What The Hell Happened?

Here’s my question, what the hell happened to Radio? Yes, the playlists have tightened up and the waggons have been circled, along with station ID messages becoming shorter and in some cases, inserted between every song in a set of music, except at the end where the on-air personality does the backsell, which is when The DJ announces song titles and/or artists which had just played. This includes the deletion of fake commercials, which were mostly heard on rock radio stations and at least two of them that I know of. There were fake concert announcements, schools such as the school for rock stars, necrophilia, a course on improving your reading (not the same bit by Cheech & Chong) and even some which were heard on the Bob and Tom radio show. Who could forget about Ed Pinkley Motors, Dickens Cider and especially, the version with the intro to Sweet Virginia by The Rolling Stones under the dialog. Unfortunately, I had found it and now it’s off of Youtube and probably for reasons of copyright.

I mention this because while listening to my music on shuffle, a Simpsons dialog bit came between 2 heavy songs by Disturbed and something else. That brought back the memories of the days when I, as a listener of rock radio would hear fake commercials between songs and they were mostly done, by the same people. Some had an undertone of violence and sex, but they were all funny. There was one commercial about a fake movie called “The Hand” about a guy who had got it on with his right hand, more than with his wife presumably. There was one where as a guy was talking to his friend he kept losing parts of himself, including his chest cracking open and it all started with something falling out of his mouth, probably a filling. However, one I remember is a man with his friend having a really bad cold, with a boat load of snot coming out of him. I remember hearing that bit back in 1995 and just writing this made me laugh hard.

I wonder who was responsible for these commercials, as crazy as they were. The same people did various other bits which were played between songs. There was a series called Fag Talk, which was of course, about cigarettes and not homosexuals. There was a series called Classic Rock Theater, where a man would recite lyrics to a song and at the end, that person would die in some ridiculous fashion. The voiceover artist would describe what would happen to the person at the end. One example of this was Hey Joe by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, where a man would recite the first line of the song simply asking “Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?” Then, his buddy opens fire and kills him. Again, I haven’t found them on Youtube as yett, but I’ll keep looking.

Another series of funny bits was a guy named Chef Perry, portrayed as a lazy son of a bitch and to illustrate my point, I have two examples I can think of off hand which I had heard on the radio in his series. One was how do use baloney. You know? The luncheon meat? One way he did was using it as an instant coaster. Another example was on how to make tea. Instead, he used pea. Yeah, a likely mistake that you would find on an adult version of Sesame Street. Right? Again, I can’t find this and I would love to get a hold of all of these funny commercials and bits, along with others I had heard in the 70s, 80s and 90s on rock radio stations.

Another practice on some stations was to play TV themes between songs and that is where I had heard the themes for such shows as Hawai-Five-O and Spiderman, among others. Again, what happened to radio and why has it gone so serious?

Taking A Trip

Before getting into today’s listening experience, I want to review why I’m doing this. First of all, to reset my attention span to what it was before, we as a collective society were directed towards songs and not albums, thanks to playlists (whether they be curated or not). Secondly, I don’t want the album as an art form to be lost and that is despite that I don’t buy albums anymore, from record stores. I’ve purchased albums from iTunes and I am as guilty as anyone for cherry picking songs off of albums, but only because I didn’t know the artist well enough and didn’t have enough money in my iTunes account at the time, to purchase the whole thing. I’m trying to rectify that and it is taking a long time, as I have new albums which I want to buy and some on pre-order.

This brings me to another topic all together, of investing in what you buy and not just pre-ordering in the hope that you will have enough money by the time the album comes out. You may not be investing the same way you were when you were saving up for an album physically, but you still have to be financially prudent in a different way. You have to be sure you have enough money in your iTunes account which you have put in there, from your personal bank account in order to be sure that you have enough money to receive a charge from iTunes, when a new album or albums come out on a Friday.

Also, it has been 11 years today since I upgraded to the iPhone. Each post is a result of that and I am thankful for being able to use this device, in the shape of the various models I have owned over the years. Without which, I wouldn’t even be on here or Twitter…. or even zoom. Hell, I wouldn’t even have bought music online from iTunes or even considered streaming, which has its place as a test ground and I talked about that in a previous post.

