And they’re are under starters orders


2009 is going to be fun. Already it has started for us at eye watering speed and in three weeks has had a couple of heart breaks, a smattering of good times and a win at the horses. All I ask of my time is that it is packed full of interest and so far we are on target for a supreme year. To hell with the last few years of excess, boom and bloody misery. I am looking forward to times of less, bust and good times. Did anyone hear radio 4 trying to get Gordon Brown to admit to the fact that we are living out a boom and bust? What a very silly person!!! I mean honestly, do these people really think we are that stupid or that they are being so very clever by reading how we would react to their errors and consider them to be failures? There are some basic rules in life and you can’t circumnavigate them through dint of power or arrogance. We are not that stupid.


So we will now have endless months of negative analysis trying to bring down our psyche to believe the end is nigh and the debts of the sins of our fathers is just about to be paid in full. This morning the news started by saying this is the most depressing set of Sunday papers to date. I bet there must be so many reporters and editors thinking what a shame that will be for them and sorting out the next days content. Bill Hicks had it right by saying that to stop Ted Turner constantly reading gloomy news that Jane Fonda should “fxck” him so we could for once have some good news. Perhaps some generous person out there might consider fxcking Robert Peston. Actually John Humphries and the rest of the BBC Today news team could do with visiting a local brothel. It could be something we all pay for through our taxes to try and guarantee some good news. I am sure that a total of less than 1p each a year it would represent one of our wisest investments?? J

I have also been trying to think back to the 80s and exactly what that recession was like. Other than remember endless school strikes (genius), pickets and trucks and buses being pelted with stones (genius), Grange Hill, Atari games computers the rest was a blank to me. And I was having a ball. So I fall flat when I try to advise myself of the possible next steps.

Tunage: I have listened to countless reissues, reedits and rereremixes of 80s tunes and mostly they have missed the stuff I truly loved. So for one week only (and longer if you request) I am uploading a few favoured tunes for the more indie minded. Not one bit of disco in sight J

Click Here to Download (available until the 1st Feb) : Lest we forget

Track Listing

New Order:Everything’s Gone Green
Primal Scream: Don’t fight it, feel it
Happy Mondays: Hallelujah (Club mix)
Moonflowers: Get Higher
Ride: Drive Blind
My Bloody Valentine: Slow
Swervedriver: Rave down
The Wonder Stuff: It’s yer money I’m after, baby
The Cure:: A Forest
Pixies: Where is my mind
Spiritualised: Anyway that you want me (ext.)
New Order: Every little counts

Arthur lovely Arthur some times I think you’re a dream


There are some people who I really think had a serious passion and served that passion with all the energy it deserved. And so it is with Charles Arthur Russell Jr. or to all of us Arthur Russell. To his Mum and Dad he was just plain old Charlie.

I am not quite sure how I came across him. A friend Duncan used to run a night in London called “pop your funk” after one of Russell’s tunes, so maybe it was from there? Maybe it was from classic disco tune “is it all over my face” which I am sure I would have heard ages back but… to be straight it was probably only in the last three years I found Arthur through the myriad of reissues of his work.

Arthur Russell: That's Us/ Wild Combination


Like all good artists he played under lots of different names and in lots of different bands, giving him the opprtunity to play around with a crazy amount of different styles. So... you might know him as: Dinosaur L, Indian Ocean, Killer Whale, Bright & Early, Dinosaur, Felix, Flying Hearts, The, Lola, Loose Joints, Necessaries, Turbo Sporty… The final name is my fave.

I seem to have spent the last few years buying reissues and wondering at the breadth of his talent and the seemingly endless supply of energy he has in his songs and his prodigious output. If you want a flavour of his output and an insight into his world then please watch “Wild Combination”. I have watched that many boring and pointless music documentaries that this one stands out by mile. It combines an eye-watering amount of his material with great interviews with his parents, partner and key friends and collaborators. Plus. It is named after my favourite song of his.

