"Turn Left at the Womble"- A Close Encounter with a Stilt-Walker

Extracted from "Turn Left at the Womble: How a 48 year old Dad survived his first time at Glastonbury"
.......  a close encounter with a stilt-walker....


Just as I wobbled and threaded my way past all the stalls and crowds near the gate, I was accosted by a stilt-walker dressed up as a giraffe trying to hand me a flyer for some show. I shook my head but they were quite insistent.

“Here you go, free show this afternoon,” they said, bending down towards me.

"No, no thanks. I’m ok.”

"But it’s free. Go on.”

“No I’m fine.”

“Go on, take one.”

“Look. I’m fine. Can’t you see I’ve got my hands full?”

“What have you got to lose? It’s free.”

“I know it’s fucking free, you’ve told me. But I don’t want one.”

“No need to be like that,” they said, in a hurtful tone.

Exasperated, I motioned with my head, “See, there are thousands of people around here and none of them are trying to carry two heavy cases and sweating like a pig. Have you thought of asking them?”

They looked at me blankly as if this thought had not crossed their mind and then around at the crowds. Maybe the penny had dropped. Or not.  They were off again. “But it’s free.” (To someone looking at this encounter from outside it must have seemed quite surreal .Maybe it was a piece of secret street theatre in itself and no-one had told me.)

”Oh my God. I know. You’ve told me. But I really am not arsed. Go and bother someone else.” There was only one way to end this. I picked up the cases and headed straight for the stilts. They hopped-I didn’t know you could hop on stilts-out of my way, whilst telling me to fuck off. I was very tempted to tell them there was no need to be like that and anyway it was all free. Discretion being the better part and wanting to avoid the embarrassment of being in a fight with someone wearing stilts I decided against it and made my way, exhausted, to the lock-up.



Get/read/see "Turn Left at the Womble" here

kindle e book; 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Left-The-Womble-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B0060YCKGW


paperback:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Left-The-Womble-Glastonbury/dp/1494816385

Totally Shuffled- Sigur Ros

extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod" 

Sigur Rós- Góðan daginn- Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

The sound of melting glaciers. Windswept vistas and landscapes that look like the surface of Mars. Slow motion films of lava flows and bubbling volcanoes. Empty skies and isolated, brightly painted houses adrift within seas of grey fields. Odd stunted trees poking through rocky ground, fighting the elements. Natural history programmes on the TV. All these clichés when I listen to Sigur Ros-I can’t get away from it.

Sigur Ros kind of passed me by for a few years. I must have taken my finger off the pulse for a bit. I thought for some strange reason that they were a bit of a Sugarcubes-type-Bjork-lite-Icelandic-twiddly-mish mash. Not for any particular reason, just a perception. It was only when someone told me that they were actually pretty good and worth giving a go that I got hold of the ( ) album just after it was released.(I actually bought it-probably one of the last CDs that I did go out and buy.)

At about the same time, and in a weird sort of happenstance, I flicked through BBC2 late one night and saw them performing live in a TV studio somewhere. It wasn’t the Jools Holland programme as I avoid that like the plague-it was probably some arts show on after Newsnight. However, they not only sounded intriguing but looked it too. It wasn’t rock at all and it wasn’t twiddly bollocks either.

So I listened to ( ) and it was much better than I expected. It was, and is, so hard to describe without falling into clichés. It’s easier to talk about what Sigur Ros mean and how I feel when I hear them.

What do I like about them? Why has my blinkered perception changed?

I don’t know what genre they fall into, what pigeonhole they could be placed in. They are just Sigur Ros, making Sigur Ros music. It’s not rock music and I cannot see easily where there influences are from. They could only come from Europe-if any music is non-American, then this is it. But Iceland is not really part of Europe, and like Sigur Ros, they are just “outside”.

Hopelandlic. The English translation of the Iceland word Vonlenska. The non-literal language,without syntax and sometimes without grammar, that they use in some songs and in all of  ( ). It sounds daft but makes sense.For Sigur Ros.

Despite the complete overuse of Sigur Ros tracks as background music for TV programmes-I swear I heard a track off Takk being used in the X- Factor- they haven’t become Radio 2 fodder.

The Icelandic economic crash. Sigur Ros still are going despite everything. They are due to release a new album sometime in 2012 so by the time I have finished this we’ll know if it heralded a radical change in direction.

The album that this track is from. Translated, the title is, "With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly" Sigur Ros have a sense of humour.

( ) has eight tracks. They are all called ( ). But they all sound different.


