Black Ice by AC/DC

Think it is going to be the case that Black Ice will be AC/DC's best album. As well as a brilliant bunch of songs a major factor has to be the production of the AC/DC sound by Brendan O'Brien who also happened to produce Magic by The Boss, quite possibly for me the best album of 2007. On Black Ice O'Brien firmly nails the snare drum perfectly, a pivotal part of the back bone of the AC/DC sound. Yes, wherever you happen to be, in whatever song, the snare of Phil Rudd is exactly where it should be in the mix, elevated but not too high, crisp but not too hard. Song after song it is simply as solid as a rock, clear as a hell's bell, powering the juggernaut on.

For me Black Ice really opens up and hits full stride by the time we reach the sixth song, Smash and Grab, it is classic AC/DC and it is followed by the equally good Spoiling for a Fight featuring some wicked snake handling guitar from Angus Young. Stormy May Day features some dual slide guitar from the Young brothers, giving us a hint of what might have been if, earlier in their history, AC/DC had decided to seriously depart from their template sound. It is a tremendous song, Brian Johnson sounding at times like Robert Plant and therefore reinforcing the Led Zep comparisons due to the slide also bringing back memories of In My Time of Dying fom their 1975 classic Physical Graffiti. She Loves Rock and Roll is another brilliant song, and if you listen to it on the cans then pay attention to the overdubbed Brian Johnson vocal during the chorus which O'Brien turns into an awesome echo effect coming out of the back of the left speaker. Tremendous, an album high point.

The slower Rock and Roll Dream again offers us hints of what the winds of change might have blown into the universe of AC/DC if they had written songs like this about 25 years ago. When the chrous comes in it is backed up by terrific rip roaring dual guitar work by the Young brothers and again O'Brian pulls out the punches with his production as Brian Johnson's repeated deep water towards the end of the song mesmerises until the whole thing disappears in a cross wired fade out that leaves you gasping. The final track is the title track and it is nothing less than a statement of lethal intent, when Brian Johnson sings I’ll kick, I creep crawl down your street, and gouge your eyes out, you better believe it. AC/DC are back after 8 years. They have never sold their souls to the life degrading digital age, their sound is glorious and their integrity is unquestionable. Pure rock n roll. Pure.

A Walk Through London in October Part 1

Saturday October 25th, went for a walk through London, big walk. God how I love walking through London: the city is like a blank canvas, any picture you like can be painted upon it. Walked so much that the next day my body ached more a less from head to toe but there was a kind of ecstasy about it so I didn't mind too much, if at all.

That Saturday went into town quite late for me. Usually I'm a morning man but this time I didn't get on the tube till just before 2pm. Reason was that Tamdin was coming back from Brussels in the evening and I said that I would most probably meet her at St Pancras. That would mean staying in town till 8.30 pm. So, no point in having to get in that early if that was the case, otherwise I was afraid of flagging and then the whole thing would turn into little more than an endurance test.

Got off at Bethnal Green to walk into the City through the old East End, Brick Lane in particular. Kind of had to make a quick change of direction when I got to Vallence Park due to a large group of youths being in the middle of the park.They made me feel vulnerable and I didn't fancy the prospect of walking past them. Me in my dad's old leather jacket that he had recently given to me and with wallet full of cash sitting in the inside pocket. White middle aged man walking past a bunch of street smart black and Asian youths; at the very least I would be humiliated. So I gave them a miss by taking an exit from the park that I didn't usually go through whilst saying a load of Guru Rinpoche mantras.

When I usually walk down Brick Lane it is on a Saturday morning and the whole scene is more or less empty but by Saturday afternoon things have changed big time and the place was full of people, mainly people younger than me. Virtually everyone appeared to be far better dressed than me, a million times sharper and I soon felt very self conscious indeed, almost out of it as I made my way down the Lane. Not a nice feeling when you are in a public situation and you feel that every single person looks cooler then you do. I cut a hasty path across to Spitalfields down Hanbury Street, there the crowds emptied out and things felt a bit less intense.

You know how it is, sometimes you can just feel that you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and that was certainly one of those occasions. It can quickly lead to feelings of paranoia, the feeling everyone is watching you, but for completly the wrong reasons. Not for cool reasons but for what's that stinking bum doing here reasons. Resolved to myself I would have to buy some new clothes so that if I ever did Brick Lane again outside of normal hours I would not feel so exposed.

