A Day In The Life

Despite the title...I've had a day off from The Beatles today!

Lewis didn't...he ripped the new remasters to 320kbps and filled up his iPod - but I have been listening to and talking about other music today...I thought it might paint a picture of the part music plays in my life wherever I am and whatever I do if I shared it...so here goes!

I have my phone alarm set to the opening bars of a nice and mellow Francis Dunnery song at the moment...so it's Frank who wakes me up each morning...and, therefore, Frank who gets rudely shut up a few notes later by the 'snooze' button! However, he tries again 10 minutes or so later and usually succeeds in waking me this time...and I rise from the pit to raise the boys! It's cartoon music for the next half hour or so - recently Ben 10 or Chowder or...if I can persuade...the more tolerable iCarly - until the 8.30 shut-off when Breakfast News goes on and so do shoes and school uniforms!

Later this morning I received the tickets for next weekend's Touchstone gig, so it was an obvious choice to put their newest album, 'Wintercoast' on in the car. Introduced by a spoken prologue from the dungeon-voiced Jeremy Irons (is he the only actor with a deeper voice than James Earl-Jones and Alan Rickman?) this CD fuses just about all I love about prog-rock: multi-layered, rich keyboard textures (and enough twiddly bits to keep me smiling!), solid rhythm section with melodic bass lines and inventive, contributive guitar work...and the whole thing is topped off by the exquisite voice of Kim who...as an added bonus for live shows, looks as good as she sounds (I mean...a Genesis gig is still good today...but do you REALLY want to look at Phil Collins for 3 hours?). When listening to Touchstone I find that one minute I'm reminded of Peter Gabriel, the next early Marillion, then the best of Rick Wakeman...and so on through my entire library of proggy faves. I was also reminded, while listening, today to drag out my copy of the first Esquire album - it was recorded when Nikki was still married to Chris Squire and his influence and voice elevate this good debut album to an excellent one!

I've been to Petersfield Hospital this afternoon to visit an elderly friend who plays in the Salvation Army brass band with me. Of course we share a love for old SA music (a legacy of all those old Regal Zonophone 78s I wrote about on Day 1, I guess!) A couple of years ago I transferred the whole set from 78 onto CD/mp3 and gave a set of discs to Bill which I know he played through his DVD. We talked about them today - and about my frustration that I now have a much better deck with a proper, dedicated, deep groove 78 stylus...so I really ought to do them all again (aaaaaaargh!)!! He's got a selection of CDs in hospital with him, fortunately, so won't get too bored as he recovers...and his tastes appear as varied as mine: today we discussed both SA and non-SA brass (although my expertise on the latter is a little limited), jazz greats like Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and Glenn Miller before venturing into orchestral music and some modern 'oddities'.

Bill has been enjoying 'The Armed Man' by Karl Jenkins recently and recommended it to me before the summer. I picked up a copy on eBay for 99p the next week but, sadly, I had to admit to Bill today that it remained unlistened to so far...I promised him I'd remedy that shortly so...watch this space...and THEN...we ended up talking about minimalism of all things!

I used to describe minimalism to my students as a composing technique in which the composer takes a simple idea and develops it...then develops it some more...and then takes it "to infinity and beyond"! My first minimalist favourite was the American composer Philip Glass. Most of his music is underpinned by his minimalist signaure of alternating, undulating quavers (8th notes)...but today we discussed Gavin Bryars and his wonderful 'Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet'. Released (in its completed form) in 1993 this 'love it or hate it' work consists entirely of a 27 second soundbite recorded when Bryars was a young technician working on a TV documentary about London's homeless. A tramp who wandered around Elephant & Castle in the late 1960's apparently sang this excerpt from an old Sunday School chorus all day as he walked aimlessly around the vicinity.

Bryars kept the recording and developed this extremely minimalist album over the next 25 years. I believe it is recorded in the liner notes (although I don't have them at hand to check as I write) that Bryars eventually made a loop of the tramp's singing and played it while working at a university, trying to improvise on a keyboard beneath (or over) it. Having been called away for a time he returned to find students nearby both stunned into silence and moved to tears by the irony of the tramp's endless repetition - he had inadvertently left the door to his study open when he left!

On the recording the voice remains the same throughout*...it is the accompaniment that changes minimally, almost infinitessimally, with each repeat - so that when you listen you suddenly realise that the string quartet that began as the accompaniment has now disappeared completely and been replaced by winds and percussions you had barely even noticed arriving! 72 minutes it lasts altogether...and I'm definitely a 'love it' person!

So...from Dunnery to cartoon music, Touchstone to brass bands, jazz to minimalism - and I came home to the dulcet tones of Carl Wilson...not a bad mix of music for what could have been a pretty mundane Friday! GOD!...I LOVE music...and thank Him for it!



*OK...to be completely honest it fades in a bit at the start then fades out near the end to be replaced by Tom Waits...I believe this is meant to imply that the original 'tramp' has gone to heaven!