Scotland in November

On holiday in the west coast of Scotland. It's raining a fair bit but still some decent views.

Lou Reed - A loss

Lou Reed meant something to me.  He was a big musical touchstone.  I think I own about 5000 albums, I've seen more gigs than I remember, I've played in crappy bands and I've written hundreds of shitty teenage songs.  Most of the shitty teenage songs I wrote were Lou Reed knock offs.

I can't remember exactly how I got into Lou.  For me, Walk on the Wildside was a big childhood song.  I didn't get the the murky subculture lyrics but I loved the sliding baseline and the 'doo da doo' backing vocals.  I can't remember if I heard the banana album first or the cassette of the Jane's Addiction live album with 'rock n roll' on it or if it was a knock off live CD of a New York concert on Christmas day in 1972.  It was one of those things and all of those things and I connected with every fucking one of them.

I wanted to be Lou Reed.  I didn't want to be a bisexual transvestite junkie but I did want to sing intelligent songs with great words in my own fucking voice.  I did try that a bit but I wasn't very good at it so I went into medicine as my fall back plan.

Lou and the Velvet Underground influenced most of the music that ever mattered to me.  Spacemen 3, David Bowie, Jane's Addiction, the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, the Happy Mondays, Nirvana, Nick Cave, Fugazi. The list goes on and on and on.  He brought grit to the modern rock song.  He let a pop song become a documentary on the fucking grime of life.  He sang about shit things in a matter of fact way that didn't really glamorise them.  I realise that he was a bit of a dick at times but he made some great great music.

I was lucky enough to see Reed play at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in September 2000 just before I went to medical school.  He played a 3 hour set.  It was pretty special.

He was 71, he had a liver transplant earlier this year, he took lots of drugs in a crazy way.  He should have been dead some time ago. He hung out with Andy Warhol and he was one of the direct roots of punk.  He was listened to by political dissidents in Poland and by the Mary Chain in East Kilbride.  He made grim music for grim people in grim places but some of it was brilliant and some of it was life affirming.  I would argue that he made popular music into art.

I'm sorry he's gone but I'm glad he was here.

RIP

Netflix

I've finally fully entered the internet era.  I've set up broad band internet in my flat and I've got a fancy new TV that lets me stream Netflix.  Netflix is a great service.

I was sucked in by Breaking Bad.  I'd caught the first series on the UK channel 5 a few years back and more recently got up to date on DVD.  I was desperate to see how the series would end so I decided to go for Netflix.  Now I think I'm addicted.

Netflix has thousands of hours of TV shows and films instantly available.  Breaking Bad is the crown jewels but it also has South Park, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy, Portlandia, It's always sunny in Philadelphia.  The list goes on.  Netflix also has a big pile of films that I want to see, the sort of things that I would pick up in Asda for £3.  Usually I would watch these films once and then put them in a pile.  Now I will hopefully save money and space.

I've found some good documentaries too.  I'd been wanting to see the Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet documentary for some time and I was pleasantly surprised to find it here.

I strongly urge anyone who likes good cinema to check this service out.

Jason Becker: Not Dead Yat

I must admit that I'd never heard of Jason Becker but I must have bought some guitar magazines with his face in them at some point in the early nineties.  Becker played a style of guitar that I am not really a fan of but he was a talented young guitarist.  He had signed up with David Lee Roth when disaster struck.  At the age of 20 Jason Becker was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.  Somehow he is still alive.

I'm a neurologist.  I've met a lot of people with motor neurone disease.  It's a terrible disease, one of the worst diseases I know of.  Very few people live for a long period of time.  Through luck, excellent family support and good resources Jason Becker is still alive and still making music.

Through a mixture of family photographs, super 8 cinefilms, concert footage and interviews we hear Jason's life story.  He should have been Stevie Vai or Van Halen but his body betrayed him and now he communicates with his eyes. Based on the film he has shown amazing resilience and focus.  Most people couldn't do that.  The only other person that I can think of who has survived so long with a motor neurone disease is Steven Hawking.

This film is worth seeing.  It interests me as a doctor and as a music fan. I'm not a fan of 'shred' guitar but it's great to see one man keeping on despite the odds.

another year older

I'm 36 now, closer to 40 than 30.  It sneaks up on you, age.  In the past year I have completed a doctoral degree which is a big step.  I'm continuing my clinical career which is as interesting and challenging (and at times soul destroying) as ever.  It's all good.

