Year: 2021

Songs about stuff

I seem to have written quite a few songs during the last decade or so…many of them emerged from Arts Night discussions others written on a whim, some of them put together for my band C5, and others for a variety of other reasons.

I’ve summarised the essence of the lyrics of a clutch of them in a single word. The musical style may well not be that suggested by the word…who knows? Have a listen and do report back with any thoughts.

Violence – Helium Heart
Homelessness – Bridges Crossed and Burned
Drugs – White Line Warrior
Hope – A New Memory of Music
Compromise – Meet Me Half Way
Mourning – Place the Pennies
Fishermen – The Stormy Petrels
Fishwives – The Spate Gatherers
Chicago – A Northern Boy
Greece – The Oleander Fires
Refugees – Bridge of Sighs
Guncrime – Shooting Waste
Dancing – When the Beat Hits Your Heart
Humanity – For the Love of People
Beach -  The Long Sands
Christmas – Seasons of Love
Fascism – The Last Witchhunt
Heroism – Grace
Betrayal – Turncoats
Acceptance – The Sea Refuses No River
Gambling – Who is Fooling Who?
Espionage – Lost to the Weather
Trouble – In Deep Water
Stubbornness – The Tide that Never Turns
Devil – The Oldest Trick in the Book
Transitions – Mercury in Transit
Illness – Too Old to Die Young
Bowie – The Day that Bowie Died
Regret – Nothing to Be Sorry For
Fraud – Switch and Bait
Overindulgence – Burning the Candle at Both Ends
Hubris – The Mighty Fall
Cybersex – Push the Button
Sex – Wild Honeysuckle
War – Collateral Damage
Pleasure – Dopamine and Desire
Revolution – The Silent Spring
Homesickness – Sail Me Back
Eternity – Golden Light
Dictatorships – Put Them on Hold
Money – Gold and Silver
Relationships – Dawn Chorus
Perspective – Point of View
Patriotism – Foreign Shores
Loss – It Could’ve Been You
Radio – Radio Love
Abandonment – Escape to the Stars
Retribution – Dead Man Walking
Escape – A Flight of Fancy
Positivity – Sunny Days and Rainbows
Indifference – When Your Love’s Offline
Depression – Polarity
Security – Security High
Addiction – Winter Warmer
Disappointment – You Don’t Get What You Pray For
Funk – Funktastic!
Alcoholism – A Word to the Wise
Environmentalism – Pale Blue Dot
Ambition – Dreamcatcher
Faith – Faith in Humanity

Violence, Homelessness, Drugs, Hope, Compromise , Mourning, Fishermen, Fishwives, Chicago, Greece, Refugees , Guncrime , Dancing, Humanity, Beach, Christmas, Fascism, Heroism, Betrayal, Acceptance, Gambling, Espionage, Trouble, Stubbornness, Devil, Transitions, Illness, Bowie, Regret, Fraud, Overindulgence, Hubris, Cybersex, Sex, War, Pleasure, Revolution, Homesickness, Eternity, Dictatorships, Money, Addiction, Relationships, Perspective, Patriotism, Loss, Radio, Abandonment, Retribution, Escape, Positivity, Indifference, Depression, Security, Disappointment, Funk, Alcoholism, Trying, Environmentalism, Ambition, Faith…

Calories in, calories out

I’m halfway through Tim Spector’s excellent book Spoon Fed, which is a bit like a food and nutrition version of my 2012 book Deceived Wisdom in which he debunks pretty much all of the myths we’ve been told over the years about cholesterol, fat, caffeine, gluten, reduced-fat foods, diet drinks etc.

Spector points out that we are all different, our genes play a major part in our response to food and that most of the claims about this or that food or drink are mainly driven by the marketing departments of the food and drink manufacturers who spend millions on advertising and lobbying policymakers to put messages out there that fundamentally conflict with good advice to sell more of their products.

One of the big myths Spector debunks is with regard to exercise and weight loss. The bottom line, as it were, is that we should exercise for general physical and mental health, but exercising does very little to help you lose weight. In fact, exercising may see you gain weight as you add muscle mass but more likely because it makes you hungry and you end up eating more than you need to after exercising (often in the form of “health” smoothies, protein bars, energy boosters and the like). Your body also slows your metabolic rate after exercise in the short term so that you end up storing more of your food intake as fat.

On what basis does he make this claim? Well, in one sense basic thermodynamics, but he puts it more simply in terms of the way the body uses energy.

