Whitley Bay Daily Photo 172

A Class Act VIII

A Bit Of Barcelona 1

Whitley Bay Daily Photo 171

Nominations For God CXXII

Georges Delerue

Whitley Bay Daily Photo 170

Fathers Day

Tricky business being a dad. There isn't a handbook which someone sticks in your hand and says “Read this first!”

My relationship with my own father was especially complicated due largely to the fact that he used to beat my mother up as the mood took him. It was something he learned from watching his father beat his own mother up.

Although he never ever raised his shovel-sized hands to me it’s fair to say my childhood memories of him are pretty grim.

As harsh as it sounds I was glad to see the back of him when, after decades of physical abuse, my mother (with help from my sister Lesley and me) worked up the courage to send him packing. 

For years I vowed I would never have kids.

Then, in the early 90s, it happened. Twice.  I’m thankful it did.

Though not always easy becoming a father was probably the best thing to have happened to me.

Despite this I always had a gnawing doubt about fatherhood. What if I wasn’t up to it? What if I couldn’t provide for them?

Underneath it all was the deep-seated fear: what if I, beneath it all, was like my dad? What if that kind of behaviour somehow ran in the family?

Although nobody gives you that handbook showing you how to be a dad, in his own way my father showed me how not to do it.

And for that, if for nothing else, I’m grateful.

Write, eat, socialise and collapse...

Writingwriting, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, eat, interact with houseguests...

Beige Peter and Kevin (and friend)

Writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing and collapse.

Whitley Bay Daily Photo 169

MØSTER Edvard Lygre Møster

MØSTER
Edvard Lygre Møster
HUBRO

Most bands appreciate that it is on a stage before an appreciative audience where the magic really begins to happen. That’s most certainly the case for saxophonist Kjetil Møster, who having assembled an all-star cast from the cream of the Norwegian prog jazz scene, unleashes a series of fiery howling choruses and frantically tumultuous grooves over four incandescent tracks.

Thrillingly flailing somewhere between crunching hairy 70s rock and beatific Coltrane-like rapture, it has the kind of cranked-up heavy-duty impact most rock bands with a wall of Marshal amps can only yearn for. Peppered with eerie atmospherics, the music is anchored by the insistent Wetton-esque bass of Elephant 9’s Nikolai Eilertsen and the unstoppable barrage of Motorpsycho’s Kenneth Kapstad.

Composition Task #1 is a haunting, beautiful tenor sax solo whose nimbly etched golden tracery falls upon an amorphous canvas of dreamy reverb. Elsewhere, Møster’s roaring baritone snarls belligerently, recalling Van der Graff Generator’s mournful windswept textures and the brusque hurtling thud of Morphine’s Dana Colley. With Supersilent’s Ståle Storløkken’s distorted keyboards adding a pungent lead foil, the phrase “white-knuckle ride” might’ve been invented for this album in general and the epic album-closer, The Boat in particular.