Let down by tech...

Playlist
New Order - Best Of New Order
Capital Models - Capital Models Sets 2014
Max Richter - Retrospective
King Crimson - Discipline
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
Elton John - Greatest Hits
Miles Davis - Live at the Plugged Nickel
Various Composers - The Sound of Yellow Lounge

A relaxing day mostly with the lurgi on the cusp of being vanquished (till the next time)...

October down...



Early on some sorting of the setlists for the upcoming gig, in light of the various instrumental permutations open to us as a trio now that Jim can no longer take part...

Last night's "Big Bang" and "Drifters" entertained...

In the afternoon, a solo rehearsal, playing along to the rehearsal tapes...

This was worked around a visit to Anne's mum's to deliver the photos of her recent Irish trip, her supervisation of the tweaking of which took place at Crispycat Towers a couple of weeks back...

In the evening, to Jane and Bobby's and, from there, to Keith and Maureen's for a great evening of lovely wine/gin, very tasty food, top sounds and good chat...

The siblings...

Bob fobbing off the paparazzi...

A giant plate of sweet potato and carrot mash - yum...

Lamb - also yum...

Not pictured were the curried prawn on bread starter and the fruit crumble sweet...

Double yum...

A drink induced display of glasses trying on pics on Bob's phone took place...

,,,before mine were tried...

Keith's music choice also entertained - Elton, Bowie and Miles Davis...

Some Schoenberg and Debussy has been requested from the CBQ library...

On the way home, Bobby failed miserably to get his phone to link to the car via Bluetooth - let down by tech - as Jane and Anne coped admirably with the nonsense chat emanating from the rear seats...

Bob's in the market for a smartwatch apparently...

it's like living in an episode of "Thunderbirds" these days...

Back home, some further listening...

...before hitting the sack around 1 or so...

Highlight of the Day : Family night out...

Pants, seat thereof...

Playlist
Max Richter - Retrospective
Various - Jackie The Album Vol 2
DAF - Alles ist Gut
Fehlfarben - Knietief im Dispo
Udo Lindenberg - Drohnland Symphonie
Capital Models - Capital Models Sets 2014

Driech this morning - the lurgi almost gone but still lingering slightly...

This evening to nephew Andy's for a two man rehearsal - here he is sorting his songsheets into the latest running order...

He has an impressive array of instruments...

New ways of working were worked out following news today that Jim Park is definitely out of the gig given his ongoing hospital stay and unlikely ability to drum upon his discharge...

Meanwhile, niece in law Tori's parents are heading up for the weekend - seen here "facetimeing" - meaning Andy cannot rehearse again until a week on Sunday, less than three weeks before the gig - which will be our first rehearsal in the format in which we will play...

Pants, seat thereof...

Home to watch the end of "Question Time" and "This Week"...

Highlight of the Day : Rehearsing...

Ships in the night...

Playlist
King Crimson - The Road to Red Vols 4-7
Various - Dub Club Volume 002
Max Richter - Retrospective

Probably the final flowers in the back garden this morning...

Good skies at lunchtime...

In the early evening, some Dub listening after a day of live King Crimson...

Later "Scott & Bailey"...

Drummer Jim still in hospital as far as I'm aware - rehearsing with Keyboard Andy tomorrow and Bassist (or, possibly, Drummer again) Keith on Sunday...

Looking forward to the entire band coming together at some point before the gig...

That would be good...

Finally, a new download, the four CD retrospective, on Deutsche Grammophon, of the music of Max Richter...

Superb...

Highlight of the Day : Max Richter...

A court re-entered...

Playlist
Uriah Heep - Epic Uriah Heep 1970-2014
Ken Hensley & John Wetton - More Than Conquerors
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Morphinecodex
Alice Cooper - The Alice Cooper Group Singles 1970-1973
King Crimson - The Road To Red (01) Columbus, OH 28/04/74
King Crimson - The Road To Red (02) Pittsburgh, PA 29/04/74

Yep, lurgi still present...

Shifted my listening today from Heep to CBQ to the Coop to Crimso...

In the evening, a chicken based dinner and loadsa telly, including two "CSI"s - series over...

My switch to Crimso was inspired by a Facebook post from Sid Smith alerting me to an offer at Amazon on the new 27CD(!!) box "Starless"...

Some listening to last year's "The Road to Red", along with the price of under £4 a disc...

...led me to capitulate and order...

Looking forward to its arrival...

Highlight of the Day : Crimson...

Wonderworld...

