Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
Totally Shuffled Day 57/366 Status Quo
Totally Shuffled Day 57/366 Status Quo Down Down pre Glasto bonus!
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Totally Shuffled Day 56/366 pre Glasto bonus-Led Zeppelin-In the Light
Totally Shuffled Day 56/366 pre Glasto bonus-Led Zeppelin-In the Light
get/read/look at "Totally Shuffled" here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
get/read/look at "Totally Shuffled" here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
"Womble 2" working extract number 1
Here's the first of a few forthcoming working extracts from "Womble 2"-needs polishing but... (still to decide on a title)
The phrase “spanner
in the works” springs to mind when I recall trying to get tickets for Glasto
2011, but, in reality, a whole toolbox would have been more appropriate. I had
all the above to contend with, but hadn’t accounted for a joker in the pack. On
the first Sunday of October 2010 I wasn’t even in the country which sort of
made things a bit tricky. We were in our second week of a two week, long-standing
holiday in Florida. In retrospect, it was pretty poor planning to be away at
that time but what can you do? However
much I enjoyed and loved being on holiday with the family and having a great
time in America-much better than I could have possibly expected- for just a few
hours, I wished that I could be transported back home through some magical Star
Trek device to Liverpool, so that I could be sitting at my PC, coffee by my
side, ashtray overflowing, phone in my hand and desperately hitting redial
and/or refresh in an attempt to get those elusive tickets. But no, I was
thousands of miles away; a literal ocean between success and failure, and had therefore
had to put a cunning plan into action.
Well, it wasn’t
exactly that cunning. In fact it was the only plan that I could think of. I’m
sure those of a more creative bent or those who could have possibly passed
auditions for The Apprentice would have come up with something better than I
did but all I had was to rely upon someone who I could trust to actually get
out of bed in the U.K. for 9 a.m. on a
Sunday morning and try to get tickets on my behalf. (At this stage, I
must add that this was well before I’d written and published “Turn Left at the
Womble” and before I’d made loads of contacts through Twitter and the like. Nowadays
I know that there are shed loads of reliable people I could have turned to assist
me in my hour of need. Back then, however, I was pretty much on my own).
Coincidently,
and very unfortunately, my two best friends were also abroad on holiday at the
time. They would have been the first people I would have turned to but there
was no way round it. I was then left with the idea of asking a work colleague to
try for me. This was trickier than expected for a couple of reasons. Firstly,
everyone I worked with knew of my plight and, being generally a very helpful bunch
of folks, most of them wanted to help. Secondly however, a number of people, quite
understandably and although wanting to assist, were a bit wary of what they saw
as a bit of an onerous responsibility. This left three or four people who were
happy to take the risk and give it a go for me. Instead of asking all of them
to try, I decided to just pick one person. Looking back, this may not have been
the best tactic. I should have given myself the best possible chance and run it
like a mini-phone bank/call centre operation by asking all of them to have a bash
at it. Maybe there would have been success in numbers, but logistically it was
just too difficult to organise. So I just had to ask one person; someone who I
knew I could rely upon but at the same time, avoid giving offence to everyone
else.
That (un)lucky
person was Sam, who I’d worked with for ages. Sam’s better half worked in IT
and had their house totally wired up with hyper-fast broadband; multiple PC’s
and stacks of mobiles. They had the technology! If they couldn’t do it, then
no-one could. Additionally, they were those sort of people who were invariably
up and about early every morning, even at weekends so a 9.00 a.m. start on a
Sunday would be a piece of cake. (I think that everyone else was quite relieved
that Sam had picked the poisoned chalice-it was a bit like the Harry Potter
sorting hat in reverse).
You can still get "Turn Left at the Womble" here
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Friday, June 21, 2013
In praise of John Peel
extract from "Totally Shuffled: A Year of Listening to Music on a broken iPod"
“Do you ever have a night when you
don’t dream about The Fall?”
(This is
clearly not a song or a tune on the iPod but it is something that is on there
and has just shuffled up. It’s shown as “unknown track-unknown artist” and
lasts only a couple of seconds. It’s far from being an unknown artist to
me-it’s a brief audio snippet of John Peel, and I guess it was him introducing
a track from The Fall. I don’t know when it was broadcast or what track it
referred to, but for those brief few seconds it’s like being transported back
in time).
There are
two ways I could use this track. I could either write about The Fall or John
Peel. Or both, I suppose. Whilst I am surprised that I’ve got all the way
through to mid-August without a Fall track shuffling up, I’m sure that there
will be one along before the year is out. Like buses-there’ll be another one in
a minute. This clip of Peel may be the only time that it shows up, so I think
I’ll go with that. I haven’t done an analysis of what I’ve written so far (I’ve
not even re-read any of it or done any editing), but I think that John Peel
must have been mentioned at least once a week since I started this back in
January, so it’s fairly obvious that John Peel was a very significant influence
upon my musical tastes. I can’t remember when exactly I started listening to
Peel, although I’m fairly sure that I didn’t regularly tune into his show back
in the seventies, when he’d play the whole of a Pink Floyd album in one go. I
think that I must have started tuning in about 76/77 during the advent of punk.
