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.

we often forget how lucky we are

 on a Friday night I'm often knackered after a week at work.  A week at my well paid, comfortable job.  after putting the baby down to sleep I'm often sitting and, as always, I feel a bit brain dead.  sometimes I listen to music.

This evening I was listening to some jesus lizard music and remembering the great times when I saw them play live.  Then I realised that I was once lucky enough to see scratch acid play.  And then I remembered seeing the elephant 6 orchestra play enlightenment by sun ra. twice. and that was really fucking special.

and then i remember how fortunate I am.  how lucky I am.  I have a great wee family and a nice house and a good job and i've had amazing experiences over the years and nothing is perfect but it's important sometimes to just remember how good things actually are.

I hope all of you out there get to feel this good some times.

COVID nutters

 The reality of the pandemic is clearly hard for some to accept.  It was always one of those existential fears that I had, having read lots of science fiction and studied biology and then medicine at university.  I'd read a lot about pandemics in the past.  I knew they were bad and that we were due one.  I knew it would probably happen.  It's just a bit of a shitter that it actually happened.

COVID has happened.  It's almost everywhere and it kills tons of people.  Accept it and deal with it.

Some people can't or won't accept it.  Some reach for a comfortable conspiracy theory to protect them from the brutal truth that humanity is sometimes insignificant in the face of nature and a wee virus could wipe us all out.  COVID-19 isn't going to eliminate the human race but it's still nasty.  We need to do what we can to reduce and avoid infections.  Vaccines, washing our hands, social distancing, wearing masks - all small personal sacrifices to reduce infection rates and reduce deaths.  Some people can't so this.  Idiots like Ian Brown of the Stone Roses and various quack doctors post mad shit on the internet and people believe them and that has consequences.

The UK government haven't helped.  Initial standard Eton arrogance quickly followed by bewildered blind  panic bolstered by exceptionalism from Dominic Cummings and standard avarice has muddied the water creating a fertile breeding ground for the conspiracy theory nutters.  We need a government of adults and the UK does not have this.  

We will be living with COVID forever.  We will probably need yearly COVID vaccines for some time and normality will take some time to return.

The big lesson is don't eat random wild animals.

Podcasts

Over the past few years I've started listening to a lot of Podcasts.  I always liked listening to the radio although I didn't always find the broadcast shows to be very exciting.  Podcasts are homemade radio shows that you can download and listen to at a time that suits you.  They also often cover more offbeat or esoteric subjects that appeal to me.

Mostly I listen to real life mystery podcasts, American political podcasts (mainly ones about Trump), Twin Peaks related podcasts and comic book podcasts.  And the Private Eye podcasts.

One of the first mystery style I started to listen to was Thinking Sideways - in this podcast three presenters take turns to present a mystery every week and discuss various theories on what went on.  The first episode that I listened to was on the 'Glasgow effect'.

Another slightly more fantastical podcast that I enjoy is Astonishing Legends - this podcast goes into strange tales in a great degree of detail.  They exude an X-Files type vibe and they are often rather credulous but the production values are good and I enjoy the shows.

From a comic book point of view Fatman on Batman produced by Clerks director Kevin Smith as part of his Smodcast empire is a good starting point (if you like Batman).  The early episodes in the archive are great, often focusing on individual comic book writers or artists and Batman related stuff. More recently the podcast has developed into a general forum for discussion of sic-fi, superheroes and anything Smith wants to talk about.

The Stuff You Should Know network has several good podcasts including Stuff They Don't Want You To Know and Stuff to Blow Your Mind (both of which have a sort of counterculture vibe) as well as the more mainstream, flagship Stuff You Should Know series.  All of these are fairly interesting.

In terms of Trump bashing Trumpcast is fairly funny and a good place to start.  The Pod Save America team have more White House connections and often have serious guests on to interview although they are often pretty funny too.

No Such Thing As A Fish  was one of the first podcasts I listened to, a spin off from the BBC QI series, where strange facts are discussed in an amusing manner every week.  It's good for a smile every now and again.

There are many more podcasts to check out - a few more are below
Page 94 - The Private Eye Podcast
The 2000AD Progcast - some great 2000AD chat
The Politico Nerdcast
A Twin Peaks Podcast

Enjoy

Twin Peaks - The Return

The revival of Twin Peaks has been rather exciting for me.  I've gone to fairly extreme lengths to try and see it on a weekly basis and overall it has been pretty satisfying.  As a teenager I watched the original Twin Peaks as it was broadcast on BBC2.  It fascinated me back then.  I think I'd already seen a couple of Lynch films by then and I did my best to see a lot of his other work after that.

The original Twin Peaks finished on a cliff hanger, with Agent Cooper trapped in another detention while his evil doppelgänger, possessed by the evil BOB entity, smashing his head into a mirror.

The show finished and was followed by the Fire Walk With Me film that was a bit of a box office flop.  Last year Mark Frost released a great book called 'The Secret History of Twin Peaks' that added a lot of colour and richness to the Twin Peaks universe without giving away much about the new series.  The book served to whet my appetite for new Twin Peaks.  I was not disappointed.