We get all of our energy, 100% from food.

We “burn” 70% of that energy just saying alive, metabolic resting rate.

10% of our energy is used to digest the food we eat.

20% is used for physical activity. However, 10% of that is used just sitting, standing, or fidgeting.

The last 10% of the energy we burn can be manipulated through exercise. That’s a tenth of the energy we take in being available to us to burn through exercise.

If you’re an average overweight bloke running an hour a day four times a week, then at best you can knock off 2 kilograms a month. That sounds great, I could get to my ideal weight within a year doing that. But, in order to make this work, you have to NOT overcompensate for the fatigue by eating or drinking more and you have to avoid the extra storage, the slowing of metabolism and the bounceback if you lapse on your calorie counting (You have to be strict with yourself and not eat more even if you feel tired and hungry). It’s mostly sugary-rich food and obesity in a bottle smoothies that are the problem…and alcoholic beverages.

Exercise is a potent drug we all need to take in moderation regularly. Moderate exercise is not a weightloss drug. The only way to lose weight is to eat less and to choose foods better matched to your own metabolism and gut microbes, Spector writes. (There are exceptions to the rules, in the same way that everyone knows a chainsmoking whiskey drinker who died in bed with their mistress aged 97.

As to all that nonsense about 10000 steps? Well, that spurious health notion was invented by a Japanese company that made and sold pedometers in the 1960s…based on nothing more scientific than that 10000 is a nice round number and although it is quite large it is not unachievable in a normal day for a lot of people. But, recent studies have shown that people using pedometers and smart health watches and the like actually gain more weight over the course of a year than those who don’t use these gadgets.

If you’re overweight it would seem that you can’t win…unless you eat less…you can win, if you eat less. It’s not the calories out that count, it’s really just the calories in.

Be the Man

In January 2020, just as there were concerns being raised about an emerging viral pandemic that would ultimately shred so many lives, we, The Tyrannochorus choir, were rehearsing hard for a couple of big concerts we had been planning for months. They were the “Love Concerts”. Songs about love and faith in humanity. Ultimately, we raised several thousand pounds for a couple of major charities with the pair of events.

Anyway, I was in my usual bass/baritone sometimes tenor slot for most of the songs we would sing but was accompanying on guitar on one tune and singing the lead solo on The Young ‘uns song Be the Man. I knew it pretty much off-by-heart, had all my inflections and emotions bedded down into it so I could sing it as best I could without choking up.

It’s a song of a young man who takes his own life following rejection by his family and leaving behind his widower to somehow come to turns with that death and the aftermath, and to somehow find a way to reconcile the family’s bigotry with the love he felt.

When it came to the first concert, I was mic’ed up, guitar was on, my two harmony fellows were alongside, we’d had plenty of chance to practice, it went well. I was tasked with coordinating and wiring up the PA for the second concert as well endeavouring to prep for the second run of Be the Man with a planned substitute harmony wingman.

I started the song solo, just me and guitar. We had no elevated staging and the front-row seats in the venue were very close. I  could definitely see the whites of their eyes and they mine…I felt quite exposed. It’s a raw song. Started well, usual audience response at this point in a song, expectant, listening, attentive, not sure where the song is going, probably not recognising it…best not to overthink things while you perform. Focus on the notes and chords…

“Matthew Ogston is my name and you’ll not hear me mourn…I will never live in shame, I will not walk alone.

For though my love took his own life because of bigotry I’ll be the man, be the man”

Oh…raised eyebrow from the stoic old gent in the front row as he clocked that line. A man singing “my love took his own life”. Now, was it that reference that raised that eyebrow or the reference to suicide? I’ve no idea…I kept going.

“…because of bigotry I’ll be the man, be the man, be the man I was born to be I was born to be.”

No more raised eyebrow, but stoic man seemed to have switched off. Second verse, first harmony and piano enter.

“And my love, he was warm and kind, and my love, he was strong
And when his brown eyes first met mine, I knew he was the one”

Sturdy-looking woman three rows back scowls, was I bit pitchy there, did the guitar clash a little against the piano, was I a bit out of kilter with the choir…who are supposed to be following me…but have to take their beat from Siobhan our choir leader? Or, was it the words, those words? I don’t know. Did she know I was telling a story in the song, maybe she thought it was my song…

The show must go on. The song builds, classic modern folk, but with a rapturous choir belting it out and me throwing in a bit of the old northern twang to match the style of the original (the band hail from a town not 40 miles from where I grew up). I put my all into this second performance of the song, generous members of the choir told me it wasn’t too bad at all.

