Telly

In the main it's been a warm week excepting Wednesday which naturally I was out in, sticking post-its to the letterbox for the mail and assorted couriers.

Television it must be said isn't a major thing with me.

I mean there people who watch from the crack of dawn to bedtime, plowing through box sets and three or four part continuious re-runs or sorts who just click through channels trying to find something.

My tv habits were formed in childhood and they tended to be just a few shows between other things like playing or as I got old between sessions playing records although radio as in daytime or weekend end show or a weekday concerts.

Televisions themselves have changed since then.

The big box with the rear of it's tube neck sticking out behind its back has been replaced by lcd displays that are much thinnner and totally flat with improvements  in geometry as those of you had those early 32" widescreen cathode ray tubes in the 90's might well remember.

Back then the dvd player and early digital tv gave us better actual widescream programming where today we have blue ray and for some very high defination streaming.

Well recently our Panasonic 32" set died - power supply issue affecting the lcd drivers - so we got a Sharp Aqua which is fairly plain set with a few streaming apps because one issue with streaming and their apps is the apps themselves go out of date after several years so your "smart" tv loses that where a set with good connectivity enables you to fit new devices as needed extending the sets life.

When and if satellite and terrestorial tv via an antenna ends no one has determined as yet although it's no secret broadcasters and transmitter owners want to get shut of this  moving everyone on streaming even if internet may be poor or non existant in parts of the UK.

Thus I feel connectivity matters more today.

1986 and all that jazz

1986 was three years on from leaving school, changing posts but at least in terms of outlook no different from them, hardly in mid teens mentally just masking along trying to impersonate a grown up with a lack of conviction.

That much had stuck me the year before staying in a guest house struggling between wanting to play on the beach which I found relaxing and going around museums which I do like - always did as a kid - but not all day.

One couple expressed the thought I was lost. Oddly enough that couple from Dudley just about got it as really nothing really connected to me how others thought you "should be" and keep a bit of an eye on me at least.

I preferred things as they had been, sat reading the Beano while everyone else watch the politics on the tv missing not being able to play with action figures as I still watch mainly childrens tv.

The big news musically was in 1986 I got a cd player although the discs were twice as expensive as my records so it took a while to build up any really decent collection and some recording took ages to come out in that form. 

For much of the mid to late 80's you couldn't get any RCA 70's Bowie for instance so I ended up still buying a lot of releases on record,

Jazz was secret like of mine borrowing recordings from the library and playing some of Dad's albums when he was out so I did get a couple of compilations from the Tandy store on compact disc.

It also helped the Aristocats soundtrack was very much jazz based.

Really they were samplers by other labels being a bit short at around three quarters of an hour but with some great performances recorded digitally but not too expensive.

You loaded them in the player and shut the lid which caused it to run for a few seconds, find all the tracks and wait for to press play.

I slowly started building a Queen collection as their albums outside of Greatest Hits and The Works came out on cd and bought Notorious, that years Duran Duran on cd.

I began to realize I needed to be me more.

1983 and all that

Some years remain strong memories with you, others while you are aware of them tend to be much less so and for some of us they are a mish-mash fairly young things and rather more grown up things that you had to deal with the best you could.

In 1983 beyond the more formal presentations to adults you couldn't avoid, feeling tired from masking and generally repressing the authentic you talking around and deal with conversations you had scant interest with such as careers, being expected to have adult "small talk", I cultivated a much younger me building on from the previous years and the issues back then that had brought it all to a head.

See, by 1978 just entering my teenage years I realized I felt nothing like my peers and that brought no satisfaction and it wasn't just a  delay of a year or so, it just wasn't there.

So by 1983 we had the strange situation of wanting to run through parks kicking a ball about, playing with toys, cuddling a teddy with taking your A levels and seeing a Careers Master and suffice to say the way that got handled was messed up as the careers service "lost me" being very late in the day to offer ANY guidance.

it was that which really pushed down a way of thinking of just doing stuff on my own as clearly I couldn't rely on a grown up to so I made all my own arrangements to claim social security to get my N.I. contributions started and get a job which took a while in the Transport Industry.

