Savoy Browns and South Parade Blues: Part 1 

At first sight, Southsea seafront and promenade doesn’t seem to change from one year to the next.  The tide ebbs and flows with seasonal regularity.  Wind blown walks along the near empty pebble beach under steely grey November skies are as exhilarating now as they were forty years ago.  Lone fishermen with thermoses of tea still stare hopefully at the horizon.  Nevertheless changes there have been and not all mark progress and those changes have not been merely physical. 

Some buildings have gone, others have taken their place.  Some of those missing buildings housed live music.  Music is part of the DNA that defines an era.  Although we can’t go back, we can remember.  In the act of remembering, events long past return.  Reliving special moments is part of the human experience that energises and refreshes the spirit.  For those of us who become energised by hearing music played live, the atmosphere at the places from which sounds emerge is an essential part of that experience and at the heart of those memories. 

Growing up within three hundred yards of the beach that forms the southern fringe of Portsmouth, Britain’s only island city, was, itself, a special experience.  From the age of seven, each day during term time, I caught the number 6 bus outside the long ago demolished Southsea Odeon at the top of Festing Road.  A couple of minutes later it would turn right past the Cumberland House Museum and skirt around the Canoe Lake.  Still populated by a game of swans, the rowing boats and canoes of my childhood have long been replaced by naff looking, swan-shaped fibreglass paddle-boats.  The sea was in full view to the left as the bus headed along South Parade.  Two of the landmarks that we passed were to play a part in my musical education.  Both have been destroyed as a consequence of the actions of outsiders.  With the demise of those buildings, it’s not only the physical appearance of South Parade that has been altered.    

The first of these landmarks, the South Parade Pier – or ‘the Pier’ as it is known to locals – was built in the Victorian era.  Indian-influenced, pavilion style towers, elaborate wrought ironwork, a grand music hall and a splendid deck were just some of its original features.  When we were kids we used to play hide and seek around the outside areas and tag on the deck.  When the weather wasn’t so good we repaired to the penny arcade.  The most satisfying of the machines was a primitive football game with static players whose right feet responded to a series of metal levers.  One penny would also operate a ventriloquist-dummy like sailor in a glass case who, somewhat curiously, ‘sang’ ‘The Laughing Policeman’.  The record was originally made in the 1920’s by Charles Jolly (ne Penrose) and includes chorus after chorus of macabre sounding laughter.  It terrified my sister.  The sailor, still in his glass case, still operational and still with his macabre cackle, is now in the City museum. 

During the summers of the sixties, a series of ‘Beat Cruises’ departed from the end of the Pier.  Featuring local groups and costing just a few shillings, battered old steamers edged around Spithead.  Locals and holidaymakers from up north would get pissed on Brickwoods beer, chat each other up and do the Twist, the Shake and the Mashed Potato.  I was too young to participate and, even if I hadn’t been, there would no doubt have been parental proscription against me doing so. 

At the centre of the Pier there was a theatre that originally housed a music hall.  In the early sixties I was taken to summer shows there featuring the likes of Mike and Bernie Winters, The Billy Cotton Band Show and Bob Monkhouse.  It was also used for Speech Day and Prize Giving at my first school, Mayville.  Behind the theatre, there was an open area that jutted out into the sea.  On the 17^th July 1968, the last night I spent in Portsmouth before we moved up to London, it was transformed into an open air venue for a special gig.  Three cutting edge British bands playing new music were coming to town.  Apparently there were 2,500 music fans on the Pier that night, though, even through the misty eyes of nostalgic remembrance that seems to be something of an overstatement.

Opening the bill was a band called Family.  Then relatively unknown, the band was led by Roger Chapman whose strangulated vocals and manic upper body movements suggested he'd been connected to a 10,000 volt charge before taking to the stage.  Along with guitar, bass and drums, Family also included the rasping tenor sax of Jim King and the electric violin of Rick Grech.  Family blew us away as they raced through a set that included numbers taken from their eclectic first album ‘Music in a Doll’s House’.  ‘Winter’, ‘The Chase’, ‘See Through Windows’ and ‘The Breeze’ all made an immediate impact.  Varied tempos, interesting instrumental combinations and Chapman’s unique performance style instantly hooked me.  A few days later with a birthday record token I hurried to the nearest record shop and, minutes after opening time, I was back home with the album under my arm.  I retained my devotion to Family right through University, buying several of their albums and seeing them live on a number of occasions.  Chapman’s movements predicated the rise of ‘idiot dancing’ that was the direct precursor to head-banging; entertaining to watch but less alluring to indulge in. 

Following Family there was Spooky Tooth.  They didn’t really do it for me, though various of those who passed through the band went on to bigger and better things.  

Topping the bill was Traffic.  Multi-talented, immensely musical, Traffic oozed class.  A fan of Stevie Winwood since his Spencer Davis days, I was familiar with their material and the band couldn’t and didn’t disappoint.  This was Traffic’s original line-up and included the often underrated Dave Mason.  Mason was unable to escape the shadow of Winwood’s giant talent and would leave not long afterwards for the USA from where he has subsequently pursued a successful solo career.  ‘Heaven is in Your Mind’, ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’, ’Paper Sun’ and ‘Gimme Some Lovin’’ were what we came to hear and we weren’t disappointed.  Mason’s tour de force ‘Hole in my Shoe’, however, didn’t make the set list albeit that his much covered 'Feelin' Alright' did.  Stevie Winwood is another of those musicians who I have seen perform live in every decade since – and deserves a blog entry to himself. 

There could have been no better way to have said farewell to my home town than spending a night under the stars on a warm July evening listening to great music from bands who have remained favourites ever since. 

I only attended one more gig at the South Parade Pier; it was a couple of years later during a weekend visit to catch up with old friends.  It was held on a bitterly cold and damp winter’s evening in the theatre.  Topping the bill was, I believe, Savoy Brown, an estimable blues band who were supported by a few others, not all of whom I can now remember.  One of them was a distinctly average three-piece called The Gun, who had then recently had a hit with a catchy riff-based confection called ‘Race with the Devil’.  The bill was opened by an early version of ‘underground’ favourites The Deviants, who were pretty awful from what I can recall. 

