I appreciate it?s one of the few disciplines where the UK, well, Scotland are well represented but it seems like hours and hours of scheduling have been dedicated towards it. :yawn:
Let?s face it, the only thing that piques my interest is the prospect of the USA-Can-Russian ice hockey teams beating the living shyte out of each other..
Russia banned, 7s :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by 7sisters
And you can?t fight in the Olympics cause they throw you out of the game
Ridicules
Even the boxers wear those hats. What is the point of boxing if you cant punch the bloke in the head? It's what the punters want to see.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
I thought the fighting was the only interesting thing about hockey? :-|Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Is it really any different to the bowls we used to watch in the '80s when there was no footy on tv so all we had was snooker, darts and bowls?Quote:
Originally Posted by 7sisters
I loved the doubles. One pair was this geriatric pipe smoker {Byrant?} and this younger one with an Alan Sunderland perm {Allcock?}
The old one was a bit doddery {but multiple UK champ} but when he had the last throw with all the opponents balls around the jack, he suddenly threw it like he Harold Larwood.
I loved that. Like watching Jocky Wilson vs the Crafty Cockney.
Surely the Jock winter thing is no different. Or is it the lack of pipes and pints that pisses you off?
Just the sheer tedium of it all. I don?t have the patience for it GG. Like sitting through 20 frames of snooker, when you really just want to engage for the last two or three if it?s a close call.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
My point is that when we had sod all sport on the telly, I'd happy spend a teenage Sunday afternoon watching Allock and Byrant {pipe in hand} play bowls.Quote:
Originally Posted by 7sisters
Just like half the country stayed up 'till midnight to watch Dennis Taylor win on a respotted black in the final frame.
If there wasn't Arsenal, 6 nations and T20WC on at the same time, and no other sport for 2-3 months, you'd love the Jock stone throwers.
See? You've become a Yoof. No attention span. I put it down to not having a sufficiently Romantic nature.
But I used to watch F1 when it was on the Beeb and there was no footy. Nowadays the idea of spending two hours when the lead only changes at the first corner, pit stops or the occasional accident appeals even less than jock stone throwers.
It's like when we were teens or at uni, we used to put on an album. The kids today play a Spotify tune and skip to the next one if they don't like the first ten secs.
When you have a surfeit of everything, nothing has any value.
It?s a fair point. Although I had no time for Pot Black either, and I?m version that was back in early 70?s.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
Low threshold, see. Attention span of a gnat. Clearly before my time. :-)
Pot Black arrived in 1969 to promote colour tv in the UK. And for those viewers watching in black and white, the yellow ball is behind the pink.Quote:
Originally Posted by 7sisters
I loved Pot Black :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by 7sisters
Couldn't call it that these days.....
Wasn't black pot the squidgy stuff, unlike brown flatpress and red Leb, back in the day? Not talking about pwoppa charas, obv.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Yes. The bog standard, high street hash. Bloody horrible. Better than leb, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
Ok. Genuine question. It's 1980 again. The only football on telly {barring intls} in the Cup Final and the coverage of that starts at 9am.Quote:
Originally Posted by 7sisters
It's the Olympics. In the whole 2 weeks, we are expected to have 5 shots at gold medals. Do you watch them all? i.e. every heat and final of the 800m and 1500m with Coe and Ovett? All 10 of Daley's events, and not just him, his major rivals when they're doing their jumping and throwing to see if DT's lead goes up or down?
I started thinking about this on that "Super Saturday" in the 2012 Games. We had a long jumper who won gold but cos it clashed with o Farah, we only saw 3 of his jumps.
I was thinking that in the '80s, if we'd have a jumper in with the shout of any medal, we'd have watched all his jumps, all his rivals' jumps, and I'd have known all their PBs and season's bests etc.
But that's cos medals were rare. But in 2012, when we came 3rd in the table with God alone knows how many, it all seemed a bit meh.
What I'm asking is if you really had this modern yoof attention span c.1980 or it's just you didn't much like Pot Black?
Could you spend a whole evening watching Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson downing pints, chain-smoking Embassys and wobbling to the oche?
{Though far play if, while the rest of us are moaning about being the last of the Romantics, you were the original yoof with a -ve attention span. That's impressive.}
I actually liked flat press just cos it was easier to crumble. I also liked the way it seemed to expand as was heated and crumbled. So you thought your blim was barely a spliff but you actually had two decent ones left.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
That and it not being harsh on the throat meant I didn't really care if I'd got slightly more THC per quid had I bought something else.