Socially little changed, I read a mixture of comics and magazines, I watched mainly children's tv shows and even dabbled in a bit of flower decorating as I found great for resetting after a struggle dealing with grown ups.

Breakfast tv started January 17th  which I caught and discussed with schoolfriends as prior to that I just put the radio one for a bit while Top of the Pops and Tomorrow's World remained a must see shows.

The Compact Disc launched in Europe to a big fanfare although it was to be three more years before I bought a player but we did have our very first Now That's What I Call Music compilation lp.

Catalogues and brochures from newly arriving supermarkets came that inspired my outside of work look too.

There was much music I liked back then, Kajagoogoo, Rush, Duran Duran, the Flashdance soundtrack but one towered over all and actually that's a recent specialist edition in even high quality sound than my 1983 original.

I had always liked the Commodores and their lead singer Lionel Richie's voice and this, his second solo album had a great mixture of uptempo funk, slow soul ballads and the most amazing arrangements that still stand up even today.

Songs like All Night Long, Hello, Running With The Night and Penny Lover were events when released as singles with memorible, moving even videos that connected with many people because they were about universal feelings and emotions.

Some like Stuck On You were covered to great effect too.

It's great to own a fantastic sounding version of now to go with my memories of that era.

What matters more - the sound or the music?

In a week where the planet has seemed rather messed up as a space mission went around the whole of the moon today I'm looking the relationship between recorded music and the means of reproducing it

Originally records were made directly from an artist(s) performing in front of a horn with their exact  position altered to get the best possible balence and often replayed by a gramophone via a horn although by the 1930's electronics came in both directions.

The big breakthoughs were in recording on tape after WW2 that made it possible to redo sections and the use of vinyl rather than shallac that allowed for both much lower noise and higher fidelity.

Around the same time slower speeds 45 and 33 1/3 rpm were used that gave longer playtime which helped with longer works and enable an album to be on just a single disc rather than several held together in a stiched heavy duty album.

That really kicked off what today's hifi industry was all about - getting better sound from your recordings  - from the 1950's where it soon joined by stereo discs and tapes adding more realism.

Tape systems improved to allow multiple tracks to be recorded independently and by the end of the 1970's digital recording came in.

What some do say today is the attention is too centred around the equipment to the point a person doesn't play a cd or record listening to the performance so much as they are listening to their system so much so that the quality of recording matters for them more than the performance.

Alan Parsons is a recording engineer and musician who gave us Dark Side of the Moon and The Air That I Breathe.

For me there's a lot of truth in that as performances generally move us more than absolute recorded quality that certainly makes it sound more realistic but that feel is what artists work on in terms of lyrics and muscial composition.

Even if we heard that on portable radio or your smartphone, it would hold your attention. You may have memories of listening to songs on AM Radio which never sounded great but those songs and memories clearly count for something.

Sometimes audio fans would be better adviced to put that record on with drink in a hand and just enjoy the performance.

The look of the past II

After last weeks post well one thing that does come into play is the length and styling of modern day boys or mens shorts specifically sports shorts.

Virtually from the 1970's right though to 1990's the lengths of football shorts, athletic shorts usually of the high cut sort and cotton tennis shorts tended to be short.

For reason's best known to themselves, some suggest as a "prank", a London football club adopted long just on the knee shorts at the start of one season and this became a craze within the Football Association and this filted into shorts for boxing, gym wear and so on.

This has implications when it comes to remaking that look I talked about last week as these almost as long as great great grannies bloomers shorts are everywhere!

There is an answer however and that there are PUMA Unisex Gestrickte Shorts Teamgoal Shorts WMNS which are available from the Puma store on Amazon which aren't branded for women but are worn more more by WSL players in their leagues.

