Seb Palmer

I don’t mean to boast, but I have an 18”er! Actually that’s small. We’re talking bass drums.

I also have a pretty fab’ Jojo Mayer bass drum pedal. And I have a Mapex brand bass drum riser. To help lift the dinky little kick drum up a wee bit, so that the beater hits closer to the middle of the drum head.

Alas, this riser design doesn’t mate or marry that well with many (any?) of my bass drum pedals. As can be seen in the pic at the top of this post, the clamps on my Jojo pedal can’t get much purchase on the riser plate. They’re obstructed by flanges that are part of the riser’s design.

My solution? File these flanges back a bit. See if that helps. Well, it does. To a degree. But I’m not all the way there yet, to a satisfactory solution.

Why not? ‘Cause the black rubber cushion (on the pedal), which usually protects the drum hoop, now clamps onto the riser, and the equivalent rubbery parts of the riser don’t fully overlap.

I’ve also realised that there are, for me, some issues, even with this ‘super-pedal’, designed by the awesome ‘super-drummer’ that is Jojo Meyer.

Let’s look at what they are:

First – and for me this might also be the most annoying – the single square-headed drum key adjusted attaching mechanism.

For one thing, it’s positioned on the collapsible pillar. When the pedal is collapsed, you can’t fix it to the hoop or riser. Once erected – well, at all times (but only once up will it secure the pedal to the bass drum hoop) – the pillar gets in the way of tightening the square headed bolt!

[Having said this, I can see the point – and a very good point at that – in locating it where it is. In theory, if/when it mounts satisfactorily to your bass drum, you can, thereafter, take it on and off without the need to adjust the bolt. Simply by collapsing the pillar.]

Second, it tightens on just one side, as opposed to both sides or centrally. So inevitably there’s ‘racking’, meaning the side with the screw is tighter than the opposite side.

I’d also have preferred the footboard to have been a single piece longboard, rather than the sort it is, with a hinged heel plate. Longboards allow for both playing the pedal with the foot lower down the footplate (more travel for less work), and an increased efficiency if/when using heel-toe techniques.

But, strangely enough, they sell it on exactly this issue, as being better than your everyday kick pedals (see screenshot).

I wonder if they’ll address these things in future models? Maybe they already have?

Today is only our second day of ownership – or should I say Flo’nership? – of our new Nissan Qashqai. We’re calling her Flo’ (go with the Flo’!?), at Claire’s suggestion, in preference to Bertha, which was my idea (she’s a big gal!).

I’m driving like a super polite and fairly timid little ol’ lady. And I’m actually enjoying doing so. It’s a lot more relaxed and relaxing than zooming around. Not that I was always zooming previously.

I’ve had a few phone mounting devices over the years. And I’ve never really liked any of them. I’m hoping this mirror mounted thing might prove different? I only ordered it yesterday. Great that it arrived so quickly!

It’s so good to be back at the wheel, and working/earning. I was extremely worried! My aerial acrobat tightrope walking – in outer space, with no safety net – was taking its toll.

Some time, (I think?) after midnight, last night, I finally finished volume three of Shelby Foote’s whopping great three volume The Civil War.

Wow! What an epic read. But, as he says at the end. All things must and indeed do pass. Rather like reading Delderfield, I feel almost obliged to note that Foote is – or was, before this twenty year work – primarily an author of fiction.

He’s also been criticised for romanticising the South. Personally I don’t have a beef with him on that. He is, after all, a Southerner himself. Considering that is so, he’s remarkably balanced about things.

But it does mean you have to bear that in mind a bit. In terms of a bias, or a tendency to romanticise things – he has a definite thing for the ‘ghostly halloo’ of the legendary ‘Rebel Yell’ – you can definitely feel it.

For example, he ends the book with what amounts to – or can easily be construed as – a slightly hagiographic defence of Jeff Davis.

But I don’t mind that. History will always have multitudes of voices, saying slightly (sometimes wildly) differing things. I’m not a big fan of Napoleon’s alleged remark that history is merely lies agreed upon. One hopes there are truths of sorts that can and should be ‘dug up’.

But the main thing is, this is dramatic, exciting and compelling. The kind of history that might inspire a lifetime’s dedication to the subject. And as long as one has the critical faculties to detect and discern bias, and treat it appropriately, then in itself it’s not a deal-breaker.

