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At some point in the seventies, pretty much against the already mixed flow of my musical taste that was straddling the Glam singles of T. Rex, The Sweet and Mott The Hoople, the Rock LP sound of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep with the softer sounds of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young and Roy Harper and the spacey sounds of Hawkwind and Pink Floyd, I found myself falling in love with Janis Joplin.

It wasn’t a poster on my wall, my walls were full of posters already from the middle of Sounds magazine (all thrown away by my family when I moved out, along with my Michael Moorcock books and my complete set of World Cup football star coins collected from the petrol station). I saw that magical woman on the inside of the double In Concert album released in 1972, two years after her death, with concerts from San Francisco, Detroit, Toronto and Calgary. Side 1&2 were with Big Brother And Holding Company and Sides 3&4 with Full Tilt Boogie Band. Her voice and her picture captivated me. When I heard her sing Summertime I was completely mesmerized, enchanted, under her spell. I listened to that album so many times, studied the bangles around her wrist and marvelled at her straw hair. Also inside the gatefold were the sleeve notes written by Clive Davis who signed her to CBS records and who would later sign the ex band to Arista. If you think I just cut and pasted this from the net, no, I didn’t, I typed them out myself with my dodgy typing technique of error and fix later. I can’t find them online anywhere, it seems like a service to Rock ‘n’ Roll that needed to be done…so here they are:

I first saw Janis Joplin at the Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967. She was then an unknown, being given the opportunity to perform on the same stage with the reigning greats of the popular music world. Janis instinctively sensed this was her moment because she was never more vibrant, more electric or more triumphant. Seeing her for the first time was an experience I’ll never forget. She tore at your insides and tingled every nerve. Her raw power and electricity was awesome. From Monterey Janis went on to become a world wide phenomenon. A tough and earthy exterior hid a vulnerable, sensitive ego, with both fighting and interacting all the time. “Piece Of My Heart” and “Summertime” – “Ball and Chain” and “Me and Bobby McGee” – each was a different part of a tremendously unique person and performer.

Janis lived like a flame in the wind – always at her most intense. The flame was, of course, her brilliant talent, itself a living thing always visible and audible in performance. Not a quiet talent but a robust, vigorous, bursting flare of creativity. She honored it and fed it with every last ounce of physical and emotional energy at her command. The result, the effect, was undeniable – a force so compelling it rode down fatigue, strain, endurance, to the very limits of human capacity.

But she was human, a human being. Given a gentler time, she might have lived more years. But she also might have burned less brightly, less intensely. The wind into which she sang was the wind of the 60s, a time of unprecedented cross-currents. The air of the time was a wind that blew away cobwebs and prejudices by the thousands, but was cruelest to those who stood exposed and did not try to hide.

Janis sang in the eye of the hurricane. She didn’t simply “sing” a song – she ravaged it, tore it to shreds, exploded it. And yet, at the right moment, she could be incredibly gentle. Caressing each word with tenderness and understanding. The energy of a lifetime she put into a few short years. Janis “live” could sing down the wind. Or start it up again if it fell silent. Her records – recordings of these “live” performances – are her testament. Hearing them now, they inspire not so much mere admiration and applause – but awe. We are awed that one human being – yes, greatly gifted and talented but still one person – could give so much.

Clive Davis (President CBS Records)

Some years ago whilst staying at the Highland Gardens Hotel in Los Angeles I discovered that this hotel used to be called The Landmark Motor Hotel and this was the place where Janis Joplin died. I asked reception if I could visit her room (Room 105) and they said yes. I wound my way around the corridors until I came to the door. I let myself in and closed the door behind me. I just stood there. The room didn’t seem to have changed much since that fateful day on October 4th 1970. There was an old wooden closet of some kind that seemed like it had been there since the sixties. I just closed my eyes and thought about her. There was no ghost, nothing left, just that voice resonating through my brain.

As you might have guessed, music tonight has been exclusively Janis Joplin, In Concert from 1972 that I mentioned at the beginning featuring two of her bands, Big Brother And The Holding Company and the Full Tilt Boogie Band. Next came Pearl that was released three months after her death in 1970 reaching No.1 in the US Charts and featuring her classic vocal performance on the Kris Kristofferson penned song, Me And Bobby McGee, a No.1 US single and who can’t love her a cappella Mercedes Benz and irreverent sense of humour.

Cheap Thrills by Big Brother And The Holding Company was the other album that I played to death starting with Combination Of The Two. I never knew which of the two guitarists, James Gurley or Sam Andrew, was playing all those mad solos, I loved the wild approach. Joplin’s voice on this album is so amazing. Somehow she sings low gruff and soft sensitive high notes at the same time. This is my favourite album by Janis and especially great with this raw band, it also reached No.1 on the US charts in 1968. For some reason I never got the first Big Brother album with Janis, something I have to fix.

