This Is This

OK, so you like the Beastie Boys and you like The Beatles. That don’t impress me much. What would happen if you had the two together? Well, I like pears and cashews, but I wouldn’t put the two together, but somehow this works.

I have an album of this stuff. There’s Whatcha Want, Lady, which is a mix with Whatcha Want and Lady Madonna, there is I Feel Fine Right Now, Hold It Together Now, Tripper Trouble, and this one.

I’m a newlywed, not a divorcee and everything I do is funky like Lee Dorsey.

Listen: Sure-Bla-Di Shot-Bla-Da

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Related pages
Weekend Song archive

When I was about twelve we had a flood which destroyed my family’s keepsakes.

Most of the childhood paintings, recordings, family letters and home movies were lost. What I do have is a mental snapshot of my dad standing midway down the basement stairs with speakers floating at what would have been waist height if he would wade down into it.

The landlord who built the house, who could be politely described as a cunt, designed something completely inappropriate, with a deep cellar under a house he situated in a valley.

After transporting them from country to country around the world, filed and alphabetised in categories which included relatives and destinations, we stored our family memories below ground.

While my ancestors didn’t do much looming, most of the few looms to which I was heir were lost in the Great Flood Of ’83 and all that’s left now is about fourty minutes of silent, moving pictures of a family holiday.

My point, apart from use your lofts, is that we didn’t have that much recorded media anyway compared to these days. I have half a small box full of pictures of my mother, about a dozen shots of my dad’s family, but I’ll never know what they sounded like before I was born, or the way they both stepped when they first stepped out.

Thanks to what was spared from the little that was spared by the flood, my kids have a bit of an idea about how I looked, but not how I sounded. But their kids, my grandchildren, will have hours of baby videos and footage out the wazoo of their, um, wazoos. If they so wish.

Now there are USB sticks, websites where this stuff is uploaded, DVDs, CDs across about a dozen people who can just email this stuff around if anything gets lost.

I wonder how keen they will be to see it. Will they have multimedia libraries on the wall where they can hear and see their parent’s baby videos at the push of the button. That’s just weird, emailing videos of your parents as babies.

But that’s one for them to figure out when I go the way of the flood myself, and it’s too much of a Friday to go there today.

Weekend song blah blah blah you know how we roll. And if you don’t, then I assure you we do. In fact, studies have shown that over the last year we’ve been consistently doing four per cent more rolling month on month.

Have a great one.

Last week I went to see the Dalai Lama and I said I’d write more about it. I started doing it as a straight piece for a magazine or something but then gave up because I’ve been busy. As well as new puppy and co-writing a sitcom, I’ve been doing some DIY. That’s Do It Yourself for any non-British readers. If you’re French, it’s “bricolage”, although if you need me to explain that then I probably lost you way back in the oven peas.

“Petit-pois au four”? Man, they’d go nuts wouldn’t they? Alors qu’est ce que c’est tous ca? C’est pas vrai. Les Anglais lessent cuir leur petit pois dans le four? Mais ils sont malade.

I have a love hate relationship with DIY. On the one hand I’d rather, I’d rather do a spot of PSOPSTDIFY (Pay Some Other Poor Sap To Do It For You), especially with large undertakings, but then it’s always good when they are done. And all this attitude despite the fact that I can put up shelves like a motherfucker.

You see, I’ve sworn already. Here I was sanded, primed and ready with a first coat to talk about last Thursday’s talk and I’ve blown this post already.

No. No, I haven’t. I can still do this. I’ve just stalled her. If I point the nose down I might get enough air into the jets to get them going again and pull out of the dive to get this bird back home. Hang on, now, OK? Stay with me. You stay with me. We’re not going out like this. Not today. Not on my watch. Now that light there, what does it say?

The Dalai Lama took to the stage of the Royal Albert Hall to the expected standing ovation and rapturous applause, wearing his traditional robes and a joyful expression. He shielded his eyes to the spotlight as he gazed out into the darkness and then leant back to look up to the gallery with an expression of sudden delight.