I have really enjoyed reading this monumental work. And I’m almost sad it’s finally ended. It’s like travelling to another time and place. A holiday for the mind/soul. Beneficial even to the body: reading this has been both calming, generally, and has helped me sleep without the chemical crutch of zopiclone.*

But I’m also happy. I’ve travelled far and wide, from knee deeps muds, sloggng along ‘bottomless’ rain-drenched roses, across rivers with magical American names – from the Appomattox to the Yazoo – with shot and shell whistling around my ears. From the reduction to rubble of Fort Sumter, and elsewhere, to re transutions into defensive trench warfare on land, and the birth of the ironclads on river and at sea, it’s been truly epochal.

Utterly absorbing. I honestly can’t recommend this enough.

* And not by boring me to sleep. Far from it.

My mum’s currently recovering from a second hip replacement surgery, in a local hospital. She just messaged to say that after a very rough first night, she’s had a better second night, ‘in spite of [the] noisy ward.’

I replied that I was glad of the former (the better nights sleep, of course!). I didn’t respond to the latter, as she’d most probably be ‘brought down’ by my ‘negativity’!

So I’ll share my thoughts on that second part of her message here.

I think there’s a pretty major problem in our modern hospitals, re noise vs calm. And I say this based entirely on personal experience. Not just of my own time in hospitals, but when visiting others (family).

My own last/most recent visit to a hospital A&E – excluding the numerous routine blood tests I’m obliged to undergo – was, frankly, appalling, from the point of view of ‘healing’.

The levels of noise – bleeping electronics in partic’ (never mind groaning or screaming fellow patients*) – meant it was more torture chamber than place of healing. The irony!

* On several occasions my father’s been admitted to hospital in recent years. And it’s often been the case that the proximity to other patients, expressing their suffering in distressingly unchecked manners, has likewise been more conducive to furthering ill health, as opposed to recovery.

Perhaps this especially true of mental health? As factories for the return to purely physical or mechanical health? Well, modern hospitals are more about that, it seems to me. Keep the drones sufficiently functional for society at large to tick over.

And to my mind that’s a very fundamental flaw in the system, proceeding from political and moral sources. I attribute it to Toryism, or under-investment in public health and wellbeing.

Hospitals should be like the best private sanatoriums. The sort you glimpse a little of in classic old black movies. In which wealthy patients have access to private rooms, and plenty of attentive staff!

But I fear that with the relentless pursuit of private profit for the few, over the common good, let alone any visions of well-being for the many, things are destined just to get worse.

As author Kurt Vonnegut (I think?) laments, with his usual world-weary and acerbic insight, modern humanity might well self-annihilate on the basis that to take a more long term or morally sound view simply isn’t ‘cost effective’.*

NB – The non-movie screenshots that ‘illustrate’ this post were culled from the top few google results returned by the search terms ‘noisy hospitals’. Unsurprisingly a large topic. But one which, like the godawful beeping devices’ is being steadfastly ignored by those in a position to address it. To the detriment of the majority.

* I’ve seen this quote being attributed to Kurt online:

‘We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective’

I’m re-writing this review from memory, for the present. Hopefully I’ll find the review I wrote at the time of reading?

But for now, a very simple and slight synopsis: I concur completely, with the author, inasmuch as he contends that whilst a rational contemporary mind may rightly baulk at full on religious belief, or ‘faith’, we have much to learn from the worlds religions. To simply abandon them wholesale is to throw the baby out with the bath water.

But what ought we learn from religion, and how might we keep what’s best whilst discarding what’s worst? Like Marx on Capitalism, non-religious folk like de Botton are often surgically exact in dissecting the ills of religion. But when it comes to what to put in its place?

Like almost all failed Utopian forms of Socialism, which all too often follow the road to Hell, whether paved with good intent or not, that’s also where I feel this book fails.

I have memories that are simultaneously clear and yet woefully dull, of attending Humanist meetings (amongst many other types, from Buddhist to Green, to… whatever), hoping to find a vibrant compelling alternative to the religion(s) I was brought up in.

That’s not to say that the latter are necessarily vibrant or compelling. But, despite (or is that because of?) the vacuum where rational thought might’ve been, these varied forms of Christian faith cohered. Not by dint of truth. More by sleight of mind.

And de Botton is quite good here, on that aspect of how religion has proven useful to humanity. The real rub is how to transfer that irrational utility into rational living. And in that area I’m less than convinced.

The other thing about all of de Botton’s books that I’ve read, is that whilst they’re well enough written, obviously well informed, and bespeak a clear thinking mind – what one hopes for in a professed/professional philosopher – for me they lack a certain zest. Ultimately that means I find them worthy but a trifle dull.

