Music Makes Me

The Voice of the Iron Lady

2012-01-21T09:31:00.000Z

After watching The Iron Lady, about which I suppose my feelings are about as mixed as they are about Thatcher herself, I was almost entirely consumed by one conviction: that hers is the most recognisable voice ever in British politics (no doubt partly because she is still probably the most discussed – and most polarising – woman in the Western world).

During the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, Wendy Richard
was a frequent and conspicuous supporter of Thatcher's policies and accomplishments.

So it’s no surprise that the scene that most intrigued me is a relatively minor one where she undergoes vocal training to ‘feminise’ her voice. Now, I’ve read that a recording of one such session used to be in circulation among journos, but I’ve never heard it. Here’s an illustration of the difference. According to Max Atkinson (in Our Masters’ Voices)

She achieved a reduction in pitch of 46 Hz, a figure which is almost half the average difference in pitch between male and female voices.

One record that made excellent use of Thatcher’s distinctive voice was this Pete Harman-produced tune from 1991, which apparently reached No. 10 in the 12” charts (sounds apocryphal to me, but I’m sure I could find out if I could be bothered).

Maggie’s Last Party – V.I.M.

I had a go at doing a mix using an interview with her myself. It’s a dystopian tale that also features little Prince and the theme from Are You Being Served? You can listen to it here.

An Interview with June Honri about ‘Working the Halls’

2012-01-16T16:17:00.000Z

(This post complements my post on Peter Honri’s book Working the Halls.

You might want to read that first!)

You may remember my post in October about Peter Honri’s book Working the Halls. I was so impressed by the book and the accompanying flexidisc that I felt that rare desire Holden Caulfield talks about in Catcher in the Rye to call up the author. To that end I contacted the Honris and managed to speak to June Honri, Peter’s wife, later that month to ask her about the circumstances under which the book was written.

At first when I realised it was Peter’s wife I was to speak to, I must admit I feared the worst, but June soon explained that she was speaking on Peter’s behalf because he sadly now has Alzheimer’s disease. However, I found June to be quite the raconteur, with a disarmingly youthful voice – indeed, very soon into our conversation she explained that people who assumed she is younger than she is were sometimes a bit ‘offhand’ with her!

MUSIC MAKES ME: Hello June! I really wanted to ask about Working the Halls. The book is unusual in coming with a ‘gift record’ – I think they call them flexidiscs. [You can listen to it here.]

JUNE: Oh, you’re lucky. You’ve got the original one. It was just done for the book. You’re very lucky to get one with the record intact. Where did you get it?

MMM: I think in a second-hand bookshop in Whitby.

J: In Whitby! Oh, well done!

MMM: I don’t think I realised it had the record in it until I’d finished reading it! And it seems to me an invaluable part of the book. Was it always a part of the book?

J: Yes. It was done through a Dutch publisher. Peter had ended up writing a show for Farnham Castle Theatre Music Hall. The next day after the opening night the phone rang about five o’clock in the evening – when you’ve got three children and you’re doing tea, not a very convenient time – and a Dutch voice, which I just about managed to understand, asked me could Peter write a book about music hall? So I said ‘Yes,’ straight away. And then he said, ‘Could he do it in eight weeks?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ So that book was written in eight weeks. It took over the entire house.

MMM: Really? Eight weeks?

J: He’d already done a lot of research in piecing it together, you see.

MMM: Yes. I can see that. To me, it’s like a brilliant scrapbook. Now, I have to confess I haven’t read any of Peter’s other books.

J: You’d like Music Hall Warriors [The full title is Music Hall Warriors: A History of the Variety Artistes Federation 1906-1967].

MMM: Thanks for the recommendation! Now, there is a passage later in the book where Peter speculates about the Arts Council officially recognising music hall as a part of the living arts. Did anything ever come of that?

J: I couldn’t tell you about that, but if you read Music Hall Warriors you’ll find the Variety Artistes Federation could be very awkward fellows! And Wilton’s Music Hall – which is a fictitious diary of its owner John Wilton. [Oddly enough, Wilton’s Music Hall was featured in a Michael Grade documentary which aired while we were speaking. It’s called The Story of Music Hall with Michael Grade]

MMM: How did the Spike Milligan preface, or ‘Overture’, come about?

J: I think through Wilton’s Music Hall. But Peter was a very well known performer in the West End, anyway, so possibly through Equity.

MMM: The book is very positive about the halls, with none of the doom and gloom about the death of a way of life. In fact, Peter appeared in a production of Beyond the Fringe in 1966, a show often said to be the death-knell of variety. Is it an age that we’ve lost?

J: No… Peter’s idea was that music hall is present-day. Today’s top-liners are today’s music hall. The likes of Elton John are the present-day music hall.

MMM: Some would argue that some modern talent shows, like Britain’s Got Talent, recapture the spirit of the halls. What do you think? Do you watch the show?

J: We have occasionally. But there are other programmes we happen to like! But again, we do see that as present-day music hall. They would be the Marie Lloyds of the present day.

MMM: Quite right. Peter was a Shakespearean too, which reminds me that the Music Hall was not just about sentiment and cheap gags. In particular, in the book, Percy’s show Concordia comes across as being a real spectacular.

J: Yes; full of innovations.

MMM: And did you meet Percy [Peter’s grandfather] yourself?

J: No. But I knew Grandma and his wife – and, also, I was approved of by the family up in Blackpool!

MMM: Of course! Now, the accordion – or the concertina – is quite a tough instrument, isn’t it?

J: It is, yes.

MMM: My granddad played the accordion up until very recently. Does Peter still play?

J: He does, yes. Unfortunately, because of the Alzheimer’s, he still thinks he should be doing a show. So I have to ration the concertina, because it can get a bit over the top – Peter standing at the front door wanting to go out with it!

