A.I. AND HEART & SOUL

There have been some interesting discussions this week on LinkedIn and elsewhere about emerging generative AI music software. I have had thought-provoking exchanges with the likes of Sam Barcroft and Dr Alex Connock. Sam wrote “nobody wants to watch or read derivative content built by robots” and “AI music is derivative and lacks that special something that truly original content sparks inside”. Reflecting on music is helpful because it just has the audio dimension, simpler than the audio-visual nature of my chosen medium of film/video.

Alex flagged up Udio music-generating AI and said: “I’m not saying it’s desirable to have our creativity done by AI; just that it’s perhaps a little naive to think it won’t happen!”

I’ve been reflecting on music and what role heart, soul, humanity and authenticity play in its creation. If we break it down, AI can generate the tunes pretty efficiently, especially at the functional end of the spectrum such as Electronic Dance Music, ambient music like in gyms and malls, and TV library music (that’s a moribund business if ever there was one). EDM is arguably already maths (apologies to its fans out there).

The words can be generated fairly well given the right training material. Even highly emotive songs. If you gave an AI, say, all of John Martyn’s material, it could probably come up with a decent simulacrum which all but hardcore followers would be hard-pushed to distinguish from the real thing.

“The army and the navy they never will agree
Till all the men and all the boys
Are gone from our country“

It’s not really poetry. It’s quite simple.

Then there’s the third component – the voice. Feed all of John Martyn into the machine and even though his voice is pretty distinctive, it can already be effectively reproduced. Which is, indeed, useful from one perspective as he’s gone to the Great Gig in the sky.

But the final component – how the artist sings/performs the lyrics – is arguably where the magic is, the heart & soul. Listen to the first minute of the song above, ‘Don’t You Go‘. It’s illuminating what the poster has written: “I could try and explain how wonderful John Martyn’s music is, but my words could never do his art justice.” How Martyn delivers the simple tune and the simple lyrics I would contend is beyond the abilities of AI, certainly AI without consciousness. AI has no experiences, never lost a child, never had its heart broken, never felt pain, fear or anything else, and therefore can never communicate real feeling, only a copy of feelings. Humans have highly tuned abilities to detect genuine emotion and empathise with it. So, for now at least, there is some corner of the music field that is forever human – a small space where AI can’t really go. But it is a very small space.

Heart & soul do play a vital role in the best of art and culture but in music at least the field is wide open for AI. It is important and instructive that we keep a close eye and ear on where the heart & soul are, and never forget why they matter.

Don’t You Go is from the Glorious Fool LP

Creative Catalysts

The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London

It’s often uplifting to cross paths with people who act as creative catalysts, to observe how they oil the wheels of creative enterprise and inspire those around them.

A celebration of Simon Emmerson 15.12.23

This year (like most others) has seen some significant losses in the music world: Robbie Robertson, Sinead O’Connor, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Burt Bacharach, David Crosby, Jeff Beck, and the last while has taken a particularly heavy toll with Shane MacGowan going to the Great Gig in the Sky, as well as Denny Laine and Benjamin Zephaniah. Back in March we lost Simon Emmerson (aka Simon Booth) – his life, music and creativity were celebrated last night at The Roundhouse with a gathering of various bands and collectives he helped bring about and grow. There was a lot of love in the room.

The Imagined Village

The Imagined Village

First up, his folk iteration spearheaded by the exuberant Eliza Carthy with her father, elder statesman of English folk, Martin Carthy. Simon’s  connection with folk music (and nature) began as a child attending Forest School Camps in the holidays. He helped launch The Imagined Village modern folk collective in 2004, working with a broad range of folk/world musicians to create a contemporary, cross-cultural take on folk music. Their debut album was released on Peter Gabriel’s RealWorld label and included a track by recently departed Benjamin Zephaniah with Eliza Carthy. Another track was recorded by her with Billy Bragg (and Simon on guitar). Billy Bragg came on at this commemorative performance to play that track with Martin and Eliza and The Young Copper Family (a family of traditional, unaccompanied English folk song singers from Rottingdean (the next village down the Sussex coast from the ArkAngel Productions office)). Hard Times of Old England (Retold), as Martin pointed out, shows how the England of the 1820s was not unlike that of this decade, just substitute Rwanda for Australia in this tale of transportation. Billy, needless to say, added a new verse about the failure of Brexit and Johnson’s role in it.