I had another phone which talks using a Standard keypad but there was no way to check my spelling or copy and paste. Thank you Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, for both starting and continuing this journey. I honestly didn’t think I would be using this device, 11 years ago today as I was frustrated with having to go from one keyboard to another, much less a touch screen. Thankfully, I had and still have the same Bluetooth keyboard to help me with composing, along side dictation which is a great Saviour because I am a bad speller. Hopefully many more years of using the iPhone, to do everything I have done so far and maybe even more.

Today, let’s take a trip down the Autobahn with German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk, who had a fan in David Bowie and have since influenced many other musicians,whose main part of their sound has been the use of drum machines, synthesizers and in some cases, vocoders. Kraftwork have certainly made use of all 3 and thanks to Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter, we have the pleasure of hearing music which can be made electronically and with which sounds are nearly infinite. Consider what Trent Reznor has done with Nine Inch Nails and even the electronica which has come after he had become popular and combine that with Garry Newman, Depeche Mode, The Normal, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Kraftwork and many other electronic based bands and you have a large pallet of sounds to choose from, in order to make your albums sound interesting using keyboards and buttons.

Today, let’s travel down the Autobahn, whose 23 minute long title track certainly takes you on a trip throughout the piece. It should be studied in schools and should also be given time on radio, even if it is the single edit.

The rest of the album is made up of 4 shorter tracks and the final one, picks up one of the melodies from Autobahn, during one of its many changes, probably played on a recorder, flute and piano, thus making Morgenspaziergang the only song on this album to feature non electronic instrumentation on it. However, this track is not entirely devoid of electronic elements with the sounds being made up of what sounds like water from a brook or stream and a bird, made up of electronic sounds much like the title track. Speaking of which, the title track car sounds are real except for the horn.

I had first bought this album in July 2000 (as a German import) and again on iTunes, in July 2018 and as you can imagine, I was very happy to get it onto my phone, so I can listen to it anytime I want. I could’ve chosen other albums from their catalog, but I chose this one because it is the first of the landmark albums and its part electronic revolution. Think of the countless bands who had sprung up thanks to this album alone and if you consider Depeche Mode, along with many other electronic Centric bands you can thank Kraftwork for giving us these sounds, both musically and vocally. Even Alan parsons may have been influenced by this album on some of his records. let us not forget about Neil Young and his 1982 album Trans and his daring experimentation with Electronics, which probably pissed off his record company, but he didn’t care. I didn’t mind it either, as I found it interesting to say the least. It wasn’t his greatest work, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to see what he could do and how far he could take it regardless of what anybody felt, even fans.

Anyway, if you get a chance to listen to this album, do so and then listen to newer electronic albums by any band you know of, who had jettisoned reel instruments for keyboards, drum machines and in some cases, the Volkoder. Of course, why not take this album on your phone, on a drive with you? if you do drive a car and see how you react, when the title track goes through all of its changes in key and tempo. Of course, make sure that you are not streaming it and it is downloaded to yur device, so you can put your phone on Airplane Mode, so nobody can call you and disturb you, while you are going on both a musical and physical trip. If you do not wish to cut yourself off with Airplane Mode, then put your phone on “Do Not Disturb” and be sure that nobody is allowed to call, leave a message, or anything while you are listening to the album. That is the whole point of listening to an album in the first place. Right? To escape from reality for how ever long the music plays and when it is done, you can get back to dealing with life. So, as I finish this post, I will be putting the album on, but I will not go for a drive. I don’t and can not drive so all I can do is listen with the music up loud and block out everything at home for that while. I hope that others who are reading this will eventually delete playlists and start putting full albums on their phone, like I have done for years. I may not buy music on CD anymore, but I still believe that music is still more valuable than just a stream. I have practised what I have preached here and I long for the days, when I can go on a trip and listen to an album, without distractions and without having to put something in or on something else, in order to hear the music. Why? I’ve done that and now I would like to enjoy the full album listening experience, without the guilt of musicians complaining about people streaming more, than buying albums. Well, I keep repeating it, but I will continue to purchase music from iTunes as long as it is active and for as long as I am able to pay for it. I hope I never have to resort to only streaming, as musicians don’t make a lot of money from that. So, purchase albums and listen to them when you can. I am and I’m glad that I have plenty of songs and albums on my phone to choose from, depending on my mood and other variables. Anyway, I will be taking a break from documenting my album listening experiences for a while, but I won’t stop this daly practise, of listening to an album a day. I hope others will do the same, whether it is on your phone, or on CD or vinyl. We need to keep the album as an art form alive, even if it is just the music or else musicians may give up on making albums and release singles. Slipknot has been considering it and I wouldn’t put it past them to go down this path. I hope they don’t and we need to convince them and other bands who are thinking about it, to continue recording a bunch of songs, for an album and not just a pile of singles. Every song is in an order for a reason, which can not be explained, but when it works it certainly fits together.

