Winsor McCay...

It's the 107th anniversary of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland (see today's Google search page) - an excuse, not that there's any needed, to post some images from that strip as well as some of his other work:

Donald Fagen on Sunken Condos...

Donald Fagen Mulling Solo Tour To Support 'Sunken Condos' Album
'If it's a total turkey, I don't want to be associated with it at all,' Steely Dan leader tells Billboard.

Gary Graff
10 October 2012

After a three interconnected solo albums, Steely Dan's Donald Fagen wanted his upcoming "Sunken Condos" to stand on its own.

"(2006's) 'Morph the Cat' concluded what was a sort of autobiographical trilogy, although it didn't start out to be that, so this is kind of new," Fagen tells Billboard. "I just started writing songs, and I figured it would just be on a song by song basis, although of course it turned out to be really a sort of continuation. But I didn't feel I was under any structure, stylistically. I didn't feel any need to refer to anything that was on those three albums. It kind of freed me up in a certain way."

Making a definite difference on "Sunken Condos" was the presence of Michael Leonhart, who plays trumpet for Steely Dan and the Dukes of September, Fagen's occasional touring band with Boz Scaggs, and Michael McDonald, as co-producer. Fagen had produced "Morph The Cat" himself (Steely Dan partner Walter Becker helmed 1993's Grammy Award-nominated "Kamakiriad") but says he wanted a collaborator who would do more than simply engineer the sessions.

"Sometimes at sound checks when we were playing with Steely Dan or whatever, Michael would sit there with the drums, just fooling around," Fagen says. "I had demos of all the songs... and I said, 'Here's a couple tunes. Why don't you just try playing the demos. Just play the drums. He was sort of reluctant to do it... but they sounded really good, and I knew he knew the technology and stuff, so it was a good fit."

Leonhart, who's worked with Fagen since 1996, adds, "Over the years the collaboration has kind of grown. I've always felt very free to create with Donald, and he's always felt very free to say, 'No, I don't like that,' and I don't really take it personally and we move on and try other stuff. I don't think I had a major agenda other than to help Donald get whatever's in his brain out on to tape -- or in this case to hard drive."

Fagen acknowledges that many of "Sunken Condo's" songs were being written while Steely Dan was on the road, but he knew they were unlikely to turn into band tracks. "I knew Walter was involved in his own solo project," Fagen explains. "I suppose if Walter had said, 'I'm ready to record' or something like that, as would usually happen over the years, I would say, 'Well, I've got a few things that you might want to work on.' So, yeah, I might have shuffled some of those half-finished tunes over to him and we would have worked on them together. But it turned out he was busy doing other things, so I kept them all."

"Sunken Condos," which includes eight originals and a cover of Isaac Hayes' "Out of the Ghetto," is due out Oct. 16. Fagen -- who, along with Leonhart, hits the road again with the Dukes of September in October for shows in Hawaii and Japan -- says he's mulling over the prospect of some solo shows to support it. "I'd really like to do it," he says. "We actually did a very brief tour after 'Morph the Cat' came out, and that was a lot of fun. It was a little scary for me; I've been the frontman for Steely Dan for a long time, but it was a whole different thing, being the center of attention with your own band. It was kind of a heavy deal for me, but it was a lot of fun. So we'll see what happens with ('Sunken Condos'); if it's a total turkey, I don't want to be associated with it at all. But if it seems like it's worth doing, we probably will do something."

http://www.billboard.com/news/donald-fagen-mulling-solo-tour-to-support-1007978122.story#/news/donald-fagen-mulling-solo-tour-to-support-1007978122.story

Blue Nile - A Walk Across the Rooftops and Hats re-released...

The Blue Nile re-mastered albums out in November

On November 19th A Walk Across The Rooftops and Hats are to be re-issued with bonus material.

Remastered by band members Paul Buchanan and Robert Bell alongside the original The Blue Nile engineer Calum Malcolm, and issued with bonus CDs containing rarities, live recordings, previously unreleased tracks and B sides, Virgin Records are proud to re-release the first 2 albums from The Blue Nile.

