Kind of Blue

It's been a kind of blue day so far. Insofar as that's possible in a top class hotel anyway.

The pool is kind of blue. The sky is awful blue and me, I'm just trying my best to fit in with the general mood. Why rock the boat? But don't you go worrying about me. You have enough of your own problems. The thing with the thing!

Anyway, lying by that blue pool, which is only blue due to the blue sky reflecting 'pon it, I listened to Kind of Blue. What I find amazing is that anyone, even you, can simply call upon Kind of Blue whenever you want. If you want to. 

This is the line up:

Miles Davis - trumpet

John Coltrane - tenor sax

Bill Evans - piano

Cannonall Adderley - alto sax

These great jazz immortals are all dead now but can be brought back to life via the play button. To spend an hour in the company of these cats playing their thymoleptic, sizzling music is a simple but intense pleasure. The most amazing thing about this album, more than any other jazz album, is how distinct you can hear each player but, equally, how seamlessly the overall sound comes together. 

The sound of Spring, New York, 1959. WRIT LARGE.

Time. The old enemy.

Awoke this morning to the sound of the cleaner banging my door and shouting "Are you awake, Baba?".

I checked the time on my phone. 9:32am. What bliss. A lie in.

"I am now, Mama", I shouted back.

I'm not sure if I was being rude or charming here. Impossible to gauge, really. It may even have been deeply racist.

I got up to buy some skype credit on my intanet to find that my computer disagreed with my phone's analysis re 9:32.  It countered, 8:32.  

Then I checked my watch, you'd think the authority on the matter, and it disagreed with the analysis of both my computer and my phone. 

10:32.

What a mess. What a temporal debacle this day was turning into.

I'm not quite sure what happened but suffice to say I missed breakfast. Badly.

Terminal 2E

In the barrage of music that's been pouring into my poor ears this year I almost forgot about Portishead's Third. A doctor friend of mine (sadly not a real one) paid actual money for it and I ripped it off him as Winter gave way to Spring's first flushes.

I think I put it on while making some pizza and it didn't fit the Friday night mood quite right. So we reverted to Rufus Wainwright who never fails on such occasions.

But now we're in the bleak midwinter and terminal 2E at Paris airport is an unbelievably depressing place to be right now. The Beaujolais Nouveau I'm drinking couldn't be much more out of place and somehow then feels about right.

And now, here, I'm finally catching up with Portishead's Third. I think it's been worth the wait. The chilled wine may be helping but I'm warming to the occasion. Two hours til we board and this place doesn't seem so bad. It's cold and unfriendly but, like everything perhaps, has an inner beauty. It's not an easy place to be but once you're here you can just about make sense of it. 

The album isn't an easy place to be either but it's starting to make sense too. It's spikily difficult but Beth Gibbon's stark, intimate vocals are lovely juxtaposition to this wonkily evocative soundscape.

An hour to go and perhaps one more incongruous Beaujolais Nouveau may be in order.  Yes, why not and a second attempt at Third to go with it. I'm tired and a little depressed but, still, I must be punished.

Smithwicks

Dublin airport last night. 

Watched aghast as a fellow showed pints of Smithwick's no respect whatsoever.

He downed four pints in an hour as I nursed by pint of stout. Each pint of fizzy keg ale was afforded no more than four gulps as he poured it down his throat. A heroically quadrilocular effort!

If anything I showed the Smithwick's even less respect [1]. But from a very safe distance.

[1] less than no respect whatsoever?

Why the ten?

If a cup of tea is €2.10 you might ask yourself why.

Like this : Why?

You probably wouldn't bother asking why you'd been ripped off. You'd expect that. Especially on a train [1].

A better question would be why €2.10. Or why the .10?

I can see two possible reasons for the .10 :

1. A charge of €2 exactly sounds like they just made it up. Plucked a number out of thin air.
   
2. They simply couldn't do it for less. Suzie in Accounts crunched the numbers, cooked up a pie-chart which said €2.10.

€2.10 for a cup of tea though. Can you imagine! What with the credit crunch and everything. 

Imagine if you went into a bank and asked for a loan of €2.10 for a cup of tea. They'd laugh at you. And rightly so. 

Haven't you heard about the credit crunch, they'd say.

[1] Funnily enough, I was charged €2.10 for a cup of tea this very morning. On a train.

Are you ok with your decay?

I'm wondering. I've been reading Philip Roth's Everyman and listening to Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump. Not necessarily at the same time. 

They're both about decay. The first about the decay of the human body and the second about the decay of computers and technology. But Grandaddy may actually be using the decay of obsolete technology as a metaphor for the decay of human relationships. Heartbreak to give it another name.

So are you ok with your decay?

It's not fucking ideal is it, but what can you do!

