The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Track and Trace is working fine! We’ve got those vile journos and photographers beat.

by 2 Comments

incoherent rant mode Yep, the track and trace approach is payin’ dividends. Those extremists in the media, whippin’ up fear and violence while our streets – usually kept clean and safe by our great, really great, magnificent police force – are in flames are really shitting themselves now. Believe me. Yes, we know who you are, you sad people, and we’re coming to get you. All you left wing communist anarchists (sic) are going to wish you never stained the reputation of our great country with your vile fake news. We got pictures of you, using the world-beating technology we have (not Chinese) and we can trace you to your home, to your family, to your employer, and we’re gonna make sure you never soil this great country with your lies again. We’re going to stamp on this civil unrest, like you’ve never seen. Never. Believe me. Nobody gets to stop me playin’ a round when I feel like it, no matter how many stores they torch. /incoherent rant mode

1990 or 1980 to the present The Afterword Favourite Albums – I volunteer

by 46 Comments

Following the great efforts of @Dai and his and the suggestion from @Feedback_File – I would be delighted to compile an alternative list (don’t we all love lists) of our favourite albums from either 1980 or 1990 up to the present day. This should be a far more interesting list than one full of the Beatles, Dylan and Joni.

So can any of us think of our favourites from a time AFTER we were born or in some cases AFTER leaving education – I was only 4 when the Beatles (white album) was released.

#1 – Do we start from 1980 or 1990 – VOTE NOW! #2 – Once it is clear what preference we have, can we think, think again and… #3 – Can we then use Dai’s rulebook for presenting our Top Ten of the last 30 or 40 years?

ATM: Which USB keyboard should I buy to start learning how to play the pianer?

by 15 Comments

Seemples question; a billion possible answers.

Having grown up with a piano in the living room, yet also having dodged piano lessons at the time and having never subsequently got to grips with the little black and white devils, I’ve long harboured a temptation to buy a keyboard that I can put on my desk in front of me and plug into a usb socket on my office PC.

I don’t need to spend a gazillion on this – I’m not looking to blow serious wonga on a Nord for example. I suspect I’d rather have 61 keys than 49 from the outset, but beyond that it’s a mystery to me, and I don’t have a handy copy of the ‘Which? USB Keyboards’ report.

So whaddya think? Amazon currently steers me towards this baby:

M-Audio Oxygen 61 IV | 61-Key USB/MIDI Keyboard Controller Featuring Velocity-Sensitive Keys, 8 Pads, 9 Faders and 8 Knobs, Plus ProTools | First, Ableton Live Lite and 3 Premium Virtual Instruments

But is it really any good? Is there a better one I should look at? Can you only get rubbish for around a ton-fifty and should I raise my budget? What are » Continue Reading.

Elon Musk confirms that his child is indeed from the 5th dimension.

by 17 Comments

You don’t have to be a billionaire to exploit your own child by giving it a ridiculous name. You could be a humble musician. Like David Bowie for example, or Frank Zappa.

Obviously I know a few of the more outlandish monikers, but perhaps members of the Massive can alert me to some of the lesser known but equally stupid examples of tempting nominative determinism, where weird parents give their kids weird names, simply because they can, even if it makes the kids turn out weird?

Highest death toll in Europe. Never mind, there’s an app for that. Give me strength.

by 128 Comments

By the Holy Jesus, Mary Mother of God and by all of the apostles, what a shuddering shower of incompetent shitheads we have in the UK Government at the moment.

They are only out-classed for thundering dimwittedness by the orange comb-over balloon himself, who knows there are enough dundering fools within the USA to carry him past all the incredulity from his peers and on to the sunlit paths of religious and historical ignorance that will lead to a second term. If he hasn’t gargled himself to death with Paraquat before then (please!).

If we don’t have a thorough-going full-scale fucking revolution at the end of this global display of inadequacy from our leadership in the Free World, we deserve to be classed as the virus, and the virus deserves to be classed as part of the solution.

ATM: How do I get my existing iTunes Media files visible in a new install of iTunes?

by 43 Comments

I use Windows PCs almost exclusively. I loathe iTunes. I use it only for podcasts, of which I have a very large number in my iTunes Media folder. My PC where iTunes sits (sat) died recently (motherboard kaput). The iTunes media folder for that machine was on an external USB drive. I bought a refurbed Dell and plugged in the USB drive – no worries, look; there are all my iTunes files where they always were. I downloaded and installed a new instance of iTunes on the replacement box. So far, so simple and straightforward.

