So I am on guard because my bird box has a family of Blue Tits in it. I can now confirm that these are Blue Tits because I identified them using the big poster that came with The Guardian this week. Of course, I jest. I knew the genus of bird already. Anyhow, both birds are darting back and forth and the other morning I noticed a neighbour’s cat sitting on top of the shed, spying on a returning bird. The blue tit was alarmed and could see his foe and began to panic. I immediately stopped what I was doing in the kitchen and ran out into the garden, scaring the cat off the shed roof. The blue tit then immediately flew into the box with his precious cargo and zipped right back out again. They don’t seem to be too alarmed at me in the garden, but don’t like the cats. Well I managed to snap this picture of the bird about to fly into the box. OK – I am not David Bailey and I don’t have a huge lens on my camera – it’s just a Sony point-and-click handheld jobby, but this is the best I could do:
By my reckoning, the fledglings should be appearing sometime at the end of next week. I’ve been reading all about blue tits and it says that families tend to stay close together once they nest, with the year’s new chicks not straying any further than 1Km from their parents. Maybe we’ll have a blue tit enclave at Chez Lock? Maybe I need to buy some more bird boxes?
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It was meant to be one of those days when you set out to do one job and you accidentally open another can of worms and get completely side-tracked. I was intending to clear all the old cassettes from the cupboard in my room/office. I’ve got a case of old music cassettes, mainly old prog like Hackett, KC and Oldfield and intended to take them to the charity shop. But to get to those cassettes, I had to lift down another case which had all my old cassette masters of my musical noodlings before I got into computer recording.
I was a late starter in music. At sixteen, I begged my grandmother to buy me a bass guitar so that I could join the band that my schoolmates were forming. Unfortunately, by the time I got the bass, that band had split up and those friends had moved on, leaving me alone in the sixth form doing A-levels with a bass I couldn’t play and no band. I didn’t get my first guitar until a good few years later – I think I was 19 then – so I started playing late and wasn’t particularly good at it. I don’t think I have natural talent for music like some people have, those who can hear a tune and play it note-for-note after one listen. Those are true musicians. For me, music is a bit tougher and even though you might hear a simple tune when I put stuff up on here, it is a hard road travelled by me to get it together.
Anyway, in the beginning, I managed to figure out how to overdub my musical noodlings using my JVC ghetto blaster. I can’t remember how I did it, but I could record something onto tape, then rewind and dub another layer over the top. Unforunately, the first track was degraded by the second and because this wasn’t a professional tape machine everything ran at different speeds, rendering the “song” or more appopriately jam, completely out of tune. Either that or I was really, really bad. I think a little from column A and column B might be right in this case. Anyhow, I could jam along to myself without the need for a band. I thought this was really clever and recorded some of these jams and subsequent lost them.
Well, I found them the other day while going through these cassettes. They have to be the worst recordings ever made. They are toe-curlingly bad and if I had a skull and crossbones warning sign (or one of those biohazard spiky symbols) I would be warning you all to turn away now. I like a healthy portion of humble pie served in a rich humility sauce, so I am posting this hideous recordings below. These are historical or hysterical depending on how you look at them, so try not to split your sides laughing. Instead of having guitar lessons, I spent my time recording myself and my mistakes and gradually improving (well, I like to think I am improving).
The equipment used was a Columbus Gibson Les Paul copy that weighed a ton and cost £50 second-hand from Allan Marshall Guitars in Markhouse Road, Walthamstow, run through a Zoom 9000 FX unit, a Encore Coaster bass (which I still have in the cupboard for sentimental reasons) and a Casio MT32 keyboard I bought for £20 that provided the backbeat. These first sonic shitstorms were put down in 1990 (I think):
If you managed to get through all that, I am so sorry. I did warn you and it’s not like I twisted your arm or anything. Feel free to pass these on to your chums and use them to poke fun at me. It is OK, my back is broad.
On another tape, I found some mixes of tunes I had completely forgotten about. They were never finished or put down properly. These were recorded on a Vestax MR44 four-track and by this time it was 1994 and I think I had my first GR-1 guitar synth and a great Alesis HR-16B drum machine. The guitar was a Yamaha RGX121 and I regret selling that one because it was a good little instrument, despite being a bit “heavy metal” in appearance. This next track is a bit long, but I think it had some potential especially call and return of the lead guitar. When I played this songs back to The Missus, she said: “Oh yeah, I remember those.” This was a bit shocking as I had completely forgotten about them, whereas she had those remnants of musical memory tucked at the back of her mind. Poor cow, no-one deserves to suffer like that…
Here you go, have a novel:
http://www.deadrockstar.co.uk/
This time last week, I was applying for a job I had seen on the Internet. It was a job doing something very similar to what I used to do way back in my glory days. I liked the sound of it but my only reservation was that the company involved was based near White City, west London…or so I thought. So anyway, I get an invite to go for a test this afternoon. Yes, in my line of work you get tested before you even get an interview. I can take a 75 minute proofing and writing test and the best people will get called back for the interview proper. Oooh, I can’t wait. Then I check out exactly where these people are: Ealing Broadway. The very words Ealing and Broadway are perfectly harmless when rendered separately, but when you bring them together in that particular configuration it just brings back deep-seated feelings of misery and woe.
