Alive!

When Peter Kenneth Frampton first released his single Show Me the Way in June 1975 it fell flat on its arse. Lifted off his fourth solo album Frampton (which also included Baby, I Love Your Way) it gained zero traction. Only when he toured the album and released his Frampton Comes Alive double album the following February did it get under the skin of every FM radio station within a five thousand mile radius. Show Me the Way was the album's lead single and, basically, cemented Frampton's career. Listening to the original version from '75 without the crowd whooping and hollering is quite strange - you're almost hearing it with a sense of loss. Watching him play it acoustically many years later without a crowd going ballistic, his flowing locks and his famous talkbox is another experience altogether; kind of endearing, but at the same time, a tad deflating.

Peter Frampton (with Gordon Kennedy) - Show Me the Way

 

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 Ever wondered how the (now patented) Framptone works?

Feel the Teal

I've mentioned teal before; when you talk about Weezer's various colour coded albums it's hard not to. What I didn't explain last time was how the colour was named. It's no great mystery - it's actually named after the Eurasian Teal duck - with its flash of green/blue on its head. The first mention of it as a colour, however, is relatively recent (1917); the Teal itself goes back a lot further, obviously, and was first scientifically named in 1758. 

As you know I love a flag, and if you study the back issues of Are We There Far you'll see numerous specimens. An interesting example with teal in its make up is the Mozambique flag. I'm very taken with it and in particular the five pointed star/book/hoe/AK-47 machine gun combo; a heady mix, I think you'll agree.

Teal is also the colour of many of the world's oceans, the predominant colour of the Northern Lights, Quaker parrots, Blue Racer snakes and the main identifier of Blue Bottle flies.

In addition to Weezer you'll also find it on a whole host of album covers including Nirvana's Nevermind, Tommy by the Who and AC/DC's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. It's also the colour of my watch.

The only game in town

I forget just how long* I've been hanging on to Phil Cooper's coat tails; long enough to know he's one of the most talented singer-songwriters around and certainly one of the best discoveries I've made in all the years I've been blogging. (And, in the immortal words of Donny Osmond, that's a long, long time.)

The fact that he hails from Bristol and that he's got a brand new album in the shops chimes in perfectly with this year's BlogCon meet-up in the heart of Brizzle (you fancy playing a little pub gig for us, Mr. Cooper?!). 'Playing Solitaire' is jam packed with some beautiful and intricate songs that expose a side of Phil we've rarely seen before. Several songs are quite raw and introspective yet it's still balanced with an underlying wave of positivity. The whole thing appears to have been recorded very sparsely, with primarily just one voice and one guitar - and none the worse for that. It's an album I've been playing the hell out of since it dropped a couple of weeks ago and could well be on the podium come my end of year roundup. My standout track? I'm gonna go for this five and a bit minute slice of homespun wisdom...

Phil Cooper - Beauty in the Cracks (2025) 

 

Phil Cooper · Beauty In The Cracks

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 For all things Phil Cooper check out his website.

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 * At least since 2018.

(Not) Saturday Snapshots #1

At the risk of infringing copyright and facing the wrath of Rol's lawyers, I refrained from calling today's blogpost Saturday Snapshots. However, the snapshots below were all taken today, Saturday. So I guess by any metric that makes them Saturday snapshots; though definitely not Saturday Snapshots. Oh no. These Saturday snapshots are 100% not Saturday Snapshots. I'm glad I've cleared that up.

Control Tower, Tollerton Airport

Approaching Hockley

Hole in the Wall

Nottingham goes all Coronation Street

Hucknall Road, Sherwood

So there you have it. Out and about with my camera on a sunny Saturday taking snapshots. Saturday snapshots, you could say. But not Saturday Snapshots. Phew, I think I got away with it.

I Love Lucid

Imagine waking up from a lucid dream and being able to paint from memory everything you saw and experienced in the dream. The paintings of Edward Hopper to me look like fragments of a dream where everything is real, and where nothing is real. Remote buildings; mostly empty. Individuals; generally portrayed as lonely and isolated in equally isolated urban cityscapes. They kind of look like regular places but are like no town or city you can remember having visited.

Here's a little exercise I did recently using a bit of human/machine collaboration (AI to you): I 'asked' it to interpret buildings and places I know (some still with us, some long since demolished) and generate images (without providing photographs) in the style of a Hopper painting. The final images conjure up a world where, just like a lucid dream where you know you're dreaming and not actually living in this place and, despite every effort you make to, for instance, read a line of text from a book or a sign on a building, the words don't really make sense. As you can see from a couple of the images below, it's a similar principle.

I often have breakfast at the Warsaw Diner on a Saturday morning. This version of my favourite diner takes it into a whole new dimension. Am I in this version of the eaterie with these lost souls (nighthawks)? I could be. But why is it dark? And where is the friendly Polish lady that always greets me from behind the counter like a member of her family? Wait a minute, where's the bloody counter? I guess what I'm saying is, where's the friendly daytime vibe gone?

The football ground is interesting. I know Meadow Lane, where Notts County have been plying their trade since 1862, but this is not it. The lettering on the main stand is nearly right, but not quite (on one of the images anyway), and the advertising hoardings make no sense whatsoever. Again, the positioning of individuals on the pitch are all wrong. What are they doing, and why are the floodlights are in the wrong place? (One of them is in the back garden of a house that doesn't even exist); that would really bug me. And yet it's a ground I now want to go to. I belong there. Drop me in this painting and I may never come back.

The ABC cinema on Long Row was an old haunt of mine before the wrecking ball paid it a visit in the 1990s. It was always a bit scuzzy, not a fleapit exactly, but it had seen better days. In this reimagined picture house, rebranded here as the ABOC(!), I immediately feel an affinity with both it and its surroundings. Again, beam me up here and, even though I can't for the life of me work out what they're showing (Siult Ack Tone?), I'd certainly sit in the doubles and give it a go.

And finally, Nottingham's iconic Council House. It's famous lions that sit either side (including our beloved Left Lion) have seemingly strolled off somewhere. Oh, and Market Square has been totally airbrushed out of this particular dream; leaving this most imposing of buildings almost totally in shadow (textbook Hopper). And the red brick building on the corner - as most red brick buildings in Hopper's work - is a bit of a tease; what secrets lie behind its walls and windows? Or in this case, what (or who) lurks around the corner? 

I need to visit this parallel version of the place I call home. A whole new world awaits.