Too Long In The Tooth

I spent a portion of this morning watching bits and pieces of the Glastonbury festival courtesy of the BBC’s iPlayer. Mostly I find myself feeling indifferent to most of the music presented on the show, which is how Noel Gallagher apparently felt about certain aspects of the concert programming. I have to confess I’d never heard of Jay-Z (I mean not even remotely heard of Jay-Z) prior to seeing the highlights.

His retort to Gallagher (playing karaoke to "Wonderwall" might have seemed like a good idea but did you actually hear the guy singing? Flat as a proverbial pancake - but then maybe it was deliberate; a clever jibe at what Jay-Z perceives to be the inadeqacies of the Gallagher oeuvre . Or maybe he just can't sing a decent tune for toffee?

And then, maybe I'm just too long in the tooth for what passes as both today's pop music and irony?

On This Day One Year Ago

Reverie, Envy And Hostility

Following a lovely night out with Bernard and Lesley (who spoilt us rotten with fabbo food and wonderful wine), this morning was spent in something of a reverie, or as it should be properly termed, a daze.

The camera isn't working at the moment - an intermittent fault that has prevented me from snapping a night out earlier in the week with my chum Johnny, last night's meal and this morning's sunrise.

I've not had a good run with equipment and software at the moment. First there was the theft of the laptop and digital voice recorder. Then the software meltdown which was causing me mucho problemo in extremis when it came to reading Word files from a Mac which sucked up huge portions of time (and not a little expense) and now the camera goes on the blink. Again.

That said I find myself secretly pleased that the bugger has gone on the blink this week as in the last few days I've been harbouring a serious case of camera envy.

On my mind this morning: how should one respond to expressions of empathy and indeed, sympathy from someone who has previously shown only unrelenting personal and professional hostility?

John Fahey Visits Washington DC

A magical reissue from music outsider...

John Fahey Visits Washington D.C

John Fahey

Takoma

From his self-financed recording début in 1959 until his death in 2001, John Fahey remained an enigmatic and maverick figure on the margins of American guitar music. Via his Takoma label he documented old rural and once popular picking tunes which had been scattered to the wind like so much chaff, as well as his own often eccentric compositions.

A passionate if idiosyncratic musicologist (he championed the young Leo Kottke), the guiding principle with most Fahey releases is that although the landscape may look and sound familiar, nothing is quite what it seems. Certainly reading the self-penned sleeve notes accompanying the original record confirms his skewed take on the world to have more in keeping with William Burroughs than any orthodox Smithsonian view of the world.

With this 1979 album he continues to layer popular melodies such as "Goodnight Ladies" and "Camptown Races" with discursive preludes, meandering off into unexpected swirling abstraction that often has more in common with 20^th Century serialists than any notional folk picking style.

Circuitous, complex lines are unfurled into rare, blooming chords in much the way a magician pulls flowers out of his pocket. However, it’s the gothic rumbles of "Guitar Lamento" (written by Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete) that remind us how Fahey’s use of space and haunting repetition created glorious epic moods tempered with a bleak intensity that resonates and shivers still.

The Wrong Object Stories From The Shed

Keeping it lean and mean…
Stories From The Shed
The Wrong Object
Moonjune Records
Led by a twin-pronged attack of sax and trumpet, Belgium’s jazz outfit The Wrong Object offer a full-on, take-no-prisoners gusto that twists between tight-cornered heads and discursive improvisation. Part of the record’s success is its brevity – the longest track is nearly six minutes - without any apparent compromise in terms of the quality of the content.

Jean-Paul Estievenart’s trumpet and flugelhorn shines bright and sweet (especially on The undulating "Sheepwrecked") and a special mention must be made of Michael Delville’s guitar playing; his textural accompaniment adds a drama-heightening shade and colouring (reminiscent of Pete Cosey or David Torn’s work at times) to an already engaging sound.

