About dc

Director of Photography at z360.com

Z360 goes mirrorless

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Nikon Z7 with TTArtisan 11mm f2.8 Fisheye and Nodal Ninja Lens Ring for Panoramas

So what are the advantages you may ask. Quite simply the most important reason for me was to have access to 4K video, so that my cameras could compete with my iPhone. Now that I have a Nikon Z7 and Z50 I have found a plethora of other reasons for the upgrade. When I saw the the power of 4K video on my iPhone XS  , it was apparent my old Nikon D800 was simply outclassed by the new computational video options in my iPhone.

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Still from iPhone 4K video – who needs SLR cameras?

 However this iPhone has only one usable lens (the telephoto is lower quality, although I hear they have improved), and I found this very limiting. Now I have access to lenses from 7.5mm to 500mm, lots of options. Not only that, but due to the short flange distance, many vintage lenses can now be easily used with an adaptor. Talking of adaptors, the Nikon FTZ adaptor for G lenses works very well retaining full AF. However it is very bulky with a large box sticking out below the camera, which I find quite annoying, both for tripod and handheld use. (Update: There is now a version without the large bump). If you are using an old lens without AF, I recommend using a dumb circular adaptor. As for Z lenses, the new Nikon S lenses are indeed of spectacular quality, if rather expensive. Much better value and more entertaining are the third party Chinese lenses from Pergear, TTAritisan, 7 Artisans, Laowa and Meike among others. I have bought several of these metal manual focus lenses, in particularly fisheyes and wide angles, and optically they are excellent performers. In particularly my TTArtisan 11mm f2.8 fisheye was a lot sharper than my old faithful, the Nikon 16mm f2.8 fisheye, much to my surprise. The edge performance was a league above, although 11mm seems a misnomer, having a nearly identical 180º field of view to the Nikon 16mm. There are now some Chinese AF lenses from Viltrox, at least half the price of the Nikons, which have been well reviewed.

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Callanish monolith Stone c.2600BC, Isle of Lewis. Nikon Z7 with TTArtisan 11mm f2.8 Fisheye.

 So much for the lenses, the real surprise was actual usage. For 30 years I have only used my cameras in full manual, locked ISO, spinning the speed and aperture dials as necessary. Now I have discovered the power of Auto ISO (still available in Manual), and am already getting lazy. With the power of dual gain sensors it does not make much difference to noise and quality when shooting in Raw whether the ISO is 100 or 10000. I am aware that for full quality I should be below ISO 400, but can you tell the difference? Anyway the speed of use, once fully set up, allows me to nearly shoot at random. The amount of information in the electronic viewfinder (which takes some getting used to) is highly informative and can be rapidly changed. The peaking function is invaluable for manual lenses. I trust the AF and exposure (-1/3) and of course all the pictures are now free.The latest sensors are amazing, I remember never shooting above ISO 800 on my Nikon D200. Meanwhile these cameras are truly optimised for video, the focus no longer jumps or hunts, aperture changes proceed as if click-less, even changing shutter speed is done smoothly. In addition you have the speed and flexibility of a touch screen, articulated monitor and best of all, silence. A minor annoyance are touch buttons on the Z50 monitor, often accidentally touched by my nose since I am left eye dominant. They have moved them on the similar spec Nikon Zfc. The autofocus is great, with a few confusing options, wide area-s seems to suit me. Mirrorless cameras tend to use more battery and require attention since while the camera is on the monitor is on, which has caught me out a few times. Always switch off when not using and it easily takes hundreds of shots and an hour of video (with a restart). One advantage is that they can be recharged via USB without the mains adaptor.

 In conclusion everything feels quiet, smooth and light, that’s all good. Do they take better photos than my old D800? Perhaps, but the benefit is really apparent in the sparkling video, tracking autofocus and flexibility of use.

Close The Nightclubs !!

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Woe Woe Woe
This is where the Brits are now

The onslaught of Covid-19 deaths, government confusion, social media madness and exaggerated statistics have brought us to a pretty pass. Yes we should all wear masks and socially distance forever say the British public. Or at least until Covid is under control worldwide, which is as good as forever, let’s be honest. Covid, like flu and the common cold, will not be going away in my lifetime. However, it gets even worse, we are truly living in fear when 27% of people say we should have a 10pm curfew, while 43% say all nightclubs and casinos should remain closed – although personally I don’t object to closing casinos, for other reasons entirely. This is definitely the most depressing poll I have ever read, and makes me worry profoundly about the country I am living in.

This poll was brought to my notice by an article in The Guardian by Joel Golby. He believes the reason behind these poll results is just that “being British is a type of madness”.

Ipsos MORI interviewed a representative sample of 1,025 British adults aged 16-75. Interviews were conducted online from 2-3 July 2021. Data are weighted to match the profile of the population. All polls are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error.

On a brighter note you can apply for your Covid “passport” letter here, presuming you are double vaccinated, like all sensible people. This URL should be front page news, but it is well hidden on the NHS website.

Update 20/05/23

Meanwhile in 2020 the Tories were organising parties in the midst of the Lockdown! At the time, London was under Tier-2 restrictions which banned indoor socialising, said the BBC. Shaun Bailey was a prospective Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London campaign, and has now been awarded a peerage by Boris Johnson.

Mina Mazzini – The Italian Diva

Discovery of a great singer

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Well I’ve never had a favourite Italian singer before, and I don’t speak Italian, but I have been swept away by the power and expressive voice of Mina Mazzini. Unknown in the UK, but apparently the premier diva of Italy, this may be an easy choice if you are Italian, since she has had a career lasting over 50 years. During this time she has made an incredible 77 albums.

Early in her career, which started a as rock ’n’ roll singer, she had No.1 hits in Germany and Japan, as well as in Italy of course . During these times she was known as “Queen of the Screamers”, but later developed into a fully rounded romantic singer, incorporating Brazilian and Jazz influences. Her career reminds me of the French singer and composer Léo Ferré, who progressed from French chanson to rock and finally neo-classical influenced poesie, never losing his unique energy.

She retired from live performance in 1978, yet has continued to make albums annually, as well as becoming a journalist in 2000. The immense variety of her output and playful manipulation of her image can be clearly see on her discography page. She appears here with a blonde beard, as Mona Lisa, a male bodybuilder, an athlete and and an alien, queen of all styles.

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She was recently brought to my attention by Sophia Loren on Desert Island Discs, singing Oggi Sono Io, this performance, building from a whisper to a scream, had immediately reminded me of the aforementioned favourite Léo Ferré. Previously I had briefly heard her work with Ennio Morricone on the 1966 track Se Telefonando, widely regarded as her best song. I had enjoyed this, but regarded it as a bit overblown in the manner of Bonnie Tyler, but I now return to it with renewed appreciation.

Her power and natural ability is revealed in this 2001 video, where she sings live in the studio with a sympathetic and dynamic band, opening with the magnificent Oggi Sono Io. “Whooah” she says at the end, quite rightly.

* Sorry, original high res video removed, just the track now:

Stop The City 1983-84

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Original leaflet from the third Stop the City Demo

Before the advent of Extinction Rebellion, mobiles and the internet there was a word of mouth demonstration in September 1983 which brought the City of London to a halt. This was followed by 2 more demos in March and September the following year. I attended and photographed the first two events, which can be seen here. 

048_StopTheCity1983The first demo was truly glorious and anarchic, since it was so unexpected. The whole area of the City of London became a “Carnival Against War, Oppression and Destruction”. Everywhere you went there were groups pf punks, anarchists, musicians and performers barricading banks, The Stock Exchange, Guildhall and The Royal Exchange. The Police were quite unprepared and the protestors roamed around freely, or held random sit-down protests.

Later in the afternoon more police and then the mounted police arrived, but despite many arrests the protest was mainly conducted in a peaceful manner.

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The second demonstration in March 1984 was a different matter. This time the police were ready and out in force. You could be arrested for simply “stopping” in the street and the demo was confined to the environs of The Royal Exchange. Protestors were often arrested  or blockaded just on the way to the protest. A massive kettling operation took place at The Royal Exchange, leading to violence and many arrests.

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Personally I had to try and avoid being kettled, while also avoiding the police who would try and steal my camera at any opportunity. Luckily it was on a strong strap and I managed to wrestle it free from their grasp. They were animals that day, there are several photos of them strangling protestors. One famous photo by David Hoffman of a photographer in a chokehold, led to a £4.000 payout at the ensuing trial.

It was a miserable day, and a downpour in the afternoon doused spirits further, which was probably a good thing all round. Apparently the third demo was so well policed that hardly any demonstrators made it to the City.

There is not much good documentation of these protests on the web, but these links should provide some good info:

Wikipedia Stop the City
History is made at night

There are also some grainy and lo-res videos:

Stop The City – News Reports 1983 / 84
Roddy Melville Stop The City 1984
Stop The City 83-84 video by Mick Duffield and Andy Palmer (Crass)

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Track of the Year 2020

My Wanderings In The Weary Land by The Waterboys

Good Luck, Seeker

This is an unlikely choice, and the idea that the pseudo Irish folk band The Waterboys would be a 2020 favourite was derided, even laughed at, by several of my contemporaries. Nevertheless Mike Scott and his cronies have metamorphosed into a soul rock band, with electronic backing. They are both hilarious and sincere, in a way that maybe Morrissey used to be.

The actual track is a rock stomper that you can actually dance to. The music is credited to Jim Keltner, the great American session drummer, although whether he actually plays is unknown, it does sound a bit processed. The other music credit is to Anthony Thistlethwaite, a long time accompanist of The Waterboys, presumably he plays the violin. Still it is the lyrics and singing of Mike Scott which animates this bulldozing epic, like a whole life in song. The coda is a proper rock guitar freakout, the like of which is rarely heard these days, but advances in a most satisfying manner after the emotions of the verses.

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Yes there is a whole life in this song, ecstatic, searching and moving. The moment when he exclaims “And I Ran” makes you want to run alongside, imagining your own experiences through the vagaries of existence. It resolves, after many adventures, at “love’s fortress”, truly a A Long Days Journey Into Night. Yet he manages to emerge into the “small damp dawn”. Such a joy to hear the height of unbridled emotion, instead of some tinkly, mousy, half-formed musings so common these days. His optimism is infectious, he will keep running and never become “one of them!”

This song is track 9 or track 2 side 2 of the album Good Luck, Seeker. The album itself is a slightly mixed bag, starting with the Van Morrison inspired The Soul Singer. It traverses through some electro-folk and then the psychedelic Dennis Hopper and Freak Street. However it is side 2, track 8 onwards, which comprises a suite of spiritual songs taking us on a true journey. Some are delivered as poetry rather than sung, which appears to have upset some fans. Yet I find the balance between the rock bombast and dreamy romanticism works perfectly, the songs reflecting off each other, building a plangent vista. We slowly move into a spiritual realm, arriving bizarrely at The Society of The Inner Light at Steeles Road in London. The album finishes with the calming Land of Sunset, but before that there is a kind of reprise of Weary Land. The short Everchanging boldly proclaims “a new vista of fresh probabilities”. Still moving indeed, and all highly energising.

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My Wanderings In The Weary Land – the official audio on You Tube

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Recommended Free OSX Apps

Free Apps

These free apps are my favourites, there are many more. They have all recently been updated. Only Handbrake has a Universal Apple Silicon version at present, though I am sure that will soon change and in any case all these apps should work well under Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon. Some apps have a paid for variant, or request contributions – I’ll leave that up to you. The free versions all work fine as of December 2020.

