Category Archives: music

memes, music, personal, thoughts

Soundtrack of Your Life

Quite some while back, and I can’t now find who’s weblog it was on, someone asked about the five songs/albums which would provide the soundtrack to your life. Not necessarily songs associated with particular events or people (although that turns out to be almost inevitable) or even ones you would want to take to a desert island, but which provide the right overall background music.

Having put the idea away for another day, I find that day has come and I want to write about it. So here we are; five songs/albums which are my background soundtrack, in no particular order:

1. The Beatles, Abbey Road
It’s that zebra crossing! No, it’s The Beatles!

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Well you could make that almost any late Beatles (ie. Sgt Pepper’s, Abbey Road, Let It Be) but Abbey Road is the favourite as for me it best encapsulates days as a student.

2. Gregorian Chant
Almost any well done Gregorian chant (male voices, monastic acoustics) will do but for me one of the most ethereal is the Pange Lingua of Good Friday.

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And yes, that’s despite my not being religious — Roman Latin liturgy has always done it for me. It is after all a form of magic: what is the priest doing walking round the alter with a thurible if it isn’t casting a circle?

3. Cliff Richard, Summer Holiday
I seem to feel I need to put something in here to evoke childhood and what better than Summer Holiday. Those hot lazy days with no school!

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Not only was Summer Holiday the first film I was allowed to go and see on my own, but Cliff comes from my home town and The Shadows used to practice in the boys club at the back of my primary school playing field. Heady days!

Well back from the ridiculous to the sublime …

4. Monteverdi, 1610 Vespers
The height of Renaissance music, this was one of the early shares which Noreen and I had all those years ago and long before we even thought about going out together.

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And the 35+ year old John Eliot Gardiner recording is still the best available.

5. Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly
The story of my life: learning to fly (and failing mostly!)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX5R00ndzQo&w=420&h=315]

I don’t know what it is this track does to me, or why. But it does. And that makes it for me one of the great rock tracks of all time. And Floyd are out and away the best rock group ever, for me.

memes, music

Listography – Gigs

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For Kate’s Listography this week we’re asked to nominate the top five bands we’d like to see live. I’ve never been a great one for going to gigs and seeing bands live partly because they’ve often seemed unreasonably expensive and partly because you can often get a better sound from a studio recording without being deafened — but then I grew up with the excessively loud rock bands of the 60s/70s. Nevertheless there are a few bands I wouldn’t mind seeing live. Those of you who know me at all can probably guess a lot of the list …

Well we’ll start with three all-time favourites Pink Floyd, closely followed by Yes and Caravan. What more is there to say about any of them?


At I’d probably but The Beatles. It would have to be late Beatles, as of the era of Abbey Road and Let It Be, by when they’d stopped performing live and the cracks were beginning to show.

All of those four create such magical music (at least it is for me). How I’ve never been to see especially Pink Floyd I just don’t know.

Creeping in at #5 would I think be the Barron Knights. Originally formed in 1959 they’re a set of guys who performed for the hell of it (as I recall they all had regular jobs) and did those brilliant Christmas-time parodies of other bands. And they were still performing live until relatively recently.

And the Barron Knights win by the shortest of short heads from Who, Rolling Stones, Queen, Dire Straits, Moody Blues, not necessarily in that order.

amusements, music

Carol Of The Belts

This has to be the most hilarious and ridiculous thing I’ve seen in ages. Ensure you’re sitting down and not drinking anything …

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDiXPx2OqPI&w=560&h=349]

music, people, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

Hmmm … doesn’t seem to be much happening in general this week, and that includes fodder for “Quotes of the Week”, so here’s only a short selection entitled “The Way Things Are” …

Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgements can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
[Richard Feynman quoted in Lawrence M Krauss, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science]

The Beatles music is really some of the best music we’ve had in the last century. Children continue to rediscover the music, generation after generation. It’s like saying why is Gershwin timeless? Their music is part of history, it will last forever.
[Sir George Martin, the Beatles record producer]

There are two descriptions of reality: either reality is the bulk of spacetime surrounded by the boundary, or reality is the area of the boundary. So which description is real? There is no way to answer that. We can either think of an object as an object in the bulk space or think of it as a complicated, scrambled collection of information on the boundary that surrounds it. Not both. One or the other.
[Leonard Susskind; Scientific American; July 2011]

memes, music

Listography – Albums by Band

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For this week’s Listography from Kate Takes 5 we’re asked for our top five albums, one per band. For once I’ve decide to play by the real spirit of the game and restrict myself to rock/pop and not include classical music. So here’s my selection, in no particular order …

1. Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
There are no special stories attached to any of these albums and I can’t tell you why I choose most of them except that I enjoy them. But Wish You Were Here is throughout a brilliant piss-take although you need to know the culture of the 60s and 70s to get much of it. For me this and Dark Side of the Moon (hard to choose between them) are classic Floyd and indeed classic rock – but then this is the rock of my (formative) post-grad days. Pink Floyd on Facebook.
2. The Beatles, Abbey Road
I was going to say this is the album where the Beatles started “doing it for me”, but that’s not quite true as I think that was probably Sergeant Peppers. I had to toss a coin between Abbey Road and Let It Be; Abbey Road wins by a short head. Again this is for me the quintessential music of my undergraduate years – I never really did get the very heavy rock of King Crimson and the like – but there was so much really great rock music around then. The Beatles on Facebook
3. Yes, Close to the Edge
Lyrical rock again from my post-grad days. I have to thank my then flat-mate Geoff for introducing me to both Yes and Caravan. And who can forget thos Roger Deam album covers?! Find Yes on Facebook.
4. Caravan, For Girls that Grow Plump in the Night
What do you mean you’ve never heard of Caravan? They’re a British band (originally from Canterbyr). And no, they weren’t a one hit wonder – they’re still touring and recording! You can find Caravan on Facebook too. See also Yes, above!
5. Moody Blues, Octave
Earlier Moody Blues (On the Threshold of a Dream, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour) are again the stuff of my student days. And listening to them again recently I found their mood rather depressing. Octave is a bit later and resonates more with me. Moody Blues on Facebook.

