Sunday 1 September 2024 09:13:22 PM CDT


Thursday 29 August 2024 18:13:48 PM CDT

I shoulda made a better pic. Call it a placeholder and I'll get back to it. The story behind those recordings is long and obscure to any but Uriah Heep and/or Asia fans. I'd say both.

Sadly both John Wetton and Ken Hensley have left us recently, Ken in 2020 - it hardly seems that long - and John three years earlier. Ken was 75 and that's still too young to lose him while John was just 67 when he lost his battle with cancer.

They made these recordings in 2002. John is best known as part of Asia from its formation in 1981 or so and with a couple of breaks up until just before his death in 2017. Asia hardly needs explaining but Ken's background may be known by fewer people. Ken was the keyboard player and sometimes guitarist in Uriah Heep from its formation in 1969 or so until he departed in 1980. He wrote many of the early Heep songs and occasionally joined guitarist Mick on some songs. You can fine some live recordings on Youtube of Ken playing guitar on Circle of Hands and those are seriously good. That's the best vid I can find just now - there's one or two where after he left Heep he turned up a show and joined Mick for that song. Great stuff.

Near the end of his life Ken did some work with a group of young Scandivian guys, Norway or somewhere, doing his material and some Heep stuff of course. John did some work outside of Asia with his bandmate Geoff Downes and made several records with them as a group called Icon. Some really nice live shows on Youtube, like this one.

So what led John and Ken to do these projects? Well, back in day, before Asia, John briefly replaced original Heep bass player Gary Thain for a couple of albums. Both were talented songwriters and singers and there may have been some friction, or not. There were some other problems and Ken left and later John left. Some years later they got together to do some shows with mostly Heep and Asia material and we got these two works.

Heep is still one of the best live bands in the world (their studio stuff is pretty polished as well since the 1980s) and while Mick is the only original members the changes have been gradual, mostly occasioned by the death or retirements of members to there's quite a bit of overlap. The newest members have been with them for over ten years and the others since the 1980s. First time I saw them was in 1974 and the set was pretty much what is on the 1973 live album. The opening number was Sunrise in those days and after all these years I like to listen to it cranked up so the walls shake.

Okey-dokey, can't talk about music all day. Let's see if there's anything interesting going on in northeast Arkansas besides corpes showing up here and there and miscreants plying their trade in Dodge Chargers.

I often feel like laughing when I see something like this but there are some really dumb people running around out there. Wonder if any of these folks have even ever been to Blytheville. Got a slick website with a team of twenty-one all kinds of managers and directors and associates and analysts and all. Hope they're not getting any taxpayer money. They do suggest gifts of $100,000 to a cool million so maybe they got some rich people paying for it. I mean, I mean, I mean do they know that the population is declining and crime is increasing?

Jonesboro still has eight million left from the Plandemic handouts? If they didn't use it for Plandemic-related stuff shouldn't they send it back. Actually eight million really is a drop in the bucket of Plandemic spending. You do know that four trillion got added onto the national debt, don't you?

This is about Memphis but it's about government provided transportation for people who don't have cars. I don't know how Jonestown does it. Does it pay for itself or does it require taxpayer input? If so please tell me it isn't 95% like it is in Memphis.





Speaking of Memphis, it's been two years since a 34-year-old woman went for a morning run and never came back. The killer is supposed to go to trial some time next year. Is that what you want for northeast Arkansas?



Friday 30 August 2024 11:42:19 PM CDT

Left Memphis rounded up a few miscreants and the state police caught a guy from New York hauling seven keys of coke. If I had fifteen pounds or so of coke I hope I'd try not to attract attention. As for putting it in the spare tire place, that ain't smart. As somebody said if very many criminals were smart we'd be in bad shape.

Nothing new on the kid at Wynne schools. The Boar's Head company has some kind of facility in Forrest City. If they had problems in Virginia they might ought to look at that place if they're making stuff there.

Lessee, today's Friday? Holiday weekend too. Believe I'll stay home.



Saturday 31 August 2024 10:41:14 PM CDT

Nice calm day so far. Could be the news folks are taking weekend off and we won't hear about the fun until Monday or Tuesday. Aside from some assaults and vandalism it's mostly football.



Sunday 1 September 2024 11:22:35 PM CDT

Memphis said they got law enforcement prepared for something called '901 Day'. I didn't know there was a 901 Day, apparently it's a Memphis thing. Why didn't they call it 911 day? Sorry... Didn't know they had law enforcement either, unless you call going to crime scenes and having the bodies toted away and maybe arresting any live perps remaining at the scene. Some guy was arrested for stealing a Chrysler 300 . Those are more Dodge Charger than a Dodge Charger IYKWIM. Chargers are more common, probably because 300s cost a bit more.



Monday 02 September 2024 12:21:43 PM CDT

This happened up in Misery back on Sadderday and I didn't comment not having looked into it much. Osage Beach is a little place with a population something under 5K up around Lake of the Ozarks. Stayed there a few days once, nice place, pricey and the company wasn't that great as it was business and it was folks I worked with.

Police identified the officer as 33-year-old Phylicia Carson. She joined the department in 2023. She leaves behind a husband and six children. This is the department's first line of duty loss in 30 years. (KAIT)
Police chasing people isn't good any time. Back in the day it was a guy in a fast car out on a highway running through the middle of nowhere and sometimes they caught him and sometimes they didn't. Too much traffic and people around and if you really need to catch someone you generally can find them later. I'd hate to be the guy they were chasing though - he's really gonna get it and looking a his mugshot he doesn't have a visually mitigating factor.

I was reading about the medical marijuana amendment, decided to see that it costs. Stuff's expensive. I guess growing it would be cheaper, unless the seeds were super expensive, like a thouand dollars a seed. And what if it doesn't germinate? Not that I care, last time I smoked pot it $15 a lid (ounce) and some of the better stuff that was being developed was 20 bucks. I do care if someone is driving while medically stoned and kills me.

Outside of a non-fatal shooting over in Stone County there hasn't been much reported action. So KAIT had this little tidbit. I'd already read about it on one of the Memphis telly websites. They're about like the local NEA bunch, just tell you something happened and that's about it. This one had a little more, seems a guy tried to buy a pizza with a fake twenty and another dude shot him dead. Wasn't George Floyd trying to pass a fake twenty just before he succumbed to a heart condition and multiple drug intoxication? Anyway the dude in Memphis is now working on his stats. Neither will catch Rodney King though. And no cops will be railroaded into prison over this one.













































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Remo Williams 43 minutes ago Ti Errno) Sounds like Memphis. That place is a cesspool. Jonesboro, I don't know. I suppose you can ask but who knows if they'll tell you the truth. Or anything at all That's the biz sweetheart. Reply +5(+]-) Jessica Atreides Marshall 29 minutes ago FOIA I suppose, but I don't know who to contact. I was thinking government entities were supposed to have some way to do that. I don't see anything on the city website. The police department has one but I don't know how much of that info you have to have to request it. We have entered the time when all will turn against us and seek our lives. Reply HG Prime Chuck Norris 12 minutes ago I never knew of a public transit system that wasn't subsidized by the taxpayers. It would be interesting to see what it looks like in Jonesboro. When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you. Reply 0 KaliforniaDreamin 13 minutes ago It's not as if they would tell you the truth if they even if they responded. I would guess they're careful enough to hide it but you never know - some people just don't care and figure they'll never be caught or held accountable if they are - like the ones in Memphis. Life is a lemon and I want my money back. ~ Meat Loaf Reply 0
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