Through a Glass Darkly...

Well here it is...my first post on my very first blog!

It's about music, of course...it would have to be...music has been, is today and will continue to be my life! Beethoven to Beatles, Palestrina to Prog-Rock and Schoenberg to Shankar they are all present in my extensive listening library.

I began buying records at the age of 12 but collecting them much earlier...my mother regales me with tales of my tears as my sister sat on my 78 of 'The Harry Lime Theme' and how I would sit for countless hours , aged 3 and above, with my trusty wind-up gramophone. Some of those tunes are deeply engrained into my musical memory even though 40 years or more have passed since those halcyon days of early childhood under the skies of Gwent and Glamorgan: Cocktails For Two (Spike Jones), Marche Lorraine, Blow the Wind Southerly (Kathleen Ferrier), By The Wishing Well (The Singing Cowboy) and many others (including various 'doubles' from my dad's extensive collection of Salvation Army 'Regal Zonophone' recordings!)

A visit back to Clapham (where I, apparently, lived from 7 months old to age 2) with dad in 1970 saw me offered my first 'single' - 45rpm, vinyl not shellac, and NOT for playing on the wind-up! With dad thinking I'd be bound to go for 'Back Home' by the England World Cup Squad I surprised him with the more eclectic choice of Lee Marvin singing 'Wanderin' Star' from Paint Your Wagon. I like to think I had an eye for a bargain even then for, on the said single's B-side sat a track called 'I Talk to the Trees', to my knowledge still the only recording ever to feature the singing of one Clint Eastwood - then a barely known, young, American actor. I laughed again a few months later when I was given a free copy of 'Back Home' by a friend in Cardiff.

I began to develop my memory for minutiae...that's why I know the afore-mentioned England song was written by Bill Martin & Phil Coulter (a Scotsman and an Irishman who wrote no less than three Eurovision Song-Contest winning songs!*) and even that its B-side was 'Cinnamon Stick' featuring West Brom's hard-heading Centre Forward Jeff Astle on lead vocals.**

Anyway, I'm sure I'll come back to some of those musical nuggets again as this blog develops...PLEASE feel free to message me and agree or disagree with my opinions...I cannot promise much use of IMHO around here - I DO have opinions but I offer them from MY heart and MY (big?) head...so there's not so much of the 'H' for humble on offer, I'm afraid. I mean...just look at the web address: I've been teaching music now for 30 years both privately and in Secondary Schools - my teaching heroes being Bertram Capey, my old music master from my own school days in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent and Mr Benjamin Shorofsky, erstwhile and displaced German-Jew music-meister in New York from the film and (especially) the TV series 'Fame'.

Why this particular article's title? Well, it's a taster for the next instalment really...today is 09/09/09 - BEATLES day in our house...we don't have much money right now or else I'd have spent at least £600 on Beatle-product today: the day has seen the release of box-sets of both Mono and Stereo albums as well as the 'Beatles Rock Band' game...not to mention the latter's accompanying replica Gretsch and Rickenbacker guitars at £90 or so a piece! Because of my contacts in the music world I have been privileged to be able to hear some of the stereo remasters today - and that's where the title comes in...listening to 'Rubber Soul' this morning was truly amazing - as if someone had removed several layers of curtain from in front of my speakers. A quick A-B test (even using Dr Ebbett's as the B-sample) sounded like a wall had been torn down between me and the music...

MUCH more on that to come!

Thanks for reading this, I hope I've either made you smile or shake your head - inspired you to go listen to some long-forgotten tune I mentioned, search on eBay for a Clint Eastwood single or...maybe, in my wildest dreams, you might even post a reply, an encouragement to continue or even subscribe to this blog.

Marc


* 'Puppet on a String' (Sandie Shaw), 'Congratulations' (Cliff Richard) and 'All Kinds Of Everything' (Dana)...see I told you my head was full of c**p!
** Jeff, of course, found fame again after his playing career by resurrecting his singing talent on the TV Show 'Fantasy Football' with Frank Skinner and David Baddiel before, sadly, dying from brain damage caused, allegedly, by too much 'hard-heading' footballs.