Christmas 2022

Okay Christmas entry here we come as I woke up super excited and put on white shirt, blue and  white tie, grey jumper with blue trim, grey shorts and grey with blue bands sock to go to my parents for the day.

Yes really!

There will be a full entry on this at some point but basically it is the four cd book form set of songs from 1980-84 Now didn't include the the individual yearbooks and extra volumes.

We'll see in late January/February where the series goes having issued the Extras set for 1985.

Call Rupert the Bear an addiction going well into boyhood, a name some used to describe my dress style back then and this is this years Rupert annual with a nexture of reprints and fresh material that makes me feel great.

This is card wrappers worth of books starting with this years Beano annual which like the comic is firmly set in the modern day even if some characters we grew up remain as does Bash Street School.

Then we have the Dandy Annual, the comic outside of the Summer Special no longer exists so we have fresh stories based on our favourites such as Korky the Cat, Winker Watson, the Jocks And The Geordies, Keyhole Kate and Desperate Dan.

The modern world is around them but things are more as they were. Love it!

Then we have the compilation with the theme Things That Go Bump In the Night which draws from old stories from the Beano, Dandy and others in the old D C Thompson stable around that theme which pulls you into the past well.

I enjoy this series of compilations a lot for that.

I'll splice an entry in for this which was a Big Present, a three lp version that takes three concerts from San Francisco's Fillmore undertaken in 1997 by Tom Petty that go beyond the greatest hits and the new album but into songs from artists such as the Byrds and Grateful Dead that aren't in their recorded catalogue otherwise and in any event were some the best concerts the band ever did 

I liked Duran Duran a lot and have a many albums of thiers but this only came out last record store day comprising of a whole show from 1982 on the Rio tour with the band on fire.

(Come Up See Me) Make Me Smile was issued in 1984 as the b side of the Reflex (remix) single.

There was a dvd and cd set issued several years back but this is the first time its been on lp record.

Christopher Robin and Winnie The Pooh are heros and this is my new diary.

I had some money and vouchers besides this plus some grey and blue socks.

A Pause for Christmas

Christmas is almost here dispite the odd unexpected challenge here and there this year which was different to what we had experienced last year never mind the dark isolation we all went through in twenty twenty trying to manage Covid.

Supply chain issues coupled with industrial dispute have made trying to sort out presents, get cards sent to people we don't see often, try to get the basics of a traditional Christmas Day dinner in or booked for those who like to go out with family for a meal.

As difficult in some respects as the year has been, we'll have a Christmas, the time spent with and communicating with our families and friends enjoying each others company.

As I pause this blog to try to get some of the spade work to make that magic happen this year I wish you all a very happy christmas  and all the best for twenty twenty three.

We should resume at some point after boxing day, probably a DuoPost tm with the other blog before we start a New Year in the forever a boy world That Uniformed Schoolboy inhabits.

A week and a day to go

Cor, it's really cold, has been pretty much Thursday with temperatures down as much as minus ten degrees c so the long thick layers have had to come out to try to survive these untypical conditions.

Certainly the coldest I can recall here in the Midlands in my lifetime and having lost four lads in Solihull at the start of the week coupled with reports of others doing the same at nearby Westport Lake in this district, please stay off iced over lakes and the like.

Hyperthermia kills.

I mean I'm typing this with my gloves on even it's that cold!

Apart from Sunday's excitement as Santa made his appearence here, something else that marks this time of year has made its appearence too.

Rather like Summer, the beano produces a special christmas themed edition involving all its cast of legendary characters with a common story running complete with sheet of stickers you can peel off and use.

As ever there are quize's, jokes and puzzles to read and have a go at beyond the regular editions we get including the Christmas Eve one with sixty eight pages in full colour.

In a year that has had its own challenges, having  comics is a real joy.

The community tree paid for by us, the residents by donations is up,much appreciated and used for carol singing and illuminated for good measure.

Just eight nights to go!

Stepping into Advent edition

 We're between the football action with the match with France this weekend a sensational win on Sunday against Senegal by three goals to nil which was just great given how good their players were.

The weeks are moving ahead as we count them down towards Christmas with the advent calander which ended up being ordered as the local shop was out of the one I wanted and talking of which a few things ordered for Christmas have yet to arrive.

Last Friday's Blue Peter showed how to make Christmas cards and the famed Blue Peter Advent display was out that I recall from my earliest days of watching the show as a child which was good to see again.

At least on Monday the Christmas edition of Monster Fun, the bi-monthly comic arrived with it's christmas themed ghoulish stories including a one page story based upon a idea submitted by a young reader.

Tuesday with temperatures at one point being minus one degree, I did have my thick woollen slipper socks on designed to keep your feet as warm as toast as much as I was in my three inch inside leg shorts as ever.

We did have a few problems on the forum in middle of last week ith posts not taking and images not loading but they appear to be fixed now.

The Roar of the Lions

 

If you haven't noticed there is quite a loud noise about at the moment on the tv and the radio that is very hard to escape from, taking up chunks of The News and perhaps excessively the morning breakfast shows almost as if there's little else to talk about.

The men's football World Cup with things on the pitch and much wrapped around politics outside of it.

It's probably true much of the country is in need of good cheer what with strikes galore - so 1973 it hurts - shortages in the shops, and the whole business around rising food, fuel and housing costs and maybe that's where the intensity is coming from.

Things seem to be going well for England since qualifying with a 6-2 win against Iran and a draw with the U.S.A. where the game the World plays is becoming much more popular which as much as I love Ice Hockey and Baseball is just great.

