Friday, July 06, 2007

The Week In Review(s)

I kicked off the week with a fairly uplifting book, Song For The World by Frank McGee, this is a fascinating look at the lives and careers of the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen. It is a sad but true fact that these musical peace ambassadors remain relatively unknown in their native US, and yet are adored by millions in other parts of the world. They have played in just about every country, and during every regional conflict in the past 50 years, and have never had a top 10 hit!

On a much darker note I read Africa Will Always Break Your Heart by Gerrie Hugo. This is a book about South Africa during and after the apartheid era. Gerrie was one of the very few people involved with the white armed forces that could see the rampantly immoral and inhuman treatment being afforded to the black majority. I recommend this book highly. It is well written, it is in places side splittingly funny, and also conveys a very dark and dangerous message. By writing this book Gerrie has lost his friends and family, in fact he has lost his homeland as well. He now lives in Sweden. I am looking forward to interviewing him, it should be a very interesting experience.

My weekly TV gig Big Ideas For A Small Planet was interesting, I got to interview Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of the Ecological Footprint, a By area company that helps businesses reduce their impact on the planet in terms of resource usage and abusage.

If you are a space history fan I can recommend Apollo XI, it is a great documentary about the early years of spaceflight. The title is deceptive, the DVD actually ends with the moon landing, 90% of the documentary covers the programs leading up to Apollo.

I took in a couple of music DVD's as well, one very interesting look back at David Bowie during his Plastic Soul phase, and one spotlighting Greg Lake (of Emerson Lake and Palmer fame). I enjoyed both of them.

On regular CD I also took in Headspace by Stratospheerius, who the web describes this genre of music as ‘psychojazz trip funk’!

Of course there is a downside to all of this reviewing fun. And that became abundantly clear when I got up at 3am this morning. Friday is one of my big reviewing days of the week, and I try and clear whatever the backlog is. There is no chance of that happening this week. We run what could be loosely called a filing system, we have 'the done pile' which is basically a series of cardboard boxes where I dump stuff that is 'done', everything else is in the 'To Do' boxes. Right now there are over 20 DVD's in the 'To Do' boxes!

The other big downside is when the hell do you ever have time to re-listen to stuff you really like? I'd love to spend some time revisiting the ones I really like, but I never have time. One watch or one read, or one listen, and it is done!

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