Laughing and a running

After Jaipur (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/08/31/its-time-to-burn/ ) our next stop in India was Ranthambore to see wildlife, especially tigers.  I was not really quite aware of how remote where we were staying would be until we were en-route.  We stopped at a small shop on the way, but everything was at least a year beyond its best before date (I know this can be fine, but all of the food I tasted from there was definitely past its best).

There are some nice hotels in Ranthambore, but we were staying in the jungle at a kind of village of chalets around a central complex.

The chalets were in groups of four.  Some close to the central area, some up to half a mile away.  They put the few men on the trip in the ones closest to the centre and the oldest women in the ones furthest away….  On the first night I walked a group back to their chalets.  It was not much fun in a pitch-black jungle with just a phone light. 

We had to be careful using electronic devices.  The power was so low that recharging phones went up only 2 or 3% per hour, as well as there being frequent power cuts (unsurprising as the power lines were tied together in places).  Luckily, I had a portable charger with me.  There was a cavalier attitude to electricity.  When the air conditioning broke down I asked for it to be fixed and watched as I hoped to see if I could fix problems in the future.  The man stuck a screwdriver into the electrics in multiple places.  I may lack common sense but that was not for me.

My chalet had a huge lizard in it.  When I asked if it could be removed, I was told that I was lucky as it would eat any insects.  It was disconcerting to hear it running about at night.  That was the lesser of the problems at night though as when I opened my bed up to get in it was full of insects.

(My chalet)

The Tiger drives were in the national park with the group crammed into a couple of open top trucks.  The park was beautiful and we saw some wildlife.  I am sure that the whole tiger thing is fake though.  There were theatrical moments of rangers leaping out and looking at footprints or faeces, striking poses.  We were pretty sure the tigers were electronically tagged so that they could be found.

(Entrance with our less than stellar tour guide talking about sunglasses, rather than anything about the tour)

This was the closest we got to a tiger on the first trip.

There is a zoom on this – we were not that close to the crocodile.

The monkeys were an ongoing problem.  They stayed in the trees throwing faeces at us whenever we came out.

The trips around the Park in the vans were severely uncomfortable so I opted out on day 2.  This was the only place we stayed in that was not five star and the food was much less than stellar.  It was also the place that over a third of the party got ill.

I was one of the first to go down.  As we were travelling by train to Agra our bags had to go on ahead.  I made the mistake of sending my medication on and then getting ill.  Luckily our tour guide had some Indian stomach remedies – including an antibiotic, a morphine painkiller and something to stop diarrhoea.  These could be bought over the counter and were very effective.

Future tours did not stay at this jungle paradise but opted for the hotels.  I think this mass outbreak of illness caused it.  I barely ate anything for four days and I lost a stone on the trip.  This was the worst part of the tour and severely affected my enjoyment of what was to come because of illness.

(Ranthambore station).

Van Morrison was one of the earliest rock musicians to come out of Ireland – first as part of Them and then solo.  Talented guy but he is an anti-masker and a bit of a prat.  After his set has finished he goes off stage and towels down his testicles.  During the encore he throws the towel to the audience.  And he is an anti-vaxxer.  Tosser.

Brown Eyed Girl

We’ll Meet Again

A day off from the usual blog posts.  I am in London with its tier 4 lockdown.  I know there are many people out there who cannot see the people that they want to see and it is especially hard on those that live alone or those who cannot see new grandchildren, like my brother Mike.  I still haven’t seen my grand nephew Odin and I hope in 2021 I will be able to pick up the adorable boy for the first time.

If you want some entertainment to enjoy here are some suggestions from what I have enjoyed in the last year (this what I watched or read in 2020, not released in the year).

On TV the best thing I saw was the Korean series Crashing Landing On You – it almost defies description being a thriller/romance/comedy/political commentary.  Unbelievably good.

In a year where the MeToo movement has gained power my other series are led by women.  Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You is an emotional journey of a woman who is drugged and raped.  Billie Piper’s lead in I hate Suzie is violated in a different way.  Both are harrowing but compelling.

