Sunday, March 03, 2024

From The Guardian Saturday 2 March 2024: From Dylan to Ishiguro: can song lyrics ever be literature?

 From the Guardian Saturday 2 March 2024

Click here to read this article at the Guardian website

A new book of lyrics by Kazuo Ishiguro joins collections by Kate Bush and Jarvis Cocker. But can songwriting ever work on the page?

Dorian Lynskey

Sat 2 Mar 2024

Jarvis Cocker performing with Pulp at the Castlefield Bowl in Manchester. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

Long before he wrote Booker-winning novels and Oscar-nominated screenplays, the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro wrote bad songs. In his own words, these unheard lyrics were “mostly ghastly” but they enabled him to find his voice. He worked through the gauche and the pretentious before alighting on the simpler first-person style that would define his fiction: “understated, almost mundane lyrics, with emotions placed between the lines, only occasionally pushing to the surface”.

In 2002, Ishiguro chose a track by the American jazz singer Stacey Kent on Desert Island Discs and a friendship developed. Kent’s husband and collaborator Jim Tomlinson suggested to Ishiguro that he try writing her some lyrics – his first in 30 years. These were much better. Now, Faber has collected 16 of them (five as yet unrecorded) in The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain: Lyrics for Stacey Kent, with elegant illustrations by Bianca Bagnarelli.

Ishiguro’s lane-changing is not unique. There are songwriters who write novels (Nick Cave, John Darnielle), novelists who have written lyrics for musicians (Michael Chabon, Polly Samson), songwriters who publish poetry (PJ Harvey), and poets who release albums (Kae Tempest). But whether lyrics are themselves a form of literature is still an open question. While they can certainly be literary, a lyric is just one channel for conveying meaning in a song. The vocal delivery, melody, rhythm, arrangement and production are all used to enhance, or sometimes subvert, what the words are saying.

Take the two available versions of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA. In the 1982 acoustic demo, the Vietnam veteran’s complaint is a bitter howl of rage. In the 1984 studio version, it sounds perversely anthemic, with the result that some patriotic listeners missed the message altogether. Or consider Nick Cave’s 1988 song The Mercy Seat, a more effective bit of storytelling than either of his novels. To Cave, the indignant death row convict was clearly guilty but Johnny Cash later covered it on the assumption that he was in fact innocent. Same words, different impact.

Performance, then, is one obvious distinction between lyrics and literature. The sensory experience of hip-hop narratives such as Ghostface Killah’s gangland nail-biter Maxine or Eminem’s parasocial tragedy Stan is so fundamental that they call to mind not literature but cinema. Yet there is no argument about considering plays as literature to be read, even though they are designed to be brought to life with actors and stagecraft.


"Lines that seem crass, pretentious or entirely incomprehensible written down can thrill a stadium."

Perhaps the real difference is that a song lyric has neither the narrative responsibilities of drama or prose, nor poetry’s duty to precision. Lines that seem crass, pretentious or entirely incomprehensible written down can thrill a stadium. Even songs with more literary flair can comfortably withhold meaning, merely gesturing at a larger story that the writer may or may not have thought through. After Bobbie Gentry’s tantalisingly enigmatic 1967 hit Ode to Billie Joe sparked a frenzy of speculation about what Billie Joe McAllister threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, Gentry admitted that she did not know herself. Ishiguro argues that this “unresolved, incomplete quality” is what makes a song haunt the mind.

As well as being Ishiguro’s publisher, Faber has a track record of publishing handsome little volumes of lyrics by Kate Bush, Jarvis Cocker, Lou Reed, and Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. Traditionally confined to record sleeves, songbooks, websites and old issues of Smash Hits, lyrics acquire a patina of prestige between hard covers. Bush wrote that all the lyrics had “been reviewed as works of verse without their music”.

Still, imagine reading one of Faber’s collections without ever having heard the songs. You would not be able to conjure Cocker’s sly, fruity delivery of the words, “I said, well, I’ll see what I can do” in Pulp’s Common People, nor the leaping desperation with which Bush sings, “Heathcliff, it’s me, it’s Cathy, I’ve come home” on Wuthering Heights. On the page, without that context, such lines would hardly stop the reader in their tracks. Read Tennant’s lyrics to West End Girls and you can see how he was emulating the collage of urban voices in TS Eliot’s The Waste Land but not how he and Chris Lowe refracted it through a homage to New York hip-hop.

The strongest case for lyrics as literature was made by the Nobel committee when it awarded the 2016 prize for literature to Bob Dylan – the first songwriter to receive that honour. But the committee skated over the reasoning for the decision and its implications, saying only that the award was for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. True enough, but does that make it literature or just very good songwriting?

Dylan himself seemed fantastically uncomfortable with the whole affair. When he was asked in 1965 whether he saw himself as a poet, he famously responded, “Oh I think of myself more as a song and dance man.” Very few songwriters explicitly aspire to the status of literature, because they know that songwriting can be fast and instinctive and even gobbledegook can delight as long as it sounds good. It is hard to square the meticulous exegesis of some Dylan lyrics with the knowledge that he did not sweat over every syllable. As Neil Tennant writes in One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, “Every lyric-writer also has a guilty secret: the sound of the words is sometimes more important than the sense of them.”