These are quite a bit shorter but still "decent", have the tie to adjust drawstring we all know and go upto 3xl (38 inch) waist.

Worn with say a white or yellow t shirt or polo shirt and ankle socks they do work out well.

The look of the past

You could say the main feature of the week has been the return to winter with fairly cold temperatures, hailstones, drizzle and all of that having been caught out in it so the thicker layers were needed outdoors although I spotted the boys in one area going cross country in their tops and shorts on Wednesday at one school and another in with the gas fire one.

Actually this kind of almost but not quite sailor suit inspired look was very much the thing in the late 1970's as I rebelled against the longs I rather liked and dressed more like  as "going back" became more acccepted at home.

School was different and being in the Marches we did have bi-lingual staff from the Valleys of Glamorganshire who had this wierd fascination in keeping boys in longs, even being a boarding school we'd see their own children in the height of summer fully covered up top to bottom.

Whither it was connected with Methodist inspired notions of displaying working class respectability to the outside world or some other odd idea I don't know but it made little sense to me and I saw less of in England which can be as class conscious and inwardly conservative as anywhere.

I liked that look as much over time I was able to return more to the tailored approach of my junior years and still do.

Happy birthday, Dennis!

It's been a sunny week, a week when low flying bee permitting I've been been out in the park enjoying the sun playing apart from some post birthday things like a belated card coming  and some of the ordered stuff finally arriving evening needing a cancelation from one place and a reording elsewhere!

It was recently another famous boys birthday who also never seems to get older towhich was marked in style by his biggest fan, the comic, The Beano.

He appears to have had a number of famous guests from music and tv apart from everyone in Beanoland for his tenth birthday but actually he first appeared some seventy-five years ago so like some of us he goes around the sun never getting older.

I do wish my joints were what they were but I know the feeling.

Rolling Stones "On Air"

After last weeks birthday excitement we return this week to something connected with that but got put off for several years.

The Rolling Stones were a group I followed although in so far as building a collection of albums went that didn't really take off until my mid to late teens, starting with a couple of compilations and then delving into individual albums.

Their recorded catalogue is split into two halves that recorded and released up to 1969/70 issued on Decca in the UK and owned by Abkco and that after that to date which the group own but license out over fixed period to other companies to press and distribute, currently Polydor Records.

Over the years we've had a number of live albums issued, some live shows from the past but like a good number of British groups they did appear on radio as BBC radio while being notoriously short on "needle time" seldom playing pop records in the early to mid 1960's did favour shows where artists could perform live a few songs at a time such as "Saturday Club".

Some other artists of this era have had their radio recordings issued on cd and record not least the Beatles with two volumes from the 1990's but with the Rolling Stones it wasn't until 2017 that two variants for them came out.

Called On Air, it mixes a whole series of recordings from 1963 through to 1965 where increased demand for world-wide concerts and recording sessions from top BBC Light Programme shows

It's not just valuable for in session versions of studio recorded and issues songs but for a good number that were never recorded at all even if they may of been in their live shows so we get new songs 

Of great interest is a series of songs recorded for an experimental stereo transmission using BBC Radio and TV transmitters for the left and right channel before the introduction of stereo radio on VHF/FM in the late 1960's.

Viewers and listeners were give instruction on how to set their sets up to gain the most from it so while their first two UK lps were in mono only this gives us some early stones in true stereo sounding surprisingly well.

The Beatles covered Chuck Berry's Roll Over, Beethoven on Beatles Second Album (Capitol) and for the UK With The Beatles albums but while the stones did a good number of covers that was one they never recorded in the studio so we get to hear their take on it.

For a variety of reasons I didn't get around to getting this in its two cd deluxe version with a disc of extra tracks so I'm delighted to finally get this set this year.

Pasts in present

Many popular comic strip and film series having started with introducing the adult character after a while starts to give us flashbacks to when they were younger sometimes it must be said to pad out the whole history but othertimes giving us a a glancing to what made them the adults we see.