There was a match on Tuesday that did divide the UK, something I can understand given my boarding school was in the Marches, had a sizable chunk of Welsh staff and I was iniated in Welsh Culture too although my family are very much Midlanders. 

Well after a fairly evenly matched first half, England came ALIVE with two goals from Marcus Rashford and one from Phil Foden victory was assured.

Cymru did very well to get into the competition after just over a half century absence with a side of great players helping to spread the awareness of Wales being distinct home nation of the UK but the superior playing of England showed.

Let the battle to move towards the play offs begin!

The life changed

 After last weeks excursion into different topics from the norm on here, we do get back to more core things this week which has been a pretty much wet and cool one with temperatures only just about 6 degrees out on one day.

One thing that you cannot entirely eliminate is the possibility of either being spotted by people who know you while out or perhaps people who just turn up while passing which in any kind of life that some people can be judgemental over might concern you.

A good chunk of my family are within our city region with many within a five mile radius, legacy of the days when people here worked in the local pits, potteries, steelworks and engineering concerns that were on our doorsteps.

Anyway I do have a good number of surviving aunts and uncles as much as in recent years the number has been thinned out as it were and quite unexpectedly my Uncle Len called while at my parents who are very used to seeing a "boy" in their company.

He called really for Dad cos he's know a lot around electronics and mechanical engineering repairing  things like vintage radios of which Uncle Len had just bought one from an auction house nearby.

He also has quite a collection of clocks.

It is several years since I have seen him, before covid for sure and within that time I have moved very much away from any meaningful adult presentation either by attire and by social position too within the family and with other adults.

He had not for several decades at least seen any version of me that wore grey short trousers, long turn over top socks and school tops and even if I had the inclination to, there was no time to change.

All I could do is just get on with it and be prepared answer anything.

He was talking mainly with my father and then mum as prompted by that universal habit of parents to show photographs of family, he remarked on how much "your son takes after you" and "how is he" which probably a reflection on the deferental child to parent relating style where by I only join in adult to adult conversations when invited in which I was to talk a little about what I had been up to only then taking direct supplimentary points.

I'm generally expected to read or "play" entertaining myself unless I'm in on the conversation or event.

Suprisingly the very altered physical presentation from when I last saw him didn't seem to faze him nor did the clear lack of relating to him as adult as mentally at least this could of been a conversation between a teenage me and him if not a couple of years younger.

As it came to time for him to be off, I shook hands with him.

Things had gone better than I had thought they may of and on reflection that I am at one with being this adult in law but child.

Revolver remade

Regular readers of this blog know we don't talk much about "affects" on here such as toys or records because it's really more a personal blog rather than the blog of a person however I was that boy and so some records are in their own way important within that.

It's also true that some artists and composers are very much connected with me so exploring them coincided with personal journeys of self exploration.

The last time I wrote anything on here about the Beatles was February 2017 which was looking at the records by them I owned, a good number from childhood around significant birthdays and christmas's part of reason was one you have a collection then, unless you collect variants and world-wide issues, you've pretty much have all you need and the last core albums of interest were issued in the autumn of 2012.

Recording technology today, indeed ever since the early 1970's was radically different than it was for much of the 1960's when these albums were recorded having far more individual tracks and in recent years attempts at remixing them for better stereo sound has been the focus.

Recently I bought the new remixed edition of the Revolver album of 1966.

This album was recorded using four tracks on a tape recorder working on one part of the song using up to all the four tracks to get all the elements wanted such as any instruments and then mixed to a single track of a new tape on another machine before starting again to build up the drum tracks, lead,bass and rhythm guitar in many sessions before a final tape with everything to be included in the final mix is made.

Back in 1966 the main aim was to make a mono record from those four tracks as that was then norm for pop music especially targetted to teens and young adults for playing on single speaker systems.

A stereo mix was made but the way it was recorded by design limited what could be done when it came to where in a stereo spread everything could be placed which coupled with the rather dashed off approach taking much less time than the mono left a less than satisfactory stereo version.

That version was the one I heard around 1977/8 when I was starting as a young teen to get into the Beatles and back then stereo versions were all you could buy as the mono deemed "old hat" in 1970 had been deleted from the catalogue.

Recently new computer artificial intelligence but steered by humans technology that enabled separating out some of the parts of the four track mixes into effectively separate tracks that could be mixed and placed within the stereo image in the manner many popular albums from the 1970's were by design using multiitrack recording systems has become possible and this album was treated to it.

What you could do to fix some of the errors of the original stereo version intrigued me

As some may recognize on the disc label they have gone for a more authentic 1960's label design although the copyright is 2022 presumably for legal protection and as the record is made not in the UK but the Czech Republic "Made in the EU" is printed,

Take Taxman for instance, there are many periods of near silence on the right hand channel as the vocals are just there or the errors in the double tracking at the start of Eleanor Rigby and the string quartet is now spread between both speakers.

The sea effects on Yellow Submarine originally from a sound effects tape have been remixed into the track in stereo adding atmosphere while the seabird effects on the psychedelic Tomorrow Never Knows are panned from left to right.

This remix centres the vocals more providing the immediacy and drive of the mono but with a more spacious feel spreading the instrumentation around the left and right channels.

Personally I feel the process has worked well producing a more enjoyable mature stereo sound spread without departing too far from what the album sounded like.

Critics have complained that the record sleeve doesn't have those folds around the edges originals had but my last original copy from the mid 1980's lacked them too and the only modern versions to feature them were the 2014 mono editions now deleted.