Sometimes recalling the less formulaic aspects of Ian Carr’s Nucleus, the group fashion their respective rock and jazz interests into a sound that is vigorous and animated throughout without giving way to any superfluous padding whatsoever.

Nominations For God XLVII

Cy Twombly

Words And Music VIII: She And Him

The new album by She & Him has been on heavy rotation here in the Yellow Room. Sigh.

Street Life CXXVII

Jade Warrior Now

Warrior's winning way...

Now

Jade Warrior

Windweaver Music

Refugees from the 60s beat boom, multi-instrumentalists Jon Field and Tony Duhig adopted the Jade Warrior name in 1969 to experiment with folk and rock forms liberally laced with African, Oriental and Latin flavours. Yet it wasn’t until they were signed to Island Records (at the urging of Steve Winwood) that they really hit their stride, producing the quartet of albums between 1974 and 1978 upon which their cult reputation now rests.

Floating World (1974) established a template of thoughtful arrangements, ingenious instrumentation and richly harmonic, ceremonial chamber music, which they continued to explore (though less successfully) in Waves (1975). The intricately scripted mood music of Kites (1976) – the most accomplished of the four - pre-empts the ECM ethno-crossovers of Pat Metheny, Steve Tibbetts, etc, creating strikingly impressive sequences along the way.

New Age before the term had been invented (and subsequently devalued), their very diversity caused market confusion prompting Island to drop them after the Latin-infused meanderings of 1978’s Way Of The Sun. All four albums (especially Eclectic Discs’ handsomely packaged reissues of 2006) are an essential part of any self-respecting prog rock collection.

Now after a series of sporadic releases into the wilderness and Duhig’s death in 1990, Jade Warrior return with a top-flight album boasting cinematic dynamics, thoughtful instrumentation, and the strategically astute placement of a roster of guest artists that includes Theo Travis (sax) and Tim Stone (guitar). Aside from the occasional stylistic misfire (the cod-Latin “Everything Must Pass”), this collection of songs fronted by pre-74 JW vocalist Glyn Havard (sounding at times uncannily like Gordon Haskell) has warmth, clarity and the power of surprise on its side.

Whilst “Fool and his Bride” begins as a jazzy-inflected blues it seamlessly morphs into John Barry-esque soundtrack mode. Metal-edged ear-bleeding sonics are raucously deployed in the manic “3.a.m Meltdown” giving the album an unexpected shaking off of any dust that may have gathered in the intervening years. Bassist Dave Sturt adds a classy lustre throughout the record whilst Jon Field’s flute never sounded better. Though very different to their classic Island albums, and occasionally straying too close to MOR balladry, Now is nevertheless a worthy successor to their glory days.

Random Penguin XXVI

1977
cover photograph by Barnaby Hall

Street Life CXXVI

Desk Duties II

Today it’s pretty much been King Crimson all the way with only brief respite provided by a fun-packed disc from Cage The Elephant and the (too) smooth jazz-rock sounds of Hiromi. The Crimson is out not so much for listening as research, and whilst doing that I’m also compiling a list of key KC dates for a forthcoming KC-related project. Now that’s what I call multi-tasking!


Out of the blue I get a telephone call from a BBC production team. They’re making a short piece about Whitley Bay and my name had been mentioned (by Paul Irwin) as someone likely to have an opinion about the place. They’re right. I do. Whilst I’m not at all blind to the many faults of our little seaside town, I love this place and its fading charm.

Faded charm is something we (that’s seaside towns as a whole) do well as this recent piece in The Guardian explores. The researcher and I chinwag for several minutes and she tells me they’ll give me a bell next week if I’m needed. I wonder what the collective noun for seaside towns might be?

Newly Weds

We happen to live next door to the best neighbours you could ever hope to have. John and Jude have been together for over 15 years and decided to tie the knot yesterday. A splendid time was had by all.

Happy Birthday Tom

Nominations For God XLVI

Willie Nelson

Street Life CXXV

The Unexpected Thug

A gorgeous morning marred only by the necessity of having to visit North Tyneside Hospital in Rake Lane. Thankfully the time spent in those labyrinthine corridors filled with ill people was short, to the point and with no return appointment required.