In real life this is a common concept, often a person may be at some kind of notable event such as at an award, or otherwise taking on a new role and someone involved will refer to his (or her) past linking that to the qualities now required or skills developed over the years.

People do develop. most of us will mature or at least get a bit wiser several trips around the sun.

The thing that often goes missing is the extent to which that younger person remains within the older one now being praised which can show in any number of ways such as continuation in interests, how they see others around the - were you the diplomat or the directly speaking one? - or that you find yourself at times back in that time.

What's so wrong with carrying the Boy around with you?
 

The more things change, the more they remain the same

 

In the ever changing world not least with two unprecidents arrests this week, a bye-election taking place that the governing Labour Party might loose as I type this and yet another BBC "clanger" this time over the BAFTA coverage somethings just don't change that much.

At the demarcation line where two settlements merged rapidally in the late 1960's into one lump in a conurbation of lots settlements for miles, the shop units that served one remain, repurposed from Newsagents and Corner Store where as a lad I'd go for paraffin and firelighters and pick up the Warlord to Offlicence and General store and Hairdressers (they do cut boys hair too).

The windows have been renewed apart from two that had been bricked up at Bargain Booze and the interiors totally revamped which is a leap of faith given the current trading conditions  but all is more or less as it's been from the late Victorian period.

That in less than two minutes you have the essentials at hand is just great here and in extra three you have Post Office and two pubs.

Meet The Beatles - last copy!

End of week, one more week left in the month and we are back with what might be the last part in the Beatles story where it began for the United States with what was the first issued album and unlike in the UK Stereo and mono copies were available immediately as the United States had a higher take up of stereo systems than the UK.

Pop records in the U.K. were generally the province of teenagers with shoe box mono portable record players.

It was common place to cut pop records with more an eye to avoiding any issues with cheap equipment with returns to shops and that tended to show with less "top" and limited bass and this was very much the case in the United States so cheap players wouldn't skip the groove.

As time went on, the records would be recut to higher standards but what was on your record was  often a matter of what "Stampers" somebody in the pressing plant "pulled" when more discs needed pressing.

By the late 1970's overall you'd stand a chance of getting an okay copy, okay compared with the U.K. With The Beatles but not that great.

That's where this, the last recut version comes in as by now fair more detail had made it so it was cleaner than any previous version just as the Beatles were to come to Compact Disc with titles from the UK catalogue

The front cover was based on the UK With The Beatles cover with a bluey tint becoming black towards the end with the title bodly showing at the top so it could be spotted easily in the shop record racks at a distance.

The rear cover was an attempt to explain by way of an essay who and where these "Beatles" came from and talks about their upcoming appearence on the must see Ed Sullivan popular entertainment show on CBS Tv.

I have had a number of copies over the decades, from a early 80's Purple label one to 2024's mono reissue but this is the 1986 edition that was only out for about 18 months at the most from the last new cutting.

The iconic "Rainbow Rim" label returned with the text newly typeset which was common feature of many 80's Capitol releases.

This copy sounds as good as it can, featuring the the new single and it's U.K .and U.S.  b sides which for some of takes us more back to those times than the british With The Beatles album regardless of that albums technical superiority.

February round up

My right side is playing up so I'm strapped up and resting a bit, at least physically as there's some family stuff that's been on my mind over the last few weeks that's been hard to escape from.

That's nothing new, I mean there's always been stuff that shall we say seemed more intense that that of your mates from way back in the day with everything being played to the max.

I have been listening to a few cds the old transport took issue with apart from that 12" single compilation  from 1986 I wrote about on the other blog this week and I suspect that when part II comes out will be the cut off point as by then I was focused more on albums and especially building a cd collection having got s player then.

