Tag Archives: music

No Direction Home

I was running and listening to Bob Dylan on my headphones. “Like a Rolling Stone”. The run was  longer than usual, part of the build up to the Great North Run in September.

The words of the refrain alerted me to the pertinence of this song to my training.

How does it feel?
How does it feel?
To be without a home?
Like a complete unknown?
Like a rolling stone?
Barrie at the start of the Great North Run

Great North Run 2017

I am running the Great North Run for the charity Shelter. One of the leading charities campaigning to eliminate homelessness.

I don’t know how it feels to have no home, but I speak to many people who have experienced the raw edge of homelessness. I am chairman of a charity called Restore (York) which provides supported housing for people who are homeless.

Dylan’s words were penned in the 1960s – I was a teenager. Now, over 50 years later the problem of people being homeless is still with us. I don’t think homelessness figures were collected in the 60s to tell us how many people were without a home. Homeless people were ‘a complete unknown‘. Today we do count them but that doesn’t solve the problem. To be a number is hardly progress from being ‘a complete unknown‘ unless houses are built and affordable for the people who need a home. We are not building enough houses. We are still not providing enough care and support for people who are homeless. The numbers have increased year on year for the last 7 years. This is unacceptable.

Shelter has been offering advice, researching and campaigning on behalf of homeless people for almost as long as Dylan has been singing his song.

Subsequent refrains in the song use the line With no direction home. My sat nav has a HOME button which is programmed with my home address. One press and the route home is displayed on the screen with an estimate of the time I will arrive there. Homeless people have no address to preset that button. No direction home, like a rolling stone

I’ve been listening to this song since my youth – but it took a moment in time on a training run for the cry of the refrain to touch my heart. It’s just a small thing, but a helpful one, to donate to Shelter so that they can raise their game to end homelessness.

The shirt I am wearing for the Great North Run has the Shelter logo front and back with a tag line on the back until there’s a home for everyone. That’s why I’m running. Donate here

 

 

Inspired and moved by Handel’s Messiah

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via en.wikipedia.org

This oratorio was written by G F Handel 268 years ago using the text of The Authorised Version of the Bible published in 1611. I am listening to a recording made 50 years ago by the Huddersfield Choral Society and The Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargeant.
It is timeless, beautiful, inspiring, transcendent and deeply moving.
A fitting celebration for the birth of the Messiah 2000 years ago.

The Duchess, York | What’s on | Matt Seymour’s MORE RAW presents | 21 Jan 2010

Matt Seymour’s MORE RAW presents Alvin Purple + The Jaw-Line Of Julianne Moore + Overreact + Cavalier

21 Jan 2010
Doors open: 7:30pm
Min age: 14+

Tickets:

£4.00 + booking fee

Buy tickets securely online or call 08444 77 1000

Deep in the bowels of BBC Radio York, there’s been rumblings for many years. Great bands, stunning live sessions and an ethic of getting some, frankly, bloody great music out there. That’s all well and good, but it ain’t live – and the penny has dropped in Bootham Towers courtesy Mr Matt Seymour, music champ, prolific Twitterer and man of enthusiastically eclectic taste. From Cavalier’s transatlantic commercial balladry to Overreact’s angular indie-punk clatter inspired by Tokyo Police Club. From Julianne Moore’s Polyphonic Spree with synths to the jazz/soul/trip-hop of Alvin Purple; a terrific night is in store and all recorded for posterity and future broadcast.

 

Please note you must be 14 or over to gain admittance – read our ID policy.

Such hyperbole – but no less than any other gig blurb at this fine venue

Record labels must face the music | Don Tapscott | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Record labels must face the music

Instead of trying to criminalise its customers, the music industry should be looking at innovative ways to make filesharing work

via guardian.co.uk

Much of this sounds like a promo for Spotify and Last FM. I’ve always “defended” the right of artists and publishers to enforce copyright and personally I’ve felt that copying music, be it on cassette or digitally, was some kind of theft. But now it has to be time to rewrite the rule book –  the music industry has to bite the bullet if they want to survive.

The Vatican’s Playlist on myspace music

via music.myspace.com

Starts with Uprising by Muse …. and it’s perfect – what else would you expect from The Vatican?
“This playlist is a perfect mix of classical, world and contemporary music. The genres are very different from each other, but all these artists share the aim to reach the heart of good minded people.”