The Price Of Milk

I returned to the dinning table having just paid the milk man for two weeks worth of milk. The children were shocked and disgusted that I pay out £1.50 for a 2 litre carton when the same item will cost 15p less in our local corner shop.

Alys concluded that we get our milk delivered because I am “too lazy to go to the shop!” Resisting the unseemly urge to point out the colour of pots and kettles, the real reason is a nostalgic indulgence; milk as a medium through to bygone times.

Well, that and the fact I felt sorry for the guy who was doing a desperate door-to-door pitch on a grim rain-lashed evening when the open heavens showed no time of closing any time soon. Someone that committed deserves support I thought, and so despite knowing it would add about a quid to my weekly milk bill I signed his rather wet and bedraggled order form with a devil-may-care flourish. None of that would cut any ice with my cold-hearted offspring.

Mind you, I miss the clink of the real bottles on the doorstep.

Random Penguin XXV

1966 Cover photograph by Tony Evans

The Pineapple Thief Tightly Unwound

The fruit of the loons…

The Pineapple Thief

Tightly Unwound

K-Scope

With prog rock so often dismissed as the preserve of a few cape-clutching throwbacks, it’s always something of a surprise when a young band comes along apparently eager to step up to the prog-ish plate with a set that includes a couple of ten minute epics liberally laced with what passes for a mellotron these days.

Though the bulk of the material (written by guitarist and vocalist Bruce Soord) probably owes more to Radiohead than to any of the old-school practitioners, there are times when the stately “Too Much To Lose” (clocking in at over 15 minutes) sounds as though they’re working off a bit of a Wall-era Floyd fixation. Whilst the shorter songs are necessarily more to the point, the longer pieces sustain moods without recourse to shows of instrumental dexterity. Or to put it another way, not a lot happens for long portions of time.

Yet there’s a pleasant, almost minimalist aspect to this one and its lengthy companion, “Different World.” If Thom Yorke’s shadow is clearly discernable (especially so on “The Sorry State”) then so too is that of Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, though on the whole, The Pineapple Thief lack the wunderkind’s current metal-edged bombast. The indie-rock swagger of “Sinners” suggests Soord’s talents may ultimately go off in a more pop-orientated direction.

Some nice production touches and solid, if not exactly inspired writing makes up a reliable enough listen. Just don’t expect any jaw-dropping lurches, turnarounds or hair-raising surprises.

Testing For Buzz LXVI 1968 And All That XVII

I was recently interviewed by a researcher for a TV production company who were in the process of putting together a biography of Elton John. They’d wanted to know the scoop on EJ’s audition with King Crimson, how Elton had felt about not getting the job, and whether or not his replacement, Greg Lake, felt undermined by the fact that he wasn’t Robert Fripp’s first choice to sing on King Crimson’s debut album, In The Wake Of Poseidon.

Whilst untangling this matted knot of googletruth, I mentioned Elton’s career as a session singer, and his appearances on some of the Top of the Pops albums as an pre-famous uncredited session singer.

As Ed Reardon might have said “It was at this point that I realised my svelte-voiced interlocutor was probably no more than 12 years old and thus too young to recall the heady days of those records and their, ahem, seminal artwork.”

She thought I was referring to the long running BBC TV show of the same name, requiring me to explain the concept of these albums of cover versions and Elton’s role in the process, in much the same way one might have to explain cheese to a visiting Martian.

However, the incident prompted me to recall a time when the frisson of excitement one experienced leafing through the album covers in the Wallsend branch of Woolworths wasn’t always caused by the music being played over the in-house stereo system.

Keeping In Strim

Prevarication is an art and one which I do incredibly well. Now that the recent blockages of technical stuttering and incomprehension have been cleared, I’ve had to climb back on the horse and get some writing done. Encountering difficulties with equipment is great because you’re able to blame your lack of productivity on something very concrete and nothing at all to do with you or your lame-assed work. Still, on a day like today, there’s always some gardening chores to enable me to dodge the page.