Lynch is a pretty unique film maker.  His work, from Eraserhead on, is different.  He views the world in a different ways and he expresses himself differently.  In Twin Peak - The Return (TPTR from now on) he has been able to run riot with his creative urges.  The initial 2 hours of the series had little relevance to what had happened before although TPTR is a direct continuation of the original storyline.  Lynch will let scenes run for longer than many film makers would tolerate, creating new and different rhythms in his work.  His use of sound is creative and his solutions for replacing actors who are no longer available (for a variety of reasons) are novel to say the least.  One actor he has fallen out with has been replaced with a talking silver christmas tree and the character of Philip Jeffries, played in the Fire Walk With Me (FWWM) film by David Bowie, was portrayed by a giant talking kettle (with the approval of Bowie before he died).

Kyle Maclachlan, Agent Dale Cooper and alumnus of many Lynch works plays 3 characters in TPTR.  Agent Cooper appears only sparingly although the malevolent doppelgänger, Mr C is a more regular oppressive presence throughout the series.  Maclachlan also supplies comedy relief in the form of a third Cooper variant, Dougie E, thought the series.

Many of the original cast return and the cult status of Twin Peaks has ensured the presence of many talented actors as well as an excellent soundtrack with performances from Nine Inch Nails and Eddie Vedder amongst others.  Lynch himself appears as FBI director Gordon Cole supplying additional comedy.

TPTR made me laugh and cry.  It contains genuinely disturbing scenes as well as amazingly heartwarming moments.  Lynch does not take prisoners and he does not explain his work.  A lot is left open to interpretation and many questions are left unanswered.  Overall I was satisfied but greedily I want more.  The are endings, one good heroic ending and another bleak, potentially apocalyptic ending.  We may have seen the end of the Agent Cooper/Laura Palmer story but there is room for more tales from the Twin Peaks universe.  We would all like to know what has happened to Audrey.

I want to watch this again and see if my understanding changes.  I feel lucky to have seen this and I can't wait for Mark Frost's next Twin Peaks book 'The Final Dossier' which may answer some stuff.

Lynch and Frost have created a masterpiece that people will struggle to understand for years.  Some folk with think it is pretentious bullshit.  I'm not sure what it is but I enjoyed the ride.

For an interesting interpretation of the ending look at https://www.waggish.org/2017/twin-peaks-finale/

A music course at East Kilbride Art Centre approximately 25 years ago

I was using Twitter this evening and said 'hi' to Davie Scott of the band The  Pearlfishers. He had tweeted a link about Brian Wilson and that brought back memories of a music production course that I attended about 25 years ago (roughly) that Davie taught in the East Kilbride art centre. I loved that course, I learnt a lot and even though I seldom make music nowadays it was a valuable experience.

At that time there was a small digital recording studio in the Art Centre and Davie recorded local bands like Gods Boyfriend. I was a music addict back then and I played in my juvenile punk band with some of my pals. My best friend from school and I signed up to the course to learn more about making music and it was great.

Davie had done some good stuff with the Pearlfishers as well as his earlier group (love and money I think  CORRECTION - hearts and minds!) and he was spreading the gospel of perfect pop to the grunge addled minds of EK. He was not the only person of interesting the course.  There was an older guy, a drummer, a contemporary of the Jesus and Mary Chain, who had apparently played in an early permutation of the Mary Chain and some band with the guy out of the Wildhearts and sadly suffered from mental health problems.  The bloke was a really nice guy with great stories but in retrospect some of his stories may have been delusions.  Back then I didn't know much about mental health problems and in the 25 years since then I've learned more through my various professional studies and personal contacts. I like to think that his story was true and he did play with the Mary Chain and that Never Understand was indeed about him trying to explain his psychotic episodes to William Reid.

Davie Scott himself is a man with a deep love and understanding of music and he was able to clearly explain this to the class. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was his hero and he taught us about various production techniques, arrangements and the rivalry between Wilson and the Beatles. I remember one session when Davie went through God Only Knows from Pet Sounds chord by chord, explaining harmonies, melodies, lyrics and arrangements, presenting to us a great argument that Wilson had created the perfect pop song. He may be right although 'Wouldn't it be nice' is a bit more catchy.

Music has been important in my life. It is not all of my life but it has been a major theme and a source of pleasure. I've played my guitar a few times this week for the first time in ages, just for fun. I always mean to write and record some songs  again but real life and its associated pressures always gets in the way.  I have a lot of passions, my girlfriend, music, comic books, neurology, art. I'm a lucky man.  I'm lucky to have had such a rich life so far.

East Kilbride was special at times. I remember playing concerts in the Arts Centre, seeing the great Alex Chilton of  Big Star play there and seeing my pals play there. My teenage life was at times electric and colourful and it is nice o remembered the good bits.

Jerusalem by Alan Moore

I've just finished listening to the audiobook of Jerusalem by Alan Moore and I'm a bit blown away.  I chose to listen to the audiobook because of the sheer size of the book.  The hardback is 1200 pages long and I think the word count is more than a quarter of a million.  The audiobook is 60 hours long but at least I could listen to it on the train, in the bath and while I was doing housework.  The audiobook narration also helped me get through some of the more challenging sections such as the bit about the daughter of James Joyce.

