A Tale of Three Cities: Part 1  

this entry was re-published on 15.4.2012

Not So Pretty, Hardly Vacant 

For those of you who weren’t around, the mid to late seventies in London were grim and bleak.  While Britain shook off the austerity of the war, Baby Boomers who experienced childhood in the fifties were seduced by the effervescent promise of the sixties.  In a nutshell, the seventies were a bit of a let down. 

Graduating in 1973, I took a then less than customary ‘year off’ or what is now more euphemistically called a ‘gap year’.  My parents were less than thrilled.  They had been looking forward to the day when my shoulder length hair would be shorn and the spirit of Samson would be suited and booted and duly ensconced in a solicitor’s office.  In point of fact the experiences that I had and the lessons that I learned from bumming around the States have stood me in good stead ever since.  But that is for another time and another blog. 

Back in London, 1974 opened to the miners’ strike and the three day week.  Totally skint, I took what work I could get until I could start the six month course of study for the solicitors’ exams.  I started by counting tiny electrical terminals into plastic packets by torchlight for a pittance.  That was followed by two terms as a supply teacher at a local comprehensive.  Nevertheless, I remained more or less skint for some time to come – as were many of those around us.  Top end entertainment had to be budgeted for and concerts carefully chosen.  I still rue not having enough in hand to cover the cost of tickets to see Bob Marley at the Rainbow in 1977.  I made do by listening to my now worn copy of ‘Natty Dread’ and repeatedly borrowing a friend’s ‘Catch a Fire’.

Conditions in the country got progressively worse.  Between ’76 and ’78 inflation peaked at close to 25%, the country was continuously plagued by industrial action and an inept Labour government clung on precariously to power in a curious pact with the Liberals who, at the time, boasted a total of 13 MPs.  In spite of what was going on around me, I secured my professional qualification, got married, became a father for the first time (in 1979) and even managed to scramble up the lowest rungs of the property ladder. 

For some, the highlight of the decade was the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in the summer of 1977.  The pomp and circumstance was played out for most on television under the watchful eye of one or other of the ubiquitous Dimblebys.  Jubilee Day itself was as grey and as gloomy as many others of that so-called summer. There was no street party in Ashdown Drive, Borehamwood, a modern development of maisonettes tucked away at the edge of the green belt and backing on to the main railway line.  Most of the other young couples with whom we had become friendly had headed off to sunnier climes.  The rest of the residents maintained their policy of splendid isolation.

1977 was also the year in which the Punk Movement reached its peak.  Emerging two years earlier from the economic and social depression that cast its shadows over the decade, the Punk philosophers mixed an angry cocktail of nihilist, anti-establishment outpourings.  Social commentators decided that this new youth movement was a reaction to the Peace and Love vibe that had acted as a compass to those of us who had navigated our way to adulthood over the previous few years.  Music critics - and even they along with the policemen had got younger – praised Punk’s musical elements as a necessary and inevitable reaction to the emergence of corporate rock.  Short songs with jagged lyrics played at pill-fuelled breakneck tempos on seemingly out-of-tune Stratocasters sent their audience manically pogoing and the rest of us reaching for the paracetomol and a darkened room.

In retrospect, Punk was a perfect metaphor for the dissatisfaction of the era that ultimately erupted with the summer rioting of 1981.  Listening now to tracks such as The Sex Pistols’ anthemic ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘God Save the Queen’ the music seems pretty thin, the message somewhat muted.  As with any musical style that emerges as a beacon of rebellion, there are always those who take the underlying vocabulary and turn it into something different.  As with earlier iterations of the Rock ’n’ Roll spirit, Punk itself became homogenised.   

The music of the original rocker, Bill Haley, was blamed for the first wave of teenage rebelliousness.  Cinemas in America were trashed as riots were sparked by showings of ‘Blackboard Jungle’ that featured Haley and his Comets’ ‘Rock Around The Clock’.  However, within a relatively short time, elements of the music had been distilled into a socially more palatable format and wrapped up as a more consumer friendly commercial offering.  Elvis Presley’s initial impact as an anti-establishment teen icon was over the minute he joined the army and then started turning out cheap, trashy Hollywood romances.  Elvis was joined in the hit parade by wilder elements who helped set the defintions of rock culture.  Jerry Lee Lewis transported a 13 year old cousin across state lines and married her.  Gene Vincent’s affection for leather stage garb defined an earthy sexuality that deliberately challenged the morals of Middle America.  However, the musical message of Rock ‘n’ Roll, an African-American slang term for sexual intercourse, was soon bowdlerised, watered down and purveyed by the likes of a string of good-looking, clean-cut teen idols such as Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson and a gaggle of assorted Bobbys – Rydell, Darin, Vinton and Vee.

Two decades later, the guitars were louder, the rhythms more frenetic, but, like its predecessor, the original Rock ‘n’ Roll, Punk intentionally put its finger up to older generations – both musically and in the message it conveyed.  However, the stance of punk and the public platform on which its key band, The Sex Pistols, played out their carefully choreographed anti-establishment rantings, also gave birth to some great music which had a broader and enduring appeal.

Although there were some punk bands who deliberately espoused their inability to tune a guitar and who made a virtue of not being able to sing, I can’t now remember their names.  Sid Vicious who became the Pistols’ bass player always struck me as totally talentless and without any redeeming feature either as a musician or as a human being.  Many of the others have disappeared into the dustbin of rock history.  On the contrary, there were other bands who emerged from under the cloak of Punk who produced great music that has endured.  