Leonard Cohen, who began his career as a poet and novelist before deciding that music was a better way to make a living – a kind of Ishiguro in reverse – is one notable exception. His lyrics have a rare solidity, meticulously crafted to stand alone. But even a lyric as perfect as Hallelujah, which took him five years to finish, tells you that it wants to be sung: “It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth / The minor fall, the major lift.” And that immense voice, pitted and weathered like a monument, tells you that these words have been not just written but lived.



‘A a song lyric works quite differently from a poem’ … Kazuo Ishiguro. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

‘A a song lyric works quite differently from a poem’ … Kazuo Ishiguro. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Pressed to clarify the logic behind Dylan’s literature prize, the Nobel’s permanent secretary Sara Danius pointed out that Homer and Sappho wrote poetic texts to be performed aloud with music but they can now be read with pleasure, so why not Dylan? But of course, we don’t have countless hours of recordings of Homer and Sappho to tell us how they wanted those words to sound. While songs can be covered, rearranged and even melodically transformed, the original recordings still have an authorial weight that is hard to shake, especially for fans who are in the market for books of lyrics.

The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain is a fascinating test case. Although Stacey Kent is a Grammy-nominated artist with 2m albums sold, her work is not so famous that her phrasing will be stamped into the brain of every curious Ishiguro fan. These lyrics can still be read as extremely short stories. He took the image of the tram ride in Breakfast on the Morning Tram from 1995’s The Unconsoled, the novel of his that most resembles music because it prioritises mood over meaning – or rather, the mood is the meaning. It is no coincidence that the protagonist who wanders through a dream-like central European city, is a pianist. When Ishiguro writes that songs allow for “narrative vacuum and gaps; an oblique approach to the releasing of information”, he could also be describing his fiction.



These lyrics also dwell on travel and the slipperiness of human connection but they contain more hope and romance than Ishiguro’s novels. They occupy the timeless realm of jazz standards: trains and rain, old movies and exotic locales, myriad variations on the theme of love. The journey in Bullet Train becomes a metaphor for the way time slips away: “It feels like we’re not moving / Though I know we must be moving … Way too fast.” The second verse of Craigie Burn, with its deft sketch of a life derailed, performs the classic songwriting trick of leaving the listener/reader to imagine the full story.


Does that make it literature? Tellingly, the introduction to almost every book of lyrics contains a semi-apology. It is a “strange beast”, admits the novelist David Mitchell in his introduction to Kate Bush’s How to Be Invisible. The page is “not the natural habit of a song lyric”, writes Neil Tennant. For Jarvis Cocker, “seeing a lyric in print is like watching the TV with the sound turned down: you’re only getting half the story.”


Ishiguro likewise maintains, “it remains my belief that a song lyric is not, and works quite differently from, a poem,” encouraging readers to listen to Kent’s recordings. That is, after all, what these words are for.




 To buy The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain: Lyrics for Stacey Kent by Kazuo Ishiguro go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Marina Ambrovic at the Royal Academy

 

Marina Abramovic Rhythm 0 Naples Italy1974

On a Saturday morning - just before Christmas - she came up in conversation around the breakfast table. A friend was staying with us. She's an artist and was going back home - to Toulouse France - the following  afternoon. She mentioned she wanted to see an exhibition in London of the conceptual artist Marina Abramovic. 
I'd heard the name for the first time on the Friday before. She was on Desert Island Discs on Radio 4. So when Pam - our friend - mentioned her name, my ears pricked up. When we realised there was a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Royal Academy we knew that we just had to go.
We also realised that we had a gap of 6 hours the following day where we could get to the exhibition.

It was the first time I had gone to see an exhibition by a conceptual artist. I didn't really know what conceptual art actually was.

It was also the first time I'd come across nudity at an art exhibition. Where we were expected to engage with it. That was quite uncomfortable. I've come across nudity in the theatre in recent years and have found that straightforward and acceptable. But being invited - several times - to squeeze myself, in a wheelchair - between 2 naked bodies, and forced to be in physical contact with them - no matter how brief and fleeting - was a thing I really didn't want to interact with. it's probably an English thing. Hopeless! But there it is.


Abromovic's work “Imponderabilia” - first performed in 1977 - was recreated at the Royal Academy. Credit David Parry/Royal Academy of Arts

I didn't really know how to approach the exhibition. This is conceptual art, where the physical components of the exhibits are not as important as the ideas that informed them. For example, the first gallery was filled with more than 100 screens on opposite walls. On one side are video screens of members of the public staring intently out. And on the wall opposite are screens of Abromovic also starring - seemingly - intently out at the screens on the wall opposite. It was a restaging of probably Abromovic's most famous work, The Artist is Present, where 2 chairs are placed facing each other and visitors are invited to sit opposite the artist for as long as they like, staring at Abromovic, while Abromovic stares back at them.
The Artist is Present Abromovic

I really was perplexed. In every other art exhibition I've ever been to, the artwork  is the central object. But this was different. Was I to join in and stare at each screen individually? Was I to stare at one screen and then find the corresponding screen on the wall opposite. Was this gallery filled with over 100 pieces of art. Or was this a gallery where I hold a collective sense of all the screens. It was unnerving.

And then confronted with Imponderabilia, I wondered whether all the 100's of visitors that visit the exhibition were expected to squeeze between the narrow doorframe of flesh made up of 2 naked bodies. I decided that I wasn't going to do that.
Apparently there was a another hidden door frame where one can pass through into the next gallery without having to confront naked flesh.