I will read bits of the book again.  I will dip in and out.  I really want someone to write a book about this book and I look forward to character guides and websites becoming available on the internet.  What a ride!

I wonder if Jerusalem is a reworking of Big Numbers, his abandoned collaboration with Bill Sienkiewicz.  That work was to be set in Northampton and the plot was intended to rotate around the building of a new shopping centre.  Even if the two works were not destined to tell similar stories I am sad that we don't have the complete Big Numbers to compare with Jerusalem.  I will need to dig out my old copies and have a look.

I was also reminded of Voice of the Fire.  This is not unreasonable as both books mythologise Northampton and are written by Alan Moore.

Moore deals with life, death, existence and time.  The book is funny and full of supernatural elements.  There are moments of horror and you worry about what fate will hold for the characters.  The narrative is also complicated by multiple viewpoints and multiple identities for some characters.  A few diagrams and annotations would add a lot to this book and I feel that multiple re-reading will pay off (although a kindle copy will probably be much more portable).

This book could be Moore's best work.  It's a different beast to Watchmen.  At times he appears to have thrown everything into the mix, possibly even the kitchen sink.  At one point the KLF even appear, burning a million pounds.

Much of the book is thinly veiled autobiography.  Alma Warren is a cypher for Moore, sharing the same year of birth, the same eye problems and much of the same style and characteristics of Moore.  Her brother Mick shares a name and a year of birth with Moore's younger sibling.  Melinda Debbie, artist and partner of Alan Moore is a character in the book.  I believe that other parallels with the reality of Alan Moore's family history in Northampton exist.

Should you read this book?  If you have the time and patience, yes.  It is rewarding.  I got a lot from it.  It resounded with me emotionally and it cheered me up a bit shortly after the death of my dad.  I wish he could have read it.  The audiobook is a good way to tackle the book.  People will pick this apart for years.  I know I will.

putting together bits of a life

I'm thinking a lot about my dads life now.  He did a lot of stuff.  He worked hard in some areas and he achieved a lot.  I have learned more about him over the past couple of weeks and some things about my mother too.  I wish he was still here and I had a chance to ask him some questions.  None of these questions would have been life changing but it would have been good to have talked more.

We often don't talk enough in life.  It's often down to personality.  Sometimes people can talk too much and share too much.  Like most things you want to get somewhere in between.

There are many viewpoints on a life.  Many people have different opinions on how things have been and on how events happened.  In truth we are all unreliable narrators thinking we are movie stars when we are really just bit part players in the world.  We pick our own truths.  That's probably OK when you are remembering your dad but maybe a bit less OK if you are the president of the USA.

We've done most of what we need to do to prepare for the funeral.  Hopefully we will give him a good send off.

This blog is now 12 years old

I started writing this blog in Coventry in 2005.  I am now writing it in Glasgow in 2017.  I am older and the world has changed in some ways.  It's always difficult to say if things are better or worse.  Back then we had terrorism in London and a government that was doing things I don't like.  Right now we still have a government doing things I don't like.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In 12 years I have managed to do a lot of stuff.  In 1999 or 2000 I decided that I wanted to do some stuff and now I have almost done everything on that list.  I do not see myself as career orientated but I have managed to get myself where I want to be.  Beyond that, I have found a great partner and I've been with her for a couple of years now.  I hope that we will achieve a lot of other stuff together in the future.

I was talking with my partner last night.  We both wish we were 25 physically but we both enjoy the stuff that maturity brings you.  Experience helps you deal with life.  Life does get better in a lot of ways when you get older, if you are lucky.  As always I see myself as lucky.

Sometimes one contemplates the future.  We look at our parents and we see what has happened to our parents and we are scared.  We don't want the same stuff to happen to us but we know it might.  It is important to remember that our parents are a lot older than us and that our futures, if we are lucky, may not be written in our genes.  I don't think I would ever want to know my future.  If a blood test could predict my future I would not want that blood test.  There can be a freedom in not knowing the future.

Now that I'm older I like the sun more.  I crave daylight and sun.  I crave green places and the outdoors.  I like watching the sea.  Sometimes I even like rain.  In Scotland we never get much sun.  I am lucky that I have been able to see so much of the world.  I hope that stupid politicians do not stop the younger generations from seeing as much of the world as I have.

Next week I'm going to see some sun.  If I'm lucky I might even see some whales.

Idiot wind

When Dylan wrote Idiot Wind I wonder if he had glimpsed the future, peeked into the world of my adult years.  I look at what has happened to our world and I don't know if I should laugh or cry.  Our road went wrong at some point and now we are here, running like headless chickens into an uncertain future.  We have gone off the rails and no-one is trying to get us back online.

What is the root cause that has pushed us into this swamp of stupidity?  Was it television?  Was it crap newspapers?  Was it the internet?  Was it Facebook and porn?

I don't know.  Root cause analysis is not my strong point.  I will just ascribe it to the beating of a million butterfly wings.  Chaos theory.