Stoic Man and Sturdy Woman seemed to be bouncing along with it on the choruses, maybe I’d misjudged their eyebrows and scowls, they weren’t confused nor bemused by the lyrics, they just didn’t know the song, but recognised they could tap their feet once we got to the rousing refrains.

I felt happier as we progressed through the bars. Singing and strumming with confidence, harmony wingmen belting it out as a trio with me. I even managed a controlled emotional crack in my voice as I sang the final line to the last strains of my fading guitar chord, there were some who thought maybe I was about to cry, but like I say I’d bedded down that emotion…mainly through endless solo rehearsals out on the fens walking the dog. I glanced across to Siobhan just to check I was still somehow leading behind her and it was all going to be okay…

“Be the man, be the man I was born to be, I..was…born……to be”

Long pause. Much applause…gratefully received.

We later learned from a choir member who spoke to an audience member from that second concert some weeks later, but before lockdown 1, that they’d thought the whole show was wonderful. Apparently, they added how lucky the choir is to be able to recruit professional singers for the solo parts…now…I think I did okay, but I just know they weren’t talking about me, they were talking about Patrick’s sublime rendition of Neil Diamond’s Walk on Water and the fabulous performance of our female soloist.

Rachel did a stupendous version of the Joni Mitchell song A case of you which had raised my eyebrows in a good way when we did the soundcheck and I was tweaking mic placement and EQ. There were no sturdy scowls or bemused eyebrows raised among the audience though when she sang that song…I know, I was there, and I could see the whites of their eyes.

 

 

Musical Rushalikes

Twelve of my original songs stretching back through the last decade and all taking more than a little pinch of inspiration from my favourite band, Rush, the band that inspired me to take up guitar in my early teens back in the late 70s. There’s a more detailed description of each song on the Soundcloud page as well as full credits. Some of them are flagrantly Rush pastiches, others simply inspired by the band as well as others, such as Genesis, Pink Floyd, Yes, Led Zeppelin, Simple Minds, U2, The Police etc. More importantly, there’s a link to the BandCamp page for each track so you can download them to keep and treasure for all time…

All words and music, arrangements, electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, 12-string guitar, vocals, percussion, loop mixing, recording, and production by yours truly except where stated otherwise on a per track basis. Artwork adapted from an original photo of a brain coral on a beach taken by Tirthankar Gupta entitled “Brain Waves” and used here under a CC license.

Give my love to the waves

Almost a decade ago, a small group of us established a local Arts Night where we’d share songs, poetry, and philosophize on the proverbial life, the universe, and everything..and eat too many biscuits and drink too much late-night caffeine. There were a lot of laughs and some serious sing-writing. We put on a few public performances in various places, members of the club came and went, but the Arts Night was also the birth place of my group C5 the band. Without those Arts Night, there would be no Clive-upon-Sea in the shape and form we know him today either.

I think the first Arts Night was April 2012 with a Simon, two Adrians, and a Dave, but by September of the next year, these old stalwarts had put together quite a few songs and been joined by various others – Andrea, Steph, Matt, Ray, Rog, Jo, Rich, another Jo, another Rog.

One of those songs was my land-locked lament to the sea…I believe this is the original electric demo recording I did for Arts Night that month, I’ve just put it on Soundcloud. The song developed lyrically and musically over the following weeks and I played it live several times solo and once or twice with an early incarnation of C5 in ensuing years. We even jammed a heavy rock version at one rehearsal at the suggestion of drummer Adam.

There are versions online where I dueted with our DJ daughter Beth and another with the Yorkshire Kate Bush, Emmazen

Give my love to the waves

Give my love to the waves
Send me home, on a wind that saves
If I ride the sea, or sail away
Will you carry me back, home again?

Give my time, to the pain
If I miss you, would you sail with me again?
Give my love, to the water
Then I can find my way back to where I ought to be

You will know me
Call me by name
Know how much I fear
It’s always the same

I’m floating in the wake of trouble.
I wish you wary on your way
Send my love to the waves,
get me out of this trouble,
or sail me to Hell all the way

Give my love, to the waves
Send me home, on a wind that saves

Floating in the wake of trouble
I wish you wary on your way
I wish you on the waves out of trouble
Don’t sail me to Hell, at least not today

Words and Music by David Bradley
Electric guitar and vocals dB/

There is no beatboxing nor drum nor bass in this version.