As we moved through the exhibition I began to feel like I just wanted to leave. I felt removed and quite emotionally detached from the whole exhibition. There were exhibits of Ambrovic combing her hair, ones of her and her lover slapping each other on the face, another one of them fully naked, holding hands and walking away from each other.

We came across another door frame in a later gallery that consisted of very bright lights shone through selenite crystals.


It was quite painful and uncomfortably hot walking through this threshold. There was a sense of passing through one state of being into another state of being. It felt like something spiritual was taking place.

There was a strong sense of discomfort throughout the whole collection. I never felt at ease or at peace throughout any of it. Especially when we are confronted by mortality. One exhibit that expressed this is a photograph or was it a video, of Abromovic lying down naked with a skeleton placed on top of her. This image is placed at floor level. On top of this image, a naked performance artist lies down and a skeleton place on top of her.  At various times in the day artist and skeleton process out of the gallery and process back again later.

For me perhaps the most disturbing image is the exhibit that refers back to Abromovic's 1974 work, Rhythm -Zero. It's the photograph that begins this post. I don't know what you think, but I've been watching it every day I've been trying to write this piece. There's shock and contempt - at those who have abused her - and also defiance against her audience. Hearing about Rhythm - zero completely caught my attention.
And looking at it again now, I think of Jesus giving himself over to the Jewish authorities to eventually be killed. It is a kind of sacrifice.


Click here for a link to the RA listing of the exhibition.

Photograph by Jonathan Muzikar The Artist is Present Marina Abromovic at the MoMA 

Click here for a link to Marina Abromovic's Desert Island Discs episode

Monday, December 18, 2023

Christy Moore: Fairytale of New York

 If you're going to cover a song, I realised years ago, you have to own the song for yourself. You have to make it your own. And the way you do that is to find a way of singing the song in a way the original artist hasn't even thought about. Find a unique way of entering the song. That's exactly what Christy Moore does with this song.

So as part of my tribute here and elsewhere to Shane McGowan, here's Christy Moore singing Fairytale of New York.

Christy Moore - Fairytale of New York


The Story Of The Pogues & Kirsty McColl Fairytale of New York The full Story

 

Kirsty MacColl, Shane MacGowan Top of the Pops January 1992

There's a great documentary about the making of Fairytale of New York but I haven't been able to post the complete documentary. However here's a link to take you to it.


Click here for the link to the full documentary, The Story Of The Pogues & Kirsty McColl Fairytale of New York The full Story.

I hope you enjoy it.


Fairytale of New York - with Shane MacGowan & Kirsty MacColl

Probably the best popular Christmas song I've ever heard. It's an absolute delight to listen to and to watch. And now with Shane Mac Gowan's death and Kirsty MacColl - 18 December 2000 - long gone. Playing the song this year has a special resonance. I hope you enjoy it.




Diana Ross - Amazing Grace

Here's Diana Ross performing Amazing Grace in 1992 at a Viennese Christmas concert.
It's absolutely stunning.





 

Friday, December 08, 2023

Legend: Episode 6: Both Sides Now

 


Click here to listen to episode 6, Both Sides Now, the last episode of the Radio 4 documentary, Legend, The Life of Joni Mitchell.

Joni Mitchell London 1970

Benjamin Zephaniah Talking Turkeys

 Benjamin Zephaniah performing at the Hay Festival in 2007 with his poem Talking Turkeys

Benjamin Zephaniah has died - Thursday 7th December 2023

We watched him perform at the Hay Festival in 2018. We managed to buy a couple of the last tickets for the gig.  We were right up in the front. When he started with the band, the place erupted. People who were politely sitting in rows behind us, suddenly got up off their seats and rushed to the stage.

It was a great gig!

 from Bloodaxe Books

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958-2023) was a writer and performer of extraordinary range: an oral poet, novelist, playwright, children’s writer, reggae artist, actor, television personality and political activist. Born in Birmingham, he grew up in Handsworth, where he was sent to an approved school for being uncontrollable, rebellious and ‘a born failure’, ending up in jail for burglary and affray.

After prison he turned from crime to music and poetry. In 1989 he was nominated for Oxford Professor of Poetry, and has since received honorary doctorates from several English universities, but famously refused to accept a nomination for an OBE in 2003. He was voted Britain's third favourite poet of all time (after T.S. Eliot and John Donne) in a BBC poll in 2009. In 2011 he was poet-in-residence at Keats House in 2011, and then made a radical career change by taking up his first ever academic position as a chair in Creative Writing at Brunel University in West London.

He appeared in a number of television programmes, including Peaky Blinders, Eastenders, The Bill, Live and Kicking, Blue Peter and Wise Up, and played Gower in a BBC Radio 3 production of Shakespeare’s Pericles in 2005.

Best known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults – and his poetry with attitude for children – he had his own rap/reggae band. He produced numerous recordings, including Dub Ranting (1982), Rasta (1983), Us and Dem (1990), Back to Roots (1995), Belly of de Beast (1996) and Naked (2004). He was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley, in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela, which Mandela heard while in prison on Robben Island. Their later meetings led to Zephaniah working with children in South African townships and hosting the President’s Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996.

His first book of poems, Pen Rhythm, was produced in 1980 by a small East London publishing cooperative, Page One Books. His second collection, The Dread Affair, was published by Hutchinson’s short-lived Arena imprint in 1985. He published three collections with Bloodaxe, City Psalms (1992), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black, Too Strong (2001), the latter including poems written while working with Michael Mansfield QC and other Tooks barristers on the Stephen Lawrence case. His DVD-book To Do Wid Me: Benjamin Zephaniah live and direct (filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce) followed from Bloodaxe in 2013, including poems drawn from all his collections.