So, how do we cope with this?I guess we just focus on where we are and what we do in life.  We try to be intelligent in a small way, a focused way.  We should try to do the tasks in front of us well, with quality, on a day to day basis.  We should do as good as we can, everyday.  I accept that this is not easy.

Sometimes, if we are lucky, we can look around and see people do things well. A writer, a musician, a painter, a doctor, a cook.  Producing something that helps us.  Producing work that is good, a lighthouse of quality above the rocks of shite in this modern world.

I like to sit and watch water.  Rivers, lakes, seas.  The water may be calm or rough but it represents a connection with the world as it stretches between continents, filled with hidden and uncertain life.  Great beasts hide in our oceans and are never seen by mankind.

I love the story of the whale found, in the polar seas, to have a 200 year old spearhead in its flesh.  Fuck you mankind!  You cannot dominate all the creatures of this world.  Some born before you will always outlive you and there is nothing you can do about it. No matter how much 'power' you have in the human world, no matter how many buildings bear your name.

I don't like to be in the sea myself.  It is a dangerous place.  I just like to watch from safety, dreaming of a communion that will never be possible.  Dreaming of meetings of minds that will never be possible.  Knowledge that I will never access.

I would love to talk to the whales.  I suspect that they are more intelligent than us.  Their way of life, their freedom, their battles and their losses.  Free for the most part, if they can avoid mankind.  I wonder what they dream of.  Do they think of us?  Do they discuss humans? Would they be interested in human life?  Would they care?

Imagine aliens coming to earth.   Would they have more in common with us or with the whales?  Hopefully they would be more like the whales.  If they are like us, we are in trouble.  Especially if they were to listen to the idiot wind that comes from the mouths of our leaders.

Hot air.

When things are good

Sometimes things are good in life.  It's probably just for a while but sometimes, for a bit, the road gets easier.  It's important to realise that you are in a good time because if you don't you only realise when it's gone.

I'm in a good bit now.  I'm doing a new job that feels worthwhile.  I'm in a good relationship.  I have money in my pocket.  I am fortunate.

At this point I look around me.  I'm doing well but that's not true for everyone.  One of my school friends is very sick at the moment.  He's a young man with a young family who's normally healthy and he has been critically ill in a hospital ITU for over a week.  The doctors are doing their best and he is almost stable,  In that situation, almost stable is a victory.  Bad things can happen with no warning so when things are good, enjoy them.

More generally, our current government are doing their best to fuck the country up.  I will never understand the Tory 'rich obnoxious idiot' mindset.  I will never understand why they have contempt for people less well off than themselves.  I guess humanity is a variable thing.

Anyway, right now, life is internally and locally good for me so I'm going to enjoy it

When medical science fails

As a doctor one of the most frustrating things you can experience is failure, the realisation that medical science is not good enough to fix a person.  It's worse if that person is a friend (or the spouse of a friend) and they have a health problem that is part of your specialist interest.  It is also important to note that as a doctor you should really not be involved in the medical care of your friends.

I wish medical science was better.  I wish that the drugs we have now were available 20 years ago.  I wish we were better. I wish we could stop young people becoming disabled.  I wish everyone could live full, pain free lives with no fucking problems at all.

My wishes are unrealistic.

As a doctor I want to make things good for my patients.  I know this is not always possible.  I can accept that. It's just fucking difficult to accept if it's someone you know, with a disease you work with, but sadly the boat has been missed and the great drugs came along too fucking late. It's a shitty fucking deal.  Sometimes you wish you could turn back the clock but life is not going to let that happen.

You also want to give all of your patients all of your effort all of the time but that is not possible either. As a doctor you are still human and your resources are limited.  It is impossible to fire on full cylinders all the time.

Anyway, I'm on holiday.  Rant over.

I think journalism may be dying but it may also be coming back to life

As a child I wanted to be a writer.  I wanted to write comic books and science fiction novels.  Later on, I wanted to be a journalist, telling the truth on behalf of the people.  I wanted to fight censorship and do good stuff for people.  I wanted to catch all those lying politicians and shine a bright light on their bad deeds.

Hopelessly naive.

I used to respect the media.  I would read 2 or 3 newspapers a day.  I saw the BBC as a bastion of truth, noble, erect and trustworthy, standing tall against injustice, serving our proud British nation and   helping out oppressed people around the world.  I bought every single bit of the beautiful lie.

The old newspapers were always partial, depending on the whims of Lord Beaverbrook or whoever held the purse strings.  Over time, watching the Murdoch empire and the Daily Record, I realised that newsprint was often grubby.  The hands of tabloid journalists are often stained red with the ink of their gutter journalism.  No matter how hard they scrubbed, sometimes that spot of ink would inconveniently stay there as they were made to account for their writings years later.  Sales have fallen and the stature of British print journalism has diminished.

I still held the BBC in high regard.  Friends from other countries tell me that they have never trusted the BBC, that they call the BBC the British Brainwashing Corporation. That's pretty sad.  It is now clear that the BBC are partial, especially in the recent debate surrounding the Scottish independence referendum.  The BBC seems to be actively campaigning against Scottish independence.  One suspects that this may be to protect 10% of licence fee income.  It does feel like a step away from impartial comment.

