Just Wondering

What was/is your favourite cereal?

What is the weirdest dessert that you love?

What is your favourite T-shirt (pic if possible)?

David Thomas

PERE UBU main man and singer, David Thomas , once lived in Brighton. I recognise the coastal road and the architecture when I lived in the Kemp Town end of the city. That is how I saw him live twice in various gigs with Pere Ubu and his follow up band the Two Pale Boys. And yes, Brighton on a cold day can be miserable. Those coloured beach huts in this documentary are in the Hove end of the city and no, I do not recognise the pub David is drinking in with his dog. The subtitles are in Dutch and I wonder if coming42 recognises the language. My bro lived in Breda for five years.

An Interview with David Thomas. David telling his story and playing live on the Hohner melodeon and with the Two Pale Boys in Brighton. He is talking about pointless, fog, journalism, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu splitting up, Rolling Stones, human voice, singer of the band, America, Geography and people, The Beach Boys, raw poetry, Brian Wilson, Smile album, Pop music, Home studio, the pub and schedule. Including Live performance of Pere Ubu in 1981.
Tracks: 1. Montana, 2. Come home, 3. The Modern dance (Ravenna 1981), 4. Navvy(1981), 5. Kathlen, 6. Man in the dark, 7. Surfer girl, 8. Night driving

Post Midnight Thomas

More from the man -

David Thomas And Two Pale Boys - Runaway

David Thomas & The Pale Orchestra - Morbid Sky

David Thomas & The Woodenbirds - The Velikovsky Twostep

from Blame the Messenger LP
Recorded and mixed at Suma in Painsville,Ohio on September 23 & 24,1986
Released 1987 by Rough Trade
David Thomas-vocals,accordion
Chris Cutler-drums
Jim Jones-guitar
Allen Ravenstine-synths
Tony Maimone-bass

David Thomas - Big Breezy Day

From the album 'More Places Forever', released May 1985. 'More Places Forever' is David Thomas' third solo album. The album was included in the 1997 David Thomas box set 'Monster' which I once had in my library.

Lindsay Cooper - bassoon
Chris Cutler - percussion
Tony Maimone - bass
David Thomas - vocals

Enjoy

Good Morning

Jon Hassell - Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)

Jon Hassell pioneered a musical ethos he dubbed 'Fourth World', a mixture of traditional Indian Vocal style - which Hassell adapted for the trumpet - and advanced electronic techniques, a style which manifested itself in his seminal first album 'Vernal Equinox'. His career since then has seen many influential solo works as well as collaborations with Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, amongst others.

A companion piece to 2018’s Listening To Pictures, this second volume in the pentimento series presents eight new tracks by the music visionary, continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing. Pentimento is defined as the “reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over” and this is evident in the innovative production style that ‘paints with sound’ using overlapping nuances to create an undefinable and intoxicating new palette.

Tuesday Thoughts

It was a day of two halves like a game of football. Morning was all sunny and warm in which I did some sunbathing. Afternoon has become cloudy and no sun. However, it is a humid day so it is not cold at all.

I popped into town since the opening of non-essential shops yesterday. The charity shops are still closed and so too is Past Sentence and the Fleurs bookshop which opens on the 19th. The market was busy. The hat and bookshop was open as well as the Creekside Record Shop. I just bought some provisions - that included coffee as I had run out - in a supermarket ,some beer elsewhere and the chemist for shower gel.

I Fell asleep this afternoon listening to some music after my meal. Lunch was beef madras with veg fried rice and two strong beers - LOL!!

Ooh, the sun has come out .. I am going outside.

History and Heritage

Ben Bradley MP

There's an ongoing debate online and in the media right now about our history and heritage, and about whether we should remove statues of historic figures based on a 21st century judgement of their actions. Obviously the Colston statue was torn down in Bristol this weekend, whilst today protesters have gathered in Oxford demanding that Cecil Rhodes be removed from Oxford University, and maps of other similarly 'offensive' statues are appearing with calls for their removal including former Monarchs and Prime Ministers.

