R.I.P Charlie Watts

 As I've always said from day one on this blog we don't do much talking about music or the arts generally as the focus is very much on me and this life, which given the traumatic history of my tumblr accounts you'll realize I need a safe place to talk around that without posts and accounts just going.

Still, sometimes we break that rule such as when we looked at artists that played a part in some aspect of my life and this week it is the same.

The Rolling Stones were many things, outlaws of society, cultural icons, a part of the development of youth culture that still impacts on today's youth as it did in ours but above all else a part of the soundtrack of our lives for decades.

I grew up listening to the Rolling Stones with my first recollections including hearing Brown Sugar on the radio when I was very young and almost certainly heard Honky Tonk Woman as we watched Top of the Pops and it would of featured on the end of year program and the best sellers pop chart rundown being a bit over four fingers and a thumb years of age.

I had the music bug then, which may of been connected to my at the time undiagnosed autism so within the limits of my development over those years followed artists such as the Rolling Stones who as we moved further into the seventies were seen as more the established acts compared to our likes of The Rollers, Gary Glitter, Sweet and Slade.

What as the years went by I appreciated was Charlie's drumming, the rhythm section is at the core of jazz and rock music, driving it forward which was not particularly showy but was as Joan Jett put it neither too little or too much - just right.

Unlike Rush's Neil Peart, Charlie had no formal credited input into the Stones' songs so their were few moments to highlight his contribution but then Charlie always saw himself as the drummer of the band and that was the extent of his involvement, preferring to step outside the rock star lifestyle spending time with his family and pursuing hobbies such as breeding Arabian Horses, collecting classic cars and so on.

This said listen to the playing on say Far Away Eyes, Hot Stuff and Flight 505 and you can hear his jazz influences showing in how he played percussion.

He was by training a graphic designer having gone to Art School to study it and when he joined the band was employed working for one, one of the few Stones who had a 'proper' job and his abilities showed with this 1966 singles sleeve design and his involvement in designing stage sets and tour launching events

It probably means at the end of the postponed tour that just prior to his hospitalization he said he'd need to be at hospital but felt the fans needed the tour with how the pandemic had affected people agreed to a substitute drummer, the Rolling Stones will cease to be a touring and recording entity.

Thus his death as said as it is is also an end of an era one we can be thankful for what he and the remaining Rolling Stones contributed to our lives.

This weeks round up

 

This week to be honest hasn't been a great week to be out with heavy showers across much of it which has meant a few changes of plans here and a few other things.

I found a box full of slides, I think part duplicates of some black and white print film pictures I too from September of 2006 of trains, the Snowdonia National Park and small villages about I took on my Minolta film camera.

If I remember right, I had two film bodies with me and in effect I swapped over the lenses between the one with Ilford 400 black and white print and the X500 with Fuji Velvia 100 colour slide film which was faster than the in vogue Velvia 50 so more suited for handheld photograph as much as I preferred to use a tripod with quick release plates beneath both.

One day I'll get around to scanning them in as later in before I got my first Digital Camera, I did get scans done while they were being processed and mounted which I then used for blogs.

I did replace a few compact discs with bad marks on from when I had for a short period a cd player that tended to cause discs to overshoot and get stuck causing abrasive marks this week apart from continuing on that Tumblr I mentioned last Friday which is now up to post 700.

The Evolving Tumblr II

 I last write about this topic in June of this year after the kerfuffle around one individuals antics and how one group of people tried to shut down an account making patently false allegations alleging a connection.

The problem on the account to which the successor to TSB went to was that quite simply through a series of actions over the years by Tumblr, it had no Primary account only secondaries and permissions were limited up to and including the inability to delete the entire account.

What I have decided to do is to totally remake that blog  titled Smol Forever 10 to the following url pasttimesforever10 which is going to take some time I suspect up to October because Tumblr being Tumblr does not have the tools that other blogging type sites have where you just export and import all your posts in a jiffy.

Instead you laboriously have to copy over all your old posts reblogging from sources any reblogs you had which takes time.

The Tumblr will be unrepentantly very much boys centred as was the original cos frankly I'm not into girlish stuff and child friendly in accordance with that of era I was younger in with nothing that would not of been acceptable in comics, magazines and tv for a younger audience back then because I remain very much one.

It's also the case some sources I may reblog from may well have modern day bio-kids following to and it just would not be right for them to follow a link back to somewhere that wasn't okay for them either although it doesn't belong to any age regression community unlike my others.

While it will reference things such as school uniform, it's not going to be uniform based blog partially cos there's a finite number of images around and also cos while I dress all the time as a boy, being one is about more the life and interests you have as that boy than just attire.

To me this thing was always about that life never anything else and that's why as the weeks go by the remade tumblr will be the way that it is.

Deja Vu and reset IV

 

The last time we visited this mini series of entries was in November of 2020 just as we were coming out of the second lockdown because lockdown had brought to a head a number of things around being age dysphoric when you are involuntarily a child regardless of your bone age and the struggles of trying to cope with everything.

I found I needed to have things to look forward to as bad as the pandemic turned out to of  had affected my outlook and general mental well-being and that meant I needed things that took me out of it, that engaged with my interests but at a more mental age level and so it was I had comics and magazines that arrived regardless just like I did as a child.

Unlike then even getting to and finding a newsagent that stocked them was difficult with restrictions on the buses and some shop only having limited stock.

When I was away, one of my comics, The Beano arrived and upon my return I noticed the envelope  was a good deal thicker than usual.

Opening it I found this.

It was described as being a "free complementary copy" of a new magazine by the same publisher in association with the Animal Planet tv channel which seems to be aimed more for 8 1/2 to 13 year olds filling the gap between the younger animal interest magazines and grown up titles.

Reading it, it soon showed interest for having good easy for me to read articles about animals and the natural environment full of facts and figures, not just pictures a few words and kewl emocions but having some rigour about it.

Actually a number of schools are using it as a resource and it is liked by educators.

I was very impressed by it and what is more you did have the option of having a gift free offer for a bit less bypassing the craze at the moment for cover mounts although Animal Planet say theirs are recyclable.

I just don't feel they should be there on unless it's something of use use like a bird spotting guide 

As the covermount free edition could be had on a direct debit thing (you pay a fixed amount per month from your bank) for £34.99 delivered for one issue every four weeks it's not just cheaper than the shop edition, but very good value for money, I've placed an order.