This Is This

I heard the “new” Beatles album yesterday. Some bits were OK, but others weren’t awful, but it was a little pointless.

I should explain something. I am a musical snob. There.

What George Martin and his son have done is revisited the master tapes and remixed them, so Fab fans can listen to them again in a new context. So you know that reversed cymbal you liked in Strawberry Fields? There’s a break in there which is nothing but the cymbal before the chorus. Some parts are stripped down, and other parts are woven in.

There’s a bit in Lady Madonna where it takes in the distored guitar from Hey Bulldog.

It’s Beatles for tourists.

“And in your left ear, you’ll notice the horns from Got To Get You Into My Life. The trumpets and saxes were recorded are over fourty years ago…. Sir Paul had this hip hop beat flown in piece by piece from New York in the United States.”

A friend at work asked me to listen to it and I lasted about a minute, until I slid my chair back a step, flung of my headphones, threw them onto my desk and looked down at them in sudden mock horror.

If this is going to happen with every generation, I’m glad I’m only taking up one of them.

But people will buy it, so who am I to criticise? Where there’s a market, I should park it.*

A piece of music is just that - a piece. It’s presented the way the artist wants it at the time. Time moves on, you move on, they should move on.

OK, I thought that Elvis remix of “A Little Less Conversation” was great, and I have some good remixes of Goldfrapp and Manic Street Preachers but still.

I don’t need to see a colour version of Guernica.

*You could have had:
If it’s shelves they’re stacking, I’ll quit yacking.
If it’s an earner, it’s on the backburner.
If it’s selling, I’m not what-the-helling.
Where there’s retail, leave the detail.

Poster in a Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society window this week

Right. 

Is that why you live in a tent?

I googled her name
and went to her blog.
I typed with my fingers once burned.
As sad as I’m vain,
I searched for my name
and seven results were returned.

I pictured her face
when writing of me,
recalling that elegant creature.
I clicked on each post;
my memories were toast:
they were geological features.

Yesterday was a normal day, and on my way to work I was carrying:

A laptop
A mobile
A digital SLR
A video ipod

I’d be the first to admit it’s a ridiculous amount for a body to carry on any given day.

And to top it off I forgot my jet boots.

Actually, no. What tops it off is that by 7:55 in the morning I had used all of them (see yesterday’s post)

Apart from the jet boots. I prefer to travel by bus as it makes me less conspicuous. I don’t really enjoy being noticed.

…..and publish.

———

Three Word Story

One of the best things about November is the sunrise. This was the sky over Windsor Castle this morning.

Click for bigger pic and others

Just so you know, I’m no good in a fight.

People who stop by here leaving comments for brawl assistance: you’ve got the wrong guy.

I have been in a couple of fights, but I wasn’t much help. I tend to use my defense as a humour mechanism.

I have a purple belt in judo, but that doesn’t help you in a punch-up. Keith Elmer broke my nose with one punch when I was ten and that was the fight, all because he said he was going to ask Roxanne out.*

I once punched Evan Smith in the jaw over some trivial thing, but that was the summer of 1976 and Rocky had just come out, so it didn’t count, as there was nothing more normal for any self-respecting Philadelphian boy to do than to land one on their pal.

Even this makes me sound tougher than I was. I grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and the leafy hills around Valley Forge, a world away and between the streets of Philly and the steel mills of Pittsburgh.

I was grateful for the following summer of Star Wars and the relative safety of lightsabres over fistfights, however slow-motion the re-enactments.

So yeah, I’m not going to fight you.

Leave it.

I’m not worth it.

Ah, my sweet Roxanne. Were it not for Camp Horseshoe I would have married you when you asked.

——————–
Three Word Story 

My phone rings during a meeting. The number of the screen is a local number of where I live, so I assume it’s my wife. I take her calls because I can always be brief.

I press the button. “Babe. I’ll call you back, OK?”

“Um OK,” she sounds different and uncertain.

“It’s just I’m in a meeting. Everything OK?”

“Um. Yes. Fine.”

She sounds really different. Oh shit.

“Who is this?” I cringe.

“Dr. Burn.”

