It is estimated there are 7 Billion people alive on earth, I would like to think there is only one of me. Alas if only that were true. I think we are not unique and whilst we are products of our DNA, it does not make me the only one of me. For all my belief that I have something new and unique to say by blogging, I am not unique and my words are not new......they are just the random words mixed up in my head and then re-arranged into sentences posted on to this blog to make it sound like me.
....and so I have finally got to a full house of my A to Z of SoD's...
my initial thought was to go for the Zutons, who put on a great show when I saw them at Thetford Forest a couple of years or so ago.... then I thought....nah.... I'll cheat....... then I thought bugger it.....
this is my blog I can do what I like...
so to end the week I have a double header and yeah yeah yeah's one is a cheat......
But the only why I need concern myself with is which Y to take as my SoD.
Looking at my iPod~cum~iPhone my Y artists are somewhat bereft.....
I did think of going for the Yardbirds for 2 reasons, 1 because Jimmy Page
was in their lineup once, and Jimmy Page was in Led Zepplin. One of my older
brothers is 8 years older than me, so when he was 16 and into music, I as an 8
year, found myself immersed with Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars, stuck on a
Heap with Uriah and then getting a whole lotta love from Jimmy and the
Zeps..... the 2nd reason for the Yardbirds........ because from the same
formative years...... and again thanks to my older brother there was David
Bowies album of cover songs..... Pin Ups...of which one track was Shapes of
things to come, originally by non other than the ....... Yardbirds....
But for today I have not chosen the Yardbirds..... I prefer the Bowie
version...instead I have gone for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs..... a more upto date
track. It sort of reminds me of Camera Obscura in a way...and oh my
word the lead singer Karen Lee Orzolek..... she is just so divine and bed
bouncy the way she dances around the top of the Empire state building at the
end of the song....
Going back to my formative years, the younger brother of a 16 year, to me
the Empire State Building was just a dream like place.....something
unobtainable only to be seen in American Movies. Given my background on a
council estate to go to the Empire State Building was just a pipe dream.....
Roll forward the years...and we had escaped the clutches of Kyle Land and
now I was traveling the world. A life on the ocean waves had been my
gateway...and now firmly employed in the shipping world but land based, there I
was standing on Broadway and only a stones throw away from the Empire State
Building. I went to Times Square at midnight, and couldn't believe just how
busy and active it was....... I didn't visit the Empire State Building..... I
regret that.... I wish I had....
....... I had been thinking that I would have little to choose from, for the X's.... and as much as I would like to say I am/was a fan of X-Ray Spex I am/was not.... although to be fair I see the medical profession are it now seems.... I can see a ready market on eBay for these...as opposed to stupid fooking google glasses....
No, for my choice of X, it was simply a happenstance moment.... a few days back I was driving along in my usual day dream world and I happened to look at the number plate of the car in front.... for some reason this is an act I often do, mostly in a conscious way but always seemingly noting the number plate of the car in front....so on this day, my X offering for today, was staring me right in front of my eyes..... XTC.
XTC have had a bit of history since their formative years, from which I take today's track, but they have reworked some of their material. Perhaps if they were reworking todays SoD they could call it Making plans for Nigella. Now to be fair to the gorgeous Nigella she still has her day in court to come, and who knows the email written by her then caring husband, may well have just been written with malice aforethought.... a stark contrast to the behaviour of his brother Maurice towards his 2nd wife.....
...and what I was doing on the day when I first heard this song......
Today's offering is a joint effort, in order to get my Q list endorsed.....
1981, I was home on leave, a cold autumn/winters day and being a poor Deck officer in training I was working on my crappy car. I was in my dad's garage, in what was then my home by proxy....
With the radio playing this song came on, it stopped me in my tracks..... funny how 32 years later I can remember that moment exactly, I can even see my self looking down at that crappy car in the cold listening to today's SoD except it was my former days SoD....
I may age, my mind may sometimes falter, I might get old and disillusioned but there is still music to turn to....
.... I noticed from my SoD playlist that in the style of QI, I have nearly completed the alphabet.
Conveniently, I am 5 short of a full house.....namely O...... Q ....... and the classic X~Y~Z.....
So that mean's a SoD lexicon week.....
Today's offering is O. I had thought of Roy Orbison, who I think is fab...... blue bayou in David Bowie's man who fell to earth, is sublime in the extreme.... and who cannot but think of Del Boy every time you hear Roy Orbison and KD Lang sing crwying..... almost too painful to laugh....
But as much as I love the big O, it wouldn't work for my SoD play list as it would lodge him in the ever hopeful R's..... so today's offering is Orba Squara..... never heard of them ? well if you remember the first lot of adverts for the iPhone.... then you will have heard Orba Squara. It is in fact mainly 1 man and lots of jingly jangly instruments coupled with his jingly jangly voice.
It can be a bit twee at times but on a cold dark winters Monday it can also lift the spirits.... So I will offer up a medley of Mitch Davis in his Orba Squara guise.....
following on from my suggestion that Lady Chatterley seemed out of place at a Billy Bragg gig....reading a couple of articles since, perhaps I was totally misplaced in questioning why such a posh lady would be at a Billy Bragg convention.....