MMM: I’m glad to hear he still plays, though! It’s been really nice to chat to you and I wish you and Peter well for the future.

J: Thanks. And don’t forget to keep your eye out for a copy of Music Hall Warriors! [Available from Greenwich Exchange]

I would also like to thank Whitchurch Arts for making this interview possible, as well as everything they have done to recognise the Honris’ achievements.

Timbre! Unusual Instrumentation Playlist - Vol. 1

2012-01-07T20:19:00.000Z

Timbre, as Frank Zappa says in the Real Frank Zappa Book, is everything. But it’s also confusing. To a Westerner, the sitar eternally signifies the mysterious allure of the East, while – as Talvin Singh once pointed out – ‘in Bombay, an electric guitar is exotic’. Why is this?

ABOVE: A rare and dangerous example of the urethra flute.

This playlist argues that context, rather than the instrument itself, is the key. I hope to demonstrate this by putting fifteen instruments in an unexpected context.

It’s a playlist that plunges into the world of exotic tones with a banjo in one hand and an ocarina in the other, and comes out the other side with a sore head, yodelling.

It would be doing the merely obvious
to include such gimmicky instruments
as the trapezoidal harp (ABOVE).

I have deliberately steered clear of the more familiar examples of instruments being used in an unusual context. Much as I love the sitar on the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood, or Jethro Tull’s use of rock flute, and the whole of the Tubular Bells album, I’m looking here for juxtapositions of timbre that still have the power to surprise.

I hope you find yourself marvelling at the sound of a violin screeching across a dub track, or a sousaphone powering an rock tune, as much as I did.

Jungle Flute – Don Tracy & the Voodoo Family

Flute

(Dance to the Music of) The Ocarina – Irving Berlin

Ocarina

The Twisted Nerve – Bernard Hermann

Harp

Jan Pahechan ho – Mohammed Rafi

Electric guitar

Got a Match – Frank Gallop

Harpsichord

I Touch Myself – Rolf Harris

Wobble board

A Day In The Life – The Koto Ensemble

Koto

K.G.’s Half Way Tree – Augustus Pablo & The Simplicity People

Violin

Yaman (The Colonel’s Lady) – The Indo-British Ensemble

Sitar

Donna Lee – Tom Slavicek

Banjo

Prodigy Medley – The Banana Sessions

Sousaphone

Take Five – Cayman Islands Steel Pan Jazz Trio

Steel pans

Bag’s Groove – Leon Thomas

The yodel

Oboe Mambo – Machito And His Afro-Cuban Orchestra

Oboe

It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ’N’ Roll) – AC/DC

Bagpipes

Timbre! Unusual Instrumentation Podcast – Vol. I

If you can suggest any more for the next playlist, please leave me a note.

Oh, and have a happy new year!

Two Visuals: The Contents of Music Makes Me, Represented Visually

2011-12-21T14:00:00.000Z

The Venn diagram shows the overlap of the different tags which accompany each post on the site; the bar graph shows how many posts there are under each tag.

Click on either pic to be taken to a list of all the mp3-related posts. It makes it a lot easier to search for content.

My Great Web page

The Festive Five (2011) - A Garden Full of Sensi

2011-12-13T21:10:00.014Z

Oh, look what Santa brought! Yes, everything from the sentimental to the chemically-enchanced is there, right there under the tree! And what’s that? A DMCA takedown notice? Oh, Santa, you shouldn’t have!

Twelve Days Of Christmas -
Peter Brogs

“On the first day of Christmas my Jah Jah gave to me/
A garden full of sensi.” And what says ‘Christmas’ like highly potent cannabis plants?

Swingin’ Them Jingle Bells -
Fats Waller

The wonderful thing about Waller is that every record is a chance for a party, so a novelty record by him swings as hard as Twelfth Street Rag.

Sleigh Ride - The Avalanches

The Avalanches recreate the feeling of a good sleigh ride, but with more acid involved.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen -
Jimmy Smith

I defy you to find a record where such an atmosphere of pomp and circumstance dissolves so blithely into utter coolness.

Please Come Home for Christmas
- The Platters

This is an incredibly short song that conjures up images of cardigan-clad crooners — until the surprisingly soulful chorus hits you.

Not had enough? Here is the link to last year’s Festive Five, subtitled Allen Ginsburg’s Dreams. With that you can make a less alliterative Festive Ten!

And if that doesn’t whet your appetite for Christmas-themed records, check out George Cole’s Christmas Record – What Are We Gonna Get For ’Er Indoors?

Links of the Month - November 2011

2011-12-05T21:12:00.001Z

Very much indulging in shellac and that sort of thing this month: a reminder that there are many, many good blogs on 78s at the moment.

Dark Sweets - Soothing Sounds of Shellac for a Long Winter
At the top of my list is this delicious compilation of obscure 78s. Even the cassette tape cover art is spot on, in an anachronistic kind of way.

Symphonies on American Odeon
A 1921 recording of Schubert’s 8th Symphony conducted by Eduard Mörike. (The 8th is the Unfinished, for those among us who love classical music but can’t count.)

Thomas Mann’s Top 12 78rpm Records
Alex Ross looks at the Death in Venice and Magic Mountain author’s pick of classical records.

Let’s Put The Beatles Back Together Again: Book Review

2011-11-15T20:56:00.000Z

About the Beatles it’s hard to write anything new. The Beatles already have their chroniclers: their Lewisohns, their Ryan & Kehews, their MacDonalds. Everyone with any claim to be the Fifth Beatle already has a book to their name.

