Walkabout pt 346...

Playlist
Various - Last 100 Acquisitions
John Lee Hooker - Alternative Boogie: Studio Recordings 1948-52
Various - Entire Hard Drive Library via Spotify
Various - Natural Progression Vols 1-19 (1967-79)
Various - Refilled iPod Touch

Downstairs first thing at around 6:45 to find Meg the Black Cat...

...had taken my last 100 acquisitions (which includes 8 albums in one box by Duke Ellington) from the living room shelf, carefully placed them on the dining room table...

...and taken a series of photographs...

OK I've acquired quite a lot of music already this year as you can see but I'm actually quite pleased with the selection...

A podiatrist's appointment beckoned and I decided to walk but couldn't remember how long it took the last time I did so, eight weeks ago...

So I set out at 7:30...

...down Crispycat Hill...

...past the Zoo...

...through the drizzle...

...past the roads to Anne's mum's and Jane & Bobby's and on past the strange house...

...the Chinese Consulate and Murrayfield (behind the trees)...

..to Roseburn - in just over 40 minutes...

So, I was early - got warmed up in Vigo with a nice coffee...

..and was right on time for my 8:45 with Helen...

Some good entertaining chat re exercise and nutrition while she did her magic on Mr Quartet's feet...

Out around 9:10 and onwards along the Water of Leith...

...past the bridge which will feature...

... on the "Riverleaves" cover...

...and past the Sports Centre, where Capital Models played two weeks ago...

...and ignored the "Footpath Closed " sign...

...and the other one a little way along - clambering over the padlocked fence...

...through Dean Village...

...past the being-repaired St Bernard's Well...

...into Stockbridge, drying off a little in Cafe Nero...

The beast was about its business once again...

..which consisted mostly of sitting around posing for the camera, sipping coffee and texting Anne..

Back out into the rain and round the corner to Voxbox where a 3CD set of early John Lee Hooker was acquired for no particular reason, certainly not because I am a fan of "the blues", because I am not...

Into Patisserie Florentin to wait for the Exec Producer to arrive (with a dry coat for your correspondent)...

Breakfast was accompanied by some planning for changes...

Home, and I downloaded Spotify onto the PC - much better for curating all the music on my hard drives than iTunes has proven to be...

It kept me entertained all afternoon while Anne was out at Kitty's annual dancing show...

Much hilarity at today's footie results with the mighty Celtic losing to Ross County 3-2 after leading 2-0 and The Rangers being beaten at Ibrox by Annan Athletic...

And these teams think they ought to be in the English Premier League?

Meanwhile Queens went 20 points clear in Division Two with yet another win...

Hearts play Hibs tomorrow...

Tasty pasta on Anne's return, followed by "Let's Dance for Comic Relief" before more music listening and, finally, "Law & Order : Criminal Intent" - we cannot yet watch "Spiral" series 4, as we await the DVD of series 3 from brother-in-law Keith...

Lights out...

Highlight of the Day : Dr Prog's beloved Spotify finally makes an impression...

Mood is important when there's a distinct lack of a tune...

Playlist
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Riverleaves
Various - iPod
Various - Last 100 Acquisitions

The iPod continues to entertain...

But, first thing, the new album was played in the car as I drove to the far side of town...

...on a car related errand...

I did not go through any red lights...

...and i did not speed...

Then to the dentist...

Nothing to relate re the day...

In the early evening, the beast was about its business on Crispycat Hill...

...trudging through the rain...

...and registering "cold" on the heatmap...

With Anne off to zumba, Meg the Black Cat and I watched the second episode of BBC4's "The Sound and the Fury", with its tales of the Darmstadt School and the British wave, led by Maxwell-Davies and Birtwhistle...

For me, this may well be the most interesting period in history with regard to music...

As I've said before though, you have to be in the right mood to listen or it all just sounds like tuneless rubbish...

Tonight, I was in the mood...

Upstairs, I updated the red books of CDs I own with the 100 acquisitions made so far in 2013...

...whilst listening to them...

A break for a tasty Indian takeaway brought home by a returning Anne...

Then more mucking about and purchasing of Maxwell-Davis string quartets and a tasty wee box of 20th Century stuff including Taverner, Ligeti, Webern, Varese, Lutoslawski, Takemitsu, Birtwhistle, Cage and Schnittke, prior to hitting the sack...

Turned out good again...

Highlight of the Day : 20th Century Classics...

Swithering about crossfading...

