The past is a foreign country - luckily, we speak the language...

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Track of the Day
"Solar Radiation" from "Ampersand" (2002)

Playlist
Bidiniband - In the Rock Hall
Stekpanna - Standin' Tall
Stekpanna - Ouch!
Stekpanna - Notes from Underground (w/ Vintskevich duo)
Stekpanna - All For A Beautiful Life

Mr Bidini's new album was enjoyed again this morning...



It features multi talented Don Kerr from Rheostatics on drums, who also produced the album and was mixed by another Rheostatics drummer (the last of a few), Michael-Phillip Wojewoda...

The brilliant Paul Linklater is on guitars and the understated Doug Friesen takes the bass...

See them live here and here and here...

They are great...

Very much recommended and just the very thing for a not so young man who loved the Rheostatics and awaits any new output from its membership following their demise on 30 March 2007...

So, also great to see a new 3CD set of live recordings is going to be available for downlaod from Zunior at the end of this month to mark the fifth anniversary of their final gig...

Today, more work on Pam's estate - it all just talkes so long but we're kind of getting there...

Not really enjoyable work...

Elsewhere, a few days ago, while trawling e-bay for cheap CDs (as I do from time to time), I came across four jazz albums at £1 each (plus £1 each postage) by a Guitar/Bass/Drums (plus occasional guests on sax, keys etc) Swedish/English/Danish trio and duly bought all four...

They arrived today...



The four disc chart the progress of Stekpanna from their 1997 debut through to a head-and-shoulders-above-what-went-before fourth album from 2004...

Nice (as they used to say on "The Fast Show")...

And a bargain at just eight of your English pounds for the set...

Elsewhere, the new drama series "White Heat" commenced on BBC1, charting the lives of six students who came together in a shared house in 1965 - told in flashback from the point where they meet again following the death, at the same house, of the MP's son (one of the six) who "owned" the house...

Considering it's now 47 years since 1965 and Juliet Stephenson was playing the young English Lit student in the present day - that would put her at an unbelievable 64....

Unless I've missed something and it's not based in "the present"...

Anyway, not bad, if full of all the usual cliches of these "looking back to the past" dramas - the posters in the background, the music, the characters just so happening to take part in famous events of the time in a nudge nudge wink wink to the people of the future who know about the past and who are watching now kind of way etc etc - and we will no doubt continue to watch and enjoy...

Meanwhile, Meg the Black Cat continued to like being inside a bag - like most cats I suppose...



Lights out...

Highlight of the Day : Thankfully at least one of the four new CDs being quite good...