This was fun ..

I vividly remember being absolutely blown away by this when I first saw it on TOTP. I think I can just about say that it was life-changing. And for me, it's aged beautifully - it still gives me a buzz 50 years later. It seemed like an unbelievable blast of energy at the time.



Listening to it now, it has so much more balls than the likes of Sweet and Suzi Quattro, whom they were competing with in the charts.

You'll have heard that NASA has smashed a probe into an asteroid as an experiment. Scott Manley has a very good video on this, including the probe imagery, here. What I didn't know is that the asteroid that was brutalised by NASA is actually a moon of an other asteroid.  The parent asteroid (Didymos) is only half a mile long and its moon, NASA's target (Dimorphos) is about 1/4 of that size.

A Second Life friend of mine is obsessed with this band, and I must say this performance is terrific. Trouble is, their studio stuff doesn't quite seem to have the same pizazz.

Favourite tune here - Alabaster, 9:35 in.

My brother and I went through some old documents and photos that my Mum had hoarded for many years and among them were two Christmas Cards that my grandad - the original James Gibbon - had sent home from the front in 1917. He was a medical orderly and he would have been 23 years old that Christmas.

Considering these are 105 years old they're in remarkable condition. The first card is embroidered with what seems to be fine wool.

In 1984 I spent a bizarre six-month Lost Weekend staying at a B&B in Northampton. It was a beautiful, hot summer. I had nothing to do. Video jukeboxes in every pub. People in FRANKIE t-shirts. Peter Powell and Janice Long on Radio 1.

No tune takes me back there quite so reliably as this one:

Got round to watching the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody last night - I expected to be mildly entertained but wow, what a superb film. Inevitably it takes liberties with the real history but the story is told in a wonderful spirit. The '70s (later '80s) atmosphere is spot on.

Remi Malek plays Freddie as a bit of a caricature and he doesn't quite have the physical size, but - it really is a delightfully over-the-top, bravura performance. And the guy who plays Brian May has got him down with uncanny accuracy.

It's on Netflix if you haven't seen it. Although I'm pretty late to the party and I expect most people have.

For me, easily the worst aspect of any state occasion - a royal wedding, the passing of a monarch - is the opportunity that it provides for religious figures to ram their idiot superstition down the throats of the populace. Fools like Justin Welby given a status as an authority figure to spout his delusional nonsense from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, without fear of scrutiny or response, while a large TV audience watches on. It pisses me off mightily.

In recent days, apart from the tiresome "God Save the King" which I could overlook as a sort of mostly meaningless platitude, I've heard endless references to Liz and Phil being reunited, Charles himself telling us about "God", MPs taking their oath swearing by "Almighty God" in their oath of allegiance (I credit Starmer for not doing this although he did manage a "God Save the King" at the accession ceremony) and our new Head of State was asserted, officially, to have been given his role by "God" in every proclamation ceremony.

This is the sort of behaviour which, in a more enlightened society, ought to lead to the afflicted being confined in a padded cell pending appropriate psychiatric care.

We have to tolerate it. But we, the rational, should not be dissuaded from criticising or mocking it wherever we see it. Otherwise we'll have to put up with it forever.

I watched the second episode of the third series of The Orville earlier. I watched the first one a few weeks ago and didn't greatly enjoy it, which disappointed me because I loved the first two series.

Pretty much the same story with the second episode unfortunately. The problem, I think, is that this is a show that's started to take itself seriously. What was a very funny comedy with huge charm has decided to morph into serious sci-fi drama. There are still a few laughs of course, but that was true of TNG, Voyager et al as well.

I did enjoy it to a point. It didn't do itself any favours by borrowing from Alien, the most brilliant sci-fi horror film of all time, because this Orville episode had very little of the suspense, and the plot wasn't particularly interesting. And it certainly tested my attention span, especially at the longer duration.

Oh well, will keep going anyway.

Very unusual that the Palace would issue a notification about the Queen's health. I was surprised to hear that she wasn't able to travel to London for what is her single most important constitutional duty this week.

I'm sorry to say that we may be entering the last days of the Queen's very long stint as our head of state. Will be an absolutely huge news event.

I've been reading ]Anthem: Rush in the '70s by Martin Popoff while on holiday. If I were to be picky I might comment that Martin doesn't write brilliantly fluently and there are a couple of typos or grammatical errors. Nonetheless he's pieced together, largely from interviews with some of the key protagonists, a pretty comprehensive account of the early years of the band.