I have a week off just now.  I've used it to try and sort out my life a bit.  I've just restructured my finances in a more sensible way and I've bought myself a fancy new TV and a fancy new computer (a MacBook Pro).  I lead a privileged life.

I'm not doing anything exciting with my holiday.  I'm reading some books and trying to sort out bits and pieces in my flat.  All first world problems.  I have no major concerns just now. I realise that I'm writing this on the 12th anniversary of something bad and 15 years after a friend died in a stupid accident.  I'm luckier than most of the planet.

At the moment I hope we avoid another crazy war in the middle east and I hope that everyone is happy.    Starry eyed optimism, hippy sentiments.  Thanks again for reading.

The Argument by Grant Hart

I've written about Grant Hart before on this blog.  I regard him as a great lost talent, a wayward genius, who should have been rich and famous but life got in the way.  Husker Du were a great band and Hart wrote many of their best songs.

The Argument is a concept album based on William S Burroughs unpublished treatment of Milton's Paradise Lost.  The music is as creative and insane as that sounds. The album is about satan and his war with God set to music that mixes alternative rock with songs reminiscent of the comedy tracks on Beatles albums. It's mad but fun.

I've listened to this CD a few times now and I'm liking it.  As I've written before, I think Hart has been unlucky in life and I don't think he's a rich man. Buy this CD or pay for a download. It's worth hearing.

Glasgow comic convention 2013

It was a warm weekend for the Glasgow comic convention now in a new venue at the CCA on sauchiehall street. The venue was an improvement on last year with more space and nicer surroundings.

I really enjoyed most of the weekend apart from Simon Bisley who I have to say is one of the most disappointing individuals I have ever had the misfortune to meet. I don't think I'll ever buy anything with his name on it again. By the time I met him late on the Saturday afternoon he had reached a confrontational stage of maudlin drunkeness and he was being abusive to everyone he encountered. Many people were saying that he is a total arsehole although I couldn't possible comment.

Anyway, enough toxic ranting. On to good stuff, and there was a lot of good stuff The first thing I did was stand in line to meet John Wagner (the man who came up with the name Judge Dredd) and Carlos Ezquerra (the man who designed Judge Dredd). I was lucky enough to get a sketch of Dredd and their autographs on a copy of 2000ad number 2 (the first Dredd comic strip).

Wagner and Ezquerra were very, very nice and indulgent. True gentlemen.





After that I met John Higgins, an all round great artist and famously the colourist on Watchmen. He's a great artist and a bought a small book illustration from him. He also drew a quick Judge Dredd sketch for me.










I then had a look at some of the local Glasweigan indie comics. I picked up the new comic by Jim Devlin, an up and coming writer/artist who won the awards for best writer and best artist. I also bought the new books by John Lees and Neil Slorance, all of which are very nice and well worth investigating.

Finally I sat in on a panel of artists including Alan Davis, Cam Kennedy and Yishan Li talking about working as comic artists. They all had rather different career paths and interesting tales to tell. Kennedy, a native Glasweigan has some great chat and was given free reign to talk for nearly an hour about his long and varied career on the Sumday. In the panel we heard about the differences in the industry in the UK, America, Europe and Asia. I am not familiar with the work of Yishan Li but I am told that she is a successful manga artist. The art that I saw her produce looks good anyway.




On Sunday my main objective was to meet Alan Davis, my favourite comic book artist. I had to wait in line for about 90 minutes to meet him but it was worth it. He's a really modest, normal, down to earth bloke who still lives in Corby. I spent some time in Kettering and Corby about 10 or 11 years back and I think he was interested to hear that I knew the place. It is always nice to be treated well by a childhood hero and he drew me a great sketch of Captain Britain.










I had lunch with one of the guys from the book group I attend after getting my sketches. I bought a couple of books and some old comics and then I spent most of the rest of the afternoon listening to talks.

I did make one interesting comic book discovery (well, a discovery for me anyway). I met Glasweigan comic book artist Lorna Miller and picked up some of her Witch comics, published about a decade ago by Slave Labour Comix. I had never heard of her but she has collaborated with Peter Bagge. She has a style similar to Bagge with a geography that I can relate to personally. One strip is based in a carry out shop on Great Western Road. I need to get more of her work and I hope she continues to publish.