You see, I spent my fallow youth as a student at Ealing College. I did a BA degree in Information Management and Publishing and this meant that every day (because it was a 5 days a week course), I got up at seven in the morning, travelled for over 1 hour 45 minutes and returned home at 7pm. This happened for three years and it can really grind you down travelling the entire length of the Central Line. It was more like a full time job that a have-it-away, drink-as-much-as-you-can, fuck-anything-that-moves kind of University type experience. In fact, I didn’t start drinking hard until I was 24 and ensconced in my first long-term assignment.
Anyway, so now I am presented with the choice. I can either just toss this one aside and say “no, I am not doing that” or I can go for it. Now I’d really like the job…really…really…really like the job. I need the money. I need to actually get into a social environment again and it would be good for my general esteem and demeanour. The only problem is that I know the travelling will rip me to shreds in a couple of weeks. Oh well, that’s life I guess.
Plus, I also believe that Ealing is cursed, but that’s another story for another time. I might tell you if you ask nicely, gentle reader.
In the meantime, here’s some clever computer animation with music and stuff:
Well I cut short my viewing of The Apprentice to write this missive and general have a good venting session. Arsehole. Absolute arsehole. Alan Sugar obviously has fluff for brains and proves why the UK version of the show is a shadow of the staggering magnificent beast Stateside hosted by the comically coiffured Donald Trump. Firstly, Trump is a genuine high-flier and not some East End Del Boy Trotter figure and secondly because the decision making process of Sugar is decidedly iffy.
If Michelle Dewberry had faced the wrath of Trump in the US, he would have asked her that despite her event being superior, why her sales were virtually half of her rivals? He would have then grilled her some more, bringing in her team to baste her further, before turning up the heat some more and then firing her. But in the UK, we go for the underdog. We love a good sob story. We love doe eyes and cleavage. We love a loser. Ruth Badger would have won the US purely on the basis of her superior selling skills and the fact that she could sell a terrible event at full markup. That takes some skill. But this is Planet Sugar were we get product placement shots of the failed Amstrad E-Mailer Phone every episode.
I knew Michelle was going to win because it was obvious that Syed would want to knob the winner – he’s that kind of guy, you know. But I thought she might have actually done it with a remarkable whitewash against Ruth. You know…a David vs Goliath conflict. Instead, we got sold short. I like a fair game with a good win, but this was a bit disappointing. Twelve weeks for a bleeding heart story…do you feel cheated? I know I do. But I also realise that I have been spoilt by the sensibility and laser-like logic of the US series.
At the end of the show, I vowed not to watch the next series, preferring to stick to the superior US version. Of course, when the promotional material for the new series makes the rounds early 2007, I’ll be salivating like the Pavlovian dog that I am. Who is the arsehole now, Mr Lock?
I forgot to mention that our birdbox has finally got inhabitants. This box was mounted on the side of our shed the first summer we moved here (just over six years ago) and has remained empty. But because the shed has decayed, needs a new roof and possibly replacing totally, some little Blue Tits have decided to nest here. This means that I can’t go near the shed – this is either good or bad, depending on lazy I am feeling. The birds nip in and out and you have to be quick to see them. It is too early for chicks but I expect them soon.
Took delivery of a new shredder, my fourth in total, after the others blew up or stopped working mysteriously. This one is a no-name brand and has managed to eat its way through several years of credit card reciepts and other semi-sensitive material. My morning has been taken up with this task, which has been quite satisfying. What an exciting life I lead. Hold on to your hats, folks!
Tonight is the final night of The Apprentice and the news has been revealed on the BBC website that both Ruth and Michelle have been working at Amstrad since last September, so it really doesn’t matter who wins, does it? How disappointing is that? I am beginning to think that the cold fish won and that Badger was employed to stop her running amok through downtown Brentwood, uprooting trees and flipping cars as if they were Dinky toys in a She-Hulk type rage. Donald Trump would never behave in this shoddy fashion – to mimic the movie Highlander: “There can be only one!”. Alan, you’ve done a great job on the past two series of the Apprentice, but despite your grumpy demeanour and your uncanny resemblance to a moth-eaten Nookie Bear, I have to say, that even though you’ve increased your ratings, you’re fired!
Meanwhile, in an effort to bring smiles to the faces of my three or four regular readers, here’s a funny video courtesy of Video Google. I was a big fan of the band “The Presidents of the United States of America” back in 1996 and this parody from Weird Al Yankowic tickled me humerous. 😉
Been messing around in the “studio” lately and messed around with that little track I put up the other day. This is a rough mix of the possible ending of my new CD. As for the end section, just imagine it’s the London Philharmonic at Abbey Road, just me trying to muster the best out of my Korg Triton. The string sounds don’t sound particularly “stringy” but at least I got back to my tribal nature banging the fake timpani on my Handsonic. Oh yeah, banging on the bongos like a chimpanzee, I was.
Direct download: CLICK HERE
At the moment, I am pushing out just over 16Gb of data a month and my stats are roughly double that of another less interesting website I supposedly run. Now I was thinking that this increased traffic might be because of the wonderful pithy commentary I provide on modern life and that just maybe, I was getting a little following. No, it seems that some of this traffic is from people leeching files from my site. Often these are picture files and I’ve tried to stop it. Most of them are being used on MySpace, people linking to a picture of Nookie Bear to use as an avatar, etc. This is all well and good, but I pay the rent on this place and they are costing me bandwidth. When I exceed 20Gb of traffic then I will be in trouble. Oh well, maybe I need to delete all those images and videos I’ve put on this site? But then it’ll just be boring and I don’t want that. Does no-one respect good netiquette anymore? Obviously not.
Meanwhile, that wag Peter Serafinowicz is at it again with his take on the recent Apple vs Apple court case.