Moving Office - Purple Walls 2

Well, the deed has been done. All my workly goods packed up in crates to be moved over the weekend. And here's the purple wall I'll be facing (it's darker than it looks), beside a window that overlooks our 3rd floor garden. The desk will look very different on Monday once my stuff's been moved over there.

And where is my stuff now? Well, here's my office as it was and as it currently is...

And here it is with crates full of research reports and suchlike on the table...

Top Ten iPod

OK, it's that time of the week again, time to plug little ipey into the back of my laptop and see what I've been listening to this week.

>drum roll<

Apply Some Pressure - Maximo Park
You Boyz Make Big Noize - SLADE
Back To The Drive - Suzi Quatro
Graffiti - Maximo Park
Public Image - Public Image Limited
I Won't Let It 'Appen - SLADE
Buick MacKane - T.Rex
I Been Down - Buffy Sainte-Marie
Darling Don't Cry - Buffy Sainte-Marie
Rock and Roll (Part 2) - Gary Glitter

There's some change there, with Suzi Q and PiL slamming into the top ten with a vengence but Buffy is slipping down and GG is hanging on by his fingernails. Maximo are in the Numero Uno slot once again. What will it take to dislodge the lads?

Don't The War Come Easy...

"Don't the war come easy, but don't the peace come hard" - a quote from a Buffy Sainte-Marie song. Buffy also said, in Belleville Ontario, when playing the mouth bow, "If we can make music with a weapon then we've still got some hope."

To quote the Control Arms website:

Lack of controls on the arms trade is fuelling conflict, poverty and human rights abuses worldwide. Every government is responsible. The Control Arms campaign is asking governments to toughen up controls on the arms trade.

Our Million Faces petition is collecting photos and self portraits from around the world to reach our goal of one million faces by June 2006. We will use these faces to send a powerful, global message of support to the world's governments for an International Arms Trade Treaty.

Be one in a million. Join us today.

Sign up, eh?

I have, and sent the delightful photo of me in a Florentine square avoiding the pidgeons.

Purple Walls

This weekend sees our big move at work and I'll lose my office since we're all going open-plan. My office will be turned into a meeting room and I'm moving onto the other side of the floor with my team. I'm not too bothered really except that I realised today I'll be sitting in front of a big purple wall.

Our colour scheme seems to be purple and cream. We've had great debates this week (they started re-decorating last weekend) about what the colours actually are and I think the consensus is that the colours are lilac and ivory... I still maintain purple and cream!

Very '70s!

Glycerine Queen

Leather Forever is the glorious DVD of Suzi Quatro's 2003 tour, subtitled 'The Wild One Live'.

It was filmed at the end of the tour so her voice struggles to hit the note a few times but she's an energetic stage performer. It's in a huge stadium in Germany, Suzi on a big stage with her six-piece band plus two backing singers. She stalks the stage in leathers and works the audience into a frenzy despite there being a definite age thing going on. The film flicks between colour and black and white and often the black and white portions are the younger Suzi of yesteryear singing the same song - the lip-sync doesn't always work but it's a nice effect.

At the end of Glycerine Queen Suzi does a bass solo before taking over the drums for the intro to Can The Can. 48 Crash and Devil Gate Drive are also in there as well as If You Can't Give Me Love and a host of other well remembered songs, but they're the big hits so are the obvious highlights. It's quite short at only 47 minutes but I don't mind - it's great to see her on stage!

The DVD ends with a a phone call from Suzi in which she talks about Mickey Most who died in 2003 and thanked him for his belief in her. That's a nice touch.

She puts on a good show - I need to see her live now... and, of course, she has all the new songs from the excellent new album, Back To The Drive!

Catalogue and other events

Had a slightly eventful weekend (well, sort of). I decided I needed to catalogue all my CDs so I know what songs I already have and by whom and when - so I don't download then from iTunes...

I was given Access 2003 when I visited a Microsoft project a few weeks ago so thought I'd experiment with it. It took hours to go through the CDs in the various towers in the living room and the bookcase in the hall - around 400 or so. But now I've got to add track listings for each as well. I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but I discovered CDs by Sting and Alanis Morrisette that I didn't even know I had - eBay here I come!

The next step is to re-order them in alphabetical order. I'm a bit worried about that. I might still have to have a pile of CDs next to the CD player so I've got my recent favourites to hand. It looks a lot better having a pile CDs as well!

Um, more exciting is that I received an email from Buffy Sainte-Marie - I sent her a 'happy birthday' email and she replied - I'm overjoyed! And no, I'm not going to repeat what she says or give you her address. I'm quietly glowing...

Top Ten iPod

Apply Some Pressure ~ Maximo Park
Graffiti ~ Maximo Park
I Won't Let It 'Appen Agen ~ SLADE
I Been Down - Buffy Sainte-Marie
Darling Don't Cry ~ Buffy Sainte-Marie
Rock and Roll (Part 2) ~ Gary Glitter
Postwar Glamour Girls ~ John Cooper Clarke
Getting A Drag ~ Lynsey de Paul
My Life In Reverse ~ Maximo Park
Buick MacKane ~ T.Rex

The top ten doesn't really change that much, does it? Kim Weston drops out of the chart and in comes some Glam Rock (I think this is due to preparing for another Record Bag DJ session).

When there're over 1,000 songs on the iPod it takes a while to play the same song more than a few times. I'm loading Suzi Quatro's new album onto my iPod now, so let's see if little Suzi can make a dent in the charts... I hope so!

The Kings of Glam ... and Queen

I've been watching an excellent programme on BBC1 tonight - The Kings of Glam! Short biographies of some of the Kings of glamrock in the early '70s and (at the risk of leaving myself open to obvious comments) one Queen - Suzi Quatro.


