Sunday, August 31, 2014

PAUSING THE ACTION





emisira wo
uchitairagete
kachitoki no
koe agesomen
haru wa kinikere

The spring has come
When, raising our voices
In a shout of triumph,
We will first celebrate
The destruction of the barbarians.

    -- Hiraga Motoyoshi (1800-1865)


Saturday, August 30, 2014

TWANG! SUNSET





Hank B. Marvin: Waterloo Sunset (Link)

Hank B. Marvin: Summer Guitar (Link)


 


Nice to read during the long car ride yesterday that Hank B. Marvin had added Waterloo Sunset to his repertoire.  The Summer Guitar track is fun also.  Impossible not to smile thinking of Hank.  I'm so sorry I misplaced the Twang! tribute album with all those great, heartfelt "thanks, Hank" performances by Neil Young & Randy Bachman, Andy Summers, Ritchie Blackmore, Steve Stevens, etc.  Who could that be outside the PSCHS window behind Jane at the Christmas show?  It's still hot but we're on the verge of another season. As HAL 9000 put it (so well), I can feel it, Dave.





Neil Young and Randy Bachman: Spring Is Nearly Here (Twang! lp Link)

Friday, August 29, 2014

EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW (UNCOMMON DANGER)





To Mr Balterghen’s secretary, his master’s office was an evergreen source of wonder. Blundell had been taken into Pan-Eurasian under Mr Balterghen’s ‘Recruiting-from-the-Universities’ plan and was one of the few bewildered survivors of the ‘Experience-not-Education’ purge. 

  


‘Balterghen’s room,’ he had once told his wife, ‘is more like a harlot’s parlour than an office.  He’s got red Turkey carpet and stippled green walls, a Second Empire desk and a Chinese lacquer cabinet, a neo-Byzantine book-case and six baroque chairs plus a Drage-Aztec cocktail cabinet that flies apart and exposes all the bottles and things inside when you press the button.  Even if you didn’t know from experience what a complete wart the man is, that room would tell you.






“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, we don’t have a strategy yet.”

Get well, Joan Rivers.

Happy 17th birthday, Jane


Text: Eric Ambler, Uncommon Danger, 1937