As Bob Dylan releases “Murder Most Foul”, an odd mixture of William McGonagall and his own “’Cross The Green Mountain” or his Theme Time Radio Hour narration with a side of “New Danville Girl”, here’s a song about the assassination of Kennedy that I recorded with Mark Pringle about 10 years ago. It was part of a project called Idols, with songs about Kennedy, Tony Blair, Brittany Spears, Buster Keaton and Richard Manuel.
Through this extraordinary period I’ll be uploading a song every few days with some recommendations of things that I’ve seen, or heard, or read, and liked, in the hope that you might, too. Play this one loud.
ONE. Best 43 seconds of percussion that I’ve seen this week… (thanks, Bob)
Two. An interesting piece on Richard Russell and XL records in the Guardian mentioned a tremendous documentary I watched a couple of months ago on Teddy Pendergrass, directed by Olivia Lichtenstein, called Teddy Pendergrass: If You Don’t Know Me. It’s beautifully made and includes some remarkable footage, as it tells the age-old story of rip-offs and talent gone to waste. Harold Melvin does not come out well. Alexis Petridis starts by talking about the suicide of Keith Flint of The Prodigy: Flint’s childhood was unhappy: he had depression and was addicted to painkillers. Russell: “But I don’t think anyone doesn’t have that side. It’s more a question of: ‘What are you doing about it?’ But Keith was doing 10k runs, he had horses.” He sighs. “When someone kills themselves, can’t help but feel – what if he’d waited 20 minutes? Or something else had happened?”After Flint’s death, Russell saw a documentary about the soul singer Teddy Pendergrass, who was left feeling suicidal after being paralysed in a car crash. His therapist staged a mock funeral, allowing Pendergrass to hear his friends and family’s eulogies. Realising how much he meant to them, Pendergrass decided to live. “I thought, ‘Fucking hell, I could imagine that working.’ If Keith could have witnessed what people said after his death, how they expressed themselves at his funeral, I think that would have had a huge impact on him.” I’m not sure how you can see it (I watched on Sky Arts), although it may be available on Amazon Prime.
Three. From Liam Noble’s excellent series, an alphabet of “Advice for Jazz Students” on his blog, Brother Face. “I apologise for the mock-heroic tone of all this. It’s a long-winded way of saying this: try tapping two hands on a table, observe the infinite variety possible with two strands of rhythm, two arms. I like it, it’s my favourite practice routine. I like to think it connects me to the world and its workings. A bus passes by outside, I don’t even see the number or where it’s going, and for me, its story ends as the back wheels leave the edge of the window frame. The driver, though, is still there in the picture, until the end of her shift. Someone, somewhere, will see that bus to the breakers’ yard finale of its useful life. Most of us will not see where those atoms go, but they will be back, perhaps in the soles of the shoes of the woman who walks the streets of your town in the morning mist.”
Four. Stewart Copeland’s Adventures in Music (available on the iPlayer). An open ambassador for all that he comes across, and like Gregory Porter, smart and totally engaged with the subject. Catch a transcendental visit to Wells Cathedral to understand the mechanics of choral polyphony, Kanye West collaborator Caroline Shaw on melody and the effect of the human voice (amazing), and the hypnotic polyrhythms of Gnawa music in Morocco.
Five. Rudeboy. “A film about the love affair between Jamaican and British Youth culture told through the prism of one the most iconic record labels in history, Trojan Records.” An absolute joy, exquisitely made by Nicolas Jack Davies. Available, I think on Sky on demand.
Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week 