His other titles include his poetry books for children, Talking Turkeys (1994), Funky Chickens (1996) and Wicked World (2000), all from Puffin/Penguin; his novels for teenagers, Face (1999), Refugee Boy (2001), Gangsta Rap (2004) and Teacher’s Dead (2007), all from Bloomsbury; The Bloomsbury Book of Love Poems (1999); Schools Out: Poems Not for School (1997) and The Little Book of Vegan Poems (2001) from AK Press; and We Are Britain (Frances Lincoln, 2003). He published his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes and Benjamin Zephaniah, with Simon & Schuster in 2018.

Click here for an obituary from The Guardian

Monday, December 04, 2023

Dog Eat Dog Episode 5 from Legend The Joni Mitchell Story

 

Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen

Click here to listen to Dog Eats Dog. It's the fifth episode of the Radio 4 documentary, Legend, The Life of Joni Mitchell.

River by Joni Mitchell supported by Herbie Hancock

Legend: Episode 4 Refuge of the Roads


Click here to listen to Refuge of the Roads, the fourth episode of the Radio 4 Legend, The Life of Joni Mitchell. 


Saturday, November 25, 2023

autumn leaves


autumn rain
disturbs the trees
leaves quivering 

 

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Part 3 Legend The Joni Mitchell Story Blue

 

Click here for the third instalment of this extraordinary documentary about Joni Mitchell as she turns 80. This episode is called Blue.




Monday, November 20, 2023

Part 2 Legend The Joni Mitchell Story The Lady of the Canyon

 

Photo by Joel Bernstein www.joelbernstein.com
Click here for a link to part 2 of The Joni Mitchell Story, The Lady of the Canyon.

Song for Sharon London 1983

Thursday, November 02, 2023

Legend: The Joni Mitchell Story

 On 7th November 1943 Joni Mitchell was born. This year on the 7th November she'll be 80 years old. To celebrate her birthday I'm going to post a link to each of the 6 episodes of a documentary about her life.
My plan is to post a photo, post a link to the documentary and post videos of performances given by her over the years that i've really enjoyed.
I hope you enjoy them too. 



Click here for  a link to the first of 6 documentaries on the life of Joni Mitchell. BBC Radio 4's programme Legend: The Joni Mitchell Story.


Here's Joni Mitchell with support from Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn at Gordon Lightfoot's home in 1975 singing Coyote


Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Australia Pub Choir singing Africa by Toto

I came upon this video this morning and thought it was great. It was the sheer joy and exuberance of singers, band members, soloists and conductor that made me think of you. So I thought I'd share it.


Australia Pub Choir Africa by Toto




Thursday, October 19, 2023

Eclipse from James Webb Space Telescope

 I thought you'd like this photograph. I stumbled on it today going through my fb feed. Apparently it's the most detailed photograph of a solar eclipse ever taken.

A recent total Solar Eclipse from the James Web Space Telescope

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Some Favourite Music Videos

While recovering from my second bout of Covid and still coming to terms with living the rest of my life from a wheelchair, I thought I'd put together some favourite music videos. 
My original intention is to put up a list of say at least 8 specifically made music videos. However, there are videos on YouTube that have been edited from much longer performances that I love watching, and will include these as well I expect.
I'm not gonna put these in any order, although I do think I know already which video I think is my number one all time favourite music video.

I suppose I ought to note down what I think makes a good music video. However I don't want to make a big fuss about this. I wanna be intuitive and even a little impulsive. But I also don't want to lead you down Cull du Sacs. I don't want to waste your time.
So I'm choosing good songs. Though not necessarily my most favourite songs.  

I'm going to be posting videos over the next few days or perhaps a couple of weeks.

Anyway, here's a first video.
I've only watched it once. And that's today, the day I first posted this post. Perhaps it was watching this that inspired me to post this challenge.



Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

The sheer power and energy of this video is completely overwhelming.  I was shocked by its chaos and implied violence.
It begins quite conventionally. The band. A stage. A seated audience. Cheer leaders.
But then completely explodes.

When I came out of hospital last year I watched something on YouTube I really never expected to watch. And that was a recording on Joni Mitchell playing at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival. The performance took place on the 24th July.

I came out of hospital in October and started catching up with stuff I'd missed. 

I saw the  Newport Festival videos soon after but didn't realise there significance.

And then the penny dropped.

Joni Mitchell, Brandi Carlile, musicians and friends at the
Newport Folk Festival July 24 2022

 I really never expected to find a current or recent recording of Joni Mitchell singing. So I was blown away when I stumbled on these videos of Joni performing. The first couple of times it came up on my YouTube feeds I didn't believe what I was watching. I dismissed the posts before even watching them. Till eventually it dawned on me what I was being invited to watch.

Now I came across this third video years ago, while I was working at Richmond upon Thames College. I'd known the song but it really wasn't a special song for me. It still isn't actually. It maybe the least interesting song for me in this challenge. But the video absolutely makes this a contender for this challenge.