I have played a couple of the latest reissue classical lps in a series I have being buying - not blindly collecting in full - where the performances were one's I've always loved but where with them due to when I first got them I never had them on vinyl so having newly remixed from the original masters versions is great and to go with one I bough a few months ago I've tracked down a later recording with a different orchestra of otherworks that I only part of on a early cd to go with it as much as I'd love to see that reissued.

I enjoyed reading this months AdventureMaxPlus magazine

Respinning the Compact Discs II

Way back around November 2024 I wrote an entry around a series of changes to the hifi as it had changed radically in several years thinking that would be pretty much the end of that for a while but something happened.

Issues started to develop with the cd player, never one for playing recordable cds, around 40 to 60% of my super audio cds with hybrid regular cd layers just refused to be recognized and play, spitting them out and those that did seemed to have audible errors on the first track.

Then to top the lot it was fussy about the slightest mark or finger print on regular cds, skipping tracks so it needed to go.

Pity.

I bought this SMSL half sized transport from someone unused as due to financial issues having just got it they needed to raise cash quick that had been on my list of potential upgrades in the future.

One aspect of it took me back to my first cd player a Toshiba  and that was it loads from the top with no slots or draw mechanisms with a magnetic puck you put on top or more accurately two, a larger one forming part of the lid.

It's a bit more basic on the display just track number and time information and if you wish to use the USB socket  but it spins very quickly on anything finding all the tracks accurately.

There are a choice of outputs, the newer I squared S, AES/EBU XLR, coaxial which is my default and optical which the lead to the minidisc portable was put in.

It works really quite well once you relearn how to get the disc out using the recesses the grip the disc with the edges of your fingers having removed the puck.

I did reorganize the shelf to make it a bit neater and stack the mini size components in a more functionally related way while I was at it.

45 rpm attachment

 There are a good five boxes of singles around my bedroom that go back to the early 1970's and cutting off around 1992 of the old vinyl wrap lockable sort even if a good many have songs that are on lp albums or cds in my collection.

There are a few select ones from the 1960's that I picked up over time, some that were played with early compilations of hits often containing original mono mixes that are otherwise hard to find but generally they're the hits of a time I really loved.

In the earliest years you had to effectively lodge an appeal for someone, usually Mum to buy you one although my copy of Jeepster by T Rex I had for Xmas 1971 has been missing for a while surviving a couple of house moves but as time went buy I had pocket money that I saved towards things like that such as my stash of Bay City Rollers singles or were bought at things like birthdays like my copy of Elvis Costello's Oliver's Army.

You could say they reason they're still here is actually down to the memories attached to each one played as the earliest were three in rotation on a autochanger before you flipped the pile over for their b sides with friends to those like Charles and Eddie's Would I Lie To You that were played a side at a time on my hifi set up before I got around to picking up the cd of the album it was taken from.

Memories these days count for such a lot.

Thoughts before cornflakes

 

Normality of sorts resumed last week with Blue Peter resuming on Friday while I have also been also enjoying like a good many The Traitors, so popular there was even a series of cartoons across copies of the Beano referencing it quite openly but with the anarchic beano take you'd expect.

I avoid politics like the plague here (and on our forum) but I think all of us have been knocked for six to use a cricketing metaphor by how events involving the President of the United States and other Nato countries have turned out although though there appears - for now in this crazy world at least - a bit of a step back from the brink that was as bad as anything we went through during the Cold War.

I do wish to turn to matters that do directly affect all of us to address a topic that is causing some concern and that is around messaging be it emails or messaging on sites.

Please, Please, Please do wait for a response before shooting off volleys of messages even within minutes of each other because we need to firstly have to time to fully read them as everybody has lives beyond their computers and sites.

We may look after people, be dealing with episodes of ill health ourselves, need to do banking, shopping and possibly have a social life even so you just cannot expect us to be immediately available to look into things, responding fully straight off the bat.

It only leads to increasing frustration as you think you have worked out the answer only to find even more things in other emails or messages and so you have to start all over again.

