rush

rush has lead to a brainblast.
no not the power trio rock band - even though they are, indeed, a brainblast.

nope this comes from a bit of greed and a bit of stupidity on my part.
i have been feeling shit the last couple of days.
so time for a treat and look those nice people at the co-op have just want i need: custard doughnuts. i buy a pack of six.
yum yum.

about an hour later a student turns up with two boxes of krispy kreme doughnuts (other doughnuts are available).
a box of 12 plain glazed doughnuts upstairs.
a box of 12 mixed fillings and toppings downstairs.
he was our favourite student of the day.

as luck would have it several of the girls have gone on diets.
good for them.
more for me.

so mnay doughnuts later i have a banging throbbing headache from all the sugar that is surging all around me.

truly a brainblast.

now let's see if i can sleep or will i be bouncing off of the wall.

split

rem have announced that they have split.
i shall have to dab back a tear or two (well i would if i knew more than one song by them).

now can we hope that the lib dems grow a spine and a set and decide it is time to walk away from the coalition off.
no?
oh well i can always dream.

b

it appears that there might very well be a plan-b (no not the bland singer) from the conservative party and their pals the lib dems.
of course it won't be called 'plan b' and there will be a lot of hoo-hahing about exactly what the, potential, £5 billion stimulus might be called adn how it might be described.
it comes at a time when the imf have, once again, changed their forecast for the uk economy. downwards again.
it must be fun being a financial expert - you just keep changing your figures every month and people are in awe of you. i can't see why it just brings into question the very point of any of their forecasts if all they are going to do is change it again in a few weeks/months time.
ah but this is the smoke and mirrors that the financial services markets are built from.

that is why they can be so bad but expect to be reward so well for it.
which is something i don't understand.
my finances are in the toilet - yet all i get are nasty leters - the heads of the banks who helped create the mess get big bonuses.

so headhunters out there - if you are looking for someone to take over a company look me up. i seem to have the right qualificaions: poor with money and have no idea what i am doing.
i am a shoo-in for a ftse 100 ceo job with that sort of cv.

find

where's pat?
(i am easier to find than a lib dem delegate who supports the coalition).

this is from the best gig i have been to.
photo found by he who can't be named and he is standing next to me.
man on the stage is ronnie james dio "this one".

winds

the met have just said that tonight there will be the stongest winds for 15 years. i have no idea how that can say that i haven't eaten any baked beans for awhile. at best i expect to have some gentle parps.
so don't blame me for any damage as all i am going to do is squeeze out a few silent but deadlies.

though i might end up dropping a few floaters - but that would be a story for another night.

pals

those of you who read this regularly (which won't include my pal dickie who loves to tell me how many unread posts from me he has on his rss feed) will know that i am a deep and philosophical thinker. that my ever utterance is balanced and considered.

i'd popped over to the daily mail website for a quick read of liz jones, ostensibly a columnist but i believe is someone creating an amazing parody. i got the usual ramblings, though her target john galliano was the central character in another sunday colunmnist's piece but this time over at the sunday telegraph - so maybe liz was on to something.
but that isn't the point of this.

what is the point of this?

well you might have noticed i am not a fan of jeremy clarkson.
you may well have noticed i am not overly keen on david cameron.
imagine how my dislike of them both soared when, thanks to the daily mail, i discovered that they are quite chummy with each other.
quite why i am surprised that they are pals is beyond me, but i am. now i have even more reason to dislike them both.
more than likely they each have a contact number for bono and a complete collection of u2 cds signed by him as well.
that would just be the icing on the hating cake.

see i told you i was measured.

confusion

these days economics just seems to be a guessing game.
the rules resembling the rule of the 'mornington crescent' game beloved of radio 4 listeners.
so governments bow and scrape to financial markets and organisatins like standard and poors or moodys even though these are the very entities that helped bring the capitalist system to the very edge.

of course whatever actions governments take is not the right for the business community.

george osborne is going on about how the deficit reduction plan is the only course. it is the right course.
christine lagarde has (with some caveats - what economic forecast comes without those?) agreed that mr. osborne is doing the right thing.
yet on the other hand she also praised president obama for his very ambitious spending plans.

very much like having your cake and eating it.

