I guess my favorite author is the late English writer Douglas Adams. He’s the writer of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Adams followed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with several other books based on the same events. Despite its sci-fi theme, it was funny, surprising, and even a bit philosophical, as it parodied the idea that sci-fi should be intellectual.
Also, he wrote Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and a sequel. This book is also a comedy in the style of detective fiction, obviously, similarly sprinkled with mad philosophy that many writers probably wouldn’t have thought to put in. Both Adams’ series have strange plot lines and beautiful characters.
I’ve never read The Last Chance to See, Adams’ last book (and Mark Carwardine) before he passed away. It is a tale of travel in parts of nature where animal life is likely doomed to extinction. There are a lot of endings Adams thought about, I think.
He procrastinated well, and his masterpiece feels like it’s almost finished. Years after it was written (I think it was published around 1980), it was adapted into a film in 2005. That’s about when Adams passed.
Netflix adapted Dirk Gentleman’s Holistic Detective Agency several years ago.
Several of these authors I enjoyed reading as a teenager. At the time, I had to get my mother to borrow Douglas Adams from the library because my children’s membership card wouldn’t qualify me to borrow fiction for adults.
A radio adaptation, a BBC television adaptation, and a computer game based on the novel also exist. In the computer game from the same hands who gave the earliest modern players of interactive games the legendary Zork, you entered commands into a parser prompt to enjoy the story.
It is the oldest popular music festival in existence today. In the last five decades, Reading Festival has hosted big bands and acts, such as Nirvana in 1992, Paramore in 2014, and Metallica in 1997.
Reading ’92
If you want to listen to some nineteen-nineties-era rock that you could share with friends, you should have no problem finding Pavement’s discography. They are an unparalleled example of a fun, witty rock and roll band, that won accolades and a level of popularity that has helped their discography endure.
What happened?
It was on 23 August, during their two-week Europe tour with rock band Sonic Youth, that the band played at Reading, an approximately 40-minute set.
Pavement was a five-member band, although Stephen Malkmus, Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, and Gary Young alone formed the band in 1989. Pavement recorded the music at Gary’s studio, Louder than you Think.
The song from those sessions includes Box Elder, seeming to be about leaving town in frustration, which enjoyed some interest. The Chicago record label Drag City handled it.
Why it was so awesome
On 23 August, ’91, the band was playing on the strengths of a 7″ single, Summer Babe (Winter Version), and three earlier EPs. The first full-length LP was a big deal, as Matador Records was working to help make Pavement a name for themselves. Meanwhile, Geffen Records was getting Sonic Youth major success, Sonic Youth having previously been shoegazers known for their song Death Valley ’69.
Both Sonic Youth and Pavement are influential music acts.
Despite obscurity in 1991, Pavement was becoming a success. Pavement’s most recent album now is Quarantine the Past, and the time seems right for both old songs and unseen material.
The unreleased songs from Pavement won’t be hard to find. Bandcamp is making it available in different formats in April. Besides the reissue of Spit on a Stranger from 1999, there is a set of all their music.
You don’t need to hear the complete collection if Pavement interests you. You could begin with Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which is their best-known release.
What the band said about Reading
The members of Sonic Youth and Pavement became pretty good friends. When Malkmus turned his attention to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, he sold a lot of units, but not as much of Pavement’s music after that found the same popularity.
Certainly, it would have been more difficult to make videos that would have been more popular with MTV audiences. Still, the two videos Pavement released with Wowee Zowee in 1995 were, in one instance, simply a bathtub filled with water, and, in the second one, the band appeared to be in a country-rock video, even though they were known for their straightforward rock music.
Perhaps Malkmus was being difficult. I like the Father to a Sister of Thought video, but Wowee Zowee obviously had little chance to break into the country music market, being an experimental rock album.
You can’t see them, but they were great!
You can get an idea of what they were like with the second CD from Slanted and Enchanted Luxe and Reduxe, where, for example, the discs include the song Frontwards from the Watery, Domestic EP, in both its studio recording and also played live, at Brixton Academy, in December of 1992.
An MTV video from 1995 of Pavement talking at Reading can be seen on YouTube. You can watch how they handled themselves when they are talking somewhat candidly.
