I'm back..........

A mere 18 months or so after my last post on this blog, I have decided to resurrect it and from time to time post a few thoughts, experiences & observations.

A lot of water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since I last posted on here - with first & foremost a new Canmore born son, Charlie born in September 2007.

Today is a sparkling hot day, not a breeze in the Valley & probably 27 degrees. It's not been the greatest summer weather-wise, lots of rain, plenty of thunderstorms & the occasional scorcher in between.

Last night was typical, after several days of beautiful hot weather, I bought an infra-red patio heater - no sooner had i battled with the instructions & assembled it, then the thunder boomed around the mountains & the rain bucketed down.

Well I'm going to tinker with this, bring it up to date appearance wise & think of some interesting thngs to post.

2006/2007

so it's all over for 12 months & today is back to work day - i mean i was working last week, but the phones/e-mail were deader than an ex-Iraqi president, so this is really back to life, back to reality

christmas was good, it cannot fail to be when you have an excited 2 year old who is getting to grips with her first proper notions of what it's all about & this year, now that we know so many people in the valley - there was no shortage of parties to attend

i also burnt way more calories than i consumed, thanks to snowboard sessions at Lake Louise, Nakiska & Sunshine - add to that a bit of x-country skiing & snowshoeing - it was all good

in fact the snowshoeing was great fun, we went up to Spray Lakes & struck out into the forest, apart from the occasional dog sled, it was just us, the trees, the mountains, the snow & a burning sun - bliss

so that was it, NYE was a quiet one - i had burnt myself out at Sunshine with a full-on day on the slopes & so we chilled out at a friend's party & watched some fireworks - a contrast to some of the London NYE parties for sure

my 2006 picks..........

No.10 HOWLIN' RAIN - HOWLIN' RAIN
No. 9 THE BROKEN FAMILY BAND - BALLS

No. 8 THE BLACK ANGELS - PASSOVER
No. 7 CUT CHEMIST - THE AUDIENCE IS LISTENING
No. 6 HOT CHIP - THE WARNING
No. 5 BELLE & SEBASTIAN - THE LIFE PURSUIT
No. 4 VETIVER - TO FIND ME GONE
No. 3 MIDLAKE - THE TRIALS OF VON OCCUPANTHER
No. 2 THE TYDE - THREE'S CO
No. 1 ESPERS - ESPERS II


Top Ten Tracks - jeez this was hard - here is my current selection,
this will have changed by tomorrow

No 10. GRUFF RHYS & LISA JEN - candylion

No 9. HOWLIN RAIN - death prayer in heavens orchard

No 8. ESPERS - dead queen
No 7. VETIVER - been so long
No 6. THE EARLY YEARS - so far gone
No 5. HOT CHIP - boy from school
No 4. THE TYDE - brock landers
No 3. DAVE ALVIN - california bloodlines
No 2. MIDLAKE - roscoe
No 1. BELLE & SEBASTIAN - another sunny day

Top 5 Reissues - no problem with no. 1 here.......

No. 5 JOHN PHILLIPS - the wolf king of LA
No 4. JESUS & MARY CHAIN - entire back catalogue remastered
No 3. JOHN CALE - paris 1919
No 2. JOHNNY CASH - live at Folsom Prison
No 1. GRAM PARSONS - the complete reprise sessions

Top Book - shamefully i have read less than 10 books this year - some
of them have taken me months but i enjoyed these two:

John Peel - Margrave of the Marshes
Naomi Duguid - Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the
Great Subcontinent

Top Movie - hmmmm we don't have a cinema so bit tricky this one:

obvious choice - Borat.............but most enjoyable in a melancholy way
Be Here to Love Me - the story of Townes Van Zandt

Best dvd i watched - Two Lane Blacktop

SoCal in the spring...........

we've decided to head down to Palm Springs in March for a week

never been to that part of the world & the aim is to book into a small, independant hotel - ( tho' it looks like it'll be a bit tough finding a child friendly one) - from where we can do our own thing

a lot of the hotel's have a fifties vibe about them which fits perfectly with a bit of a B-Movie phase I have been going through - Invasion of The Body Snatchers rules!!!

now the radio blog is up again i can share some tracks from bands i have been listening to

So Far Gone (also a terrific Teenage Fanclub track) is from the latest album by The Early Years - they are a London band, much akin to the likes of Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom & Spiritualised all of whom i saw, loved & adored in equal measure in my indie-kid days

actually on reflecton i think i am still in my indie-kid days

surely by now is houlda developed an affection for Simply Red, Michael Bolton & Keane?!?!

The Music Machine Returns.............

after much fiddlin' about - it's back & i can share some favourite tunes

i love this version of Blues Run The Game by obscure 60's US folkie Jackson C Frank

and of course you can't go wrong with Donovan

more to come, but don't fret it ain't all folk

so cold it hurts.......

by jove it's cold

cold as in i think my eyeball's might be freezing

cold as in getting into the warm, from being outside, really hurts

cold as in don't touch any bare metal with ungloved hands or else

it's -35C to be precise, in reality it's only -25 - but the wind chill man, the wind chill

so all this lovely talcum powder like snow that is falling is going to waste as only the extremely brave & the foolish are venturing outside let alone up a ski hill

and there's more to come, a whole weeks worth of bone chillin' cold

those warm summer's evenings are a mere dream, now we are in the depths of winter

brown water....

it's terrible

i haven't written anything here for aeons - it's not like i'm always crazy busy - i just forget

i am in Vancouver, heavy, heavy storms have turned the water in the reservoirs a murky shade of brown & a murky shade of brown is what you get when you turn the taps on

the city is without clean drinking water & subsequently sales of bottled water are at an all time high - it's all a bit surreal & makes you realise just how precious the stuff is & how much we take it for granted

the ironic thing of course is that this, being Vancouver, is accompanied by an almost constant downpour of fresh water from the leaden skies

it's all too much & i look forward to getting back to Calgary & Canmore tomorrow where life in the deep freeze is much more straightforward

i urge you to listen to John The Wolfking of LA by John Phillips - it's just been reissued, i have been a fan for years of this early 70's masterpiece - now it's back for all to hear

a talented guy who waste a lot of his life on drugs but was also married to one of the most beautiful women in the history of popular music in my humblest of humble opinions