I feel happy about my musical intakings over the past month or so. I have broken myself out of the routine of sticking on the same albums and have pretty much steered clear of most things I have heard before. This is because of the generosity of one Nick Barbery who burned 6 DVDs of musical delights for me last year and that I am now, finally, coming to terms with.
The major surprise is how much variety I’m currently able to bear, without curling up into a ball. I am, at this very moment, which is 7:41pm on Thursday evening listening to one of my favourite albums from the Barbery batch which is by Javad Ma’roufi, is called Golden Dreams and Other Romantic Melodies and is some beautiful piano music that, as Nick rightly mentions on his blog, steers pretty close to being sentimental but somehow manages to distance itself enough to just be thoroughly enjoyable and introspective enough. It was immediately accessible, which can be a bad sign, but in this case was not. It has stood up to repeated listens and is one of the few albums I have listened to more than once in recent weeks.
There’s a pretty powerful old-time music vein running through my current listening. Lots from the Kentucky mountains, and some delta blues. John Fahey and Jack Rose have made appearances. Buell Kazee has become a firm favourite, mainly for his voice, and Bascom Lamar Lunsford is always good to me.
What I like most about finding new stuff to listen to every day is that my mood doesn’t attach itself so much to my music anymore; I can just enjoy the experience of a new experience, if you see what I mean. This seems like a pretty obvious conclusion to have come to a long time ago but I feel like I’m only just really realising it. Luckily, most of it has been handed to me on a plate – I haven’t been searching things out for myself which may change, but at present there are enough gems coming at me from friends that I don’t have to do any work for myself.
In my plodding around I have also discovered an English traditional singer I hadn’t heard before, and is clearly incredible: Harry Cox. His version of Just as the Tide was a-Flowing is the finest version I have heard of the song, and is well worth downloading just on its own.
And finally, yesterday I listened to The Blops, a Chilean prog folk group who are amazing. Los Momentos was the highlight track for me.
That’s all for now.
Hello chums. It’s been a long while!
Can we have a discussion about the nature of ideas? You see, I feel like I have been having less recently and am finding those few small ones much more difficult to come by. What is impressing me now is the thought that I could do everything I do without attachment to an edifice. By edifice I may mean ‘trend’, ‘fad’, ‘emotion’. But what is important is that an idea can exist most importantly for itself, and to convey a meaning, and that everything else may come along second. I am trying to un-fuzz my thinking, I am trying to think beyond myself.
I am thinking about the entry that won the Brit Insurance Design awards last night which happened to be a folding plug designed by Min-Kyu Choi who happened to be a recent graduate from the RCA. It’s a pretty good idea for those of you who live in the UK and have seen the size of our plugs. They are massive. But what was really great, what got me more excited was seeing how you can have more than one on one socket, and how compact that still was. I thought ‘hey, that’s nice.’
So that was a good idea. Then I found this website: (me) which belongs to with associates which is not the best looking site in all creation but looks pretty clean and clear and clicked on some of their work. I liked this site for its mottled background which I found to be subtle and clever. Then there’s this one which promotes collaboration and while some stuff is ‘hey, ok, yeah sure’ some of it is good and the idea even better. And at this point I’m getting a good impression of the bubbling-under of talent and creativity in the world. There was this site too which I liked for the typography and the google map which is just smart and obvious. Like, why make your own map?
Then I kept looking and began getting frustrated with how brilliant everything was. Like, who gave these people such clarity to build such sweet-looking things? How is it all so spot-on? Which breaks a cardinal rule of mine which is ‘don’t get overwhelmed by other people’s awesomeness, you’re awesome too’ but is currently running up against my current less-assured thinking which is ‘i don’t feel so awesome’.
So then I think some extra, and think maybe I should carry a sketchbook around with me more.
U P D A T E : 10 minutes later
Yum www.studio100london.com
Waiting for the phone
is a lesson in madness.
The light outside is beautiful
falling a-fuzz on the blocky buildings
My legs are acidic and tight from anticipation
Tomorrow may not prove to be an alkali
A turning disc of birds navigates the concrete canyon;
Mozart is playing.
It’s a shame of mine, this blog, neglected as it is. Tonight I am in a half-light listening to Blue Haze by Miles Davis on vinyl. I resurrected it earlier when I decided that tonight would be about me and some music and not much else. I haven’t played this record since 2003 or 4 and despite hoping it might throw me into a world of remembering, I only recognised the first frantic bars and then it was all new again. Whether it’s the half light or the music or the wine I thought it about time to take a ride on this again, which is a little risky as I don’t have anything in particular I wanted to share, only to share myself which seems to be popular these days. I will be a sharer too.
I got married three weeks ago. A completely incredible event, bookended by days of seeing old friends and of course the honeymoon, which we took in Paris. My God, what a city. I hadn’t been since I was a boy and, much like the Miles Davis, remembered nothing. But my eyes were opened wide and it was a crying shame to leave. Really, lunch by the Seine watching yellow birch leaves circling each other in the waters with a new wife by your side, having spent a tranquil two hours and the grand and peeling Rodin museum is about all one can ask for. The whole trip was perfect, and should Paris live up to our honeymoon the next time we visit, I’ll be packing our trunks and upping sticks to the city of lights.
In three weeks I head to Vegas for Peter’s stag weekend which cannot be far from the complete opposite of Paris, and yet certainly a city of lights and I am so excited about getting an eyeful of tacky Americana. Three nights seems like it will be enough, if not too much by the end of it, but hell I’ll probably not make many trips back, if ever, so three nights it is. One of THE most exctiting parts of the whole circus is going to be flying into Phoenix to meet Chris and driving across the desert to Vegas the next day. I can’t imagine a better way to make an entrance to Vegas than from the desert.
Dinner is calling. I may come back, I probably won’t. It was good to talk.
We have all read and heard so many things in the few days since Jackson’s death. All of them have kind of missed the mark for me, until I read this comment left at the bottom of a piece in the Guardian by Charlie Brooker (which was pretty good too).
It has the right mix of humour, feeling and sincerity which I think Michael Jackson deserves. Enjoy the peace, MJ.
From DeanW:
I was watching Glastonbury on the TV and simultaneously on Twitter, demanding proof. Read the TMZ website. Didn’t seem credible, even though the BBC said it was. I screen grabbed the LA Times report he was in a coma, then 2 mins later an update saying he was dead. I made a couple of smart zombie comments, then remembered that he had kids and decided to wait for better jokes. Then I played some Joe Jackson, just to spread the Jackson vibe sideways.
Then I saw Jermain do the press conference which I found genuinely moving.
Then I read about the physical pain and the drugs, so I played some music, but not MJ, instead the Carpenters “Say Goodbye to Love” thinking that here was another beautiful sad person who didn’t eat enough and died of a heart attack, consumed by internal demons. Then I remembered “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” and thought MJ would probably enjoy that, so I played it twice.
My submission for the Bookmarks project, now in its 7th year. Last years is somewhere on this blog too. This one came from a conversation Ollie and I had about Damien Hirst and the current economic mess and via a bottle of aspirins. Oh, also a Michael Hurley song. It is titled One of the Devils Daughters. It is a digital print.
