Saturdays are for sport! Today we've had a one-day cricket international (or - another chance for England to show how inept they are), a full football programme plus golf and US Open tennis! I didn't even get to catch a minute of the last two...so where the opportunities for music?
It just happens to be that there always is time! A day without music at all would be unthinkable! Lewis and I (still on the inevitable Beatles kick) found the time to watch an old 1965 Tv special I've had on DVD for a while... The Music of Lennon & McCartney. Essentially, this was a showcase for the group's new double A-side single, Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out - and that such a pristine condition copy still exists nearly half a century later is somewhat amazing (especially coming from an era in which tapes were routinely wiped for re-use).
An unusual and very diverse set of artists appeared to perform their own cover versions of Beatles songs - some good, some not so...and one or two were nauseatingly toe-curling! The execrable Flamenco annihilation of 'She Loves You' really had to be heard to be...suffered - and the dual manual jazz electric organist with St Vitas' dance may have sounded interesting...but to watch his twisted gyrations almost made me laugh uncontrollably...and reminded me that I suppose a donation to SCOPE is probably overdue! Peter Sellers, as Richard III, was very funny, of course!
Now it's time for a great British tradition - The Last Night of the Proms...so more music! The first item in the finale was an overture for orchestra and...hoovers! Composed by Sir Malcolm Arnold in 1956 the 'Grand, Grand Overture' is surely one of the great musical jokes! Lewis reckoned is was meant to depict someone trying to listen to music while another (maybe his wife?) did the cleaning...it ends with the errant vacuumers being shot by four handily-placed riflemen! I was reminded at once of that awful 'anti-programme-music' quote by Stravinsky that music does not have the quality in it to be able to speak for itself...I thought it was nonsense when I first read it and still do! Igor wrote some extraordinary music...but should have left philosophy to his betters in that field!
'In A Monestary Garden' came next...I haven't heard that 'nightingale-soaked piece of cheese' for decades. I was playing it at college back in 1982 when dear Eric Stanley (an elderly professor from Dagenham who regaled us week by week with wonderful tales from the days when he taught Dudley Moore at Trinity College) came in and shouted me down. "What are you doing with THAT old chestnut?" he demanded before advising me that it might make a better piece of music if I turned the sheet music upside down! I did...and won a prize for my piano piece in the next composer's competition! Thanks Eric!
A trumpet tango and some Gershwin followed and, as I type, we're on the first of 5 newly-composed fanfares...if the other 4 are as bad as the first I might go have a bath before the real fun starts! Really...it's horrible!
LNOTP is the one night of the year, it seems, when it's OK to 'like' classical music (don't get me started on what 'classical music' is...that's another blog topic waiting its chance to burst from my fingers!). Tens of thousands of stable-minded Brits who spend the other 364 days of the year making sure that Lady Gaga and Pixie Lott clog up the charts suddenly acquire temporary taste-chips and crowd into parks, castles and City Squares to listen to Handel, Beethoven ("didn't he go blind?") and the rest without losing their 'cool'. The reason? Well, LNOTP ends with some good old-fashioned jingoism! 'Rule Britannia', 'Fantasy on British Sea Songs' and Elgar's 'Pomp & Circumstance' are being joined tonight by 'Jerusalem', fresh from its Ashes series overkill* and, surely the best English patriotic tune ever to have been composed by a WELSHMAN!
So there we have it...plenty of music on Sporturday and still finished in time for Match of the Day! Life is good!
*Jerusalem was played and sung loudly before the start of play on all 25 days of the test series between England and Australia this summer...we were actually quite good for some of that and won the series...its just the one-day stuff we're so bad at, obviously!
Saturday, 12 September 2009
Friday, 11 September 2009
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!
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!
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Through a Glass Darkly (part 2)
Now, where was I? Oh yes...please don't think for one minute while reading this that I'm a musical perfectionist! I will always want musicians to be heard performing to their potential but sheer, clinical perfection leaves me a little cold.
