Oliver Wood Photography

We are on the move, or rather Gill and the Boys’ n’ Girls are in the process of relocating to Cheshire and now we are all very excited about the prospect of acquiring a very large farm house with land and out buildings in Lach Denis not far from Northwich. I must say that I do admire Gill’s dynamism, she is one of those people that can spring surprises and galvanise action at the drop of a hat. Generally life is rather interesting when shared with someone that has the ability to make instant decisions and fearlessly take the main chance. Life at 40 something is too short for stifling and unimaginative fixations.
For the time being I will be staying in Prestbury and continuing with the 50/50 life style (50 percent here and 50 percent there as it might be) but the prospect of fifty fifty-ing it in rural Cheshire seems so much more attractive to me.

The farmhouse is huge, and although the out buildings are all in need of repairs between us we have enough skills and contacts to be able to make a pretty good job of restoration. Some of the outbuildings have been earmarked for Evan’s Recording Studio and yes I have visions of an SSL digital rig and Cheshire’s answer to the Wool Hall but initially it will be a mostly improvised set up. There will also be a darkroom and photo studio for the use of Wooscary photos and possibly yours truly too. The surplus bedrooms will accommodate other creative activities and an office for Lu’s free-lance music management and publicity ventures. The folks are already discussing the concept of turning one of the large second story rooms into a ‘snug’ or chill out space…. I really can’t wait to join in with all of these exciting projects, but of course, it is still dependent on the vagaries of the property market. But we seem to be able to achieve anything, and it is, after all, a year with a ‘7’ in it — know what I’m sayin? My ‘lucky’ move was all with the 7s and it has never felt like a mistake.

We are rapidly running out of server quota here at Oliver Wood photos so the previously mentioned switch to proper hosting on my .co.uk domain is a definite for 2007. I want to increase the scope of my Prestbury Gallery pages and start to upload some of the more abstract representations of the locality. Also, there is a pressing need to accelerate the rate at which new images and galleries are uploaded to this site, as I am quite keen to develop something of a weekly photo blog. The much larger server quota and easy access from anywhere afforded by proper hosting would make this project feel a lot more pertinent. I do tend to feel that I should prioritise my own personal site over flickr for all new photos, but it looks as though the latter will have to take priority in the short term.

Music of The Moment

Again I’m being extraordinarily eclectic in my tastes and creating some very odd sonic or should that be stylistic juxtapositions. Check this out for weirdness. Today we have, for your delectations, two old steamers from the coal age of funky jazzines and prog rock (art rock).

Roy Ayers ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine’    Henry Cow ‘Leg End’

I never realised until today that Roy Ayers ‘Sunshine’ dated from 1976! I always though it was much more up to date. But I suppose this would result from having my attentions blocked by punk at the time. Never the less, it is a timeless album—a timeless genre in fact, but I have to say that I only got this for that unmistakable ‘third eye’ track. It is ever so slightly weird sounding with some kind of primitive vocal processing and a very skewed melodic refrain underpinning the hook-like lyric ‘look to the sky, seeking to find; the third eye’— it was made for sampling before the concept was even thought of.

The 1973 album ‘Leg End’ by the one time Peel sessionistas Henry Cow is very much more obscure stuff but something of a coup for the prog rock genre. Which I gather is generating a lot of interest amongst the younger generations once again and not just ageing collectors.

This is a rather more timely approach to a sort of jazz modality than Roy Ayers ever youthful funk. But Leg End is a very entertaining discovery and reminder of just how ‘high brow’ rock music once was; back in the day when it wasn’t so unexpected for ground breaking bands to be made up of classically trained Cambridge music scholars such as Henry Cow.

Much of the stuff on this album is complex, but avoids the full on improv of their latter albums. It is however, rather reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s more experimental years with the Mothers of Invention only without the often silly comedic aspect spoiling what would otherwise be quite interesting adventures in a burgeoning genre. HC is much more subtle and much more English with a heavy dose of the then fashionable pastoral ethos. Fantastic indeed.

My first entry of 2007, I feel as though I should make something of this as I tend to be rather fond of the number seven and years with this number in them are often either very good or very remarkable for some reason. That’s not to say that 2006 was a bad year, in fact it has been one of the best for ages but seven should be even more — but then — things have got off to a miserable start and I hope this doesn’t presage Ill fortune for the rest of the year.

If the somewhat depressing bleakness of January, a feeling of emotional fragility, and the sense of general stasis wasn’t enough; my current woes have been exacerbated a hundred fold by the scum bag that wiped out my online bank account just last week. Yes, I know, like you I never thought I would become a victim of internet crime—but it has happened and rather a lot of money has disappeared into the either.

This has resulted in a tedious and long winded rigmarole with the bank and fraud squad and in someways I feel rather embarrassed about the whole thing. Even SEO consultants can become the victim of very cleverly engineered viruses but I’m sure my fellow techi colleagues quietly think that I may have been inappropriately negligent or inappropriately non techi in some ways—if you catch my drift. The main consolation here is that no offending viruses were found on my machine, this doesn’t account for the possibility of a self deleting keylogger though.

The bank helpfully advised that those of us running the more up to date operating systems are much more likely to become the victim of very cleverly engineered key loggers or data mining Trojan viruses. Virtually all of the major ‘threats’ are specifically engineered for the most up to date, or potentially lucrative operating systems. So there is a very good argument for reverting to good old Win98SE or even Mac or Linux.

But alas It’s not all doom on gloom tha’ knows, and yes its not like me to be ‘down’ and certainly not in any defeatist of silly ‘fatalistic’ manner. That existential Sagittarian optimism always makes me feel totally in control no matter what happens, (even if the juxtaposition of an astrological category and a scientific philosophy seem like an oxymoron par excellence) I just dance off to the next thing completely secure in the knowledge that I am master of my own destiny and choose all courses in life according to my own tastes and preferences — The joy!.

So some moderately pleasing discoveries were made last week, I noticed with the help of various utilities at work that this website now has between 875 and 919 listings across the top search engines and my optimisation is starting to kick in. But I also happened to chance on an incoming link from Mancubist, an arts and cultural directory for Manchester. I was completely oblivious to this—what a joy when someone actually notices things and appreciates what we attempt to do. I have put a reciprocal link on my dedicated links page, and thanks to anyone else that may have been responsible for the submission..

But now it’s time to say enough of this computer stuff—– It’s time to stop! Three paragraphs of computer nonsense and it’s the weekend! It’s not cleaver, and it’s not quite the kind of self reflexive discourse we want here at Oliver Wood Photos…….thanx very much!!