These links should take you directly to the Download page, if possible.

EtreCheck – Computer Check

Malwarebytes – Virus Check

Find Any File – better than Spotlight

The Unarchiver – File Opener and Decoder

VLC – Video Player

Handbrake – Video Encoder

Audacity – Audio Editor and Encoder

XLD – Audio Decoder and CD Maker

Libre Office – Replaces Microsoft Word

Cyberduck – FTP application

Mactracker – Mac Computer Specifications

Onyx – Mac Maintenance and Hidden Preferences

BBEdit – Text and Code Editor

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test

DaVinci Resolve – Professional Film Editing

Do not buy an old Intel Mac

 The Future is Apple Silicon

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The new M1 Macs are blistering fast at every level. An M1 MacBook Air is now as fast in many scenarios as an Intel iMac Pro which costs five times as much. There is no doubt that the Apple M1 Silicon, replacing the old Intel chips, is a masterstroke and a huge step forward for computing. This new generation of processors are System on a Chip (SOC), integrating the CPU, GPU and RAM, a big step forward. They were inspired by by the A14 bionic chip found in iPhones and iPads, this is an evolutionary technology. Soon it will no longer matter which computer you have, they will all be incredibly fast. Computers have finally become a mature technology. Just like a kettle.

The sweet spot at the moment appears to be a 512GB 13 inch MacBook Air with the 8 core chip, which retails for £1,249. The new unified memory appears to make RAM less important, but as usual Apple are still charging a premium for it, 16BG costs an extra £200. This machine is faster and more efficient than any previous laptop – full stop. If you don’t need a laptop the M1 Mac mini starting at £699 is excellent value, just as fast as the base £5449 Mac Pro. In the meantime, Apple are not making too much fuss about all this – they still have to sell off their inventory of old Intel machines. The transition to the new silicon architecture will take some time.

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The only downside is that you have to run Big Sur Mac OS, which prevents old 32 bit apps from running and conceals the actual user interface. Obviously Windows, designed for Intel processors, will no longer run in Boot Camp on these new chips. Another consideration may be that we are now awaiting an M2 processor for the new iMac and MacBook Pro 16”, which should be even better, who knows. Meanwhile apps that have not been optimised for Apple Silicon appear to run well under Rosetta 2, and eventually they will all be translated to the new processor.  Let’s face it, Apple Silicon is now the future of computing.

Just one example, you can now seamlessly edit 8k video on a MacBook Air, which previously required a high end workstation where the video card alone cost as much as one of these new M1 Macs. Meanwhile we await the new iMacs which should have more Thunderbolt  / USB-C ports. The current machines only have 2, although they can be expanded with cheap USB-C adaptors. As we wait, there is no doubt that Apple has once again made a transformative leap in the world of computing.

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Update 25 October 2021
The new M1Pro and M1Max chips now available for 14″ and 16″ MacBook Pro laptops are showing the amazing potential of these new system on a chip (SOC) designs. They are so far ahead of the game that Intel must be quaking in their oversize (14nm) boots. The highly reputed AnandTech has this to say about the latest M1 (5nm) iterations:

The M1 Pro and M1 Max change the narrative completely – these designs feel like truly SoCs that have been made with power users in mind, with Apple increasing the performance metrics in all vectors. We expected large performance jumps, but we didn’t expect the some of the monstrous increases that the new chips are able to achieve.
The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.

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Update January 2023
If on a budget buy this machine, it can do everything you need!
Mac Mini – 512GB – £1049
Apple M2 with 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
16GB unified memory
512GB SSD storage (256GB is never enough)
Gigabit Ethernet
Two Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, two USB-A ports, headphone jack

W, A Personal History Part One


First Rule of Life Club

1. Never talk about any of these things 

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This is a story rarely told, yet apparently we nearly all do it. The subject may upset you, if so stop reading now. The subject of wanking aka masturbation aka self-abuse has not been covered in most of my reading, and in my researches I have only found two recent articles which mention it, by Lily Allen and Giles Coren. In 2009 NHS Sheffield published a controversial leaflet called Pleasure stating “An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”. A more recent booklet titled Masturbation (see above) expresses the current medical opinion succinctly: “Masturbation is a natural, healthy expression of sexuality, which can have a large number of health benefits, not least that of sexual pleasure.” Anyway, for better or worse, here is my personal take on the subject, of which the keynote is honesty. I hope it will be amusing, informative and kinda bizarre.

I have no particular memories of erotic stimulation before my adolescence, although it was a subject of mystery and fascination. Come adolescence and the floodgates opened and haven’t closed since. The utter shock and mess of my first ejaculation was totally unexpected, despite having been told the “facts of life”. Obviously they had censored a few chapters, I soon realised. A veiled enquiry was made to my mother, and I gathered that everything was normal and I was perfectly healthy. “Night emissions” were apparently to be expected from someone of my age. However I found all the semen a great inconvenience, and it made masturbating in bed rather problematic. I decided to use the toilet, where tissues were available. A box of Kleenex by the bed was not a good look in those days.

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Anyway new doors and avenues of exploration were opening before me, but where could I find real information? I had no idea and amongst my peer group it was either a no-go area or just filled with nudge-nudge wink-wink big boys talk. I was on my own and for me the answer was books. I tried the dictionary and yes in those days it simply described masturbation as “self-abuse”, which wasn’t very helpful. However my father was a doctor and I found a huge volume called Cunningham’s Text Book of Anatomy from the Oxford University Press 1937. This 1500 page academic tome was well illustrated with photographs of naked men and a whole chapter on the Uro-Genital System with graphic illustrations. It was highly informative, but not very sexy. To make up for that I found on the bookshelf nearby the classic photo documentary book The Family of Man, created by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. Now I am sure this was not the intended usage of a book documenting the greatest photographic exhibition of all time, but already on page 3 there is a naked lady lying in a forest. There is a lot of reality, wonder and romance in the many photographs, but of much more importance to me at the time was the appearance of a few naked ladies. I was desperate.

Expanding my search through the bookshelves I finally found a cache of sexual classics, not hidden exactly, but well out of the way. These books were to be my window on a hidden world. I started with the Kama Sutra which proved interesting, but rather frustrating, not sexy enough. There was also The Jewel in the Lotus by Allen Edwardes, written in 1959 and apparently a historical survey of sexual culture in the East. More down to earth and sometimes plain obscene was The Perfumed Garden by Sheik Nefzawi, a fifteenth century Arabic sex manual, translated in 1886 by Sir Richard Burton. Now this book was really the business, both serious and lascivious, I found it very arousing. Of course I could not take these books away, I could not not wank while reading them, they had to be read surreptitiously and immediately replaced in the bookcase. They were my secret. Then I discovered Walter, My Secret Life. This book was closer to home, allegedly being the memoirs of an unknown Victorian gentleman and his erotic life, involving many prostitutes and brothels. It has been prosecuted for obscenity many times and was only finally legally published in 1995. This was an edited two volume set, apparently there were eleven volumes in total and Wikipedia describes it as “one of the strangest and most obsessive books ever written”. Opening the book at nearly any page there was a panoply of detailed sexual encounters.

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So after the brief period of night emissions I would get home from school, read a bit from the from the naughty library, carefully replace the book and then retire to the toilet with a Sunday Colour magazine or a copy of Vogue. In retrospect I am pretty sure my mother knew what I was up to, but nothing was ever said. At this time, and for many years, I did not have any “dirty“ magazines. I was far too intimidated to purchase them, if not too young, and in any case there seemed to be no safe place to hide them. This was not the case at school, where there was a lively blackmarket for copies of Parade. This remarkably cheap pinup weekly, had originally been named Blighty Parade and aimed at servicemen. A bit more raunchy was Fiesta, which as the cheapest “porno“ magazine (bare breasts only at the time), became very popular. The sexuality portrayed was down to earth and blatant, reinforced by having the first Readers Wives section. Playboy was occasionally available, but regarded as too expensive, classy and American, although with better printing. I believe it was the centre spread from Fiesta, which was attached to the inside of the new boy’s desk in our class, who had no truck with such publications. We all enjoyed the look of horror on his face, yet the irony was that he would become the biggest heart throb in our school only a few years later. At the time he would not believe that his parents could possibly have had sex. O tempora, o mores!

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Sex education at school was relatively farcical, and none of the teachers wanted to undergo the embarrassment. Different teachers tried, they all failed, there was no textbook. As part of these occasional lessons we were invited to write down our questions on bits of paper, to overcome our own apprehension. I wrote “What is menstruation”, leading to a prolonged bout of blushing by our teacher when read out in class. I never did receive an accurate explanation, although I already knew the answer. There was one event of note which has stayed with me, there was a school cinema trip to see Helga, a West German Federal Government sex education documentary. This was a very graphic movie including a live birth, and we needed special permission to see it, being under age. Pretty sure my parents had to sign the dispensation, and as a result only half the class made it to the cinema. It taught me more about sexuality than any of our lessons, and I was very taken with Helga herself. For many years this was the most explicit movie I had the privilege of seeing.

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I started experimenting with different places, our toilet did not feel right. Down the end of our road was a wild piece of bracken and paths next to the golf course. While exploring there I found a damp stash of abandoned dirty magazines, which proved to be an exciting discovery. After a few visits on my bike, they disappeared and I thought about making my own secret stash there. Nothing came of it, simply too uncomfortable among all the brambles. Another time I found a building site  with a stack of magazines left by the builders, I became a regular visitor on Sunday when no-one was about. Pictures of Lily solved my childhood problems sang the Who, and how right they were, they helped me feel alright. Once on a long boring holiday drive through France I had been amusing myself with sexual fantasies. We stopped at a mountain lay-by and I ran off to have a wank over the glorious view, quite risky but eminently worthwhile. Sometimes the urge to wank would simply overcome me, this happened particularly in afternoon history lessons at school, teacher droning on, dull as ditchwater. Yes I got caught in flagrante by a schoolmate, said I had itchy balls, but this did manage to rather put me off the idea. Later I had a fondness for wanking in other peoples bathrooms, always made it seem more dramatic. Must have been a consummate red-faced liar by this time.

One of the problems of my adolescence was the unexpected erection. This could occur at any time, no erotic thoughts or stimulation needed, this thing appeared to have a mind of it’s own. That is one of the reasons I have never worn those loose boxer shorts, and I found that even Y fronts appeared to have an escape hole. I was sitting innocently on the train home from school and suddenly the sharp eyed girls noticed a pointy lump in my trousers. I shifted position as if uncomfortable, but it was too late, my dick had escaped from my Y fronts and there was little I could do about it. I went bright puce and shrugged my shoulders. I was powerless to conceal the truth, there we are folks. Even worse was being caught in my pyjamas early one Sunday morning, dick sticking straight out through the loose fabric fly. My mother came into the room and I attempted to hide behind the empty dining room table, shuffling nervously. She asked what I was doing and I mumbled some blatant excuse. I presume she realised what was going on, because I was quickly left in peace. Ever since I have worn good tight briefs, hold it in place man.

