onionbagblog

It’s surprising how much you think you know about Bob Marley when, actually, there’s still more to explore. The obvious tracks leap out here: Get Up, Stand Up, I Shot the Sheriff. but beyond this there’s a lot more of a soulful side to Marley that I’ve not heard before. I’ve never understood why Small Axe isn’t held up as an absolute Marley classic. It has everything: the music, the message, and a masterful delivery. This feels like an album rather than an individual collection of songs. It somehow just all holds together.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Indoor chores and crappy weather conditions meant that most of Wednesday was spent indoors. That’s no place to be.

Late afternoon and the bloody Estuary Wilds skies had cleared. I had cleared out the To Do list of indoor chores.

Hey! Let’s head out for a walk. How adventurous. You know how it goes by now: the usual schlep around the 10 km or so Estuary Wilds circuit.

It was still a little slightly overcast when I set off and incredibly windy. Remarkably however, it was warm.

Rowing had already been cancelled earlier in the day because of the wind. However it still felt like the dog days of August, even though we have October rapidly approaching.

In the AirPods was the latest pub cast from Deserter. It meant I was walking along with endless chuckling. The AI News in particular raised a smile.

There were signs of a particularly high tide earlier in the day, with water still lingering down at the quayside.

I was pleased to be wearing my walking boots and not having the OCD stress of having to clean up a pair of trainers back at base. The conditions were definitely soft to firm.

Dog walkers were out there getting in their last session of the day. I had just enough light remaining to get around my circuit at a fairly steady pace.

I reached Whitehouse Beach. The summer camps and the celebrating sixth formers and other students have long since moved on, although the remains of their barbecues haven’t.

I had a bit of a moment on Whitehouse Beach, taking in the serenity of it all. The shingles all around look like my new garden. Maybe I should just stay at home to have these hippy shit moments.

I think you know where you stand when you see a song title of Prison Sex. Christ, this did my fucking nut in. I bailed after 30 seconds. Unlistenable shit.

⭐

A real mixed bag here.

Let’s first start off with the Triffids and their the 1986 album In the Pines. I’ve taken a punt on this purely on the strength of what followed, with Calenture a year later.

I went through a very obsessive phase with Calenture last year after it appeared on the Album of the Day list. I recognised the Bury Me Deep track from radio play back in the day, but somehow the rest of the album passed me by.

I’ve also fast forwarded slightly and bought The Black Swan that followed in 1989. By then I think the band were on the decline.

I love buying random albums that I know I’ve got perhaps half an interest in. I can take a gamble with £3 or £4 or so, and I’m often rewarded with some absolute listening gold.

And then we come to Bruce.

Oh dear.

Only the Strong Survive got absolutely slated by critics and many fans a couple of years ago. It’s basically Bruce’s blue-eyed soul effort.

But Bruce doesn’t really do blue-eyed soul. He’s more of a screw up your eyes, clench your fist, and shout out blue collar anthems.

GRUNT GRUNT GRUNT.

But it’s all good, apart from Only the Strong Survive…

There are some interesting covers on there, such as Frank Wilson’s Northern Soul classic Do I Love You, The Commodores' Night Shift, and even a take on What Becomes The Broken Hearted.

It’s not a poor album but obviously it’s not the first Springsteen album you’re going to turn to whenever you feel in the mood for Bruce. Like many artists of his age, his past is behind him in terms of the recorded output.

I’m nothing if not a Bruce completist. This was picked up for £3 and it will sit quite happily at the end of my Springsteen section, with possible plays if I want a bit of a late night bop with the Boss.

I’m playing catch up here, severe catch up. R pinged this Spotify link through early this morning. It’s the album Anika by Anika from 2010.

Who says we’re behind the times?

He knew I’d love it. I knew he would bloody love it. We’re both suckers for some cold, dry electro-pop with not much pop and a Germanic female voice.

It’s what the Velvets might have sounded like in 2010, right?

Possibly…

I don’t know how this one completely passed me by. Anika is a trio which includes Jeff Barrett of Portishead. The pace of the album is a lot faster than his usual Portishead slowed own beats. It’s all the better for it.

But of course the killer vocals are what define this album. Gosh they are so harsh, so cold, so unforgiving.

The choice of covers is interesting. There’s the classic motorbike ballad, Terry, as well as The End of the World.

The album’s all over after 36 minutes, as all good albums should be.

I wonder what else I missed during my fallow music listening period?

Another Tuesday, another Forty Plus club ride.

Chapeau!

Having clocked up 120 km on the previous ride, I was keen to at least match this. tl;dr my final ride distance came in at 118.5 km. I should have gone around the block a couple of times just to get this up.

There was a slight doubt if I would roll out early on Tuesday morning. Some meticulous weather planning the night before suggested possible rain through until 9 am. My rollout time was around 8:15 am.

If in doubt just fucking do it. You’ve got to get out there and ride, right?

There was plenty of surface water around as I made my way westward over towards the rendezvous meet-up over in Tipperary. I had some slight OCD concerns and made a mental note to get the Mr. Sheen out for my Raleigh electric upon my return later in the day.

My route took me around the side of a half town, half city I wasn’t expecting. It turns out I could have just gone on my usual Abberton route, which is where the new route then threw me out.

This meant going all the way around Abbey Fields and past the barracks. Some of the troops were out on manoeuvres doing circuits. They were all carrying rifles as well.

Blimey.

I had to stop at one stage along the lane to allow a family of young pheasants to pass through. It was most charming. Mother and Father Pheasant were walking together with their kids right behind them.

I reached the rendezvous with 10 minutes to spare. This is better than the effort a few weeks ago when I actually missed the meet up time and had to time trial it to catch them all up. It wasn’t the best of first impressions.

