Thursday, February 27th

February 27, 2020 by 4 Comments

This week sees me engage with social media via the medium of Instagram. We’ll see how that plays out. I was on Twitter for a few weeks around an exhibition that we were putting on and it was by turns exhilarating (when you’d found something cute to post) and exhausting (when you hadn’t, and felt in danger of falling off the whole slippery platform…) I learned of Choral Dub this week, where you cross dub reggae with renaissance choral music (here for some examples). I remain agnostic. Lately, there’s been a few nice things about Jazz in Britain, but let’s start with an exhibition that has only a day to run in NYC.

{ONE} DANA, TUPAC & BIGGIE
There’s a great app called Art Passport, by GalleriesNow, that provides 3D walkarounds of shows on in art galleries the world over. At GRIMM, New York, until Feb 29th is Dana Lixenberg: American Images. Dana’s a great photographer who I almost got to work with (she came in with her portfolio one time, but I couldn’t find the right job in the right place). As Eyewitness News from ABC! says, “New exhibit in New York City gives rare glimpse into hip-hop royalty.” She made really interesting large-format images, very against the grain of the time, which was high-key and dynamic. Dana’s work was about a quieter, caught moment, or a slightly unsettling context (see Steely Dan outside a jail cell, for instance)

{TWO} CASS, MOON, TARA, & JOHN…
Three interesting articles about the 60s and beyond.
a) The house in Mayfair where Keith Moon lived, and Mama Cass died, by Rob Baker at Flashbak. “It’s interesting to note that Mama Cass, a person who struggled with her weight nearly all her life, died from trying not to eat, with a heart fatally weakened by too many diets. Keith Moon, a man with a prodigious appetite for alcohol, died from an overdose of medicine prescribed in an attempt to stop him drinking.”
b) Tara Browne and the writing of The Beatles “A Day in the Life” by Kit Ward at These Islands. “Six months before his death, his doting mother arranged a lavish twenty-first birthday party for him at the family’s Gothic pile in the Wicklow mountains in Ireland. The Lovin’ Spoonful, his favourite group, were flown in from California to perform, a snip at $10,000. The Rolling Stones were all there but the Beatles had to pass as they were in the thick of recording the Revolver album. It was a druggy do. Mick Jagger took LSD for the first time, though he didn’t enjoy it, Anita Pallenberg remembered it as ‘all pretty heavy’ and Marianne Faithfull saw it as a kind of turning point for many of the party-goers: ‘the start of a quest for decadence among these people.’”
c) The Fascinating Life and Times of John van Hamersveld by Benito Vila at Please Kill Me (Thanks, Bob). On his sleeve design for Exile on Main Street: “Norman Seeff was there and over the weekend, he had shot The Stones in a Hollywood studio late at night. Keith showed up for the shoot totally high, pants half off, and falls, bringing down the whole set. It was a loss in a way because what they were going to do was take a set of stills and, now, what they have are pictures of the set crashing, a sequence in motion. I’m sitting at the table with Jagger; meanwhile, Keith is across the way with his mirror glasses on, really loaded. Keith takes his hands and puts them together, and then opens them up and says, “It should be like a postcard fold-out,” and then he falls to the floor. We take his postcard fold-out idea and that becomes the thing that was inside the album, what Jagger called the bags.”

{THREEa} KEN, BILL, BERYL & OUCH!
Richard sends me this hilarious paragraph from a Steve Voce piece in Jazz Journal, about Chris Barber: “In between that band and the Halcox/Sunshine group, of course, came the Ken Colyer band. Ken’s taciturn lack of ability to communicate was compensated for by his immensely voluble brother, also in the band and who, in the manner of a ventriloquist, did Ken’s talking and rivalled Beryl Bryden if not in size then in bad washboard playing…” And this week, my aunt gave me these three 78s from her record collection as a gift. Now, who’s got a 78rpm deck…5-lonnieken

{THREEb} LONNIE, CHRIS, ALEXIS, KEN & BJÖRN?
Loved this keen reminiscence by Björn Ulvaeus in the Guardian’s Farewell Europe issue, and wondered if Chris and Ken and Lonnie and Alexis had been a subtle influence on Abba! “For as long as I can remember, the Swedes have loved the UK. A one-way love? I don’t think so. I’ve always felt so incredibly welcome, ever since I had a summer job in an office at 1 New Oxford Street in London. I was 15, and the trad jazz clubs along Oxford Street were heaven for a small-town boy from Sweden.”

{FOUR} LAURIE, BENNY & TEDDY…
Another Jazz Journal piece has this affecting obituary of drummer Laurie Morgan, the first British jazzman to witness Bird live, by his son Simon. It includes this paragraph: “Here [at Club Eleven, Britain’s first modern-jazz club] in 1949, Benny Goodman’s pianist, Teddy Wilson, scouted Laurie to play London Palladium and possible European shows with the King of Swing. ‘Teddy chose me because I wore a beret and sunglasses’, laughed Laurie. ‘He thought I looked the typical modernist, and wanted some of that in the show. In fact, I was disguising a head injury I got diving into the Serpentine!’ However, the Musician’s Union stopped the 22-year-old drummer playing as his dues had lapsed.”