Pavement is a band that you might find interesting if only for the sake of hearing songs that are both unique and entertaining. Like Range Life, from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, or In the Mouth a Desert, on Slanted and Enchanted. Artistically, Stephen Malkmus is competent.
“Thanks for coming to Reading Festival this year. As you probably already know, we’ve got a few of our most interesting acts playing live on the Main Stage: Arctic Monkeys, Rage Against The Machine and Megan Thee Stallion. We also have other great names, such as Bring Me The Horizon and Halsey.”
I’m joking, I’m not a Reading Festival emcee 😉 Those artists are apparently in for Reading this year, however.
I have had a recurring dream in which I live in an apartment beneath a vampire’s castle. The dream appears similar to the remake of the film Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nach, directed by Werner Herzog in 1979, and to Norman Bates’ house in Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960. It is always frightening returning to the house, and I never have an opportunity to move out of that home.
Werner Herzog
I referred to the dream moods website. “To see a house in your dream represents your own soul and self,” dream moods says. You have specific areas of your home that reflect different aspects of your personality.
When you dream of an old, rundown house, it represents your old beliefs, attitudes, and how you used to feel. Your current situation may be triggering old attitudes and feelings. The old house may also represent your need to update your thinking style. When you see messy or dilapidated houses in your dreams, something in your own life might be in chaos. There may be some emotional or psychological clutter affecting you. For you to recover control, you need to relinquish these sentiments.
Having a dream of a haunted house signifies unfinished business in your personal life, such as unresolved grief or unresolved emotions.
This fantasy, which has come to me recurringly for a couple of days all at once, and at various times, is generally somewhat delightful and somewhat unnerving. I live in apprehension about the house, but then I can’t abstain from returning, as the place of the beast is the place where I reside.
My sister Kaite, years and years ago, encouraged me to look into the meaning of my dreams with the gift of a dream dictionary book. Although I’ve long since lost the book, I enjoyed probing into what some dreams I was having could mean.
When I am writing, my mother has also advised me to reflect on my dreams.
He wrote The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels. The quote above includes the wisdom of Murphy’s Law, which states that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Douglas Adams’ books, additionally a BBC radio series, a TV series, and a film, all describe the obliteration of the Earth and two human survivors who eventually resolve to satisfy themselves with new lives, somewhere else in the universe.
Definition of foolproof
: so simple, plain, or reliable as to leave no opportunity for error, misuse, or failurea foolproof plan
The plan that initially begins the plot of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a plan to demolish a house to make way for the building of a freeway bypass. The foreman of the laborers who have the occupation is a bonehead in that he can’t handle the proprietor of the house, our hero, from giving a valiant effort to stop the annihilation of his home. There is an idea that the seemingly foolproof plan to build the freeway bypass becomes a battle of wits between two men with different ideas. The irony in Adams’ novel pointed to the parallel idea that the entire planet should also be demolished for a plan to build an interspace bypass.
I think Adams felt that the majority are fools.
I feel reassured to read the Adams quote, as I often try to reflect on my strengths rather than feel like a loser. I have a wonderful girlfriend, a home to live in, and family. Though I am not sure I’ve ever achieved anything foolproof, the fact that nothing much is foolproof is a heartening indication that perhaps there is a foolproof plan for the Earth that only God comprehends.
An excursion is extraordinary, assuming you have a touch of resourcefulness about you. If ever the opportunity comes, I think I will be on board, rather than miss out, on what is nearly a surefire recipe for fun.
This writing prompt is funny, too, because the phrase “road trip” reminds me of the Ivan Reitman-directed film (titled Road Trip) of the very early 2000s. That movie’s a comedy, the story of eligible college boys racing cross-country, to intercept a videotape, mistakenly placed in the mail. It’s a tape that will put the brakes on a burgeoning love affair, between one young gent and his significant other. She is about to find out he has strayed unless his friends get the tape back.
The movie aside, the ideal excursion may be, for a more established individual like me, between here and London, Ontario, which is a town I haven’t seen for quite some time. It’s where my sister Kaite did an undergraduate degree. I’ve heard that London is a technology hub, and it would be fun to see it. London’s only about two hours away, so a road trip there is the kind of thing you can knock back without much worry.
