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View Article  Back with a vengeance?
Regular readers of my blog if they haven't seen me lately might be wondering how I'm doing after my unexpected trip to hospital.

The answer is pretty good. On Friday, I thought I'd give myself a little work out, so seeing as the weather was good, I got up earlyish (for a day off) to do my usual route to Epping, but with the express aim of doing it quickly to see if I was feeling better. And I have to say it went pretty well, and I felt better than ever. The weather was great, I was in a great mood and the air smelt wonderful. And I was going at quite a pace that I think I got to Highams Park in record time, despite the mud, which makes walking fast a little problematic.

In fact, I practically skipped up a small incline, between the trees, such was my enthusiasm. Which was then tempered by the painful pinging of one of my muscles in my lower back. I don't know, you get one thing sorted and another thing goes wrong. But I thought it was better to carry on, which I did. But by the time I got to Epping station about 4 hours later, my back and legs were complaining.

The good news is that my chest felt fine though, which was what I set out to reassure myself of. So that was good. But it got better, as I was meeting up with the guys from work for a night out at a Greek restaurant. The meal wasn't bad, but I didn't much want to get involved with the slightly naff disco afterwards (it doesn't help when you're not drinking). Fortunately, the pain in my back prevented me from getting involved. What a shame.

After that, a few of us went to Langleys for Jon's birthday. Now admittedly I was sober and I did turn up at about 11.30, but boy that place is nasty. It actually smelt of sick. The service was poor, and even the glasses weren't clean. Absoultely disgusting. I will never set foot in that place again. Bad back or no bad back.
View Article  Track of the Week - Follow Me - Jam and Spoon
I'm beginning to think this was a mistake calling this track of the week....

Jam and Spoon were a influential German electronic act. They were Rolf Ellmer and Markus Löffel who was otherwise known as Mark Spoon. Spoon was also a DJ. They had a certain amount of mainstream success in the mid nineties with primarily their Album Tripomatic Fairytailes and the Singles Stella and Right in the Night.

The track Follow Me was a B-Side to "Right in the Night". For me, "Right in the Night" summed up a lot of what was bad about Euro dance/techno/whatever. But it did pretty well, despite its cheesiness.

Thankfully, Follow Me was something else. It's a track that sometimes doesn't know what it is. It starts with a fairly bit of generic sounding bit of Euro dance with the slighly annoying lyric being repeated, but once it gets going it settles down into a fairly stripped down techno track losing the chart friendly melody that could well have ruined it. At this point, it's more Detroit than Berlin, running at about 140bpm. About half way through, the techno sound dies to be replaced by some fairly expansive and lush chords as the sound turns a bit more ravey.

And then all hell breaks loose as the track then erupts in to (what for me at the time, I think 1994) the mother of all breakdowns. The tempo rises to about 180, and the sound once more descends into something else, a little more acidy (at this point I really should mention I really am hopeless at describing dance music genres), before dying away into the chords we heard first in the middle of the track.

When I hear this track it always takes me back to one night, myself and Rob ventured to the legendary Orbit @ The After Dark club in Morley near Leeds in probably about 1993. Mark Spoon was DJing that night. And the place absolutely rocked. We didn't have a car, so it was a bit of a mission getting there, so it was a bit of a one off, but made all the more memorable as it was at the time one of the best Techno venues in the world.

Tragically, Spoon died in 2006 of a heart attack aged 39. He's fondly remembered by a large number of people around the world, so for that one night in Morley and a lifetime of enjoying your music Mark, I thank you.