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A few years later both my parents were often at work, so if I got off school early I had the house to myself. I proceeded to explore their bedroom and found such erotic classics as Fanny Hill, Portnoy’s Complaint and In Praise of Older Women. In addition there were some old copies of Playboy and Mayfair in the bedside cabinet. Much more exciting was a copy of The Joy of Sex subtitled A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking, a British illustrated sex manual. To get round censorship issues this book did not have photographs but pen and ink line drawings. As a result they were highly explicit for the time, while also conveying a certain sensitivity and tenderness. I did not find them highly erotic, the bearded man didn’t help much, but this groundbreaking and popular book was certainly informative. For just a few weeks I did find some copies of the truly pornographic Danish publication Color Climax. This was well printed in A5 format with full orgy photo stories, from the fully clothed meeting, then oral, then anal, of course intercourse and finally the naked ejaculation. Not much has changed from this template. I presume these illegal magazines must have been loaned from a friend, dad had not been to Denmark, where pornography had been legalised in 1969. This was the the first hardcore pornography I had ever seen, it was both highly arousing and intimidating, if not slightly unpleasant. It was though a relief, in some ways, to finally see the real thing: pornography in color.

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The rest of the magazine bares no resemblance to this opening spread…

I spent a year in France as a language assistant, where pornography had been legalised. Here I saw the gamut of poorly made sexploitation movies in the local town cinema. This was still a novelty so the cinema would be quite busy, and it seemed bizarre to be watching this smut with the headmaster of the school where I worked. The French didn’t care, in fact I discovered their sensitivity in these and other sexual matters were quite different to the prim British mores. In the local town there was a red light area, many blatant prostitutes on one lively street. I often walked down this street in fascination, though not temptation, to visit the school where a friend from the UK worked. As well as Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones I did get to see one moving and powerful film in Paris featuring real sex, In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no Koriida) by Nagisa Oshima. Well over a million people saw this film in France, it was finally released in the UK in 1991. Fortified by this sexual liberation I was possessed to buy a gift for my parents, which I presumed would be unavailable in the UK. For reasons beyond me I chose Histoire d’O by Pauline Réage, beautifully illustrated with gothic line drawings by Guido Crepax. It was a proper large coffee table hardback edition, very popular in France, despite the S&M undertones. It was welcomed with a forced smile and obviously went nowhere near a coffee table in our house. What was I thinking? I blame the Marquis de Sade.

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I have decided to end Part One of this memoir here, while I was still a frustrated virgin. Of course the wanking continued (to my surprise), but the whole situation becomes more complicated, if not compromising, when involved in a relationship. I should make it clear here that somehow my sexual fantasy life and my real sexual life have alway remained separate, though they are interconnected, because that seems to be healthier to me. I can also say that real sex is so much more than having a wank, that I feel embarrassed to put them in the same sentence. It’s the difference between fantasy and reality.

Of the many lurid texts I have read, this simple phrase has proven to be a sincere comfort:

A humid kiss
Is better than a hurried coitus

from The Perfumed Garden 15th c.

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Idiot Dancing : A Personal History

“I move not without thy knowledge”
Epictetus (c. 50-135 AD)

From The Town and Country Club, Kentish Town 1985

From The Town and Country Club, Kentish Town 1985. ©Douglas Cape Z360

How do you dance when you are 14? How do you even know what to do, without looking stupid? My solution was to copy the girls, they all seemed so self assured as they shuffled mellifluously. I was in the Church Hall of St James Church, Birkdale, Southport. It was at least dark, which helped my embarrassment, since this was before the arrival of the flashing disco lights. It was my first experience of a discotheque and the song was the hit of the day, Sugar Sugar by the Archies. This classic of bubblegum pop had a moronic and repeating rhythm, which seemed to make dancing easy. I was already aware it lacked the danger of say The Rolling Stones or even the funk of Tamla, but this was after all a church disco, and even the suggestion of kissing a girl seemed quite outré, in the building which had been my Sunday School. Well I had broken the spell, and managed to dance in public, although no-one could see me, all for the better. The narrow horizons of the Church Hall disco would soon spread out into the brand new world of the discotheque, which would later become the de facto night out. It never failed to amaze me that I was listening to the most orgasmic song ever, Je t’aime by Serge Gainsbourg, while next door the the vicar would be sermonising against all this sexual behaviour among young people. Down the disco was the only place I could hear this song, since I did not have a record player and it was banned by the BBC.

Of course Je t’aime was not much good for dancing, it was the smooching song played at the end of the night. The real staple of dancing was Motown, in fact Tamla Motown Chartbusters Volume 3 was practically a disco in it’s own right and used as such for house parties on a Dansette. The girls laid down their handbags and jackets and danced in a circle around them, a little club it was often difficult to break into. As a guy there was always a question, could you dance on your own? Sometimes the boys would form their own little circles, but they did not last long, after all you were supposed to be picking up girls. At some places it was OK to dance with a guy, but often you felt obliged to ask a girl for a dance, even though you might not fancy them at all. It was not deemed gay as such to dance with a guy, since that usage of the word did not yet exist for us, nor in reality did the concept. The insult was to be called a “homo”, but most people didn’t bother with that, they knew you just wanted to have some fun and enjoy the music.

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The world of church hall discos expanded into sports clubs and eventually schools. Once you got in, sports clubs were cool since you could buy under age alcoholic drinks with no questions asked, while obviously at the church hall disco the staple drink was Cola. Some school discos were more like snogging contests, the dancing used as a polite introduction. Couples would then be seated all along the walls, french kissing for hours, forgetting the perfunctory disco. Dancing at the time was pretty basic and followed the sedate formula seen on Ready, Steady, Go and then Top of the Pops. Being a good dancer appeared to involve fancy footwork, as if we were all auditioning to be Irish dancers. Yep a few steps forward, a few back, what we would now call Dad Dancing. Occasionally for a rock song there would be a bit more animation from the guys, involving leaning over and shaking the head to and fro. If you were lucky a bit of jumping might be acceptable.

This was the situation at my first school disco, where I finally experienced proper rock music and managed to dance to it. The excitement was palpable when any of the following records were played: Summertime Blues by The Who, Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Black Night by Deep Purple. We felt we were experiencing the dawn of a new age, the search was on for “heavy” music, which was at the cutting edge of our adolescent experiences. This music belonged to us, our parents could not comprehend it. Near the end of that sweaty night, the lights suddenly came on, a Stanley knife had been found on the floor. There was often an undercurrent of violence at these dance venues, which you could put down to peer groups, nascent gangs or just the basic enmity between different schools. I avoided all this macho posturing as much as I could, but you had to be aware of when the trouble might start. My school did not hold another disco.

Another key dancing experience was at a Caravan Park in Woolacombe, Devon. For the first time I went on holiday with friends and not parents. As part of the provided entertainments there was a nightly disco, designed for families and bar regulars. The most popular song was Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by Middle of the Road, need one say more. However during the evening there was usually a Rock interlude, and then the 5 of us would take over the dancefloor, trying to outdo each other. There were no girls to dance with and we didn’t care, this was a celebration of youth culture and showing off. Hardly anybody else wanted to dance to these songs anyway, but we loved In My Own Time by Family, Devils Answer by Atomic Rooster and Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who. After a few days we knew every word and electric chord and were jumping all over the place, fuelled by the local cider. I spent some time perfecting my split leg jumps to the power chords of Pete Townshend, it wasn’t easy to do that on time. The locals managed to put up with us, maybe we were deemed part of the entertainment. Of course, being under age, we couldn’t dance anywhere else.

Shortly after this the music scene was hit by T.Rextasy, all the girls seemed to love Marc Bolan. For a time T.Rex seemed to be all there was to dance to, and I did quite like Get It On and Hot Love. However it all seemed a bit retro and vapid, lacking in funk. At the time the Charts were a battleground, we all had our favourites, which helped define our personalities. At 6pm on a Sunday there was the Top 30 Chart Show on Radio 1, which was listened to in both horror and amazement, depending on who got to Number 1. Bizarrely it was followed by Sing Something Simple, as if to calm us all down. Over on television there was Top of the Pops on the following Thursday, where T.Rex had made their name with Marc wearing glitter and make-up. My most vivid memory of watching the show was the day my father declared the end of British civilisation while watching Sweet. Maybe he had missed the wondrous transgressions of David Bowie. Slowly TOTP seemed to become even more of a marketing exercise, with the real music appearing on Old Grey Whistle Test, where the groups actually played their own instruments, although there was less dancing on view.

Mati Klarwein - Santana Annunciation

Santana Annunciation by Mati Klarwein – Cover of Santana Abraxas

And then came my Latin revolution. At the time I did not even realise I was listening to Latin music, it was all Rock to me of a particularly funky variety, with beautiful guitar playing. I am talking about Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen by Santana. I already knew and liked the original Fleetwood Mac version, but this was the song that started a new dancing style, my hips took on a life of their own. The break as they segue into Gypsy Queen and the tempo slowly increases was like a magic potion to me. I could certainly dance to this on my own, in fact usually had to, since I was behaving like some kind of whirling dervish. The first time was in Southport Rugby Club, surrounded by muscle men. Vague sense of danger, but I was kindly regarded as some kind of hippy loon. Only rarely was this record played in discos at the time, so you had to make the most of it. I believe I certainly made the most of it a few years later at a disco bar in Biarritz and upset the locals. Out of the blue I was punched to the dancefloor and received a good kicking, dancing can be a dangerous business. With shouts of pédé ringing in my ears, I hightailed it out of there, to be met with much tea and sympathy. I am still dancing to Latin music, but a bit more aware that the dancing style should match the situation.

Now all this is not exactly Idiot Dancing, that was yet to come. However I wrote the phrase “Bring Back Idiot Dancing” on my work folder around this time. I was already feeling I had missed the Sixties, that the craziness I had witnessed in the film Woodstock had disappeared and we were stuck in a kind of anodyne normalcy, behaviour could only go so far. I was proved wrong, yet by this time I had been to some exceptional rock concerts by The Who, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, but these were not dance events, there was no raving. At concerts you had to go right to the back to dance, you couldn’t dance properly in a packed, seated venue, let alone stand up. Of course at a good concert, you all jumped out of your chairs for the last song or encore and shimmied about, but you cannot call that proper dancing. Later at non-seated venues like Pathfoot at Stirling University I began to experience the mass psychosis and craziness that a thousand people raving together could bring on.

So now, for the time being, Rock became predominant. Everything else seemed lightweight, if not uncool. I was schooled by Darrell Jay’s Progressive Music Show at the Dixieland Showbar on Southport Pier, a huge ballroom. Here we preened to Rebel, Rebel by David Bowie, but eschewed the southern rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Can you dance to Be Bop Deluxe? Only with difficulty I found out. Meanwhile at Stirling University there was a free disco every night in the most amazing Student’s Union, The Grange. There was a bar, then some seats and tables alongside the DJ booth. In the middle of this large room there was a dancefloor, and then at the back, raised up and in the dark, sat all the dope dealers. Here the beer was 9d a pint or about £1 today (it was subsidised) and dope cookies were available on Tuesdays. So yes dancing nearly every night to all forms of rock known to man in 1973, as well as a fair bit of soul and then some plain weird stuff. The dancefloor was only about 5 metres wide and could become absolutely rammed, but anything went there. I learned how to dance in a confined space and still enjoy myself. I befriended the DJ’s to find out how they chose their music, but they were not very informative. Still in my second year I became the DJ Convenor for Stirling and managed the discos at Pathfoot, which would open a few days a week after the Grange closed at 10pm. We had 2 turntables, but usually no microphone. People could bellow in your ear for requests. The must play record was Alright Now by Free, not forgetting Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones and Layla by Derek and the Dominos. I would try to slip in the heaviest song I knew, The Nile Song by Pink Floyd. However this was only available on the Relics album, side 2 track 4, and was very difficult to cue up in the darkness, so I often gave up. Also I would attempt to slip in a few tracks which I wanted to dance to, although vacating the DJ turntables was frowned upon. Silence was a sin. We danced to my selection of the hits, which I had a budget to choose and purchase every week.

