It’s another bloody bus story! Actually the bus part of the story features fairly minimally because the bus I was on – heading back home after a long day’s work – broke down and we all had to get off it while an engineer came from somewhere miles away to try and fix the problem.
It was a half an hour wait for the next bus and the engineer would be at least half an hour before he turned up. I decided that because I was only a 15 minute walk away from my house that it would be a good idea to walk the rest of the journey. So I headed off the bus with everyone else and started walking.

I was quite glad to be getting away from my bus companions because there was a number of small, noisy children with parents who were either very apathetic or very deaf; so I wasn’t bothered about having to walk, in fact I was looking forward to it because it was a good excuse to use my Satnav
(see this post if you were unfortunate and missed my lovely satnav post).

I’d only taken a few steps when the bus driver shouted at me to stop. I turned back round. “You can’t walk” he shouted, “you’ll have to wait till the next bus”. I was a bit confused by this statement, given that, in my opinion, I’d been doing a pretty good approximation of walking before he’d stopped me; it’d been taking me from A-to-B so I assume I’D been doing it right. I explained to him – over the increasingly louder screaming children – that I only lived about fifteen minutes walk away and that I knew the way back home. The bus driver protested, saying it was too dangerous for me to walk. I reciprocated by pointing out that I’d walked the route before, I knew the way and I wanted to get home in fifteen minutes rather than 45 minutes, especially since I was getting pretty desperate for the toilet. I then cheerily thanked him for his concern and assured him that I’d be fine and started to walk off again. The bus driver shouted at me to stop. I turned my head around and shouted back that I was fine and continued to walk. one of the waiting bus passengers ran up to me and took hold of me. I tried to once again assure the bus driver and now the passenger that I would be fine but the passenger cut across me: “If you walk then I’ll call the police!” The police? I started laughing at the absurdity of all this and once again attempted to explain that I was fine and that this was starting to get a bit over-the-top. The passenger’s response to this was to take hold of me with even greater force and say in a very sympathetic tone, “look, you’re blind son”. I didn’t point out the paradox of that statement; instead I told him that I was fully aware that I was blind. Sadly, he didn’t then immediately let go of me and say, “o right, sorry, well just as long as you know; I’ll let you go on your way now then”.

What could I do? By this point, other passengers were joining the scene and some screaming children came over to see what was going on. I should have stood my ground which I suppose is actually exactly what I did do in a very literal sense because I didn’t move. I ended up waiting for half an hour with the screaming children and a load of very condescending passengers, who tried to take my mind off my aggravation at the situation by distracting me with a litany of questions about my blindness: “how long have you been blind?” “how much can you see?” “how did you become blind?” “how many fingers am I holding up?” “where’s your carer?” … So I was essentially held hostage and then interrogated under the torture of bladder pain.

Then to add insult to injury, an old age pensioner (not one of the young ones under 60 – an old age pensioner) turned to the waiting crowd and announced, “actually, I only live ten minutes away so I might as well walk home rather than pointlessly waiting for twenty minutes”. The crowd parted and let him through as he nonchalantly walked past me and headed off whistling in the direction that I was going in which was apparently “too dangerous”. Then another man spoke up and said that he too would rather walk than wait and again the crowd parted and let him walk in the same direction. To add further insult to injury, this man was walking with a crutch.

Fortunately I did eventually get home, although I was a bit concerned that they might not have let me get off the bus by myself and insisted I ordered a taxi to take me the 215 yards from the bus stop to my house (I really am too obsessed with the Satnav).

When I did get home I was so relieved to be finally able to go to the toilet and far too hungry to brood too much about the whole situation. I do however feel annoyed and upset that out of a bus load of passengers, not one of them seemed to think that it was completely inappropriate and ignorant to refuse me the right to walk a fifteen minute route just because it happened to involve a main road, despite my confidence and anything I said.

I’ve told this story to a few people and all of my friends think it’s a bit out-of-order, although one old woman I met on the bus afterwards who was present at the scene said “that was really nice of them to be so concerned; real community spirit”. I wanted to punch her.

I hope that you can see why I’m so appalled by what happened and you’re not thinking like that old woman and those passengers. This to me indicates the very apparent existence of the negative stereotypes about blind people that indicate why there are so many unemployed blind people.

A few days ago I was crossing a road and an old woman pulled me back. “no! you’re going the wrong way!” she shrieked in my ear. I informed her that I was not going the wrong way, but she continued to pull at me and shrieked again with more defiance “no, you don’t go that way!” I asked her what on earth she was going on about. “I’ve seen you do this journey before and you always turn right; you don’t cross this road. Come on, I’ll take you the right way!” I hope you appreciate that I do try and be as polite as I can in these situations when what I really want to do is punch these people. I explained to her that I usually go the other way because I usually go somewhere different to the place that I’m going to today, so therefore today I need to go a different way to get to the different place. There was a pause, then she said, “o, Ok”. I thought that she would now let go of me and I could be on my way but she kept hold of me and insisted that she took me across the road, then persisted to insist that she walked the whole journey with me, holding on to me and walking very slowly. Before she eventually left me she said to me in a sympathetic tone, “I understand what it’s like; my dad was just like you”. She then gave me a sweet and walked off leaving me to feel confused and a bit shit. She might have meant that I was like her dad because we are both extremely good looking, intelligent or amazingly funny, but I think it’s more likely that she meant that we were both blind, and this obviously makes us identical.

