My Top 25

One of iTunes more entertaining tricks is that it will list your top 25 most played songs. This is always interesting for an old music fanatic like me. So out of my almost 9000 songs, this is my top 25. I'm shocked how much of my own material is here, how vain. Also, imagine there being no Syd Barrett or Van der Graaf Generator. I suppose computers don't lie? I'm glad good old Pavlov's Dog is still in there, 23 years since I first heard them. When I had to decide in 1999 after a considerable amount to drink, what the last song of the 20th century was that I'd play, I decided on "Theme from Subway Sue" by the Dog.

Swell Marketa and the June Fool

I ordered the CD that the two people from the "Once" movie had made (Marketa Irglova, pictured above, and Glen Hansard), it's called "The Swell Season". I was not hugely taken with it the first time I heard it, but that was in the car heading up to San Francisco. Now I've had a chance to hear it again tonight on the proper CD it is really rather good. Musically it is really beautiful, really pretty, relaxing music. Shame Marketa only gets to sing one song on her own, she has a great voice. There are loads of lovely harmonies she does with Glen Hansard. Marketa sang about three songs in the "Once" movie that are featured on the CD, I wonder why not.


The next CD that I almost grabbed at random made me smile after I put it on. Considering we are only now three hours away from next month (and it's next month already back in Europe) how strange that it's the late great "Madder Rose"'s "Hello June Fool" CD I just put on. I wonder who the June fool I am subconciously thinking about is?

When I left the UK I transfered all my CD's, and some vinyl, to Apple's equivalent of MP3, AAC. I then sold all the CD's on eBay, as I was not sure I wanted to cart mountains of CDs here to the USA. What I've discovered since is how much quality you use when you compress the audio files to make them fit onto iPods. Hearing the original Madder Rose CD again, it sounds great. I hope all the exponents of downloading from iTunes are realising that they are not really downloading music that is really CD quality, but a rather flat sounding compressed file. The audio compression technology is really clever to compress all that data into a 3meg file for a three minute song, but there is no such thing as a free lunch and I've found that you lose a lot of sound quality in the process. Maybe the compressed files are OK on an iPod, but if you play them back on a computer connected to a decent hifi system, the difference between the compressed file and the original is obvious.

Having realised this, I went on a second hand CD shopping spree back in December of last year, and re-bought Madder Rose's finer moments as well as a lot of other old friends. So I feel a bit stupid now, having gotten rid of so many CDs, just to buy them back again 18 months later. So maybe I am the June fool? Problem is that I think I sold the CDs in March.....

Harman

I started watching BBC2's Newsnight every night back in the early 1990's, when Jeremy Paxman was just a boy. As it's archived every night now on their website and you can replay the night before's programme up to 24 hours after it's broadcast. I can still enjoy it here, and not have to stay up late (the Indian conference calls I have to do most mornings at 7am make a 11.15pm bedtime too late for me now!).

Having missed watching the Labour deputy leadership "hustings" special on Tuesday, I was happy to see that they archived it separately from last nights programme, so I could watch it too today.

Harriet Harman was a real revelation. I'm not sure if anyone is assessing and observing by their behaviour and making assumptions about who Gordon Brown is secretly backing for the job, but I'd have to bet on Harriet Harman. I think she was his "deputy" in some role in the past. He must be secretly backing someone - right?

What, for us old Labour watchers (that's people who, like me have been observing the Labour party for a long time, not those of us watching "Old Labour". "Old Labour", what a horrible term - one of Tony Blair's least attractive.) is most fascinating though, and maybe a tantalising glimpse of what a Brown premiership will be like, is how outspoken and left wing Harriet Harman was prepared to be. She heavily criticised the Blair government for clumsy "news management", and argued for a more re-distributive tax system. She was arguing against Alan Johnstone in flavour of redistribution of wealth, whatever next? Maybe this is just wishful thinking about a more "Genuine Labour" Brown led government. Interesting all the same. I'd vote for her if I was still a member.