{FIVE} MARTIN, GIBSON, HARMONY & STELLA…
I think that I need a copy of this, The Times 2019 Music Book of the Year, by John Stubbins. Mostly because it asks questions like this: Why did music written for the parlor guitar in the 1800s travel into the Delta? How did Spanish and Vastapol tuning sow the seed for Delta blues? How did a big band banjo player influence the modern finger style acoustic guitar. Why were German and Bohemian violin makers so important to the development of English beat music? It is, however, such an extraordinary labour of love, and so beautifully designed that it has a £200 price tag.

{EXTRA} SOPHIE, HEARTS & MINDS…
Sophie Ellis-Bextor for NHS Organ Donation.

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Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week: Wednesday 28th November

November 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Return Of Scott Walker
Exciting news for us Scott fans! In a relatively revealing Guardian interview as his new album, Bish Bosch, is launched, Scott talks about his fear of performing, as well as saying that no promoter would put him on anyway, as they’re only interested in money. But Scott could tour cultural festivals, not rock arenas, if he chose. In 2008, for instance, The Barbican put on Drifting and Tilting—The Songs of Scott Walker. It was more opera than rock. Scott, eyes hidden beneath baseball cap, stood at the mixing desk conducting his collaborator Peter Walsh. It was all I could do to drag my eyes away and back to the stage, which teemed with extraordinary visions. The most arresting image? Possibly a boxer using a pig’s carcass as a percussion instrument. Or maybe Gavin Friday as Elvis (“It casts its ruins in shadows/Under Memphis moonlight”), perched on a stool, singing to his stillborn twin Jesse, while a bequiffed and backlit figure strode  from the back of the stage until he assumed gigantic proportions, looming over the whole theatre. Whichever, it was an evening that lives on in the memory. Long may Scott run.

Amy’s Blues
The National Portrait Gallery in London buys a portrait by Marlene Dumas of the late Amy Winehouse, and  the curator says: “Dumas said that she had been very moved by the news of Winehouse’s death.” Which sort of begs the question: why not be moved by something useful like her talent or her voice—while she was alive. What’s “moving” about her death? “Dumas, who is based in Amsterdam, sought out images of Winehouse online for the work which draws the viewer in to the singer’s distinctive eyes and eye liner.” Yes, you read that right. In Art Speak, she sought out images of Amy online. And then copied some of the photos she found, quite badly. So, basically, this mediocre fan painting was co-created by Google Image Search (79,600,000 results).

Kermit The Frog, Meet Miles Davis & Louis Malle & Jeanne Moreau
Genius overlay of Davis’ session (filmed by Malle) recording the soundtrack to Lift To The Scaffold, the great French noir from ’58, with LCD Soundsystem’s New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down. The film of Davis playing to a huge projection of Moreau walking the streets of Paris at night is just stunning. That’s cut with Kermit on a rock across the river from midtown, and in Times Square. Hats off to Alessandro Grespan for his inspired and crazy jamming together of these two videos. The despairing mood of both pieces is eloquently summed up in James Murphy’s brilliant couplet “There’s a ton of the twist, but we’re fresh out of shout…”

Is It Rolling, Keith?
My favourite moment so far in Crossfire Hurricane, the Stones doc, is the extraordinary stage invasion footage. Keith: “It started, man, on the first tour. Half way through things started to get crazy [here the on-stage cameras filming the concert record a group of young besuited guys pushing the Stones over, singing into Jagger’s mic, attempting to pull Brian Jones’ guitar off, as the soundtrack becomes phased and fragmented]… we didn’t play a show after that, that was ever completed, for three years… we’d take bets on how long a show would last—you’re on, 10 minutes…”

Christies Pop Culture Auction Preview, South Kensington
A random sampling of the 20th Century, from chairs that were part of the set of Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca, via Harrison Ford’s bullwhip from Raiders to the ‘Iron Maiden’ from Ken Russell’s Tommy (a snip if it goes for its estimate of £1000). I was there to gaze upon Mitch Mitchell’s snare drum (as featured on Purple Haze, The Wind Cries Mary, Hey Joe etc) and Andy Warhol’s mock-up of an unpublished book of the Stones ’75 tour. Favourite item? Hibbing High School Yearbook, 1958, signed, “Dear Jerry, Well the year’s almost all over now, huh. Remember the “sessions” down at Colliers. Keep practicing the guitar and maybe someday you’ll be great! A friend, Bob Zimmerman”

Jerry’s Yearbook, Hibbing High School, 1958

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Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week: Wednesday 18th July

July 18, 2012 by 5 Comments

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie, born 14th July, 1912
My favourite photograph of a musician is this, a picture of Woody Guthrie, kindly given to me by the peerless Bob Gumpert. It’s my favourite because it has all the essential ingredients for a great music photo: An Icon. A Cigarette. A great location. A wide-angle that puts you right there. An acolyte, absolutely in the moment of playing with an trailblazer. A fascinated, curious crowd, all looking about fifteen. Their expressions are priceless.