Suits You Sir

I'm told that I look a mess and need to smarten up my act. So, it was off to an out-of-town retail park to see what could be done. Happily(for me) nothing was purchased and I remain a nexus for sartorial disgrace. After such fruitless exertions Lesley drove us to Seaton Delaval and the wonderful Crescent Cafe. This is the only ice cream shop where there's always a queue no matter what the time of year might be.

Wooden Shjips Vol.1

It’s A Beautiful Noise…
Vol.1
Wooden Shjips

Holy Mountain

The first self-titled album by the oddly named San Francisco drone-rockers was surely one of the great releases of last year; a monumental swirl of shrieking feedback, dub-drenched vocals and mesmeric beats. Prior to this, the band released a series of sought-after singles in 2006, vinyl samizdat spouting the Wooden Shjips lo-fi manifesto, which promptly vanished into cultish collectability almost as quickly as they appeared. Long out of print, they’ve now been collated into this handy-sized showcase.

A corrosive caterwauling wall of sound, they produce a strange, strained Surf music emanating from a place where an apocalyptic sun glowers down on rolling waves of static, and where amplifiers are permanently cranked all the way up to eleven.

The tightly compacted slabs of sound invoke the spirit of the Velvet Underground but they also touch base with Kraut Rock’s cosmic thrum and the murky, often jarring repetition of early minimalism. "Space Clothes" is a college of spoken words, square-wave abrasions and rattling interference, whilst "Death’s Not Your Friend" madly throbs to a repeating organ note around which ragged shavings of terminally scratched-up guitar chords dance and pound.

Every once in a while lyrics will bubble up out of the gloop, their syllables as oblique and peripheral as smoke, and just as impossible to decipher. Yet for all its intentionally primitive harshness, the music retains a popish sensibility that is oddly accessible.

"Dance, California" begins like a terminally tangled-up retake of Steppenwolf’s "Born To Be Wild," whilst "Clouds Over Earthquake" has Erik ‘Ripley’ Johnson’s stately guitar rise magnificently from a haze of distortion, sounding like an outtake from Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting. The exhilarating blitzkrieg of "Shrinking Moon" will get the blood rushing and like everything here, it needs to be played at max when the neighbours are out and animals aren't in earshot.

Though I’m not sure that this is quite the thing the recently sainted Neil Diamond had in mind when he sang about there being a "Beautiful Noise," but it’s an apt enough description of what you’ll find on this magically impenetrable record.

Nominations For God XLV

Spike Milligan

Travis And Fripp Thread

Radiate And Not Fade Away…
Thread
Travis & Fripp
Panegyric

Applying the principles of Frippertronics to his flute playing on 2003’s Slow Life, it was only going to be a matter of time before Theo Travis ended up collaborating with Robert Fripp. Having exchanged vows of mutual respect after Fripp saw the sax player performing with Soft Machine Legacy (where Travis more than ably replaced the late, great Elton Dean), the pair retired to deepest Wiltshire to a day of improvising in 2007.

With only a tiny scrap of the session utilised on Travis’ Double Talk, Porcupine Tree’s Steve Wilson and Travis have co-produced a best of the rest for the wider world. Avoiding any outright soloing as such, the real magic on this album are the nuances and intricate details that sustain and support each other’s work. Like two colourists sharing the canvas, they painstakingly blend their respective approaches into a result that is beautiful, delicate, sometimes wistful and occasionally forbidding.

On "The Unspoken," Fripp’s initial playing is surprisingly reminiscent of those gentle runs during the second half of Crimson’s "Moonchild,"and are arguably his jazziest licks in a couple of decades. Travis’ soprano sax during "The Silence Beneath" not only widens the sonic scope of the record but adds a more demonstrative voice that coaxes Fripp into responding to the curling vaporous notes with some characteristically laser-edged light-beams. And it’s the sax / soundscapes combo that provides the 10 minute closer, "Pastorale," with its warmest highpoint.

