Walking On Thin Ice

Yoko Ono wrote Walking on Thin Ice". She and John Lennon finished the recording of the song on December 8, 1980. Lennon played lead guitar. On their return from the recording studio to their home, Lennon was murdered. He was clutching a tape of a final mix when he was shot.

The song was released in 1981. 

Here at the Meltdown Festival at the South Bank in 2013.  With Siouxsie Sioux . And with Sean Lennon, in white suit, on bass guitar. Earl Slick played rhythm guitar on the original recording. Here he is on lead guitar.

Walking on thin ice
I'm paying the price
For throwing the dice in the air
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart ?

SS Great Britain

Almost 50 years ago my family lived in Watchet, on the coast of West Somerset. I remember watching on TV as a tug towed this up the Bristol Channel on a huge pontoon. 8000 miles from the Falklands, where it had lain since it's last voyage in 1886.


Anyway, to Bristol last Sunday. Big surprise was the entrance fee. 1 Adult £16.50. I coughed up after making known my opinion of the cost.

As I wandered round, peeking into the various cabins, and compartments, a thought occurred, about current politics...,

Is the...

about to go down the..........

?

I also noticed that that the number of cabins, and bunks didn't seem to add up to the ship's official capacity of 360 passengers. There just didn't seem to be enough accommodation. However, soon I came across this scene near the front ( the bow ), and perhaps this hints at how the steerage passengers were accommodated. They tied them down ?

Afterwards, on my way out, I spoke with the person to whom I'd complained about the cost.
I retracted some of what I'd said, as overall I'd enjoyed the visit.
About £12 would have been more acceptable to me.

[ Besides, I didn't want to sound like I was turning into Victor Meldrew. ]

Football

Croatia 2 - 1 England

I'm Scottish, and tend not to bother much with football south of the border. So, about every 20 minutes, I'd switch on the TV to check the scoreline.

Photo, and accompanying comment, from Pie and Bovril, the Scottish Football discussion forum.

" As if things couldn't get any worse, Bono has arrived."

The Cure ...

LOVESONG

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
 You make me feel like I am whole again

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again



And, inspired by the film.. 'Aristocats'....

Martha and The Muffins - Echo Beach ..., 1980 becomes 2010

Always loved this song. Memories of wandering along a beach with a girlfriend, near Portmarnock, Ireland.

... On a silent summer evening
The sky's alive with light
Building in the distance
Surrealistic sight.....

Django Django - Surface To Air ..... featuring Rebecca Taylor

We move surface to air
Will you follow me anywhere?
Try to rise up, you lied up
Into the silence
If you know what I know
Maybe then someday you will go
Seize the night far below

Take my hand, shift in sand
While the other on solid ground
Side by side, rising tides
Stay up together
Hit the ground, feel revived
Nowhere I'd rather be right now
Just in surface to air

Once Upon A Thyme....

Once upon a thyme, Kind told Keen that she must tell a gory, every naught, to ease his heavy blind. Her head would troll if she hadn't. Instead, Keen gave Kind sheep of paper with some destructions. After 365 hits of this, Kind was a happy mane and Keen was a proud womb. Together, they roved and laughed forever after. Who could frame them.

Y. O.

'Grapefruit'

Viv Albertine

I've now read the Viv Albertine book that I mentioned in the last post.

Haven't quite assimilated it all yet. But can only say that it's an engrossing, and raw
read.

Neighbour's cat in relaxed stretch. As I read, the recent snow was about to arrive. With the temperature well below zero, and the East wind funnelling down the driveway, ... when I opened the main door to go outside for a few moments, there was a blur of black and white, headed in the opposite direction.

Viv Albertine - Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

A couple of years ago, Viv Albertine wrote her book..., 'Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys'.

I haven't read it yet, it's one for the list.

I did though, have a wander through some of her previous work. She was with 'The Slits'. Back then, I was completely into Madness, The Specials, The Selecter... The Slits never really crossed my radar. Later, the only recording of theirs that I became aware of was  'Heard It Through The Grapevine'. I'd never liked the original by Gladys Knight and The Pips. Nor what is generally considered to be the classic version, by Marvin Gaye. And I didn't like the Slits cover either. I just disliked the song.

