little bits of everything

When I was a teenager I heard a song where a sung note seamlessly blended into a saxophone, and then into a saxophone solo. That was The Gunner's Dream by Pink Floyd on album The Final Cut. Around the same time I heard another song that did a similar thing, into a violin, but I didn't remember what it was. Recently I heard that second song again on Pick of the Pops on Radio 2, and thanks to the magic of Shazam I was able to identify it as Music by John Miles. If you just want to hear that blend, go to 2:40. The Gunner's Dream was my favourite Pink Floyd song for a while, I would play it over and over again and picture what the video would look like. Until I'd found that video to embed it above I'd never seen the actual video. It's different to my headvideo. Today I've just come across Roger Water's Lockdown Sessions version of it. I won't comment on on his recent remarks in interviews, but this is an interesting version, with no saxophone solo, but

 I've written previously about ELO's Time album in Desert Island Disks II . When it came out in 1981 it sounded so futuristic. Now it sounds retro-futuristic. As I listen to it, it evokes pictures in my mind. Rather than try and get them out on paper I turned to Dall-E to see what it came up with given some prompts from the lyrics . I couldn't get suitable pictures for all tracks. Prologue a man walking down a large hall with the end wall looking out into stars in a retro-futuristic style Twilight a man standing in a desert as the sun goes down with a woman with wings flying down to see him retro-futuristic style   Ticket to the moon a man on a spacestation looking out of the window at a rocket retro futuristic style The way life's meant to be a man standing in the middle of the road while other people walk around him retro futuristic style Rain is falling a town square full of adults and children sheltering from a thunderstorm in a retrofuturistic style Here is the ne

It's award seasons again, and here's my contribution. Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash Best food A couple of times last year we ordered a "ready meal" from Cook. If Carlsburg did ready meals they would be like these. They are cooked to order and very tasty. The best part of the meals though was this cheesecake . It's light and fruity and the best food I ate all year. Best music biography Running up that Hill - 50 visions of Kate Bush  isn't a sequential biography, but has 50 chapters on different aspects of her life and music. It's bang up to date, so includes the Stranger Things use of the title song. There are some great stories, like when Lenny Henry came into the studio to record backing vocals for Why Should I Love You? , and remarked, "that sounds like Prince on the guitar". It was, and Kate asked Lenny if he wanted to meet him. Best TV programme The Secret Genius of Modern Life  from the BBC looks into modern gadgets that we rely on,