Crotchety Man has been bingeing on prog rock recently so I thought it was time for something rather different. As luck would have it my Release Radar this week included an enchanting track called Listen to the Grass Grow by Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita. Now, I used a photo of Catrin Finch in an…Read more Future Strings
Track of the Week
The Road of Bones
The lowest recorded temperature (-67.7 °C) in any permanently inhabited place on Earth was recorded at Oymyakon (Оймяко́н) in 1933 in eastern Siberia. In December and January the average daily temperature there is around -45 °C and the village lies deep within the permafrost region. Building roads in this frozen and mountainous part of the…Read more The Road of Bones
Proud Mary
Yesterday the sun was out, the sky was clear and the birds were singing. Today, the forecasters assure us, will be just as nice. And tomorrow is likely to be the warmest Spring Bank Holiday there has ever been. Feeling unusually full of life the Crotchety Couple set about weeding the garden and cleaning the…Read more Proud Mary
Green and Orange Night Park
A post on my Facebook page this week linked to this page on the DGM Live website. It reports that Keith Tippett is recovering from a heart attack and pneumonia and will be unable to work for the foreseeable future. Some of Keith's friends in the music business are doing what they can to help…Read more Green and Orange Night Park
Manic Moonlight
On Friday Crotchety Man took his camera to the Crich Tramway Village in picturesque Derbyshire. He spent several hours the following day sifting through the photos, cropping them, straightening them and adjusting them for exposure and contrast. A selection was then published as an album on the photo hosting website, flickr. In doing so the photographer…Read more Manic Moonlight
A Thousand Shards of Heaven
The English word 'lunatic' comes from the Latin 'lunaticus', which means someone who is afflicted by one of the diseases of the mind caused by the moon. These days it is generally taken to mean a person who is endearingly foolish and unpredictable rather than actually mad and can be a term of affection. Perhaps…Read more A Thousand Shards of Heaven
Days of Pearly Spencer
Sometimes I feel I'm losing the will to live. It's usually when I'm ironing - shirts are so darn fiddly, aren't they? So I do my ironing weekday afternoons between 1 and 4 pm so that I can listen to the Radcliffe and Maconie show on the radio. They play some good music and they…Read more Days of Pearly Spencer
Girdik
We entered the draughty hall in silence. "What do you think 'Diz?", I said to my companion. He looked up at the vaulted ceiling and gazed for a moment at the stained glass windows. He paced down the aisle and stepped up onto the stage. He clapped his hands, twice; the sound bounced back at…Read more Girdik
The Black Rock
March came in with an icy blast here in the UK. We had 10 - 20 cm of snow, much of the country's transport system ground to a halt and some unfortunate motorists got stuck on a Scottish motorway for eight hours. It was all due to "the beast from the east" - a weather…Read more The Black Rock
Off the Radar
Decisions, decisions ... What shall I choose for my Track of the Week? Well, there are several good candidates on my Release Radar today. How about Dança dos Miseráveis from the Marinheiro de Terra Firme album by Puppi, an Italian cellist based in Brazil? (The track starts at 22:54 in this YouTube video and you can ignore…Read more Off the Radar
Crotchety Man 