Katherine Ryan’s The Duchess and Awkwafina is Nora From Queens are both comedies and totally worth your time.  Though, thinking about it, The Duchess is serious at times as well.

Mrs America is the story of the women’s movement in the USA in the 1970s and the Republican fight back against the equal rights amendment.  An absolutely stellar cast, including Cate Blanchett and Sarah Poulson.

I saw all of The Good Place this year.  An ensemble cast led by Kristen Bell (who is not only a great actress but a superb human being).  A twenty minute sitcom about moral philosophy?  It is nigh on perfect.

Films…..

Misbehaviour is the story of the protest against Miss World with Gemma Arterton, but it is not a “heavy” film.  Birds of Prey shows Margot Robbie’s talent for comedy and is a different spin on superheroes. 

I finally saw Winter’s Bone – the film that showed Jennifer Lawrence was not only going to be a star but also the great actress of her generation.  It shows that thriller’s do not need to be unremitting action movies. 

Sorry We Missed You is Ken Loach’s film about our delivery culture, especially apposite in Lockdown.  Not a happy watch.

The Card is an Alec Guinness film from 1952 about a self-made man in the early 20th century.  Guinness is brilliant and the story shows the hypocrisy that haunts society to this day.

Most of my favourite books of the year are not light and happy reading.  Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women about unconscious bias is eye opening.  Ian Dunt’s How To Be A Liberal is brilliant but depressing in the face of the nationalists and the alt-right. 

For sports fans Derek Pringle’s book on the 80s cricket, Pushing the Boundary, and Sean Payton’s inspirational Home Team, about coaching the New Orleans Saints to a Superbowl after hurricane Katrina are must reads.

The only fiction book I would recommend that I read is Stephen King’s The Outsider.  Much, much better than the TV series that was made – if you like King this is a great book.

If you want to laugh then the comedians Subhah Agarwal, Fern Brady and Fizaa Dosani are all incredibly talented and will one day be headlining those pay per view specials.  Hopefully they will tour the UK after the pandemic.

That was mostly a depressing list, so if you something more Christmassy then The Box of Delights is so Christmas it is dangerous.  A beautiful children’s TV story from the 80s based on a novel from the 1930s.  The special effects are cheap but that is not the point.

Blackadder’s Christmas Carol is an antidote to all the saccharine retellings of the Scrooge story. 

Last Christmas is the best of the Doctor Who Christmas specials that are set at Christmas.

The Vicar of Dibley’s Christmas special where Geraldine has to eat four dinners always make me laugh.

Wherever you are use modern technology to talk to your loved ones and stay safe. 

Ring out the Solstice Bells😊

There’s a shadow on the door

The Police were perceived as a boy band (by the standards of the late 1970s – three blonde men, though Andy Summers was definitely not a boy).  They were too good looking for their own good.

(Andy Summers, Sting & Stuart Copeland)

It is odd as their first single that was a hit was about a prostitute (Roxanne) but they got very pop very quickly.  I was too young and naïve to understand how clever their songs were.  Message in a Bottle is an almost perfect pop song.  It was songs like Don’t Stand So Close To Me and De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da that made me think they were silly.  The Lolita reference totally went over my head at that age (though given Sting’s background as a teacher it can be taken in a sinister way) and the latter was a commentary on the inane lyrics around.

After Zenyatta Mondatta there was a break which Adam and the Ants charged into and became the biggest band in the UK in the space of less than a year.  They had already had a massive chart topper with Stand and Deliver (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/07/09/throw-your-safety-overboard/ ) which had gone straight in at number one.  The follow up, Prince Charming, went straight in at number two and rose to the top the following week.  The Police released Invisible Sun and the tabloids set it up as who was the biggest band in the UK (like the Blur Oasis battle 15 years late).