Not comes the bit that has me stumped. I have to negotiate the way iTunes is set up in a fresh install, and somehow pursuade it to show me the podcast files from my pre-existing iTunes library. The only trouble is, the options are all Apple-speak, or more accurately, iTunes-speak, and leave me clueless.

How the F*CK do I tell the damn thing to just go use the files I already have??????

Burning Shed – data breach ALERT

by 6 Comments

Just a heads-up for anyone who has or has ever had an account with the Burning Shed people.

They’ve emailed everyone for whom they have an email address whose data they believe has been compromised.

According to the message I received, they have lost a load of email addresses and passwords – nicked as a result of hacking activity – although they believe that no payment related info has been compromised.

Their web site is off line as a result, and they have nuked all the passwords that were currently in use.

If you think you may be affected, you might want to check your browser to see if the saved password you used for Burning Shed was also one you’ve used elsewhere. We all know full well that you should never do that, but like everyone else you’re human, and you may have been lazy about it…. so check up, and if you have re-used a password, start changing it wherever else you’ve used it, and do this immediately. As in NOW.

Why-eye eet’s dya twentee-wun. Lockdoon continues. Hoo is evorywun deeing so far leik?

by 57 Comments

First off; apologies to anyone whose accent is even remotely similar to something akin to Geordie.

It’s getting to feel like a Big Brother series now, after twenty days or more of stay-at-home-or-we’ll-all-die. Trouble is, it’s the only sensible way to proceed with a nasty bug doing the rounds, and we all (well, anyone with half a brain) know it’s true, so we have to just suck it up and get on with it. Unless we are David Icke, who thinks it’s something to do with 5G mobile phones. Or something.

I’m reading voraciously – I’ve burned through a couple of month’s worth of Waterstone splurges, books previously piled up in the music room ready for a period on the bedside table. They’ve each lasted only a few days. Some crackers, mind. I’ll have to write a few short reviews for this place and maybe someone else will investigate and enjoy them too. Most recent few were from Alys Fowler, Alan Parks, Emily Maitlis and – current one – Raynor Winn. Short reviews to follow – all highly recommended anyway.

I’ve very nearly finished re-decorating the living room now. This would normally have taken me over six months, maybe longer, » Continue Reading.

Bring out your dead! What are you going to be reading to while away the plague days?

by 98 Comments

Chin up, it’ll all be over by Christmas! Time to dig out those tattered unfinished paperbacks you bought when you were 16 because you thought they made you look sophisticated – the ones in the loft that you’ve never been arsed to dump at the chazza. Give ’em a second chance! You aren’t going anywhere more interesting for the forseeable, so you may as well get stuck in. You’ve seen everything worth seeing on Netflix and Amazon, and you can’t bring yourself to wade through any of those boxed sets of DVDs all over again, can you? Save electricity, open a book, put your feet up and pay attention to the page. That’s better. Proper relaxation, not artificial distraction.

This last week I’ve just done three Jack Reachers in quick succession, a guilty romping. Before that I enjoyed a very intriguing visit to The Stopping Places courtesy of Damian Le Bas. Next I’ve lined up Who Owns England by Guy Shrubsole.

What are you planning to read for the next few months while the world collapses?

» Continue Reading.

Sam Lee and friends at St. Georges, Bristol, Feb 19th 2020

by 4 Comments

There are many songs out there that are older than I am, songs older than my house, older even than the village in which I live. Some of the oldest songs are lost, gone forever with the loss of those who last sang them, and some are still sung, having reached some form of critical mass, and will last for years to come, and finally there are some that fall between these two extremes.

These songs that still hang on by their refrains, resisting the silence, are perhaps known and sung by only a very few people or are maybe even partially lost with only a few verses still known, and these songs are a rich seam that repays investigation, reveals much of interest, plumbs deep emotions and gritty historical experience, provides reflections upon our modern world that often reveal profound takes on humanity that we’d easily have missed without the added perspective of history. They deserve to be preserved, these songs that crystallise the wisdom of elders as sung art. Excitingly, it is often these diminished, shattered and incomplete works that can be manoeuvred or cajoled into revealing things their authors and countless previous singers had never imagined.

» Continue Reading.