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Around this time I met Eric (and his pet rat), who was a big Northern Soul fan. Wow he could dance and in a totally new way, gliding around like a cool well oiled machine, none of that stomping and angular histrionics found in the student rock fan. I then discovered that people liked what they knew, and inserting a Northern Soul section into my playlist did not go down well with a writhing mass of drunken students at Pathfoot. This was old soul music and not regarded as cool, though on the other hand they loved It’s Better To Have (And Don’t Need) by Don Covay and demanded Superstition by Stevie Wonder. Not to be put off, I found some smooth leather soled shoes, which could allow you to swish around a wooden dancefloor, with your feet never leaving the ground. All the action became contained in the hips, incredibly fast and smooth. This was my home made version of the style used at Wigan Casino (without the dips), which I succeeded in trying out at the disco behind the Scarisbrick Hotel in Southport. However I soon found out this style did not work for Rock or on carpets, and I never plucked up the courage to go to Wigan Casino itself. There was also a high risk of ending up on your arse, if you got over excited.

Talking of gliding around, I did learn to waltz while working in France and it was wonderful. Well it was just one night, and the elderly teachers at the Lycée where I was working took me on board and taught some basic steps. Of course I was never leading, but by the end of the evening I was floating round the room, aided by some glasses of Crémant. It was never as good again. Everyone in France appeared to have gone to dance school, it was all Le Roc (a form of swing and jive dancing), there was no freeform or solo dancing. Eventually I approximated a clumsy form of this, using my waltz steps, but felt constrained and I constantly went off-piste, which did not go down well. What happened to the Rock revolution I wondered, it was like dancing in the 50s. I did not want to remember steps but to express myself. It felt like being one of the regimented souls on the original Come Dancing, which I despised. There was one fantastic night in Paris at a small sweaty club watching the crazy rock group Au Bonheur des Dames (like Sha Na Na meet Bonzo Dog Band) perform Oh Les Filles, the crowd intermingling and dancing like people possessed for the whole set, no sign of Le Roc, but plenty of hand holding, hip swinging, clapping and shouting. Magnifique!

Then came Punk, I cut my hair and loved the spirit, but you could hardly call it dance music, more like a mosh pit of anger and idiocy. You can only pogo up and down in one kinda way. As mosh pits go, Grannies in Cardiff with Stiff Little Fingers was pretty intense.  Ian Curtis of Joy Division was certainly a mesmerising performer to watch, which I did at The Nashville Rooms in Kensington, but there were only a few tracks such as Transmission which I wanted to dance to. Soul music was the guilty pleasure of my Punk years. This was reinforced by going to see John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, which I secretly loved and introduced me to K.C. and the Sunshine Band, but it was regarded as deeply unhip by my punk counterparts. The Disco wars had started and never the twain shall meet. That did not stop me from buying a Chic 12” on the same day as a 7” single by the Clash. I can fairly say that Shame by Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King  is one heck of a record, but I might not have proclaimed that back in the day. I had missed the early records of Michael Jackson, but when I first heard Billie Jean it was electrifying. Down the empty disco I had no-one to dance with, so I ended up dancing with a pillar. Since then I have regularly used pillars as dancing partners, you can hang onto them or swing round, push away or nudge up to them. At a squeeze, walls can also provide a platform to bounce off or get close to, I love dancing with walls. If needs must, you understand.

There is a certain unwritten etiquette involved when you dance in public. Firstly you have to choose your space carefully, a favourite of mine was the gap in front of the speakers. If it’s too busy there try and carve out a space on the edge or in the shadows, which allows you to manoeuvre into a better position. Try not to come between couples or break into groups, unless invited. Once there, at least make an effort to synchronise your movements in some way or another, a lot of good dance moves are learnt by copying others. Lots of eye contact, respect all around and make clear your intentions. Sometimes I would dance with other people, at other times just on my own to get lost in the music. If there’s a pack of wild dancers down the front, head in and join them, it’s a communal activity after all, and give everyone the space they need as you interweave. Watch out for and avoid the flailing drunks, just move on if you feel uncomfortable. The worst mistake is standing on other people’s toes, always apologise. My biggest bugbear is people just standing there, not properly dancing, like some kind of bollard taking up valuable dancefoor space. Participate in those good times!

Kanda Bongo Man at Africa Centre 1986. ©Douglas Cape Z360

Kanda Bongo Man at Africa Centre 1986. ©Douglas Cape Z360

Falling out of love with the bombastic nature of Rock, it was African music that came to the rescue. The first real soukous music I heard was by Franco & T.P.O.K. Jazz, but it was his countryman Kanda Bango Man who I got to see and fell in love with. He appeared at WOMAD in the I.C.A, and the Africa Centre in Covent Garden, no seats there and room to dance. Nearly every song was an exhortation to dance, by the dynamic frontman. The revelation was the interweaving of the guitar line by Diblo Dibala, the very fluidity of his playing encouraging you to nearly ignore the rhythm and simply follow his swaying melodies raining down on you like an excited waterfall. Wikipedia says of Kanda Bongo Man “His form of soukous gave birth to the kwassa kwassa dance rhythm where the hips move back and forth while the hands move to follow the hips.” Reggae was also becoming popular, but that required a very laid back shuffle after a few blunts, not quite my animated style. Much more to my taste was Papa’s got a brand new Pigbag, an anarchic mix of tribal rhythms, James Brown bassline and funky jazz. I then tried Sol Y Sombra , a world music club in Charlotte Street, London, but it was all a bit fey and earnest dance wise, for me at least. The search was on.

Heaven. That was what proved me wrong. Heaven was a Cathedral of Dance, and probably still is. This is a gay club underneath the Arches at Charing Cross, London. The entrance is down an intimidating tunnel and to gain admittance you had to demonstrate you were gay, in which I falsely succeeded. Once inside there was a luxurious bar area and then the most cavernous dance hall I had ever seen. Not only that, the sound system was poundingly 3D loud, my bones were vibrating, while the lighting spread the length of the entire hall scanning and pulsating in time to the hi-energy music. The place was full of men, only men, frugging as if their life depended on the music, amazing dancers of all types. They carried on regardless all night, showing off their moves in a splendid array of S&M costumes. It was all bit much for little me, if not intimidating, but upstairs there was a chill-out bar with occasional live music where I could relax. This apparently was a superclub, I had never seen the like of it, dancing had arrived and was simply massive. All that came later (House, Raves, EDM) pales into insignificance with this first revelation, I have never been in a more amazing dance venue. I went back many times, saw friends performing upstairs, New Order downstairs, and my best man was the star of the first gay play performed there. I was also called out by a good gay friend for going there when I wasn’t gay, I didn’t care. Nevertheless I did not always feel at ease dancing there, it was all a bit motorik after a while, plus I was me on my own usually and felt a bit exposed, had to keep moving around, it was a predatory place. I was not part of the club, just a visitor. I remember going to The Fridge in Brixton and seeing Leigh Bowery, but he was a fashion icon rather than a dancer, plus I just wasn’t in the mood for dancing that night. Still, if you wanted to dance, gay clubs were the place to be in the early 80s.

Jesus at Great British Music Festival, Olympia1976.

Jesus at Great British Music Festival, Olympia 1976.

There is no doubt who was the greatest idiot dancer. It was Jesus aka William Jellet, who really was an idiot, or at least severely misguided. Some of his quotes include “I never wanted to be Jesus, but I realised I was”; “Music has been used by God to open up people to find their true spiritual selves.”; “I’m completely free of the forces man has created, which stop him from being himself”; “If you want to know the truth, listen to Jimi Hendrix”. From the late sixties onwards and for many decades he would be the first man standing at a gig, his long blond hair waving over his kaftan (if he was wearing clothes that day), freaking out to the music in a sepulchral manner. He appears in several films of the period, including Cream’s last 1968 performance at The Albert Hall, The Stones in the Park in 1969 and the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre. One acquaintance said he told her that he loved Isadora Duncan and admired her for her free dance form, and that it was his bounden duty to dance. I first saw him at the Reading Festival in 1974 and forever after he would crop up at a huge variety of venues, even at punk gigs, although his preference appeared to be for the hippy era bands. He was often greeted with an ironic cheer when he stood up to start dancing, sometimes with maracas or bongos, and he was a regular at The Marquee in Wardour Street. For me he was an inspiration, the first man standing and you always felt he was behaving out of a sense of admiration for, and surrender to, the music. There is an excellent article about his life and crazy times by J.P. Robinson at Medium, from which these quotes are taken. There was also Stacia Blake, who danced with Hawkwind, but I think you would have to call her a professional, I presume she was paid. The same goes for Bez with Happy Mondays, a few decades later. Another public figure who I saw dancing like a dervish was Gareth Sager of Rip, Rig and Panic. This stands out since we were at an Ornette Coleman gig in the Victoria Theatre, Pimlico. Usually no-one dances at free jazz gigs, although this time there were two drummers and a pounding bassline from the album Dancing in your Head. It was a lesson that you could really dance to anything.

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I may not be a trained dancer, but I did follow some movement courses. For nearly a year I had to move like an Orangutang every morning at 10am. This was part of theatre training at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, where I also learned some basic tumbles and acrobatics. These classes have stayed with me and certainly influenced my dancing. I also met my first professional dancers there, truly dedicated and fit people, even if they were always getting injured. They used to rehearse to the great roots album The Path by Ralph MacDonald, a percussionist influenced by both Trinidad and New York. It was at this time that Mike Bradwell of Hull Truck Theatre impressed me by saying his actors never went to the gym, but down the disco instead. Indeed, the BBC has stated that dancing is one of the best ways to reverse the ageing process. Years later I spent a good few years studying Tai Chi, I took those dexterous hand movements and incorporated them into my style, to  the extent that I now dance a much speeded up version of that art form, with a bit of clapping included. I also worked with some professional dancers in theatrical and alternative productions. Again their work ethic was second to none, but they were useless down the disco, maybe it was too much like work. I saw Ballet Rambert in in 1976 doing proper modern dance, loved them. Later the seminal Michael Clark with The Fall at Sadlers Wells showed me how disparate art forms could work together, while my modern dance favourites were The Featherstonehaughs. The greatest dancer I ever saw was Louise Lecavalier of La La La Human Steps performing Human Sex in 1985 at The Town and Country Club, Kentish Town, London. Incredibly physical and acrobatic to a pounding, fractured live rock soundtrack. A thousand barrel rolls, a thousand swoops and swings, this was a work of unfettered abandon. Closer to home my flatmate was in Zoo, the hip TOTP follow up to Pan’s People, now he could dance and do the dips, great fun! My dance style is the culmination of all these influences, I hope.

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The Working Party 1992. ©Douglas Cape Z360

It is important to remember why I was going out to these clubs. As opposed to most of my friends, I was not trying to pick anyone up, get drunk or score drugs, though that may have happened. If there was no dancing, or I just stood watching, the evening was a disappointment. Many a time at a party I retreated into a corner and started dancing with myself. There would be no dancing if I didn’t like the music, I was strict about that, but as you have seen I would dance to nearly anything. Sometimes though I just wasn’t inspired, you had to feel the music begin to pulse through you, get ready for take-off, then make your move. At other times the music was so funky I just had to start the dancing, get the party started. Dancing is like a virus, someone has to get infected. These were often the best moments, you had to find your style for that moment, be totally engaged, prove the validity of the music. And of course one was on show, so you did your best in the circumstances. Too much flailing or being too fast would put off the other dancers, this had to measured, you were aiming for mass participation. I often failed.