I hope you can see why this riles me so much. If this happened once in a while then it might be Ok but there’s always something every day that suggests that people think I’m incapable of functioning on anything remotely resembling a “normal” level. If you’ve read my other posts about various problems with getting work because of people’s attitudes to blindness then hopefully you can see why my aggravation compounds. However, if I don’t want people to view me purely as “blind” then I suppose I should probably stop writing about it; so here ends my rant.

In other news: The new series of the young’uns podcast is coming very soon; This means regular Young’uns podcast episodes. I’m planning on recording podcasts at all the festivals we do so that should be a really good summer run. I’ve also put down the satnav and made a start on the next Pick and Mix

Thanks for reading; I know it’s only because I’m blind! Byeeeeee!

I’m writing this blog post from a really hot bus – that’s “hot” as in the temperature not “hot” as in sexually alluring, I’m not particularly attracted to busses; well, apart from the 93 from Middlesbrough to Scarborough, but then who wouldn’t be? As regular readers will know-ever the optimist-I tend to write my blog entries from busses on the way to and from work, which gives me plenty of writing time since I spend 4 hours a day on them. Although I haven’t blogged for a while, I have still been doing a lot of bus travel. The reason for my lack of bus based blogging is to do with a newly acquired gadget that I’ve been using addictively. It’s a satnav. It may seem a little strange that I should be using a Satnav at all given that I am blind and can’t drive, never mind the fact that I use it on a bus, but this particular satnav is especially designed for blind people. Rather than the satnav voice just telling you to turn left or right like the boring satnavs you bland sighted people use, blind satnavs are much more exciting; not only do they give directions but they announce all the street names and the types of buildings you pass. On a practical level, the satnav has in all honesty revolutionised my life. I can now travel to new places all by myself without needing to know the route or continuously ask people for directions. It also means that I don’t have to ask people to tell me when we get to the bus stop I want to get off at, and any technological device that reduces the need to talk to pesky people is obviously very worthwhile. To try and put the amazingness of the satnav into perspective: I visited my friend Ben recently in York. By the help of the satnav I located Newcastle train station, then got off the train in York and walked a 20 minute walk in a completely unfamiliar area to be successfully guided to Ben’s house. I can even record my own landmarks such as bus stops so that I know exactly how to get to places that aren’t on the standard map installed on the satnav.

So it does have immense practical value. However, I must confess that I have been using it needlessly to the point of it being an addiction. When I’m being driven to places by a friend or in a taxi, I will turn on the satnav and listen intently to the names of the streets. During this quality time with the satnav I tend not to join in with conversation around me and ignore what people are saying to me. I seem to find street names more interesting than the nonsense my friends go on about. I suppose it’s the thrill of the whole thing-the adventure: Will we turn left on Bernard street or right on to Albert Street? I can feel my heart rate increase as we get closer to the turn, as the anticipation builds. I’m sure you all know the feeling. Just writing about it makes me feel excited! It’s not just the street names that I get though (although this would be enough excitement for anyone) I also get the speed, distance travelled, distance from my various landmarks (such as my pre-programmed bus stops) and of course the all important altitude.

But my addiction doesn’t stop there. I see no reason why I should stop addictively using my satnav just because of a small factor like the fact that I’m not actually travelling. The makers of the satnav have created their product with the crazed addict in mind. I can sit in the comfort of my own home while stationary, without the need for GPS coverage and replay the routes that I have previously travelled using the virtual mode. So I can be sitting in my home in Hartlepool and relive the rollercoaster of a journey that was the trip from my house to the venue that I did a gig at in Peterborough a fortnight ago: Every twist and every turn, every rise and drop in altitude, the increases and decreases in speed is mine to relive now and forever, over and over again. When I have children, instead of bedtime stories, we can go on virtual adventures together, reliving journey’s taken in year’s gone by: “This is your mother walking down the isle at 2.7 miles per hour at an altitude of 50 feet. She walks the 18 yard walk then makes an 172 degrees turn to face me”.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. I’m not merely limited to reliving the epic voyages taken in my past; I can also explore new routes that I’ve never taken before without having to actually bother leaving the house. I can programme in any destination and any starting point, which means I could travel from Buckingham Palace to the Blackpool tower without having to leave my house. Genius!

I must apologise for anyone who has travelled with me over the last couple of weeks for not listening to anything they’ve been saying and interrupting their attempts to converse with me with a cavalcade of stats about our speed, distance altitude, the names of the streets and the distance we are at any given time from any given bus stop in the area. It’s come as a bit of a shock to me, but not everyone seems to share my enthusiasm for these comprehensive commentaries-the continuously updating unexpurgated minutiae of the journey.

