once upon a time ...

 

Once upon a time there was a big man, with a big field and a shiny, new tractor to keep it all nicely mown.  He had a big trailer to carry things in as well.

One day the big man put some children in the back of his trailer and took them for a lovely ride up and down in his big field.  He let one of the children steer the shiny, new tractor.

The big man still lives there and he still has a big field. The children are all grown up now and the shiny new tractor has a patina of rust. It still mows the field though!

top ten albums - no. 6

Dear Sheddists,

no Top Ten list of mine could ever be complete without a King Crimson album.  I've followed the works of Robert Fripp since I was a small boy hearing the roar of 'Twenty First Century Schizoid Man' through my bedroom wall. It came courtesy of an Island sampler called, "Nice Enough to Eat' owned by elder brother, Bruce.

The very first King Crimson album I bought was the debut, 'In the Court of the Crimson King'. As a teenager I also loved the much neglected and oft maligned, 'Islands'. It's very pleasing to see that at least two songs from that album ('the Letters' and 'Sailor's Tale') now feature regularly on the live sets of the latest incarnation of King Crimson.

More of that later, but back to the albums.  Others followed in quick succession, including the legendary 'Larks Tongues in Aspic' and a trio of sharp, poly-rhythmic albums featuring the distinctive voice and guitar of Adrian Belew. He brought an almost Talking Heads-like feel to the music and it's unsurprising to learn he once turned down an offer to replace David Byrne in that band.

Mr Fripp has never stayed in one place for too long. Both his music and the band that plays it changes and morphs with delightful regularity.  Indeed, at one point he launched a whole series of bands simultaneously under the collective name of the ProjeKcts.

The album I've chosen is one of the more recent King Crimson live sets, called, 'Radical Action to Unseat the Monkey Mind'. 

In recent years Mr Fripp has put together a fantastic seven piece touring band, featuring three drummers, to re-imagine selections from the mightily impressive King Crimson back catalogue. These are drawn from many different eras and iterations of the band and the fact they integrate so well with each other and with the various impromptu sound landscapes that punctuate the performance is testimony to his music genius. 

Mr Fripp once described the contrast between King Crimson's studio albums and their live outings as the difference between receiving a love letter and a going on a hot date. We saw the band play two years ago and it was most certainly a hot date! We're due to see them again later this year and we're very much looking forward to a similarly exciting experience!

dreams and nightmares - no. 84

 a forest

green leaves bid sun-lit dapple

forest bird's call shrill as

new life springs from the morning

dreams and nightmares - no. 83

 kitchen garden

Our homework this week is to produce a picture in homage to one of our favourite photographers.  I chose the fantastic Gregory Crewdson.

Crewdson's images are often surreal in nature, sometimes disturbing and always challenging. Their hallmark is an intricate, beautifully-lit, cinematic setting. Clearly I can come nowhere near his level, but for this series of photos I chose to focus on three elements of Crewsdon's inimitable style, namely surrealism, setting and light.

As regards the first, I decided to create a mini-garden within my kitchen - a play on words. The setting was created using a perspex sheet on the floor which I covered with grass-cuttings and leaves from the garden and compost from the potting-shed. Various pot-plants and flowers from around the house completed the background.

I wanted to use a natural light but had to wait a little while for the sun to move round the house until it provided a shaft of light through the kitchen window. You can see this on the right-hand side of the photos and it's particularly effective in the shots where it lights up the tread on my wellington boots.

I really enjoyed taking these photos and may well return to the theme at a later date. I've already spotted one or two things I would like to improve but for now, what do you think?

dreams and nightmares - no. 82

the owl man

You really couldn't make this one up!

Yesterday, whilst having lunch at the house of an old-friend, there was a knock at the front-door. Exactly how do you react when you discover a white-bearded man outside dressed in authentic Elizabethan costume and holding what looks to be a turbo-charged TV aerial?!!

To cut a long story short he was the falconer at a local Shakespearean heritage site and his barn-owl had been attacked by a clattering of jackdaws. The poor bird, who we subsequently learned was called 'Arwen' after a character in Lord of the Rings, had taken flight in panic. She was now hidden somewhere in my friend's garden.

Fortunately, barn owl and falconer were successfully re-united, as can be seen from the photo above.

meeting mogul the puppy

top ten albums - no. 5

Dear Sheddists,

those of a certain age will be familiar with the term, 'mix-tape'.  It refers to the recording of favourite tracks onto a cassette tape, usually with the purpose of impressing either less knowledgeable aficionados or the current teenage crush of the recorder.  From such crude early beginnings sprang a vibrant, new phenomena known as the DJ mix.

Pre-eminent among the early exponents were the pairing of Welshman, Alexander Paul Coe (better known as Sasha) and a native of Hastings called John Digweed.  Cutting their teeth at the legendary Renaissance club they became superstars of the emerging electronic dance music movement with the release of the first of three mixes under the Northern Exposure banner. It's a truly magnificent work in which songs flow seamlessly from one to another.

I've always loved electronic music with a passion from the early works of Tangerine Dream to the modern-day sounds of Floating Points and Ulrich Schnauss so the free-flowing Northern Exposure mix was an obvious choice for my top ten albums.