More Great Drumming

Back to Paul Weller playing live again, as easily available on YouTube. After singing the praises of B.J. Wilson it occurs to me that Steve White, a regular conspirator with the Modfather from The Style Council onwards, was probably my favourite of the next generation of Brit drummers. Evidence of just how good he was is all over the place, but I'll limit myself to linking just to a totally cooking performance of Sunflower from the early 90s. (And it doesn't hurt that it's the great Yolanda Charles on bass. Who said that the ladies couldn't rock out when it was necessary?)

Great Drumming

I've been continuing to blast my ears with Procul Harum, the 1971 vintage, in odd breaks at work and, alongside enjoying a superb band, have been trying to figure out if it was B.J. Wilson, their drummer who made a deeply profound impression on me in my early years of attending live concerts. I have this incredibly powerful memory of seeing a band in concert with the drum riser placed centre and upfront and me looking down from the circle (second level at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester) utterly mesmerised by the sheer drama of the drummer's playing. I'm pretty sure this was the first time I'd ever really picked out a single musician in concert and made them the fulcrum of my consciousness of the great noise they were part of. Even watching early Crimson it was the totality of the sound that did it for me. But this time my listening, in tandem with the visual, visceral power of it all, went up a level or, possibly, two.

The thing is, that it could be I'm remembering the excellent Mel Pritchard, the drummer with Barclay James Harvest - a fine live combo. Having said that, I can't think of BJH, for all their many virtues, having quite the same variety of tempi that PH indulged in. And it's difficult to think of any drummer quite as visually expressive as Barrie Wilson. Also, in the numbers I gave links to from Procul's Beat-Club performance the other day he's very much front and centre. Just to add to those, I thought I'd better post a link to Powerfailure, a stunning drum-feature, if ever there was one, and Shine On Brightly, in which the playing is flawless in terms of providing exactly the right dynamics at exactly the right moments. Those fills!

Oh, and here's a bit of an erratum. It turns out that Simple Sister is a Brooker/Reid song after all despite that great guitar riff. Surely Gary must have copped it from Robin Trower at some point in their jamming?

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake - 1

Entertained some disconnected thoughts on History in the course of the day and vaguely wished I hadn't. Then read this in the Graun in relation to a famous massacre a couple of millennia back and definitely wished I hadn't. (Read it, I mean. And thought too much about history, I suppose.)

Soul Sister

Here's a bit of a follow-up to my recent singing of the praises of the esteemed Paul Weller & Gary Brooker. This morning I was giving a spin to Amy Winehouse's debut album Frank, and wondering why I don't do so more often. The thing is, I know the answer. It's glorious stuff, with that voice and all, but I always feel a bit sad playing it, given her early death. Thinking of what might have been, I suppose.

A day or two back I was reading something about how great Back To Black - her 'breakout' album - is and how it moved way beyond the debut taking Amy into the very top league. Now I wasn't close enough to the current music scene at the time (I never am, in truth) to know all that much about the presumed ranking of various contenders. But I've always preferred the earlier work. According to the article Frank is more of a niche piece and her appeal as a performer on its release was limited to precisely the kind of musos who love all that jazz & the off-beat. So, since I'm very much in that minority, I suppose that's why its (and her) appeal to me goes so deep.

Anyway, this leads me to a sort of happy fantasy about Ms Winehouse. That she didn't get uber-famous; that she thrived in her little niche and the jackals and hounds from the tabloids never got their nasty claws in her; that she become a part-time member of The Specials (a band she loved); that she became a co-vocalist of sorts with the Modfather; and that, somehow, this engagement with what she loved and what is really real put her back on the straight path.

And that somehow we got many more years of Amy, Amy, Amy.

Lazy Days And Saturdays

Not just a bit of a lazy day but a lot of a lazy day. Listened to bits of The Byrds, Dylan, Paul Weller, Lou Reed and Beethoven (a couple of piano sonatas.) Read bits of poetry and a good murder. Enjoyed three naps.

Then off to dinner at a halal Vietnamese place down Clementi Road with Boon & Mei and lots of inconsequential, non-sequential, conversation. Though Boon and myself did get down to discussing the usefulness of Bloom's Taxonomy, so it wasn't all just sweetness and light.

Don't think I'll get quite such another lazy day for a while, so here I am savouring it whilst I can.   