Perhaps I should mention the name of the Satnav and then this will constitute a professionally written review of the product. The company might even use this blog post as part of their literature. I see know reason why not.
It’s the Trekker Breeze from Humanware.

Unfortunately, the satnav addiction has not only affected my ability to blog but also my work on the next David Eagle’s Pick and Mix which I have yet to start.

This is David Eagle, travelling at a speed of 32 miles per hour at an altitude of 72 ft, signing off. O no! I can’t stop myself! Help!

In 2010, The Young’uns’ Sean Cooney committed a terrible act that we really can’t talk about. His sentence was to organise a folk event as part of Hartlepool’s tall ships festival alongside Hartlepool borough Council with oodles of red tape and risk assessment forms. Sean took this great responsibility like a man and did Hartlepool and the folk community proud, hosting an incredible event with an amazing list of performers. This Young’uns Podcast aims to capture the joys of the festival through recorded performances, interviews and various random happenings that took place over the festival.

There’s music from Polish Shanty group
Brasy,
world folk from
Sheelanagig,
Mrs Trevor’s Deep Freeze Secrets,
the Askew Sisters,
Paul martin and Ian Mckoen. Plus there’s world-class kazoo playing from a children’s marching band; find out what folk musicians get up to late at night; we expose the folk group that have launched an attack on the blind; Michael Hughes dices with the law; The Young’uns get involved in some interesting collaborations, and of course there’s the obligatory smattering of puns. I could go on, but what’s the point when you can find out for yourself.

Click here to listen.
Click Here to Download.

Remember, you can catch up with the previous 102 podcasts
here
how about listening to all 103 of them in one sitting, perhaps for charity?

Thanks to everyone who came to see
The Young’uns
in Peterborough; we had a very enjoyable night. Thanks also to Toby wood who wrote this review of the gig, which is a completely accurate and well-considered critique of the proceedings:

“I would love to be a fly on the windscreen of the car transporting to a gig the three chaps who comprise The Young ‘Uns. (I should emphasise that I would hope that my fly incarnation would ideally be on the inside, not the outside!). The reason for this somewhat odd entreaty is that I could spend a few hours listening to Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes practising as they speed along.
The Young ‘Uns are in essence an a cappella group, hence the ease of being able to practise in the car with a fly for company. Just as well the trio don’t play harp, double bass and grand piano!
Along with friends and a healthy audience I was fortunate enough to see Cooney, Eagle and Hughes at Baston Folk Club on a Friday night, as opposed to the club’s customary Thursday. Oh the thrill of a change of night – we do know how to enjoy ourselves! I write ‘fortunate’ because, according to details on their website, The Young ‘Uns only seem to perform live two or three times a month, possibly due to the fact that they all have ‘proper’ jobs as community artist, producer and teacher. Indeed should Mr Hughes (as I presume his teacher name to be) ever get fed up of the teaching life he could easily get a job as a doppelganger for Marcus Brigstocke, so physically reminiscent is he of the comedian. Sean’s own website is so full of educational and cultural activity that no wonder The Young ‘Uns don’t gig that much. Want a Tall Ships Folk Festival organising? Then Sean’s yer man! And as for David – well just type his name into YouTube and you’ll find a wealth of humorous clips and quips as well as lengthy ‘Pick and Mix’ sessions. In short individual talent abounds.
The group performed mostly traditional shanties and homages to Hartlepool but all in a way that had a modern touch. Indeed a James Taylor song made a brief appearance alongside my own personal favourite, Sean’s ‘Jenny Waits For Me’, a poignant tale of men at sea.
I took a while to try to work out why the trio actually worked and then it clicked. Individually they appear so diverse, singular and individual yet as a threesome they blend seamlessly together, each appreciating the other’s strengths without becoming competitive or domineering (a sort of folkie Crosby, Stills and Nash). This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that they can spend two or three minutes in a comedic, laugh out loud introduction and then suddenly swoop into a song that requires concentration and even a little gravitas. They simultaneously revere the material and recognise that pleasing an audience is paramount.
The Young ‘Uns are one of those acts that’s best seen live. Their quirky and enthusiastic mix of seriousness and laughter is infectious.
Just one gripe! I’m just not keen on the name ‘The Young ‘Uns’. What will happen when they hit fifty (assuming they are still playing together)? Will they become ‘The Middle-aged ‘Uns’ or ‘The Receding and Increasingly Podgy ‘Uns’. Perhaps they ought to cross that bridge when they get to it.”

Yes, very accurate and well-considered.

So what will the next project be? I’m planning on starting work on the next Pick and Mix in the next few days so perhaps it will be that, though I imagine there’ll be two or three long rambling blogs written from busses in the meantime.