Maybe he realised it was because he matched the scarlet décor right down to the yellow flair or perhaps because he didn’t expect such a warm reception. Whatever the reason, it was a spontaneous demonstration of the simple charm of a man who appears to take nothing for granted.

He started the talk by thanking the Tibet Society for their invitation to speak in London, stopping to check with his translator if this was the third or fourth time he had spoken at the venue. “I think three. Four? Maybe four, yes, but I think three. No matter.”

He settled himself in his armchair, sitting in a half lotus position, with legs crossed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I just take a minute to get comfortable. I am not going to sit in silence and meditate for the whole time instead of talking.”

He let out an infectious chuckle which still lingers with me two days later.

He said he was going to talk for about forty minutes and then answer some questions. “Forty minutes, thirty minutes, depending on my mood.” He adopted a serious look and said: “If the mood is bad and I’m not enjoying myself, talk shorter.” Then his face lit up and he pointed a finger at the crowd and said: “But if my mood is good, then fourty minutes,” he waved his hand in a carefree way, “or much longer. We shall see. I hope my mood will be good.”

The most endearing thing to me about the Dalai Lama is that his uncertainty is as endearing as his statements are engrossing.

“Whatever I say,” he said later, “you must find out from your own studies. Just because I say, you should investigate, investigate.”

He talked about the importance of human values, saying they were the same as religious values, and that religious values were all the same. He said how a Muslim friend of his said Islam was about helping others, and that Buddhism was about ending suffering. He waved the labels away as the same precepts.

“When you wake up in the morning, and you are getting ready and washing and thinking about the day, you do not say: ‘Today, I hope there will be more problems.’ You want less problems. These are human values. They are human values first and religious vaues second.”

Amen right there. Um - you know what I mean. Right on. Namaste?

Or just thank you.

I think a sign of talent is to present something that that no one else would have considered but makes perfect sense. Bach did it, Leonardo Da Vinci, The Beatles, Steven Speilberg, it happens in all fields and sometimes it’s the simplest of things which are the easiest to explain but the most elusive. If you can pluck that stuff out of thin air, that’s all a person could ask for.

I want to get into live blogging. Not where I’m writing about event as they happen, but where I am the event writing about stuff that probably never will. I’ll charge admission and put this stuff up on a big screen. I’d have an opening act, get t-shirts printed up and write about how big and famous I am and ride the applause at the end of one of my posts. I could be edgier in my act than I am here. I could work blue.

Let me try that now:

I know my fuck skills give most women chills
(the delicate picture that paints).
I stuck my johnson in chicks from Wisconsin
and never had any complaints.

Thank you, really.

Yeah, that could work.

See, the internet’s getting too big. Perez Hilton’s site was on CSI the other night. The only way this site would get on that show would be with as chalk outline if I deleted it.

Does anyone know if they still do those chalk outlines? You never see them on those forensic shows, and otherwise they seem pretty true to life. Kind of.

I don’t like how the characters exchange information in ways that cops never would for the benefit of a dumber audience.

“Have we checked for GSR, Bob?”

“Well Steve, gun shot residue only shows up in a radius of twenty feet, and that’s with no wind.”

…thereby explaining what GSR is and how it spreads after a, um, GS. Of course, Bob and Steve would both know all this. They’ve been wearing a badges since before I was riding a Big Wheel, as they might put it.

And these guys seem to be involved in every process of the crime fighting food chain. They’re in the courtroom, they’re interviewing suspects, they’re raiding houses, they’re shaking down perps, they’re doing family liaison, they’re working undercover, they’re pulling nightshifts in the morgue, they even organise the big annual softball game against the Feds. And they never use secretaries. They are too cool for meetings or diaries.

And the computers on their desks do everything. Email, handwriting analysis, weather reports, booking tickets and they have the entire database of every criminal in the world.

