Ian Parker flies "solo"

Ian Parker, the ubiquitous keyboard player who is part of London's Celtic membrane and a personal friend of this blogger, has just released his very own latest, a CD called PACIFICA.   The launch, in deepest Bloomsbury, was a collectable event. All the stars of the album showed up to do their thing, mostly Pete Howarth of the Hollies, who gave us a full set as a 'support' act. Ian's new stuff sounds big and important; lush, too. Ian's own  pop voice has got stronger - of course - with a-gig-a-night for so many years.  All struck me as being like movie music, especially the kind you'll hear over the opening credits and scenes of major emotion and drama.  The titles might contain clues: Women of the Desert, Spacetime is Cool, A Day in the Life of a Sherpa...I just let it wash over me.

The Damned. Thank you; I publish...

www.last.fm

If you were too young, or too old, to really "get" Punk - or even if you were in the thick of it, the band that was the missing link between Music Hall and armageddon - as remembered in this documentary - is for my money the one to fill in the gaps. Summing up so much about the punk attitude, really dangerous onstage and sparking riots on tour - with a bass-player called Captain Sensible.

Chris Rainbow

Chris Harley, who metamorphosed into the Rainbow for the short few years of his career in mainstream pop, has died before he could extend his album Home of the Brave (which contained two of his singles) into the body of work we listeners and friends so eagerly anticipated, although there is  The Best of Chris Rainbow, 1972–1980, which has appeared in single and double CD sets and includes radio spots, and rare and unreleased material.  Back in the early 1970s as his pals and fellow musicians in Glasgow agonised interminably about what they would do when they hit The Big Time, he just quietly sneaked off and became  a successful singer/songwriter, working with Stevie Wonder's producers and gaining expertise as a producer in his own right. He started out as a member of successful Glasgow band Hopestreet, and soon moved on to run Vital Spark Studio on the Isle of Skye. He is now widely seen as inhabiting the same territory as Brian Wilson. Among his friends, he was as famous for his stutter as much as anything, and adding that to his sense of humour leads to the name of his own record label "Stutter Music". More here: 

Acker Bilk

JazzServices.org.uk

The clarinettist and band leader who came close as anyone could to making Trad Jazz look cool, Acker Bilk has died at the age of 85. He will always be associated with 'Stranger on the Shore', the major hit in both the UK and US, ahead of the British pop-rock invasion. After he gave up touring, and a good while after the height of the Trad boom, he returned to one of his other careers and enjoyed some success as a painter, concentrating on small landscapes. More:

So long, Jack

goingthruvinyl.com

Jack Bruce, from Bishopbriggs Glasgow, has died at 71. He studied composition at the  Royal Scottish Academy of Music and left the academy and Scotland at the age of 16, making his way to London where he became a member of the seminal Alexis Korner's Blues Inc, where Charlie Watts was on drums. Watts left to join the Rolling Stones and Ginger Baker took over, beginning the long love/hate relationship - or hate/hate relationship, that found its expression in Cream's roaring, racing backdrop to Eric Clapton's extended solos. Immediately after the breakup of Cream he got back into jazz, with the release of the album 'Things we like', and went on to work with such luminaries as John McLaughlin and Frank Zappa, playing a central role in arguably jazz's first supergroup, Lifetime. He left a legacy of songs and compositions as well as just enough recordings to establish his great width of abilities.

pete Seeger

It's barely credible that just one man could have written - or co-written - so many songs that have been embedded in our culture for so long that they seem more like traditional airs with no known parentage. Including: If I Had a Hammer, Turn, Turn, Turn, Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, and Where Have All The Flowers Gone, which  may have sparked Bob Dylan into writing Blowing In The Wind. But the father of them all - Pete Seeger - musician and political activist, has died at age 94, in hospital in New York.
Seeger gained fame as a member of The Weavers, the quartet formed in 1948, and had hits including Goodnight Irene. Never one to sell out, he left the group when they agreed to appear in a tobacco advert.
He continued performing and recording for six decades afterwards and was still an activist as recently as October 2011, when he marched in New York City as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Seeger was a major figure in 'folk' music, and played a leading role in getting the world to take the banjo seriously as a virtuoso instrument. But it is as a songwriter that he is immortalised.