REM - Everybody Hurts - Official Video

What struck me about this video is how it connects to one of my all time favourite films, Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders.
In that film we hear the unspoken thoughts of various anonymous characters as they pass through their uneventful day. Their thoughts are not necessarily linked to what is actually happening to them. However the thoughts do link directly to the broader challenges they are facing in their lives. These thoughts are often about loss and grief and are very similar to the various characters we find in this music video.

Here's the fourth music video. In fact I'm gonna post 2 videos of this song. The official video and a live performance of the song.

I love this song. It would definitely feature in any Top 10 songs I'd do of David Bowie songs. This song has its hooks deep inside me, from the first time I heard it back in 1980 when it was first released. 
I have a memory of sitting in a pub in Burnt Oak - where I went to college - with a few friends from college and at least one teacher. We were all sitting round a table having lunch and a pint or 2, when this song came over the speakers. I still have a vivid memory of that afternoon and wrote a poem at the time about that lunch.
This live video is taken from a BBC Radio 2 Radio Theatre concert. I love this whole concert. It's probably my favourite concert of Bowie's. I think for me, this is Bowie's best line up of musicians: 


David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes - Live Radio Theatre 2000
with Earl Slick – Guitar, Mark Plati – Guitar & Bass, Gail Ann Dorsey – Bass, Guitar & Vocals, Sterling Campbell – Drums, Mike Garson – Piano & Keyboards, Holly Palmer – Backing Vocals & Percussion, Emm Gryner – Backing Vocals & Keyboard.

I love Mike Garson - from Aladdin Sane days - the plucked keyboard introduction and the closing solo, Earl Slick's guitar solo, Gail Ann Dorsey's bass and of course Stirling Campbell's drums - which of course Bowie mentions at the end of this video. 

But I also have to post the original video for Ashes to Ashes. Apparently it was the most expensive music video ever made at the time. Co-directed by David Mallet - who also directed another video I'm gonna post. It depicts Bowie as a clown, an astronaut and patient in a padded cell. I think it's a completely brilliant follow up to Bowie's Major Tom - the main character in his 1969 breakthrough single Space Oddity.

David Bowie Ashes to Ashes Official Video

David Mallet also directed the next video. This video is the 2nd song of a 3 song encore from Pink Floyd's 1994 Pulse concert in London's Earls Court. This concert formed part of the band's Division Bell Tour. The first I knew about the concert, the tour or the video was watching - what I think was the encore - on YouTube. So here is the 2nd video from that 3 song encore.

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb - Pulse concert, Earls Court 1994

Well I was completely mesmerized by the performance. I'd never seen anything like it. It seemed to me that I was watching the greatest live concert performance of any band, ever. I've watched the videos over and over again over many years, and it still knocks me out.  


Here's Madonna and Like A Prayer. It's a good song. It's a good video. It has a strong narrative, it's sexy, the choir is great. The visuals, stunning.

Madonna - Like A Prayer

Here's a video I've come to quite a few times over the years. It was recorded during the On an Island Tour in 2006 at GdaÅ„sk Shipyard in Poland. This was the last performance Richard Wright gave before his death in 2008. I think it's a stunning live performance.


David Gilmour and Richard Wright  - Echoes - Gdansk Shipyard 2006

There is so much to enjoy here. I particularly like the closing duet between Gilmour and Wright at the end of the piece. I also really enjoy the lighting effects throughout the video. 

I still remember the first time I watched this video. It was so moving. I think I cried. Such an emotionally charged and personal video. I was sure Cash had written the song himself. He absolutely owns the song – as any good cover artist has to. It felt that it was the last song he recorded. It felt like it was the end.

Johnny Cash / Hurt

I think that all these videos are tremendous. I've come back to most of them year after year.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.


Thursday, October 05, 2023

The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn Peter Sellers 1956

I've been looking for this film for years. I first watched it in 1975. It was shown before the main feature of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I went several times to see that film and got to know both films quite well.
Watching it again, right now, I realise what a bad film it is. A showcase for Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan who were in the middle of recording The Goon Show - aired on the BBC World Service and The Light Programme - between 1951 - 1960.
I also thought that the character CID's Ace Det Supt Quill played by Sellers might be a forerunner for Ch Insp Clouseau from the Pink Panther films that started in 1963 with the first film, The Pink Panther.



The Pink Panther theme music and title from the 1963 film





Monday, October 02, 2023

Fawns Alert

 

Young Fallow deer, Richmond Park, September 2023

at the end
of their first summer
fawns alert

Friday, September 22, 2023

Into My Arms Nick Cave Official Video

I've never seen the official video of this song, until today. But I thought it was worth sharing. So here it is. It's a stunning video.





Monday, September 18, 2023

September Pond

Martin's Pond Richmond Park  18 September 2023 David Loffman
shrunken pond
filled with summer sludge
and mud

Saturday, September 16, 2023

Getting Closer to Solar Maximum

We are reaching the peak of the solar cycle - roughly every 11 years. Experts believe the cyclical peak is likely to take place in mid to late 2024. As we get closer to the peak of the cycle - solar maximum - the sun becomes more active. Activity such as sun spots and Coronal Mass Ejections occur much more frequently and to a greater intensity.
Oh my goodness I'm beginning to sound like one of the commentators on one of my favourite websites: APOD or Astronomy Picture of the Day.

