Where Worlds Collide

Thanks to Scott - Soda Constructor. I won’t attempt to describe it, just see for yourself.

What it says - Fireworks!! From Silflay Hraka

Stuii was right when he wondered how long it would last. It appears that www.thinkofthechildren.co.uk has now been torched by an angry mob, just as Stuii predicted.

With their sixth album, Californian prog-rockers Spock’s Beard have done what many prog-rock bands have done at some point in their career, produced a double concept album. In prog-rock history, such beasts have either been their creator’s finest hours, or marked the point where hubris got the better of them. So, is “Snow” a ‘Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’, or is it a ‘Tales from Topographic Oceans’?

For the uninitiated, Spock’s Beard are a 5-piece from San Francisco, comprising of Neil Morse on lead vocals, keyboards and acoustic guitar, Alan Morse on lead guitar, Ryo Okumoto on keyboards, Dave Meros on bass and Nick D’Virgillo on drums. Over the course of the previous five their sound has blended influences of Pink Floyd, Yes, The Beatles, and more obscure English progressive bands like Gentle Giant with that of American bands such as pre-blandout Kansas into a seamless whole; their sometimes lengthy songs feature strong melodies with big sweeping choruses, punctuated by manic instrumental sections. Eschewing modern synths sounds and and samples, they play 70s instruments, with heavy use of Hammond organ and Mellotron.

The concept is a trifle vague; with the central character ‘Snow’ a Tommy-like messaianic figure; but progressive rock isn’t really about the lyrics, it’s about the music. And music-wise, Spock’s Beard deliver.

All these trademark Spock’s Beard elements are present on “Snow”. The songs on both disks run into each other to produce a pair of hour-long pieces, in true concept album fashion. There are some noisy guitar-driven songs, such as heavy “Devil’s Got My Throat”, jazzy instrumental passages like the instrumental break on “Open Wide the Flood Gates”, and even an ELP-style keyboard explosion in the appropriately-titled “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Ryo Okumoto on the Keyboards”. The strongest individual song has to be the ‘Comfortably Numb’-style ballad “Solitary Soul”, penultimate number on disk one.

Overall, a strong album even if the two-hour length means there’s a bit of filler there, although I found it took quite a few listens to really get in to. If you like this album, there’s a good chance you will also like their five previous albums.

Many of us have received those annoying “419 scam” letters pretending to be the relatives of deposed African dictators wanting to smuggle their ill-gotten gains looted from national treasuries out of the country. However, this one made me laugh out loud!

Silflay Hraka has started Carnival of the Vanities, linking to the best post in the past week from more than a dozen blogs you might have overlooked.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Reprieve for Greek gamers
Now they’ve issued a “clarification” to the police telling them only to prosecute gamblers, and not any other type of gamer.

The new guidelines are being distributed to all police stations in Greece in an effort to reassure internet caf� owners and tourists.

“The installation and use of games in public or privately owned spaces with no connection to paid services, and their usage, will in no way incur debts by or on behalf of the user, the management or any third party,” say the guidelines.

Is this a Greek Tragedy, or a Greek Farce?

This review also appears on BlogCritics, here.

After the end of steam in Britain 1968, a great many British railway photographers either hung up their cameras or diverted their attentions abroad, and it was the best part of a decade before a new generation of photographers began recording the current scene again. This leaves the period from 1968 to about 1975 woefully under-recorded, a great pity, because this was a fascinating time for diesel fans, seeing many surviving operating practices from the steam era, and the last years of some of the unsuccessful and short-lived ‘modernisation plan’ locomotives.

This makes this album all the more welcome. Compiled by David Cross from his father Derek’s extensive collection on 35mm transparencies, this album focuses on Scotland from the mid-sixties to the early seventies. It takes in both the highly scenic parts of the highlands and borders, and the cities and industrial parts of the central belt, and features just about every class of locomotive that operated in Scotland during that era.

We have some wonderfully evocative shots of the scenic West Highland line between Glasgow and Mallaig, many featuring the unreliable and short-lived North British class 29s, such as green D6103 in the rocky Spean gorge, and blue D6129 along the shores of Loch Eil. There’s also a couple of great photographs of the more successful BRCW class 26s on the Kyle of Lochalsh branch, with the Isle of Skye in the background.

In contrast, we have one of the classic urban locations, the line through Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, featuring a pair of class 101 DMUs. We have several views of another short-lived unsuccessful locomotive class, the centre-cabbed Clayton class 17s at work on local freight in the central belt.

The book features all four Anglo-Scottish main lines, including several photos of the now-closed Waverley route which crossed the border hills south of Harwick; the barren sparsely-populated terrain is demonstrated by the shot of two class 17s on a very long train of vans at Steele Road. We also have class 45 “Peaks” on the Dumfries route, plenty of English Electric class 40s and 50s over Beattock, and the obligatory “Deltic” on the East Coast route.

Overall, this is a great book for any enthusiast of diesel locomotives, or of any type of train running through spectacularly beautiful scenery.

Heyday of the Scottish Diesels
David Cross
Hardcover (15 August, 2002)
Ian Allan Publishing; ISBN: 0711028699

This Guardian Unlimited article bemoans the fact that whenever Hollywood adapts British novels to the screen, they always insist on Americanising things. The only British accents you hear always belong to the camp villain.

In Hollywood, English accents are out - to defeat aliens and save the world you need a good ol’ American drawl

Rumour has it that Steven Speilberg wanted to film Harry Potter and relocate Hogarts to the US. Sums it all up really.

Doesn’t bode well for the forthcoming film of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - I fully expect Arthur Dent to become an American.

It had to happen. Not to be outdone by those Glasgow fish-and-chip shops’ deep-fried Mars Bars and Creme Eggs, now a fad for Deep Fried Twinkies is sweeping America.

The fact that a deep-fried Twinkie — before toppings — has roughly three times the calories and six times the fat of a regular one does not seem to bother customers such as Sue Holz.

“It’s been years since I’ve had a Twinkie because they gross me out, but this is good. Real good,” she said.

Does she know, I wonder, that Glasgow is the coronary capital of Europe? From Boing Boing.