Another Soulman

A recent discovery I've made, of the life-enhancing variety, involves the realisation that there are numerous videos of fairly early Procul Harum playing live. I'm talking about the line-up around 1971, about the time of the release of Broken Barricades, their fine fifth album and the first one I bought. I saw the band live in the same period at the Free Trade Hall, though when I watched them Robin Trower was still on board playing guitar, whereas the five piece version featured live on Beat-Club, playing classics like A Salty Dog and Simple Sister has got Dave Ball on guitar.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant to the point I want to make today, following yesterday's post on Paul Weller as a great soul singer, which is that Gary Brooker is in the same league even though what he's singing isn't exactly soul. Mind you, Simple Sister (I think a Trower composition, though I might be wrong) is steeped in the blues, so it's not so far off. But A Salty Dog is sui generis I reckon, though I suppose prog ballad might work as a ludicrous classification.

To think I had the great good fortune to grow up alongside this music. And now can blast it out through my ear-buds (as I think they're called) in well-earned tea-breaks.

Soulman

I thought I had a pretty good idea of the various covers the Modfather has performed over the years, his covers album Studio 150 being a bit of a favourite of mine. But somehow or other it had escaped my attention that he'd done the business with a Marvin Gaye classic. If his live performance of What's Goin' On doesn't seriously rock your boat there's something wrong with you.

Oh, and this surely puts an end to the ludicrous myth of cultural appropriation. If Mr Weller isn't a serious soul brother I honestly don't know who is.

Still Navigating The New World

It's official: the Gods of Commerce are not on our side. Nor the Gods of Tech. (Probably pretty much denizens of the same pantheon, if you ask me.)

We wended our way to the Guardian at Clementi Mall this afternoon, retracing our steps from last Sunday. I was (foolishly) confident that this time we would be able to 'spend' our e-vouchers. They were there, on my phone, website open, bar codes clearly showing as we made our way to the cashiers - fortunately before buying anything - to check we could use them. Just before we were about to get into conversation with someone from the shop I pressed upon the little button to open the page where the vouchers (with barcodes) appeared and nothing happened. It looked like the page had frozen. I pointed this out to Noi and pressed a couple of times more but guessed that the signal for Internet access wasn't strong, the 4G readout being down to two bars.

Never mind. A bit of patience. Wait for a stronger signal just outside the shop. Which came. Back to the page to log-in to the site. Key-in the phone number, carefully so no slippy finger. Key-in the password, with equal care. And up comes the message: Your account has been locked due to multiple failure attempts. That was around 4.00 pm. Still getting the same message several hours later.

I made no failed attempts. The system failed despite my accurate logging-in. 

The future sucks.

The Hard Life

Am annoyed with myself for neglecting to mention anything about my Dad yesterday on the anniversary of his death. I'd been thinking about him before going to work but after that the deluge of Monday stuff swamped me to be followed by the excitement-cum-bewilderment of a super-sized telly and catching up with Hakim & Fifi & life outside our four walls.

Still busy today but found the time to think about Jack Connor and what he would have regarded as tough work and a tough life. Always a healthy perspective because my life and work is a cakewalk compared to what was expected of Dad & his generation in our little corner of Manchester & environs around the middle of the last century.

Slumped in his chair in our small living room, in front of the fire. After a ten hour shift on the dirty roller at Rotunda. Close to breathless. Nothing left - dozing before our tea. Finally at ease in a life in which nothing came easily.

On The Big Screen

We're undergoing some mild disruption on the home front at present. Fifi will be our permanent house guest for a month or two or three or four (possibly more) as Hakim needs to temporarily take shelter at Fuad & Rozita's place at Woodlands. We're storing some bits and pieces for Hakim at our storage facility out at the IMM building and this evening we took delivery of his television.

The thing is that his telly dwarfs ours, being at least twice the size, possibly more. But our little telly is the one suffering from all those spots of light I've moaned about previously, and we're definitely going to have to get rid of it. So Hakim's set is now occupying pride of place in our living room, despite the fact it's all a bit much for our needs.

However, I'm manfully trying to come to terms with this by playing my DVD of Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Festival 1963 - 1965. Somehow seeing the Bobster dominating the front room doesn't feel bad at all. So progress, of a sort. Stay tuned, as they say, for further updates.

Taking A Risk

Noi was not well pleased earlier today when I announced my intention to make my return to the gym after a lay-off of some ten days, and I can understand why. Taking into account the extreme discomfort I was in on Thursday morning, it was quite a surprise that I might consider working out - but this kind of seeming contradiction is part and parcel of dealing with the kind of lower back pain I sometimes experience. By Thursday afternoon the pain had eased to some degree and I was able to make it to Friday Prayers, though not exactly fully bending during the prayer itself. By Saturday things had further eased and I was actively considering getting some exercise done, but decided to err on the side of caution. And then today was the day I decided to get on with it.