Bugger. Local number. Local doctor. Whose call, now that I think about, I was expecting. I called her “babe”. My options are to either apologise, or crack a joke.

Any guesses?

“Sorry,” I say, “I’m not normally that rude to people who aren’t my wife. Heh.”

“Right,” she says, unflinching.

“Would you mind terribly if I call you back, doctor?” The posh thing. When humour fails, try the posh thing.

“That would be fine.”

“Sorry again. I am in a meeting.”

First impressions, eh?

Also, you wouldn’t be the first to see the irony in having a doctor named after an injury. It’s like it having a pilot called Captain Nosedive, or a speech therapist called Professor Stammer.

My dad sticks it to the man.

I would worry about this being me in fourty years, but it already is.

We could debate all we want about the existence of a Bank of Karma, but it wouldn’t do any good. Then we could debate the consequence of something not doing any good and we’d still be nowhere, just here and a little older on a wet Monday.

Even if there is a Bank of Karma, they’ve probably closed my local branch and it’s all internet only now or something or you have to go through a call centre with options you can’t fathom culminating in staff you can’t understand when all you want to know is how to pay in your cheque. Man.

But what about  Bank of Time? Now we’re talking. You thought your bank was mean - look at this: the Bank of Time never lends, there’s no interest paid and when you’ve spent your balance they close you account and that’s it. There are no call centres, but that’s OK because you can never pay into it.

The security features are not that great. Someone else can get their hands on your time if your account is not being used. You can either spend your time yourself or you can let someone else spend it for you.

OK - they’re not totally heartless. You can use your time for anything you like. You can give it away and hold it back, but yes, it will run out.

Seize the day?

That won’t help you much.

Spend the day.

Don’t expect much change out of twenty four hours, either. You can’t cram too much into any given day, because like your real money, you have to invest it. You need to sleep and eat and work at your relationships and learn and practice - all the things that will bring you a meaningful return on your time, as long as you spend it, and as long as you spend it

Conversation interlude

Me: You know your car? Tell me you’ve called it Harvey…

Wendy: Why?

Me: It’s an H-RV.

Wendy: Oh. But it’s an F-RV.

Me: Oh.

Wendy (hopefully): I could call it Farvey?

Me (with approval): Nice.

Mount McKinley stands.
It towers above my plans
to one day go
back to the snow
and follow heart’s demands.

Some day when I’m old,
and everything gets sold,
I’ll buy a place,
enjoy the space
and pan my thoughts for gold.

I’ll hold out with the best
but when I come to rest
it’s up and over,
right at Dover,
head up north and west.

When I was a kid I once set up a hammock up in my room. The thing about them is that they have to be set up really tight in order to give you some support.

Without my parents knowing, after the lights went out, I got out of bed and I tied one end of the hammock to my wardrobe rail and all the way across the room on my door handle I hung the other end, along with my notions of a life of swashbuckling adventure as I climbed up into it and drifted off to sleep.

When my parents came in to check on me before they went to bed, I was roused from my slumbers when they turned the handle, which released the hammock like a snare, tangled me up in the netting and sent me crashing three feet to the ground on a cold stone floor.

Have a good weekend.

I’ll be fine. No, really. I’ll catch you up.

So on Monday I spoke at my son’s school. Well, spoke doesn’t cover it; I gave a talk, answered questions, helped in the teaching. And hand on heart, I have seldom spent a better day’s valuable vacation time off work.

After work I spoke to my friend Wendy who knows about such things and we reckoned that if I started training now, I could possibly become a teacher by the age of 36 with a big drop in salary and I was seriously mulling it over.

Because to see a room full of six year olds downhearted at my feet because they didn’t want to go out and play at break time, and then see two of them quietly, literally punch the air next to their sides and whisper “yes!” when the teacher said “but Mr. Jones will still be here when you get back to talk to you some more” - that’s the stuff.

I went in to talk to them about Remembrance Sunday and the First World War and I took in pictures of my grandfather (my son’s great grandfather, pictured here and here) and his medals and maps which gave it more of a connection with real life.