Billy Bragg (vocals) & Martin Carthy (guitar & vocals)

The Imagined Village built up a driving tribal vibe punctuated by a rich mix of sounds from the technical modernity of a theremin to the ancient heritage of a sitar. In the recent feature documentary about Marc Bolan, AngelHeaded Hipster, Bolan made a very resonant observation – what a wonder it is that a piece of wood with strings – his guitar or this sitar – can move you to cry. Or lift you and make your heart beat faster as this dynamic folk outfit more than achieved on the night.

“There are people like Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page, if you like, whoever you relate to out of those sorts of people, that through the use of a guitar, which is a piece of wood with string on it, really, when you relate to it like that, made by man, that certain things can stir your emotions up out of a piece of carpentry. Or blowing a piece of steel pipe and making you cry, what happens, you know, within that pipe? It’s the spirit that comes. It’s when people deny spiritual factors, its very sad, because it’s everywhere around us.”

Marc Bolan

Afro Celt Sound System

Afro Celt Sound System

The next band/collective took up that baton and ran with it. Combining traditional Irish and Celtic instruments (low whistle, uilleann pipes, bodran, etc.) with an eclectic mix from Africa and beyond (including the 21-string kora from Mali and the driving beats of a traditional Punjabi drum) Afro Celt Sound System took the energy to the next level with a masterful performance fuelled by the special mission of the night.

Simon Emmerson’s guitar had to be substituted  by a very able replacement but his spirit still infused the band. He formed it in 1995 in the wake of working with Peter Gabriel at RealWorld on the OVO soundtrack for the turn-of-the-millennium show at the Millennium Dome in 2000. One of their highpoints was the track they recorded that year with Sinead O’Connor, Release, with which they opened their exemplary set. It was followed by their Malian singer (all in white in the photograph above) singing unaccompanied a song traditionally sung in his native land when somebody significant passes on.

Working Week with Juliet Roberts

Working Week

The final Simon Emmerson-infused act of a highly memorable evening was Working Week, playing together for the first time in over three decades. The son of the original Brazilian percussion player had to stand in for his dear departed father. Their set was introduced by DJ/Producer Gilles Peterson who knew Simon and his wife Karen well, lived in their basement at one time and ended up buying their house when they moved on. His Acid Jazz Records and Talkin’ Loud recordings were greatly influenced by Simon, who added a jazz sensibility to his soul roots. Resurrected Working Week opened with Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues.

Juliet Roberts added vocals to their brass-driven big(ish) band sound but what was interesting and evident from the physicality of the event was that the centre stage was rarely filled. Simon clearly was an instigator and nurturer of collective musical endeavours with no natural central figure. You could still feel his presence holding them together and firing them up.

Working Week grew out of the band Weekend, which Simon founded with Alison Statton after the break-up of her previous outfit, Young Marble Giants. Weekend made only one (excellent) studio album, La Variété, in 1982 on Rough Trade. They brought some jazz into the fertile territory of the UK Post-Punk scene, which was a  promising delight. He went under the pseudonym of Simon Booth on that record for some reason. The record sleeve was charming, offering a colourful contrast to Pornography (The Cure) and Combat Rock (The Clash), all in the shadow of Joy Division’s Closer (1980).

Variety is the essence of Simon Emmerson’s illustrious career in music. From jazz to world to modern folk, from initiating bands to producing (the likes of Baaba Maal and Manu Dibango), from DJing to playing various instruments made of wood and string (guitar, bouzouki and cittern), he had the rare ability to inspire and catalyse the creatives around him in a way which enabled them collectively, with no ego in centre stage. That’s pretty much the opposite of what a rock band is but very much the essence of the anonymous songs of folk, the circularity of Irish music and the turn-taking of jazz.

Shane MacGowan Forever

This evening Nick Cave took part in a conversation with journalist Seán O’Hagan in the magnificent (and appropriate, given Cave’s Christian leanings) setting of 18th century St Martin in the Fields church on Trafalgar Square, London. Both are friends of Shane MacGowan who went to the Great Gig in the sky in the early hours of this morning. Cave commented on both his brilliance and empathy as a songwriter, and his kindness as a human being. Despite having a caustic edge in some circumstances, he walked around with a roll of cash which he handed out liberally to those in need.