From then on in every Monday to Thursday, 10 until midnight, was reserved for
hearing a whole panoply of music. I genuinely believe that without John Peel’s
influence I wouldn’t have learned to love all the different sorts of music that
I do now. Blues, doo-wop, reggae, soul-even Pink Floyd. I think that I may have
still got into The Fall, but I can’t really be sure. Listening to John Peel and
his clear love of music, beneath his sometimes grumpy exterior, was the best
education I ever had. I know this sounds completely over-the-top and something
I think he would have snorted derisorily at, but I think my attitudes to so
many things, and not only music, would have turned out very differently if I’d
never heard his broadcasts. I probably wouldn’t have been as into music as much
as I am and wouldn’t have considered approaching it with the same regard that
he did. I would have either been not bothered about music (like those people
who when you ask them what sort of music do they like they respond with a “oh,
all sorts really”- and you know they have a couple of Simply Red albums and a
CD by Adele), or overly serious about it all.
I cannot think of any other
presenter apart from John Peel, who just loved music for what it made him feel
rather than if it was fashionable or not, and didn’t see that playing records
on the radio just as an interruption for “his public” from hearing his
wonderful voice. If I hadn’t got into music through his broadcasts, then I
wouldn’t have read the books that I have or watched the films I have seen. I
wouldn’t have developed the attitude to popular culture that I’ve got. I
certainly wouldn’t have ever have gone to Glastonbury in 2010 if I hadn’t heard John Peel enthusing about it, and
therefore by extension not written about it which, in turn, has led to writing
this. If Glastonbury was good enough for him, then I knew it would be ok for
me. I wouldn’t have followed Liverpool Football Club in the manner I have. (I
really wish he’d still been around for the Champions League Final in 2005). I
don’t want to end this by sounding too maudlin, but every time I listen to an
old recording of one of his shows I still find it hard to believe that he’s
gone. There’s a certain sadness that my children will never have the chance to
hear him playing the wrong record at the wrong speed live- but I’ve still got
this recording and many others to treasure- and they know that he was a great
man.
Get/see Totally Shuffled here
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Totally Shuffled Day 48/366 Bill Drummond- Julian Cope is Dead
Totally Shuffled Day 48/366 Bill Drummond- Julian Cope is Dead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuDmjZfa_Z0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuDmjZfa_Z0
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Totally Shuffled Day 47/366 Blind Lemon Jefferson
Totally Shuffled Day 47/366 Blind Lemon Jefferson-See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Reading "Turn Left at the Womble" and/or "Totally Shuffled" without a Kindle
Reading "Turn Left at the Womble" and/or "Totally Shuffled" without a Kindle
A lot of people (well, a few) have asked me how can they read either of the books without a Kindle. Whilst I'd love to be able to get them into real hard print, it's not at that stage yet.
However, thanks to Amazon you can get free apps so you can read them on iPads, iPhones, iPodtouch, PCs, Android phones and Android tablets. Everything apart from paper really.
Here's a link for the apps
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000425503&ref=kcp_ipad_mkt_lnd
and here's a link for the books
"Turn Left at the Womble" here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Left-The-Womble-ebook/dp/B0060YCKGW
and "Totally Shuffled" here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
Many thanks to everyone who's got hold of the books so far & for all your feedback. It is very much appreciated.
Regards
A lot of people (well, a few) have asked me how can they read either of the books without a Kindle. Whilst I'd love to be able to get them into real hard print, it's not at that stage yet.
However, thanks to Amazon you can get free apps so you can read them on iPads, iPhones, iPodtouch, PCs, Android phones and Android tablets. Everything apart from paper really.
Here's a link for the apps
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000425503&ref=kcp_ipad_mkt_lnd
and here's a link for the books
"Turn Left at the Womble" here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Left-The-Womble-ebook/dp/B0060YCKGW
and "Totally Shuffled" here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
Many thanks to everyone who's got hold of the books so far & for all your feedback. It is very much appreciated.
Regards
Totally Shuffled-Day 44/366 You.May.Die.In.The.Desert
Totally Shuffled-Day 44/366 You.May.Die.In.The.Desert-Can I Get More Steel In My Monitors?
get "Totally Shuffled" here;:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
get "Totally Shuffled" here;:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Turn Left At the Womble-unpublished ending
This is a short piece that I originally
wrote as a sort of end-piece to “Turn Left At the Womble”. In the end I didn’t
include it in the book, largely because it seemed to make it a bit disjointed.
