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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.

To Manningtree! …early on Sunday morning - or actually To the Sailing Club first. The occasion was the first race of the Harker’s Yard winter season. It’s been a while for me.

I’m not sure why but I did put my name forward to be considered as part of the race crew for both Manningtree and then Rowhedge in a couple of weeks' time. I kinda of stopped racing a few years ago. It just wasn’t doing anything for me. There was an awful lot of faffing around, eating into your valuable Sunday time.

But here we are again, with a rendezvous down at the Sailing Club at 7:50 am. As ever. I was rushing. I surprised myself by being on time. Out of around a crew of 15 or so people, I was one of only three rowers on time. Oh well, time and tide and all that.

What became very clear was that there was plenty of nervous energy down at the Sailing Club even before we had left. I get nervous about many things, many stupid little things that really shouldn’t bother me. But when it comes to racing, you just get in a boat and fucking do it, right?

I thought it best to stay clear of those who knew what they were doing rather than me bumbling through. There was an awful lot of organising and packing as we prepared two gig boats to hit the road and make the short journey over towards Manningtree.

The journey over there was simple. We parked up and took a look out over at the estuary water in front of us.

Hang on, where the fuck is the water? We’re going to need some of that if we’re going to race, right?

I then realised that it may have only been 9 am but the first race wasn’t until midday. Like I said there’s an awful lot of faffing and waiting around whilst race rowing.

I looked around at the scene and who else I could see. Most of the other dozen or so rowing clubs had many new faces who I’ve not raced against before. SHOUT OUT to the dude who was wearing a pair of Wham-style badminton shorts and then the most ridiculous chunky pair of wellies.

All this nervous energy led to some pretty bat shit crazy conversations. We spoke for around ten minutes or so about the possibilities of breaking a thole pin and what to do if you find yourself in the exact same situation.

We then made our way over towards the race HQ. This involved navigating our way around a game of beach rugby taking place on what the locals in Manningtree optimistically call a beach.

It was reassuring but also a little scary to see a sizeable team from St John’s Ambulance on show. I was reminded of the Round Mersea race, where we ended up being rescued.

Whoops.

The situation then became extremely surreal as one of our experienced crew members unpacked out of his sailing bag half a dozen small cardboard cutouts of gig boats. But it didn’t end there. There were also various obstacles that we might find on the course, such as buoys and other boats.

I was actually enthused by all of this. I loved the idea and it triggered something of the obsessive within me about planning for these events.

I was all set to role-play out a race with the cornflake packet cardboard cutouts were put away as didn’t want to give away the race tactics to other crews who were lingering nearby.

Time passed rather slowly; and then some more time, even slower.

Finally it was time to get prepared. I had one last toilet pit stop. I had made the basic error of wearing a pair of cycling bib shorts. You try standing in a busy gents' urinal as you take off your rowing vest and then strip down the straps for the bib shorts. How to alienate other rowers, etc.

“This must be where the big cox hang out.”

No one laughed.

We then had a brief race prep with our cox. I was racing in the men’s race for our second crew. The cox was talking about how we were going to handle the turn. She then mentioned she wanted to feel the water and also feel you. Blimey I don’t think it was that kind of race.

Twenty or so gig boats then needed to be taken off their trolleys and placed on the water that was finally starting to arrive. There were some incredibly tight manoeuvres launching on Manningtree hard.

Best of all was the washing line pulley system that you had to use in order to go from the hard over to the jetty where the boats were now moored up.

Our men’s crew then took to the water with around 40 minutes or so before the race started. I think we went a little too early. I was all for keeping warm but I didn’t want to use up too much energy.

Some pretty random bird spotting took place, with one of our crew members being something of an expert. He pointed out a whole bank of godwits who did look rather resplendent.

The Manningtree course, on paper, looked really simple but it didn’t really take into account the number of moored boats which have to be navigated.

The race started. Soon we found ourselves in the centre of a boat sandwich. There was some tricky rowing taking place and it’s quite a miracle that we had no major clash of oars.

The instructions then came from the cox:

“Row like fuck.”

I don’t think you’ll find that motivational training in the British Rowing manual but it did seem to work.

I thought we got off to a half-decent start. We were certainly in the race for the first 5 minutes or so but then the other fleet of boats managed to push ahead. We had our own little private race with another boat as we pushed ahead of each other and tried to compete not to pick up the wooden spoon.

I didn’t hang around for the results but I think we might have picked up the wooden spoon.

It all then got a little argy-bargy with some of our other crews. An official complaint was put in after a rival club allegedly blocked the course and crashed into our boat. It was like waiting outside the headmaster’s office as we prepared to submit our evidence.

Eight hours later I was back at base. I had rowed for around 20 minutes. You have to be very committed to take part in gig race days.

Apologies but I am most definitely a non-committal type of guy

To the Essex Sports Arena! …on Saturday evening. This was the first double header of the season for the Rebels, with the recently reformed men’s Division 3 team on court first, followed by a men’s Division 1 game.

Football commitments kept us away from the Div 3 men. We rocked up and took up our seats at the arena to see the final couple of minutes in the 4th quarter.

At first I thought the scoreboard was borked. It said the Rebs were leading 117 to 34. Hang on, that can’t be right.

A few friendly conversations with some Rebs folk then confirmed that this had been an absolute walkover. The visitors from Bedford had come with only 5 players. There was absolutely no one on the bench.

The atmosphere in the arena was flat but a win is a win. Some within the organisation were a little concerned that the sizeable crowd might not hang around for the main attraction, given what they had just witnessed.

It’s a little awkward for the men’s Div 3 team. They’ve had to drop down a year after taking a sabbatical last season. It looks like the season ahead might be something of a stroll for them, with few competitive matches.

Any concerns about the arena being half empty once again for the Div 1 men were soon put aside. Even with England international football on the telly, there was still a half-decent crowd.

Once again coaching for the Rebels was Ashley Jordan. He has stepped up to the role in an impressive manner as the organisation still looks to recruit a full-time coach.

The early exchanges didn’t look good for the Rebs against a really strong Reading Rockets team. The visitors outmuscled the Rebs on their home court in the early exchanges.

We also had our own little tussle with some kids sitting in front of us. They had a right bloody annoying mouth reed-type instrument thingy. One of the young fellows kept on squeaking away in a most annoying fashion.

The Rebels were impressive in the first quarter. They moved the ball around the court at some pace. It would always be a challenge to keep up this level of commitment.

It was a great team effort as they took an 18-14 lead going into the start of the second quarter. They had to work for it, with Reading pushing them all the way.

Reading came out strong in the second. This was a key game as both teams looked to progress in the Trophy. It was pretty much winner takes all to see who would come out on top for the next stage of the knockout competition.

The Rebels' strategy of relying on sharpshooter Kyran Martin to hit his three-pointers won’t win you a game. This isn’t a one-man sport. Martin did remarkably well with most of his shots but not everything is going to sink.

Some great coaching though did take place from Ashley Jordan. With 3 seconds left in the second quarter, he brought on two subs and set up a move which got the three-pointers needed. This left the Rebels trailing 40-42 at the buzzer.

The game got back underway in the third but the scoreboard started to slow down. This then became a low-scoring ball game as Reading started to get away. The shots just wouldn’t sink for the Rebels.

The comeback never really seemed on. They were always chasing the game. The home team rallied in the final couple of minutes but the gap was already too big. Reading left Our House with a well-deserved 88-76 road win.