Janis Joplin - can't spell sugar-coated.....

November 15^th – My, how things have changed. In the mid/late fifties when rock ‘n’ roll arrived (and was, as the song says, here to stay) one of the many things that staggered the ruling classes, and that included men in government and right on down to the cinema manager, was the level of audience participation which accompanied either the films or the live shows put on: and I mean staggered them. What they’d been used to ‘til then was a compliant and reasonably well-behaved clientele. Ushers/ettes were employed by the various venues (Gaumont, Odeon) to keep order with their intrusive torches but the worst they’d have to put up with would be the odd person standing up too much or over-enthusiastic snogging. Not so when Rock Around the Clock was first shown at my local; it must have seemed as though the four horsemen had arrived...only this time they were taking no shit. I think it would be fair to say they destroyed the place; seats pulled up, various missiles launched to and from the balcony, fights, dancing…and, I feel sure, the odd miracle of conception to round things off. To say the folk in authority had absolutely no idea how to combat this melee would be a vast understatement.

Things sort of mellowed a little in the late 60’s and through 70’s as it became decidedly uncool to show hyper-emotion due to music. What music was supposed to do was chill you out, send you trance-like into another realm, one to which the grown-ups hadn’t got a key. So it was that, at most of the gigs we played round then, the audience would remain seated and just sort of twitched a bit every now and then…’course that might have had something to with the volume we usually played at pinning them into their chairs but…let that pass. Then punk happened and throwing yourself (and anybody else who came within range) at the band as well as vomit, gob and bottles of piss became the required reaction to a musical backlash that rebelled without a central cause.

Throughout all three of these musical movements the bands’ just played on, happy to see the crowd enjoying both themselves and the music (although I have to say I didn’t go much on the gob and vomit). There were, however, one or two incidents, particularly in the late 60’s, that bucked the trend. Been here before so won’t labour it, just remember this was a time when yoof had a level of input into world events, when the time and cash-rich youngsters began stretching their political and social muscles and calling their leaders, law-makers and local government to account. Vietnam, conservation, race, feminism, all were under the spotlight and were ripe for change…and the only constant was change.

Janis Joplin is one of my top ten female vocalists; by heck but she could belt out a tune. Much of her early work was with Big Brother and the Holding Company and this coupling led to her seminal album, Cheap Thrills which included the sublime track, Piece of My Heart. Now I guess you could argue (and I’d not be one to disagree very hard) that Pearl was her bestest work; certainly showcased her vocal abilities to within an inch of her life, particularly Buried Alive in the Blues, but, as this was released posthumously, it sort of missed the boat a little. Her rapport with the crowd and her concern for their welfare makes her stand out from rock bands of the day who, in general, were all about the money; the money the pussy and the smack: the audience were just a means to get them to this end.

Ms. Joplin’s struggles with drug addiction are well documented and although she had several goes at getting clean, still it was the heroin that did for her in the end…(in 1969 she was reputed to be shooting $200 worth of it…per day)…the heroin and the booze, as it does with so, so many. It would be wrong to say she was a hard living woman, she lived life on her own terms, unafraid of authority, self-inflicted danger or the shadier side of the street, she dedicated sufficient funds in her will to hold a wake and pay for the booze.

Comes as little surprise then that, on this day in 1969, during a concert in Tampa, Florida when a policeman used a loud-hailer to try and control the audience who had left their seats and were milling around in friendly groups while the band played, Ms. Joplin shouted through her mic;

 Don’t fuck with those people! Hey, mister, what’re you so uptight about? Did you buy a $5 ticket?

The cop shouted back at her;

Tell your crowd to sit down.

Joplin replied;

I’m not tellin’ ‘em shit, you son of a bitch! You keep that up and I’ll kick your face in!

She was eventually led from the stage and arrested for using, vulgar and indecent language.

Now, you may not like the blues but, by jiminy-cricket, you gotta stand back in awe at her commitment. This was a lady who took no musical prisoners, who was prepared to lay it all on the line and become open to the moment, who saw through the sequinned veil of fame and recognised it for the rag it was and would have no truck with it…such a pity she couldn’t treat her addictions like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5If816MhoU

US - Aaron Copeland - UK - Vaughan Williams

November 14^th – What do you find is the most irksome thing in modern movies and TV? You know…the thing that really winds you up to the point where, if it weren’t for the entrance or licence fee you’d bloody-well walk out…but you don’t, probably because, if you’re anything like me, you’re a cheap-skate.