Anyway, I’m gone and I won’t be back until my trip is over.

Class Clown

Today’s album listening experience is an album I have known since I was 14 years old and had heard various tracks from, on comedy radio shows, as apposed to comedy radio stations. Back in the day, radio stations which played music would devote time to other lesser-known or lesser-heard genres outside what was regularly played. This was called foreground programming and it consisted of 30 minutes to about 3 hours of long form programming and it could include a jazz show, a metal show, an hour of radio from the past, talk or trivia, or even comedy.

This brings me to George Carlin and his 1972 album Class Clown, which begins with the title track and ends with Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television, with the latter becoming probably his most famous routine. It even would get a friend of mine fired from a radio station, but that is a story for someone else to have told in a podcast. https://youtu.be/nIgmo0AIGRw

I like the whole thing and my favourite bit is the one which opens the album. After all, when you were of a certain age in school, you wanted nothing more than to disrupt the education of not just yourself, but others in your class. Besides, there were many tools you had to accomplish this goal, which you did not have to go to the store to buy either. You just needed to be creative and learn how to make certain sounds with your body, like the classic fart sound. There were many ways to make that sound and the fart under the arm is probably either the easiest, or the most difficult one to do. On another sound, I could never pop the cheek. I could make the sound, but not how he did it.

He even gets into knuckle cracking, belching and making milk come out your nose at lunch time. I had never heard of the latter, until this album and that crosses the line for me.

He also talks about the act of swallowing and that there are two parts to it. I wonder how high he was when he had written this, as it would take a lot of slowing things down, in order to really pay attention to how, when you are swallowing water it doesn’t just go down. It needs to be checked out and if it is seen to be passable, it can go down the shoot.

Elsewhere, he talks about his education and going to a catholic school, like no other. In that, there was no cruelty and everyone was allowed to ask questions without being told to shut up (so to speak). There is more, but I encourage you to give this album a listen on your own.

The final track is the 7 words and I”m not going to put them here, as there is no need. Besides, that is why I want you to listen to this classic comedy album and if you have only heard more recent George Carlin material, you will be surprised at how good-natured his delivery was, due to him being straight and clearheaded for this album when he had recorded it on May 27, 1972 at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and between it and Led Zeppelin IV, Atlantic Records had made money off of those two albums especially. I could get into how George got arrested for doing the Seven Words bit at an outdoor summer festival in Milwaukee and eventually getting off, because the judge was open minded enough and thought it was hilarious. However, there are books on George Carlin which go into that much better and whose writers are more eloquent in describing what had happened than me. I wasn’t there and in fact, I wasn’t even born yet or even a twinkle in an eye so, commenting on that is out of my hands.

Anyway, I hope that you and anyone else who likes comedy will give this album and George Carlin a try. Not everything George did sounds the same, including his vocal delivery and back in the 70s, he certainly sounded different from what he would later do, with his rasp and having to raise his voice. I could get into how different his vocal timbre was, from 1993 onward, but that’s a whole other story and I don’t wish to go down that rabbit hole. Anyway, enjoy hearing from a class clown, who apparently was a class clown back in his day at school.

Pyromania, 40 Years Later

Today I’m listening to an album from 40 years ago and it is an album I had bought, despite my parents wanting me to get something else which was on sail. It is by a band from Sheffield England and their drummer has one arm. Yup, it’s def Leppard and their breakthrough album Pyromania, which was produced by Robert John “Mutt” Lange and whose drums were actually played by sampled drums.