I recall as a young boy being astonished by how fast a cornet soloist with a band moved his valves up and down, in seemingly perfect synchronisation with his breathing, tongueing and blowing - THAT much inspired me! At the end, when the audience's prolonged applause had died down and the soloist, having politely acknowledged the reception with neither a flushed cheek nor a hair out of place, had returned to his seat - the compere spoke:
"Wow! Didn't he make it look easy?"
My thoughts exactly! The compere meant it as a compliment, of course, yet I wanted to know how much better the performance might have been had the solost given a bit more of himself in the performance! I vowed secretly to myself that, if I were ever in a similar position I would not want to retake my seat unless I were a sweating, drippy heap...and both mentally and emotionally exhausted! Anyone who has seen me play in the 34 years I've now been a euphonium soloist would smile, realising why their applause at the end of my efforts was warmed by their relief I hadn't actually dropped dead in front of them mid-variation!
But, I digress...and realise (even at this early point in my blogging career) that typing my thoughts is going to a like a Ronnie Corbett monologue...we WILL get to the point eventually! What I guess I was trying to say above is that while clinical perfection is something to be aspired to it is rarely attained and, if so, surely at the price of a little 'soul'? Maybe that's why, when I first bought a vinyl copy of the 'Beatles Live in Hamburg' (my bizarre mind reminds me that it was bought in Newcastle with birthday money from Grandad Hedges circa October 1981!) I was intrigued by the liner comment that 'bum notes flew like beer bottles'. They did indeed...and the hissy, imperfect recording - made on a cheap reel-to-reel tape recorder with, no doubt, even cheaper microphone and NEVER intended for commercial release - was hard to listen to at all, to be honest. Yet, buried beneath the vinyl noise, recording imperfections and audience interference it was THE BEATLES - as I'd never heard them before...which made it all worthwhile. The skill, energy and enthusiasm they put into their, surely, routine work showed why the had become the superstars I'd grown to love within a couple of years of the show in a dingy, German nightclub.
All Beatles fans will know the official releases like the backs of our hands. When I would play Beatles to classes full of seemingly uninterested schoolchildren for 20 years they were always surprised how many of the 'sample tunes' I carefully chose they already knew! "Oh, THAT's The Beatles! I know that song...didn't know it was them though!" came back at me class after class, year after year (as I smiled, knowingly, back at them!) I bought the whole lot on vinyl back in the 1980s (plus bootlegs in Portobello Road), made copies onto cassette, assembled my own compilations, got the Red and Blue sets and the Rarities LP (wow, what a thrill it was to have THAT!). I got some official cassettes as well if they were going cheap in a sale or 2nd hand shop...and then, in 1987, 'the Holy Grail'...The Beatles arrived on CD.
I took it as gospel that these were definitive. It was, after all, the 3rd time I'd bought the same songs...but now without surface crackle and scratches or cassette tape hiss (or even worse - the beheaded abomination your ears suffered with a Dolby circuit switched on!!) I had no real reason to question whether what I heard on my decent home hi-fi was as close as one could get to 'what it sounded like in the studio'. The 'industry' had, after all, sold us the concept of 'CD' under that premise! Only in hindsight, and with 22 years of reading, listening and (in recent years) internet fan-groups and mailing-lists, do I know the truth: when dear George Martin made the new masters in 1987 his once pristine ears were not what they once were! Nor could he (or, to be fair, we) have envisaged the advances in remastering techniques that would later evolve during the 1990's and 2000's. As more and more 'classic' albums received the 'digitally remastered' re-release ('Dark Side of the Moon' and 'Pet Sounds' come to mind...HOW MANY TIMES???) I began to wonder if The Beatles oeuvre was being 'left behind'.
Then, I heard on the internet about Dr Ebbett! Here was a Beatles fan, so disturbed by the poor quality perceived to be the group's legacy on CD that he developed his own technique to drop stylus onto pristine vinyl and produce CDs that (it was claimed) sounded much better than the official releases? Of course I was sceptical! If they were that good, why hadn't EMI done something about it...after all they had the original tapes?
