The Dark Tower by Stephen King

 I’ve written here before about my longstanding love of the books of Stephen King. I started reading them in the late eighties triggered by my love of Anthrax and film. I was already well into Isaac Asimov and I had read a lot of Philip K Dick and King was a natural progression.  The first books I read included The Dark Half and The Shining and I saw many of the film adaptations.

I used to pick up his books in the local library and some I remember stating to read but for some reason they didn’t really click. These included The Eyes of the Dragon and The Drawing of the Three. I think I also tried that eras iteration of The Gunslinger but I couldn’t get into them.

Roughly 36 years later I’m finally enjoying these stories as part of the complete Dark Tower series. It did take some effort as the introduction to The Drawing of the Three is hard going but it does get better. I have vague memories of struggling with the first 100 pages as a teenager but memory is often unreliable. As the character of Eddie solidifies King’s writing warms up and the story starts to flow.

This is a fantasy series but with post apocalyptic magical cowboy elements too. It beats Lord of the Rings hands down. King is a much better writer and his ferocious output highlights that compare to the unreadable intellectual fundament gazing that makes up the majority of Tolkien’s work. King has written a hell of a lot of  popular bestsellers that people like to read beyond the Dark Tower series. And many of his greatest hits are are tangentially linked to the central cycle. You do not need to read The Dark Tower to enjoy ‘Salem’s Lot or Insomnia but The Dark Tower adds to these books retrospectively.

The seven central books are a long read or listen. There are laugh out loud funny bits and almost crying sad bits.  If you buy in enough to read the whole thing you will probably come to care about some of the characters and be moved when bad things happen to them. King also takes pot shots at book collectors who never read their books and himself. 

I still have some of the tangential tie in books to read.  There is a King Universe that links up and I will work through them all. F Paul Wilson does something similar with his Repairman Jack/Adversary cycle and is also worth checking out.

King has written a lot of books and I have read a lot of them. I am thankful that I have not yet read them all. I am currently working on The Talisman, another book that I failed to get into as a teenager as well as Bag of Bones. After that I’m aiming for The Black House and then Other Worlds Than These.  I am thankful that King is prodigious. I am also thankful that Joe Hill is almost as good. 

Asterix and Obelix

 I think I learned to read with Asterix.  Certainly, Asterix was the first thing that I can remember reading for fun. The books were always in the house when I was wee. Looking at the copyright information on these books many of them were printed when I was a baby and I suspect my dad bought them so he could read them himself.  I’m glad he did as I’ve had decades of pleasure from them and now I’ve been able to share them with my own son.

Re-reading the books has been fun.   At the grand old age of 48 with my young son who is 6 I’m picking up new aspects of the stories.  I don’t know if I understood all the names when I was younger or all of the wordplay.  The art improves over the first few books until it achieves a consistent quality. Many of my old books were badly coloured with mistakes and layer editions have corrected much of this.  The newer editions look better and seem more professional. I haven’t checked in detail but I think that some of the text has been edited for modern tastes. 

It’s very difficult to decide on a favourite Asterix book. I could probably pick a top ten in no particular order.  I think Asterix and the secret weapon is probably my least favourite and not one I will rush to reread. Thankfully that one was borrowed from the local library.

The themes in the Asterix books are sometimes fairly adult.  Asterix and the great divide about right wing and left wing politics in the divided village.  With a bit of Romeo and Juliet mixed in.  Obelix and co is about capitalism and marketing.  There are jokes here that are aimed right at the grown-ups whilst the kids just like watching Obelix 'paf' the Romans.

And in this modern world there is a lot of Asterix product for us to consume.  There have been numerous live action and animated films over the past 60 years.  There is a new CGI film due to come out in December.  There have been almost 20 computer games since the 1980s, none of which I had heard of.  There have been different toy ranges, most recently some fairly nice Playmobil figures that my son likes to play with.  We live in an Asterix paradise that 8 year old me could only have dreamed of.

It takes me somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour to read one of the books to my son.  This is great quality time and it's encouraging him to read too.  It feels a bit full circle for me as the love of these books led to my own love of reading.  At the moment he likes to draw the Gaulish village, menhirs and Roman helmets in a pile.

While the Asterix books are perhaps not entirely timeless they still hit the mark more than 60 years after their original publication and they let my son travel with his imagination like I did when I was his age. For this, I am glad.

