“Don’t worry, I won’t burn you,” the Sun said, while giving me a melanoma. But I’m cured! The dermatologist got all of it on the first try, and the biopsy is clear. What a huge relief!
Caught in a Mechanical Rice Picker
I feel like Mr. Spock in “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Why? Because yesterday I had the first of at least two, and perhaps three, surgeries to remove melanoma skin cancer from my head.
A huge bandage, at least an inch thick, now covers the open wound, that the dermatologist said is “very large,” being about the size of a quarter. So I’m keeping a stocking cap handy, in case the doorbell rings, to cover my head. In a couple of weeks I will undergo plastic surgery to make myself more presentable.
Totally Tubular!
Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” became a sensation in 1973, helped in part by its use in “The Exorcist,” a genuinely scary movie that I saw as a college freshman with a very nice girl named Mary Wilson.
I’d always assumed that “Tubular Bells” existed only as spliced-together overdubs, until I watched this amazing live BBC performance by a very young Oldfield and his equally young friends. The narration towards the end by Viv Stanshall was pre-recorded, and it’s sort of a variation of his Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band track, “The Intro and the Outro.”
https://youtu.be/l7MY_cdUL1E
Tax Status
Is self-unemployed an IRS category?
The Greatest Concert You’ve Never Heard, Or Heard Of
Long before the Monterey International Pop Music Festival was held in 1967, in England there were the NME (New Musical Express) Poll Winners concerts. The 1965 event was held on Sunday, April 11, and it featured an unbelievable lineup, along with a couple of lesser-known acts. How did these huge names all clear their schedules to appear together on the same day?
The Moody Blues
Bo Didley
Go Now
Freddie And The Dreamers
Little Bitty
Pretty One
A Little You
Georgie Fame And The Blue Flames
Yeh Yeh
Walking The Dog
The Seekers
I’ll Never Find Another You
A World Of Our Own
Herman’s Hermits
Wonderful World
Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter
The Ivy League And Division Two
Funny How Love Can Be
Sweet And Tender Romance
That’s Why I’m Crying
Sounds Incorporated
Time For You
In The Hall Of The Mountain King
Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders
Game Of Love
Just A Little Bit Too Late
The Rolling Stones
Everybody Needs Somebody To Love
Pain In My Heart
Around And Around
Pain In My Heart
Cilla Black With Sounds Incorporated
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
Going Out Of My Head
Donovan
You’re Gonna Need Somebody On Your Band
Catch The Wind
Them with Van Morrison
Here Comes The Night
Turn On Your Love Light
The Searchers
Bumble Bee
Let The Good Times Roll
Dusty Springfield with The Echoes
Dancing In The Street
Mockingbird
I Can’t Hear You
The Animals
Boom Boom
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
Talkin’ bout You
The Beatles
I Feel Fine
She’s A Woman
Baby’s In Black
Ticket To Ride
Long Tall Sally
The Kinks
You Really Got Me
Tired Of Waiting For You
The first time I heard about the ’65 NME concert was at a solo Ray Davies show, where he described how the Kinks were stuck being the follow-up act to the Beatles. Let’s all agree to ignore the presence of the posthumously disgraced Jimmy Savile, and please note that, despite being two hours long, the concert footage is far from complete, but what there is of it is fantastic. And now, on with the show!
Days of Future Passed Again
This is just about as silly and minor as a blog post can get. I’m playing around with my Bluetooth speaker in the sun room. By switching the wireless link over from speaker mode to headset mode, I can make it sound just like a cheap AM radio.
After spending so much time and money on listening to music from the Sixties in the best possible sound quality, I’m getting a nostalgic kick from making it sound like it did on a transistor radio from 50 years ago. For excellent audio, I can recommend the recent vinyl re-issue, by recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees the Moody Blues, of “Days of Future Passed.”