I crossed paths with him a couple of times – once when he was sitting at the bar in the Boogaloo pub in Highgate and before that in Islington, near Filthy MacNasty’s in Amwell Street. I only saw him perform once, with The Pogues at Brixton Academy.

Shane’s songs I believe will live for decades and indeed centuries in the way that the best Irish songs do. An example of one that has all the feeling of having been around for ages and going on to persist forever is The Snake with Eyes of Garnet which he recorded with The Popes:

Last night as I lay dreaming
My way across the sea
James Mangan brought me comfort
With laudnum and poitin
He flew me back to Dublin
In 1819
To a public execution
Being held on Stephen’s Green
The young man on the platform
Held his head up and he did sing
Then he whispered hard into my ear
As he handed me this ring

“If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

This snake cannot be captured
This snake cannot be tied
This snake cannot be tortured, or
Hung or crucified

It came down through the ages
It belongs to you and me
So pass it on and pass it on
‘Till all mankind is free

If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me”

He swung, his face went purple
A roar came from the crowd
But Mangan laughed and pushed me
And we got back on the cloud
He dropped me off in London
Back in this dying land
But my eyes were filled with wonder
At the ring still in my hand

If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

And if you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

Timeless and deeply Irish – with a strong London-Irish vibe, that very special identity. Shane ironically was born in Kent and spent years roving North London. I once spotted a photograph of him working on Brent Cross shopping centre when it was still just a building site – the photo was hanging in a pub in the monkish Glencolmcille, Donegal. Here’s a 2009 episode from this blog’s occasional Songlines series about Shane and the London-Irish identity [1.5 mins listen], Thank Christ for the BBC. 

Nick Cave considers Shane the songwriter of his generation. It is an extraordinary feat to write songs that feel they have always been here.

The fact that he took inspiration from the Sex Pistols (picking young Shane out for the first time in a photograph of the Pistols’ crowd was a thrill) just adds to the magic: a punk instinct to destroy fused with a Celtic instinct to preserve and pass down…

with Kirsty MacColl in 1994

in audience at a Clash gig (bottom right in V-neck)

in 1991 at Pukkelpop Festival

Joy

In my work as a TV/film Commissioning Editor and Producer I often apply the Joy filter. I ask the filmmakers I’m working with “Where’s the joy in this project?” This has particularly been the case since 2008 from when people have seemed more in need of uplift than ever. If the answer is that there is none or little then it is usually not a project for me.

The night before last I went to see Van Morrison at the Albert Hall, London playing tracks from his latest LP ‘Moving On Skiffle’, his 44th studio album, including songs by figures who inspired him like Lead Belly and Hank Williams. The very special performance was characterised by the joyfulness of his playing and singing. He’s got a bit of a reputation for grumpiness (though I’ve never seen this at the many shows of his I’ve been at over the years) but on this night the opposite was on display – a man loving the kind of music he was sharing with the audience.

I’ve been to other performances like this characterised by the performer taking clear joy in what they were playing. Van at Nell’s in West Kensington opening the venue with a jazz and blues night was one memorable example – jazz, blues, skiffle are all genres he grew up on in East Belfast. Another such performance where the artist was very clearly revelling in what he was singing was David Bowie at Grenoble on the Serious Moonlight (Let’s Dance) tour in 1983 – his joy travelled off the stage and infused the witnesses.

Van joined by the hugely charismatic Ronnie Wood

Adding to the joyfulness of Van’s show this week was that he was joined on stage by The Rolling Stones’ guitarist Ronnie Wood who had the energy of an over-excited schoolboy. Also on stage was Seth Lakeman, who played fiddle with an exquisite touch and plays on the ‘Moving On Skiffle’ LP, and Joe Brown, the spiky-haired English rock’n’roller I recall from my youth who played an unlikely mandolin. Van was also joined by North London singer Chris Farlowe (now 83) who was one of the skiffle originals with the John Henry Skiffle Group in the late 50s (John Henry Deighton is his birth name) and who has been associated with the Stones since way back when. I first saw him with Van and fiddle player Dave Swarbrick (Fairport Convention) at a gig at the Westonbirt Arboretum (in Tetbury near Bristol) in 2006. As we were leaving the Albert Hall we were astonished to see Chris Farlowe, who had had his arm round Ronnie Wood’s shoulder just minutes before, standing at the bus stop among the departing concert-goers. It seemed like amazing humility on his part and people thanked him for the extraordinary show.