One thing that is certainly left, and a thing that is accomplished with fearless dilettantism by Jeff Walker in his book Let’s Put The Beatles Back Together Again, is the job of pruning what exists. This book is a veritable orchard of the resulting bonsai trees. To put it more crudely, this is a listmaker’s wet dream. ¹

Walker structures the book around the idea that, contra Lennon’s song ‘God’, the dream is not over. That is to say, there is a way to claw back the Beatles’ solo careers and construct a Beatlesque canon. To do this, Walker proposes a thought experiment. Suppose the Beatles, upon officially splitting up, had made a pact to continue to group their best recordings together under the moniker of the Beatles Recording Collective (the BRC).

Some amusing hypotheticals fall into place here. John still dies on December 8, 1980, but he ‘survives’ as ‘ghost-John’ as a recording artist through the virtue of having a fair bit of unreleased work in the can.² They still release their various solo albums, although the best tracks (‘Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five’ but not ‘No Words’ from Band on the Run) are creamed off and packaged for the BRC.

I realise I am struggling to say what this book is. I would say it is best described as a piece of conceptual art, as much as it is a ‘list’ book. At its heart is the notion of digging out ‘Beatles-worthy’ (as Walker puts it) songs from the post-Beatles period.³ A subjective – and subjunctive – cataloguing which is very much of our time. The idea of wresting programming duties from the artist is the sine qua non of the iPod playlist. It’s a notion positively encouraged by the digital world we’ve surrounded ourselves with. As someone who runs what I’d like to think of as a discriminating music blog, I am all for eclecticism. Out with the overrated! Down with the merely popular! (Indeed, at one point, Walker refers to people whose appetites are sated by Best Of collections as ‘cultural plebeians’.)

Best Of collections are for ‘cultural plebeians’,
according to Walker.

To me, this is where the book comes into its own. The BRC’s Black Album, a 1973 four-record boxed-set which juxtaposes the former Beatles’ best solo tracks. So, to take four tracks at random, George’s ‘What is Life’ is followed by John’s ‘Instant Karma’, followed by Ringo’s ‘It Don’t Come Easy’, itself followed by Paul’s ‘Another Day’. (Interestingly, Walker relates that George made a very similar collection in 1971 for Beatles fans who couldn’t wait for the boys to reform.)

Walker’s selections (for that is what matters here, if we’re honest; not many people will buy a book like this for its elegant prose style) are admittedly quirky at times: the Get Back sessions are abundantly represented, despite much of the material being, to my ears, a motley collection of ragtag miscellanea that Spector rescued from ignominy. However, I found the author’s quirkiness endearing rather than irritating. Commendation must go to him for representing each of the Beatles fairly: I myself wouldn’t know where to start with Ringo. (See the APPENDIX for the choices of his that I appreciated the most.)

Not many of us know where to start with Ringo.

Moreover, there is a marvellous boldness to the writing and to the choices. A boldness which rests somewhere on the assumption that the Beatles’ albums are better listened to selectively. I managed to repress the pedant in me who knows that, under all this, there’s a question-begging value judgement about what counts as Beatlesque. It’s not an easy question to answer, nor is Walker the type to ponder such philosophical questions. But perhaps that’s the point. It’s easier to classify the Stones’ output. (Ballad or rocker? Gutsy or psychedelic? Bluesy or progressive?) But the Beatles’ work frequently eludes such categorisations. That is why we love it. That, I might add, is the best definition of what is ‘Beatlesque’.

I often think, while reading Beatles-related books, by people who are clearly obsessed with the band, I like the Beatles more than you! You know more about them, have troubled yourself to listen to poorly recorded bootlegs, have better access to their private data, but I don’t think ‘Till There Was You’ will ever be a filler (Walker dismisses it, preferring the group to be seen as a ‘path-breaking rock ’n’ roll band’), or that ‘Crippled Inside’ is ‘weak material’. But then, perhaps I am closer to idolatry than I realise.

All this is no more than to say that this is not a book for completists, but for fantasists. And that is also appropriate: the Beatles were, after all, in the job of fantasising for a generation.

That’s, on the face of it, it. But the book does double duty as a repository of biographical data and contextual information about the song selections. Here I found Walker’s pruning superb. You may know that John Lennon had a pony as a child, but I hadn’t seen that mentioned before, and I certainly don’t know many writers who would dare to be literal enough to mention it in the context of ‘Dig A Pony’. (And I mean that as a compliment.) You might not think it adds much to your appreciation of the song, but I think it does.

This could so easily have been John.

Furthermore, the timelines Walker provides are helpful, but beyond that, they often have their own unexpected pathos, the week leading up to Lennon’s death in December 1980 in particular.

I should mention that although it is very informative, this is not a dry book, by any means. There is plenty of gentle humour: the short section entitled ‘Ringo’s Guide To Impressing A Bond Girl’ (in short: nearly get killed together) was a big favourite of mine. And how can you not love a book with the chapter heading ‘Getting Past George’s Obsession With Eastern Religion’?

Before developing his spiritual side, George learned to play
the invisible Theremin to a professional level.

I haven’t even touched on many of the problems the book deals with felicitiously. To select one, the book raises the interesting question of how you go about compiling a great Beatles live album. Walker shows how it could be done, and I would not be surprised if someone at a record company is listening and taking notes. Imagine if Walker was to catch someone at EMI’s ear about the live album. (After all, the hotchpotch that was Lennon’s Acoustic (2004) did pretty well in the States, even if it wasn’t a hit in the UK)

In summary: This is a well-meaning and worthwhile project, accomplished with good humour and a lightness of touch, despite the enormous effort involved. I cannot fault Walker’s meticulous research, which has encouraged me to seek out in particular some Harrison and Starr material that I might otherwise have not bothered to find, buried as they are on sometimes middling albums. Certainly this is a good antidote to the complacent, who think they might have listened to everything the Beatles had to offer them.