The BBC has also been damaged by the horrific realisation that prominent members of the on-screen BBC staff were apparently rather unpleasant in real life.  These nasty realities seem to have been common knowledge around the BBC.  Nothing was done.  A strong institutional reputation was tarnished.

So the media of my childhood has betrayed me.  Betrayal is perhaps not the correct way to frame the situation.  It is perhaps fairer to say that I have come to see the media in it's true light.  My expectations of the BBC and Fleet Street were higher than they could reach.  It's not the fault of the media, it was my youthful innocence that was to blame.

In the future I guess the media will be different.  The bell has been tolling for newspapers for a while.  Print newspapers may not exist in 20 years time.  I think we will continue to have good quality written journalism on websites.  There will be a lot of dross out there but there will be some pearls too.  Unfortunately there is no editor online and you can always find some evidence to back up your maddest prejudices.  You must become an editor and you must filter things carefully and avoid becoming a member of the 'tin foil hat' brigade.

The decline of old media will hopefully lead to a maturation of the reader and the development of critical skills.  Hopefully with time we will begin to evaluate things and make our own decisions.  Sadly, the world is full of conspiracy nuts with poor filters.  We may need to rely on our paternalistic media overlords for some time.

That should be OK as long as they don't try to tell us how to vote........

......oh.

Old music that was lying about

So on Friday I randomly went to see the Pet Shops Boys at short notice.  It was a really good gig and it sparked a memory of an old recording that I had made with a friend of dodgy covers on a 4 track.  We had recorded 'always on my mind', 'it's a sin', 'never ever' by all saints and 'circle in the sand' by Belinda Carlisle.  We might have done another Belinda Carlisle track.  We did all of that in one afternoon using an early play station as a drum machine.

I'm not sure what happened to that tape.  I wish I had it.  I went looking for it and I failed to find it.  What I did find was a collection of slightly less cheery songs from 1999 when I was pretending to be Lou Reed.  They are all pretty shit but Bandcamp didm't exist back then and it does now so I had a 'what the fuck' moment and stuck them all up (well 6 of them anyway).



Now this music is not very good and it is not well played but I wrote it and spent time with it so why not just let it exist somewhere other than a rotting CD in a pile.  It was mainly written after the accidental death of a friend at a young age and the words are mainly about coming to terms with grief and death.  Cheery stuff.  Very angry.

All of that was about 15 or 16 years ago.  I really wanted to be a rock star until I was 21.  The only real problem was a lack of ability or good looks.  Most of these songs were played in a full band format with a few friends but we never got our shit together enough to properly record any of it.  There are probably some 2 track rehearsal tapes somewhere but I doubt I could ever be bothered to find them.

Additionally there is another track recorded for a laugh in 2007.  It sounds a bit better because a friend played some guitar on it and we used a computer.  We were listening to a lot of Violent Femmes stuff at the time so we just ran with it.



Other than this I have some recordings from a band called Punani that I played bass for.  I'm not going to put any of that on here as it's not all mine.  It's not fair to put anything that would embarrass other people out in the public domain.

The first band that I was in had a hundred names but was mainly called the Divers.  I have a large box of tapes but none of it was recorded properly (well maybe one song on an 8 track and a Nirvana cover for a tribute tape).  I would put that up if it was in a decent format and I could find it but I can't.

Anyway, this stuff is now in public.  The 1999 stuff is sad and angry and a bit rubbish.  The 2007 song is sad in a different way and a bit rubbish.

It exists.  That is all.

Bad stuff can happen at any time

We often think we are bulletproof.  We think that bad stuff can happen to us.  We live comfortable lives in nice places.  Nobody shoots at us.  Most of the time we are safe.  We are still relatively young.  Plenty of time to just keep your head down and work.  Save money for the future.  Live for the future.

It sounds nice, doesn't it.

It's not always true.  August has in many ways been a month of bad stuff.  None of it, I hasten to add, has affected me personally, directly.  I've personally not had anything bad happen to me although some things have brought life into a greater clarity.

So this month one of my colleagues, who is a couple of years younger than me (early-mid-thirties) has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  She has two young daughters, her parents live on the other side of the world, her husband hasn't got a job right now.  It's not the worst possible scenario medically but it's not good.  The future is uncertain.  She's so young.  Her family is younger.

Earlier in the week I had attended the funeral of the mother of a close friend.  She was relatively young but she had lived a good, complete life.  She met 3 of her grandchildren and had many good things in life.  Her children and her husband were with her as she died at home.  That was good.

In addition to these two stories I was also saddened to hear of the death of the teenage son of two very nice colleagues.  The poor bloke, who I had met once, had been ill for some time.  Expected but still unspeakably sad.

This might all sound like a torrent of misery but it shouldn't be.  I guess the point of this bit of writing is to say that you should live for just now.  Live your life as fully as you can all the time.  Plan for the future but do not bet your life on the future.  Life is short and transient so it is important to have as good a time as possible while you are alive.  Take sensible chances and if you are in a situation you don't want to be in, change it.