Van played in a skiffle band as a 12-year-old with his schoolmates in Belfast. In 1998 he recorded a live LP in Whitla Hall in his native city with Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber called ‘The Skiffle Sessions’, which brought Lonnie out of obscurity until he went to the Great Gig in the Sky in 2002. The final track of the night, ‘It Takes a Worried Man’, was from that album. Every Van gig (more or less) in my experience is marked by a moment of transcendence – which is why I love him – and on this occasion it came in that long last song. This moment is often triggered by repetition of words or sounds. 

The skiffle band has an important place in British & Irish popular music. The genre arrived from America (jug band music and blues) in the late 50s and early 60s and was a formative influence for the Stones, Led Zeppelin and others. The Beatles famously began life as The Quarrymen, a skiffle band. It was 16-year-old John Lennon’s group and they played a now-legendary set at a Liverpool church fête in July 1957, where a certain Paul McCartney was in the crowd. The two met after the performance and later that year McCartney became a Quarryman. Also in 1957 a 13-year-old boy named James (Jimmy) Page appeared on a BBC talent show playing guitar on ‘Mama Don’t Want to Skiffle Anymore’ [see video]. Jimmy Page wrote the sleeve notes for ‘Moving On Skiffle’.

I’ve done my best to reconstruct the Albert Hall set list (which I’m preserving for posterity and as a souvenir for myself in future) – hopefully some enthusiast will publish it accurately online soon (at which point I’ll refine this, my best guess):

* Streamline Train [The Viper Skiffle Group, 1957]

* Sail Away Ladies

In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)

Travellin’ Blues

Take This Hammer

I Wish I Was an Apple on a Tree

* Careless Love

* This Loving Light of Mine

The Streamlined Cannon Ball

Oh Lonesome Me

Greenback Dollar

Come On In

(I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry ?)

* Mama Don’t Allow [various solos]

No Other Baby

* Cold, Cold Heart

The Gypsy Davy

Worried Man Blues

Green Green Rocky Road

I’m Movin’ On

* It Takes a Worried Man [Lonnie Donegan]

It’s telling that the headline in the Evening Standard review includes the word “joyful”.

 

On a daily basis my motto or affirmation or mantra is “I will enJOY my day“.

Coincidence No. 240 – Cyprus Avenue

21/3/23

My friend Stuart comes to visit me in Brighton and is pleased to see that I have a poster in my bathroom from the Bruce Springsteen gig we saw in Dublin together in 2003 – possibly the best gig I have ever seen.

21/3/23

That night we go to Komedia, Brighton to see a gig – Robert Forster (The Go-betweens). Standing in the crowd Stuart spots a face he thinks he recognises. He leans over and asks this bald, middle-aged man: “Are you called Adam?” He is. “We met at the Bruce gig in Dublin in 2003. We were in touch about it on [the Chelsea fan site]. We had a drink before the gig.” How Stuart recognises him is amazing – he must have had a lot more hair two decades ago. (The other) Adam is with his brother, sister-in-law and friend, Aidan, who lives in Hove. We chat. It turns out that Adam grew up in Windsor Road, behind where my late grandparents’ house was, in Cyprus Avenue, Church End, Finchley. Aidan, who he has known since childhood, grew up in Village Road which is the continuation of Cyprus Avenue. And Stuart’s mum has just moved to Cyprus Avenue.

18/3/23

Two days before, after not having been in or near Cyprus Avenue for ages, I am being driven home by a friend when she overshoots and we try to correct ourselves by turning into the small group of streets by Cyprus Avenue and getting a bit lost, stuck in the dead-end of Cyprus Gardens which sits where Village Road becomes Cyprus Avenue.

And I’m caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
I’m caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
And I’m conquered in a car seat
Not a thing that I can do

Van Morrison – Cyprus Avenue

9/5/23

Exactly 20 years on, Stuart and I are going to Dublin in May to see Bruce again.

