GHS Halloween Party

Well it may get done today as we're doing things a bit differently, a bit more rapidly than usual  but we did get away against most odds with a host issues to work through but it did happen.

Fun thing number one was having booked a cab to get the main rail station here rather limited services more directly "in area", the cab is running late which meant it was as well I allowed very generous timings from projected arrival to when the first preference train would depart.

Then you find the driver doesn't know one route at all although they had a sat nav app on their smartphone and doesn't seem to know the other that well so by the time you encounter roadworks and diversions, well my work is cut out remember 15 year old routes from roughly when we had a car, that went across that area and the back routes to the Town centre.

We did get there thank heavens in reasonable time, enough to buy a Royal British Legion remembrance badge from the sellers at the station and get on platform five for the Avanti service to London Euston that did call where I wanted quicker and the dash to get another cab to the venue.

I arrived doing a quick change act to more suitable skirt before chatting and having a cod and chips tea which having not eaten since midday was much appreciated.

Things were somewhat spookiness inside and out and on Saturday a few others had come as I read my comic and chatted a bit before settling down to a burger and fried onions ready for the Treasure Hunt which took the form of racing around the garden trying to find sheep to which you then place in a pen after having each one recorded.

We then moved on and in my instance took off coat and jumper to Lantern making from carving a pumpkin which had proved a bit elusive in some areas to get but fortunately Jennifer had bought one for me which also saved something more reminiscent of carrying a old school Medicine Football and that was mine carved. 

By early evening it was time for the fireworks display as we battled out out with the massive display in the West Midlands for bangs getting though a good number of fireworks and unlike last year we it was dry which was more fun.

I got through three sparklers which is a lot more than usual as post accident I have massive grip and shaking issues in my hands to the point I didn't safe holding a  flaming *anything* in my hands with dropping either on me or anyone else but did manage that which was personal triumph after all these decades.

We had a bring along a bit of something buffet afterwards, with me avoiding anything connected with cheese for reasons those who know will well understand (you wouldn't want to next me if accidentally had any!)

That was followed by Jennifer's General Knowledge and Music quiz which I score a reasonable 29 out of fifty and a good laugh was had taking part in which is the bigger thing really.

After what seemed an eternity for those of us on early bedtimes, we did get to sleep after talking through the next meet up and other related stuff to get up later the next morning for a Bacon sandwich before heading for a meal.

The meal was scrumptious, I opted for a Turkey Roast, a Sticky Toffee Treacle sweet and a orange flavoured J20 which I must admit was the for time I drunk one and it was really smooth which helped my throat a bit.

Everybody else's look good, was well presented and we had steady walk back before people made their way back home before Iris and Mary kindly offered me a lift to the station where although we had missed one by minutes the next wasn't long back home to the door at decent hour.

I'd like to thank Jennifer for her hospitality, Andi for the trifle, help in the kitchen plus technical support with fireworks and everybody for making it a fun time

* assembled on Asus Chromebook with NO processing or picture editing*

Classical music round up 2024 - bits from the past

I was a bit late getting up this morning  even though I was in bed  and asleep according to my set bedtime although that's probably down to the business around moving from Daylight Saving Time  and how that affects your body clock.

We're a bit busy with getting ready for the spooky weekend but in the throws of that I revisited a set of four really quite old records of mine.

Piano music is a favourite of mine either solo or in the form of a concerto with other instruments typically a full orchestra and Beethoven wrote a set of five such concertos for piano and orchestra which remain hugely popular even today.

This is the third in series of I have that were recorded around 1961-3 for the first time in stereo by the acclaimed pianist Wilhelm Kempff with accompaniment from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by  Ferdinand Leitner.

The whole set came on four lps, and this like the others is an original  with the "Tulip" logo on the record label.

Given they are over sixty years old, I gave them a very thorough cleaning to remove anything that in that time had worked its way into the groove which helps as there are a good many very quiet passages that don't like any intrusions of dirt and other debris.

That's the rear and it does also show the more usual thick spine with title wasn't commonplace back then as this doesn't have nor do Decca albums of the same era although I have to say the more modern spines with titles are much easier when hunting for your recordings when in racks.

As for the playing, the orchestra is a full on with modern instruments that won't impress those who favour using replicas of eighteenth century instruments but the playing especially the piano just sweep you along in their romanticism which to me is most apt as you just focus on the playing.