So there I was, just ten minutes ago, standing by the sandwiches and wraps stand in the Marks and Spencers shop in the Trowell service station just outside Nottingham about to purchase a Hoisin Duck wrap when
I had the comedy equivalent of the Eureka moment. There’s just no telling when genius will strike – in the bath or in the Marks and Spensers sandwiches and Wraps isle. So here’s my joke:

I have a friend who is totally blind and totally deaf. He has very poor orientation with no sense of direction; he’s always crashing into stuff and falling over. However, he has this uncanny ability to locate checkout tills. As soon as we’re in a shop he moves at great speed and with complete ease in the direction of the checkout till. I asked him “how do you do it?” to which he replied, “Well, I suppose it’s because I’m counter intuitive”.

I’m currently in a car with my fellow
Young’uns,
heading back home after a gig in Surrey. Gardeners questions is on radio 4, and so we’re driving through the streets with the windows down, Gardeners Questions on full volume,
blasting out conversations about Couch grass, Pine weed and the best way to propagate Delphiniums. That’s the way we roll, o yeah!

The Hartlepool tall ships podcast is coming even sooner than it was when I mentioned that it was “coming soon” the last time. I’ll be back with it in the next few days.

I dedicate this blog post to Jamey the security guard at Gateshead bus Station who reads the blog. The strange thing about writing a blog is that I get really surprised and taken aback when someone says they read it, even though the whole point of writing it is for people to read, as well as to satisfy my ego obviously. Also, people at work have now discovered the blog and my Youtube videos; This has led to a few interesting encounters where people come up to me and make references to things in my videos and posts. So rather than just saying “hey I watched your
Bleating Love Parody on Youtube”,
they will come up to me and say something like “I can’t believe he shot the poor sheep”. As I’m in work mode, living under my work-based Alta ego Davis Eagles
(see this post if you’re confused)
I’m not really expecting this and I find the whole thing a bit baffling especially when I’m in a group of people who are completely oblivious as to why a colleague has come up to me and said “I can’t believe he shot the poor sheep”. Jamy the security guard at Gateshead bus station walked up to me a few days ago and greeted me by saying rather loudly in front of a group of very bemused passengers, “I love your Mongol Sex post mate”. People started quickly inching away from us, a bit fearful, unsure of what he could possibly mean by “my Mongol Sex Post”.
I then had to explain to the frightened crowd that he was referring to
a blog post I’d written which was perfectly innocent,
but I don’t think this really placated anyone. So hello to you Jamey and to anyone else associated with Gateshead bus station.

Thanks for reading, bye!

In Google webmaster tools, you can see what searches people do in order to find and click on your website. The most common search terms are things like “David Eagle” and
“the Young’uns”
but down near the bottom of the list is the search term “Mongol sex”.
Presumably this is due to
this blog post,
where I wrote (on the subject of Shortwave radio):
“you’re on the shortwave band and that slight touch can tune you into a completely different station and into a completely different world. One moment you’re listening to an enraged American evangelist damning you to hell unless you send him money, then you touch the dial ever so slightly and you’re listening to a French radio drama with Lesbian sex scenes; then the sound of a Mongolian throat singer, belting out the popular Mongolian hits of the day. …”

I can just imagine some sweaty pervert (o god, I hope no one finds me by searching for “sweaty pervert”) breathing heavily over his laptop, anticipating some hot Mongolian porn, finding my website in Google search with the following words shown:
“… Lesbian sex scene .. Mongolian throat …”.
then clicking to see what this Lesbian sex scene Mongolian throat website is all about, only to see a picture of my face and a blog post about Vick Reeves and smelly pirates with hairy knees. O well, you never know, perhaps there are people out there with a sexual interest in Vick Reaves, smelly pirates and hairy knees. I look forward to more revelations from Google in the near future.

Hartlepool’s Tall Ships Young’uns Podcast coming soon!

“Pirates”, “pilgrims”, “pub” and “philosophy” are four words that begin with the same consonant and so I suppose is an example of alliteration; however the word philosophy does not begin with a hardened P sound and so is it really alliteration in the true sense? Thank god for the Internet; I could probably find this out relatively quickly. In the olden days we’d have to sit and watch hundreds of
QI
episodes in the vain hope of finding the answer. I may do an Internet search to get some information about this and include my findings at the end of this post. You’ll have to read on though to find out. Now I’ve got you interested.

I’m writing this post from a bus. I know this will be great news to you all; I tried writing my last blog post from a different location to the bus but I’m sure you’ll all agree that I write much better when I’m blogging from a bus. There’s a certain poetry about my bus posts; a certain je ne sais quoi maybe – I don’t know. Before I actually write about what I’d planned to write about, I should probably set the scene a little bit; it might explain why this post might turn out to be a bit rubbish.