Formed after graduating from Glasgow University in the early 1980’s by guitarist Paul Buchanan, bassist Robert Bell and keyboard player Paul Joseph Moore, rarely does a band evoke such passion and loyalty in its fans.

The bands debut album , A Walk Across The Rooftops was released on Linn Records in 1984 and included 2 singles – Tinseltown In The Rain, and Stay. After a five year break, Hats was recorded in Castlesound Studios in Pencaitland, East Lothian, and released to near universal critical acclaim in 1989, cementing the claim that they were a seminal band with long lasting and far reaching cultural impact.

Entering the UK albums chart at number 12, all 3 singles released – The Downtown Lights, Headlights On The Parade, and Saturday Night – all of which achieved top 75 UK chart status. Described as ‘an immensely warm and human album’, Paul Buchanan’s vocals and songs are thoughtful, heartfelt and moving’, while listening to Hats is often described as ‘a cinematic experience.’

A Walk Across The Rooftops
1. A Walk Across The Rooftops 2. Tinseltown In The Rain 3. From Rags To Riches 4. Stay 5. Easter Parade 6. Heatwave 7. Automobile Noise Bonus CD 1. I Love This Life – the band’s first single 2. Heatwave – Rhythm Mix 3. St Catherine’s Day – previously unreleased 4. Tinseltown In The Rain – mix 5. The Second Act – B side to I Love This Life 6. Stay – Little Mix 7. Regret – B side to Tinseltown In The Rain

Hats
1. Over The Hillside 2. The Downtown Lights 3. Let’s Go Out Tonight 4. Headlights On The Parade 5. From A Late Night Train 6. Seven AM 7. Saturday Night Bonus CD 1. Seven AM – recorded before the end of the Hats sessions 2. Christmas – previously unreleased 3. Let’s Go Out Tonight – vocal 2 – the 2nd vocal take 4. Saturday Night – vocal 2 – early mix 5. Headlights On The Parade – Live In Tennessee 6. The Wires Are Down – B side to The Downtown Lights single

http://paulbuchanan.com/the-blue-nile-re-mastered-albums-out-in-november/

I remember their faces, forget their names...

Just saying, Ian...

Donald Fagen - Tomorrow's Girls

Van Morrison - Born to Sing

Art Garfunkel - Waters of March

Jeff Lynne - Stormy Weather

Thea Gilmore

Here we are - the wonderful Thea Gilmore for your enjoyment. Pity I couldn't remember her name.

Poets Inspired by Titian: Hugo Williams | Metamorphosis: Titian 2012

The Golden Age of the British Sports Car

Generally speaking, cars do nothing for me.  They have a wheel at each corner and they get me from A to B, but I found myself drawn to this documentary for a number of reasons: the  footage of the occasionally perilous rallying across Europe in the 1950s; the heroics of Pat Moss (Stirling's sister, who, I confess, I'd never heard of); the way manufacturers sought to meet the demand for affordable, speedy and stylish cars; the notion that we once had a motor industry, never mind one that could compete with others throughout the world. You'll have to tolerate Tamsin Grieg's narration, however.

You've got 14 days to watch it on BBC iPLayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01n8hl9/

Magnificent Machines: The Golden Age of the British Sports Car

Timeshift sets its rear view mirror to look back at the golden age of the British sports car. It's the story of how - in the grey austerity of the post-war years - iconic marques like Jaguar, Austin-Healey, MG and Triumph sparked a manufacturing frenzy that helped to democratise speed and glamour.

From the MG Midget, much loved by American GIs, through to the more affordable Austin Healey 'frog-eye' Sprite, and the E-Type Jaguar, seen by many as the ultimate sports car, this is a tale of how, for a brief time, Britain was home to two-seater heaven.