I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama (1969) with the Kozmic Blues Band was the band and album between Cheap Thrills and Pearl. At this point she had left Big Brother under pressure to work with studio musicians. This was a step away from the Psychedelic Blues Rock of Cheap Thrills and headed more in a Soul direction with brass, Janis took Sam Andrew with her for this album with a new band. It also featured Mike Bloomfield from Electric Flag on guitar who also played with the controversial electric band that Dylan brought to the Newport Folk Festival.

Go love Janis, she’s amazing.

Song Of The Day today is Janis Joplin live singing Summertime at Gröna Lund in Stockholm with Full Tilt Boogie Band in 1969.

Sitting on a big stone on the beach has become a luxury. That long list of things we take for granted has been glaring out from under the fridge magnet. There on the beach with the cucumber green sea lapping against my feet I feel grateful. A fishing boat was returning from its catch and we all know that sympathy for fish will never shake up the sometimes aggressive and defensive ridiculing entitled carnivores. As I look down at my leather shoes I wonder if the so called hypocrisy that these opinionated brutes throw at you has ever had them consider that veganism might be about one’s preferred diet, not proselytizing? I’m not vegan, I just don’t eat fish, meat or eggs, I do eat honey and cheese. It feels really good not to eat meaty anything, but why? When I gave up meat 37 years ago I went from always having digestion issues to never having digestion issues at all through food intake. A man in Sweden once told me that Swedish people don’t generally get indigestion. Ha ha. Claiming terrible food (nothing to do with meat) messed up your digestion and food in Sweden was better balanced on the whole. Fast food places have of course ruined everything. A quality burger store on the same street as McDonalds might not do as well, even if the prices were comparable. But back to eating meat, the idea that not eating animals is a good thing came to me later, it wasn’t originally why I stopped. Hindus are horrified at the thought of eating cows, they are sacred to them. Even as a meat eater I couldn’t see that killing a giraffe was anything more than barbaric and I guess a cow is a giraffe in an uglier suit.

Then there’s the wet markets. So in China people eat bats or snakes? Well in France they eat horse meat and frogs’ legs and snails. In Arabia they eat sheep’s eyeballs. In Japan they eat raw fish. In England they eat tripe, sheep’s brains, paté, in Scotland haggis. In Spain they eat goat’s testicles, in South America they eat all kinds of insects. In Norway and Iceland they eat boiled sheep’s head. In Africa locusts and everywhere in the world liver and kidney. In Papua New Guinea there’s still cannibalism. As a vegetarian the whole world seems to be making some bizarre choices about what kind of food they put into their bodies, especially compared with fresh vegetables. It’s a wonder that more people aren’t healthier, because it just feels so much better. Better in the body and better in the brain, unhealthy sickness is the worst. I don’t personally care what people do, I’m not an activist and it’s a free world (for some), but cigarettes and alcohol, sugar, meat full of hormones. It doesn’t really compare to…well as I said I’m not an activist or a preacher. As a lad growing up in the North of England I had to figure out what worked for me. My initial choices were either meat and two veg or beans on toast. I’d never eaten avocado till I’d been to Australia, it changed my life, but it took me 22 years to try it, just to be aware of it as food.

Perhaps learning to love animals or people is the same as learning to love music, it takes heart. I always wonder what people would listen to if there was no promotion, no DJs, no image. Like politics, what if there was no lobbying, arm twisting, bribes, threats? Families have been torn apart by Trump and he seems to me to be quite a vicious and vindictive man. A more honourable man might encourage rigorous debate between the different sides, find common ground. Unrealistic as it may seem for his congressmen it might lead to a more reasonable way of running a government if they voted with their hearts and not be under pressure from their peers or their constituents or through the fear of being attacked by the boss. A divisive man might suppress the opinion of his own people so as to halt debate with the other side. What’s the good of that? Your side doesn’t always agree with you, you don’t have absolute power, nobody should. Can you imagine living in that atmosphere, where you can’t say what you think or feel without getting abuse or ridicule. The polarizing of opinion has meant that there’s no chance of compromise or proper debate just fuelling the fires of hate with provocation. Society is still fighting racism, sexism and it wasn’t so long ago you could get attacked for having long hair. I remember getting hassled in Jamaica, because I had my ears pierced. In France they banned the hijab. How do we bring this world together? By leading by example and having a heart as well as power. This president’s radical policies are so hard to argue when he attacks anyone that doesn’t go along with his whims. You’d feel better if he was just a man with a different plan that you could reason with. Imagine that.

That sky was billowing with clouds today, a gusty wind blowing the clouds past the sun so the Earth was momentarily put into shadow. The air immediately felt colder. They say that one day the sun will burn out and if we are the only beings around this part of the galaxy and if we don’t have the technology to leave this place, then the human race will die, forgotten, a brief moment in time. Are we doomed to always look back on wars and suffering? Imagine if all our resources were put towards saving the human race instead of destroying it. The only solace is that overall it used to be worse but with 30 million filing for unemployment in America, it seems that the privileged mighty also have to learn how to suffer, but guaranteed all this will take a bigger toll on poorer people. The only equality in all this is that both rich and poor die.