The thing is that one's basic instinct is to try and protect oneself from doing any damage to one's extremities by doing as little as possible after a bout of pain. But over time I've come to realise that this is not the way forward. It's strangely counter-intuitive but working out generally seems to ease aches and pains in the lower back and thighs and, so far as I can remember, I've never felt that a session in the gym has resulted in further damage.

But I did worry as I got on the elliptical trainer this afternoon. My left leg was still feeling the after-effects of whatever had gone awry earlier in the week - a trapped nerve, I suspect, though how exactly such a 'trap' might work I have no real idea. Anyway, I survived the session and am now feeling pretty darned good. Just hoping this keeps up tomorrow.

Portents

Now coming to the end of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. Have reached the sobering realisation that over four decades I have somehow managed to forget pretty much the entire novel, except for the wonderful opening. It's a more fulfilling read than Over Sea, Under Stone, far better crafted, but I am just not able to take the mythos underpinning the sequence seriously.

I think I prefer a world that's sort of accidental as opposed to one in which even a belt buckle is deeply significant. I've had enough of the portentous for now. 

A Preference

I prefer life to a lifestyle. Just saying.

Making Comparisons

Chanced upon an excellent article about the role of Falstaff  by my favourite drama critic, Michael Billington, today. He nails it on the complexity of the character with some fascinating summaries of recent stage performances. Must say though, I don't think the comparison with the complexity of Hamlet as a character works. They seem to me to belong to different orders of creation: Hamlet as the starring role, a demonstration of Burbage's astonishing range; Falstaff as a real bloke that Shakespeare may even have encountered. (Come to think of it, I'm not sure who played the fat knight. Was it Will Kemp?)

As so often is the case with genuinely classy articles, the comments section is worth reading. Someone makes the brilliant point that Boris Johnson bears an uncanny likeness to the old villain. Spot on, and I never thought of it before. Mind you, Falstaff is a big character for all his many faults; Johnson not so. Small in fact. Petty in a way that Falstaff can't be.

Coming And Going

My back is very cranky at the moment. And unpredictably so. The problem started on Sunday, coming suddenly out of nowhere in the early afternoon, and Monday and Tuesday were tough days to get through.

Then this morning everything seemed all clear, to the extent that I was half-wondering about trying to get to the gym. But around two o'clock in the afternoon a mild sense of discomfort rapidly developed into something pretty extreme. And it's not going away.

This is strangely suspenseful, but in all the wrong ways. 

Making It Up

Chanced upon an engrossing improvisation today featuring the brilliant percussionist Evelyn Glennie and remarkable guitarist Fred Frith (of Henry Cow fame - or rather lack of fame, I suppose.) I saw Ms Glennie playing live some years back in this Far Place and the on-line performance brought back memories of that, happily so.

For some reason this improv reminded me of the extended section from Crimson's Moonchild off the first album - probably the first completely improvised piece of music I ever listened to now I come to think of it. It took me years to get the point of what Fripp, Giles and MacDonald were up to, but I think I got there in the end.

On The Bright Side

I'd been vaguely intending to post a bit of a moan about my bad back after completing a latish sort of duty, but then Fate intervened in the form of salad and super-delicious fish cutlets as a late dinner.

The world is now officially a better place than it was three hours ago. Well, this little corner of it.

Oh, Brave New World

Made a second (possibly third, I can't remember) valiant attempt to 'spend' some e-vouchers I was given last year in the Guardian pharmacy at Clementi Mall this afternoon. Failed. Again.

But some progress has been made. Back home I accessed the website the vouchers come from on my lap-top and discovered somehow - I'm not sure I can repeat the procedure - that you have to buy the vouchers from your own account, if that makes sense, before you can use them at the cashiers. I think we might just be able to make this work on our next visit as bar codes have suddenly appeared in places where there were none before.

Now in case you're thinking that this is just a case of a foolish old man with no idea of how anything on-line works, I need to tell you that we showed the vouchers on my phone to a very helpful assistant in the shop who ran everything by the cashiers there and no one could figure out what I was supposed to do in order to use the things.

Which leads me to a pressing question: Why is everything intended for our convenience in this Brave New World so deeply inconvenient?

