Wednesday 26 April 2006

Ultimate Girl bands

Why is it all female bands get a a rep as just eye candy?
Take the Bangles for example, fine practitioners of classic 60’s based pop rock dismissed because of hairdos. All three full albums, All Over The Place, Different Light and Everything are of excellent quality.

Not a few hit singles either.
Factor in a good debut mini-album on Miles Copeland’s I.R.S. records and surely they, not Bananarama, were the best all girl band of the 80’s.
Do visit here for more http://www.thebangles.com/
As far female contributions to a mixed gender band the Wilson sister’s contributions to Heart add a vital dimension to that longstanding groups sound.
If you don't own anything by Heart, I would strongly recommend a two CD set - 'The Essential Heart' - on Epic/Sony Music as it covers all their music from the first album 'Dreamboat Annie' to 1995's acoustic set 'The Road Home. The mastering quality of this compilation is excellent - better on the tracks from 'Heart' and 'Bad Animals' than the original 80's Capitol Records CD's.
The European catalog number is 510519 2.
Visit the following links for more on Heart and the Wilson sisters:-
www.annandnancy.com
www.capitolrecords.com/heart
www.legacyrecordings.com/heart

Wednesday 12 April 2006

Reading and me

One of the things that make me different is I don't read things that are targeted at adults and never have so if you were to say see me reading at work or visit me at home you would see pretty much children's books outside say a photography manual or instruction book.

 
Part of this is because my reading ability is very much restricted to upper juniors struggling to make sense of more grown up language and descriptions in addition to recognizing words.

 
The other is partially connected and that is because of my childhood injuries my overall development has come to a stop around that point so what I find interesting remains very much what I did prior to those things and much of even teen never mind adult stuff just floats over me.

 
In that way even if I were a better reader, I still wouldn't get much from 'older' peoples books.

Wednesday 5 April 2006

Winnie The Pooh

Something I've always had time for was A.A. Milne's Winnie The Pooh stories which always held my interest  with well observed situations and lovable characters of which there's been a good number of tie in items to buy.

 
When I was at college several years ago I met a person I became friends with who was paralyzed in a road accident and one of things that immediately struck me was his love for this series having lots of Winnie The Pooh stationery including a lovely yellow vinyl pencil case with a Tigger motif on the front of it which was unusual  at the time for a guy and he was the only guy on our course too.

 
We of course just loved it.

 
There are a number of really good sayings from the series that have been illustrated over the years and this one has always stood out for me as a disabled person:

I think this is one of the most important ones.