There’s probably a list spinning round you’re head: those people who spend more time looking at their passenger than out the windscreen when they’re driving along a crowded highway at 90mph; people who never turn room lights on when they come home in the dark…………and when there’s a triple-digit serial-killer in the neighbourhood; people who always find a parking slot right outside the place they want to go to……… that their car fits into perfectly………which they never lock……..and which is always there when they come back out; those kind of annoying things that make you roll your eyes and shout out;

Oh, FFS!

What is it that sums up quintessential England for you? For some, I believe, it’s the start of the domestic football season, although I have to admit I never thought, over the past ten or fifteen years that the football ever comes to an end but, let that pass…the start of the domestic football season, for others it’s the sound of lawnmowers on a sunny Sunday morning or of shattering glass as the bonny, wee bairns welt in the side window of that BMW that the owner foolishly left a briefcase on the back seat of; in some cases its the smell of autumn bonfires that people still insist on lighting even though they know the damage we’re doing to the planet…ooopppsss, political, sorry, slipped out…said the art mistress to the gardener. All those last are tangible things; what about music? If you had to name a form of music that reminded you most strongly of your heritage what would it be; and don’t you dare say, ABBA. Three things; it’s trite; it’s schmaltzy; it’s Swedish.

For me, I’d have to say its pretty-well anything written by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Pastoral Symphony, In The Fen Country or Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis are compositions that immediately spring to mind and mighty works they are too, but for me it has to be his concerti, Lark Ascending which contains all the ingredients that make me know my nationality. The smells, sights and sounds he conjures up are unmistakably Shropshire (for me) and I have always considered that county to be the heart of England, the space that, in their mind’s-eye, soldiers fought to preserve and poets eulogised over. I know, I know, Wordsworth waxed lyrical about the Lake District…but I like to think that, in the back of his head, he was as much influenced by the march counties; Dorothy Wordsworth too. BTW, if you have the time, the opportunity to concentrate and have a liking for choral music, do have a listen to Mr. Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music – for Sixteen Solo Voices and Orchestra; it is sublime.

If I was American my guess is that I’d choose anything by Aaron Copeland who was born on this day in 1900. Some of his work crosses easily into the category of Mr. Vaughan Williams’ territory as it’s as descriptive, as heartbreaking and as uplifting as anything Mr. Vaughan Williams wrote; it aint English but it is very American. His composition, Appalachian Spring is a breathtaking musical description of a vast and wild country and his works, Billy the Kid and Rodeo (both ballets) are a whimsical and exciting take on the American dream. But it was Mr. Copeland’s ventures into film that concerns me most here; for me, in this discipline, he’s my hero.

Full cirlcle. One of the things that wind me up most in movies is what I call musical overkill. Where every gesture, emotion, statement or turn of the head is staccato-ed to death by musical punctuation telling us how to emote, what to feel, as if we, the watcher, lack the intellect to create our own sensory soundtrack just by watching the actor. That sort of stunted understanding may be true in the US (the home of foreign film remakes ‘cos the average American can’t be arsed to read subtitles) but not in the UK. What is also anathema to me is excessively loud music that plays throughout the movie; music that accompanies every scene, ebbing and flowing with the action and drowning out any conversation that’s conducted in anything less than a bawl. For his musical contribution for the film, Of Mice and Men (wonderful, wonderful, wonderful novel and stage play) Mr. Copeland was nominated twice for an Oscar, best score and original score and he said, in typical modesty;

I was lucky. Here was an American theme, by a great American writer, demanding appropriate music.’

I beg to differ. Your compositional abilities and your American interpretive brilliance were tailor-made for this film; spot on. But where he stands head and shoulders above the present-day blockbuster, blaring musical accompaniment is his pioneering of…silence. When writing a score, Mr. Copland kept silent during intimate screen moments only beginning the music as a confirming motive toward or at the end of a scene. Fuckin’ ‘A’! My kinda guy. 

Ritchie Blackmore Look-Alike....

November 13^th – I’ve always thought there was something intrinsically creepy about people who do look-a-like sessions, of any sort, for a living, but my barometer of creepiness goes up when the look-alike spills over into the music scene.