And here's another. Why does every system change as soon as you've actually got used to using it?

Up Close

Got up close and personal with some Toru Takemitsu this morning, simultaneously supping on my milo. An excellent way to start the day. Kicked off with I Hear The Water Dreaming and followed that with a bunch of shortish water-themed pieces with the flute leading the way. All very sumptuous and harmonically gorgeous - enough astringency involved to add the sour to the sweet.

Astonishing that TT was largely self-taught!

And later in the day I chanced upon a fine article by the excellent Jan Swafford - possibly my favourite writer on 'serious' music - making the case for Takemitsu as the greatest film composer of all time. Made me wish I'd heard enough of his scores for movies to be able to agree - though there's a fair argument that the music for Kurosawa's Ran is proof enough.

Numbers - Good Ones

Popped up to NUH this morning, between lessons, to get the results of various tests carried out in their Digestive Centre earlier in the week. These related to my liver going pretty haywire, like a number of my other internal organs, back in their ICU in September 2022. Happily, normal service now seems to have resumed.

In fact the numbers related to my cholesterol levels and the like are better than they were back around 2006 - 2007 when they were a wee bit high. So I must be doing something right.

Gripped

Got started on The Dark Is Rising and found myself instantly hooked. Great opening with a genuine uncanny power. What exactly is happening to Will that makes the animals so afraid of him? Susan Cooper has gone up a notch or three on the earlier novel, and seems to be writing for a more mature audience. At least three years senior to the assumed readership of Over Sea, Under Stone, as far as I can tell. But why the inconsistency in the sequence? Was it planned?

Oh, and I should add that, contrary to the impression I may have given in my previous post about my reading of fiction falling flat, I was completely knocked out by two novels recently read (well, re-re-re-read) for teaching purposes: Kawabata's Snow Country and Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. And to think that I get paid for this! Hah!

Kids' Stuff

Still struggling with my reading of Lowell's History sonnet sequence, and my reading of fiction hasn't been going all that much better. In early December it struck me that it might be a good idea to read Susan Cooper's fantasy sequence The Dark is Rising once again. I'd read a particularly enthusiastic article somewhere about the title novel of the five-novel sequence (actually the second) and it brought back some fond memories of my first reading of the saga back in the late 70s - early 80s in my early years as a teacher.

At that time I'd acquired the five individual paperbacks published by Penguin, with their very funky-looking covers, but those sort of disappeared when I shipped stuff over here. However, I picked up a single-volume compendium, in Borders, I think, some fifteen or so years back just for the sake of possessing it I suppose and vaguely thinking that I'd read it all again one day. And it seemed that day had arrived in the final month of 2023, so I picked it up from the shelves in Maison KL to accompany me back here.

Sadly it took me until yesterday to finish the first short novel Over Sea, Under Stone. Why so? Well, the opening of the sequence is by far the most 'childish' of the novels in terms of being obviously aimed at a younger readership. It's basically a sort of 'summer adventure' featuring an archetypally middle class family on holiday, in Cornwall, in a mysterious sort of house, with a mysterious sort of uncle and three precocious kids who are left to their own devices and end up on a mysterious sort of quest. It's easy enough to read and written with real craft and the twenty-something-year-old me enjoyed it in an easy-going manner, happily replaying some of the pleasures of what the even younger me had enjoyed reading in terms of other 'summer adventures' in primary school.

But the old, crabby version of me just couldn't surrender to the spell at all. It all felt so long ago and far away. So the easy reading seemed a bit too much like hard work since I felt little or no compulsion to turn each page. Which now leaves me with the question as to whether to carry on with the other four novels. Oddly the answer seems to be I will, but I'm not entirely sure why. (A bit like persevering with Lowell's later poetry, I suppose, but can't be for the same reasons.)

Two Questions

What I want to know is who thought it would be a good idea to make people try and solve those weird 'CAPTCHA' puzzles that pop up when you're rushing to get into a website to enact pressing business? The ones involving stairs, motorbikes, cars, traffic lights, fire hydrants and the like in badly rendered photographs. And why do I always mess up on them? Especially the ones with stairs.

And why would anyone think I was a robot? Do I look like one?

(I know that's more than two questions, but I think I've made my point.)

Words And Music

I am never merry when I hear sweet music, says Jessica in the fifth act of The Merchant of Venice, in the bit where the rather self-satisfied young nobles of Venice are chatting about music. Must say I agree with her. I suppose we all do.