Music today has been 1969 (mostly). Tony Visconti has remixed Bowie’s first album and called it Space Oddity. I bought it in Liverpool in the HMV Black Friday discounts and only just got to it today. That was an expensive day because there were lots of records that were 20% off that I wanted. You just end up spending way more than you would have done overall. This might have been the first time that I heard the name Hermione (Letter To Hermione) before J. K. Rowling came and made it a household name. I was enjoying Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud tonight.

Same year, Keith Christmas (real name) released his album Stimulus (CD). He played acoustic guitar on Bowie’s album. Sometime in the seventies I saw him live at Liverpool Stadium. It might have been supporting Hawkwind? Stimulus suffers a little from the era and the ‘jolly vaudeville’ as All Music Guide calls it, that appears way too early on the album (Bedsit Two-Step). But there really are some cool tracks on this record, you just have to wait for them. Track 1, Travelling Down, is a contender and also the longer Trial And Judgement.

In 1969 the concept of the groovy bedsit came to the fore with all kinds of Bohemians in furry jackets buying guitars and retiring to their rooms with beautiful long haired girls, tea and funny cigarettes. Al Stewart’s first album was called Bedsitter Images. His second, Love Chronicles, was released in 1969 and has lots of an uncredited Jimmy Page playing electric guitar with long wordy songs. Highly recommended. I met Al Stewart in San Juan Capistrano in California when I went to see him there. When he heard that a member of the ex band was there he wanted to meet me – he lived in California and I guess he had a radio. He told me that before John Lennon, Yoko Ono was his girlfriend.

The late Duncan Browne who died tragically of cancer at the age of 46 made Give Me Take You in 1968. (I have a CD.) Unlike most of the other British bedsitter, singer, guitarists, he played nylon string guitars. (Although Bowie was heavily into the 12 string.) Again wordy thoughtful songs. Colin Blunstone told me that they shared a flat in Earl’s Court. In 1972 he had a hit with the song Journey, played on acoustic nylon string guitar. My friend Ed Rogers recorded the song Alfred Bell from his first album and I played bass on it (I think) at Tony Shanahan’s studio somewhere in New Jersey. (He’s Patti Smith’s only constant musical companion these days.)

Next and back in 1969, Roy Harper and Folkjokeopus. It’s worth it just for the 18 minute McGoohan’s Blues, great lyrics and great singing. She’s The One – also great. If you haven’t brought Roy Harper into your life yet, stop everything and do it now, there’s a lot to get through.

Jake Holmes’ self-titled album from 1969 was his third. You know about the original versions of Dazed And Confused that appeared on his first album, The Above Ground Sound Of Jake Holmes (1967). I always wondered was he trying to separate himself from the hip underground with that title, or was he just being clever-clever? By the time he got to this album he was in Nashville and not afraid of a Country influence, but there’s some good songs on the record. After this album he went on to co-write (with Four Season’s Bob Gaudio) all the songs on Frank Sinatra’s Watertown, sadly it didn’t really work out commercially, the album not making the US Top 100, still, imagine.

Today’s Song Of The Day is I Must Have Fallen from Nightjar. Drop D and sprawling.

 

I Must’ve Fallen

Greenest eyes overbite
Skin like light what a sight
When I first saw you

Standing there unaware
Your neck bare yellow hair
I already adore you

Fingers long that linger on
Singer sings a song so long
Especially for you

I wonder if you’ll hear the riff
The lift, the voices drift
All over you

I must’ve fallen in love with you

Your mouth that moves and soothes
And chooses words and coos
I just wanna talk to you

If I’m awake for heaven’s sake
Let’s not make mistakes
I don’t wanna hide from you

So come to me this plea
From me to you to see
If you’ll let me inside of you

You’re a dream it seems
Soft serene velveteen
I just wanna sleep with you

I must’ve fallen in love with you (I really wanna see you)

(Willson-Piper)
Nightjar (2008)

Olivia walked out today into a storm, a coldish windy day at the end of April when spring is supposed to be here. No bother, I remember being in Sweden once and I woke up on a day at the end of April and there had been a massive drop of snow in the middle of the night. To be honest I don’t mind, I like the wind and I like the rain like I like the sun and the blue sky, but too much heat and too much rain are equally painful. It’s all about the balance – in everything, right? But today it was a squall, the wind blowing the rain sideways and then stopping for a bit and then coming back again. I ran through the streets with my towel on my head and sunglasses living both summer and winter simultaneously.

Lots of news today. Record Store Day has moved again till the end of each month from August to November. It comes with a new name for this unprecedented situation, RSD Drops. I’m happy to announce that my 2008 album Nightjar will be one of those vinyl releases although at this point we are not sure which month. It all adds to the intrigue. Nightjar will be released exclusively in a limited edition gatefold on red vinyl through Schoolkids Records. We’ll let you know the details of the release date as we get them.