Spitalfields was emptier than Brick Lane, giving me a bit of breathing space, and then things really levelled out as I made my way into the City proper after picking up a wholemeal veggie pasty at a pasty stand outside Liverpool Steet Station. On my way to the pasty stand as I walked through Cutlers Gardens I had passed a man going through the contents of a bin looking for food. I thought it would be a good idea to maybe buy a couple of pasties then I could go back and give one to him. Somehow by the time I got to the pasty stand I forgot all about him, then as I walked down Bishopsgate holding the hot pasty in my hand I passed him again and I'm afraid to say that I didn't give him my pasty.

A Seemingly Aimless Drive into the Middle of Nowhere...

Got in my car yesterday afternoon and I went for a drive. This is something that I very rarely do, just going out in the motor for the sake of it, but the weather was nice and bright and all week people had been saying on the radio how glorious the colours of autumn were this year. So decided in my mind to drive cross country to St Albans, ancient place of pilgrimage although for the vast majority of souls who now inhabit this island that fact is long forgotten and probably not even known about at all. Been to St. Albans many times over the years, mainly because it is on the way to my parents place in Harpenden, or it is on the way if I choose not to go up the A1.

Usually if I go to St. Albans I do so by the shortest possible route which is a 20 minute westward swing around the M25. Yesterday however I drove straight on up through the forest to Epping which as usual was congested and full of Essex twat. Through Epping I then took a B road out into the country on the way out to Roydon. Music wise on and off (at least to begin with, later in the ride much more on than off) was Coldplay's X & Y, an album which I have only just gotten into. One which I have to say I am very much enjoying, mainly because it is so derivative and it is really rather entertaining picking out the influences on each of their songs; U2 and Peter Gabriel spring to mind, but there are others as well like New Order, The Smiths and even a bit of Beatles.

At Roydon the road was closed and I had to backtrack a couple of miles east to Harrow in order to pick up the A414. From that point on it was due west through Hertford, Hatfield and into St. Albans, most of it on fast road, dual carriage wherever possible. As soon as I hit the A414 the countryside seemed to open, the skies suddenly got bigger and up above there were some really quite spectacular cloud formations. Made the earth appear what it really was; a planet deep in space, rather than grey, full of concrete and a constant source of pain and suffering. Many cars bombed past me, people no doubt in the middle of their working day, rushing like hell from A-B, B-A or wherever it was they had to get to in such a goddam hurry.

There was no real reason for me choosing to go St.Albans other than that it was somewhere to drive to and it has a nice cathedral. The only thing I thought of doing there was picking up a copy of the remastered version of AC/DC's Ballbreaker from the HMV in the middle of the town. I had seen it there a few weeks ago when I had happened to drop in on my way to my folks. I had the orginal Ballbreaker however so it was hardly that urgent, even though I was kind of curious to hear how the new one sounded. The original was produced in the mid-90's by Rick Rubin and in my opinion it is one of AC/DC's best albums.

When I got to St.Albans I wandered round for an hour or so but in an aimless kind of way. I felt my energy dissipate as I looked for a place to get a drink a cup of coffee, but was put off by the fact that everywhere was full of noisy schoolkids, or students, or whatever it is they are called these days. Got to the point where I didn't even have the energy to go with a copy of the re-mastered Ballbreaker to the counter at HMV and hand over 9 quid for it. After a desultory search for some clothes to buy I gave up when I was unable to find a Next. Finally after much walking around the same streets and lanes I grabbed a coffee to go which I took back and drank in my car. There had been a market in the middle of the town which had made the streets and pavements seem really crowded; trying to walk fast was certainly not a good idea, something which out of habit I had ended up doing. Slowing down sometimes and just taking in the view was, it seemed, a lesson that I still had to learn.

When I had finsihed my coffee I cut my losses and got back on the road. Back on the A414, eastbound this time until I picked up the A10 at Hertford. There was still enough life in the day to make the ride home stunning in parts, western sun blazing on tarmac, 21st century humanity rolling through space, you know, things like that...By the time I got back Woodford it was 5 and I was fully recovered from my aimless non-productive walk round St.Albans, remembering that that had not been the point of getting in the car and going for a drive in the first place, that the 3 hours or so out there in the bright October light had maybe not been so pointless after all.

Behind It All

Life is constant movement. It can be problematic if you demand reality to stay the same. In Buddhism this is related to experiencing the suffering of change. In my own case I know that I have wasted a lot of energy and undergone experiences of mental agitation when I have either wanted things to stay as they are or not wanted things to come along which have. It is impossible to control every situation. Now, as far as I am able, I try to keep in mind that whatever the situation is, pleasant or unpleasant, it is just a temporary island I am standing upon.

