A place to park those random thoughts, stolen images, hidden conversations and incoherent babble from beyond the wall of sleep. Odd bits of music and so-called worldly wisdom may creep in from time to time. Don't expect too much and you won't feel let down.
These photos are not really of Aberdour but more taken from Aberdour on a very calm, balmy September afternoon. A day of Indian summer weather. In the distance there is Inchcolm, an island in the Forth complete with ruined abbey and various abandoned fortifications. St Columba never did visit but stray angels can be seen there every Halloween. Below is a zoomed in shot.
The afternoon is spent lazily wandering along in the sun, kicking the dust and making up band names up whilst discussing the physical ailments of the over 60s. We're filled up full with heavy but tasty sandwiches, along with soup and salad from a local bistro . (Never liked the word bistro but it is what it is - a sort of cafe where things are slightly more expensive and a little bit nicer but the service is worse).
A brave soul on a paddle board drifts across the bay at the Black Sands. There's sand there but it never has been black, or has it? Aberdour is a lovely wee place that I've got to know very well over many years but it still seems blighted by local shops and hotels that just can't quite make it, so there's a sense of brave failure and valiant but fruitless effort in the air. Shops and eateries churn on, in and out of business as the seasons turn over. It's a tough gig. The struggle is real. The premises are vacant.
The historical (they all are) castle and gardens. It's £7.50 (Highlander location = fan tourist trap) to visit so we maintained a safe distance to avoid being compromised. Out of shot is a robot lawnmower mowing a non robotic lawn, quietly and efficiently in line with mandatory manpower cuts. Meanwhile drones disguised as picnic tables await their next Amazon delivery mission.
There's been a nasty outbreak of these screens on my Planet X feed. Maybe it's me, maybe it's things in the wider world, maybe it's retribution. I'll never know and I'm not bothered. If the whole thing folded tomorrow we'd all just go elsewhere and browse. We're basically all cattle in little herds chewing on straw bales and looking blankly over the fence. X is just one of many straw bales. I'm also well aware that I'm only really writing this insignificant message in Sharpie on yet another brand of straw bale.
Meanwhile this product is in the style of the Greeks and I'm already won over by those two simple words - Greek Style. I am however reluctant to try it, just in case it turns out to be not quite what I'm expecting. The eternal tension between life expectations and the hard face of reality remains and often stops progress or experimentation. It's a cruel world when you're human, but I'm almost ready to get down from this high place and hopefully smell the coffee. What if it's awful?
I have become the sort of person who takes photos of spider's webs when out in the garden in the early morning foggy dew. Little did I think that my golden autumn years would be spent this way. All that training, education and workplace experience have led to this kind of thing. The crown of creation on my life and career are now activities that some may consider to be fine examples of wasteful, hollowed out and vacuous pastimes. But ...
"What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare."
"Leisure" by W H Davies.
P.S. Here's George quietly sitting 20' up a tree in a pigeon's nest.
The long and winding roads of central Scotland took me away to Cellardyke in Fife. I traveled via St Andrews University where I made an urgent delivery and also purchased an unexpected emergency duvet (student life etc.), but enough of that. My other job was involved going to Anstruther cemetery to tidy up two family graves that sadly don't really get much care and attention because there's very few family members left alive from my generation who are able to maintain the gravestones. Not an unusual situation I imagine.
The task is a bit of a challenge, locating the graves being the hardest part before brushing them down and cleaning and refreshing the stones and lettering as best as I can. There I am with my orange B&Q bucket of materials; some crazy old man wondering back and forwards among the grave stones squinting at names and dates before settling down onto his knees to clean one. Is this peculiar behaviour in a cemetery? Probably not but it feels awkward at the time. I undertake this work every couple of years and I get an odd sense of well being from it.
Once the gravestone cleaning was done I rewarded myself with a stroll around Cellardyke, my first ever (I suppose my only) home town. It was one of those warm, misty but kind of wild at the edge September days. The sea being in particularly good form. I looked suitably dangerous. Rough and rowdy out across the rocks but reasonably clear and manageable in the community organised Cellardyke Tidal Pool. This busy pool has had recent upgrading works done and it's a credit to those local folks who have pushed and pulled to get the funding and the improvement plans completed. It's a fine wee, if slightly ramshackle corner of the village with the reworked pool, the pizza shack, coffee caravan and an outdoor sports and water sports centre all being well used.
The buzzing of a not too distant chainsaw, trees are being hacked into shape. A heavy fog sits on the water and it's droplets move in to drip from branches and hedges. Foghorn blasts resonate across the invisible river. The air is damp and tastes of sea mist. A completely unrelated delivery of logs arrives as a tree branch crashes down in a nearby garden. Cars are moved for safety to allow tree surgery works to get underway. The men hack and saw through the pile of timber and leaves and the debris goes into the back of their truck.