I'm a lucky bloke.  I've got a great life.  I'm well paid, I enjoy my job (sort of), I have a decent flat and I get to do what I want to do most of the time.  I realise a lot of people are not as lucky as I am.  Sometimes it's good to just sit back and think about how good things are.

So, carpe diem everyone.  Just be nice to everyone else while you do it,

living in a science fiction present

My grandfather didn't have a television until 1980.  My father grew up in a house without electricity, heated by coal fires, in a remote costal area in Scotland.  They lived 200 metres from the sea and they saw seals every day.  They didn't always see other people on a daily basis.  A lot of time was spent reading books or out living a rural life.  And shooting stuff.

My grandfather died in 1987/1988.  I don't think he ever saw a computer (although I'm not entirely sure).  He was born in a croft in 1903.  I'm writing this on a fancy laptop.  I'm streaming music onto my iPad beside me.  Technology like this only existed on Star Trek and in the science fiction novels and comics my father read.

My grandfather left the UK twice (as far as I know).  In the late '70s/early '80s my parents brought him to Lanzarote and Malta with us for family holidays.  Until then he had never been in a plane.  He did live in London where he worked as a servant in the 1920's and 30's so I guess it is possible that he may have travelled abroad at that time.  I don't know and I guess I never will.

As a kid I never imagined that I would at some point own something like an iPad or a smartphone.  I could could conceptualise a mobile phone as I had seen walkie talkies.  Early chunky mobile phones were available in the '80s but only for the very rich.

Possibly the most amazing thing now is the internet.  Vast amounts of knowledge, science, music, media and art are available free, instantly at the touch of a button.  I did my first degree before scientific papers existed as PDFs.  I had not used the internet or sent an email before I went to university.  I spent years looking for books, comics and music.  Now it's all there.

Our ability to communicate has improved too.  I play scrabble and chat with someone in Hong Kong every day.  I know and care about someone in Hong Kong.  As a child in the West of Scotland I would never have imagined such a thing.  I dreamt of America in movies and comic books and later in records.  I was lucky enough to visit Europe and I knew about World War 2.  Beyond that I knew that other cultures existed but I didn't really believe that I would ever interact with these distant places in any meaningful way.

When I was a kid for a while I wanted to be a spaceman.  When I was very young I wanted to be a soldier but thankfully I got over that idea very early.  Most of the time I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write comics and novels.  As a teenager I wanted to be a rock star or a journalist.  I had a vague childhood idea of being a scientist but only in a sort of very vague science fiction/spaceman way.

I never thought I would be a doctor.  Doctors were the people my mother worked for, a class apart. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty years later, here I am.  How the fuck did this happen?

I sit in a posh flat in Glasgow living in a science fiction present, parts of which echo the William Gibson books I read when I was 10.  Parts of this are so much better than I ever thought would be possible.  When I watch the television news and hear borderline racist, anti-immigration political beasts from UKIP talk, I hear echoes of Mosely and Enoch Powell and it's all gone a bit dystopian.

What would my grandad think if he was alive today?  His generation fought the nazi's and gave us the Scotland we have today.

Teaching

I regularly reflect on what a lucky bastard I am.  I spent the last week teaching a full year group of medical students about my speciality interest.  I had a great time.  Teaching is one of the most enjoyable parts of being a doctor.

Part of what you want to do is stop the students falling asleep.  A lot of medicine is boring.  It's difficult to just absorb a stream of facts.  It's also difficult to filter the massive amount of information that we deal with.  Hundreds of pages of medical data are published every day and the vast majority of it is bullshit.  You want the students to walk away with knowledge of the important stuff that will save a life and help patients get better.  You want the important stuff to stick.

By teaching, you learn.  I've learned some neuroanatomy myself this week and I've come to realise that my understanding of at least one condition was wrong.  I don't know if this is because I was taught badly myself 16 or 17 years ago or if I just misunderstood a concept.  The important thing is that I have corrected my knowledge now.

We were trying to make things fun for the students so we set up a text number on a mobile phone to let them ask us questions as well as a twitter account.  We got a lot of useful texts as well as a few abusive ones.  I used the twitter account to promote YouTube videos of examination skills, patient experiences and other useful websites.  If the students are interested they will check it out.

I'm a bit of an extrovert so I enjoy public speaking.  My problem is, that as a Glasweigan, I tend to swear or say inappropriate things.  The students did seem to like this.  I didn't say anything that was too out of order, especially when I compare myself to a surgical colleague who started to talk about shagging goats.

We got some decent feedback and hopefully it was a success.  With luck the students will pass their exams and some of them may even develop a greater interest in neurology as time goes on.  I have to get back to regular doctoring this week but I'm already looking forward to my next bit of teaching.

sometimes it's nice to meet your heroes - End of an Era 2, the final ATP holiday camp festival and Mike Watt

The ATP festival concept was brilliant but sadly it has now run it's course.  This weekend I attended the ATP chalet festival at Camber Sands in Rye.  For work and financial reasons I never made it to the early festivals but I always looked at the line-ups with awe.  A good friend of mine plays in Mogwai and actually curated the first ATP festival but the first one I made it to was curated by Jeff Mangum in 2012.  I loved that experience and went back to the Deerhunter event this summer.