APPENDIX: Songs Walker’s Book Has Highlighted For Which I Would Like To Thank Him

George Harrison	Apple Scruffs Awaiting on You All Devil’s Radio Lay His Head Handle with Care (The Traveling Wilburys) Life itself The Lord Loves the One Beware of Darkness Hear me lord Wah-Wah What Is Life
Paul McCartney	Golden Earth Girl Lifelong Passion - The Fireman Beware my Love Cafe On The Left Bank Helen Wheels That Would Be Something Uncle Albert-Admiral Halsey
Ringo Starr	Blindman It Don’t Come Easy Oh My My

(I’d also like to thank Walker for pointing me towards this breathtaking clip of Yoko ‘singing’ with the Beatles minus George during the Get Back sessions. Why wasn’t it on Let It Be... Naked?)

¹ Full disclosure: The author kindly sent me a copy of the book.
² In fact, this is very much what happened in 1995 and 1996 with the two demos Free as a Bird and Real Love.
³ Walker even steps in to rejig the existing Beatles catalogue, which to me was a step into heresy, and a certain defensive reflex snapped into place at this point. This section, which begins the book, might have been better off in an appendix, as to me it is the least palatable of Walker’s suggestions. (And, yes, I agree he has a point about the Past Masters series being an unsatisfactory compromise, but I have such an indomitable respect for the albums, I can’t see fit to meddle with them.)

Links of the Month - October 2011

2011-11-05T09:22:00.001Z

Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition
A selection of photographs created using a microscope. The objects are sometimes shown 2000 times their original size.

Bizarre Love Triangle – Frente
Lovely cover of an already beautiful song. The soaring melody is sung against guitar arpeggios.

The Composer as Accompanist
This site posts some astounding classical 78s, including a solo piano piece by John Ireland. The Shellackophile have some really nice pieces.

Finnegans Wake (James Joyce) - Siobhan McKenna and Cyril Cusack (1959)

2011-10-28T09:35:00.004+01:00

I’m going to do something which betrays the philistine in me and post up two extracts from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, recorded nearly thirty years after they were written. Philistine because I must admit I haven’t read the book, but these recordings are quite captivating in themselves, as is the link to Joyce reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle.

The cover of Nino Frank’s translation of Anna Livia Plurabelle (1938)

Anna Livia is thought to be the personification of the river Liffey in Dublin.

Anna Livia with her Baudeloire Maids - one of the illustrations
Stella Steyn produced after a request from Joyce (1929)

However, the academic Carol Schloss believes that Joyce’s daughter Lucia – who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1935 – was her father’s muse for Finnegans Wake.

ABOVE: Lucia, who, it is argued, is was Joyce’s muse while writing Finnegans Wake.

Anna Livia Plurabelle - Siobhan McKenna

I find McKenna’s reading in particular to be hypnotic and moving – it’s hard to believe it’s still language at times; it seems to move beyond mere assonance and alliteration into something richer, stranger.

Here is Joyce reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle in 1929.

Shem the Penman - Cyril Cusack

Shem is thought to be Joyce’s alter ego in Finnegans Wake. He is the son of Anna Livia and is an experimental artist, possibly because, as we find out in Chapter Seven, he seems to be physically inferior:

Shem’s bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman’s son), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt’s thinskin, eelsblood in his cold toes, a bladder tristended...

...and so on.

Finally, I thought that some of you might like this, which appears when you put ALP into Google:

A Concert-in-a Turn - The Honris (Narrated by Peter Honri) (1974)

2011-10-10T17:35:00.000+01:00

This post gives those with an interest in the history of music hall a chance to sample a wonderful book about the remarkable Honri family. It’s called Working the Halls by Peter Honri. Like many such books on the subject, it’s now out of print, but this post is a chance for you to read a few excerpts and listen to tracks from the accompanying flexidisc, called Concert-in-a Turn.

ABOVE: Sickert’s Old-Fashioned Mother Of Mine, a portrait of Talbot O’Farrell,
in etching and pastel form, respectively.

It features a loving preface (or ‘Overture’) by Spike Milligan which laments the fact that “a few etchings and paintings by Sickert are the only colourful evidence we have of a great age”, a period “that began with gas-lit stages and ended in the tense days before World War II”.

Sickert’s Brighton Pierrots

But the book is not a lament over a dead era. Rather, it begins as it means to go on, with a sensitive yet unmawkish recreation of the mechanics of the music hall era:

With a flurry of cymbals and a final roll of the tymps, the overture ends. The musical director turns to face the spotlights that until now have played on his back, and smilingly acknowledges the clapping audience. He has broken through the slight air of stiffness that every audience has as it settles down to an evening’s entertainment. He nods to some of the regulars; after all, he and most of the band are local men.

Honri comes from a long line of music hall performers and proprietors, the book lovingly documenting, in pictures and text, over a half-century of their songs, costumes, records, films and venues.

It is full of marvellous asides, such as this digression about clowns and clowning:

One day, a doctor, not knowing who Grimaldi was, said to him regarding his low spirits: “I would recommend you see Grimaldi”.
The patient replied: “I am Grimaldi.”

Here is a still from the 1901 film Mister Moon, which featured the author’s grandfather Percy Honri as a huge moon-faced banjo player:

It’s still available to view at the British Film Institute. (There are links to the other Honri appearances on YouTube below.)

At the centre of Percy Honri’s career was his 1906 show Concordia, which featured various innovations, including revolving scenery and a film sequence:

There were six sets of each costume worn by Percy and his assistants. Each set was of a different colour so that each day’s audience would see the fantasy in a different hue [...] Percy Honri played it in various guises for twelve years!

In 1911, a reader of the Daily Chronicle with a Romantic bent called it

A true psychological treatment of the Spirit of a dream. [...] Concordia is the most original and poetic sketch upon the Variety Stage.