For example, listening to VW's wonderful Serenade to Music does not instill cheerfulness, though doing so brightens doleful days in other ways. And discovering that I was wrong in assuming the music in question is a purely orchestral piece was a dolefully cheering reminder that my ignorance of stuff I might be thought to know about has few bounds. I posted a link to a lovely orchestral version back on the second day of the year only to discover the very next day that the original version was intended for orchestra and voices (sixteen of them) and that the first recording is easily available on-line. The 'lyrics' are essentially a neatly edited lift from the Act 5 'music' of the Merchant, from which I quote above.

Must say, though, it took me a couple of listens before I warmed up to the version with voices (even though I was listening to the actual individual singers VW had in mind when he wrote the serenade.) My usual prejudice regarding 'fruity' sounding voices initially got in the way. What helped me overcome this was when I realised it would be a good idea to put the actual words from the play in front of me as I listened and then it all came together. 

A potent mix. 

Contrasts

I was re-reading Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich this afternoon, ahead of teaching the great novella, and, as with each reading, feeling its extraordinary concerted condensed power. And then Noi provided a lovely tea of freshly baked scones and coffee.

The contrast was disconcerting to say the least. But it didn't stop me relishing the scones. And I had the oddest feeling that Solzhenitsyn might just have approved of that. Offhand of all the truly great writers he seems to me the most in touch with the day to day simple pleasures of existence - I suppose because he was so entirely deprived of them for so many years.

Finishing

A bit of a relief to get the end of the first working week of the year. And to do so in one piece. I think.

Of course, I'm ignoring the fact I've got a fair amount of work-related stuff to do over the weekend. Sometimes living in denial is a fruitful strategy.

Getting Started

Talked to two colleagues today who joined the school at the beginning of the year. Both are finding things overwhelming. It's not the teaching, because neither have started actual lessons; it's the sheer amount of information they need to take on board and the number of things that are going on outside the classroom with which they are already involved.

The only consolation I could give was that despite my being around for quite a few years I was feeling challenged in a similar fashion. It comes with the territory. Cold comfort, I'm afraid, but the way things are.

Great Audiences

Yesterday's article in the Graun about poor etiquette in relation to theatre audiences in the UK struck me as being depressingly typical of what I've been reading in the last two or three years about poor behaviour in audiences in my home nation. How things change. I don't recall ever seeing such behaviour in the theatre when I was in my native country. Quite the opposite in fact. Indeed, when I came to this Far Place I was struck by how Singaporean audiences sometimes didn't quite seem all that aware of how live theatre worked and felt vaguely proud of this aspect of British culture.

But here's the thing. I can't remember the last time I felt critical of a Singaporean audience. In recent years my experience of such has been uniformly positive as they seem to have somehow grown in sophistication. And this has been especially true with regard to audiences for school shows. This evening I was thinking back to our performances of As You Like It back in July. Our audiences were small but happily engaged & responsive. Being out on stage myself really brought that home to me.

There is no magic in theatre. Unless a directly shared understanding of human experience is magical. Which it is.

Sad that some people choose to wreck this. And a bit sad for me that I'll not be involved in any kind of production this year.

Serenaded

Not sure why but until today I thought that Ralph Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music was one of his somewhat lightweight early works, knitting together a few good tunes a la the lovely Norfolk Rhapsodies, but not of any deeper consequence. Finally listened to it in a break at work today and discovered how fabulously wrong I'd been. Composed in the late 1930s this is mature mystical VW, as exquisite as anything from Job or the 5th Symphony. Just wonderful.

And the accompanying visuals from the Victorian artist John Atkinson Grimshaw, of whom I'd never heard before, in the version I chanced upon on YouTube, further helped soothe whatever parts of my soul the music failed to reach. Not that there were many.

Ahead

I'm happy to say that I accomplished my resolution for 2023. I had no real choice but to be resolute, of course, but enjoyed being so and managed to get back to what I regard as good health, which I didn't really expect. So I'm resolved to stay resolved, but that's a given I suppose, so can't really qualify as my resolution for 2024.

What can qualify is something based on what I posted on 21 December in relation to diet. My fighting weight seems to have been definitely reduced from what it used to be by a good 2 kg. So it isn't a matter of eating less. But I think I can tweak my intake to eat a bit better in terms of fruit and vegetables. In the year ahead I'll seek to enjoy the fruits abundantly available in the world I've been blessed to exist in. And to keep up with the exercise.

This is drearily practical and sensible, and that's just what I need at this point in time.