I was sad to hear that the festivals were ending.  I am not privy to the reasons for this but running a big festival has to be difficult in harsh financial climates.  Pontins certainly did not roll out the red carpet for guests this time, requiring us to bring our own linen.

The line-up for this festival was brilliant and contained many personal favourites. Slint, Shellac, Loop, Girls Against Boys, Michael Rother, Mike Watt and of course Mogwai.  Attendance was required despite my fears about the notoriously unpredictable late November weather.  In the end I made it to Camber Sands without any snow having made a stop at the British Museum on the way.

Pontins is not scenic and reminds me of my home town of East Kilbride.  I guess it provides an appropriate back drop for alternative rock but I wouldn't want to spend an actual holiday here.

On the first night I saw Thought Forms, a band I was unfamiliar with.  They made some cool Sonic Youth-y noises and jumped about.  I liked what I heard so I bought up their back catalogue.  I'll look out for them in the future.

Thought Forms

After Thought Forms I caught Om and the Fuck Buttons set.  Om were intense with a great Sabbath/stoner rock sound.  I have a few records by Sleep, the band that Om developed from and they were just as good.  After that the Fuck Buttons hit the stage.  They made some great noises.  I don't have any of their records but I enjoyed seeing them.  Finishing off Friday night was a one-two whammy of Shellac and Slint. 

I saw Shellac in Glasgow last weekend and this was the 5th time that I have seen them since 1994.  I bought the first Shellac singles as they came out back in 1993 and they have always been one of my favourite bands.  They played a great set although they were oddly quiet (dodgy PA).  They even played 'wingwalker'.

Shellac wearing their evening suits

Slint too had a quiet PA but it was great to see them again.  They played most of Spiderland as well as a track from Tweez and a track from their EP.  I had hoped that we might have seen more of the mythical Slint documentary film but there was no joy.  After the concert I ended up in the Mogwai party chalet and in a drunken haze I met David Pajo.  He seems like a nice guy, even when confronted with an intoxicated Scottish Danzig fan.

The next morning was a bit of a red wine haze.  I woke up early and went to Camber Sands beach to contemplate infinity.  Camber is probably fairly nice in the summer but it's a really small town.  I wouldn't want to live there.  The locals were nice but the holiday camp is certainly grim.  This time we brought food with us so we didn't have to buy overpriced rubbish in the Nisa store or toxic waste from the onsite food outlets.

The beach itself is beautiful.  I took a few photos before my hangover really kicked in.  I was able to watch the Dismemberment Plan play a set that drew heavily from 'emergency & I' but after that I had to lie down for a bit to prepare myself for the evenings festivities.  After my much needed beauty sleep I caught a bit of 23 Skidoo and the Pop Group.  Neither band really set my world on fire but it was nice to see 'we are all prostitutes' played live.

Comets on Fire were a different thing altogether.  They took to the smaller downstairs stage and tore the place apart.  I've been listening to a couple of their albums which are enjoyable enough.  The recordings did not prepare me for the rock fury of the band on stage.  Blending Mudhoney, the Stooges and Sabbath they sent an electric shock through the crowd.  Rocktastic.

Comets on Fire

I had been listening to Loop stuff in an attempt to prepare myself for this concert.  I sort of missed Loop as a teenager spending more time listening to Spacemen 3.  In recent months I have taken a bit of a crash course in their stuff but it didn't really click until I saw them live.  They managed to make an immense noise with the hitherto 'polite' upstairs PA system.  Their repetitive drones drove the crowd mad and a plague of crowd surfing spread though the room.  To ice the cake they encored with 'mother sky' by Can.  I was grinning from ear to ear.  Once more I retired to the Mogwai party chalet where I had a close encounter with some rather nice 15 year old Glenlivet.  I stumbled back to my chalet at around 3am with a smile on my face.

My hangover was a bit worse on Sunday.  I managed to reconstitute myself in time for the Michael Rother set at 3:30pm.  It was pretty good but I preferred the Neu heavy set that I caught in Primavera a few years before.  My recovery was complete in time for the Mike Watt set.  He was playing ll Sogno Del Marinaio, a sort of opera about sailors.  It was nice, instrumental passages with intermittent vocal flourishes. He finished his set with a cover of Funhouse by the Stooges (i think).  Watt is a great hero of mine but I'll return to this topic in due course.

Mike Watt

After Watt came Girls Against Boys.  I've been listening to Girls against Boys for many, many years. I saw them 2 or 3 times in the mid nineties but I haven't seen them for a long long time.  I was rather excited to see them again and I wasn't disappointed.  The sound was slightly ropey during the first song but they managed to shine anyway.  They kicked off with 'tucked in' before playing an action packed set.  The strength of the Girls Against Boys back catalogue was highlighted by the fact that they managed to play a great show despite missing out classics like 'I don't got a place' and 'sexy sam'.  The new songs that they played held their own against the old material.  It's a shame that GVSB never had the success they deserved.

Girls Against Boys

The next big discovery of the weekend was Goat.  Goat are a Swedish band that wear masks and play intoxicating rhythms.  They make you want to dance.  I suspect them to be the Knife in disguise but I am told that this is not the case.