So, lets’ look at where the guys from Sheffield were at in 1982. First, they wanted to do something different and in order to do that, they would eventually have to let their guitarist Pete Willis go, for drinking too much. Yet, Steve Clark and Pete Willis’s replacement Phil Collen would become the terror twins, when it came to alcohol consumption and sadly, Steve would be dead in January 1991, but let’s go back to 1982. The guys in def Leppard wanted their manager Peter Mensch to fire Pete Willis for them. He said that they should do it and so, they did and they found Phil Collen, who had been asked to replace Pete months before and help the band out with some equipment, like an amplifier. Well, he was more than a help and in fact, he was a godsend when it came to recording guitar solos for the album. His first solo was for the song Stagefright and he would go on and on, with solos which took only 1 pass. The keyboards were provided by Thomas Dolby, who also helped out with the band Foreigner and their 4th album, also produced by Mutt Lange. You can hear his keyboards on the song Waiting for a Girl like You and on Pyromania, I bet you that he had a big hand in not just the keyboards, but that eletronic drum pattern which ends the album, after Billy’s Got a Gun ends as a song. I guess you could say it could be a hidden track, but there is no blank space at the end of the CD and everything on the album, comes one right after the other.

The first song I heard was Photograph and I knew there was something I liked, when Joe Elliott started singing and especially, when he went into the high register. For weeks I only heard Photograph, Rock Of Ages and Foolin’ on the radio and not much else, especially at school. I remember when I had heard Too Late For Love in September 1983, I started wishing I would get it some day and maybe, for Christmas. Someone I knew did get the album before Christmas and it wasn’t me, or anyone else in my family. My sister Jackie had it as a taped copy and as you could have imagined, I wanted it too. So, I had no choice, but to make myself a shitty copy taping it off of a tape player beside a tape recorder, namely a ghetto blaster, against my better judgement of high Fidelity. Frankly, it’s sucked and I finally got the album on tape in January 1984, against my parents wishes. They were happy for me to get Pyromania too, but it just so happened that Seven And The Ragged Tiger by Duran Duran was on sail. What would I want with an album by a band, who isn’t being played on the radio station I listen to? So, I got my Def Lep album and I was happy, especially to hear my favourite album track Comin’ Under Fire when ever I wanted, while I was at home. Of course, I can hear that any time I want now, as I have it digitally.

Now, the big mystery was what the hell “Gunter glieben glauten globen” means and it was thought to be German. Nope, it’s just gibberish and another way of counting a song in, besides the standard “1, 2, 3, 4” and the song begins. I loved it when it had started off Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) by The Offspring from their 1998 album Americana, as it shows that they have a sense of humor, towards a band like Def Leppard. I don’t find it cheeky at all and in fact, I found it quite funny. They weren’t making fun of anyone and this was harmless.

For my friends who are Queen fans, check out the deluxe version as Brian May gets on stage with the guys in Los Angeles and together, they play a version of Travellin’ Band by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I had found the deluxe version on CD in 2013 and in 2020, I had purchased both the standard and deluxe versions of this album on iTunes. Why? Because I like this album so much and I like the band that much. After all, they are a part of what I call The Queen Family, which is a large family of bands who have either been influenced by Queen, or who have played with any members over the years. Def Leppard fits nicely into this category and there are many other bands like them. However, today I’m focussing on this band and the third album, which is my favourite out of all of their albums and it should’ve been given a chance to be number one. At least, it was on The rock charts, but Michael Jackson kept it off the top of the Billboard album charts. Pyromania is no. 1 in my heart and I am thankful that Joe Elliott, Pete Willis, Steve Clark, Phil Collen, Rick Savage and Rick Allen did a hell of a job, along with Mutt Lange and everyone else behind the scenes, engineering, mastering, mixing, coproducing, etc. This is a classic from front to back and there is no filler here.

Live In A Prison

Today it is an album by a country music outlaw. Yup, I’m talkin’ ’bout Johnny Cash and his 1969 album At San Quentin (Live). Unfortunately, it is censored in a few spots, but despite that I have always had a soft spot for this album, for a number of reasons.

I had discovered this album back in around 1979 and I was about 6 back then. We had it on record and I would play it to death, along with many other albums we had at home with my parents at the time. There are the versions of every song on the album, which I enjoy immensely, beginning with Wanted Man and ending with an abbreviated version of Folsom Prison Blues, which I would find out was a part of a medley around this song, along with other Johnny Cash Classics, sung by all of the performers on stage. This included: Carl Perkins, the carter family and the Statler brothers and the complete show is available on the “Legacy Addition” of the album. I’m not going to go into that, because that would be too much to digest.