Let's leave the last words on the matter to those much missed Californian alt-geek rockers:

In truth I'm okay with my decay

I have no voice

I have no choice 

So I rejoice

Isobel Campbell

I listened to the fragrant Isobel Campbell being interviewed by Guy Garvey on his 6 Music show last night.

I think she's a terrifically talented songwriter with the voice of an angel. She's also very normal, surprisingly ditsy and giggly, barely able to string a cohesive sentence together. Like a girl you might meet whilst getting a colouring at the hairdressers. Guy was clearly smitten and giggled like a schoolboy throughout. I liked her a lot.

Not much of a blog, I know, but at least I now have a picture of Isobel Campbell up. Two pictures.

The Ecumenical Council

I first met Tom Holland in 1972 at a Welsh Ladies Fencing tournament in Llandudno.

We had a shared love of the sport and we bonded over beer and doctrinal technicalities that weekend. Even then Holland had only 3 interests in life:

1. Ladies Fencing
   
2. Beer
   
3. The Ecumenical Council

But not in that order. In the opposite order:

1. The Ecumenical Council
   
2. Beer
   
3. Ladies Fencing
   

You would imagine that a man so obsessed with recounting  intricate details of The Ecumenical Council would be a dull man indeed. Not so Tom Holland. He imbued these weighty ecumenical matters with such a spirit of Temps d'Escrime and parried questions with a Rapier-like Froissement that it was impossible not to be captivated. 

Drinking pint after pint of strong Brains bitter that little bar in Llandudno truly felt like the centre of the known universe. Happy times indeed.

In 1975 when Tom got his first record deal there was only one subject he was likely to record. His beloved The Ecumenical Council. 

Listening to this record over 30 years later you realise what a remarkable and enduring piece he has created. With nothing more than harp and snare-drum by way of accompaniment he truly brings the subject to life. 

If anything, I understand the actual details of his monologue even less now than I did all these years ago. But that matters not. After just a few minutes I allow my mind to drift off calmly on his dulcet tones and we're back in that little bar once again. And I think to myself:

By Christ, we did some bevvying that weekend!

  

The Dangers of Religious Life

I was lying in my sunroom yesterday listening to this sparkling sermon from the Very Reverend William (Bill) McNamara. 

Of the Reverends I know Bill is definitely the Veriest.

He's also some man for the words and they fairly danced and sparkled from his mouth, each more layered and imparting deeper metaphor than the previous. As I lay there, watching the dip and swell of the ornamental parachutist in my vestibule, my brow became fevered and my spirit fervoured.

Then I realised that I'd left the bath running and water was cascading down the stairs destroying everything in it's wake. What a calamity!

Never had the powerful motif of this forgotten old piece of scratched shellac seemed more prescient.

Escapism

I was listening to child psychologist, Dr Tanya Byron, on Radio 4's "The Media Show" recently.

She was discussing why children’s viewing can and should be controlled. But, she argued, children, like adults, need some tv "downtime" away from the stresses of daily life. 

After a hard days learning at school and dropping crumbs all over the house they need to simply sit down, empty their tiny little minds and be entertained and enchanted.  Not challenged. She lauded "Spongebob and Squarepants" in this regard, a programme that she, herself, greatly enjoyed. 

She went on to say that adults were exactly the same. When she went home at night after a hard day's kiddie staring the last thing she required was some informative documentary about the boring old war or some outdated Dickens dramatisation with fancy language. She preferred to sit down, disengage her brain entirely, and watch "Strictly" or "X-Factor" with a glass of Australian Chardonnay. That's what she said. 

It's what being a human being is all about, she also said.

Internet Radio

My internet radio is a fickle mistress to say the least.

As times she leaves me whimpering with simple pleasure but, as often, leaves me depressed, helpless and cuckolded.

They say there's a book in everyone and, if that's true, I suspect the fractious, beautiful, unhappy and joyful relationship I have with my internet radio may be the subject of my own tome. It would be a cast of two since everyone else in our house, quite rightly, stays well away.

I'll probably cover this in more detail in the future when I'm less emotionally frazzled.

Bolander

Here's my old sparring partner Neddy appearing as Bolander in my house last night. It was a great honour to have him perform in my living room and I emailed him to let him know.

You're probably wondering, did I use some kind of fancy screen scrape technology? 

Nope, friend. I did not. I took the picture off the telly with my ducking? phone. 

I didn't think this was possible due to semi-diffusional gamma rays or some such. It certainly didn't used to be back in the days. 

My parents have an alarming number of pictures of a grey tv (some inexplicably featuring a single slippered foot at the bottom left of shot). The idea that the tv could genuinely have been off on each occasion is not a feasible one. I can only conclude that they were trying to take pictures of Tommy O'Connor or Jimmy Tarbuck for whatever the seventies equivalent of a (world wide we)b log was. 

You think this is all a bit mentalist? Well, at least I wasn't watching 'X' or 'Strict'. 