There are many ways to dance to songs and sometimes it is the very words which become the expressive root. I was in a small back street bar in Antiparos, Greece called The Doors. As the night progressed tables were cleared and the tiny floor became a writhing mess of bodies, with people also perched on the bar and chairs, shaking along to the music. As expressed by the name, this was a rock venue, and unexpectedly the highpoint was Hurricane by Bob Dylan. This is not a dance song, but a story song, and the words became the source of the movement. I knew every word and proceeded to act them out, howling the key lines along with Bob. A similar experience happened with Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen at The Boogaloo on Archway Road in London. The very intonations of the words can provide the rhythm for dance. It is your choice what aspect of a song to dance to, usually it is the percussion, sometimes the bassline. If a song feels a bit slow pick out the tambourine or congas, they are often at double tempo. The problem with a lot of electronic dance music it that it mandates the rhythm, you are locked in with no real variation for minutes on end, I soon get bored. Dancing should be dynamic, not formulaic.

This is a description of my behaviour at a jazz venue, Cafe Oto for example. I am sitting down because that’s what you do. I still can’t believe how static people are listening to live music. I know some people don’t like to dance, in particularly many of my musician friends, yet I get a strong physical reaction necessitating movement. The music plays, light rhythm, singer songwriter on electric guitar with cool amplified foot beat. The audience sit there like Easter Island statues, kinda riveted and not moving. Out of the corner of my eye I see a lady holding a glass. There is one finger tapping it. I am a mess of subdued kinetic movement. Right now my head is sharply flicking maybe five degrees every few seconds, mainly to the left. My arse is constantly shifting weight in time to the music, the muscles there causing a rolling motion in my torso. The shoulders too are rolling, moving back and forth about one to two centimetres. Legs currently stationary, being careful with a bottle under the chair. All quite contained. I look around again, no one is moving. A few minutes later I have shifted position and my legs are at about 90 bpm, bouncing on the toes. My head has calmed down. No one else is moving. Are we listening to the same music? Why am I the only person moving?

Earth, Wind & Fire

Maybe after that I should provide a little list of my own great dance experiences, although you have to imagine them since talking about dancing is even worse than trying to describe music. OK, dancing barefoot on hessian mats to the Ace Records soul extravaganza (featuring Jimmy McCracklin), feet a mass of blisters the following day and I could hardly walk. Dancing calypso with a Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop of Grenada, cruelly assassinated a few years later. On La Isla Bonita with squaddies in Belize, quite competitive. In China dancing solo in a an empty venue the size of Camden Palace with a 16 piece band – just to show them how it’s done.  Down Philip Sallon’s Mud Club, in various London venues, all of a haze now. Standing on the chairs at the Royal Festival Hall as the crowd erupts over Khaled, all night. The Tropicana Beach Club, off Drury Lane, non stop samba party, and what a great dance club! Freaking out to The Hives at the back of The Roundhouse. The bass speakers at Cargo in Hackney going right through me, giving me palpitations. Bukky Leo at Passing Clouds in Dalston, packed full of Fela Kuti rhythms. The Big Chill and Womad festivals, too many events to remember. Most recently at a Disco Soul night in Hornsey Town Hall, for maybe the last time. Lots of kudos from the young people that evening. Many a time I have been asked what drugs I am on, or whether I have some to sell. The answer is always “Nothing. I am high on the music, Thank You”.

When I say Idiot dancing, I am referring to a totally freeform type of movement in response to the music. It can be of any style, but energised with a sense of wildness, even danger. I love kinetic performers, reacting to their music. The best recent example is Samuel T. Herring of Future Islands dancing to Seasons (Waiting On You), as seen on the Jools Holland TV programme. I dashed out and bought the record, trying to incorporate some of his moves into my own style. Another revelation was Beyoncé on her first solo hit Crazy In Love, that performance turned her into a star, every word actuated with movement. Certain records instantly make me want to dance, for many years the best was Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind and Fire, at other times Finally by Ce Ce Peniston or Too Blind To See It by Kym Sims. A certain record can just click into place, it consumes you, you forget yourself and life can’t get better. This has happened dancing to Step It Up by the Stereo MC’s, My Baby Just Cares for Me by Nina Simone and You Get What You Give by New Radicals. You have to get involved to get the feeling, the unexpected are often the best, trust the DJ and follow his lead. “Enjoy this trip and it is a trip” said S-Express on one of the craziest and most stupid dance records ever, a glorious meaningless wind-up. It has all calmed down a bit these days, so to conclude on an elegiac note here is a quote from the album Record – Nine euphoric feminist bangers from Tracey Thorn – or so says the sticker.

 Dancefloor by Tracey Thorn (2018)

 Play me Good Times, Shame
Golden Years, let the music play
It’s where i’d like to be
Is on a dancefloor with some drinks inside of me
Oh it’s where i’d like to be

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Bike Bumps

Cycling Issues in London

This is a list of the issues confronting the cyclist in London. In theory we are supposed to be enjoying a new government push to encourage cycling. New cycle lanes and bike superhighways are being built, some of which are excellent. However many of them simply end at the roundabout or busy junction, they are hard to find and badly signposted. In addition scant respect is paid to cycle lanes by drivers, often ignoring or parking in them, while the bike box at traffic lights is regularly full of cars.

Potholes!

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Well, obviously first on the list are potholes. Here are three in a row. On their own they are dangerous enough, causing hospital visits by simply throwing people off their bikes. Combined with the dangers of traffic, you are often forced to take evasive action confusing other road users who will not be looking at the parlous state of the road.

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In this example you are forced to cycle in the middle of the road, competing with traffic accelerating away from the traffic lights. PS: Hole is even bigger now!

Same A Road a year later – complete leg breaker!

 The Road Narrows

This is a particular bugbear of mine. Sometimes the road narrows because of roadworks, which can often drag on for months. Recently they are often building bike lanes, but during construction the cyclist often has nowhere to go, endangering themselves and other road users. Yet often the road appears to narrow by design, either as a traffic calming measure or to aid pedestrians. On a busy road these are a disaster waiting to happen, we are suddenly much too close to buses and heavy lorries, often feeling forced to pull out in front of them, hoping we get noticed. Below is a classic example in my local high street, they are supposed to be making wider pavements for social distancing.

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This A Road will soon be a liability for cyclists.

IMG_6365Is there room to get through? Who takes priority? Dangerous decisions forced upon cyclists by narrowing the road.

The Cliff Edge

I understand the reasoning behind sleeping policemen, they are to slow the traffic. However when the speed limit in Camden and Islington is usually 20mph, how much slower can you go? In addition they appear to be some kind of work creation scheme, 1 or 2 is never enough, they sprout everywhere. Why on earth are there so many on bus routes?

For the cyclist they may be annoying, but some are so badly conceived and made that I find them plain dangerous.

In this example the camber to the gutter is simply too much, you are forced to ride at least a foot away from the pavement on a busy and narrow road.

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Perhaps keeping the yellow line was more important than safety.

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Skid Pans

Yes I have done it, that is skidded on the metal street furniture that infests our roads. I now avoid them assiduously, however on busy roads that is not always possible. In wet or icy conditions these metal plates are particularly dangerous, please no braking or turning while bumping over them.

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I hope to post a better example of one placed bang in the middle of a right hand turn.

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Signposts for Cyclists

If they exist, signposts for cyclists are confusing and way too small. Why are they blue like motorway signs? Signs are important for all road users, we should not have to stop in order to read them. Many “signs” for cyclists are placed on the road and soon deteriorate. There needs to be a national signage for cyclists campaign.

In this example the sign is just plain wrong. The road is NOT No Entry for cyclists, it has a bicycle lane.

IMG_6358The intimidating camera sign should of course say “Except for Cyclists”.

Crying Wolf

This temporary sign is an insult. It is supposed to tell cyclists to slow down, because they are outside a school. However since the school is closed, like on this Sunday, it should not be there. This sign is fake news, there is no reason whatsoever to slow down. The more fake signs there are just encourages cyclists to ignore all signs. Stop crying Wolf !

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Bollard in the Road

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What is this black bollard doing here? It appears to be of no practical use, but is particularly dangerous to cyclists, especially at night. Surrounding the bollard are 8 confusing signs, distracting the cyclist. The bollard is completely black, nothing reflective, it simply disappears at night. Remove this dangerous piece of useless road furniture now!

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These are just a few examples from my local area, which I hope to add to in the near future. Happy Cycling!

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The Memories that Music Brings

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Ear Worms and All That..

So I read back in 1976 that it was the madeleines that brought back the memories. As a young man I could understand that, even though I had fewer memories to draw on. The book after all was called À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust, and the personal romanticism was endearing. Yes the 1920s, and so it seemed all time, were defined by the depth and power of that novel. This was the place that structured and held our memories, through the pages of a book we could visit and imagine the lives of others and our relationship to them, even use them as ciphers for own lives and feelings. This was a romantic notion which has not fully stood the test of time and the vicissitudes of experience. I now regard novels as a form of emotional manipulation, I can see the scaffolding, the agenda to influence our behaviour, playing with our emotional involvement for the benefit of ‘the story”. However this was relatively anodyne compared with my music problem, as we shall see.

I was not prepared for the way that music has locked itself into my brain and made me behave like some automaton, like a Pavlov’s dog who salivates with the correct stimulation. This is more direct and visceral than a novel, it seems to lie at a deeper more primal level, hence I have even less control over it. All the major events of my life have their soundtrack, after all I grew up at a time when music became the predominant cultural, outlaw influence. For my parents there was a relief at just escaping the ravages of war, and for them cinema had been the revolution, the cultural signpost to a better life. But by the late 60s the cultural signifier was something my parents could not understand – Rock Music.

Incomprehensible to them, it has now become a cultural norm. This music that then seemed so outlandish, hidden in corners, has through acclimatisation and advertising, been made into the ultimate capitalist’s dream. You can sell the same stuff again and again, through vinyl records, cassettes, cd’s, the box set and now Spotify. Rock Music won that cultural war. Punk, the ultimate fuck off music, now sounds like tinny pop. (Fuck off, the ultimate insult, is now printed in the Guardian and repeated regularly on TV, so has also lost the power). Perhaps as a result I love free jazz, the final bastion of fuck off music, but don’t really want to listen to it at home, you need the atmosphere, the thrilling moment of improvisation.

But back to my problem, certain songs trigger emotions I can’t control, even though I despise them. As a kid I loved The Beatles, then for 20 years I could not bear them and never listened to them. In the 90s I had kids and suddenly The Beatles were catnip, they could not lose and they still can’t. Somehow every word, every strum, every bit of enthusiasm had become part of me, I even do a passable imitation of Ringo (talking not drumming). I feel forced to resist their jolly banality, yet somehow they always win, I am in too deep to betray them. All you need is love they sing, with just enough knowing, enough edge. Imagine… all the  sounds they made were unconsciously baked within me and now I am stuck with it – I just can’t get you out of my head, as the song so accurately says. And there is the point, life has become a series of hummed song titles, signifying nothing. Personally, I believe the rot set in with Queen, the first content free, yet highly competent rock band. They had nothing to say, but you could certainly hum along.