And when they scan for prints, if actually scans!!! You can see pictures of real finger prints go round, all the finger prints in the world, for about seven, maybe nine seconds, then it goes:

MATCH FOUND

Then it does a powerpoint animation thingy to superimpose the fingerprint found at the scene with that of our sleazebag waiter in the cells, so the only bars he’ll be working are the ones in the state pen.

“Nice work, B, I’ll see you make Lieutenant for this.”

“Lieutenant Boffin McCool. I like the sound of that, Captain.”

“That’s Mister Captain to you, McCool.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t get sloppy on me.”

“I’ve already apologised for that.”

Here’s a one. It’s a bank holiday so I’m short on time and long on duties. According to the rules of the Weekend Song, I can’t post up the same song twice by the same artist, so I’m exploiting a triple loophole here.

Firstly, this is not a Weekend Song, so I can post up something else by Gerry Mulligan.

Secondly, it’s Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax and Zoot Sims on tenor AND a fourteen piece band.

Thirdly, it has been raining and shining all weekend and the arrangement of this live recording has a majestic inevitability that makes you feel lonely and lovely in equal measure, money or not, funny or sad, rain or shine.

Listen: Come Rain Or Come Shine

You know, a lot of people say to me:

“Congratulations on one year of the Weekend Song. I am a big music fan myself, and I enjoy a range of musical styles. Like you, I like lively feelgood tunes, digital delay on jangly guitars and weird eastern harmonies like the The Police’s Andy Summers plays, intricate high hat rhythms over electric snares and fast driving reggae bass lines, rap music, soft female vocals like her out of the Cardigans or the other one from the Sundays and I also think Portuguese is a beautiful language to sing in. I don’t suppose you know of a song that does all this? Oh, and lazer beam noises.”

Please.

Listen: Loa Do Mar

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

A couple of announcements before I make a start, and that is that there’s a guy sitting opposite me this morning reading a book called Murder On The Leviathan by an author called Boris Akunin.

Murder On The Leviathan by Boris Akunin.

I’ve never heard of this book, but it’s got a sepia headshot superimposed over an image of a big ocean liner.

That’s a great title, isn’t it? …The Leviathan. I could never write that. My name’s Cliff Jones. Cliff Joneses write This Is This. They don’t write Murder On The Leviathan. They’d lack the cadence.

But then Boris Akunin wouldn’t blog about oven peas, so I’ll always have that.

The other thing is the sad news of yesterday’s announcement that Monty Don has had a stroke. It was described as a “minor stroke”, but to me that sounds like “a bit of a shark attack”, so there’s a tribute to him at the end of this post to add to the numerous I have posted before on this site. Best wishes, MoDo, for a swift and full recovery.
 
Right. I went to The Royal Albert Hall yesterday to see the Dalai Lama and I hope to post some more about that later. It was as funny and moving as the last time I saw him. I don’t know if he’s some kind of enlightened being, or the living reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and I don’t know how much it matters. Just like I don’t know why I beam back a smile and fill up with tears when he walks into a room - maybe neither are important. It’s like religion itself – it’s a medium and what matters is the result. The internet, air, food (yes, there’s the taste, but the substance I mean), electricity – it doesn’t really matter. What counts is what it counts for. It’s all about what you do with it once you’ve got it.

Talking’s good, but it’s what you talk about. Power is fine, but you need to use it for something. Religion’s nothing on its own. What good’s the air once you’ve breathed it? Or stopped breathing it? It’s what you do and who you are that’s important, not the things that allow you to be.

I might write more about this later next week, but right now my train trip is over, so I better post this up and head into work. And to be honest you should maybe think of doing something else. This is just a blog post after all, and will only get you so far.

There’s the Weekend Song on Saturday, which I’ve narrowed down to a shortlist of two and they are both awesome. Which will it be? To be honest, I don’t even know myself but I guess we’ll all find out tomorrow.

Have a great weekend.

Rain over Scotland will drift to the northwest on Friday and tend to die out. Brighter weather will follow from the south with showers and some heavy rain over the weekend. Temperatures will be a little below normal with daytime highs between 12-17C (54-63F). The overnights will be chilly with the risk of patchy frost across parts of the UK especially central and northern areas. Winds will generally be light over the next couple of days but will shift around to the southwest across western parts on Wednesday.