The Northern Lights - Aurora Borealis were captured by photographer Owen Humphreys on Wednesday 13 September. This aurora display appeared as a result of a CME which was hurled into space from the Northern Hemisphere of the sun on 14 September. Click here for more information


from the Lindisfarne Causeway
taken on Wednesday 13 September 2023 at 12:45pm



The sun released an X1 solar flare on October 2, 2022, which was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. X-class events are the most intense flares, and they can impact communications systems on Earth

Thursday, September 14, 2023

I've been ill

 I wrote this after I was discharged from hospital last year in 2022. But it's been in draft form ever since.

I noticed it this evening, scrolling through my blog posts and realised I had posted nothing about what's happened to us.

So it's been a year since my right knee was amputated. But this whole thing probably started at least 3 years ago now in 2020.

But my memory is shot.

I wouldn't trust it if I were you.

But this account is as close as I can come to what happened to me.

Over the next few months I'm intending to edit this post, add some photographs and write a second account following on from this one.

All I've got is a series of events but I can't be sure the the order of them.

I've got to lay them down quickly before they disappear completely.

At Home

In 2020, I was  given a new prosthetist. She made a new above knee leg for me. Despite being considered a specialist above knee prosthetist, I developed a sore and slowly it developed into an ulcer. The ulcer developed along the line where my above knee leg is sealed onto the prosthesis. Secretly, I blamed my prosthetist and the long line of prosthetists I saw during that period for the ulcer, who tried to mend it. I went back to Queen Mary's hospital regularly - at times almost every week to have the problem fixed. Every prosthetist I saw, including my own prosthetist, tried to put it right, but they all concluded that the leg fitted well, and they could see no reason why the prosthetic leg should create the ulcer.

This went on for quite a while. I cleaned and dressed the small ulcer. It wasn't growing or getting smaller. It wasn't infected. But it wasn't right. It became painful. I only walked when I had to walk.  Whenever I got home from teaching or going out I transferred into my wheelchair.

The ulcer was dressed regularly and I just carried on. As you do.

At the same time as the ulcer was developing on my left above knee amputated leg I began to feel fatigued.
Everyday it was the same. I woke feeling that lead weights were attached to me, trying to hold me down. It went on like this all day till I went to bed.
I'd wake the next day and it was the same. It didn't get any worse or any better. I carried on working. I didn't connect the ulcer to the fatigue.  

The GP Surgery, hospital appointments and work


Until February / March 2022 the G.P surgery phoned with the results of my regular 3 monthly blood tests. The GP said, my results showed high levels of inflammation. He'd contacted Doctor Kiely - the doctor who managed my recovery from Polyarteritis back in 2004.  He was based at St George's hospital. The GP wanted to inform Doctor Kiely of the situation and ask him to call me in for an appointment.

An appointment came to see Prof Kiely. In the consultation Prof Kiely said confidently that I didn't have a resurgence of Polyarteritis - an autoimmune disease I'd developed when I was 17. He was confident that something else was causing the high inflammatory markers, the anaemia and low red cell blood count. I think he put all my symptoms down to a virus.

So we went back to our local G.P surgery with one question.

"If this isn't Polyarteritis, then what is this?" The GP said she'd send me off for tests.

She was one of the surgery's GP team. I'd never seen her before. She seemed in her 20's. I was pissed off and didn't expect this consultation to lead anywhere at all.

About the same time [as we were seeing the GP] in March 2022, I experienced fatigue. I remember teaching, but feeling the whole time as if I was being weighted down by a huge stone hanging over a long drop. Other symptoms developed, these included sleeplessness, loss of appetite and  sudden short fevers. I assumed it was a virus. It would pass.

A couple of weeks passed. I continued to teach. 

But then I went off sick.

The GP we'd seen who recommended tests, referred me to have three scans under three different medical teams, these were, heart, lungs and kidneys. The appointments came fairly quickly. Scans were either CT scans or MRI scans. 

Katy went to the Bologna Book Fair on 23 March. I had been officially sick for 8 days when she left.

At home I went ON GUARD!

I started spending the night sitting up in an armchair in the sitting room. I was on guard twenty four hours a day. Seven days a week. On guard against an unseen enemy. I was a body knotted in anxiety and stress. I couldn't relax for one moment. And yet the invisible enemy was upon me. Destroying whatever it could of me. It was absolutely awful. I was defenceless! I was powerless!

I was on guard for weeks. Always watchful. Drifting into a few moments of sleep here and there. By this time I wasn't eating.

And then one morning in mid May, my left stump was covered in purple patches. We knew exactly what this was. This was vasculitis! We'd seen it before in 2004. And I'd known it from the 1970's & early 80's. It's a symptom of Polyarteritis Nodosa.

Untreated we knew these purple patches would become ulcers and attack the stump. In 2004 vasculitis resulted in the amputation of both my legs. The left leg amputated above the knee, the right, amputated below the knee.

And of course, when we saw the purple patches, we immediately tried to contact Prof Kiely. But he was away.

Meanwhile the GP's heart scan showed an enlarged aorta. But this was normal. They'd check it again in a year or two.

We can't remember anything about the lung scan. But whatever they found they considered wasn't causing me any harm.

At Kingston Hospital

We had to wait a bit for the third scan. A kidney scan. And wait a bit longer for the results. When we did see the consultant urologist at Kingston Hospital, he said that I had kidney cancer. He said he'd need to remove the whole kidney. He said once it was removed everything would be alright. I wouldn't need any further treatment.

And then we told him about the vasculitis. 

By the time we had this consultation - with the consultant urologist -  the vasculitis was all over the left leg. It was early days. There were purple patches. No signs of ulcers yet.