bbc

"the british broadcasting corporation is a jewel in our crown, but only so long as it is well-run and managed".
this is a quote from a conservative member of parliament (though it was pretty obvious that it would be from someone from the right).
part of the argument the dear tory mp was making came from the rumblings of peter sissons who, after working at the bbc for close on twenty year decided to say just how bad they were to work for. among sissons' complaints was ageism, he had been moved on and he cited that david dimbleby wasn't allowed to do the recent royal wedding. sissons said "...have denied him the royal wedding - a subject he has covered brilliantly for decades". while sissons acknowledges that the beeb had left dimbleby with the weekly 'question time' he ignored the fact that dimbleby also fronts the beeb's various election night coverage.
what sissons seems to be saying is that once you are in a job you get to stay in it all the time. no room for change.
i can understand why a tory mp would see that as a reasonable line of argument. incumbency being the order of the day.

(oh and by the way the last time dimbleby did a royal wedding was back in 1986 - not like it is something he has built his career around).

the tory mp also did the usual the bbc is biased. oh no the bbc is crictical of the government and the economy. oh no the bbc is critical of isreal. he seems to forget the amount of time you get to hear the, frankly mad, voices of the tax payer's alliance or various business groups who just want to abolish any control on them.
really the bbc isn't as biased as those on the right believe it is just that those who claim that the bbc is biased are just so far from the centre.

and of course there is the question of pay.
amazingly the bbc shouldn't pay high rates of pay to its high fliers. it is true that some of the salaries are eye watering for both executives and for presenters, but then it has to be remembered that it isn't a small organisation and it has a lot of different aspects to it. while its funding is public it does exist in the commercial world and in order to get the best it might have to pay the best.
odd how the need to pay the best to get the best argument works when it is applied to those in the financial sector and for lowering tax brackets. (just don't apply it to the public sector).
the tory goes on to point out that the bbc's top presenters/stars get around about 2% of the bbc's total licence fee. he goes on to say "i would just say that i find it slightly annoying that when one or two female presenters are presenting the news on a very serious subject, they smile" (more and more there seems to be a strand in the tories that just seem to be anti-female - just think of those recent comments from david cameron).

it is little more than 'i don't like the bbc'.
quite why the tories have such a hatred of the bbc is something that will always remain a mystery to me.
you have to wonder if there is a tory checklist that if you don't tick hate the bbc and the nhs you are just refused.

i like the bbc.
but with the hatred of the tories aimed at the bbc i think i really love the bbc.

rest

i am totally cream crakered. so off to bed i go.
you lot can have a rest from my rants and raves,
i will be back soon.

tease

the e-petitions were launched with a big hullabaloo. democracy for the people, by the people. sort of.
simply put the idea is if you e-petition gets 100,000 signatures then it would be debated before parliament. the big worry was that hanging would top the charts and our politicians would have to debate it.
as it turns out the various pro-hanging petitions haven't made the required numbers.
instead the petition that tops the list is one that argues that those involved in the recent riots should have their benefits removed.
when the backbencher committee met to decide what should be discussed in the next free day for debate not one parliamentarian supported the e-petition motion. the motion might make it onto the debate list in october.
they say they want the petitions to work, but first there are some problems that need to ironed.

it seems the problem is they only want to debate those things that they like and not what the public might want.
with that slap in the face i suspect that this exercise in public engagement isn't going to be a roaring success.

bonus

do you remember when they told us we were all in it together?
did you like the way it evoked the churchillian spirit.
did you like the way it asked us to make sacrifices.
did you believe them?

of course not.

a recent study claims bosses' bonus have risen 187% since 2002.
the report points out that bonuses and salaries have risen faster than companies profits and their share values.

of course this is ok - it is not like public sector bosses wage and bonuses because their pay comes from taxes. so that is bad.

that said it is not like the, somewhat, over-inflated salaries of bosses does have an impact on us all. after all there is the issue of pensions and then they is the question of the price of goods and services. in order to pay the high salaries the money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is us. us because we are the ones who pay for services that these companies provide. so if they are selling fewer items what do they do? they increase the prices and that is how they pay them.
see so those very rich bosses are actually taking money from our pockets.

