Stret Pegging for Zola
ja that old black box of ted hughes’s frayed lines you picked up from autumn’s last bung fair came in handy on your drive home then. you conjoured illusion there, the grit they forgot to spread on saturday night for blizzard sunday, for the snow that caught the bulldozer rusting behind the smoke sheds and [...]
Sweet Bitter Love
Aretha Franklin coughs, someone, probably a studio technician, is chatting away and leaves the studio for a cup of coffee. He doesn’t even seem to know that this will end up as something, anything at all, worth keeping. Aretha stops playing. Finally, she starts again. A drummer, no one seems to remember his name, looks [...]
Bossa Nova
29 November 2007 // Books //Music
Jeff Nara Leao and Bob Le Flambeur. It doesn’t get much better than that. If you get a chance check out a book by Ruy Castro called Bossa Nova – it’s just about best music book I’ve read. Got mine cheap off Amazon, and well worth investigating. Check this out from it about the great [...]
The Two Terriers Press
28 November 2007 // Caught By...
New John Richardson cards, for Christmas Water Like A Stone Mistletoe Thrush A Pool, a Pike and then two pints The Two Terriers Press
Brasil, Brasil
BBC Four are running a season of films about Brazilian music. Looks good. This Friday’s is Tropicalia. A good excuse to put up some cool record covers then; Brasil, Brasil
Jim Ford, R.I.P.
22 November 2007 // Music //Remembrance
Jim Ford, 66, found dead Sunday 18th November Less than a year after Bear Family’s highly successful and critically acclaimed Jim Ford CD, ‘Sounds Of Our Time’, we’re faced with the sad and tragic news that the prolific singer/songwriter has left life on Earth behind. Early in the evening of Sunday, November 18th 2007 Jim [...]
The First Snows of Winter
dp the dog days of autumn are upon us, all the leaves nearly down and me and john richardson are out looking for roach on redundant chalkstreams. the carriers chucking it through and on the main river the flow slowing to a trotless halt. the roach we want so far out of reach, every handful [...]
That’s the bag I’m in….
21 November 2007 // Miscellany
We fished last Tuesday. Jak, Steve, Dave & myself. The Last of the Summer wine gang. We went to the Kennet again but this time at Kintbury, a little further up river. Three miles of the river cut into channels to make sport for the trout fishers and also home to monster Pike. We didn’t [...]
‘Mushroom Faking’ by Dexter Petley
17 November 2007 // Miscellany
There’s ecological catastrophe in the woods as I write this. This autumn, for the first time since I can remember, the mushrooms have not appeared. If, like me, you talk to wild mushrooms as you pick them, then you’ve lost your voice. All is mute. Your tongue is tied, shocked into silence. A vital mycomorphic [...]
Coldwater Revival
ja your great british pike bungs are the true symbols of the fallen leaf, the design classic to rival the mini, the land rover of the float world. they should be hung down oxford street come christmas. they should be the olympic logo, the lamb street runners, the ice queen’s earrings, the acceptable fesse of [...]
Caught by the River