Another reason I love this album is because of the looped crowd noises. There are two different noises here, which include a backward applause and the other, is a short round of applause which can be heard many times during the album. It’s most notable appearance is just before the reprise of the title track, which is the second song on Side 2. It even starts off A Boy Named Sue and both looped noises are heard, at the end of this track, each coming out of different channels, with the actual recorded applause in the centre. Again, you can hear this on the “Legacy” version with the recorded applause alone, going right into the next song.

I have always wondered what W. S. Holland was playing between the second performance of San Quentin and A Boy Named Sue. If he was just playing any old thing, to keep his hands moving, I understand, but the crowd were certainly encouraging him to keep going. Also, Bob Wootton’s guitar had a crunch to it as it sometimes fed back a bit, during songs like I Walk The Line, but not enough to disrupt anything. You could hear the buzz from his amp and the same thing, when San Quentin started, with W. S. Holland’s snare drum also rattling , especially at the beginning of the first performance of the title track.

I love when Johny talks to the audience and especially, because it is an all male audience in a prison. Some may be on death row, others may not and may serve either a life sentence, or possibly a shorter term behind bars and I wonder who is actually out of San Quentin, who was actually at that concert and lives to tell about it. That prison is also famous for Metallica filming the music video there, for St. Anger and parts of it appearing in the movie Some Kind Of Monster, which makes both this album and Metallica more significant in my life.

I had never had this album on tape and when I found it on CD in 2008, it wasn’t the standard album version, which I would find on iTunes 21 years later in July 2019. I actually prefer this album to the previous live album a year earlier from Folsom Prison, because I had heard the latter first and I do like both albums for what they are and I have both the Standard and Legacy Adition of both albums, on my phone. Another reason for me favouring this album over the former, is because there are no announcements from the prison, interrupting everything and any of the sweetening of the crowd noise is actually better on this album, as it is much less whistle and more general applause. Speaking of applause, I noticed that it is much more subdued at the end of Peace in the Valley, compared to everything else on the album. I could go on and on, but I would much rather you who are reading this, give it a listen. Then, check out Johny’s other music and if you like, go to his cover versions of Rusty Cage and Hurt, as I like them too.

I have no idea what I will put on tomorrow, as I will be as surprised as you are, with what I select from my music library. I will probably continue this either indefinitely, orit could last a week. I don’t know what I will do so, we will just have to wait and see. As long as others decide to take on the challenge of listening to an album a day, in order to expand our collective attention spans, improve our mental health and understand why the album as an art form is so important. If everyone who loves music does this every day and documents it either in a blog or on social media, this could possibly get the attention of those who make music for us and those who play music for us on the radio, if we still listen to it either on an app, or on a receiver.

The Album

In the age of streaming I had decided to listen to at least 1 album a day, in order to try and reset my attention span, when it comes to listening to music and complete works of art. This applies to albums already in my music library and not new albums, which have just come out on a Friday. This does not apply to comedy or spoken word albums as I like to listen to them, while either eating or doing laundry.

The album I had chosen for today was News Of The World, just because and I guess because in my Youtube feed, I found a rough mix of Sheer Heart Attack and for some reason, something clicked and I had decided to start the one album a day practise. So, Queen’s 6th studio album it was and I have no idea what the next album will be, or if and when it will be a Queen album.

I had been thinking about this for a while, as I found that I had got into the habit of listening to songs, rather than full albums and I know why that is. When I went to and from school on the bus, it took about 1 hour and 30 minutes to get from the pick-up point to the school on Sunday evenings and much the same amount of time, on Fridays going the other way taking us home for the weekends. I would continue this practise while in transit on public transit and this includes city and inter-city transit. I would take CDs with me, which I wanted to hear at the time and now that I have my phone and a massive iTunes collection, I have plenty to choose from, but I haven’t had much of a chance to go out on a long trip and listen to a full album or more. So, I had decided to start today and as I had said, I started with an album I know off by heart and I have many albums like that in my iTunes library and I may even dig into my Youtube Music library sometimes. I have listened to new albums from it first and then, from iTunes to compare sound quality and of course, iTunes always won out because of the EQ with which I set my phone to play music being hip hop. I chose that because of it being rather bass heavy on the bottom, with other settings lacking in that area. Plus, it is the closest to CD quality sound and so, I have started a new habit.