I had a great history teacher when I was twelve. The first time we sat in his class, Mr. Miller said something I’ll never forget which fired my imagination up so much that before he had even taught us a thing, I felt that none of his lessons could have started soon enough.

“There books are there and they have names and numbers and you can help yourself and learn them, but it won’t help you at all in the real world. Dates can’t help you be a historian. I want you to know about people and to look at how they lived and what they did. You need to put yourself in their shoes and use your imagination. You’ll need to step outside of your own worlds and back into theirs and above all use your imagination. In this class, you’re going to be all kinds of things. You’re going to be explorers, you’re going to be spacemen, soldiers, acrobats, builders, archaeologists, kings and queens - everything.”

And right away we were hanging on every word in the books and abseiling down to the next paragraphs.

Of course, Mr. Miller did all this without medals and maps, but unless I misread the situation, one Monday, some twenty two years later, I came full circle to know how he felt.

Naturally, there was always the fear that I would say something stupid to embarrass my kid, like blurt out something silly or say bow and arrow instead of machine gun and then only realise my mistake when they did their drawings afterwards.

Or end the talk with “And if you want more information about this and other topics, you can always log on to www.thisisthis.org.”

But no event with me is ever left unstupid, so when I accidentally called my son by his nickname, I recoiled as a handful of kids looked and him and repeated it immediately in an sharp inquisitive tone.

“Nickname?” (omitted by me here for confidentiality)

He said, “Yeah,” And went on and asked me his question.

After the talk, as the kids walked out for lunch, I sidled up to him and said: “How’d I do?”

He stared at the ground and beamed and said: “Great.”

“Look, sorry about the nickname thing.”

“That’s OK. It’s my nickname. I don’t mind.”

He walked off to lunch with his friends, and pride filled the growing space between us.

When did pop songs by women all start being about how hot they are and how you can or can’t sleep with them? This Is This’s Cliff Jones investigates.

Engine’s running high baby, can you come and check it? Got such a pretty kitty, boy I know you want to pet it.

The weather’s nice and wet just south of the border. I can cook up anything that you have to order.

It’s your serve baby but the ball’s in my court, I’ve got a landing strip clear for you at the airport.

These are not my words, but the words of the Sugababes in their current chart single, Easy.

It seems that everyone from Nelly Furtado, Beyonce, the aforementioned Pink, Fergie from Black Eyed Peas, Sugababes and Natasha Bedingfield all record songs with words to the effect of

you can(’t) have my big hot stuff like you know you want

followed by something said over and over that could be filthy given the context, like “shortcake”, “watching” or “big time”.

Then you’ve got your posh singers, who are a bit more sophisticated. I’m talking your Norah Joneses, your Alicias, your Alanii, your Maria Caries and your Jennifers Lopez. But even then, you get songs like Keys’s “Rock Wit You” which leaves little to the imagination.

And don’t think age is a barrier. Paedowatchers can have their fun when it comes to people like Jojo and Ashlee Simpson. Even Joss Stone asked “Don’t Cha Wanna Ride?” at a shockingly tender age.

Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be empowering and everything, and you go sista, but can you imagine this 20 years ago? I’m pretty sure that when Joni Mitchell sang Big Yellow Taxi, she meant just that. Can you imagine Karen Carpenter belting out “We’ve Only Just Begun (Baby Yeah)”, or Sarah Vaughan crooning “Something’s Got To Give (It To Me)”. Neither can I, reader. Neither can I.

The roots of it can be traced as far back as 1977 when Donna Summer first groaned her way into the opening bars of “I Feel Love”. When Olivia Newton John was extolling the virtues of getting physical, I think the jogging she was referring to was the horizontal kind. (Shudders)

And now it seems if you’re a woman in the pop market, you have to make some bold statment about how licious your booty is, allude to your hump, your hump, your hump, your hump or boast about how many boys your milkshake brings to the yard.

Just how far this trend will continue remains to be seen.

For This Is This, I’m Cliff Jones.

Incoming link the other day for Mr Alwin Fernandez.

Google his name and see what happens.

Earl was right. Karma is a funny thing. Because some people say that if you do good things, then good things will happen to you.