The Clash told the story but in a way that excited even sixties relics like me.  Unfortunately, they were foisted with the moniker of ‘The Only Band That Matters’ by their label, CBS, the progenitors of corporate rock.  I never understood how The Stranglers were lumped into the Punk movement.  Songs like ‘Golden Brown’ and ‘No More Heroes’ combined intelligent lyrics with catchy melodies and sparkling musical arrangements; the thinly veiled heroin association of the former and the political comment of the latter offended no-one. 

The Punk movement in the States was more about fashion and drugs and the music itself and less about self-aggrandising, pseudo-politicking and social comment.  As in the UK, the essence of Punk was similarly bifurcated between the musically digestible and some that was less so.   The likes of The New York Dolls created a challenging synthesis of the discordant and the menacing that nevertheless owed much to what had passed before – The Stones and the like.  Yet, despite their anti-establishment stance they, too, passed into the commercial mainstream of major labels and fabled producers. 

Two American bands who arrived in the midst of the Punk era that made the biggest impact were The Ramones and Talking Heads.  The Ramones took the concept of the two minute song and raised it into high art.  Mixing simple declarations such as ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ and ‘She’s a Sensation’ with more potent observations such as ‘I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’ and ‘Psycho Therapy’, the lyrics were simple and sharp and the riffs were catchy.  No-one can resist tapping their feet to The Ramones.  Accessible to both Punks and other music fans, their records are classics. 

In no way should the art-house chic of Talking Heads be lumped in with punk; yet early critiques often referred to their association with the mid-seventies New York punk scene.  Under the leadership of multi-talented David Byrne, the Heads made a series of fine albums and continued as a unit until the early nineties when Byrne decided that he didn’t need to be in a band to realise his multi-faceted artistic output.  ‘Psycho Killer’, ‘Life During Wartime’, ‘Burning Down The House’ and ‘Road To Nowhere’ are all great songs that endure.  ‘True Stories’ which contains the band’s versions of the songs on the soundtrack to Byrne’s 1986 first feature as a director remains a favourite.  In the mid-nineties I advised David Byrne on sorting out some of his UK contracts.  Highly intelligent and very charming he was as far removed in his demeanour and sense of aesthetics as one could be from the popular image of punk. 

The ‘real’ British punk was born of the social malaise of the seventies.  Like other musical expressions of teenage angst that preceded it, the underlying popularity of the genre soon mutated into the mainstream.  As seventies ennui was replaced by the brash new Realpolitik and upward mobility of the eighties, the discordant thrashing of the real punk faded into the footnotes of contemporary rock history. 

‘Natty Dread’ by Bob Marley and The Wailers is a vinyl album released in 1975; ‘Catch a Fire’ is a CD reissue from the late 1980’s of the 1973 original vinyl release. Bill Haley and his Comets’ ‘(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock’ and ‘Razzle Dazzle’ feature in my collection on 78 RPM wax discs albeit that I have nothing to play them on.  They are both on the Brunswick label and no date appears on them.  Presley ’The All Time Greatest Hits’ is a 2CD set released by RCA in 1987.  The Stranglers ‘Friday The Thirteenth’ is a live album released by Eagle Rock in 1997 on which I advised Eagle in the negotiations with the band. The Ramones Anthology is a 2CD set released by Warner Brothers in 1999. ‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ (1978) by Talking Heads is a 33 RPM vinyl import on the Sire label.  Talking Heads’ ‘Stop Making Sense’ (1984) and ‘True Stories’ (1986) are vinyl albums released by EMI.  The Best of Talking Heads is a CD released by Sire in 2004.

Weddings, Barmitzvahs and a touch of Fame

I don’t remember the first time I heard music performed live.  I do, however, remember singing lessons at Mayville, the pre-prep school in Southsea that I attended from the age of four.  The teacher rejoiced in the soubriquet of Mrs Nutton.  Like most of the other teachers, she seemed positively ancient.  Her most distinctive feature was a mass of wiry brown hair that straggled skywards from a widow’s peak, her most endearing characteristics a sharp tongue and low tolerance threshold for anything other than perfect behaviour.  She played a battered upright that stood in the corner of the ‘nursery’ – the classroom used for entry level pupils in the morning and which doubled as the music room in the afternoon.  The piano had a plinky-plonky sound and always seemed out-of-tune.  The echoes of the twenty-odd largely tuneless voices it accompanied may well have been reconstructed from the relatively more recent experiences of my own children’s schooldays.

Singing lessons were a weekly feature of the curriculum.  What we sung, or, in my case, attempted to, is mostly lost in the remoter recesses of my memory.  ‘A frog he would a wooing go’ seems to have stuck somewhere and, of course, the school song.  Until well into adult life I believed that ‘Now as I start upon my chosen way’ had been written exclusively for Mayville. We sung it at Prize Day and on other big occasions during the year.  In fact it is known as the ‘Scout Hymn’ and was written by Ralph Reader who promoted the early Gang Shows featuring members of the scouting movement.

At about the same time as I started at Mayville, I also started to attend weekly services at the local synagogue. Each Saturday morning, I was taken with a bunch of second cousins by my great-uncle Issy, who bundled us into the back of his ancient black Wolesely 4/50.  I learned by rote the psalms and songs that are sung at every shabbat service in every synagogue such as ‘Ayn Kelohenu’, ‘Yigdal’ and ‘Ahnim Zemirah’.  Whenever one of these emerges in a broader context, for example, Neil Diamond leading his congregation in ‘Adon Olom’ in the 1980 remake of ‘The Jazz Singer’, I am instantly transported to the homely interior of Portsmouth & Southsea Hebrew Congregation’s pretty little synagogue.