Narrated by Tamsin Greig and featuring contributions from Stirling Moss and Quentin Willson.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01n8hl9/Timeshift_Series_12_Magnificent_Machines_The_Golden_Age_of_the_British_Sports_Car/

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #172

Last night's set lists

At The Habit, York: -

Ron solo: -
No Expectations
Make You Feel My Love

Da solo: -
Falling
I Don't Want To Talk About It

Da & Ron: -
The Price Of Love
Wild Horses
Sorrow
You Got It

Probably one of the best open mic nights ever. An amazing array of talent including the evergreen Mark Wynn (the host with the most) and a band called Buffalo Skinners who were 2012's version of The Band - no kidding - awesome dudes. Also there was a new song from Completely Bananas - oh this was just mental maaaaan.

And another trip to Bar 1331 - why oh why???

Alex Karras RIP age 77 - goodbye Mongo

Karras was known to millions for his role as "Mongo," the monosyllabic, horse-punching brute in the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy "Blazing Saddles."

Donald Fagen - Sunken Condos - streaming...

Listen to the whole album - here:  http://music.msn.com/music/listeningbooth/

Donald Fagen’s Stealth Pop

The Steely Dan vet mulls his savvy new solo album, the state of the art and his weakness for smart, funny, neurotic characters

By Mark Brown
Special to MSN Music

For Donald Fagen fans, it's an early Christmas. He's back with a new solo album, a mere half-decade after the last one. "Sunken Condos" is everything fans expect from the Steely Dan co-founder, keyboard mainstay and lead vocalist: wry humor, a look at relationships, a sense of unease and superb sound, with playing by a crack set of players. It dovetails with the Dan's R&B-laced post-reunion sound, even if partner Walter Becker sat this one out.

Michael Leonhart, who plays trumpet with the current touring edition of Dan, co-produced the album with Fagen, and it's clear the duo had a blast. They've covered all the bases for fans past and present, analog and digital: One version was mastered for iTunes, another for the clear-vinyl double LP that will come out as well (though fans of 5.1 surround mixes shouldn't hold their breath, as Fagen has soured on the format). "It doesn't matter anyway. Everybody listens to it on those terrible computer speakers anyway," Fagen said, only half-jokingly.

Fresh off a summer tour with Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs in their Dukes of September revue, which combined their respective signature songs with R&B classics, Fagen and Leonhart got on the phone together to talk about how all this happened.

MSN Music: Why now? When is it time to do a Steely Dan album or a solo one? As someone wrote online, "Another Donald Fagen album? He just did one six years ago!"
Donald Fagen: [Laughs] It's really just when I have enough songs to fill up 50 minutes or so.

Do you purposely keep them the length that vinyl albums used to be?
Donald Fagen: I didn't have any more. This is all I had.
Michael Leonhart: We could have gone one more. But the 50-minute mark, that's a good length, that's a good meal.

Where does the decision come from to make this a solo album? There's some of Steely Dan's touring band in there and there are other outside players.
Donald Fagen: I wrote the songs by myself. So when I say "Hey, Walter, what do you think of this?" there's no answer. So I have to figure it out myself. They're more subjective. When I write with Walter, we end up a little more journalistic, a little more objective. When I sing them, I'm sort of posing as these different characters that may be different from myself. On this I'm also posing as these characters, but they're a lot closer to myself. It's more personal."

How does touring with the Dukes of September influence this work? You're revisiting your older work, you're revisiting R&B classics and you're working on other musicians' songs.
Donald Fagen: I don't know if it has that much influence over writing and stuff. It's more of a release for me. It's more a way of getting a kind of energy out of it so when you come home you're ready to go in a writing mode or recording mode.
Michael Leonhart: We're doing a lot more older soul and R&B stuff. So much of it is based around R&B changes in songwriting that I find myself in a different kind of pocket than in Steely Dan.
Donald Fagen: Maybe, on some unconscious level. I do have to look through a lot of old material when we're choosing songs, going back to the 50s and 60s. Maybe it rubs off in a way. In a way my interior writing life feels different to me somehow.