The funny part is that I don’t think it’s right. Or OK, there may be some truth in it, but a lot of the people who say that do so on the occasion that they have done something good expect something back. They can’t tell you what will happen in return, but they’ll say they believe in karma.

When you do something good, you shouldn’t hope for anything good to happen.

More importantly, there is no karma bank.

“Welcome to the Bank of Karma, how may I help you? Your account? Certainly. Every time you make a deposit of Good Things, we hold on to it and pay you back sometime in a way we see fit. If you make a withdrawal or your Good Things balance goes into the red, then bad stuff will happen until you start paying in again.”

No. Stop.

Do something good, and a good thing has happened.

If that’s not enough for you, then you’re probably creating a lot of that negative karma you believe in.

If you’re so desperate for something good to happen to you, why not just do something for yourself instead of helping someone else, and completely cut out the middleman at the Bank of Karma? What have they ever done for you anyway?

Close your account, keep your good deeds under the mattress and splash out a bit.

If you expect good things to happen to you, then you’re attached and clinging to your desires, which we all know is the root of all unhappiness and is only going to make you miserable and increase your suffering.

There aren’t many contradictions in modern Buddhism, but I think this is one and I’m not a subscriber to the karma thing in the whole “what goes around comes around” sense.

I’m not saying my Buddhism is better than your Buddhism, because I’m not sure I’m that great a Buddhist by any stretch. I’m just going along with it, because what appeals to me most is that for my personality, disposition, temperament, whatever you want to call it, I find it works. There is reason and there are cast iron laws with nice rounded edges and they last forever, like those nice expensive French pots and pans. You know, the really heavy ones? They make the lines in the food as you cook. So as well as steaming the food, you’re actually grilling at the same time. It’s really something.

What was I saying? Oh yeah. There’s something real and undeniable when you can look about the place at anything and say: yeah, there it is and I can see why that makes sense and the reason it came about.

There actually is a law of karma: people like good things.

That’s it.

There’s the reward - a good thing for someone.

Feel better already? They do.

Final example: if you have a nice meal or you do something good for yourself, you feel good, right? That makes you more inclined to go on and do the right thing in however it is you choose to live. There’s the karma.

But you don’t expect yourself to do another good thing back to yourself because of the first thing you did, do you? So why is it any different with anyone else? They’re just the same as you.

You scratch my back, my back’s all nice and scratched. Thank you.

I have finally arrived. Again. 

I have joined the social network phenomenon that is Vox, which is a like a My Space for grown-ups.

I thought I better get on board because everyone else is, and for good reason, by the looks of things.

My page is called Like Standing Still, Only Faster, and it’s not really a site as such, kind of more a presence, but not in the metaphysical sense.

At the moment I’m not sure what it’s there for, but Vox do a cool thing where you answer a question every day and they give you ideas for posts.

This Is This will still be my main site - my, if you will, Ultravox, but if you’re interested in random quickfire questions and want to know what books I’m reading and stuff, then pay a visit.

Actually, I do have a My Space page, but I don’t use it. I just wanted to reserve it in case anyone else wanted to take my My Space space. The curse of having a name as common as Jones is that what little style you have is often cramped. I bet that never happens to Alwin Fernandez.

I saw an poster ad today for a pink PSP. It had the header: PSP GOES PINK.

Under that was a picture of Pink the pop/rock chick screaming like she don’t care.

I really don’t like Pink. I mean I liked Just Like A Pill and Linda Perry is a good songwriter but here’s what really gets my party started:

She took the ad.

She cleared her schedule. She took a limo, maybe a flight to get there. Probably had a nice meal, spent some time shopping, and went into make-up. She meets the photographer, goes into the studio, they set up the lights while her PA holds her calls and her agent talks to Sony to get the money.

The photographer talks to Pink about how it’s going to work, he gets the shot prepared, and - everyone ready?…

“Pink, can you do your ‘I don’t give a fuck’ face?”

Pink does her “I don’t give a fuck” dumb shouting rebel face.

Because, like, she doesn’t care what anyone thinks, right. She’s doing her own thing, yeah?

No. People who tell you they don’t care what anyone thinks usually want you to know that they don’t care what anyone thinks.

