Just the notes, folks!
Week from Monday 20th November 2023 - I haven't quite started to 'live with it' yet (still caught up with the MARKUS REUTER & STEFANO CASTAGNA album "Sea Of Hopeless Angels"), but last week's episode of "LIVE FROM DARYL'S HOUSE", with special guest ROBERT FRIPP, was an hour of extraordinary musical telly. I 'captured' it as it went out, but you can now watch the whole thing on That YouTube They Have Now...
Sky Arts showed another one of those baffling 'music' documentaries in which, although a fascinating 'POTTED HISTORY' in its own right, none of the titular artist's own music even makes an appearance (a bit like the DAVID BOWIE docko they broadcast a few weeks back)! This one was called "THE ROOTS OF LED ZEPPELIN" and it went into great detail about some of the influential names in Delta and Chicago BLUES, various flavours of FOLK MUSIC, even hippy-endorsed nutters like ALEISTER CROWLEY and JRR TOLKIEN. Very interesting stuff indeed, and right up my street. But not a single note of Led Zeppelin to be heard!
Week from Monday 27th November 2023 - I've just listened to a piece of MAHLER that I've never heard before! The Mithras Ensemble performed a PIANO QUARTET (in A-minor) that he wrote when he was still a student, but he didn't like it. It's very much a foretaste of what was to come, but in miniature. Like his later big symphonic works, the score contains very few markings suggesting HOW the piece is to be performed, just the NOTES, folks! I thought it was delightful!
Things That I HAVEN'T Done Much Of These Last Few Days... PARTAKE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: I don't feel quite so compelled to visit Twitter these days. While I don't agree that it's become COMPLETELY toxic, a lot of the 'content' on my own timeline has become a bit "MEH!" and not worth getting excited about. My Bluesky presence is up and running now, but I only tend to have a peep at that when I turn the laptop on to do OTHER tasks, which is now a rarer occurrence. ACTIVELY LISTEN TO MUSIC: I'm usually quite content to have BBC RADIO THREE wheedling away in the background, at a lowish volume, out of the tellybox. I don't remember the last time I 'chose' a CD to listen to. I haven't bought any 'new' music in months. GET NOSTALGIC ABOUT THINGS THAT HAPPENED FORTY YEARS AGO: ...because I've drawn a blank for things that DID happen to me in December of Eighty-Three. No gigs attended, no new records released. I dare say there were a few student parties along the way though. GO OUTSIDE: That goes without saying, given that I still get out of breath just crossing to the next room. Maybe once a week, I have to mask up to go to the pharmacy or corner shop. It's only a few yards away, but I still have to 'recover' afterwards.
Sky Arts showed another one of those baffling 'music' documentaries in which, although a fascinating 'POTTED HISTORY' in its own right, none of the titular artist's own music even makes an appearance (a bit like the DAVID BOWIE docko they broadcast a few weeks back)! This one was called "THE ROOTS OF LED ZEPPELIN" and it went into great detail about some of the influential names in Delta and Chicago BLUES, various flavours of FOLK MUSIC, even hippy-endorsed nutters like ALEISTER CROWLEY and JRR TOLKIEN. Very interesting stuff indeed, and right up my street. But not a single note of Led Zeppelin to be heard!
Week from Monday 27th November 2023 - I've just listened to a piece of MAHLER that I've never heard before! The Mithras Ensemble performed a PIANO QUARTET (in A-minor) that he wrote when he was still a student, but he didn't like it. It's very much a foretaste of what was to come, but in miniature. Like his later big symphonic works, the score contains very few markings suggesting HOW the piece is to be performed, just the NOTES, folks! I thought it was delightful!
Things That I HAVEN'T Done Much Of These Last Few Days... PARTAKE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: I don't feel quite so compelled to visit Twitter these days. While I don't agree that it's become COMPLETELY toxic, a lot of the 'content' on my own timeline has become a bit "MEH!" and not worth getting excited about. My Bluesky presence is up and running now, but I only tend to have a peep at that when I turn the laptop on to do OTHER tasks, which is now a rarer occurrence. ACTIVELY LISTEN TO MUSIC: I'm usually quite content to have BBC RADIO THREE wheedling away in the background, at a lowish volume, out of the tellybox. I don't remember the last time I 'chose' a CD to listen to. I haven't bought any 'new' music in months. GET NOSTALGIC ABOUT THINGS THAT HAPPENED FORTY YEARS AGO: ...because I've drawn a blank for things that DID happen to me in December of Eighty-Three. No gigs attended, no new records released. I dare say there were a few student parties along the way though. GO OUTSIDE: That goes without saying, given that I still get out of breath just crossing to the next room. Maybe once a week, I have to mask up to go to the pharmacy or corner shop. It's only a few yards away, but I still have to 'recover' afterwards.
FROM THE DIARY, TWENTY YEARS AGO... The LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL continued on Radio 3, with a lot of strange electronic noodling on "Mixing It" and "Hear & Now" (worth hearing, but not a keeper!) and a cracking set from TIM BERNE's latest bunch of downtown Noo Yoik reprobates (this week he calls his band SCIENCE FRICTION). This line-up also included that DAVID TORN on his inimitable space guitar. More than once I thought I heard the ghost of HENRY COW in there somewhere. On 6Music on Wednesday, "The Dream Ticket" broadcast (almost) the entire STEVE HILLAGE "BBC In Concert" from Canterbury Uni in 1979 (VERY funky riddim section!), as well as some more of the weird 'n' wonderful set by MIKE WESTBROOK's SOLID GOLD CADILLAC from 1972 (Is their "Brain Damage" album still available in any form? I must have it!). There was also the second part of Charles Shaar Murray's FRANK ZAPPA documentary. This week, it's ten years since UNCLE FRANK left us and, to mark the moment, I intended to "eat good chilli and listen to 'Three Hours Past Midnight' by Johnny Guitar Watson". It's what he would've wanted. In the event, however, I found that the compilation of JG Watson's '50s output that I have in my collection did not include that particular tune, but I listened to it anyway, as well as my favourite version of Frank's "Black Napkins", which seemed to set the right tone... The chilli was fantastic, by the way... On Friday, "Jazz On 3" is broadcasting a session by an ALL STAR BAND OF EX-ZAPPA SIDEMEN recorded in Los Angeles to mark the occasion.
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