sounds from the street

Sounds from the street, sounds so sweet
What's my name?
It hurts my brain to think
Sounds from the city, sound so pretty
Young bands playing
Young kids digging - And I dig them
The USA's got the sea
Yeah, but the British kid's got the streets I don't mind, the city's
right
Sounds from the street, sounds just fine



so i'm back online(full version) after a hiatus of a few weeks, where i had no connection, or used my blackberry on the go... we spent a few cosy evenings with radio4, and i plotted new creative endeavours to keep me occupied(i'm rhehearsing an idea for a hammond organ party album, of beatles, james bond and tv-themes...).
before i went offline, i did get involved in a bit of a spat with an online forum, which was quite an eye-opener, the story follows thus...

my fault really, i'd never actually read the magazine(who i won't name) before getting involved, i thought it would be a good way to chat with fellow music lovers, and maybe pick up a few tips(damned if i didn't discover some great music though...), but it soon ended-up with me getting into arguements with all these odd, little web-warriors, with no real opinions of their own... knocking down anything i had to say, with one line put-downs, such as "well, i read in a magazine that such-and-such were good, but i disagree... so there."
nice, thanks for the insight.
there were a few people who i enjoyed debating with, but they were sadly out-numbered by the majority who probably had very narrowly defined record-collections, which is too bad(for them, at least).

it all got a bit emotional, which of course is a good thing... who wants to sit and mumble about something that they feel passionate about?
naturally, i got into a routine of slagging off one particular vapid popstar who no one in their right mind would consider worthy of being in a magazine of musical legends... that was the crux of one particular problem though, the writers of the DTP version hailed all the usual old suspects as untouchable and the only modern material they rated was anything vaguely music-biz connected(ie - someone who's people spent a lot of money advertising in the magazine)... and any vaguely unknown bands were "spotty indie herberts", or something similar... also i found myself having to stand-up for loathing loathsome record-company bands... again not naming any names, but dross like coldplay, snowpatrol, radiohead... zzzzzz, sorry, where was i?

just out of curiosity however, i actually made the mistake of buying the current issue, as there was an article on how lilly allen had been hounded on the internet for her views on downloading... and the writer soon got down to the crux of the matter, which was basically criticising bloggers(the old professional writer versus someone who doesn't get paid to do it, and merely has an opinion).
not something i got involved in debating, but i waded in with some excellent quotes here... brilliant stuff really, i enjoyed that feeling of annoying people who thought that they themselves were above criticism.

language is my oxygen.

it was fun for a while, but hanging around with bitter old hippies isn't my thing, and i was just killing time until the inevitable internet shutdown.

read it and weep, i suppose.

tuning up

here's one i made earlier
got a call last night from alan - he'd noticed the myspace i'd put for him had gone awry... i blame flickr meself... lots of the images i'd linked to were "unavailable".
so i went through the html on the site and re-loaded all the addresses that i'd linked with.
in the interim, i also experimented with an animated gif. about 10 years after everyone else had been using them.
who says i can't embrace technology?
while working on the webpage, it occurred to me that i was also listening to a radio caroline rockabilly show on satellite, and that alan famously performed/recorded image which was used as a radio caroline theme tune for many years(amongst other uses!).

alan of course, played on hundreds of other musical projects, notably being john barry's organist of choice for all his big 60's film themes, as well as releasing plenty of his own material(i have a tidy little stash of his albums...).

the future is unwritten

granada - spain 2008
Originally uploaded by ☆eightbaII is offline until late october☆

i was watching said film this evening(a biog by julien temple about joe strummer), and as they covered the period where joe goes to granada after breaking up the clash...

we climbed it alright... all the way through the gipsy sector and up the steepest path in the world... it was worth it though ten times over!
on the way back it started raining - so we ducked into a flamenco bar built into the caves and had a nice lunch with free drinks!