Sugar live at the Glasgow Barrowlands

 I really enjoyed Sugar back in the day. They were all over the radio in the post Nirvana haze of the early 90s and Copper Blue, when it hit, was a monster of an album.  I had a few Husker Du records but I appreciated the new stuff.  Beaster was great too.  Then they just sort of disappeared quietly.

I subsequently saw a few Bob Mould shows and they were great. Sadly, I never saw Husker Du but when Sugar announced a Glasgow dare after 31 years I jumped on tickets. It was great.

They played 24 songs from their 3 albums and quite a few B sides, David Barbe sang lead on a significant number,  He has a nice Teenage Fanclub style voice and it allowed Mould to make it through the 90 minute set. There drummer in now 73 but played like a teenager. Great,

Support was an acoustic set from J Robbins of Jawbox and Burning Airlines, very good.  We all went home happy.

Things I have enjoyed recently

 Spending time with my son

Teaching medical students.

Political history books by Tim Shipman

Star Wars Skeleton Crew

Scooby Doo (with my son)

A good curry last night

Audible audiobooks

Here comes the guillotine podcast

True Detective series 4

Void Rivals comic book

Kids parties, Christmas and a week off work

 Life is short.  It slips by in flashes of months and years.  I can't pause it, I can't slow it down, no matter what I do.  It progresses, relentlessly.  The base way to deal with it is being here and enjoying it.  Enjoying the little bits of it and the big bits will hopefully take care of themselves.

Life goes in a direction and I think it is the right one.  

Sometimes it's nice to write just to write.  I never have the time..  

Fairwell and rest in peace Steve Albini

 I  was fairly shocked and very much saddened when I read about the untimely death of Steve Albini this afternoon.  He has been a hero of mine since I heard 'bad penny' by Big Black on a mix tape when I was about 13.  That tape also contained my first fugazi, minor threat, black flag, butthole surfers, sonic youth and many other life changing bits of music.  I was a fan of the dead kennedys but I didn't know all this other music was out there.

Albini was among the best.  I was a bit surprised when a couple of years later he produced a Nirvana album.  It's not my favourite Nirvana album and it's not my favourite Albini record but I suspect he will mainly be remembered for 'in utero'.  It was nowhere near his best work.  The Jesus Lizard 'pure' and 'goat' spring to mind.  People will point to 'surfer rosa' or the Breeders or 'songs about fucking' or something else  and they will all be decent choices.

When I was 16 I travelled down tot he phoenix festival in stratford upon avon to see shellac with a couple of friends from school.  it was great.  it was well over a decade before I had a chance to see them again and I can't be sure how many times I saw them after that - maybe another 4 or 5 times - but they were always good.

He was a great thinker and a great speaker.  He talked sense about music and other things in a calm and logical way.  He was 61 when he died which is far too young for this world.

RIP

'I'M A PLANE.  I'M A PLANE'

'...and the plane becomes a metaphor for my life...'

Things I’ve done today

 Listened to music - Delgados, Ezra Furman, Blonde Redhead, Pavement, Yann Tiersan

Went out for lunch

Played with my son, tried to encourage him to eat his dinner, looked at a book with him, bathed him and put him to bed, told him a story about how his great grandad had a brown Hillman Imp

Read some of a book - Edge of the grave by Robbie Morrison

Picked up blood pressure tablets from the pharmacy 

Sat and drank a fairly rubbish coffee and ate a bit of truly terrible millionaires cake which I couldn’t finish

Phoned my mum

Royalty

 Why should an accident of birth make one person better than another? At the end of the day, we are all the same.  We all have hearts and brains and skin and lungs. What we choose to do with our lives may define us but I do not believe that anyone is innately superior just because of their parents.

I live in a kingdom. One internet definition of this is 'a politically organized community or major territorial unit having a monarchical form of government headed by a king or queen'. My country is packed into a unit with other countries because of the existence of a monarchy.  We are united and ruled by someone who has a job because of an accident of birth. A lucky sperm.

I realise it is not all wine and roses.  Prince Harry certainly feels that he has been the unlucky sperm and outlines his feelings in his ghostwritten autobiography Spare.  The book has sold exceptionally well, much to the annoyance of the press and news media in the UK who did their best to curtail sales whilst boosting their own by publishing all the juicy bits before it hit the shops.

France, America and Russia have all been sensible in going down the rebuild route.  I am not saying that these are model societies or any more equal but at least they have made an effort to get rid of the pseudo-mystical royalty bullshit.