Finish sowing hardy annual flowers outside before the end of May, as later sowings will result in later blooms. Sprinkle general purpose fertiliser around clumps of spring-flowering bulbs and ensure permanent shrubs and hedging are given a generous feed using this or rose fertiliser. Hoe it into the soil’s surface and water in before covering with a mulch of garden compost. Place support frames over tall perennials, or those with a floppy disposition and remember to put eye guards on top of any canes used.

Oh hi. You know, when you think of early communication, we had shortwave radio, where geeks in their rooms could talk to people thousands of miles away and ask questions about the weather, and conversations were often misunderstood. How far we’ve come.

CaptainLOL: Hey.

Surfergal: Hey! How are you?

CaptainLOL: Good, yeah. Snowing loads.

Surfergal: Yeah, saw your blog update.

CaptainLOL: I put some picks up flickr, too.

Surfergal: The snow ones? I saw them. Nice

CaptainLOL: Jim’s just updated Twitter. It’s snowing there, too.

Surfergal: In Brighton?

CaptainLOL: No, he’s in Manchester.

Surfergal: At LOLfest?

CaptainLOL: Yeah. Thought you were going?

Surfergal: No, I have a work thing down here. I’ll catch the podcast. I listened to the first one though and they said it was snowing, too.

CaptainLOL: Any snow there?

Surfergal: No. Click my webcam. It’s really nice here.

CaptainLOL: Oh, I’m not saying it’s not nice here. I’m just saying it’s snowing.

Surfergal: OK. I know it’s nice there – no harm meant.

CaptainLOL: None taken.

Surfergal: Phew. I thought you were in a mood then.

CaptainLOL: Yeah, I’m really angry.

Surfergal: Think it’ll last?

CaptainLOL: Seriously??

Surfergal: No, I was only joking. It won’t last because I AM NOT IN A MOOD.

CaptainLOL: The snow I mean.

Surfergal: What about it?

CaptainLOL: DO YOU THINK THE SNOW WILL LAST?

Surfergal: STOP SHOUTING.

CaptainLOL: Are you in a mood? Seriously.

Surfergal: No.

CaptainLOL: Phew.

Surfergal: I mean I AM in a mood and I don’t think the snow will last.

CaptainLOL: Seriously?

Oven peas.

That’s what someone should invent.

You know, you get home, put in something in the oven, it could be a breaded thing or a tasty slice of something and you add your chips. But then you’ve got to boil water for your peas or use a microwave. The pain there is that when you’re in a hurry or you’re doing something else, you don’t want to be going to be setting about another task while your food is in the oven. You want to be checking the news, putting some music on, getting the kids into bed or spending time with your loved one or spouse.

Oven peas. The divorce rate would half. Think of the differences that would be reconciled.

You rarely see one oat.

Nelly Avila Moreno, a leading commander of the Farc rebels in Colombia has surrendered to the authorities, officials say, prompting reports that the terror group has gone into irreversible decline, hit by resignations and inter-organisation killings.

Insiders have been critical of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which has seen the number of rebel fighters fall from 16,000 in 2001 to a current figure of 6,000-8,000, but security analysts believe the actual figure could be much lower.

The group, which recently celebrated fighting the Colombian state for fifty years, is seen as a dinosaur in the terror industry, a claim denied by bosses.

“When you’re the best, you’re a target for speculation”, argues founder Manuel Marulanda, saying 2008 would be a busy year.

He said years of training had given its members the chance “to learn about the enemy and the way that it deploys, and operations, day and night, with its reconnaissance aircraft, bombers, helicopters and satellites”.*

He dismissed claims that staff were leaving the company to work for rival organisaions as “nonsense”. He added: “We have a generous flexible holiday package and a bike purchase scheme which we developed after listening to employees’ concerns about the environment.”