they had this very view(including the tree in the background), during a voice-over.
this was a hill above granada in the al baicin, where we climbed up to see some cave houses.
yours sincerely - gobsmacked.

international jet set

The businessmen are having fun are they on a different plane to me
I've lost touch with reality, they all seem so absurd to me
Like well dressed chimpanzees

Spend and spend and spend and spend
Will the muzak never end?

poor buggers... we spent an hour taking the piss out of these people, at the next table, in some generic coffee shop in barcelona's brand new airport wing(no pun intended), all super shiny floors, and over-priced generic coffee shops selling pastries well above the mark.
i was reminded of this following a tweet by that there david quantick about travel-taverns, and my own experience of meeting sales-reps over the years... i've stayed in a few travel-lodges over the years, strange familiar looking places, all brown and orange with oatmeal coloured carpets.
many years ago - i went for a job interview with a courier firm, and i was going to be working with the interviewer, a portly older-looking bloke, who had slept on a cot in his office for three months, trying to catch up on the work... the job was going to be 10 pm till 6 am... and despite them being keen to have me start right away, i got a better daytime offer, thankfully.

back to barcelona though... we'd just escaped the cultural madness that is BCN to find ourselves with an hour to kill in the departure lounge, and of course took to the well worn travel routine of taking the michael out of our fellow journeymen, for shits and giggles.
the businessmen in the photo were tucking germanically into beers and pastries at six in the morning... all dressed up with somewhere to go, still playing their arrogant office politic games with the airport people around them... and were slightly perturbed to find themselves being sniggered at by two tattooed scruff hillbillies(this is not the percieved wisdom of the cultural pecking order - mentally i suppose they were having us demoted to the postroom for six months... although i have worked in a postroom and it's not that bad a place to be...).
i kept having the specials song(see above) go around in my head... it reminded me of not long after i'd first heard the song, and i'd seen some businessmen in a restuarant, all walking timidly in single file, no one daring to take the step of breaking rank.
they did give us a few glances, and once they'd sussed out their powers weren't going to work on us went back to talking about mortgages, and projected business options, or some such guff(do tired businessmen dream of electric sleep?), and even we got bored and amused ourselves by taking photos of the napkin dispencer, as we concluded the character on it looked like a badly dressed transvestite.

autumn is the finest time of all

i was reminded of this fine tune(whilst browsing a forum i haunt), and it took me back to my 80's days in scotland, when i was living in kilmarnock or aberdeen....
walking around in oversized coats, with those fingerless gloves that fishermen wear, spending a lot of time getting back to nature in various woods, hanging around with new people(the taste of dandelion coffee springs to mind as a signifier of the new era... we were re-inventing our world), there was a feeling that the old world order had changed, and that something new was dawning, although to be honest it did feel more like a nuclear winter than autumn.
i was exploring new places and meeting the sort of people i wanted to hang out with, as opposed to those that fate had thrown my way.

one of those periods in life, when you throw off the shackles of who you used to be at school(or more likely - who you were told you should be), as i was starting to find myself... a scruffy indie-kid with a rockabilly hair-do, listening to winsome indie music, post punk hybrids and the polecats...

it really did feel like one long wintertime, that carried on forever.
bonfires in the woods, walking along deserted beaches, taking shortcuts across industrial wastelands, finding the abandoned cricket pitch in kilmarnock with it's 1940's buildings still intact but unused in decades, parents well out of the scene - as they busied themselves with being old and boring(i was working now, so no longer depended on the past to support me), reading futurist manifestoes, looking at european art and wishing i could be as savvy as modern french illustrators, punks from sink estates tearing it up whilst drunk on cider, rattling old buses with no heating and steamy windows, riding around on my bike in impractical clothing, wondering why all my friends were disapearing one after another into some strange nether world called "beyond the town".
i was a mobile urban dodger(as i-D called us), wearing 50's clothing, raincoats, avoiding anything remotely fusty, listening to new music... working as a graphic designer for the local council, always staying one step ahead of responsibility, always on the lookout for joy.

