Samuel's Blog

Samuel’s Musicians Of The Week

Monday and Tuesday of last week, and in particular approximately 3:30pm Tuesday, marked an important personal milestone for me. It also marked the end (or at least the start of the end) of a chapter of my life that I’m not particularly proud of. I’m not going to elaborate on what this is at the moment, I may feel like discussing it publicly in a few months from now…maybe.

I can count on one hand the number of people who know what I’m talking about…hopefully it will stay that way, but it’s up to them if they choose to tell. Right now I think the idea Clive Robertson keeps mentioning (a tell-all book released posthumously) sounds like a very good idea.

So, what does all of this have to do with the Musicians Of The Week award…well I was going to mention what I have just mentioned, and then run Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” as the award winner because a few lines of it are reflective of the ending chapter, but then I realised that Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” was an award winner last year, so it can’t win again. I didn’t want to let the opportunity to make a point of this event slip away, so I wrote all of that, and in case you’re wondering, these three lines of the song are the lines that relate to what I have described above.

Yeah you go back Jack do it again
Wheel turnin’ ’round and ’round
You go back Jack do it again

As much as I know that you, as a reader and effectively my audience, probably find my occasional lapses in to the cryptic (such as this) to be annoying or bewildering, and I don’t aim to bewilder you, it is fun!

Anyway, on to the award for this week. It has been noted by a couple emailers over the last few months that the alphabetical progression of the artists receiving my Musician(s) Of The Week award has disappeared. They are right, I have moved to a different system where I update a list of songs I want to feature as I think of them, and then select one of them at random each week. This week’s award goes to a group who have been waiting on the list for a couple months, Flash and the Pan, and the feature song is “Hey St. Peter”.

There are a couple reasons why the lyrics of this song should annoy me (I could add to that list if I lived in New York), but I’m quite sure that, like most songs, the lyrics don’t really mean an awful lot…and apart from that, the composition of this song is fantastic.

The morning was cold and lonely
City lights old and grey
The sun arose trying to smile
Gave it all away
The honky-tonk called a stranger
The stranger couldn’t pay the bill
Made a stand, raised his hand
Sang a song, no time to kill

I said, Hey, hey, hey, St. Peter
I’ve got a tale to tell
I’ve just been down in New York town
It really feels like hell
It really feels like hell

Billy was out of fashion
Manhattan was years ago
Yesterday he wasted time
Money was kind of slow
Billy had friends of glory
Billy was a friend of fame
Took a chance and raised his hand
Sang a song, now he’s back in the game

I said, Hey, hey, hey, St. Peter
I’ve got a tale to tell
I’ve just been down in New York town
It really feels like hell
It really feels like hell

I said, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, St. Peter
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, St. Peter
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, St. Peter
It really feels like hell
It really feels like hell

Hey, St. Peter
Before you ring your bell
Just been down in New York town
Done my time in hell
Done my time in hell

I said, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, St. Peter
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, St. Peter
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, St. Peter
It really feels like hell
It really feels like hell
It really feels like hell

Samuel

January 27th, 2008 at 05:48pm

Sleep and Coffee

As I sit here having a cup of coffee, I’m trying to work out how much sleep I’ve had in the last few days…at this moment it amounts to three hours of sleep in the last 54 hours, and seven hours of sleep in the last 58 hours.

At 11:30pm on Thursday I woke up from a four hour sleep and went to work, the next time I slept was 9:30am to 12:30pm yesterday; I haven’t slept since then and I won’t be getting to sleep until at least 10am, by which time the counter will have reached three hours of sleep in the last 58.5 hours, and seven hours of sleep in the last 62.5 hours.

It’s also safe to say that I have had a fair bit of coffee in the last few days…at least five on Friday, seven or eight yesterday, and I’m already on my third for today. The coffee isn’t keeping me awake…I’ve just had too many things to get done in the last few days to get any sleep (I’m definitely not used to working midnight to dawn on the weekend), the coffee has been helpful in keeping me alert to some extent though.

The upshot of it is that I am once again interested in running my sleep-o-meter and coffee-cup-o-meter, starting yesterday. I’m going to declare yesterday a “7.5 cups of coffee” day and start from there. As long as I remain interested in the project, updates will be posted on a weekly basis.

Samuel

January 27th, 2008 at 05:33am