These are a few famed destinations you can visit in London.
Springbank Park, or the Thames River Park, occupies an area of nearly 350 acres in the western neighbourhood of London.
Museum London is ideal for those seeking more information about London’s history. Its collection includes more than 5,000 unique works of art and some 45,000 artifacts from across Canada, with a special focus on the local region.
With its architecture dating back to 1827, the Catholic St. Peter’s Cathedral Basilica makes for a beautiful backdrop for a picture.
I think, all around, London would make for a great road trip.
September is World Candle Month. Established in 2013, World Candle Month joins candle devotees around the planet. I think this year it is helping to remember September 11, as today is Patriot Day in the USA.
Well, let’s get out from under that debris.
In other parts of America, Nashville Tennessee author Jeff Goins retired at the end of the summer this year, having for ten years presented courses online, to get writers blogging. Books by Jeff Goins include his 2015 bestseller, The Art of Work. That book explains many expressions of work, by which to inspire readers.
While I didn’t officially join up with his courses, it is almost ten years now since I partook in the some of the free advice he proffered, like how to brainstorm ideas for your blog. Some of Goins’ blogging strategies I, in fact, applied. I have never made blogging anything other than a hobby, but when I read on Facebook Jeff’s retirement announcement, I was again interested to read what he had to say.
The agreeableness Mr. Goins has fits a way of composing books that is both unique and open. His books include The In-Between and his first book, in 2014, You are a Writer. The title of his first book reminds me of adventure books where the reader assumes the identity of someone else (here it would be… a writer).
Goins was a musician who worked in marketing, before he realized that he wanted to be a writer.
Since 2012, the work I have done has been assisting with the upkeep on the grounds of a cemetery. For years, my father, whose business it is to operate this cemetery, would bring around breakfast, a Cinnabon and coffee. https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited/
Why Cleanliness’s are More Tempting than a Cinnabon
With autumn here I have opted to reflect on different kinds of cleanliness. Seeing the world for its contrasts is a twisted conviction. There are shades of dark in pretty much every circumstance.
Why would I think about cleanliness in the autumn time this year? While usually it is spring when people turn their attention to cleaning, like the contrast of light and dark, autumn needs some cleaning off, too.
Likewise, many people choose cleanliness in some areas and not others. Some people have a knack for cleanliness in most areas; some people have cleanliness in only a few (or even none). I found, on insider.com, an article by a Zoë Ettinger, whom I suspect is very clean.
In case she were to at any point know about me, I am simply attempting to communicate her recommendations.
1
“Fade cleans, without question, everything.” Don’t let the dirt settle. That resembles life settled to pieces, just space-separated. If you sit in the dust, you become it.
2
“Quill dusters eliminate dust.” Let the quill remain, but don’t make it your only tool. My, you could add a candle.
3
“Paper gives the glass without a streak sparkle.” You can’t wipe an unstreaked sparkle on glass. Therefore, why not let the sparkle streak?
4
“Vinegar is a generally useful cleaner.” Vinegar is best for fish and chips, and not for cleaning the table.
5
“Hairspray can be utilized to eliminate ink stains.” Hairspray can make or break a good time! Ink will set unless you take measures to remove it.
6
A candle will melt if you leave it lit. Let the ink stain, perhaps, become found art.
“You should wash everything on cold.” To remove a stain, start with cold water.
Boiling water can set stains, like milk, egg, or blood. It cooks the protein. Boiling water works best on slick stains, like mayonnaise.
8
“Deodorizer helps clean the air,” an aroma. Lighting a candle would achieve the same end.
9
“String mops are the best approach.” If it is not too evident to say here, a string mop requires a bucket.
10
“You should finish wood regularly.” Finishes shield wooden surfaces and show up more.
Wood finish is not the same as painting, for painting subtly conceals a wooden surface while a finish completes it. Philosophical point.
11
“Vacuum, then, at that point, dust.” The vacuum will contaminate considerably more than you.
12
“You can wash your sheets like clockwork.” A more natural routine can deliver better results.