Days of speed and slow time Mondays -
Pissing down with rain on a boring Wednesday -
Watching the news and not eating your tea -
A freezing cold flat and damp on the walls - that's entertainment!

funny how wearing second hand clothes can seem like the future.

searching for the young soul rebels

Sir Galahad by Lord Alfred Tennyson

My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel:
They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
And when the tide of combat stands,
Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
That lightly rain from ladies' hands.

How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favours fall !
For them I battle till the end,
To save from shame and thrall:
But all my heart is drawn above,
My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine:
I never felt the kiss of love,
Nor maiden's hand in mine.
More bounteous aspects on me beam,
Me mightier transports move and thrill;
So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer
A virgin heart in work and will.

When down the stormy crescent goes,
A light before me swims,
Between dark stems the forest glows,
I hear a noise of hymns:
Then by some secret shrine I ride;
I hear a voice but none are there;
The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
The tapers burning fair.
Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,
The silver vessels sparkle clean,
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
And solemn chaunts resound between.

Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
I find a magic bark;
I leap on board: no helmsman steers:
I float till all is dark.
A gentle sound, an awful light !
Three arngels bear the holy Grail:
With folded feet, in stoles of white,
On sleeping wings they sail.
Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!
My spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,
And star-like mingles with the stars.

When on my goodly charger borne
Thro' dreaming towns I go,
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
The streets are dumb with snow.
The tempest crackles on the leads,
And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;
But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
And gilds the driving hail.
I leave the plain, I climb the height;
No branchy thicket shelter yields;
But blessed forms in whistling storms
Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.

A maiden knight--to me is given
Such hope, I know not fear;
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
That often meet me here.
I muse on joy that will not cease,
Pure spaces clothed in living beams,
Pure lilies of eternal peace,
Whose odours haunt my dreams;
And, stricken by an angel's hand,
This mortal armour that I wear,
This weight and size, this heart and eyes,
Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.

The clouds are broken in the sky,
And thro' the mountain-walls
A rolling organ-harmony
Swells up, and shakes and falls.
Then move the trees, the copses nod,
Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
'O just and faithful knight of God!
Ride on ! the prize is near.'
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;
By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide,
Until I find the holy Grail.

my aim is true

thinking ahead here(ha! visual pun...)
i bought a hat, a real one.
been after one of these for a while now... keep seeing similar ones around that never quite reach teh target, this will do me just right(with a leather jacket for that cliched joe strummer look i enjoy...), get a hat, get ahead!
but i digress...
house move in motion soon, so i'm using that as a milestone of sorts, to put a few things to bed and strengthen other ideas i have been working on...
i'm plotting a book of photography - some of my best shots in one handy compendium, all sorted out, just have to sit down and work out which images to use, and in which order then send it off to the printer.
i'll be selling it around like a pimp, so keep 'em peeled.
i may invest in a printer to run off individual shots, this should be good as i get to see stuff on walls - there is a digital photography magazine which is campaigning for photographers to get back into printing again(as they say - we put the stuff up on the web, and stick it on cd's but never experience them in a frame... which is exactly what i'm guilty of...).
i plan to visit some dramatic locations next year - if there is time and such this year, i may fit in a weekend to some old seaside towns though...
the music is going to take a back seat to photography, i'm selling off old synths and guitars like nobody's business, although i will continue with the helvatones and record an album of bluesy stuff(working title memphis stew), featuring mainly hammond and bass/drums but precious little of my inept attempts at guitar(which i have been trying to learn all year....).
i will be stepping up the podcasts, with a good mix of rockabilly/blues/post-punk/dub-influenced sounds... this should be at least once or twice a month... i have a lot to say about music and some great material that deserves to be enthused about(i'm in an ian dury mood at the moment).
so the move, is a good point at which to finish/start ideas.
now about that hat...