It was John Cruddis the left wing total outsider "never in a million years" candidate that won the Newsnight viewers on line pole held after the show was broadcast. Hazel Blears came last. Her performance on the show was a total disgrace. Complete Blairite clone, she typifies all that is wrong with the current government. She was the only candidate that seemed incapable of giving a straight answer to anything. How does she think that plays with the Labour Party electorate?

It'll be interesting to see how things develop in the next few months.

House concert

A much better part of Sunday was the house concert that we went to. A guy who we know who lives in Cupertino (where Apple Computer lives too) arranges these concerts in his house. I have never figured out how he gets these artists to do this, but he always gets such great people to play there, he also lays on tons of great food too. All in all it is a pretty enjoyable experience.

He often has celtic artists, or celtic influenced artists. The pic above is of the artist who played on Sunday. Kevin Burke is a top Irish fiddle player. His playing was lovely. I could just imagine the peat bogs and little cottages of Ireland as he played. His line in "in between song chat" was also very enjoyable.

More info on Kevin can be found at - http://www.kevinburke.com/

Boo

The definite low point of the weekend was the 4 hours I spend sorting out the huge mountain of unwanted paper that has sat about in my home office for months. No wonder I put this job off for so long. Because a lot of this paper is work related and also because of identity theft, which is a big issue here, I shred most paper like this. But domestic shredders like mine only last about 5 minutes of intensive shredding before stopping and needing to cool down for 10 minutes. There also seems to be no easy way to empty the bloody thing without little bits of paper going everywhere. Not a nice way to spend a Sunday, though I enjoy looking at the empty area on the floor next to the desk where the great pile of paper used to be.

South Bay Veggies in San Mateo

I didn't get too much time to spend at the zoo though, as a friend was hosting a lunch for the South Bay Veggies. This was up in San Mateo and was pretty easy to get to from the zoo.

Despite never having enjoyed the term "veggie", I've been one since March 1986, when I discovered what cheap sausages were made out of and how many cute girls were vegetarian.

This was a really nice day and I met some interesting new people.



We also had a good old wander round San Mateo and I found this huge store called Draegers, with a large UK foodstuffs area, much better that Safeway. They had brown sause, Safeway has not had that for months.



Also some rather nice chocs, I didn't buy any. San Jose is pretty big and spread out, so it's nice to be able to visit a downtown where you can easily walk everywhere.

Me and the Elephant, we still remember you

We finally got round to going to San Francisco Zoo on our day off on Memorial Day on Monday. I took a load of pictures which I have just uploaded to Flickr. I'm really blown away by Flickr, it is so easy to use. Really good user interface design, like really good anything, looks deceptively simple - but it's not. I took loads of pictures at the zoo, some came out pretty good. I love having the 10 megapixel camera as you can take a pic of an animal that is really rather far away, then crop and enlarge the image and you still have a decent picture. I added a link to my flickr pages to my links section in this blog.

I tried to get some video of giraffe's peeing. That's all the giraffes seemed to do when we were looking at them. Its amazing how much water comes out of a giraffe, it has such a long way to travel too.


I really liked the little train at the zoo, but then I always do!


This squirrel was very funny. It kept hopping up on the little train's engine as we were waiting for it to leave. I was worried it was going to get run over, but it must be used to dicing with death on the little train.

The Real Ramona

Having spent most of the morning thinking about The Throwing Muses it was spooky to then go put for lunch in Palo Alto and find myself parking in the underground parking lot between Ramona and Bryant.


Of course, the last real Throwing Muses album, with Tanya, was 1991's "Real Ramona". As I remember, it was one of the last albums I bought on original vinyl.



It was not an unqualified success, but I just love Tanya's "Not Too Soon", also known as "the Frankenstein Song"by the band, as it changed so much over the years.


We also met some really nice doggies today. Don't think they are in the "Doghouse"!


They had lovely soft fur. I'm not a huge dog fan, some of them are a pain in the arse. But these dogs just melt my heart.


The bubble machine was very funny too - very Haight Ashbury!

