Trying Hard to Wake Up Again

 I ran into Bill Nighy, or at the worst, a very bloody good look alike, even down to the hair and eyes, and mannerisms, on one of my regular local walks as the first main "lock-down" was relaxed. It was a lovely sunny warm Sunday morning. 

I did a "double-take" as I know I'm not 100% reliable on look-alikes, but I was utterly convinced, and still think that it WAS Muriel Gray in the pub in Holmfirth that time..........

I wished him a "Good morning" and he stopped, looked at me, smiled, and said "Hello". 

That was it, and I knew all was ok in the world after all. It just felt a bit seriously shit at the time.

In the mean-time, I am trying to write, and draw, and concentrate on the camera, and my dog.....and well, I'm making a fist of things as usual. Here's my imaginary girlfriend's video from April. Filmed in Kyiv seemingly, must have been before Putin went nuts.


(Aiming for normal service, but bear with.)

Numan

At the tender age of 12 my peers tempted me away from the safe environments I was used to, and into the insane world of train-spotting......

No, really.

Bear with me.


Insecure skinny white spotty geeks unite, before, or as well as going all Dungeons and Dragons, or other far worse forms of self abuse.....

I once had whole photo-albums of diesel engines, stations, etc...... But while I don't now, sort of wish I'd held onto them for posterity.

Anyway, stretching the apron strings is all part of growing up. Away from home, away from your home town, exposed to illicit things, beer, tobacco, hash, speed, mindless vandalism, influential stories from your senior influences, lies, violence, whisky, bitter stories from old men who chose to return to trains in their dotage...... It soon becomes less and less about categorising and collating, and ticking off which engines you've actually seen, and more and more about rebellion and self discovery.

Someone should make a film. Maybe Mr Welsh....

Back on topic. On a red hot summer's day in 1979 at the end of platform 9 of York Station an older fellah had a radio on, while brandishing a camera, notepad, binoculars, and a pack of sandwiches and cigarettes.....on this radio played "You Can Ring My Bell" "Bright Eyes" "Pop Muzik" "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" and so on and so forth.... what a bloody good year to really start to listen to music! (I had already, but really this was pretty influential!)

"Are Friends Electric?" played, about four times, as we waited, and watched the trains come and go, drink coffee, Coke, and cough our way through the mildest cigs going...Silk Cut, Kim, More Menthol......and it stuck with me. I thought it was so utterly different from what I thought I liked.

In the immediate weeks after it inspired me to order a cassette from Woods Music Shop, on Wood Street, in Wakefield, my second chosen album..... My first being in 1976 when I bought "Mud's Greatest Hits" with a Christmas voucher for "Boots" (The Chemist...) (My first single was Monty Python's "I Like Chinese", also from Wood's, probably at the same time, but I was so bloody naive, I didn't even know there were such things as record shops that a 12 year old boy could go into and learn all this stuff.........

To cut a long story short, I bought everything in time that Tubeway Army and Gary Numan put out, until Strange Charm. I have no idea what happened after that, as I got side-tracked, and a bit bored. In hindsight I think I was actually on a tight budget and fell in love with a thousand and one other bands, from all the classic Doors/Joy Division/Bowie/Pink Floyd/Led Zep/Stones/Jam/etc etc onwards.....

Music shops became mecca, and my enthusiasm cost me, and benefitted me too no doubt. But I ended up ignoring my initial idol. I hardly listened to his stuff, except on very rarer occasions, and then the records got scratched, lost, left in someone else's house, or whatever when I moved.....

Thank Goodness for the internet!

The other tracks on YT are the obvious ones, until you start mining down to the nitty gritty.....when you can find all sorts of gubbins......

Got to go and listen to Savage, the new album ASAP...... not enough leaks as yet.....

Flockprinter: Buddy Wakefield

Ignore the video.

I don't know a lot about Buddy Wakefield. 

I have listened to some of his stuff, and some works for me, and some not so much, that is true of a lot of things out there I guess. The Flockprinter track I came across on a music blog I used to follow a few years back, and stumbled across it again just today while listening to the "misc" folder, and culling out some of the old dead-wood.

Wiki/Bio 

Have a look/listen. There's a whole load on YouTube.....

Time-Out

Before they hit the charts, but were bubbling-up as they used to say back then...Japan did some starker more cutting-edge stuff. Adolescent Sex, look it up on YT, and

It's only 41 minutes long. It's my soundtrack to tonight. Well, for as long as that....

Whoever you are, take everything that I post as having a hidden-meaning, as it does. Maybe it doesn't.

Pedantry....(UK)

Given the amount of chatter on the air-waves and other media with the UK election approaching at a rate of knots....There seem to be more and more opportunities for mangling of the English language.

Time for pedants to get extremely warm around the neck region...

My own current gripes are not so many or varied, but do irk increasingly as time goes on.

vis-à-vis

 (vē′zə-vē′)

prep.

1. Face to face with; opposite to.

2. Compared with.

3. In relation to.

adv.

Face to face.

n. pl. vis-à-vis (-vēz′, -vē′)

1. One that is face to face with or opposite to another.

2. A date or an escort, as at a party.

3. One that has the same functions and characteristics as another; a counterpart.

 

I nearly scream at the radio at times, that what you really meant to say was "Viz". You are hardly ever "comparing" or relating to, but usually...oh no, you're right. It means that too....

 

 
viz. is used to introduce a list or series. It differs from i.e. in that what follows normally expands upon what has already been said, rather than merely restating it in other words; and from e.g. in that completeness or near-completeness is suggested, rather than a small selection of examples. (From "Wiktionary"

Ironic? Didn't meant to be, it's been a long few days....

Or did I?

Visage-a-visage, can hardly lead anywhere else....

I was an instant fan when "Fade to grey" hit the TV in the 1980s, but became even more or during a family holiday to France (& Switzerland, & Italy, & Germany albeit briefly on the last two counts, just to get the stickers to say we'd been...!) when I bought a cassette of theirs, which turned out to be a Euro-ri-off with tracks from various sources stitched together in "homage" to The Anvil..Still, it played well enough on my cheapo imitation Walkman.....

Then Ultravox, then Gary Numan, then Depeche Mode etc etc Oh, and Flock of Seagulls, "I Ran" was my favourite for a few years.... Treat yourself, but turn it up, and imagine your favourite not at all related distant cousin, who's two or three years younger than you, and in thrall to your every (slightly more mature) view on the world....and foxy with it....Who then emigrates to Canada, so you never actually see her again........

 

 

I dallied with Jean Michel Jarre too, but we'll keep that quiet for now I think.....Those home-made speakers of my Uncle Richard's were simply awesome though....Not quite ear-bleeding, but not far off.

Ha.

Life.

 

(Clearly not one of mine, so don't think it is...)(Does that count as adequate copyright dissociation??)

 

 

 

 

 

Kings Of Leon

Just turn it up and, no that's it. Just turn it up.

The Cure - "Close To Me"

Presented without comment, but for this; one of their best as far as I'm concerned.