Only it wasn’t.  Invisible Sun is a mournful track about the situation in Northern Ireland.  It got to number two but that was a huge achievement for a track like that.  Ghost in the Machine is a much more downbeat album than its predecessors.  There was always a tension in the band as Stuart Copeland was a right winger, Sting is on the left and Andy Summers just wanted to make it in music.  As Sting wrote most of the tracks (and if you listen to them you will understand why) his view takes precedence.  Rehumanise Yourself about the National Front; One World (Not Three) about the developing world (Copeland thought it was about the multiple lives of rock stars). Spirits in the Material World and Darkness.

(Ghost In The Machine – symbol for each member)

The next single is Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.  The one happy song on the album and I hate it.  Just loathe – by far the worst track on this album and it was a number one.  It was not helped by Graham playing it a lot, about the girl he was keen on at the time.  I can’t even escape it to this day as it is a staple of retro compilations and TV channels.

Their final album is Synchronicity – not quite a classic as the Andy Summers track is not good (he and Copeland have one each for royalties).

(The term synchronicity (syn = with, chronos = time) was chosen by the psychotherapist Jung to describe the simultaneous occurrence of events (or coincidences) which apparently have no clear cause, but are deeply meaningful).

The most successful track was Every Breath You Take – to the uninformed as love song but actually a deeply disturbing stalking song.  I preferred the other singles – King of Pain, the mesmerising Wrapped Around Your Finger and album track Synchronicity I.

My favourite is Synchronicity II. A song about suburban despair and a family breaking down at the same time as a monster rises from a “dark Scottish Loch” – Loch Ness.  The husband’s rage, the wife’s despair and the family chaos fuelling the rise of the monster.  The guitar style really different from anything else they have ever done and a million miles from their early white cod reggae.

If the monster was real it would be amazing and it was a myth that I loved in my childhood (a book on the search was one of the first I ever bought for myself).  There would need to be a breeding colony and there would be way more sightings.  Good for tourism I suppose.

Synchronicity 2

Playlist (13-14 by Sting solo)

  1.  Roxanne
  2. Can’t Stand Losing You
  3. Message In A Bottle
  4. Don’t Stand So Close To me
  5. Spirits In the Material World
  6. Invisible Sun
  7. Demolition Man
  8. Rehumanise Yourself
  9. Synchronicity 1
  10. Synchronicity 2
  11. King of Pain
  12. Wrapped Around Your Finger
  13. Fortress Around Your Heart
  14. Russians

I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’

2015 – Dad and I go on a 16-day tour of Italy starting at the north in Venice and ending in Sicily.  We had wanted one where you actually stayed in Venice but could not get that at the time when we could go.  Our hotel was on the nearby Lido De Jesolo.

We started the day with a boat ride across the lagoon to Venice.  Our boat was relatively small – the size of the cruisers that dock there is absolutely staggering and it is easy to see how that they are destroying the city with the size of their wash.

We dutifully followed our tour guide into Venice and he pointed out some of the central highlights.  As normal it is a lot more interesting to get away from the tourist bits near the docks and explore the backstreets.

Beware, despite being late June it was not an especially hot day. but the cramped streets and narrow alleyways made the atmosphere very heavy.  The smell from the canals was not as bad as I had feared.  There are no supermarkets, just tiny shops.  If residents want to shop at a chain store they need to leave the city.

(Our tour group on back a street)

We saw the Venetian Bridge of Sighs.  I have seen the one in Cambridge and the one in Oxford (which is the least impressive).  Just one more to go.

Taking a trip on a gondola is not cheap.  £80 for half an hour then, but you can hardly go to Venice without taking a trip like this.

(On a gondola)

We had lunch on the Rialto bridge – with a beautiful view over the canals. 

We bought some souvenirs and went up St Marks Campanile.  At this point the gathering clouds turned into one of the most impressive storms that I have ever seen.  The rain was blowing into the top of the tour and the conditions had become very unpleasant.  We were dressed for a warm summer day and were not well prepared for this.