As you might expect from musicians of this calibre and fluency this is just one of several utterly radiant sequences. Yet the manner in which the darker timbre of Travis’ alto flute conspires with Fripp’s somewhat austere string settings ensures the prevailing atmosphere is the right side of chilly rather than the wrong side of chill-out.

You can order this album here.

Street Life CXXIV

Seth Lakeman Poor Man's Heaven

Making Waves…
Poor Man’s Heaven Seth Lakeman
Relentless

When you’re hot you’re hot. With Poor Man’s Heaven, the man who would be folkie cross-over king is certainly giving off a lot of heat. The instrumental palette may be largely the same as 2006’s Freedom Fields but the reach is bigger and you can hear an ambitious stadium-sized appetite rattling around in the fusillades of up-front drumming which open the album.

Such is the rock and reel quotient there are moments where you could imagine Jimmy Page and Robert Plant coming up with some of this stuff; the thundering pattern utilised “The Hurlers” bears a passing resemblance to the flurry of energy sizzling between the guitar and drums of Led Zep’s “Four Sticks.”

With a cover that has him alongside a rocky shoreline there’s no great surprise that nautical themes and imagery ripple through many of the lyrics, and none more dramatically than on “Solomon Browne.2 Here the Penlee lifeboat disaster, in which 16 lives were lost, is recounted in much the way it might have been had the tragedy occurred in 1881 instead of 1981.

Aping the kind of stoic reportage of catastrophic events that was the bread and butter of traditional folk music has worked well for Lakeman, enabling him to blend contemporary events with an old-world patina like a stylistic camouflage. You can never be sure if the song you’re listening to wasn’t handed down through the generations or has just been whipped off the hard-drive.

Throughout the album Ben Nichols’ acoustic bass growls like a predatory beast, pouncing and gnawing at the bones of songs such as “I’ll Haunt You” and the ebullient banjo-fiddle driven, “Race To Be King” and most spectacularly in the spine-tingling runs and slides of “Greed and Gold.” Pentangle’s Danny Thompson himself would be proud to turn in work of this calibre.

His song writing continues the gold-yielding formula of its predecessor with energetic strumalongs, voracious fiddles and a sparkling delivery that’ll do nothing to diminish his rising star; folk music for people who don’t want to stick their finger in their ear or don the Arran Isle sweater just yet.

You can hear the whole album over on BBC music online.

Random Penguin XXIV

1976 cover design by Spike Milligan

Testing For Buzz LXV 1968 And All That XX

In 1968 the nightly news seemed to be comprised entirely of violence and death of one sort or another. Whether it was demonstrating crowds in London’s Grosvenor Square, students ripping up the cobblestones of Paris, the daily dose of Vietnam, or the slaying of Martin Luther King, the background noise in my life at that time was feverish and turbulent.

Yet the impact of the assassination of Robert Kennedy seemed to outdo them all. At the time my mother worked in a local newsagents and I recall the impact of seeing so many photographs of Kennedy, his head held off the ground, his eyes wide with uncertainty and astonishment. My interest in political killings, which had been bubbling under for most of the year, initially with JFK and further fuelled by the death of MLK, now exploded.

Looking back on that time, I confess that my reactions weren’t primarily that of shock but a kind of elation, the sense of being caught up in something right then and there. I felt like a witness to these profound events and bizarrely decided that I would need to keep a record of these momentous events.

Consequently, in the summer holidays I found an old scrapbook and grandly renamed it The Assassination Book. It was really just a random collection of photographs and clippings about JFK, MLK, RFK etc., but in my head it was to be the foundation of some great, definitive work on those crimes.

As the summer got underway and the distance between myself and the events in the Ambassador Hotel grew, my daily additions to The Assassination Book began to be overtaken by developments in the space race and music. Perhaps somewhere in my brain there was also a realisation that this was more a morbid indulgence than a useful contribution to understanding such acts.

Some time after the actual shooting I saw some photographs that had been taken from the train that was carrying Kennedy’s coffin from New York to Washington. I think there was also coverage of the train’s arrival on television.

As a kid it was the dramatic pictures of death that held me in their gruesome thrall. As an adult, it’s Paul Fusco’s photographs from the train that capture the sense of dumbstruck loss so simply and eloquently and that's what resonates so deeply and intensely with me now.

The Great Escape

My PC / Mac woes have continued all week requiring quantities of time, effort and money in order to rectify the apparent unwillingness for a piece of kit to do what it was happily doing a week ago. I called in the big guns (aka as Rick of Dynamic Services) to try and sort it out.

In a way I was glad when Rick drew a blank having spent most of Saturday afternoon at my desk scratching his noggin. He's taken the new laptop to see if he can come up with some clever lashed-up get-around. If anyone can do Rick can.

Debbie and I head over to Bernardstrasse and from there we are transported in the Quinn's mirth mobile up to Wallington Hall. A glorious summer's day.

Hugh Hopper Yumi Hara Cawkwell Dune

A certain kind…

Dune
Hugh Hopper & Yumi Hara Cawkwell
Moonjune Records

Though collaborator Yumi Hara Cawkwell may be less well known than ex-Soft Machinist, Hugh Hopper, she is no less talented. A gifted composer, performer and one time associate of London-based Japanese performance art popsters, Frank Chickens, Cawkwell has been steadily building a reputation that has seen her working with ex-King Crimson violinist, David Cross, providing thoughtful arrangements of Soft Machine repertoire for the Delta Saxophone Quartet, and stints as turntable-twirling DJ.

Oscillating between classical-sounding abstractions and looped-based electronics, these open-ended improvisations recorded in 2007 and 2008, chronicle two musicians respectfully seeking common ground. Her keyboards (both piano and organ) and sombre vocals offer a yearning ambiguity to Hopper’s grounded motifs and nimble exploratory figures.

Inevitably there’s a hit and miss aspect that creeps in occasionally. Though the tentative meandering of “Awayuki I and II” makes for an inconclusive experience, the terrain mostly consists of engaging and provocative pieces. “Long Dune” has Cawlkwell’s voice echoing forlornly across slowly shifting patterns of Hopper’s descending bass, and more demonstratively on the unsettling “Seki no Gohonmatsu”; which also bears the purr of Hopper’s trademark fuzz bass. Here, Calkwell give a full-blooded vocal to words taken from a traditional Japanese folk-song conjuring something that comes off being simultaneous ancient and drenched in modernity.

Elsewhere that mixing-up of traditions and disciplines continues. Messiaen-like shards of piano splinter across the abrasive “Shiranui,” and Softs fans will be intrigued to hear “Hopeful Impressions Of Happiness” – a bold reinvention of a song with nearly the same title from Soft Machine’s debut, proof were it needed, of that 40 year old album’s seminal status.

From soothing moments of calm reflection to jagged swipes at the psyche, the collective voices of HUMI form textures, moods, improvisation and formal compositions into a cohesive, expressive language. Beyond the confines of genre, subtle, striking and eloquent, don't expect anything obvious from this duo.

Nominations For God XLIV

Hugo Ball

Words And Music VII

Ozric Tentacles Sunrise Festival

It’s Déjà vu - all over again...
Sunrise Festival Ozric Tentacles
Snapper

Having formed at Stonehenge in 1983 it’s appropriate that the Ozrics are celebrating 25 years with this CD/DVD recorded in 2007 in nearby Somerset. This is an extensive set covering various parts of their career (with one extra track on the DVD) with past members adding to the mix including Merv Pepler, whose energetic drumming is a distinctive highlight.

It's a tribute to their dedicated fanbase that they've managed to sell kerjillions of albums over the intervening years and remain pretty much outside of the radar of the mainstream.