I have only photographs at my disposal to illustrate this, but I feel the images below give you a sense of its power, and what ended with the First World War.

A still from Percy Honri’s musical fantasy revue Concordia.

Another still from Concordia (1906).
(Click to enlarge.)

A humble Percy Honri turns his back to the camera
and holds his concertina up for inspection.

Mary and Percy Honri: a sort of Fred and Ginger of the concertina.
Except a related Fred and Ginger. (Percy was Mary’s father.)

01 - I’m A Jolly Old Jester - Percy Honri

02 - Peter Honri Introduction - The Happy Darkies - Percy Honri & Fred Gaisberg -
(The First Flat Disc Record) (1898)

03 - The Happy Darkies - Percy Honri & Fred Gaisberg - The First Flat Disc Record (1948)

04 - A Typical Music Hall Comedy Routine - Percy and Mary Honri

05 - Busking

06 - Song from Johannesburg - Mary & Percy Honri (1938)

07 - Poor Marlene's Boyfriend - Mary Honri (1944)

08 - A Concert-in-a-Turn - Percy Honri (1949)

09 - I’m A Jolly Old Jester - Percy Honri

10 - Concordia March - Percy Honri

11 - The Old Toby Jug - Mary Honri

12 - The Lost Chord - Percy and Mary Honri

(I presume the tracks without dates are from 1949, but this might be wrong.)

APPENDIX

There is another post about the Arthur Sullivan song ‘The Lost Chord’ here.

Other accordion-related posts can be found here and here.

Peter Honri, the author (below), can be seen in this scene from Oliver! playing a tiny concertina.

Here is a clip of Percy Honri performing in the 1934 film Lily of Killarney.

Another little YouTube gem: Percy & Mary Honri playing Gipsy Violin (Chiswick Empire, 1936).

Links of the Month - September 2011

2011-10-03T19:13:00.001+01:00

Songs to lie on your bed and stare at the ceiling to

A Stumbleupon mix of such songs.

Space is the Place

The 1974 meandering film version of Sun Ra’s album.

The sugary secret of self control

An intruiging book review of Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney’s book Willpower by Steven Pinker.

Cliff Edwards and Buster Keaton play a duet
on the same ukulele

It’s two minutes long but I could watch this for 200.

Celebrities by Ron Galella

The original pap. Love the shot of Dustin Hoffman.

Also, there was a great interview with Roy Harper at 17 Seconds.

125

The Billy Eckstine Transition – Can Crooners Change?

2011-09-25T19:18:00.000+01:00

A singer who made the transition from jazz crooner to funk-edged soul singer (on Stax records, no less) completely plausible.

Four tracks will illustrate his mastery of both musical forms:

Lady Luck

Well, I realise I’m defeated already. This is totally funky even though it is, on the face of it, a jazz track.

Summertime
(with Benny Carter)

To me this is the definitive version. I realise it’s not considered a man’s song, but this is how, in my mind, the Platonic Form of the song would sound.

Third Child

Tough being the third child. From the sounds of it. This is quite a hard-hitting song in anyone’s books.

My Cherie Amour

There are other disco versions of this, but the Eckstine’s sonorous bass voice makes this version the weirdest. This track proves the old adage that you can take a crooner to funk, but you can’t stop him from doing that wobbly thing with his voice.

Apart from Sarah Vaughan, who did a few funk tracks (her version of the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ being a prime example), I can’t think of any other jazz singers who were artistically successful in both arenas.

There is the odd one-off, such as Fred Astaire’s ‘Attitude Dancing’, but I must admit I’m a bit stumped. So – do readers know any jazz-to-funk transformations to rival Eckstine’s? Or do they all suffer from ‘Ethel Merman Syndrome’?

An Evening With Alistair Cooke (1955)

2011-09-15T20:03:00.000+01:00

The great broadcaster made only a few vinyl recordings, but they are all fabulous. I have featured one of his spoken word records previously: Talk About America.

This LP, however, features him at the piano, whistling, singing and telling stories. I realise that to the youngsters of today, that sounds almost insane. They let him do this? Why didn’t someone sedate him, send him to a nursing home or put him on a stairlift?

There is even a wonderful moment where he demonstrates, with impish glee, the results of an experiment in multi-tracking his own voice.

The album tells a coherent narrative, so is perhaps best listened right through, but once you’ve done that you’ll keep coming back to many of these tracks for more.

Drink to Me

This prelude to the album is a prime example of the almost vaudevillian versatility of Cooke as a pianist.

Spring Song

“I was taken on a picnic to see a tree. And I was very overcome. And I wrote a song.”

Blue Skies

Cooke explains the emotional resonance he found in Berlin’s massive hit song, before playing it with a light, yet chiming intensity.

She’s Funny That Way

Knowing that no one quite sings this song as Gene Austin does, Cooke whistles his way through it.

The Man I Love

Here’s a really good anecdote about the origins of this Gershwin song. I’ve never heard it elsewhere – I’m hanging on to it for future use.

Cupid, Ease A Lovesick Maid

This is a reflection on Cambridge University life: composing music for an 18th century song with no extant score. It shows a wonderful grasp of the songwriting of the era and the ‘sweet discords’ possible by the cadence sidestepping briefly into another key.

Have You Forgotten God?

I really like this. Cooke, composing again, sets the words of a hymn to a descending blues tune. Apart from a romantic middle eight, it completely works: you notice how close the Wesleyan preacher is to the fingerpicking blues singer. There’s even a bit of scatting in the coda.

Perpetual Motion

Talking of hymns, did Poulenc get the melodic material for his Perpetual Motion from a Welsh hymn?

Madrigal from The Mikado

Cooke whistles and hums almost simultaneously. Once you’ve heard it, you’ll want to try it yourself.