You wrote a tribute to Levon Helm on your website about the swing and swagger in his drumming. I feel a lot of that swagger in these songs.
Donald Fagen: It's the distance between old-school drumming and what you might hear these days. That really goes back to the '30s or '40s. Drummers used to play in a much more laid-back style. With this record what I did is I had these demos. After I wrote them on a piano, I put them on GarageBand, the Apple program, and sequenced them in a crude way. When we were touring, Michael has always played the trumpet. But he gets behind the drums sometimes and I hear him playing. I really liked his feel. He actually has what you're talking about. He has the shuffle and layback when he plays. I said, "You should play the drums for me." When Michael and I began to collaborate and he was going to co-produce, I said, "Look, take one of these demos, put some earphones on and play the drums to it. Let me see what it sounds like." It came out great, and he ended up playing the drums on every track. That's exactly what you're talking about. He comes out of the jazz world, too. It's no accident that his groove is just like that.
Michael Leonhart: I came to Levon's music through his daughter, Amy. We'd been writing songs and I was playing drums, and she said, "You sound like my dad a little bit." I'm not anywhere near the drummer that he was, but there's a sense of space where you hit in the pocket, the syncopation and the feel. Donald has been a huge fan of Levon's forever.
Donald Fagen: His drumming is like you hear on Chicago blues records, the guys on Chess Records. Steely Dan was heavily influenced by that. Chicago blues drummers, you'll never hear a more laid-back pocket than those guys.

I always appreciate it when an artist grows and the lyrics reflect the changes in life. There's that self-awareness in "Slinky Thing" where the singer is with someone younger and hipper and he doesn't fit in.
Donald Fagen: We started with "Hey Nineteen" and we were only in our 30s. It was very obvious there was a generation gap then. If you wanna be honest, you have to write about that kind of stuff, about where you are, age-wise and everything else. (If not) it gives you kind of a cognitive dissonance, kind of like the Rolling Stones giving you that creepy feeling.

It almost sounds like you're giving advice to a friend or a lover or even another musician with that line about "upgrading your stuff."
Donald Fagen: It's the guy's girlfriend. She's got this guy who is fixing her computer or something like that. I'm definitely living in a world that's pretty alien to my own sensibilities.

You've always had a reputation for sterling sound, and this record has it as well. How comfortable are you with technology?
Donald Fagen: I'm always comfortable with computers. The engineer we started out with, Roger Nichols, was a computer specialist. Before computers even had knobs on them, he'd show us how to program stuff. I have some of the earliest sequencers. I learned how to sequence on those. I'm comfortable with them, but on the other hand, in the '70s, Roger started bringing in these computers & and we started getting into programming drums. It got out of hand. We were paying more attention to the technology than to the actual music. One day we just quit: We said, "We're not going to do this anymore." I try to minimize that. I don't have an aversion to it. I still have to deal with it. I don't like it, but sometimes to achieve the results I want I have to deal with it on some level. But I won't start a record with a bunch of machines & I purposely never learned how to use Pro Tools. I know I could just sink into that and never write another song again.
Michael Leonhart: One mic on the guitar, great playing, it'll do. It's not this "Let's have way more than we need." There's economy and patience. The technology should be used as little as it can be used.
Donald Fagen: A lot of people I know & there's all these myths that people live by vis-a-vis technology, stuff you have to do to sound like the Beatles or this group or that group. It's total bulls---. I've never been in any room where I couldn't make sound good with a decent microphone and a simple, straight-wire sort of setup. It's absolutely ridiculous. A lot of those records from the '30s sound just fabulous. It's absurd the lengths some people go to.
Michael Leonhart: Good taste can never be undervalued.
Donald Fagen: You've just got to have good taste to know the difference between something that sounds bad and something that sounds good. But most people don't have a clue.

You often have a song about an unusual woman, be it "Peg" or "Josie." This time you've got "Planet D'Rhonda."
Donald Fagen: I know. They're all so terrible! They're all so irritating!

It's a theme you return to fairly regularly.
Donald Fagen: It's the most interesting thing in the world, women. I'm most interested in people who are smart, funny people and are neurotic. Whether it's a man or a woman, it's about the problems that come with being smart and funny. Usually it's something creepy that happened to you as a kid. That's what makes you so interesting. On the other hand, because of the neurotic stuff, if you wanna be friends with them or if you want to have a romantic relationship, you just have to deal with that. That's fine with me. I'm used to it because most everyone I know is like that. I live in New York.