I love this , though.  'The Man Next Door'.
Viv Albertine on guitar. Ari Up lead vocals. Tessa Pollit bass. Neneh Cherry vocals.
Bruce Smith on drums. Steve Beresford on keyboard.

There is a man that lives next door
In my neighborhood
In my neighborhood
And he gets me down...

I play music late at night
Always a fuss an' fight
Always a fuss and fight
All thru' the night

I've got to get away from here
This is not a place for me to stay
I've got to take my ...
Find a noisier place to be ........






Here she is from much more recently....

Viv Albertine - If Love


And in Bristol ....

A Change From My Usual Fare

I'm not very classically minded, though I do often listen to BBC R3 when I'm in the car. Also Classic FM. That has a major aura of staleness about it, so it's definitely a second choice.

Anyway, a couple of winters ago, on a grey, wet, winter day, I went for a drive in the Mendip Hills of Somerset. Really, to get out of my flat on a Sunday afternoon. After a while, I'd decided that flooded roads, and murk, were hardly preferable to being at home. Till this came on....

Cheered me right up.





Couldn't leave today without  mention of the recently deceased Mark E Smith, and his band, The Fall. I wasn't very interested in the music, till I heard this recording, from 1983. The Fall was basically Mark, plus whichever musicians he hadn't yet fallen out with. He took quite a while to fall out with Brix Smith, his wife. She wrote much of this song, and is the vocalist.





35 years down the way, this is Brix Smith with her version of the same song, recorded last September. More mainstream, tribal drumbeat replaced by drum rolls, as English drummers like to do. Mark E Smith might have rolled his eyes at that. I do like it though.

And it's painless, sitting in subterranea
Ancient reference to Mesopotamia
And it's quiet again
Hidden fragments, surface now
Repetitious history
One more time for the record
....

Art is Meant to Disturb the Comfortable and Comfort the Disturbances

Wilco - How To Fight Loneliness

On soundtrack of film, 'Girl Interrupted'.

Goan Curry & The Fish Fingers - ( Not a band )

Today, I pulled out a curry kit that has lain for ages at the back of my food cupboard.

I needed white fish to go with the king prawns that I already had, so I stripped the coatings from some cod fillets and fish fingers.

The breadcrumb on the cod was more like batter.

I weighed the coating and the bare fish.
Coating : 78g
Fish  : 68g

Now, where's that copy of "In Defense Of Food"...( Michael Pollan )... ?

This Goan curry was rather grim. Heat, without the spicy subtleties. And a heavy, artificial taste.

Glasgow School of Art - Restoration of Mackintosh Library

Prototype of section of Mackintosh Library unveiled...

https://archinect.com/news/article/150026998/glasgow-school-of-art-unveils-prototype-of-mackintosh-library-bay-based-on-the-original-1910-design

One of the several places where I lived as a student in the 1970's, was Southpark Avenue, in Kelvinbridge on the West side of Glasgow. A top floor tenement flat, which I shared with 5 other engineers. We had some great games of football in the massive hallway.

It was No. 13.
I found out quite recently that No 78 was the home for many years of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Learning Glaswegian - A Couple of Beers

When a couple does not actually mean a couple.

BBC Report

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41160013

Sutton Bank Gliding

I used to fly gliders. I eventually acquired this one, a Pik-20D, and flew competitions in it.

I commented recently, on another blog, about a course that I signed up to in Yorkshire one October. It was a less than great week.

I just thought I'd post it up here. Although everything sounds downbeat, I did laugh as I thought about it. The Youtube clip below is what I, and the other course members, had hoped to be doing.


Interested to be reminded of Sutton Bank and the mist. Long ago, I booked on a course at the gliding club that is atop the Bank. I arrived on the Sunday evening, and rose eagerly on the Monday for a week of of low level flying along the ridge. The clubhouse staff seemed rather subdued. I recalled that a few weeks previously, 2 gliders had collided in mid air, and the pilots, both local, had died. 

So, after breakfast, the 5 of us on the course went outside to prepare. Parachutes, pre-flight glider checks. The sky was very misty, but we reckoned it would burn off as the morning warmed up, and we'd soon be able to fly. 

The mist didn't burn off, and the weather didn't warm up. Each morning, I'd wake in my bunk, gaze through the window, hoping, hoping the sky would be clear. 

