TO WHERE I AM NOW

I wonder if Mother Nature has bad days? Days when she has a headache. Days when she just doesn’t feel like it. Days when she thinks Oh God! (Ha ha.) Today was somehow drab, there was no enthusiasm in it, no life. It was a bit cold, but not too cold, it was a bit warm, but not warm enough. The breeze was weak but irritating. The sky was almost cloudy, the sun nearly came out. It looked like it was going to rain, but it didn’t. The sea didn’t know what colour it was and the choppy waves were pathetic, half-hearted. The seagulls were flying, but they weren’t using their wings, they were just lazily floating in the air going round and round in circles. When one of them, the big one with the black wings did swoop down and take something edible from the sea, the others didn’t bother to challenge for the feast. Usually when one finds a source of food they all swoop down and try to steal it, not today.

Today was a day to be indoors which seems like a bizarre idea based on the recent weeks. But it was just one of those days where you would curl up with a good book or watch an afternoon movie. Biscuits, the cat, tea and ignoring the phone. Still, I found myself outside with that recycling excuse to make a trip to see the sea and before all the plastic overwhelmed the kitchen. If two people can create this much plastic what must it be like for a family of five? How can we find a way to live in the world without packaging? Who remembers the CD long box? When the trusty old vinyl was being overshadowed, made obsolete by digital technology, some bright spark came up with the idea that as vinyl was big and CDs were small that CDs needed to have a bigger presence in the store to attract the attention of the customer. Otherwise, Michael Jackson fans wouldn’t be able to find his new album. Well, it lasted for a while and eventually they were phased out and all that excess cardboard was saved. Later they came up with the idea of the Digipak when people started to tire of the generic easily breakable plastic jewel box. The problem with the Digipak was that it wasn’t as durable and was easily damaged in shop shelves and when transported, creating a financial loss for the stores due to damaged product.

Does anybody remember what CDs were like when they first came out, I mean their presentation? They were very basic. It was actually an insult to the customer, especially with the reissues. ‘I can’t wait to get the reissue of Strange Days on CD so I can retire that horrible bulky, scratchy vinyl copy that I’ve had since 1968’. So down to the store you would go and for some silly price you’d get a digital version of that groundbreaking Doors album. What you actually got was an overpriced thin and flimsy cover with bad colour separation, sometimes with none of the original sleeve notes and anything that was there was too small to read and badly printed. Cheap as possible, no effort and the CD mastering was a joke. It was so trebly and harsh that dogs were dying in the streets as they went past new CD buyers’ open windows. The record business instead of seeing it as an opportunity to create something sonically better, a way to improve the medium, more compact, easier to store (and all that nonsense), instead created a nasty cheap, horrible sounding replica of your most treasured music for their own profit. A record that had paid for itself 50 times over with a deal that let the record labels take millions of dollars in new revenue with zero commitment – except for the extra cardboard.

Things improved, sure, but it wasn’t just the CDs, it was also the CD players. All that laser technology needed more research and so early CD players – were crap. Nowadays there’s something to be said for CD quality, CD players have improved, the packaging is much better, imaginative and attractive, but guess what, now nobody wants them. Instead they are going for streaming sites which allow access to everything you would want for next to no money, with no storage issues and you can’t scratch them if you can’t get your careless, greasy unloving mitts on them. This also means that you don’t need that cumbersome stereo system with the bulky speakers that you never know where to put in the room, taking up space where there could be a nice small brass table with a souvenir from Italy on it. You don’t need that dust attracting amp that has all those wires trailing out of it that the cat keeps on chewing. Last of all who needs that impractical turntable when you can’t put your dinner plate on the lid in case it cracks, or your coffee cup without leaving a mark or spilling something and then you can’t use the damn thing because it’s sticky. Then there’s the needle. It needs changing every now and again and even when you put a new needle in it clogs up with dust and suddenly the tone arm skates across the record. Plus there’s the trying to fit the damn fiddly thing. What a hassle and should it be double sided, is it a sapphire or a diamond, does the price difference really make a difference when I treat the records so badly anyway?

The records themselves – too big, too fragile, you can’t lean them against the radiator, or leave them in the sun, you can’t leave them out, you can’t find them amongst the other records. It’s a disaster. With the internet you don’t need all these hassles and best of all you don’t need any speakers because in your computer there’s already a speaker as there is in your phone. It is so much better than it used to be – less hassle, more choice, cheaper.

The aesthetics of handling the records, better sound, the larger cover art, gatefolds, the soft release of the needle onto the grooves, the warmth, the break in the middle to turn the record over, the importance of the sequencing that the band sweated over for weeks to get right, the mastering, the atmosphere, the smell of a new record, the sensuality of the experience, the dimmed lights that the experience demands. The different label designs, the sleeve notes. Like books, the gravitas records give to a room. The caring for them, the relationship with your records, the love, thank GOD they came back in some form and that the sonic entities didn’t just relegate records (or books) to the past – yet.

Music today has again found its way to 1969. After Janis I wondered what Laura Nyro was doing that year. It was of course New York Tendaberry, one of her most intense albums. You can see Todd Rundgren falling off his chair as he listened to this and saw a whole other world of songwriting and soulful expression.

Next came Joni Mitchell’s second album Clouds. Somehow not on the radar as much as her other albums despite the fact that it has her version of her much covered song Both Sides Now (recorded first by Judy Collins in 1968). It’s been recorded by Frank Sinatra and well, by hundreds of other artists. This also has the original versions of Chelsea Morning and I Don’t Know Where I Stand which Fairport Convention recorded on their debut album released in 1968 and sung by the great Judy Dyble. (This was the album before Sandy Denny joined the band.)

Well 1969 was something of a turning point so we got a little heavier in here and found an unusual Australian copy of Led Zeppelin 1 on the green Atlantic label. It’s such a great record, despite the stealing. Amazing guitar sounds, fantastic drumming and bass playing and Plant standing in the front and making that unique sound with his vocal chords!

How do you follow that? Easy, the debut Stooges album. I have a nice re-release from Rhino that sounds like somebody really cared about the sound when they remastered it and reissued it. What a great record it is, too. Iggy at times sounds a bit like Jim Morrison and Ian McCulloch sounds a bit like both of them from this era.

So it’s been a while since I heard the new Abbey Road with the extra double album with all the outtakes. Luckily I found a mint copy of it second hand, because these Beatles reissues are way too expensive. I’m still saving up for the multi CD version of the White Album which is over 100 pounds, still it is my birthday next week! Ha ha!

Song Of The Day today is Waves Towards The Moon as an encouragement for Mother Nature to fight back.

 

Waves Towards The Moon

Only stones
That skim across
The surface of the sea
I have thrown
To see if Neptune
Sends them back to me

If you talk
Then words will only
Splinter into sound
Where’s the sun
When all your conversations
Shadow bound

Time waits for you
And I do too

Wind in the curtains
I am so certain
Did I hear your silky tune
Tapped on my window
You make the night glow
Then you’re gone like the
Waves towards the moon

Presence felt
I can’t see you
But I know you’re there
It’s like you melt
And disappear like water
In the air

Just a glimpse
Somewhere in the corner of my eye
Upon your lips I will settle
Like a butterfly

Time waits for you
And I do too

Wind in the curtains
I am so certain
Did I hear your silky tune
Tapped on my window
You make the night glow
Then you’re gone
Like the waves towards the moon

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