I hope that others will begin listening to full albums again, as a song is just a song and an album is a bunch of songs, with most albums making a story and a concept. Queen, Tool and some other bands have taken this idea of making an album up of songs which flow together and unfortunately, most albums these days don’t have a sense of a story to them. I’m sure that there are some, but none come to mind. Even the new album by Avenged Sevenfold sounds scattered and with no real musical flow to it. However, But Here We Are by Foo Fighters is a collection of emotional songs, given the year they have had and especially, Dave Grohl loosingng both Taylor Hawkins and his mother, within months of each other. Compare those to an album like Queen’s 4th album A Night At The Opera or my favourite Tool album Ænima, both with songs which link to each other. I will do a post on Tool some day!

Anyway, I hope that those of us who are of a certain age, will somehow educate those who haven’t grown up knowing how important the album is, as an artistic statement, rather than just a single. If we loose the album, music could become less valuable to us and with streaming, we are on the way to that path and I hope that we can at least slow things down. I haven’t bought a physical album or CD since 2014, but I haven’t stopped buying music. I love iTunes as I can do a search on my phone for new albums and occasionally, discover something I hadn’t heard before, by either an artist I know, or someone new to me. More often than not, it is by a known band or singer and I have found out about new artists from either radio, or reading about them in online magazines like Revolver, or Loudwire. With Queen, it has been Wikipedia and iTunes which has brought me up to speed on everything and I still have things to purchase, including some concert films.

The main point of this post is that I hope I and others like me, who still believe in albums as an artistic concept can convince others to stop with the playlists and listen to an album, created by artists for us to listen to. we need to at least try to bring back some sort of consensus, not just by curation by streaming services, or by ourselves. Let’s think of all of the classic albums by legacy bands who have taken the time and energy, to write these songs for us and we pay them back, by just listening to them as a song and not a complete work. Also, listening to an album will help us escape reality for a while and after it is over, we can get back to dealing with life. So, whether you are listening on your phone, CD, or a record, I encourage listening to at least one album aday, to help with our mental health and to reset our collective attention spans.

Me At 50

Hi. It’s me and now I’m 50, the September of my years as someone had said in a song. Even if that is so, I am still young at heart and will not loose my edge. Yes, I do have an edge and I keep it hidden because I have had no real need to show it, other than here. yup, I have left my true feelings for my blog and other places where I can express myself without feeling the need to apologize.

Where is this post going? Well, nowhere and it’s probably a stream of consciousness going where my mind wants to go, on this my 50th birthday. I hope to stay much as I have and age only by a number in the next 12 months. Hopefully a miraccle happens and I will get to ride on a bus, other than on a public transit vehicle and with no real destination either, just riding around. Hopefully I will even get to play with the controls too, if such a miracle is possible today. If it doesn’t happen today, I hope that something good like this does in the next couple of days. I really want to ride around on a school bus, or a highway coach for an hour or so and as I have said, I would love to touch and play with the controls like I used to do, when I was a kid.

On that note, I will tell you a story from when I was 11 and this was during summer camp. We were going on an overnight trip at the end of the summer of 1984 and the bus we were on, was a Wayne model and the windows pushed in and out, rather than up or down when opening and closing. It was a smaller vehicle, but it wasn’t a bus with a drivers side door.

I got to sit in the drivers seat before we went back to Toronto and I got to touch both the emergency break and the gear shift, both of which went up and down and were on the wall infront of the driver, as apposed to the floor. After all, it had an automatic transmission and it was a gas powered bus, with the classic whine. The driver’s name was Dianne and the company was out of Burlington Ontario, called Skywways.

I hope to relive that history again today, or in the next couple of days. Sure, some people in my building may frown upon me riding in a bus for kids, but I don’t give a shit. I have always loved school buses and the same with highway coaches. Speaking of highway coaches, the best thing about them is that they have washrooms on them, unless they are meant for shorter commutes such as Go Transit buses and probably other companies may have coaches, without a place to piss. I wouldn’t recommend taking a shit on one of those buses, for obvious reasons and I have only had to do that at least once, back in 1992 during a school trip to the US. Thankfully, the tank flushed and at some point, the driver had to have it emptied out somewhere and then, have some ccandy-like substance put into the toilet in order to keep it smelling good, even after making a deposit.

Anyway, it is my birthday and I hope that a miracle happens. I have outlined both of my wishes here and let’s hope that one or both, will come true either today, or the next two days. If I ride on one during that time and the other during the summer, even better.