In other hot news Bandcamp has again decided to have another day where they waive their fees so anything you buy from us either digital or physical goes directly to us. This time we have more things available than last time. We have extra stock of T-shirts and CDs in the US which will help postage if you live there. The big day is May 1st and it’s just for 24 hours, so don’t miss it. Any questions you can send us a mail and we’ll help as much as we can.

I’ve been meaning to write about the video release of The Churchhill Garden’s new song which stars me and Olivia as well as me old mate Mark Burgess from The Chameleons. Also starring our friend Andy Jossi who is the composer and instrumentalist and Krissy Vanderwoude who sings and who wrote the words. The song is called We Can Dream and will be today’s Song Of The Day at the end of this post.

I was also thinking today to remind you to check out the In Deep Playlist on the site to see which records we have been spinning this month. Tomorrow is the last day of April so we will start afresh on May 1st. In my mind, in my dreams I will be doing some Spotify playlists for your listening pleasure, but I’m so busy with sessions, studio, blog, and life, that I’m not finding any big blocks of free time, but I will do my best and will post anything that I do. I didn’t even get to watch Star Trek tonight.

We listened to a mix of Space Summit song 9 tonight as we get close to completing the album. All will be revealed when we have all the songs and we’ve thought about how we are going to present it, when, where, all that needs to be decided, but I just can’t wait for you to hear it. As I was just nipping in and out of the studio today as Dare was mixing I did find some time to get better organized in the archive and actually got to put some records away, so whilst pottering I was throwing on all kinds of CDs that will appear in today’s music picks.

Also I trust this more newsy blog today doesn’t have you craving for more intense philosophical ruminations, surreal stories, true life-changing experiences shared and intriguing considerations. We are all living this bizarre reality at the moment and it must surely be a time of reflection. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? I got busy, but for a lot of people there’s more free time, no commute, working more or completely from home. Less social life and therefore more indoor contemplation. I’m busy because some people out there are taking this time to doing something creative, work on ideas they’ve been meaning to get to for a long time and now they finally can. The Songwriting & Guitar Guidance is open. If you are healthy and not freaking out about how you are going to survive like a lot of people are, I would recommend not wasting this time, because it may not happen again. In fact we hope it won’t and if it doesn’t then everything you do now might just give you the future you want. Let’s hope so.

So music today has been very varied CD and vinyl, due to the pottering and filing and sorting. Starting with one of Mexico’s great bands of yore, Los Dug Dug’s from Durango. Mostly unknown outside their home country they made their own special brand of Psychedelic Beat music and thanks to that dastardly internet we can find their records at least on CD and probably on vinyl if you have the cash. This one is from 1971.

There’s a very sweet album called Analog Man by Joe Walsh released in 2012. It’s so lovely and sincere that you have to smile when you hear it. As always with Joe the guitar sounds and playing are really great and his unique voice gives it that familiarity. Produced by Jeff Lynne (you can always tell), Ringo plays drums on a couple of tracks. A great album for the uncynical.

I have all of First Aid Kit’s albums. Olivia and I saw them in Texas and when I worked at Pet Sounds in Stockholm they came and played on RSD. It was a thrill to stand right next to them as they sang their magnificent harmonies – beautiful. This is their first album Drunken Trees (2008), still developing, but a promise of things to come. I can only recommend everything they do.

Then there’s U2 and Songs Of Innocence (2014). I try and try and sometimes succeed in liking some of the songs on later U2 albums. On this one especially Every Breaking Wave, but it sounds a little lacklustre in the energy department to me. Not that energy is what I need from U2, what I need from U2 is the passion that the none Bono lovers don’t like. I never thought you could fault him on effort. The Edge, samey, I don’t know, a certain blandness going on, fine for pottering, but even Morrissey does current affairs better than Bono these days and Coldplay sound a little edgier. I blame Danger Mouse. I feel the same way about his album with Karen O – Lux Prima. Still, I will try again.

The three girls in boygenius (2018) are Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. I have their collaboration EP on vinyl, but my stereo isn’t set up to play 45RPM, this is when Spotify comes in handy. Check it out. But tonight I was playing the solo albums by Phoebe, Stranger In The Alps (2017), and Julien, Sprained Ankle (2015). I’m particularly fond of Phoebe at the moment, really like this album. I’ve had it for a while, played it quite often, Julien Baker I’ve only heard once and that was tonight. So more listens needed. Highly recommended US singer-songwriters. Lucy Dacus also has a cool album, Historian, from 2018.

So who is Israel Nash? I’m not sure really. He’s also been called Israel Nash Gripka. This album Lifted (2018) is kind of Hippie Lush. Melodic, well produced, if he was already famous people would really like this album, ha ha. Maybe he is very successful in America, I don’t know. Other records I have heard by him sounded very Neil Young like, more simple, less produced. I have Barn Doors And Concrete Floors from 2011. You’re just going to have to press random play on your music service to hear him, to see if you like him, but I recommend you do.