Mamie’s Blues

Cooke describes a chance meeting with Jelly Roll Morton. (“A gangling, wide-mouthed, flat-faced man with big wrists and diamonds in his teeth.”) The line Morton feeds Cooke is word-for-word the same as the introduction to his 1939 recording: “This is the first blues I no doubt heard in my life.” (You can hear Morton talking bitches here.)

Basin Street Blues

A reflection on Englishness (“The English have to go after things that are out of reach.”) takes us to Basin Street and “Mr. Teagarden’s immortal invitation to the land of dreams”.

Cooke, always a great storyteller, himself became the subject of a rather ghoulish story posthumously. He was one of the victims of a body-snatching gang that hacked up corpses of the recently deceased, replacing the harvested bones with PVC pipes, gloves and aprons before returning the bodies to families. Then – having forged donor consent forms to cover their tracks – they sold the stolen bones on for transplant tissue.

Wanda Landowska - A Treasury of Harpsichord Music (RCA Victor)

2011-09-05T20:39:00.000+01:00

From a beautiful set of 78s showcasing the keyboard works of classical composers.

Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat

Sonata in D (Scarlatti)

Sonata in Dm (Scarlatti)

La Dauphine (Rameau)

Rondo in D (Mozart)

Turkish March (Mozart) - Menuetto in D

The quality varies from disc to disc, but the playing renders this a venial sin.

Links of the Month - August 2011

2011-08-31T23:46:00.001+01:00

Many fascinating reads this month, mainly because I’ve been on holiday and so had more time to read. Anyway, here’s my top five:

August 28: Jafaican Doesn’t Exist

A glorious response to some of the comments made by David Starkey on Newsnight about the recent London riots, including the now much-qualified claim that “the whites have become black”, speaking a “Jamaican patois”. Don’t worry: it’s not a political but a linguistic reading of the situation.

August 25: Eeker Listens To Kick Drum Heart

Sample quote: “There are some weeks when a certain event influences the songs in your head. Other times, a news story could trigger a reaction. Or it could even be something someone has said to you.

This week has not been any of those.”

August 24: Early Wildlife Recordings:
Songs of British Birds

In 1953, Ludwig Koch, the renowned wildlife sound recordist, was responsible for a number of recordings of common species, providing an aural identification guide to British birds.

August 23: Leiber & Stoller on Charlie Gillett

The site, which frequently features old Gillett shows, here becomes a double tribute, since the DJ’s guests are none other than Mike Stoller and his songwriting partner the late Jerry Leiber (left in the pic).

August 21: Dmitri Nabokov Sings The Music from Tetris

That is, here are some Russian lieder performed by the author’s son, who is, as his father was, to say the least, multitalented: at various times he’s been curator of lepidoptery at Harvard, a semi-professional racecar driver and translator of many of his father’s works.

An Encounter with Talbot O’Farrell: The Suspension of Disbelief

2011-08-29T22:28:00.000+01:00

Of course it’s not me: the man’s been dead for longer than I’ve been alive.

But I refer you to James Agate, who, in a piece written for the Daily Chronicle and published in 1924 in the collection On an English Screen, recalls an encounter with the tenor of somewhat disputed origin.

Agate is writing about the suspension of disbelief in the theatre, and how he considers himself quite accomplished at it, when he is silenced by an encounter with “a grave, untheatrical figure” at a rehearsal at the Alhambra Theatre:

““YOU two ought to know each other,” said the manager. And it was signified to me that I was in the presence of Mr. Talbot O’Farrell. But where were the check trousers and the blue, double-breasted pea-jacket, the grey topper, the single eyeglass, the white gloves, the stick?

After a time I recovered my presence of mind, and we talked learnedly of many things—golf and Japan, sailing ships and sealing-wax, cabbages and kings. I confessed to a nasty habit of writing about plays and actors.
    “Have a cigar?” said the genial one, promptly.
    “Bribery?” I asked.
    “No, sir! Corruption!”
    And the real man, the comedian, came to birth in a merry twinkle.

[Two hours later, Agate takes his seat in the auditorium.]

    The curtains parted to disclose a grand piano, a modest young gentleman played the opening bars of “When The Sun Goes Down”, and to the plaintive melody there wlaked on a pair of check trousers, a blue reefer jacket, a grey topper. It was Mr. O’Farrell all complete. And I forgot about our solemn talk and listened again to that voice which goes so very near to unbinding the sweet influences of Pleiades and loosing the bands of Orion. This, and not my friend of two hours earlier, was the real person. And, the better to applaud him, I threw away the stump of my cigar.”

Agate neatly and effectively inverts the cliches of disillusionment and captures something credible in expressing the idea that the performer is most themselves when they are performing.

The book, by the way, is rather interesting: a confection of amusing (that, I think, is the mot juste) essays. Imagine an English Robert Benchley, or a less prodigious S J Perelman.

All of the above will be in vain if you do not visit the O’Farrell recordings available on the site, which you will find here. Only then will you be able to judge if you agree with Mr. Agate that O’Farrell’s is a “voice which goes so very near to unbinding the sweet influences of Pleiades and loosing the bands of Orion”. I certainly do.

The Astonishing Sound of the CORDOVOX - Mike Timoney (1971)

2011-08-25T20:12:00.013+01:00

I’m a big fan of accordions, so I knew I had to have this. I was nonetheless perturbed by a perusal of the liner notes:

Many musicians who’ve gone over to electronics have tended to use them for either novelty or bizarre effects. Not so Mike Timoney; he displays restraint, discretion and impeccable taste.

If you’re a regular reader of this site, you can imagine how my heart sank.

Turns out Timoney is an accordion prodigy who, when he saw this Leslie-speaker-clad beast, had to have one — at a cost of over £2,000.