Growing up in a small provincial Jewish community in the 1950’s meant that whenever there was a simcha – a celebration, such as a wedding or a barmitzvah – the whole community would be invited.  The parties were usually thrown at Kimbells Ballroom in Osborne Road, Southsea that accommodated a number of function suites. 

From about the age of six or seven I, too, would be invited.  These events ran to a pretty set formula, one that then seemed to be followed around the world in contemporary Ashkenazi Jewish communities.  ‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz’ (1974), ‘A Serious Man’ (2009) and ‘Barmitzvah Boy’ (1976) are all films/television plays that capture the essence of such occasions.  Following drinks and nibbles, guests were asked to consume a gargantuan meal that typically featured chicken soup, a main course of brisket and rounded off with large helpings of lokshen pudding.  Speeches by the barmitzvah boy, his friends and his father combining bad jokes and melancholic sentimentality were then followed by dancing to a live band.

Promising and delivering so much more than Mrs Nutton’s mundane renditions of nursery rhymes and ‘Ten Green Bottles’, the function bands would consist of five or six musicians and maybe a singer or two, all duly attired in tuxedos and dickie bows.  Even the musical programme was fairly predictable, generally including a waltz, a foxtrot, a quickstep, a cha-cha, a Charleston, a conga and, from about 1960, the Twist.  The musicians were often former Marine bandsmen who would never quite make it to the LPO or the fabled bands of Ted Heath or Joe Loss.  They had dutifully learned a few lively, traditional Jewish favourites – ‘Hevenu Shalom Aleichem’, ‘David Melech Yisrael’ and, of course, ‘Hava Nagila’.  In my crazy family, the Jewish tunes were a cue for mayhem.  Cousins and Uncles would schlep a table into the middle of the dance floor, hastily remove the final detritus of the meal, strip off the cloth and use the bare table as the platform centre of the Hora circle. Two or three at a time would jump up onto the table, grip hands and perform the gezutzke counter-clockwise as the rest of the dancers circled around them.  As each chorus of the tune was played faster than the previous one, so the dancers speeded up.  On more than one occasion I can recall a table collapsing as a trio of out-of-breath, sweating male Morrises fell into a bruised heap of tangled limbs.  The laughter was raucous, the anger of the venue manager barely concealed.

I believe that it was at my cousin Jack’s wedding in early 1964 that I also experienced a special moment in my musical development.  Having had my fill of brisket and fox-trot, I decided to explore the rest of the labrynthine Kimbells’ complex.  I went down a back staircase and heard music coming from below.  This was a sound that was instantly intoxicating and I followed it to a balcony that overlooked a large square room packed with teenagers and students from the local technical college.  A tight band that included a punchy brass section and an exotic conga player was led by a man whose voice had a unique tone and who played jazzy figures and funky chords on a B3 Hammond Organ.  Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames were about as far removed from the barmitzvah band as anything that I had ever heard.  I leaned over the balcony totally mesmerised.

It would be another year before Fame hit the number one spot in the hit parade with his cover of Mongo Santamaria’s ‘Yeh, Yeh’.  That would become the first in a run of chart successes that continued through the sixties with the likes of ‘Getaway’, ‘Sitting in the Park’, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, ‘In the meantime’ and ‘Sunny’.  In the early seventies Fame performed in a duo with Alan Price.  He reformed the Blue Flames in 1974 since which time he has also played with big bands and as a guest with others. For a time in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s he acted as MD for Van Morrison.  Together they were wonderful on stage.

One particularly memorable set that I was privileged to enjoy was performed at the Bulls’ Head in Barnes in early 1990 or 1991.  En route to a recording session with Van the Man, Fame arrived with a trumpeter and a sax player.  Legendary British tenor player, Dick Morrissey, was leading a quintet through a blistering set of hard bop and straight ahead modern jazz.  The versatile Fame and his cohorts were invited up on stage.  Sitting down at the piano, Fame exchanged a few words with Morrisey.  With a knowing nod, and calling out the keys and the time signatures, Fame led what was now an octet through half an hour or more of extemporised jazz and blues.  Awesome! 

To this day Fame still performs with continually evolving line ups of Blue Flames.  I have seen them at more venues than I can remember – concerts, clubs and festivals.  I thought about hiring Fame to play at my son’s barmitzvah, but he was on tour abroad at the time.  It would have been a nice way of bringing the experience of his music full circle.

The times may change, but good music is always good music and great musicians mature with age.  Serendipity is often the way that musical discoveries are made and no happier accident occurred than my discovery of George Fame at Kimbells in 1964. 

The Scout Hymn' maybe heard at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gebU7AvK4KI ;'The Jazz Singer’ Soundtrack Album by Neil Diamond is a vinyl album released by Capitol Records in 1980.  ‘Israeli Folk Dance Party’ by various artists is a vinyl album released in Israel in 1961 by Tav-Le-Tav Folklore Agency.   ‘Yeh, Yeh’ by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames is a 45 single released by Columbia Records in 1965.  ‘The Two Faces of Fame’ (Columbia) (1967) and ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ (Pye Records) (1979) are both vinyl albums. ‘Cool Cat Blues’ (BlueMoon/Go Jazz)(1990) and ‘The Very Best of Georgie Fame’ (Spectrum) (1997) are both CDs.