The Casting Game No.229: Leonard Cohen

Al Pacino (Godfather II era) AS…

Leonard Cohen

 

OR

Dustin Hoffman AS…

Leonard Cohen

This round inspired by the documentary ‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song (2021- dir. Daniel Geller & Dayna Goldfine) – the first 7 minutes

Story through Inventory

Bought my Other Half Jarvis Cocker’s new book ‘Good Pop Bad Pop’ for our 13th monthiversary, she’s a big fan of Jarvis and Pulp. I’ve admired him from a certain distance without ever getting in deep. I’m more the Punk generation and it turns out he’s 8 days younger than me, so the next musical generation as a performer. The one time I saw him on stage was at ‘The Story’ conference in Red Lion Square, Holborn – talking rather than singing, speaking about the Extraordinary. He spoke about how he started out trying to write extraordinary things, then realised he had to make the ordinary extraordinary to capture what was significant about his life.

Needless to say I found myself dipping into the book once it had been presented as a gift. It is subtitled ‘an inventory’. It is written very well, clear and conscious of the reader’s perspective, shot through with a dry sense of humour. And beautifully designed and printed. Reading the opening immediately reminded me of my own attic-load of accrued stuff. The book springboards from objects fished out of a London attic as Jarvis finally moves out of his Victorian pile. I had the same experience in 2020 – first emptying out my office archives in Kentish Town (by coincidence, as I look up from writing this on my phone on the train from Brighton, I see a pale blue mural on a Victorian building saying “Welcome to Kentish Town”) and then the loft of my London house of 22 years. In the process I came across numerous resonant objects from my past which collectively tell some kind of story.

You just have to tune in to that wonder that is all around you. It’s everywhere, honest. That’s the way life works. Extraordinary moments, the extraordinary comes from the extra ordinary.

Jarvis Cocker at The Story conference 2018

The creative who comes to mind with a significant relationship to objects is designer Paul Smith. I visited his studios in Covent Garden near Richard Seifert’s Space House when I was at Channel 4. It was filled with random little objects he had collected from which to take inspiration. Some mailed in by admirers. I too take creative inspiration from objects – colourful ones, well designed ones, pop ones, quirky ones, toys, souvenirs, orange ones, 70s ones, ceramics, Bakelite, art-related ones, shiny ones, old things, gifts, a French folding knife from Marco with a Napoleonic bee motif, a small plastic skinhead from Emma-Rosa.

I so enjoyed reading about Jarvis’s old exercise book, chewing gum packet, Northern Soul patch, that I decided to dust off a few of my random objects on Insta. Here are the first 3…

[1] a cassette single (1980)

[2] what used to be called a Transistor Radio

[3] Keith Haring painted on stage behind the bands

worn by father in Paris in 1983

worn by son in London in 2020

Even just this opening salvo, what does it add up to? What story does it tell?

A man who loves his music. Of a generation around 1980 (1978 to 1991 were probably the defining years). Strongly connected to Malcolm McLaren and what radiated from him – from Public Image Limited to Buffalo Gals, Bow Wow Wow to Joy Division. (I’m currently working on a music documentary which includes Public Enemy and Talking Heads.)

A person who, despite being very visual, loves radio. Radio has been an important part of my life since school days. I discovered Egon Schiele (when he was still little known) through Bowie on the radio. I used to listen to Phillip Hodson‘s late night phone-in in bed on this tranny (!) with people ringing in for counselling on the most debilitating of mental health and sexual challenges – I went on to make a film with him twenty years later entitled ‘Conflict!’, semi-improvised drama Mike Leigh style. (On the audio front, I’m now working on three podcast series.)

A bloke who loves jazz – and Caravaggio. And Keith Haring and street art. Who had a formative year in 1983 which included a trip to Montreux for the jazz festival, to Grenoble for Bowie’s ‘Serious Moonlight’ tour, to Evian to see his friend Mirjam (artist & air hostess), all in the context of a year-long sojourn in Chambéry, Savoie. (At the moment I’m also working on an art feature documentary which should be finished by Jarvis’s birthday – 19th September.)

This first trio of objects actually captures quite a coherent story of what makes this particular creative tick and foreshadows much of what I went on to do in the wake of them coming into my world.

The cassette single in a way gave rise to ‘Amy Winehouse & Me‘ (MTV)

The pocket radio gave rise to ‘The Radio Play’s The Thing‘ (Channel 4)

The T-shirt gave rise to ‘Big Art Project‘ (Channel 4) and ‘Big Art Mob‘, Instagram five years before Insta launched.

