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Here you can find links to free music, videos and literature by Mike Dickson, Systems Theory, Greg Amov and the Ashley-Dickson Immersive Experience.

18th April 2025: I find this stuff fascinating. Actual people making actual music using actual talent. A rarity.

It's far from my favourite song of theirs, though. The album is really patchy too and kind of falls to bits on close examination, but watching them at craft is something to behold. Even more extrordinary is that none of this stuff was schooled into them, but was learned from listening to the radio and picking up what they heard. Even from a compositional perspective, it's staggering.

16th April 2025: Loving the idea of unfathomable bleakness like this:

And some common sense comes out at last...

15th April 2025: Listening back to Flux today for no particular reason. I was struck by how much I not only enjoyed it, but by how much I didn't even recognise it as being one of mine. Flux 02 in particular struck me as being the work of someone else entirely. It's quite a strange feeling.

12th April 2025: Back to the work and unmitigated genius of of Joan Cornella...

	Sol Invictus 03
	Work in progress, being remixed as I progress. Very rhythmic, very discordant. Three instruments are doing entirely their own thing, yet they all seem to make sense together in a twisted sort of way.

10th April 2025: On to the next one, to be called Sol Invictus. I think it might have a lot in common with Voice which I don't think is a bad thing.

7th April 2025: RIP Clem Burke, probably one of the greatest pop drummers there ever was.

Parallel Lines was the first album I ever owned on tape, having been put there by a school mate. The thing that shone out for me on that was the drumming. Some of those fills were like gunfire.

Now playing...

The film is great, as is the live extracts. There just feels to be something missing, but it's hard to say exactly what that is.

Voice released. I really like the simplicity of this one.

6th April 2025: Is there no one out there with a steady aim and suitable motivation? And where is the NRA? I thought that their entire purpose was to be that well-regulated militia that would protect the USA from the very thing that this turd and his weird mates are doing. Or is it that he is their kind of tyrant?

Hardened readers will remember my ranting about this guy a few months ago:

It seems I am not alone. Tim Worthington ("Writer. Occasional Broadcaster. TV's 'Clangers Expert'.") has a very similar piece going on at The Fear of a Clown which seems to express exactly the same feelings. He also has an excellent article on Trumptonshire Architecture which feels wonderfully researched, showing the same levels of attention autism that I seem to have.

Said it before and I am saying it again - and this feels almost like heresy - but this album isn't really all that it's esteemed by others to be:

The title track is okay I suppose but it's never been something to get me really thrilled. Starless is (of course) the best thing the band ever did, but the other two songs on side one are - to my ears - painfully pedestrian, and the improvisation on side two isn't even close to how good they got as evidenced on The Great Deceiver boxed set.

Admittedly, a lot of what irritates me about the delirium accorded to this album is the inevitable bUt KuRt CoBaIn LoVeD iT that gets rolled out like a cliche every time you hear it mentioned, just as you cannot hear God Only Knows without some flaming helmet saying that it's Paul McCartney's favourite song. But taken on its own, it's still not that great a record to me. I realise that Fripp was going through one of his many tough times when he was making it, and that at least one of the others thought that they were on the cusp of being hugely successful (which makes me wonder about what direction they might have taken) but it was the right place to stop. The album is just a bit meh, but if they had gone further it would have been far worse.

5th April 2025: Now I find out that Nico and Robert King lived together in Ladbroke Grove in London, though of course that does not preclude them coming to Edinburgh, especially since both were sur le junk and Edinburgh was awash with it at the time. Maybe the mystery continues.

I find this extraordinary woman bewitching and fascinating in equal measure. And neither are down to the way she looked. If anything, I admire the fact that she was like that in spite of the way she was immediately judged by others, like something climbing upwards into the light to reveal itself. The idea that a beautiful woman cannot also be a hugely intelligent, imaginative and unique artist is simply absurd. Are these days behind us? I really think not.

This one gets to me every time. Her voice is perhaps not conventionally beautiful, but beautiful it is. It has that minor key climb without lift, that meaningful resonance, that enunciation of every syllable. No one else sang like this. No one.

The book is still fabulous. The more I read about her the sorrier I feel for her and the more I think she was someone who should have had more of a chance than she got. But we all know that being a heroin addict doesn't swing many favours, but I would argue that she might not have been there if she wasn't constantly overlooked, judged, ignored or simply laughed at by her 'friends' along the way. Of these people I would have to single out Reed as being the worst. If the stories are true, then he behaved atrociously towards her. But then his ethical cowardice is long documented and fully understood. As much as I may admire him artistically, as a human being he was a Grade One Shit. The only person who seems to have shown her the least amount of credible loyalty is John Cale who always seems to have been there when he was needed. Bravo John Cale.

Listening to this one now. It's damned wonderful.

Voice is becoming something I am losing myself within. 06 and 07 are really very strong now. Just got the eighth to address now, and at this rate it promises to be really good.

Usynth by UJAM looking really good.

Likely to be the next acquisition.

3rd April 2025: This is taking on a life of its own now...

	Voice 06
	Work in progress. Darkness reaching into the darkness.

2nd April 2025: Lots being written about the Netflix series Adolescence, and rightly so as it is a quite magnificent series, with Stephen Graham on absolute top form (when is he even mediocre?). As we all know, it's shown in four parts with each part being shot in a single take, not unlike Boiling Point which was shot entirely in one take.

I can barely get my head around the logistics of making this work. It's not even like 'stand on this mark and do your stuff', but a three dimensional effort of not just where and what but also when. It's mesmerising, like watching an intricate dance performed in front of you. What were the rehearsals like? How did they manage to rehearse it to death (as they must have) yet keep the dialogue sounding like it had only just formed in their minds? Did the director (Philip Barantini) just let them run with the script? And some of the shots and tracking angles are simply breathtaking, real how did they do that moments.

But for all of that, I harbour three criticisms of it, presented here in increasing order of severity:

1. The much heralded third episode - largely a two hander between the psychiatrist (Erin Doherty) and the child at the centre of the story (Owen Cooper) - is really clumsy stuff. It's meant to be a tense one-room affair where the adult tries to get under the skin of the child but (predictably) it happens the other way around. My biggest problem here is that the writing forces words into the adult's mouth that would have got her struck off inside a nanosecond. It's just not believable.

2. More controversial - Owen Cooper (in that episode especially) often is unconvincing. In the third episode he often comes across as a child who has been told to 'act angry' or 'act violently' or whatever. Why is this? Is it because children don't (maybe can't) have the emotional depth (or resources) to express this sort of thing? It also has to be said that for all his acting skills, Owen is about as threatening as a Chewit: he looks about eight stone soaking wet. A fully-grown woman would have been able to knock him flat out with one punch, I reckon. (Seeing that might actually send a more convincing message to the chinless acolytes of the equally chinless Tate brothers who are named in the dialogue)

3. But here my friends is The Biggie: marvelling at the cleverness and the ingenuity of the single shot tech of every episode is clearly something the film makers were looking for, especially with that single shot from outside the school to the car park. The problem here is that in marvelling like this you are taken out of the drama entirely and realise that you are watching a TV program made by technicians and engineers and crew, and by extension actors and writers and a director. That is, I am afraid, a single problem that destroyed the whole suspension of disbelief for me. I never felt I was in a drama, but was instead watching a director's wank about what he thought drama should look like. His intent was to impress rather than to enthral, and in doing that made it something to be admired rather than something to be enjoyed.