It's a set that although there have been a number of great modern accounts  that may offer modern musical scholarship and digital recording you just find yourself very much coming back to.

Two thousand posts

Time creeps up on you. At least that is how it appears to me barking a little still recovering as we look back to another time when as ones world went more electronic and internet based, the scrapbook became more of a electronic blog although what people do with blogs does vary.

The earliest of posts had their origins elsewhere from when various emergent social media tried adding things to keep you more on their pages as we walked out of the walled channels of news and information our internet providers offered to more user friendly browsers that let us store sites we'd look up things more for ourselves from and sites offered unique content such as discussion on music going from the those Use.net boards to sites that looked at things around gender, interests such as anime and things for those of us who loved our past experiences in childhood, realizing that actually there are many of us whether or not it's about the things you did, they way you dressed, what the heck, the life you loved and still love.

This blog always was a mixture of that and all the interests  cos in me at least it is all wrapped in one package - always was - just being yourself in carefree and totally innocent way which for me at least much of adult life just fly over me me like some airplane you read of in a book but never really on that whole projection as it went whizzing by.

That was never my trip, just obviously minding the way how as an adult in law the way things go and the things that clearly could never be but then as time went by you found others of a similar mindset to whom just playing more that way, that was okay (being by law adults) well clear of anything "off" or gets your "ick".

That's the thing between the pages of this journal not always in chronological order often following some sequence, sometimes things from the past I recall, often things in the present, the life as lived and the two thousand of them is what today we celebrate.

Improvements at the sharp end

We're an issue away from an anniversary here, recovering from this flu thingy and one thing that has run from the early days of this blog wrapped around all the things around being, presentation, age dypshoria/regression has been music and to be specific the evolution over the decades of how I hear it.

Records do play a fair part in that although the way things go is hat some recordings may not be on record but say compact disc and some often older albums may not of had (or had less than satisfactory) an issue in that format.

Thus the record deck itself has had upgrades from simple automatic models of my youth to more complex hifi models that play just one disc at a time.

Also the cartridge and stylus have had changes to with them of getting more out of what is in the groove and less of what isn't such as surface noise from the disc itself.

Recently I bought this which offers in a sme bayonet style form a clearer modern cartridge body to which a nude eliptical stylus is fitted to better fit the groove and extract more information.

Compared to others it is a better match for the arm with less lower mid resonances that however slight can make themselves heard.

This sounds just great through my phonostage that takes its output and raises it to play though the amplifier much better than its own built in one.

Now Yearbook Vault 1984

I did suggest it was going be a busy period on music releases last week and on Friday while sneezing my nosy off something a bit familar but also a bit different arrived.

Now Yearbooks, we covered them here looking from 1982 and before with 1977 due next month, rounding up on three very well filled lps the main hits of each year complement my original Now and Hits Lps from the 1983 and 4 respectively and then some older compilations.

In June Now launched a sub series VAULTS, which aims to cover minor hits of the sort that tended to pad out our Ronco and K Tel sets as much as we may of preferred some of them to the big hits back in the day and also American Hits which unless someone did a American Hit compilation you didn't get so I'd buy the 45's where available.

We didn't bother with 1983 as that was well covered on the vinyl front and I have many American and Canadian acts albums from that year I liked anyway so the initial title got a miss here.

Yesterday though they issued Vaults 1984 which although 1984 is well represented with a half of Now 2 and the whole of Now 3 and 4 plus the first Hits  did miss out a number of these min or hits and American hits that never were over here so I thought "What the heck!" and ordered it.

Like the regular Now Yearbooks on LP, these are coming out in three lp sets, three discs stuffed in a single sleeve which means we do miss some of the tracks from the 4 cd version in cheapskate wraparound card or fuller book forms but most of the essentials make it.

Record one  begins with some pop gems from established artists such as Heaven 17, ABC, and Scritti Politti ahead of Wild Life a U.S. single release from Bananarama followed by the solo debut from Helen Terry who had sung back-up vocals on the previous years’ massive seller ‘Colour By Numbers’ from Culture Club features along with Level 42, Soft Cell and Talk Talk who close the first side with ‘Such A Shame’. 

