Mr Seinfeld

Why is it the two times I've been to a comedian at the point it's been early may

Liberia here I come

I've just got the tickets today, its 98.5% definite - liberia here I come.

Mr Kay

went to see peter kay on sunday. Funny man, air shovel!!!

mad to think he sold out the point for 6 nites

Justified Ancients

We I bought a couple of cds the other day which I'm working through.

Blues & Jazz.

John Lee Hooker - I think Benny had introduced me to him. I got this and the squirrel nut zipper album in the excellent Freebird Record shop in Dublin

I can't remember who told be about the squirel nut zippers but I think it was benny, I think they're like the canadian cherry poppin daddies - modern swing

I also got a best of Son House, I've been fascinated by this guys since watching the Martin Scorcsese documentary on the blues. The recording quality is fairly poor so I'm looking forward to having a good listen to it with the head phones on.

And finally a double album including Lee Morgan's The Cooker and Lee-Way both early albums of his recorded before The Sidewinder.

Long time coming

Hey there, been a long time since I posted but I've got something to share.

Recent book - Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, this was one on loan from the library. Plugged as being a forerunner of the modern spy novel. I got about halfway through it and had to put it down out of sheer boredom. Unless you have been sailing I'd say you might find this book particularly confusing and somewhat boring. I got them impression I left right before it was going to get "exciting" but I wasn't holding out great hope.

In the interim I was reading the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, which I forgot was one of the 1001 Stories of the Arabian nights. Actually I'd say its 7 of the nights. Very short little book which I read on the plane to Berlin. A little bit repetitive but I could see how a 10year old would have enjoy this.

So I've switched to a recent €2 purchase of For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemmingway which, so for, is great.

I'm Back

Wow,

nearly a year since the last post. We'll I'm hoping to get back on the bus now so I should be ploughing through the auld books.

I am currently reading Bound For Glory by Woody Gutherie. For those of you who don't know Woody is a now legendary american folk singer popular in the 50s who was one of the majoy influences on Bob Dylan. Having read bob Dylans autobiography (Chronicles Vol1 - whens he gonna publish the second vol!!!) - he waxed lyrical about his love of Woody and how is teens were spent doing all he could trying to dig up woody albums that he didn;t have or know about.

I suppose back then there was no itunes or allmusic.com, where you can instantly find out the completed discography of any artist. It would have been a mystery. How many albums? In which order were they recorded~? Woody was a bit of a vagrant and recorded stuff here and there so I imagine it would have been a real task to get a complete collection.

And thats pretty much what the books is about, Woodys travels around America most around the time of the WW2 although it does also give a great back ground to his childhood.

Interesting fact the gang of kids he used to hang around with were called the Boom Town Rats. This was down to the fact they were based in one of the oil boom towns of the early 1920s (I think). I think its great that this is where Geldof got the name for his band (I stand to be corrected)

The book is very reminiscint of the Grapes of Wrath by John Stienbeck (one of my favorites). And the poverty and hunger people faced seemed devastaing.

So yeah a great book, with illustratons by the author.

Never realised there was a film made of it until I just searched for images there, must check it out.

Keep em comin

g

The Godfather

Another good book,

very easy to read, a real page turner. Perhaps the most interesting thing is the differences between the book and the film,. for instance there is a whole story line revolving around Johnny Fontane, the Frank Sinatra type character, which is completely omitted from the film. In addition there is a whole chunk of the story about Connie which we don't hear.

The book is in many way more violent and darker to some degree. However it has to be said that the Godfather character does not come across quite as charismatic as Brando. I suppose this is testament to the great actor. Although the author tells us of the respect and the awe people hold him in, theres something about his dialogue of its delivery thats missing.

The ending is also different, I suppose they didn't need to set it up for a sequel.

I've now moved on to satanic verses.