Famously, in 1974, much of the Pier burned down during the filming of Ken Russell’s ‘Tommy’.  Some arc lights overheated, exploded then started the conflagration.  Locals were outraged when a short clip of their beloved landmark in flames was included in the finished movie.  Russell’s thoughtless tokenism led the locals to blame the errant auteur personally for the blaze.  Eventually the damages claim was settled by insurers.  

Athough the framework and the forward elevations of the Pier survived the worst of the fire, the theatre and much of the main structure was destroyed.  What was built to replace it looks to be no more than a cheap and nasty 1970’s imitation of the original which, of course, is precisely what it is.  What has also been lost is the atmosphere of Victoriana that pervaded every inch of the old Pier and gave it its soul.  The space that was once occupied by the theatre was subsequently crammed, Las Vegas style, with slot machines.  A bouncy castle or somesuch was amongst the so-called attractions installed on part of the deck; kiosks selling food and drinks were located on other parts.  At some point in the last two years the Pier was closed by the local council for reasons of Health and Safety.  I am not sure if it remains closed.  I don’t have much time for much of the extreme nonsense that is pursued in the name of Health and Safety nirvana, equally I don’t suppose there is anything that can be done to restore the lost soul of the South Parade Pier of my youth.

‘The Laughing Policeman’ by Charles Jolly was a 78 PRM wax disc released in 1922 by Regal.  I don’t own it but it may be heard at    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuPQjdRyXfs&feature=related  Most tellingly, along with ‘Little Wing’ by Jimi Hendrix, this was one of the records that was played at the 2002 funeral of the late Paul Samson, heavy metal guitarist, who I represented for the best part of 20 years.   

‘Music in a Doll’s House’(1968), ’Family Entertainment’ (1969), ‘A Song for Me’ 1970) and ‘Anyway’ (1970) are all vinyl albums released by Reprise; I also have the CD reissues on Mystic Records of ‘A Song for Me’ and ‘Anyway’ as well as those of ‘Fearless’ (1971), ‘Bandstand’ (1972), ‘It’s Only a Movie’ (1973);  there is also a Mystic release of ‘Family Live’ recorded on tour in 1971.  Castle Communications 1993 ‘Best of Family’ includes tracks originally released as singles such as ‘No Mule’s Fool’ and ‘In My Own Time’.  ‘Winwood’ is double vinyl album compilation released in the USA by United Artists in 1972 and includes Traffic’s ‘Heaven is in Your Mind’, ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’, ’Paper Sun’ and Spencer Davis Group’s ‘Gimme Some Lovin’’.  ‘Hole in My Shoe’ by Traffic is a 45 single released by Island Records in 1968.

Savoy Browns and South Parade Blues

The next two Blog entries will be another sentimental return to sixties Portsmouth.  I will be revisiting some classic gigs by more great names from that very special era at two venues long gone but never forgotten

THE Duet live at the Barbican

‘Two’s company and three’s a crowd’ is an old saying.  In Jazz, that is seldom true.  However, forty years after their first duet collaboration, Chick Corea and Gary Burton prove that sometimes old sayings don’t need to be repeated to contain more than a little wisdom if not an absolute expression of the truth.

The problem with writing about music I like, and especially the musicians who are long time favourites, is that superlatives begin to lose their meaning.  Last Wednesday evening’s Barbican concert by THE Duet was simply superlative in every respect and, with that said, I will endeavour to leave some of the many adjectives that come to mind out of this blog: brilliant, exciting, intelligent, inspiring, uplifting, creatively original (ok ‘creatively’ is an adverb) … I’m going to stop, now.

Take it as read that Chick is my number one favourite pianist in any genre and that, as regular readers will already know, Gary Burton’s music played a seminal role in my jazz education.  It’s also worth noting that I own at least thirty albums on which each or both of them are featured or lead including several by The Duet itself.  I had originally intended this blog entry to catalogue and review a whole host of gigs that I have seen The Duet play.  However, they were so terrific on Wednesday night that I decided to make this into a one-off concert review; in taking this tack, left on one side are a club performance on New Year’s Eve 2001 going into 2002 at The Blue Note in New York and a concert on a cold night in the Winter of 1982 at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.

Chick Corea is one of those rare musicians who are able to slot his readily identifiable sound and technique into just about any genre of music and play it as well as anyone else.  On the broad palette that Jazz, itself, offers, Chick excels in any style – bebop, stride, Latin, fusion and more besides.  Although the vibraphone has a sound that is limited, Gary Burton’s ability to use the instrument reveals a versatility that would seem improbable in the hands of others. 

Having bought the new album ‘Hot House’ ahead of the gig; albeit that I had only listened to it once, I had some idea of where the two might be leading the music on the night.

The concert kicked off with two long time staples of the Duet’s repertoire.  ‘Love Castle’ originally appeared on the first Burton/Corea duet album ‘Crystal Silence’.  It was repurposed for the 2007 concert and album with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.  The melody offers plenty of scope for improvisation.  ‘Native Sense’ is a fabulous piece and the first showpiece for the vibrant groove Chick creates with his left hand – of which there were some special moments later in the concert.

Having warmed up with a couple of oldies, the pair began to attack the contents of their new album.  Showcasing predominantly covers by some of their favourite composers from the 1940’s through to the 1960’s, the selections included lesser known works by Dave Brubeck (‘Strange Meadow Light’), Tadd Dameron (‘Hot House’) and ‘Can’t we be friends’ written by Kay Swift and Paul James but on which some stride figures prominently featured in a tribute to Art Tatum.

The second set began with readings of Scriabin’s Prelude No 4 and Bartok’s Bagatelle No 2.  Having heard Chick play pieces by both Mozart and Prokofiev at previous concerts I was prepared for his personal approach to the Classical book.  Burton added some interesting counterpoint as well as intelligent soloing to pieces originally written for solo piano. 