Je reste mon valaise.

Not sure why Neddy (Bolander) is wearing a Dundee United scarf. Perhaps he's a fan. I'm sure he would have mentioned it though...

 

Predictive Text 3

It doesn't even like me swearing...

I don't need no moral guidance from a bleedin' phone.

I don't swear that often but the notion of deciding the 2011 Rugby World Cup seedings 3 whole years in advance for "logistical reasons" is ducking? ridiculous.

Orange Conundrum

You may consider this a matter or no importance and I might agree before adding that, if that's true, then the matter is very welcome on this blog. This blog's very raison d'être is to find a home, to love and care for, such matters. For if not here, where?

But what is the matter of which you speak?

The matter is this (and thanks for your patience) .

When I'm eating a tangerine (as I do at least twice per day) or a mandarin (I don't know the difference) and reach for the second half I find that it's never there.  It's already been gobbled. 

Now I'm not suggesting that someone is coming over to my desk and stealing it. I think that's unlikely although not impossible. More likely is that I've already eaten the second half before I reach to get it. 

Is this confusing? Bear with me. It's important (although obviously of no importance).

Now clearly I must have reached to get the second half a first time before eating it. But what I think is happening here (and this is merely a theory at this stage) is that, perhaps due to excessive juicyness, I've actually achieved some kind of internal tangerine/mandarin frenzy and have become completely blind to the fact that I've already reached for and eaten the second half. And, thus, end up reaching for an already eaten and therefore non existent tangerine/mandarin half.

And, worse, I do precisely the same thing with the second tangerine/mandarin. Another frenzy resulting in a futile search for a non existent second half.

Unless someone is coming over to my desk and stealing them...

Butcher v Maradona

Would Terry Butcher at least have the decency to act Scottish?

Diego Maradona is an icon, a legend in Scottish football. He doesn't deserve the nasty, petulant, babyish side-swiping and whinnying from Butcher who refuses to forgive and forget the infamous Hand of God goal.

Anyway, as you can see from the picture, it's far from conclusive yet.

 

Sargeant's Ballroom

John Sargeant has decided to pull out of Strictly Come Ballroom Dancing. Or Ballroom as it's known. 

He said, 

"The trouble is that there is now a real danger that I might win the competition. Even for me that would be a joke too far."

Now the way this works, for those of you less au fait than me with the Ballroom format, is that the expert judges, judge the dancer's performance but then, as a clever twist, their expert opinion is completely ignored. 

Instead, the BBC ask the Great British Public (GBP) to spend their hard earned money to phone in and gainsay the expert judges. It's all jolly good fun and helps the BBC keep Ballroom on air every single night of the week. Without adequate Ballroom our life would be very difficult indeed.

But here's the nub...

The GBP don't like the so called expert judges one little bit and they boo and hiss at them pantomime fashion.

What do these idiots know!!!, they pontificate from their Saturday night armchairs. 

Bunch of bloody poofters wouldn't know a good dancer if they saw one!!!, they perhaps add.

On an internet chat room (therein lies madness) today one actually said,

"I am very angry about this ... I have supported John from the start and have voted for him and now the bullies have won."

That, of course, is part of the trick. The judges on Ballroom are all effete arseholes and are eminently dislikable. The GBP, on the other hand, are normal people and as any fule kno have a much greater appreciation of the more technical aspects of the dance genre. Through attending weddings and the like. 

But now, Catastophe Hathst Strucken! 

This has backfired horribly on the BBC. Everything is ruined, ruined. All their clever thinking has been cast asunder. John Sargeant with his fancy ideas and gadoid mush has presumed to know better than the GBP. 

Treason! Hang that man.

Ned's Reply

Finally, finally, Ned Beatty emailed me back.

Since our last correspondence I've watched the Big Man twice on Homicide, Life on the Street. With each passing episode my admiration for his work grows. I consider Neddy to be a friend and, as you'll see, I think he feels the same way about me.

From: Ned Beatty (nedbeatty@nedbeattysings.com)

Sent: Mon 11/17/08 6:05 AM

To: musters@forthewaywelivetoday.com

Howdi Musters,

Word up! And ... "In the Beginning Was the Word."

(Just my little joke)

As the holiday season approaches, it's been very busy so apologies for not replying sooner.

Steve, Thank-you so much for considering me for your project, Thank you, Thank-you, Thank-you!

I'd love to say, Yes, my friend, and verily I was very close to doing so. Then, after discussing the project with my wife and sister we decided the answer had to be a reluctant ... No. All of us are Worsted Yarns now, you must understand!!!

But that night we had a few glasses of wine over dinner and it seemed like a swell idea again. None of us had ever visited Budapest, Hungary...

But, now, alas, in the cold, caliginous light of the new dawn it must flip back to No, No, No. I wanted to send you this email NOW in case we changed our minds again!!!