The premises once occupied by Kimbells Ballroom in Osborne Road, Southsea are now the Grosvenor Casino.

Who knows where the time goes? 

Last night I went to a gig.  Nothing unusual about that as I generally get to hear live music more weeks than I don’t.  However, this was a special gig.  It wasn’t the fact that it was a great band in a small venue or, even that the material was consistently excellent, well-chosen and performed by a group of talented musicians.  What really made the evening special was the vitality of the atmosphere that was engendered as much by the level of engagement between artist and audience as by the music itself. 

When she first hit the scene in 1969 as a member of a band called Delivery, Carol Grimes was touted as the British Janis Joplin.  To me that doesn’t even begin to do Carol justice.  In looking at this comparison I must immediately declare that I was never much of a fan of Janis.  Emotion is a key ingredient of music and Janis had plenty of that; I just didn’t care for the sound of her voice.  There was little in the way of light and shade with Janis who, to me, did the same thing on pretty much every record she made.  This isn’t helped by the fact that nearly all of what she left behind was blues oriented rock and little else. 

Perhaps the comparisons are unfair.  After all Janis Joplin was dead at 27.  Who knows what she might have gone on to achieve had she lived longer?  Carol Grimes is now in her late sixties and, if last night’s performance is anything to go by, she still has plenty of life left to live and lots more music inside her.  Carol slips easily from blues to jazz and from soul to straight ahead rock.  While employing a musical vocabulary drawn from a wide range of American styles, the difference between the two is also highlighted by Carol’s quintessential Britishness.  Carol imbues her material, particularly her self-penned lyrics, with humour as well as gritty realism.  Humour was absent from Ms Joplin’s oeuvre.  

On stage at the Vortex last night with a group of talented jazzers led by pianist/arranger/composer Dorian Ford, Carol Grimes played two sets to a packed house.  Had there been chandeliers, undoubtedly more would have been hanging from them.  The low-key ‘Snake’ kicked off the first set – an alluring number replete with unsubtle sexual innuendoes; more subtle were the harmonies of versatile drummer Winston Clifford.  There were arrangements of contemporary songs that were not originally written as jazz by the likes of Nick Cave and Elvis Costello, the latter’s ‘Shipbuilding’ proving particularly potent.  A beat-poet like recitation of Grimes’ own observations of London, ‘Blues for Louis’, closed the first set.  Throughout the evening, the four piece horn section punctuated and blew and soloed, with altoist Dave Bitelli and trombonist Annie Whitehead outstanding.  But before finishing off with a raucous reading of Allen Toussaint’s evergreen ‘Shoorah Shoorah’ a less obvious cover caught my attention. 

‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’ was written by Sandy Denny.  It was recorded by Sandy when she was with folk-rock pioneers, Fairport Convention, and released on the ‘Unhalfbricking’ album in 1969.  The album itself and that song in particular were sixth form favourites.  I have continued to play it ever since.  Hearing Sandy’s plaintiff lament for the passing of time performed as a jazz-ballad 43 years down the line was poignant. 

When I first heard the song it was a nice tune with interesting lyrics about the passage of time.  As a teenager, one has limited appreciation of how time may play with your life.  Last night, listening again in the company of 100 plus strangers - many now nestling in middle age - the experience the song addressed connected in a different way.  Instead of the original being performed by a youthful chanteuse looking ahead and who then ‘(didn’t) count the time’, here was someone with extensive experience able to look back and to invite us to do the same thing.  

Contrary to the song’s message, it was hard not to count the time since I first listened to it and to think of the contrasting lives led by Denny, Joplin and Grimes.  Joplin died of a heroin overdose.  Denny is said to have been a heavy drinker and cocaine-user.  In 1978, she fell down a staircase and cracked her head on concrete and died a few weeks later from a brain haemorrhage.  She was 31. 

I never saw Janis Joplin perform live.  I have watched her on film and video.  She put a lot of herself into her performances - raw power and edgy.  The songs she sang – a few self-penned - were vehicles for the outpouring of pure emotion.  The level of contact with audiences was fevered and frenetic.  It’s hard to know from this distance whether those audiences were moved by Joplin’s music and its message or purely by her performances.   

I was fortunate to have seen Sandy Denny perform on at least six or seven occasions, including her last ever London show at the Royalty Theatre, in November 1977.  Sandy beguiled audiences with her unique phrasing.  She had the ability to let a note hang in the air and bend it before letting the import of the language it conveyed apprise the listener with the meaning of a lyric.  As her career developed, so did her songwriting and the complexity of the feelings that she articulated.  Notwithstanding the serious side of her compositions, Sandy Denny had a bubbly and effusive stage personality that endeared her to audiences and which made the manner of her death and its surrounding circumstances all the more inexplicable. 

Carol Grimes has matured in a way that neither Denny nor Joplin were able to in the relatively short time that life had allowed them.  Both as a woman and an artist, Carol has experienced much, learned more and conveys what she knows in a manner that genuinely connects.  Her music betrays eclectic influences - jazz, blues, soul and rock.  The lessons of the songs she sings and the music that conveys them are easily digestible.  That much is as true for both teens and twenty-somethings embarking on adult life as for those who have lived through the entirety of the times that she chronicles.  It is unfortunate that so much of that time was missed by both Janis Joplin and the delightful Sandy Denny and that neither of them will ever know where that time went. 

