Music
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Veracruz & Boca del Rio: Baking Sun & Flash Floods
The very word Veracruz conjures up certain visions – romantic, exotic, dynamic – although maybe I’m swayed a bit by the fact that there’s a Santana song bearing the city’s name as its title which is all about falling in love whilst within the city’s conducive ocean setting. Consequently we venture there with a great sense of anticipation, eager to see it for ourselves. As it happens, we are about to be underwhelmed, and the reality is that Veracruz doesn’t quite meet those expectations. A near 6-hour bus journey from Mexico City sounds like it could be a bit of a trial but the ADO bus is extremely comfortable and…
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San Francisco #2
For those of us of a certain age, the very words “San Francisco” evoke memories of 1960s music, flower power, the hippy generation and the 1967 summer of love. That entire movement, if movement is the right word, may have been synonymous with the wider city, but it was actually centred around the district of Haight Ashbury, just over a mile west of downtown. A district which was hit hard by the Depression and fell into decline during the 1950s slowly became a haven for the hippy counterculture during the 60s due in the main to the availability of cheap rental accommodation in a downbeat and under populated neighbourhood. Within…
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Athens & Kalamata: Tales From Two Cities
After eleven weeks in Greece and its islands we are into the last week of our journey through this sun soaked land, leaving the wonderful island of Milos and taking the short prop plane flight over the Aegean to Athens. Amusingly the bus ride from Athens airport to Syntagma Square takes considerably longer than the flight. It’s only two years since we were last here in the Greek capital so this visit is one of expedience and we are here just for a single night, in an 8th floor hotel room with magnificent views of the Acropolis. After so many weeks in an assortment of apartments and houses, a hotel…
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Rock History & Me #3: An Affair With Caroline
The four of us sat at a small table in the college refectory, Cheltenham Charlie putting together another of his daft looking skinny roll-ups. “Can you actually taste anything in that matchstick?”, says John Mayes, aka Daisy. “Man yeah. My saviour” Daisy and Sylvo shake their heads and grin, Cheltenham Charlie drags on the tiny fag, oblivious. “They’ve put “Wardrobe” out as a single”, he drawled. “What? Really?” This didn’t seem right. Prog rock bands – proper prog rock bands – didn’t put singles out, it was unwritten law. Maybe Cheltenham Charlie had got it wrong. “Where’d you hear that shit?”, I asked. “Radio Caroline”. Until that lecture break at…
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Rock History & Me #2: Foxtrot
In the summer of 1973, glam rock was still in its pomp with the charts full of Chinn-Chapman productions and the TV screens bringing outrageous sequinned costumes and equally outrageous hairstyles into our living rooms. Each new release by the likes of T Rex, Sweet, Slade, Mud, Roxy Music and (dare we say it) Gary Glitter was eagerly awaited and then thrust immediately into maximum radio airplay. Best of all for me, I’d left behind the schooldays which I’d grown to despise and at 16 felt more than ready to be out earning a living instead of listening to the dullard individuals who called themselves schoolteachers. I felt a heady…
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Rock History & Me #1: Ziggy Stardust
During this period of having no new travel stories, I’m drawn to write about another passion; Michaela isn’t convinced, but encouraged both by my sense of self indulgence and our fellow blogger Leighton Thomas at leightontravelsblogs.wordpress.com I’m pressing on….. #1: Ziggy Stardust As I took my seat on the sofa for the weekly Thursday night ritual of watching Top Of The Pops, I had no inkling of what was about to unfold. Within a few minutes I was transfixed, deaf to my parents’ disapproval, hooked instantly not only to the music but to this unworldly being and his ethereal lyrics. At each chorus, these two men would put arms around…
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Joe Biden & David Bowie: A Thought For Friday
In recent days we have seen Joe Biden announce multi trillion dollar spending plans based largely around social welfare and other public spending, as the reverberation of the end of the Trump era continues. Just over fifty years ago,at the start of the 70s, David Bowie released the album “The Man Who Sold The World”, containing the track “Saviour Machine”, which opens with these lyrics…. “President Joe once had a dream The world held his hand, gave their pledge, So he sold them his scheme for a saviour machine. They called it The Prayer, its answer was Law Its logic stopped war, gave them food Oh how they adored till…