Would you like to buy my new CD? With all of the holidays being just around the corner, maybe a CD would make a thoughtful gift for YOUR family and friends. If you think so too just click on the link below!

May this holiday season bring to you and yours all of the joy and happiness that you deserve.

God Bless,

Neddy

http://cdbaby.com/cd/nedbeatty

Am I disappointed? A little, of course. But I understand. If Ned could have helped Ned would have helped. I'll have to keep looking is all.

(I bought one of his CD's)

(Actually, I bought six by mistake)

Phones and McGonagall

My mate Andy phoned me last night. He phones now and again for a chat. He enjoys chatting.

So I took the phone through to the place in the house with a poor signal and answered. I could just about hear him but he couldn't hear me. Eventually the poor signal deteriorated to no signal at all and the line dropped. So I went back to watching the Munster game in peace.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when phone conversations with my mates were along the lines of:

Hey

Pint?

Yup

Friday at 8, Staggs?

Aye, see you then

Bye

Sometimes the above conversation could be obviated entirely by actually arranging the pint the week before. In person, while drunkenly staggering out of Staggs. And, regular as clockwork, everyone would be there the following week at 8. These were simpler times.

Now everyone wants to chat. Even men. It's all gone a bit arse over tit, if you'll forgive the expression.

From what I could make out, Andy wanted to have a chat about the Scottish poet William Topaz McGonagall. Now I'd normally be more than happy to discuss the merits and demerits of McGonagall at great length so long as I was safely ensconced in the snug of Milne's Bar with a pint of 80/- in front of me (and possibly 3 or 4 behind me). Certainly not over the phone. 

Honestly, if it wasn't for emergencies, I'd seriously consider disabling my phone's voice function.

Settings / Phone / Voice / Off.

Paradox Smokehead

I note with interest that BrewDog have just won  first prize at the "Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ Awards." Apart from being an apostrophal nightmare, this is an extremely coveted award.

But the brewery has come in for severe criticism from some quarters (not least this one). They have been warned by The Portman Group, who promote sensible drinking, that drinking Brewdog products is the very definition of not-sensible. They go on to say that the way Brewdog advertise their products promotes excess, particularly among younger people. Brewdog respond simply by calling for the abolition of The Portman Group. They don't care, what anyone thinks, see.

Now my own view on Brewdog are documented here (me no likey) but I don't quite see what all the fuss is about. Young people bent on excess are hardly likely to be swayed by guff like "Paradox Smokehead - a unique whisky cask aged stout" even if it comes in at a hefty 10% ABV. Like normal young people they'll simply seek vomit-inducing oblivion via the medium of the cheapest can of cider they can find. I think we can rest safe in the knowledge that none of our young people would be stupid enough to drink anything from Brewdog.

So, who in the name of Sweet Baby James, does drink this stuff? Who are they marketing their crass and overbearing marketing at?

Well I don't know. I can only assume that they are aiming for the age group at the highest point on the Earnings/Stupidity scatter diagram. Should such a thing exist.

They're right about one thing though. It is a Paradox. I just can't fathom it.

Percy Grainger

If you haven't heard any of the extraordinary symphonies, choral works or piano music of Percy Grainger I would urge you not to bother with the greatest possible haste.

Grainger was born in 1882 and managed to mooch around, generally annoying people, until his death (of natural causes) in 1961. He was born 6 years before Celtic Football Club were founded and died 6 years before I, myself, was founded (i.e. born).

Can anything be read into that?

Unlikely.

The notable thing about Grainger is that his primary interest in music was to promote his daft ideas about racial purity. He had very little interest in the music per se (per cy).

For example, he despised all musical instruments. He considered them an absolutely unnecessary affectation in the making of music. He preferred to develop and promote his daft musical ideas about racial purity via less conventional forms. He eschewed actual musical instruments and composed and played his pieces literally "upon and in the air we breath". 

Percy Grainger was a very odd man.

He had a particularly strong aversion to the piano. He believed that it "deliberately destroyed" his "melodiously conceived ideas" by trying to "shoehorn" them into the limitations of "two human hands" and a "box of hammers and strings". Strong words indeed.

He did, however, manage to "dish up", as he put it, several piano pieces in a variety of styles. All of them were, unfortunately, unplayable. This was much down to Grainger's unconventional musical notation which he attempted to free from Latin and Greek "impurities". So his sheet music contains such racially engendered terms as "louden hugely", "heavily but cloyingly", "harped all the way" and "make toppermost whiter" that nobody, but nobody, could make head nor tail of.

What else? Let me check my Wikipedia ... here we go,

1. Grainger's mother allocated time each day to stare at a statue of a Greek god in the belief it would pass some of its qualities to her child.
   