Each time I see Burton play I watch as closely as I can to try and work out how he accomplishes the seemingly physical impossible feat of using four mallets – especially during the solos.  I have given up – but the sound he produces is beautiful and watching him play is mesmerising.  I had not previously heard him playing classical pieces.  Bartok is challenging at the best of times and both musicians rose to that challenge.  However, what they created on the Scriabin started off as a reading of a classical piece that became fusion and then total musical synthesis.  Hopefully they will record it; I would even buy it on CD single!  The clue to the duo’s next project was contained in the only original on the new album, ‘Mozart Goes Dancing’, which is scored to include a string quartet, played on the night without. 

The only number that was not introduced before it was played was an unusual arrangement of ‘Eleanor Rigby’.  The left hand rhythms were reminiscent of some of Chick’s work on the original ‘Duet Suite’; they were spellbinding and led to Corea’s self-effacing comment at the end that he needed to keep practising them.  Paul McCartney’s familiar melody emerges from the rhythm giving both musicians plenty of opportunity to highlight musical elements of the piece that have always been hidden beneath its melody but which have not previously been heard; this piece alone is worth the price of the new album.  One other piece from ‘Hot House’ included in the second set was Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘Chega de Saudade’.

A final surprise was the introduction of long time collaborator Tim Garland, a Brit of course, who wrote the arrangements of Corea’s pieces for the Sydney Symphony.  Choosing the soprano saxophone from his arsenal of instruments, Garland came on stage for the encore that included an uplifting reading of much-recorded ‘La Fiesta’ complete with its disparate intro and Latin swirls and chorus.  Garland is an intelligent player who knows exactly how to use space and makes a lot out of placing notes and runs exactly where his accompanists make sure of their maximum effect.  The final piece was, I think, by Thelonius Monk; it’s one of those I have heard dozens of times and I can whistle it – badly – but can never remember its name.  In any event, with all three musicians populating its jerky theme with thoughtful solos it proved a fitting close to what was a wonderful and memorable evening.

Duet albums by Gary Burton and Chick Corea in my collection start with ‘Duet’ originally released by ECM on vinyl in 1979; I also have the CD reissue.  ‘Native Sense’ is a CD released by Stretch records in 1997.  ‘The New Crystal Silence’ is a double CD, the first of which includes orchestral arrangements by Tim Garland of Duet favourites played by them and accompanied by Sydney symphony Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer; the second CD features the Duet alone; it was released in 2007 by Concord Records. ‘Hot House’ is a CD released in 2012 also on Concord.  ‘Like Minds’ is a CD released in 1998 by Concord and features Gary Burton and Chick Corea in a supergroup quintet with Pat Metheny, Roy Haynes and Dave Holland.

A Tale of Three Cities: Part 1

This entry was originally published on 26.3.2012; Part 2 was published on 7.4.2012

I’ve never ridden on the Marrakesh Express though the idea does appeal.  

In the summer of 1969, with the sound of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s first hit already deeply embedded in my subconscious, I took a trip in a different direction. Nevertheless this was a journey that would ‘sweep cobwebs from the edges of my mind, (as I) had to get away to see what (I) could find’.  

I was just 17 and had never been abroad on my own. Apart from a couple of family holidays to the less than exotic beaches of Belgium, I had joined three school trips to the continent. France(1963), Austria (1966) and a pioneering expedition behind the Iron Curtain to what was then Czechoslovakia(1967) are all worthy of future blogs. Under hawk-like gazes of gaggles of teachers, itineraries were meticulously planned and finely tuned. Opportunities for extemporisation and personal exploration were extremely limited.  

A trip to Germany, youth hostelling along the Rhine was organised with two old school friends from Portsmouth, Pete and Rob. They were good companions and veterans of the various school trips during which we had shared many hilarious episodes.  However, a year’s separation had prepared us in different ways for our ‘Aufenthalt in Deutschland’.  

After finishing O levels, I left the relative tranquillity of Portsmouth and sunny Southsea for the hubbub of the capital. Simultaneously, I exchanged the prosaic formality of a public school for the earthier tone of a local state grammar. The naval and church traditions that defined the values of Portsmouth Grammar were altogether different from those of my new school.  I left behind the sons of Royal Navy officers, local vicars and chartered accountants. Located in a cluster of Nissen huts thrown up at the end of the war, the sixth form at Orange Hill, in Burnt Oak, Middlesex housed an altogether different constituency.  In addition to the skinheads and tough-nuts and rough diamonds there was a significant number of fellow first and second generation British-born Jews.  We were the sons and grandsons of immigrants who had escaped the pogroms of Czarist Russia and survived the Holocaust. Altogether the school entertained a potent social and cultural mix that was generously exposed by a bunch of gifted teachers to all that London had to offer.  Even so, while making the most of my new environment I had stayed in touch with Pete and Rob and we planned a summer trip together.  

The journey started with the misleadingly named boat-train from Victoria.  There was no Eurostar in those days.  In fact the train took us to Dover from where we caught a passenger ferry to Ostend and, from there, another train to Koblenz.  We spent the first night in a foreboding hilltop castle that operated at a level half way between a hostel and Colditz.  At Koblenz we started a cruise down the Rhine.  Our tickets enabled us to debark and re-board at towns and villages along the way.  We stopped off at various places including Rudesheim where I got totally pissed for the first time in my life.  It took us all two days to recover from quaffing vast quantities of cheap Rheinwein that gushed from kitchen-like taps in the wall of a cellar bar.

A week of gently sailing the sunlit Rhine enabled us to check out the Lorelei, visit castles and, subsequently consume more considered volumes of Rheinwein.  I discovered that travelling could be something more than a pre-organised trip and wholly reliant on timetables prepared by bureaucrats.  I persuaded the others to ignore parental prohibitions of hitchhiking.  From Saarbrucken we hitchhiked to Luxemburg via Trier.  Pete and Rob went together; I went on my own.  By mid-afternoon on each of the two days we met up at the youth hostels.  All I remember of Luxemburg was a strange valley in the middle of the city, the radio mast and two whole days of continuous, unrelenting, heavy rain.  Pete and Rob had had enough.  On the third day the sun came out and they headed for the station and a train to Ostend.  