You've had two solo albums out since the last Steely Dan album. Obviously you've been touring with Walter. What's the status of the group?
Donald Fagen: No update really. We're gonna try to get together on a theme for an album. Last time I was free he wasn't free; he was working on one of his albums. Right now it's up in the air, but we are planning on setting up a tour in the near future.

Are there songs you set aside for that band?
Donald Fagen: If we get into Steely Dan writing mode, maybe I'll hold this one or that one back for Walter to see if it works. But that didn't happen this time. I just kept (the songs) for myself."

How do you negotiate the music industry now? You've come up through vinyl, 8-track, CDs, 5.1 surround sound and now digital downloads.
Donald Fagen: I think they re issuing it on fairy dust this year. You re just gonna have to grab it out of the air.

http://music.msn.com/donald-fagen/story/interview/

Last night's songs

At the Waggon & Horses, York included: -

Walk Right In
Sweet Virginia
I Should Have Known Better
A Hard Day's Night
Things We Said Today
She's Always A Woman
Let Your Fingers Do The Walking
Candyman
Dancing Shoes
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Blackbird
I'll See You In My Dreams
The Christian Life
Love Song
I Am A Pilgrim

Plus original songs from two of the players.

Another enjoyable evening of sobriety (driving again).

Tintin meets H. P. Lovecraft V

Artist Murray Groat: http://muzski.darkfolio.com/

Clive James - Too Much Light

M y cataracts invest the bright spring day
With extra glory, with a glow that stings.
The shimmering shields above the college gates –
Heraldic remnants of the queens and kings –
Flaunt liquid paint here at the end of things
When my vitality at last abates,
And all these forms bleed, spread and make a blur
Of what, to second sight, they are and were.

And now I slowly pace, a stricken beast,
Across a lawn which must be half immersed
In crocuses and daffodils, but I
Can only see for sure the colours burst
And coalesce as if they were the first
Flowers I ever saw. Thus, should I die,
I’ll go back through the gate I entered when
My eyes were stunned, as now they are again.

CLIVE JAMES

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1141101.ece

Martin Luther King in Newcastle...

Dr King speaking in King's Hall

Film footage of Dr Martin Luther KIng's Tyneside visit is found

Kerry Wood
Evening Chronicle
6 October 2012

LONG lost footage of Black Civil Rights leader Dr Martin Luther King visiting Tyneside just months before his assassination has been found.

The grainy black and white film captures the moment the inspirational clergyman was awarded an honorary degree from Newcastle University in 1967.

Renowned for his “I Have A Dream” speech, Dr King went on to make an impromptu speech in front of hundreds of Newcastle lecturers and students.

Eric Cross, Dean of Cultural Affairs at Newcastle University, said: “Like many other universities we are careful about honouring political figures but this award obviously emphasised the impact his work had.

“One of the significant things about the visit was the impromptu speech he made and it was so very impressive. Honorary graduates were never before invited to speak and it’s only in the past couple of years this has changed.”

Hearing he’d received the honour, Dr King made the 6,330-mile round trip from America to the UK for a whistle-stop visit to Newcastle and receive the prestigious award, leaving 24 hours later.

The five-minute film sees Dr King and other dignitaries entering the hall where he is presented to the-then University Chancellor, the Duke of Northumberland, and receives his honorary degree making him a Doctor of Civil Law.

To an audience of hundreds he goes on to give a speech about racial justice - but just five months after visiting the city Dr King was assassinated while in Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaking at the hall all those years ago, Dr King said: “I can assure you that your honouring me in this very meaningful way is of estimable value for the continuance of my humble efforts, and though I cannot in any way say I am worthy of such a great honour I can assure you, you give me renewed confidence and vigour to carry on in the struggle to make peace and justice a reality.”