2. In London, he was known as "the jogging pianist" for his habit of racing through the streets to a concert, where he would bound on stage at the last minute because he preferred to be in a state of utter exhaustion when playing
   
3. In 1910 Grainger began designing and making his own clothing, ranging from jackets, to shorts, togas, muumuus and leggings, all made from towels and also intricate grass and beaded skirts.
   
4. He also designed a crude forerunner of the modern sports bra for his Danish sweetheart.

As mentioned, Percy Grainger was a very odd man.

Eventually, disaffected and embittered, Grainger gave up composing and playing entirely and spent his winter years making up jolly folk songs. About racial purity.

Neachtains

I dropped into Galway's best pub, Neachtains, last week for a couple of pints.

I was welcomed in the door by Tom Waits' Rain Dogs playing at a slightly louder volume than you'd expect. Waits doesn't do background music and, even if he did, it wouldn't be Rain Dogs. This album, along with it's predecessor Swordfishtrombones, marked the end of Waits bohemian, crooner persona and heralded his junkyard, bone machine shouty one. The persona he maintains to this very day. 

Then I saw another musical hero of mine, John Martyn. I grabbed my pint and asked him if he minded if I joined him. He didn't seem to.  

We talked about his life and music and I told him how much I admired how he'd re-invented the folk genre with his unique jazz inflections and deliberately slurred vocal style. I reminded him that we'd met, years ago, in Kendall, when he was wearing a kimono and showing large Bacardi and dribbles of coke the very smallest of respect. He was literally throwing them over his neck. 

He laughed and told me, veering - within a single sentence - between a Scottish, Irish, American and London accent, that he vaguely remembered the occasion and asked me if I'd buy him a pint of stout and a short while he went to the toilet. I assured him I would, with absolute pleasure.

As he got up and walked to the toilet it struck me that John Martyn, the singer, was confined to a wheelchair after having his right leg amputated below the knee a couple of years ago.

It's a great pub Neachtains. You just never know who you're going to bump into.

Po Kng Fre Plasy

There was one thing I wanted to talk to you about.

According to the note I scribbled last night it was Po Kng Fre Plasy.

Sometimes, I get inspired and a brilliant idea comes into my head. But I'm not near an intanet or I'm about to watch a program about Stephen Fry in America. So I write it down.

This happened last night and, according to my notes, the matter I wanted to cover was Po Kng Fre Plasy.

Do you agree?

Functions

I love functions. Weddings, Birthdays, Young Entrepreneur of the Year, that kind of thing.

You may sit with a banker or a prostitute but, at that table, everyone is equal. Typical of my luck, I sat down at a recent function with a banker.  

Whilst we tucked into our chicken and ham vol-au-vents and had a few drinks we put the world to rights.  By the time the chocolate profiteroles had arrived we'd not only put this world to rights but also the other eight planets which orbit the Sun [1].

Then the dancing started and everyone is having a great time. There's very little I enjoy more in life than watching people having fun. It's part of the very air I breathe.

So, as I sat there, watching people dance, chatting and enjoying their night out away from their hum drum, everyday lives, I though one thing. 

I wish I'd brought a book.

[1] we failed to put the Sun to rights and in fact, clashed violently over the matter.

Antiques Roadshow

Boy, were we ever sold a pup last night!

I'm a minor fan of this show in a very particular early Sunday evening kind of way. The same goes for One Man And His Dog which, sadly, seems to be no more. I'm even toying with watching Songs of Praise but I fear this may be taking things too far. Still, at least it's not as evil as it's Saturday night equivalents, X-Factor and Strictly Come Ballroom Dancing.

Anyway, I was more than usually excited about Antiques Roadshow last night as I'd read that some punter had turned up with an article which the assessor had valued at one million pounds. The details were a closely guarded secret and that only heightened my anticipation.

On the show last night there was a series of lovely items. A Faberge egg, delicately carved. An amazing Edison phonograph once owned by Harry Lauder. Some Francis Bacon sketches he did whilst out on the piss one night. These were only valued at only a few thousand each. What could possibly be worth a million?

Then some Tyneside local councillor turned up with a prototype Angel of the North that, by all accounts, he's nicked out of the broom cupboard. And this, this rusty piece of bronze, was valued at one million! Hard to fathom, really, and suggestive that the only antiques that are actually worth a million are the ones that patently aren't.

Predictive Text 2

Does my phone really believe that the rabbit recipe I'm cooking would be calling for "vizo?".

What kind of cheap shit phone would be unaware of something so simple as a sprig of thyme?

CD collection

I was just in the house of the finest fiddler in Ireland.

He played me some bizarre C&W sean-nós album on which he played the bouzouki. When he went to make some tea I took a look at his CD collection.

Guess what! Here's a secret...

(It was really, really bad)

I saw a Shania Twain and an Eva Cassidy and, at that, I looked no more for fear of what I might find.

