onionbagblog

I approached this with some caution. I’m not really a fan of nu soul: too much vocal gymnastics and not enough, erm, soul in the actual delivery. I was pleased to see that this is only 37 minutes long. That’s pretty much a decent running time for any album.

“Global warming ain’t got nothing on this chick. My summer has gone frigid.”

… ‘aint going to win an Ivor Novello Award anytime soon.

The music is actually the winner: strong Prince vibes - and not just any old Prince vibes but some pre-Purple Rain stuff with some of the slowed down funk on offer here. Still not enough to tip it over the edge for me.

⭐ ⭐

Kevin Ayers and The Whole World’s Shooting at the Moon. He’s a name that I’ve always been familiar with, but not so his music. My endless journey towards being lost in a summer of Prog continues. We may be coming towards the fag end of the summer days but this doesn’t stop my musical time ravelling back to the early 70s. I remain convinced I was born in the wrong decade.

There’s something just so innocent about Shooting at the Moon. It’s a bit of a messy album in that there are so many styles and structures taking place. That’s the jazz thing going off, innit. But some of the more considered song pieces really are well crafted and have a very pastoral warm sense that just fits these final days of the summer of 2026. It’s a shame I came to it all more than half a Century too late.

To Tate Modern!

I had half an hour or so to kill on Wednesday afternoon. I was in search of Mr. Rothko. I found Mr. Rothko.

The Seagram Murals are of an immense scale. There’s a very dark mood to them compared to the lighter touches in his other work. I found it all rather calming, such was the vastness of the art in front of me.

Mr. Rothko has been known to make grown men cry. Yep.

To Shakespeare’s Globe! …on Wednesday afternoon.

“Is this Much Ado or As You Like It?”

…asked my theatre companion.

Oh dear.

Two and a half hours later and I still don’t think she knew what she had just seen.

This was something of a slow burner. It started off with half the cast wearing costumes that looked like those old naff toilet roll doll holders that your nan used to have.

SHOUT OUT to the company members who had to spend the first half hour simply holding a pose. It was like watching a game of musical statues.

It all livened up when one of the main young, virile love interests came to life. He ripped off his shirt, showing a pair of pecs that would put my calf muscles to shame. There were a few fainters in the crowd - male as well as female.

The casting was superb. Issues of social class were somehow explored and drawn out of the plot. Orlando in particular, played out his outcast role to perfection. There is no war but the class war, etc.

A subplot was taking place with the scenery. Live art was being created as the plot developed on some large white boards.

This worked out really well during all the All the World’s a Stage speech. The seven stages of humanity were portrayed in artistic form as the trees in the artwork went through their seasonal changes.

The climax, so to speak, got very saucy. The musicians up above were superb, with a Burundi drummer’s beat pounding out the thrust and rhythm to keep up with the plot.

Oh, I think it was As You Like It, luv.

To Four Corners Gallery!

Yoanna Walden was exhibiting in something of a miniature show with a very loose theme of containment and mental health. Cheer up, luv.

I do love these outpost galleries on the eastern edge of the city. It was a right bloody pain in the arse to get to, but just about worth it.

We walked straight into some big pow wow with three curators discussing an opening elsewhere with some grade A artists. They tried not to sniffle at us as we wandered in for a quick shifty.

I’m not quite sure what the point of the exhibition was, but it was visually stimulating all the same. I quite like the way the photographs were framed. I suspect this was part of the overall artistic vision. The medium is the message, etc.

The Orb are one of those artists that I really should listen a lot more to but I never really get round to it. What’s the point? A lot of it all sounds very familiar, but that does them a disservice.

With Oblivion you feel like you’re listening to a mixtape from the mid to late ’90s, which I guess essentially this is what it is - and that’s no bad thing. As ever the album takes you on a journey through the ups and downs, with plenty to explore in between.

It’s music of its period, with a certain amount of post-rave hippy shit thrown in. It’s also highly infectious and another example of the ideal music in which to work along to.