Pink took the ad. She’s working.

The face is work.

Oh, so you give a fuck about Sony but not anything else?

Pink this.

The 9th King’s Liverpool Regiment, France, 1915.
Private Walter Jones in middle, wearing shorts.
Thanks Grandad.

“Come on, man, just open the fucking door.”

Thanks to Mr Angry for his comment.

And they wrote back.

From: “Customer Services (Buses)” <customerservices@tfl-buses.co.uk>
To: Cliff Jones - Citizen Journalist (OK, I added that)
Subject: London Buses
Date: 10 November 2006 17:15

Our Ref: XXXXXXXXXXX                   
Date:  10 November 2006   

Dear Mr Jones

Incident on route 391

Thank you for your recent email.

I was concerned to learn of your distressing incident on route 391.  Our drivers should be professional and courteous at all times. I am very sorry for the obvious inconvenience caused to you and fellow passengers.

You will be pleased to know that I have contacted London United, who operate route 391 on our behalf. They will interview the driver in question about his conduct, and follow this up with appropriate action in line with their internal disciplinary procedures. For confidentiality reasons we cannot release details of an interview and any subsequent action taken. However this matter will be taken very seriously to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

As I’ve already mentioned, it’s essential that our bus drivers promote a positive image of London Buses, as well as operating their vehicle to the highest safety standard. Training is vital in achieving this. All drivers receive thorough training from their operating company. To augment this, we’ve developed an enhanced programme for all drivers aimed at raising standards of driving, as well as improving customer service skills. This training leads to a nationally recognised BTEC qualification. We are committed to continuously improving the service our drivers provide.

Thank you once again for taking the time to write. I hope your journeys in the future are more pleasant.  If I can be of any further help please feel free to get in touch.

Yours sincerely

Alwin Fernandez
Customer Services
**********************************************************************
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they
are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify
TfL IM Service Desk on 08452 340 017.

This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by
MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses.

Surface Transport
Transport for London
**********************************************************************

“…confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual” or not,  I have chosen to publish this letter, not because of a sense of fairness or that doing the right thing gets the right things done, but because I REALLY dig your name.

Alwin Fernandez?!?!

Are you fucking kidding me?

They’ve got Alwin Ferandez on the case, readers.

Related stories:
My AIM Is True

This Tuesday morning just gone
Hammersmith

Cliff says: Hey

Cliff says: Busy?

Iain says: yeah

Iain says: seems like always these days

Cliff says: Ah well - was going to tell you how I started my day shouting at bus driver

Iain says: tell me anyway

Iain says: i need a distraction

Cliff says: This bus was coming up to a stop, got snarled in traffic about 70 yards before and opened the doors and let people out.

Cliff says: The lady at the stop started hesitantly making her way towards it, knowing that if the lights changed and she wasn’t by the stop, he wouldn’t pick her up

Cliff says: So she steps 2 paces away from the bus stop, the lights change, and he shoots the stop

Cliff says: THEN

Cliff says: he gets caught in traffic and stops 30 yards past the stop and the lady knocks on the window.

Iain says: oh man

Cliff says: I see the whole thing and I rock up, stand in front of the bus and knock on the windscreen and say “You missed the stop. Let her on.”

Iain says: good on you dude

Cliff says: I was there for two minutes in front of it arguing, saying let her on, writing his number down, saying I was going to report him for letting people get off before the stop and being unreasonable.

Cliff says: I took his badge ID, got out my phone, pretended to take a picture of him and the number.

Cliff says: What a cunt, though. Seriously.

Iain says: wow

Iain says: yeah, totally

Iain says: why do they have to do that?

Cliff says: I was really angry - going “Come on, man, just open the fucking door.”

Cliff says: “You missed the stop anyway and you’re going to get reported if you don’t open the door right now.”

Iain says: thing is, what would he lose by letting her on?

Iain says: nothin

Cliff says: Exactly. What a sadist. And he’s happy to get reported and have all his passengers know he’s a cretin and I’m right and she’s going to be late for work? That’s fucked up.

Iain says: did he let her on?