Bands who do accurate covers of the music of once-famous bands, so-called tribute bands, are one thing, but bands who put on their chosen copy-cat-band’s costume, make-up and mannerisms in order to imitate once-famous individuals (particularly if that person is long dead) are in another category altogether. All of us, or most of us maybe (sorry, didn’t mean to make assumptions) most of us have musical regrets. Like, I’d really liked to have been around when Mozart was giving the classical world some stick but if I had then I would’ve missed Jimi Hendrix…and that just doesn’t bear thinking about.

What’s happened to a greater degree over the past ten or so years is that, like the instant replay we’ve come to expect in our various forms of visual/digital entertainment, we want to recall times and events that we missed first time round because…well because we weren’t born at the time. We want them re-created time after time after time and so we watch endless remakes of classic movies and go to geriatric, pension-tour rock shows where 70-year old rockers try to recreate their heyday, happy to fool the audience and themselves that they’re right back in the day and even happier to be pocketing the cheque at the end of it.

And this state of affairs isn’t helped by those who were around at the time harping on non-stop about how good those times were; reminds me of that lovely ‘T’ shirt slogan:

THE OLDER I GET THE BETTER I WAS.

Thing is, to the people who experienced that music first time round, in those times and at their age, of course they’re the best times of their musical life; of course they were. You were of an age when these sounds, these bands were new, cutting edge, dangerous, whatever. Just like the young people of today who consider they’re living through the best times of their musical life when, in many cases and just like our parents, all we can hear is a row…

Not like it was in my day’

we scoff…and, as far as music is concerned there’s a grain of truth in that bald statement.

The bands and solo artists of the 50’s/60’s/70’s formed the foundation to the music that’s played today. It’s the backbone in the skeleton of rock, no matter how much Punk tried to deny it, and from that foundation has fleshed out what we have now. Its part of rock’s DNA, as important and integral as the central nervous system attached to a skeleton and body formed by the political and social events of the time. Don’t know about you but, back in the 60’s (FM here he goes) back in the 60’s, I really thought I could change things, y’know? As in make a difference. The sad thing is it seems that today young people don’t believe that, and that’s because politicians have crowded them out of the decision-making process through secrecy, lies, subterfuge and levels of surveillance and control that I, for one, never thought I’d see outside of a totalitarian state; never. Nowadays young people feel powerless, welded to their mobile ’phones and consumed with dreams of a long-promised-Porsche-for-nothing whilst drowning in a waterfall of choice that’s just there to keep them befuddled, to keep their eye off’f what’s really going on in the country…in the world. So the great nostalgia-fest revisits those times and look-alike, sound-alike performers are everywhere, recreating the recreated sounds of the great bands and events of yesteryear for an audience whose consciousness is assuaged for the 60 minute trip down someone else’s memory lane and are left with a feeling of emptiness because, in honesty, it was much, much more than just about the music. The music was just a soundtrack to change…now it’s just a soundtrack.

Maybe one of the lessons we could all do with learning is just sometimes how to live in the present. How to, as far as our own lives are concerned, ditch the past, disregard the future and live for the moment. It’s harder than it sounds, certainly for any length of time, but it’s surprising the level of immediacy it adds to ones everyday.

Moments seem sharper, events more colourful, emotions more precious and I think that was one of the defining things. That back in the 60’s when it was all fresh, when anything seemed possible, when life seemed razor-sharp and when opinion, solution and outcome had the ability to turn through 90 degrees in an instant because, probably, it was happening to us for the first time and we felt part of that change. We really felt part of the solution (part of the problem too but working on it). When those things are recycled, endlessly, by copies of the real thing, they become just chewing-gum for the senses, the sincerity wrung out of them by poor imitations wailing into a nostalgic void.

So it came as some light relief to all this angst I’ve just scribbled about look-alikes and such nonsense when I read that, on this day in 1974, an imposter posing as Ritchie Blackmore (fabled guitarist of Deep Purple) crashed a Porsche he’d borrowed from fan he’d hoodwinked having already conned food and shelter from several other Deep Purple fans. Now, I don’t know about you but if I met Ritchie Blackmore and he was friendly enough to want to talk to me and then to take me out for a drink I’d figure, on the salary he was earning, he’d be buying, wouldn’t you? I’d also figure he’d be living it up in the penthouse suite at the Waldorf Astoria so, when he asked could he doss on my settee for the night and have a borrow of my steak and onion pie, never mind my Porsche, I’d get suspish… wouldn’t you?

They wanted a piece of history, I guess, these fans. A place they could revisit in their old age and say;

Yup, I was there. I was part of the story

Even if they did end up with a fucked-over Porsche and no pie.