(St Mark’s Square from the top of the Camapanile)

Despite it being the most tourist thing you can do we had coffee and cake in the one of the café’s on St Mark’s Square.  It was over £20, but there was a musical group playing, and it was very beautiful.  It was a thrill for me to be where they had filmed Moonraker (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/12/12/arm-yourself-because-no-one-here-will-save-you/ ).  It also meant we could stay out of the rain.

By the time we got back to the hotel we were soaked (a particular problem as we were on the coach the next day – some of my wet clothes would never stop smelling damp and I had to bin them).   I fell asleep in the hotel and have never been more disconcerted than waking up in the dark with no idea where I was.

The weather meant Lido de Jesolo was pretty much closed and the evening was very quiet.  It was not the last time on the trip that I wished that I had brought warmer clothes with me.

I would love to go back to Venice to explore the quieter areas.

Eve of Destruction

I made a lot of mistakes

The most controversial post I made was the one where I said that I hated musicals.  Now Chicago should be an open goal as I am a sucker for fiction set in the interwar period; I am actually fond of tap dancing, and like the music of that period.  But why waste time with a musical like this when there is actually good quality material that you could be watching set in that era?

I know that my conception of the era is not what it was really like and it is seen through a lens of rich people and the detective fiction of Dorothy Sayers.  In reality most working people lived in terrible conditions with limited healthcare and malnutrition rampant.  The Jazz Age was only the Jazz Age if you were rich.  It was the first of two societal eras of huge change in the twentieth century (the second being the 1960s) as the impact of the First World War dropped a bomb in what people wanted and expected.

This era is important now.  The Jazz Age started off a pandemic that actually makes COVID 19 look mild.  Is there going to be another era of hedonism – party today, tomorrow we may be dead?  Either with another pandemic (that will happen unless we make some major changes to the way we are exploiting the Earth) or the Climate Crisis.  The pandemic will be looked on as a defining point in our history, like the first World War and the succeeding pandemic. Paired with the financial crisis of 2008 it has a devastating impact on the less well off in the UK.

There are two amazing TV shows set in the 1930s that everyone should watch – one British and one American.

The British one is Brideshead Revisited.  Typically of British stories set in the era it is set in the upper class world, which we explore with Charles Ryder.  It starts in 1943 with Charles Ryder being sent to Brideshead, which is an army base, in a stately home.  The story then flashes back twice and starts in chronological terms with the middle class and studious Charles meeting Sebastien Flyte and his upper-class friends (behaving as badly as the Bullingdon boys did when Cameron and Johnson were there).  Co-incidentally the first time I watched it I was the age Charles was in 1922 and the second time the age he was in 1943, totally by chance.

(Sebastian Flyte, Julia Flyte and Charles Ryder).

Charles joins this group and is introduced to a world of money and priviledge.  Even to the younger me it seemed obvious that Charles and Sebastien were lovers.  Charles’ eventual relationship with Sebastiens’s sister, Julia, seemed to me, him settling for the closest woman to Sebastien that he could find.  Anthony Andres and Diana Quick do a stunning job of acting like siblings.

The Flyte’s are a Catholic family and the story is about that and the effect it has on people in the story.  It is beaurifully made and one of the greatest shows ever made in the UK.

The American series is more recent and is also stereotypical, set in the world of Prohibition.  Boardwalk Empire is different in that it is not set in New York or Chciago but in Atlantic City.  It stars Steve Buscemi in his greatest role, as the corrupt treasurer of Atlantic City.  He sees Prohibition as a great opportunity.  (It is sad that the genuine concern many people had for the excess use of alcohol in the USA led to this – the fortunes made by organised crime left them a pervading influence across society for the rest of the century)

(Steve Buscemi as Nucky)

It starts off in 1920 and deals with the fallout of the First World War on some of the people in Atlantic City and Nucky’s increasing power and influence in the City and across the USA.  It does bring in the Chicago mob and other famous historical figures later on.  It shows how Prohibition led to crime taking over prostitution and hard drugs.  Give organised crime an opening and it will expand – something our own laws on drugs has not worked out 100 years later.