I should also add in addendum to the last point, that running single takes meant telescoping down the action into episode sized blocks, which meant omitting much about what made it believable, albeit due to the fact that (say) police searches take hours to execute and watching that would have been so dull. But it does make it seem like 'action for the sake of drama' sometimes. It sort of worked in Boiling Point because that could be operated in one take in real time believably, but not here I am afraid. Maybe reserve it for shorter things like the raid in True Detective One?

Second in addendum: Some procedural stuff is simply absurd. They arrest the boy at 07:00 over an incident that happened at 22:30 the previous night, and in that time have gathered reports from his school? And they have reviewed his social media? In that time? And that involves finding the body, running the CCTV and identifying the suspect? And then got enough evidence together to be able to crave a warrant? If the one-shot stuff is supposed to be convincing then this sort of thing wrecks it.

1st April 2025: I think it is possible that I have solved a very old mystery.

Back in the 1980s my then girlfriend and I visited a coffee and cake shop is or around St Stephen Street in Edinburgh, near Stockbridge. I have no idea what it was called or even if it's still there, but it a small, homely sort of place. Whilst we were sitting there, my girlfriend nudged me and indicated the woman sitting in the corner of the room, alone at a small table. She was muttering quietly to herself and was seemingly lost in her own world. It was clear she was once very beautiful, with prominent cheekbones and elegant features, but she also looked somehow ravaged either by hard living or just the careless passing of the years. Her hair was long and dark and had been attended to, but in a way that implied that it was in only a cursory way. Her clothes looked very shabby as well, and she carried a large carpet bag which she kept dipping into when she was not lost in her private reveries. The impression was very much of someone who used to have it, then lost it.

Some weeks later I was told some odd news. Someone told me that they had heard that Nico was staying in Edinburgh at that time.

Normally I would have dismissed that one as nonsense, but it did occur to me that the woman in the cafe may well have been her. That was backed up by the fact that the person reporting this also told me that she was living in or near Stockbridge. I asked my girlfriend if she thought that could have been Nico. She had never heard of Nico. (The relationship was therefore doomed). I even went back to the cafe to see if she was there again, but she was not, so I gave up and filed it away under 'Mystery: Unlikely' and pretty much left it there. I mean what would Nico be doing in Edinburgh anyway? 1980s Edinburgh was a fertile ground to get heroin, but so were many other places. Why would she want to be here, assuming it was even her in the first place?

Recently I picked up the striking new biography of Nico by Jennifer Otter Bickerdike You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone (which is highly recommended) and which I was quietly enjoying until I got to this section:

For the rest of Nico's life, Delon continued to deny paternity of Ari, a situation which "she was angry about most of the time, because he wasn't recognizing his responsibility", according to Nico's friend and former lover Robert King. King was the lead singer of Scars, a post-punk band from Edinburgh, Scotland. He had a romantic relationship with Nico in the 1980s, which led him to become close to other members of her extended family.

The Scars were big news in Edinburgh (and elsewhere) at that time, and I well remember hearing tales from friends who had been to see them. And that may well explain everything.

31st March 2025: Something else I have noticed is that Voice is also incredibly sparse, to the point of being minimalist, something I have always liked listening to. My previous minimalist efforts was the Atmospheres series, but this feels strangely different.

It's at times like this that I realise (or remember) that I am not doing any of this for an audience, but I am instead doing it for myself and don't care whatsoever if the sound gets out of the four walls I am doing this stuff within.

29th March 2025: Voice now underway. This one is all about textures. Some are about rhythm, others about melody and some are about sounds to accompany an invisible movie. This one is much more to do with the absolutely ambient.

27th March 2025: Jesus wept. Lawson jettisoned from Red Bull after only two races and a sprint! I can see why, but isn't that a sign that someone there has poor judgement? Oddly, I was rewatching The Thick of It only yesterday, where it was said that if a minister is sacked after a year it looks like they fucked up, but if they are sacked after two weeks then it looks like the PM fucked up. I hope Tsunoda does well, but I cannot help but think he will be a statistic like Ricciardo, Albon, Gasly, Checo and Lawson.

After Isack Hadjar's disastrous formation lap crash in Australia, we all saw Anthony Hamilton console the rookie driver afterwards which was not only hugely impressive but also probably hugely necessary.

However, if we have Yuki starring in Red Bull at his home Grand Prix, and Liam now relegated to Red Bull Racing (and presumably will have to be refilmed in their livery for the intros, which must feel like being shamed in public) then Anthony Hamilton will have to set up a shop with one of those 'please take a ticket and wait for your number to be called' systems installed outside.

Get him properly fucking screen tested. I'm sorry mate but you need a lot of powder. I've never seen anybody look so fucking ugly with just one head. And who was it that did your media training? Myra Hindley? I mean, it was terrible, all this hands all over the place. You're like a sweaty octopus trying to unhook a bra. It's like watching John Leslie at work.

26th March 2025: Three wonderful quotes made in the Republican's defence concerning the Signal leak. I should remind the reader...these were made by the Republicans, in their own defence

Asked about the story during an official visit to Hawaii, Hegseth called Goldberg a "deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again."

Why doesn't Jeffrey Goldberg disclose to readers in his stories that he is a registered Democrat? His wife also worked for Hillary Clinton and has donated nearly $25k to Democrats.

"So of course, I didn't see this loser in the group," Waltz said the day after the national security revelation broke. "It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened by some other technical means is something we're trying to figure out."

The first was quoted all over the place, where Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (that's one of the great offices of state in the USA, incidentally) starts telling journalists that the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, has a terrible reputation.

The second was posted by Donnie Junior on X, where he shrieks that Jeffrey Goldberg is a Democrat.

The third is a quote from Trump administration national security adviser Mike Waltz, where he implies that someone 'hacked' into their Signal conversation illicitly.

The first thing to observe is that these are all lies or distractions from the truth. Goldberg's reputation is fine (I am surprised that, with a name like Goldberg, they could even consider attacking him but that's another issue). That he is a registered Democrat puts him up alongside about 45 million other Americans. And if Waltz can demonstrate how to 'hack' Signal then I am sure that we'd all love to see it demonstrated.

But here is the other thing: together, these statements taken in toto say that they have had a 'discredited' political adversary on board in a conversation that took place on an insecure, unclassified channel. Are they trying to make this better or somehow worse for themselves?

This is excellent:

25th March 2025: Ki released. I've played it back 'as is' four times now and am really liking it a lot, the last track in particular.

	Ki 08
	A bit of a quiet musical battle between tech here that resolves to something entirely organic, yet mutated.

It closes with a mutated piano sound that I came up with that surprised even me when I did it. Wonderful.

24th March 2025: Finally blocked on BlueSky by that whining piece of tripe Supertanskiii after (it seems - it might be hard to know, given how thin-skinned she is) daring to suggest that her unimpeachable news source was actually just a news site that reposts from newspapers (which she says are biased) and is not a magical news site filled with elves and goblins to whom the Real Truth is mystically imparted so that they can reveal it to the enlightened. She really is a dreadful piece of work: the sort of low ratio, low signal leftist who gives real leftists a bad name and (worse) when challenged falls back on the tired crapola about how it's all because she's a she and not a he. The problem with her is really in the delivery. She says a lot (and some is mildly funny) but that's about all. She doesn't really say anything. She's like a Vulgar Vorderman without the facts, or a Poundland Purkiss without the deceptive intelligence. I will not miss her.

It did reveal something else though: when one person drops you, a whole raft of other irritating spunkwaffles disappear too. As I posted elsewhere, we all may be Jock Tamson's bairns but some are more related than others.

On a positive note, this is fantastic:

And this:

And this:

Ki now enjoying The Process as usual. Sounding pretty good so far.