Electric Ladyland - That Cover

November 12^th – When does art become pornography, in fact what constitutes pornography? If I were to show a b/w, sensitively lit photograph of a naked woman with erect nipples and one of a plain lit man with an erect penis, which of those two would be classed as pornography? My guess is the latter as, in our over-sexualised lives the frequency with which we see photographs of naked women has de-sensitised the form whereas the frequency of erect cocks is still sufficiently rare as to make it overtly sexual.

But where does the line lie if I see a photograph that I think is art but other people think is pornographic? Am I allowed to put it on public display, admire it, define and distribute it, or would it be classed as anti-social and written off as just the machinations of a D.O.M.? At this juncture my guess is you’ll be looking for some sort of definition as to the opening question… Sorry, not here. You should know by now; what is it? That’s right, more questions than answers here; I do it just to get folk thinking on things, mischievous little fucker that I am.

But, present chat in mind, there’s a couple of things that sparked this off for me. One is that I’ve just started writing a one-acter about the Page Three culture we’re living in and what that’s done to the women’s movement, and the research is proving to be very illuminating. The other is the launch of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland double album, released on this date in 1968, the one with Voodoo Chile on it, and the controversy surrounding the cover photo when it was released. I’ve patched a copy of it for you to see (no hate-mail, please, this is up for photo-discussion not personal derision) and there’s much to be gleaned from it.

There’s no distraction from the bodies on display and no sensationalist use of backdrop or male intrusion. All the ladies portrayed are portrayed in formal fashion, non-erotic, and a number of racial forms are depicted; white, black, Hispanic, American Indian amongst them. All are looking straight to camera with a benign expression that bears no hint of aggression, submission or sexuality and the only step outside the chiaroscuro format of the photograph are the three seeming album covers; two taken from the inside cover of the Electric Ladyland album and one of the front cover of Mr. Hendrix’s previous album, Axis Bold As Love. So, does my appreciation of the cover and my feeling that its art miss the pornographic point?

Given all that, I find the album cover very pleasing (indeed, when I bought the album this was the only cover it was offered in so, although I would’ve bought a new Hendrix release even if it’d been wrapped rancid bacon, still, the cover was a pleasing bonus). Let’s say though that the cover was not, as many people suggested at the outset, Mr. Hendrix’s choice. Track Records (the releasing label) had its own art department, which produced this cover depicting nineteen nude women lounging in front of a black background taken by photographer David Montgomery and, indeed, Mr. Hendrix expressed his displeasure and embarrassment with the cover. If you’ll allow me a little leeway here I’ll give you all a chance to shoot me down in flames with my proposition as to how that art department coincidentally allowed greater insight into the psyche of two connected but disconnected countries with their choice of cover.

The U.S.A. When the album was first released this cover was not available in the US (the country of Mr. Hendrix’s birth, this soon-to-be world famous son of a nation) and we have to deal with the first factor to be part of the conundrum; that he was black. Civil rights disturbances were rife in many parts of the country and Black Power was becoming a force to reckon with and here was a black man using the naked bodies of, amongst others, white women to market his type of, in their view, drug-addled, anti-social philosophies. The Vietnam War was going awry for the US, the numbers of returning coffins was growing larger by the day, Mr. Hendrix had already made his position clear on the matter and we were only 10 months away from Woodstock and his rendition of Star Spangled Banner. But more importantly than either of these things was the strength of the US feminist political movement at the time of the album’s release. Active since the early 60’s there was a real upsurge in the US concerning form and content during the late 60’s, and that must have formed some convulsions of corporate thinking when this Track Records Ad Dept front cover was first mooted…and there’s nothing a US corporation hates more than seeing a loss in profit due to an oversight concerning the punching-weight of the neo-cons and the liberal left.

The U.K. Why was the cover seen as OK in England? Well, my contention is that we were still very much a man’s culture in the mid/late 60’s. We had our bands of course, Beatles, Stones, etc, but the fantasy they peddled saw women as passive objects of entertainment. That’s not to say the US didn’t have similar misogynistic tendencies in their rock world but we were playing catch-up with the US in the sense of feminism and the, then, present-day position of women in society. I’d reckon we were about five years behind the US, indeed the first women’s liberation conference didn’t take place until 1970 and organisations like Spare Rib and Off Our Backs didn’t become active until around then either. Of course they didn’t just spring up from nowhere, there had to be a lead-in to their eventual surfacing over here, but it says something about the strength of the male dominated culture of the time that, IMHO, the women’s liberation movement didn’t really become a real until the 80’s. Now, it could be you’ll consider all the foregoing to be bollocks, just the misguided rambling of ‘a bloke’. If that’s your take then, fine.