This is very definitely a series for adults – it has a lot of nudity and even more violence.  The themes are adult in nature too.  Very different from the understated British series from the 1980s.

Sufjan Stevens has been a prolific artist and when I found this track I thought that it would be a great musical discovery.  Turned out that this was the only track I liked, but it is an awesome track.

Chicago

To pay the rent now to pay our share

One of the worst things that the western world has done has been the way it treated indigenous peoples across the world.  In Australia children of the native inhabitants were removed from their families in the period from 1905 to 1967 and placed in “white” homes or church missions.  The practice continued into the 1970s for mixed race children.  At the same time the land was taken away from the people – a terrible situation for a people whose way of relief and religion were linked inextricably to the land.

This is quite well known and a shameful stain on Australia and the UK.  Yet it is not an isolated incident as the same thing happened in Canada (in Canada the indigenous people are referred to as First Nation which is a much better name).  Over 16,000 children were removed from their families and placed in white homes in the Canada and the USA, some as far away as Australia and New Zealand.  Cut off from their people, their culture and their heritage.  This happened up until the 1980s.  Families were split up with no way of contacting each other.

These removals have a long-term implication as these people are now, on average, poorer, more likely to be mentally ill and more likely to be addicts.  When people talk about how racism finished a long time ago this ignores the fact these are just examples of people whose racist treatment affects them to this day.

The podcast Missing and Murdered tried to find out what had happened to one of these missing children, Cleopatra Semagais Nicoutane. 

Cleo and all but two of her siblings were taken and placed in different families across the North American continent.  She constantly tried to get back home to her family and to her people.  It was almost impossible for her siblings to get information about her from any government department.  They were obstructing them at every turn.  Eventually the podcast tracked her down, but she had been dead for decades.

Even to this day First Nation women disappear and are murdered at a far higher rate than any other group in Canada.  The police do not take it seriously saying that they ran away or that they are drunks or are “Just an Indian”.

The same podcast (in a different season) focussed on one woman, Alberta Williams, whose body had been found by the “Highway of Tears” in Canada.  A stretch of road in Canada that has had a hugely disproportionate number of women disappear nearby and bodies found by in the area.  These are almost all First Nation women.

These women suffer twice over.  Being female and being First Nation they are doubly discriminated against.  Even now they do not have the rights that other Canadians have.  Listen to the Missing and Murdered podcast.

The shame of the treatment of the First Nation people (and their parallels over the world) is a living shame that springs from Western colonialism that is not well known in the UK.

This is a song by Midnight Oil, an Australian band, that was a hit in the UK in 1987.  The lyrics are a must listen.

They had a long musical career and then their lead singer was a minister in the Australian parliament.  Still an activist, still fighting for the rights of the indigenous peoples.

Beds Are Burning

There’s a band playing on the radio

Roxy Music are two groups.  There is the innovative band that was effectively co-fronted by Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno in the 1970s.  Eno left over clashes with Ferry and then the group went on hiatus in 1976.  Famously they always had a woman on the cover of their albums.

They reunited in 1979 and the single Trash was a disappointing return (releasing the first track that is ready is never a good idea – Duran Duran did that with My Own Way https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/12/10/i-dont-believe-in-dragons-or-blue/ ).  The other two singles from Manifesto were much better and very successful – Dance Away was remixed for release though and Angel Eyes was completely re-recorded.

The spiky edges had gone, Roxy Music were not experimental anymore – they were a black tie band.  Flesh and Blood (their next album) was poorly reviewed, but it is packed with great tracks – it was probably a year too soon, in amongst the New Romantic era it would have been hailed as the masterpiece that it is with Oh Yeah, Over You and My Only Love.

Their final album is a gem.  Avalon is a beautiful, gentle late-night album.  I would strongly recommend it for anyone stressed – put it on and relax.  At the time I was a big heavy metal fan and listening to this kind of music was a surprise for those that knew me.

(Bryan Ferry said that it was a woman in the armour).