Not on CBS

Having asked several friends to tape the news on the day the lady from CBS told me I was going to be on, truth is - I must have ended up on the cutting room floor. I'm quietly relieved, although I was looking forward to trying to post myself on Youtube!

Muses on Bornemouth 1990

I can only think of one or two bands that I would describe as truly original. This is one of them.


I first came over the Throwing Muses in the year of 1990. That year I had the somewhat bizarre experience of living in an out of season Bournemouth hotel, for blocks of one week, or two weeks at a time, it all added up to three months of Bornemouth.


I was learning how to be a professional Procurement guy at the time. It was great fun. This was when business travel and staying in hotels still seemed interesting to me.


I was also with such a great bunch of people. Me and two other Scottish guys (Gary Diggens and Steve Casselles) really bonded and we had such a great time. That's when I learned the dangers of the phrase "put it on my bill" in a hotel bar. I was not earning much at the time and could not claim back huge drinks bills, so the fear I felt at check out time was very real!


We were in the bar every night as I remember. I was going to say with all the drinking, it was amazing I passed. But now I think about it, I didn't first time. But it was great fun all the same. 1989 was, so far, the most miserable year of my life. I was determined to have fun in 1990. I could almost sense the change of the decade bringing about a change in me, as I was sick outside my mate Andy's house at New Year 1990 (sorry Andy, don't think I ever told you that before, hope you didn't have to clean it up!).


I used to arrive in Bournemouth with my old faithful Sony Walkman (bought in 1988 and still functional, though obsolete, when I left the UK in 2005) and mountains of cassette tapes. Yes kids, this was 14 years before the invention of the iPod! I used it so much that I had to buy a transformer from Bournemouth Dixons to plug it into the wall instead of it chewing through all the batteries. As I remember, at the time I was learning about costing models and I must have worked out there was a "return on investment" in buying my transformer, I had to be very careful with money in those days.


Somehow listening to the Throwing Muses in this rather bizarre setting of half empty Bournemouth hotels, out of season, filled with Procurement students and the occasional retired person, really appealed to me. There was a kind of faded grandeur to all these hotels. The hotels were past their best and quiet.


Hearing Kristen Hearsh's screamingly, frighteningly original music, seemed to fit in these odd locations. As I remember, I also used to frequently listen to John Cale's "Fear is a Man's Best Friend" and I also had a bootleg tape of The Television personalities "Live at Janey's Bay Hotel Gourock 1983", which also seemed to fit the scene.


So the Throwing Muses and Bournemouth 1990 are inextricably linked in my mind. We finally got to see the Throwing Muses in 1991, the year Tanya Donnelly left the band.


I didn't know it was her last tour at the time, so I was really glad to have been able to see her with the band. Like when Keith Moon died, I think the Who died with him. I didn't think Kristen should have continued with the band without Tanya.



Around 1998, after years of having it out there on bootlegs, the Throwing Muses released their original demo tapes, which contained most of their first album and the wonderful "and a she Wolf after the war", "raise the roses" and "sinkhole". It was great to hear these songs in their original form. What I really loved about this CD re-release though, were the liner notes. Kristen Hearsh's words here always make me want to cry. They are great words about a great band. But also, like most well written pieces, they reflect thoughts more universal. I love the fondness she has of the band in those days and how she misses them. The fascination with the musical creative process is great here too. I hate losing touch with people I spent good times with. Kristen's words remind me of the great times I related on Kirkcaldybands.com, but they also remind me of the guys from Bournemouth 1990. Great times, great people, great memories.

"I swear to God, we thought we were a party band. As Throwing Muses, at age oh, sixteen or seventeen, we were gleefully impressed with ourselves and our ability to bring joy to people through sound. We were then stunned and horrified to see audiences react with something like stunned horror.

So, this sound became our mission. Every note and word had to fascinate us. Every song had to be alive, like a great person... full of colors and sweat and memories and potential We never expected anyone else to want to listen again and this was okay. I guess we figured we,d get the internal right and the external world would either fall into place or disappear. It kind of did both.

