Cosmic Dancer

On Friday I will be going to see Slade. Yes – Slade. Without Noddy Holder but the rest of them including slimy Dave Hill will be playing. I didn’t much like Slade back in the 1970’s. I was into the more gentle magic of Marc Bolan and T.Rex and Slade seemed raucous and too down to earth. There was no magic, no white swans or Wizards with Slade – just poor spelling and loud music. I moved from T.Rex to Status Quo. Corkscrew hair and spandex was replaced by greasy hair and denim. Fantasy was replaced with a gritty, monotonous reality of life in the north. Of course, now I look back and enjoy a lot of the music of that era. Even stuff I detested at the time now

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Blackfield and Moon Whispers

I have enjoyed the music of Steven wilson (Porcupine Tree) for many years now and have all four albums from Blackfield, a project in which Steven wilson partnered with Aviv Geffen to create some of the most melodic and listenable music I heave ever heard. Tunes like Pain and Where is my love? have haunted me for years. Recently, however, I got a hold of Blackfield II and this is almost heaven. The songs 1000 People and The End of the World are incredible and send me to aural heaven immediately. About 3 months ago I started listening to this record over and over again finding that each time I did I had to write. 1000 People in particular seems to make my creative juices spurt in vast quantities and

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Thinking of Poetry

Just recently, I have been popping a lot of rhyme. Poems have been and continue to spill out of me and you know, thats just fine and dandy. I enjoy poetry. I enjoy playing with words and sounds. Somehow, poetry gives us the flexibility to play and joke with words and structures without having to worry too much about whether the result is correct or not. There surely in no correct in poetry – no right and no wrong. Poetry just is and it either works for you or it doesn’t. It doesn’t even have to rhyme! When I write a poem I usually start with just a feeling. Not an idea. There is no plot, no characters to develop, no story line. Just a feeling. Poetry is, or should

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