Mine Has the Blue Cover

I suppose I've been away but not really. Work has meant that days are seriously long yet very boring. So a walk in the drizzle to the local fireworks display was most welcome and while the recession and various regulations overs the size and volume of various pyrotechnics available to all but the most serious display runners made it less thrilling than normal, the general atmosphere of darkness, burger vans and small children wrapped up like spherical multicoloured sheep was enjoyable in the extreme. We all came home to the gentle glow of an autumn house very happy if a little damp.

I am annoyed that so many things I wanted to comment on have been missed because of the lack of blogging. However hopefully I can fall back into it. Things are still busy but the difference is that now I am in control.

First up for mention is what might be the ultimate geeks' book - Just My Type by Simon Garfield, a book about fonts. I'm not sure I should enthuse about this too much. I love it - I just can't see the difference between the a font that is lauded and the ones that are supposedly less attractive. Just as I can tell the difference between white and red wine, I can distinguish between Sans and Serif fonts - I can even happily side with the hatred of Comic Sans - but Helvetica and Univers, Garamond and Times New Roman? That's impossible. However from reading the book this is the whole point. As some high-up in the business said, if you remember the shape of the spoon you used at lunchtime, then the spoon is designed badly. This is not a technical volume - there are plenty of type encyclopaedias if you want to ward off insomnia - it just tells you the history and reasoning behind the names we all know but ignore the moment the drop-down has vanished. Another book to make you feel clever without giving you brain fatigue.

While finding the links for this I saw this :

The Rock Drill

Mutability

I spent a quiet couple of hours (quiet in the sense that I did nothing rather than it being literally quiet) at a table by the side of a Wacky Warehouse climbing frame reading about The Fourth Dimension and How to Get There again. Somehow I fell into a strange state where the 3 dimensional frames around me became the shadows of complex collections of hypercubes and hyperspheres and I was for a few instants able to see perpendicularly to this world and into the 4th dimension. I was woken from this reverie by the sound of one of the parent whooping as he came down the tube slide all the way from the top of said complex and I realised that all the children were eating leaving the play stuff free for us adults. I have been waiting to come down this slide for years. There have been rumours that on Wednesdays parents were allowed in but never having had one of the children invited to a party midweek I was never able to confirm this. But today I was allowed to squeeze through the various holes all the way to the top and into the completely dark hole that was the top of the slide. It was great fun but like Arthur Dent I bruised my upper arm (actually got a plastic burn) because I only just got down without getting jammed - damn those doughnuts.


The second half brought me the accompanying doodle of which I am rather proud - easily pleased that;s me. Och a Vay.

SauerKrautRock

... or on being very disappointed. A few days ago I wrote about being excited that Probe Records was moving from its boring industrial unit to a unit within The Bluecoat. It should have stayed where it was. It's a box - a bloody box. The place has no soul - well there is some soul but only on record. All the records are there and the CDs and the vinyl on the walls but it has no shape - no atmosphere - it is a machine for selling music and nothing else. I don't want to be around when Julian Cope or Pete Burns find out. I can't bring myself to post the phot I took - I hope they do some decoration.

Well I still bought something rather than just waltzing in to swipe a free copy of The Stool Pigeon, which incidentally has shrunk from NME size to fanzine size and is all the better for it except that I can't quite read it now all the text has shrunk - maybe I'm in the wrong demographic. (Get on with it - what did you buy? Ed.). Thanks to a recommendation from Scaryduck I bought Neu! 75 - note careful positioning of The Pling there - and beautiful it is. From Motorik drone to distant and plaintive distorted guitars. Unless you count Kraftwerk as Krautrock, this is my first in the genre and how could I miss it? It's been round a few times now and it is wonderful.

However I have more music to report on from Radio Two's Swing Time slot this morning which was Light Flight by Pentangle - the theme to Take Three Girls - which I am sure I remember watching despite only being five when it came out.

Eighth Blackbird Wonder

I have of course been waiting sometime for this recording of something which won the Pulitzer Prize for Steve Reich and Eighth Blackbird so long ago and more annoyingly was performed in a local venue without me hearing a peep of publicity. While Double Sextet itself does not disappoint one bit, the accompanying 2x5 performed by Bang on a Can is slightly weedy in comparison - some feedback and room simulation might have been useful just to give it a bit more drive. However, the third movement contains some trademark Reichian interlocks which make up for this a bit. But the obvious star of the release is the three-movement Double Sextet which I suppose is the definitive Reich piece. It moves at just the correct speed in all places and the interlocks here are myriad - jittery mixtures of time signatures just to keep anyone thinking of using the piece as dance music well and truly on their toes. It is amazing that there are only two of every instrument - the conceit being Reich's favourite device of having an artist or artists play against a tape of themselves (though the premier had two live sextets) - the texture is rich and deep. A slight technical niggle which may be my player, is that the Piano recording level seems to be too high meaning that it distorts a little; it was not audible when I played it through speakers last night but it is occasionally jarring in earphones.

Despite the slight negativity about Bang on a Can above, I am interested to see that they are performing a new opera by Evan Ziporyn with Gamelan Salukat called A House in Bali which is based on the book by Colin McPhee. I read the book years ago and it is a gentle story of nothing much other than composing and playing music in Bali. So there is that to look forward to as well.

The Möbius Strippers Union

I have reason to be visiting someone in hospital at the moment - nothing desperately worrying - and I was struck by how typical this hospital actually was. The view from the windows was of nice, clean buildings, the atmosphere and ambience suggested calm efficiency and the technology was visible, reassuring and unobtrusive. I half expected Jim Dale to come round the corner as I negotiated the air-conditioned bridge from the car park to the main hospital. It was comforting when all we usually hear is that the NHS fails at this and that. I know that there are arguments about cost, red-tape, mistakes, cleanliness but this hospital suggests that things are going in the right direction. The NHS should be outside party politics.

Don't You Touch My Lorna Doones

For years I have been confused by the lyrics of You're Moving Out Today a strange record that my sister played over and over until both the needle and the record were worn out. I always wondered what sort of weird guy this bloke was and why an obviously intelligent woman had taken up with him in the first place. However yesterday, I was reading the Daily WTF, a place populated by many stories of geeks, nerds and other (probably self-declared) associated sociopaths when it clarified that Lorna Doones are actually biscuits which made the line in the song about leaving the narrator's Lorna Doones a lot more understandable. Unless of course she was a collector of rare editions of said book. All this is of course just wibbling and I have to say that the discussion currently in progress on this office is about the teaching of evolution - we are all for it I have to add.

Sporadic Dorado Implosions

Oh doesn't he look grainy over there? Anywhere somewhere in this audio you will find RD talking to David Attenborough about all sorts of things. What is it that makes Dawkins so divisive compared to David Attenborough - they both seem equally calm so I suppose it is just the militant atheism isn't it. The fact is he doesn't advocate anything violent - and while I am sure he has remained silent on the recent Koranic Libricide, I am sure he thinks that the whole episode was just a provocative stand by a well-known idiot. I suppose there haven't yet been worldwide demonstrations against Dawkins but there are probably a few nutters out there who would happily kill him for peanuts judging by the anger that he receives via email.

Oh dear - I shouldn't be bothered by such idiocy should I? It should be filed and forgotten under "people are stupid".

On Getting More Than You Expected

Admittedly most of this excess of Smoke Fairies freebies consists of postcards but it is always nice to get stuff like this. I am a wibbling fool for limited edition CDs/7" Singles/Picture Disks/Sumptuous booklets but purchase of these has been reduced in proportion to my trips to Probe Records and other such byways of alternative music. Stop Press - I see from this link that Probe have just moved to The Bluecoat which is excellent news. My first trips to Probe were when it was at its second location right in the centre of Liverpool - it was the standard alternative record store - vinyl on the walls - sticky carpets - exotic aromas and everything else. It was sad when it moved from there to an anonymous looking boxy building well out of the centre. Marriage and Children mean I rarely go except to pick up my free copy of The Stool Pigeon. The last things I bought there were a second-hand copy of Surfer Rosa and by coincidence a double-A side 7 inch of Gastown and River Song  by The Smoke Fairies (produced by Jack White). I will be at The Bluecoat as soon as possible. Well back to the Freebies. This is The Smoke Fairies first album proper - Through Low Light and Trees, a beautiful collection of modern folk from two smooth-voiced women from Chichester (rather than some prairie train halt as suggested by some of the music and some of the titles). They harmonise at a weirdly low-level which is so beautiful that it is difficult to say how much so. This album deserves a proper review but the several times I have listened to it so far have been in the car ... with children ... and so have not been entirely uninterrupted. For anyone desperately interested there is what I thought was an album called Strange the Things which must be a collection of singles.

Not By a Long Chalk

It is an inexact world. Nothing conforms to the spec and that means we spend lots of time accommodating this fuzziness rather than getting on with the real business of life which as we all know is to enjoy ourselves. Bearing in mind the current debacle over PAYE (not that I've received a letter yet and I do not anticipate receiving one but there is still time) and the fact that there is at least a page of instruction for the amount of tax due on biscuits and cakes, it is time to raise my idea of simplifying the tax system. However when you realise that the distinction between cakes and biscuits when applied to just one particular item means the difference between The Government receiving £3.5 and not receiving it from just one retailer then the whole issue becomes a bit more difficult to call. Only it doesn't. The system just shows that the people who are responsible for working it out are not at all clever ... or bothered  ... or both. There is a requirement for tax and as long as some amount of money flows out of the Government end of the black box no one gets sacked. I think this should change. Only trouble is, the system cannot cope with even small change.

Axis of Even

The Interior of David Mitchell's Car Yesterday.

My wife tells me that I rant like David Mitchell does. She also tells me that there is a compilation clip of Would I Lie To You - the panel show where he is a team captain and that this show is composed mostly of these rants. So if you want an idea about what my day is like it might be useful to watch this. I do have something to rant about today - but I'm only giving you the title so you must make up your own mind about what my view is from this. People who won't use public transport because they hate other people. Rant Over!

On Libricide

So we still burn books do we? Sad isn't it? Of course these are just nutters - minor sects who under the cover of making a point are actually trying to recruit. This inevitably triggers severe cognitive dissonance in a lot of people. Liberals will be saying that certain building work going on within sight of Ground Zero should be allowed to go ahead because it indicates that The US is a bastion of free speech. However, burning books raises both sides of the question doesn't it? We should allow people to do what they want, but burning books is a thuggish censorship of what the thugs themselves do not agree with. I of course subscribe to the meta view that any book burning is wrong full stop but I am sure that there are many books I would happily toss into a fire based on my dislike of their contents. Obviously the actual specifics of the reasons for burning religious books are simply boys games as far as I'm concerned but I'm happy for any books to exist - even those by Piers Morgan.

On the subject of books, I'm tempted by this wheeze, though maybe more because it seems a less risky adventure for someone as nervous of authority as me than for any feelings of outrage about TB's stance on the Iraq war, though I do have that as well. Only days after 7/7 I watched as he denied that this atrocity was in anyway related to the Invasion of Iraq only to see that being the very reason put forward by the bombers themselves on their pre-martyrdom videos. The really annoying thing is that this hubris is seen as statesmanlike by many people - most abroad I would reckon, - I hope to see the history of Tony Blair record him in the list of failed politicians. But hey, history is not written by the bereaved of either Iraq or of British Soldiers or even by any relatives of the victims of 7/7. I am ashamed to share a country with him.