Friday 29 November 2013

Trans Europe Express

Cycled into the centre of Glasgow to meet someone at the Trans Europe Cafe this morning.



The logo for the establishment is, not surprisingly, a depiction of the famous train from the 1950s/60s, "Trans Europe Express".

The logo
And here is my model of the same train.



And here is the real thing:


There was no light in the toilet or the corridor leading up to the toilet in the cafe and so I had to keep taking flash photographs with my phone in order to illuminate matters.



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Currently listening to:

Afterwards we wandered down to Mono and its record shop, Monorail where I purchased this:


As we were leaving Mono, what should pass above us but a Deltic Diesel locomotive - I couldn't believe it and only just got my camera out of my jacket pocket in time to photograph it as it disappeared into the distance.



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Currently Reading:



In this well researched book, Reynolds describes the huge influence that the German electronic group, Kraftwerk, had on middle-class black kids in the suburbs of Detroit in the late 1980s early 1990s.

Most of these teenagers' parents were working for the big motor manufacturers in Detroit and had well paid jobs. Reynolds draws a parallel: the role of steel in the motor industry and the album, Trans Europe Express, by Kraftwerk.

" ..... on the Trans Europe Express album, the title track - all indefatigable girder-beats and arching, Doppler Effect syths - segues into 'Metal On Metal', a funky iron foundry that sounded like a Luigi Russolo Art of Noises megamix for a Futurist discotheque."



And, regarding the unlikeliness of this German/Detroit link up.

'They were so stiff, they were funky,' techno-pioneer Carl Craig has said of Kraftwerk. This paradox - which effectively translates as 'they were so white, they were black' - is as close as anyone has got to explaining the mystery of why Kraftwerk's music (and above all 'Trans Europe Express', their most dispassionately metronomic and Teutonic track) had such a massive impact on black American youth. In New York, Kraftwerk almost single-handedly sired the electro-movement." p 3.

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Yesterday's lunch:

Forgot to take photograph of last night's Chinese take-away, so here's yesterday's lunch instead.

Spouse-made stovies, tomatoes and beetroot.
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Miscellany:

No need for a separate miscellaneous section today.

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