I really should listen to The Orb a lot more, even though I’m only really half listening to them.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Gee Vaucher Art Foundation seeks start-up funding

via HNWB

Royal scroungers grab £50 million ‘pay’ rise

via Socialist Worker

This is a real mismatch of an album. It sounds pretty much like it is: some McCartney demos that didn’t quite make it onto the back of Let It Be or Abbey Road.

Too Many People is just pure spite and bile. The sentiment works fine but musically it doesn’t really go anywhere. It picks up a little with Uncle Albert, which shows that he’s not lost any of his pop sensibilities.

The highlight is The Back Seat Of My Car. I wasn’t aware of this song until a few outtakes appeared on the Let It Be Disney series a couple of years ago. This could have been a Beatles classic if McCartney had persisted with it. A missed opportunity.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

I’m getting pretty pissed off reading endless articles or posts where people diss AI big time. I often wonder if some of these criticisms are AI generated themselves.

Oh - and don’t even get me started on AI - generated posters for your local jumble sale. Yep, they’re absolute shite. Be gone! You could do a better job using Microsoft Paint.

But wait! What’s this?

For all you AI doomsters and gloomsters, as someone once said, it’s all about how you use the tech, right?

In less than 15 minutes this morning my very friendly Claude work colleague managed to whack out a spreadsheet that randomises almost 3,000 albums each day.

If you’re a long term reader of this blog, you’ll know that R and I have been going through the daily exercise for maybe three or four years of having the exact same album served up to us each morning to listen to, and then add some feedback notes.

This was part of the original 1,001 Albums to Listen to Before You Die list. Such definitive lists are of course bollocks in themselves, but the daily revelation of a new piece of music has opened up my tastes and also my CD collection.

We long since finished the original 1,001 Albums list. We moved on earlier on this year to the Colin Larkin list.

So far so good. There was, of course, some duplication, plus the crappy old website displaying the Colin Larkin list was full of ad-heavy gunk. It didn’t half slow your browser down.

I managed to find a spreadsheet online where some dude had imported all of the Larkin albums, as well as combining these with some of the other definitive muso beard-stroking lists that are out there.

I thought, Hey! We could just go through this each morning as R and I work our way down the combined list.

But the problem was that they were all A to Z. When you hit an artist that you think is absolute crap - for argument’s sake let’s just say, erm, Aerosmith - then you’re going to get 10 Aerosmith albums across 10 days.

No ta.

I turned the task over to Claude. I gave it a fairly brief prompt and said, Yep my tech skills are diminishing. Just bloody do it for me.

A few tweaks here and there and 10 minutes later, a Google script was produced, which aggregates every album on the list and then at the click of a button both R and I get served up the same album each day.

Others, of course, are free to join in. I’ve made the link shareable so all you need to do is to open this Google Sheet in your browser. You’ll get the exact same album as us each day once pick Random Album in the Google menu bar.

Of course I could tinker around with this and have an option to leave a shared listening experience with some brief listening notes. I might fire up Claude and see what he’s got to say.

So yeah, stop and think before you post up some shite dissing AI. You should be able to tell what AI slop is, certainly in terms of images and probably text these days.

But for the tech coding side of things this is truly a SHIT THE BED breakthrough advance.

We had a full house for the Monday evening table tennis social session down at the Sailing Club: six players, one hour or so in which to squeeze in some knockabout games of singles and then watch it all fall apart with the finale of the doubles.

What could go wrong?

We reverted to the international table tennis rules of playing only to 11 points. Usually we play to 21. Eleven allows for all players to have a speedy rotation around the table.

It’s a very cunning game when you have such little margin for error. I play best at 11, rather than 21.

If we’re chasing the golden 21, then I get bored halfway through. I start to mess around and generally fall apart.

Not so when your mind is focused on 11. Jump 3 points ahead and you’re pretty much home.

Except on Monday evening I never really did jump 3 points ahead. I lost every single game.

Oh dear.

There’s optimistic talk of resurrecting the Sailing Club table tennis tournament sometime in the new year.

Another reminder that the nights are starting to draw in was on our walk home. SHIT THE BED. some fucker has even got their Christmas lights up.

What’s wrong with this place?