Deep Soul Morning

A couple of soul grooves with one being a deep soul classic. Two tracks for a gentle Sunday morning after all the funk from last night.

First, Same Cooke and A Change Is Gonna Come

This seems as appropriate now as it was was when he first cut this "anthem" of the Civil Rights Movement

Next up , James Carr and a deep soul tune from the Southern States , At The Dark End Of The Street.

Peace be with you.

Birthday Greetings

Happy birthday to angiereedgarner. Hope you have  a great day.

That Ambient Wheel In Faversahm Yesterday

I mentioned the other day that i took a couple of short videos with my camera whilst in Faversham. They have now been fixed, uploaded to You Tube and now i can show you that strange looking wheel in pre-movement and post-movement moments.So here is that ambient wheel , in standing mode -

and one where the couple are starting to roll it , with some difficulty.

The music must have been on a loop as well, and mixed in the middle of this loop and soundscape was a Johnny Cash song.

Interesting and weird.

Edit - googling further this was part of a street festival of theatre, dance, circus  and silliness.




This made it all a bit clearer.

Dave Godin

There have been delays on the trains coming from London. Cousin phoned to say he was stuck at Sittingbourne station now that he has a weekly train ticket to get to work. I have already made the salad and stuck his in the fridge.

I have been listening to some deep soul music from a  number of compilations, but the best one is those compiled by Dave Godin in 2000. In the seventies and eighties i use to read Blues and Soul magazine and Mr.. Godin was a regular contributor to it. It was in the nineties that i switched to The Wire and discovered jazz.



There is a complete biog of him in Wikipedia and the four collated Deep Soul collections he made before he passed away in 2004

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Godin

Book 67 - lain Banks "The Bridge"

lain Banks "The Bridge" (Abacus)




A man's car crashes and he ends up in a coma. He wakes up on the bridge (a gigantic and bizarre structure that is a world in itself) with complete amnesia and is dubbed John Orr by the hospital staff. Orr is seeing a doctor who analyzes his dreams, although he admits he doesn't have any. Orr begins making up dreams to please the doctor and then finds that he really is beginning to have strange dreams ...

As this brief description might imply, The Bridge is a multi-layered surreal book grounded in the world of dreams. The ending is probably not a surprise to anyone paying attention to the book, but how you get there is an engrossing ride. The novel feels like a dream itself and i really enjoyed this book and was drawn into Orr's many worlds (real, imagined, and dreamed).

There's a lot going on in The Bridge (indeed, I could see it definitely being worth a re-read to see what you missed the first time around), but it's hard to substantially write about it without giving too much away. Some of the major pros of this book are the interesting characters (Abberlaine Arrol in particular, although there are certainly others), intriguing plot lines that leave you wondering/wanting to know more, excellent writing including symbolism that makes you think, and a surreal landscape that set the right tone and atmosphere. The only con was that some prose parts, especially when Banks was describing the look of certain things, were a little lengthier than needed/a bit tedious to read. The real downside was that when it ended, I wanted to spend more time with these characters and know more about them! Of course, I always think that's a good sign in a book.

However, despite how much I ended up enjoying this book, I'm not sure to whom I would recommend it. It's more literary and bizarre than most of the standard science fiction fare yet a little too heavy on fantastical elements to appeal to the more general literary reader. It seems to fit into a sweet spot for readers like me who enjoy both genre and literary fiction.

Latest Dr. Who Trailer

I know that londonkds has already put up this trailer but oh it is a good one from Auntie Beeb, and we get a better feel of the direction this will take. Squee, i am so excited!