Very conveniently I got Suzi's new album this afternoon - Back to the Drive - which I'm listening to for the first tme now and it is excellent so far. Rocky and loud, the title track starts off with 'Devil Gate Drive' playing in the background before exploding into the new song which is also written by Mike Chapman who wrote the hit song 30-odd years ago. What a woman! I want to see her live. I do I do I do. Teeny weeny Suzi dressed in leathers with a huge bass guitar - a classic rock image from my youth. Who could possibly forget?

Anyway, back to The Kings of Glam...

It started with a biog of Marc Bolan, the bopping elf himself, through Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Elton John ... and a lovely biog of Noddy Holder, the Lord of Noize himself! He came across as a really nice bloke, everybody's favourite uncle. It was also nice to see Dave Hill share some memories as well. If only ... a reunion will never happen (I tell myself firmly to avoid getting my hopes up). There was some great archive footage of the Kings and Queen, none of it looked new to me but it's great to see it again. There should be more about glam rock on telly! No mention of Sweet or Glitter but I don't suppose you can have everyone on (and, given the news today about GG perhaps not the best day to put him in the spotlight).

And, of course, Suzi. Listening to her heavy version of Neil Young's 'Rockin' In The Free World' on her new album. And, of course, I've inadvertently found Suzi's website which has lots of interesting nooks and crannies - and tour dates...

Buffy Sainte-Marie Albums

Imagine my joy at receiving a small package this morning from Holland - three Buffy Sainte-Marie CDs of albums that have never been released on CD:

Buffy / Changing Woman / Sweet America

I've got them all on vinyl but not on CD. Pieter who runs the excellent Buffy tribute site offered burnies and I jumped at the chance. I already had a CD of 'Buffy' (courtesy of Chris for Christmas 2004). I've been listening to the other two albums in turn all night since getting home from the Retro Bar where I failed to live up to my reputation as an international superstar DJ since all the DJ slots were taken - drat! Double drat since I was going to play a Buffy track as song four.

But I've got Buffy albums to keep me happy!

Now I've just got to track down all the singles and 'B' sides that aren't on the albums and get them digitised too... it's a never ending quest ...

Shopping Bag

A few things to record for the worthy readers:

First of all, the lights on the fine old tree at the top of Mitcham Lane, beside Streatham Green, have finally gone out. I suspect vandalism. They made such a difference to that area in the few weeks they were allowed to sparkle and shine.

Secondly, my back's partially gone again ... by that I mean my slipped disc hasn't exactly slipped but it's making itself known. I don't know how I did it this time - I can usually pin it down to the exact moment and what I did at that moment, but this time it just went when I stood up after a late lunch in Da Pietro on Streatham High Road on Sunday afternoon. All I did was stand up. Well, I didn't quite stand up fully coz me back started playing up so I hobbled home. Ouch and the pills aren't really helping.

The mornings are the worst, taking a long time for my back to 'open up' and let me stand up straight and walk without too much of a limp. Most annoying. It was really 'tight' this morning so I stayed at home and did what work I could via email - I get far more done at home than in the office. My back finally started 'opening' around 3pm by which time it's too late to try going into work.

This evening went to the theatre to see 'The Exonerated' at the Riverside Studios at Hammersmith courtesy of Chris (who will, no doubt, draft a much better review because he's good at those things, y'know, words...). I wasn't entirely sure what to expect but I enjoyed the experience (if 'enjoyed' is the right word). 10 actors, 6 of whom portray ex-prisoners on death row in America, all wrongly convicted, telling their stories, no excessive emotion, all the text lifted from court transcripts, statements or letters. All terribly sad and scary. At one point in the latter half of the play one of the ex-prisoners comments that it could happen to anyone. And if the examples in this play are anything to go by, then yes it could happen to anyone. That's the scary thing about it.

There were a few threads that connected all the stories - consistent police laziness or falsification, the ex-prisoners all trusting 'the system' because they were innocent, deliberate brutality, physical or mental. I was particularly taken by the story of the woman prisoner (played by Stockard Channing), played as a very calm hippy-type, a love-child of the '60s who ended up on death row in the mid '70s for a murder she wasn't involved in, she trusted 'the system' and so did her parents so they didn't get a proper lawyer. The killer confessed in 1979 but she was only released in 1992, and this was sadly after her husband had already been executed for the murder... So sad. After the play we were invited to give donations for the six ex-prisoners who spent years on death row since none of them received any compensation for rotting unjustly in jail. Part of me was angry about what happened, part sad, part thoughtful.

It's not just about six ex-prisoners, of course. It's about all oppression, all corrupt systems, all minorities, the life most of us don't experience (to our relief) but some do. It could happen to anyone in the 'wrong' circumstances. You or me. That's what's scary.

It resonates with where I am in my Simone de Beauvoir biography at the moment, moving from the struggle for Algerian liberation to the student riots in Paris and Simone's increasing politicisation as she grows older, taking the French Army to court in order to justify the actions of one of her former students. She shows the lie to the young radicals growing soft as they age - she discovered her radical side as she aged and she lived it to the full. There's a line in the book when, in the late '50s-'60s, she was being dropped by the Communists and others for her criticism of the USSR and other 'causes' because of their abuses of human rights when she states that her primary responsibility is to her own intellect rather than to any particular cause. Her purity of thought and seering vision wasn't about to kowtow to any trendy cause - if it's right it's right and if it's wrong she'll tell you about it in incredible detail. I like what I'm reading about Simone. Integrity counts after all.