Thee Oh Sees latest album 'A Weird Exits' is pretty cool and there is no finer way to kick-start a working day than with 'Plastic Plant' a psych workout with a humming bassline...
I have been swimming deeply in the sea of life, often miles from land, and there hasn't been space to write. Have you ever tried writing whilst immersed in the sea? Much has been going on externally and internally. Getting engaged to Q in July has necessitated some early planning, starting with where and when we'll be getting married. We have a date and a location. Based on the date of the wedding we've booked a venue for the party. These two dates being agreed upon, we've sent out initial invitations: this is especially important for most of Q's family as they will be travelling from a land down under, namely Australia. Most of August was taken up with this planning, mentally if not physically. As wedding-related activities have started to crystallise, I have begun to realise that everything has been leading towards the big day next year. Destiny. I've also found it hard to write here for a couple of different reasons. A bee flew into my bonnet and took up r...
Book Review: A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio by Paul Myers For a long time I resisted getting this book. I’m always wary of books about musicians: they tend to fall into one of two camps, sycophantic fan hagiography or hatchet job. Whilst I am a huge fan of much of Mr. R’s musical output (though equally finding some his songs irritating, ultimately pointless or just plain boring) neither approach appeals to me. Persuaded by some positive reviews and the fact that the book is billed not as a straight biography, but rather as a career history focussing on Todd’s studio work, I decided to give it a go. Happily, I was not disappointed. Todd Rundgren is not a household name in the UK (nor that well known in America), and his albums are relatively unknown outside of music fans and journalists, even though a very large number of households probably possess at least one album he’s produced, played and sung on. On that basis alone it’...
For about a week, maybe more, I've had a cold. It's one of those colds that refuses to go quickly. I have shared it widely, unintentionally, though of course, I may not be the source of all the colds, there are so many about. I'm not here to write about my cold, though. It's a lead-in to something more pernicious. Accompanying the cold, especially as it slowly fades, I've had a bad headache. Initially, I thought it was cold-related, but I've come to believe it's a physical manifestation of stress - a topic that opens a crate of cans of worms. The stress I'm experiencing is probably the result of several things I'm anxious about. I had considered listing the things I thought were at the root of it, and then deciding whether they belong in the category of things I can control or cannot control. Instead, I've decided to dig deeper and write about it in the hope that writing it down helps control it and maybe it helps more widely. I've always b...
I can begin counting down the days now. In four days' time, depending on how you count the days, I will be retired. On Friday the 1st of December I will no longer be a number, I will be a free man! It's starting to feel very real; today I had my first haircut as a senior citizen. In the past week, I have been to have a couple of gigs and also been out for a curry with an old school friend, not to mention organising for the impending life change. Gigs! The first gig was The Orb at Sub89. A great evening out with a good friend, which included a trip to Nando's, a rum and coconut-based cocktail. The Orb were excellent, with some crowd-pleasers including a number I didn't recognise, based around Pink Floyd's 'One Of These Days', but much more danceable. Most recently son #1 and I went to see Queens Of The Stone Age at the World Resorts arena in Birmingham. What a gig! It certainly ranks amongst my top ten if not top 5 gigs. Here's the setlist: Regular ...
…which is probably just as well. Apropos of absolutely nothing, some random misfiring of synapses prompted me to give another airing to “Hermit of Mink Hollow”, Todd Rundgren’s first 100% solo album on which he plays all the instruments and sings all the vocals (1972's "Something/Anything?" fails to qualify as his first 100% solo effort because one of the 4 sides is a live-studio effort featuring assorted musicians and backing singers.) The album was released in 1978 and is named after a valley near Woodstock, New York, where Todd set up a recording studio and recorded this album. Like all of Todd’s solo albums post-1973’s“Todd” double album, there are a couple of seriously duff tracks but in spite of that it’s probably the most consistently good album he’s recorded after the creative peak of the early 1970’s. The album – at least in its vinyl form – was split into “The Easy Side” and the “The Difficult Side” – though I can’t decide if that’s a joke: tracks on ...
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