Flipping the record over we get to enjoy the sumptuous vocal pairings of Teddy Pendergrass and Whitney Houston, and Dennis Edwards and Siedah Garrett. The side also features the debut from the Colour Field, M+M’s ‘Black Stations/White Stations’, a commentary or racially defined radio in the States and established artists Tom Robinson and Marillion.

Record Two kicks off with a stunning collection of indie-pop, including Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Icicle Works and the Top 40 debut from Everything But The Girl… plus Malcolm McLaren, The Associates and Blancmange with their cover of ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’, whilst the dance-floor beckons on the other side with electro-dance and Hi-NRG from Sheila E., Divine, Evelyn Thomas, Miquel Brown, and chart regulars Shalamar, Donna Summer and Sheena Easton – with Arrow closing the LP with carnival favourite ‘Hot Hot Hot’.

The final record focuses on singles that found chart success in the U.S. and opens with Culture Club’s ‘Miss Me Blind’, which didn’t get a single release in the U.K, alongside a selection of U.S. new-wave hits from The Fixx, a British group who found more success in the States, Go-Go’s and The Cars. Synth-led tracks from The Psychedelic Furs, Visage and Sparks close the side. 

The Pretenders open the final side with ‘Show Me’, which was a U.S. hit, but not issued as a single in the U.K. Daryl Hall & John Oates, and Rick Springfield continued their run of Stateside hits and Bon Jovi debuted with ‘Runaway’. Scorpions and Judas Priest are up next with rock classics ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’, and ‘Freewheel Burning’… and the concluding moment is given to ZZ Top with ‘TV Dinners’ one of four singles from their massive ‘Eliminator’ album.

It's a slightly off the beaten track musical overview of 1984 covering much that wasn't on those pioneering 1984 compilations regardless of quality and for those reasons gains a spot in my vinyl compilation collection

Now Millennium series part iv

It's all gonna be happening as the count down for the Christmas season record release schedule begins so batten your hatches, get the Winter Tires ready and let's resume from where we were in June this year with those Millennium compilations from Now That's What I Call Music.

We'd been going for a bit on this blog after everything in the adult world got so messed up I needed time out to recover which in part at least is where all else really fitted in so rather like in childhood the radio played a part with presenters playing hit tunes forming a part of those memories.

From the early nineteen-nineties though the chart moved more away from mainstream pop and rock to more club based sounds and various sub genres such as Grunge, "Shoegazing" etc so what I bought for myself typically on cd based albums was different which is really where a set like this fits in gathering enough of those other sounds you recall but didn't even bother with the four or more double cd Now numbered compilations back then as the misses to hits ratio with you would be rather high.

As mainstream chart as it got with me was a fully functioning reborn Take That and the North Wales retro fused female singer Duffy.

As is the standard in this series, each year has two distinct discs and my copy being the book form has short write ups about the songs and chart performance which all helps bring it all back.

Disc One kicks off with a run of pop gold, Take That’s triumphant #1 ‘Greatest Day’, the band’s 11th #1 single, starts the count for #1’s on this album followed by Girls Aloud’s BRIT Award winning homage to the sounds of the 60s, ‘The Promise’, another UK #1.  Britney leads a string of fabulous pop hits with the infectious ‘Womanizer’ before P!nk’s #1 ‘So What’ and Kylie Minogue’s ‘Wow’. 2008 Was a great year for new and breaking acts; Katy Perry announced herself to the world with the hit ‘I Kissed a Girl’, while The Saturday’s second single ‘Up’ shattered the high expectations set by their debut single. Duffy’s excellent  jazz-inflected smash ‘Mercy’ sits neatly alongside other jazz and swing-inspired hits on this disc with Alesha Dixon’s ‘The Boy Does Nothing’, Gabrielle Cilmi’s ‘Sweet About Me’, and Sam Sparro’s ‘Black and Gold’. Closing off Disc One are a pair of X-Factor superstars with Alexandra Burke’s debut UK #1, Xmas #1 and the best-selling single of 2008: ‘Hallelujah’, and Leona Lewis’ powerful cover of Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’.

