Morris Pert was a percussionist extraordinaire who worked with the likes of Mike Oldfield, Brand X and numerous others. I’ve always enjoyed his contribution to the music I’ve heard and I’m sad to say that another hero has passed away at the young age of 63 of a suspected heart attack on 27th April 2010. I’d never seen him play, only heard his performances, and it wasn’t until I saw his manic energy on the Mike Oldfield – Live at Montreux 1981 DVD that I was totally amazed by his performance and ability. He reminded me of Animal from the Muppets on speed.
Anyway, here’s a clip of Morris rocking out with Oldfield from the self-same performance. (He’s the guy with the lambchop sidies and the blue T-shirt).
Category: Diary
Remember this entry I made about the worst article ever written, well it appears that the fine publication responsible for such shoddy journalism is in a whole heap of trouble. Companies House has made an application to dissolve the limited company responsible for the Isle of Wight Gazette as it hasn’t filed its annual reports.
And I thought that it might end up with a large libel writ on its hands…
So I watched the second of the debates between Gordy, Nick and Dave. This time everything was razor-sharp enough to slice the corneas from my gloopy eyeballs as I was watching the show on the newly launched Sky News HD. Ahhhh, the joys of High Definition television are still a novelty in this house as we “upgraded” last Christmas when our last satellite box bit the dust and it turned out to be cheaper to upgrade than to get a new box via eBay.
Now when the wind is blowing in the right direction and the broadcasters decide to actually broadcast high-definition content, you can witness the joys of Doctor Who, Come Dine with Me and these Prime Ministerial debates all funky-looking. Yes, the picture is sharp, the colours appear more vibrant and there’s plenty more detail on the screen (down to the level of open pores, hairs descending from nostrils and the texture of fabric). In fact, when they showed “The Robe” in HD over Easter, I cooed more about the detail in the costumes than the actual film itself. I love a good Victor Mature movie – he’s a real dreamboat.
Anyhoo, back to the debate. It was more of the same really and I was surprised that some of the same topics were revisited (war, sleaze, etc) and this took up a lot of the debate. Cameron really doesn’t seem to be projecting in these contests. I am really surprised by this because at PMQs there is a flicker of a personality there, but this time around he really does seem to act like a stuffed suit.
Again, Nicky Clegg – though I’ve been called the three of them Compo, Foggy and Clegg after “Last of the Summer Wine” – put on a brave effort, but you could see his opposition were gunning for him and this time around El Gordo appeared to be taking his performance a lot more seriously. I like Brown’s little talk about our tolerant society and his joke comparing Cameron and Clegg to his naughty son’s arguing in the bath. That joke actually got a considerable snigger from the audience, which was meant to remain dumb.
Of the three, Brown is very much Prime Ministerial material and you can feel his gravitas – while the other two seem a little lightweight in comparison, but the anarchist in me would love the momentum for Clegg to increase and for the British electorate to pull the biggest tactical switch in the history of our parliament and put him in Number 10. I don’t want this because I think the country needs “a change”. I don’t want this to teach Labour a “lesson”. I want this to happen just to see the look on his face when he is ushered onto the steps of Number 10. I can imagine his face plastered with a rictus grin while the voice in his head is screaming: “What the fuck am I going to do nooooooooooow!?!?!?!?!?”
However, I will still be voting for the Labour candidate. Why? Purely because I received today’s copy of “Retail Newsagent” and I absolutely loved the mock-up cover for their election special which had El Gordo photoshopped into the role of a servile newsagent. He felt like one of the boys and for that reason, and that reason alone, I am voting for Gordon. Thanks to some clever Photoshop my political decision has been cast.
But it was interesting to see a report on the ITN Evening News two nights ago where Mr Brown was doing a visit and some disgruntled business owner wanted to see him. This fellow was in a right old state but demanded Brown’s attention, claiming he was doing nothing for a the small businessman and he was due to go bankrupt for the second time (once is unfortunate, twice is bloody irresponsible).
So the Labour team usher the guy inside and after his meeting, the businessman wanders into the light, looking shell-shocked and confused, his demeanour completely changed. He had gone from impotent rage to being as soppy as a box of kittens.
“Well he’s just this guy, you know,” he said (I’m paraphrasing here), “He really does want to make these changes, but he’s just one man. I completely misjudged him”.
It truly was a fascinating piece of TV, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.
Seeing as this is going to appear in the Evening News and Eastern Daily Press this week, I thought I might as well break from cover and post this myself. After having the place for sale with a commercial agent for nearly a year (we went to market as soon as the paint dried) with almost zero interest. We approached a couple of residential agents with regards to working out the value of splitting the property up, as we have the planning permission to do this, but they recommended we keep the place intact. Also, in terms of value it would be almost exactly the same value to split and sell separately minus your building costs.
Both agents then said “Hey! We can sell this for you” so we thought we’d give them a try. I mean, I’m basically selling the four walls and roof and throwing the business in for free. What a bargain, eh? The reason…oh come on – you know the reason. After all that has happened, we want a fresh start. That’s understandable, no?
But we’ll see if anyone bites. The housing market is a little depressed at the moment anyway, but miracles can happen…right?
Folkie strummer Billy Bragg attempts to confront Richard Barnbrook, notable for his career in gay porn and being a BNP poster boy, over the BNP in Barking.
Every morning, when I rise, I go to the mirror and look at my fat, aged, balding head with baggy eyes and loose jowel and look ruefully at myself before saying:
“You really are a useless pathethic cunt, Darren.”
It’s a psychologically trick to toughen myself up against the world, because if you insult yourself enough you develop a tough skin. And you need one when comments such as the following appear on the back of my recent “Death to the Music Biz” entry:
Dave Curse (or Mr Made-up-Name) wrote:
. . .Yes, you are an idiot dreamer. You’ve never had any success so you direct your anger and bitterness at anything failing, you pathetic hobbyist asshole.
Oh my feelings are hurt, they really are…
I think I’ll just sell my guitar and quit recording right now because you are right. I’ve achieved absolutely nothing in my 39 years. I really am a pathetic wretch, ain’t I?
Following on from my post yesterday, I can see that lots of people are in the self same situation as me and are being linked to by qq829.com. The most information I can glean is from this link. The general opinion there is that the owners of the domain have been involved in malware and spamming in the past but there’s no real explanation for this. Big website and small websites have been targeted. Perhaps it is a way of Chinese surfers side-stepping the government control of the Internet in that country? Perhaps it is something more sinister and possible the first inkling of a Chinese botnet or DOS attack network being put in place?
There is no answer at this moment, but if you, like me, are feeling a little uneasy about being linked via this dubious sounding website then I would suggest that you made amendments to your .htaccess file on your webserver to block out any traffic from China. It sounds drastic but it would certainly put an end to the issue and block out these strange links.
Further reading: http://www.parkansky.com/china.htm
** UPDATE **
A fellow suffer of this condition posted the following answer to this question and it seems that this is a variant of an adclicker trojan, which when you click the referrer in your stats, it puts a trojan in your cookies which helps generate fake stats for another website.
http://hubpages.com/hub/qq829com-What-is-it