it is nice to know that as the rest of us are seeing our standard of living dropping there are a few at the top who are seeing their standards rapidly improving.

so remember we are all in it together - well those of us who are not on excessive bonuses and salary packages.
still nice to know there are a few out there who are doing well.

measures

you remember when the world came to the edge of an economic abyss, skidding to a halt on the precipice of disaster. for awhile it was gordon brown's fault - that is how the murdoch news machine (and the daily mail) liked to cast the events. that nasty mr. brown spent all out money borrowed even more and we are in lots of debt. brown has caused the world economic crisis. he is a bad man.
as we know that wasn't strictly what had happened.
brown had borrowed a lot to make sure the banks remained afloat.
back then it was brown's fault.
it worked, labour were pushed out of power (not the expected drubbing from the public as was expected).
we got the "we're all in it together" brigade. it made me feel better knowing a millionaire was sharingmy pain - well pretending to.
it became alright to castigate the bankers.
that changed quickly to we need to reward them, we need to give them tax breaks. we need the best of the best. (these being the ones who caused the problems in the first place - i must have missed the memo where being really shit at your job meant you were the best).
the reason we have to care about them and for them is that they are the best and we need the best.

enough preamble.
then there is the british chambers of commerce.
they have cut their british growth forecast for the third time this year.
which goes to show that either their experts are not really all that good or that their use of forecasts has been proven to be flawed and so should be dropped as a tool. of course it won't be.

their solution to the problem of slow growth: the government needs to do more. this would be the same government that they are always complaining interferes too much with business. oh but now government is good because business is there with its cap in its hand saying "please sir more sir".
their other solution is (and you will be surprised by this radical bit of thinking) that planning should be made easier and simpler - or to put it another way: business gets what it wants the rest of us can live with the consequences.
now remember they are experts. they are the people we need to be giving big rewards to because they are the wealth makers and they come up with goverment help and fewer planning restrictions.

amazing.

stessed

work is doing my head in.
don't get me wrong i enjoy the job - just not right now.

so i decided to have a bit of retail therapy - as you do.
a trip to pc world is in order (ok this isn't such a big thing as it is on my way home and i had been planning on recycling a load of ink cartridges there anyway).
i go in an i amble. as you do.
i look at the ion negative and photo scanner. yup i could do with one of those. on sale! maybe. not just today.
i look at the netbooks. the cheap ones are too dinky and respond like shit. the expensive ones are not much better.
i look at laptops. crikey they are ugly. pricey too.
i look at the various tablets. how hard can it be to design one that looks nice. harder than you think by the looks of things. all a bit pricey.
i look at the various piece of apple kit they have on display. imacs. lovely. pricey. want don't need.
macbooks. gorgeous. pricey. want. need. will have to wait.
ipad. sweet. pricey. want. need. will have to wait.
(big sign up saying they have one copy left of the ipad1 and it is going for a low price - looks to be about £10 off. it has obviously sold. sign is still there).
i drag myself away from the apple stuff.
i look at external hard drives. i could do with another 2 gig one. it can wait. do i want some headphones. not really. let's look at the cameras. not much nikon stuff in here is there. i wander here and there along the aisles. nothing is taking my fancy (well nothing that i can afford).
i stumble along to where the graphics tablets are kept. i have a reason for wanting one: help with photo editing. i can justify it. the shelves are crammed with wacom's bamboo and intuso tablets. just one tablet on display from a company called trust. there is also just the one price tag for a tablet from a company called trust. the price tage says £25. do you know what i think i will take a chance on that. i pick it up and continue my stroll through the store.
i look at dvd players, i look at fridges (not had one for years maybe it is time to have one - that said i don't own an iron -but i am not looking to change that situation). i look at food steamers. for a moment i become a product expert on steamers - none of them look very stable, none of them look safe. not that it really matters as steamer means cooking and that isn't something i do very often.
sod it time to go home.
i go to pay.
£49.95 the chap says. no i say it said £25.
i go look. still just the one ticket price for the one trust tablet. i have the one trust tablet left in stock in my hands. so logic dictates that the price ticket refers to the product on the shelf.
oh you naive chap pat.
of course it doesn't. why the fuck would you think that. i mean why. if you need to check these things make sure you have compared the digits on the barcode of the box to the digits that appear on the price sticker.
i mean i wouldn't want the store to actually label up the goods correctly because that is just me be fucking unreasonable. i mean imagine that a shopper wanting to know that the price that is next to the item actually refers to the item.
all i can say is that i am irked by it.
retail isn't rocket science - but on the basis of the way they stock and label the stock in my local pc world i can understand why their sales are dropping.

still i did feel much better that i didn't spend the money on a graphics tablet. £25 saved. shame i ended up buying that david lachappelle book.
ah well. at least i didn't buy any cream cakes in tescos.
that's sodding will power for you.

return

normal service will now resume.
more bile and cynicism about the world around me mixed with the occasional story about having a poo will become the order of the day.
i know you have been waiting for it.
i know you have been clamouring for it.
and who am i to deny it.

the ire and irk are back.

music

and so i come to the end of the music themed month.
so much i didn't get to do. so many greats who missed out.

it is funny that music plays an important part in my life. i love music. i love that it can transform my mood or it can accentuate it. i hate that so many people just listen to the pap that is fed them via the radio that they don't explore all that is out there (yeah i'm elitest (sort of) so what). for all that i don't have musical memories - i rarely hear music and get transported back to that day when i first heard or it happened to by playing while something significant happened.
(ok i will admit to having an 'our song' whenever i hear phil collins' 'in the air tonight' i remember the night when me and annemarie probably became a couple which is a bit ironic given phil wrote it in anger over his divorce perhaps it was a sign).
music for me is what i listen to hear and now, it is what it does for me hear and now. there are some albums i haven't listened to in years but will get the urge to play them. there are songs i hated but now like. there are genres i avoided but now listen to.
music is at once constant but it is also ever changing.
while i may sneer at a lot of the pop pap that is played today for a whole generation it is their poetry, it is their expression of the world around them.

there are two musicians who have consistently entertained me.
so i am going to end this themed month with two guitarists, both very different, both excellent.

ladies and gentlemen i give you frank zappa playing a lovely solo, shorter than the studio version (from joe's garage acts II & III) but wonderful none the less.



and he is followed by robert fripp who either as the main man in king crimson, or collaborator with peope such as brian eno or andy summers, or as a solo artist has always thrilled and intriqued.
here he is alone making turning a guitar sound into a ambient soundscape. wonderful stuff.

music

sometimes with music it comes down to just one thing: the voice. forget the instruments, forget the music, and forget the words. just listen to the voice. does it soar? does it roar?
nowhere is this truer than in the world of rock music.
tenacious d sang
“dio has rocked for a long, long time,
now it's time for him to pass the torch.
he has songs of wildebeests and angels;
he has soared on the wings of a demon. “
and they weren’t wrong. ronnie james dio may have been diminutive but he had the voice of a giant. it was a sad day in the world of metal when he died.
myself and a pal (who doesn’t like to be named, but never reads this so: hello joel) went to see dio several years back. we thought it was going to be one of those let’s promote the new lp but throw in a few favourites type gigs. the later period dio solo albums were ok, nothing special to write home about. we were just going to be in awe of the man rather than sing along to his new album.
ah but the little man fooled us all. the astoria (now sadly gone to make way for london crossrail) wasn’t packed. filled, mostly, with middle-aged rockers all ready to stamp and cheer as dio did his little finger signs to the audience. i doubt if many there could remember much of the album he was promoting. it didn’t matter. the audience was in for a treat, we just didn’t know it yet.
anticipation is always the order of the day at gigs. they rarely start when they say they are going to start. there is always some waiting. then there is a little teasing as a roadie walks out to check an instrument or two, or the sound guy begins playing the intro music too soon.
the astoria may have been a great venue for watching bands – it wasn’t a great venue for just standing around waiting.
the band came on. the audience cheered. we still didn’t know what was in store for us.
first track. ok. it warmed us up.
second track ‘sign of the southern cross’ that can’t be right, but i am not complaining. no that is not possible. fuck me ragged but it is ‘stargazer’. three songs in and already he has played two of his greatest songs. i look at joel. joel looks at me. we are both shocked.
the shocks just kept coming by the end of the night we had ‘mob rules’ ‘man on the silver mountain’ ‘long live rock n roll’ ‘gates of babylon’ ‘heaven and hell’ ‘mob rules’ ‘holy diver’ ‘neon nights’ and more. it was a veritable feast of dio.
we were both as happy as pigs in shit.
it was, without a doubt, the best gig i have been to. it remains the gig i most want to find as a bootleg.
dio what a man. what a voice.
watch out for dio throwing his finger horn shapes and saying ‘this one’.
with the ‘kill the king’ video you see dio in action with one of the great guitarists in rock: ritchie blackmore. there is a story to this song but that will wait for another day.



