In case you missed it, the long-out-of-print Buckingham Nicks album was issued in expanded mini-LP-style CD form last week by Big Pink Music in Korea.

https://www.catchopcd.net/en/mini-lp-cd/5499-buckingham-nicks-buckingham-nicks-mini-lp-cd-.html

Few things make me proud to be a professional engineer. At parties, I find myself claiming to be an accountant to boost my cred. However, BBC2’s The Big Life Fix with Simon Reeve has made me proud.

Born with no hands or feet, but want to ride a bike like your teenage mates? Ask an engineer to make one for you.

Had a stroke and can no longer speak to your wife? Have an engineer make you an iPad stylus and app to trigger snips of your voice taken from old home videos.

An artist with Parkinsons who can no longer hold a pen? Well, you get the idea.

Watch either episode and see if you have dry eyes at the end.

This could well be the kick up the arse I need to get out of Industrial Printing (where, my colleagues remind me, we design the printers to print the codes to stop people poisoning themselves with gone-off food or conterfeit drugs) and into something more life-affirming. Or, more likely, back into broadcast audio gear where I make radio listeners happy (and my family poorer).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084ztrw

Only 44. Jeez.

My Carpets-fan pal Emma will be very upset.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-38066578

Doolittle in new 5.1 hi-res mix on BD, included on the disc is the MFSL stereo transfer (which I have and sounds amazing).

£15 (which is half what I paid for the MFSL SACD).

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/pixies-doolittle-on-5-1-blu-ray-audio/

My lad is on a school trip* today. He had to be at school an hour early, so my internal insomniac woke me up extra early (at 4am) just to be sure.

Tomorrow there’s a BSI audit at work, so today I am correcting typos in the world’s longest and most boring document.

Please post me something to keep me awake this afternoon. Thankingyouverymuchly.

(*) Warwick Castle

Grade-4 flautist daughter has announced that she wants a uke for Christmas, I’d like to buy her a half-decent one. Any advice much appreciated.

Thankingyou very muchly in advance.

From Time Out London, via the EIL.com blog.

Which one are you?

I am Jeff.

http://www.timeout.com/london/blog/top-five-london-record-collectors-091616

Have a new album, Wild Pendulum, out. It had escaped my notice. I can’t be the only one.

Some John Barry-esque moments mixed in to the usual jangly pop.

No live dates (John Douglas recently had Ulcerative Colitis, which might be something to do with that).

That is all.

The boy has saved a couple of hundred quid in birthday and summer odd-job wages. He fancies a laptop, so I suggested a Chromebook. He’s off to big school next week, so I would like it if he could do his homework on the Chromebook (big sis gets first dibs on my Windows laptop).

I’ve never owned or used a Chromebook, so advice please – even if just what to avoid.

He already has a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 10″ Android tablet which is mainly used for playing Minecraft.

Thanks in advance

The much-loved-by-me-and-@Skirky electro-gospel-blues duo Vienna Ditto are having a summer sale on their Bandcamp merchandise.

There’s a 1/3 off package deal on the Circle LP, Ticks EP CD and a couple of remixed tracks as download for only £12. On top of that, enter ‘mailchimp’ in the paying window and get a further 15% off to just £10.20.

Vinly pressing sounds great – 180g, gatefold sleeve.

https://viennaditto.bandcamp.com/

If this works, here’s the video for Liar Liar:

My 8-year-old Dell 22″ LCD monitor went up in smoke this morning.

Any advice from the Massive on a decent replacement?

An extra couple of inches might be nice (no sniggering at the back).

Built-in Freeview HD tuner would be nifty to avoid occasional family viewing clashes.

RIP Steven Young of Colourbox and M/A/R/R/S.

Far too soon.

No place for Br*xit, p*litics or cl*ques on here. This is all about the music you’re loving right now.

A colleague tipped me off to jazz poet Anthony Joseph a couple of weeks ago. This* is Jimmy, Upon That Bridge from the album Caribbean Roots. It has rarely been off the gramophone since.

(*) fingers crossed YouTube link works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oypQ5x36788

Playing back my sound-desk recording of Helen & the Neighbourhood Dogs’ recent set, on the school run this morning, raised a laugh during the song ‘Not That Kind Of Girl’.

“I want cats in the cradle and dogs on the hearth, a cup of tea and a nice warm bath I’m not saying some girls are easily led, but they want tiaras and I want a shed”

Any other songs featuring mundane household or garden objects?

I was daydreaming as I mowed the grass this morning…

Picture the scene, a few decades into the future. An respected ethno-musicologist revisits the homeland of the music he loved during his youth. No English-speaking westerner has been there since the political upheavals of the mid 2010’s. He tracks down his heroes and gets them into a vintage recording studio for one final album of long-forgotten hits.

[Picture goes all wobbly at this point, to indicate time travel]

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to 2050…

Moby presents Das Kling-Klang Sozial Klub, featuring nonagenarian Ralf Hutter with some old fellas from Can and Tangerine Dream [fix this later – Ed].

Performing for the very last time… Autobahn.

My grandchildren are in for such a treat.

CD (22nd July) + vinlys (15th July)

“While looking for the (still ‘lost in the archives’) multi-track tapes to enable Steven Wilson to undertake new stereo and 5.1 surround mixes of the album, the original half-inch master tapes were discovered and used as the source from which engineer John Dent has prepared this 2016 ‘original master edition’.”

https://www.burningshed.com/store/ape/collection/351/

Number 5 in the most read items on the BBC news site this lunchtime:

“Calvin Harris unfollows Taylor Swift”

Is that really the 5th most important news story today?

Despairing, 46, Cambridge.

Attention Moose: on Front Row last night:

Poet Blake Morrison and composer Gavin Bryars tell us about their celebration of the train journey between Goole and Hull that will be entertaining passengers as part of the Yorkshire Festival.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07djvf5

Oh cobblers. Sea Stacks are giving up.

I suppose the hassle of years of dragging a 12-piece buskers orchestra around the country to toilet venues got too much. They certainly didn’t make any money – we gave them £100 when they played in a Cambridge chapel, unheard of for a support act, but it wouldn’t have covered their train fares from London. I must have spent £800 on microphones just for that one gig, but my goodness it was worth every penny.

These were people who played for the love of music, and what a wonderful racket they made.

There will be a 5-track EP to download on Friday and their debut album will be released posthumously.

I realise I might be the only person in the world who cares, but I appear to have something in my eye.

Here’s The High Tide for your viewing and listening pleasure.

I’ve been decorating this weekend, listening to a broken FM radio with a coat hanger for an aerial which can only receive Radio 2. They’ve been previewing this doc about the influence of the Sex Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall.

I claim I was there, despite it being a (primary) school night. And living in rural Hertfordshire at the time. I bet Johnny C was, though.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07cyvmw

Berry Gordy was on DID this morning, recalling when his dad would make him work on buidling sites, “plastering houses” (he didn’t mention whether it was lime or gypsum plaster, or even cement render – come on Kirsty, pull your interviewing socks up)

Wasn’t Charlie Higson (post-The Higsons, pre-Fast Show) also a plasterer? I vaguely recall one of Madness was a brickie.

Can the hive mind of the Afterword recall any other pop stars who were useful with their hands?

The morning after my first post-Crohn’s-diagnosis wedding.

The bridegroom has Colitis, so we munched on gluten-free chicken sandwiches while all the other guests enjoyed lamb roast. Well, all except for the vegans, who tucked into their kale bake.

Cons: it was a bit odd at first, being sober at such an occasion. I noticed I was a bit stiff in the late evening, after an afternoon of my bony arse resting on church pews and dining chairs. Toasting the bride and groom with lemonade, next time I’m pushing the boat out and going for Elderflower pressé.

Pros: I dad-dance equally well sober, and have no hangover this morning. I call that a score draw.

Life really doesn’t stop when you give up the sauce, it just gets a bit less extreme. I work with an older diabetic who says much the same.

The band were a bit Mumford – feat. banjo & upright bass – and kicked off with this, which got the dancefloor heaving. Warning: contains YouTube.

Outkast – Hey Ya

The boy and I have been listening to Prince on the morning school run. My collection stops at the Squiggle album (the one after Diamonds and Pearls).

Where do we go from here?

Received wisdom would suggest there’s a lot of tedious funk workouts during the TAFKAP years.