BMI

My BMI is 26.9
That means I am overweight.
Need to be 24,
Thats 18lbs!
Eeeeek

Live@The Fillmore: Lucinda Williams

What a better way to celebrate her birthday than to use this as a reminder of her great live recording.
Live @ The Fillmore is Lucinda Williams' eighth album, and her first live album. Recorded at The Fillmore in San Francisco over three nights in November 2003 it was eventually released in 2005 . With the selection dominated by recent material, the first eight numbers are like a sweet ache, as the wistful country of "Ventura" and "Reason to Cry" and the folkish minimalism of "Lonely Girls" explore the fringes of emotional fragility. Then Williams and band flex their musical muscles, shifting into the bluesier side of her artistry on "Change the Locks" and "Atonement," extending the desperate intensity of "Joy" over almost eight minutes, and offering homage to Neil Young's Crazy Horse on "Righteously" and "Essence." Backed by the barbed-wire guitar of Doug Pettibone over the bare-bones rhythms of bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Jim Christie, Williams tells the crowd, "We got the mojo workin' tonight."
This was the group that we first saw at the Shepherds Bush Empire, and it a shame she has abandoned them. Pettibone's guitar playing is one of the finest I have had the pleasure to see and hear. Not only a great series of performances but technically a superbly recorded piece of work. I know I am biased but this is one of the greatest live album recordings you are likely to come across.
9.5/10

In the autumn of 2007, Williams announced an unprecedented series of shows in Los Angeles and New York. Playing five nights in each city, it was the first time a major artist would perform her entire catalog on consecutive nights. These albums include the self titled Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Essence, and World Without Tears. Since these shows, other artists have imitated this idea in different variations, but to date no else has accomplished this exact feat. Each night also featured a second set with special guest stars. Some of the many special guests included Steve Earle, Allison Moorer, Emmylou Harris and David Byrne. In addition, each night's album set was recorded and made available to the attendees that night.

Happy Birthday Lucinda

57.
Lucinda Williams was born January 26th 1953 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the daughter of poet and literature professor, Miller Williams
Not that well known in this country but her contribution to the popular song should not go unnoticed. With Grammy awards over the years in both folk, country and rock genres as well as numerous other nominations, there cannot be another artist in recent years that has covered such breadth of popular music, Although Joni has won nine Grammys, they only have been for folk and pop.
Whilst Ella Fitzgerald put sex into the American Songbook, Lucinda Williams put real sex, real bitterness, real life into the songs of the late 19 hundreds and early 2 thousands.
Happy Birthday!

Up In The Air

Interesting, well put together film, but on reflection lightweight. Clooney here, and as with a number of his recent films represents corporate America, slick, smooth and very self centered. He does not really have to act, but deliver his lines. Of course he delivers them with ease and somewhat chillingly remote, until it starts to effect his own life. He was far better in ...'Goats' where he had to act as well.
7.9/10

Waltz with Bashir

A cartoon, but that hardly does it any justice.
An autobiographical film by the writer and director, Ari Folman when as a 19-year-old infantry soldier in the Israel Defence Forces witnessed the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut. It was perpetrated by the Christian Phalangists, but with the tacit support of Israel against the Palestinian refugees, the reality of which he is unable to remember but haunted by in dreams.

The art work at times is quite breathtaking, only the humans appearing very cartoon like, and had me on the edge of my seat throughout. Surprisingly even the Sex Pistols get in on the film and soundtrack.

9/10

Curved Air: The Second Album

My favourite cd at the moment, arrived earlier in the post costing next to nothing, ie under a fiver and it just reminds you how good they were back in 1971. Three very outstanding tracks, Young Mother, Back Street Luv and Puppets with the long, Piece of Mind not quite as good as it appears to have too many ideas going on (could have been at least three 'songs') but do like the addition of T S Elloit's 'The Wasteland into the song....

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.

9 / 10

The Road

A very watchable film, a road movie without a vehicle (so to speak)follows a father and son journeying together toward the sea across a post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and almost all life on Earth.
And that is where the holes appear in the storyline, that level of damage along with a winter to end all winters, this pair would not have survived a week, added to a number of technical flaws detracted from what would have really been a haunting film. Good use of a number of abandoned and derelict locations...just like Doctor Who!
6.4 / 10

Snow

About 8 inches fell from 4pm Tuesday to sometime around 3am Wednesday. The top view is towards Oxford taken out of the window, mid morning, the other is of the garden at the rear....what you can make of it.