Yet their basic template of driving rhythms, gurgling sweeps of synth and chiming echo-drenched guitars are lifted wholesale from Angels Egg-era Gong and early solo Steve Hillage. It's not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with these modal space jams, but their derivative style means they are clearly for kids who know no better, or old Hippies too stoned to remember where this music came from in the first place.

Walkabout

The new laptop arrived yesterday but there's no time to play because today I'm going walkabout. Not strictly for pleasure, you understand, but a visit to a new dentist in Jesmond - a suburb of Newcastle where I spent a bit of time in the 70s.

On the approach to Whitley Bay Metro station on er, Station Road...

Twenty minutes later (or near enough), I'm at West Jesmond Metro Station...

nearby the Lonsdale pub. I once performed in the upstairs function room wearing a white boiler suit, alongside a similarly attired pal declaiming nonsense / cut-up poetry in front of a bemused (and possibly underwhelmed crowd) as part of a performance art outfit called (for reasons which I cannot even begin to recall), The French Attic (circa 1980).

Into Sunbury Gardens...

where I was once billeted in the house on the left...


Then turning right into St. Georges Terrace, where I pause to enjoy this masterpiece of municipal 60s planning control - otherwise known as West Jesmond library. You can see how well it blends in with, and takes account of, its surroundings.


Then a left-hand turn into Acorn Road and my dental appointment.

The good news is my teeth are fine. The bad news is my gums are not. With further appointments made, I pay up, leave and cross over Osborne Road...

and into Cavendish Place.

Sometime in the late 70s I used to share the house on the right with Keith Morris and several others. It's coming up to the third anniversary of Keith's trgaic death.


Before living in the communal house with Keith and co, I used to live in another communal house a bit further down the same street - the house on the left...

Out of Cavendish and crossing over Manor House Road...

and into Daniela's deli...
for some much-needed provisions...


Then back out into the baking heat , pausing on Manor House Road to gaze at yet another Smith domicile of yesteryear...Back up Cavendish Place...

back over Osborne Road...

and into Acorn Road again on my way to...

Larkspur Terrace - a street which holds a special place in my heart as its where I first heard In A Silent Way by Miles Davis circa 1975ish...

and where a couple of years after that I ended up living in another communal house (the one on the left) for a time.
Then back out into Acorn Road looking at St.Georges Terrace...



heading back toward West Jesmond Metro...


and then nearly two and a quarter hours after I'd started out, back in Whitley Bay...

and down to our street with a view...



and home...

Random Penguin XXIII

1980 The cover shows 'Flag above White', 1954 by Jasper Johns

Happy Birthday Debbie

I walked along to Bernardstrasse and from there headed out with Bernard to retail parks to peer at laptops. In the end we settled upon PC World and following the creation of a business account, I ordered a Toshiba Satellite Pro. What it lacks in terms of aesthetics it makes up for with a nifty 250gb hard drive and 3gb of RAM. If I say all that quickly enough it might sound like I know what I'm talking about. They tell me it'll arrive tomorrow.

Elsewhere, Mont and Dave have very kindly agreed to be interviewed again, and accordingly a replacement digital voice recorder has been ordered off the internet.

Tonight I attended the launch of the Whitley Bay guide. A swell occasion to be sure and a great time was had by one and all.

However the real star of the evening was none other Debbie. It’s her birthday today and so as soon as was polite, we left the launch party and headed for home where Sam had called around with a gift and we were joined by Bernard and Lesley.

PC Meltdown

This has been a very, very difficult day. For reasons utterly beyond my pea-brain comprehension the desk top computer is playing up big time. Word will not cooperate when opening files that have been sent to me via the internet. One week ago everything was working fine. One week later (during which time it has not been used) nothing is doing what it should.

I've wasted five hours trying to get things to work, downloading patches, new compatibility software, and received all kinds of well-meaning but contradictory advice from chums, all of which has proved useless.

Arrrrgh....

Tomorrow, I'm out hunting down a laptop regardless of whether the insurance claim coughs up or not.