I left as grateful as I've ever been that I'm utterly devoid of musical talent.

Wee Car

Returning from yet another disastrous assignation (15 grand!) this morning I saw this wee car. 

It was tiny and spooky and I didn't know what it wanted. It surveyed me with a quiet, leering menace. I felt weak and faint and woozy.

I quit that place with haste but was slowed down by (the need to take) this picture.

Fordlandia

I would happily have bought Johan Jóhannsson's superb new album for the opening and closing tracks alone.

Fordlandia and How We Left Fordlandia run for 13:43 and 15:25, respectively, and are truly things of rare beauty.

In between those two abstract, symphonic masterpieces we have melodias i to iv which finally build into the final triumphant Melodia in which we are offered Guidelines For Space Propulsion, no less. 

As if that wasn't enough we are also treated to a chimeric, ariel view of that vast, untamed wilderness of Fordlandia before learning that, finally, The Great God Pan is Dead. 

Hurray!

I imagined Fordlandia might be a reference to the landscape of Jóhannsson's native Iceland but, in fact, it relates to Henry Ford who, in the 1920's, purchased vast tracts of land in Brazil with the intention of manufacturing rubber and, thus, cutting out the middle man and increasing profits. 

The plan was, predictably, a disaster not least because Ford didn't know what the hell he was doing and tried to enforce US prohibitionist ideology on Brazilian peasant workers who enjoyed a pint and a fag. 

The final straw came when Ford tried to make them eat hamburgers. The workers were revolted by these beef patties and they literally revolted, chasing their bosses into the jungle where they were eaten by tigers and pecked by enormous pachyglossal parrots. 

So listening to this extraordinary music don't think of glacial fjords or gabbroic geysers think of spare engine parts and the smell of rotten rubber in a decaying Amazonian hinterland. 

Actually think of what you want, only listen to the music. If you like it you might try it's predecessor, IBM 1401 - A User's Manual, which, more predictably, is about an IBM 1401 User's Manual. 

John Kelly

McGenius skyped me yesterday thusly,

[11/11/2008 12:58:02] 

McGenius says: Hey, John Kelly - you read his novel?

I had read it not. I'm a big fan of John Kelly's radio show but I didn't even know he'd written a novel.

I deliberately kept him waiting before lying,

[11/11/2008 13:02:28] 

Musters says: I've been meaning to get it for a while now.

[11/11/2008 13:02:34] 

McGenius says: S'on my desk if you'd like

I was over at his desk at [11/11/2008 13:02:42]

Yes I got there in 8 seconds. Lickety-split.

The book is called Sophisticated Boom Boom and, like all Kelly's work, I heartily recommend it to you. Yes I have it read already. I devoured it, meaning I read it quickly, not ate it, by [12/11/2008 13:02:42]. In less than 24 hours. 

Saying John Kelly is a DJ is a bit like saying Leonard Cohen is a singer. It doesn't even begin to tell the whole story. Listening to his afternoon show on RTE's Lyric FM will offer you an aural experience nonpareil. He'll take you from Bach to Aphex Twin through Wayne Shorter, Toumani Diabate and Orlando Gibbons back to Sigur Ros and Elbow before you know what's hit you. 

There truly is no better musical arbiter in whom to trust your your listening pleasure. Even a dinner party chez (woops) Musters would be unlikely to throw up such outrageously good taste.

His book shows, through the character's childhood experiences in Fermanagh, how Kelly's love of music developed and how in the most mundane surroundings music retained the power to uplift and inspire. All sorts of music. He just missed out on Punk and the Pistols but found solace and salvation in Horslips and Handel instead. 

I won't say much more about the book primarily because I'm fibbing when I say I've read it already. I didn't get where I am today by reading books before reviewing them.

Children in Need

Children in Need, this year, is hosted by Terry Wogan, Tess Daly and Fearne Cotton. It's also jam packed with pop star performances, while the cast of EastEnders turn into "West Enders" for the night and The Bill pop on suits and shades to become the Blues Brothers. BBC newsreaders will be humiliating themselves for our entertainment and the biggest stars of stage and screen will entertain us in their own inimitable way. 

I'm all for giving money to children in need. I can think of no other flavour of children I'd like to give to more. 

To quote my dear Mum "I'm a Mcghee no a McTack". 

She is, admittedly, referring to herself but I also like to think of myself as a Mcghee. The electoral register, however, strongly disagrees with my analysis.

Anyway, the BBC website encourages us to give generously despite, as they put it, the "credit crunch". I do wish people would stop bandying that term willy-nilly. I mean to say, do people really borrow money in order to give to charity? It would surely be an unusual state of affairs.

I will give to children in need. It's clearly a very worthy cause. If, however, you think I'm wasting my Friday night watching that shite you have another thing coming.

