TO WHERE I AM NOW

Today’s sizzling, sensational piece of news is that whilst talking with Craig in Atlanta during a thunderstorm, a blistering bolt of lightning came down and hit his front porch, knocking out the computer and the internet – but happily not his partner who from what I understand was out there. He managed to get half a message back to me via his cell phone that they were alive! Result! Sessions that end in death are never good. I’ve never been in Penzance when there’s been a thunderstorm. It must be something to do with the climate, how the land lies, the sea, they do have thunderstorms in Cornwall but seemingly not here. Where Olivia comes from in the Rheinland, thunderstorms are rife and huge and amazing. I remember as a kid in the north of England my Dad and I would watch the thunderstorms and lightning come towards us as we sat in anticipation. He told me if you count between the lightning and the thunder, you can tell how many miles away the thunderstorm is, I don’t know if it’s true but I still believe it. Thankfully he didn’t indoctrinate me with stories of a god, that’s something where influence should have no bearing. He also told me that when the sun was at a certain angle he could tell the time with the tattoo he had of a watch around his wrist. My father had two tattoos, the second on his arm was a hammer and sickle. He was hassled about it if he was at the swimming baths in the sixties and began to cover it with a plaster to save the aggravation. He told me he got the tattoo in the war and said that if you think this was radical you have to remember that the Russians and the British were allies/comrades and you should have seen the tattoos some of the Russian pilots got of Union Jacks emblazoned on their chests.

I almost played bass on one of Ahad’s tracks today as Dare was in the studio sorting out drum takes. But I had sessions with Noelle in Montreal and Chris in New Jersey so I postponed it so I wouldn’t be rushing to get it done. Everyone has been moving forward with their songs and it’s great to see they are as mad and as enthusiastic as me when it comes to creating and listening to music. It’s been a philosophical few days on the sessions as the important balance between the math and the magic has been discussed. You can search for the muse in the mist, you can find the muse, but the muse is not a tape recorder, a compressor or a fuzz box, it’s not accuracy and experience, that’s you and your tools and your skills, it’s a collaboration between her, you and the functioning of the technology. The practical things are just as important as is the bed and the soft pillows in which to woo and rest the muse’s head. You have to be good at or at least aware of a lot of things and then have fine friends good at the things you can’t do to realize your goal. Then there’s the cost, financial and emotional, equally committed to reach a place which may be a lonely journey to an empty room, or a busy room that exacerbates loneliness. And this is why you have to satisfy yourself first in case the audience either demands something of you that you don’t want to give or ignores you completely.

French today was interesting because I found myself successfully understanding everything with the pronunciation and the grammar and I also found myself completely unaffected by the fact that a couple of days ago I listened to part of a French radio station and the announcer started with a monologue of which I understood nothing. I guess a 26-day streak on Duolingo and schoolboy French doesn’t make you a polyglot. I’m pretty satisfied with what I’ve learnt – how to say owl (chouette), how to conjugate some verbs, masculine and feminine, spellings and better pronunciation. Aujourd’hui Duolingo, demain le monde!

Olivia and I ran down to the prom today in between sessions just to breathe in the sea air. Just five minutes of this revitalises you, clears your head. Today on a cloudy day and on a choppy sea one of those awesome great black-backed gulls sat floating on the waves like a toy and as if it was personal leisure time. The idea of animals doing things for fun, enjoying themselves, is rather nice I think. You see it most in happy dogs, but I’m sure there is such a thing as a cheerful pigeon. You’ve seen those big cats, bears or dolphins, looking like they are having a really great time and like us perhaps they get depressed, miserable, don’t feel like chasing after the ball.

Music today was inspired by a trip to the greengrocers, but not by a vegetable, so not Green Day or Steve Hillage’s Green or REM’s Green or The Smithereens’ Green Thoughts, or Greenslade or even Candlewick Green or even Hughie Green, but by a song that was being played on the radio – Romeo. You had to be around in England in 1977 to remember this band and this song and you can’t confuse them with the American band of the same (dumb) name, Mr Big. How can two bands think that this is a good name? (Well in the case of the English Mr Big, it was their manager who made them do it, they were actually called Burnt Oak before.) I have two of their albums that were released in the UK and the US compilation of those two albums. There was a third album, Seppuku, that remains elusive.

Their first album Sweet Silence (1975) is a great mixture of Queen, Heavy Metal Kids and Bon Scott, part Glam, part seventies, part Rock. In fact Mr Big were Queen’s support on the A Night At The Opera tour. I can imagine they were a big success. Lead singer, guitar player and songwriter Dicken (aka Jeff Pain) screeched his way through this album but had the vision to put in the quiet bits, the dynamics, the album is full of ideas for a Rock album by a band that might have easily been a New Wave band if they’d been born a little later as is evident on Zambia, the opening track on Side 2. It’s a band you never hear about, never see their albums, isn’t on Spotify, well their hit is and some other bits but not the albums I have.