"Totally Shuffled":
Kindle book here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA 
Paperback:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-The/dp/149495687X

excerpt no 9- mad sherpas

Looking at the clock it was spot on five o’clock. It had taken exactly 8 hours to get there and finally we were ready to load ourselves up with the stuff from the car, head through the gates, pitch the tent and get some tea. We would be sorted by 7.00 pm and be chilling with a coffee. That was the plan anyway.

Once we had stretched our backs and legs we started getting everything out of the boot. A suitcase for each of us-they were on wheels so they would be easy to pull. Each of us then had a rucksack on our backs and we would carry in our hands and over our shoulders things like sleeping bags and the tent, chairs and anything else that had a strap. We also loaded up the wheely modubox from the car and put some stuff in that. “Do you think we should do all this in one go or should I make a couple of trips?” I asked, thinking that it was simply a matter of going to the end of the field and then we would be in. “No, lets do it in one go, we’ll be fine,” Amy replied, “We’ll be ok”, said Sacha, “Lets go.” Loaded up like mad sherpas, off we set, leaving only the umbrella in the car, and £50 emergency cash and the emergency car key hidden behind the speaker grille. 

 

 Amy chilled and ready to yomp....

Sacha similarly loaded up.

Totally Shuffled extract: AC/DC- Bad Boy Boogie

after seeing Metallica at Glastonbury thought it might be pertinent to update this blog post with an extract from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod".  This short extract below was my take on heavy metal and specifically, AC/DC.   



January 7th

AC/DC –Bad Boy Boogie-Let There be Rock (Australian Edition) 

An apology.

I shouldn’t really like AC/DC, but I do.

If there is any music that I am too old to listen to, let alone enjoy it is this. Surely at 50 years old I should be getting into Classic FM or something relaxing on Radio 2-say, classic Dire Straits, Chris De Burgh, or, in a rockier, edgier moment, Queen.

Not AC/DC though. It’s not as if I have been into AC/DC since I was 14 and stayed with them ever since. It was only a couple of years ago, when in a moment of boredom, I downloaded the live “If You Want Blood…” album that I recognised slowly that sometimes it’s just good to have music to blast away, without any need for over-analysis.

So, here I go, contradicting myself - a couple of hundred words of how I got to AC/DC.  I did have a very brief infatuation with heavy metal when I was I suppose about 13 years old. Until then it had it been pop and glam. I had graduated from the cheap mpf TOTP (remember them?) covers albums to Slade, Sweet and the mysticism of T- Rex.  It was but a short step to what I considered a sophisticated move to buy the only two heavy rock albums I have ever owned, Deep Purple’s “Made In Japan” and “Deep Purple In Rock.”  The former was played incessantly on my small single speaker record player. Shortly after this I graduated for a brief phase to prog rock (ELP, Genesis) as this was seen as more intelligent than heavy rock (of course.) 

Thankfully, it would soon be 1976 and the Buzzcocks’ “Spiral Scratch would change my horizons totally.

Fast forward to 2009 and the downloading of the AC/DC live album. I can’t really remember why I did it except for a moment of boredom. It was so different to everything else I usually listened to-it wasn’t exactly Godspeed You! Black Emperor!-just straight ahead Rock. The music moves like a train although it helps if you don’t listen to closely to the lyrics. It’s something that maybe you only need to hear once every six months or ,but when you do its best to be driving and to have it as loud as humanely possible.

After downloading the rest of AC/DC’s discography, including the album this track is taken from, I considered that I had all the r.o.c.k.ROCK that I ever needed encapsulated neatly by one band.

No more Deep Purple or Whitesnake-AC/DC cover all my needs.  

Get/see/read "Totally Shuffled" here

Kindle
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA 

Paperback
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-/dp/149495687X  

What "Totally Shuffled" is all about:

One track per day for 366 days on a broken iPod. 

366 tracks out of a possible 9553. 

From the obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the obscure (Karen Cooper Complex). 

From the sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the risible (Muse). 

From field recordings of Haitian Voodoo music to The Monkees. 

From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s blues, jazz, classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between. 

This is what I listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of never wanting to hear any more music again. 

Some songs I listened to I loved, and some I hated. Some artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others received a bit of critical kicking. 

There’s memories of spending too many hours in record shops, prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself over tracks that I’d completely forgotten about. 

But with 40 years of listening to music, I realised that I’ll never get sick of it.  I may have fallen out of love with some of the songs in this book, but I’ll never fall out of love with music.