Then there’s Margaret Glaspy, singer and electric guitarist. I’m not sure why she’s not more popular, perhaps she’s just too new. But like Israel Nash, perhaps she is popular, I really wouldn’t know from here. This album is Emotions And Math and is from 2016. I really like it. Her new album Devotion (2020) I’m yet to explore. On a sad note each of her albums on vinyl are nearly £30 each, ridiculous, and why?

Moving right on to vinyl. I bought the last And Also The Trees album, Born Into The Waves (2016), direct from the band. Nice note back from guitarist Justin Jones. Really good, moody, dark, atmospheric, as all their albums are. Always interesting lyrics from brother Simon Huw Jones and Justin’s effected guitar creates perfect moodscapes as a background to the evocative words and singing.

Next was the new Rustin Man album, Clockdust (2020). You have to like his singing but I do. It’s quite unusual, moody, intriguing, sometimes a bit Robert Wyatt. I’ve only played it once so far, but I liked it immediately.

Next came Jenny Lee Lindberg’s Right On (2015). She is the bass player in Warpaint who I love and like her band mate, guitarist Theresa Wayman, has released her own album. You can tell they are in the same band, they tap into something, it’s hard to put your finger on it, but I really like the mood and the sounds.

Last but not least Vanishing Twin’s odd record. I’ll add a quote from Wikipedia as to what they sound like: “Their sound has been compared to the band Stereolab and is described as Brazilian psych-jazz as well as a psychedelic, experimental pop ensemble”. Last thought – Do the very rich have record collections?

Today’s Song Of The Day is You Can Dream by The Churchhill Garden, featuring us and many others in the video. The song is featured on a compilation called “Songs from Quarantine”, available exclusively on Bandcamp. 100% of profits will be donated to the World Health Organization for Covid-19 relief efforts.

 

We Can Dream

I miss you
I miss everything
About the way it used to be
Before life in quarantine

Before isolation
Feeling so alone
Scared inside our homes

But I still have my memories
This can’t take that from me
We can dream
We can dream
Dream…about how we hope we’ll be
After life in quarantine

No more isolation
Feeling so alone
Scared inside our homes

I still miss you
I miss everything
We can dream
We can dream

(Andy Jossi / Krissy Vanderwoude)

I had four sessions in the diary today, Stephen in Melbourne, Noelle in Montreal, Chris in New Jersey and Noel in Surrey. Reaching out to the world from this little room in Penzance. I need this, I need to be travelling, even if it’s simply communicating with people in different parts of the world. This is the worst thing for me about the lockdown and the cancelled gigs. I was going to be in Canada with Anekdoten, the US with Olivia (and Salim), in Germany where Olivia and I had a show in Berlin booked. We planned to tour in the UK in December. We still have shows pencilled in with Anekdoten in Sweden (and Poland, if I’m about). Plus Olivia and I were/are still planning to travel to Portugal. The trip to Portugal is perhaps the most serious of all as we are looking at the possibilities of living there, the only real alternative we like for Europe in the wake of Brexit. It seems like it’s a tricky language, but it has a lot to offer. Lefty government, sensible drug policy, warmer climate, Fado, the Portuguese guitar, Ronaldo, Pastéis de Nata (custard tarts), the Algarve, Lisbon, Porto, the Vasco de Gama bridge, the Lello bookstore, allegedly the inspiration for Hogwarts and did you know “The alliance between England and Portugal, ratified by the Treaty of Windsor in 1386 is the oldest alliance in the world still in force”. There is also the chapel of bones, above the entrance the sign boasts “Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos” (‘We bones, are here, waiting for yours’).

“I haven’t found anywhere in the world where I want to be all the time. The best of my life is the moving. I look forward to going”. – Sean Connery

What is Fado? – “In popular belief, Fado is a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with a sentiment of resignation, fate and melancholia”.

So as soon as the lockdown is over, as soon as we have covered as much as we can in the studio with Space Summit, the Jerome album, Noctorum, when we’ve figured out how Olivia and I are going to record and see what happens with the plans for Salim in Texas, Paul and The Wild Swans in Liverpool, Steve and Lynne and Atlantaeum Flood plotting in Scotland and Arno and Sweet Gum Tree in France. When we have MOAT’s Poison Stream – that’s where we will be going, Fado land. I realized tonight that I don’t know any Portuguese writers. Paulo Coelho, famous for his book The Alchemist (and others), writes in Portuguese but he is Brazilian. I know four Fado singers: the legendary Amália Rodrigues, Mariza (who I’ve seen live at the Sydney Opera House) Cristina Branco and Ana Moura. I know little about Portuguese artists from music to cinema, painting to writing. I need to change that. So much to know, so little time.