Goat going bongo crazy

Finally the last ever ATP festival was closed by one of the best bands on earth. Mogwai.  I cannot write an objective word about mogwai, especially when they got me drunk all weekend and gave me a stage access pass for their set.  However, I will honestly say that they played a brilliant set.  The new material is amazing (especially 'remurdered' and 'blues hour').  I remember first hearing them play Helicon 1 about 18 years ago in a very small room and seeing them playing it again in a very big room in front of some very excited fans was great.  Mogwai curated the first ATP festival and it was fitting that they closed the last one.

Mogwai playing mexican grand prix

After they finished the DJ played 'Teenage Riot' by Sonic Youth and it was all over.  The crowd went mad.  I was able to nip on stage and take some photos of the departing crowd.  Somehow I had found the 'make everything look drunk' button on my camera.  I ended up in the surprise party for Barry Hogan at 2:30am.  I shouldn't really have been there (although I was again abducted by the 'gwai) but it was nice to hear his words on a series of events that have meant a lot to people with good taste.  I don't know what he'll do next but I'm sure it'll be good.

As a coda to an amazing festival I had an amazing experience on the train from Rye to Ashford.  I met Mike Watt on the platform and I spent about 30 minutes talking to him.  SST punk was a big thing for me and I remember first hearing the Minutemen after buying the Post-Mersh volume 3 CD from Tower Records one boxing day (maybe 1991?).  Watt is one of the nicest men alive and when he heard my accent he asked me if I knew Dep from Monorail Records.  When I told him that Dep had advised me on Minutemen records over the years he smiled.  I think he regards Dep as a sort of missionary.

Watt spoke about his need to constantly tour.  He sees life on the road as being like that of a sailor, like his father who was in the navy and served in Vietnam.  Watt told me that he saw little of his father growing up and that he feels he only got to know him in his thirties by which point he was dying of cancer.  Watt himself said that he had decided not to have children as he felt family life was incompatible with life on the road.

He suffers from arthritis and needs to have a knee operation next year.  He'll need to to take 6 months off from touring to do that.  He says that this will be difficult as he doesn't know what to do when he isn't touring.

He told me a bit about how he recorded some of his records, how they got free studio time to record one song but managed to record all of the first side of 'buzz or howl under the influence of heat' by pretending it was one song.  He told me that he originally wanted to use images from the magazine Scientific American for the cover (indeed the title came from Scientific American) but the photo cost too much so Joe Baiza drew a sketch of him and D Boon instead.

Watt is an inspirational musician and his life and words have meant a lot to me over the years.  After I finished talking to him, changing trains at Ashford International I listened to all 175 minutemen tracks on my iPod back to back.  They took me most of the way back to Glasgow.  I thought about the life of Mike Watt and how he has given so much to me.  I don't think he's a rich man but he is a good man.  Like most American musicians he won't have free health care and nobody buys records now so musicians have to tour to make money.  If anyone reads this think about buying a mike watt record (fIREHOSE/minutemen/anything) or go to a mike watt gig.  He's a good bloke.

With the ATP concept, Barry Hogan did a good thing and has given me some amazing experiences.  I hope he does something new, similar and brilliant again.  Maybe even in Scotland?

Adventures in bin-raking

I'm staying at my parents house for a couple of days.  I haven't been out here since Christmase so it's noce to catch up with them a bit.  I've also been tidying out my old room at their house and getting rid of some of the crap that's still cluttering the place.

I went to the local dump with my mother this afternoon.  My mother likes a bargin and keeps her eyes open for useful things whenever she goes to the dump.  We were fairly lucky today.  At the top of the dump was a pile of about 30 CDs and DVDs.  It looked as if somebody had thrown out someone elses possessions.  The collection looked rather female in origin and contained a lot of stuff by the likes of Michael Buble and Jess Stone.  There was also a few Beatles CDs and stuff by Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Miles Davis and BoB Dylan.  Randomly there was also a copy of 'the last time I did acid I went insane' by Jeffrey Lewis.  I promptly jumped into the dump and salvaged all this booty.  As a family we are not proud.  I even found a copy of Johnny Cash 'American 5' for my Dad (I own this one already but my Dad is a Cash fan too).  We also picked up the first series of the Wire and a couple of books.

At the end of the day we figured out that the collection of stuff was probably worth about £150.  Not bad for stuff that was due to be landfill.  The stuff that we don't want for ourselves will be donated to charity shops with some of the other stuff we were getting rid of.

My parents and I are not poor.  I have a good job and they have decent pensions.  However it does sicken me to see useful stuff condemed to landfill when it could be used by someone else.  My Dad will enjoy watching Finding Nemo and the Wire and my Mum will enjoy listening to Elton John (hopefully when I'm out of earshot).  I'm happy with my free stuff too.

So, if you go to the dump - keep your eyes open.  And if you are going to dump stuff maybe think if someone else could use it.  We suspect that all this stuff was thrown out by an idiot in a fit of anger which is sort of sad but hopefully the charity shop may be able to do something useful with it.