22nd March 2025: That's them all gone now. Ali. Frazier. Norton. Foreman. Damn.

Of them all, Foreman probably had the greatest boxing gifts. His reach was enormous: he could get to almost anyone from way outside their range and didn't even have to duck back after the attack. (Assuming you had even the senses to retaliate: 'when George hit you, you stayed hit') His sense of position in the ring was unlike any other: his footwork could cut the ring down until you had nowhere to go, then finish you off exactly where he wanted you. And that punch: like a steamhammer, it would destroy almost anyone it touched. Smokin' Joe was seen as his greatest challenge and he was destroyed by George inside two rounds, memorably being lifted off his feet by one blow that could probably have stopped a horse as he wasgoing about his job. George of course lost his crown to a smarter boxer, but not necessarily the greater fighter. Afterwards he sunk into a black hole of depression but had the sense to reinvent himself and come out as one of the greatest ambassadors to the sport we have ever known. In his prime I doubt there is a fighter alive or dead that he couldn't beat in a straight toe-to-toe bout.

Good to see someone back where he most deservedly belongs (at last), even if it was only the sprint. He managed to better the field by about 6 seconds over a mere 19 laps. I think this will be Ferrari's year, as long as the drivers can work together.

21st March 2025: Watching Jandek on Corwood this afternoon. Sometimes I wish I actually liked his music. The mystery about it is wonderful (although a bit damaged now) and the sheer otherness of what he has been doing for the last fifty years is astounding. The problem is the music itself: I really don't get anything from listening to it. Some find it repellant. I don't - but I also don't get anything from other singer/songwriters types either. I couldn't tell you a song by James Taylor, or Michael McDonald or Jackson Browne or any of the other bazillion guys with a guitar and an earnest expression whose music is (to my instinct) immediately anodyne. Jandek sure isn't anodyne and is pulling the format about as far out of shape as one really can, but it's still sitting in that ballpark, for me.

If anything, I really like his presentation the best. Most of his albums have his face on the cover, but until recently no one really knew who he was, which of course was because his fellow Texas immediate residents were hugely unlikely to have seen him and an album at the same time, or the same week, or even at all. Most of the covers are deliberately artless. They don't say much, but that may also chime with the music, since I cannot make out a single word he 'sings' anyway.

The huge problem I have with the documentary is that anyone who is considered to be an outsider is assumed to be defective which is a recurrent theme among the people interviewed for the film. They assume he is on drugs, or mentally ill, or socially inept, or has no contact with any other human being, or is in some way dangerous. It's a common mistake many make: if he is not like us then he must be demented on chemicals. People said (and still say it) about Zappa, which is about as far from the truth as you can get. But that narrative persists. If I cannot understand it then it must be damaged, after all...I am an intelligent person, am I not? The sheer level of presumption is dreadful here. It's all too ugly to bear, so it has to be wrong.

And then, there is this....

15th March 2025: Well, there's a shock. Bearman crashed in Australia in FP1, missed FP2 whilst they gave him a new gearbox and engine, then let him out this morning for FP3 when he spun it through the gravel. He's now going into Q1 with less than 20 laps done so far. I think Gene Haas might be nervous about this.

Williams looking very good indeed. I suspect at least one of their drivers feels he has something to prove.

14th March 2025: Ki is turning out quite strangely. It's turning out well, but incredibly strangely. It just seems to be happening without me having to do an awful lot, which is unusual.

	Ki 01
	Work in progress - not even very sure what this one 'means' or where it has come from. Some lovely sounds from the Mellotron though.

I am still thinking about that version of Bo Rap I wrote about yesterday. It's incredible to hear this.

Binged Drive to Survive season 7 already. As much as I love F1, it's looking very sanitised now. There are no real wow moments in it now, other than the whole Horngate thing which is dealt with and disposed of in the first episode. The story isn't finished by a long shot - we have a court case coming up soon enough, thanks to Red Bull managing to suspend the woman at the centre of all of this for providing the world with some fairly good evidence that the whole matter has been swept under a convenient carpet.

My F1 prediction for this year? Ferrari for the win this year and Charles for the WDC. Max won't be anywhere beyond third. Williams will do very well. McLaren will push Ferrari to the end. Sauber and AMR will crash and burn (figuratively speaking). ANT will do better than George in the long run. It should be a great season. That Haas will end up nowhere is hardly a prediction, but I think they are putting way too much store into Bearman.

The new titles are crazy. Who told George to do that? And Carlos, for that matter.

13th March 2025: Is this the most beautiful man who has ever lived? I dunno. Maybe. Quite probably the greatest screen actor of all time? I dunno.

This is really worth listening: 'negative harmony' Bohemian Rhapsody. It's like listening to Uncanny Valley. Strangely beautiful, very minor key and incredibly unsettling.

No idea what 'negative harmony' actually is yet. A swift visit to Mr Google says that it is a compositional technique that involves inverting chords and notes around a central axis. This creates 'polar opposites' of the original chords and notes. The idea behind negative harmony is that you can move towards the tonic but instead of doing it in perfect fifths, you can do it in descending perfect fourths, just like the plagal cadence - from Bb to C; and still maintain the functional quality of the chord progression towards the tonic

Quite bizarre.

4th March 2025: Working on Rational right now, which is (again) a bit different and a bit more sparse than before. First one is a work in progress, but I have all of the tracks together now:

	Rational 01
	An ambient sound which starts off in one place and which changes under your nose and moves into another direction completely.

I seemed to miss the 50th anniversary issue of Red, maybe because I am not going to buy the album yet again. So far I have the late 70s Polydor issue, the original CD issue (which sounds terrible), the 30th anniversary CD issue in the mini LP sleeve, the 40th anniversary issue with the Steven Wilson abomination remix, and the Panegyric vinyl issue on 180g vinyl. Buying it again would be an act of utter madness.

It's not even my favourite Crimson album, not by a long shot. I do like the title track, and Starless is in a class of its own, but the other two songs on the first side are a bit meh and could almost be played by flesh and blood. One More Red Nightmare in particular is quite painfully ordinary (to my ears anyway), and the handclaps on it really bug me for some reason. It's just too...ordinary. I'm also at a loss to understand why they used the improvisation from Providence when they have had far better improvs on the same tour. I don't dislike the album, it's just not top of the league for me, nothing like the previous two. In fact, I think I actually prefer USA which provides a better (doctored) document of where this band was at their best.

Arg, fuggit. Rational is released. The next up will be called Ki

1st March 2025: I have actually signed a petition and will later e-mail my MP to express my grave misgivings about extending an invitation to the American President on a state visit, given the way he carried the meeting with the Ukranian president yesterday. I haven't been this motivated in years.

Their biggest concern seemed to be why Zelensky did not wear a suit and that failing to do so was somehow a mark of 'disrespect', a phrase I associate with actual Mafia gangsters or London gangsters who think they are in the Mafia. As someone else said, yesterday a sitting President disrespected the office of the USA, and it wasn't Zelenksy.

I have had this song stuck in my head for about a week now, and I have no idea why...other than it's a great song, of course.

I still think I have yet to hear an actually bad Doors song. Maybe Horse Latitudes qualifies as being mediocre. Someone else says that it gives every reason why people hate the Doors inside two minutes. On the plus side, John Densmore wanted to call Strange Days Mute Nostril Agony at first.