(After that there was a live EP, Roxy Musique, four long tracks long.  I don’t usually like live albums but this was a keeper.  Never a CD in this form, the four tracks are part of Heart Still Beating).

Fantasy stories have come a long way since the early 1980s.  Quite a party from the disdain from the mainstream media even science fiction fans looked down on fantasy novels.  The Lord of the Rings cast a massive shadow across the genre.  So much so that Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shanara is a total rip-off of the series.

It had been okay for children to read fantasy – the Chronicles of Narnia were almost de rigeur at school.  The BBC adapted it for TV in the 80s and there have been three feature films.  Whilst The Horse and His Boy is probably unmakeable due its depiction of a quasi-Islamic society in a very negative way, it is a shame that the first and last books have never been adapted.  The Magician’s Nephew, with the origin of Narnia and the White Queen is very interesting.  The Last Battle is even more important as it ends Narnia and we find out what happens (though CS Lewis’s issues with women are wrote large as Susan is excluded due to her choice to be an adult woman).  The Christian analogies work much better with these bookends.  (When I was a child I insisted that chronological order was the only way to read them.  Now I realise that publication order is right now).

The 1980s saw more fantasy series coming out.  Stephen Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant started in the 70s, though by the time they were out in paperback in the UK it was almost the 80s.  Covenant was a leprosy sufferer who spent three long novels not believing in the fantasy world, so was ineffective.  In the second trilogy he was scared to do anything as he was so powerful.  Over 2,000 pages with the protagonist agonising internally non-stop is pretty grim.

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is an antidote to this.  The later ones do tend to get a bit bloated but even these are less than 400 pages and they are funny.  The plus side is they very much reflect real world issues, the negative is that you need to know a lot of fantasy tropes to get all the jokes.

David Eddings had two five book series – The Belgariad and The Malloreon.  Entertaining, but they highlight the fact that in fantasy writing length is seen as a necessity to be good.  It can be a good thing and be a way to tell a huge story – like George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, but too many poor writers thing that longer is better.

Oh Yeah

Playlist:

  1. Virginia Plain
  2. Do the Strand
  3. Street Life
  4. Love is the Drug
  5. Both Ends Burning
  6. A Song For Europe
  7. Angel Eyes
  8. Dance Away
  9. Oh Yeah
  10. Over You
  11. The Same Old Scene
  12. Flesh and Blood
  13. My Only Love
  14. Eight Miles High
  15. Jealous Guy
  16. More Than This
  17. Avalon
  18. Take A Chance With Me
  19. Like A Hurricane (Live)

Pimps trying to catch a woman that’s weak

Bobby Womack was obviously a fun guy.  His autobiography starts with his wife chasing him through their house and garage trying to shoot him.  To be fair it was because she had caught him in bed with her daughter, his stepdaughter, so I think that she had every right to be mad.  (Someone I worked with years ago was caught in bed by his wife with one of her sisters, but Womack was even worse).

I first heard this song when I watched Pulp Fiction (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/06/02/royale-with-cheese/ ) but it actually comes from the Blaxploitation films of the early 70s (like all exploitation cinema of the period it needs to be watched with an understanding of the time period, whilst not forgiving the society that made them).  This the period where David Simon’s TV series The Deuce is set.

David Simon was a journalist in Baltimore in the 1980s and 90s.  He wrote books about life in Baltimore in that period – when crime and drug addiction was rising.  HBO were reluctant to have a cop show on their network as it seemed too conventional for them.

There is nothing conventional about The Wire.  Over five seasons it covered an expanding range of topics in Baltimore.  It starts with the police and the drug gangs – the latter dominant under the control of Avon Barksdale and his moneyman Stringer Bell.  A unit is put together of mavericks and losers who work out how to break in the gang’s communications (the titular wire).  The point of it was partly to show how similar both sides are, but also to show what has happened to this once proud city.

(Back Prez, Cedric Daniels, Jimmy McNulty, Beadie Russell   front: Lester Freamon, Kima Greggs)

It is incredibly complicated.  Episodes could have 50 speaking roles and the story would rely on the viewer knowing the plot of all the previous episodes.  It is not casual viewing – it is the closest to a TV novel there has ever been.