Playlist
Various - iPod on Shuffleplay
Holzmann - Wandelung
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Riverleaves
Various Composers - The Artistry of Martha Argerich
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Soundingfall
Ten Years After - Ssssh
Ten Years After - Cricklewood Green
Capital Models - Covers EP
Alban Berg Quartett - Berio's Notturno

Another walk down to Stockbridge on what was a horrible cold drizzly wet day...

My camera war nicht dabei...

At the Shelter shop, two discs - one seen the other day and the reason for my return - two piano cycles by German born pianist Vonzi Holzmann and then, spotted in the window, a two disc set of one of my fave pianists, the Argentinian Martha Argerich, adjudged by many to be the "finest and most complete female pianist of all time" - which is playing as I type this...

Helene Grimaud's not bad either of course...

Also tonight, after a very tasty home made Beef Stroganoff from the fair hand of the Exec Producer, I listened to the new CBQ album - due out next month - and swithered about amending it to individual tracks rather than one 45 minute cross-faded piece...

We shall see...

Late on designing a revised cover for the CM's EP...

And buying some string quartet music online - an Alban Berg Quartett box set and the Belgian Baroque Orchestra of Ghent mixing Vivaldi and Cage...

Four years ago today, I was working on a new song...

It was pretty good, if I say so myself...

Highlight of the Day : Annie's cooking...

No to dub club...

Playlist
Various - iPod Music Selection
Various - Jamaican Recordings Dub Sampler Vol 3

Another visit to Fopp today - and approached the counter with a £6 disc of Jamaican Dub Reggae in my hand, expecting to be charged £4.20 - but it seems they have now ended their 30% off sale...

I wonder if they will start getting any new stock in or if they are going down the pan...

Back home, an early evening of listening to said top dub stuff whilst looking through a large number of reggae discs from the collection was undertaken...

I asked the Exec Producer if I ought to start a reggae club...

I could call it "Dub Club"...

The answer came back in the negative...

Later, "CSI" was enjoyed before a comparatively early hitting of the proverbial sack...

highlight of the Day : New dub...

On, to number nine...

Playlist
Various - iPod Touch Selection
Rzewski - Piano Recitals
Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No 2
Various Composers - History of the String Quartet

A nice, if cold, day to start off the ninth year of consecutive daily blogging about nothing in particular...

Mystery pic...

At lunchtime, a walk down to Stockbridge...

No purchases...

On the way home, a building was being painted...

The evening was spent with Meg the Black Cat, Anne once again at Tynecastle where, tonight, at last, the JTs managed a win - 2-0 v St Johnstone...

Huzzah and a hey nonny nonny...

Meanwhile, Meg and I prepared some replacement Pet Shop Boys discs for chum Chris-with-a-Ch, his originals having been squashed to bits in an inadvertent car-enters-field-at-speed scenario earlier this year...

We did not listen to Pet Shop Boys though - we listened to string quartets and Rachmaninov - having watched "Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles" and the first part of BBC4's documentary on 20th Century Music...

Anne returned smiling and we watched even more TV to round off the day - very possibly the things I said we watched last night...

Highlight of the Day : Terminator..

Infernal machines...

Playlist
Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies
Earthworks - Earthworks
Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
Audience - Friends Friends Friend
Various - iPod
Rzewski - Piano Recitals

Wiped the iPod again - not sure if I did it on purpose - but loaded in a few albums to soundtrack the day...

At lunchtime a visit to a pretty empty looking Fopp resulted in the purchase of Audience's second album, which impressed in places but was a little bit "of its time" in others...

On TV some stuff was watched including the first part of "Broadchalk" or Broadchurch" or something,  "Law & Order : Criminal Intent" and a new comedy based in an army camp in Afghanistan - which kind of struck the right balance between comedy and tragedy I think...

Highlight of the day : Mucking about with the iPod...

Visitors...

Playlist
Various - Songs from the iPod
Rzewski - Piano Recitals
Various - Blue 45s

Another morning of trying to get to grips with the iPod...

Out to my mum's in the early afternoon...

She was on good form, enjoying a cup of coffee from her very rare "Starlightnight" mug...



Then, back over to Fife to see John and Ali's new house in the daylight - me having forgotten my specs upon leaving last night...

Coffee and a doughnut were enjoyed...

Our last visit of the day was to Anne's mum's for home made curry and family chat...

Comparing notes with Keith and Maureen re the London trip and our upcoming couple of days to be spent there...

Home to Meg and some TV - "Person of Interest" being the highlight...

Highlight of the day : Visiting...

Believing the starter to be the main...