A Circle of Sound – 150 years of the Royal Albert Hall

An appropriate colour of light for its address on Kensington Gore

The day before yesterday (19 July) marked the first full-capacity concert at the 5,000 seat Albert Hall since March 2020. It was a piece called ‘A Circle of Sound’ composed by David Arnold, known for his soundtracks for Bond films, Hollywood movies (Independence Day) and TV dramas (Sherlock), to mark the 150th anniversary of its opening on 29th March 1871. In 10 parts, it addressed the history of this very special London venue through various lenses – pop music, the Proms, sport, remembrance, activism, etc.

It was set up as the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, a direct result of Prince Albert’s brainchild, the Great Exhibition of 1851. After the success of the Exhibition, he proposed a permanent presence for Science, Art and Learning near the Hyde Park site. He didn’t live to see its fruition, but it ended up bearing his name when Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone in 1867 in memory of her beloved husband who died six years before the Hall finally opened. (The foundation stone sits under Block K of the stalls.)

David Arnold and special guests – Mel C (white suit), Jemma Redgrave (white dress), Helen Pankhurst (between them in Suffragette scarf)

It’s an important spot for London architecture because you see juxtaposed at close quarters the two main influences on modern London – the Classical as represented by the coliseum-like circle of the Albert Hall and the Gothic as represented by the pointy, churchy Albert Memorial, just the other side of Kensington Gore. 

Circle of Victorian red brick

Highlights of the celebratory evening included:

• Helen Pankhurst, granddaughter of Sylvia, great-granddaughter of Emmeline, introducing a speech of her great-grandmother given in the USA (Hartford, Connecticut) known as the Freedom or Death speech, considered one of the great speeches of the 20th century.

we will put the enemy in the position where they will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death

• Jemma Redgrave, daughter of Corin, son of Michael, in that English acting dynasty, performed the speech with great energy, bringing a tear to the eye – the achievement of the British Suffragette movement is one of the most admirable and proudest moments for this country
• Mel C of The Spice Girls introducing the section on all the pop music that has been played at the Hall, featuring a young band invited from the Rhythm Studio in W10 including the drumming talent of Finlay Gee (nephew), who provided the only fist pump of the evening he had gotten such a kick from playing this huge venue at the age of just 18
• Brian Cox helping us all feel like an insignificant speck in the universe as he framed the perspective of the Science section, Science being as much a part of the original conception of the Hall as Arts
• Charles Dance receiving a warm welcome as a national treasure with an edge as he introduced the Remembrance section – he stole the show thanks to that edge when we made Was It Something I Said? at Channel 4 
• Michael Sheen performing in Welsh barnstorming style as he introduced the final movement looking forward to the next 150 years

With regard to pop music played in the Hall the landmark shows include:

The Great Pop Prom // 15 September 1963 (the week I was born)
The first time The Beatles and The Stones performed on the same bill. Paul McCartney remembered the night like this: “Up there with the Rolling Stones we were thinking: ‘This is it – London. The Albert Hall.’ We felt like gods.”

Bob Dylan // 26 & 27 May 1966
The tour when he “went electric”. Ironically the concert famously known as the Albert Hall concert actually took place a few days earlier in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester – that’s the one where an outraged audience member accused Dylan of being “Judas!”

Bloke in audience: “Judas!”

Dylan: “I don’t believe you!”(reference to the title of a song he had played earlier in the gig)

Dylan: “You’re a liar!”

Dylan (to band): “Play fucking loud!”

Jimi Hendrix // 18 & 24 February 1969
The Jimi Hendrix Experience first played the Hall in 1967. They returned two years later to play some blues rather than their hits. The fans were appeased with an encore featuring ‘Purple Haze’, ‘Wild Thing’ and Hendrix on the floor playing the guitar with his teeth.

Pink Floyd // 26 June 1969
Pink Floyd excelled themselves by getting a lifetime ban from the Hall on their first gig there. During the song ‘Work’ Rick Wright constructed a wooden table on stage wielding hammer and saw. After that a gorilla burst into the auditorium, that is a man in a gorilla costume. As a finale, two cannons were fired and a pink smoke bomb exploded. The Hall’s management swiftly banned the Floyd from performing there ever again. Then in 1972 they decided to ban all “pop and rock concerts” because of the “hysterical behaviour of a large audience often encouraged by unthinking performers.” But Rock triumphed. The Floyd were back playing there just a year later, and the blanket ban was similarly short-lived, although The Who’s 1972 show fell victim to it. 