My ancestors have been farmers and servants and shop keepers and nurses.  Many of them lived their lives in challenging environments and some of them did well for themselves.  To me, they are more valuable than kings but I realise that most of the world doesn't give a shit about them.  But at least, as far as I am aware, they never started any wars or invaded any countries.

My son will make his own way in life with whatever help I can give him.  It won't be much and he will need to work for what he wants in life.  He will be luckier than some. 

I wish every kid in the world was as lucky as my son.

Bob Dylan - Live at the SEC Armadillo Halloween Night 2022

 The last time I saw Bob Dylan was in the SECC in 1998 when he was supported by Van Morrison (who was not great).  That night was almost a Dylan greatest hits show with fairly faithful versions of tracks like 'Blowing in the wind' and as a 20 year old I loved it.  For a variety of reasons it took me nearly 25 years to see him again.  My memory of that last show is ghostly faint but positive.  Tonight was crystal clear and very different.

Dylan played an upright piano all night.  His band was just brilliant.  A great drummer, great guitarists, a great bass player and a multi-instrumentalist on steel guitar and others.  Tone, sound and music was everything tonight with Dylan's voice, his vocal tone, another lead instrument.  He played some big songs from his past but the versions while musically excellent were almost a parody of the more familiar versions.  When I paint my masterpiece, gotta serve somebody, most likely you go your way and I'll go mine and I'll be your baby tonight were just tossed out, taken apart and rebuilt in very different.  This was not a pop hits night, this felt like an improvised jam band that was punching above it's weight.

The bulk of the set was from the excellent Rough and Rowdy Ways and I was glad to hear that album live.  Dylan is 81 and I'm not sure that he will play Glasgow again.  Surely the never-ending tour must pause with time.  I would love to see him again but I'm not hopeful.

Pavement- live at the Glasgow Barrowlands

 The 1990s had returned to Glasgow last night with those ancient student unions and indie clubs pouring forth their revenants into a chill October evening. Pavement were back at the Barrowlands for the first time since 1999. I was there in 1999 and I was there in Barcelona in 2010 and I was there last night. Pavement seemed even more present than they were on those distant dates. They were tight, energetic and apparently enjoying themselves.

They played 26 songs, 7 of which I would describe as the MTV pop hits. Those bangers were delivered well and enjoyed by the crowd.  I own all the Pavement albums although I haven’t listened to some of them for several years.  Most of the songs were familiar but there were a couple I didn’t recognise. At times they mimicked Neu and the Fall. They fell apart in the middle of one song for the second time on the tour.

Pavement are a great band and it was good to see them again. I believe that if they had desired it more at the time they could have been massive. They could have been bigger than Nirvana with true pop hits but that was not their road. The road they picked was right for them and right for the Barrowlands last night as the spirit of the 1990s was manifest again,

Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland

 I spent a lot of time as a teenager listening to music released on the SST label.  Black Flag, Minutemen, Husker Du, Descendents, Bad Brains and many more released music via SST in the halcyon days of the 1980s.  Then it all went wrong.  The good bands stopped releasing music or moved to another label and eventually SST ground to a halt.

This book highlights how successful SST actually were at their peak and documents the fall.  It's not totally clear what precipitated the fall but the departure of key team members such as Chuck Dukowski and Mugger seems to have played a part.  Greg Ginn is often cast as a pantomime villain in events although I'm  not sure how accurate this is.  Certainly, early on, he did a lot of good for these bands and gave them a step up to better things.

I was an American hardcore/alternative enthusiast when I was younger but this book contained viewpoints I was unfamiliar with and has introduced some music that I did not know.  I was left pining for a world where SST signed Nirvana and managed to keep Sonic Youth happy/release Daydream Nation.  That may have been an exciting world.

What does the future for the SST bands hold?  Will we see reissues and remasters with unreleased material?  Has it all been lost?  Do they even have decent tapes of the 1982 Black Flag demoes. 

Ian MacKaye took a very different, archivist approach with Dischord and we will have much of the DC scene for posterity.  The LA scene may just be degenerating, covered in some green mould.

Post-op recovery 2

Further surgery yesterday to repair things after the operation in January.  I think the anaesthetist was better this time as pain control has been better and I didn't have the horrible dry mouth and urinary retention again.  This operation involved more tissue damage and recovery is meant to take a bit more time.  I'm on antibiotics and I've been given some stronger pain killers to use as needed. 

I'm going to be bored over the next few weeks before I can go back to work.  I'll need to find other things to distract me and take it easy.  I need to avoid heavy lifting which can be hard with a two year old in the house.