In fact this phenomenon was given a name in the 80s (when pop music transitioned from rebel to mainstream), the earworm. This has now become a medical condition related to OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and can be severely distressing. For some these involuntary musical imagery attacks can last several days. There is no known cure, apart from chewing gum (a distraction activity). I do not suffer personally from this form of distress, but am certainly prey to earworms, often expressing themselves as a constant and unconscious humming. This is often more annoying for those around me, since I am hardly aware I am doing it. In general earworms are transitory, may well be pleasant, and experienced by most people at some time. It appears to be the case that the more music you listen to, the more likely you will be subject to earworms. In our current streaming media age we are all vulnerable, indeed that appears to be the intention.

So now that pop music is endemic in our culture, I can be caught out and manipulated by just hearing a few bars in a shop, on an advert or East Enders. Memories come flooding back, like some kind of mind control. They slowly devalue the original, often romantic, memory, leaving me bereft, as if my privacy has been invaded. In a sense it has been, since the songs now have a different, twisted agenda – to manipulate my emotions or simply to sell me something. Certain events in my life are so keyed into a song, that the song has become the physical representation of them, to the detriment of the actual event. In particularly some girlfriends in my past life stand before me as soon as I hear “their song”, that has somehow come to represent them. I am no longer in control of this process, I feel abused. Once upon a time these songs were outside the culture, personal and secret, now they are just part of the machine we have lost control of. Unbelievably there was once a thrill to hear pop music in a shop like Biba, since the only other place to regularly hear it was on pirate radio. Now we are just surrounded, the muzak is universal, turning rebellion into money.

_ZDC0465

 Earworm Songs, an abridged personal list

  • Can’t Buy Me Love : The Beatles
  • All you need is Love : The Beatles
  • Instant Karma! : John Lennon
  • Gimme Some Truth : John Lennon
  • All Right Now : Free
  • In The Year 2525 : Zager and Evans
  • Suzanne : Leonard Cohen
  • Sweet Jane : Velvet Undergound
  • (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais : The Clash
  • Into the Valley : The Skids
  • Ever Fallen In Love : Buzzcocks
  • We Will Rock You : Queen (A Top 20 Earworm)
  • A Love Supreme : Will Downing
  • Too Blind To See It : Kym Sims
  • Can’t Get You Out of My Head : Kylie Minogue
  • Swords of a Thousand Men : Ten Pole Tudor (Current TV Ad)

The Top 20 Earworms
Wikipedia on Earworms
Stuck Song Syndrome

Coronavirus Perspective

IMG_5894

Will Covid-19 be more deadly than the flu?

Public Health England told ITV News: The number of flu cases and deaths due to flu-related complications varies each flu season. The average number of deaths in England for the last five seasons, 2014/15 to 2018/19, was 17,000 deaths annually.

England Flu Death
Annual Flu (average)  :  17,000
2018-19  :  1,692 (flu jabs available)
2014-15  :  28,330
Of these 28,330 deaths, 25,143 were aged over 65, nearly 90%.

 On a historic and global scale
Worldwide Flu Death
Annual Flu (average)   :  0.5 million
1918 Flu Pandemic   :  20-100 million
1957 Asian Flu   :  1-4 million
1968 Hong Kong Flu   :  1-4 million

Never before has the world taken the drastic action of a global lockdown when confronted with a contagious virus. We are yet to see whether this will be effective.
Despite their high number, deaths from flu are not normally headline news, so what has changed?

 Conclusions

  • We do not yet know if coronavirus is more dangerous than the flu
  • Most political decisions have been taken without sufficient testing
  • It is impossible to know you have coronavirus without a test
  • Many people with coronavirus have no symptoms (asymptomatic)
  • We do not know how many people have coronavirus
  • This is a global pandemic
  • National borders are meaningless
  • We can all act together when necessary
  • The surveillance state is growing more powerful
  • Our liberty will be curtailed for the foreseeable future
  • The economic rules we live by will have to be revised
  • Petty differences evaporate when faced with universal calamity
  • This is a chance to build a more caring and unified world

Or perhaps we all now live in a Twitter Panic World…

References 
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-02-06/how-does-the-wuhan-coronavirus-compare-to-seasonal-flu/
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/seasonal-influenza-guidance-data-and-analysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/23/have-i-already-had-covid19-coronavirus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-map-how-covid-19-cases-are-spreading-across-the-world

26th May Update – Timeline

 • 1st December 2019
First symptoms in Wuhan, China says The Lancet

• 22 January
WHO confirm human to human transmission
Wuhan enters lockdown for 76 days

• 22 February
First European death in Veneto, Italy

• 3rd March
Boris says Wash your Hands

• 11th March
WHO declares worldwide pandemic
Tory Health Minister Nadine Dorries tests positive

• 12th March
Boris says We are not – repeat not – closing schools now
Government does not go into Lockdown

• 23rd March
Boris says Stay at Home

• 6th April
Boris admitted to intensive care with Covid-19

 • 10th May
Boris says Stay Alert 

• 26th May
Metro newspaper says Stay Elite

EY45jnFXgAAzZuH

30th July Update
We are living in a panic world – For the last 5 weeks fewer people have died in England and Wales than in an average year says the Office for National Statistics. For example, that is 270 fewer deaths for the week ending 17 July 2020. This has not been headline news.

Roughly 620,000 people die every year in the UK. 2020 is lining up to be about eighth in the list for deaths since 1993, so it’s not particularly unusual in terms of the number of people who’ve died. Undoubtedly Covid has killed way too many people, but in normal times they would have been deaths from other causes. Let’s keep this in proportion…

References
Office for National Statistics

Michael Yeadon, formervp-of pfizer

All Hail the Mac Pro

Apple-Mac-Pro-2009-2019

Well after a decade long wait Apple has finally produced a new high end computer which can be customised until it costs nearly £50,000. It looks a magnificent machine in the tradition of the original 2005 cheese grater Mac Pro, rather than the pointless 2013 black “trashcan” Mac Pro with no PCIe expansion slots or drive bays, which proved to be a dead end. The return of the PCIe Mac has also proven to be a boon for the old 2009-2012 Mac Pro, of which more later.

The 8 core base model of the 2019 Mac Pro costs £5,500 and would be a particularly pointless purchase if you do not intend to upgrade it. You can buy an apparently faster 2019 16” MacBook Pro for nearly half the price, while the entry level iMac Pro at £4,900 is much better specified with a great screen. The minimum configuration for a 2019 Mac Pro would be the 12 core version, after all we had 12 cores in 2010, and the memory runs at the intended high speed of 2933MHz, while the Turbo Boost speed of 4.4GHz is also faster. The base machine comes with only a paltry 256GB SSD, which would soon cause problems, I would regard the next step of a 1TB SSD as the minimum. As for the video card there is not much choice until the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X 16GB becomes available. The stock video card AMD Radeon Pro W580X 8GB has only 2 HDMI ports and is lower specified than the Vega card in the iMac Pro. Unfortunately the the current next step is the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32GB, costing an extra £2,160. For me, a worthwhile and expandable 2019 Mac Pro would have a starting price of about £7,500 for the 3.3GHz 12 core, 1TB SSD, 32GB Ram and currently unavailable AMD 5700X.

Of course, as stated this is only a starting point. There would have to be other additions to make a Mac Pro worthwhile. Firstly I would purchase an additional 64GB Ram Memory from OWC at $400 (less than half the price Apple charges) to make 96GB total. It also may be worth keeping in mind that Mac Pro’s seem to prefer all the memory to be of the same size, so it might be worthwhile chucking the Apple memory and installing 32GB or larger modules, especially if you want to get nearer to the previously unheard of 1TB limit. Apparently it is also relatively easy to upgrade the processor, Intel sell the 28 core Xeon W-3275 for about £3,500.

mac-pro_interior

A total of 8 PCI Express Gen 3 slots are available in the 2019 Mac Pro

Next on the list is internal storage, and here we have seen a real revolution. While processor speeds have not greatly increased in 10 years, access to data is now 50 times faster in real world terms. To put this in perspective the read rate of a good SATA hard disk in 2010 was 120 MB/s, now with NVMe SSD’s in a fast PCIe slot, read speeds are at 6,000 MB/s or more. Wow. This can be accomplished with 16 lane PCIe cards like the OWC Accelsior 4M2 or Sonnet M.2 4×4, which use up to 4 NVMe modules in a RAID 0 configuration. They are available in sizes up to 8TB, from £500 upwards, but keep in mind that Apple does not recommend installing the startup system on a RAID drive. If that all sounds a bit much, then simple 4 lane PCIe NVMe cards are available for only £25 with a fast M2 drive (from £100 for 1TB) which will give you 1500 MB/s, at least three times faster than the best SATA SSD. However in this case make sure you use a heatsink, NVMe modules can run very hot. For reference, the speed of the 2019 Mac Pro internal NVMe SSD is roughly 3000 MB/s, the same as in a recent iMac and MacBook Pro. If speed is not a necessity then you can still install good old hard disks, now available as large as 14TB and filled with helium, using a Promise Pegasus storage enclosure for the 2019 Mac Pro.

After all that wishful thinking where money grows on trees, back in the land of taxes and insurance, I am here with my 2010 Mac Pro and will be for some time. The good news is that the release of the 2019 Mac Pro has in fact extended the life of my 2010 machine, since all the new PCIe cards mentioned above can be installed in my old warhorse. In addition, the development by Apple for this new machine led to important improvements in  firmware for all PCIe Macs. Finalised in OSX Mojave, Boot Rom 144.0 allows for the use of bootable NVMe disks on these types of computers. So yes, I have a Samsung Evo Plus SSD (latest firmware) running at 1500 MB/s as my startup disk. In order to install Mojave I had already purchased the AMD Radeon Pro RX 580 8GB video card, as used in the stock 2019 machine. A new Sonnet Allegro Pro PCIe card gives me USB-C 3.1 speeds for external drives and accessories. Meanwhile RAM for this old machine is now dirt cheap, so I have 96GB, which cost half as much as the 24GB I installed in 2011. Performance wise, the single core performance of my dual 3.46GHz Xeon X5690 processors is now relatively poor, but as a 12 core machine the multi core result (Geekbench 5: 6954) is close enough to the base model Mac Pro 2019 (Geekbench 5: 7929) for me to use it happily for many years to come. Of course the next step will be to invest in one of the 16 lane PCIe M2 RAID 0 cards. Where’s that money tree?

Update 20 February 2020: 
Apple Mac Pro Technology Overview PDF

Mac_Pro_White_Paper_Feb_2020crop

 

 

In Support of temail

temail

A temail is a text email. An email in Plain Text. It is what an email should be. Emails were not intended to be gaudy headlines but purveyors of information. That is fast, quick, personal and practical: they are quite simply the mail –  as in a letter – version of the internet. The idea that it could call in other content from another continent is anathema to a considered and personal form of communication. Email should not be trying to emulate the internet browser experience. Never mind also including hidden trackers, that is just plain abusive. Just so you know, most commercial emails contain trackers, and yes it should be banned, and yes we are being abused.