Going to Portugal, a place I’ve only been once for one night when I played there with the ex band, Tom Verlaine was the support. I have vague memories of going to a late night bar after the gig where a Lisboeta or Alfacinha took an interest in me. I soon found out she was a lady of the night. I remember telling her at some point, sorry but I’m not interested in your wares (ha ha). She looked at me with a harsh look on her face and scowling said to me “you are cold” and moved on. That memory has only just come back to me.

I couldn’t wait to see the world. It’s not like I was looking for adventure, I didn’t want to bungee jump off a bridge in Vietnam, I didn’t want to go white water rafting. I thought India sounded scary and although my old mate Yeb from Cameroon lived in my one room flat in Ladbroke Grove whether I was there or not still hasn’t got me to Africa. It’s not like I was looking for first class travel in strange lands, my scariest moments have certainly been in Western countries, but I wasn’t necessarily looking for the exotic, although I think seeing a giraffe in the wild might be quite something. I wasn’t ever interested in Eastern religion, I was more into Western literature and travelling to the countries that spoke European languages. I liked hearing French and Spanish. As a teenager and Hawkwind fan I read twenty something Michael Moorcock books. We had Dickens at school so the Science Fantasy feast and books on the school curriculum had me liking a good story. Then I discovered that amazing world of literature for myself. Still I only ever read five books from the first period of 200 years when the modern novel was born, Cervantes’ Don Quixote,  considered to be the first released in two parts in 1605 and 1615 (he died in 1616), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels released in 1726, Voltaire’s Candide (1759), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Stendhal’s Scarlet And Black written in 1830.

After that came the riches of the 19th century and from then till the turn of the 20th century there was enough to keep you occupied. Here’s some of the more famous ones that I actually got to read: Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of the 1830s and 1840s, Gogol’s The Nose, The Overcoat and Dead Souls (1835-1842), Jules Verne’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (1870), Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (1865 and 1871), Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1867), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1890). The poets, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) and The War Of The Worlds (1898). After all this there was the whole of the 20th century. I read everything by Sartre and Camus (although as an Algerian, he was brought up in Africa). The writers that interested me the most were Zola, Dostoevsky, Strindberg, European writers. Storytellers, it was fiction from the continent I wanted to experience the most, Europe, including Scandinavia and into Russia.

But then came the computer, the mobile phone. Thank god that I read Lord Of The Rings before all that happened, I’m so happy to have become an adult before the computer age. Olivia and I were just commenting on how we live in front of the screen. How do we get the voracious reading that I had in my past back into our lives? It’s the choices you make, the priorities you make. Nobody is forcing me to look at my computer and the opportunities it gives me are infinite. But when I look at that list of books and think of all the reading I did before the digital revolution, I feel nostalgic, a craving for a bygone age. I suppose you can’t live in a world where people ride horses and enjoy the fact that dentistry is so sophisticated. Does anybody else hate that term ‘time management’? I think I need a Time Manager, but then where’s the freedom to live?

Music tonight took some turns. I was looking at some new releases on Spotify and listened to some of Ozzie’s new record whilst pottering and thought it’d be nice to hear Black Sabbath. ‘Nice’ is not the usual word that people associate with Black Sabbath, but I realized some time ago that Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) is a really melodic and catchy album. (Rick Wakeman plays on it.) Amazingly it was recorded in September and released in December of that year. Those were the days. What a terrible pressing it is though. I need to play my original copy over this reissue, it has to be better sounding. What a stoopid thing when an album is re-released, repressed, remastered and they do a terrible job. Or like my Kinks’ Arthur record, sealed, big scratch on it! How is it possible?

After this I went and had a small browse in the aisles and found the second, self-titled Third Ear Band’s album (1970). Really great moody Chamber Folk with violin, viola, cello, oboe and percussion. Out there, half jamming, half planned. Check it out on Spotify. I liked it so much that I also played the first album, Alchemy, from 1969.

After that, with all this talk of Portugal, I dug out my Amália Rodrigues albums. Known as the queen of Fado, you really don’t need to understand the words to feel it, share the melancholy, be moved. She died in 1999 at the age of 79. These days contemporary Fado singers I mentioned earlier, Mariza, Moura and Branco, are your chance to experience this emotional music in the modern era. If you get the opportunity don’t pass it up.

Song Of The Day today is sung by Dare and our friend Julie Elwin as a duet with me playing bouzouki and the 6 string bass. It’s of course Victorian Vignette from Noctorum’s Honey Mink Forever released in 2011.