And I haven’t even mentioned Dire Straits, Queen, The Who, Rolling Stones …

Now a bigger challenge would be to find ones favourite five tracks (but only one per band). Hmmm … hard … and they wouldn’t necessarily come off these five albums!

Anyone else for choosing five albums?

environment, history, links, music, personal, pleasures, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

Weekly Interesting Links

OK guys & gals, so here’s another weekly, but doubtless occasional, new series — links to interesting sites I’ve come across during the week but which haven’t made it into a full posting.

An article by my friend Potter-san on the Soul of Okinawan Music. The music of Okinawa (the southern-most tropical islands of Japan) is a fun eclectic mix of their native music and just about anything they can import. Try it! I was surprised how much of it I liked.

Also advance information on the London Okinawa Day 2011 on Saturday 25 June. I’ve never managed to get to this annual event but it sounds like it should be a fun day. Anyone want to get together a party of us?

On a totally different subject, a thought-provoking item Should Young Teens be Prescribed Hormonal Contraception? by Prof. Kate Clancy. All the more powerful because Clancy is American and her stance is totally contrary to the prevailing American ethic of total teenage abstinence.

If you are interested in your family history and have forebears who worked on the railway you might be interested in the Railway Ancestors FHS.

In view of the week’s biggest event (at least here in the UK) history buffs may be interested in Medieval Weddings.

One of the most misunderstood areas of the law as it affects anyone involved in literary or artistic ventures is copyright. Fortunately the British Library describe the duration of UK copyright in one easy flowchart. But I suspect I shall have to continue to explain intellectual property law even to our literary society trustees. 🙁

And finally, here’s a super eco-idea: use cardboard packaging impregnated with seeds to rejuvenate the environment. No sorry you can’t have the idea, it’s already been done by Life Box.

amusements, beliefs, music, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

A better selection of quotes this week, which reflects a more varied weeks reading.

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
[Steve Eley]

When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
[Psychologist BF Skinner]

We all are born mad. Some remain so.
[Samuel Beckett]

Physicists. Just because you’re not smart enough to know what the fuck they’re talking about doesn’t mean God exists.
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I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
[Stephen Roberts]

Children are naïve – they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you’re asking for trouble.
[Frank Zappa]

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.
[Frank Zappa; Statement to the Senate Hearing on “Porn Rock”; 1985]

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
[Isaac Newton]

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
[Frank Zappa]

Just as long as that giraffe is made of choux pastry and dipped in chocolate! Might be best if it doesn’t mate with a pink unicorn too. 🙂

amusements, music, personal, sexuality, thoughts

Tasmanian Liberation

Just today (where have I been?) I came across this song from Amanda Palmer & The Young Punx. It’s catchy. But more than that, the lyrics (at the bottom of this page on Amanda Palmer’s website if they’re not clear) are a hoot. (And they mostly accord with my view of the way the world should be. Hehe!)

There’s the background to the song (if you need an explanation) and a video of her original rendition on Amanda Palmer’s blog. And comment on SPIN amongst other sites.

Enjoy … but it’s probably NSFW!

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OMG! I’m turning into a punk rapper! At my age!?!? OMG!!!!!

memes, music, personal, photography, topographical

3/52 Horns


3/52 Horns, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Week 3 of the 52 weeks photographic challenge and I almost didn’t get a decent picture this week. But then I saw this window display in Selfridge’s Department Store in London’s Oxford Street. All these brass instruments looked absolutely stunning – but impossible to photograph well because of all the reflections.

arts, books, current affairs, music, natural history, nudism, quotes, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

I’ve been reading quite a bit over Christmas, so this week there’s a good selection of quotes; something for almost everyone here …

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.
[Paul Harvey]

If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.
[The Economist; unknown author and date]

You can’t prove that there isn’t a magic teapot floating around on the dark side of the moon with a dwarf inside of it that reads romance novels and shoots lightning out of its boobs but, it seems pretty unlikely, doesn’t it?
[Kurt Hummel]

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is in the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements but not with as much strength, though it is deficient only in power of maintaining equilibrium.
[Leonardo da Vinci, The Flight of Birds, 1505]

Newton saw an apple fall and deduced Gravitation. You and I might have seen millions of apples fall and only deduced pig-feeding.
[Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher; Letter to the Times, 12 January 1920]

All dog-lovers must be interested in Lieutenant-Commander Elwell-Sutton’s account of his white whippet which insists on singing to the accompaniment of his (or, may I hope, his young son’s?) accordion – presumably one of those gigantic new instruments, invented, I think, in Italy, which make noises as loud as those made by cinema organs, and rather like them. This dog’s taste is low; but a musical ear is a musical ear.
[Sir John Squire; letter to the Times, 11 January 1936]

They [18th and early 19th century Quakers] became a bourgeois coterie of bankers, brewers and cocoa-grocers.
[Mr Ben Vincent, letter to the Times, 13 March 1974]

[The correct] forking technique is called the Continental method. It’s the method used in Europe as well as anywhere else that the British have killed the locals.
[Scott Adams]

Alice: Would you please tell me which way I ought to walk from here?
Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where –
Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk.
Alice: – so long as I get somewhere.
Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if you only walk long enough.
[Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]