26th February 2025: I see that Henry 'dis is the tord knockout of the first round of the second set of quarter finals' Kelly has died today. Famous of course for the interminable and almost incomprehensible Going for Gold which was the favourite of shift workers and the terminally unemployed, here is a contemporaneous review of the show by Victor Lewis-Smith in the Evening Standard. Later reprinted in his collection of reviews Inside the Magic Rectangle (which is maybe the most screamingly funny book on TV that I have ever read), I quote it here in its entirety to convey the cadence of VLS's writing style and to convey the degree to which withering contempt can be honed until it's no longer a mere cliche any more. This is savagery at its most savage:

Going for Gold

"I warn you now. If daytime television gets much worse, I'm going to stop watching it altogether, pop down to the video hire shop, pick something at random and review that instead. Even Jeremy Clarkson's Guide to the Wankel Rotary Engine would be preferable to most of the dross currently on offer.

"When choosing the presenter for a new quiz show, producers draw up a list, with the biggest names at the very top. Agents are telephoned. Offers are made and rejected. Gradually, they move further down their list. Eventually, as the cameras prepare to roll, the reluctant shout goes up: 'OK, phone Henry Kelly then.' So it must have been with the genesis of the Euroquiz Going for Gold, for there was the great man himself, charisma-light, hair prematurely ginger, bounding on to the cheap blue neon set and rousing the audience to fever pitch with his first exciting words: 'It's an important day, because today we'll find the third semi-finalist for the first semi-final.' The man exudes not gravitas but frivitas.

"With our national cricket and football teams at their present nadir, I thoroughly approve of the BBC making three foreigners speak English when they compete against one of our boys. How else are we ever to win anything? But, although the programme claims to be panEuropean, non-British contestants almost invariably hail from Scandinavia or the Low Countries, and therefore all speak better English than Henry. Yesterday's line-up was a typical Euro-bland trio in jackets and slacks, looking like a team of junior buyers from Marks & Spencer: Gert from Denmark, who resembled a hairless unconstructed photofit picture with a slashed saveloy for lips, and expressed 'a strong interest in Boy Scouts'; Stein from Oslo, who wisely talked only about his tie, since it was by far the most interesting thing about him; and our boy William from Scotland. Together with Kiki from Finland, who said almost nothing and seemed to be there principally as ballast, this was to be our afternoon's entertainment.

"What followed was not a game show, but an impotent ritual in which questions and answers were meaninglessly and unenthusiastically intoned. Every expense had been spared, and there were neither picture inserts nor music. 'We have no elimination round,' said Henry, beginning a round whose sole purpose was to eliminate one contestant. His unique skill as a broadcaster - whether as TV quizmaster reading from cards, or DJ on Classic FM regurgitating sleeve notes - is that you always feel you have a better grasp of the subject-matter than he does.

"Eventually it was over and, I don't mind telling you, I was intellectually stretched. Gert had a tactical win and Stein had a tactical defeat, but neither seemed remotely elated or dejected, as though this had been a job interview and they had both decided not to accept anyway. Finally, Henry told us that, if we knew which island Bergerac was originally set on, we could waste 48p by phoning an 0898 number 'and have the chance to win a year's free TV licence'. Such a lavish prize was offered, presumably, because they reckoned no one would bother to take up the offer, after this example of the output.

"The show is certainly not gold, but the production office deserves to be knee-deep in guilt. The graphics and set are appallingly cheap and nasty, while the words of the title music plumb new depths of inanity - 'The heat is on, the time is right, it's time for you to build your game cos people are coming, everyone's trying, trying to be the best that they can when they're going for, going for gold'(*) - as though they've been translated into English from Danish, via Esperanto. The whole farrago is such a dreadful warning against #European' culture that I half expected the closing credits to reveal it as "a Lord Rees- Mogg production'. In fact, Reg Grundy is responsible, and it can only have got on air on the strength of his name.

"Years ago, Picasso used to avoid paying restaurant bills by simply signing his famous name on a napkin and presenting it to the patron. Going for Gold is Reg Grundy's free lunch."

'Through The Magic Rectangle ', Victor Lewis-Smith

(*)Incredibly perhaps, the theme was written by Hans Zimmer.

Feeling listless. I've been asked to come up with music that is way outside my genre, and I don't know how or if I can do it. But I will try. (That's me talking, not Hans Zimmer)

23rd February 2025: Yesterday was a debacle. Finn Russell missed every kick he took and England took the few chances they had. Our biggest issue is obviously discipline: we just bleed away results by giving away idiotic penalties.

Scotland had 59% territory and 58% possession. They scored three tries to England's one. We carried for 933m compared to England's 474m, and we made nine line breaks to England's two. Add to that, we won 35 defences to England's 10.

Have we invented a whole new way to lose?

Some coding to do today. I have a database which contains all the sounds I use in all the tracks I have recorded (in Reaper - I don't know how to parse other arrangement files yet) so I don't fall foul of repetition. In summary, it does this:

USAGE TRACKDATABASE [ACTION] [SEARCH-STRING-WITH-SPACES/IMPORT FILENAME/NAMED FOLDER]

Actions

BUILD will build the database from scratch

BUILDQ as BUILD but with quieter output

BUILDA will build the database from scratch and will then import new data from a named file

BUILDAQ as BUILDA but with quieter output

TRACK will search the database for a string within a track name

ALBUM will show all tracks in an album

STATS will provide statistical analysis of the database

EXPORT will export database to a CSV file (optional args ALBUM= or TRACK=)

IMPORT will import another database to the master database

IMPORTCSV will import a CSV database to the master database

IMPORTNEW will import all .album-database files awaiting import

BUILDFOLDER will build a mini database for the named project folder

It's all working wel, but the stats need tightened up a bit to be meaningful. Also, the database might need reformattinmg too. Grand.

22nd February 2025: The fight to obtain a decent copy of Laughing Stock has progressed and failed and then progressed again. It was found earlier for non-comedy prices, but was being sold by a comedian. Trading under what looked like a company name, he was in fact selling records from his own collection from his home address, without ever mentioning the magic words 'second hand' or anything like that.

When I received it, I found a horrid scratch right across side one which I reported to him immediately, despite him advertising that he did not take returns. (Is that either fair or even legal? Can I sell you a housebrick and call it a gold bar and refuse to give a refund?) To be fair, he accepted and asked for the record back so that I could be refunded, but when I sent it back the Post Office fleeced me on P+P which he refused to fully cover, despite an earlier promise that he would. Very Unimpressive. I have since found it elsewhere and managed to get it yesterday.

Terrific inspiration tonight. Really happy with this so far. I think that the simplicity of the graphics have helped this happen.

20th February 2025: Variations EP now released. Takes a bit of getting used to, probably.

20th February 2025: Arcana EP now released. Very happy (again) with how this one turned out. The fourth track is particularly lovely, I think. All available for free.

I am re-reading one of the funniest books I have ever had the fortune to pick up. Like all properly funny books it's also poignant at times without being mawkish, and quite beautifully written:

This part describing John Cooper Clarke is just glorious:

His own creation. A slim volume. A tall, stick-legged, Rocker Dandy with a bouffant hairdo reminiscent of eighteenth-century Versailles and Dylan circa Highway 61. Black biker's jacket with period details, in the top pocket a lace handkerchief, a diamante crucifix, and a policeman's badge pinned on to the sleeve. He wasn't gay or even camp, his tastes were what you might call School of Graceland. His favourite music was Rock'n'roll - big guitars, whacking great beat. His favourite eatery was any Little Chef. He particularly enjoyed the cherry pancake with whipped cream - it was consistency of product standard he relished as, without such little oases of sweetness, each day could be an endless series of disappointment, threat and anxiety. He and Echo were almost interchangeable. They both came from the same part of Manchester, they were both Catholics, they were both pure Rock'n'roll, and they both shared the same needle. The difference being, Clarke had a career.