As regular readers will know, I usually write from the x9 bus. Each morning I get the 36 bus from Hartlepool to Bilingham and then the x9 from Billingham to Gateshead. I usually set off from my house at 7:30 and arrive in Gateshead (where I work) at about 9:15.
I have managed to inadvertently train my brain to associate work with blessed relief. Invariably, by the time I get to work, I am utterly desperate for the toilet; I run into the building with a wide grin on my face, race across to my office, throw down my bags and coat and rush down the corridor in the direction of the toilet, panting and shouting “thank god, I’m here!” Most of the staff probably think I’m a crazed workaholic and this is probably why they avoid me, but in actuality I’m just a man with a very full bladder, exulted by the fact that I can finally relieve my liquid burden – which is a very poetic way of saying “have a piss”; I’m so poetic.

The first reason this blog post might be rubbish (although it’s going pretty well so far I’m sure you’ll agree) is because I am even more desperate for the toilet than usual. The reason for this is because I’m running late. I set off from my house at the same time that I usually do; in fact it was slightly earlier than normal. Either the 36 bus didn’t turn up or it had come early. I was not late. Nevertheless, the bus didn’t come and I had to get the next one, meaning I had missed my connecting bus. Because I’d been stood at a bus stop for 30 minutes as opposed to the usual two minutes, the cold had gone to my bladder and I started to need the toilet. Unfortunately, because I’d missed the x9 bus from Billing ham, I would now have to travel even further on the 36 to Norton to catch the x10. Unfortunately again, I have another 20 minute wait in Norton before the x10 comes, meaning another 20 minutes for the cold to effect my bladder, increasing my need for the toilet. What makes the situation even more frustrating is that Norton is in the opposite direction to Gateshead, so I’ve had to travel further away from the place I want to be and then come back again in the opposite direction. I set off from my house at 7:30; I was stood at a bus stop, desperate for the toilet, in the cold about 50 minutes later from leaving my house, further away from the place I wanted to get to than I was when I was lying in bed this morning. I’m eventually starting to head in the right direction again after one hour and 15 minutes of setting off from my house.

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest. I hope you managed to follow all that. I imagine that in the future, perhaps when I’m dead, there will be throngs of David Eagle worshipers making pilgrimages, setting off early in the mornings to travel the famed route as detailed in this blog post. Congregations from all over the world will set off from my house – which has now been turned into a David Eagle themed place of worship – and stand at the relevant bus stops – which are still standing exactly as they did in my day because they have been deemed as buildings of historic interest and are protected under heritage law. The congregation will drink a special potion that makes the drinker desperate for the toilet – to be honest drinking lots of water would have had just the same effect but the potion makers got in on the act and started profiting on the back
Of my name; this makes me very angry, as I specifically wrote in an authoritative and widely quoted blog post about the evils of false profits (you see what I did there?) The pilgrims will eventually – after a large amount of tedious bus travel – arrive at my place of work which has also been turned into a place of worship. They will run into the building with broad grins on their faces, race through the corridors towards the toilets shrieking ecstatically “thank god, we’re here!” They then all pile into the toilet and what happens after that is probably best left to your imagination, but this is something else about the whole affair that upsets me, and I do not condone that sort of behaviour in my name.

Anyway, last Tuesday we, is in
The Young’uns
recorded our duet with
Vick Reeves
about smelly pirates with hairy knees. It went very well. I feel really sorry for the studio staff: the producers and technicians working on the project had to spend a whole day in a recording studio, recording different musicians and actors and the Young’uns doing take after take, singing the same one minute song: “I’m a smelly pirate, with hairy knees” etc etc, over and over again.

I suppose I better explain a bit more about this song and the film since all I’ve mentioned so far is that my folk group are singing a song with Vick Reeves about smelly pirates with hairy knees. The project is a film animation that has a budget of £3’0000000 – I’m sure that at least a third of that money was spent on the smelly pirate song. I think that the story and the songs are all written by children. The film is animated and produced by the film company who are responsible for Wallace and Grommet – not responsible for them in terms of their welfare, making sure they’ve got enough cheese; I suppose you knew what I meant. They also have celebrities doing various voices, such as
David Walliams,
Harry Hill,
Miranda Hart,
Catherine Tate
and of course Vick Reeves.
O, and, of course, The young’uns.
The project isn’t complete yet and so I’ve not heard the finished smelly Pirate song but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

An accurate barometer of the Young’uns’ success and popularity is the amount of paperwork we have to sign. When we first started out doing this folk music lark, we would just do gigs in pubs in front of who ever would listen. As time has gone on, we’ve had to sign contracts for performances, appearances and recordings; these contracts have grown exponentially both in frequency and content. We did a gig recently at the Sage theatre in Gateshead. We were one of a number of acts on the bill that night, which was a folk against fascism event. The folk against fascism concept derives from the comments made by
British National Party
leader
Nick Griffin
who suggested that bnp members should go to folk clubs because they might be a good place for recruiting members. This inference that folk clubs and folk music was in anyway associated with the beliefs of the bnp was met with outrage by the folk fraternity including many folk musicians and many high-profiled singers who made anti-fascists speeches and countered the idea that British folk music was fascist simply because it was British, celebrating tradition and history. Anyway, we were only on stage at the sage for about 15 minutes and it took us longer than that to read and sign the various contracts: the health and safety contract, image rights, copyright etc. The copyright document was interesting. You have to write the names of all the songs you’re going to perform that night – which is a bit of an issue since we normally don’t decide this until we’re on stage. You then have to write down the name of the song writer for each of the songs so that they can get the money from
PRS.
This is a bit of a fruitless exercise as the majority of the songs we sing are either written by people, who have been dead for centuries, are people who aren’t on prs, or the songs are traditional folk songs
and the writer is unknown. If this trend continues and we have to sign even longer and more ludicrously convoluted contracts before we can actually do a gig then we might have to start increasing our fee to compensate for the large amount of time taken up by the contracts.