Pondlife update – We are with spawn

UPDATE: Even more spawn as of 9th March 2021

As long-time Sciencebase readers will know, I resurrected our garden pond in May 2019 (you can read about Operation Sciencebase Pond here). It was too late for the amphibian mating season that year, but, frogs did appear later that summer. in fact, we usually had at least one frog in the garden even when we didn’t have the pond. In 2020, one summer’s evening I counted nine frogs on the rocky border, which was gratifying and a big part of the whole point of redigging our old pond.

Early this year, Mrs Sciencebase spotted a Grey Heron in the garden, twice, preying on frogs from the pond. But, thankfully, there are still several in there and I’ve observed mating behaviour on a couple of evenings recently. There was activity last night and we are now with spawn. It will be a month or so before tadpoles hatch (hopefully). You just know I will keep you posted. #PondLife #PondWatch

If you have frogspawn in your own pond, please consider adding a reference to this spreadsheet, the data is mapped to show where frogspawn is present across the UK by PondDip and how it emerges over the spawning season.

Sonnet 1 by Bradley Davespeare

We’ve been tasked this week by our maestro Tim Lihoreau to come up with a sonnet for the Tyrannochorus weekly ZoomChoir. I don’t think I’ve written this type of poem since English lessons at school. It felt like too much of a challenge but I read a couple from The Bard and I think I’ve got their measure (yeah, right!).

So my first public sonnet laments the lack of live music any of us can rehearse or perform right now and also, perhaps, the notion of problems one might experience with one’s sense of hearing having been involved with relatively loud live music for years and years…

Anyway, it’s entitled “The strings I’ve strummed are wearing thin”. I hope I’ve not got my iambic pentameters mixed up with my alembic pentagons

“The strings I’ve strummed are wearing thin”

The strings I’ve strummed are wearing thin
The words I’ve sung feel like they’ve failed
The notes and chords that once echoed from within
Against an empty bar room wall now descaled
The practice of arpeggiated riffs somehow betrayed
Faced with silence in the midst of night
Reverberates no more against clefs unplayed
A wall of sound now noise so white
And yet in music, there may still lie some peace
Though sound is lost this passion still brings heat
The melody inside that catches quick won’t cease
Despite the ritardando slowing of the beat
A solo flight must glide on to take a bow
If harmony in chorus remains but a memory for now

Learning a new photographic lesson

Sometimes you have to step back from how you normally do something to find a way to do that thing better. For a year or more, I’ve tended to set my camera shutterspeed to about 1/1000th of a second for bird photography. It’s a lower limit on capturing the rapid wing movements of small birds flitting from tree to tree and on and off the feeders. It works quite well, but the lens aperture then has to be as large as possible to compensate for the short length of time the sensor is exposed to light. Even then, if it’s not a bright day or I’m in woodland, the photo will not expose well and I have to bump up the ISO (the sensor sensitivity) to get the shot.

Higher ISO equates to more noise if you’re shooting digital or more grain if you’re shooting on film. Grain can be atmospheric in monochrome stills of grizzled old actors and the like, but for a wildlife shot you really want crisp details and pinsharp eyes, otherwise it fails as a photo.

Enter the Youtube tutorials of wildlife photographer Paul Miguel. He’s got lots of free materials for photographers to explore and I’d watched one or two of them previously. But, then one about photographing small birds kept popping up as suggested viewing whenever I was on Youtube. So, I took a look…well, it couldn’t hurt and I might learn something…

…and so I did, he reiterates all the above about shutterspeed and aperture and ISO and lots more besides.

BUT.

And this is the re-learning bit for me. He points out that if your subject isn’t moving a lot you can use a much longer shutterspeed, which means a much lower ISO and so far less noise even on a dullish day. With a longer shutterspeed, you need a decent tripod with a gimbal or similar to balance and move a big lens smoothly for framing and/or beanbags or cushions to lie it on so that camera shake and thence blur don’t come into the equation on this side of the lens. With the camera on the beanbags, he suggests making the setup even more stable by pressing down firmly with your left hand while being gently poised and ready to depress the shutter with your right.

I set up a perch (a gnarly and grizzled old log in the middle of the lawn, scattered some bird food (mealworms and red millet seed) on it and around it, and tucked myself out of site with the camera on a couple of cushions on a low table.