Obituaries: Two watershed artists

Two artists, each in his own way a man of the Sixties and whose work provided a  watershed in his chosen sphere, have left us.
Lou Reed, the pop star who changed the meaning of the title more than anyone in the 'sixties/'seventies, has died at 71. He left us a raft-full of new blueprints, their influence already disseminated widely by the millenium's end.

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


For more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24698207

Anthony Caro, the man whose medium was really the air-space contained by his big, brightly coloured constructions, has died at the age of 89. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/10401828/Sir-Anthony-Caro-British-sculptor-dies-aged-89.html

Eric's burden

Eric Burdon, ex-frontman of The Animals, cancelled a performance planned for Israel on 1st August, following complaints from interested parties. It has been suggested that he was threatened by the boycott fraternity, which denies having used threatening language or behaviour.
The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott stated: "Although we and our allies urge artists not to cross the international picket line by performing in Israel, and although we make sustained efforts to educate performers about the reason for boycott, we have not and never will issue any threats against anyone who does not heed the boycott call."
  http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/we-gotta-get-out-of-israel-if-its-the-last-thing-we-ever-do.html?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=c23b4890fb-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-c23b4890fb-398415153

Alvin Lee

Alvin Lee, in so many ways the embodiment of the 'Sixties, hasn't quite made it into his own seventies. He established the gold standard for speed as a guitarist - in fact, before Alvin Lee, speed just wasn't an issue except among small groups of competing musos. The term 'rock hero looks' wasn't coined until one or two guys including Alvin made pop music appeal to the big girls again. He combined his talents with the attitude of a Real Hippie: effortlessly generous and modest on-stage and off.  I base my sketch on  passing acquaintance: Ten Years After's performance of 'Crosscut Saw' at the Railway Hotel West Hampstead August 1968, featuring Roger Chapman on vocals and Cliff Hanley on harmonica.

The harp had its own story - it had spent a few years stuck in a saddle round my neck before I went electric, and saw some busking and partying in Germany and Istanbul, before allowing its owner a rare and memorable plug-in to a bit of the best of the Love Decade. TYA obviously had their night in the pub as a regular open mic thing - after us, John Mayall joined them for a tune. And the moothie?  It ended being given with some change to a very pleased beggar in Oxford Circus tube station around 1985.

Bristol International Jazz Blues Festival

This, the first Bristol international jazzfest, certainly lived up to its name with Colston Hall making room for gigs major and minor, plus the odd jam session - and international enough with the mighty Ginger Baker and Jazz Confusion, leaning heavily on the African roots of jazz.  And as James Brown alumnus Peewee Ellis, long settled in the West Country, took the stage, he got a special cheer for being himself and local too. He reappeared with one of the many bands gigging out front in the entrance hall, and headlined too, on Sunday.  Read the full review here:

John Schofield (here with his new Organic Trio) is a real all-rounder, easily moving from the kind of big-build-up and firey solo that a younger man would be proud of, to the prettiest of ballads with Tennessee Waltz. A real feast.

Arturo Sandoval

This was also a welcome opportunity to see Chris Barber, who was already a well-established Name when his end of the Trad spectrum was the breeding-ground for the Rolling Stones. When you consider what followed on from the Stones, you have to accept that some of Barber's musical DNA is swirling around in punk. His inbetween intros and band stories got extended into a virtual stand-up comedy routine. The weekend also gave welcome exposure to Clare Teal, local heroes Get The Blessing, serial collaborator Andy Sheppard  and 'New Orleans official musical ambassador' Lillian Boutté. 
The final big bang came from Cuban maestro Arturo Sandoval, whose sextet blew a swinging, roaring set, including his spot combining scat with beatbox and segueing into a vocal impersonation of all the instruments onstage. Generosity!

Kevin Ayres

So the sardonic king of sunshine has left us for good. A founder member of Soft Machine, he also led The Whole World (lead guitarist Mike Oldfield) and managed to record a string of charming, quirky and avant-garde albums although he claimed to be work-shy, and had a tendency to vanish between albums or tours. He told me once that he used to think living the easy life in the sunshine was the way to live. "Now I'm fucking sure it's the way!"

Pussy Riot set free

The punky protest girl group that bravely stood up against the Mr Lupin culture in Russia has been let out of jail, partly as a result of world-wide support. This is good news for anti-authoritaran activists everywhere; and as you probably weren't in Moscow at the time, here is what the fuss is all about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grEBLskpDWQ
And if you would like to support them, go HERE

UPDATE 24 OCTOBER:
The most likely background to the above is that it was a PR stunt intended to demonstrate Lupin's 'leniency'. On 17th August 2012 Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevitch were sentenced to two years imprisonment for their involvement in the Pussy Riot action at a Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow. While Yekaterina Samutsevich has been released, the struggle continues.

Gilad Atzmon on an open sleigh

Here's a quick blast from the orient Ensemble to warm you up, starting with high-speed latin ,squeezing in a bebop Wonderful World and as it's December, Jingle Bells.

insert music here

As history is rewritten, most of the music of the 'seventies towards the century's end tends to get marginalised. For many, the sign that the Melody Maker had lost the place was that it had not made the death of the King of Kool, MilesDavis, front-page. Elsewhere, music from the heart continued to flourish in all its colours. Jim Mullen's Blues Bag is mainstream jazz, but very much of its time. Technology, hard bop and the rock cross-over have extended the range of possibilities.

Spike Jones lives!

When we think about American humour, we really mean urban, New York humour; and on Manhattan, although Polish, Irish and other noisy cultures took root, the attitude we have to associate with the Island has always been Jewish.

While we're on Manhattan, look up the music. Before and after the birth of rock 'n' roll, the best in pop was coming out of the east-coast collision between trad Jewish and the Blues, from the Gershwins to the prolific sweatshop writers of the Brill Building to - well - Bob Dylan.

And right there in the middle was Spike Jones, dedicated to taking the mickey out of everything round him and while he was at it, mixing it in such a way that predated the 'invention' of Postmodernism. But no matter what the City Slickers got on to, they always sounded like a bunch of clever old friends having a good time at a Jewish wedding. I'll bet Gilad Atzmon, a bit of a joker himself, could fit in there easily enough if the time barrier could be lifted.

I've selected one recording by the Mad Maestro, which, although it's relatively laid-back, has a fair cross-section of the kind of noise you should expect in his platters. Another favourite, one of the first pop records I paid any attention to, was I went to your wedding, which ends triumphantly on the wrong note, really grinding it in. This, I am sure, had a profound effect on the formation of my own creative sensibility.

It helps, being born a Glaswegian: with the big cinema and dance culture there, "American" culture has always had a stronger hold than it has in the rest of Scotland or indeed the UK; and Glasgow gave birth to Dr Crock and His Crackpots as well as the 5th Goon, George Chisholm. Glaswegians naturally got the joke right away.

Spike Jones is a little like the Marx Brothers in that it's the whole idea we like, and no single tune or film quite sums it all up with the whole schtick. You may get an inkling, though. And your neighbours will, too!

Palestine: the last muse?

Is Palestine the "last muse"? If you follow the careers of several high-profile artists and musicians since they got hit by the middle east meatball you may well see it that way.Here are two for a start:

Joe Fallisi, popular Italian tenor, is more well-known in some international circles as the hyper-active Palestine blogger and activist; Gilad Atzmon, hard-working saxophonist, composer and author, dances across the crossover points between music, cultural history and entertainment, with his proseletysing always buried deep in the sound, although he always has plenty to say on the subject, given half a chance.

It happens. Anyone who goes to see Palestine for themselves is almost bound to return knowing they must act. Artists are in the business of making noise, and making their work into life. So you will hear about it.