He performed his poetry in a rapid-fire style taken from the Italian Futurists and a youthful predilection for amphetamine sulphate. His droning Maserati vocal technique sometimes blurred the brilliance of his writing, but everything he did or said had the mark of an individuality born of a true, self-inflicted suffering. Like Echo, he believed in Original Sin. And the Catholic sensibility is capable of nurturing the most original of sins.

He rarely liked to leave the flat, as he had a public persona to maintain. If he did venture out, then he had to prepare the Grande Levee. Hair back-combing could take an hour in itself. Leaving the house was like going on stage. (Echo once delayed his entrance on stage by a whole hour when he commented adversely on Clarke's choice of trousers. Since all his trousers were the same black drainpipes the choice seemed immaterial.) Both of them lived in a world haunted by superstitions and taboos of their own making. Clarke couldn't bear to be near things that weren't manufactured. The 'natural' world was a source of intense dread and disquiet. To tread on grass meant to come into contact with 'the world of worms', a potential holocaust under every cuban-heeled step. He was so like Echo, except his fame had projected him even further out of reality. With commitment and effort he might have become one of our finest People's Poets.

Songs They Never Play On The Radio (James Young)

Fantastic.

19th February 2025: I feel so stupid for never seeing this before...

 

His favoured method was to ask the politician to agree with an escalating series of propositions ('Would you agree that...?') before closing the trap: 'So if you accept A, B, and C, then surely you must accept that...?'' The closest he had to a catchphrase was, 'Ah, yes, but first let me bring you back to', employed when the interviewee tried to evade one of the systematic series of hooks. Heaven help any politician who lacked a comeback.

Interrogator-in-chief: farewell Brian Walden, father of political TV (Mark Lawson, the Independent, 13th May 2019)

I could think of so many shapeshifting fucks that I would love him to have skwewered, but I fear most of them would simply refuse the opportunity.

17th February 2025:

Damn...

RIP Jamie Muir, you fabulous talent. Larks' Tongues in Aspic is perhaps one of the most profound records I have ever heard and Jamie was a huge part of that. That he was only around for a short time in the band yet had such a massive effect on them speaks so much about how good he really was. And always will be.

Ambient Diaries volume IV is done. Now onto the other myriad things I have mapped out.

16th February 2025: Pretty sure that the Ambient Diaries volume IV is done, but I have to give it the requisite listen over for the Eyebrows as usual. The last track is something I really like:

	Ambient Diaries Volume IV 04
	An ambient track, part of a body of work recorded over the last five years.

Combing through the rest now. I'm surprised to find there is actually very little that needs to be acted upon, which is unusual, especially right after the tracks have been put together.

I've started watching The Outsider which has been touted as a sort of follow up to True Detective. It ain't. It's Stephen King. Sooner or later the mumbo-jumbo ghost shit creeps in and there are no rules and every opportunity for the deus to emerge ex machina again.

Nice title sequence though.

12th February 2025: This is absolutely essential viewing for everyone: Rick Beato in conversation with John Densmore and Robbie Krieger, better known as what is left of The Doors.

The interview is actually hilarious - the two of them carp at each other in a good-humoured way like an old married couple correcting each others' recollections of the events from 60 years ago. Beato is in his starry-eyed element, of course, and asks some genuinely fascinating but incredibly geeky questions about how their music was recorded, what kit they used, and so on. Also some genuine insight into the inner workings of the band and the dynamics within, which seem to centre on their legendary front man's inability to turn down any form of alcohol offered to him, something that really seemed to fracture the band more than anything else.

Something I noticed: there is a strong similarity to the other interview that Beato did with Brian May, in that every time the late and legendary singer's name is mentioned there is a real air of expectation around what was about to come next from someone who knew them better than most people. At least here we are spared the 'he's not really dead' claptrap that was sadly hawked about by the other band member at times, and which was never helpful.

It was also refreshing to see how the interview did not subtract from the fact that some of the best songs the band had were not written at all by Morrison, but by Krieger. In fact, it was also clear that anything that Morrison did 'write' was really just a lyric to which he applied a tune to remember the words. For a non-playin musician, that's quite an incredible gift, especially when you consider just how splendid some of those melodies were, like this one:

A friend's brother once told me that he couldn't think of a single bad tune by this band. I scorned this opinion (thinking mostly about the weaknesses of The Soft Parade) but then had to concede that I couldn't think of an actually bad one either. Like all bands they had moments that were better than others, but unlike some of them they never actually dipped into self-parody or mediocrity.

I am revisiting Arcana as a project (and maybe even as a concept), I've rattled off an EP which I am brooding over and have come up with a third project which only has a title and a very loose idea behind it as to what it will contain. As if that is not enough, I am also going to return to the Ambient Diaries series and come up with volume IV, something I jotted down some ideas about earlier today.

11th February 2025: I've always found this interesting. If you work out how many people are responsible for you being here, you can count back by generations. So if you're in your 20s right now, your two parents were resposible for you being here in 2000 or thereabouts. If you go back another 25 years (if we can assume that is the length of a generation, which is reasonable) you can then add in their parents too which brings the number up to six. Another generation back will add on their parents, which brings the total up to 14. And so it goes on and can be quite easily calculated.

The interesting thing is when you get to around the time of Queen Matilda of England, around 1125 or so. By that time you've gone back only 36 generations, but the number of people standing behind you in the genetic queue is 137438953470 which is higher than even the outside estimates provided by the Population Reference Bureau's idea of the total number of humans who have ever lived (which is 117 billion). So what has gone wrong here? Is our calculation wrong?

It's not. The number is quite correct and reveals the following:

1. We are all the product of a subtle form of incest.

2. If someone claims to be a direct descendent of (say) William The Conqueror, you can say back to them with absolutely no possibility of being wrong that yes, you are too.

3. That we are quite definitely all Jock Tamson's bairns.

And of course, it doesn't end there. If you go back far enough you'll find that the genetic contributions that led directly to your existence also involves non-human creatures. Go back a million and a few generations and you might find some real weird people in your family.

Great (^1.2 million) Uncle Dimetrodon Dickson

	Variations EP 02
	A twist on a theme, working in progress.

Finally found this for a non-joke price on eBay.

I cannot wait to get my hands on it. This is a band that I sort of wish I had been in, whilst at the same time realise that their two last outstanding albums were stitched together in a studio SMiLE-like from improvised scraps left by others. It's up there with The Aeroplane Over The Sea and Pet Sounds for me. It's that good.

6th February 2025: This one sure resonantes...

Final Working Definition: a bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.

That more or less sums up 80% of everything that I ever did in paid employment. Not that I didn't try, or that I was a slacker, or that I was even unenthusiastic. I just knew that everything I was doing made no difference to anyone and that if the job was not done then there would be barely any repercussions beyond some angst over paperwork, or corporate liability, or something or other. For the other 20% of the time I knew that what I was doing 'mattered' on a small individual basis, but even then I knew that I was part of an organisation that was pissing into the wind, that knew it was pissing into the wind, yet still thought what it was doing was important and valuable, mostly for a very few tiny successes that it may have had, most of which were really handed to them on a plate.

The only reason to commit to my Bullshit Job was to earn money to pay for the things that actually mattered to me, and to keep house and home with my partner and to maintain a style of living that suited us both. Other than that, I saw no reason in doing anything other than to maintain the wishes of the bosses I answered to whom I knew had no idea about anything and whose greatest contribution to anything was to make a decision about something put to them, something that was not only their primary function but which was also something that nearly all of them avoided doing because the nanosecond they did so it would be absolutely and completely apparent that they were bereft of ideas, leadership and any of the other myriad traits that they lied about having in order to Get On.