Given enough time the landscape is sure to change. Not that thinking like this is enough to always prevent what I would call long term frustrations and sources of anxiety to appear in my mind and thus colour the thoughts I might be having. They are still too big for me to see them properly for what they are, and I can be liable therefore to fall under their influence, which is more emotional I guess than anything else. The result at those times can be negative feelings about my life, whether it be a sense of lack as far as achievement at work is concerned, or just all round disappointment over where I am as a human being.

The more life goes on the more I can see the value of prayer in those situations. Praying to the objects that represent higher power and wisdom is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you do not go too overboard with expectations of reward from anything outside yourself. Prayer is really about just making contact with those aspects of yourself untouched by the temporary swirl of conflicting emotions that more often than not result in painful experiences. There is a part of all of us that has always been untouched by the day to day consequences of living a life on Earth, a part of us which has not changed in any way at all since the very first day we were alive. To connect with that changeless nature is very important and if we can do it we will have done well. For me the door to it is opened by meditation. Not all the time, I would never say that, in fact not even a fraction of some of the time, but nevertheless it is a source of great hope for me and I don't think I will ever tire of looking for it when my energy allows me to.

Getting Meditation

It doesn't make any difference if you learn to meditate at ages 5 or 50; the state of meditation is the same. You might spend a life learning meditation well, and then the winds of cause and effect blow you away from meditation for 10,000 years. But when you return it is still the same, there will be not one single atom of difference (and meditation being non-atomic I suppose there is a good reason for that). All the descriptions that are in all those books on Buddhism certainly apply, they are not lying; meditation is your changeless nature, the state of no coming no going...really though, words won't touch it by way of description.

It is inexhaustible, it will remain exactly as it is until the end of time; wonderful, wonderful meditation! As human beings on this planet it is a birthright we all share. We all have the right to taste it and once we do we will know that beneath the surface it is the same taste for everyone. There might be a difference in strength between the seasoned meditator and the novice but the source is the same. To collect on this birthright, time and circumstance are the main things that are required, and willingness to practice it of course, seemingly simple but in fact not necessarily easy and possibly downright complicated. There are no garauntees, just work hard around the edges to create the causes for meditation to become part of your life. Always pray and remember how lucky you are, if you are able.

Good Times, Bad Times

Good times, bad times, whichever rolls along try to accept each with equal dignity. Don't go too over the top, thinking you are the chosen one when things go well and then wanting to throw yourself into a hole when things appear to conspire against you.

Pressure days these last few days. Yesterday morning sitting in the office, sun shining through the window onto my desk. It soon got pretty hot, I should have pulled the blind down far sooner than when I did. The result was a thumping headache. Took 2 Nurofen and they didn't even touch the sides, so by mid-afternoon I had taken another 2 but the tiger was still wagging it's tail by the time I left the office at 5.30 pm. Must be related to stress at work; lots of bills to pay but at the moment no business. Really worrying factor is that this is pretty much the time of the year when we should be busy. It would not take much for things to go belly up if this is how it is going to be until the end of the year. If it is then we might be able to limp on for a couple of months into '09 and then it will be curtains.

So I took the headache home with me where it lingered all evening until I hit the sack at 10.30. The 2 beers I had probably didn't help but what the hell; bad head or no bad head yesterday was one of those when I felt I needed a drink. The whole episode reminded me of the huge headache that I had in Kathmandu at the beginning of the year. On that occasion I had stayed up all night in the Potala Guest House, throwing up one minute and the next curling up in a ball on the bed wanting to die. By the time morning came my thoughts had turned really rotten and I was on the road to going a little crazy if it had lasted for that much longer. Just about managed to get through that one.

Yesterday when I crashed I was tired enough to fall asleep pretty much right away but by 4 am I had woken up. Thick head was still there, now a dull ache but strong enough to stop me from going back to sleep. Had to go downstairs and this time took 2 paracetemol and they managed to finally kill it off. Then slept fitfully until 7.40, being pushed around by Tamdin for lying on my back and snoring. Got up and made coffee with the bright sun once again shining in through the window. This time I pulled down the shade, sat on my cushion and thought to myself good times, bad times; I should just try as much as possible to take them in my stride and not get too carried away.

Music and the Moon

Brought down my sound system from the loft the other week. It had been up there for just over a year, after we had a makeover for the house, so it needed cleaning and checking. Got it all set up in our second bedroom and once it was working and sounding how it should I was just unable to take it apart and put it all away again. Just sounded too goddamed good. Nothing fancy just solid English audio technology; Nad amp and CD player, Tannoy speakers, that's it. Fantastic.