More optimistic reports suggest the company is making a big for Corsican separatist group FLNC in a bid to keep afloat amid bigger rivals such as al-Qaeda. Such move would be welcomed by the Ajaccio-based terror group, after a disastrous move last year when a clerical error led to the Colombian group tabling a 386m Euro bid for French media retailer FNAC.
* Real quote in a statement issued on Jan 3 2008

More fun with terrorism:
Oh My GOD. - An Apology
Bomb THIS.
Seven seven - London Terrorist Attack
An Apology
The Wisdom Of Nasrullah Stanekzai

I don’t want no Civil War.

Not my words, but those of Axl Rose’s revisionist assessment of the battle that split their country. When Gun N’Roses recorded this song, I guess he was sitting on the fence, because he wasn’t calling for Civil War, but he wasn’t saying he didn’t was no Civil War, fromt which one concludes that a little Civil War might be a good thing. Then there’s a bit of whistling, which only adds to the indecisiveness. As a statement, though, I think it works.

There’s something about the US Civil War that captures my imagination. Jonny Reb fighting Billy Yank. There’s a romance to the horror, there’s a frustration in the hopelessness and the determination of the men who fought.

It’s there in the everything. The trust in the cause, the letters home and the windy phrases, the uniforms. The hats. Those caps with the flat bit on top and the bit of ribbon? That was headwear. If I lived back then and was asked to take arms against my brother, I’d probably join up just for the hats. And the slave thing, obviously.

I had a quiet weekend, which is good. Was and is. I’m primed for the fortunes of the week and the challenges it brings. Like how in meetings when someone doesn’t want to talk about something and suggests you and them “take it offline”, I will no longer be tempted to say “Actually, no. I’ve very much rather keep it fucking online? How about that shit? I just made that word up. And yes it’s fucking gibberish, but of course you’re welcome to use it.”

Guess I picked the wrong week to give up italics.

By the way: this summer’s going to be all about starfruit. You read it here first.

A bit of New Orleans funk for you now from the mighty Lee Dorsey. Born on Christmas Eve and recording in that spirit of hope, this captures some with a bass line that could change the fortunes of most bad days.

The Weekend Song feature is a year old this week, which makes me think I may be drifting towards a formula. I’m an opening monologue away from two guests and a band, but David Letterman’s a hero of mine so I’ll steer into that skid if that’s how it’s looking.

I’m not doing the self-doubt thing, don’t worry, I’m over with that, but I will get nostalgic on you, because back in December 2007 I had Signed, Sealed, Delivered up as the Weekend Song, where I wrote:

And a sitar opening riff? Fuck. Fucking. Me. Who knew? Who has dared since? No one, that’s who, cause they ain’t Stevie.

Well, it turns out Tommy Dorsey knew it in 1969 with this song, a full year before Steve Wonder.

You got your thing together and I can’t wait too 
and that’s the very reason I’m stickin’ here with you

Listen: Give It Up

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Related pages
Weekend Song archive

If approached, I’ll pipe up with an eloquent quip - there’s a piece my mind I’ve been saving.
I’d like to report with the witty retort that I thought of this morning while shaving.

One of the dumbest expressions we have is “wouldn’t say boo to a goose”.

I don’t see how scaring waterfowl would be any indication of bravery or confidence at all. It might be an early sign of madness. If you’re reading this and you have started freaking out ducks, then it’s time for a holiday.

A mongoose, maybe. I’ve seen stuffed ones of those in museums and they look terrifying. They look like a livid stote. Or a teased weasel. Stop it. Heh. Weasel teaser.

Quiet as a churchmouse, strong as an ox, stubborn as a mule, hungry like the wolf – fair enough. I’ll give you those. But someone who wants to scare geese? It’s just wrong. It’s not the quiet ones you want to watch.

One day someone’s going to run nuts with an axe and they’ll interview a neighbour and she’ll go: “Oh yeah, odd chap. Said ‘boo’ to geese.”

So listen to me going on - how are you, anyway?

I know I said two weeks, but two weeks, shmoo shmeeks.