So, I still listened to my CDs...even mp3's ripped from them! I used to persuade myself I couldn't hear a difference between the CDs and an mp3...even when ripped as low as 128kbps...then someone demonstrated to me how I was wrong! I still rip mp3's but now never lower than 192kbps (and my favourite music at 320) and it is to my regret that I admit that I only acquired a set of Dr Ebbett's needledrops earlier this year...
Bluntly, I was ASTONISHED by what I heard! I was hearing things I'd never heard before: clarity between instruments - almost a defined 'space' between the musicians and elements of the sound. The bass punched and the high-frequencies rang out without jarring my ears and setting off my tinnitus! I took the set with me into a professional studio when recording keyboard overdubs for a CD and asked the engineer (another Beatles fan) if we could listen to a bit on the studio equipment: half-way through the 2nd song he took my discs into his office and copied the lot before we finished the session!!!
So, when I read recently that Dr Ebbett had 'thrown in the towel' after hearing the new, official Beatles remasters I had to expect great things. He always maintained that he had not worked tirelessly (as he undoubtedly had over the last few years) to make money out of The Beatles but to provide fans with recordings the group's legacy deserved. He now acknowledges that there is no need for him to continue - EMI have done the right thing at last!
When I did an A-B-C test yesterday with my son (and fellow-Beatlemaniac) Lewis between the 1987 CDs, Dr Ebbetts and the new stereo releases the reslults were everything I could have expected...and more! Like I said yesterday it was "as if someone had removed several layers of curtain from in front of my speakers". (The differences between 1987 and 2009 especially I would defy anyone to not hear!) We Beatles fans have entered a new world...and with games and iTunes to follow I guess we'll be picking up a few new members too!
'Through a glass darkly' is, of course, taken from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. To quote Wikipedia, "the phrase is interpreted to mean that humans have an imperfect perception of reality." In that case, and to continue the allegory, yesterday I met the music "Face to Face".
...And they tell me the 'Monos' are even better...........
I recall as a young boy being astonished by how fast a cornet soloist with a band moved his valves up and down, in seemingly perfect synchronisation with his breathing, tongueing and blowing - THAT much inspired me! At the end, when the audience's prolonged applause had died down and the soloist, having politely acknowledged the reception with neither a flushed cheek nor a hair out of place, had returned to his seat - the compere spoke:
"Wow! Didn't he make it look easy?"
My thoughts exactly! The compere meant it as a compliment, of course, yet I wanted to know how much better the performance might have been had the solost given a bit more of himself in the performance! I vowed secretly to myself that, if I were ever in a similar position I would not want to retake my seat unless I were a sweating, drippy heap...and both mentally and emotionally exhausted! Anyone who has seen me play in the 34 years I've now been a euphonium soloist would smile, realising why their applause at the end of my efforts was warmed by their relief I hadn't actually dropped dead in front of them mid-variation!
But, I digress...and realise (even at this early point in my blogging career) that typing my thoughts is going to a like a Ronnie Corbett monologue...we WILL get to the point eventually! What I guess I was trying to say above is that while clinical perfection is something to be aspired to it is rarely attained and, if so, surely at the price of a little 'soul'? Maybe that's why, when I first bought a vinyl copy of the 'Beatles Live in Hamburg' (my bizarre mind reminds me that it was bought in Newcastle with birthday money from Grandad Hedges circa October 1981!) I was intrigued by the liner comment that 'bum notes flew like beer bottles'. They did indeed...and the hissy, imperfect recording - made on a cheap reel-to-reel tape recorder with, no doubt, even cheaper microphone and NEVER intended for commercial release - was hard to listen to at all, to be honest. Yet, buried beneath the vinyl noise, recording imperfections and audience interference it was THE BEATLES - as I'd never heard them before...which made it all worthwhile. The skill, energy and enthusiasm they put into their, surely, routine work showed why the had become the superstars I'd grown to love within a couple of years of the show in a dingy, German nightclub.