He had a look at the leg and said he wouldn't operate until the vasculitis was all sorted out.

We needed to consult with Prof Kiely again.

Despite Prof Kiely being on holiday, we had the first of several phone consultations. But he didn't change his mind about his idea that the something else was causing the illness. Instead he said the cause of the vasculitis was due to the cancer. He said get rid of the cancer and the vasculitis would go away. He told us to go back to the consultant urologist and tell him to remove the kidney as soon as possible!

So with the support of one of the GP team at our local surgery and a rheumatologist at St Thomas's hospital it was decided to remove the kidney. 

By this point the ulcers were getting significantly worse. Right from the start, the ulcers were not being treated at all. This was a deliberate policy set by Prof Kiely. The medication needed to treat the vasculitis would inhibit healing the cancer. As well as this, Prof Kiely was sure that - with the cancer removed -  my body would heal the vasculitis by itself. The cancerous right kidney was eventually removed at Kingston Hospital in July. 

But the vasculitis continued.

I was ready to be discharged by the urology team at Kingston hospital but the ulcers on my legs were still progressing. We've got photographs of the progress of these ulcers from early on. I'm not going to share them with you though. The ulcers were so shocking!

Just before I left Kingston hospital, we did see a rheumatologist. He recommended a biopsy of the ulcers. But the urology team at Kingston were only interested in the cancer. And they discharged me. Eventually an appointment came for a biopsy. When we went for the biopsy the doctor at Queen Mary's hospital, Roehampton. was so shocked by the ulcers he told us to go to St George's immediately. He said St George's hospital is the place where the ulcers could be treated properly. He said the best and quickest way this could be done is if we went to A&E.

At St George's Hospital

So we drove to St George's hospital A&E. 

That was one of worst experiences we had during this time.

We arrived at around 4.00 in the afternoon and joined the queue to be seen. First by a nurse and then by a doctor. I sat in the wheelchair. Katy sat in a chair. 

We waited. We waited! And we waited! And waited!

At some point in the middle of the night we were moved to another part of the A&E department. It was quieter. There were fewer people. There were curtains. There was a bed. There was a chair. We were told we were being admitted to the hospital but were waiting for a bed to be freed up. 

We realised that wasn't going to happen for hours yet. And so we waited and were admitted onto a vascular ward later that morning.

At first I was admitted into an 8 bed bay. It was noisy. It's difficult managing 8 bored and very unwell men. So I was pleased that one day I was transferred into a single bay.

And then one day one of the rheumatology team said that the ulcers were so bad on the right leg the only way forward was to amputate the knee. 

And that is exactly what they did at St George's hospital at the end of August.

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Pigeon roof gutter

 
Newborough Green Roofs KT3 September 2023 by David Loffman

pigeon in
a roof gutter, breaks the
line of tiles

Thursday, September 07, 2023

Martine Wright on Radio 4 Woman's Hour

 

Martine Wright

Click here to hear Martine Wright MBE talking about rebuilding her life after she became seriously injured after the terrorist 7/7 attack in London in 7 July 2005. 

Her slot begins a 24.30 and lasts just over 13 minutes.

Before the attack, Martine worked as a marketing manager. But she is now a 7/7 survivor, a Paralympian, Motivational Speaker,  Author, Channel 4 Reporter and Mother.

She is also now a bi transfemoral above knee amputee.
St Mary's Hospital in 2005 while we both were learning how to walk again on Prosthetic legs. 


Wright is helped to learn to walk again by physiotherapist Maggie Uden at Queen Mary's hospital in Roehampton, in 2005. Photograph: Dan Chung/the Guardian


Click here for a link to her website.




Click here to buy her book from amazon


Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Apples Ripen

 



in among
a cloud of leaves
apples ripen

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Kingfisher on the River Bure

 


over summer water
a piece of sky
in flight

Wednesday, July 05, 2023

Father of the Bride speech

At last! It's taken me sometime to work it out. But I think I'm there now.
Here's a video of my father of the bride speech. Given on Iona and Andrew's wedding day. The 10 June 2023 at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire.




Tuesday, May 02, 2023

Gordon Lightfoot is dead at 84

Gordon Lightfoot has died aged 84.
He died in his Toronto home on 1 May 2023.

Click below for a news report


And click below for a link to one of the greatest songs of the 20th century 



The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald



Friday, March 10, 2023

Oye Como Va ft. Carlos Santana & Cindy Blackman Santana | Playing For Change | Song Around The World

Oye Como Va ft. Carlos Santana & Cindy Blackman Santana: Playing For Change
Song Around The World





 

Cover to Cover: Days by Ray Davis - The Kinks, cover by Kirsty MacColl

 The Original




The Cover

Hello D & N

Well this is a tough c2c. I love both versions and feel quite torn by them. I’ve heard them both for years. I think I’m gonna go with MacColl.

Here are a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I’m so surprised by her voice in this song. It’s so strong and accented. There’s a freshness in it.

Secondly, she’s more believable than The Kinks.

It’s a strange song really. Ray Davis is writing about loss. Yet the song is so upbeat. His harmonies with his brother are fantastic but there’s no connection to the implied sense of loss buried in the song. Perhaps that sense of loss is carried better in a woman’s voice. She sings it upbeat like the lads but as Nicki writes,

‘she gives it a slightly more melancholy feel to the song. It feels more mellow and controlled.’ I agree with Nicki. I think it’s a woman’s voice that we feel better expresses the tortured joy that is being described here. In the words of Leonard Cohen, ‘a broken Hallelujah.’ Except of course Cohen was a man and wrote and sang beautifully about loss.

