Doctor Yes

Oho, I'm Quite Pleased With This One

Whether or not you are is immaterial, because once again, whose blog is it?

     The lead-in and background to this is that I have been a-listening to quite a bit of Yes recently, principally their iconic Seventies stuff.  Last week it was my first time listening to "Tales From Topographic Oceans".

     O my.  Art?

      From memory, I think it's a double album, back in the days when a vinyl record long-playing record could accommodate about 30 minutes per side, and each of the four (?) tracks is at least 20 minutes long.  One for the completists, I fear.

     Then it was onto "The Yes Album", which was their breakout album, and pretty good it is too.  This was the last record that Tony Kaye, their original keyboard player, was present on until a return in the Eighties.  Yes, Rick Wakeman came in after TK and no, he wasn't there from the start.  Art!

    This cover photo was from a hastily-cobbled together photo session.  Tony is the one with a plaster cast on his foot, something Your Humble Scribe wondered about at the time, and which wasn't explained in the music press as the story behind it was years old by the time Conrad acquired the album.

     What happened was that Yes's tour van was involved in a serious road accident late in 1970, where all were seriously shaken and Tony suffered a fracture in his foot, hence the plaster in the photo above, as it still had weeks to heal.  Conrad is unsure how he would manage the pedals on piano or Hammond organ.

     Anyway, that's the story behind today's title!  What, it has some satirical allusion to an obscure thriller film from the early Sixties?  Pshaw, you're making it up!

O.
(Cheap gag comment avoided)

     It is, of course, entirely possible that you are reading the title incorrectly from left to right, when it should be read vertically, and we ought to be going "Wow!" at "DN Ro"*.
     Motley, let us anticipate the forming of the Ministry of Permitting Dangerous Things and play Poisonous Paintball!  You can have curare and I think I'll take tetrodotoxin.

"Field Guns In France" By Colonel Fraser-Tytler

A very interesting memoir written by a Royal Artillery officer, consisting of letters he sent home during the First Unpleasantness, which are mostly free from boring technical details about azimuth and deflection and meteor reports and indenting for spare salad forks for the mess -

     He writes with a certain caustic wit, having a rather cynical attitude towards higher command, yet remaining technically competent in his job as Battery Commander and also quite dedicated to the pursuit of slaying the bally Hun**.

     He typically never mentions the original D.S.O. ("Distinguished Service Order") and only the bar (i.e. the same award again) as he is told off for not wearing it by his CO.

     Your Humble Scribe guessed he was an Old Etonian as he always mentions bumping into other Etonians in the front lines or when ambling around the rear, and he was definitely a hunting, shooting and fishing chap, too.  There is mention of his pike-angling gear in an especially ghoulish fashion (attempting to 'reel in' the corpse of a dead Teuton pilot lying out in No Man's Land), and lots of stuff about 'stalking' which in those days meant sneaking up on wild game in order to shoot it, rather than being a sex-pest.

TYT was in charge of six of these

     He draws comparison with how little kit the battery arrived with in France in late 1915, when all their worldly goods were carried on a single cart.  When they came to quit their positions on the Somme they needed eight carts to carry away all their kit (some of it blatantly stolen), including wing chairs and a plush red couch for the Major's HQ.
     Conrad feels a nagging need to annotate the whole book.  I know, I know, I've got 1,160 Canadian war diary files to index first.  One day, Vulnavia, one day ...

"McTeague" By Frank Norris

This is mentioned briefly by Ol' Steve in "The Shining", where he mentions McTeague - a dentist, of all things - being handcuffed, alone, to a dead man in the middle of Death Valley, which is the very end of the book.  I shan't apologise for spoiling it for you, it's been out for 121 years so you've got absolutely no comeback.

     Your Humble Scribe, of course - obviously! - had to go look up a precis of it, and grim indeed the whole miserable thing seemed to be.  Everyone ends up either dead or mad, much like Dostoevsky's stuff, except without the snow.  Art?

     That cover lies, it's not a cheery little tale at all.  Now that you know, you can avoid it in future.  I know I shall.

"Death Valley Nights"

Since we're on the topic and in the area, I thought it incumbent upon me to mention this Blue Oyster Cult track, where the lyrics are derived from collaborator Richard Meltzer, and the song itself is on the epic "Spectres" album (the one with all the illegally-powerful lasers on it).  Art?

Citizens of the Pond of Eden look on with envy

     The song is allegedly about lost loves.  Which automatically makes a desert landscape that broils at 500 Centigrade leap into one's mind, nicht wahr?  Mind you, it is about 'nights', so presumably it would be considerably cooler than in the searing daytime.

Egad! Nothing About The Moon Yet!

Quickly, for this has been a consistent and popular theme of late, and Conrad will stoop to any Machiavellian stunt in order to boost traffic <thinks> how about another song with the Moon featured in the lyrics?  Yes, there is "Moon Crazy" by The Cult Of The Blue Oyster but i) They've already been mentioned, and ii) we tend to be quite mocking and disrespectful in these musical asides, and I like BOC.

     Aha!  "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

I hear hurricanes a-blowing

I know the end is coming soon

I fear rivers over flowing

I hear the voice of rage and ruin

There's a bad moon on the rise

     

        Well, there may be, old chap - that global warming, hmmm? - but you can console yourself with the fact that it won't be there in the morning -

Bad Moon!  Naughty Moon!  No popcorn for you!

 - er - which is a bit ambiguous in light of that picture above.

Finally -

This is "Architect's Daughter", which I thought I'd test-drive just to see what it looks like in a couple of sentences.  What do you think?  Not that I'll pay any attention to you, because, once again, whose blog is it***?

 *  Don't ask me, I only work here.

**  Credit the chap, he never actually writes this.

***  Which is where we came in.