Wild Combination: Movie Trailer


Honestly fancy being that talented? Imagine being a cellist, composer and singer and then as you traipse through life you find yourself in New York and become one of the leading lights in the whole nascent disco scene. And then, just because you can, you find yourself playing with the likes of Philip Glass to David Byrne (Talking Heads) to Nicky Siano. Cool n’est pas?

His sound ranges from the most abstract classical through to new wave, country and of le disco.

As i love this fella so much and also love to join tunes together in a semi seamless way, i have posted links below to two mixes. The first (Arthur) was made very recently and is more ... modern. The second is a couple of years old but is very of the time being mostly 70s and 80s disco. Sort of. It has a track called Springfield which was a reworking/ finishing of a tune by Arthur by the DFA peeps i.e. Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy (both from LCD Soundsystem) which has beats and rhytmn that are to die for.

Arthur

Poshlust

Arthur died on April 4, 1992, at the age of 40. The obituary for him in the Village Voice wrote: "his songs were so personal that it seems as though he simply vanished into his music." Mayhap, we can all visit him there?

Christmas Favourite


I have drafted a few posts over the Christmas period and they all seem to be the same kind of thing. World is facing doom. World needs to act now. Blah. Blah. Mayhap I will pop one of these up in the next few days but until then something a little more upbeat.

Did you get a favourite Christmas present? I did. I love it but then again I had no surprises as it is something I asked for and people duly (and very kindly) obliged and purchased said object for me. As it stands it is pretty useless and very much the kind of thing where the owner would also say “I like to drive model steam engines at the weekend”.

So the toy in question is… a Stirling Engine. Phew. I guess everyone knows what one of these things is and I have no need to explain it? Perhaps not? Full details can be found by Googling
In short it:

• Is a heat engine
• Can create power
• Has the potential to achieve the highest efficiency of any heat engine
• Has been used to power outdoor (Coleman) fridges and is used in submarines

To me it not only looks very pretty and kind of primitively industrial, it also sits on my laptop and using just the heat from the can start spinning away. And spinning away. And spinning away. And spinning away. And spinning away. And looking pretty. And spinning away. And spinning away.

Video Clip Interlude: This is taken from You Tube. I could have videoed mine but figured it would look the same anyway so hey. Anyway, it is not a patch on the real thing but gets the old grey cells firing away.



So now what? Having had a look at an Anaerobic digestor recently click here for a definition
I thought that the waste hot air being pumped into the atmosphere was just that, a waste. Why not strap a stirling engine into the path of the air and soak up some more energy to be converted into electricity. What with there being only about a dozen or so AD plants in the UK I figure there is a bit of opportunity to develop this technology given ambitions like the National Farmers Unions for having 1000 of them by 2020. This might seem like a big number but given the fact that Germany has over 3000 it is surely something we can go for. Even getting a 50% result would be a positive step. So what for the applications of the Stirling? Well a quick bit of research shows there are some bits of kit out there but nothing being used at present to generate some extra power. Anyone with any examples?

So from this kind of thinking I moved into the whole world of decentralised power. This has the power (no pun intended but obviously now sitting there) to change the way we use and generate electric. The World Alliance for Decentralized Energy (I am always a littler more inclined to trust a source that sounds like a spin off Star Wars unit) described the approach as:

"Electricity production at or near the point of use, irrespective of size, technology or fuel used - both off-grid and on-grid."

So what? Well. So perhaps we all produce our electric as we move around going about our daily lives. Perhaps we lose the worries of energy security and energy production down to the level of if you have no electric then it is because YOU forgot to sort it out. Not because SOCIETY failed to plan ahead.


So… Could the future be where we all walk around with little gadgets in our bags picking up on the motion we create whilst moving and turning this in to electric to be used there and then or stored for later use? Could we have a myriad of little machines strapped to anything with heat (or cold)? Can we go off grid and live truly localized lives? My feeling is that there is some mileage in this and that it creates to the perfect antidote to a globalised society?

Music Interlude: The link below is for snippet taken from Cosmo Galactic Prism Mixed By Prins Thomas. It is available for 7 days. I have a copy of the 10” and think it is a great anytime bit of happy music.

Sing (Unabombers Electric North Remix) - The Electric South Feat Bob Lind

Have fun