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

My review of About Time by Calum MacColl

 My review of About Time by Calum MacColl

Calum MacColl

It's about time! Here's an album by singer song writer Calum MacColl. It's a fine collection of songs reflecting on life and loss. Performed on an acoustic guitar foundation, Calum brings in electric guitar, drums and keyboards to place the songs into a more contemporary setting.  Along with 4 other musicians and collaborative songwriters, Calum sings with a powerful and self-deprecating and gentle voice.

The CD opens with Good Enough. At the age of 58 Calum has released his first solo album.
I love the honesty in this opening song. It kind of sets out his stall as a song writer and performer. Calum uses the song to encourage himself to follow and live his dream of being a successful artist. And he reaches out to others, like himself, to be courageous and do whatever is needed to achieve your goals.
Calum puts the spectres of perfectionism and failure behind him. Perhaps even slain the shadows of his parents’ – Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl - legendary successes as singer song writers. He steps out of the shadows and performs remarkably well in my opinion.  
I remember after years of teaching, feeling I wasn’t very good. Often paralysed by fear myself. After years I suddenly realised I might not be the best teacher on the planet but I was good enough. Calum like me seems to have reached a time in his life and career where he too can accept that truth. That he too is good enough. Better than good enough actually.

What follows is a series of songs about everyday life, like walking his dog. Other songs include reflections on life, loss and bereavement.
For example, in Cosmonaut – the second song - Calum sings about his friend – singer song writer Colin Vearncombe – Black – probably most famous for his song, It’s a Wonderful Life - who died in a car accident. He writes about him as a cosmonaut. Completely out of reach. Calum sings directly to his friend.  Tells him how things have changed and asks him what things are like for him. It’s a moving love song, without a whiff of Bowie’s own space prisoner. Thank goodness.
And in the song The Other side / Liberation Road, written in two parts. About, Woodrow Speed and Lyle Lovelady, two American soldiers who fought and died during the D-Day landings in World War II.
The first part of the song is addressed to one of the American soldiers, whose grave Calum and a friend Tim May - who co-wrote the song with Calum - found among all the graves in the American Cemetery in Normandy. There was something of Eric Bogle's song No Man's Land here.
This first part of Calum's song is slow. The beat played out on keyboards punctuated with sparse instrumentation. It consists of three repeated lines - haiku like - that take us from the battleground setting in which the two men died and transports us with the familiar line, ‘see you on the other side’, a line first associated with the Apollo 8 mission where the astronauts were out of communication with Mission Control for 34 minutes while they travelled behind the moon. Calum uses outer space again as a way of writing about complete dislocation and separation from life. Instead he puts the phrase into a military context. The line becomes abstract; either meaning, we’ll meet again after the battle, or we’ll meet again in death. It’s a haunting and strangely comforting refrain.

Finally, Calum covers one of the last songs his father wrote, Joy of living, released three years before he died. It’s a beautiful performance and matches the beauty of his father’s words. Calum is accompanied by an acoustic guitar and suddenly we’re reminded of the huge folk music tradition that he comes from. Ewan MacColl sang his goodbyes to the mountains of the Lake and Peak Distracts he loved. Then sings his goodbyes to his wife – Peggy and finally his children. . Calum’s father performed the song aged 71 and died 3 years later. Calum’s a sprightly 60 odd years old now. Let’s hope there’s a lot more music to come.

Here's a link to Hive where you can buy the CD

Calum - in his studio?


Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Review of Debut solo album from Calum MacColl from Plastic Magazine

Here's a review of  Calum MacColl's - my friend's - CD. The review is published in Plastic Magazine. Here's a link to the magazine.

Calum MacColl

Debut solo album from Calum MacColl

London-based indie folk artist Calum MacColl seemed destined to become a musician due to the rich sonic heritage of his family. The son of folk legends Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, he’s also the half-brother of Kirsty MacColl but he’s ventured on his own unique musical path that’s seen him enjoy a decorated career that spans decades.

Over the years he’s played in various outfits and written for and performed with hundreds of iconic artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Eddi Reader, Backstreet Boys, Ronan Keating and Colin Vearncombe aka Black. Earning a Grammy-nomination for his work as a producer, he also co-wrote the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Best Original Song in 2015.

More recently however, he’s set out as a solo artist under his own name, to bring to fruition his dazzling creative vision. Now ready to share that vision with the world, he brings us his debut full-length record as a solo artist with the aptly titled album About Time.

Featuring ten new recordings that showcase Calum MacColl’s timeless folk songwriting talent and his assured musicianship and vocal performance, across About Time he delivers moments that charm, moments that move you and moments that inspire reflection.

Led by his smooth vocal leads carrying delicately crafted melodic lines and thoughtful lyricism, he enlists an array of traditional folk style instrumentation to capture a sound that’s as engaging as it is enduring to make a thoroughly enjoyable listening experience and a worthy debut effort from a celebrated artist.

Commenting on his debut LP, he shares, “It’s About Time – both the songs and the fact that I’ve only just got around to making this, my first solo album, at the age of 58. I’ve been writing songs all my life, but they’ve invariably been for other people to sing. It never occurred to me that I could sing them myself.”