Jack ’n’ Woody

I asked Bob how he came to have the picture: “It was taken by a photographer named Art Dubinsky—I am guessing the late 50’s-early 60’s in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, NYC. The other guitar player is Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. Art was a friend, a generous man who was a far better photographer than he got credit for. He lived in NYC at the time—at least I think so. I met him when he lived in LA and I was working in a rental darkroom, time behind the counter for time at the enlarger. He came in one day to use the darkroom as his home had burned down. We got to talking and became friends. He put me in contact with the National Lawyers’ Guild which led first to my photographing farmworker housing at Gallo wine, housing they said they didn’t have, and then to Harlan County, Kentucky for three months of photographing a coal miner’s strike. That in turn led to everything else. Sorry—I guess that is really more about Art and I and not the photo. He gave me the image, probably for no other reason than I liked it and had said so.” An appropriate story to celebrate Woody’s hundredth birthday—a story of friendship, inspiration and workers’ rights.

Poor Old Donovan, Destined To Be Dissed By Dylan Comparison Forever*
The always-amusing Barney Ronay on André Villas-Boas, new Spurs Manager, Guardian. “…there was something oddly heartening about the return in full-page panoramic close-up of André Villas-Boas, now formally in place as the new head coach of Tottenham Hotspur, and appearing, austerely suited in the middle of all this wretchedness, like an unexpected knock at the door from the local curate, who against all expectation you find yourself delightedly ushering inside. Welcome back, André. It has become fashionable to see Villas-Boas as a rather tarnished figure, to recall the frictions of his time at Chelsea, to balk at that familiar air of manicured expectancy. And to portray him instead as a kind of weak-chinned, own brand José Mourinho, Donovan to Mourinho’s Dylan, a provincial Wimpy bar to Mourinho’s gleaming McDonald’s, a managerial Sindy doll of prodigious inauthenticity. This is more than a little unfair. If nothing else there is much to admire in the way Villas-Boas is still out there… displaying the unshakable backseat extroversion that all the best managers have, as he winces and struts centre stage in skinny-trousered splendour, looking each time a little more like a tiny little dancing soldier on top of a wedding cake, or, increasingly, like a particularly convincing waxwork of himself.”

* However, Donovan doesn’t see it this way himself—there’s not much humility going on in his autobiography, The Hurdy Gurdy Man. The evidence of Don’t Look Back doesn’t lie, however—It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue vs To Sing For You?

Roll Away The Stone
The Stones played their first gig at the Marquee club 50 years ago this week. Bill Wyman, in his book, Stone Alone: “On 3 March 1963 we played… an afternoon session at the Ken Colyer Club, Studio 51, in Soho. It was ironic that we were given a great welcome by the ladies, Vi and Pat, who ran this stronghold of New Orleans-style jazz, whereas the jazz snobs at the Marquee and elsewhere saw us as upstarts who should not be encouraged.” The Stones went on to play Ken’s club most Sundays for a year. On September 10th, 1963, The Beatles visited them as they rehearsed at the 51. They presented them with a new, unfinished song, I Wanna Be Your Man. On hearing that the Stones liked the song, John and Paul went into the office and completed it.

The Sound Of Gatz
Ben Williams is on stage through the whole of Gatz (so that’s about six-and-a-half-hours in all), sitting at a desk off to one side, controlling the sound effects and cues, as well as playing various characters. He does a stunning job—sometimes intensifying the drama, sometimes broadening it out with humour—running the gamut from car crashes and gunshots to air conditioner hums and vaudeville turns. One of the most (unexpectedly) moving moments comes when Mike Iveson, playing Gatsby’s houseguest Klipspringer, turns the office sofa into a piano and mimes the gestures of a pianist, paying along to Williams’ tape. He abruptly stops and sings, acapella, the only words in Gatz which don’t come from Fitzgerald’s book, the song The Love Nest.
Building houses still goes on
Now as well as then
Ancient Jack and Jill are gone,
Yet return again.
Ever comes the question old,
“Shall we build for pride? Or,
Shall brick and mortar hold
worth and love inside?”
Just a love nest, cozy and warm,
Like a dove rest, down on the farm,
A veranda with some sort of clinging vine,
Then a kitchen where some rambler roses twine…

In an exquisite rendition, Iveson turns the theme from the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, a pretty standard Twenties musical number, into a complex, achingly poignant commentary on the emptiness at the heart of Jay Gatsby’s mansion.

M.I.A.’s ‘Bad Girls’ Video, As Recommended This Week In Metro By Shirley Manson
Words are extraneous. Just go to 2:03. Go on.

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