I’m all right and it seems that everything I do I’m doing slightly better*, so I’m back sooner than I expected. What happened is that I hit a sudden deep low with very smooth walls.

I sometimes get pretty down which makes me not want to write. It’s not that important whether I write or not, but if I think it is, then I dwell on my own importance and that makes me sad. But if I don’t write, then I feel worthless like I’m not making the effort and that makes me sad.

Other things do as well, it’s not all about the blog, but it doesn’t help, but then being depressed, I’d be the first to point out that nothing does anyway. Nice, right?

At least two or three times a year I seriously consider deleting this blog and having nothing more to do with it rather than write it, and that’s when it’s time to have a break. The comments here reminded me that it’s OK to do that, which was great. So either you’re not bothered whether I write or not, or you’re the best readers in the world. As uncomfortable as it make me to address you collectively, it would be much harder to say nothing at all. Thanks especially to my dad and grandfather for their comments.

I don’t know. It’s a far cry from the innocent days when I first rolled into Blogsville in my short trousers with nothing but the words on my back and a suitcase full of dreams.

But if I could do it all again, though, if I could go back in time I’d go right up to that kid, put my arm around him and say: “Dude. Why the short trousers? And what’s the deal with carrying all your dreams around in a suitcase?”

It just seems like a stupid place to keep them, that’s all.

*Including this.

This is a response to Sam who posted this after I posted this.

Dear you,

In light of in a lot of personal areas that require considerable headspace, so I’m going to have to have a break.

This site takes stuff out of me that I’m not sure I’ve got to give but something has to. The fact that I’m not sure that makes sense speaks for itself. The way that the sun is shining and I’ve barely noticed says a lot too. And also the notion that I’m living alone amid people who want only the best for me.

I put a lot into this as I hope you can tell from the amount I vest in it, but if there’s a web equivalent of a little white dot fading to black*, then that’s what this site is going to have for a bit. (*That’s what TVs used to do when you turned them off, kids.)

No, that’s a little dramatic. It’s on standby. The little green light has turned to red and the remote’s somewhere down the back of the sofa and I can’t be bothered to get up and just turn it on.

Actually, that’s closer to the truth than I’m comfortable with and while it has never stopped me before, it should now. It’s a sign that I have too much going on, and if I’m not careful then something’s going to make a strange noise and a ping and then a snap and they won’t be able to get the parts in because they probably don’t make them any more. Or if they do they’ll probably not be the right ones.

Or something.

See? So negative.

Couple of weeks maybe?

Yours,

Me

Here’s a thing that uncompromising blogger par excellence Sam Burnett did over on A Little Bit Of Wisdom In Every Box. A great name for a blog, though I would have called it Look! Ack! In Bangor.

What you do is stick “(YOUR NAME) likes to…” is the old googleator machine, press the doohickey and first you cut the results and then you want to paste the results.

Simple. Classic. Genius.

What doesn’t help is that I have a famous namesake and there aren’t too many famous Cliffs around, so even before doing this I’m expecting to see “Cliff likes to sing at tennis matches when it’s raining and everyone’s waiting around because they’ve spent hundred of pound on their tickets and plus we’re live on the BBC”, but that’s where the similarity ends, I’m afraid.

But I’m a sucker for a meme, so what can a guy do. I’m ready. Are you? Well all right.

1. Cliff likes to likes to stay slim (he is a mere slip of a thing, albeit a tanned and groomed slip of a thing).

2. Cliff likes to be hands on at his vineyard.

3. Cliff likes to visit the theatre and is an avid follower of Hull RLFC.

4. Cliff likes to cook. Not content with merely cooking, Cliff also likes to discover food’s origins.

5. Cliff likes to pick out questions that may be on the minds of lots of students.

6. Cliff likes to try cases. His readiness to do so is as evident in mediation as it is in the courtroom.

7. Once his tomatoes are in the ground, Cliff likes to mulch them with red plastic, also known as Tomato Booster Mulch.

8. That is exactly where Cliff likes to be — at sea.

9. Cliff likes to spend time sailing and skiing and other things that start with “S”.

10. Also, he’s stolen the curtain that Cliff likes to hang out in front of, and he’s playing the bass without actually holding the bass.

