onionbagblog

To the Table of Dreams!

…on Wednesday lunchtime. We were both free. There was brilliant Estuary Wilds blue sky up above.

Make bloody hay, etc.

The tactical decision was taken to play with the conventional, non-wind ball. This took a little getting use to.

We’re use to TWATTING the extra heavy wind ball around the table.

It’s great for rallies where you are both playing power shots and smashes, as each player moves further away from the table.

It’s a macho style of play, almost reduced to an arm wresting contest.

But I like to embrace my, ahem, feminine side in table tennis every now and then.

Spin it to win it, Jase.

The conventional ball is a delicate affair. It needs caressing. It needs the dog shit from the public playing field to be wiped off before play.

The scores were level at 2-2. This would usually be signal to get bored, start showboating and walk away with yet another defeat.

But not on Wednesday. I found a new cautious side to my game. Play safe, wait for her to make the mistakes.

Oh dear, luv. You didn’t want to do that.

My feminine side was well and truly embraced, even if was playing wiff waff whilst wearing the most ridiculous pair of wellies.

I’ve been listening to Beth Orton’s brilliant Weather Alive album once again. I say once again - I never really got going with the 2022 release.

As ever - I’m a slow listener, reader, watcher.

Beth has been under my radar for the past thirty years or so. I’ve always been aware of her, and in particular the singles. But I’ve never really taken it further.

And then three years ago, she put together an incredible live set for Gilles Peterson at Maida Vale to promote the Weather Alive album. I was hooked.

An ebay deal was done for the album. The entire back catalogue soon followed.

Weather Alive is a haunting album. Her voice sounds so fragile, almost to the point of breaking down. The lead song Friday Night is my soundtrack for walking the streets of South London alone in the evening.

There’s a strong hat tip to John Martyn. I think the Weather Alive album title might even be a reference to Bless the Weather?

So what if I’m running three years behind here. Music is right, right? Any listening is good. Especially if it’s Beth Orton.

The Postman Delivers:

Rubber. BLACK rubber.

And so we have a Swedish Stutterheim rain mac. So what if the ebay listing was under FETISH?

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it, etc.

There’s a shopping story behind this, involving R. The last shopping story involving R was centred around buying underpants in the West End.

This time we found ourselves along Ken High Street, doing the charity shop run. You always get a better class of charity shop hauls on this side of town, compared to say, erm, Streatham.

And there it was, staring me right in the face: a magnificent green Stutterheim mac.

“Go on, try it on”

I needed no encouragement from R.

The size ever so slightly put me off; the price tag more so.

A quick online shifty in the shop, and the £150 wasn’t that outrageous. But I had to let it go.

The clincher was that it looks like a fisherman’s mac. I live in a bloody fishing village. I couldn’t get away with that.

“Go on, YOU try it on”

…I told R. It suited him better tbh.

He umm-ed and ahh-ed and attempted to text B to see if she was cool with this.

JUST BLOODY BUY IT.

And so he did.

“You can always shift it on ebay”

…I reasoned.

A couple of hours later and I was back in the flat, searching for a Stutterheim black mac.

BINGO.

A week later and it arrived.

R and I are the Rubber Twins around Town. We look like we are heading out together for a specialist party.

#ponce

#rubberponce

There’s a lot of noise here. And not all of it good. I struggle with the US interpretation of punk and post-punk. It doesn’t speak to me. This sounds more metal than the street talk of UK punk.

⭐ ⭐

Mule’s Off White album, and Peter Gabriel’s self-titled third album.

I confess to not having heard the Off White album. I’ve got a Cleaners from venus search up and running on ebay. It usually serves up the boxsets.

I should really walk down the road, and hand over some cash to the man himself. Cut out the middle man, etc.

But this was a cheapo ebay price, with free postage as well.

I would love a complete Mule discogrpahy. But the old bugger is prolific, especially so in recent years. I’d need an entire new CD shelf to accommodate his back catalogue.

Peter Gabriel meanwhile completes the run of the first five solo albums. I love the wordplay for the fifth album, So.

Do, Ra, Mi, Far, So etc.

The modern interweb tells me that Paul Weller plays on a track for the self-titled album. That would have been a very young Paul Weller back in 1980.

There’s also Kate Bush and Phil, natch.

I am SO (aha) far behind with my CD listening btw. I do need something of a buying sabbatical.

Christmas is coming and so it must be time for another Beatles album.

Sigh.

It’s the music industry gift that keeps on giving, and giving and giving.

Punters need product. The Beatles industry of the 21st Century is booming far better than it ever was some sixty years ago.

And so for the 2025 Christmas market, we have Anthology 4, plus three more episodes of the Anthology telly series - y’know, the one that was the definitive tale of The Beatles back in 1996, that ended with The Threetles together again and a full stop on all things Fab Four.

Or Three.

So there.

I’m a tight arse and so haven’t forked out to stream the updated episodes. I have listened to Anthology 4 in one sitting.

tl;dr we don’t really need this.

Who would have thought?

Unlike Anthologies 1-3, the fourth instalment takes songs across all thirteen of the original albums. It’s basically a Best of the Bootlegs.