Berenstain Bears

The Berenstain Bears are a family of bears. A Mum and Dad, a Sister and Brother.

They live somewhere deep in bear country. They're kind of furry round the torso. Like people, only more so.

My kids love them and I don't hate them. It doesn't get much better than that.

The episode we watched was about a lighthouse keeper who was a ghost A green one. But really he wasn't. He was just a lighthouse keeper pretending to be a green ghost. 

Why green? 

That's not important.

Anyway, the bears sussed him out pretty quickly and saved the day by turning the lighthouse into a tourist attraction.

Sadly it wasn't the episode pictured.

Rob Bryden

The One Show is good. Well quite good anyway. As I may have mentioned.

But you don't always get the quality of guest you get when Rob Bryden is on the couch. We did tonight for he was on it (the couch). 

There was a typically dull feature about a proposed compulsory DNA database with the usual arguments to and fro. Then back to Bryden on't couch who was asked what he thought of it.

He described it as a great idea and a genuine force for good that everyone should get behind. Before adding, 

"But I'm not in favour of it".

"Why not?", asked Chiles.

"I'd rather not say", he replied.

He continued,

"People say, if you haven't done anything wrong, you've nothing to be afraid of"

[pause]

"Which is another reason why I'm against it".

Brilliant! 

Then we jumped into bed and watched the Berenstain Bears. 

Scottish Football

I wish Irish people would stop picking on me about Scottish football. 

Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick.

They're being beastly unkind.

Ok, we don't have a big, fancy-shmancy league in Scotland like the English league they have over here in Ireland, but we're only a small country.

We're doing the best we can for Goodness Sake!

Louis Walsh

Louis Walsh, 56, is an expert talent spotter.

You might think you know talent but Louis, who is Irish, actually knows he knows it.  

So don't try to gainsay him. Just shut up. 

You may really enjoy a particular tune but you know nothing ... nothing about vocal stylings, pre-choruses, modulation of major and minor keys or even something so simple as how to create a bridge. 

Louis knows all this by heart and has done since he was in his late forties. 

Inbuilt collars

Remember back in the old days - before we lived the way we live today - when you had to buy a shirt and a jumper separately? What an odd age!

That's if you wanted to wear a jumper with a shirt under it of course. This is a very difficult thing to pull off without looking preppy and foppish and appalling. It's not impossible but it's definitely tricky and generally not recommended.

But you don't have to do that any more. You'd be hard pushed to do it even if you wanted to. Because they've solved the problem. Nowadays when you buy a jumper it comes with an inbuilt shirt. Not a whole shirt, mind you, just the visible bits around the collar. 

The reverse doesn't apply of course as if you bought a shirt with an inbuilt jumper then the whole jumper would be visible and only the visible bits around the collar of the shirt would be, er, visible. 

[thinks...]

Hold on that's just the same thing. Whichever way you cut it you get a jumper with little more than a suggestion of a shirt underneath.

Anyway, they've solved that centuries old separate jumper/shirt problem for us. 

Thanks Goodness for they. I know I couldn't have waited a second longer.

Russell Brand

I don't think I've ever knowingly watched Russell Brand on tv or heard him on the radio.

And I've generally got a decent handle on my own activities so you can probably infer that I have, in fact, never watched him on tv or heard him on the radio.

I have read him in the paper though. I read his sports column in the Guardian and find it diverting enough. This week he writes the following about Old Twitchy and his extraordinary improvement over his hapless predecessor at Spurs, Juande Ramos.

I suppose in a way it's not that baffling; one could use a Stradivarius to fiddle out Vivaldi or to smash a prostitute over the head - it's not the violin that decides whether to be a maestro or a misogynist, it's the operator.

It's a good line and also, I think, a brilliant and subtle sideswipe at the awful Clarkson and his pathetic oeuvre. 

Deipnosophy

I much prefer one conversation at a time over dinner. I may be old fashioned in this regard, many people seem quite happy to have two or more conversations concurrently but I find this off-putting and noisy and, predictably, I'm never in the conversation I want to be. 

It's even worse if the conversations are criss-crossed and I have snatches of interesting conversation about The One Show or Chopin coming at me amidships while I'm struggling to keep up my end of a conversation about James Fucking Bond or The Bleeding Economy.

My parents didn't really have dinner parties, they just had drunken drinks parties but they knew the importance even then of One Singer One Song. Of course, that related to actual singing songs rather than conversation but the principle applies. Now I think of it I can't quite fathom why more than one singer would have been singing more than one song but this was the seventies when they used to dress monkeys as jockeys and parade them down the High Street. At least in my home town anyway. I have a picture somewhere of the young Musters holding a monkey-jockey and I'll hunt it out and post it up here sometime. On a slow news days perhaps.

