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.

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.

Keep creating [quotation]

“If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change”

Miles Davis

Miles at Newport ’69

McCoy Tyner – pianist

“To me living and music are all the same thing. And I keep finding out more about music as I learn more about myself, my environment, about all kinds of different things in life. I play what I live. Therefore, just as I can’t predict what kinds of experiences I’m going to have, I can’t predict the directions in which my music will go. I just want to write and play my instrument as I feel.”

McCoy Tyner with John Coltrane at Van Gelder studios, New Jersey in 1963

McCoy went to the great jazz gig in the sky this weekend – his performance on ‘A Love Supreme’ is transcendent and I’m having it played at my funeral (on the way in)

Quote of the Day: Resilience

Learn to deal with the valleys and the hills will take care of themselves.

– Count Basie

The Count & The Chairman of the Board (Basie & Sinatra)

Coincidences No.s 349-355

No. 349 Rome

The Villa Wolkonsky, British Ambassador’s residence in Rome

I am on a train to Exeter to be on the panel of a documentary pitching session at Two Short Nights film festival. I am with my colleague Harold who is telling me about his choir and a recent performance at the British Ambassador’s residence in Rome.

As he mentions the residence an email notification appears on my phone, right that second. It is from a woman at the British School at Rome (interdisciplinary research centre) who I met at a cocktail party at the British Ambassador’s residence in Rome, Villa Wolkonsky, when I was in the city in October to speak at the MIA Film Festival.

No. 350 A Man of Parts

HG Wells on the set of ‘Things to Come’

I am finishing a novel, A Man of Parts by David Lodge, about HG Wells, which I started ages ago but never got round to completing. The date is 28th October 2018.

I notice that I started reading it on 29th October 2015.

No. 351 Rishikesh

A see an old Channel 4 colleague of mine at the annual Christmas drinks of Sheffield-based indie, Joi Polloi – an event now known as The Circle. He wants to train in transcendental meditation and one of the places he is considering is Rishikesh in Northern India.

I have just finished a book called Revolution: The Making of the Beatles’ White Album by David Quantick. It centres on Rishikesh where much of the album was composed. It’s the only context in which I’ve ever come across the city.

No. 352 Dimmer Switches

I am listening to an episode of the Heavyweight podcast by Jonathan Goldstein, one of my very favourite podcasts. It is one about the making of the ‘one-take’ film Russian Ark by  Alexander Sokurov. In it there is discussion of changing a dimmer switch/rheostat to a regular on-off switch.

Just before leaving the house for the jog on which I was listening to Heavyweight I had had a domestic discussion about changing a dimmer switch/rheostat to a regular on-off switch – not a regular topic of conversation in our household.

No. 353 Meeting Your Heroes

Pete Shelley, Tony Wilson, Howard Devoto (L to R)

The news of the death of Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks is on the radio news. I met him once (as well as seeing him perform, supported by Joy Division at the Lyceum, London) on the studio set of a TV comedy entertainment show called In Bed With Medinner, execed by Jeff Pope [Philomena]. He turned out to be a bit of a cock, pissed on champagne, and made me think of that old adage about not meeting your heroes. Steve Diggle, the guitarist in the band, thankfully was a much more pleasant individual and asked for his wasted mate to be excused.

The next morning on the same radio station I am listening to novelist David Mitchell talk about his collaboration with singer Kate Bush on the Before The Dawn concerts in 2014. He evokes that old adage about not meeting your heroes and explains that in his instance with Kate Bush it did not apply, she lived up to his image of her.

No. 354 Catwatching

Ziggy look-a-like

I order the book Catwatching by Desmond Morris for my cat-loving older son for Christmas.

The book arrives today – I peel off the plastic cover and the cat on the front cover is our cat Ziggy – or a clone of her.

No. 355 Benny Goodman

Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa

I am talking to Enfant Terrible No. 1 about racism in football. It brings us on to a discussion of the movie Green Book and he says he is glad the pianist Don Shirley did not play in a restaurant in the Deep South in which he was not permitted to eat alongside his white band members by dint of the colour of his skin. I mention that it was jazz clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman who made a stand on this issue, refusing to have his band divided on the basis of skin colour.