with ‘heaven and hell’ dio is fronting black sabbath; with dio at the helm they were a much different band to when ozzy was the front man. when i saw them play iommi’s guitar solo was so dull and went on for so long you could see great chunks of the audience sit down. the video is marred is by yet another unsuccessful audience participation section.

music

enough of this classic rock shit you keep peddling pat - what are you listening to today. what is modern that is shaking your tree? are you down with kids? are you phat and illin' pat? that is what we want to know.
nay! that is what we demand to know.

simple answer i have no idea what is current and trendy.
while at heart i am always going to be a prog metal fan, a lover of harf and heavy metal my tastes have moved towards the ambient and elctronica fields of people making quiet and loud noises of long drones and pitched squawks. of people playing music on their laptops or twiddling a few knobs on an oscilator. these are people who release their music to thr world on self produced cd-rs. they don't expect fame and don't court.

here are wolf eyes doing a modern version of napalm death



banging on a can and still with enough time to have a drag on his fag.



chinstrokey music up next. this is scanner. i met him once, he blanked me. not to worry though i spent my time looking at his attractive wife. i got into an argument over laptoppers. i am not sure i consider them musicians - for all i kow they are just playing a cd in their laptops. i do think of them as composers - some of whom make fanastic sonicscapes for the world to enjoy. as i explained this theory to several of hem you could see i wasn't going to be on their christmas cad list. that is one thing i have noticed about laptoppers - they do take themselves very seriously.

music

frank zappa famously said "jazz isn't dead it just smells funny" he also asked his band to 'make a jazz noise here' which just goes to show that even the great man was sometimes confused or contradictory.
just like the rest of us.

i quite like jazz.
i know nothing about it.
what i do like is jazz noise.
the jazz noise of john zorn - well it just doesn't get much better.

it was the painkiller album that first introduced me to john zorn. a blast of screaming rawness that cleared the sinuses and opened the way for a sonic attack.
jrn was the one who lent me the painkiller album. from then on we would swap zorn lps back and forth.
i became a collector of zorn's label, tzadik. through that i discovered all sorts of music from the contemplative to the ear melting; from the serious to the silly.

on my last trip to new york i had intended to drop by zorn's club and hoped to catch the great man in action - if he wasn't there then someone else would be blistering up the place and i would be able to get some cheap tzakik cds all the while doing the chinstrokey thing of a visiting boho. yeah daddio.

life rarely works the way you plan it.
that night i happened to end up dining with a couple of work associates. i persuaded them that it might be an interesting end to the night. we set out in the direction of the club. somehow even though we appeared to have walked in a straight line we had ended up where we had started.
yup. freaky. but true.

so i didn't get to see zorn play at his club.
i didn't get to see his club.
i did get to buy a load of tzadik cds from the wonderful 'other music' store (and for a few years after that i would get regular packages of cds from them - all full of tzadik goodness).

one day i will catch zorn playing at the barbican and he can blast my ears while i do the chinstrokey thing as a mature pretentious wannabe.

enjoy mike patton speaking in tongues while wearing a really ugly pair of nike trainers (though that said mos nike trainers are pretty ugly).



and in a more contemplative mood. check the beard out on the keyboard player. my kind of beard.

music

because no list of music that i like would be complete without a nod of the head to some krautrock.
most of the krautrock bands i know and like i was introuduced to by jrn. it would be safe to say that in my later musical years, jrn is the one person who has the greatest influence on my listening tastes and habits. some may say that was a good thing, others may say it was a bad thing. me i am just thankful he opened up a whole other world of noise.

the vid on offer isn't strictly krautrock as it only features one of the members of neu! but it does serve to show how it has endured and endeared.

music