I will see how much Netflix I can tolerate.

Bright Eyes at the Glasgow Barrowlands

 I've listened to Bright Eyes and Conor Oberst a lot since 2004.  Some of these records contain some of my favourite music.  Oberst is genuinely gifted and Bright Eyes sit with Fugazi, Dylan and Neil Young as perennial favourites.  I've managed to see Oberst solo a couple of times and with the Desparadicos but I've never managed to see Bright Eyes.  When they last played Glasgow in 2011 I was working In Dundee and I couldn't get through.  Life sucks sometimes.

The show tonight should originally have happened in 2020 but was rescheduled twice due to the pandemic.  Glasgow was dark and busy as Celtic were playing Real Madrid at Parkhead, just up the road from the Barrowlands.  We arrived late so we missed the support act.  The venue was not too busy and the crowd were fairly mild mannered.

The band tonight were great.  Besides the 3 core members there were an additional 5 players on stage producing a rich sound.  This was the last night of a month long European tour so they were well practiced and tight.  Bright Eyes as a group compared with Oberst solo are different prospects.  Solo, Oberst seems more precise or subtle but with Bright Eyes there are more sample driven soundscapes and improvised jams.

Oberst appeared to drink from a bottle of wine onstage.  His speech appeared slurred at times but he was able to play piano or guitar with perfect timing immediately after the apparent drunken rambling.  Oberst as part of Bright Eyes might be a bit of a character at times.  He had been tattooed by a member of the support band before the show.  Pictures were posted on Facebook afterwards.  Twitter contained a lot of concern for Oberst but I think he probably had a good night.

I always struggle to remember the names of Bright Eyes songs.  I often know all the words but I can't remember the titles.  Thankfully SetlistFM exists and can tell you the titles of the 18 tracks that were played.  Personal highlights included I believe in symmetry, Lover I don't have to love and Mariana trench.  A cover of Double Joe by Simon Joyner was enjoyable too.

So, overall, I loved this gig and I could watch Bright Eyes recurrently and be happy.

Isaac Asimov

 As a kid, I enjoyed science fiction. My dad grew up in a remote place in the Forties and Fifties and passed in his love of reading and some of his books to me. One of my childhood favourites was Isaac Asimov and the recent Apple TV version of Foundation has made me think about him again. This has left me with mixed feelings about Asimov.

Asimov was born in Russia in around 1920 and moved to America aged 3. He completed a PhD in Chemistry and was in the American army for a time.  He was an intelligent man and a prolific writer and sadly it seems that he was a sleazy bastard.

As a kid I got a lot from his books. My favourites were really the Robot detective books featuring Elijah Bailey such as The Caves of Steel and Robots and Empire. I also enjoyed some of the later Foundation books as well as his detective series the Black Widowers and Azazel. I have great memories of reading these books while visiting family in rural parts of the West Highlands. 

I also read some of his autobiography and found his scientific work inspiring which indirectly led me to my current job and life,

I did not know he was a sleazy bastard who was notorious for his bad behaviour but I guess he died more than 30 years ago when I was a young teenager. 

I only found out about the unpleasant side to Asimov when googling after watching the impressive Foundation TV series. The adaptors (including Asimov’s daughter) have made a good show and have diversified the characters in keeping with the futuristic setting of the story. Im looking forward to further instalments.

Sadly books such as The Caves of Steel are currently out of print on the Kindle and other e-reader devices. After watching Foundation I would love to reread some of them. Maybe someday….

Bruce Dickinson - What does this button do?

 I never liked Iron Maiden.  I just never for into them. I liked lots of other heavy metal stuff over the years but Iron Maiden just never floated my boat.  I think it's the way they dressed.  They just didn't do it for me.   I was never really a fan of Bruce Dickinson either.  I have vague memories of him messing about on the BBC Heavy Metal Heaven season in the eighties.  In retrospect he must have been channelling Spinal Tap.

I listen to audiobooks a lot.  When I'm commuting I like to use the time to do something and audiobooks seem efficient when I can't be bothered with music or the kindle. Using Audible you can often get an unexpected gem of a book for a couple of quid.

Which is how I found What does this button do?