13
“Your dishwasher cleans itself.” Plain and simple, it doesn’t.
14
“Your clothes washer cleans itself.” It doesn’t.
15
“All green cleaning items are protected to utilize.” You need green cleaning as much as on all the other things you ensure.
From the standpoint of being a professional, in being green for your buyers and representatives, and also when creating your business’ impression, green cleaning is held to decrease contaminations. It doesn’t always cause the same medical issues brought about by non-green cleaning.
16
“Using more laundry detergent is always better.” An excess of cleanser will leave buildup.
You’re welcome to like the post, to follow, or to comment.
I am ending with the band Deerhunter’s video for their 2018 LP Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? That’s Bradford Cox singing, with very few close-ups in the presentation. Reputable indie rock. Enjoy World Candle Month.
“Most of us really aren’t horribly unique. There are 6 billion of us.
“Put ’em all in one room and very few would stand out as individuals. So maybe we ought to think of worth in terms of our ability to get along as a part of nature, rather than being the lords over nature.”
–Herbert Simon, 1916–2001, market analyst
Simon was an American financial expert who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978 for his commitments to financial matters. Simon set the “bottleneck,” which limits both what we can see, and what we can do. Current financial matters are generally founded on Simon’s thoughts.
Simon was granted the prize in financial matters for his examination into the interaction inside monetary associations. Fast forward to 2021, and the Internet is sometimes summed up as a whole with the phrase attention economy, and the expression arguably was begotten by therapist, market analyst, and Nobel Laureate, Herbert Simon. In a compelling book, Administrative Behavior (1947), Simon tried to supplant tradition, demonstrating—in an idea—a methodology that perceived different components.
As I understand the industry of Big Tech, in 2021, web designers often work on websites that advertise banners for revenue.
A phone call this week, the two of us in a small Canadian town, surprised me with the news that a downtown building, closed since 2018, had burned to street-level. An active Internet user, who has a blog that shows ads to readers, recounted what happened in his blog.
I am sorry that the building burned down, but that I was quickly clued up by social media, I am happy to indulge in feeling is the bee’s knees.
If you don’t know a lot about data privacy, and you wonder how your web searches seem to translate into similar ads on websites you use, it is because you have been observed searching, and advertisers wish to help you spend your money. There are steps you can take to reclaim data privacy, but you should be aware of where and what you do on the Internet, so that you can own your progress, if you liken browsing the Internet to, say, an adventure game.
I’ve thought about data privacy before. Facebook has had a scandalous history of data privacy betrayals, as when they employed Cambridge Analytica to help them unfairly sway the result of the 2016 run for the White House. The effort to cheat didn’t succeed, but the vote was a very narrow divide.
The deceit delivered by Cambridge Analytica led a giant blow to Facebook’s reputation, and was very hard on Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica had been trying to manipulate voters into thinking as the manipulative computer firm was paid to lead people to think.
Many computer users, you probably know, use VPN technology to disguise their location, by relaying their decisions on the Internet through a route that presents a fake location that an uninformed spy might take as your actual physical location (and not the location that you have).
Another retrofitting solution is to use a software scan, like Superantispyware, to detect tracking cookies, which show you ads that have targetted your behaviour on the Internet. Superantispyware deletes those cookies and shakes that control the advertisers have on you.
⦁ Getting personal
Something as simple as resolving to speak honestly can have profound and upbeat results. Herbert Simon was a therapist–I spoke with more than one caseworker when I was living out my twenties, and what guidance they provided, I still remember things they said to me, to this day, years later.
Inspired by those, like Rick and Tony and Pam, I am for this post listing what might help “counsel” individuals who are perhaps new to the attention economy, so they are not shorted by their own expectations.