One way of stopping this is to stop “Loading Remote Content”. There is probably an option to do this in your Email Preferences, hidden away somewhere. On OSX Mojave go to Mail/Preferences/Viewing and halfway down the page switch off “Load remote content in messages”. You will then have a button so you can view the remote content if and when you wish. This should be how email works, and in effect it once was – there was no “rich content”. Our internet overlords have allowed email to become a pipeline for spam, random advertising, tracking and malware.

remote

Another problem, which you can cure to some extent, is the false or no-reply address email. To me, any email where you cannot reply to the actual sender should be banned, it is just plain rude. Many spam emails also have a false sender, so make sure the return path of the email is visible in the Header. If it does not match the sender press Delete asap. Edit the “Show Message Headers” option in your email preferences to show the Return-Path. Again this is not usually the default, when it should be.

Emails are of course wonderful things containing the world of letters, discourses and eventually lives. It is still an open medium (although Google and Apple etc. wish it wasn’t) and as a photographer I do use it sometimes to send small photographs. These photographs are not remote content, they are part of the original email. But if it was just temail, a text only medium, I would not object. You would know just what you signed up for, something effective and utilitarian. Nothing hidden.

In more general terms, if you do not have access to a discrete mailbox with your own domain, I usually recommend gmail. Although it has not always played well with OSX, it is still free, deletes spam and is usually reliable. Just remember Google is reading, tracking and in effect censoring your emails. Also remember that with any IMAP email system that most of your email is being stored in the cloud, not locally, unless you specify otherwise. Old emails are likely to be “pruned” (that is deleted) at some point. There are always limits, Google currently allows 15GB of storage which sounds like a lot, but may not be enough after many years usage.

Meanwhile always log out of everything you can, while logged in they are tracking you, ‘cos you invited them! The worst offenders in this regard are Facebook, Google and Amazon. If you don’t believe me, feel free to spend half your life reading Terms and Conditions, Cookie Settings and GDPR documents.

 Support temail !

PS. I made up the term temail, I hope you know what I mean.

Three Million Brexit Coins Recycled

50p

This says it all about the mis-management of the last three years.

50re

Out of the many skits on the Brexit 50p, this was my favourite, just set your own date.

50brex

This is the design that has been withdrawn, but featuring the ‘rather die in a ditch’ date of 31st October 2019. Yes let’s not forget there were another 10,000 ‘collector’ coins recycled last March. A Treasury spokesman said: “We will still produce a coin to mark our departure from the EU.” Pure hubris.

The Get Ready for Brexit on 31 October ad campaign has already cost £100 million.

 

Do Not Install MacOS Catalina

macOS-Catalina

Warning ! Do Not Install Catalina, the new system software from Apple. Go to System Preferences / Software Update (if using Mojave, other systems may differ) and switch updates off, especially macOS updates.

• The new macOS Catalina (10.15) will break old 32 bit software, which you are using now.
• It is very hard, if not impossible, to go back to an older system.
• If you use iTunes it’s gone, the newer version called Music will be different and designed to promote Apple Music. Most DJ software no longer works.
• Old format videos will no longer play.
• If you sync your phone to your computer, prepare for everything to change – again.
• Your MacOS will now be on a Read-Only system partition. A lot of non Apple apps will have problems because of this.

There are many other changes, the only current benefit will be full compatibility with iOS 13.2 (already patched twice in a week) and new apps like Sidecar.

If you only ever use Apple Apps or have a new computer, think about upgrading to Catalina in a month or two, when it has settled down. Otherwise do not update until you are fully aware of all the changes.

The current system Mojave 10.14.6 works well on most computers made since 2013.

Catalina beta testers said:
• I continue to be stunned by Apple’s failure to significantly announce to its millions of users that lots of their software will simply stop working if/when they “upgrade” to Catalina.
• The new security features are incredibly annoying. Apps are constantly asking for permission to see various folders.
• This is the first OS X version I won’t upgrade until I’m forced to.
• Apple’s documentation says “Beginning in macOS 10.15, notarization is required by default for all software.”
• Ars Technica says give Apple a couple of months to patch Catalina before you install it.

FYI – just my opinion !

Update 12 November 2019
Following lengthy discussions on MacInTouch due to Apple Installers now having out of date security certificates and the disappearance of important software, this is where you can find the hidden Mojave installer on the App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12

If you find an Apple software installer giving you the misleading information that it is “damaged and can’t be used”, try this solution: Reset the date on your computer to 2016 after quitting all apps. Install the software as usual and reset the date back to normal as soon as possible.

The version linked to above is now working, but last week it was not. Apple have not changed either the version number 14.6.06 or the creation date 19 September 2019, yet I now have 2 apparently identical Apple installers for Mojave of different sizes (the slightly larger one at 6,051,048,165 bytes is the new one). One of them works, the other is “damaged and can’t be used to install macOS”. Shameful – and not even true!

Update 29th May 2020
With the latest Security Update 2020-003 Apple is making it harder not to update to Catalina. I now recommend turning off all updates in System Preferences / Software Update. If you are running Mojave 10.14.6 do not keep your Mac up to date!

If you are careful you can apply security and other updates manually. However a safer way of doing this is to use SilentKnight or LockRattler.

This is making life much tougher for Mac Administrators, since it is easy to upgrade accidentally. Apple must be getting desperate, as we have to put up with more nagware without any opt-out. We are losing control of our computers and I find their attitude unnecessary and abusive. This is Apple being hostile to their own users, never a good strategy.

In addition, the latest update to Catalina has a nasty bug which prevents making a bootable backup disk. Remember you cannot easily revert to a previous system, or even update, yet updates with bugs are being forced upon us..

For more information and a list of installers try this Diskmaker X page.
Meanwhile here is a revised list of previous system installers, now hidden in the App Store:

Get macOS Mojave 10.14

Get macOS High Sierra 10.13

Get macOS Sierra 10.12

PS Download installers with Safari browser. These installers are still not reliable and often spawn random errors. Keep trying!

Update 27th October 2020
Well I hope you followed my advice, since Apple are now issuing rogue MRT files which are supposed to protect your computer. These are “invisible” files and are not supposed to affect your own usage, just protect you. However MRT 1.68 has caused serious damage and has been withdrawn, but you cannot replace it.

In addition the last security update 2020-005 caused serious issues for many users, it was also withdrawn and replaced with an update with the same name, so who knows where you are! Apple as usual refuses to comment on any of these issues.

Meanwhile to quote Ric Ford of MacInTouch:
Apple is now secretly hiding its phone-home connections from firewall software, which is completely and totally unacceptable and will cause some customers and partners to abandon the Mac platform.

David Dudok de Wit says starting with macOS Big Sur, users can’t:

  1. View a full, uncensored list of apps trying to access the Internet on their Mac — as Apple is hiding 56 of its own apps.
  2. Know how much data these Apple apps upload or download.
  3. Know which domains or IP adresses these Apple apps interact with.
  4. Block or allow traffic from these Apple apps.

Security by obscurity is not a thing, never has been.

Hi Greta Thunberg

greta55Hi Greta Thunberg
Every time you speak
I am very moved
Your simplicity and directness
Speak truth to power

Look to the bigger picture
Relatively speaking
There are too many people
Our power and demands are deadly
It’s not just carbon it’s people
Our planet earth is a dynamic place
Islands form and Islands die
Icecaps grow and recede
Extinction happens
We are not immune
We adapt
We will change
We are missionaries
With a new leader
Speak carefully
Stay Happy

“All of our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people, and harder – and ultimately impossible – to solve with ever more people.”
Sir David Attenborough, patron of Population Matters
When David Attenborough was born in 1926 there were 2 billion people in the world, now there are over 8 billion. That is some elephant in the room.
*

Losing control of our computers

How do you delete a corrupted prefs file in Mojave?

corrupt

With a vast and previously unnecessary amount of difficulty.
This is when security combined with nannying the user becomes abusive.

  • You cannot find the file using Spotlight
  • You cannot rename it
  • You cannot change permissions
  • You cannot drag it to the Trash
  • You cannot replace it
  • You cannot compress it
  • You cannot delete it using Secure Delete in Cocktail or Onyx
  • You cannot even delete it when started up in Target Disk Mode on another computer
  • You cannot delete it using Terminal in the standard manner
  • It is not visible in Time Machine

 What do you do? Apple say nothing on the subject.
First of all you should make the hidden Library folder visible.
Find the corrupt file using Find Any File, not Spotlight.
It was identified in this case because of a bad creation date.

Then I used the dangerous rm -f function in Terminal. When I dragged the recalcitrant file dated 1 January 1970 into the Terminal window it gave the name Library/Preferences/com.apple.ResourceFork, which was wrong. Naturally the reply from Terminal was No such file or directory. This was an OS error, perhaps related to APFS.

Only when I manually typed in the actual file name Library/Preferences/com.phaseone.mediapro.settings did Terminal finally manage to delete the file, and I got back to normal working. Many hours wasted.

Bargain Pro Cameras

FX Lenses on DX Cameras

Article featured in Nikon Rumors June 15th 2019
Comments included:
– That’s a very good article. If a D5xxx works for you, that’s great. 
– This is a good article for enthusiasts to read and feel confident they are justified in buying and enjoying a DX system.

_1D82785

I am often asked for camera recommendations and my standard reply is the Nikon D5500. The later D5600 is basically the same camera with Snapbridge (an app for phones), which I never use. To make this into a “Pro“ camera I suggest attaching some some full frame FX lenses, which will give you startling sharpness, very little vignetting and no corner fuzziness. You are just using the best part of the lens, which is basically over-engineered for usage on DX crop sensor cameras. Take a look at nearly all MTF charts and you are avoiding the wavy (not as sharp) part of the graph on the right hand side, which is the edge of the sensor.

50mm-f18-g-mtfDX

Here is the Nikon MTF Chart for their AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G full frame lens.
On a DX camera you are only using the lens up to the vertical dotted line.

A note about terminology. 
A DX or APS-C camera is a so called crop sensor camera, meaning the the sensor is 1.5x smaller than a full frame FX camera. The sensor in a full frame camera is 24x36mm, the same as classic 35mm film. Thus on a crop DX camera the standard 50mm lens becomes a 75mm lens (50×1.5=75), a short telephoto. DX lenses cannot normally be used on full frame FX cameras, the image does not cover the whole sensor. On a DX camera a standard lens would be a 35mm, giving roughly the same angle of view as a 50mm lens on full frame. The Nikon 18-55mm DX kit lens is equivalent to a 27-82mm full frame lens.
The sensor in the D5500 is 24.2 mega-pixels, which is the same resolution as many full frame cameras such as the Nikon Z6 or D750 and the Sony A7.

Starsha Lee at Flaxon Ptootch

Starsha Lee at Flaxon Ptootch, Kentish Town
AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G – 1/250sec, f2.0, ISO3200

My favourite lens combination in this regard is the AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G. You might think a full frame lens would be too big on a DX camera, but it fits perfectly in the hand and weighs less (185g) than the 35mm DX f1.8 lens (200g), specifically made for crop sensor cameras. Best of all it does not look like a telephoto lens, has well recessed glass and focuses down to to 0.45m, very good for a 75mm lens. It is no wonder Nikon do not make a DX 50mm lens, it would be pointless to try and improve on this. In crowded social situations this focal length is ideal for picking out faces in the melee, and is several centimetres shorter than the kit zoom lens which is only f5.6 at 50mm. Indoors with average room lighting that will never be fast enough even at ISO 3200, and of course you lose the the 3D effect of an f1.8 lens.