I’m prob’ being too harsh here. But having just finished the humungous and epic three volume Shelby Foote series, The Civil War, the compelling romantic excitement that reading that was, is a marked contrast to de Botton’s cool, calm, possibly slightly neutered style.

Just like the subject he’s addressing, there’s something slightly awry at the heart of this dilemma. Anyway, I’m going to leave it there for now. Until I either unearth my original more detailed review, or (this is less likely!) return to re-read the book.

To summarise: a good and worthy book, about a subject that needs addressing. But, just like most attempts to do what the title suggests – reap the benefits of faith without actually abandoning reason – it kind of doesn’t quite work. So both book and subject remain an unresolved and slightly dis-satisfying conundrum.

It’s maddening that faith in flawed fairy tales should prove more robust and utilitarian as an ‘answer’ to life’s riddles than evidence based reasoning. But that’s the rub. The latter, rather than providing pat answers, or even much solace (de Botton attempts to address this in another work The Consolations of Philosophy), simply leads to more questions.

Thanks, Tim, for giving me a lift to check out the above car. You’re a gentleman!

I bought the car. I trusted both my intuition – I just had a good feeling about it – and my senses (and Tim’s!) when we took it out for a short local test drive.

It looks terrific. It’s got FSH, from both previous owners. And it’s clearly been well looked after. It even has cruise control!

I drove it home like a little ol’ Granny! Very gently and conservatively. Observing speed limits religiously. And with oodles of due care and attention.

The recent accident has changed me as a driver. I don’t want to risk death or injury. Mine or anybody else’s. Not that I ever did, obviously. But experience teaches that I need to do more to make those things less likely.

Being an Amazon delivery driver – which I’m now going back to doing – has the potential risk of making one more accident prone. Even if only by dint of being on the roads so much.

If one then zips around, well… it’s obvious what might happen. I guess the irony in my case was that I wasn’t delivering. I was just on a short local run, picking up the mrs from the station.

For now, what with getting home in the dark, the pics of the new wheels aren’t great. I’ll take some in the daylight, tomorrow…

I love this guy’s guitar projects. And I’ve watched lots of them. But I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that here on the blog?

So, the point of this post is really very simple: celebrating his excellent work; sharing it with anyone who might visit my blog; and putting a few of my favourite of his videos in one place

Our contemporary era of solipsistic self-regard has got me too. Cataloguing the minutiae of my life, for nobody much besides myself. So far, so whatever. But will it all just fizzle out? Of course it will, eventually.

Meanwhile, bacon butty lunch, whilst watching snooker, with Chester over-grooming the base his tale into baldness.

The snooker is a marathon 35 framer, from 2011, ‘twixt John Higgins and a very young Judd Trump. Trump’s hair is a bit Indie/Emo! I doubt I’ll watch it all. Certainly not in one go! But it is relaxing. Hence the viewing.

Admiral paid out, finally, yesterday, on my car crash claim. I need to find ways of getting about to buy a new car. Got my eye on a Nissan Qashqai. Just need wheels to go look at wheels!

After my butties, and the nice hot cuppa I’m nursing now, that’s my primary task: get a new car! After, or as well as that… more selling of music gear; getting back out working; looking into money-saving schemes.

This is fun.

I’m glad, ‘cause finding anything else to watch makes my paying subs to the Evil Apple Empire – which I took out primarily for Masters Of The Air – that little bit more palatable.

It’s very silly, but quite a lot of fun. And I’m a big fan of fun right now. As I try to claw my way out of the tar pitch slough of despond.

Noel Fielding does indeed have ‘(?) charisma’ (I forget which brand of charisma it is he specifies; I’ll find out at some later juncture). And I really like Mark Heap (who also plays Robert Greene, Master of Revels and over-enunciating villain, in Upstart Crow), as Turpin’s butcher dad.

Apart from anything else, there might even be a local connection, something I always enjoy.

Aaargh!!! More stuff I want. And yet I know just accumulating stuff isn’t the way to happiness. Plus I’m totally broke. But I have to say, this looks worth having.

It’s the same team and the same publisher as the Bossa book I recently reviewed. I can foresee a similar potential issue. Inasmuch as there are few areas in music that pack the same kind of lunch as say Blue Note.

Some of the stuff coming out of this scene I love. Much of it I’m indifferent to, or don’t like. Some I loathe! But with such diverse music, that’s bound to be the case. And the same goes for the album cover design and artwork.