I mean, look at some of this kit:

The album’s got some weird programming (‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ AND ‘Je T’aime’ on the same record?), but two tracks amused me enough to rip and here they are:

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Theme)

Wheels

Poor Folk: The Old Sow and Ilkla Moor Baht 'At – Traditionals on 78

2011-08-21T09:43:00.000+01:00

While it might produce some great song collectors, England has a frustratingly poor record when it comes to actually recording our own folk songs. English-born recordists such as Hugh Tracey and even the great Cecil Sharp often went further afield for their field recordings (to Southern and Central Africa and north America, respectively).

The trend can be seen in America too (Native American songs were recorded as early as 1890), but it is a fact that many of the earliest wax cylinders that could be considered folk music fall into the ethnographic category, with English recordists often casting their nets beyond Europe.

Of course, we have these recordists to thank for capturing on shellac many cultures which have since vanished, but that surprisingly few people found home-grown folk music worth recording is a constant surprise to me.


Leslie Sarony	Albert Richardson

All this is a preamble to these curious recordings. Whenever English singers or composers touch ‘folk’ material, there is often a sense of condescension there; you can be fairly sure the material will either be popularised (embellished with fashionable harmonies or Bowlderised for crudities) or classicised (by being notated and sung by trained singers – the Vaughan Williams approach) in some way.

These recordings are interesting in trying to deal more honestly with their material. They are not field recordings, so they should not be judged as such. But I would say that Richardson’s ‘Old Sow’ is one of the bravest and most successful attempts to produce a folk recording in a studio setting ever captured on shellac.

The Old Sow - Leslie Sarony (and male vocal choir)

This is the version of the song included on compilations such as Vintage Children’s Favourites 1926-1959. It’s given a little tarting up, with a Gilbert &amp;amp;amp; Sullivan-style chorus bookending the song (which works better on Ilkla Moor Baht ’At, below). It rather irritates me, though, that Sarony fails to make some of the lines scan.

The Old Sow - Albert Richardson, bass (a capella)

In 1929 Zonophone recorded an unaccompanied rendition of the song by a young sexton whose jobs at the time included “bell-ringing, grave-digging and gardening for the Rector”. The song had been around for at least a century, a version of this song dating back to a broadside of 1828. Richardson later claimed that the recording company had refused to include one stanza that began, “Now, these little pigs shit in the farmer’s hat”.

On Ilkla Moor Baht ’At - Leslie Sarony (and male vocal choir)

Rather a reversal of the old phrase about the devil not having the best tunes, here is an example of a hymn (‘Cranbrook’ by Thomas Clarke) with secular lyrics. I’m rather dubious about Sarony’s Yorkshire accent, but the Gramophone review of 1934 does credit him for his clarity: “for the first time I have heard the words of this classic”.

Buttercup Joe - Albert Richardson, bass (with piano accompaniment)

Here Richardson sings another folksy song (it has more of an air of music hall parody of folk music) with earthy subject matter. I think the piano is unnecessary, and creates a slightly odd image of a rustic figure standing by a grand piano at odds with the song’s message.

Nat Cole - Wild is Love (1960)

2011-08-14T09:06:00.003+01:00

Cole experiments here in an LP of love songs by Ray Rasch and Dotty Wayne tied together by a narrative concerning the vicissitudes of love. I think it would have made a fantastic one-man show. There are some spoken word interludes helping to tie the tracks together, and these may well be my favourite parts.

Beggar for the Blues

Clearly the stand-out track. A stripped-down 6/8 pulses throughout while Cole squeezes everything out of those portamento notes (When love pulls me iiiiiiiiin...).

Pick-Up

I like this as an example of a jazz carpe diem. Cole’s pitch-perfect sleaziness is quite a contrast with the next track.

Hold Her Tight

This is an example of the spoken word interludes that punctuate the album. Cole has got such a trustworthy voice that what could be interminably cheesy sounds genuine.

A Brass Band Swinging - Lansdowne Jazz Series (rec. engineer Joe Meek) (1959)

2011-08-07T20:03:00.004+01:00

“They’re a brass band that play jazz,” are words that make any sane jazz addict blanch in trepidation. But not me.

Idly reading the sleevenotes, I spotted Joe Meek was the recording engineer (at the time the real names on this record would have been Kenny Baker and John Lusher), and I wondered if Meek’s engineering talents had been praised by any contemporary magazines. (I strongly suspected not: the sound was a little brash for my liking.) To my surprise, I found a reference in Gramophone magazine’s archives. The reviewer – a certain C.F. – had this to say:

[T]his would still be quite an interesting LP were it not for the abrasive recording quality. Considering the great use that is made of heavy brass textures, there must have been strong arguments for issuing the LP in stereo; at the very least the mono recording should have been carried out with exceptional care. As it is, too many of the ensemble passages sound smudged and imprecise. There are even moments in Bell Bell Boogie and Honky Tonk Train Blues when one’s cars might as well be massaged with sandpaper.

Ouch. “Abrasive.” “Smudged.” “Imprecise.” Poor Joe. Would he have read Gramophone, I wonder?

I also found what the reviewer said interesting because although it’s recorded in mono, at times it sounds like it’s in stereo. Is this even possible? Listen and you’ll see what I mean.

Bell Bell Boogie (Calvi)

The introduction (a war of attrition between semibreves) gives us the heads-up that we’re in a world of fancy introductions. When the tune kicks in, it’s like classic call-and-response Basie with (literally) bells on.

Mack the Knife (Weill)

Compared to some of the timpani-driven excesses on other tracks, this is done very straight. Actually, for a brass band, they manage to find a nice balance of textures: you don’t notice the absence of saxes.

Marching Saints (L. Johnson)

It’s a relief to find that the band are allowed to let their hair down a bit here. The bouts of collective improvisation are so wonderful you wish they weren’t used so sparingly.