⦁ Observations about the world (propelled by Herbert Simon)
Nature is flourishing
We have enhancements in medication
Significant development is happening all the time
Expanded digitalization is happening just as fast
Distant, working, is a clear reality
Enhancements in instruction abound
Another gander, at the powerless and oppressed individuals from our general public, needn’t give us pause
Promising circumstances favour us
Co-operation and social support enable us
Co-activity and social help assist us
Picking who is imperative to us is a potential reality
Working on psychological wellness through helping other people is good for your wellbeing
Collaborations between regular citizens (not government nor police) is becoming a mainstay
Feeling of appreciation might be a new unique norm
Discovering delight has never been more possible
Having an effect is, straight up, a reality
The world is a strange and wonderful place. When you consider, for example, co-activity, you might reflect that every person is truly an individual, and many people have talents that really help highlight other people’s strengths. While there are of course powerless and oppressed individuals, if you can get a smartphone and learn how to effectively use it, you are as powerful an individual as ever walked the Earth, in some regards.
Even with only a few social accounts, your potential is rather excellent. A philosophy of industry isn’t always discussed with words you could charactertize as “holistic,” but someone with an adequate command of many many realities about life, and how to do right, for both themselves and others, can be completely excellent.
Check out Canadian musician and recording artist Rick White’s new album Where it’s fine
⦁ Contrarily bound by confusion (to contrast)
My pinned tweet describes how AI has become an excellent tool, in many applications, for providing useful content recommendations. AI can look at what you’ve done before, on a specific service, and can guide you to more good content, to be enjoyed, and that you want to share.
My aim in circling data is to be helpful, to arrive at information relevant to what you might be searching for now, and I am additionally marginally important for my dad’s business, the Maple Lawn burial ground he focuses on all year, with some assistance from family and friends.
Good hobbies should be cultivated. I feel the attention economy is awesome. In particular, video, both big-budget presentations and little user videos, is widely available. A little music can help, too.
When AI is employed for reasons that include helping to provide good content recommendations, as, for example, when you are on YouTube, quality YouTube videos, though controlled with measures that can feel extreme, are recommended to viewers, by an AI algorithm.
YouTube launched in February 2005.
…”In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
–‘Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World’ in Martin Greenberger (ed.) Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest (1971), 315 pages, index, sources
1: to make as if for the first time something already invented and reinvents the wheel
2: to remake or redo completely
3: to bring into use again
Reinvention, in the year 2021, is one way to move out of our present circumstances. It is no mystery that the future will not be the same as was intended.
There is an undercurrent of happiness again these days. Just surviving has become like a triumph, and love may prove the order of the day.
A worldwide perception of a second chance come is rare, and the future is unwritten; here is an age of miracles. You should reinvent thoroughly and carefully.
Governance could at this time be set free by Big Tech, or it could be screwed down like a bench at a bus stop intended not to be stolen.
In Canada, it is debated whether Canadian media on the Internet could get paid, with Bill C-10 ready to put Canadian content front and centre on sites where it is not now automatically top-tier content, kind of a detriment if you don’t wish a Canadian flavour every time you want a user video recommendation. Nor should Canadian viewer recommendations get like the offerings of AI bots behind walls at HQ, or further like that, as I suppose they may already be.
Take the case of Canadian comedian and broadcaster Tom Green, who has lately been highlighting his YouTube channel with a vlog showcasing a drive he did from LA to Ottawa. It is a singular vlog.
Watching Green offer reflections alone in the US desert, about the planet getting back to to a pre-pandemic normal, Green, whom I remember in Road Trip directed by Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, raised the point of how adaptation, not the adaptation of literature to film, but the adaptation you can utilize, being how you could save the endeavours you want for yourself to succeed in the face of unknown days. You start confidently and your handle on what we are facing will strengthen your resolve. I think Green is going, possibly, from the field of comedy, into music.
Without being afraid of having dropped the ball, I am having some trouble relating to the concept of schools as we understand them now, leaving behind their classrooms on campuses without that experience. Goodness, excited about the future opening up for us, if it is not ultimately restricted by forces that we neither foresee coming nor welcome.
There must sometimes be a natural intelligent design for learning–that there could never be would be a very remote possibility. Intelligent design occurs frequently enough that I can not be discouraged from believing what we have is merely a happy accident.
I sometimes wish that, when I once considered affording myself some of the opportunities youth brings, I could have opted for hard work, in light of the big picture. At age seventeen I could have begun to become marketable for the reason, chiefly, of challenging myself to appeal to social norms. Opportunities most frequently available are now changing in nature, while content, as Bill Gates said, could well remain king.