Cliff says: No - the lights changed and I stepped off the road and he left.

Iain says: what a cock

Iain says: him, not you

Cliff says: We were both shouting at him saying “Come on - you missed the stop.” We agreed to report him, and I have.

Iain says: good

- Thanks to Iain for saying it was fine for me to post this. Friends and readers who write in can rest assured that I’m not going to publish any private emails or conversations without your approval. Bus drivers can rest assured that I don’t often bang on their windscreens and swear at them in the street.

OK. Let’s get down to the nitty, if not the gritty. The business, if you will. Brass tacks. Let’s boil it down. Here’s the rub and the deal is this:

I drink.

I drink because I enjoy it and I am very particular about what I have.

It always breaks down to three things which are beer, wine and whiskey.

Beer
Real ales and bitter, but only when it’s good. It can be cloudly, room temperature, flat, bottled or cask, but it’s got to be good. I’m talking Websters, Adnams, Brakespeare, Spitfire, Tanglefoot. Good beers. Bad ales are foul and I’d rather have a cold lager when that happens. Good lagers are strong drafts, like Stella, 1664. You can keep your Carlbergs and Heinekens and Fosterses and Budweisers unless I’m out for a whole evening with people drinking beer because you can’t drink the strong stuff all night. Beer should never be served in cans, but bottled beers can be good, the kings of which is Peroni Nastro Assuro or the more illusive Peroni Red.

Wine
I’m not a wine snob at all, but I can tell a cheap one from a decent one. I can’t really tell and excellent one from a good one, so I’ll often say “Nice wine” and drink several glasses. Some people talk about wine the way I talk about music and that’s fine, but I can also see how it’s silly, but whatever. I don’t mind but I don’t really get it. On the plus side, my philistine outlook to the grape probably saves me hundreds over the course of the year. It’s normally red, often French or Italian for ethical reasons, because I think there enough boats and planes moving things around the planet.

Whiskey
I always have a bottle of whiskey on the go in my house. Always. It might not be right, but I can’t see who it’s hurting. That’s just me. Je roule comme ca.
 
They are normally Bourbon and Scotch. Actually at the moment I have Jack Daniels and Famous Grouse going in the cupboard. My everyman approach to wine also applies to the grain. I like single malts like Laphroaig and Glenfiddich, but I’m ok with a good blend like Famous Grouse. There comes a point where I can tell the difference in smaller incriments than the increasing price tags. I’m a fan of Jamesons and Paddy from the father’s mother’sland and I like the bourbons. Jack Daniels on the shelf is as common as tea bags in my house. I’ve had others like Maker’s Mark and Rebel Yell, but for me, you can’t take the Lynchburg out of the boy.

Exceptions
I will drink good cider when I’m the west country and margeuritas in the southern US.

Appendix
I have never had a martini, a gin and tonic, a rum and coke, a bloody mary, a mint julep. 

Or a spritzer, a cooler, (come on pretty mama) kalua, zambucca, (ooh I wanna take ya)… ouzo or a bunch of things with silly names in wierd bottles.

Irish coffee also makes no sense. Whiskey and coffee - wouldn’t they just cancel each other out? What’s the benefit? It’s like deep fried celery. I’ve had it when I’ve had a bad cold, because the coffee does pick you up while the booze comforts you. It’s the firm soothing of tough love.

Liver
My liver’s good. There was a stage about fifteen years ago where I would have three or four pints at lunch and then beer and whiskey in the evening. I would have the shakes in the morning sometimes but never felt unwell and I remember my main concern was the expense rather than my health. Two years ago I could not remember the last time I hadn’t had at least one drink in a day. I’ll still pour a little something 95 per cent of the days and no one minds. I remember my parents always drank their fair share in the evenings when I was a kid. There was booze at every party and no one in my family has ever had a drink problem. I would be looking for those signs if I thought I did.

You may think it’s excessive but it all depends on your standards. I drink may drink more than your local imam, but it’s less than, say, a French journalist. But then people who say they don’t have a problem would say that, so you can’t win.

Most honest friendships I have were cemented with alcohol and they are the most valuable things I have. Booze has cleared more air that anything I could have concocted and I don’t drink when I shouldn’t.