11. Cliff likes to say: Pure. Comedy. Gold.

12. Cliff likes to be more adventureous.

13. Cliff likes to have fun

14. One thing that Cliff likes to emphasize is that our customers need to be comfortable while they are shopping

15. Python, as Cliff likes to refer to it (12-inch bull snake), chases old Cliffy across the road, over the bank and out through the woods.

16. I’ve seen that Cliff likes to eat puppies. Maybe you could work out some sort of deal.

17. Cliff likes to dazzle customers.

18. cliff likes to have good times with good peoples, also known as friends( yeah thats right, im talking about myself in third person, so what) …

19. Cliff likes to hide in closets for years!!! XXX Love You XXX …

20. Apart from the above mentioned styles, Cliff likes to work in what he describes as his own contempory style, where the painting lacks the heavy shadow

I promise I did not see the “Pure. Comedy. Gold.” Before I typed “Simple. Classic. Genius.” It’s just how things worked out.

I am better than Alanis Morissette because she has a song called Weekend Song, but when you google it, you are directed here above references to her tune.

Before all the lyrics sites and everything, I win out over the confessional Canadian breakthrough soloist every time.

Seriously. Google it.

See?

Do it again.

You see what happens? BANG.

Sorry Alanis – Ha ha. In your toothy face, sister.

Oh dear. It’s like rain on your wedding day.

She used to be a fella, you know. Seriously. Alan Morris.

The posts this week have had a common theme of dropping the attitude, something I should do a lot more of, and I’ve learned that perceptions aren’t always the better part of character.

So in that frame, the weekend song’s going fusion. No, not Cajun ice-cream in a raspberry coulis, I mean jazz rock.

Speaking of coulis, it just sounds unappetizing. Like jus. Who would eat something in a jus. It’s festooned again. Festooned in jus.

I mean fusion as in jazz-rock. Yeah, baby. Pompous raw talent and joy, but then so is Bach. And if fusion was good enough for Miles Davis, it’s good enough for all of us.

So we’ve got the aptly-named little Steps Ahead with a saxophone sweeter than molasses and four times as fast. Michael Brecker was a brilliant jazz sax player, better known for his session work. You’ll have heard him on Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight by James Taylor and Still Crazy After All These Years by Paul Simon. And Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, John Lennon, Carole King, Elton John, Billy Joel, Steely Dan, Parliament, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, Chic, and Frank Zappa, not to mention such jazz legends as Horace Silver, Charles Mingus, Herbie Mann, Chet Baker, Don Cherry, Dave Brubeck, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Chick Corea, and Jaco Pastorius.

But here he is with his own band with a beautiful sax solo, which he plays after a stint on the EWI. The EWI is an Electronic Wind Instrument which is a wind operated thing that looks like a Tupperware clarinet and with the same fingering as a saxophone.

It goes through a MIDI interface, and even though it is a synth, it responds to the player’s performance. I’ve played one; it’s amazing. If you blow harder, it plays louder, you can tongue notes, slur them, do pitch bends just like you can with a normal sax. They are also very fun to play because you can cover twelve octaves instead the normal two and a half you can with a regular horn.

Michael Brecker’s got that sweet East Coast rock tone that David Sandborn has. It sounds so New York - he was the house sax player in the Saturday Night Live band for years and he fucking wails. Laura by Scissor Sisters has the same sound at the end, and they always fade that bit out on the radio, but it sounds great.

He owned a bunch of saxophones, and on this he plays an aged Selmer Mark 6, an instrument with which he became so familiar he once said: “It’s as if I own every molecule of the instrument.”

You’d know the Selmer sound, too. It sounds dense and less tinny. You’d notice it if you knew what to listen for. Even if you don’t have a great ear, you’d hear it, as sure as you’d recognise the sound of your own car door closing.