It never was. By late morning, as it became obvious that a day was not going to improve, we'd all disperse. The number of hours I spent trudging around cold, damp places like Thirsk. A coffee here, a coffee there... And I could feel a nose running, eye watering, sleeve wiping cold coming on.

And so, Thursday arrived. We all gathered together, and the instructor said... "Well, what do you think, guys, what do you want to do..?". 

I said... "I think I'd like to go home. I feel absolutely terrible.". 
Everybody else also wanted to go home. This Up North place wasn't at all like Sunny Hampshire.

I wasn't joking about feeling terrible, and after driving a few miles down the road, I was almost exhausted. I decided to plod slowly down the A1 in my Porsche. Quite a big change from the usual commute up the M3, into the outer lane, and stay there at about 90mph, like all the other rat-racers.

Anyway, I managed the 25 miles to Wetherby, and landed on the doorstep of my sister's home. The next 4 or 5 days being looked after, hot soup, solicitations etc.. 

Yes, I remember Sutton Bank, in 1987.
And the small matter of..., while I was there, incommunicado, Black Monday of 19th October, the London stock market had crashed.
About £30,000 worth of my investments evaporated in the space of a few hours.
Unlike the mist. 

Wet Sunday Afternoon

Well, it's rained all day, so far.

The Italian F1 Grand Prix has just finished, time for some lunch and reading....

Sliced roll with mackerel pâté, olives and a Worcester apple.
A mug of tea.

And the Grayson Perry book, The Descent of Man.

Lionel Martin - Saxa

I came across this today, I hadn't realised.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/may/12/lionel-martin-saxa-obituary

Here he is.....

Waiting - Fun Boy Three - The Lost Album

Something of a lost album, 'Waiting' is loved by just about everyone who did hear it. One of my old favourites.

• Terry Hall - vocals
• Neville Staple - percussion, vocals
• Lynval Golding - guitar, vocals
• Nicky Holland - keyboards, vocals, arranger
• Ingrid Schroeder - vocals
• Bethan Peters - bass guitar, vocals
• June Miles-Kingston - drums, vocals
• Annie Whitehead - trombone
• Caroline Lavelle - cello

Most of it was played during this 1983 gig at the Regal Theatre, in Hitchin.




Most of the album, that is. Except for 'Farmyard Connection'. [Understandable perhaps, as the gig was being recorded for the BBC].

Anyway, here it is......,  a little story about the agricultural life.



Caroline Lavelle, cello..., 2005.



and some teaching....

LSD Meets Bluegrass - Leo Kottke - Eight Miles HIgh

Thought I'd revisit this, written and first recorded by The Byrds. .  

Banned, initially, from broadcast due to perceived drug connotations. The lyrics describe a tour of England by The Byrds, and their observations from the back of their black limousine as the band travelled from town to town. 'Rain grey town..., known for its sound..' is London of the '60's.

The ambiguous title and the 'spaceyness' of the music tell another story. 

Influences drawn from Ravi Shankar. Also from John Coltrane's "India", which inspired the intro. These are somewhat smothered in the original. The repeated jazz phrasing is very clear here, recorded in 1971 by Leo Kottke.

I love the country underlay, quite hypnotic.


Eight miles high

And when you touch down
You'll find that it's
Stranger than known

Signs in the street
That say where you're goin'
Are somewhere
Just being their own

Nowhere is
There warmth to be found
Among those afraid
Of losing their ground

Rain gray town
Known for its sound
In places
Small faces unbound

Round the squares
Huddled in storms
Some laughing
Some just shapeless forms

Sidewalk scenes
And black limousines
Some living
Some standing alone

Written by David Crosby, Gene Clark, Jim Mcguinn 

Glastonbury

I'm not at Glastonbury. I did though watch the Pretenders performance on TV last night. In a very rockers orientated set, my favourite Pretenders song was a no show.  Released in 1981, during lead singer Chrissie Hynde's relationship with Ray Davies of the Kinks, and written by him many years before. 

   


Here's another by Ray Davies. He wrote it, and gave the song to Dave Berry, who had a hit single with it. The KInks never made a studio recording for release. This is live from a session for the BBC.