Circular Nomadic Octopus

impossible songs


Isn't Doctor Octopus (by Steve Ditko around 1968) pretty cool looking? Well he does seem to share my dress sense... unfortunately...




impossible songs

Nomad

Where you put down roots is important, but its not everything. Life is an adventure and the unexpected and the unplanned can sometimes mean opportunity. Ok I guess this sounds a bit like some sort of second rate advice from a Sunday Post letters page or a Red Top horoscope. Maybe that’s all it really is but right now it has the ring of truth about it. Maybe all of life’s lessons are simple and clear, we just like to wrap them up in a showpiece veneer of cleverness and sophistication. Even if you can’t be a nomad for real and range free and far and wide into the sunset, you can be a nomad in thought.

The circle of music

When I first started to get into music I was always drawn into listening to the unknown and obscure, bands and artists that were “underground”, not played on radio, (what little radio there was) and only known to the select few (those in the know as we thought). Then when these bands became famous they’d be discarded (usually after the third album) and some new musical horror or joy was dragged up from the depths. Gradually however these listening habits changed, discovery and innovation no longer became important and I became mainstream and dull. I listened to chart music, bought new albums without thinking and ignored my old friends down in the underground. Of course what goes around comes around and I’m back now in my (rightful?) own place out on the margins listening to the unknown, the unsung and the desperate. Can you blame me? I picked up this month’s Q, another 27 page homage to U2 (if it’s not them then it’s Radiohead or REM) as it rattles on paying little attention to emergent music of any kind. So why not get away from the glam and the glossy, listen to podcasts, indie bands, pub music, buskers and all the things your parents told you to avoid.