Please consider fully what you wish to say - make a note even before typing - and put it in a single, ideally structured message and wait for us to respond.

Until next week, bye.

Less skating, more fun!

 

That it's been a cold, snow and ice covered week as I had struggled to get about on foot to the park or to ride buses to get me magazines and that so as a week it took in more comic reading and watching Youtube videos.

Over the last few weeks one Youtube channel has been posting a number of End of Year episodes of Blue Peter from the 1970's and 1980's some I only saw first time in black and white and others I might of forgotten over the years, bringing back memories and also to the void whilst the show in its modern form was taking a hiatus.

This afternoon it returns on CBBC with a Gladiators take over which in everyday terms means its an episode very much focused on and about that gameshow on BBC1 which is a big hit with children to the point of their being a Junior version too.

I have to say of newer programs, that is a favourite of mine together with Masked Singer when it comes to more general entertainment so it's something I'm looking forward to watching tonight.

Greetings from the Snow scene

 

Well we're expecting Storm Goretti here although whither for being somewhat lower than most of the city region we'll just see a light pasting of snow or sleet compared with the 30cm forecast for higher parts remains to be seen but we're stocked up here for the worst.

Yes readers I am in my short trousers and turn over long socks writing this but then the winters I lived through at school age were very much like these with just wellingtons on changing into proper sandles in school trugging to school on foot though snow although I read yesterday a real groan up meanie who took a shovel to a five year olds Snowman which naturally really upset him.

Just what is it with groan ups that cannot accept a bit of schoolchild fun like making things without having an urge to strike out?

Anyway it was caught on camera and with any luck he'll be shamed by the community for such a mean sprited act.

We're slowly catching up with delayed post and also working on the great classical downloads, restoring content and even upgrading a few recordings.

Twenty-Twenty Six and that

So it is New Year although calendars are on order, they have as yet to arrive in dribs and drabs with all the festive holiday delays although you might of thought I'd of ordered them sooner but I had other perhaps more serious on my mind like a badly injured sister in law, an unwell parent and that so they ended up well on the back-burner.

New Year most likely will start as it left with Blue Peter although it's on hiatus until the sixteenth after the Christmas edition.

What I have been doing is watching the Christmas specials from nineteen seventies and early nineteen ages when I saw it around Tea Time on Monday's and Thursdays and the year highlights which brought back strong memories of things like the death of Jason, the seal point siamese cat and various appeals that I was involved in either donating to or buying at "bring and buys" for.

There should be a couple of classical records, one a modern from the analogue tapes reissue, the other while in that series because a spare analogue system was used in tandem with the pioneering Decca Recording System but I've ordered a near mint digital original as it went in the great vinyl purges of the late nineteen eighties when we all swore we'd have need for in the world of the Compact Disc.

There wasn't an awful lot on the television on New Years Eve that interested me so I listened to a repeat broadcast of the Last Night of the Proms from September that amongst things featured a more opera based interpration of Bohemian Rhapsody by the rock group Queen.

I can see more music, not least more high quality 24 bit downloads being purchased, as with just two Super Audio cd plants in the world few are being issued and indeed with one popular series we've just not had them although though they were promised at the start with just a couple of exceptions so if you want better than cd sound more like vinyl at it's finest, then that's as good as you can expect.

I do hope to get away a bit during the year although it may be more extended weekends with issues around accomodation for anything longer given the numbers and that and for day trips by some means or other just to ensure I get some personal time.

Forum depends very much on it's members, generally we rub along well enough but as text only media is want to do, we do have some misunderstandings as subtleties get lost or commenrts misread but we've seen more original story telling related to past lives and the bits we keep with us and some interesting use of A.I art although it can make mistakes.

I do expect more of that as talking about experiences only really continues at length when new people bring fresh tales to it and while we have had some new faces, sometimes participation isn't so strong as you might of thought.

Sometimes visual clues take you back further than words too.