The atmosphere of the trip thus far had affected me profoundly.  The ease with which we were able to meet and relate to people of our own age from all over western Europe and others from America who were a little older was genuinely exciting.  This was the era of Arthur Frommer’s ‘Europeon Five Dollars a Day’, the Vietnam War and Easy Rider.  The world was our oyster and I, for one, was keen to explore its every corner.  I had money that I believed I could make last for another ten days or so and school was out for at least that and more.  

Bidding my companions a ‘gute reise’ I took a bus to the outskirts of Luxemburg.  I was aiming for Paris.  I had been invited to visit by Christian Nicourt, a Sorbonne student from the suburb of Drancy who we had met in Mainz – or perhaps it was Saarbrucken.  It was only after returning to England that I would learn that Drancy had been the site of an internment camp from which French Jews rounded up by the Nazis were sent to Auschwitz.  

Arriving at the motorway ramp, I held up a handwritten sign that simply said ‘PARIS’ and stuck out my thumb.  In the days before iPods, or even Walkmen, I could do no more than sing to myself the theme I adopted for the trip: Canned Heat’s ‘On the Road Again’.  

It took me a few hours not to get very far.  A little way out of Luxemburg, a farm truck picked me up and dropped me close to Metz – perhaps no more than 50 miles from where I had started.  Less than confident that the Alsatians would lay on a direct ride to the capital, I made my way to the nearest station in a village called Onville.  Doing my sums, I reckoned that if I didn’t eat until the following day, I could afford a twelfth class train fare to the Gare de l’ Est.  A few hours later I was at the home of Christian’s parents that was minus said parents who were en vacances elsewhere.  Visibly delighted that I had unexpectedly shown up, Christian welcomed me in.  It was the eve of a holiday weekend and the first of several of his friends who would sporadically populate the house over the coming few days were already in evidence.  The weather was grey and overcast, Christian and his friends were anything but.  

In between eating, drinking and listening to music, I managed to get myself to a few of the tourist sites - the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Couer and even on a Bateau Mouche.  More exciting than that, was taking the wheel of the Nicourt family Deux Cheveux, even though I had not then actually passed my driving test.  The worse for wear from endless bottles of Beaujolais not so nouveau, memorably, we circled the centre of Paris at 5 am on a Sunday morning as Pigalle finally began to get some sleep.

For all of that, the highlight was hanging out with a group of twenty-something, arty Parisians who wouldn’t believe I was only just 17.  Some of them had played an active part in the student unrest that had gripped Paris during the previous year and which was part of a general upsurge in such activity that was continuing to sweep across campuses throughout the western world.  It all seemed somehow terribly romantic.  Most of them spoke little more English than I spoke French and some less.  We all worked hard at communicating with each other.  We talked about every subject imaginable and I learned more about France and Paris and French culture than I had in eight years of studying French in school.   However, despite my best efforts my spoken French, although improving by the day, was insufficient to pull any of the girls.  

The few photos that I have of the crowd that came and went chez Nicourt instantly take me back to those five wonderful days as does the soundtrack that was played and played over and over, again and again: Joe Cocker’s grandiose arrangement of ‘With a little help from my friends’; his strangulated vocal crescendos ripped apart the seams of the modest house.  Then there was The Stones’ ‘Beggars’ Banquet’ album and, in particular, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’.  Patting our thighs in time to the bongo intro and enthusiastically chanting the ‘ooh-oohs’ of the chorus, we debated whether Jagger was really the devil incarnate or if it was all a clever marketing ploy.  Even those espousing the former knew the latter to be the truth.  I was also introduced to the erotic delights of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je t’aime … moi non plus’.  When this hit the turntable, it was a cue for some of those in couples to indulge in activities that required some privacy; the rest of us speculated whether or not Serge and Jane had actually been ‘doing it’ when they made the record or if it was all a clever marketing ploy; once again, even those espousing the former knew the latter to be the truth.

As the day of M. et Mme. Nicourt’s scheduled return drew near, all hands were on deck to clean up the house and dispose of rubbish, a large proportion of which consisted of empty bottles.  Sleeping bags were folded and packed away as the general detritus of a five-day house party was removed.  One of Christian’s friends kindly volunteered to drive me the relatively short distance to the Autoroute du Nord.  Before I left there were Gallic kisses on the cheek and pledges of undying love and fraternity, even a tear or two was shed.  

Although I did subsequently exchange a couple of letters with Christian, I have never seen him since.  I often wondered what happened to him and his friends, those whose names I remember – Laurent, Dominic, Marie-Christine, Yolande – and those I don’t.  Apart from the memories of those few days that we shared together, now they are all just faces in photographs frozen in their twenties forever.

It was another overcast morning, a Tuesday if I am not mistaken, when I scurried out of Dominic’s car towards the autoroute entry ramp with a handwritten sign that simply said ‘ANTWERP’. I was on the road again.  

‘Marrakesh Express’ is the first track on the first and eponymous Crosby, Stills and Nash album released by Atlantic Records in 1969; I have the original vinyl as well as the CD re-release. Canned Heat’s ‘On the Road Again’ is a 45 RPM vinyl single released in 1968 by Liberty Records. ‘With a little help from my friends’ by Joe Cocker was a single originally released in the UK on the Regal Zonophone label in 1969; it’s on the album ‘Cocker Happy’ which is a compilation originally released in 1978 by Cube Records and re-released on 2CD set by Castle Communications in 1988. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ By The Rolling Stones, originally on Beggars’ Banquet is included in the 3CD set released by Abcko in 1989 as The London Years. ‘Je t’aime…moi non plus’ is the title track of an album of that name by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg released in 1969 by Phonodor.  

Aufenthalt in Deutschland was the name of the German Textbook series that Pete, Rob and I had used in studying for our German ‘O’ level.

Land of Milk, Honey and Much Wonderful Music 

Israel is a tiny country that is brimful with musical excellence. Tel Aviv buzzes with a thriving local jazz scene.  And, when it comes to classical virtuosi, Israel is home to seemingly more per capita than just about anywhere else in the world.  Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zuckerman and Gil Shaham are just three amongst the many contemporary Israeli greats who have established careers that take them to play with leading International orchestras at concert halls and festivals in every corner of the globe.  I have been fortunate enough to see each of them in concert at different times, both in London and elsewhere.   

The national musical treasure is the Israel Philharmonic, which never sounds better than in its acoustically excellent home – the Mann Auditorium.  The IPO has regularly performed at the Proms and elsewhere in London during its regular overseas tours.  If the IPO aren’t playing then there are other orchestras from towns and cities across the country.  There are enough quality musicians to make up more orchestras than there are halls in which they might perform.

In the wake of Glasnost and Perestroika, there was a mass emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union into Israel.  Amongst these new immigrants were graduates of the many wonderful Soviet musical academies.  Those who were unable to get a gig with the established orchestras have done what they can to adapt.  Back in the mid-nineties I came across a string quartet busking on Dizengoff, one of Tel Aviv’s main thoroughfares which is a cross between Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road.  While traffic trundled past them and crowds of pedestrians looked in shop windows, a few gathered to listen to a terrific performance of Borodin’s String Quartet No 2 (in D Major).  The four ageing Russian maestros were a long way from St Petersburg, yet the exuberance and passion of their playing would have done the Mariinsky proud.  They were as good as any quartet that I have heard elsewhere, even with the addition of the ambient sounds of a busy main road that were not included in the composer’s original score. 

In more recent times, each Saturday morning, there is a string trio that busks on the Tayelet – Tel Aviv’s glorious promenade.  I suspect that this is not the same as the 90’s Dizengoff group minus a second violin.  The trio’s choice of repertoire is not aimed at the purist Borodin fan.  In amongst Beethoven, Bocharini and Mozart trios there are selections from ‘Cabaret’, ‘West Side Story’ and even The Beatles.  A few weeks back I managed to find a seat on the bench that is next to their pitch and happily listened for an hour or more while I wrote a post for this blog! 

Over the past couple of years I have been regularly exploring Tel Aviv’s jazz scene.  There are numerous venues in town, albeit that some also play host to other musical genres.  Periodically, muscular tenor saxist, Shlomi Goldenberg, hosts a club at the atmospheric Hasimta Theatre in Old Jaffa.  Goldenberg’s playing is funky and edgy bowing in the direction of John Coltrane.  Last summer also he led a group playing live – and for free – in Ben Gurion park that backed a seemingly endless array of talented teenage vocalists performing standards with aplomb and individuality.  In addition to circling around contemporary jazz stylings, the truly original Keren Friedman is a vocalist who also fuses her repertoire with traditional Jewish religious musical references and influences. 

There are not yet too many Israelis who have followed in the footsteps of double-bass legend, Avishai Cohen, onto the major stages of the international Jazz scene.  However, talent is beginning to bubble up and sax playing composer and arranger, Eyal Vilner, made a recent visit ‘home’ from his New York base.  He took Shablul, a prominent club in the Nemal – the old port section of Tel Aviv – by storm.  Leading a big band comprising a talented bunch of locals through a ninety minute set of original numbers, the capacity crowd were on its feet at the end of the night.   

To my ears, much of current Israeli pop music is barely distinguishable from the contrived confections that inhabit the airwaves of other countries regularly represented at the Eurovision song contest.  Nevertheless, there is a lot of very interesting contemporary Israeli fusion music that might be filed in Western record stores in the ‘World Music’ sections.  And talking of record stores, no music fan visiting Tel Aviv should miss spending an hour or two at Third Ear Music located at the corner of Melech George and Dizengoff.  There are not too many equivalent record shops left in the UK, or even the States so my friends there tell me.  Third Ear is not a megastore; it’s quality not quantity that is on offer for the discerning fan who still enjoys buying music on disc in a bricks-and-mortar emporium. 

The ground floor offers pop and rock but the Aladdin’s cave is on the upper level.  Separate but contiguous sections containing Blues, Jazz, Classical and World Music are curated by the estimable and highly knowledgeable Ohad.  Last week, we spent a half an hour or more shooting the breeze and discussing all manner of musical matters while Ohad played albums by each of Taj Mahal and Don Byron.  The man has taste.  Seeking his recommendations, I picked up some fascinating contemporary Israeli albums, all of which I can highly recommend to those who enjoy music that doesn’t easily fit into any one category. 

Ravid Kahalani’s ‘Yemen Blues’ fuses Middle Eastern rhythms and beats played on oriental percussion instruments with an electric bass, violin and viola, trumpet and trombone.  Kahalani’s lyrics, written in a mixture of Arabic, Hebrew and French convey messages of peace. Outstanding tracks on the album include the infectious up tempo ‘Eli’ and the moody groove of ‘Min Kalbi’.  This is an album that I am going to be playing a lot!  

The Orchestra Andalous d’Israel was originally established in the Port of Ashdod in the 1960’s by immigrants from Morocco.  These days the ensemble includes a large Russian contingent.  The fifty or so musicians play an interesting array of both Western and Oriental instruments and largely perform original repertoire that combines a range of cultural influences.  The 2011 album, ‘Ashdod Yam’ is a tribute to the ensemble’s home town.  Predominantly composed by orchestra members, the music circumscribes an alluring marriage between the steppes and the Sahara often in the same piece; examples include Adam Bak’s ‘Tushiya Shenaz’ and Gamil Bak Tamburi’s ‘Longa Nahwand’.

I am still exploring the truly astonishing double album ‘Ahavot Olamim: Andalusian Hebrew Song from the Mahgreb to Jerusalem’ which would be worth a blog of its own, if not an entire series of blogs.  The landscape of the collection is drawn from the Andalusian Jewish musical traditional of Algeria and Morocco.  The rich and varied textures of the arrangements move from traditional North African instruments through layers of classical strings to jazz influenced tenor sax and trumpet.  The lyrical content is drawn from two thousand years of religious liturgy.

Mark Eliyahu was born in the hilly country of Dagestan.  The ethereal sound of ‘Voices of Judea’ is led by Eliyahu’s kamancha, a bowed instrument that originates in Azerbaijan and is complemented variously by an oud and percussion.  Eliyahu also contributes on other relatively little known stringed instruments.  The album was partly recorded in the curiously named Loozit Cave which gives the recordings mystical feel.  This fascinating mood music was inspired by the search for the magical garden in the mystical spaces in the desert of Judea from where some of the prophets of the bible emerged.

Israel, the land of milk and honey of Jewish scriptures, is also a land rich in music – new, old and in some cases a fusion of both.  Try some, you’ll enjoy it!

Borodin: String Quartets No 1 and 2 are played by the Haydn Quartet on a CD released by Naxos in 1994. Ravid Kahalani’s ‘Yemen Blues’ was released on CD by LGM/Global Lev in 2011. ‘Ashdod–Yam’ by Orchestra Andalous d’Israel under the direction of Shmuel Elbaz was released by Magda in 2006.  ‘Ahavot Olamim: Andalusian Hebrew Song from the Mahgreb to Jerusalem’ is by The New Jerusalem Orchestra with Rabbi Haim Louk and The Piyyut Ensemble of the Ben Zvi Institute, Artistic Directors Omer Avital and Ya’ir Harel; it was released in 2012 by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Mark Eliyahu: Voices of Judea  is a CD released by Adama Music in 2005.

More about Third Ear at http://www.recordstoreday.com/Venue/4143

A Tale of Three Cities: Part 2

“We’ll always have Paris.”  Humphrey Bogart’s immortal line will resonate with anyone recollecting a visit to the French capital.  It was some years after 1969 that I began to recite by heart chunks of dialogue from Casablanca.  Buying a CD of the soundtrack helped.  Bogart continues: “If we didn’t have, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.”  Just as I have never been to Marrakesh, I have never been to Casablanca either, but writing the first part of ‘A Tale of Three Cities’ helped even more.  

Experiences make up life as do our memories of them.  One of the premises for this blog is how music can instantly conjure up a memory.  The recordings mentioned in Part 1 have always instantly brought back Paris ’69 to me.  Pulling them off the shelves and playing them again helped me write the blog; writing the blog enabled me to mentally access even more of the detail of those events. 

By 1969, the flower power promise of the hippy movement was already fading.  Dope soaked dreams of peace and love were drowning as the drugs got harder and the slogans of the counter-culture became overtly politicised.  Music was already looking back with misty-eyed nostalgia – ‘Summer ‘67’ from Family Entertainment being but one example.  As ‘the troubles’ flared in Ulster, the need was felt in Britain – as articulated by John and Yoko - to ‘Give Peace a Chance’ which localised the movement that had started in the States with protests against the Vietnam War.  Ironically, perhaps inevitably, such protests led to violence.  The Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’, a reflection on the student riots of the previous year, was a favourite on the road that summer.

Against this backdrop, we pick up the story at the entry ramp to the Autoroute du Nord.  My destination, Antwerp, is an inland port connected to the North Sea by a series of waterways.  It is no more than a couple of hundred miles from Paris and this time the hitchhiking was easy.  Antwerp wasn’t a city that was prominently located on the 1969 map of student hang outs, nor was its allure cultural; neither the Rubens House nor the magnificent Steen – and I do like a castle – drew me there.  It was a girl I had met ten days or so earlier in one of the hostels along the Rhine.  We had spent the hours of a fine summer’s evening talking and getting to know each other and it all seemed to be leading somewhere.  At the end of a conversation in which we had shared much about each other, we also exchanged addresses.  Miriam was travelling with a friend and was on her way home.  She suggested that, if I was passing through Belgium, I might like to visit her in Antwerp where she would happily put me up for a few days.  

Building up the invitation in my mind, I imagined that maybe it could amount to something more than it probably would.  I believed then, and still do, that if it wasn’t for life’s ‘maybes’ there would never be any ‘actuals’.  Up until that time, my experience of relationships with girls had been mainly about ‘maybe nots’ and ‘actually noes’.  So it was, some hours after leaving Paris, I found myself outside a house in a narrow lane that was not too far from the centre of Antwerp.  There was no answer to the bell or to my knocking – and subsequent pounding.  The front door was bolted, the windows locked, the curtains drawn and the lawn needing cutting.  Feeling like Le Grand Meaulnes in his quest for the elusive Yvonne de Gallais, I stuck a note through the letter box.  In the vain hope that maybe Miriam would be back later that day – or even the next – I repaired to the local youth hostel.  By the time I got there I was already working hard on Plan B.

When you are travelling alone there is always a Plan B, often a Plan C and even a Plan D not far from the front of your mind.  Shrugging off the what-might-have-been but which clearly never-was-going-to-be with the elusive Miriam, Plan B was Amsterdam.  Deciding that Antwerp itself was worth a look – and still thinking that Miriam might just turn up – I spent the next day checking out the Rubens House and the Steen and even the Modern Art Museum that had a memorable collection of Ensors on display.  That evening, over a plate of youth hostel meat and two veg, I met my companion for the next few days, Larry, a tall, fair-headed nineteen-year-old American from Chicago.

Larry was nearing the end of a three month trip around Europe.  He shared my passion for music.  We had both heard about Amsterdam’s vibrant youth scene and its apparent multitude of clubs that included the fabled Paradiso.  After three months, Larry had also learned much about life on the road and how to make his five dollar a day budget stretch beyond what I perceived to be its relatively generous limits.  Amsterdam would be his last stop before flying home from London where he correctly predicted I would offer him space for his sleeping bag for a night or two.

It was while on our way to Amsterdam that we met a guy of indeterminate Scandinavian origin who had – or at least claimed he had – actually been at Woodstock a couple of weeks earlier.  Regaling us with descriptions of three days of mud and mayhem and music by The Who, Sly and the Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix, he also painted a florid picture of the Amsterdam scene.  The image of groups of stoned hippies playing guitars and singing protest songs in the middle of the Dam Square turned out to be accurate enough.  He didn’t explain that there was a sleazy undercurrent to the scene that made it all rather unpleasant.  

As much as Paris had provided me with a personal awakening, the revelations of Amsterdam in ’69 underlined the fact that on top of every silver lining there was a cloud.  The city was intriguing enough, but its mainstream culture escaped my attention.  The milieu that Larry and I explored made Amsterdam somewhere I was happy to leave as soon as I had seen enough to satisfy my curiosity.  One furtive walk along the street where the admittedly attractive working girls sat in the windows was plenty.  The cafés selling legal dope were of no interest and too many of the travelling youth and Vietnam draft dodgers with whom we came into contact were too stoned to make any sense.  Somewhere the spirit encapsulated by John and Yoko’s bed-in of a few months earlier at the Amsterdam Hilton, recounted in the Beatles’ 'Ballad of John and Yoko’, had evanesced.

We never made it to the Paradiso, nor even to the next place on the list which I think was called the Melkveg.  We did make it to one pretty unprepossessing hole in the ground that churned out rock music at a decibel level that was close to the threshold of pain.  The name of it escapes me – that is if it had one.  I remember tracks from The Doors' first couple of albums, tracks that I liked but which, in their doomy feel, reflected the darker side of that first Amsterdam experience – ‘Strange Days’, ‘When the Music’s Over’ and 'The End’.  The Grateful Dead’s then most recent release, ‘Aoxomoxoa’, was also on the playlist.  It would be another year or so before I embraced the Dead but that album does include the first recordings of classics such as ‘St Stephen’ and ‘China Cat Sunflower’.

I left Larry to it while I headed back to London where he came to stay a few days later.  Following his return to the States, I received a thank you scrawled on the back of a postcard depicting Downtown Chicago.  My response occasioned no reply.  That Christmas I received an apologetic note from the elusive Miriam.  It accompanied a seed cake in a cardboard package that somehow survived the combined vagaries of the Belgian and British postal services.  I never received a reply to my thank you note back to her.

‘Casablanca’ soundtrack is a CD released in 1997 by Sony.  ‘Family Entertainment’ by Family is a vinyl album released in 1969 on the Reprise label.  ‘Give Peace a Chance’ by the Plastic Ono Band is included on the 1997 Parlophone CD ‘Lennon Legend: the Very Best of John Lennon’.  ‘Street Fighting Man’ as with ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ mentioned in Part 1 of this blog was originally on the Stones’ ‘Beggars’ Banquet’ and is also included in ‘The London Years' the 3CD set released by ABCKO in 1989.  ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ by The Beatles was originally a single released in 1969 and is included on ’67-70’ also known as the ‘Blue Album’, a double vinyl set released by Apple in 1973.  ‘The Doors’ that band’s eponymous first album and ‘Strange Days’ are both on vinyl and were both released by Elektra in 1967.  The Grateful Dead’s ‘Aoxomoxoa’ is on vinyl and was released by Warner Brothers in 1969.

Mahler, Suk and the Boogie Woogie Flu

Apologies to those who have logged on waiting to pick up the second part of The Tale of Three Cities. You will have to a wait a little longer to find out what happened to the seventeen year old me thumbing and bumming around Europe in the summer of 1969.  The sad fact of life of a working blogger is that last week was financial year end which invariably obliges lawyers to endeavour to meet clients’ needs to close deals before 5^thApril.  The powers that be in the office also require total commitment to certain financial disciplines.  Creative writing had to remain on the back burner while the demands of my legal practice took first place. 

Nevertheless, this blog is beginning to live without my continual intervention. Having had little time to check the stats I was delighted to see that, unceremoniously and hitherto unremarked, some time last week my blog passed more than a thousand views.  Seemingly, readers are located around the globe; in addition to the UK, folks are regularly checking in from Russia, the USA, Germany, Qatar, Israel and Australia amongst others. There are none yet from Africa but maybe that will change once I start attacking my much-loved collection of music from Mali and Senegal.

In spite of what was happening at work, last week I did find time to indulge in some culture.  The irrepressible Yannick Nézet-Séguin was billed to conduct the London Philharmonic at the Royal Festival Hall last Wednesday.  At last, I hear some of you say, he’s finally got round to his Classical collection.  Indeed I have, though, as with all of the other genres of music, and records, that I like, my relationship with Classical is somewhat different to the rest. 

Following the demise of the North Sea pirate stations in 1967 – yes, yes there will be a blog about that in due course – I set about exploring the radio dial.  I started an occasional dalliance with Radio 3 which, nowadays, is my first choice station.  Not long after discovering the measured tranquillity that frequently inhabits what is now 91.0 FM, a weekly part work called ‘The Great Composers’ was launched in the UK.  Each week a 10 inch vinyl album was published in a fancy cover that included a booklet dedicated to the composer, the music featured and related socio-historical material.  This groundbreaking multi-media package could be bought from newsagents for about 15 shillings a pop; that is the equivalent of 75p but with the purchasing power of about £7.50.  For my second biggest constituency of followers in the USA that’s the equivalent of $1.20 and $12.00.  Unfortunately, the exigencies of teenage life in London did not permit me to allocate enough of my limited budget to indulge in buying all 120 issues of ‘The Great Composers’. 

The first part featured Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Ludwig’s sixth, played by the Royal Philharmonic conducted by Charles Groves.  One of a relatively small number of symphonies to consist of five movements as opposed to the more usual four, the Pastoral includes many great melodies.  I played the album endlessly and read the booklet until I could virtually quote it by heart.  The piece is still one of my favourites.  I only managed to buy another two of the Great Composers packages – both Beethoven.  One of the albums features piano sonatas including the Moonlight and the Pathetique.  It was subsequently employed as romantic/seduction background music on the all too rare occasions when I managed to persuade girls to come back to my room at University.  I don’t actually remember it ever ‘working’.  My last buy in the series was Beethoven’s 1^st Symphony which, prior to writing this blog, I hadn’t listened to for donkeys’ years.

Having acquired three classical records, I reverted to the fervent accumulation of rock albums.  I didn’t buy another classical record until my second year at University – of which more anon.  Nevertheless, having got the bug I wanted to go and hear a symphony orchestra play live.  Every week, my parents bought The Sunday Times.  Included in its then fairly thin review section were advertisements for what was called ‘the Four Orchestra Series’ at the Royal Festival Hall.  The week’s upcoming concerts were set out in a rectangular box down the side of a page of cultural announcements.  Just the names of the orchestras excited me: the Royal Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the London Philharmonic and the Philharmonia.  I mooted the prospect of heading to the South Bank with the friends I was making at my then new school.  The responses were along the lines that they were otherwise committed and/or, in any event, that watching paint dry would be preferable.

One Sunday, with nothing else planned, I spotted that the Royal Philharmonic was playing that evening.  I think it must have been around the Spring of 1969.  The programme included Josef Suk’s Asrael Symphony.  I didn’t have a clue what it was and I had never heard of Josef Suk.  However, with a name like that – mysterious and Eastern European sounding - it couldn’t be anything other than amazing, surely?

I remember phoning up the ticket office and reserving a seat in the side stalls – by the stage and under the boxes for about 7 shillings.  It was a bright sunny evening as I strolled along the rows of faux Tudor houses that lined my route to Edgware station.  I assumed a somewhat different persona to my usual gigging self.  Leaving the jeans and t-shirts that I would usually have worn to smoky clubs hosting guitar based rock or blues, I put on my one and only suit – dark navy.  I felt very grown up as I took the tube to Waterloo, no doubt with a Penguin Modern Classic in hand! 

Suk’s Asrael Symphony is a majestic work that runs for about an hour or so.  Its orchestration calls for 12 double-basses and I was sat right over them.  There is a grand bass refrain – riff if you like – that reappears at different points in the piece and which has resonated in my mental juke box ever since.  The Suk is a sombre composition that was written in memory of the composer’s father-in-law, Antonin Dvorak – who, of course, turned out many altogether better known works.  Asrael is the Islamic angel of death who leads the souls of the deceased to a state of perpetual bliss.  There is nothing quite like hearing a full symphony orchestra in full flight. The sound of a hundred or so unamplified instruments playing together is awe-inspiring.  The experience blew me away. 

The next day I was at Hendon Library, which in those days loaned out records, from which I ordered its copy of the Suk and in which I immersed myself until I risked a fine for its late return!  I finally got around to buying my own copy –on CD – earlier this year on one of my too rare visits to Amoeba, of which, too, more anon.

While I greatly enjoy listening to Classical music, I don’t have the same depth of appreciation and breadth of knowledge about it as I do of, say, sixties/seventies rock or post-1960 Jazz.  That being so, I take a somewhat generic approach to buying Classical records and attending concerts.  In recent years, however, I have become somewhat addicted to the boxes on the Blue Side of the Festival Hall that I regularly attend, especially when the magnificent London Philharmonic is playing.  About two years ago I discovered its frequent guest, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, when he was conducting one of the Brahms symphonies (I think). His performances are extraordinary, totally immersed in the music and ethereally connected to the sound that he conjures out of his musicians.  I book to see every Festival Hall Concert he plays with the LPO.  The highlight thus far was last Autumn and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.  During the last of its many crescendos I thought Yannick was going to literally fly off the podium into the air. I decided to buy a recording of the piece heading to HMV the next day and locating a fabulous recording by Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic. To illustrate the generic approach to much of my classical record buying, when I got it home I discovered that I already had a recording of the piece by the Rotterdam Orchestra conducted by … yup … none other than said Mr Yannick Nézet-Séguin! 

The nugget of fun and culture that was scheduled to break up the hard work of financial year end didn’t quite work out.  The anticipation of watching the youthful Canadian maestro leading the LPO through its chops on Mahler 9 (I’m still a jazzer at heart) kept me going through the thick of some heavyweight contract negotiations until I got the Festival Hall on Wednesday evening.  Unfortunately Yannick had come down with a bad case of gastric something or other and was indisposed.  I desist from making comparisons to the rocking’ pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu.  His place was taken by Matthew Coorey, a young Australian. My one-liner about missing his principal didgeridoo player uttered in a bad Ozzie accent, while prompting a suppressed titter from my companion, didn’t go down too well with those sharing the box.  Nevertheless, the relative unknown gave an assured performance which reached a high spot with the shimmering effervescence of the final movement. 

Apologies – more apologies you say - for turning what was intended as a short stop-gap about a concert into a totally different piece.  It’s the way this blog seems to work.  However, year end is now ended, I have a week’s holiday and I will shortly return to 1969 and the autoroute from Paris to Antwerp.

Beethoven: Symphony No 1 and Symphony No 6 ‘The Pastoral’ are performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Groves; Piano Sonatas: ‘Moonlight’ and ‘Pathetique’ are performed by Alfred Brendel; all three are 10 inch vinyl albums released in 1969 by Marshall Cavendish in its Great Composer part work series. Suk: ‘Asrael Symphony’ is played by the Czech Philharmonic under Charles Mackerras, also an Australian and was released on CD by Supraphone in 2011.  Brahms Symphonies 1-4 are included with a selection of Brahms other orchestral works in a 3CD set on EMI Classics released in 2004; the recordings date back to 1955, 1958 and 1962 and feature the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Otto Klemperer.  I also have vinyl albums of Brahms 1^st by the Berlin Philharmonic under Rudolf Kempe released by MFP in 1959; the Berlin also performed the second under Karl Bohm in 1966 released by Heliodor.  The first of my two recordings of Berlioz: ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ is by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Orchestra released on CD by Bis in 2010; the second is by Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic released by CBS Masterworks in 1985. ‘Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu’ is by Jerry Lee Lewis; I don’t have a recording of it at home – at least I don’t think I have, but thought it would be fun to include this reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI1r-D2B3SI