My view on this is pretty clear and straightforward. We shouldn't be ripping down our history! End of story. Not everything involved in our history is comfortable, and not everything is good, to say the least. It's still our history though and we can't change it. You can't define people from the past as simply 'good' or 'bad' - characters are complex and context is important. Besides which, who gets to decide? There's no such thing as impartiality on this.

What starts with slave traders statues is a slippery slope. What about Ghandi? He wrote some pretty racist things in his early life. Nelson Mandela? Some people say he was a terrorist and condoned violence. Lord Nelson defended slavery. Twelve of our British Monarchs presided over the colonies... Churchill? The Romans had slaves, shall we tear down the Baths and the Aqueducts? Where does it end!? What will we have left?

In a country built on empire - in fact in a world which has largely been built on empire and war for centuries - there is very little history that isn't associated with things we don't like in some way!

We can deny it and pretend it didn't happen, banish it from our memories, or we can respect our heritage and learn from it. Preserve our history and teach the lessons of the past to our children, so we don't make the same mistakes again. It would be an insult, in my view, to those that have been caught up in the atrocities of the past to try and remove all trace of their plight from our lives. Those statues serve as a reminder and a discussion point. They are how we remember.

There is no good ending to a process of stripping out the bits of the past we don't like!

Cosmiche Music #1

More German weirdness ad it is brill -

Emtidi - Saat (1972)

Label: Pilz
Country: Germany
Released: 1972
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Folk Rock, Krautrock, Space Rock, Acid Rock.

Line - up:

Maik Hirschfeldt - 6- & 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar,
Leslie guitar, electric bass, flute, synthesizer, cymbal, vibraphone,
Maultrommel, vocals
Dolly Holmes - piano, electric piano, Hammond organ, mellotron,
electric spinet, kazoo, female vocals
+
Dieter Dierks - bass, percussion, mellotron
Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser - producer
Tracklist:

01. Walking In The Park 00:00
02. Träume 6:30
03. Touch The Sun 9:48
04. Love Time Rain 21:41
05. Saat 24:27
06. Die Reise 28:36

Creative Young Artists In Lockdown

A link to a BBC news article. Creative sixth formers making some wonderful art.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-52968564

Anita Baker

A couple of sultry grooves from Anita Baker -

Anita Baker - Angel

Anita Baker - Caught Up in the Rapture

Anita Baker's first LP The Songstress (Beverly Glen, 1983) was a brilliant vocal debut. Her slurred phrases, moans , screams, and use of melisma - taking those vowels through all kinds of unexpected twists and intervallic jumps - were a fabulous display of Gospel techniques used in a secular context (and the listener's sense of jouissance was possibly a resonance of the singer's own enactment of a self on the point of dissolution - originally, in possession by the spirit; here in overwhelming emotion).

Rapture, her second LP, is also full of excellent singing, but its effect has been a little muted. What's happened is that the focus on the voice has been softened: whereas on The Songstress, the production and arrangements served to highlight the voice, on Rapture they frame it, so containing its power; strings, keyboards, and backing vocals arc more prominent, matching and sometimes anticipating (interpreting) the voice. In Barthesian terms , the instrumental "phenosong" has started to mediate the vocal "genosong': a shift which possibly reflects Anita Baker's move from a small label catering chiefly for a Black audience to a corporation that deals in commercial music for a mass, white-dominated market. Certainly, arrangements like these - lush, slick, a cliched gesture of sophistication - are one of the means with which, historically, white Western pop has tried to "commercialise*- i.e undermine the (spiritual) power of Black music. Of the two albums I prefer the first but both are great albums.

Anita Baker - No More Tears

Enjoy.

AoS Season 7

Yes!! I finally watched the first three episodes of Agents of SHIELD Season 7. I found anew site were I can watch the current series for free. That site is OnionPlay. It is more stable than shush.se. Thank goodness.

I am loving this last season so far. Sad to know it will be the last.

I look forward to episode 4.