After the recording, we went to the pub to celebrate the success of this soon to be historic song. Just before we left the pub, there was a group of people who started filing in. One of them approached us and asked: “here for the philosophy in pubs night lads?” He was disappointed when we informed him that we had no idea what a philosophy in pubs night was and that unfortunately we had to scoot off and would not be joining in; apparently they want new blood in the group. I asked what philosophy in pubs was all about and apparently it’s a group of people who meet each fortnight in the pub, take a vote about what subject to talk about, then philosophise. I decided to do an interview with the group which we’ll feature on a future
Young’uns podcast
episode along with the pirate song.

Anyway, this brings me to the final paragraph and now you know the reason for the four p words in the blog post title. According to my Internet searching, words still count as being alliterated even if the consonants don’t sound the same, so “Pirates with pneumonia in pubs philosophising” is alliteration even if they don’t all start with hardened P sounds. Anyway, the bus has finally arrived at Gateshead and so I can finally go to work and enjoy making a P sound of my very own – or should that be “pee” sound (o I’m so poetic!)

All of my blog posts this year have been composed from busses. I’ve decided to write this post somewhere different than a bus to see if it alters the way I write at all. See what you think. I am writing this post at the Sage theatre in Gateshead, in the cafe area, about to do a rehearsal.
The Young’uns
got an invitation to be on the soundtrack of a film that apparently features
David Walliams,
Vick Reeves,
Catherine Tate,
Miranda Hart
and
Harry Hill.
Apparently we’re singing a duet with Vick Reeves about stinky pirates with hairy knees; as you do.
I don’t think we’ll actually be meeting Vick Reeves; I think he’s recording his bit in London. I’m sure he’ll be very disappointed when he finds out that we’ll be recording our parts in the North East,.

So that’s the “Vick Reeves, hairy knees” part of the title explained. The weakest link” part is to do with a radio link that I heard while in a taxi last Friday afternoon. It was the link just before the news, and the presenter obviously wanted to try and do a clever segway between the last song (the Scissor Sisters and I don’t Feel like Dancing) into the news bulletin where the main story was the overthrowing of president Mubarak in Egypt. I don’t have a recording of the actual broadcast and so I’ve re-enacted it for you with just a tiny bit of extemporisation and exageration.

On a “weakest link” theme, my friend Ben went to Anne Robinson’s house on New Year eve as part of his band who were asked to perform for the guests. Unfortunately they didn’t use “the weakest link” theme as a riff throughout their songs which is what I would have done.

And you thought I was just an ordinary bloke. O no, I’ve got friends who play gigs at Anne Robinson’s house, and my band are singing a song with Vick Reeves about Stinky pirates with hairy knees.

We record the song for this film on Tuesday so I’ll tell you more about it in my next post.

It was around this time last year when myself and
fellow Young’un Sean Cooney
were working on a community arts project, going into some of Hartlepool’s primary schools to teach children about the history of Hartlepool. Regular listeners to the
Young’uns podcast
Will be aware that Sean works as a community artist, going into schools to teach sea Shanties and traditional folk songs.

The Young’uns
have been involved in a number of educational projects, teaching children about the history of Hartlepool and working with the children to create songs about what they have learned. We also take the children to visit old people’s homes and local churches to meet with Hartlepool’s older residents. The children ask questions about how their home town used to be and what has changed. This is obviously a valuable experience for the children and a tremendously rewarding one for the older residents, who relish the opportunity to impart stories about their own childhood.

At the start of 2010, Sean was commissioned to work on a project that taught primary school children about the history of Old Hartlepool; They were then helped to write songs, poems and stories about what they had learned. The children also interviewed Hartlepool’s older residents. Sean also got them to act in a traditional folk play known as a Mummers’ play. I was commissioned to record the whole thing and compile it all on to a cd.

We will be recording new Young’uns podcasts soon but I thought that since we’ve got loads of material we haven’t released yet, it would be sensible
To release these podcasts first before recording new episodes. Next week, we release a podcast that covers the Hartlepool Tall ships festival that occurred last summer, but this week we release the cd that covers 2010’s community arts project: Hild’s Tales: stories of old Hartlepool through music, drama and oral history.

This wasn’t originally intended as a Young’uns podcast but as a cd which was sent to the funding body who supported the project as evidence that we were doing our job; so you’ll hear a much more serious David Eagle than you normally would.
Click here to listen,
click here to download.