Having said that, on reflection, it may have made a neat coda to the whole
thing. But it isn’t in there, and rather than it being lost and thrown away
forever, at least by putting it up on here it will leave some sort of faint
electronic imprint somewhere on the internet…
It was about two
week after Glastonbury. For some reason-now I cannot remember why- I had
arranged to meet Amy in town one afternoon. I know I wasn’t in work that day,
but I’m not sure why I had the day off. I don’t recall why we met in town; possibly
she’d had some meeting, or an interview or some training or the like and I was
just picking her up. I don’t think why we met really matters that much, but it
was one of those odd (and few) times when neither of us seemed to be rushing
anywhere so that we could just sit down and relax. Naturally, this involved a
coffee.
It was a sunny
and warm afternoon and I think it was a Friday. It was that warm that I was
sitting outside the coffee shop, cappuccino by my side, ciggies on the go and
note book open. I was just starting to sketch the first notes of what this book
turned out to be. At that time it was just simply a few random words and was
intended only to be a sort of a personal diary of what had happened. It was something
to look back on years to come, a “did you really go to Glastonbury, Grandad?”
type-thing. I would then dust down some battered old notebooks, dispense
Werthers Orginals to all and sundry and tell the tales of what I got up to in
those Somerset fields, many years ago. They would have thought that I was
exaggerating about the horror that was Muse and put it all down to the
ramblings of an old man, but I would have known it was all true, and in fact I
had spared them the worst. They’d nod indulgently at how I told them that the
Flips were the greatest music I’d ever heard. They’d hear stories about Amy
that would not be believable. And that’s all it was really meant to be-just
some notes to look back on. I never really thought it would turn into anything
as grand as a book.
That’s why it’s
turned out the way it has. I could have made it all sound more exciting than it
really was. (Not that it was exciting, but that wasn’t really the intention). I
simply wanted to record what actually happened at Glastonbury, how it felt and
what we actually did. I wanted to give it that whole feel of what it was like,
stepping into something unknown, and doing something that I hadn’t expected to
be doing. By writing it just as a record, and by trying to keep it as matter-of-fact
as possible, I knew that it would at least be an honest account of what
happened. I could have spiced it up by adding linguistic flourishes or by
writing that we did things that never happened or saw things that we never did,
but I’d have known that in the future some of it wasn’t true. And I’m sure
that, over time, I’d have started to blur the line between fact and fiction. I
had to have all that build up-the tickets, the planning, the drive etc. Without
that context, I don’t think that it would have explained how far I’d come as I
had when we walked through the gates-both in a geographical as well as a
personal sense- since we managed to get those tickets on that Sunday morning in
October.
So there I was,
scribbling away in my little notebook, Glasto wristband still on my wrist, coffee
going cold and half-watching the world go by on a sunny Friday afternoon. I was
still in that Glasto frame of mind; probably helped by the sun, the fact that I
was wearing my shorts and battered sandals and that everyone walking past
seemed to be wearing suits and rushing around. I think that it’s too easy to
get back into that ordinary, workaday frame of mind and that it all can just be
a good memory; but somehow I know that going to Glastonbury has changed me. To
what extent and in what way I’m not really sure yet; I just know that it has.
Does all this sound a bit precious, and more than a little bit silly? Possibly .
After all, it was just five days at a music festival, wasn’t it?
Out of the
corner of my eye, I saw Amy come bounding down the street. (That’s Amy by the
way; she doesn’t walk, or run-she bounds).
She started waving at me from at least 100 yards away, whilst at the same time
motioning for me to get her a drink. I didn’t leap into action, I was too
relaxed. As she reached the coffee shop, she looked at me and then the table quizzically,
“And where’s my coffee?” “I’ve been waiting for you for ages, it would
have been cold. What do you want?” I asked as she flopped down next to me.
(Flops, rather than sits. You get the picture). “Oh, anything” she said as she nosed into my
notebook, “what are you writing?” “Just a bit about Glastonbury,” I replied. There
was a slight, imperceptible pause before we both shared a grin. “It was bloody brilliant,
wasn’t it?” she smiled.
Get Turn Left at the Womble here:
U.K.
U.S.
Totally Shuffled Day 43/366 Beethoven
Totally Shuffled Day 43/366 Beethoven Symphony No 4
Totally Shuffled
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
Totally Shuffled
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
Friday, June 14, 2013
Totally Shuffled-Day 41/366 Dennis McGee & Ernest Fruges
Totally Shuffled-Day 41/366 Dennis McGee & Ernest Fruges-Le Blues De Texas
Not the highest quality recording, it must be said- but you can't beat a bit of Cajun music!
get "Totally Shuffled" here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
Not the highest quality recording, it must be said- but you can't beat a bit of Cajun music!
get "Totally Shuffled" here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
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