One thing that I was extremely conscious of was that my job did nothing to make anyone's life better (other than indirectly) and instead only served to make things a whole lot worse for a very small number indeed. In that, I really have little to offer other than a mild form of regret that I wish I had experienced when I was there. I just wish I had known the foresight to ask why I was doing what I was doing (not meaning 'the reward' but 'the action') and what made my life end up there in the end. Like a lot of working lives it was mostly shaped by a series of accidents and lucky interventions, rather than through any driving ambition of my own (something that I not only mistrust but also see as a character weakness in people who know that they are shoring up a dreadfully hollow existence otherwise) which I have always signally failed to demonstrate, and I am glad of that. Ambitious, competitive people are the sort that I instinctively shy away from for a number of reasons:

1. Their conversations are entirely defined by, limited to and encompassed within any of the following: their lives; their problems; their personal victories. They are almost pathologically incapable of speaking in the abstract and have very few strong opinions outside their own narrow range of personal interests. The most I have ever got out of one such person was their love of TV and a myriad TV series that they claim to enjoy, something I unfortunately really don't.

2. Their competitive streak is not a streak, it's an emulsion. They cannot even play party games without getting over-excited about winning and downright sulky when they lose. I like to win these things as much as anyone, but the feeling of triumph might last about ten seconds after which I switch over to something else. I don't dwell on the outcome and - worse - do not conduct myself during the process as though my soul depended upon the way things pan out. (In that I may exclude backgammon which is a serious business)

3. They have a great memory for their few victories in life, and a great deal of amnesia for the many defeats. We all have the latter. Deal with it and move on. One of the worst phrases was 'it was a learning experience', which is only valid if the learning actually happened and made you a better person.

4. They are also usually perfectly capable of embellishing their own sense of worth and importance to society to an astounding degree. Which brings me back to the subject of Bullshit Jobs.

6th February 2025: Compositions still come over very slowly. As usual, some are inspired by Sounds or presets which sound great in isolation (or at one tempo) but when piled into a DAW and blended with other sounds can appear a bit meh. Onward with the struggle.

5th February 2025:

3rd February 2025: Keen readers of this journal - there must be one of you out there somewhere - will no doubt remember that I have a copy of The Magnetic Fields signed by both the coauthor Philippe Soupault but also the translator, the poet David Gascoyne. I knew little about Gascoyne other than he was a bit of an underachiever. Only today I turned up the following in a book regarding people who may have once been considered for the role of Poet Laureate:

David Gascoyne (1916-2001) was an English surrealist poet, and friend of Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. In 1969, he became convinced of an imminent apocalypse, which led him to head for Buckingham Palace early in the morning of 29 May, in order to tell the Queen of the plot for world domination by the Scientologists. Outside the Palace gates he was apprehended. 'I immediately found myself in conflict with the earthly powers in the person of a young guardsman.' After a brief struggle, he was placed in a cell, before being driven to the Horton Psychiatric Hospital in Epsom.

Bizarre.

The next one up will be a four track EP called Arcana which will have some banging party music on it.

1st February 2025: Uh oh...

31st January 2025: Flux released after a few last minute cleanups and one almighty howler being found.

30th January 2025: Flux might be over finally. Just got to square it all up and add the eyebrows and see what I have. It's taken a lot longer than some of the others, but not for an additional detail or because I was actually taking my time over this one. It was because I genuinely ran out of steam on this one and had so little to present that I was recording and rejected at a rate I have never really done before. Am I getting worse or simply more hypercritical?

	Flux 08
	Bent instruments, endless delays, incoherence with moments of coherence.

25th January 2025: An excellent story:

Lady Gladwyn could not have been aware of an unfortunate incident a few days before. On the morning of a lunch in Rome held in the Princess's [Margaret's] honour, the ten-year-old daughter of a senior British diplomat had been taught to say grace. But when the big moment came, she grew tongue-tied. While the Princess and everyone waited expectantly, the little girl whispered to her mother that she had forgotten what to say.

'You remember, darling,' replied her mother encouragingly. 'Just repeat what Daddy and I said before lunch.'

'Oh God, why do we have to have this difficult woman to lunch,' piped up the little girl.

Work still slogging away on Flux. I think this may be the first time I have suffered a serious form of block, in that I have started and restarted both tracks six and seven four times each. Like a lot of people, I tend to relisten to stuff I have just done and become hypercritical about it. This may be the first time that it's a case of me finding no redeeming features in so much of it. Seven was finished last night in a draft form. I have an idea for eight now, and that will then be enough.

Another excellent snippet:

* Of all the adjectives used to describe the Queen Mother, 'radiant' is surely the most frequent. During her lifetime it almost became part of her title, like Screamin' Jay Hawkins or Shakin' Stevens. Radiant this, radiant that: she might have popped out of the womb radiant, and continued radiating morning, noon and night. As time went on, it became hard to imagine her ever unradiant, but then again, she never had to put out the bins, or book a ticket online, or trudge around a supermarket with a twelve-pack of toilet paper. She seems to have achieved her perpetual radiance by ring-fencing herself from anything unpleasant or - a favourite word, this - 'unhelpful'.

Both taken from Princess Ma'am: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown. The woman sounds like an absolute nightmare and one of the best arguments for Republicanism I have ever encountered.

I actually had my own run-in with The Royal Dwarf (as many seemed to call her, particularly when she was older and 'sometimes difficult') which didn't involve actually meeting her face to face. In the 1980s I was dining in the city with my then wife and her parents in a Chinese restaurant which had a decent reputation and pedigree, but which was by no means particularly fancy. The evening was going pretty well when the (full) restaurant was joined by a couple of tall men in raincoats who sought out the manager and had a word with him in what looked like serious and urgent confidence. Health inspectors? Protection Racketeers? The manager's face changed from inscrutable to flustered almost immediately, whereupon the men left and the manager issued instructions to the waiting staff who scattered like disturbed mice, circulating the tables in equal haste to break the news to their paying customers that the restaurant had to be cleared immediately as they were 'booked for a private occasion that evening'. Naturally the attitude of the customers was understandably at odds with the urgency of the manager's request, especially when one of the waiting staff started handing out full bills for the items consumed. As far as I could see, they were in no mood for comping anything.

To be fair, some customers who were hardly into their meals were allowed to have their food boxed to take away, but that hardly helped. For ourselves it was less of an issue as we were onto the brandy, so leaving was not the issue as much as the absurd haste. When the bill came to the table my father-in-law asked what the rush was all about. The waiter replied he was sorry but 'Princess Maglit' was coming and the place 'needs to be empty of people'. ('Needs'?) I assumed that the men who had come in earlier were Royal Protection or something and that the RD had announced her intention to dine in one of her favourite places (as I later found out) but that the sight of subjects at their beef, green pepper and black bean sauce would not assist her delicate digestive sensibilities, so we were hoofed out onto the street.

I was disappointed not to see a fleet of black cars hauling up outside but did not stick around to witness it myself. Assuming it happened of course. The Royal Sponge-For-Brain may have changed her mind at the last minute and gone on elsewhere, as was part of her reputation. That may have explained the restaurant's eagerness to bill the poor sods who were already there: that might be the last money they were taking all night, such was the other part of her reputation.

Whatever the event, I don't think I returned to that place again. Inexplicably, it's still there, although after the head chef left I understand that it suffered a serious downturn in its reputation and is now just a tatty reminder of how it used to be.

Viva la Republic

22nd January 2025: I was literally just reading about Elliot Ingber yesterday and was amazed to find he was still alive. And today I find he is dead as of about 12 hours ago.

Godspeed, Winged Eel Fingerling

This is enlightened...

Portugal's policy rests on three pillars: one, that there's no such thing as a soft or hard drug, only healthy and unhealthy relationships with drugs; two, that an individual's unhealthy relationship with drugs often conceals frayed relationships with loved ones, with the world around them, and with themselves; and three, that the eradication of all drugs is an impossible goal.

That it even looks enlightened shows how withered things have become.

20th January 2025: Just skimming over a book retailer online has (accidentally) revealed to me that there must be upwards of 100 biographies of Jim Morrison.

How can you write so much about a single dullard? Do any of these books say anything 'new'? Who the hell is buying this?

Finally removed Threads, Facebook and Twatter from the column on the left of the page. I'll be replacing them in time with music sites, probably.

Also, trying not sound overly like Yoda, but I just sensed a huge shift in BlueSky yesterday, and not in any way for the better. Maybe I am used to everything on the Internet falling apart, but I think it's inevitable.

Good one from The Oatmeal:

19th January 2025: What the bent twats at Ali Express advertise:

What the bent twats at Ali Express actually sell it for:

Elvis on Ed Sullivan.

Stones in Gimme Shelter.

Beatles at Shea.

Pistols on Grundy.

And this. A thousand times, this. 'Thus confronted, rock and roll becomes irrelevant'

Dance, dance, dance to the radio.

Radio, live transmission

Radio, live transmission

Listen to the silence, let it ring on

Eyes, dark grey lenses frightened of the sun

We would have a fine time living in the night

Left to blind destruction, waiting for our sight

We would go on as though nothing was wrong

Hide from these days, we remained all alone

Staying in the same place, just staying out the time

Touching from a distance, further all the time

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

Well I could call out when the going gets tough

The things that we've learnt are no longer enough

No language, just sound, that's all we need know

To synchronize love to the beat of the show

And we could dance

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio

And here is another style of poetry entirely...

17th January 2025: Following on from yesterday, which follows on from reading John French's book again...

Sorry to its many followers, but I have never managed to get into this one, really. It seems to suffer from a combination of near-wilful obscurity, a lack of any real tunes, and (above all else) some terrible, muddy production. In the case of the latter issue, that has of course always been a problem here. Safe as Milk sounds pleasingly lo-fi at times, but Strictly Personal is wrecked by phasing, Trout Mask Replica sounds better but was recorded on unfamiliar equipment that ran at very high tape speeds and hence gave a brittle edge to it, and then the next two were apparently recorded at the bottom of the LaBrea Tar Pits. It's a pity as a lot of the good ideas were either lost or modded into obscurity.

Clear Spot was far better recorded, but was the first step on the painful journey into the first two Virgin albums, which were abominations. Arguably, Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) was the first album that contained good material and which was well produced and recorded, and that was probably surpassed by the superior Doc at the Radar Station, which I think might actually be his best album of them all. (I will gloss over Ice Cream for Crow as it seems to be less of an album and more of a sweeping up of ideas and recordings that had been around for years)

The problem with this one, though, are the songs themselves. They are all pretty short, but they crowd around the centre stereo spot and are often obscured by Don's voice which - again - only has a vague sense of synchronisation with what else was going on and which occupies the same place. So what is missing?

When it came time for Don's vocal overdubs, Dick Kunc took every type of conceivable microphone and set it up in the studio in a big cluster. Don had been saying he wanted his voice recorded correctly 'for a change.' When Don asked what this was all about, Dick replied, 'Since I have no idea what kind of vocal sound you actually want, I am going to have you sing and I will give you samples of every conceivable sound you can achieve.' Then, you can decide which you like. I thought it was a great plan. Don did not seem to understand, and thought it was some kind of joke on him.

Dick appeared to be oblivious to this, but I could sense that Don was building more and more of a case against him. Finally, Kunc was fired, but in typical Don fashion. If I remember correctly, Artie and I were the ones who actually had to tell him. We both apologized and said that we had no idea what it was about. Dick was obviously hurt and shaken by the decision. I enjoyed having him at the house, and so did Helen. She said it was nice to be around someone like Dick, who got up whistling and read the paper in the morning.

I went to the Record Plant the next day to watch as Don overdubbed his voice. Unfortunately, he was never easy to work with in the studio. Phil Schier, however, was a more non-threatening type of guy and Don trusted him. However, it was apparent that Don was not prepared again and was winging it on several pieces. It wasn't a comfortable experience, and we left after a very short time.

'Beefheart - Through The Eyes of Magic', John French

Well, a second guitar for one thing. Harkleroad and Boston play a load of notes to compensate (or so it seems) but missing Jeff Cotton meant that a gap had to be filled, and whilst the addition of ex-Mothers man Art Tripp on marimba to play second 'guitar' is without doubt a USP of sorts, it doesn't have the same level of noise about it. The effect is to make the sound rather weedy by comparison, especially when the moments arrive that would have been a dual guitar break, only to feature a single guitar and some rather strange plink-plonking from the other side. It's an idea that might have stretched to a couple of songs, but Don was likely alienating so many people by that point that word had gotten around that joining his weird band would also mean joining his even weirder personality cult. (Elliot Ingber eventually doubled lots of Tripp's parts which actually solved on small problem and created a third: it beefed up the second sound, but introduced a level of simplicity, when a third instrument could have given a real sense of depth)

I don't imagine that the TV advert did them any favours down in Squaresville, USA either.

During this time, we rehearsed more often over at the Trout House. Elliot and Don also had brainstorming sessions in which basically Elliot gave Don ideas that he used almost verbatim. The most vivid memory I have is of Elliot describing in detail the promotional b&w film for Lick My Decals Off, Baby. This happened at Don's house while I was there.

'Beefheart - Through The Eyes of Magic', John French

Sure, take the ideas and suggestions made by others, but don't steal their credit...

Art Tripp: But the thing that never ceases to amaze me even to this day and I've told this a hundred times to other people, is I actually thought, and I think some of the others actually thought that this was a commercial effort. (laughter) I mean, Trout Mask was just too far out and now we're going to do Lick My Decals Off, Baby, which we expected to hear on AM radio. That to me just shows how goofy we all were.

John French: Well, I am going to say this and you may not believe me, but I never believed that stuff was going to be on AM radio.

AT: Yeah, well I didn't either, but going in to it...

'Beefheart - Through The Eyes of Magic', John French

A review at the time made the difference between this album and its predecessor around one being music and the other being songs. I'm not sure I can share that opinion. Trout sounds like it was recorded in white light in a studio, whereas Decals sounds like it was recorded under a big wet bridge.

Still really enjoying this record after all this time. I cannot really put my finger on the reason why, but it plays with a sort of confident swagger that a lot of their counterparts could only fake, and fairly badly at that.

Now working on an update for the Decent Sampler version of the Mellotron Mk V. One happy bit of news is that I have found a suitable font for the logo: Gacor Regular. Looks okay from here anyway.

16th January 2025: Love the music, but the guy was a fraud of the first water. His occasional forays into brilliance were at the hands of the bands he recruited. That was perhaps his greatest talent.

The Labour Party - as weak as slittery cat shit. The slightest voice of criticism from the Tories or Musk and their arses got into a collective collapse. What spineless nonentities we have to choose from.

Working on Flux now and then. There is some great stuff happening here...

	Flux 02
	Endless change. Eternal transformation. The slow movement between something and nothing and back again. Flux eternae.

12th January 2025: I don't know if I entirely agree with this, but it's a take on a new subject by someone who has been around for a while now:

So does the prospect of [AI] taking your music worry you at all?

Actually no, not at all. For very personal and complex reasons.

Can you summarise them?

Well, I'll try. I'm now at the stage in my life where I am essentially a hobbyist musician and am only making stuff up because I want to, rather than because I have to, to make a living. So if people want to help themselves to that material, then please feel free. If they want to go after the older stuff then they would have to contend with old school labels and publishers, so they are likely to transform it into something that is unrecognisable from the original anyway, so we will never notice it anyway.

Yes, but what about the original idea being yours? Does that not bother you that...?

Look, we have stood on the shoulders of others for centuries, maybe as long as art has been around. If we don't build on what has gone before then what we will have would be unrecognisable to the audience, so we steal and pinch and borrow an transform. It's been going on for years and years. Decades. Centuries.

But you don't claim it as being your own though, do you?

No, of course not. That's the Led Zeppelin problem. I assume they must have had some sort of meeting where they decided that no one had ever heard of Willie Dixon, or something. But at the same time you don't entirely confess either. You're just better off saying nothing at all. Plant and Page said nothing but their issue was that they didn't transform the material enough. Some of it sounds like a cover version, it's that close. So you are better off just saying nothing.

But would that not kill creativity?

Of course not. In the 70s home taping was going to kill music. Then it was file-sharing. Then it was AI. Music lived on past all of that stuff. I'll tell you what might kill music, though: streaming. Why bother to invest talent, money and effort into something that is going to pay you back a fraction of a cent for every play? Why bother? And that's not artists or the consumer stealing - that's the industry doing it to itself.

Why would they do that?

Oh that's easy. Thanks to the internet and cheap music production software you can make stuff up in your home and - assuming people want it - can sell it direct via Bandcamp or whoever. Who needs labels?

To fund stuff being made?

Through what? Advances you have to pay back to them? And what else? They insist on you handing over copyright so they can republish it. They insist on you financing everything out of your own sales so you can sell tee shirts at a stall, and people wonder why you have to charge $40 for a screen printed tee? These people are the worst kind of parasites you can imagine. What they do is easily replaced by another model which is now available to everyone [who] wants to use it. The thing is that they are now fully aware that this is the case, so they seem to be trying to scuttle the fleet before the torpedos get them.

Hasn't the death of the traditional record label been reported before, though? I seem to remember similar arguments back in the 1990s about this.

Sure. But now it's actually happening. For too long they convinced us that doing without them was unthinkable, and that people would have to go to them voluntarily to further their intentions. Now it has all changed.

So...how come they are all still in business?

Erm...

The bit about Led Zeppelin seems to have ben true, at least in terms of Whole Lotta Love, as Robert Plant explained:

Page's riff was Page's riff. It was there before anything else. I just thought, 'well, what am I going to sing?' That was it, a nick. Now happily paid for. At the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do. It was decided that it was so far away in time and influence that... well, you only get caught when you're successful. That's the game.

At last. Immortalised in Private Eye:

From the Independent:

A singularly depressing read if ever there was one. I know that nothing about Beefheart is all it seems, but to learn just how bad it was through the words of someone who dwelt within the Trout House is just staggering. I still think that TMR is one of the best albums ever made, but that seems to be in spite of Don Van Vliet rather than as a consequence of him. Some of the reading is genuinely harrowing, and gives a phenomenal insight into life beyond the music and deeper into the heart of what living within a cult must really be like and why it's so hard for some people to see a way out of it.

"I do recall the most obvious case of Don being out-of-sync, as Frank mentioned above. It was on Pachuco Cadaver. Don wanted to overdub some horn on the end of the piece. So, he assembled his soprano and took it out into the studio. Not wearing earphones, he became totally out-of-sync with the track. He came back through the door and asked 'how was that?' I was surprised at his asking. My thought was that it sounded like crap. However, two things were going on in my mind. Perhaps he intentionally wanted it out-of-sync.

"It wasn't me playing, so who cares?"

'Beefheart - Through The Eyes of Magic', John French

11th January 2025: Although some see it as a hope for the future, I can see shades of Twitter already appearing quite strongly in Blue Sky. It's ridden by 'sexbots' already, and this morning I'm getting Ponzi scheme notifications to increase the value of some worthless crypto. So far it is missing the egregious ads and the right-wing bots, but so did Twitter once. I have also seen that "As of January 2025, the social media company Bluesky is valued at around $700 million. This valuation is the result of a new funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures." (As reported on Cosmico)

If it trades then shareholders will be gagging for someone like Musk to jump onto it. I think this might be humanity finding its low water level, somehow.

Imagine if Harry Nilsson hadn't sold 9 Curzon Place to Pete Townshend. Who would it have claimed next?

Weirdly, the Rolling Stone article of August 29, 1974 repeats the story told so often about Cass Elliot:

Death was ruled accidental at a coroner's hearing the next day; the postmortem showed that she died as a result of choking on a sandwich while in bed and from inhaling her own vomit. She had complained to friends recently of frequent vomiting, possibly the result of dieting.

It transpires that this was actually based on a lazy assessment of the doctor who attended the scene and who made the assessment based on there being ham opened in the apartment. So how did it get as far as a PM? An odd story to repeat.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the death of Keith Moon holds fewer surprises.

It was later revealed Moon had 26 undissolved Heminevrin tablets still in his stomach when he died.

Kinell

And this one is not so far from the truth...

10th January 2025: Just when you think the world could not get any more barking mad, this comes up:

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss has sent a legal "cease and desist" letter to Sir Keir Starmer demanding he stop saying she "crashed the economy".

Her lawyers argue the claim made repeatedly by Sir Keir is "false and defamatory", and harmed her politically in the run-up to losing her South West Norfolk seat in the general election.

Truss was the UK's shortest-serving PM, forced to resign after just 49 days in office when borrowing costs soared in the aftermath of her government's mini-budget.

The prime minister's spokesman suggested Truss should also write to "millions of people up and down the country" who, he said, had seen their mortgage bills pushed up by her economic policies.

Well Liz, if you didn't crash the economy, then who did? Your chancellor. Your choice. You were PM. You take responsibility for it. You endorsed it. And what an insult to the people of South West Norfolk. Are you saying they were blinded by what people were saying about her, and were incapable of making up their own minds as to whether you're a useless extrusion of used cat food, hastily stuffed into a twin set with a face drawn on it?

There. Done it. I look forward to being sued or something. Bring it on. Incidentally, that photograph of her above is so telling. Those eyes. Nothing functioning behind them except for ambition. No ability whatsoever to assess her own suitability for the job. Just like Rishi. Just like Boris. Just like Theresa. Just like David.

Should we drag this one out again? Why not? Here we have Crown Exhibit A where the defendant is cosplaying a Prime Minister. She knows what she wants. She even might know how to get it. But once she is there, she knows that we know she doesn't have the slightest idea about what the job entails. Just like Rishi. Just like Boris. Just like Theresa. Just like David.

We've now reached some sort of apex point, where it's just enough to want to be a Prime Minister and even play dressing up as one. The fact that you have no actual abilities is no hinderance to ambition. Just go for it. The country deserves you and you deserve it.

And if it all goes wrong? Then it has nothing to do with you.. You're the chosen one. Anointed.

I hope these people never get a sniff of any sort of power again. I wouldn't even have them as chair of the local neighbourhood watch. And let's not forget, Liz Truss is the same rampaging twat who wrote this:

2nd January 2025: Damned cold, damned wet and damned overcast which is frustrating when the Aurora Borealis is supposed to be at large this evening. Not only is it overcast, but everywhere is flooded with light pollution in the city, so even if you could see it you probably wouldn't...