 

Victorian Vignette

“Come my dear sit here and tell me
What it is that troubles you
If you can confide in me
Then we’ll see what we can do”
Be still, my heart
See how she suffers
“Lady take this moment
For there may not be another”

The comfort of friendship
Has turned into something not planned
How can I tell her
I crave the mere touch of her hand

The words left unsaid
Go ’round in their heads
Will shyness and shame
Defeat love again

“How kind of you sir, to ask me
What it is that’s on my mind
I assure you it is nothing
But tiredness from this work of mine”
Be still, my heart
His eyes are not for you
“Pleasant though it is to chatter
I have duties to resume”

These two years I’ve known him
His dear heart I never addressed
Yet all that I crave
Is to minister to his happiness

The words left unsaid
Go ’round in their heads
Will shyness and shame
Defeat love again

(Willson-Piper / Mason)
Noctorum – Honey Mink Forever (2011)

Evolution of the soul in music through the eras and the styles of disparate artists. Cynicism, magnanimity, ego, compassion, love, hate, nastiness and kindness. It’s all out there, I’ve met them. I’ve bought their records and then found records I liked hard to listen to after meeting some of them. (No, I’m not saying who or why.) I’ve avoided meeting certain musicians so as not to be disillusioned and found myself unavoidably face to face with other musicians who were the nicest people, the smartest and the coolest people you could ever meet. There’s skillful singers that can’t write songs, skillful writers that can’t sing. But why should we care what other people think or do and how well or how badly or how differently they do it? Can’t we just do it our way and be happy with that?

I wonder what we are actually hearing in the music as individuals that’s driving some to ecstasy and others to despair? Why are people so critical of other styles? Is it the fashion, the image, the level of melody versus the depth of the lyrics? I love Hip Hop except for the talking, the essence of Hip Hop. Attitude, is it the attitude that bothers me or is it the lack of melody? I hear the beginning of the track, great sounds, great ideas, great production and then the talking starts. It’s not even the subject matter, I can hear other people’s stories even if they don’t relate to me. I’m still human, I can hear the pain. Image and attitude reigns supreme in Punk, in Metal, in Hip Hop, in all the different genres. So why do people like one rhythm over another, one style but not another? And should we care to hear why? I know people that hate Reggae and others that listen to nothing else. I know a guy that hates The Beatles but loves Metal. Do The Beatles sound like wimps to him? Does it matter? Does he enjoy telling us that a band that so many people love doesn’t do it for him? Does it make him special? Or does John Lennon look like nothing compared to Rob Halford in his world? Is it not his people? Who are my people?

I saw a bit of Nick Cave live at Glastonbury yesterday all out of tune with silly hair and those moves, but the people love the attitude. I have so many Nick Cave records, I’ve seen him live twice in Stockholm, once in Grinderman and once at a mostly empty show in Sydney years ago, that I have mentioned before. I also saw him and Mick Harvey in the trendy Belgian mussels and fries restaurant in Ladbroke Grove once. It was opposite my flat where I lived for three years. You didn’t get the feeling you could walk up and say Hi. The impenetrable aura of Nick and his soldiers, you get the feeling they don’t talk about football. The tragedy of the loss of his son must make his deep artistic soul ache like hell, as if he needed this pain to create. I love a lot of his work I just wonder why so many other people do. He’s a captivating performer in an ironic Las Vegas cabaret kind of way. As if direct love to the world would come across as insincere, over-sentimental, shallow, cloying. Why do we trust him more than we trusted John Denver?

Strangely enough last year I saw Kylie Minogue live at Glastonbury (YouTube) and that was also all out of tune with silly hair and moves. Hey I had silly hair, too. I used to put sugar in my hair to stop it being flat. We have all done silly things for fashion, but in the end it’s the essence of the music that matters. BUT, the idea is that the music you like reflects who you are. That makes me a very confused person. The Carpenters have some magic moments as do The Monkees. Their image, their apparent lack of depth is overpowered by their presence, their producer’s skills, the era, just the fantastic songs. Pleasant Valley Sunday, I’m A Believer, The Porpoise Song, Last Train To Clarksville or Goodbye To Love, Superstar, Rainy Days And Mondays, Close To You and who could even imagine that The Carpenters could cover Klaatu’s weirdo classic, Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft. Also bear in mind, this apparent girl next door, this straight middle class woman with the beautiful voice, was troubled. Karen Carpenter died of complications from anorexia at the age of 33.

Look at ABBA, how many serious Swedes couldn’t take ABBA as they conquered the world? But what about their skills? How can you ignore their exquisite songwriting craftsmanship? I once said one of the problems of being in a Progressive band in Sweden is that it’s hard to find a critic that doesn’t like The Clash. I suppose The Clash shook the society up, got some anger and truth into the illusion of success and happiness. But nobody there outside the mainstream really talks about ABBA’s songwriting craftsmanship. Can’t you appreciate both? How can you ignore what both these bands had to offer? A large Progressive and Metal scene now exists in Scandinavia generally. Black Metal thrived in Norway and Sweden gave you Opeth, Katatonia, Amon Amarth, Entombed, Meshuggah, Ghost, Bathory, Candlemass and more. Where do these bands fit between ABBA and The Clash? Who cares what each other’s fans think? What about Stina Nordenstam and The Cardigans? Do we really have to choose or die?