Fairport Convention’s ‘What We Did On Our Holidays’, ‘Unhalfbricking’ & ’Liege & Lief’ (all 1969) feature Sandy Denny and are all vinyl albums released by Island Records.  I have the CD reissues of all three, each with bonus tracks.  ‘Fotheringay’ (1971) is a vinyl album released by Island Records; ‘Fotheringay 2’ (2008) is a CD released by Fledgling Records; Fotheringay was a band formed by Sandy Denny after leaving the Fairports at the end of 1969.  The second album was abandoned for over 35 years before being completed by guitarist and producer Jerry Donohue.  Denny's ‘The North Star Grassman and the Ravens’ (1971) is an Island Records release on vinyl as is the 4 album boxed set compilation ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’ (1985).  ‘The Essential Janis Joplin’ (2003) is a 2CD compilation released by CBS/Legacy that was given to me as a present by a friend who thought, correctly, that having some Janis was an important addition to my collection.  I am embarrassed to admit that I own no records by Carol Grimes, something I plan to rectify very soon!

Three days of rice pudding, rain and rock 'n' roll

During the so-called ‘Summer of Love’ of 1967, the Monterey International Pop Festival heralded the dawn of the age of the contemporary music festival. 

Two years later, Woodstock happened in upstate New York a week or two before vast numbers of my school friends had flocked to a similar but more modestly appointed event on the Isle of Wight.  Notwithstanding the successful movie and album that chronicled Woodstock, the financial and social mayhem and chaos that engulfed the festival elbowed its cultural impact into a corner.  It would be 25 years before Woodstock was to return.

Nevertheless, lessons had apparently been learned from the Woodstock experience by British promoters.  Rikki Farr put together a bigger and better bill for the Isle of Wight for the following August.  Freddy Bannister arguably trumped Farr with his programme for the geographically challenged Bath Festival that was to be held at Shepton Mallett in Somerset.

At the beginning of that summer, 1970, A levels grabbed me by the throat.  Three years of state-subsidised education – and fun – were within my grasp.  French Literature sat uneasily on the schedule for the first Tuesday in July.  The last weekend in June promised the ultimate trip.  The Bath line-up kept me awake at night just thinking about it: Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, the Byrds, Frank Zappa and another twenty or so others.  In the face of unrelenting parental disapproval at the interruption to revision schedules, arrangements were made.  Tents were borrowed, sleeping bags aired and somebody’s mum’s Triumph Herald loaded up with bottles of orange squash and cans of food.  We were on the road and, like all great movements of conquest, heading west. 

The first band was scheduled to start around Saturday lunchtime.  From recollection it was Maynard Ferguson’s Big Band.  I love a mixed metaphor – especially a musical one.  (I never did manage to work out why Ferguson had claimed a place on a bill that was otherwise entirely filled with rock acts.)  Having set off at around 8 am from home in Edgware, Middlesex we were confident of reaching our destination in plenty of time.  However, once we got close, the roads were jammed and traffic was at a stand-still.  I had had the foresight to check out the relevant Ordnance Survey maps from the local library.  I navigated a route along farm tracks and wooded lanes that brought us to a shaded bank no more than a quarter of a mile from the festival site.   Four of us, Stuart Sinclair, Paul Matthews, John Callaghan and I, schlepped our stuff along a series of paths.  We joined the throng that poured past unmanned checkpoints into a vast open arena bounded on one side by hills.

It was not particularly warm and there was more than a suggestion of rain in the air.   The brown-grey murk of a disappointing day was speckled with tie-dye and the flapping of blue and green tent canvas.  We found a decent enough vantage point to call home for the weekend.  After pitching the tents to the sound of the big band, the early afternoon entertainment hit a high spot with Fairport Convention.  I was a big fan at the time and knew every note of ‘Liege and Lief’ backwards.  Richard Thompson’s unique folk-rock guitar and the banshee wail of Dave Swarbrick’s electric violin had the crowd on its feet and jigging.

I can’t now quite remember the running order of the bands except that, as the weekend evolved, the traffic problems worsened.  By the time Frank Zappa & the Mothers were the first to be helicoptered in, the published programme was abandoned and gaps between bands were filled ex tempore.  I recall an extremely long and boring set by an unbilled Donovan.  I also remember a band called Jo Jammer playing at least twice.  No-one had ever heard of them previously and I don’t believe they were ever to surface again.

The weather became increasingly inclement and we had vastly underestimated the amount of food required to satisfy four continually hungry 18 year olds.  Cans of baked beans heated on a less than convincing fire and a couple of loaves of French bread soon disappeared – as did the orange squash which was ripped off.  There were usable loos although there was nothing on the festival site to buy to eat and drinks were at a premium.  The music on the other hand was awesome. 

The first highlight for me, Santana, were still playing the Woodstock set of their first album spiced up with pieces from the then recently released Abraxas.  The three-pronged percussion section and Carlos Santana’s soaring guitar delighted with ‘Samba Pa’ ti’, ‘Jingo’, ’Black Magic Woman’ and the show stopping polyrhythms of ‘Soul Sacrifice’. 

At an ungodly hour on Sunday morning, Pink Floyd hit the stage and ran through then current favourites such as ‘Astronomy Domine’ and ‘Careful with that Axe Eugene’.  They closed their set with the world premiere of ‘Atom Heart Mother’ complete with a dozen or more classical brass players and a thirty voice choir.  As the final crescendo woke cows and sheep in farms a mile or two away, a thick cloud of pink smoke billowed across the stage.  When it cleared, the band and its auxiliaries had departed.