Reading this article about Billy Bragg in which there is reference to him being described as the Sherpa of heart break, then it's not all about the politics, Billy Bragg has a much wider repertoire... and so for that alone, maybe my post on irony was wrong after all.... how ironic.... posting about irony when maybe it wasn't ironic after all....
So as proof of the wordsmith talents
from the Sherpa of Heartbreak,
here is the song he wrote as a tribute to his dad...
so there I was, stood with a bag of corn in one hand and a Guinness in the other, but alas as no one else had a bag of corn, there was the risk that my visit to the Cambridge Corn Exchange might have been a wasted visit...... were it not for the arrival of Billy Bragg on stage...... so I dumped the corn, drank my Guinness and took to my seat.....
But that was not the irony......
Billy Bragg is known for his left wing politics and his music is deemed a reflection of many of his strongly held views...not just politics I hasten to add.... but I only went to listen, because regardless of his self accepted singing qualities, he bangs out a decent tune....
But you would normally expect his audience to be of similar left wing leanings [ as I say I am leaned to the music not the ideology ] but as I sat there waiting for him to appear, the lady sitting next to me piped up...... Oh I say Rupert, Issac would just love one of these mugs [presumably a BB tour mug], the song... I was a miner between the wars is his favourite....
Not sure of the plum supply status in Cambridge at the moment, but for sure this lady was hiding a couple in her mouth as she spoke.... With names like Rupert and Issac in the family, you just know that left wing politics is not their bag, and I doubt they will be sending christmas cards bearing the hammer and sickle....... To be fair she is probably a delightful and charming lady but that was the irony....as I sat at a Billy Bragg concert, that was not the accent I fully expected to hear..... may be like me, she, Rupert and Issac [by proxy], were there just for the music......
So today I dedicate
the SoD to Issac....
a pity you were not there last night,
you would have loved it
Interestingly Billy Bragg himself faces a suitable paradox of lady chatterly who was sat next to me last night, in that he has come in for some targeted criticism [and I do not say it's right] because as this out spoken socialist, he has found his own wealth and lives a comfortable [financially comfortable] life.
As I say I make no judgement and I am sure he would readily and easily defend him self upon that charge.... he is a very eloquent and articulate advocate, but it must irritate him ever so slightly the paradox he has created from himself.
....listening to the radio in the car, most of the time is banal wittering and serves as back ground noise.... but....
I was listening to a story being told by Sir Ken Robinson, how he found it difficult to listen a particular Leonard Cohen song..... a song about Leonard Cohen's loss of his mother...and also touches on the death of his father when leonard cohen was a young child.....My dad's dad died, when my dad was a young child.
Sir Ken Robinson recounted how he was driving south for a meeting the following day, and then the Leonard Cohen song came on the radio...... it made him think of his own mother...... did he carry on his journey or did he make a 200 mile detour to see his mother ? ..... he wasn't sure what to do....
He made the detour.....he said he had a wonderful meal with his mother....he was glad he did....
...so instead of trying to write something smart and clever....
I will simply offer up a double header SoD
I was going to post.....you don't have to be in the army to fight the war....
if only to illustrate this guys voice does not match his body !
but it appears not on Youtube
But you can download the song free from his website....
.... feeling pretty fed up with life, far too much work to do, against relentless deadlines [most of which are artificially created by my clients].......
thieving bastards everywhere you turn... whether they be money grabbing no-hopers stealing my paid taxes under the auspices of benefits, or motorway services stations stealing my money under the auspices of stay longer than 2 hours and I will shaft you with a £100 fine...... or the building trade who think it entirely appropriate to put their hand in your pocket, do shit work and then fuck off as if it is perfectly normal or just as bad, they waste...ach erm.... steal your time....
I am not normally a big fan of flash mobs and those who stand around them in awe thinking wow this is cool.... but for Deborah Cohen I will make an exception. My mantra these days always seem to be that cancer is shit...... still is, but I will give Deborah her dues, she is finding one way to make it less shit. I won't join the chorus of rebel rousers who gue....go girl ! go girl ! go girl !...... but I will acknowledge that for her, this is her way of dealing with the shit of cancer....
Reading Deborah Cohens caringbridge web page, I like how she encouraged everyone to share her dance at exactly the same time to the same song.
A vicarious dance between strangers. There are no random acts, you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate the breeze from the wind.....mitch albom all over again....the 5 people you meet in heaven.
When my daughter shared Deborah Cohen's flashmob with me, she noted the quote with her own......
"Life
isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about dancing in the
rain." Thank you for showing me a perfect example of someone dancing in
the 'rain'.
And I realised. It doesn't matter whether
we're chewing elephants up bit by bit, hammering walls down on houses,
writing countless essays, selling umpteen salmons or simply dancing in
the rain... at least we're doing it together. And that's what matters.
So whether it's strangers de-shitting cancer, or daughters who understand the power of love.....
