Quintin Jardine's blog

The rail service must stop being a political issue. Government has to take the lot over and implement a system that works properly.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/commute-unworkable-northern-passengers-rail-chaos_uk_5b166c13e4b0129b529df7c8

No idea, but from what I read here she’s another pointless attention seeker that nobody needs.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44353321

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44344859

What do you say to your four year old grandson when he sees the Money Supermarket ad and wonders why Action Man has joined the Village People?

My ear worm of the day: a very old Billy Connolly song called Three Men from Carntyne.

Questions: where were they going and who was their companion?

Big hole in the world this morning, with the passing of a good friend, and proper gent. RIP Dilwyn.

www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2018/may/28/unanswered-questions-leave-chris-froome-in-the-shadow-of-suspicion

Confession. I can’t stand Mary Berry. Is that permissible?

I’m watching the Indian Premier League and seeing ads for Indian satellite TV receivable in Britain. In which case, why can’t British programming be received in European countries?

Scene of the Crime – Quintin Jardine | Crime Files
— Read on crimefiles.co.uk/blog/2018/05/scene-of-the-crime-quintin-jardine/

A very good friend of ours needs a hug just now. We’re sending ours, maybe you could do the same. The destination doesn’t matter, just take my word for it and send.

Promise kept: in my Bluetooth bubble I listened to ‘Desire’ all the way through. Eight stories and a love song. Anyone who can’t understand the link between Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize might want to take a listen.

I think back to 1976 before it was released in the UK. Someone gave John Peel an advance copy. He played it all the way through and then he played it again. Next night he did the same.

Nothing to do with profit, of course.

apple.news/AschPu7rTQRevicrI4yB6TA

I was involved earlier today in a discussion surrounding a piece in the Guardian by a columnist who took it upon himself to rate, bottom to top, all of The Rolling Stones’ studio albums. It seems that its editor thinks that such acts of self-indulgence sell newspapers: and she’s right for here I am writing about it.

Needless to say I don’t agree with Alexis Petridis’ ranking, but that’s not unexpected. Nor is it unreasonable, since he wasn’t born when the earliest of them were released and can have no first hand knowledge of their social impact at the time, which was considerable and should be part of such a judgement, IMO.

When I was 17, early 60s, a guy I knew was lifted at a Stones gig in a hotel in Hamilton (really). The police turned up mob handed and laid into everyone at the first sign of over exuberance, including my classmate who was doing no more than waiting to collect his sister. That’s how they were viewed in those days, and so a simple listing of their edited work is banal without a parallel study of their life and times.

The Guardian’s is banal also because it trots out the old ‘world’s greatest rock and roll band’ label. Most famous, yes, but greatest, how could they be, particularly when that is the assessment of a study that excludes their live work?

The best live music experience I’ve ever had, recorded or witnessed, involved Bruce and the E Street Band performing Racing in the Streets in St James Park, 30 something years ago. They’ll have had better nights and they’ll have had worse, but then I thought they were gods.

In my library I have five live versions of ‘Rain King’, a Counting Crows anthem, them being among my favourite bands and Adam Duritz being among my favourite writers. Each one is different and each one I like, most of all the most recent, when Adam really loses it. Which is the greatest of the five? You tell me.

My point? That my opinion is of no less or greater value than yours, or than that of the guy in the Guardian. My resentment? That he gets paid for expressing his.

Now I am off to listen to Dylan’s ‘Desire’. The greatest studio album ever made? I think so.

Today I kept my promise to myself and retreated within my Bluetooth bubble to listen to Van Morrison and his live version of Astral Weeks.

I didn’t get to the end of the first track. There was a great line years back about a Stevie Nicks album being ‘digitally remumbled’, and that’s how it was with Sir Van. Couldn’t make out a bloody word.

Instead I did what I should have done in the first place and spent a happy 47 minutes cocooned with Moondance.

‘… and may God be with the National Rifle Association.’

It’s 50 years since Van Morrison recorded Astral Weeks. I am marking the milestone by playing it all the way through.

It crept out rather than being released: no singles were ever issued. It took time, and the blessing of John Peel, the Pope of modern music, but now it’s seen as the most significant work of a long career.

Eileen hates it so I have retreated within the bubble of my Bluetooth headset. When it’s done, I may play the much more recent live version.

It makes me feel as old as Sir Van, as in fact I am.