For many, the four hour set that Led Zeppelin played on the Sunday evening was the event’s most memorable.  Not for me.  By the time Zep came on I had been up for thirty-six hours and not missed a note from the main stage.  I retreated to my tent and slept through the first three hours or so of their set.  When I came to, I wasn’t engaged by the rest.  I was more intent on claiming my share of the last of the food – a much coveted can of Ambrosia Creamed Rice.  At the risk of using a cliché I go out of my way to avoid, having not eaten much that day it was as it said on the tin!

Earlier on we had been treated to the gorgeous sound of It’s A Beautiful Day.  Featuring the near operatic tenor and classically influenced violin playing of David La Flamme, IABD also possessed every teenage male’s pin-up, the stunningly beautiful Patti Santos on co-lead vocal.  The rest of the band provided a sparkling West Coast sound that for me was the festival’s highlight and nicest surprise.  Largely playing what I was to subsequently discover on their eponymous first album, ‘White Bird’, ‘Bombay Calling’ and the seemingly illusory ‘Hot Summer’s Day’, their set was wonderful.

The band I eagerly wanted to see and who eventually materialised in the early hours of Monday morning was Jefferson Airplane.  Sadly, long awaited live performances of ‘Crown of Creation’, ‘Volunteers’, ‘White Rabbit’, ‘Other side of this life’, ‘Somebody to Love’ and the rest were cut short by a lightning storm and a sudden downpour.   It was time to pack up and find our way back to the car and head home, missing the Byrds’ legendary acoustic set that closed the festival.

Arriving home at around six o’clock on the Monday morning hardly thrilled my family who were getting up and ready for a normal week.  I slept for much of the day and made a token attempt at final revision for the following day’s French exam.  I got a less than distinguished E. 

The buzz and the vibe of the Bath Festival has remained with me for over 40 years.  Indeed, for quite a while afterwards the world was divided into two clear camps – those who had been there and those who had not.  However, once I had put that experience into perspective, I resolved that it would be a one-off.  The idea of sleeping in a wet field without food was not one I decided to repeat.  I have attended festivals subsequently but either for one day only or where, well ahead of time, I have booked into a strategically located hotel or B’n’B’. 

Twenty-four years passed by when – against my better judgement – I was persuaded to head for a weekend festival with a tent for only the second time in my life; but that is another story for another blog and one where there was a complete absence of even a single can of Ambrosia Creamed Rice.

‘The Monterey International Pop Festival’ is a 4CD boxed set released by Castle Communications in 1994; the Monterey albums include performances of artists who also appeared at Bath: Canned Heat, Country Joe, The Byrds and  Jefferson Airplane.   ‘Liege & Lief’ (1969) by Fairport Convention is an Island Records vinyl album; I also have the 2002 CD reissue with bonus tracks.  ‘Santana’ (1969) and ‘Abraxas’ (1970) are both CBS vinyl albums; I also have the 1998 CD reissue of ‘Santana’ which includes the extended version of ‘Soul Sacrifice’ from the Woodstock soundtrack.  ‘Ummagumma’ (1969) and 'Atom Heart Mother’ (1970) by Pink Floyd are vinyl albums released on the Harvest label; ‘Ummagumma’ is a double album.  ‘Led Zeppelin II’ (1969) is actually a vinyl reissue from 1972.  ‘It’s A Beautiful Day’ is a CBS vinyl album; I also have the CD reissue.  ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ (1967), ‘After Bathing At Baxters’ (1967),  ‘Bless Its Pointed Little Head’ (1969) and ‘Volunteers’ (1970) by Jefferson Airplane are all vinyl albums released on the RCA label; I also have a CD reissue of ‘Volunteers’ and Jefferson Airplane: The Collection (1988) released in 1988 by Castle Communications that includes ‘Crown of Creation’. ‘Untitled’ (1970) by The Byrds is a vinyl double album released shortly after the Bath Festival; I eventually caught up with The Byrds at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester in early 1971. Most of the vinyl albums mentioned in this Blog are in gatefold sleeves.

http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/bA1.html is a website dedicated to the Bath Festival 1970

Joshua, Joshua

‘Have You Heard?’ has been up and running for two weeks.  Apparently it has received nearly 500 page views to date and there are seven registered followers based in five different countries.  I have also received a dozen or more personal emails.  My thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement.

Early feedback was keen to establish whether all of the blogs would be about the 60’s and 70’s.  Those enquiring could have been excused for thinking that might be the case.  However, as the last two or three entries prove, to me at least, there is much else yet to write about to reference 3,000 records acquired over nearly 50 years.  Before you start counting, and I am keeping a running tally, thus far I have managed 25 albums and 15 singles; so, still a long way to go to meet my challenge.  In any event, it was never my intention to write something chronological – either by reference to the times at which particular music was first acquired nor to the eras from which pieces originate.  I neither listen to nor think about music in that way.  Often I will select an album at random or even on the basis of ‘hey, I haven’t heard that for a while’ whereafter one selection may naturally suggest another.

Other feedback suggests that I should write more about the music itself and not just the memories and anecdotes that I associate with it.  I can certainly try though I rather think that I have more music to mention than there are adjectives in my vocabulary to describe it!