Deipnosophy is the art of dinner party conversation and one of it's key tenets is that when your hostess says "This is Nigel Slater" they mean "This is a Nigel Slater recipe". It helps no-one to suggest that we are actually eating Nigel Slater himself because cannibalism is rarely a fit topic for the dinner table (or, indeed, any table). No matter how funny you think it is, the idea of eating humans (even that one) is enough to put decent folks off their dinner.

Ned Beatty

Ned Beatty is perhaps my favourite actor. He's also very attentive about responding to his emails as you'll see.

He's probably best known for his first movie role in which he was horribly brutalised in Deliverance. But I don't want to think about that. 

He's a lovely cuddly old uncle to me and I prefer to think of him as Detective Stanley "Stan" Bolander, aka "Big Man", from the brilliant tv series Homicide, Life on the Street.

I sent Ned an email yesterday via his website and, honestly, within the hour he'd responded personally saying that he needed time to consider my request and that he'd speak to his wife and sister (2 different people, I assume) and get back to me as soon as possible (asap, he said).

I'm very excited. I'll keep you "looped-in", as they say.

The One Show (Two)

You have to be careful what you write.

Although one very good thing about my intanet is that it doesn't keep history records. I can simply go in and make a change and you'd never know. Unless, of course, you'd saved off that page to your own intanet storage device. But you'd have to be nuts to do that.

You may think I'd said this or that in posts passim but if you go back and look again carefully it may actually be that I'd  said the other. I can simply re-write history like it had never happened.

You know I was talking about that really interesting and clever wildlife chap off the life giving, life taking The One Show? Yea him, remember? Well I was out this afternoon having a music adventure with my kids and I bumped into his brother. His actual real brother in true life who not only looks and sounds like him but actually is his brother and is also bald.

As I chatted to him today I thought to myself thank goodness I didn't say anything nasty or mean about his interesting and clever brother off the telly. 

Lord Mayor's Show

Those lazy bastards at BBC Scotland are showing the Lord Mayor's Show this morning.

Why can't they show their own show? What the fuck is it anyway?

(Not that I was looking for Saturday Kitchen or anything)

Zbigniew

I was in Next today buying a deadly night shade.

The lady in front of me was being invited to enter a competition to win a holiday in Bali. She started to fill in the entry form and then asked if she really had to provide her email address. 

The assistant (Zbigniew) told her yes, but assured her they would only use the address to send her promotional information about once a week.

"For the rest of your life", I chipped in, helpfully.

"Yes", she agreed, adding "And I already get enough emails about viagra and sex aids".

"Viagra is a sex aid", I chipped in, helpfully.

She told Zbigniew that she wouldn't bother with the competition.

He replied, "You could always get another email address".

After she'd gone he told me that he'd only been joking with the other email address idea. I told him I had thought that, but had only been about 75% sure.

It's just a hunch but I suspect that Zbigniew is wasted in the Home Department at Next.

BrightBlack Morning Light

Sometimes I feel like I'm living back in the olden times.

In the days before intanets and magnetic card readers when you could run past a weatherbeaten fencepost 'pon summer hoof and make another reclaimation. In the days before hologram buffalos when beads spell power leaf. 

Did we even care about credit crunches (whatever they are!) when we could simply fry bread 'bove Amber Canon Majik and share our blanket with an owl?

No we did not, my friends.

And you don't even need drugs. I urge you not to take drugs. Only the music. Let into your soul, it will ease your troubled mind and make you whole again. I'll see your global recession and raise you a star blanket river child.

I'm saying, let BrightBlack Morning Light be your hammock today.

Chez

Is there anything quite so unnecessary in these straitened financial times than using the word chez when speaking English?

I think it's perfectly acceptable to spatter one's daily chit-chat with some foreign words, like coberta-acolchoada and treppenhausen for example, but chez, I think, is just slightly beyond the pale.

Chez is a derivative of the French word chez and means "at the place of".

Jessica Brinton in his, frankly incomprehensible (but unputdownable), Sunday Times column (it seems to be written in English but not as we know it) writes:

"Then there was a debauched evening in Richmond chez Nicky Haslam, of which the less said the better."

I couldn't agree more, mate.

Crazy?

Ignoring entirely the fact that we were in Ireland, physically speaking anyway, myself and an unusually shaped friend had a pint at lunchtime. This doesn't really happen in Ireland (except to alcoholics) but we're both (arguably) British so we did it anyway.

We ordered two pints of black blood from the dingiest pub in the Free State and sat down.

He told me how he remembered that he lost his mind and how pleasant that place was. Even his emotions had an echo in so much space. And he was so out there, without care, that he was out of touch. It wasn't that he didn't know enough, he knew too much. Have the time of your life, was his only advice. 

Come on now, who do you think you are, Ha Ha Ha bless your soul, he cackled maniacally.

Then I went to the toilet.

I think he's crazy. Possibly.