Raise a glass, I’m buying.

The usual schtick for a ventriloquism act is to have a normal guy, modest and charismatic, trying and failing to control an irreverent, abrasive, embittered of hyperative dummy or character.

The way it pans out is that the performer can get away with saying anything and blame it on the dummy. And that’s your gig.

I think it would be much funnier if the dummy was this calm, normal character and the ventriloquist was this nervous, edgy, abrasive and immature sociopath.

Think Rod Hull actually attacking Michael Parkinson, arms flailing, punching him in the nuts while a mortified Emu tries to restrain him.

That’s entertainment.

Or a ventriloquist taking potshots at a talk show host’s career and the other guests’ clothing, while the dummy apologises profusely and admonishes the performer.

He could insult the dummy’s lifestyle choices to disrupt the routine while the dummy tries to laugh it off and reason with the guy and finish the act.

You’d laugh, right?

The dummy could appeal to the crowd and tell them that the performer is a good person really and that he doesn’t mean it. All the while, the perfomer sould be shouting and swearing at the audience, leaving them thinking “How uncouth. What’s he like without the dummy?

“Get in the house.”

“I don’t want to get in the house.”

“Get back in the house.”

“Don’t put me back in the house.”

I bought three songs the other day which should have owned.

Ain’t Misbehavin’ - Fats Waller

For anyone who doesn’t know, Fats Waller was, for a time, jazz piano. In fact, he was jazz piano when jazz was just “music”. In the 1930’s, when you said you liked music, everyone would know what you meant because jazz was what there was.

Think of a band from that era and you’ll think of boozed-up talented musicians having the time of their lives amid the whiskey and wiggles, all frisky and giggles.

And in the middle of that band, you’d find a piano player with a stogie and a hat, singing his heart out at an upright piano.

And that was Fats Waller.

And in the middle of him was a song called Ain’t Misbehavin’

I know for certain
the one I love.
I’m through with flirtin’
it’s you that I’m thinking of.
Ain’t misbehavin’ -
saving my love for you.

In one simple song you can hear Johnny Mercer’s lyrics and Little Richard’s phrasing, Errol Garner’s flowing stride piano style and King Oliver’s band and riding high above it all is that inimitable voice.

You can hear it here singing The Sheik Of Araby

I have my own tenuous connection with Fats Waller, based on coincidence of course, which you can read about here.

Love Will Keep Us Together - Captain And Tenille

I hear this and smile. It’s happy and silly and what’s wrong with that? I try not to pay attention to how many different instruments are used in the recording, but I guess that’s part of the enjoyment, because it’s so well produced.

It starts off with a keyboard and bass doing the same notes, then a harpsichord trill, then vocals, then drums, then synth, then finally backing vocals. And the bridge sounds like Carly Simon.

I will! I will! I will! 

But then maybe all intelligent pop in 1975 sounded like Carly Simon -  I don’t know.

But when I was looking up the spelling on her name for this post, I notice that Toni Tenille has a blog.

The Captain deosn’t though, which is a shame, because Captain’s Blog would be one of the best titles I can imagine.

Just A Gigolo - Louis Prima

How did I not own this song??!

The spirit! The backing vocals!

The brushes on the snare! The offbeat right hand on the piano! The walking bass!

Cause.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!

The fucking horn breaks!

The sax is outstanding, but when the muted trumpet kicks in…

?

It’s.

…

I mean.

Well…

There’s.

I give up.

It’s a moment - let’s leave it at that. 

And then they do that harmony riff with the sax back in but the trumpet keeps playing the same note and they bring it back to Louis Prima’s scat riff.

If I can get near that level of greatness with anything I do even once, then I’d die a happy man.

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Related posts:
Recently Bought Singles
Free And Singles Part 1
Free And Singles Part 2
Free And Singles Part 3

Note to regular readers - I realise that you may have already read these posts, but newer readers may have missed the odd post on a similar theme, so I’m going to link to related stuff every now and then. As well as write new stuff, of course.

Note to new readers - Hello and thanks for stopping by. It’s great to have you and please come back. This site is updated every day, so you know, please keep reading.