Playlist
King Crimson - The Road to Red Improvs
Uriah Heep - Wonderworld
Uriah Heep - Return To Fantasy
Uriah Heep - High And Mighty
Uriah Heep - Live '73
Various - Now That's What I Called Music 1959-????
Uriah Heep - Innocent Victim
Robert Fripp - Perspectives And Distortion
Uriah Heep - Demons And Wizards
Uriah Heep - Conquest
Uriah Heep - Epic Uriah Heep

Still under the influence of the lurgi...

No acquisitions today despite visits to both HMV and Fopp - bumping into brother in law Bobby in the latter, doing his weekly scan of what he ought to be listening to on Spotify and/or Deezer...

Back home, eschewing TV, post "Big Bang" reruns and a tasty chilli from the Exec Producer, a further ten discs of fave singles from the early eighties were added to the hard drives...

Despite this sustenantial intake I hit my all time low again today and hope to be able to partake again soon from the Ritter Sport stash residing in the fridge...

Meanwhile, what's this?

It's probably too many Uriah Heep CDs...

The mighty Heep formed much of my listening today...

It's now just over 40 years since I saw the classic Box/Byron/Hensley/Kerslake/Thain line up at the Edinburgh Odeon...

Jeez-oh...

Elsewhere, text correspondence with drummer Jim revealed he is still in hospital and his leg pain is down to "a bug" - he is being kept in...

Rehearsals will continue on Thursday with a duo session at Andy's concentrating on keyboard lines and backing vocals...

Soldiering on...

Highlight of the Day : Heep reminiscences and, of course, the EP's culinary skills...

The horror...

Playlist
Various - Now That's What I Called Music 1978 - 1980
Thomas Köner - Tiento de las Nieves (Preview)
Capital Models - Rehearsal Tapes
Various - Capital Models Covers : The Originals

Still not free of the lurgi...

Added more old singles to the hard drive this morning before getting ready for today's work...

Oh, and ordered the upcoming new release from Thomas Köner...

To Keith's around midday, dropped off by Anne who was off to Jane and Bobby's to watch the Edinburgh derby, which Hearts pulled out of the fire with an equaliser in the 92nd minute, a 1-1 draw maintaining their unbeaten record in the league by the skin of their teeth and keeping Hibernian a further two points behind Queens than they might have been...

Meanwhile, the setting up took place...

Hard work for the trio of music makers...

No drums today, with Jim texting to advise he was still in hospital...

Anne arrived around 4:30 to end the session - probably for the best - these early days are always the worst...

We will soldier on...

To Anne's mum's for the first full family tea for a good while...

A magnificent pavlova (featuring white chocolate) was the centrepiece, following tasty marinated in a spicy barbecue sauce chicken...

Some shenanigans took place between Mr CBQ and his favourite niece...

We decided to advertise Diet Coke...

...and Kitty was getting ready for Hallowe'en...

The most horrific moment though, was discovering - aargh!

...that she had eaten an out of date biscuit!!

Meanwhile...

...brother-in-law Keith was disappointed to find that only his arm featured in the second Diet Coke ad...

Home to "Downton" for Anne and some listening back to today's work for me...

Highlight of the Day : Playing with the band, dining with the family...

Past and future...

Playlist
Various - Now That's What I Called Music 1959-1977
Various - Dub Club Volume 001

The majority of this still under the weather day was spent working on compiling a 2015 calendar as a present for Anne's mum - which involved trawling through all the pics taken over the last year (plus around 700 of Anne's mum's pics) to choose suitable images of family members and pets...

Whilst doing this, I was listening to my compilations originally undertaken around 15 years ago to record my own personal history of popular music from 1959 onwards...

Three episodes of "CSI" were also caught up on, a call with my mum advising no visit due to lurgi, Queens drawing at Livingston after being 2-0 up and the third last "Dr Who", which wasn't great but the trailer for the upcoming two part finale looked very promising...

Hoping for some lurgi respite re tomorrow's rehearsal....

Highlight of the Day : Old music...

Weekly Playlist No 43

Welcome to the Cloudland Blue Weekly Playlist No 43...

This week's two hour cloudcast brings you two dozen tasty treats, including four covers by Alice Cooper from his new live set, four tracks from Yello and its constituent parts, two songs from Canadian songwriter Justin Rutledge, brand new power pop from OK Go, Mike Garson's take on a David Bowie standard, while Mr B is also present himself with a cheeky wee hit single...

There's some dark ambience from Thomas Köner and, from the imminent "Morphinecodex" set, Cloudland Blue Quartet...

