Where Worlds Collide

God's Unfinished Business

Richard Hall's Economics and Theology blog reviews John Wilding's God's Unfinished Business: Evolution of Humanity. I thought I'd mention it, because not only am I related to the reviewer, I also know one of the authors.

Nobody will put up a statue of an Amazon reviewer

I've never paid much attention to the customer reviews on Amazon.com. When something's filled with typos and bad spellings, it's difficult to take the reviewer seriously. Charlie Stross has trawled though some of worst, and come up with some hilarious takes of classic works of literature.

To give a flavour, here's some wingnut on Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude.

At best, Marquez reveals an egalitarian attitude that seems to pervade the Americas south of the Rio Grande (no wonder those countries are in constant economic trouble). Marquez should study supply side economics as described by Milton Friedman, another Nobel Prize winner, in order to give his book better balance."

Others cover such classics as 1984, Brave New World and A Tale of Two Cities

Music Quote of the Day

In a post about music and radio stations, David T of comes up with this gem, deep in the comments thread:

There's Radio 2, for those who have resigned themselves to their middle aged fate.

Then, there's 6Music. Which is basically Radio 2. But it plays more Clash.

For a few years, I thought: 'Oh, this is cool - I'm still into new trendy music, and so I'm never going to get old and die'. Then I realised that things like 6Music, the (excellent) Word magazine, and all those revivals of punk bands etc. were actually just an enormous marketing ploy to make me feel as if I was still in touch with coolness; and were, in fact, the cultural equivalent of wearing lo-slung jeans with a middle aged gut hanging over them.

Indeed. Reminds me very much of that work colleague who I've mentioned before.

In fact the only cultural different between the current crop of formulaic new-wave of new-wave of new-wave post-punk retreads and the third-generation prog-rock I listen to is that the prog-rockers never try to pretend that they're cool and trendy. Oh, and they know more than three chords and therefore play far better actual music. But if you're reading this blog you knew that already.

An Amazon Astore

As a bit of an experiment, I've included an Amazon aStore on this site. It's still a bit rough and ready, and not yet fully intergrated with the rest of the site, but give it a try.

You're probably going to call me a total commercial sellout for this.

Live music for November and December

Like last year, there's a lot of live music coming up over the next couple of months. This represents as many shows as I saw in the whole of 2004.

• Opeth, Manchester Academy 1, Friday 10th November
• Hayseed Dixie, Manchester Academy 3, Friday 17th October
• Mostly Autumn, Bilston Robin 2, Friday 1st December
• IQ, The Mean Fiddler, London, Saturday 9th December
• Mostly Autumn, Crewe Limelight, 20 December

So far I've got tickets for the first four of those. The Crewe Christmas gig isn't quite a definite for me yet, but Mostly Autumn's Xmas shows are usually well worth attending.

Classical Snobs

Rather silly article by Philip Hensher which is supposed to be about why rock musicians shouldn't attempt anything more ambitious than three-minute pop songs, but really says a lot more about the snobbery of large sections of the classical world.

One of the reasons such enterprises often fail so dramatically - and it's very difficult to think of any that have lasted more than a couple of performances - is that their composers rarely have the technical ability to record and convey their intentions with any accuracy.

Many rock musicians can't read music and have what strikes most classical musicians as rather a loose conception of authorship, relying on amanuenses to transform vague ideas into detailed life. In the world of popular music, such transcribers, arrangers or "producers" have always done a great deal more than the public suspects.

Note the scare quotes around the word 'producer'. I know that it's not exactly a secret that a lot of best-selling chart acts have extremely limited musical abilities, and their records owe more to whoever's producing them than anything else. But there are plenty of other rock artists with plenty of compositional and arrangement ability, especially those working in genres outside the fashionable 'indie' mainstream. Some can ever read music!

When he starts talking about 'amanuenses' (yes, I did have to look that word up), Hensher reveals how little he understands rock music and how it's created. He can't get his head round the idea that you can have highly complex and sophisticated music that doesn't completely revolve around 'the dots'. If a lot of rock musicians can't read music, then a lot of classically-trained musicians are incapable of playing by ear. I remember a bassist telling me how frustrating he found it to work with musicians who couldn't play a note unless they had those dots in front of them. The reason rock works the way it does because of the ubiquity of recording technology, something else he fails to grasp.

Actually, one of the worst things about many rock/classical crossovers is the appallingly lacklustre playing by some of the orchestral musicians. Frank Zappa has railed against this sort of thing on some of his many orchestral collaborations, especially the complete lack of rhythm of some orchestras. Listen to the original recording of Uriah Heep's "Salisbury", where what's actually quite a good composition is spoiled by some very sloppy and out-of-time playing.

The article ends with a rogues gallery of unsuccessful rock/classical collaborations, while conveniently neglecting to list any of the successful ones.

Railroad Earth, Spawn of Satan?

Have Railroad Earth done a Robert Johnson and sold their souls to The Devil in order to play that shredding mandolin and fiddle? Is there an Ümläüt in the making? If you think I'm worrying unnecessarily, look what's happened to one of their fans.

News from 2026

Captain Electra has some predictions for model railway products from the year 2026.

Hornby were showing off their Lyddle End "Nano-Folk", 1:148 scale robotic folk who can be programmed to perform simple tasks such as getting in and off trains, waiting impatiently on the platforms and going shopping. We are assured that the problems encountered with earlier Chinese-built "Nano-Folk" will not be repeated and they will not form a Democratic Republic on your layout.

Will the range include nano-chavs?

Life Imitates Test Data

At work I've spent most of the past year's work as an IT tester working on an extremely complex work allocation function as part of a housing management system. Some of my test data is somewhat humourous; I've got aging rock stars as operatives, "Disinfestation of rats and mice" as one of the jobs, and "Sharp pointy stick" as one of the required material items. Little did I know that reality would catch up!

Update: Now it seems that "Disinfestation of Pigeons" needs a Pelican.

Podcasting: for Marillion fans only?

Some completely stupid drivel from a tiresomely hipper-than-now New Statesman scribbler called Rachel Cooke.

Podcasting is for geeks -- created by geeks, listened to by geeks. Think about it. Don't you ever wonder why you no longer see anyone wearing a Marillion T-shirt? I'd bet good money that the reason for this is that the owners of said T-shirts are all too busy at home, messing around with their podcast software.

Doesn't she know that Marillion T shirts are for wearing when going to model railway exhibitions?

I find something vaguely fascist about the Bruschetta-eating literati's hatred of 'geeks'. They seem to feel threatened by the very existance of people that don't conform to their narrow definition of 'cool'. How dare we listen to music which has some depth and complexity rather than the latest three-chord style-over-substance flavour of the month? How dare we read science fiction rather than pretending to like dull novels in which nothing happens but are deeply symbolic of man's struggle against his socio-polical environment?

Mailing lists vs. Web Fora

The Ministry of Information's take on HippyDave's post on mailing lists vs. web forums.

On the initial topic (e-mail groups vs. online fora), I definitely favour the latter, for one main reason: threads. For me, that's the 'killer app' of fora, with which e-mail lists can't compete. I drastically prefer to read the topics I choose, rather than an undifferentiated stream of all traffic.

I can see the point on signal-to-noise ratios, but I find that the extra time spent checking and navigating web forums is longer that the time skimming and deleting off-topic postings on most mailing lists. This may be because I'm still on dialup, and I find web forums with all those graphic avatars and other 'cute' cruft take forever to load. But few if any web forums have an easy way of telling you which posts you have and haven't read, or even which threads have new posts.

Most mailing lists support threading if you use a decent mail program (i.e. anything other than Microsoft Outlook, which was intended for corporate email, not Internet discussion groups, and it shows), although that gets weakened by poor thread discipline, mostly from top-posting Outlook users who don't realise that other mail programs exist.

One of these days someone will come up with a 'killer app' that combines the best elements of both. Although I think the usability of web fora would be dramatically improved by the simple addition of RSS feeds which can tell you when there are new posts on a particular subject - I can't imagine the Blogosphere without RSS.

Mostly Autumn, Bury Met, 20-Oct-2006

Friday's gig at the Bury Met was the first time I've seen Mostly Autumn since Rhyl back in May. Just like everyone else I had great difficultly in actually getting there; for the second day running the trains were farkled by a broken down train, and a plethora of road accidents had gridlocked the entire road network in Lancashire; the number 130 bus took an hour and a half to get into Manchester, which scuppered my plans to get anything to eat before the show.

The gig was well up to MA's usual standards. Most MA gigs I've been about halfway back, but this time I met up with a bunch of regulars from the Mostly Autumn Forum, and ended up right up at the front. The downside of this is that you don't get a perfect sound mix, since most of what you hear is from the monitors rather than through the PA. I ended up with a lot of lead vocals, flute, and Liam Davidson's guitar, and not quite enough keyboards or lead guitar. The upside was that I was only six feet away from Heather and Angela! It was also interesting to hear exactly what Liam plays; while his guitar parts make a contribution to the overall sound, he's not usually that prominent in the mix.

There were absolutely no surprises in the setlist, although we weren't really expecting any. I think the only change from Rhyl was that they played "Passengers" instead of "Answer the Question". High spot was a sublime version of "Carpe Diem", although "Shrinking Violet" ran it close. The jigs, which some people love and some people hate went down well with the crowd, as did the call-and-response between Bryan Josh and Olivia Sparnenn on "Never the Rainbow".

The only time they really stumbled was "Nowhere To Hide (Close My Eyes)" which exposed the limitations of Bryan's vocals, and is precisely the sort of oldie that really ought to be retired from the setlist.

They closed with the perennial epics, "Heroes Never Die" and "Mother Nature", the latter ending with Bryan playing a few bars of Pink Floyd's "Echoes".

While I've been critical of the rather conservative setlist, this set does strongly showcase Angela Gordon's flute playing, and she was on really good form last night. But what was it that she found so amusing about DEMU T-shirt?

Hot Axlebox!

While waiting for my train home tonight, I noticed a freight barrelling along on the other line; a long train of continuous welded rail headed by a Freightliner 66, doing something like sixty.

Alarmingly, I noticed a lot of black smoke coming from one of the bogies about halfway down the train, which looked worryingly like a hot axlebox. As the train receded into the distance, it seemed to be shrouded in smoke. The tail light, still visible through the smoke, took a long time to disappear round the curve a mile along the line. Was the train slowing?

After the train disappeared, the signals didn't clear. My own train, due on the other track any minute failed to appear. Disturbing thoughts started appearing in my head; had the train derailed and blocked both lines? Had my local train run into the wreckage? Should I have tried to warn someone?

Another waiting passenger rang the information helpline, to be told that services were delayed due to 'problems with a freight train'. As if we didn't already know that.

I eventually got home by getting a lift from a later-working colleague (the office is next door to the station). National Rail stated that 'the broken down train is now on the move' at 19:11, with residual delays of up to 85 minutes. Sounds like it didn't derail, but why did they close both lines?

Update: At least it wasn't a nuclear flask train.

Nostalgia vs. Progression

Insightful post from HippyDave, on the divide between innovation and nostalgia:

Marillion are a band who have never felt the need to stick slavishly to a particular sound or approach. This is to be applauded, I feel: too many bands endlessly xerox their past work until they paint themselves into a musical corner, and end up like current-day Yes, or The Eagles; fine bands, but essentially playing endless gigs on the nostalgia circuit. Condemned to play their increasingly ancient 'fan favourites' ad nauseaum whilst almost totally ignoring anything they've written in the last ten years, these bands play to expectations. Their gigs are wall-to-wall 'classics', the band feeling that to stay in the game, they have to play to the expectations of their fanbase, who hunger after a particular period in their favourite band's history. Nostalgia wins, and true artistry suffers. I blame it on lazy listeners. Yes, we all like to hear a few favourites from time to time, but with bands like Yes or The Rolling Stones, that's all you get. Nothing new and interesting, just the same old songs you've heard a million times before.

Actually, with Yes, the problem is that most of their output since the mid-80s has been pretty lacklustre. The one really good song from the mid 90s, "Mind Drive" was in the setlist the last time I saw them, and they played a pretty awesome version too. But I noticed that a lot of the audience didn't recognise it, presumably they stopped buying Yes' albums after Tormato.

I've been critical of Mostly Autumn in the past for falling into the nostalgia trap. They're a band who have only been going for ten years and recorded five albums, but recent setlists seem to be dominated by the same old songs that everybody has heard many times before, to the vociferous applause from sizable proportion of the fanbase. Which is a pity when there's a lot of good recent material that's not getting played live. Will they end up as their own tribute band? Or will they eventually go down the Marillion route? Or find the happy medium between the two?

One Day In History

Today is One Day In History.

'One Day in History' is a one off opportunity for you to join in a mass blog for the national record. We want as many people as possible to record a 'blog' diary which will be stored by the British Library as a historical record of our national life.

Write your diary here reflecting on how history itself impacted on your day - whether it just commuting through an historic environment, discussing family history or watching repeats on TV.

Here's my entry.

Wake up at 07:25

Breakfast: 2 Oatabix spread with margarine, one cup of coffee.

First half of the day was a four-hour train journey from my parents' home in Slough to my workplace the Alderley Edge in Cheshire. The previous day I'd had a dental appointment with my old dentist in Slough; since I've only recently started a new job in the north of England I haven't found a dentist up here.

Noticed that First Great Western have started painting ex-Thames Trains Turbos in the new First Group livery, dark blue with swirly bits. One passed through Slough while waiting for my own train, and I saw a second at Paddington.

Paddington was thrown into chaos this morning due to a fire in Praed Street. Several streets were sealed off, and most of Paddington's entrances were closed, as was Paddington underground station. Everyone was being diverted to the bus station through a narrow exit that wasn't able to cope with anything like that number of people. There were three or four fire engines visible in neighbouring streets, but so sign of the major conflagration that would have required closure of such a large area.

The rest of the journey was uneventful. I managed to catch the 9:46 Virgin Pendolino with about five minutes to spare, which arrived in Crewe on time at 11:30. Train about two-thirds full. The local connecting train to Alderley Edge was also on time (A three coach Northern Rail class 323 for those interested).

Lunch: Baked Potato with beans, bacon and red onion from the sandwich bar round the corner from the office.

Afternoon was spent working on a software change control request, the gory details of which are not appropriate for a blog.

Arrive home to find that the landlord was still away, and therefore hadn't got my note about the air pockets in the central heating, which means the house is still cold.

Dinner: Chicken Jalfrezi and Pilau Rice, washed down with one bottle of Becks (about one-and-a-half units)

Music on stereo while I'm typing this: Second Life Syndrome by Riverside.