The same day I am reading a crappy-but-enjoyable adventure novel (based on the Richard Hannay books), The Thirty-One Kings by Robert J. Harris. It mentions Benny Goodman.

Benny Goodman is who introduced me to jazz via a record I bought on my first trip to LA as a teenager, his greatest hits including Sing Sing Sing, featuring the proto-Keith Moon which was Gene Krupa on drums. Goodman is closely related to my best man’s Argentinian wife.

 

 

 

 

The 4 best things to come out of Scotland

While I’m still under the influence of the Macallan’s I thought it best to capture the best of Scotland – I was daydreaming for just a moment at the Burns Night gathering we’ve just been to at Cha Cha Cha in the shadowy alleyways of Muswell Hill, transfixed by a pile of Tunnock’s tea cakes, wondering what else as magnificent as a Tunnock’s Caramel has emerged from north of the border…

1. Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer

5 layers of wafer, 4 layers of caramel, fully coated in real milk chocolate. The dog’s cahones.

2. Mike Scott of The Waterboys

5 layers of Yeats, 4 layers of Dylan, fully coated in real wild Ireland.

3. John Buchan’s stories

My favourite copy

5 layers of outdoors, 4 layers of clubland, fully coated in real imperial conservatism.

4. Bobby Wellins’ sax on Starless & Bible Black

5 layers of melancholy, 4 layers of beauty, fully coated in real jazz delicacy.

 

 

 

Or perhaps you know better…?

Joie de Vivre revisited

I’m standing on the terrace of the Château Grimaldi in Vieil Antibes (aka le Musee Picasso). Below is an expanse of azure sea punctuated with dozens of white sails travelling in various incomprehensible lines as they race from whoknowswhere to somewhereelse. I couldn’t be happier being back in Antibes/Juan Les Pins. I’m here for the MIP TV market/Digital Emmys, my usual reason for being in this neck of the woods, but as a veteran of such things, I know to stay in Juan rather than Cannes.

Juan-les-Pins has two particular resonances for me – my European grandparents and jazz. The former, a Germano-Polish alliance, used to come here in the 50s and 60s as it was à la mode, the In place. They both enjoyed gambling so I expect the casino was a significant attraction. The latter I suspect was not unrelated to this modishness as it was the golden age of modal jazz and other such modern experimentation. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen stuff about Miles and Coltrane playing here. This hotel (I’m now on the balcony of my room at Le Grand Pavois as my phone ran out of juice at the end of the first paragraph) has a Sidney Bechet room. Somewhere near the patch of sea I can see through the pines is a commemoration of the international jazz festival they used to hold in town.

A quick bit of Googling shows that Trane played at the festival in 1965 and a live LP was recorded, and Miles played here in July 1969. That probably makes the Trane performance within 6 months of the release of ‘A Love Supreme’.

A bit more Googling reveals that Coltrane, Tyner, Garrison & Jones (the recorders/creators of ‘A Love Supreme’) were the band who played in Juan on 26/27 July 1965 and they played A Love Supreme, Impressions and Naima, which makes it I believe the one and only live performance of ‘A Love Supreme’, one of my favourite records, the opening track of which I’ve left a request to have played at my funeral (on the way in).

Back in the land very much of the living, today has been a pretty blessed one. The taxi driver who picked me up in Nice had a PhD in history of art from the Sorbonne and taught there. Cue interesting conversation about Fragonard, Boucher, etc. The hotel room they put me in is a corner room and because of its odd shape is big enough to play football in and has this huge sweeping balcony hugging the curved corner of the building where I’m now sitting in the golden rays of the evening sun in just a clean white towel (refreshing after the London winter).

So I dumped my coat and baggage, changed into shorts and my Save Ferris T-shirt and headed over the hill to Old Antibes. Steak frites for lunch with a glass of rosé. Crêpe citrone and café crême. Reading The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell), my book club choice. Then into the back streets by the marché provençale to the Musée Picasso, like an annual pilgrimage. It’s one of my favourite places.

I delighted in revisiting the fabulously Mediterranean ‘Joie de Vivre” (1946) which Picasso painted in the building after the war and about which I’ve written at length. This time the work that really stood out for me was ‘Nu Assis sur font vert’ (1946) which is a good example of Picasso capturing the human body in geometric, sculptural forms.