To thousands of students, the King’s Hall is regularly used for free weekly lunchtime concerts and graduations but 45 years ago the hall in the Armstrong building on Queen Victoria Road was the site of the historic visit.

As the only UK university to honour the civil rights leader in his lifetime, the landmark event on November 13 remains among the most important in the university’s history.

Mr Cross added: “The footage is something we’ve had for many years in our archive but it wasn’t straight away that its significance was realised. It was a very big deal for the university that he came all the way to the UK just to come to Newcastle.”

To mark the historic anniversary, the National Union of Journalists held its Claudia Jones Memorial lecture in King’s Hall. The event will also coincide with Black History month.

The footage was discovered by former Newcastle University historian Prof Brian Ward who, as an internationally renowned expert on civil rights, will also be attending the event where he’ll talk about the journey from Martin Luther King to the election of Barack Obama.

The national meeting, on until tomorrow, commemorates Claudia Jones, the journalist, trade unionist and campaigner for social justice who launched the Notting Hill Carnival and Britain’s first Black Newspaper, The West Indian Gazette.

Other speakers include Shadow Minister for the Department for Business and Newcastle MP Chi Onwurah.

MP Chi Onwurah said: “I remember reading Dr King’s I have a dream speech on a poster in Boots in Eldon Square when I was nine and being very moved by it.

“Being the only UK university to honour him in his lifetime says a lot about Newcastle, the university and what he stood for. He was an inspiration for many in the North East.”

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/evening-chronicle-news/2012/10/06/film-footage-of-dr-martin-luther-king-s-tyneside-visit-is-found-72703-31979850/

See the footage here: http://www.nrfta.org.uk/explore/nrfta/19445.html

Tonight's set list

At the Dharma Banana open mic, the Cumberland Arms, Newcastle: -

Heart Of Gold
Out On The Weekend

Also played during the warm-up in the back bar earlier were: -

I Am A Pilgrim
Too Far Gone
I Don't Want To Talk About It
Country Roads (A request - have never played it before but somehow knew the chords - brainwashing!)
Let It Be
There Stands The Glass

Much more enjoyable than the match I have to say.

Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace - Review

Neil Young: 'You don't want to OD on music'

Neil Young's marvellously idiosyncratic autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, rummages through his 50-year career – and offered its writer a relief from music

Alexis Petridis

guardian.co.uk

Thursday 4 October 2012

There are perhaps more relaxing preparations for interviewing Neil Young about his autobiography than reading Neil Young's autobiography. It's not that Waging Heavy Peace isn't a good book. It is, albeit in a very Neil Young-ish way. Over the course of its 500 pages, Waging Heavy Peace is variously wildly idiosyncratic, unpredictable, bafflingly digressive, wryly funny, deeply moving, plain-speaking, still in thrall to the mysticism of the late 60s, painfully honest – "do not doubt me in my sincerity," counsels Young at one point, "for it is this which has brought us to each other now" – infuriatingly elusive and shot through with moments of rare insight and beauty, which you might say makes it the perfect literary counterpart to the 50-year career it describes, in a fairly roundabout way.

Anyone hoping for a chronological hop through Young's triumphs – the astonishing run of albums that stretches from 1969's Everybody Knows This is Nowhere to 1979's Rust Never Sleeps, the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, his early 90s resurgence, borne by the alt-rock scene his music inspired – is going to go home very disappointed indeed. The main criticism of it is that it has a tendency to ramble, but as fans at Crazy Horse's recent show in New York's Central Park would have told you – perhaps as their version of 1991's Love and Only Love entered its 14th minute, with no sign of a conclusion in sight – Young is an artist who has always reserved the right to ramble on a bit.

The problem, at least for the prospective interviewer, and particularly if the interviewer is a huge, hawkish Young fan, comes when you reach the part where Young reveals his feelings about interviews. "I hate interviews," he offers, fairly unequivocally. Journalists, meanwhile, are "jerks" and "dickheads". He is specifically referring to the journalists from Associated Press present at the infamous mid-80s interview when Young – he of the peace signs on his guitar strap and the song about how he never knew a man could tell so many lies until he saw Richard Nixon – appeared to voice support for Ronald Reagan. But you somehow get the feeling it extends to the profession as a whole. Still, at least the prospective interviewer can console himself with the fact that he's not a blogger, by contrast with whom journalists appear to be his favourite people in the world.