Recently, last year and this year, my posts, each to a recollected song, under the nominal tutelage of Jim Adams, were rejected, when Adams decided he no longer welcomed my participation. That is fine, as my reflections helped me get better organized, and of my several posts for Song Lyric Sunday, even if the posts were finally met with dismay, most of them were useful in their own right.
Beginning again the last few weeks, with a new temperament, how now in the days of yesteryear, when I came up with observations that grew from insights that author Jeff Goins introduced, bestselling author of The Art of Work, with notes on Facebook about how to blog. They never demanded a lot of work, but by now with a little work, they keep my little readership alive.
I don’t mind resuming the approach with which I began in 2012. Without a proper book, or even trying to write a proper book, I might be accused of taking in a blog of this shape and style, mine, without effective longtime goals.
But The Art of Work is the bestseller in Jeff Goins’ hand, about people who carved out singular paths for themselves, and it’s a wonderful book. I doubt it was written in the bathroom at parties.
If this does not work, then, let this be Finding Courtesies in Handfuls of Garden Flowers.
One evening, the other day, I’d got to feeling, oddly, like how I did when I was an unfulfilled young person, feeling regret at letting time go, without, you could say, stopping to smell the roses.
Two weeks ago, the YouTube channel for IGN posted the Indiana Jones trailer commemorating forty years since Raiders of the Lost Ark made its premiere in 1981.
It was kind of weird to think about a related film, The Rise of Skywalker, being in theatres an entire year in the past. Things have certainly changed.
Song Lyric Sunday is is a blog hop organized by Jim Adams. For Sunday, December 20, Jim’s prompts include: “circle.”
A blog hop is a social experience, a little fun if you blog.
About music, to be a famous musician is a powerful fantasy. I regard exciting music or any sort of expert musicianship.
The prompt circle reminded me of the late, great Lou Reed’s song Vicious Circle, on the album Rock and Roll Heart. In 1976, Reed’s first album with Arista Records followed the records he did for RCA after The Velvet Underground ended, and was kind of immediately enjoyable for a casual listener, though Reed seems to flirt again on Rock and Roll Heart with self-destruction, not unlike what a depressed but notable musician can be like. Rock and Roll Heart is the seventh solo studio album by Lou Reed, released in 1976. Heart is the seventh collection by Lou Reed. It was his first for Arista Records after record magnate Clive Davis safeguarded him. There’s a TV interview with Reed in Australia recorded around 1975, just before he made Rock and Roll Heart, where Reed seems unhappy.
Reed tries a joke about the tyrant Adolf Hitler, calling him a great organizer. The interviewer admonishes him. I think Reed was obliquely referring to Andy Warhol, who once managed him as a musician.
Reed is a championed rock guitarist and singer who is seldom rivalled, given the influence of his personality. He is gone, but when I was in college, one long-haired, heavyset history teacher taught us a little about him, calling Reed “the godfather of punk.” In the library, I found a little book about subculture, music subculture in the nineteen seventies, and I put energy into understanding it.
Lou Reed’s New York
Because of the acclaim of The Velvet Underground, that was after they ceased making music together, as a group, songs of theirs began to be popular.
When in the year 1999 I went into the HMV store in New York City, the international chain of CD shops where you went if you wanted music, in the days when you bought music on physical media, the Velvets were well-advertised, as in giant letters in the store announcing, “The Velvet Underground.” You knew it was their town.
Years before I was born, Lou Reed had a Top 20 hit, contributing to the new popularity of both Reed, and, consequently, the Velvets. The most popular song by Reed is a song I first heard on FM radio, cruising the streets of my town, probably for no particular reason, or for no good reason.
Lou Reed a Life by Anthony DeCurtis
I didn’t know who that singer was, on the radio, until I heard the song again, as though it were still 1972, in some kind of Doctor Who-type parallel universe. I still didn’t know whom it was singing like that, but eventually, a friend of a friend listened to me describe the song, and he knew who it was, given a moment (between thought and reflection).
I was in a circle, then, being a kid in high school, dealing with pressures that are specific to what I think is most kids’ experience. It wasn’t vicious, by the way, just sayin’.