I accept your opinion on that. 
It was just that, by revisiting the English version of the Electric Ladyland cover, I wanted to direct the spotlight of self understanding for myself onto something you perspicacious lot already knew; namely my belief that, when it comes to Page Three, far from becoming the sharp beam of enlightenment at the end of decades of struggle and sacrifice by countless women, the Page Three culture isn’t helping to breathe life into art or have any effect on the suffocation of pornography…

Mose Alison - Creator to the rock industry

November 11^th – I’m a pretty simple individual over most things, only really get worked up over stupidity and am content to be a back-stager over things that a lot of folk think I should be more forward about…sorry to all those who have to cater for my insouciance; it’s not deliberate and you know I love you all… However…

Music has been a constant thread in the tapestry of my life. It’s what forms some of my opinions, fires my imagination and is a prime mover in my weeping or soaring emotionally in equal measure. I class some modern lyrics as modern poetry and they give me plenty of scope for research in order to understand the meaning carefully folded between the lines. Not that I’m an anorak or anything like that, I just enjoy the process of finding out how a certain song came about or how the lyrics link in with the time and space they were written. I suppose I ought to say at this juncture that if you want to stop reading now and bugger of to put some lard on the cat’s boil then please, feel free. I don’t expect anyone else to find these sorts of things even remotely interesting, it was just that I noticed today was the birthday of Mose Allison (1927) and that got me thinking…

When I was in bands full time we (the band members) were fully focussed on what other bands were doing, all the time trying to keep one step ahead. One of the staples of every band, from those at the very top of the heap (Cream, Hendrix, The Who) to those face down in the gutter (us for one) was to do a selection of cover songs in one’s repertoire and to re-jig at least one blues standard so as to stamp the band’s roots credentials on an audience that in the main just wanted to dance…you know;

Never mind this blues-authenticity shit, play summat I can bop to

kinda thing. Not that anyone could deny the blues credentials of either Tendency Jones or The Image; we all took ourselves VERY seriously… well, most of the time. I have to say that the gig we did at Wooten Wawen Social Club wasn’t exactly a high point in our career.

We’d been booked in, I now think by mistake as the audience’s combined age would have taken us back to the dinosaur age. Thing is we were full of ourselves then and figured the fact that 80% of the audience wore hearing aids would mean that the louder we played the better they could hear us…y’know? I think the stage was the size of a table-tennis top, certainly well filled by my drum kit which consisted at that time of nine shells and seven cymbals…oh, and a hi-hat…to the point where other band members had to stand on the dance floor level, but then, they were only three guitarists an organist and a vocalist so, what do they matter? By the time we were a third the way through the first number (a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Stone Free, I believe) there was an undignified scrabble to gather up various sets of ejected dentures and felled octogenarians with as much dignity as they could muster. Not surprising then that the management strode over to the stage at the striking of the last, blasting chord in order to inform us, in no uncertain terms, that we really would have to turn the volume down unless we wanted to face manslaughter charges.

We duly did so (we were nothing but compliant, especially where the possibility of losing a fee was concerned) only to see that little had changed down front. At the culmination of song two we’d managed to rearrange the chairs and tables by sheer brute force of our lessened volume and several small children (oh, yes, it was THAT sort of Club) had tried to take shelter under the kitchen counter; and they would’ve succeeded were not for the gang of cowering pensioners already filling the space to bursting point. This time the management came across with the cavalry and laid the law down; we either turned down to a volume acceptable to their clientele or they (the management) would pull the plug (literally) on the gig and, worse still, we wouldn’t get paid.

I think there was some discussion surrounding the fact they (the management) had booked a rock band so what th’ fuck did they expect to turn up; Englebert Humperdink’? It was to no avail. So, in order not to antagonise the management any further (and cut off my fag/beer supply for the forthcoming week) we suggested that we begin to play the next song (one of our own manufacture) with one of their number by the stage and another in the audience and then, as per their direction, we could gradually turn down the volume to an acceptable level… Suffice to say I ended up uncoupling my two kik-drum peddles and playing the rest of the kit with two pencils, vox was all acoustic and all guitars were at level 0.5 on the amps…the Hammond organ we turned off completely. No such worries for Mr. Allison.