(Druglords Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale)

The Unions, politics and the media were added to the mix as the seasons went on.  Undoubtedly the most complex lengthy TV series ever and the best by quite a huge margin.  It made Dominic West, Idris Elba and Aiden Gillan stars.  The cast also features real life veterans of the Baltimore criminal world and the accents are genuine.

Treme is Simon’s three season meditation on a post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.  Music is a huge thing that runs through the series as that is so important to the city and there are many guests from the world of music (including Elvis Costello).  It also covers the corruption of the rebuilding program and how it affects people in their day to day lives.

The most recent of Simon’s series is The Deuce.  Three seasons set across a decade – one year a season covering the seamy side of New York.  It covers sex workers, drugs, the rise of the gay community and the mafia links to all of this.  It is the story of individuals and does not characterise a group in broad strokes.  Maggie Gyllenhaal is excellent (as usual) as the sex worker Eileen Merrell, turned porn director who becomes an artistic director.  Yet there are those who dies or are hurt in the underworld.  It does not cover up the violent and abusive pimps or the Mafia blackmailing the gay community.  There are other characters who are successful in their personal lives and transcend the Deuce and it ties in with the rise of feminism with the journey of Abby Parker.

It finishes with the campaign to clean up that part of New York which leads to the move of these industries to other areas.  It is a rich tapestry of people and a community that is long gone.

If I did not cover these three series then Simon’s other works like The Corner, Show Me A Hero and Generation Kill (about drugs in Baltimore, a true story about housing desegregation in Yonkers and the Iraq war)would be almost equally worthy of talking about.  A lot of the best television of the last 20 years comes from this man.

Across by 110th Street

Ride out protectors of the realm

Unpopular opinion – Black Sabbath were a better group with Ronnie James Dio as a lead singer.  I remember discussing this with Jason Sainty back in 1992 and he was sceptical.  To be fair most people are.  It isn’t just that I think Dio is the best metal singer ever (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/05/just-like-somebody-slammed-the-door/ ), I mean this is his third time on the list (solo, with Rainbow and with Black Sabbath) I think the songs are just plain better.

(Original Black Sabbath line up).

Paranoid was the first Sabbath track I heard on the Axe Attack album (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/13/this-is-not-a-situation-for-a-nervous-boy/ ).  Now I have read Ozzy’s autobiography and Motley Crue’s (that backs up some of the 80s stuff about him).  These days Ozzy is the lovable figure from a reality TV show struggling to keep up with his family and the modern world.  He was not a nice person in the 60s and 70s.  Initially a petty criminal, then a hard living reprobate who consumed prodigious amounts of alcohol and drugs.  This did not even end when he left the band and his antics on tour in the 1980s are wild. Even if he did not believe that it was a live bat that he was biting the head off live on stage.

(Sabbath with Dio up front).

I am not exonerating the other group members, but the quality of their albums falls away very badly in the late 70s.  The first track I heard by the Dio fronted Sabbath was Turn Up the Night, a slice of radio friendly metal.  I got the album Mob Rules for Christmas and it is my favourite Sabbath album.  At university I heard its predecessor – Heaven and Hell.  The albums are a pair in style and this is not quite as good, but the best track on either (just) is Neon Knights.

(Which always reminds me of this Doctor Who comic strip.  It is the prelude to The Tides of Time, considered to be one of the best Doctor Who comic strips ever.  The strip has run since 1979 with many famous creators like Pat Mills, Dave Gibbons, John Ridgway and Grant Morison working on it.

If you judge the strip by the standards of TV tie in strips it has been pretty good, but by any other quality measure it is nothing special.  It was widely loved by people who did not like the Virgin New Adventures (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/11/01/lets-all-meet-up-in-the-year-2000/ ) presumably because you need pictures for proper Doctor Who – until some of them decided that you need actors too.