Disc Two opens with the epic Coldplay’s  ‘Viva La Vida’ followed by The Killers’ indie dancefloor chart-topper ‘Human’. Back in 2008 we saw some huge trance-pop hits such as Basshunter kicking off a run of dance classics with their emphatic ‘Now You’re Gone’ before Scooter brings a similarly irresistible energy with ‘Jumping All Over The World’. Eric Prydz’s ‘Pjanoo’, Ultrabeat’s ‘Disco Lights’, and H Two O’s essential ‘Whats It Gonna Be?’ follow. Enduring playlist favourites from The Script (‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’), Kid Rock (‘All Summer Long’) and Nickelback (‘Rockstar’) lead into Oasis’ psychedelia-infused alt rock track ‘The Shock Of The Lightning’. To close this review of 2008, we have great bands including The Kaiser Chiefs, Snow Patrol, and Radiohead with ‘Nude’.

Disc Three and our review of 2009 opens with the Black Eyed Peas’ global hit ‘I Gotta Feeling’.  This UK and US #1 is followed by a slew of similarly huge floor fillers including David Guetta and Kelly Rowland’s ‘When Love Takes Over’. Next up, synth pop smashes from La Roux’s ‘Bulletproof’ and The Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Love Etc.’.  Local lad Robbie Williams continued his stellar chart run with ‘Bodies’. Lily Allen’s #1 ‘The Fear’ is followed by Florence + The Machine’s debut top 20 hit ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’. This is followed by a run of RnB pop finishes the disc off with Ciara and Justin Timberlake’s ‘Love Sex Magic’ followed by Flo Rida featuring Kesha on ‘Right Round’, Taio Cruz’s ‘Break your Heart’, JLS’ ‘Beat Again’, and Jason Derulo’s breakout hit, ‘Whatcha Say’.

Massive pop superstars open the final disc; Britney Spears (‘Circus’), Miley Cyrus (‘Party In The USA’), and The Pussycat Dolls alongside A.R. Rahman (Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny)’). #1 debuts are up next from Cheryl Cole with ‘Fight For This Love’ and Pixie Lott with ‘Mama Do (Uh Oh, Uh Oh)’. Airplay favourites from Paolo Nutini (‘Pencil Full Of Lead’), James Morrison featuring Nelly Furtado (‘Broken Strings’) and Kelly Clarkson’s #1: ‘My Life Would Suck Without You’ feature alongside top 10 smashes from Metro Station (‘Shake It’), Sugababes (‘Get Sexy’) and Little Boots (‘Remedy’). Hip-Hop and Grime are represented here with Tinchy Stryder and Ironik featuring Chipmunk on their huge tracks ‘Number 1’ and ‘Tiny Dancer (Hold Me Closer)’ (sampling Elton John’s classic that revived interest in that song). Our final disc closes with Westlife’s ‘What About Now’ – their 22nd Top 5 hit since their 1999 debut.

This is a great sampling of these two years before we started the twenty-tens.

Steely Dan gets near to finished off

At christmas 2022 in with the traditional Christmas entry was reference to a couple of Steely Dan albums (Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go) I hadn't got then that were being issued by the american specialist company Analogue Productions on both record and Super Audio cd (sacd).

That was part of a projected ten disc reissue series that way back then I had set up pre-orders for  with a major specialist record and cd store in Wales.

This weekend one of the last three titles has eventually been delivered, November 1980's Gaucho although it had been released in the United States last month as apparently they give two company owned retailers over there a two week window before shipping out to the Rest Of The World - aka us here in Great Britain and Ireland.

It featured Hey Nineteen", reaching # 10 on theU.S. pop chart in early 1981, and "Time Out of Mind" (featuring guitarist Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits) was a moderate hit in the spring.

The whole series has been dogged by major delays even on the vinyl side due to pressing plant shortages and with the Super Audio cd, only two plants in the world make them and they're fully committed with other titles to manufacture.

This 1974 album came out around November last year with "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" which reached as high as #4 on the U.S. charts.

 

 Countdown To Ecstasy issued in 1973 home to the singles  "Show Biz Kids" and "My Old School shown in its case came out in June 2023.

 

 

1972's Can't Buy A Thrill that was their first ever album featured the hit Do It Again was issued in January 2023.

 

1977's Aja came out in March of this year although the record version came out much earlier.

That's how it came to be what normally would of been be a single launch of a bunch of titles on one day has been in dribs and drabs in two years so much so I go by my record at the store of what was ordered and what's still in the orders to keep track of it.

And much has happened since then that in many ways I'd lost some of the buzz around these coming out and even doing a full set of entries in them despite their expense so this week we're catching up.

With any luck I'll fire up the player the Saturday before posting and give this a good spin.