TO WHERE I AM NOW

Somehow July arrived and walking up to Dare’s house today I could feel the sun baking on my neck. There was the sound of drilling beyond the block of flats to my left and I got the feeling that everything was normal. There was a woman behind a hedge, gardening, women pushing prams and people taking their dogs for a walk on the rec at the top of town. It was what I call a ‘Doctor Who day’ where everything seems normal, but there’s something else going on. This is the insidious nature of the virus, only attacking a certain part of the population (the most vulnerable), but at the same time killing someone who is young and healthy. Then, slowly disappearing, giving millions of people a false sense of security and then suddenly reappearing, confirming the suspicious and the careful that it was never going away. What is going on in America? President Cramp and Mike Tripe are saying it’s fine whilst it’s spreading like crazy? Why won’t their own people stop them doing this? I don’t get it. If your husband or wife starts running around the house swinging a machete, you take it off them.

That sense of security is easy to feel around these parts especially here and as most places in England are opening up from Saturday, trepidation is being replaced with hope. But there’s spikes here too and with Britain’s awful numbers in comparison with Germany one wonders if it’s all going to start all over again. Shouldn’t we be dreading the onset of winter if spikes are happening in the summer? It looks like Lufthansa is finally noticing that some people had bought tickets way in advance for international trips that we can no longer take. Olivia and I have tickets to the USA on August 13th but it seems that we can now cancel them and have until the end of January 2021 to re-book. So, we will re-book to come to play in America next year in support of all these albums that we will be putting out, we hope. Who knows where we will be in a year? Will there be a vaccine? Will the pandemic be worse? Will President Plank be gone? We are still trying to plan but the three things that matter the most to us at this stage remain closed. They are: The leisure centre with its pool and gym, the venues so that we can play live and last but not least the place where followers of this blog are liable to be most excited to hear about, the belt shop!

I had no studio or sessions today so it was time to get into the archive and record the records that are getting played in here on the website and bring out the record cleaning machine so I can clean some records and put some records away. I’ll be continuing and doing this all day tomorrow. I’ve been trying to find some time to introduce Ace Zarathustra’s Eclectic Train Wrecks, that would be my radio show should I have the time to become Ace the DJ. I play records here, but it’s only me that gets to hear them. So at this point the only way possible to make my musical choices available for public consumption is to make Spotify playlists. And then that wouldn’t mean albums, it would mean tracks. The ‘train wrecks’ comes from a term used in American radio circles to denote a situation when the continuity doesn’t work between two tracks. Like say Doris Day into Black Sabbath or Type O Negative into Celine Dion. Ace is my Starbucks name and Zarathustra sounds like I am from space.

I find that the eclecticism does usually confound. I do like to jump around and mess with musical styles so a theme might be leading somewhere but could equally go off the rails as stay on course. When I did my radio show in New York I played all kinds of things but there would be trains of thought, spur of the moment connections, there wouldn’t exactly be no planning and it wouldn’t be totally random but there might be some jumping around. For example I had a show of just Welsh bands and then the next show was themeless. What makes the idea of variation odd is not necessarily the different music but the sonic differences between music from different eras. Flying Lotus sounds pretty strange next to The Kinks. But then maybe you noticed the photo in one of the previous blogs of Vera Lynn with Dave Brock from Hawkwind? Anything can happen. On the other hand I could possibly play Bowie all day or some unhip contemporary Pop songstress. Then there’s the Progressive issue, I’d be as happy playing a two minute song by The Box Tops as I would a side of Yes. It’s whatever the mood takes and you can’t ever make everyone happy, it’s taste and no one can claim it because no one has everyone’s circumstances and influences.