To close the Sunday I sat and listened to a series of talks. I have already mentioned the quality chat of Cam Kennedy and his solo session was very interesting. He had trained in commercial art in Glasgow doing early work on Commando comics for DC Thompson before heading off round Europe. You often hear criticism of DC Thompson but Kennedy told us the other side of the story detailing the various perks of working for the Dundee publishers. Cam has a healthy indifference to his career and sounds like he enjoyed himself without becoming big headed. He worked hard in his time and produced some great stuff. His tales of interactions with American publishers and Lucasfilm were brilliant and I would gladly have listened to him for a day. Sadly problems with his eyes mean that he can no longer work but he certainly can talk.

After that there was a panel chaired by John McShane discussing the differences between working in the American industry and the UK industry. Alan Grant, Mike Ploog and Alan Davis have all been successful internationally and raised some interesting points. Grant made enough money from writing Batman in the late '80s to buy a house that his friends call Wayne Manor. Davis continues to do high selling books for Marvel comics. A common theme was issues with editors. A good editor can make a job great whilst a bad editor can make your life hell. Ploog has a great story about why he never worked for DC after unintentionally insulting a famous editor.

The weekend ended with Alan Davis discussing his career. As I have already mentioned he is a modest man who feels lucky to have had a career as a comic artist. He no longer reads modern comics as he has become disillusioned with the violence that is often present in stories. He chooses not to write because he feels that his stories would not sell. This is a shame because he has written some good stuff over the years. Davis stands as an example of professionalism and decent blokeness. Most of the people I met over the weekend were the same, with one sadly obvious exception.

To end on a good note though here's a picture by Mike Ploog:-

Paul Bright's confessions of a justified sinner at the Glasgow Tramway

On Saturday I was on Facebook and I noticed that a play based on James Hoggs' Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner was on at the Tramway theatre, two ,minutes walk away from my flat.  It was the last night of the run.  I had to see it.

The play wasn't a straight adaption.  The main points of the story were covered but this was about more. This was about a heroic failed attempt to stage the play by a crazy Scots playwright called Paul Bright who has since died and had long before vanished from the Scottish theatre scene.  It was also a one man show by George Anton, a friend of Brights who had worked with him on the failed production.

So far, so mental.

The show also involved an exhibition of the Paul Bright archive of the materials from the original shows.  There was also an extensive presentation of film material from the original production.  My tiny mind was pleased by lots of swearing and references to Sonic Youth and the Mary Chain.

Justified Sinner has often been thought of as an untranslatable work.  It is an important novel and is an early example of an unreliable narrator.  This play/stage show captures the spirit of the book in a modern and brilliant manner.  It's not on any more but hopefully it will be presented again or maybe even adapted into a television show. I'd love to see it again.

Achievements

So it has been a big week for me in a way.  I had the viva for my MD thesis on Monday crowning nearly five years of research work.  My examiners liked my thesis (much to my surprise) and it will be accepted by the University.  An achievement.

Does that make me an academic? I have 3 degrees in science, medicine and research.  I do clinical work and I have clinical qualifications.  I work hard and I am probably a bit addicted to it.  Work is almost an end in itself.  Money is a happy side effect.  I have published a few useful scientific papers.  I hope they are useful as other authors have cited them but it is difficult to be sure.  I have made tentative moves to do more academic work.

How do you know when you have achieved enough? When can you sit back and relax? What drives you on?  Sometimes I feel like I have blinked and 15 years have vanished.  At times my life has been a whirlwind.

I like helping people when I can and I like to have an interesting life.  I get bored easily and I like a bit of variety in my life.  Research and teaching give me a bit of variety.  Clinical work is enjoyable too but burnout is always possible and important to avoid.  

I honestly don't know why I work so hard.  I do it because it's easy and it gives me something to do.  Work means that I don't need to think too much about anything else and I can feel like I am doing something worthwhile.  I guess I'm lucky to have a job that lets me do that.  I have a job that sometimes lets me feel like I'm achieving something.

iPad photography

I've been on holiday near Oban and I've been experimenting with the camera on the iPad.  I've had some decent results