There are always going to be songs you don’t know well enough.

I say enough because you’ll want to know them better when they come on, so you can sing them in your head. You don’t know them because they are cheesy, but they are catchy cheese.

Like you don’t own the record, but you kind of know the song, or maybe you don’t want to sing along in your head.

For me anyway, one of these songs is Footloose, by the great Mr Kenneth Loggins.

I don’t know any of the words apart from:

Everybody cut. Everybody cut.
Everybody cut. Everybody cut.
Everybody cut. Everybody cut.
Everybody cut foot loose!!!

It’s certainly an impassionned request, and if someone told me it was a protest song about hunting animals using snares, I’d probably buy it.

But the verse. What is it?

Jeez… Luis.
Kick out the chimpanzees.

or

Please: no squeeze.
It come up to my knees.

then

Jack. Go back.
Pick up my hackeysack.

or maybe

Plaque attack,
climbing up the NASDAQ.

or something.

Then it goes to the bit where he pleads for people to sever his leg at the ankle, as I mentioned before.

The thing is, I just don’t know. Maybe I am so desperate for it to be about monkies in a bullish stockmarket that I sing that in my head.

Like So Lonely by The Police, which to me sounds like “Sue Lawley”. Try it - especially the big after key change and the guitar solo where Sting brings it into the last chorus.

I feel Sue Lawley, Lawley, Lawley, low.
Lawley, low!
I FEEL SUE LAWYLEY!!!
Sue Lawley!
Sue Lawley!
Sue Lawley!

—————
Ohhh - just so you know, I hit publish and it told me that this was post number 666. Is Sue Lawley in league with my namesake?

I have loved Bob Newhart since I was a kid and I think he’s still great.

Here’s a thing.

I don’t believe for a second that therapy is stupid, I just think this clip is funny.

Found this on the web last night and love it.

Great rhythm and tons of patterns.

Not so much with the blogging today, chiefly due to the hangover I had, the throws of which were endured on the ride into London when I would normally be writing this.

So hey anyway. I’m all right now: a little more shevelled than I was this morning, certainly more gruntled and well on my way to a generally finer fettle, all told.

Watch

Carry on.

I was sending an email to a friend the night before last while listening to a podcast in the background. Wife was on the phone to her mother in the background and she happened to say the name of the best friend of the person I was mailing. As she did so, the podcaster says my name in relation to an email I had send them two weeks ago.

Weird, huh? Except no, because these things happen so often that they don’t surprise me.

In fact my life is part of a big coincidence.

My mother was one of three daughters whose father was in the armed forces and lived by a port.
My father was one of three brothers whose father was in the armed forces and lived by a port.
My mother’s sisters all had girls. Two years later, they all had boys.
The boys were all colourblind.
Two of those boys (me and one other) were born at the same time on the exactly same day on opposite sides of the world.

My dad gets them, too. We used to joke in my family that wherever we went in the world, my dad would meet people he knew. Once we were on a boat in between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands when I was seven years old, and I said to my dad:

“OK, you haven’t seen anyone you know this holiday.”

Straight as fuck, he nodded ahead and said: “See that guy…”

And I thought he was kidding, but it was a guy he had shared a house with a couple of decades before, and the guy was working on the boat and he walked over and said an astonished hello to my dad, who didn’t seem all that surprised.

And that’s just one of an almost countless number of coincidences.

Like how, after living all around the world, I ended up going to university miles from anywhere, but on a campus which had once been the place where my Dad had been stationed in the Air Force.

There are many, many more, some too personal to go into out of respect for people (life and death stuff) and some I have written about here and here and here and here.

I don’t think everything happens for a reason - I’m not like that. I mean something caused it to happen, obviously, but the reason is ”there you go” rather than ”because”. If you start thinking everything happens for a reason, you’ll wonder what you did to deserve it when things go wrong, and that’s not thinking right.

So with these coincidences going on all the time, I assume nothing but “there you go”.

This from Aimercat’s blog cannot be bettered.

That is all today.

Oh - and happy All Saints Day. I know where it’s at.