Still, crackling down the line from his New York publisher's office, the 66-year-old sounds affable enough. If I never exactly get the impression that talking to me is the highlight of his day, at least it's nothing compared with some of the stories that circulate among quaking hacks who have made his acquaintance over the years.
It might help that I can't see him: Young's eyes apparently have a habit of fixing journalists with a glare that causes them to wake in a cold sweat years after their encounter. "Back in the beginning I was averse to doing press because I'm not really comfortable with reading about myself," he offers. "It pisses me off that I can't just create art and have the art stand on its own. I would say, hey, if it's a great album it's going to sell … If it sucks, you know, no one's going to buy it. If it's mediocre, some people will buy it, or it could be great and nobody will get it. But it doesn't make any difference what you say about it."

Nevertheless, he says, Waging Heavy Peace isn't intended as a rebuttal, a misunderstood artist setting the facts straight: he professes not to care about the shelfloads of books that have already been written about him. "There's nothing much I can do about it and it doesn't matter to me. I find it of interest just to look at it and go, hey wow, that's something else. What am I going to do with it? I don't know what to do with it."

In fact, the book seems to have very prosaic reasons for existing. "Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a great way to pass the time," he tells the reader at one juncture, with admirable candour. "I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn't know what to do next." Young needed the money, because he appears to spend it as fast as he earns it. Not, it should be noted, on rock star fripperies, but on vast, complex non-musical projects about which he talks at length in Waging Heavy Peace: his Lincvolt electric car, his inventions for model railways, and his proprietary music system Pono, an iPod rival he says delivers perfect studio sound quality.

He had the time because he broke his toe and was unable to play live: "My manager had mentioned that Penguin was interested in me doing my memoirs, but I hadn't thought much about it. But then when I broke my toe I was just sitting there going, what am I gonna do now? I thought: why don't I just do that book?"

To compound matters further, the author of Homegrown and Roll Another Number for the Road had given up smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol on his doctor's advice: he suffered a brain aneurysm in 2005, the same year his father died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's. He says that he had barely written a song in 40 years without smoking weed: according to the book, he had literally never performed with his most celebrated backing band Crazy Horse straight. Waging Heavy Peace is underpinned by a struggle to connect with his muse without the aid of a smoke. Given that he is about to release his second new album this year, it's a struggle he clearly overcame. Arriving hot on the heels of Americana, which featured Young and Crazy Horse singing the British national anthem, Psychedelic Pill opens with a track that clocks in at nearly 28 minutes: clearly Young's cranky eccentricity has survived sobriety intact. In Waging Heavy Peace, however, there are moments when Young openly wonders if he'll ever complete another song. "How fucking loose do I have to be to write a song?" he protests at one point.

"I was never really worried about it, other than I was curious about it, in a day-to-day way," he says to me. "I'd go, wow, I've not written a song in a long time. This is very different. " As it turns out, he didn't need marijuana to write songs at all. "I didn't know at the time what was going to happen so I was discovering it, and now I've discovered that it doesn't matter."

The book frequently turns up a fascinating nugget of information about a well-worn story from Young's career. He is wryly amusing about his mid-80s battles with his record label, which ended up suing him for making music "that was uncharacteristic of Neil Young": "I don't," he says today, with charming understatement, "react well to being told what to do." If it doesn't tell a fan much they don't already know about the demise of Crazy Horse's guitarist Danny Whitten, whose death from an overdose at 29 spurred Young to convene the drunken, grief-stricken recording sessions for 1975's astonishing Tonight's the Night, it does reveal that Joni Mitchell showed up during said sessions, proceeded to get as plastered on tequila as everyone else, then delivered what Young thinks is the greatest performance of her career: much to his chagrin, she refused to release it.