David Gilmour & David Bowie // 29 May 2006
When Bowie was invited onto the stage by Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour in 2006, it turned out to be both Bowie’s first & only appearance at the Hall, and his last ever UK public performance. The two  duetted on the songs ‘Arnold Layne’ (a nod to the influence on both of Syd Barrett) and ‘Comfortably Numb’. 

 

One of the many magical moments at the Albert Hall – Gilmour & Bowie

Story Snippet: Harrison

Three of us are having a late night summer wander around the backstreets of Hampstead. We come to St John-at-Hampstead church. As we walk through the churchyard there are two winos sitting on the bench in the yard. I acknowledge them and keep moving round the side of the church – I have something I want to show my two companions. As we walk down the side path between the building and some graves there are three teenagers sitting on a bench smoking weed. I acknowledge them and move past. Just beyond them is the object of the diversion – the tomb of John Harrison, a key contributor to the measurement of time, the inventor of the marine chronometer, and a self-taught clock maker and repairer. Born in 1693, his claim to fame is that he worked out how to measure longitude at sea, vital to global navigation. He won a £20,000 prize for his efforts, although getting the Board of Longitude and Parliament to honour the award proved difficult and drawn out. We read the lengthy inscription which tells Harrison’s story as best we can by phone light. 

We head back to our main course past the weed-smokers and back into the church yard. There one of the winos asks, to our surprise, “Did you see the Harrison grave?” I confirm we have, taken back a bit by the fact he has any knowledge of or interest in the relatively anonymous tomb. The other one pipes up that he is actually George Harrison. (18th century John  Harrison was also, as it happens, expert in the technicalities of music, given his mathematical genius.) The jolt from the first one’s question reminds us once again that winos, street people, addicts, burn-outs, bums and the like are human sons/daughters, maybe parents, friends, certainly relatives. Too easy to lose sight of. 

One of the nominees in this year’s inaugural SMART film festival, our international Smartphone film festival, helps underline this same realisation – José Rocha Pinto’s ‘In the Depths of the City’

And on the subject of addiction and drinking, our Amy Winehouse film for MTV and Paramount was announced this week. ‘Amy Winehouse and Me: Dionne’s Story’ plays on the 10th anniversary of Amy’s trip to the great stage in the sky (23rd July 2011 – in the UK it TXs  Mon 26th July at 10pm on MTV):

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Billboard

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Variety

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Daily Mirror

 

In contrast to the predictably grim Mirror piece, our film (on which my focus was story and script) is constructive and substantial, showing a process of grief over a decade finally coming to its crux. It centres on Amy’s godaughter, singer Dionne Bromfield.

Here’s the trailer: play

 

Amy Winehouse in Camden Town

Atmosphere (2013) by Pegasus – Junction of Parkway & Albert St (Earl of Camden pub)

Junction of Bayham St & Pratt St

by Bambi – Amy (& Morganico – Michael Dixon) – Michael, the man in black, was a local hairdresser, friend of Amy, added later

a fresh one – under the railway bridge at Castlehaven Rd

by Pegasus – just in the doorway of the Old Market Hall (Camden Lock Market) straight off of Camden High Street opposite Castlehaven Rd

by Otto Schade aka Osch – Hawley St

by Scott Eaton (2014) – The Stables Market

The above are all the traces of Amy Winehouse around her manor ten years after her tragic passing. 

The below are previous street art pieces which have gone the way of most street art, to that  blank wall in the sky.

by Mr Cenz

by Amara Por Dios and Kaptain Kris

by Philth (Phill Blake)

by Amara Por Dios and Kaptain Kris

Here’s a good snapshot of Amy art in the summer of 2017 when the Jewish Museum, which sits firmly in her stomping ground (on Albert St near ‘Atmosphere’), held an exhibition in her honour, appropriately including a series of street art commissions in the area.

The 10th anniversary of Amy’s death is on 23rd July.

forever with her gran

THE ARTISTS

Pegasus 

Bambi 

Osch

Mr Cenz

Amara por Dios

Kaptain Kris

Philth