So sue me Mr. Gove, you insulter of intelligence, you scorner of experts, you utter tosspot

by 14 Comments

“Mr Gove told BBC Radio 5 Live that the prime minister described his political outlook as that of a “green Tory” when they first met 30 years ago. “Ever since then I’ve seen his dedication to ensuring that we fight to ensure that our Earth is handed on in a better state to the next generation,” he said.”

Do you really expect anyone to swallow such a ludicrous arslikan statement Mr. Gove?

I call you a LIAR. A shameless, vacuous, self-serving transparent LIAR.

Diggedy-bum, diggedy-bum, woooo-ooooooooo. MEH

by 39 Comments

Is it just me, or have other Doctor Who fans also simply finally abandoned the show, badly disappointed and bored by the last couple of series?

I can’t stand the shouty attention-deficit styling, the constant bloody screwdriving, the anodyne “companions” who are like a cheapskate crew on a Radio 2 afternoon show making asinine interjections every two minutes, the over-busy direction and the lack of a decent story arc lasting more than 40 minutes start to finish. You’d think it was a kid’s show for the ADHD generation. It’s really gone to pot lately, and I can’t be bothered anymore.

Anyone else resorting to watching elsewhere when it’s on these days?

Matt Hancock is a clueless moron – discuss.

by 36 Comments

This fool thinks electric aircraft are the solution to aviation pollution.

This fool hasn’t stopped to wonder how the electricity is generated in the first place, and how it is then stored in a battery full of elements dug from the ground using deisel engined machines, and how it is subsequently to then be used to power machines made largely of steel and aluminium, also harvested from the Earth using large machines that usually run on diesel, in order to get him from London to Aberdeen more quickly than any other form of transport. This fool is our Transport Secretary. This fool exemplifies the stupidity and cluelessness of the politicians running this country. This fool should get off his over paid arse and fucking well walk from London to Aberdeen.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-51121875/matt-hancock-we-shouldn-t-be-flying-less

New Year’s resolution: give the Mods a break

by 38 Comments

In an effort to retreat somewhat from the frontline of bile, I will be attemtping to follow the following words of wisdom, stolen directly from the BBC’s website; that turbulent wen of vile, spittle-flecked communist ranting that poisons our world with grotesquely partisan fake news:

How to disagree better – eight tips

1) You don’t have to agree – disagreeing itself isn’t the problem, it’s how we do it. 2) Don’t aim for the middle ground – splitting the difference isn’t the answer when you fundamentally disagree. 3)How you talk is more important than what you talk about – “What matters is the dynamic that exists between us,” says couples counsellor Esther Perel. 4)Speak truthfully – to form meaningful relationships what’s needed is total honesty. 5)Listen intently and aim for empathy – it’s all about “a willingness to take in what the other person says,” says Esther Perel. 6) Dial down the rhetoric and rein in the insults – “No one in history has ever been insulted into agreement,” says Harvard professor Arthur Brooks. 7) Understand the difference between fact and opinion – opinions are perspectives to be tested against the evidence, not just weapons to be wielded against our » Continue Reading.

How many people do you think there are…

by 66 Comments

..in this country, who are STUPID enough to vote for Farrago?

Have you seen the treacherous swine today, waving his little “contract” and spouting nonsense while the telly feed him the oxygen of publicity in tankfulls? Why aren’t we seeing the election addresses of the various Monster Raving Loony candidates around the country as well; they make a lot more sense than he does.

Shall we run a book on this? What do you reckon? A million? More? Less? There surely cannot be enough people dim enough to believe a word he says?

Perhaps we could pursuade the Chinese to find room for them in one of their “re-education” facilities? Perhaps we should open our own such facilities? Maybe we just need to explain gently to them that they are, sadly, being royally shafted by Mr. Frog-Face? Or maybe just cut the crap and inform them that they are witless sheep?

Of course, we could try to change their minds in more subtle and enlightened ways with patient logic, informed reasoning and the promise of new net curtains.

Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes – available on BBC iplayer at the moment

by 8 Comments

If you have a single jazz gene in your DNA, grab this now while you can. I don’t recall seeing this programme mentioned here before – so this is a heads-up to anyone who’s gleefully picked up Rudy Van Gelder remasters at a fiver a pop in Fopp over the years, or who has a few old Blue Note originals on their shelves. Or both, for that matter.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b8pd