There's a smidgen of classical from Beethoven and Bach and some prog related stuff from Rush, Trevor Rabin, Pink Floyd and Roger Waters...

But we kick off with some seventies classics from Mott, Quo and Elton...

All of which have entertained during the last seven days...

...and during which time, light entered the CBQ camera thus...

Using the button over to the right, you can join over 1,100 other Mixcloud followers of these eclectic weekly musical selections...

If you're interested in knowing about any of the tracks, contact me...

Press play and away we go...

Cloudland Blue Weekly Playlist No 43 by Cloudland Blue Quartet on Mixcloud

Mott The Hoople - All The Way From Memphis  5:03
from "Mott"

Status Quo - Down Down  3:50
from "On the Level"

Elton John - Your Song  4:04
from "Elton John"

David Bowie - Golden Years  4:02
from "Station To Station"

Mike Garson - Life on Mars  5:28
from "The Bowie Variations"

OK Go - Upside Down & Inside Out  3:08
from "Hungry Ghosts"

Beethoven - Piano Sonata #23 In F Minor, Op. 57, Andante Con Moto  6:11
from "Alfred Brendel : Beethoven Piano Concerto #5, Piano Sonata, Op. 57"

J S Bach - Lute Suite In G Minor, BWV 995, Praeludium  6:52
from "Walter Gerwig : Music For Lute"

Justin Rutledge - Heather In The Pines  7:54
from "Valleyheart"

Justin Rutledge - Looking For A Place To Happen  6:08
from "Daredevil"

Boris Blank - Cigarette Girl  1:48
from "Avant Garden Vol. 1"

Yello - Lost Again  4:21
from "You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess"

Dieter Meier - Lazy Night  3:25
from "Out Of Chaos"

Boris Blank - Aqua Marine  4:42
from "Rote Fabrik"

Thomas Köner  - Novaya Zemlya 2  12:51
from "Novaya Zemlya"

Cloudland Blue Quartet - The Pastoral Province  7:25
from "Morphinecodex"

Alice Cooper - Break On Through  3:27
Alice Cooper - Revolution  2:56
Alice Cooper - Foxy Lady  3:51
Alice Cooper - My Generation  3:03
from "Raise the Dead : Live From Wacken"

Rush - Territories  6:21
from "Power Windows"

Trevor Rabin - Market Street  5:36
from "Jacaranda"

Pink Floyd - Pigs on the Wing Pts 1 & 2  2:29
from "Animals"

Roger Waters - Amused To Death  9:06
from "Amused To Death"

Hope you enjoy this week's selection and will pop by again next week for another weekly playlist from Mr CBQ...

An unwanted reflex action...

Playlist
Various - Weekly Playlst no 43
Various - Dub Club Volume 001
Various - Crucial Music No 2
Various - Top Ten Albums 1959
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Morphinecodex
IQ - The Road Of Bones
Portnoy, Sheehan, MacAlpine & Sherinian - Live In Tokyo
Redemption - Live From The Pit
Robert Plant - Lullaby And... The Ceaseless Roar
Enchant - The Great Divide

Another day on which I did not venture forth...

I listened again to the new CBQ...

Things were still done though, despite the continuing influence of the dreaded lurgi...

Much time spent at the computer doing stuff that needed to get done...

And stuff that, frankly, didn't...

Meanwhile, new music arrived via Dropbox from Prog Rock Willie to entertain...

Later on, some CDs were kind of sorted out (i.e. taken from where they were stored in no order, piled up, sorted and alphabetised and put back to where they'd formerly been)...



Four separate playlists were concocted this evening...

Firstly, tomorrow's weekly take on the weekly ear input...

Then, the first in a possible new series - the banned from happening in real life by the Exec Producer, Dub Club...

This was followed by a stab at a second "crucial music" podcast, featuring tracks from albums bought in 1972, 1979, 1986, 1993, 2000 and 2007 and still admired...

Finally, a set featuring tracks from my fave albums of 1959 - all (understandably) jazz...

On TV, "Big Bang" reruns, "Not Going Out" and "Have I Got News For You"...

Highlight of the day though was a delicious chicken curry concocted by the EP in her inimitable fashion - mmm, mmm...

For a few happy moments, there was no coughing from Mr CBQ...

Elsewhere, disturbing news from drummer Jim - he has been admitted to hospital for tests on his errant leg...

Hopefully it will be found to be nothing serious...

His health must come before the band though and perhaps his playing last Sunday was an error on both our parts...

Fingers crossed for my old chum...

Highlight of the Day : Anne's curry...