Road to Mandalay (Speaks)

Begins with a bit of bugle business, some twinkling exotica. Then the arranger seems to get bored with that, and cues the tune popularised by Sinatra.

Teddy Bears' Picnic (Brattan)

Tubas and trombones state the melody, answered by the trumpets. Most of it is done tutti (the solos are fairly unexciting, to be honest: all the ingenuity is in the arrangement).

Links of the Month: July 2011

2011-07-31T18:23:00.011+01:00

July 2011 was a gripping month in terms of breaking news. In fact, I think news itself ‘broke’ several times, and has since had to be painstakingly reassembled by the often out-of-touch presenters on our screens.

There was the dramatic re-emergence of the phone hacking scandal (with dramatic consequences for Rupert Murdoch, about whom I’ve learned an awful lot), the massacre in Norway and the death of Amy Winehouse.

But these things have already been given blanket coverage already, so I’m picking out five completely unrelated sites that have most satisfactorily intrigued me this month.

‘Music for Mentalists: Unexpected Sounds
for the Connoisseur’ (19th July)

This collection of miscellaneous mental music made my day by reminding me of a tune from my childhood: ‘Patel Rap’. At the time, my best friend lived above a corner shop and so the lyrics rang true. It’s funny when something so silly causes you to get all nostalgic. It’s full of all the usual unusual juxtapositions: Jim Bowen raps, Arnold Layne is given a disco reworking, and Boon’s Michael Elphick sings a song from the perspective of a predatory male.

Alternative Ghostbusters (14th July)

If, as I suspect, we are all learning to be retronauts and hauntologists at the moment, this site really is as indispensable to us as its name suggests. This post re-imagines how the film Ghostbusters would have been advertised in bygone years.

‘The Sunscreen Smokescreen’ (11th July)

There is still time left to read this before your summer holiday (or vacation, if you’re in the US). David McCandless’s site Information is Beautiful goes from strength to strength in demonstrating how information can be both informative and beautiful. Here he tackles the proliferation of misinformation about sun cream.

‘I Sure Wish He’d Shave!’ (10th July)

A novelty record about a woman obsessed with her man’s facial hair. The site, run by Bob Purse, specialises in vanity records and song-poems.

Crack The Surface (10th July)

The first in a series of documentaries on Urban Explorers, who risk it all to access and infiltrate closed or forgotten spaces, abandoned buildings in the like. It’s delightfully amateurish and doesn’t try to mythologise them too much. One surprise is how urban explorers are often middle class. As one of the contributors says: “If you live in a situation that resembles an abandoned building, why the hell would you go and explore another abandoned building?”

See the Links of the Month for June 2011.

See the Links of the Month for May 2011.

Results of Our Poll - Do You Download or Stream mp3s?

2011-07-25T11:10:00.017+01:00

I put poll up on the site recently to find out how people use the music on the site.

You might think with Google Analytics and all the other tools at my disposal that I could easily find that sort of thing out, but actually I don’t have access to the data on how often music is streamed or downloaded.

Anyway, the results are below (the numbers refer to percentages):

The key finding is that half the respondents said they streamed music (either before downloading or as without subsequently downloading it), and half said they downloaded music without streaming. The message is clear: keep the facility to stream music and download it. So I’ll do that. Which is good, because it means doing nothing.

ADDENDUM

I’ve got a couple of things to add:

- I -

The poll ran on the blog for 14 days, from the 9th to the 23rd of July.

During that time there were 379 unique visitors to the site, yet only 23 people responded to the poll. That’s 6% of the total visitors to the site during that time. Is that serious voter apathy, or have I done my sums wrong?

I’m not sure that I’d be surprised if the data is right, but that’s still a very small percentage of people who took part in the poll. I mean, people love polls. I once saw a poll on a local newspaper website where, out of three multiple-choice responses, a small number of people had actually picked one that didn’t make any kind of grammatical sense. They’d voted for something that didn’t exist for the sake of voting.

- II -

So I looked into it, and maybe the small number of respondents could be because it wasn’t on every page: a rookie error, meaning not all of those visitors would have seen it!

And it turns out that during this time there were 45 separate visits to the pages where the poll could be seen. That would make the number of respondents just over 50% of visitors, which actually isn’t such a bad statistic. Panic over: I’m just a very poor poll publiciser.

The Magic Wood

2011-07-23T20:17:00.008+01:00

A children’s story on 78rpm. Featuring story and music by Harry Phillips, narrated by Frank Phillips, a man possessed of a wonderful, warm voice with an old-RP accent.

The Magic Wood - (T.P.L.)

Peggy Lee Sings The Man I Love (Arr. Riddle, Cond. Sinatra)

2011-07-16T09:49:00.019+01:00

Featuring an orchestra conducted by Sinatra. And he does a good job.

Please help us to improve the site by answering one quick question:

“How do you access the mp3s on this site?”

Happiness Is Just
A Thing Called Joe

A beautiful, witty song by Harold Arlen, but hard to find a really convincing version of. This is it.

Just One Way to Say
I Love You

A little schmaltzy but this should still be better known. There is far worse schmaltz out there. It’s authentic schmaltz.

The Left Bank Bearcats in Hi-Fi

2011-07-09T09:20:00.017+01:00

I hope you’re ready for some Snazzy New Orleans arrangements with some nice solos. This is a really upbeat, fun record. But I think you’ll agree that the cover is what really swings it.

Comin’ Round the Mountain – Camptown Races (Medley)

The power of collective improvisation. Very trad. The two tunes make nice bedfellows.

Glow Worm

What happens when you open the music box?——

“Glow, little glow worm, glimmer, glimmer.”

Muskrat Rumble

Tailgate trombone seeks future Woodstock war protest anthem for jaunty pissing-about.