Jazzjet

Thanks for the birthday wishes. I suppose I should repeat my reply from last year but I'm not sure I'm any wiser!

Interesting playlist. Thanks.

There seems to have been an art installation based around the old Dobell's Jazz Record shop. Lots of images here, including archive photos (the staff, Elvin Jones, Horace Silver, Errol Garner etc) : Dobells

Here's a very comprehensive gallery of photos of HMV in Oxford Street : HMV Oxford Street

Isn't Greenland a store where they sell stuff from Iceland that's gone off?

Pretty much matches my favourite TV, although I haven't watched Happy Valley I yet and don't 'get' Peaky Blinders. I would only add River and the ITV crime series Unforgotten. I've spent quite a lot of time working through series on Netflix such as Homeland, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. PS Isn't 'Trapped' set in Iceland rather than Greenland?

Well it's alright for some. Here in West Cornwall there was no sun all day, on and off drizzle and then, in the evening, a torrential downpour with thunder, lightning etc. This storm was repeated at 3am this morning, only worse. Good job I'm moving to the balmy paradise of Devon next week.

BBC4 effectively replaced BBC2 as home of art and culture some time ago so this is welcome news. My worry is that when ratings hit the floor, as they may well do, this will be seen as justification to revert to the lacklustre, repeat-heavy version of BBC2.

Yes, all important events but how many of them had an impact on society as a whole. I remember my parents taking in a couple of Hungarian refugees and me learning to play table tennis (and enjoy goulash) but I'm not sure it changed the way society behaved. The same with Suez, although it might have hastened the process of public mistrust of politicians. The impact of 'Look Back In Anger' was probably limited to the liberal elite. There's more of an argument for 'Rock Around The Clock' which did have a real impact on popular culture, as did skiffle. It probably did a lot to raise the profile of the teenage, although not in a positive way.

I've got the Jon Savage book but it's on my ever-growing 'to read' pile. I'm not sure that there's much of a case for 1956 being the 'year that changed Britain'. It certainly saw the early stages of the birth of the teenager (skiffle, Elvis, Lonnie Donegan etc) but it was all fairly self-contained. I'm surprised that more isn't made of the claims for 1963 with the explosion of Merseybeat, pirate radio, the Profumo scandal (and the breakdown of deference), the Lady Chatterley trial, the Great Train Robbery etc. But maybe there was a book and I missed it. Perhaps the truth is that every year changed Britain in some way.

I would strongly recommend 'Mr Robot'. Also, 'Halt and Catch Fire' is pretty good. The subject matter - the early 80s computer industry - may sound unpromising but it's hooked me so far. On the comedy front there's 'Transparent' if you're in the market for a modern transgender sitcom.

It probably depends on the navigation capability of your streamer. My Oppo is connected to my home cinema setup so I can easily control and navigate my music via the screen. I have some memory sticks full of favourite tracks where I use the shuffle option. I have others where the integrity of individual albums is maintained and I can navigate and play in exactly the same way as a CD. For example, I have one memory stick dedicated to all my vinyl LPs which I have digitised losslessly and these are maintained in original album format. The approach does provide pretty good flexibility.

I don't know whether the Naim streamer has this facility but with my Oppo streamer I use USB memory sticks a lot of the time. They come in quite high capacities now - I have some 128 Gb ones - so you can easily store a lot of lossless music on them. The sound is great and navigation is easy.

I would definitely support Bev's recommendation of John Wickes' book 'Innovations in British Jazz'. It's a little chaotic in organisation and poorly bound (maybe because it's been well thumbed) but full of great detail. It's been mentioned before but Pete Frame's 'The Restless Generation' is very good on the post war development of trad and modern jazz, although its main thrust is rock and pop.

And if you have Spotify you might want to listen to David Hepworth's 'Never A Dull Moment' playlist :

I've often wondered whether Tony Hall and the BBC chiefs would dare turning up at meetings with Whittingdale dangling a pair of handcuffs and a knowing wink. I wonder whether Cameron and co are seriously misjudging the public mood on the BBC (as with other matters). I imagine a large amount of the audience for things like The Archers, Strictly, Attenborough, Bake Off etc are old and conservative.

Not to mention that the writer of current ITV hit 'Marcella' is Hans Rosenfeldt, who also wrote Scandi hit series 'The Bridge'. A real indication of how top class Scandinavian drama has started to influence mainstream TV.

'Blue Eyes' is developing nicely, as is 'Follow The Money (on BBC 4). Both from Swedish TV I believe. There's also a promising looking French series on the Walter Presents strand called 'Mafiosa", set in Corsica. I think it's on demand via the All4 hub rather than on More4 as other Walter Presents offerings have been.

I grew up in docklands London, near Tower Bridge, and the landscape was mostly bombsites until well into the early 60s. Most of my childhood was spent playing on those bombsites, a wonderfully exciting place for a kid although I'm not sure we had much appreciation at the time of the devastation that had caused them. My Dad was a navigator on Lancaster bombers towards the end of the war. I remember him as a pretty awful map reader in the car so how we didn't end up bombing Coventry is a mystery to me.

According to the author's note at the end of 'A God In Ruins', which Kate Atkinson sees as a companion piece to 'Life After Life' rather than a sequel, she talks about wanting to examine the two most important episodes of WW2 (as she sees it) - the London Blitz (in the first book) and the strategic bombing campaign (in the second). Looking forward to the Brodie's after my next book, 'A Foreign Country' by Charles Cumming, a spy thriller. His 'Trinity Six' was very good so I have high hopes for this one.

I also enjoyed 'Life After Life' immensely. I'm currently nearing the end of the (sort of) sequel, 'A God In Ruins' which concentrates on Ursula's brother, Teddy. Very enjoyable and a bit more conventional than 'Life After Life'. Next up, I'm starting Kate Atkinson's 'Jackson Brodie' books.

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes. Another day older etc.....

I think 'Boris stands in front of Paintings' would be counter-productive as the size of his privileged, over-fed body would obscure the view. Even the bigger canvases.

I enjoyed it, maybe not so much as the Yorkston/Thorne/Khan one but definitely worth a listen. I hadn't made the connection that Thorne was the Jon Thorne who made a nice album with Danny Thompson (Watching The Well) and one with his own Oedipus Complex (Manchester Road), both albums I bought a few years ago and enjoy a lot.

Thanks Bev. I've just checked this album out on Spotify and the feel is exactly as you describe.