As much as my musical tastes were first shaped by growing up when I did, many of the pop and rock records that I accumulated in my teens and early twenties are not now played as frequently as they once were.  There are honourable exceptions for the likes of the Allman Brothers and, of course, the Grateful Dead and some of the other West Coast bands whose finest hours straddled the turn of those two previously mentioned decades.  Nowadays, I rarely buy current or recent rock or pop records.  I don’t personally find there is much being presently produced that adds musically to what was innovative or original in the 60’s or 70’s.  And, being honest about it, lyrically, it is not that easy for a cynical Baby Boomer to relate to a twenty-something bemoaning the end of a love affair or the dearth of the availability of his street drug of choice.  Having said that, I own and play both of Amy Winehouse’s albums.  I am probably as much drawn to her music by the jazzy feel of her vocal inflections as to her original approach to expressing the meaning of a lyric.  Radiohead are undoubtedly innovators and it is to my shame that it took me an embarrassingly long time to appreciate just how excellent they are.

Over the past decade, the music that most often satisfies me has been accumulated during my adult life.  In addition to jazz, I listen to classical, movie soundtracks and so-called ‘world music’ particularly that which comes from Mali and Senegal.  I also have a host of other records that don’t easily fit into any category – random electronica, mixed genre experiments and oddities.  I am also wont to make periodic forays into a not inconsiderable collections of blues albums, primarily accumulated during the early 1990’s, and another of Renaissance music acquired over the past six or seven years.

New experiences spawn new memories, new anecdotes and, inevitably, new musical associations.  Regularly attending gigs, as I still do, and hearing amazing musicians play live – especially for the first time – are the most potent catalysts for buying new records. 

A couple of weeks back, I heard – and experienced - the extraordinary Joshua Bell playing live on the South Bank.  I am waiting for his recording of the Brahms’ Violin Concerto to arrive in the post.  Outstanding tenor sax player Joshua Redman brought his James Farm project to perform in Tel Aviv when I was visiting there last summer.  I bought their album on the way out of the venue and haven’t stopped playing it since, also enabling me to discover the remarkable – and original - talent of pianist Aaron Parks. 

Any overseas artist visiting Israel is more or less guaranteed a full-house and an effusive reception.  At the James Farm gig my wife and I shared a table with an interesting Romanian couple who told us their story and how they came to live in Israel.  Perhaps of more significance was that my 80 year old mother suggested that we might go and see Bell together.  It was great to enjoy an event like that with her, particularly when there was a time when our musical tastes collided – often quite acrimoniously.   As my sister commented on the ‘Rhythm ‘n’ Booths’ entry (26.2.12) back in 1964 my mother banned me from playing ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ within her earshot!

So, it doesn’t have to be 60’ or 70’s to meet the criteria for this blog.  My passion for music continues to live and breathe and so do the associations and recollections it engenders.

‘Frank’ (2003) and ‘Back to Black’ (2006) by Amy Winehouse are both Island Records releases on CD.  ‘OK Computer’ (1997) and ‘Kid A’ (2000) by Radiohead are both Parlophone releases on CD.   Violin Concertos: Tchaikovsky / Wieniawski / Brahms / Schumann performed by Joshua Bell is a Decca CD release.  James Farm (2011) featuring Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman and Eric Harland is a Nonesuch CD

Goodman, Pepper, Benji & Bird

“I want to learn the saxophone.”

I wasn’t sure that I had heard my then nine year old son, Benji, correctly.  Since the poor guy had been in utero I’d fed him a steady diet of music.  His appetite whetted with an hors d’oeuvres of rock, the main course consisted of healthy helpings of jazz à la mode.  Lee Morgan’s 'The Sidewinder', Art Blakey’s ‘Straight Ahead’ and John Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’ were albums I played in the (retrospectively unreasonable) belief that they would easily be accessible to an infant mind.  Jazz was surely part of his DNA, I figured, and exposure to my favourites would surely lead them to become his favourites as well.

In the mid-1980’s, Capital Radio, in headier times, had promoted an annual jazz festival on the South Bank.   At the beginning of the summer, Capital persuaded flight’s full of the finest jazzers to take a detour from destinations Dutch, German and French.  As and when the concert line-ups were announced, I would buy a pair of seats for four or five of them.  By night three I would be phoning around for a companion and thus it was that Benji started coming along to gigs.  It was only after the second festival I realised that his enthusiasm for coming along wasn't motivated by a penchant for the innovative tapping technique of guitarist Stanley Jordan or the hard-bopping tenor of Joe Henderson.  It was more about being out in the evening with his dad and doing something that seemed delightfully grown up.  On one occasion I can even recall carrying a virtually comatose Benji over my shoulder after a particularly lengthy bill at which I seem to recall one of the Marsalis boys doing his thing.  Benji’s inclination towards accompanying me to jazz concerts died at the same time as we took an early family holiday in July 1988.  Thus I missed what I recall was the last of the Capital Jazz Festivals at the Festival Hall.

“Dad, are you listening?  I want to learn the saxophone!”

“You do?” 

“Yes.  I don’t want to do piano anymore.” 

He’d been learning the piano for a couple of years.  He demonstrated some talent but no great love for the teacher and consequently no desire to practice. 

“Have you thought about which saxophone?”

“Alto,” he replied assuredly.

As a pavlovian reaction, some alto sax led favourites began playing on my mental juke-box: Art Pepper’s rendering of ‘Webb City’ with its studied probing solo; Bird’s free flowing excellence on the self-tribute ‘The Bird’.

“That’s great,” I replied.  Within seconds I was picturing a family group at a table on the rail at Ronnie’s as a future Benji ambled on stage on a triumphal homecoming from New York.  His all star band would include a then-to-be-middle-aged Wynton Marsalis guesting on trumpet.  Then the reality check: “but you do realise that you’ll need to learn the clarinet first.”

