There has been a lot of talk recently about "fake news" and its equally alarming cousin, "alternative facts". Some say those alternative facts are nothing to worry about; they are just white lies, little fictions that reveal a deeper truth. Pictures of the crowd at Donald Trump's presidential inauguration may have shown fewer people than at…Read more Little Fictions
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Laiks
Here's a song for all my Latvian readers. Laiks is a track from the Tavs Stāsts album by the Latvian pop-rock band Sound Poets. Judging by the pictures on the band's Facebook page Sound Poets are huge in Latvia and are building a following elsewhere in Europe, too. Reliable information is hard to come by because almost…Read more Laiks
Boo Boo Bird
"It is up to you whether you read this... my advice is just to ignore it." Ivor Cutler Ivor Cutler was the Scottish equivalent of Spike Milligan. He was an eccentric poet, songwriter and humourist. His fans included The Beatles, John Peel, KT Tunstall, John Lydon, Neil Innes and Robert Wyatt. He was the driver of…Read more Boo Boo Bird
Annie, Let’s Not Wait
There's a big difference between 'awesome' and 'awful'. And that's strange. Both words derive from 'awe', which originally just meant 'fear'. So 'awesome' should mean 'instils a certain trepidation' while 'awful' should have the more emphatic meaning, 'terrifying'. The use of 'awe' in the Bible to describe the mortal response to God's presence is thought to have…Read more Annie, Let’s Not Wait
The Other Side
Cast your mind back to December 1968. Apollo 8 was on the launchpad. No human being had ever been beyond Earth orbit. No astronaut had flown on the Saturn V launch vehicle before. There had been no less than three engine failures on the unmanned Apollo 6 mission earlier that year. Apollo 8 had been…Read more The Other Side
Let Them Eat Chaos
Years ago now Crotchety Man was watching a documentary about old sitcoms on the BBC. The discussion turned to The Good Life, a TV series about a cheap plastic toy designer, Tom Good, who gives up his well-paid but unfulfilling job to turn his suburban house into a small-holding and become entirely self-sufficient. Needless to say…Read more Let Them Eat Chaos
Fend for Yourself
Back in June the Crotchety Man blog carried a review of Magnolia, which was then the most recent album by The Pineapple Thief. I gave it a rating of 3.5 out of 5 but reserved the right to adjust that as I got to know it better. Over the last few months, though, it has become…Read more Fend for Yourself
4 Degrees
Ten days ago Crotchety Man watched the awards ceremony for the 2016 Mercury Prize on the TV. The scheduling was confusing. At 7 o'clock there was a one-hour program on 'the red button' (a channel up in the six hundreds most easily found by clicking the red button on the TV remote) and this was…Read more 4 Degrees
Familiar
The 'classical' tag appears in these posts from time to time. Sometimes it refers to music from the years 1600 - 1900 but more often it indicates modern music in a style that owes a substantial debt to that period. Familiar is one of those more recent compositions. It is a single taken from Agnes Obel's forthcoming album Citizen of Glass…Read more Familiar
River Song
The times seem to be changing at Crotchety Mansions. Recently, I added another couple of blogs to my list of followed sites. As if to balance those beginnings the first music blog I followed since starting this one, Vinyl Connection, has just ceased publication and this week The Maccabees announced they are disbanding. It's sad…Read more River Song
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