TO WHERE I AM NOW

I looked out of the window today and the blue sky had gone, the sun had gone and the grey clouds were back. But I suppose that’s April, that’s the uncertainty of spring, the promise of summer coming, but not quite realized. Dare had a day off from the studio today as I had three session with Kevin in Atlanta, Daniel in Arkansas (I guess near Little Rock) and Brian in Florida (I guess Orlando area). There’s one thing to be said about me being in lockdown, that is I still get to communicate with people all over the world. Skype has made the world so small and I wonder how many people use it to communicate not just with their friends and relatives in other countries but with people in the same town. I went up to the parcel office today to pick up a couple of packages and Olivia went to the post office to send an In Deep Music Archive tote bag and a CD to America. We are hanging in a small town (20,000 people) with lots of familiar local faces. Olivia knows the woman in the post office by name, the guy in the parcel office doesn’t ask me for ID anymore because he knows I’m who I say I am! Ha ha! The other day I was walking in the street and Amy from Rowe’s bakers saw me and said hello. “We owe you five pasties” she said (I usually pay for a week on Monday but they were closed by Tuesday). I realized that I miss that daily interaction with the ladies in Rowe’s and dropping in at the charity shops and seeing if I can find a CD for the archive and chatting with the staff. So for all those people in lockdown whose lives are social, I suggest if you don’t have it already, get Skype. Having that interaction with the outside world will be a welcome relief from Netflix.

Over dinner tonight, we watched Netflix. The Frankenstein Chronicles with Sean Bean, Episode 1. I’d seen it before but wanted Olivia to see it so we could watch the series together. How do they make these shows? The sets, the extras, the attention to detail. Victorian England never looked so real. I’ve always liked seeing all kinds of films from world cinema and old classics to the occasional blockbuster, but I never felt the urge to act. What a calling that is, how do they do it? Brilliantly portraying some complex character whilst surrounded by a bunch of technicians. How do they get into character, transport themselves a hundred years into the past or two hundred years into the future and make it all seem real. How do stage actors in Shakespearean plays remember all their lines? Actors are so impressive, their skills and their dedication to roles and their performances. I remember being in a play at primary school, I must have been 9 or 10. I remember wearing fake whiskers and being dressed as a doctor or a professor? A girl in our class, Diane Vickers (I can’t believe I remember her name), played a mechanical doll called Olympia. I have a certain uneasy feeling about it, ha ha, like what am I doing up here on this stage? Or was there even a stage? In the back of my mind I remember thinking that I couldn’t wait for it to stop.

The other day, the bumblebee rescue day, we walked past the boating pool which was probably once a hot spot for young kids and their parents sailing toy boats. It seems like people don’t do that anymore, at least around here. Directly across the road is the skateboard park. I can’t imagine the boat pool drawing the attention of the skateboarders, I can’t imagine that the skateboarders ever knew that sailing toy boats was ever a thing. So despite the lack of toy boats of any description there was instead a beautiful swan. Its long poetic neck ducking into the water, disappearing for a moment and rising with the water falling away. So dignified but also scary, having been attacked once by a goose I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of an angry swan. It was until the 1980s that killing swans was outlawed and allegedly the queen owns them all. Queen Elizabeth I had a different idea about swans and ate them as part of her royal privilege.

Music today has been a band you might not know, Bodast. It featured Steve Howe who later joined Yes and as of today has his own version of Yes with Alan White, Geoff Downes and Billy Sherwood who have all been in different incarnations of the band and with Jon Davison on vocals. They had to find a vocalist whose voice was similar to the distinctive voice of Jon Anderson. Journey did the same thing, substituting Steve Perry with a sound-alike, Arnel Pineda from the Philippines. The other version has Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin with a new bass player and drummer. What a strange situation it is. I saw Yes with Jon Anderson at Night Of The Prog a couple of years ago, Jon Anderson’s voice was beautiful and pure, he really sounded so good. Rick Wakeman’s cape was a little over the top and unnecessary, obvious. But is this how it is? They have to be like what people expect them to be, including the cape? When Steve Howe recruited Jon Davison he couldn’t get any singer, he had to get a singer like Jon Anderson. It didn’t use to be that way. When David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes replaced Ian Gillan in Deep Purple they were hired for their own voices, not his. Even Black Sabbath hired Ronnie James Dio because he was a great singer, not because he sounded like Ozzie. It’s the old problem of the nostalgia act again, the future just isn’t as interesting as the past…Having said all this looking at Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets’ band with Hawaiian-shirted bass player Guy Pratt doing the duckwalk along to One Of These Days and wearing those whiter than white trainers was all wrong. (Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, guilty.) It looked like an outing for the Ferrari owners club, I guess it was. Close you eyes and musically it was really good, open them and die.

After Bodast I played The Yes Album released on Atlantic records in 1971 and featuring Steve Howe as a new member replacing Peter Banks who would form Flash but still with Tony Kaye on keyboards who would shortly form Badger, his place taken by the inimitable and the flamboyantly dressed Rick Wakeman. It seems that Steve Howe was instrumental in replacing Kaye and talking of instrumentals, I learned tonight that the chord sequence from Würm (the last section of Starship Trooper) originally came from a Bodast song, Nether Street. You can hear it on the Bodast album that was finally released in 1981. To think the band was formed in 1968 and it took this long to release their record. The singer was Clive Skinner, aka Clive Maldoon, he sadly died in 1978 and never knew it finally came out. The first major band I saw was Uriah Heep and Clive Maldoon was the support. I saw Yes once in Sydney with Anderson, Wakeman, Howe, Squire and White at the entertainment centre (now gone apparently). That same week Roger Dean had a gallery exhibition that I went to. It was in the same street as the studio we were recording in. There I met Dean himself and Chris Squire for one of three times, but that’s another story.

I started and finished the night with some American Bluesy influenced albums, the first Pacific Gas And Electric (1969) from LA with Charlie Allen on vocals. He was the drummer, but when they realized he was the band’s best singer they got another drummer and he became the front man.

Last was The Blues Project’s second album Projections (1966) featuring Al Kooper who would leave after the album’s release to form Blood, Sweat & Tears. Either side of Projections the band released a live album. It seems unusual for a band to have two live and one studio album in their first three releases (including the debut), but then this was the sixties, anything was possible. Apparently the band never saw the album cover or heard the mix before it was released. That was the power of the labels in those days.

Today’s song really has to be Swan from Hanging Out In Heaven (2000). I still haven’t managed to get myself a copy of the vinyl re-release, must do that.

 

Swan

If you sway
In the breeze of moving reeds
Swim away
Then fly out in the universe
With grace

Softly down
You lose a feather from your snow
There’s no sound
Just whispers from the waters
You have found

Wings of silk
Curves of beauty to behold
Face of milk
Oh my swan
The gift of you unfolds

White opaque
Fabled goddess
Drifts and dreams
In your wake
Astounded by the wonders
That you make

You glide by
I stay loyal to my queen
Don’t have to try
Swans they stay together
All their lives

Raise your head
Stroke your neck
That’s soft and long
Have I said
Oh my swan
The gift of you I want

Wings of silk
Curves of beauty to behold
Face of milk
Oh my swan
The gift of you unfolds

(Willson-Piper)
Hanging Out In Heaven (2000)