At 8 or 9 pages a month it really did not get great depth in many stories.  Even the long ones did not run more than 60 or 70 pages.  Some of the art, especially John Ridgway, was excellent though).

Black Sabbath, along with Deep Purple (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/10/26/we-stood-and-stared/ ) were one of the foundation stones of heavy metal, but listen to the Dio years, not just the Ozzy years (there were other singers after Dio left, but apart from the Ian Gillan albums I am not a fan).

This is a great album sleeve. 

Neon Knights

Playlist:

  1. Black Sabbath
  2. Evil Woman
  3. War Pigs
  4. Paranoid
  5. Iron Man
  6. Children of the Grave
  7. Changes
  8. Snowblind
  9. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
  10. Neon Knights
  11. Children of the Sea
  12. Heaven and Hell
  13. Die Young
  14. Turn Up the Night
  15. The Sign of the Southern Cross
  16. Mob Rules
  17. Falling Off the Edge of the World
  18. Born Again
  19. Headless Cross

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery

I hate being ignorant, or rather not knowing about things.  It is certainly impossible to know about everything, but I am thinking about how you can be frozen out of whole conversations or discussions because you just know nothing.  This was hardest at school – at middle school I had no idea who any film star was (with exceptions of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John), yet for some reason everyone else knew about Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, etc.

On our geography field trip in the fourth form (year 10) to Dorset one evening we were hanging out on the promenade by the beach huts.  We had already had a stern injunction not to run on the top of the beach huts, not that my group would have done that anyway, so the teachers came by occasionally to check that no one was disgracing the school.  This was May 1981 and a temporary teacher came past and told us that Bob Marley was dead.  I had absolutely no idea who he was and the news just rolled over me, though she looked quite shocked.

At the time I hated reggae and I think that this was for two reasons.  Dub was huge at the time, having succeeded Lovers Rock as the dominant form of reggae in the UK, and the boiled down rhythm section with a lot of reverb was beyond what my musical lexicon could understand at the time.  The other was UB40, who were the biggest reggae group in the UK, but Ali Campbell’s vocals are so nasal and, well, strange, it grated on me.  I can appreciate both now, though I am never going to be a big fan of dub.

No Woman, No Cry was played occasionally on the radio and it piqued my interest.  This was different to any reggae that I had heard before and then there was a posthumous album led by the single Buffalo Soldier. 

While I was at university no one I knew was a Marley fan but Fai hired a car for a couple of day (I can’t remember why) and we went to Royston on a joyride – just to show them where I used to live.  On the way No Woman, No Cry played and Fai was very enthusiastic.  Sadly we did not seem to be able to borrow any Marley LPs from the college record library or the town library.

Finally, when I had enough money, I bought the compilation Legend, which is the less challenging half of his oeuvre.  Later on the record label released Rebel Music which is the more political stuff.  I now have all his albums on my iPod, they suit a beautiful hot summer day perfectly – just lying back and listening to the words, the pace perfect for managing the heat.

Marley was shot in 1976 when he was trying to organise a concert promoting peace between the two warring political factions in Jamaica.  He still went ahead with the gig, he was a man who wanted to improve things for his country.

Marley brought reggae to much wider audience and died of cancer at the age of just 36.  Undoubtedly there was great music left in him and his early death took that away.

The words to this song mean a lot.  Bob Marley was a human being and had flaws, but he did many great things and was a man of peace.  Gone way too soon.  Rest in Paradise.

Redemption Song

Playlist

  1.  No Woman, No Cry (Live)
  2. Could You Be Loved
  3. Buffalo Soldiers
  4. Redemption Song
  5. Exodus
  6. Iron Lion Zion
  7. Crazy Baldheads
  8. War
  9. Natural Mystic
  10. Easy Skanking
  11. Stir It Up
  12. Waiting in Vain
  13. So Much Trouble in the World
  14. One Love/ People Get Ready
  15. Pimper’s Paradise
  16. Sun is Shining
  17. Exodus
  18. Slave Driver
  19. Get Up, Stand Up
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