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.

 

 

 

 

4 things I love about Peter Gabriel

On Friday I bumped into an old colleague at BAFTA, Tom Dolan of the Government Digital Service, who said he’d spotted me coming out of a Peter Gabriel event the other day. Which reminded me I’d been meaning to write this, it was majorly inspiring. The event was set up by The School of Life and centred on Peter Gabriel being interviewed by philosopher (and bit of a fanboy) Alain de Botton. PG came across as humble and connecting. The setting was The Emmanuel Centre in Marsham Street, just behind Channel 4 yet I’d never suspected that behind the modest door lay a massive, magnificent circular church auditorium. In the queue I bumped into an old C4 colleague & friend, Jan Younghusband, then Commissioning Editor for Arts & Music at C4, now Com Ed for Music & Events at the Beeb. Also Mike Christie, director, whose work includes one of my favourite shows during my time at the Channel, Jump London. (My other favourite is one of Jan’s, The Cost of Living featuring the DV8 dance company.) Mike’s a one for interesting buildings – I recently watched his modernist architecture series From Here to Modernity which inspired me to go back and look at the Isokon building in Hampstead.

 

 

1. He’s ever curious

This video was shown which blew my mind. It’s an ape learning to play the keyboard through its own exploration. At c.1’48” you can see it discovering the octave. PG is just a few feet away harmonising in the background.

 

You can see the set-up here:

 

Now (a) I love monkeys and (b) I reckon we’re just bald ones so this was guaranteed to appeal: the notion of communicating with our simian cousins through music which, as PG pointed out (a PG Tip) is the most direct and non-rational of art forms. As Walter Pater put it:

All art aspires to the condition of music

i.e. to that direct to the heart&soul unmediated non-material nature.

 

2. He’s a great collaborator

Kate Bush & Sinead O’Connor are two that particularly stick in my mind…

The Don’t Give Up video by Godley & Creme.

Blood of Eden

 

3. He was great looking

Captured particularly well by Robert Mapplethorpe – I remember this shot jumping out at me at a Mapplethorpe exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (?) because of that white V and the downward eyes.

Peter Gabriel by Robert Mapplethorpe

 

4. He has an open mind

Whether it’s his championing of world music through his Realworld label and WOMAD festival or his embracing of interactive digital technology (and apes) he has a most admirable and inspiring openness. When I won the very first Interactive Entertainment BAFTA Award in 1997 with the MindGym team the main nominee we beat was Peter Gabriel’s Starship Titanic game made with Douglas (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe) Adams. It felt very much like the young upstart had triumphed. His work with Amnesty International. His campaigning for South Africa in the wake of Steve Biko’s murder. His wide-ranging interests and boundless enthusiasm remain an inspiration to young upstarts across the globe.

 

 

The Opposite of Digital

Camille at the Roundhouse

It started deep below Tate Modern. In three large circular spaces, formerly oil tanks for the Bankside power station, Will Gompertz, Director of Tate Media, mentioned he would love to do an event in the brick-walled space before it gets transformed into new gallery space for 2012. The acoustics were enchanting, a huge cylindrical echo chamber punctuated with iron pillars, and a low hum from the remaining generators which made me think of Le Fil, the album by London-based(?) French singer Camille. The name of the record – the Thread – comes from the single note which threads across the whole of it. So when I noticed Camille was playing at the Roundhouse I invited Will.

Le Fil I came across by chance. Just liked the cover. I was down in Brick Lane with the Enfants Terribles one weekend when I ducked into Rough Trade East. When we pass a record or book shop they habitually form up into a SWAT team to bar my way but on that occasion I was too quick for them. It was a good session of buying on instinct – I came across Burial’s Untrue for the first time that day too.

As things turned out Will couldn’t make it in the end (had to meet Steve McQueen of Hunger fame) and I ended up inviting James, my neighbour, on the touchline at Finchley RFC vs Harrow RFC U12s out in Stanmore on an autumnal Sunday morning.

Now James hadn’t been to the Roundhouse since ’69 when he saw Pink Floyd, of which there are colourful accounts in Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles, including a mention of Donegal’s own Henry McCullough, the only Irishman on stage at Woodstock (with Joe Cocker). So it was a pleasure to reintroduce them and resonant to be standing next to an iron column not dissimilar from that secret Tate space.

Camille‘s performance was the opposite of digital. In this age of easy copying, reproduction, recording, on demand, clones – it was a unique performance of an unpredictable singer in dialogue with the live crowd. She seems to have a thing about the colour orange which suits me as so do I (childhood bedroom colour at 2A Selvage Lane aka La Sirene, appropriately enough – lord knows why my parents called the house that (or anything) but the sign ended up being flipped around and having the even worse Popin added to the former reverse side at the next house where my mum still lives and Sirene still hangs hidden).

Camille in short hand is Bobby McFerrin meets Kate Bush with a bit of Swingle Singers, Marcel Marceau and Beardyman thrown in for a good measure of machine-free madness. So all voices and body beats with no instruments beyond a piano which she doesn’t really need.

The gig came to a collective climax and just to show how live it was she came on for one too many encores and an improv with Jamie Cullum which didn’t quite work and dissipated the hard-won energy. But that’s the beauty of transcending the 1s and 0s – you win some, you lose some, you can’t tell til you try, human fallibility seeps in alongside human spirit.

The best 0 of the night was when she came back on for the encore that took the performance to its high point. She’d changed from the LBD under her orange robe to a Longer Black Dress. Then at 1 point she turned around to reveal a large 0 cut into the dress at the base of her spine, revealing an expanse of back which recalled Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger and a delightful toppest bit of bum, an emblem of that mad French sexuality we know and love from the likes of L’Ete Meutrier (One Deadly Summer) and 37.2 degres le Matin (Betty Blue). That threat of madness, that touch of unpredictability, the moment of unevenness, the ambiguous attractions among the band are the undigitalness we all need from time to time.

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