This is a guy who wrote, toured and performed for 65 years. His influence has spread the length and breadth of 60’s/80’s rock music (Hendrix, Stones, Waits, Mayall, Cale, Yardbirds, Fame, Blue Cheer, Cactus) and his name is mentioned alongside performers of real stature in the blues and jazz world (Getz, Mulligan, Cohn, Sims) and had his songs covered by The Clash, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and Leon Russell to name a very few. He was made a Jazz Master in 2013 and has a Blues Marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail; in a nutshell, this was a guy who could hack it. His original 1959 composition of Young Man Blues was played on acoustic piano with acoustic bass and jazz drums with brushes. They would’ve loved him at Wooton Wawen Social Club…loved him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpTSVy3yzts&list=RDpCpekvOkwNM

Not so had The Who done their cover of that same song. One of my all-time top-twenty numbers, their rendition of it on the Live at Leeds album gives a real insight into a song’s development from the original blues artist to when it’s let out into the field of rock. Cream did it to great effect with Spoonful and Crossroads but, IMHO, The Who’s version of Young Man Blues takes the blue ribbon; it would also be fair to say that Mr. Townshend’s performance removes the mask of we’re serious bluesmen on stage here…listen to these roots and shows just what rock music should do to you when played with conviction, no matter what its pedigree and authenticity…and it should also be played VERY LOUD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeXJKlogiM4

Miriam Makeba V Margaret Thatcher...

November 10^th – Do you ever get the feeling you’re turning into one or other of your parents? I can well remember listening to my dad and thinking;

Yeah, yeah, back in the day…whatever…

And now? Now I’m aware that he wasn’t talking about things being better in his youth just that they suited him and his sensibilities at that time in his life, but more than that, that wrapped up in all this back in the day stuff are some givens and they’re to do with worth and value.

Miriam Makeba, who died this day in 2008, has been a person worth noting for me, even though I’m not a huge fan of her genre of music. Her life story reads like a car-crash (you can read all about it elsewhere and in better prose than mine so a quick resume will suffice).

Living through the dark days of oppression and apartheid, Ms. Makeba’s family spent years trying to scrape a living in spite of all the obstacles Mr. Whitey threw into their path. Her Xhosa Father (Mandela, Mbeki, Tutu) was treated poorly even by apartheid standards and died when Ms. Makeba was 6, and when she was only 8 days old her mother was sentenced to six months in prison just for trying to earn a crust…so Ms. Makeba was sent to prison with her. An early marriage and early motherhood for Ms. Makeba (18) was swiftly followed by the early onset of breast cancer and the early fucking off of her hubby (let’s just heap a little more difficulty on those girlish shoulders shall we). With a voice of note she was used as a singer for some jazz bands which led to her early involvement in the anti-apartheid movement and her outside of Africa profile was increased when she appeared in a film, Come Back Africa which carried a dangerous, anti-establishment message that went down like a cup of cold sick with the intellectually stunted Boers who held power in the region. Her mother died when Ms. Makeba was in the USA and, on trying to return to her mother’s funeral, was told her passport had been revoked (I’ve said this before to you guys, these fuckers, these so-called world leaders? They may be intellectual pygmies but they have a gargantuan grudge-holder,  you get the wrong side of them, cause them to look foolish and you’ll find out very swiftly that they bear this grudge…for a long, long time; Putin, Hollande, Jinping, Nazarbayev, Cameron, Obama…the whole fuzzy gang: make a note of it). Ms. Makeba’s met presidents, appeared before the U.N. against the apartheid regime and had her SA citizenship revoked (see…that grudge thing again) but shot them fuckers up the arse ’cos she was granted honorary citizenship in ten countries but not her own; didn’t quite make up for being denied a homeland; Ms. Makeba put it very eloquently;

I always wanted to leave home. I never knew they were going to stop me from coming back. Maybe, if I knew, I never would have left. It is kind of painful to be away from everything that you’ve ever known. Nobody will know the pain of exile until you are in exile. No matter where you go, there are times when people show you kindness and love, and there are times when they make you know that you are with them but not of them. That’s when it hurts.

She was very eloquent.

