconie only less well maintained- or by the tour and performance.It was  a bit sixth formish and amateurish.

 

We could be wrong of course.It is many years since the wife and I were students and neither of our sets of parents accompanied us to interviews for the Unis we chose so we have no idea what they would have made of it.

 

 

Language School- The Tours

The third in my occasional series of Songs You Really Should Hear this song seemed to be played every night on John Peel's show when it was released but it probably wasn't. It was played enough for me to register its brilliance and use my school dinner money to purchase it from  the cool record shop Tracks in Hertford.

Anyway it is a cracking song that races along with  added advantage of barely intelligible lyrics that made it seem more alluring. I almost took a TEFL course on the back of this song with its seeming promise of  foreign girls in language schools being very keen on their teachers!!

Language School- The Tours

I never heard anything more from them after this masterpiece but if you Google them you will find some stuff. I could provide you with links but that would just make you Internet surfers even more lazy than you already are. Look it up yourself if you want. It's not hard.

2nd birthday

Two years on and I am still (well,sort of) going strong. It has had its up and down this blogging thing and sometimes I haven't felt like posting anything for weeks. I do come back to it though and my series idea for Songs You Really Should Hear is getting me thinking and planning

 Looking over the last two years I can see that I still haven't really found a groove and stuck to it . In other words this Blog is a bit all over the place. That I suppose is reflected in the Blog's strap line and in reality is a reflection of me.

Went To see Posh play last night. We won 5-3 against Sheffield Wednesday .Met my son. Those  two things made the not getting back to Newcastle until 2:30am worthwhile. So today I am off work, resting.

Page views are increasing so I know some people out there are reading this. Leave a comment  I welcome all feedback about this. Why not listen to some of the songs. You never know you might even enjoy them.

Review

Reading back over my posts for this month has been a bit depressing. I seem to be suffering from the classic “winter blues” not uncommon at this time of year. Yet I don’t think that this is really true of me. Yes January is a very long month and yes it is bleak, dark and miserable but I think I am still presenting myself as upbeat, relaxed and cheerful.

 

This did get me thinking though about the way I behave. People think of me as relaxed, cheerful etc etc but am I really? Is that just my public façade and I really am as miserable and bleak and dark as some of these January’s scribblings seem to indicate? Am I tortured inside living a lie and desperately unhappy. Well I guess like most people some days and some parts of days I am.

 

Perhaps it’s just easier to be miserable when you are writing. It’s a deeper well of emotion and maybe a natural default if you are trying to express emotion in words or in music. Maybe it gets people’s attention more easily.

After I wrote this I caught news on the radio that public confidence has dipped to its lowest point for a couple of years.  

Come in , your time is up

I am going through one of my  more dislocated phases.  This is where I turn up at work, do the bare minimum ,  go home, do the bare minimum etc and exist in  a parallel life of my own mind’s making. This happens to me every now and then and can last for ages- months/years even. Sometimes I look back at my life and wonder if I have just been going through the motions for most of it. Whole years just seem to have slipped by without me noticing.

 

I am reading this book  59 seconds as part of my  attempt to shake myself out of this mood. I have also started running two months earlier than usual.This is having a positive effect.  As I get older I am realising I have less time to waste. I need to maximise what is left of my three score and 10. I owe it to my wife, my children and more importantly to myself.

 

 

A Passing Thought

January is a very long month

Location, Location, Location

Song Number two in this occasional series is from that most iconic of all bands The Velvet Underground. 

If you have never heard their material you are really missing out on one of the truly great bands of rock (ouch!), up there with The Beatles, The Stones, Beach Boys The Who, The Clash. etc etc.  

It was Radio Caroline not John Peel who introduced me to this band, although they  did only ever seem to play this one song. It did take John Peel  however,to introduce me to the depth of their genius by  playing  songs from the double live album on his show.

Now there are so many of their songs that you should hear especially from the Banana album (The Velvet Underground & Nico) but I have chosen that Radio Caroline favourite. Funnily enough, despite its subject matter, this song, like Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side was openly played on daytime radio in the late 60’s and early 70's.

I have been to New York twice. During our visit last year I actually made it up to Lexington and 125 albeit on a tour. I was so excited to be at the spot described in the song. Is that sad? Probably.

This version is from the legendary Norman Dolph acetates. Despite all the fuss about these "different takes", most of them sound like demos to me.

I'm Waiting For The Man- The Velvet Underground

Back To Work Blues

I’ve been back at my desk for three days now after a week off and it feels like I was never away. Same people with the same problems. A new year but nothing changes.

This year has to be the year I get a new job. This job no longer does it for me and although I moan about them, it’s not the public with their problems that bother me, it’s the structural changes within my organisation that have made my job more difficult and so much less satisfying.

When I first started in this job I could solve problems more or less without reference to anyone else. I had authority to spend money on repairs, authorise moves, resolve anti social behaviour etc, and the back room functions and senior management supported me. Yes I sometimes got it wrong but I learned and got better at my job of helping people.Now it seems my purpose here is not to provide a direct accountable service to our tenants (sorry, customers) but to compile stats for the back room staff and senior management and meet targets that are set for my team without reference to me (although it always says I was consulted). My skills, knowledge and experience built up over 25+ years are ignored.Not valued, worthless in the eyes of my employer.

Over the last 6 years we have lost 15 posts on the front line, the ones who actually deal with the public. At the same time this organisation has increased its establishment from just under 500 staff to just under 900 staff. There was a time when I knew almost everyone who worked for us. Nowadays I go to the extremely plush HQ building (the old HQ of a big IT company) and don’t know anyone.

I remember old hands telling me similar things when I was a youngster starting out and maybe it was ever thus. That doesn’t make it feel any better.

This year the New Year has to be a new start for me.

Atishooo!!

I've spent most of the week since Christmas Day being not well. Neither is the wife. This combined with the grey dark sunless days have made this a miserable time to be off.

Now there is one day left of the Christmas holidays and it's then back to work. I have no enthusiasm for this return to the workplace but we all have to eat so back I go.

2011 could be our annus horribilis and I  approach it's dawning with trepidation and an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.   Here's hoping.