Since getting it down it has meant that each evening I sneak off into the second bedroom stick my head between the speakers whilst sitting on the edge of the bed and get lost in the sound of music. Over the last few days this has comprised of Bob Dylan's Tell Tale Signs, Paul Weller's 22 Dreams and the deluxe re-maseter of his early '90s Wildwood album. I tell you, at the moment, nothing beats sitting there in the dark with my head bewteen the speakers, window open, moon shining in, thinking the thoughts you tend to think when you're listening to really good music (and c'mon, Bobby and the Modfather, ya don't get much cooler than that).

Thoughts of life and my position in it...just what are we doing running around the planet constantly, tiring ourselves out, looking for things to blame when things go wrong. Every day countless numbers of us come and go, come and go, and yet we all seem to blindly carry on with little time given over for introspection. Well too much introspeaction is not so good of course, I know that I have been guilty of that almost on a daily basis over the last 25 years, ever since I as able to properly walk and talk, but still a little introspection is good.

The dark of the evening, the cool October wind blowing in through the window, the faint moon shining above, an illusory shine of course as it it is just a ball of dead rock, long dead rock illuminated by the sun to give it the appearance of life. But still even when that is taken into consideration the moon is still a mighty powerful object to have sitting there over our heads. Pulls the seas of the world this way and that, has affected profoundly the way man lives on this planet ever since he too could get up and walk and talk properly.

Tell Tale Signs

Well I guess my love for the music of Bob Dylan goes back a few years now. Think the first album of his that I bought was Good As I've Been to You back in 1992. Now I am aware of course that that is nothing when placed in the context of how long Bob has actually been around. 30 years too late some might say, and in all honesty there would be very little I would be able to say in answer to that. But, better late than never and there is no doubt in my mind that although in comparison to countless others I am late on the Dylan scene, I have done my best to make up for it. In the 15 years from 1992 - 2007 I have managed to see Bob exactly 30 times and also bought a shitload of his CDs although I have managed to resist the temptation to delve into the murky world of Bob bootlegs, well, the unofficial ones at least.

As far as the offical bootlegs go Tell Tale Signs is the eighth instalment in the Sony Bootleg Series, a double CD that covers the period 1989-2006. I think that it was whilst I was playing the 2nd disc in the car last Friday afternoon on my way back to London from a business appointment in Suffolk that I realised Tell Tale Sings was very possibly the best Bob CD that I had yet heard, which, beleive me, is really saying something.

Drivin' back down to London, early October, warm and sunny Friday afternoon. Drivin' fast, playing Dylan loud, just like it should be played. Colours of autumn making the English countryside appear truly majestic, a beauty that is absolutely astounding. The angle of the road, a rising curve, the shape of a bend...when the time is right they all have the ability to make me feel so deeply in love with life that I could hardly imagine what it would be like to ever be unable to witness such boundless mystery. Go read the signs, the tell tale signs...

Blogs

Do people write blogs so that they are going to be noticed and read by others? Guess many people do, and there is nothing wrong with that. After all it can be one way of making friends in what can be a lonely world. Of course, being the type of person that I am, a character who is essentially a stranger to himself, I will write down here that I really don't care if anyone ever reads anything that I have written on Ghost Eternal. Well, I might write that, but I know that it isn't true. A part of me (a large part?) no doubt writes all this in the hope that people do read it, do pay attention and understand it and even possibly comment on it. Favourably of course. It would be a lie if I wrote that every time I logged on and viewed my blog I didn't have a small flutter of excitement when I scrolled down to the bottom of my last posted article to see if anything had been written about it. No one has commented on anything yet and that might be for a couple of reasons; first no one has actually come across the blog, second that those who have just have not read anything that they feel is worth commenting on.

Imaginary Companions

It seems that after a certain point in your life you realise the lines are so deeply drawn, so deeply set, that things are not going to change unless something radical happens. When I think about it, I suppose that at times I see myself as a lonely person, like when my internal dialogue is running and I am imagining the people that I might be expressing my thoughts to, that I might be talking to. Who are the people that I imagine? Old friends more often than not, people from the past who I have now lost touch with. There is a part of me which asks the question: will I ever make the effort to get in touch with some of these people again? Well the truth is that I probably won't. It is a common enough habit to look back on the past and see it as better than it actually was. The main reason for this as far as I can work out is because we look back at the past with thoughts in the form of memories, but do we really feel the past? I don't think we do, the body tends to forget. It forgets that often in those previous times things didn't feel that brilliant anyway. There is no going back. These days I have Tamdin, I have meditation and I have other interests to keep my going. No doubt there will be more times in the future when I continue to talk to myself, imagining my companions as I try articulate thoughts; describing situations, experiences of life, events that I might have witnessed, or whatever.