All Beatles fans will know the official releases like the backs of our hands. When I would play Beatles to classes full of seemingly uninterested schoolchildren for 20 years they were always surprised how many of the 'sample tunes' I carefully chose they already knew! "Oh, THAT's The Beatles! I know that song...didn't know it was them though!" came back at me class after class, year after year (as I smiled, knowingly, back at them!) I bought the whole lot on vinyl back in the 1980s (plus bootlegs in Portobello Road), made copies onto cassette, assembled my own compilations, got the Red and Blue sets and the Rarities LP (wow, what a thrill it was to have THAT!). I got some official cassettes as well if they were going cheap in a sale or 2nd hand shop...and then, in 1987, 'the Holy Grail'...The Beatles arrived on CD.
I took it as gospel that these were definitive. It was, after all, the 3rd time I'd bought the same songs...but now without surface crackle and scratches or cassette tape hiss (or even worse - the beheaded abomination your ears suffered with a Dolby circuit switched on!!) I had no real reason to question whether what I heard on my decent home hi-fi was as close as one could get to 'what it sounded like in the studio'. The 'industry' had, after all, sold us the concept of 'CD' under that premise! Only in hindsight, and with 22 years of reading, listening and (in recent years) internet fan-groups and mailing-lists, do I know the truth: when dear George Martin made the new masters in 1987 his once pristine ears were not what they once were! Nor could he (or, to be fair, we) have envisaged the advances in remastering techniques that would later evolve during the 1990's and 2000's. As more and more 'classic' albums received the 'digitally remastered' re-release ('Dark Side of the Moon' and 'Pet Sounds' come to mind...HOW MANY TIMES???) I began to wonder if The Beatles oeuvre was being 'left behind'.
Then, I heard on the internet about Dr Ebbett! Here was a Beatles fan, so disturbed by the poor quality perceived to be the group's legacy on CD that he developed his own technique to drop stylus onto pristine vinyl and produce CDs that (it was claimed) sounded much better than the official releases? Of course I was sceptical! If they were that good, why hadn't EMI done something about it...after all they had the original tapes?
So, I still listened to my CDs...even mp3's ripped from them! I used to persuade myself I couldn't hear a difference between the CDs and an mp3...even when ripped as low as 128kbps...then someone demonstrated to me how I was wrong! I still rip mp3's but now never lower than 192kbps (and my favourite music at 320) and it is to my regret that I admit that I only acquired a set of Dr Ebbett's needledrops earlier this year...
Bluntly, I was ASTONISHED by what I heard! I was hearing things I'd never heard before: clarity between instruments - almost a defined 'space' between the musicians and elements of the sound. The bass punched and the high-frequencies rang out without jarring my ears and setting off my tinnitus! I took the set with me into a professional studio when recording keyboard overdubs for a CD and asked the engineer (another Beatles fan) if we could listen to a bit on the studio equipment: half-way through the 2nd song he took my discs into his office and copied the lot before we finished the session!!!
So, when I read recently that Dr Ebbett had 'thrown in the towel' after hearing the new, official Beatles remasters I had to expect great things. He always maintained that he had not worked tirelessly (as he undoubtedly had over the last few years) to make money out of The Beatles but to provide fans with recordings the group's legacy deserved. He now acknowledges that there is no need for him to continue - EMI have done the right thing at last!
When I did an A-B-C test yesterday with my son (and fellow-Beatlemaniac) Lewis between the 1987 CDs, Dr Ebbetts and the new stereo releases the reslults were everything I could have expected...and more! Like I said yesterday it was "as if someone had removed several layers of curtain from in front of my speakers". (The differences between 1987 and 2009 especially I would defy anyone to not hear!) We Beatles fans have entered a new world...and with games and iTunes to follow I guess we'll be picking up a few new members too!
'Through a glass darkly' is, of course, taken from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. To quote Wikipedia, "the phrase is interpreted to mean that humans have an imperfect perception of reality." In that case, and to continue the allegory, yesterday I met the music "Face to Face".
...And they tell me the 'Monos' are even better...........
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
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.
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.
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