The song Vicious Circle could be about having social pressures, like specific patterns ingrained in you to run up against a wall. The song is less up-tempo than most of the songs on Rock and Roll Heart. I am not sure the better part of Reed’s listeners would embrace music like his, if they didn’t feel, at least from time to time, that the intrigue about the music was coming from a place touched by despair.
There are stories about Lou Reed, when he was the frontman of the Velvets, like that he played Woodstock in ’69, but nobody could hear the sound. I don’t think the Velvets did play Woodstock. They broke up amid tension.
The third and fourth of the Velvets’ records were more straightforward as rock albums than the first and second albums. I believe in 1968 they performed in Hamilton, Ontario, but if so, that was likely the Velvet Underground’s only show in Canada.
Lou Reed’s hit in 1972 includes the B-side Vicious (not Vicious Circle). Four years after that, after Reed was back to being a struggling songwriter, Reed with Vicious Circle was possibly pointing to his choice of making a livelihood as a rock singer, because Vicious Circle points to the song Vicious, and the 45 format itself is circular in shape, music being on vinyl discs, records. There is a hint of weariness in Vicious Circle.
There is a Bowie song, too, with the word circle in its title, and I know there’s a reference to him in the title of Vicious Circle in all likelihood.
Reed had a great sense of humour, I read in college, the Velvets’ drummer Moe Tucker remarking on that about Lou Reed.
Reed expounded on experience in his music, including thoughts about sex and culture. Reed did much of his very best music with the Velvets, who were John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker, and Doug Yule.
Everything Lou Reed did music-wise is very acceptable, I think. The Velvet Underground is a legendary band. Many an amateur rocker knows whom the Velvet Underground are, and get songs like What Goes On, and Sweet Jane, west coast surf type stuff.
I used to wonder what Reed intended for the fate of his music.
I think with Rock and Roll Heart Reed was trying his hand at again being a straightforward rock musician. I would venture to guess that he was a pretty hot musician, trying to move into AM Radio with the record Coney Island Baby, but had simultaneously conveyed the ability to fail with his 1975 noise opus Metal Machine Music.
Metal Machine Music sort of seems easier to take as an experimental ambient noise album, but I take it fans of the artist would have wanted more rock songs, not something altogether weird like Metal Machine Music. Wikipedia says, “In 1979 Reed said ‘Saying ‘I’m a Coney Island baby’ at the end of that song is like saying I haven’t backed off an inch. And don’t you forget it.'”
Reed lived a long life, until October 27, 2013, passing away at the age of 71. When I was In college, I didn’t believe Reed’s image as a street-weary rock musician, compared to who he was. I don’t have any acquaintance with it all, however.
Thanks to Jim Adams for the December 20 word prompt circle.
You’re caught in a vicious circle Surrounded by your so called friends You’re caught in a vicious circle And it looks like it will never end ‘Cause some people think that they like problems And some people think that they don’t And for everybody who says yes There’s somebody who’s staring, saying don’t
You’re caught in a vicious circle Surrounded by your so called friends You’re caught in a vicious circle And it looks like it will never end ‘Cause some people think that it’s nerves And some people think that it’s not And some people think that it’s things that you do And others think that you were cold, when you were hot They think that that is what it was about
Ontario is on target to meet its objective of getting 65 percent of grown-ups before the month’s over, and there is good faith it very well outperform.
They expect that May 24, around 2,490 drug stores provincewide will offer Pfizer and Moderna. There ought to in the long run be around 280,000 traveling through the network every week, authorities said.
Here on WordPress, occasionally I find specific bloggers to be interesting for me. One guy like that is Jim Adams, who has a blog and who has planned blog prompts.
Jim has an interest in music and knowledge to share.
I recall the previous winter when my father brought up to me that the sharing I was doing online didn’t appear to be excessively important, as should have been obvious. I help out my father with his business.
While I enjoy Facebook and Twitter, the day he offered that criticism about my content, I was a little miffed. I know that my dad clowns, but I tried to look past that, to see if I could think of a better approach. I tried chancing to utilize the focus right now that Jim has been providing.