The Band Room, Low Mills, Farndale, North York Moors

The Band Room is located on the North York Moors and has been variously described as 'England's tiniest major venue,' 'The greatest small venue on Earth,' and 'a corrugated iron shed in the middle of nowhere.' Built for the Farndale Silver Band in the 1920s this 100-capacity wooden room 35 miles north of York has got to be one of the best 'intimate' gigs in the whole of England, Shows are few and sometimes far between as the promoters only book artist that interest them.
We saw Eilen Jewel back in August ’08, bringing in our own bottle of wine to drink, having a chat to her at ‘half time’, it is that intimate. You stand outside in the small car park, mingling with the rest of the audience and are surrounded on both sides by the moors rising up to the sky. Step inside and it is small, seats lining the sides, it could be a Womens Institute meeting, and there is the band up on a small stage that is only a foot above (from what I can remember) the audience.
Here is the link, if you ever get the chance, just go.
The photo below is of Richmond Fontaine, our next gig in a similar but slightly larger hall in Tingewick, near Buckingham and where we saw Eilen Jewel.

Rail Prices Down

With about 40 hours to go before I return to work, I went to get my weekly season ticket at Oxford station for the daily grind to King's Cross. Having heard that the cost of tickets had gone up, I was more than surprised to learn that it in fact had gone down! By the glorious amount of £3.50! What is the world coming too?

Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. Bob Dylan

The infamous concert, where to quote Wiki:-
The early bootleg LPs attributed the recording to one of Dylan's tour-closing concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall. However, Dylan's now-legendary confrontation with a heckler calling out "Judas" from the audience, clearly heard on the recording, was well-documented as having occurred at Manchester's Free Trade Hall on May 17, 1966. After "Judas!", there is clapping, followed by more heckles. One of those shouts, barely audible on the record, is a man shouting, "I'm never listening to you again, ever!" Dylan then says "I don't believe you", then after a long pause, "You're a liar." Then, Dylan can be faintly heard telling the band, "play it fuckin' loud", as they start to play "Like a Rolling Stone". At the end, the audience erupts into applause and Dylan says, "Thank you."

Split into two cds' the first one is just Dlyan by himself, guitar and harmonica, and the audience listening in hushed reverence, his harmonica playing is surprisingly good and impressed me, but the second one he is joined by The Hawks (to become the Band) and it goes electric. Quite rough and sloppy to be honest, and a poor recording given that the source was the mixing desk, but very authentic.

I rather like the first half, but glad that he was a Judas nevertheless.

9.25/10

The New Year

Back in September a group of us discussed the possibility of spending new year away from home by renting out a house. The search was on to find somewhere suitable. Finding expensive houses was straight forward, but you needed to be cash rich. I did suggest a B&B in Hope, Derbyshire which I has used on many occasions when I was working in nearby Sheffield, the landlady was amenable to letting us take her whole house but the idea slowly died. We ended up seeing the new year in at one of the group's house, but earlier that day had purchased the Indie only to find this photo (and in the Telegraph) reporting the heavy snow falls in the area. This bungalow was in Hope and whilst may have been in an extremely exposed location would have made the walks we hoped we would have taken with kids and dogs challenging to say the least. My plan was to walk up Win Hill which looks down over the town, somehow I dont think we would have even started out.
The pass over to Manchester through the Winnats which goes through Hope then Castleton had been closed as did the Snape Pass next one northwards, and so too the Woodhead Pass further to the north although reopened on new years eve. Now that would have made for an interesting start to the new year.
The photo below was taken before Christmas Day and since then the area has had two further appreciable falls of snow. The 'taller' peak in the centre is Lose Hill and the double cone just to it left but the other side of Edale is Win Hill. Hope lies at the bottom of the other side of Lose Hill, and from the garden of where we would have stayed there is a footpath that leads all the way to the top.
Lose Hill gets its name from the Battle of Win Hill and Lose Hill in 626. Prince Cwichelm and his father, King Cynegils of Wessex, possibly with the aid of King Penda of Mercia, gathered their forces on neighbouring Lose Hill and marched on the Northumbrians based on Win Hill. Despite their superior numbers, Wessex was defeated by the Northumbrians building a wall and rolling boulders down upon them.