His ownership of the horn really shows on here and I love the solo in this because it carries the song around. A lot of sax solos are breaks, showcases – this is part of the song and it totally makes it. If you don’t like the cheesy keyboards at the beginning, stick it out for a couple of minutes to get to that bit. You can always use the time to pretend you’re the opening credits of a 1980’s TV cop show.

A bit of jazz/rock for you, anyway. I don’t always give you what you want, but at least it’s always what you get.

Listen: Trains

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Weekend Song archive

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are going to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term “lesbian”.

This strikes me as weird, seeing as that’s where the term came from - the poet Sappho was a native Lesbian and possibly a lesbian who expressed her love for other women during the seven century BC.

But Dimitris Lambrou, the man spearheading the case against the use of the term, argues that not only did she have a family, but she committed suicide over the love of a man.

I think he doesn’t have a case. It’s a term. Get over it. You’re a Lesbian, she’s a lesbian. Stop complaining. It’s only because you think lesbian is a derogatory term that you have an objection, you fucking bigot.

I don’t hear you complaining about other Greek derivatives, like democracy. Or hexagon. Or homophobic.

The term stays. People will associate it with the gay community. Live with it. Same with Mardi Gras. It’s safe to say that if you go to a Lesbian Mardi Gras, you’re not going to encounter a load of Greek islanders eating pancakes.

Did the people of Sparta didn’t complain that their collective noun became an adjective for boldness and bravery? Did they fuck. And I’m sure some of them were pussies.

Man, the searches I’m going to get now (cocks an eye towards google).

Apologies about the language today. I worry about being too rude on my site. I may have really offended some people today. My dad reads this. What if he’s a lesbian? Actually, dad, don’t answer that. I’d really rather not know.

I’m so very sorry. Unless you laughed, in which case YAY!

Have a great weekend, everyone. Cocks!

Click picture for bigger version. 

 
My bone. GRRRRRR!!!!

 
A little privacy here?

Keyboards ‘dirtier than a toilet’

Especially the keyboards at the beginning of Superstition by Steve Wonder.

Filthy.

Technology is cool. I was talking to my friend Adam online last night as I was listening to the Chelsea Liverpool match radio Five Live through my television. Adam is in Australia and he was watching it on television.

He’s a Chelsea fan so it was good to share it with him, plus I wanted Liverpool to lose. Not that I dislike Liverpool, but being an Everton fan, they are our local rivals. But if they were the only English team in the Champion’s League, I would have wanted them to win – it’s not like I always want them to lose.

It was apparent from the commentary and the timing of our reactions that there was no delay in his broadcast, my radio reception and our connection online.

Even that’s amazing, because twenty years ago when you’d have to get everyone in the room to shut up when you called made a transatlantic phone call and you’d get echo on the line and someone would stand in the background with a stopwatch to time the call which probably cost a arm for the first two minutes and a leg for every thirty seconds thereafter* (*minimum cost: one arm).

I still don’t think that technology has changed that much in the last thirty years, not compared with the jump from the 40’s to the 70’s. I think what we had has improved, but I don’t think we’re flying around on jetpacks getting holojobs just yet.

When I was a kid and my dad explained his world to me, he may as well have landed from another planet that spoke the same language. But when I talk to my son, I talk about the day I remembered being able to control our radio without leaving my chair.

It sounds silly sometimes. “News?” I say to him. “When I was a kid and you wanted to know what was going on in the world you had to wait for a man to come on the television and tell you what was happening.”

Of course, now they have the news on tap, you have a mobile, you have your PC, there is television with live news on three channels and if you don’t want to watch one of those, I can check the news in a little window on the same screen while someone else watches something else.

And if that’s too much of an imposition I can walk over to one of my other televisions and check on there, or go to one of the news channels on my radio, although there I’ll have to wait for someone to tell me the news, but that’ll probably change in the next year or so.

But even before news on demand, you the news thirty years ago was still gathered, if not delivered with the help of satellites. That’s space to you and me.