Hello sailor

I can’t decide whether this ship’s name is rude or is the Greek for “Does my bum look big in this?”

Monitor: Kevin Ireland

Les Paul R.I.P

What to say about the inventor of multi-tracking and the Gibson Les Paul that Lenny Kaye hasn’t already? Shut up and listen, I guess. Here he is performing “How High the Moon” with his wife Mary Ford:



I used to play a Gibson Les Paul gold-top for a while in the 80s. It belonged to my friend Sina’s brother who was back in Samoa so she let me borrow it without him knowing. I couldn’t play it very well but at least I looked like a rock star. Or maybe just like someone who had a cool guitar. At the time Dave McArtney from Hello Sailor played a black Les Paul: I basically learned how to play by sitting in front of him and his amp at the Globe Tavern in Auckland.

The Fender Stratocaster eventually took over as the dominant rock guitar – maybe it was Hendrix at Woodstock, maybe it was Eric Clapton – but for a while the Les Paul ruled. Here are three reasons why.

1. Peter Green of the original Fleetwood Mac plays one on “Oh Well” at the BBC in 1969:



2. Gary Moore plays one at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990. It may even be the same one as in the Green clip. Moore is/was a friend of his and does own it:



3. And now for something completely different: Robert Fripp , a couple of tape recorders and a lovely Dorset accent, probably in 1979. That’s him playing the brilliant guitar on David Bowie’s “Heroes”, which if you ask me is right up there with “Dancing Queen” as pop perfection. This isn’t, but I still like it:

Russians bat for lashes

From the pure gold that is English Russia comes this report on the latest style there. I do hope it doesn’t catch on here:

Weird fashion spread among Russian girls - celebrities and just regular ones – the fashion for long hairy eyelashes.

How does it look like you might ask, this post is to get an idea how it is.

Rambo as role model

Joe Hildebrand, who is my kind of movie reviewer, blames his unhappy student years on the fact that he didn’t see Sylvester Stallone in First Blood until a decade or so later:

The lack of a strong male role model had left me dreadlocked, drug-addicted and devoted to a reconfigured branch of socialism in which everyone was supposed to work equally except me. This state of mind left me vulnerable to exploitation, costing me several girlfriends and the best part of an Arts degree. At one memorable party a lesbian separatist dragged my drunken love interest back to her house while I dejectedly trundled upstairs to find that the boyfriend of the lesbian separatist (whose sexuality was apparently more fluid than originally thought) had projectile vomited red wine on my walls and passed out in my bed. Upon realising this I muttered something along the lines of “Solidarity my arse” and trundled back downstairs to pass out on the couch. It is unlikely that John Rambo would have dealt with the situation the same way.

30 Songs

Not PC and MacDoctor have listed the 30 songs that come up first when their MP3 players are on shuffle. Home Paddock isn’t playing because she doesn’t do MP3s and hasn’t got an iPod or similar. Neither have I, but I can put my PC’s player on shuffle, and here’s what I got:

Jet Plane in a Rocking Chair – Richard and Linda Thompson (In Concert 1975)
Lassus Lamentations – Collegium Regale
Bach “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan” from Cantata 99 – Monteverdi Choir
Rihm “Tutuguri, Poeme Danse” – Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR
Tone Probe “Promenade” – Robert Fripp
Bruckner Symphony No. 6, Adagio – Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR
People of Conscience, Rick Danko
Heavy ConstruKction – ProjeKct Two
Corelli Recorder Sonata in F – Alison Melville
Don’t Let Our Love Die – Emmylou Harris
Dowland “Thomas Collier, his Galliard” – Christian Lindberg
Promenade II – Robert Fripp
Ghosts in the Wind – Richard Thompson
Bach Keyboard Concerto No. 3, Adagio – Robert Levin
Berg Lyric Suite, Allegro Misterioso – NZ String Quartet
Precious Memories – Sweet Honey in the Rock
Lead a Normal Life – Peter Gabriel
Wave – Jesse Winchester
Holding Back the Years – Angie Stone
Bach Toccata in D minor – Kevin Bowyer
Go Tell the Women – Grinderman
ProzaKc Blues – King Crimson
Straight, No Chaser – Cannonball Adderley Quintet
Mr and Mrs People – Ornette Coleman
Just What I Need – Dave Dobbyn
Agitation – Miles Davis
Infatuation – Dave McArtney and the Pink Flamingos
There’s a Rugged Road – Judee Sill
Handel Rinaldo, “Scorta rea di cieco amore” – Daniel Taylor
Time is on My Side – Irma Thomas

Some odd overlaps there – in particular, all three of us have Robert Fripp or his band King Crimson. Chris Bell at NZBC is a fan too. Is this some sort of weird male blogger thing? No doubt Laughy Kate will let us know.

The elephant in the room

Monitor: Mick Hartley

The #1 rule of moving house

1. Don’t do it.

We’re in the middle of it and it’s hell. Not recommended.

Normal service, such as it is, will resume in a few days.

Bread and circuses

Via Marginal Revolution:

Uncle Sam is on the verge of paying the City of Los Angeles $30 million to subsidize a ten-year run of Cirque du Soleil.

So it’s finally come to pass – America has embarked on the same road down which ancient Rome marched to its ruin: Uncle Sam not only subsidizes bread (by subsidizing wheat production) but now also circuses.

The original news story is here.

Animal husbandry

Here in Waipa we take a keen interest in cows and horses, especially horses. It’s no secret that people in and around Cambridge love them – but just as friends. Not like this fellow:

A South Carolina man was charged with having sex with a horse after the animal’s owner caught the act on videotape, then staked out the stable and caught him at shotgun point, authorities said.

But this wasn’t the first time Rodell Vereen has been charged. He pleaded guilty last year to having sex with the same horse.

Weird? Yes. Sick? Certainly. But I guess in his defence he could claim it was a stable relationship.

The wit and wisdom of Joe Biden

Now that we don’t have Sarah Palin to kick around any more, three cheers for the new blog Joe Biden Said That? which records – often with video clips – the Vice President’s numerous gaffes. There is this classic spelling epic fail:

Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs.

There is this twofer on the Depression:

When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here's what happened.’

Television was introduced 10 years after the Wall Street Crash, and Hoover was president. And here is Biden on swine flu:

I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places right now. It's not that it's going to Mexico, it's that you are in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft. That's me.

It’s early days yet, but this could be worth following.

Monitor: Tim Blair