_DC53300

Spizz Energi at iKlektik, Lambeth
AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G – 1/250sec, f2.0, ISO3200

At events when I am a bit further away I use the AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G, which becomes a very fast 130mm lens on DX. This extremely sharp lens sits well on the D5500 and only weighs 350g. Another FX lens I have used extensively is the tiny Fisheye Nikkor 16mm f2.8, which requires manual focusing, but does give a unique picture angle of over 100 degrees. For general travel and video usage the AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G VR lens is much heavier, but still quite manageable and becomes a powerful 36-180 lens without any FX corner fuzziness.

John Landor Music in Motion

John Landor Music in Motion at Conway Hall, Holborn
AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm f/4G – 1/125sec, f4.0, ISO3200

To put all this in perspective the D5500 is a remarkably light camera (470g) with an excellent grip. While lacking a few bells and whistles, in particularly a discrete aperture dial, you soon get used to this and I have yet to find something the camera can’t do once you are familiar with the menus. The touch screen is also remarkably useful and can be used to set focus. It competes well with mirrorless cameras, being smaller and much lighter than a Nikon Z6 or Sony A7, and while the Fujifilm X-T30 may be a little smaller it does not have a proper grip and is at least twice the price. I prefer to handhold my camera and do not use a strap, which inevitably gets in the way and makes shooting less flexible. If you really want a light camera choose a Nikon D3500 which only weighs 365g, the lightest DSLR ever. It is the same basic design as the D5500 with the same sensor, but has only 11 AF points, as opposed to 39 on the D5500. I would not recommend it for video since it has no flip out screen or headphone/microphone port. It does represent excellent value, the results for stills should be as good as cameras costing four times as much.

Irene Serra

Irene Serra at Royal Festival Hall, Waterloo
AF-S VR NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G – 1/200sec, f2.8, ISO2500

So to conclude my bargain camera would be a Nikon D5500 with 18-55 kit lens, currently available for £450. If you never use video and want to save more money try a Nikon D3500 with kit lens, about £315. The kit lens is usually heavily subsidised, you might as well purchase it since it is the only way to get a cheap wide angle on DX cameras, and they perform well enough these days. Next stop is the 50mm lens, which you can find for £150, or less second hand. If buying older lenses remember only the post 2000 G or E lenses with no aperture ring will autofocus on these cameras.

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All pictures were taken as Raw files and processed in Adobe Lightroom.
Here are some more examples of full frame lenses on the D5500:

Trevor Watts, Peter Knight, Veryan Weston at Cafe Oto

Trevor Watts at Cafe Oto, Dalston
AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G – 1/2sec, f4.0, ISO200

John Landor Bach Recital

John Landor Bach Recital at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Charing Cross
AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm f/4G – 1/125sec, f4.0, ISO3200

Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair at Cafe Oto, Dalston
AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G – 1/200sec, f2.0, ISO3200

Marc Ribot at Cafe Oto

Marc Ribot at Cafe Oto, Dalston
AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G – 1/160sec, f1.8, ISO3200

Starsha Lee at Flaxon Ptootch

Starsha Lee at Flaxon Ptootch, Kentish Town
AF Fisheye-Nikkor 16mm f2.8D – 1/125sec, f2.8, ISO3200

The Gulps Guitar

The Gulps at Flaxon Ptootch, Kentish Town
AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G – 1/200sec, f2.0, ISO3200

All Photographs ©Douglas Cape z360.com

 

There Wasn’t Another One

The Jimi Hendrix Experience ‎– Voodoo Chile EP

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In October 1970, at the age of 15, I bought my first 45rpm single, Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix. It was exceptional in many different ways. Firstly it only cost six shillings – from 1971 onwards post decimalisation that would be 30p. A normal single cost 10 shillings in those days which represented at least 2 weeks of pocket money. In addition this was an EP (Extended Play) single with three tracks, lasting over 12 minutes. It was cheap because it was regarded as a tribute single, using old tracks recorded in 1966 and 1968. Jimi Hendrix had died the previous month aged 27 in Notting Hill, London, after an overdose of sleeping pills. This single was his only UK Chart No 1.

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I had suffered a frustrating few years because my father had refused to buy a record player. He did have an amazing Truvox reel to reel tape recorder, but I was not supposed to touch it. I did play with it of course, but when he was out. Still one day, after I had saved up just enough money, I insisted, saying all my friends had a record player. I had ended up buying records just to play on their record players, it felt ridiculous. We went to a tiny back street lean-to where we purchased the necessary second hand bits to make our own record player, I could not afford a Dansette. We bought a sturdy 1950s portable player with a bakelite tonearm and proceeded to make our own balsa wood headshell for a ceramic cartridge. This high output piezoelectric cartridge meant we could use a cheap amplifier without pre-amp, and quickly destroy records with the heavy tonearm. However, with the addition of another speaker, it was stereo, so better and in fact much louder than a mono Dansette. I also painted it electric blue, so it looked both ridiculous and cool, and I used it for many years.

Electric Ladyland _ The Making Of Electric Ladyland

Back to Jimi and the exceptional single. Voodoo Chile was recorded in Electric Ladyland Studios in New York, with the classic Experience line up, Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. The day before Jimi had recorded the 15 minute jam version found on the double Electric Ladyland album with Jack Casady on bass and Stevie Winwood on organ. On the album, where both versions appeared, the shorter single version was named Voodoo Chile (Slight Return). The song was based on an old recording from the 1930s, Catfish Blues by Robert Petway, which had also been recorded by John Lee Hooker in the late 40s. The Experience had even played the Muddy Waters version of Catfish Blues live earlier in their career, and there you can already hear the roots of Voodoo Chile. However come 1968, Hendrix was at the peak of his powers, and he had completely rewritten the lyrics and honed the arrangement to make the dynamic blockbuster that we know today. In one sense the song became a poetic description of his own dynamic and visceral playing, his guitar is indeed chopping down mountains and then picking up grains of sand. In this five minutes there is nearly every guitar trope known to man, frottage followed by talking wah-wah descending into huge searing power chords in the first 40 seconds, then a phased solo swoops across the speakers taking us up into space. There are huge dynamics in every move he makes, he is too quick to be bombastic, the music veers between solo, chords and glissandi in an epic tour de force. Jimi is indeed demonstrating, via his guitar, that he is the voodoo child.

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While his guitar could do plenty of talking, here his vocal prowess is a match with it. The casual belief in his own boasting is delivered with complete authority and an infectious enthusiasm. Whispering asides, even apologies, are made before he ascends into the next world, screaming with dramatic urgency “Don’t be late”. The bare lyrics, while suggesting he has god like powers, also contain genuine concern, with lines from a love song worried that he will “take up all your sweet time”. Still before long he is an alien again, there is another world out there, the counterculture, and out there he’s a voodoo child. Noel Redding claims the song was basically improvised live since they were being filmed at the time, which may well explain the unique dynamism.

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The other side of the EP starts with Hey Joe, recorded in 1966 during the early sessions for his first album Are You Experienced. I was later to purchase this album in WH Smith for just £1, since it was re-released in a budget ‘backtrack’ series in a plain brown sleeve. My bakelite record player was soon to wear out the grooves on that one. The origins of the song Hey Joe are hazy, it was credited to an obscure Californian folk singer in 1962, known as Billy Roberts, but there are several other antecedents. However the version which inspired Jimi was undoubtedly by the West Coast band Love, since Jimi and the lead singer of Love, Arthur Lee, had recorded together the previous year in LA. Chas Chandler, former bass player for the Animals, saw Jimi performing the song in New York’s Cafe Wha?, and it became the first single when Chas brought Jimi over to England and signed him to Track Records. This single set the template for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, already you can hear the unique guitar style in his solo, while his conversational singing breaks into anguish as the song builds to it’s climax. It reached number 6 in the UK charts. No surprise that it is featured on his memorial single, this was the first hit record.

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And finally the apocalypse. Huge urgency drives Jimi’s version of the Bob Dylan song All Along the Watchtower. It has been named as the greatest cover version of all time. Despite appearing on Electric Ladyland, it was recorded at Olympic Studios in London with guests Brian Jones and Dave Mason, and Jimi himself played bass after a dispute with Noel Redding. The original song, which featured on Bob Dylan’s acoustic John Wesley Harding album, could not sound more different. There is still a sense of urgency in Dylan’s version, but the instrumentation is sparse with a plaintive harmonica, all the drama comes from the vocal line, as befits a folk album recorded in Nashville. Jimi had long been a fan of Dylan’s, and covered several of his songs in concert, the terse yet convoluted lyrics seemed to suit his own singing style. Here though, Jimi makes the song his own to the extent that Dylan has said “when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.” The reason being that Dylan now sings the Hendrix arrangement, as heard on his 1974 live album with The Band, Before the Flood.

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The religious based imagery of the song, suggested by the Book of Isiah, does indeed summon up an archaic, end of days atmosphere. The stinging guitar lines suggest the horsemen of the apocalypse, the movement is palpable, horses are galloping through a slashing, distant storm. Dylan claims he wrote the song in reverse, we never seem to know whether we are fleeing confusion or bringing chaos to the gates of the watchtower. Only at the end of the song do we realise that the two horsemen must be the joker and the thief. Nevertheless the sense of desperation is ever present, the hour is getting late, the whirling howling guitar suggesting cataclysm is upon us. It is at once a comment on the failing vision of the counterculture, as it faded into drug addiction and Vietnam war protest, and simultaneously a call to arms for the outsiders, the jokers and the thieves. It was Hendrix who transformed this song from an elegy into a song of protest, welcoming the future conflagration of corrupt establishment values, defined by the gradually building guitar line ending in a blistering shower of repeated high notes. Now the music matches and reinforces the lyrical intentions of the song.

Are You Experienced _ The Making Of

When Jimi Hendrix died I had been saddened, but thought there would be another great guitar player along in a minute, there seemed to be plenty around. In vain I waited, maybe Jeff Beck would take up the mantle, or perhaps Robin Trower. Buddy Guy, Albert Collins and Albert King took on some of his stylings (or vice versa), but they were playing firmly in the Blues tradition. Much later I discovered Bill Frisell, whose work with Naked City and Power Tools seemed to echo some of Jimi’s more esoteric musical concerns. There was one reason that nobody sounds quite like Jimi, he played right-handed guitars that were turned upside down and restrung for left-hand playing. Nobody would be crazy enough to do that nowadays. In addition, he was right place right time for the new Vox-Wah pedal and associated phasing effects, the electric guitar had come of age. The best Jimi guitar impersonator was undoubtedly Stevie Ray Vaughn, who recorded an 11 minute version of Voodoo Chile, which while played with great power and elan, is simply a remake. Finally I did see a great live version of Voodoo Chile, unexpectedly played by Vini Reilly, guitarist for Morrissey and Factory Records, but of course he couldn’t sing, which would explain why he made instrumental records. There is no-one since Hendrix who has managed to make such a unique synthesis of blues, rock, funk and space music in the way that he did. Despite his foreshortened career, after fifty years he stands alone, a revolutionary artist just as powerful as Picasso, Beckett or Beethoven.

Electric Ladyland 13 The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Jimi Hendrix 
Born November 27 1942 in Seattle, Washington, USA
Died September 18 1970 in Kensington, London, UK

Mitch Mitchell
Born 9 July 1946 in Ealing, Middlesex, UK
Died 12 November 2008 in Portland, Oregon, USA

Noel Redding
Born 25 December 1945 in Folkestone, Kent, UK
Died 11 May 2003 in Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland

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 Update 10 June 2020

This article was extensively quoted in the Guardian Readers Favourite UK No 1s

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