Martin doesn't dig deep into the personalities or the chemistry of the band but where this book scores particularly highly is in his analysis of the music - it's a proper fan's insight. There are tons of anecdotes from the likes of Ian Grandy and Liam Birt as well as the band themselves.

I especially enjoyed reading about Neil's audition with the band. What I didn't know was that before they'd auditioned strangers for the drum seat, the band had done their best to pry Paul Kersey away from Max Webster - much to Kim Mitchell's annoyance. Paul turned them down.

As I'm sure readers will be aware, an unmanned, robotic rehearsal of mankind's return to the Moon is due to launch from Cape Kennedy early this afternoon.

Live feed here:


Countdown has been suspended after a technical problem. The launch window only lasts 120 minutes, so fingers crossed!

In the meantime, there's a good introduction video here:

https://www.loudersound.com/features/rush-a-guide-to-their-best-albums

Can't say I agree with a lot of this, but an interesting read.

It's 1993, and the three members of Rush, each having reached that landmark birthday that starts with a '4', are recording their 15th studio album.

They have a successful recording career behind them, they sell out arenas when they tour, they have a dedicated fan base. They have surely achieved everything they could have dreamed of when they embarked on their musical careers and they have nothing left to prove.

If that sounds like an ideal set of circumstances to produce a dud album, well - Counterparts tends to support that theory.

There appear to have been two distinct forces at work in the composition of this album - guitarist Alex Lifeson's decision to abdicate his talent for creative, intricate and subtle guitar playing in order to reinvent himself as an unimaginative heavy rock riffer (I wonder if the term "mid life crisis" may help to explain this) and singer/bassist Geddy Lee's new-found love of the radio-friendly superficial pop song.

The result? Something with an aural resemblance to an illegitimate love-child of a Roxette b-sides compilation and a tape of Who outtakes, though not actually as faintly enjoyable as that description might suggest.

At its very best, this is shallow, throwaway, limp corporate rock. At its worst, it's dull, leaden, uninspired riffola - or in the case of the dreadful Nobody's Hero, surely a new lowpoint for the band - buttock-clenchingly embarrassing drivel.

One for completists only. To be fair, it was an improvement on their previous effort, Roll The Bones.

The band's next long player was a marked improvement and saw the Canadian trio making enjoyable music again, with a degree of energy and inspiration. But in the Autumn of 1993, having made two dismal albums in a row, Rush appeared to be a spent force.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/dan-bigham-used-a-prototype-pinarello-bike-for-hour-record-ride/

Dan Bigham has set the record for distance cycled in one hour: 34.516 miles.

Admittedly he was on a velodrome, not a selection of indifferently surfaced Leicestershire B roads - but even so, that's some going.

Very interesting bike as well, I love the minimal simplicity of the transmission.

Extraordinary, this. An initiative to catapult objects into space, by spinning them up to speed in a vacuum.

Straight off the back of her resounding victory against Serena Williams, Emma demolished the former World Number 1 Victoria Azarenka 6-0 6-2 in Cincinnati.

Could be the British tennis legend is finding her feet again at last?

Nice piece by Joe Scott which describes the technology which will return mankind to the Moon, later this decade. I was fascinated by the Apollo missions as a kid so it was a treat to watch this, and find out about the modern day equivalents of the Command Module, Lunar Module, Saturn V and all that.

So a horrific start to the season then, and the first time a new United manager has lost his first two competitive games in just over a century.

By now though it must be obvious that the manager is not to blame. Clearly, an exceptional manager who can assert authority quickly is needed, but that's not where the problem lies. Deposing Ole from that job has not done one iota of good, so far.

It's going to be damage limitation before long; granted it's still August but United should have chalked up 6 points now and giving them away could cost a few places in the league table.

Anyone read it? Or know why it's considered offensive by some Muslims?

I've just bought Kindle copy with an audiobook addon. It's been on my todo list for many years.

I will say that while I'm appalled by the idea of a 'fatwa' as a response for someone writing a novel, I also disapprove of religious groups being insulted in the name of freedom of expression. I was disgusted by that episode a few years ago of people passing round caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad online, because that offended a lot more people than the Islamist headbangers.