It is becoming a very wooden Friday morning. Things are being tidied. I empty the log pallet, one dirty log at a time. The winter stock of logs are slowly piled up into storage with a fair bit of honest sweat and effort on my part, strangely satisfying though. I stand back and review the loaded up storage spaces. We're looking squarely into winter already. All three cats snooze quietly indoors through the whole proceedings as their staff continue to plan and prepare the strategy to keep them warm.
As per the previous post - I can't deny that I was once a lot younger than I am now, hard to believe I know but I didn't hold on to 16 any longer than anyone else did, nobody does, it's a normal thing. Resistance is futile. I didn't own a Strat either; there were Bibles and belts though, but no actual Bible Belt. My soul took flight and refused cheap salvation, eventually. You're working class in Scotland, it's the 1970s and you're going to have to work because that's what's for you and further education won't be an option ... but you'll still keep on learning. 16 was 54 years ago, or thereabouts.
I wouldn't want to be that kid again. If I ever met him I don't know what advice I'd give him and it would be a waste of time anyway because I know he wouldn't be listening, too busy dreaming dumb and grubby dreams. Reality hits everyone eventually. The painful truths of growing up and over your mistakes. Maybe giving advice about getting over things is more useful than giving advice about avoiding things. Better to regret doing something than doing nothing (this of course comes with a few major caveats for real life). My generation were 16 once, it was about the time that Jimi Hendrix died.
When Electric Lady Studios were simply analogue: From what I've heard of this material so far, it does sound good, even to my cloth and compromised ears. Sorted and mastered up by the old wizard Eddie Kramer himself. Devotees and listeners will be familiar with all the tracks, part of that slightly peculiar batch of songs and instrumentals from a time when Hendrix's creativity was wobbling (so I've always thought), in the final year before he died. The old saying still goes though: "even Hendrix playing badly is better than anybody else playing well". Some might see this as another "cash in" package but from what I've heard from Eddie Kramer I'm pretty sure there's a lot of love, honesty and pride in the work that's been carried out on fixing up these tracks. One question might be how come has it taken so long to materialize? Tech solutions, other priorities, legal wrangles maybe.
So it takes me back to a 16 year old me skipping school and eagerly purchasing "The Cry of Love" from Bruce's Records in Edinburgh's Rose Street in 1970. In truth it wasn't the album I'd hoped it would be but "better than etc." prevailed and a lot of that music has stayed with me over that last 50+ years. From what I've heard so far the remastered i.e. previously unreleased material, is very good. The multiple layering of the guitars on "Night Bird Flying" were tremendous back then. Today they are still as fresh, complex and delightful, even if age, nostalgia and reflection tend to add and remove their own measures of brightness and distortion.
I guess the audience for this material and these kind of deluxe bundles is slowly diminishing as are the witnesses and the fan base. It's perhaps the last hurrah before some AI monster beats down the studio doors and extrapolates way on into the blue yonder with enhanced and re-imagined Hendrix style music destined to trash the legacy but increase the income from what looks like a new official entity; "Experience Hendrix". I don't really want to be around for that.
The official blurb from Electric Lady Studios:
A Jimi Hendrix Vision' is an in-depth project from Experience Hendrix, encompassing 3CD/1 Blu-ray of previously unreleased music Jimi Hendrix recorded at his newly-created recording facility in 1970. The deluxe box set offers 39 tracks (38 previously unreleased) that were recorded by the new-look Experience (Billy Cox on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums) at Electric Lady Studios between June and August of 1970, just before the legendary musician's untimely death the following month. The project also includes 20 newly-created 5.1 surround sound mixes of the entire 'First Rays of the New Rising Sun' album plus three bonus tracks ('Valleys of Neptune', 'Pali Gap' and 'Lover Man'). The Blu-ray includes the critically acclaimed, full-length documentary 'Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision'. The film chronicles the creation of the studio, rising from the rubble of a bankrupt Manhattan nightclub to state-of-the-art recording facility inspired by Hendrix's desire for a permanent studio. Directed by John McDermott and Produced by Janie Hendrix, George Scott and McDermott, the film features exclusive interviews with Steve Winwood (who joined Hendrix on the first night of recording at the new studio), Experience bassist Billy Cox, and original Electric Lady staff members who helped Hendrix realize his dream. The documentary includes never-before-seen footage and photos as well as track breakdowns of Hendrix classics such as 'Freedom', 'Angel' and 'Dolly Dagger' by recording engineer Eddie Kramer. The package includes an extensive booklet filled with unpublished photos, Hendrix's handwritten song drafts, and comprehensive liner notes.
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