A few heads were turned when the other club riders clocked my Raleigh Electric. You bounder! You cheat! etc.

They’re a friendly lot and I think they got their heads around the idea that a bicycle ride is a bicycle ride, innit?

It turns out that I didn’t actually really need the electric. I was pretty knackered a few weeks ago, heading off with the fast pace group. I just about managed to hold on at the back.

Instead on Tuesday, I opted to go with the slower pace group, who were also then meeting up with the fast riders for the lunch stop.

It was, how can I say, rather slow. I actually turned my motor off for the majority of the morning session. Even with a bike weighing a massive fuck off 27 kg, I could still keep up with the pace unassisted.

We passed one particular house that had a homemade street sign saying “Pothole Heights.” The road leading up to the climb where the house was located lived up to its name.

The route was a little random. At one stage we actually crisscrossed the fast group, who were going a slightly elongated way around to the lunchtime get-together.

Lunch was taken at a fairly remote but rather quaint roadside cafe. It was a type of place that was covered in lots of OH SO FUNNY signs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in my old man’s stuffy old conservative golf club. You get the idea.

A ham sandwich was ordered.

A ham sandwich these days means something a little more than two slices of bread with some meat thrown in.

What rocked up was a sandwich on bread that was as thick as a double CD jewel case. In between was the most gristly ham. The side serving was some fairly average salad and a packet of ready salted crisps.

Yours for £10 sir.

I really should bring my own food to future rides.

I opted to join the faster group for the afternoon session. One of our poor riders had a few mechanical issues with his fancy electronic gear shifting roadie. While the battery said 80% capacity, they weren’t talking between the brake levers and the actual disc wheel. He was stuck in one gear for the entire ride.

We decided to take afternoon tea at a different location than the planned Coggeshall meet up. It just seemed to make sense with dark skies starting to descend.

We all split off on our various ways as we approached the run into the half town, half city.

One of the riders uttered the rather unfortunate words:

“See you next Tuesday!”

I don’t think it was intentional.

Eye Measure, Why do people vomit? (Rian Treanor Remix)

aka welcome to my world…

via the always excellent Late Junction.

An album I wanted to hear in 1990 and not 2026. You’ve heard the first track, you’ve pretty much heard the whole album. Short, sharp, but not really shocked. It just plays to the formula and sounds a little stale.

The formula is fine when you’re a 20-year-old and want to kick the shit out of everything. But it’s not so great in your sixth decade in your life when you want a cup of tea and some reassuring songs of warmth and love first thing in the morning.

⭐ ⭐

It was a joy to listen to this from start to finish once again for the first time in three decades. There was a short period around 1990 where I was obsessed with this album. I carried it around all the while in an old Walkman and rinsed it whenever I could.

As ever this approach to music led me to creating my own stories and narratives around the songs. Listening once again, 30-odd years later triggers some of those life events that were happening at the time for me. There you go again, Jase, making it all about you.

As an album it’s completely bonkers and it’s all over the place. That’s always the joy of Hendrix. There are so many styles but you can’t really pinpoint what he’s doing. There are no obvious reference points with the blues, but then he takes this in a completely different hippy shit direction.

It’s equally beautiful as it is brutal in places. I’m not a fan of worshipping at the altar of Mojo-style classic albums but this one stands the test of time.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

To the Conga! …on Sunday evening for the return of the autumn series of the Music Mix jazz events.

There is something of a secret club ethos around these superbly curated local gigs. It’s not so secret in that there is a half-decent marketing push, but secret in that, on a Sunday night, you have high quality jazz musicians visiting your local church village hall. It’s got to be better than stupid Songs of Praise.

Appearing at the Conga on Sunday was the Simon Spillettt Quartet. This is a collection of musicians who follow the lead from Simon and his love for all things Tubby Hayes. We all love Tubby Hayes, right?

Tubby had something of a reputation for enjoying the finer things in life. I felt it only appropriate that upon arrival I bought a bottle of the house’s finest red wine and sat back to enjoy the jazz.

Chin chin.

The only problem was I almost came a cropper before even the first notes were played on Simon’s sax. I narrowly avoided a red wine incident over my lovely recently purchased women’s sheepskin fur white gilet.

Whoops.

I took a little time to take in the surroundings. It appeared that we had Donald Trump sitting in front of us. I never had him down as a Tubby Hayes fan.

As the evening developed I realised it wasn’t the dickhead dictator himself but just someone who liked a good old-fashioned comb-over blonde haircut.

The Quartet took to the stage bang on 7:30 pm. They looked the absolute bollocks, suited and booted, and ready to put in a classic jazz performance.

I’m never entirely sure what happens with jazz music with regard to how it’s played. Maybe I don’t want to peek behind the magician’s curtain. Do the band make it up as they go along or are they playing note for note Tubby Hayes' songs?

Either way it looked bloody tiring up there on stage. I was also impressed to see Simon Spillettt never failing to run out of breath with some of his stretched out saxophone solos.

In between the wonderful songs we had plenty of stories. Simon is something of a storyteller and also the world renowned fountain of all knowledge when it comes to Tubby Hayes.

This was a very suave and sophisticated performance. It certainly wasn’t a crappy tribute act.

The band even ventured into some of Tubby’s ballads, which can always be a problematic choice. You can get away with the anarchic nature of the faster arrangements, but not so with a ballad.

“Scorecards at the ready”

…remarked Simon before the Quartet pulled it off with a plum.

The pace picked up a little for the second half of the show. In particular Don’t Fall Off the Bridge had all the energy and rumbling drums, as the song title suggests.

I do love the freeform nature of this music. Even the count ins for the rest of the band were a little odd.

“1, 2, 3, 2, 2.”

What’s that all about?

And so a pretty special evening with high quality musicians appearing in the local church hall.

Talk about blowing your own trumpet, etc.