Playlist
Sumner McKane - Select Visual History
Alice Cooper - Killer
Various - Possible Covers
Brian Eno w/ Jah Wobble - Spinner
Various - Random Music Loaded Randomly by iTunes into my iPod
Norman Lamont - New Ideas
David Ackles - American Gothic
Donald Byrd - Royal Flush

Up shortly after five - and the first five hours of my day was spent trying to sort out iTunes...

Luckily, a wee chum was on hand to help...

Ended up wiping my iPod back to factory settings and managed to load in one LP, "Killer" by Alice Cooper..

That was fine for now...

Off we went out for breakfast, to be followed by shopping for jumpers and shirts - a whim having taken me yesterday to do such a thing today...

First though, to Leith...

...and an attempted 10:30 breakfast at the King's Wark (supposedly the purveyor of the best brunches in Edinburgh) only to find it still closed...

..while the nearby Granary was only selling coffee...

So we did some shopping then ended up at the trusty Patisserie Florentin for a cheeky wee petit dejeuner...

...an hour or so later we were back on the road...

...and a goodly number of outlandish and not so outlandish shirts was acquired along with a snug as a bug in a rug cardigan and a nice cloudland blue jumper...

Home to "sync" the iPod and I decided to allow iTunes to randomly fill the 16GBs with anything it wanted from the 11,000 albums in my library...

...which it did quite happily and without complaint from either me or it...

Then, to choosing some items of clothing to be replaced by the new stuff - all this instead of attending a record fair, having received no missives from either Count Brodski or Dr Prog advising their presence would be on hand...

Many shirts and a couple of pairs of trousers were said goodbye to...



Meanwhile, Anne was at Tynecastle, to watch Hearts take their fifth defeat in a row - this time at the hands of Motherwell - while Queens beat East Fife in Fife by the odd goal in five...

Perused a few blogs around the net...

Listened to some of Norman Lamont's new ideas and pondered stealing them...

Sid Smith led me to listen to David Ackles...

While, on reading Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus's blog - which took me to some tasty Donald Byrd - I came across a link to 25 pieces by Frederic Rzweski for free download...

I, of course, partook...

The site itself, The Petrucci Music Library, is an excellent source of non-copyright classical material, boasting over 22,000 performances...

So I enjoyed some avant garde piano music as we prepared for tonight's night out, a get together at Impossible Songs' new place over in the Kingdom of Fife...

The Reillys, Mackays, Lamonts and Barclay-Grahams enjoyed an excellent evening of much food and drink...

...and entertaining chat - including whether we were going to apply for the Mars trip and just how far you can wind a flatwound G string on a guitar - doing d'doing doing doing doing...

 Clint the Ginger Cat (who we first met as a tiny kitten) was not impressed...

Much to the Exec Producer's delight, at no point did we undertake a sing song...

Our taxi arrived to bring us back over the bridge around 12:20 and we were tucked up in bed by 1:30...

Excellent evening...

Highlight of the Day : Top notch dinner party type thang...

A fruity item from a serpent...

Playlist
Various - Potential Covers
Sumner McKane - Select Visual History
David Bowie - The Next Day

Another beautiful day - much of which I did not witness...

This, however, on the way home in the twilight...

Much of - in fact almost the entire - evening, was spent re trying to sort out iTunes on the PC...

I have downloaded this Spawn of Satan a few times before and always it has ended in an uninstall scenario with vows never to try again - my ex-Dr Prog iPod lying devoid of any content and used purely to peruse t'internet when located far from the PC (or Anne's iPad)...

If I had had hair prior to this undertaking, it would have been pulled out...

I was multi-tasking tonight - while I did this, I was also ripping more than the already over 200 possible covers to be considered in an ongoing fashion - having gone through my collection from a-z, I am now making my way through the compilations...

Eventually, I did manage to get iTunes kind of up and running - albeit in a fairly hopeless fashion, were I to want to use it as the means with which to listen to music at the PC, due to the repeated stuttering - but I did manage to achieve my main aim - which was to get a reasonable listen to the new David Bowie album, which is up for free streaming until its release date...

While much of it was adjudged (subjectively) to be very good indeed - some of it would not make it onto a 35 minute album...

Off to bed with all machines still running, in an attempt to update artwork for the 10 or 11 thousand albums I have (possibly foolishly) loaded into my iTunes library...

This Apple thing, might well indeed be the self-same fruity item offered to Adam and Eve by the Serpent, back in the old days...

Highlight of the Day : New Bowie Album...