Back in the 80s we watched stuff like that because there was **** all else to watch. And if you were a kid, sod all else to do once it got dark.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
Until you were old enough to get in the pub, obviously:-)
I never really took to cannabis in any form. Not my bag. I liked a drink, or one of the more exotic substances.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
:nod: much the same, just made me feel sick.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Or knackered. Or a slow headache and a dry mouth.Quote:
Originally Posted by PSRB
8 pints and a couple of lines. Now you're talking :-)
But that's a young man's game. I'm past it :-(
Oh I don't know. When I first started working in the late 80s CDs had just come out and I discovered a chap in settlements was selling the most wonderful Caribbean weed. Made you smile, giggle and everything seemed more interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
As I replaced my vinyl with CDs while smoking this weed it was like listening to all my favourite bands for the first time again, and they were better than ever.
Happy dayz :-)
Which is sort of my point. If there was never any sport on telly, nothing to do once it got dark, 3 channels of boredom and you suddenly got some Jock rock chuckers who might win your tribe a medal, we watched that sort of thing back then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Got into it straight away at uni, and that's when I started listening to all the hippy classics my mates introduced me to instead of 8-bit C64 computer music.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Though once your 2nd year young ones house of pot heads all bosh acid cos there's a puff drought that day, well, that's that. Never looked back and still going strong. {Personally - more than half my mates' funerals have been ODs or other drug related.}
In all honesty, I think I got into it for the social thing at uni, and very probably the nicotine, cos I didn't smoke fags at all, but was smoking spliffs from waking up to beddy byes.
Never got all those people who did that. Paid money for coke so they could spend more money on booze. I s'pose it was alright in the French West Indies, back in the day, when it was $5-10 a g and a litre of Absolut was $5 and $1 a pack of Bensons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
But even so, not really my buzz.
If I'm not on spiritual psychedelics, I'm more an opiates and cup of tea chap.
Ah, and to shoe horn some Romanticism into the discussion about the superiority of opiates - Kubla Khan. No coke-head's ever written a poem like that. Well, I say written, ST Coleridge said the Divine gave him the whole poem as a gift in a vision, it was not his work.
Read the first part before the Person from Porlock knocks on the door and freaks out his buzz for an hour, by which time the vision has gone.
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves; ....
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw: ....
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song, .....
BEST POEM EVER. FACT.
I agree with all that except:Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Harder to skin up on a CD cover than a 12".
I replaced all my LPs with CDs at uni. But in the first year, we'd put an album on and skin up on it. By the 2nd year, I had a CD multi-changer in my room, but it wasn't the same.
I also miss the waking up to the tssssss-doomp of the needle going round and round at the end of the album.
I do know what you mean about rediscovering all your fave bands.
But I miss the analogue world. The 12" album covers - some of the finest artwork this country has ever produced. The physical feeling of putting the needle on the record and watching it ride those grooves up and down.
Oh, acid is a very different story. Wonderful stuff :-) I managed to do it for years and still not like Pink Floyd :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
But again, a young man's game. I reached the point where it felt like I'd seen this film before. MDMA the same. Great for a while, but it becomes a routine in the end and the magic starts to dissipate.
The drink is a friend for life :-)
And, of course, CDs changed not just the artwork but the art itself. Albums stopped being two sides and became one long list of songs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
The flow of many great albums was disrupted. Born to Run isnt the same without its four corners.
Cocaine has inspired some (if not all) of the greatest rock albums ever made. Not necessarily the greatest lyrics, though :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
Every drug has its virtue and its vice. And we all choose our own device. Why trust one drug and not the other? That's politics, innit :-)
Oh, I kept on seeing new films. But I got into doing the best Dutch acid as opposed to British, and then having a theory that if you did the whole picture {if it was 4 trips, 2x2, to the picture} you'd see the whole picture man.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
So I did 4 Buddhas, then 4 Red Dragons, then 4 Buddhas and 4 Dragons to see the whole picture in stereo.
Then at a NYE tekkie a few years later, the best trips were Fat Freddie's Cat. And they were 5x5, 25 to a picture. Did that on the main dancefloor all at once. Now that was a ****ing new movie.
I was about to go to hell and the sprung out as I was in fact the 2nd coming of Christ and the whole world's media was there to welcome.
Apparently, I'd spent the whole time sitting in the lotus position right in front of the biggest stack of speakers, getting in the way of the several thousand ravers trying to get to the front.
Never really liked Es/Mdma. Seemed pointless to pay, say 3-5x the price of acid for something far less psychedelic and far less spiritual.