Searching for Clouds

Clear morning, sun shining on the window of the house opposite. Tremendous glare, unable to stare at it, makes spots appear in front of my eyes. At 46, happily married, living in a comfortable house, I really have nothing to complain about. All the basic requirements for living a pain free life are basically now in place. We have no children so that means we can sleep as much as we like in the mornings if we have no work to go to. In the evenings we can eat good food and enjoy a drink or two before our meal. It would simply be impossible for me to complain about any of this when so many countless millions of people on this planet can only dream of leading such an easy life. There are clouds on the horizon of course, that is inevitable and goes with the inescapable unsatisfactoriness of existence. I worry for example over how selfish I now must have become, how anything which comes along and possibly disturbs things would be most unwelcome. And if that were to happen I know that I would receive little sympathy from others, because I have had a pretty good deal for a number of years now, and that human nature being what it is, some people might actually feel a sense of satisfaction if all of a sudden problems came along for me.

Waking Up from Sleep

When I wake up in the mornings I sometimes lie in bed knowing that I should get up but not quite managing it. Zen masters say that when you wake up, then get up, don't even think about it. Occasionally I will be able to do this but more often than not the alarm goes off and I lie there in the semi-dark and snooze awhile. Tamdin never gets up early if she doesn't have to so I guess a part of me is influenced by her. She always says that sleep is the best medicine and I now think in many respects she is right. So many times in the past when I was younger I would get up early simply because I had it fixed in my mind that it was the right thing to do. What would happen on those occasions was that I would often be tired and irritable throughout the course of the day. Looking back now it seems clear that the reason for this was that my body had not had enough sleep the night before. It meant that on busy days physical exertion became painful and I would end up exhausted. These days I am better able to pace myself, to have that extra 1/2 hour or 1 hour in bed in order to feel properly rested, and more importantly to not feel racked with guilt for supposedly staying in bed too long. The benefit is that I now know from experience that I feel all the better for it and as a consequence I am less likely to bend under the pressure of those stressful situations which inevitably come along from time to time. I am by no means perfect of course, feelings of anger and agitation seem to be drawn from an bottomless well so easy to find, but hopefully I am moving in the right direction.

As You Get Older

Do the days get better as you get older? Yes and no. When I look at me and all that I am I sometimes shudder, but then again a part of me behind it all stays pretty calm. It is the way it is. What is different from before? From the days when such thoughts would plunge me into stress and doubt? No guilt. No guilt, maybe that is what it is. Things are just as they are, I have landed, so to speak, and there is no point in getting caught up in feelings of agitation. Those thoughts, those feelings are just the coming to the surface, more often than not, of worries over how I might appear in the eys of others. Praise and blame, two of the eight worldly attachments. The absurd thing about being taken in by those feelings is that really there is no one watching. All the time and energy that is expended in playing a part which I think might be acceptable in the eyes of others is really wasted time and energy. The reality is that people are far too busy trying to make sense of their own lives to pay much attention to me. Why should they? Crazy to think they should, so why worry?

Where is it in me that sees those visions of clouds being blown across a blue sky, leaves swirling in the autumn streets? Mind pictures that are echoes of a love of life deep within...

Ghost Eternal

When I think of who I am it is difficult to get beyond the overwhelming feeling of complete and utter insignificance. Just what do I mean to others, and how much? Here I am, 46 years of age, over halfway through my life, and that is if I am lucky. I mean, I could be more than halfway through my life already, who knows? Like Jim; he is more than halfway through his life, he is completely through his life. For Jim it is all over, at barely 47 years of age. Jim's death has affected me more than I thought it would, in fact I hadn't even thought of how it might affect me, because I hadn't expected him to die. But dead he is, at 47. At least Jim will be remembered, he was a larger than life person; the good, the bad and the ugly all rolled into one. How many people remember me? Not many, really not many. It is a sobering proposition, almost makes me ask the question, well if that is the case what is the point in carrying on? All for what?

Age 46

Often wander round my house wondering just what the hell it is that I am supposed to do. Many people have hobbies; things that keep them interested in life. Keep them wanting to stay alive. It might be cooking, gardening, doing up cars. Whatever it is it gives them a shot of energy, makes them feel positive enough to want to carry on. When I look at myself and my own lack of development when it comes to these things, I worry. I seem to have so little in comparison. I mean I do a bit of meditation whenever I get the chance and whenever I have the energy for it, but it doesn't go that deep. There are also the books I read, mainly Buddhist ones, but not always, and there is the music I listen to. And that is about it.