People love Oasis. They sound so bland to me, the guitars and the basic rhythms, but I do have their records (CDs only) and can listen to them (rarely). Some songs are great, others drive me nuts. Good singer, bad attitude. Live Forever, great, Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back In Anger, no, please no. There was recently an English magazine cover, Mojo or Uncut, with Gallagher saying “People are too nice”. Do we need him to be provocative or to continue to be a good singer? How rude is he when he’s in the room with McCartney and Ringo or Klaus Voormann? How nice would he have been to John Lennon? I bought a CD by the other Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, the first track had the lyric ‘There’s something in the way she moves me to distraction’. Was he joking? Antagonizing the fake Beatles critics? The album was so well produced, what a sound. Expensive, but you’d think he’d avoid that as the opening line of his latest album or was he aping what George Harrison did to James Taylor?

Through it all, whatever anyone tells you is good music or bad music, somehow the soul of music hasn’t evolved, the reason, it never needed to. It’s always been there in both the audiences’ and the artists’ taste, in people’s expressions, in their hearts, in their genius, their craftsmanship. What people say is just a meaningless distraction. At the 1996 Brit Awards Michael Hutchence was presenting prizes, Noel Gallagher said “Has-beens shouldn’t present awards to gonna-be’s”. What would he have said to Frank Sinatra or Burt Bacharach or Ian Curtis or Scott Walker? As if he was in their league. I knew Michael a little bit, hung out with him all night once, he was going out with Kylie at the time (or was it Belinda Carlisle)? Ha ha. He was the coolest and one of the smartest musicians I ever met.

I just wonder must we hate something to love something else? In life, in politics, in music, in football. Can’t we stop judging other people’s personal decisions about things if it doesn’t affect us? Or does other people’s bad taste ruin everything? Ha ha. Can we not feel sad that people got a bad education or are misinformed and can’t someone out there do a better job of training the humans to be civil, respect each other (despite past differences), develop an understanding. There is no universal right, I just get the feeling that if you hate another football team so much that it drives you to violence or you hate gay people or people of another race then that’s a universal wrong, you are actually sick, need help and one hopes that one day you will see the light and the evolution of the soul.

Music today has reflected the idea that there’s different visions. I started off with the first 10cc album from 1973. I was thinking I’d listen to their first four albums, but then didn’t feel like it. These talented individuals pushing and pulling against each other’s ideas, two traditionalist in Stewart and Gouldman, Groovy Kind Of Love to No Milk Today, playing guitar and bass and Godley and Creme, more experimental, playing drums and guitar. What a mixture, making albums both complicated and melodic, pastiche and irony, straightforward, Pop or complex. Four strong voices in their own studio (in Stockport, where I was born).

Following up on Peter from Stockholm’s reminder that Mirkwood’s theft of Child In Time went back beyond Deep Purple In Rock and 1970. If you listen to San Francisco’s It’s A Beautiful Day’s debut from 1969, Bombay Calling is credited to band leader David LaFlamme and the mysterious Vince Wallace. Ian Gillan tells that they rewrote it after the It’s A Beautiful Day version, but they didn’t give credit for the original and key riff. But then they say It’s A Beautiful Day borrowed their Wring That Neck on their second album Marrying Maiden (1970), calling the song Don And Dewey. Check it out.

Then there’s The Carpenters’ third self-titled album from 1971. I always love hearing Superstar (written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell). I see the twee songs on the album akin to listening to a musical. Perhaps Julie Andrews could have been in The Carpenters and Karen Carpenter in The Sound Of Music?

The Carpenters clearly took me to Nick Cave and his first solo album From Her To Eternity, released in 1984. I bought this album when it came out. It starred Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Anita Lane, Barry Adamson and Hugo Race (who I met years ago). He had a band called The Wreckery in the eighties and if you like Nick Cave you would like The Wreckery so check them out, too.

Song Of The Day is See Your Lights from Forget Yourself, the strangest song, a jam with words. The confusion out there, the inability to understand, the feeling that something hasn’t been thought through. The idea that I love because I hate seems primitive and ridiculous.

 

See Your Lights

Come down
Come down, come to me
She’s somewhere sliding through me
Even though I can’t believe it
If I look can the Earth receive you
How come I see you

I’m never coming down
From the ceiling sister, losing life
We’re spinning down and down
Watch the medium, sister

Come floatin’ on through yourself
I hate to love you now baby on my own I see you
You have to haunt yourself

How come I see your lights
They keep paralyzing me
Try a little light on me
Everything’s so bright

How come you see your lights in me

Winding your way through this room full of flesh
Science, sexuality, the heat of your breath
Each bead of sweat, the message is sent
An army of hips, and trenches to defend
You can call your name again and again
Wear out your welcome, and escape on a train
Slither on up to a shining star
Concern yourself with the weird and bizarre
Disappear like smoke in a cold black sky
With a warm soft throb and a flash of light

How come I see your lights
They keep paralyzing me
Hey, try a little light on me
Everything’s so bright

How come you see your lights in me
Come away, come away
Come away, come away

(How come you see your lights)
(Come away)

(Kilbey/Koppes/Powles/Willson-Piper)