Breaking away to the other side I wanna make sense of why we live and die I don’t get it, I don’t get it…

So here I am unable to sleep waiting for the clock to tick over so its time to go. 17 hours and 50 minutes of travel ahead of me, 5 of them sitting in Vegas, maybe I will win a fortune.

I remember the days when you used to collect your passport tickets and wallet and head out the door, now you need all the accouterments of modern life, wires and cords and headphones for the trip. Laptops and iPads and iPhones and the stuff to make them work, endless miles of cords, it’s like being a roadie getting ready to leave, all so I can work while I sit and wait and maybe more importantly so I can stay in touch with back here as I sit and wait.

So I sat down and thought about the days of old when recordings where done live around one microphone, which led me to the beautiful Trinity Sessions by the Cowboy Junkies. Recorded entirely around one microphone in the Church of the Holy Trinity Toronto over one night.

It’s an album from another time, a slower time a time when music wasn’t really portable. It’s an album that is 31 this year it has matured over the years and remains timeless like all great pieces. It’s a perfect companion for the waiting of the clock to tick over and time to go.

Like Blue that I listened to earlier this week it requires the commitment to see it to the end, it’s a whole piece that demands attention.

Things I will miss as I sit and wait and watch with my Mum and Dad:

• the birth of my first grandchild.
• the digging of the well
• installation of the septic system from the future
• turning on the power in the new house

 

• 

somebody said he jumped…

Sometimes you are idly minding your own business and all of a sudden the gremlins start speaking to you. As usual this results in some on-line browsing and inevitably a purchase.

This time the thought was wouldn’t it be grand if there was a live Hawklords album? Well there  is one, it’s Live 78 and it was a record store day release in 2017, limited on clear vinyl. Hmm I thought, I wonder if I can still get one? Let’s take a look, damn there it is and it’s beautiful.

Two clicks later and the next move is to watch the tracking.

Two days later the joy and beauty of the Hawkords Live ’78 arrives just in time to fry my brain before the flight to the UK on Friday. There is something refreshing about the Hawklords sound. It is decidedly more punk than what happened the next year with the glorious Hawkwind Live ’79. Brock churns out the riffs and makes a decent stab at lead guitar over the usual squeaks and squalls of the keyboards. Not surprisingly Calvert is bonkers throughout managing to just about hold himself and the band together.

This would be the last tour Calvert managed with Brock. There were plans that never came to fruition before Calvert’s death. More than any other member I think Calvert’s loss with his vision and lyrical input has been missing in later bands. Despite his mental health issues his musical and lyrical input leant a cohesion to the music. Ideas of alienation and loss of control permeate the music, Calvert’s world is dark and foreboding, dystopian in a time when that didn’t describe cookie cutter young adult novels. His lyrics have a relevance to this day especially Pantranscendental Industries slogan of “Reality you can rely on…”

Go here if you want to read more of all that guff…: Pantranscendental Indistries

There is another thought that goes like this, it’s just bonkers good fun to play loud and bounce around the living room to.

So let’s not talk of love and flowers
And things that don’t explode
We’ve used up all of our magic powers
Trying to do it in the road

Acid booze and ass, needles guns and grass…

If there was ever a woman who could hold her own with the machismo idiots of the Laurel Canyon world it was Joni Mitchell.

If you listen to her lyrics you get the sense that she would turn most young men inside out, use them and spit them out the other side with no compunction. No shrinking violet in the decidedly male world of rock and roll music. Joni seems to have more than held her own, pushed the envelope and strutted her stuff often with a maniacal hearty guffaw, looking at the world through a decidedly female sense and uncompromising.

Blue is one of those albums you begin and you are in for the whole album, there is no stopping half way. You’re along for the whole ride. Which as the album documents two of her relationships seems to be how Joni sees things, you’re all in or you’re out.

An album about love and relationships and the mess they create as well as the joy.

“Got to him, stay with him if you can. But be prepared to bleed.”

When I listen to Joni I get the urge to run, go somewhere exotic, envelope myself in my relationships and let those I love know they are loved. Her music inspires something wild and reckless in me. An understanding that all things are possible and even fuck ups are worth the pain for the joy. Of course then the record ends.

I have a memory of flying into San Francisco one night as This Flight Tonight played on my discman with those horrid over the ear headphones letting the noise of the airplane in. It was 1997 and I was on my way back from my dads by-pass operation, maybe thats what inspired me to get Blue out again as I prepare to fly home for another parental emergency, who said the decisions we make get easier with time? Not me.

Puppies, coffee and whole grains…

It’s been an odd couple of weeks, it’s been almost a month since I last wrote anything and 7 years on wordpress.

Anyway a little taste of our lives for the last few weeks/months.

First up we are finally getting ready to be done with the beginning of our big moving project, but as Shawn the Builder says that’s just the start of the fun and games. Here’s Mrs Timeweleft standing on a pile of dirt and there is a foundation of sorts.

Next up puppies who doesn’t love puppies:

In an effort to create a more healthy lifestyle as I get back to the country I have been making my own muesli, it’s easy and delicious and oh so filling.

Maybe a forbearer of future posts, thats an awful lot of Klaus I just found.

Unheard, but not unwanted…

Bruce at Vinyl Connection asked what I had on my shelves I had not heard.

I figured I would take a trawl through the unheard herd, maybe I could even cull a few if the feeling took me.

First up we have Neil Young’s Trans. It seems to have become hip in some circles to claim that this album is a masterpiece. That’s okay the more opinions the better in the current political environment, maybe we can have a talking head argueathon just like Fox News or CNN.

It’s not as bad as I remember, I am no longer overcome with horror when hearing it but my tastes have changed and may have even matured but it was 1982 when I sold my copy, 2018 when I got this one and it may be an equally long tome before I play it again unless someone asks about it.

This one I bought the other week, I really wanted an Allan Holdsworth album. If I could find another two records than shipping was free. This and the Twelfth Night album together where less than the shipping so why not?

I have never knowingly heard this album before, yes I heard the singles when the album was released. I was 21 when it came out and spent far too much time out, rather than in so it was inevitable. I am going to guess that this will move on pretty quick, curiosity got the better of me.

He was easy on the eyes as they say and it’s a perfectly adequate 80”s pop album.

Then there is Autobahn.

I have no idea why this sat in the pile at the end of the shelf other than I forgot I had it, this will no longer stay unheard. This is my only Kraftwerk album and I know I need more.

I am not a big Clapton fan but I have found several Cream albums just laying around recently, then I don’t listen, so here we go and it’s a double.

Ending the weekend here with Gandharva by Beaver and Krause. This is a strange mix of electronic music, lounge jazz, gospel choirs and blues guitar, side two recorded in Grace Cathedral San Francisco.  It’s a strange album.

I’ve not had much to say lately so here is a stop gap. There a lot more unheard in the herd, some I may never get to but this seems to be a way of playing them at least once and deciding if they stay.