Only reason I stopped doing acid is the same reason I stopped doing DMT - it was becoming a gamble. Heads and you get an amazing psychedelic, spiritual trip. Tails and you're playing literal Russian roulette with your sanity. Had the whole - I'm gonna fly on acid. I'm gonna jump off the roof and God is gonna take me by the hand and fly me round this part of Delhi and drop me off back here.
Then I realised that of course this wouldn't happen and I'd just fall to my death like those acid casualties you heard about in the '60s. And I was just as cool with that - if that's what Shiva put me on earth to do, who am I to argue? That sort of thing.
Basically, I was seeing newer and better movies, but the price of the ticket became a spin of Russian roulette.
*******s - I should have used part of Danny's speech for my end of Romanticism waffle. The greatest era in the history of humanity is over etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
But while coke has inspired some {though far from all} of the greatest albums of all time, opiates write better lyrics.
Loss of ego, giving yourself up to the Divine.
And musically, compare Golden Brown with any of the songs specifically about cocaine you care to name.
But Kubla Khan is gorgeous. The 3 sections - the trip, the little bit after his trip had been interrupted for an hour and the vision has mostly dissolved. Then the rest, written years later when he'd realised that no matter how much opium he boshed God was never gona give him the rest of that poem again.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,*
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
- *i.e. with my words, my poetry, I would create something as beautiful as KK's pleasure dome
Agreed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
{Dear God, you're even more of a Romantic than me. You're gonna need a really stiff drink when the digital world finally grinds ours into the dust.}
They ruined Appetite for Destruction as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
And I can remember the first time I was in a record shop and saw a copy of New Mind The *******s on CD. It looked ridiculous.
Still, these kids were never going to understand it anyway. **** them. At least I know what it all means, and I wont forget.
See, I like it. I get it. I see it. And you can draw a direct line to the poetry of Oscar Wilde, Rupert Brooke, and on to Morrisey:-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
But it doesn't move me the way Leonard Cohen does.
My failing, perhaps. But I can live with it :-)
Oh, come on, it's personal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
We all have fave songs on an album, fave album by band X, fave band, fave artform etc.
You don't have to choose between Byron and Bronte and Delacroix and Van Gogh and Shaw and Wilde and Sassoon and Brooke and Cohen and the Beatles and the Pistols and free raves.
The whole point is, as you say, the direct line that connects them all.
That, and that it's over.
That was the point I had unintentionally found myself making last week and it seems you now agree. So get yourself a drink, try to switch off your Scharma's a bit of a mincer prism, and watch those docs. Joins the dots to the modern world. Draws the direct line to use your words.
If Romanticism is a diamond, it doesn't matter what your favourite facet is as long as well all agree that it's the same diamond and it's beautiful.
And that there will never be another diamond because modern, fake, compressed carbon digital diamonds have taken over, and soon, you won't even see them, just an AI image of a diamond on yet another ****ing screen.
QED.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
As a Romantic, the first hint of its ending, with digital music, even though those CDs were our fave ever bands, make the hair on the back of your neck stand up cos you subconsciously knew something was wrong.
As I say, QED.
My sister has tried for years. With Coleridge, Byron, Shakespeare, Shelley, Hardy.... she's given up :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
I mean, it's alright.... but its no Dance Me to The End of Love, is it...... :-)
I see the line, I dont dispute it. But I chose my edge of the diamond a long time ago. I'm not going to change it now.
Should have gotten into Iron Maiden; they check all of those. Plus Burns, Tennyson and Marvell. Frank Herbert, Huxley, Golding, Orson Scott Card, too many to mention really. UTI.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Oh, I wouldn't expect you to.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Which facet we like best is subjective. But I objectively believe we are all part of that diamond that's been built since thee 1780s and is being killed by the digital revolution.
Do you really not "get" Shelley's Ozymandias?
Indeed, as with Kipling's Recessional - on dune and headland sink the fire / lo, all our pomp of yesterday / is one with Nineveh and Tyre - you could say Ozymandias now applies to the death of our Romantic diamond.
.... And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
It just doesn't move in me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
The declaration of independence is the better read. Now that is romantic :-)
My sister loves them.Quote:
Originally Posted by redgunamo
I once saw a band in the pub called Wooden Maiden, who did acoustic covers of Maiden songs. It was far, far better than it sounds :-)
lol. Harsh but fair. It is Americans, after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
I've heard of them. Didn't know they were a tribute act though, mostly original stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter