Thank You For Asking Me No Questions Jumblequeen

Another ‘big up’ to Jason Smith & the Fraser Centre, Milngavie for making an old man very satisfied & happy.

On Saturday, my wife & I witnessed an incredible performance of 2 living legends, Bridget St John & Michael Chapman. It seemed hardly possible. I had to pinch myself to check it was really happening, it wasn’t a dream.

Michael Chapman toured recently after being ‘at death’s door’ & I was upset at missing him, so it was an ideal opportunity to catch him & then there was Bridget. Double plus plus. It doesn’t get any better than this.

I had caught a recent USA radio show & interview with Bridget (‘Spinning on Air’ with David Garland) & she get close to the format of that show. Thus I knew what to expect & it was all good.

I am still in awe with some of the events I have caught at this location a mere 15 minutes drive from my house.

Soundtrack for a Revolution that Never Was

Jefferson Airplane – Volunteers (‘Up against the wall M……..’)

Country Joe & Fish – Electric Music for the Mind & Body

Fugs – It Crawled Into My Hand Honest

Mothers – Freak Out

Captain Beefheart – Trout Mask Replica

Incredible String Band – 5000 Spirits

Love – Da Capo/For Sail

Beatles – Sgt Pepper

Grateful Dead – American Beauty/Workingman’s Dead

Blodwyn Pig – Getting Into This

Family – Music in a Doll’s House

Edgar Broughton Band – Wasa Wasa/Inside Out

Tyrannosaurus Rex – My People Were Fair/

Soft Machine – Vols 1 & 2

Pretty Things – S.F. Sorrow/

Savoy Brown – Shake Down

Jimi Hendrix – Axis Bold as Love

Van Morrison – Astral Weeks

Pink Floyd – Ummagumma

Velvet Underground & Nico

Between Two Worlds

Winter: short dark grey days & long cold nights. What makes it tolerable is the comfort food – the soups, the pastas & roasted tubers, peppers & vegs.

Darkness & light. We do not do enough with the light. My family, friends & neighbours laugh at my DIY attempts to bring some light to our garden in the winter.

A recent rescue & food drop to the Glenmore Forest Park gave me the opportunity to see what others, more professional, can do with the darkness & light.

Although I am too parsimonious to pay the £12 entrance fee for ‘Between Two Worlds’ after dark, I did get a feel for the event at dusk. I thoroughly enjoyed the wolf sound loops in the forest.

Centring

Listening to a Terry Riley & Don Cherry album from 1970 flashed me back to that period. What was happening to me then. Why did I enjoy The Doors so much? I now think it could have been that basic pulse common to all Celtic peoples: the drone.

I know I have ranted & raved about this in previous posts, but I feel it is so central to our old way of living like those standing stones, scattered throughout Scotland & given decent descriptions in Julian Cope’s massive tome.

Looking back at my vinyl collection I was a little obsessed with both Terry Riley (In C/Poppy Nogood/a Rainbow in Curved Air)(the latter is used as the title of this modest blog!) & Don Cherry (Eternal Now/Relativity Suite/Actions). Why was this?

Perhaps I was searching for a comfort zone, roots, ambience or something meditative. I have always enjoyed Indian sitar music & World Music before it became a fashion.

I suspect it was due to the fact that this kind of drone used to be central to our way of life & now it is not.

Maybe I am just afraid of silence. I know that if I am in our toilet in the early a.m., I am much happier opening the window, despite the cold air rushing in, because I enjoy the ambient sounds drifting in.

Library Music

Listening to Janek Schaefer’s Recital from the Old Library (an item well below the radar, but a classic in this writer’s opinion) & I noticed in this month’s ‘Wire’, that he has been nominated in the New Media category of the British Composer of the Year 2007. Not before time, I reckon anyone who mentions libraries walks on water.

On that theme I would admit to having a great passion for the genre called Library Music. I have been exposed to a lot of this lately: Bosworth & Chappels Music for Dancefloors, De Wolfe, KPM. In addition, I am mixing this with those quality Italian soundtracks…e.g. Morricone, Nardini, Umiliani…..etc……

Point of Information: the 2^nd SLIC FE Conference in taking place on the 23^rd November 2007 in the Cunard Suite of Clydebank College. I understand a visit to the grooviest library in the world may be on the agenda.

rainbows in curved air

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White Bicycles

I would like to re-state it was Robin Williamson I went to see last week and not Robbie Williams as you might suspect.

Robin, not Robbie, did mention Joe Boyd’s book on the folk revival UK. I felt guilty as I had the book from a local library & had not got around to reading it.

As I was on hols I made a great effort & read it. It was a bit disappointing I did expect it to be better. He did mention (as did Robin) that he thought Mike & Robin were always at the scrapping: not true!

The beginning of the book is mostly about the USA & jazz & Newport Festivals. The bit I was concerned about didn’t take up much of the book & there was not much detail.

There is, I fear, the need for an in-depth, look at this early period…e.g. Bert Jansch trip to North Africa, Clive Palmer’s journey to Afghanistan, Davey Graham’s impact, John Martyn’s early days…………..

More Nostalgic Hippie Nonsense

A weeks holiday in November how will I spend it? Catching up with myself. I did go in to college midweek for my 5-a-side game, but that just shows my level of commitment.

Yesterday, I re-lived a painful & pleasurable journey as I re-traced steps taken as a small child.

After school I often took off alone into the Kilpatrick Hills & I relived this epic journey armed with suitable boots & clothing. Or so I thought. As I did when I was younger, I did get wet feet, I cannot remember so much bogland & mud.

I passed the wall where I leaned my back to read ‘Lord of the Rings’ during one of those glorious, carefree summers. It had to be read outdoors for the ambience.

I sound like an aged Gandalf the Grey, when I complain about how these fields were full of lapwings, sparrowhawks & skylarks. Now its just the clattering magpies (rare when I was young!) & the old crows. At one point, at twilight’s last gleaming, I saw a flock of around 300 crows squaking directly above me as they headed in to roost.

Looking over to what we used to call the ‘Judges Wig’, a hill covered in pine forest, I could see what I would wish to name: the ‘Judges New Wig’ as it echoes the older forest nearby.

I became tearful as I followed the burn & I remembered my father taking me here to catch trout from under rocks with our bare hands. Gypsy fishing. I know every rock in this burn, even after all this time. I know the shape of these rocks underwater, all the nooks & crannies, where the trout would shelter. At least you would not notice the tears as they soon drip down into the burn. I would spend all day here, when I was young only rushing home as it started to get dark.

I searched for the waterfall in the forest. I could now see it from the fence. This is the odd thing. Although I have been up here a few years ago, the landscape has changed a fair amount since my youth. The paths have moved. Other areas have become overgrown or have been cleared. Even the course of the burn has been altered. So much so in one area that used to be a loch for Saturday morning fishing with a rod in the rain, that it is virtually unrecognisable as it has dried up.

My father would collect the crab apples from the old gnarled trees. No one picks them now they just drop to the ground. Even the sheep pass them by. My mother would make wonderful fruit pies with them or with the blueberries or brambles. Who does this now?

Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat

Thinking about the simple pleasures in this life as I open one of Tesco’s finest products: roasted courgettes with chilli & listen to Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat.

Anyway I have to get out & get some exercise if I wish to compete in the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

DR Z

(Lifted with respect to Chris Goes Rocks Blogspot.)

One of the great, lost prog rock albums, Dr. Z's “Three Parts to My Soul” ended up being one of the rarest albums on the "swirl" Vertigo label, with only 80 copies said to exist.

Luckily it was reissued many times, starting with Second Battle in Germany, Si- Wan in Korea, Universal in Japan, and most recently Akarma in Italy. Most of these reissues replicate the original gimmick cover (a die-cut fold-out cover not unlike ELP's “Brain Salad Surgery”).

Dr. Z was lead by North Wales university professor Keith Keyes, who handles keyboards (harpsichord, piano, organ), as well as vocals, with Bob Watkins on drums, and Rob Watson on bass. This is another album, like BLACK WIDOW's “Sacrifice”, that featured lyrics that flirted with the occult in a prog rock setting.

Here Keyes had the idea that in the afterlife, your soul is divided in to three parts, with a Latin term to each, Spiritus, Manes et Umbra. Spiritus was the soul that goes to heaven, Manes is the soul that's damned to Hell, and Umbra being the soul that stays on Earth to eternally haunt.

There are some people who don't think this album is particularly good. OK, so don't expect polished YES/GENESIS-influenced prog here. What you get is early British prog, dominated mainly by harpsichord, with occult lyrics and very peculiar vocals, trying to sound "evil".

The production isn't the greatest in the world, although it was produced by Patrick Campbell-Lyons of NIRVANA (the late '60s/early '70s UK band that is, hardly the Kurt Cobain-led grunge band everyone knows of).

"Evil Woman's Manly Child" is said to be a reverse of the Ten Commandments. Here you get two voices, a whispered voice and a sung voice.

This is truly one of the album's many high points. "Spiritus, Manes et Umbra" could almost sound like a hit if things worked out a bit different for the band (and of course, rid of the drum solo). It's such a catchy little song. "Summer For the Rose" shows some psychedelic elements, showing how in 1971, the 1960s hadn't totally vanished. "Burn in Anger" is a piano-dominated ballad that truly screams 1971, while "Too Well Satisfied" is one of those cheesy songs with lots of appeal. "In a Token of Despair" is the closing ballad, regarding the spirit that haunts the Earth.

The entire album has that theatrical quality. Many of the reissues come with two bonus cuts, "Lady Ladybird" and "People in the Street", which was released as a single back in 1970 on Fontana. What's really interesting about these two cuts, written by Keith Keyes as on “Three Parts to My Soul”, is you will find absolutely no signs of occult subject matters in these two songs. "Lady Ladybird" is a pretty cheery number. "People in the Street" on the other hand sounds too much like straight-up pop, lacking the charm of "Lady Ladybird". But for “Three Parts to My Soul”, this might not to be everyone's taste, but I like the album, regardless what might be said.(Review by proghead0)

1. Evil Woman's Manly Child (4:47)

2. Spiritus, Manes et Umbra (11:51)

3. Summer for the Rose (4:32)

4. Burn in Anger (3:25)

5. Too Well Satisfied (5:49)

6. In a Token of Despair (10:31)

...Bonus tracks on CD release:

7. Lady Ladybird (2:46)

8. People in the Street (3:08)

Wee Jack

A sudden thought came to me as I was watching a life changing performance of Robin Williamson on 3rd November at the Fraser Centre in Milngavie.

As he approaches his 64th birthday, I thought this incredible man has brought the African thumb piano & the blues of Ali Farka Toure & fused it with Celtic harp playing.


A long time ago I saw him make this much use of the harp on the Renfrew Ferry to accompany stupendous stories. Last night, although much older, he has got even better.


He takes you right to the heart of the almost forgotten art of Celtic storytelling & he does it in such a beautiful manner. The harp playing was just so wonderful & if ever there any doubt about the migration of Celtic culture or African culture throughout the ancient world, then last night the fusion of these far & beyond the silk routes was there for all to see & hear.

This is It

Sometimes you think you have seen it all, done it all & that nothing could surprise you & then along comes something, that just knocks you off of your feet, ‘blows your mind’, ‘freaks you out’ & flashes you back off the beaten track.

This recent acquisition does all of this with bells on.

Apologies for just ‘lifting’ the review, but it is so good a description I have included it here.

ALAN WATTS' "THIS IS IT" (1962)

THE FIRST PSYCHEDELIC LP

Original release: MEA 1007, Sausalito, California 1962

No production or engineering credits

Participants listed as:

Alan Watts - incantations

Roger Somers - drums and chanting

Leah Ananda - conga drum

Joel Andrews - falsetto and evocations

Henry Jacobs - piano and French horn

William Loughborough - bass marimba and lujon

The LP begins with "an explosive dialogue" wherein Watts and associate Roger Somers rap and ramble over a crude piano and percussion backdrop; an extraordinary intensity rapidly builds and culminates in voices screaming and chanting "loveyouloveyouloveyou", abrutply cut off with a state of the art (for 1962) psychedelic echo effect. It's too tribal to be avantgarde art, too crude to be free jazz, too freaky to be rock'n'roll - it just is "IT", and that's all you can say about IT.

We are then greeted by Watts' delightful voice introducing the "Onion Chant". The confident mid-Atlantic lecturer tone that was such a hit with Bay Area radio listeners briefly recaps a theme from the acid visions of "The Joyous Cosmology", namely that the spiritual student finds himself in an infinite regress of self-realization, where he steps out of his phony egos over and over, like peeling the skin of an onion, until he reaches a point wherein there is almost nothing "genuine" left -- and the subsequent realization isn't moksha, but rather the insight that one is a fake. "He is artifice and insincerity, through and through and through...". This rather harsh message of liberation gives way to an extraordinary uptempo chant with conga drums supporting Watts' seemingly ad libbed trip into an aboriginal tribesman past. You can pick up the word "LSD" early in the chant, but this may be coincidental.

Watts was, among many other things, a great admirer of Japanese culture and tradition, which is echoed in the brief third track of instrumental music. This is followed by an obviously improvised "floating soliloquy" wherein Watts rambles like a true freak about whatever comes through his mind, sounding more like a Shakespeare stage actor zonked on acid than his eloquent lecturer self. "I am so strange in this... queer dark old stewpot..." is just the beginning of the trip, which leads way to some heavy metaphysical poetry about the human body and a rendezvous of friends "high in the sky like the moon". These "Fingernail pairings", supported by feeble avant-jazz snips, is as psychedelic as anything you're ever likely to hear.

Side 1 closes with "Umdagumsubudu", a "controlled accident" with frantic drumming and incomprehensible chanting back and forth, exploring in full the African/Caribbean tribal voodoo feel present throughout the album. It's spooky like an old Nonesuch field recording, except that this is a bunch of white beatnik heads aboard a Sausalito house-boat in 1962, rather than some age-old initiation rite. Uncontrolled laughter and an outburst of Watts coughing puts the listener right inside their freak scene.

Another strand in the colorful ball of "This Is IT" is the influence from religious music of the ecstatic, devotional type. Some of the rants have a tongue-speaking quality, while there is a clear presence of liturgical wailing at the beginning of side 2. This is the "Metamatic Ritual", a 14-minute "contemplative ritual mounting slowly to ecstasy". The whole gang joins in with various percussion instruments and chanting voices half-buried in the soundscape, the total impression being very effective and enchanting. Although improvised, it seems obvious that there was a clear group-mind at play here, much like you can find on tribal acidrock albums such as Beat Of The Earth, Yahowha 13 or Furekaaben; some call-response passages also recall the Merry Pranksters recordings from 1965-66. "Metamatic Ritual" is also the track which best displays the quality of the musicians, with some excellent drum/conga interplay.

"The End" naturally takes us back to the beginning, as it is partly the same track that opened the LP. There is some atmospheric, low-key wailing from Watts and Roger Somers, before the craziness creeps back in, with eerie piano excursions, percussion and incomprehensible ramblings in invented languages; an excellent use of stereo is demonstrated with the chanting voices taking up one channel each (side 1 is mono).

"This Is IT" is an extraordinary album on every level; it must be taken into account in any serious chronicle of psychedelia. Even in 2003 the album appears highly advanced and challenging, its intensity certain to surprise those expecting some bongo-beating beatniks mumbling about nirvana. Timelessness, courage and a sense of absolute freedom makes it a truly essential experience. The fact that it was created by one of the portal figures of the mid-century's spiritual revolution is just one aspect of its importance and appeal.

Babel, Babble, Babylon by bus

We all know what happens when a butterfly flaps its wings. My life has been choc full of the consequences. Someone else is steering, I know I have very little control over my own life. So what!

Maybe this is why I loved ‘Babel’ so much. Prior to writing this I checked for verification. I ‘googled’ ‘Babel’ for reviews. To be frank, I baulked at the results. It was slated . Perhaps the reviewers have short attention spans. Certainly they seem to ego-centred Americans, who totally miss the point of the movie. They could not cope with Brad Pitt & Cate Blanchett having such minor roles in the film. However I am certain that they could easily identify with the media frenzy that surrounded the main event in the film & the assumption that it was an act of terrorism.

For a Christian country I thought at least the reviewers would have picked up on the biblical references.

In a world divided by money, race, religion & language, threatened by terrorism, the relationship of seemingly random events across 3 continents shows how people fail to grasp what is really important in life. They are building (twin) towers into the sky, when they should be reaching out to communicate with those around them. Love is a central theme in this film. Get past the babble of modern life & listen to each other.

Everything in this movie is outstanding, the soundtrack, the photography, the atmosphere, the parallel storylines that eventually converge & the underlying comment about life in the 21^stthink.

Big Up Beirut

Sometimes when I arise, I just have to hear Beirut. I don’t know it just seems to clear the air. What is it? The harmonies, the lilting brass or just stunning melodies. So fresh, so vibrant & even after hearing the new album so many times, the cd goes on again.

For some reason, I am drifting through a Balkan or tango phase at the moment. I am either listening to Beirut, Gotan Project, Bajofondo Tango Club or a recent acquisition: the Kocani Orkestar – ‘Alone at my Wedding’. The latter reminds me of my own wedding.

Shinsuki Nakamuri, Meiko Kaji & Reiko Ike

If like me you have a soft spot for the Ye-Ye Girls & enjoy the Jane Birkin, Frances Gall & Bridgette Bardots of this world then you might be pleasantly surprised, amused or even shocked at the songs of Reiko Ike.

I was expecting another Meiko Kaji, i.e. Japanese Ye-Ye, but I had to sprint over to the hi-fi to turn the volume (usually at bat level!) down el rapido.

Although the songs are roughly in the same genre, she peppers each one with heavy breathing & other more embarrassing porno effects.

Dip Tip #23
















Culinary delights from our mystery shopper as he cruises the supermarkets in his luxury continental motor vehicle


Pay attention to the sweet fusion of Olive & Sundried Tomato Houmous from Tesco....it is to die for...

Back From The Dead

The oldest, quality, 5-a-side player clawed his way back from an injury that would have halted someone, who had the least modicum of common sense.

However, I did take a few minor precautions. I purchased a pair of cheap shin guards that meant I was dressed like an ice hockey goalkeeper on the pitch. At least it might scare the other players. I had a goal & injury free game. However after the match & the shower, I could not find my football shorts that also housed my boxer shorts. I asked the players who were still around, but to no avail.

It was with great embarrassment, that I had to go ‘commando’ back to work in the library. I immediately put an ‘all alert’ bulletin out via email. I had enough sense just to target my fellow players & not a general message to the whole college!

Naturally, I got my fair share of humorous replies, I did ask if it was some kind of sick ‘trophy thing’ & people did put others in the frame suspecting they had already sold them on eBay!

I did get them back someone had taken them in error, exactly as I thought, but now I have so many aches & pains throughout my whole body. This is where the age factor does come into play. I have a week to recover.

Replacing all that classic vinyl

In previous posts I have mentioned my sickness, nay obsession, in finding those lost gems of another age when we lived a fuller life & cared about each other.

Recently I raved about the Tony McPhee’s (Groundhogs) compilation ‘I asked for Water & she gave me Gasoline’ & Loudon Wainwright III’s 2^nd album.

I have been re-living golden moments this a.m. as I type this & listen to Doug Kershaw’s ‘Devil’s Elbow’. What a stone dead classic from Louisiana.