Picture: Trio Joubran return the compliment, live in Bristol

Israel Phil shouted down

Zubin Mehta was unable to conduct the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra at theRoyal Albert Hall after several pro-Palestine demonstrators interrupted right at the start. The BBC immediately pulled out of their broadcast, doing a quick fade to a chorus of booing and footstamping. Musicians born as Israelis often find themselves in an awkward position when travelling and performing abroad, but when they are billed as the legitimate cultural representatives of such an alleged legitimate state as the apartheid regime of Israel, their position is indisputedly not on the side of rock 'n' roll. It's a great pity that these musicians - my fellow artists - should be used in such a way.

Endless Sleep - a production classic

The night was black, rain fallin' down


Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around


Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more


I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.


I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.


I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Ran in the water, heart full of fear


There in the breakers I saw her near


Reached for my darlin', held her to me


Stole her away from the angry sea


I looked at the sea and it seemed to say


“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep


I saved my baby from an endless sleep.
[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
......................................................

The original version of Endless Sleep was recorded - and co-written - by America’s Jody Reynolds, but this echo-draped production is the one to go for. The combination of lyrics, music, performance and production is impeccable. It’s one of pop’s cut diamonds.
It’s the high point of Marty Wilde’s short career as one of England's ersatz rock ‘n’ roll singers before he settled (like Tommy Steele) into family entertainment. The production is ideally suited to the content: right down to the backing chorus of monks behind that twanging guitar and Marty’s stylised moans and yelps. Despite the heavy atmosphere it may well have been recorded in a tiny room over a shop in London’s Denmark Street, also known as Tin Pan Alley. Another possible venue could have been Decca’s studio in Kilburn. Yes - I’m guessing! It’s another death song; always guaranteed to appeal to young teenagers who feel immortal, and it helps that the whole thing feels more like a very dark dream than anything, perhaps spun out of an opium pipe. Death never sounded more sexy. And it’s barely two-and-a-half minutes long - the perfect pop single.
The above conjecturing only serves to demonstrate my geographic knowledge of London's music history. The only contender here must be the incomparable Joe Meek, who had already produced Marty's version of 'Teenager in Love'.

.................

In jazz there is an equivalent recording: ‘Cry Me A River’ by Julie London, also an irreducable gem (including one of the most audacious rhymes ever).

Freedom For Palestine!

It has come to our attention that this potential Chart Topper is even now surfing the etheric waves. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V28HnPTYz-I&feature=player_embedded

...and tell all your friends!

Ishbel MacAskill

Some days after the event, I've just heard that a light of life for many and one close to me personally, has gone out.

Angus MacNeil, MP for the Western Isles and the SNP's spokesman on Gaelic for the UK Parliament, came close to summing Ishbel MacAskill up when he said: "Not only was she a lovely lady but she had a unique voice with a wonderful warm quality, which matched her own personality. She will be a huge loss to Gaelic culture. Ishbel was a tremendous ambassador for the language." Tom Morton once wrote in The Scotsman that she was "arguably the world's greatest Gaelic singer".

Her interest in music went beyond the Gaelic, however: she turned me on to the early recordings of Ray Charles, for instance. I still have that record.

Ishbel MacIver was born and raised on Lewis, moving with her family to the island's capital, Stornoway, at the age of 12. Growing up, she moved south to the Big City, Glasgow, where she married Bill - from Lochinver - and worked for some time at British Rail. Her husband introduced her to fellow whisky lovers, Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor, who tried to get her to join them professionally after hearing her sing at a party. But she didn't take up singing full time until 1979, when she was 38, and she appeared at a Mod fringe event. It wasn't long before her career took flight, and she swopped her 'lowland' name Isobel for the Gaelic original.

After years of globetrotting in pursuit of her muse, she died after hitting her head in a fall at her home in Inverness.

I'll remember her as always being full of love for everyone, vibrant with life; regardless of her size, a little larger than life itself.