She’s had hits worldwide, voted 38^th in the top 100 African performers and recorded songs and albums that have influenced nations. Her only daughter died in 1985 (no mother should have to bury their children, should they?) and joined Paul Simon in the Graceland sessions and subsequent tours thereby securing the place of African music in the wider pantheon of the west’s pop/rock culture and wrote her autobiography, Makeba; My Story which was  published in multiple languages and sold worldwide. Her involvement in the Nelson Mandela saga is well documented and her appearance in the 70^th birthday celebrations in ‘88’ heaped yet more pressure on the SA government and, two years later Mr. Mandela was indeed released from prison…yup that’s the same Nelson Mandela that Margaret Thatcher called;

That grubby little terrorist.

What an inspiration that woman was.

Ms. Makeba has received limited recognition in the general consciousness of the west and, to this day, is still seen as persona non grata by the hardliners of the apartheid movements that are still active worldwide.

She suffered from arthritis for years and died of a heart attack whilst still touring, taking part in a concert organised to support the writer, Roberto Saviano who was highlighting for taking a stand against the Camorra, another word for a mafia organisation, who were wreaking havoc in his local region of Campania. Some mistakes along the way but…what a lady. She moved the women’s cause particularly that of African women forward by years.

Miley Cyrus has simulated being fucked doggie-style on stage and sparked a joint on this day in 2013 during a live performance at the MTV awards ceremony in Amsterdam. When she was asked for her reasoning about this act she said:

I just did it mostly because I knew the fans in Amsterdam would love it and they started going crazy when I did it. It was just, ‘Oh, I have this in my bag, that will be real funny’. People think I overthink things…I don’t.

No, Ms. Cyrus, no one would ever accuse you of that.

Ms. Cyrus has put the women’s movement back years.

Neil Young rescue squad...

November 9^th – After yesterday’s little query, think of today’s as an extreme form of Desert Island Discs; like extreme ironing but to music.

OK, let’s rephrase a little, set the scene so to say.

The kids, should you have had any, are all grown and happily living with their partners (if they have one, happily on their own if not) in comfortable homes dotted around the country and are all in secure, well-paid employment (fairy-tale time, methinks, but we need to get the nuts and bolts out the way before seriously considering the conundrum, OK?) You’re on your own at home (a home that is paid for and fully insured) as your partner has gone out for a drink with some friends (an outing you thoroughly approve of as you know and trust all the people involved and you completely trust your partner…) and you’ve settled down with a lid of tea and a bun to watch an episode of Frozen Planet, lulled into full relaxation by the dulcet tones of Mr. Attenborough. Of a sudden you smell something… something like burning…! You spring up from the armchair and open the door to see the whole of the kitchen enveloped in flames. You foolishly left that pan on the stove; the one you’ve just conjured up a single serving of lamb tagine with pan fried aubergine in, the oil’s caught fire and blessed you with a vision of Hades from the hall. Everyone near and dear to you is safe, all pets are OK and, I repeat, everything is covered by insurance. You’re granted just enough time to go to one room and retrieve an item, two at most, that is precious to you, so, where and what?

OK. Your starter.

I asked that question here at home and it’s amazing how, when you press people, it concentrates the mind. What you have to do is insist that the rules are followed. It really is just one (1) room and that room has to be exactly as it is when you ask the question. You can’t have folk saying; Well, I’ll just rearrange everything pre-inferno so’s all that’s precious to me is in one place

Not allowed; everything as is at question time, thank you, and absolutely no more than two (2) objects/things. Any more than 1 room and 2 things you’re toast; OK? If it’s done seriously the answers can be very revealing; the answers from my home in sunny Cornwall certainly were.

After some discussion as to why only one room as the things most precious were in two rooms and my insistence that rules is rules (as you can tell, I have a lot of time on my hands) my lovely lady plumped for our photo’s. The fact that some of them were in a different room altogether to our main collection (and these were very precious too) made for some soul-searching as to which batch to go for but, eventually, the major collection, voted for purely on number, was the clincher. For her it’s all about family and history and memory and love…that’s what formed the basis of the choice.

My decision was relatively easy. I chose my lap-top with the attached 50-gig standalone. On it are all my ideas and writing development, future novels, plays and developed first drafts… So, as you can see, all about ME. Shallow as a babbling brook…sorry…

Imagine, then if you will, the dilemma faced by Neil Young when, on this day in 2010, a raging inferno engulfed a warehouse where he stored his memorabilia, vintage cars, guitars, recording notes, song ideas and rough recorded material awaiting release… With that much stuff on the verge of incineration, my guess is that one may as well give up all thoughts of a rescue mission, chuck some spuds on it and invite your friends round for a Barbie.