It starts off being a whole lotta fun with some goofing around in the studio by four very ambitious young men. It ends with AI stodge.

The goofy shit is great. Bands tend to goof a lot. We watched The Roses documentary last week after the news of Mani’s passing. My theory is that band goofing is good for the Them Vs Us music industry mentality.

But back to The Beatles.

You need to be an obsessive to recognise some of the slight differences compared to the original songs. Which defeats the whole point of unreleased rarities. You might as well listen to the originals.

The Beatles barrel is being scraped here.

But what a barrel.

You’re listening to songs that are staples of 20th Century culture. You are over-familiar with what follows.

Imagine listening - or even recording - these songs when they were completely unknown in our popular culture.

It’s hard to appreciate the outstanding qualities of the songs, given that you hear them every other day, given the relentless Beatles industry.

In My Life stands out amongst an incredibly crowded field of absolute monumental songs.

But halfway through, Anthology 4 starts to fall apart a little. The instrumental of Nowhere Man is bland. The strength is in the picture painted by the lyrics.

On the other hand, She’s Leaving Home works as an instrumental. It’s a rare case of the lyrics adding a little too much sorrow to an already downbeat arrangement.

Eggman sounds extra dramatic. You can imagine the instrumental working well on a horror soundtrack with all the stabbing strings.

The Something instrumental is… quite something.

Anthology 4 finishes off with the AI Beatles. Free as a Bird and Real Love benefit from a little extra production boost. But it’s still Beatles by numbers.

I actually quite liked Now and Then when it was released as the 2024 Beatles Inc release.

It closes the chapter on The Beatles for one final time.

Yeah, right.

Beatles AI will keep the business going for decades.

RSS 2.0, the antidote to enshitification

To the Table of Dreams! Under fading light!

The window of opportunity for these hit and miss knock ups is diminishing. We are accelerating towards the Winter Solstice. Wiff waffle under candle light is a little woeful.

There was just enough time to get a best of five games in. At 3-1 down I had already accepted defeat and was ready to walk.

Must we really play a fifth game?

MUST WE?

Oh go on then. For shit ‘n’ giggles.

Time to experiment with some spin. Some you win, some you lose. I usually lose, tbh.

I was a little distracted with people watching, rather than ping pong. Playing outdoors in a public park is a great opportunity to capture the daily back and forth movements of folk.

It also coincided with the return of the early morning commuters, back in the town, just as the Estuary Wilds sun was setting.

You don’t get many table tennis daytime opportunities when you’re stuck in the 9-5, Comrades.

“You really are the most HORRID child.”

Steady the buffers, Madam.

Some poor little ankle biter was receiving a stern ticking off in the nearby playground, just as I was being BATTERED with bat and ball.

I had the luxury to walk. The poor kid didn’t.

Hey! Let’s for a bicycle ride! On a bloody cold November lunchtime with the potential for black ice on the roads!

This wasn’t the wisest of moves. But I had a spare couple of hours, and there was blue sky up above.

I’ve been pretty much trapped in Weird Wiv over the past fortnight. All roads in, and all roads out have been closed for various roadworks.

That’s an exaggeration, obvs. But it has been a right bloody pain to plot a circular route with constant road closures.

I wasn’t entirely sure that I had a clear run in front of me. I decided to chance my luck.

Five minutes in and I was dismounting and pushing the Raleigh electric around a blockade of roadworks.

Arse.

I was already bloody cold, and didn’t really warm up for the next hour and a half or so.

I headed out around the lame Bobby George BONER of a route. It’s a not very challenging 30km or so circuit. It was the first time I have ridden these lanes in over a month.

Nothing had changed, natch.

The highlight was catching some local kids at Alresford receiving some road training on their bicycles.

I believe the children are our future, etc.

Chapeau!

I’m still bloody cold as I type.

Blimey - a ‘new’ track from The Style Council ahead of the Cafe Bleu boxset drop in the new year.

And so here we Take It to the Top (demo).

If I’m being slightly less than favourable, then I would say that there’s usually a reason as to why demos remain just that.

Take It to the Top is no companion piece for the anthem Shout to the Top.

There’s a heavy funk riff going off; it still sounds like a different world away from the more retro sound of The Jam only a few years previously. But it’s not going to change the world.

It sounds more like a loose, ahem, jam between the various members of TSC at the time. It dies out a little before it even gets started.

I wonder how many other ‘lost’ TSC tracks remain in the Solid Bond archive? EIGHT discs for a boxset is at least five too many.

Related:

MOJO had a list of all the TSC albums rated. Before I even scrolled down, I tapped in my list, to see how it stacks up.

I wasn’t expecting MOJO to rank EVERY album, such as the Best Of and Live album etc.

I was close.

My list:

Our Fave Shop - the absolute MASTERPIECE

Confessions

Cafe Bleau

Introducing

Cost of Loving - which you really should stay away from.

MOJO has Cafe Bleu as the top album, then Confessions and Our Fave Shop.

We’re nitpicking. All three are absolutely glorious.