We became somewhat suspicious of our fans, though,, Why are you here? we would ask people who came to our shows. Maybe they were just falling into place.

It has been suggested that I was insane during the Muses early days, something I have vehemently denied in my effort to prove that this stuff could come out of our girlfriends our sisters, and our mothers. Listening now, I wonder if I was all there, but maybe that was the point. Our girlfriends, sisters and mothers have been known to go elsewhere at times, too.

The difference is that I had lovely, funny, talented musicians to go there with me. These Muses saved my life, quite literally, over and over again. They are full of colors and sweat and memories and potential; they are great people. I miss them

Besides, the idea was always to leave a big, fancy present on the table and tiptoe out of the room."

The Great American Stella Shortage. I had some dreams, they were clouds in my Becks Bier.

I met someone on Wednesday who runs a micro brewery and I asked him the most important issue on my mind at the moment - "where did the Stella go?". It's my favourite beer here in America, and it seems to have disappeared from most bars. San Jose's meagre population of bars slowly have added Stella to their beer taps, to the extent that, from memory, I think all of them had Stella. But last week, it had all gone! They guy I met who is from the industry told me that the Belgian brewery that makes Stella got taken over. In the confusion of the takeover, they messed up up their demand forecast, so didn't make enough, hence the tragic shortage of Stella in America.

I did try some draft Becks instead tonight, and must try that again. I remember back in 1985 being told that Becks was the best bier. I also used to drink it a lot in the early '90's, which was also the early days of the Pooheads - hence the lyric about the Becks from our early classic "You're so Vain".

The San Jose Dive Bar managed to have about one more person tonight compared to last week. But they were playing some kind of weird Led Zeppelin mega mix tonight. I'd forgotten how much I liked them. I don't think any of they can write lyrics and John Bonham, to me, always sounded like he was playing a different song to the rest, but I just love John Paul Jones's bass playing. He must be one of the most listenable bass players ever. Their early stuff is so exciting. The late 60's early '70's "all or nothing" stereo mix sounded really strange though tonight in the very separated bar speakers.


I have absolutely no clue what "Beer Pong"is though. Another strange American sport I suppose. I should be told......

Nobody @ Sun

Today is the last Friday before Memorial Day, which is a day off here on Monday.


The Sun offices were un-naturally quiet as a result.


A lot of people work from home some days a week, it seems everyone was at home today.


We were supposed to get away early, but I had a problem and I had to stay and sort it out. So it was even quieter when I left.

Don't let this happen to your car. Outrage at North Park.

This notice was posted in one of the lifts where I live on Monday. This is a real shame, I had heard of this happening in other apartment complexes, but not here until now.

I just spend $260 on mine getting it a well deserved service. I'm always very careful not to leave anything lying about inside my car, so I hope I'll be OK. Shame, but this is what happens in societies where there are great diversities of income.

The San Jose Light Tower

I found some interesting pictures of the San Jose light tower.


This is it being built in 1881.


This is from 1907. You can really get a sense of it's size here.


This the year it fell down, 1915.


This is it after it fell down. I read somewhere that there is a school of thought that the guy who designed the Eifel Tower took his ideas from the light tower.

Where's all the buses? More Downtown San Jose

I couldn't believe this city had a Greyhound Bus terminal, I thought they went out with the bus boycotts in the 60's.


Having found it though there seems to be a lack of a certain something. What could it be? Oh yes, buses!


What a shame. Imagine it in it's prime, full of buses going to San Francisco and Monetary and other exciting places. I can't imagine it'll be around much longer. For now it's a little anachronism buried in the heart of downtown San Jose.



There are still plenty of planes though. San Jose airport is pretty central so they have to come in quite low over downtown. These kind of images always remind me of 911, the planes so near the buildings. That footage of the planes near the towers before they hit was repeated so often. Shame how an innocent image can get so associated with tragedy.


This tower sounds great. This text was taken from one of the many "History Walk" signs around downtown San Jose. I wonder if I can find a picture of this, I wish it was still there.