So my question is do you have Spotify? Would you listen to playlists? Let me know. Also I don’t want playlists to be agonising with a huge pressure to come up with faultless choices. ABBA might appear with Nick Cave or Gwen Stefani next to Patti Smith. Sadly, I don’t have a radio station with a staff or a budget or loads of time so we’ll see how often I get the playlist made, perhaps weekly for two hours. I might start by posting the New York songs I played, but unfortunately I won’t be able to introduce the songs and tell you stories or interesting facts which originally accompanied those choices so maybe not. But then, interjecting DJs isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, some people hate the DJ talking.

Music today was me randomly picking an interesting album and that happened to be Dreams’ debut, released in 1970. It was more music in the area of Rock with horns, but not as successful as Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago even though they also had good songs and incorporated the brass in an interesting way. Although they didn’t become successful in their own right, some of their members did become well-known, John Abercrombie became a prolific Jazz guitarist, The Brecker Brothers were successful with their own band and as sessioneers – Michael played sax and flute, Randy, trumpet and flugelhorn and then there’s Billy Cobham, the drummer’s drummer. This album is a mostly forgotten jazzy, fusiony classic, if you like that kind of thing. If you are interested in some nerdy facts, the band was formed by Jeff Kent (?) and bassist Doug Lubhan who was asked to join The Doors but declined due to his membership of the band Clear Light who made one album in 1967. But he did play bass on Strange Days (1967), Waiting For The Sun (1968) and The Soft Parade (1969). Guitarist Bob Mann went on to be an in demand session player and played on Mountain’s Twin Peaks.

Colours released two albums in the late sixties, their self-titled debut (1968) on Dot and Atmosphere (1969). Colours were some kind English Beatlesy, sixties-inspired orchestral Pop group, Where Is She particularly stands out as a Lennon influence. They allegedly had a hit with Brother Lou’s Love Colony reaching the Billboard Charts in 1968, but I can’t figure out how to search to see if it’s true. It seemed at first that they were essentially a vehicle for songwriters Jack Dalton and Gary Montgomery and by the second album they were the only two credited musicians. But Colours did have one member, bassist Carl Radle, who went on to play with Delaney and Bonney, Derek and The Dominoes, J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton. Drummer Chuck Blackwell played with Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Taj Mahal and Freddie King. Dalton and Montgomery wrote songs for The Turtles, The Outsiders and Spiral Starecase.

The Collectors were a Canadian sixties Psychedelic Pop band who released their first, self-titled, album in 1968. They only made two albums, the second was a collaboration with prominent Canadian playwright George Ryga. They wrote the music for his stage play Grass and Wild Strawberries (1969). When singer Howie Vickers left, guitarist Bill Henderson took over on lead vocals and they became Chilliwack who went to be a successful band in the seventies and eighties.

The Collage were a sixties band who made just one album, released in 1968. Donna, Jodie, Jerry and Don were a cross between The Free Design and The Mamas And The Papas. It’s what you call sunshine Pop and despite their short tenure they managed to find famous sessioneers from The Wrecking Crew, Larry Knetchel and Hal Blaine, to play bass and drums. If you feel like donning a head band and skipping through a field, this is the music for you.

Song Of The Day is Felice (MOAT, 2013), because Felice lived in another century like the sixties is to now, she was to then.

 

Felice

Felice
Throw all your flowers down
Scatter them on the ground
And take the boat to Cádiz

The night’s
Mischief has ended now
They won’t find you in the crowd
So make sure that you leave

And you must go
With the southerly wind
In your hair
If you stay here
There’s only despair for you
Only a prayer for you
You must leave

Felice
You are too beautiful
It will make you sorrowful
Bring you down to your knees

Felice
They won’t find you innocent
He worked for the government
And he could do as he pleased

So you must go
Tie up your hair in a bun
Leave the past
For the future to come
Now you’re on the run
Make good speed

Felice
They’ll never catch you now
But murder still haunts your brow
And your soul still looks for relief

Felice
You must get on with your life
They never found the knife
Just that you were a tease

Now you are free
Look in the mirror to find
If there’s any lies
To remind you of
What really happened on
That dark street

(Willson-Piper / Röhlcke)
MOAT – MOAT (2013)