A Day in the Strife

Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Music of the moment: Gravy Train, (A Ballard of) A Peaceful Man, Vertigo spiral label, 1971 [sourced from vinyl copy of a Korean reissue on the Si-Wan label]

Food of the moment: a 3-minute microwavable panini bread with ham & three cheeses.

All of the titles to my blogs so far have been episode titles of the excellent SF series "Babylon 5". By the way you should have figured that one out by now.

BREAK ------

Perhaps not. Perhaps I am endowing the readfer with too much intelligence. After all Babylon is niche product placement. Anyway if you did great becasue you'll understand why I have called all my blogs after Babylon 5 episode titles. Mind you it could have been Star Trek as there are 5 incarnations with 3, 7, 7, 7 and 3 seasons respictively. Each season containing on average 26 episodes. You can see how complex this could have got. Instead I chose Babylon 5 a five year story arc therefore a closed loop.

Star Trek is great too. For the past month or so I have been watching 3rd-5th season Voyager episodes. That's been my "brain food" for a while.

Scientifically you cannot compare the two, despite their being science ficience fiction television shows. They are two completely different animals altogether.
I plumped for Babylon 5.

I started out tonight with my music. I organised the songs by year (in this case 1971), then by track name.

Therefore what followed after the Gray Train track, was the following tracks:

"(Theme From) Twilight" by New Lords, from New Lords
"A Picture of You" by Rick Wakeman from Piano Vibrations (skipped)
"A Prenormal Day at Brighton" by Jade Warrior from Jade Warrior
"A Tiny Book" by Fuschia from Fuschia (skipped)

Just finishing is:

"A Venture" by Yes from "The Yes Album"

Now starting:

"After You Came" by The Moody Blues from To Our Children's Children's Children

Now if you (the reader) have assembled all these tracks, then played them, then you have just repeated the experiment I set up at the start of this blog.

Now I am not looking at the list of songs being played. Therefore I don't know what comes next from my extensive library.

Let's have a look shall we??

It's "Alone in Georgia" by Gravy Train. Oh look abnother track from (A Ballard of) A Peaceful Man that we've had one of their songs earlier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hay, that was a good song. I liked that track (i.e. the title track of the album) hmm...there's another comming up soon. See what I mean.

The bloody system works!!!!!!

END BREAK -----

The point of that excplanation - blog titles are episode titles from Babylon 5 - was becasue unlike Star Trek titles, you can read a hell of a lot more into it than you can with StarTrek episodes

I found a piece of silver thread
Leading to bewliderment
It wound and wove all through my head
And disappeared into my imagination

I heard a melancholic sound
Tumble from the height above
Was smashed to semi-tones on the ground
And suckled into silence by the sleeping earth

I knew a child the other day
Her name was Resurrection
Her name is not the same today
She cast her fate in every fanciful direction

Born of suns's shining
Fusion of fire
Child of the Order
Of choas collision and burning desire
Yesterday I
Asked myself why
and where
and how
in the sky
Am I ?

She is beautiful and lost
Once a butterfly in the rain
Now a moth inside a lampshade
And still she seems ther same

Flying round and round the lightbulb
Look, here she comes again
Has she changed into a mirror
No, shes only changed her name

Swims the river of her mind
And there behold the queen
All alone amidst the ruins
Where her memories have been

Casting spells into the water
In the time she has between
Painting words on broken glass
With her poetry machine

- Lyrics by David McNiven from the song "Amaryllus" from the 1971 album Amaryllus by the band "Bread, Love and Dreams" (not Bread)

So when yoiu listen to the song you'll knoiw what's what.

HAVE A NICE DAY

Morning Way

Dreaming strands of nightmare are sticking to my feet
It’s time to wake up and throw away the last remaining sheep
Sunlight sliding down my back and dripping on the grey
It’s time to watch the dawning light reveal the morning way
Dreams are fading now it’s nearly noon and then it’s afternoon
The leaves are creeping green inside the day

To where the friends who used to lend me love were all about my head
And looking down at me to smile at how it ought to be. (Repeat a further 13 times)

- Trader Horne (Judi Dyble ex Fairport Convention & Jackie McAuley ex Them), "Morning Way" from the album Morning Way, 1970.

Jackie McAuley sings the first two lines, Judi Dyble sings the rest to the first repetition.

This is the forgotten music of the UK - early British Folk that is powerful and just stunning. Unlike anything that has come out of the modern day scene.

Now don't get me wrong I have got some recent releases, James Blunt - Back to Bedlam; Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams to name but two of the more recent pearls cast before swine.

Here is a classic example of inventive and evocative lyrics from Magna Carta's 1973 album "Lord of the Ages"

Lord of the Ages rode one night,
Out through the gateways of time
Astride a great charger, in a cloak of white samite
He flew on the air like a storm
Dark was the night
For he had gathered the stars in his hand to light a path through the sky
Whilst the hooves of his charger struck comets of fire
Bewitching all eyes that beheld them

Lord of the Ages
Nobody knows
Whither he goes
Nobody knows

Below a dark forest, in caves of black granite
The children of darkness dwelled in oblivion
Betraying one another in endless confusion
For the Lord of the dark
Had bewitched them

From time’s first creation
The wise men and prophetsAnd all workers of magic had warned of the reckoning
The wind and the fire
And the plague of destruction
That follows the paths of evil

Lord of the Ages
Nobody knows
Whither he goes
Nobody knows

Far above the wide oceans and thundering rivers
Through the sun and the rain and the turn of the seasons
Rode the God of all knowing
Whilst all about him, celestial companions
Friends from the void before time was woven
Honoured his crown with words of white fire
And carried his robes of light
Whither he goes
Nobody knows

But in the peace of a valley a young child was born
Filling the night with his crying
And an old man gave thanks to the Lord of the Ages
Whose battle is not with innocence
But the birds of the air were silent
Knowing the time had come
When time was forgotten
The waters were stilled
And the mountains stood empty
For the cities were deaf
Long, long ago
‘Enough’ cried a voice
And the earth was awakened
Poor and the rich felt the plague and the fire
Death and destruction rode out together
Turning the world to a funeral pyre

It was the Lord of the Ages
Gathering in the harvest
The Lord of the Ages
Gathering in the harvest

And from the blood and the thunder
Of men and their dyingHis eyes dark with sorrow
The Lord of the Ages gathered in his harvest
But to the old and the helpless
The weak and the humble
To the children of light
His words of compassion breathed on them gently
Dissolving the darkness across the great valley
That rumbled with fire
And from the death and destruction
The Lord of the Ages carried the fruit of the harvest
To freedom
Lord of the Ages
Nobody knows
Whither he goes
Nobody knows