From there I passed a happy hour reading, snoozing, listening on the small harbour beach beside the marina. A walk over to Jaume Plensa’s Nomade sculpture (2010) on the harbour wall. Pleasant memories of one of my best days at Channel 4, rounding the corner of a wood to see for the first time ‘Dream’, which Plensa made as part of the ‘Big Art Project’ series. I met him that day.

On the late afternoon walk home I had one of the best ice-creams I’ve ever had (rum & raisin and coffee if you want to know).

The feeling that came to me walking over that hill on the way out at noon was that for all the crap going on in the world (and there’s no end of it) we need to stay in touch with the joys of living and appreciate them each and every day. That’s the only way to live. Otherwise it’s a road to madness.

Radio Radio

I listen to about 30 plus hours of radio a week. It’s a great medium. “Skull Cinema” is what a colleague at work called it the other day.

One of my favourites shows on the radio is the Robert Elms Show on BBC London 94.9 – the current unwieldy name for GLR. GLR, founded in 1988, burned brightly for just a few years like a flare in the night, lighting up the faces of Chris Evans, Chris Morris and Danny Baker; Mark Lamarr, Gideon Coe, Phill Jupitus and Gary Crowley; lightening the hearts of 20somethings across the capital, feeding telly for years to come. By 2000 it was no more – except in those hearts.

Robert Elms is into much of the same stuff as me – London, music, architecture, trivia, history and music. You said music twice…

Hedley Lamarr: Qualifications?
Applicant Outlaw: Rape, murder, arson, and rape.
Hedley Lamarr: You said rape twice.
Applicant Outlaw: I like rape.

He shares a birthday with my Other Half. That must mean something.

Anyway, this weekend I got a real kick getting a mention on the show. Robert asked for ideas for Christmas tunes to play over the next couple of weeks. I sent in these two.

This is the latest Christmas record in our household, acquired this time last year. Robert said he’d played it a couple of days ago. Good, we’re on the same wavelength. It’s got that Rockabilly heartbeat.

This one is our core Christmas record. It goes on first thing on the big day and means it’s finally here – the pressie-opening, the turkey, the film, the family, the fun&games. Robert said he hadn’t come across this one and would follow it up (he says he takes these suggestions from listeners very seriously – I believe him).

So I whack off a quick email upstairs and by the time I get down to the kitchen I hear my two proposals coming out of the old Roberts, a veritable honour.

The best show of the year is one he does on New Year’s Eve day where he collects the best of his live music sessions of the year from the small Radio London studio with the dodgy Joanna. Always a total treat. Last year I remember finding Cecile McLorin Salvant and Laura Mvula through it.

Magical Music Moments

I’m just moving this parlour game over from the Inheritance Tracks post to its own space here.

The Game:

You have to pinpoint a transcendent moment in a track which constitutes a magical music moment. Provide URL of track in YouTube or similar and pinpoint the precise second the magic happens.

Moment #1 (Adam Gee)

This first one is based on a performance at the Royal Dublin Showgrounds – an uplifting moment when I realised Springsteen is at his best as a gospel/soul voice and got carried away on it.
My City of Ruins (Bruce Springsteen)
The moment is 4:07 but is indivisible from the build up 3:03-4:06
“With these hands With these hands With these hands With these hands”

Moment #2 (Adam Gee)

The second one is a massive cliche but no less powerful for that – it is one of The Great Rock Moments
Stairway To Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
4:18 at which point every fibre of you so needs those drums to come in (to deliver fully at 06:22 and 06:42)

Moment #3 (Doug Miller)

Yusef Lateef (Number 7)

One of the great live jazz albums is ‘Live at Peps’ by Yusef Lateef (Vols 1 and 2 are both great). The track is called ‘Number 7′. It’s got a great feel to it. You can hear the chat in the audience and the drinks being served behind the bar. Everything a great jazz club should be. There are two great changes – the first at 6.49 when a trumpet catches you unawares. The second a few seconds later when the piano comes in at the perfect moment and plays the blues. The audience responds and it’s recorded so well that you imagine yourself as an audience member. Yusef is now 92 and still playing. His album ‘Eastern Sounds’ is one of the great jazz albums – one of my top 10. But that’s another game.

More to follow…