I’ve been blogging since MySpace, kind of a wow. On WordPress, I have done some posting with a bit of humour to it, and in the months since my dad said that to me about how I seem on social, I eventually decided I still wasn’t too far off the mark.
There aren’t too many “rules” for running a social presence.
For November 29, 2020, Jim’s prompts include: “bird.” The late Leonard Cohen made the song Bird on the Wire.
By the mid-1960s, Cohen started to form rock and pop melodies. He had already written an expansive amount of writing, both poetry, and novels.
He studied at McGill in Montreal and made a name for himself through the sixties. Cohen kind of burned out about that stuff in the early nineteen seventies, but music came to him his whole career. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame enlisted Cohen in 2008, and Leonard Cohen got a Grammy Award in 2010.
Bird on the Wire is on the record Songs from a Room, released April 1969, and is like a poem set to the sound of Cohen’s guitar. The title Songs from a Room is very simple, understating the mastery of the music.
Songs from a Room LP
Being able to enjoy something from the years before I was born is lucky, as hearing Bird on the Wire is an experience that has power to it, sentimental. Strange song title, eh? A listener feels like the hardships of life have been met by others just the same, whether more talented, or more fortunate.
Not to sound presumptuous, but Bird on the Wire is great that way. Leonard Cohen got into music as a popular singer when he was losing interest in writing. Wikipedia says that Bird on the Wire is a country song, a detail which surprises me, and reading that, I thought additionally that the song just has a simplicity that sets it apart from other country songs.
The country genre of music isn’t something I understand, and maybe neither is the language of love, but when I was in college, I got to study, one semester, Canadian music. Country music in the Canadian Prairies is a favourite choice of many resident Canadians.
I can infer that Bird on the Wire could be a favourite of many who can remember 1969. It was years before I was born.
There is something about cowboy music, that we’ve adopted in Canada, that reflects how life in the Prairies shaped up. The first herders calling themselves “cowboys” got to the Canadian prairies in the 1870s, riding up from the US territories of Idaho and Montana.
The romantic image of the cowboy emerged around this American subculture. British Columbia “buckaroos” likewise sooner or later adopted the cowboy appearance.
I doubt that Cohen identified with being a cowboy; he was a novelist, poet and musician. He identifies, I think, with the archetype of a cowboy’s passion. I think of the scene in the Hollywood movie City Slickers, where Billy Crystal’s Mitch Robbins character plays the harmonica at the campfire.
Curly, Jack Palance’s character, interrupts the music.
Mitch Robbins: [Playing harmonica]
Curly: Put that away.
Mitch Robbins: [Stops, then resumes playing harmonica]
Curly: I said, put that away!
Mitch Robbins: Hey you know, the first time I tried to talk to you, you embarrassed me. So I teased you a little bit which maybe I shouldn’t have done, so I’m sorry.
And now you’re sitting over there playing with your knife, trying to frighten me – which you’re doing a good job. But if you’re gonna kill me, get on with it; if not, shut the hell up – I’m on vacation.
City Slickers
Wikipedia explains that before writing Bird on the Wire, Cohen carefully structured the song, before committing it to tape. To tell the truth, before I read Wikipedia’s description, I hadn’t thought that the song would be identified as a country song.
Cohen’s music is usually in the genres of folk, and soft rock. Romantic country music doesn’t meld with the other interests in music I have thought of. If Bird on the Wire is a country song, it breaks, I think, with the tradition of country music that country music fans enjoy.
It’s unique that way. I wonder if a country song should be simple, but distinctive. The answer isn’t straightforward.
Sometimes answers to questions like that turn up unexpectedly, even if it isn’t initially clear where to begin, to get an answer to the question. A post like this one, doing the research and writing the content, helps me understand better something that already interests me, the music. Also, maybe somebody else interested in this blog challenge thought to say something about this specific song.
I first heard Bird on the Wire when I was in high school, the twelfth grade or so, on a simply dubbed audio cassette.
Leonard Cohen passed on November 7, 2016 (aged 82).
I saw him once in concert. It was terrific.
Here are the lyrics to the song, followed by the song itself, in a video.
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