Well, you can’t say that this blog doesn’t have variety;
My last post was a DJ mix
and this week it’s a community arts project featuring primary school children. What will the next post bring? Will I be on a bus? Find out, soon!

So here it is, the first ever David Eagle’s Pick and Mix, just in time for the new Chinese year – the year of the rabbit, which should be manner from heaven for the promotions team at Ann Summers.

56 songs in a 40 minute mix. A DJ set that is designed to celebrate the universality of music: no genre dictations or restriction about the time period of the music. This is not a DJ
Set for the club; this is a DJ set for your ears, for your soul. I’m not trying to impassion you to char char slide to my beats, or wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care, or “oo oo” to the rhythm. I’ve just realised that I’m probably coming across as a pretentious snob, but the point I’m trying to make is that this is a mix designed for the music fan: someone who doesn’t bass their music preferences purely on a cultural identity – because a certain group of people say that a certain song or artist is “cool” or “the latest thing”.
My last blog post
was a fairly extensive explanation of why I wanted to release this project, so I think the best thing to do now is to just give you the links to listen and download and hopefully enjoy what I’ve put together.

I’ve provided a full tracklist of the music featured in the mix. There is also a link to a free Spotify playlist that contains most of the tracks in the mix. Not all the tracks are hosted on Spotify but I thought it would be good to provide a playlist with those songs that Spotify does have because a lot of the tracks are only featured in the mix for short periods of time and are generally mixed with other songs. Plus if you don’t enjoy my mixing, you can hopefully at least hear some quality music that you might have not heard before.

So then, here it is: David Eagle’s Pick and Mix: Episode 1.
Click here to listen
Click here to download.

And now on to the tracklist:

Eastenders theme
Sergei Prokofiev – Montagues and Capulets
Xzibit – X
J-Kwon – Tipsy
nina simone – feeling good
Bentley rhythm ace – bentley’s gonna sort you out
James Brown – I Feel Good
Chemical Brothers – Music Response
Flanders and Swann – The Wompom
Pendulum – Slam
Queen – We will Rock You
C. C. S – Whole Lotta Love (Top of the Pops theme)
Faith No More – Epic
Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out
Missy Elliott – Get Ur Freak On
Jimi Hendrix – Voodoo Child
Negativland – Moments to Remember Raining Hard etc
Dream Theater – Home
The Flashbulb – Kirlian Shores
System of a Down – Arto
The Offspring – Pay the Man
Bjork – It’s Oh So Quiet
Venetian Snares – Boarded Up Swan Entrance
The Flashbulb – My Life of Loving Ghosts
House of Pain – Jump Around
Bubba Sparxxx – Ugly
Kid Carpet – Jump
OPM – Heaven is a Halfpipe
CKY – Quite Bitter Beings
Papa Roach – Last Resort
Daft Punk – Oh Yeah
Soulwax – Too Many Djs
Aquabats – I fell Asleep on my Arm
Korn – Freak on a Leash
dizzee rascal – Fix up, Look Sharp
RUN-DMC – Walk This Way
Justin Timberlake – Like I Love You
Focus – Sylvia
Max Tundra – Labial
The Beatles – A Day in the Life
Dusty Springfield – Son of a preacher man
Buffalo Springfield – For What Its Worth
Skee-lo- I Wish
The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
Kelis – Milkshake
High Rankin – Dont Carry On Like A Rude Boy when Daddy’s got a Yacht
Pendulum – Set me on Fire
BT – Every Other Way
Crosby Stills and Nash – Carry On”
Gorillaz – 5/4
Canned Heat – On the Road Again
Booker T & The MGS – Green Onions
The Mojo Men – She’s My Baby
Kansas – Carry on Wayward son
Muse – Knights of Cydonia
Wolfmother – Woman

————

You can hear a free Spotify playlist
Featuring many of the tracks in the mix
Here.

That’s all for now. I already have the next mix entirely planned out in my head, but I think the next project might be the first
Youngun’s Podcast
of 2011. I’ll be back with a blog post (probably written from a bus) very soon.

When I was around six years old, my nana worked in a news agents. My brothers and I would often go there when she was working. She probably harboured the grossly inaccurate illusion that we went there to see her, whereas the reality was that we went for the free sweets. Working in the news agents, she got a sweet allowance – these were decadent times. My brothers would always have a systematic approach to sweet picking; they had specific preferences, but I would always go for the Pick and Mix option and select sweets at random. Being blind, I was able to put my hand into a jar and put a sweet into the bag without having much of an idea as to what it was. I loved the surprise element: putting my hand into my random bag of sweets, unaware of what I was about to receive. Would it be
chocolate, candy, something liquoricey, fruity or an explosion of fizz? I loved the variety, the contrasts of taste, texture, shape and size.

