July 31st

Last day of July and the month has ended with a hot streak as far as weather goes, it has been pretty warm for the last 5 or 6 days and at last it feels something like Summer in London. Work has been slow going, not much coming in as far as orders go but at least it has not been totally dead like it was a couple of weeks ago when we were all suddenly scratching around looking for things to do. When the orders slow up time drags and everyone seems to work a little bit below par, the less work there is to do then the worse the performances can be, both individually and collectively. I have noticed that a certain amount of business is needed for people to hit their optimum level; if the hours of the day slowly tick by it gets hard to stay motivated. I for one end up taking a long time to do things which if there were a lot of other tasks that needed doing I would accomplish a whole lot quicker and to a better standard as well.

Today for instance I spent quite a bit of time surfing the Net trying to sort out booking air tickets to go to Spain in September; checking out flight times, comparing prices, etc. All without actually getting to the point of making a booking, just acquiring the information, a lot of which I have already forgotten as I sit here in the early evening and write this. Of course all this keeps me from concentrating on my work but when there is only a little work to do there is little incentive to stop wasting time anyway, you just get distracted, lazy.

The other factor to bear in mind is the heat and the fact that the temerature is high enough in the office to make you feel hot and sticky, unable to move that quickly, both physically and mentally. Like a dull dog panting. So it looks like I have come back to the weather. It affects my sleep as well, not necessarily in an unpleasant way, more in a stuporous kind of way; at night I fall into a sleep which has dreams that I know I won't have a chance to ever remember. I wake up in the night just before dawn and lie there a while before dozing off again. Finally I haul myself out of bed around 6.45 or 7.00 am; it takes a bit of an effort to get going, even after coffee. That is OK though, my mind is dulled maybe, but at least it is not overly agitated, just working it's way through the dog days of Summer.

Tin Drum by Japan

It's bamboo music, an Oriental confection of the highest order. The combination of electronics, drums & percussion, snake charming bass and punchy songs make this a classic album. Hard to believe it is now over 25 years old; the remaster delivers a pristine sheen to what was already a well produced album. I remember the genuine excitement that was in the air when Ghosts was heard for the first time; a sense that we were listening to a group of musicians who were cutting new deals with their imaginations,who were walking into lands where creative ideas are just plucked from the trees,moulded into soundscapes that burnt into the memory whilst at the same time demanding to be played again and again. None of us knew it at the time but this was really as good as it was going to get for Japan as they split up not so long afterwards and never reformed. Their frontman David Sylvian embarked on a solo career which saw him release a couple of decent albums before he gradually became more and more serious and self-important, culminating in him releasing an extremely boring song in praise of his Indian guru on the Secrets of the Beehive album - a cardinal sin in my book. But let's end on a positive, Tin Drum is brilliant. Not perfect because nothing ever is, but great fun nevertheless.

The Playlist

Took a long walk into the city at the weekend and picked up a bunch of CDs that I haven't really sat down and listened to for over 25 years. Remarkable that isn't it? Time flies, really flies, oh man oh man; countless millions in that time will have come and gone in this revolving world, that we call Planet Earth and that I call Wobble Tilt.

It all kicked off after watching Simple Minds at the Nelson Mandela Birthday Concert that took place in Hyde Park a couple of weeks ago. I have mentioned this before, in the last post. It was not that they were any good, they weren't particularly, it was more that seeing them on TV after so many years of not knowing what it was they were doing (enjoying the riches life must have brought them?) reminded me of a time I had forgotten. Not long after seeing Kerr & Co. I bought their New Gold Dream album and not long after that had arrived and remained on my ipod for a good few days (not to mention the CD player in my Toyota) I had a list of other music from that time - the early '80s / late, late '70s -that I knew I had to get, all vinyl records long since disappeared. So take a deep breath, here is my shoppping list from that walk into the city on a sunny day in July that was not so long ago -

Tin Drum
Gentlemen Take Polaroids
Sons and Fascination / Sister Feelings Call
Penthouse and Pavement
Dare!
Systems of Romance

Do you need to know who they are by? Well, if you are anywhere near my age and had any form of interest in music back then, the answer is no. If not then I guess I better tell you - Japan, Simple Minds, Heaven 17, Human League & Ultravox, in that order.

I think I will write about them as and when I get the chance over the coming weeks, months, years, whatever it takes...Suffice to say that at the moment when I think about going in to buy them again I smile to myself, knowing it was a really nice thing to do, that the light was shining.

Simple Minds

A couple of weeks ago there was the Nelson Mandela 90th Birthday Concert from Hyde Park on TV. One of the groups performing at the show were Simple Minds. They seem to have been off the scene for so long that I didn't even know they were still going, mind you I don't know if I can tell you what "the scene" is supposed to be these days anyway. Although the song they played - Mandela Song, or something like that - was not much good it reminded me of the early '80s and the time when, at least for a short period, Simple Minds were vital, if not brilliant. This period culminated in their New Gold Dream album from 1983 or 1984, I can't remember the exact year, but whichever it was there is no denying the fact that the album is a quiet masterpiece; it more than delivered on the promise of their two releases prior to that, Empires and Dance, Sons and Fascination / Sister Feelings Call.

Since the Mandela concert I have bought a copy of the remastered edition of New Gold Dream and I am happy to say that it sounds just as good now as it did all those years ago when, on summer evenings, I used to play it incessantly on my Sony Walkman, being taken off deep into the realms of my imagination by the wonderful music it contains. Their next album after New Gold Dream was the Steve Lilywhite produced Sparkle in the Rain and compared to the subtlety and beauty of it's predecessor it was simply horrific; it served as a forewarning of the vacuous stadium rock bombast they were to release throughout the rest of the 1980s and beyond. By then however they probably didn't mind the fact that as far as the critics were concerned they were outcasts; they had become mega-successful, and the bucks were rolling in, hell they even on a par with the likes of U2 for a short while.

In a way, Simple Minds serve as a good example of how so many things in my life from the 80s began with such immense wonder and promise, suggestive of endless possibilities, only to finish up as something I could hardly bear the sight of by the end of the decade. It has taken a long time to recover from the disappointment, but the good news is that enough water has passed under the bridge it is now possible to go back to those times and what came out of them without any hang ups, without any fears of getting caught in the swirl of conflicting emotions. It is possible to appreciate all the invention, the feelings of hope and (dare I say it) intimations of immortality that works such as New Gold Dream contained and realise that they are in no way undiminished. Play it in a thousand years and it will still sound fantastic.

Desert Fathers

Reading a book on the Desert Fathers, they went a long way in the search for their souls, believed in bringing out their inner light. They were around about 1600 years ago. It was another age, when living in a cave would not have been seen as such a weird thing, today such behaviour would be all but prohibited. Asceticism was the name of their game, and no doubt the going got tough, but by all accounts they got results, transcended the mundane, got to what was real. Served as inspiration for generations to come. Well done Desert Fathers, you might have lived many hundreds of years ago but you were way ahead of the pack compared to the likes of us.