“Why?”

I was no expert, but I had always believed that learning the embouchure and fingering for the clarinet made the passage to saxophone all the more easier.  Quite apart from that, the clarinet is an easier instrument for a nine year old to handle.  The explanation was not acceptable.

“I don’t want to learn the clarinet.  If I had’ve done I would’ve asked to learn the clarinet.  I want to learn the saxophone.”

Over the succeeding days, the discussion was repeated.  No amount of logic would prevail, mine or his.  Even Benji's tried and tested route of lobbying my wife on the quiet made no difference to my view.   The subject was dropped at around the time the school year came to a close.  Benji took his last piano lesson and we headed off on a fly-drive to the States where our final destination was Los Angeles.

Venice Beach is like no other.  Open air body building gyms and basketball courts divide the promenade from the golden sands.  The promenade itself is lined with cafes and restaurants, head shops and hat shops, tarot readers and astrologers, panhandlers, cops in beach-friendly uniforms, Buddhist hangouts, preaching gurus and entertainers of every shape, size and persuasion: jugglers, and magicians, balloon-folders and charlatans.  Most alluring of all are Venice’s busking musicians.   A young guy, perhaps no more than 18 or 19, was playing an alto sax.  A poignant rendering of Thelonius Monk’s classic ‘Round Midnight’ drew us towards him.  He was good, very good.  We all enjoyed it and stopped to listen.  Another couple of standards followed.   He paused to adjust his instrument.  I dropped a dollar bill into his hat.  “How long have you been playing?”

“Only a few months, but I played clarinet in high school.”

I looked at Benji raising my eyebrow.  He said nothing but it was clearly an electric lightbulb moment. 

A couple of weeks later, it was Autumn term at St Anthony’s School in Hampstead, North London.   One evening, after waiting for my key to turn in the front door, Benji coolly advised me that the school music teacher had recommended a local clarinet teacher.  Clarinets could also be borrowed from school. “If I learn the clarinet for a while, can I learn the saxophone afterwards.”

I had then recently fallen in love with Benny Goodman’s rendering of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.  I had heard the master’s sparkling reading of the rondo in a TV re-run of the 1956 biopic ‘The Benny Biopic’.  I tracked down a CD of the recording featured in the film that I still play frequently.  There is nothing quite as exhilarating as hearing jazz greats playing classical masterpieces into which they inevitably throw interesting variations and interpolations.

“OK,” I responded, “here’s the deal.  Once you can make a passable attempt at playing any one of the movements of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, I’ll buy you an alto sax and pay for the lessons.”

Benji responded positively and with enthusiasm.   After a couple of years in which he featured in school concerts, he attained a decent enough standard, though I cannot now remember the grade he reached.  Of more significance, he could play extended sections of the first two movements of the Mozart.  I judged that he had met the challenge I’d set him.  

In the early Autumn of 1990, we went to a music shop in Kentish Town that is now no longer.  The helpful store-manager picked out a Yamaha alto from the ranks of shiny brass instruments that lined one wall.  He asked Benji about his previous musical experience.  On the basis of the responses, an appropriate reed was selected and fitted.  Benji eagerly took the saxophone, hung it round his neck and placed his lips on mouthpiece.  Immediately able to make the requisite embouchure, a note or two emerged.  He flexed his fingers and discovered that the fingering required to play a scale was within his capability.  Then a tune began to emerge.  Playing the piece he knew best, the opening movement of the Mozart began to fill the shop.  Other customers stopped to listen and smile.  While endeavouring to hide his admiration, the manager pronounced that it wasn’t really ‘on’ to use an alto sax to play a piece intended to be played on the clarinet!  I’m not sure that Mozart would have agreed with him.

Sadly, Benji’s acquaintance with the sax lasted less than a year.  At the age of 13 he traded it for a Gibson SG with which he joined his first rock band.  He made his first recording in a professional studio very shortly thereafter, of which more anon. 

At the time of posting this blog, Wynton Marsalis has not yet called Benji to offer him a gig.

Lee Morgan’s ‘The Sidewinder’ (1961 Blue Note) and Art Blakey’s ‘Straight Ahead’ (1981 Concord Jazz) are both vinyl albums.  I had an old cassette copy of John Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’ (1957 Blue Note) that dated from the 1970’s which has now been replaced by a 2003 CD re-master.  Stanley Jordan’s ‘Cornucopia’ (1989 Blue Note) is on CD as is Joe Henderson’s ‘So Near, So Far’ (Verve 1993); Henderson’s two 1966 Blue Note albums ‘Mode for Joe’ and ‘Inner Urge’ are on vinyl.  Art Pepper’s ‘Omega Alpha’ includes ‘Webb City’ (1957 Blue Note reissued as a Blue Note Classic in 1980 and is on vinyl). Charlie Parker’s ‘The Bird’ recorded in 1949 is included on Metro Records’ compilation ‘The Definitive Charlie Parker Vol.1’ released in the mid 1970’s on vinyl.  I have a number of recordings of ‘Round Midnight’, my favourite being the title track to Bertrand Tavernier’s movie of that name released in 1988.  Included on the CD soundtrack release, it features Bobby McFerrin on vocals and Herbie Hancock on piano.  Benny Goodman’s performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto was recorded in 1956 and is on a 1985 RCA CD reissue.  I have a number of recordings by Wynton Marsalis of which, too, more anon.