Dickinson narrates his autobiography himself and he is funny.  He is very funny.  He doesn't take himself or anything else seriously.  Between his boarding school education, his adolescent interests and his general positive mental attitude this is a real feel good book.  He did very well with Iron Maiden and he became a pilot flying commercial airliners while on a break from music.  Eventually he was flying Iron Maiden around the world in 'Ed Force One',

He is, sadly, a 'Brexit wanker' although I do see that he has expressed dismay at the impact of Brexit on UK musicians which is good.  Thankfully we don't get any Brexit stuff in the book.  Just fencing, beer making and Spitfires.

He would be a better Prime Minister than the one we have.

Stephen King

 As a young teenager in the late 80s and the early 90s I went through my Stephen King phase.  I was always aware of Stephen King, even when I was younger than that but I was led to believe that the books were 'too scary' for a wee kid and to be fair, they probably would have been.

I can't remember which ones I started with but I did read almost everything that was available and fast.  I remember buy and loving the paperback of "The Dark Half'.  I'm sure I had a copy of Carrie and a few of his other early books.  I did have the hardback of the revised version of 'The Stand' with the Bernie Wrightson pictures.  Most of them I borrowed from the East Kilbride library.

More recently I've taken the time to catch up on some of his newer books.  11.22.63 is pretty good, The Outsider is enjoyable with some great characters, I finally managed to read the Gunslinger (book 1 of The Dark Tower) and I'm finally reading Doctor Sleep, the follow-up to The Shining. I'm glad I'm taking the time to read these books.

I can remember reading the Bachman Books collection when I was young and I was a bit surprised that King had withdrawn one of the Bachman novels (Rage) from print.  I think he had good reasons to do it but it is a bit weird to think that a book I remember reading 30 years ago has now disappeared from the shelves.

King writes with comfortable rhythms and that has been good over the past month while I've been recovering from minor surgery.  Looking at him now, I think he is a decent bloke.  I think his heart is in the right place so I'm glad that the young me spent so much time reading his work.  I don't think I'll ever read it all but some of it is good.  I wonder if my son will like his stuff when he grows up.

Two decades of Tory rule

 I think we are stuck with Prime mInister Johnson in the UK.  He doesn't give a shit about anyone other than himself and the recent Sue Grey report seems to imply that most of his staff were drunk for a significant part of 2020 while the rest of us were miserable during the early COVID times.  I think he will be here for another year or so and I strongly suspect that the Tories will find another poster boy for the 2024 election and probably win again.

All very shit.

Post-op recovery

 2021 turned into 2022 fairly quickly.  Life continues to be busy.  My son is now 2 years old and is a constant source of joy.  The poor wee fella has chicken pox just now which is a bit miserable but he continues to be stoically cheerful.  His main interests are Bing, his soft toy Froggy and scribbling on things with his crayons.

I'm off work for a couple of weeks as I had scheduled minor surgery at the start of the week.  It was under a general anaesthetic (third time I've had one) and fixed a chronic problem at least partially.  I might need a further operation later in the year but I can already see some improvement.

I had the joy of a couple of hours of urinary retention when the general anaesthetic was wearing off.  Between the morphine, the glycopyrrinium as well as pain and local anaesthetic I couldn't pee for a bit and my mouth was dry as a bone for a few hours afterwards.  I felt fairly good for the first 24 hours, probably on a lasting high from morphine and propofol but the pain kicked in later on.  I lost a fair bit of today just sleeping and painful.

Watching the decline of the United Kingdom on Sky News led by Prime Minister Johnston, hoping he doesn't start a war with Russia because he can't follow his own rules or say no to a party.  I will never understand why people have voted for such a shambling garbage bag.

I've been reading Val McDermid books and watching the Book of Boba Fett on Disney+.  The episode today was amazing.

Summer in Scotland

 I've been off work for the past week on holiday and I'm glad of it.  Temperatures have been in the high twenties and certainly warmer than Tenerife is in January.  We are lucky to have a garden and be able to cool down outside.  The nights are too warm at times and it highlights that we are lucky to have proper winters too.

The heat actually makes Scotland smell different.  It smells like a foreign country.  In this time of the virus and lockdowns and travel bans this is enough to make a holiday at home bearable.

As always I want more time off work.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

 I read Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell about 16 years ago and I loved it at the time. Piranesi was published last year and I've just had a chance to listen to the audiobook.  It's fairly short and well read by Chiwetel Ejiofo.

Piranesi is a magical and mysterious book that reminded me of the Narnia tales of CS Lewis. It's a story about a massive house, deserted and partially flooded, filled with strange things and inhabited by the narrator and another.

The story flows and was succinct and well constructed.  I totally recommend it.