Nowadays I don’t really eat sweets, but I do listen to a lot of music. Music today is what sweets were to me when I was six.
Often my approach to listening to music is the same as my approach was for making a Pick and Mix. I have a large music library: thousands of tracks in every genre from any period of time. By pressing the shuffle button on the player, I get a randomized selection from my library. I also use Napster which sometimes adds tracks to the playlist that it thinks I might like, based on the kind of music I have in my library. As I have every type of music in my library, Napster usually gets very confused and starts playing any old rubbish, assuming that just because I happen to like one specific NSYNC track for its production, that I will inevitably like to listen to a Westlife hit. Now and again however it does present me with an undiscovered gem. The experience is the same one that I used to get from pick and mixes when I was younger, only now it’s with music.

When I was about ten, my dad discovered this local record shop that sold old second hand vinyl and cassettes. He would sometimes go in their and brows to see what they had. This was in my opinion the perfect opportunity for me to spend my pocket money. I had no idea what I was looking for. I taped all the songs I wanted which were in the charts from the radio, (along with a few of my favourite time checks of course). There was a section of the shop that sold records and tapes for
£1 or less. I would immediately head to this part of the store and select a handful of records. I had no idea what was on the records, I would just choose randomly. I would then take them straight to the counter, without letting dad see, and buy them. The reason I didn’t want dad to see was because I didn’t want him to know what I’d got before I did. It had to be a total surprise.
I wouldn’t know what the record was until it was playing.

I loved the whole experience: sitting cross legged on my bedroom floor with a pile of records, taking the record out of the sleeve, putting it on the player and then dropping down the arm to reveal …

Rolf Harris, singing about Jake the Peg with his extra leg. I’d never heard that song or of Rolf Harris before that moment. I remember hearing it and instantly falling in love with it. It felt as if I’d had a kind of epiphany. One minute earlier, I was a stupid, naive ten year old boy. Then this happened. I was now truly a man. I loved that record: Rolf Harris’s greatest hits. I thought Rolf Harris was a genius. The first track was Jake the Peg, and as Rolf Diddleiddlummed, I laughed loud and heartily all the way through the song. The second track was Two Little Boys. I remember being very moved by this song; I might have even cried. I was astounded by the brilliance of this man, whose name I didn’t even know yet because I hadn’t found out what was written on the record sleeve. One moment I had been laughing raucously to Jake the Peg, and then, a couple of minutes later, I was wiping the tears away as the sounds of Two Little Boys entered my ears for the first time and moved my soul. I’m sure you all remember where you were when you first heard Rolf Harris. I certainly do. It was a magical moment, one of many magical moments that my random record purchasing gave me. I wouldn’t say I’m a massive Rolf Harris fan now, but at that moment, sitting on my bedroom floor at the record player, I was spellbound.

I mentioned in a
previous blog post
that I used to love listening to the radio at nights for the same kind of reason. I used to switch over to the shortwave band and start moving the dial to see what I would find. Shortwave is nothing like
FM; you don’t know what you’re going to get. There’s about ten stations on FM and hundreds on shortwave. YOU rotate the dial on the FM band and you get the same old recognised stations, but rotating the dial when you’re tuned to shortwave is a very different experience, a magical experience. The sound that the radio makes as its tuning is a sequence of beeps and crackles, as opposed to the fairly prosaic hiss of FM. You only have to touch the dial when you’re on the shortwave band and that slight touch can tune you into a completely different station and into a completely different world. One moment you’re listening to an enraged American evangelist damning you to hell unless you send him money, then you touch the dial ever so slightly and you’re listening to a French radio drama with Lesbian sex scenes; then the sound of a Mongolian throat singer, belting out the popular Mongolian hits of the day. Again, it’s the randomness of it all, the surprise element that I loved. I got that same feeling with my random record selections,
Although disappointingly I never managed to procure a record with a Lesbian sex drama on it.

I love the concept of DJing for the same reason: mixing different tracks into each other to create a musical collage. But I often get board of a lot of DJs because they generally play only a certain type of music: They’re either a drum and bass DJ or a dance DJ or a Hip Hop DJ etc. Their DJ sets are usually designed for clubs, for people to dance to. This dictates the style of the DJ set. The tracks are often 4/4 and have a similar tempo. I want a DJ to create mixes that take on all genres and provide constant surprises for the listener. Notice I wrote listener, not clubber; I want a DJ set to be like hitting the shuffle button on a massive, diverse music library and playing the randomized selection as a continuing, structured mix. This brings me to the point of this blog post – we got their in the end.

David Eagle’s Pick and Mix is a DJ set that features all types of music, embracing anything from any period of time. I’m putting the finishing touches to my first mix and I’ll release it in just a few days. I’m slightly wary of this project because it’s unlike anything I’ve released before, but it’s an experiment I’m excited to try and I hope that we’ll go on this musical adventure together. I’m not a professional DJ, but I wanted to really try and mix the songs together, rather than just segway from one song to another. This isn’t just me playing my favourite records. I am not just picking and playing songs. O no. I am mixing them into a crazy, multifascited, all encompassing thirty minute mix. That’s my plan anyway. Wish me luck! Standby!