Aperture was f/6.4, shutterspeed, t, 1/200th second, ISO was nice and low (set by the camera based on f and t at ISO500). I also rolled back the focal length from its maximum 600mm (900mm equiv on a 2/3 crop sensor) to around 400mm (600mm equiv) partly so I could get the whole bird in the frame (I was quite close to the log, about 4 metres away) but also so that the lens wasn’t at its limit (focus is usually a little softer on any zoom lens at maximum focal length. For a smaller bird I might have wanted to be a bit closer to get more of it in the frame, but that would be closer than the lenses minimum focusing distance so a short extension tube would be needed, see Miguel’s discussion on that point too, you lose about 1-stop of light with a 25mm extension on a 400…600mm type lens.

Anyway, an obliging Starling turned up for the feast and I fired off a few shots as it pecked and preened. Some were a bit blurry due to the bird’s movement, but a couple of them were pin sharp and showed off the wonderful iridescence – greens, bronzes, purples – of this species rather well.

Several nice comments came back once I’d shared one of the best of the photos on social media. Someone said it looked like a Faberge egg in avian form, others simply said “awesome”, “beautiful”, but the most flattering of the comments on my Instagram was from another David B who had this to say:

When they write the book on the best way to represent a Starling, they will reference this photo

So, here’s the photo, resized for the website and with my familiar dB/, decibel, logo.

Common Starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, are now actually quite rare in the UK, they’re on the RSPB’s red list. Winter numbers are swelled by visitors from Continental Europe and you may be lucky to see several thousand in murmurating flocks close to dusk. I’ve blogged about murmurations on several occasions here, please check the archives. Biggest of those I’ve seen locally counted at about 14000 birds over the reedbeds at Ouse Fen RSPB. In the summer months many of those flocks dissipate and the resident numbers fall significantly.

Nevertheless, we usually have a dozen or so in our garden coming and going on most days throughout the year and they nest in the spring locally in the gaps in the eaves of our houses, old woodpecker nests in trees, and other hollows. Peak numbers might be 20+ during the summer when the chicks have fledged and they will get through fat balls and birdfood very quickly. It can be quite expensive being a bird lover.

Covid answers

Which is the best vaccine against Covid?

What does “95 percent effective” mean?

Can you still get Covid if you have had the vaccine?

Does the vaccine stop you being infectious if you catch Covid?

Do you need to be vaccinated if you have had the disease?

Do the vaccines developed in 2020 work against the new variants that have emerged?

Answers from the experts this week in Scientific American here.

The frozen circle of Whooper life

The frozen circle of a Whooper’s life

Video by Grant Norman

Words, narration, and incidental music by David Bradley

Each winter, they arrive in their thousands. White, winter visitors flying in from the frozen north. Most will have come from their breeding grounds in Iceland. They navigation the east coast and sight land in North Norfolk. They will keep flying to their usual splashing grounds at Welney. The Whooper Swan.

The vast squadrons roost overnight on the waters, safe from foxes and other landlocked predators. When dawn breaks, they head for the fields. Where they will hoover up the green-top residues of beet and potato harvests. Before returning to their watery roosts each dusk.

In late 2020, the farmland around Welney and the Ouse Washes were floodier and floodier. The Whoopers were compelled to spread their wings and search farther afield. However, by January almost as soon as Fen Bridge Farm had harvested their sugarbeet. Several dozen arrived. The numbers have grown and grown.

Everyone in the village is asking everyone else about the honking and whooping. Is it geese? What are those birds? It’s amazing to see when you catch sight of them from the Lode or Les King Wood. By the end of January, almost 500 were on the flooded field there. Most of the greentops seem to have been purged from the land.They will most likely soon move on…to “pastures” new, although it’s worth noting that some are not even flying to roost these last two or three evenings, preferring to stay on the flooded farm at the edge of Cottenham.

We will have to wait and see whether they return to our Fen Edge Patch next winter. It will all depend on the flooding and the farming. Before the spring arrives though, this year’s birds will depart. Heading back to the frozen north for the next round in the circle of a Whooper’s life.

 

UPDATE: Numbers have been falling over the last few days. There were only four Whoopers on the frozen flood patch at the farm when we walked past today. They bobbed their heads and took flight as we walked past. Be interesting to know whether that’s the end of them on our fen edge patch for this year. It could well be…