The book also acts as an index of Young's obsessions, some of which, it has to be said, are more expected than others. He writes beautifully and very movingly about his wife and kids, not least his son Ben, born quadriplegic and with severe cerebral palsy, who Young calls his "spiritual guide". "You can feel him," he says. "He doesn't talk, so it's very spiritual, very brain-to-brain, soul-to-soul, and it's very refreshing and rejuvenating."

Equally, he spends an unexpected amount of time discussing Human Highway, the 1982 film comedy that he directed and starred in alongside Dennis Hopper: it cost Young $3m to make, and even his devoted fans tend to find it a bit of a schlep. He returns again and again to the truncated career of his and Stephen Stills's mid-60s band Buffalo Springfield, which he seems to regard as unfinished business. "It just seemed like it never reached its potential. There was always something wrong, always somebody missing, always some kind of conflict, always a problem. It stopped us from being as great as we could be, and we didn't know how to deal with it and so we really didn't quite succeed."

Some people would say the same thing about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the early 70s supergroup torn apart in their prime by drug problems and ego, but Young insists Buffalo Springfield were different. "The Buffalo Springfield … we lost our players, we didn't lose our minds. We lost our bass player" – the late Bruce Palmer, who got deported back to Canada in fairly spectacular style after driving down the Pacific Coast Highway on LSD without a licence. "We lost what made us great, and when we got the chance to record with the band in the first place we didn't have anyone good to take us into the studio and make the best of what we were. Two of the guys are no longer with us, so it's difficult, but we're yet to do something that …" His voice tails off. "You never know."

In fact, Young writes with great affection for the late-60s hippy era, something that might come as a surprise to long-term fans. It was Young, after all, who spent his 1972 tour literally screaming at his docile hippy audience to wake up and realise that the utopian dreams of the Woodstock nation were dead, and that they had been bullshit all along. "You can live your own life/ laid back and laughing?" he howled on 1973's Last Dance, before singing the word "no" 60 times. A year later, he released the gripping Revolution Blues, which brought up the spectre of murderous hippy Charles Manson, whom no one other than Young really wanted to discuss: Crosby, Stills and Nash asked him not to perform it onstage. And yet, here he is, reflecting fondly on the clothes and drugs: he even seems quite affectionate about catching the clap. "Well, those songs were reactions," he says. "It's just disillusionment with the original idealism and naivety." Has time softened that disillusionment? "Well, perspective changes it. Not softened." He laughs. "It's just less in my face."

Perhaps his affection had its roots in the enjoyment he clearly got from writing the book: reading it, his enthusiasm for the project is almost tangible. "Well, it's always good to be doing something for the first time. There's no pressure," he says with an unmistakable wistfulness: in the book he keeps returning to how carefree he was in the early days of his solo career or Crazy Horse, before he was competing against his own past, before he had a vast, hugely influential back catalogue for his new music to be compared with. "Well, there's the pressure to do something people feel is worthwhile, but other than that there is no pressure."

Indeed, he enjoyed it so much, he is already writing another book, this time about cars. "I do it really easily. I could probably do this and just this for the rest of my life, and I would be OK." But no, he says, there's no danger of that actually happening: much as the reader might get the impression he is currently more interested in electric cars or music players than music itself, he insists they're not taking over his life either. "It gives me relief, it gives me something else to do so that music doesn't wear me out, so that I don't wear the music out. Everything should be taken in its own dose. You don't want to OD on music and then the music loses its potency. If that's all I did, it wouldn't be as good. I think if you don't have some obsession in your life, you're dead."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/oct/04/neil-young-autobiography-relief-music?intcmp=239

James Bond at the movies: the first 50 years...

I have to admit that I'm not a fan.  The only Bond movie I've seen at a cinema was Live and Let Die and for some reason or other it's the only one I've watched all the way through on television. Don't mind what I've seen of Dr No - Ursula Andress and all that...

Listen to Donald Fagen's Sunken Condos...

http://www.highresaudio.com/artist.php?abid=73574

Okay, they're only snippets, but hold on to that Slinky Thing, indeed...

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #171