Can I Call You Rose?
Can I Call You Rose? is one of my favourite recent soul tracks. Its by San Diego's Thee Sacred Souls. A great write up HERE in the Guardian on the Low-Rider soul scene, and this band.
Data Deluge
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Rebel Music (1979)
I got this reggae compilation when it was released in 1979. It was then, and remains, the best double album compilation introduction to the richness, and sweetness, of Jamaician reggae. It was compiled by David Headley from the Trojan back catalogue. Some of these tracks have haunted me for decades, and there is not a clunker on the album. Listen to Little Roy's Hard Fighter and Bob Andy's You…
Hooton Tennis Club (31-1-2024)
A superb poster for a brilliant gig last night at Future Yard.
Iechyd Da
Bill Ryder Jones is a West Kirby based singer, guitarist and song writer. He co-founded The Coral when he was 13 and has been making great music ever since. Last summer he organised and headlined Yawnfest at Future Yard in Birkenhead (his set is easily in my top 10 gigs of all time - along with The Coral 's gig at Future Yard in May last year). He has just released his latest album, Iechyd Da ,…
Human Cumulative Culture & Innovation
After a long break... This paper ( HERE ) by Maxime Derex is the best academic paper I have read for a very long while. It explains in the context of human cultural evolution the difference between the optomisation of shared human cultural activities and innovation in them.
Back on the Vinyl (2023)
At the tail end of last year I got myself a simple vinyl set-up - a Dual 505 deck and a Cambridge Audio amp. Both items were in excess of 35 years old and they were bought from eBay. I was a bit surprised to find that with some new cables both items worked perfectly and they worked very well with some old Wharfedale speakers I had been gifted. It's the first time for about 20 years that I have…
The Third Magic (2023)
I have read quite a few pieces about so-called Artificial Intelligence over the past few years. Most of them have been quite unsatisfying. The best, by which I mean most thought-provoking, is an essay I have just read on the topic which was published on 1st January this year by Noah Smith called "The third magic. A meditation on history, science, and AI" ( HERE ). An extract: Humanity’s living…
YAWNFEST (2023)
On 29th April 2023 West Kirby legend Bill Ryder-Jones presents the YAWNFEST at Future Yard, an all day celebration of the wonderful sonic world of Yawn Studios in West Kirby, curated and headlined by Ryder-Jones. Tickets HERE .
What You Can Learn from Beowulf (1998)
From one of Anthony Madrid's reviews ( HERE ). What You Can Learn from Beowulf Cliff Fyman. Fatstick Magazine Spring 1998, p. 39. How to accept a compliment If you undertake a voyage to save someone you don’t need to tell him in advance you’re coming Don’t use a weapon for what you can do by hand When in trouble look up If a king’s wife gives you a necklace for a gift give it away quickly to…
The Future is Birkenhead
Letterpress Printing (2022)
I spent a brilliant afternoon on Saturday with my brother on a Letterpress printing workshop in Bristol ( HERE ). The output is above.
Compared with what? (2006)
The fundamental analytical act in statistical reasoning is to answer the question “compared with what?”. Page 127 of Beautiful Evidence Edward Tufte (2006)
An intelligent mechanic (1941)
Before today, I had never read this quote of George Orwell's from The Lion and the Unicorn : Right through our national life we have got to fight against the notion that a half-witted public schoolboy is better for command than an intelligent mechanic. As the son of an intelligent mechanic, I found this a wonderful thought.
How a watch mechanism works (2022)
HERE is a superb website that explains very simply and clearly all of the key parts of a mechanical watch movement.
Rip it Up and Start Again (2009)
Rip it Up and Start Again is an excellent book by Simon Reynolds about post-punk music between 1978-1984. It covers the bands and musical movements that dominated my teenage years and is very well researched and written. The following excerpt rings very true for me. At the time, even though The Beatles had only fallen to pieces less than 10 years previously, no-one was bothered about their music.…
A present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things to come.
One of the most thought provoking passages in Lewis Hyde's book A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past , is about time and St Augustine's Confessions . Here it is: He moves then to thinking of these temporal categories as existing not by themselves but as human mind-states, all of them taking place in that fleeting present. His boyhood lies in the past, but when he recalls it, he is…
Wilko dreams of dashi (2022)
The documentary, Jiro dreams of Sushi , focuses on the 85 year old sushi chef Jiro Ono, doing what a Preserver of Important Intangible Cultural Properties is supposed to do, that is to demonstrate such intense dedication to their craft that they completely transcend what the basic version of the same craft is capable of delivering. In the case of Jiro, his sushi is so good that his tiny (10 seat)…
Slaughterhouse-Five
HERE is a superb piece by James Parker in The Atlantic on Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five. Fifty years have passed since the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s the same age as me. And the older I get, and the more lumps fall off my brain, the more I find that rereading is the thing. Build your own little cockeyed canon and then bear down on it; get to know it, forward and…
Two Legs, Thing Using and Talking (1998)
This paper by Francis Evans is one of the best things I have read about the interaction of our human capacity to walk, talk, make things, and technology. In Google Scholar it has just 9 citations, which means that in the past 20+ years it has been cited in other scientific papers less than once per year. The Abstract Reads: Instead of seeing technology as outside ourselves, it is argued that it is…
Revealed (1977 - 1982)
A friend has very kindly just given me a signed copy of Revealed by Francesco Melina ( HERE ). Melina was an Italian who travelled across Europe and ended up in Liverpool (he's still there) and he made friends with artists, musicians and other Liverpudlian creatives. The book is fantastic - it contains dozens of photos taken in Liverpool in the late 70's - just as Matthew Street in Liverpool was…
Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (1940 - 2020)
The Sea of Cortez In March 1940 Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck chartered the Western Flyer , a 75-foot purse seiner built in Tacoma in 1937, and sailed from Monterey to the Sea of Cortez , also known as the Gulf of California. This unique marine environment is located between the mainland coast of Mexico and the coast of the Baja peninsula. The Sea of Cortez is one of the most ecologically diverse…
Why do we love books so much? (2020)
This is one for my wishlist. Ex Libris. 100+ Books to Read and Reread By Michiko Kakutani. In it, Kakutani critiques a long list of books that she feels are worth reading and rereading. And I guess she would know - she was formerly the chief book critic for The New York Times , and has won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. What shocked me is how few of these books I have read. As to why we love…
HNY 2022
Get Back (1969)
What Brain Eno calls scenius emerges within human groups who share a common space and understanding of how to make a particular type of artefact. They share traditional knowledge, but are not limited by this tradition. The group uses the tools and techniques which their wider peer group also use, but they push at the boundaries and one or more of the individuals in the group begin to modify and…
After Dark (2021)
Keita Morimoto is a Japanese painter. He recently held an exhibition of his night time paintings at Kotaro Nukaga in Tokyo. More HERE .