Mr Big were missed, despite the hit, they were missed and Dicken should really have been a big rock star. Of course he nearly was, or he was for 5 minutes when they had their big hit Romeo that reached No. 4 in the UK charts in 1977. It was co-written with Edward Carter who was also credited on the second album as lead singer, so not sure what was going on there except listening to the song I realized that they are both singing it. The US album Photographic Smile released in 1976 was a compilation of the two UK albums. The back cover of the album is quite disturbing, but I’ll let you find out why.

Unfortunately it all happened for Mr Big in 1977 as New Wave and Punk were taking hold and although they managed this one hit, they were fighting a losing battle. The self-titled album that the single came from was out of step with the times (rather like The Doctors Of Madness), if you didn’t fit in it didn’t really matter how good you were. The other problem is that this album, post Glam, isn’t as good as the first one, it tries and almost succeeds with Vampire and Can We Live/Angel Of My Life but it’s inconsistent, when it’s good it’s great. I bet the lads in Queen loved them.

They made this elusive third album, Seppuku (1978), that I’ve never seen and then broke up. I’d like to find that album because they made it with Ian Hunter! But they regrouped and Dicken and bassist Pete Crowther reappeared in 1980 as Broken Home with Pete Barnacle on drums and Rory Willson (double L!) on guitar and guess what, it’s great. It sounds great, good songs, Dicken’s unmistakable voice has something Sting-like about it, but only in as much as it’s clear, pure and high. It’s produced by Mutt Lange and if you don’t know who he is, this from Wikipedia:

He has produced albums for, or otherwise worked with, artists such as AC/DC, Def Leppard, The Boomtown Rats, Foreigner, Michael Bolton, The Cars, Bryan Adams, Huey Lewis and the News, Billy Ocean, Celine Dion, Britney Spears, The Corrs, Maroon 5, Lady Gaga, Nickelback, and Muse. He also wrote and produced songs with his then-wife, Canadian singer Shania Twain. Her 1997 album Come On Over, which he produced, is the best-selling country music album, the best-selling studio album by a female act, the best-selling album of the 1990s, and the 9th best-selling album in the United States.

Broken Home (Dicken and Crowther) made one more album in 1981 with Greg Walsh (brother of Peter Walsh who produced Heyday). Destroyed by the sounds of the day, that is, a horrible drum machine that may have worked for Heaven 17, but this attempt at musical modernisation at the hands of the fickle zeitgeist was suicidal…and that was that. It’s a damn shame because Dicken had it. In the nineties Mr Big reformed, Dicken without Crowther but with Carter, and released an album, Rainbow Bridge, in 1996. Like REM didn’t know Steve Hillage, Fairport Convention’s Peel sessions didn’t know my ex band and Pink Floyd didn’t know Medicine Head, although the story goes that Floyd changed the name of their album to Eclipse but when they realised that Medicine Head’s album had slid into obscurity they resurrected the title. It also seems like Dicken didn’t know Jimi Hendrix?

Song Of The Day is Romeo by Mr Big because you might have never heard it or if you did it was a long, long time ago. You may recognise part of the same video idea in Bohemian Rhapsody.

 

Romeo

I am the morning, you are the light
You make the morning such a beautiful thing
I am the green grass, you are the rain
Fall on me, make me grow
No-one will ever know
Fall on me make me grow again

I am the spirit, you are the light
You make the sun shine brighter, you make me smile
I am the water, you are the rose
Oh lady of the land
Come to me take my hand
Until tomorrow I’m your man

Step back in time dear Romeo she said
Step back in time please take me to your bed
Step back in time dear Romeo
My Juliet and take me home

I am the darkness, you are the night
You make the darkness such a beautiful thing
I am the mountain, you are the snow
Fall on me make me grow
No-one will ever know
Fall on me make me grow again

Step back in time dear Romeo she said
Step back in time please take me to your bed
Step back in time dear Romeo
My Juliet and take me
Step back in time dear Romeo she said
Step back in time dear now
Step back in time dear Romeo she said
Step back in time please take me to your bed
Step back in time dear Romeo
My Juliet and take me
Step back in time dear Romeo she said
Step back in time please take me to your bed
Step back in time dear Romeo
My Juliet and take me
Step back in time dear Romeo she said
Step back in time please take me to your bed
Step back in time dear Romeo
My Juliet and take me home