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.

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“.

Story through Inventory (update)

Here’s another creative for whom objects are an important artistic inspiration…

The first video message from Rockaway, Patti Smith’s out-of-town retreat

Poet/singer/writer Patti Smith keeps a selection of inspirational objects in her beach house in Queens, New York.

Pretty sparse and Zen

Besides the Frida Kahlo book and the well-worn copy of the novel ‘A Girl of the Limberlost’ by Gene Stratton-Porter (1909), the embroidery with Christian iconography and a hint of the Pilgrim Fathers(?), and the stones probably off Rockaway Beach, the other selections are hard to interpret and highly personal. The way they are displayed clearly has something of the altar about it, concentrating them in a focused space.

I’m more of an all-over-the-place merchant, punctuating my space with resonant or interesting objects. Here are the latest from my ‘Random Object from the Archives’ series…

Walkman WM1 – a milestone

The CD iteration

The MP3 iteration (iPod U2 special edition – I love red, black & grey)

London 2012 Olympics Gamesmaker pass – the best summer of my adult life

Without a doubt, that black & red iPod contains many Patti Smith songs. What music is actually on there is now a mystery.

Coincidences No.s 291 & 292 – A London Boy

No. 291 All Things Must Pass

I go for my last run (of hundreds) in St Pancras & Islington cemetery. It’s only open on weekends at the moment due to Lockdown/Covid so this Sunday is my last opportunity. I am due to move house on Tuesday. I know every inch of this huge cemetery-cum-nature reserve and have deeply enjoyed the hours I have spent here running, walking and meditating. I jog listening to a BBC Radio programme (‘Archive on 4‘) about George Harrison’s first solo record ‘All Things Must Pass’. 

As I reach the gate coming out for the last time the narrator, Nitin Sawhney, reminds us that the record first came out in the UK 50 years ago on 30th November. This is 29th November. On the 30th I am packing up the house and home office of ArkAngel to move out. 

As I reach the side gate of the house at the end of the run George says (referring to the long recording process):

“…and it’s finished.”

No. 292 A New Dawn

I just received the following message (30 seconds ago via Facebook):

“Listening to it myself. Dedicating Nina to you. Xx”

It refers to this playlist, ‘Weekend at Home‘, created by my Best Man, and the track ‘Feeling Good’ (by Nina Simone). I’ve been listening to the playlist all morning on the first Saturday in my new home, where I’m sitting at my new ArkAngel desk.

About two minutes before the message arrived I got an email from a colleague/friend at Little Dot Studios. It was about somebody pirating ‘Surf Girls Jamaica‘ and at the end he asked

“How’s the new place?”

Exactly as I read the email these were the very words I heard from Spotify…

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me

Yeah, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me

And I’m feelin’ good

‘Feeling Good’ was actually written by two Londoners – Anthony Newley (Hackney) & Leslie Bricusse (Pinner) for a musical, ‘The Roar of the Greasepaint’ . As I finish off this post, on the ‘Weekend at Home’ playlist I’ve reached the track ‘The London Boys‘ by David Bowie. It was a 1966 B-side on Deram records which put out his early work. He sings it in a very Anthony Newley London style as Newley was a huge influence on Bowie when he was starting out. My move takes me back to my native postcode: London NW7

It’s a new dawn

In the Wake of Waking Up

I’m writing this after having just finished an online session about the Sirens chapter of Ulysses with the Charles Peake Seminar group – it’s the chapter centred on music. I switched straight from that which finished at 8pm to a live online gig from the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin by Iarla O Leonaird (singer in Gaelic) & Steve Cooney (guitar player) which started at 8pm. Music is a Big Thing for Joyce – this morning I got to The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly at the end of the second chapter of Finnegans Wake, marking the culmination of the rumours about HCE’s shameful act, fixing that moment for the long term in folksong. It actually opens with musical staves and notes, underlining the collagey, encyclopedic and scrapbooky nature of the Wake.

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And he curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
At the butt of the Magazine Wall,
The Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?

He was one time our King of the Castle
Now he’s kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he’ll be sent by order of His Worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy
To the jail of Mountjoy!
Jail him and joy.

I noticed this morning after finishing this section and the couple of pages before it that when I went to read another (conventional) novel it took a good few minutes to go back to conventional reading – you get into a different mode of reading and thinking when immersed in the Wake. It was a really interesting reading experience. The way you read the Wake is more engaged, playful and energetic than normal reading.

I want to finish off this second post by starting a couple of lists. The central character, HCE, has his initials explained in a number of ways in the book and I want to start capturing them:

• Harold or Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (p30) – see last post
• Howth Castle and Environs (3) = 1st line of the novel, a key location in both the Wake and Ulysses
• Haveth Childers Everywhere (a section published in 1930 as part of Work in Progress) = Adam, father of mankind
• humile, commune and ensectuous (29)
• Here Comes Everybody (32) = Everyman
• habituels conspicuously emergent (33)
• He’ll Cheat E’erawan (46) = a sinful fella

Another list I want to begin here is one of all the different ways Joyce refers to the city at the heart of the novel (as with Ulysses) – Dublin:

• Dabblin (p16)
• (Brian) d’ of Linn (17)
• dun blink (17)
• durblin (19)
• Devlin (24)
• Dumbaling (34)
• Poolblack (35) = Dub/black Lin/Pool : dubh linn (Gaelic) black pool

The focus of Wake’s Dublin

(I’ll keep building these lists as I read through.)

 

Art School was Rock School

A couple of years ago I went to a meeting at University of the Arts/Chelsea College of Arts to discuss a programme idea about Art Schools in the UK. Waiting in the cafe bit near the entrance I was really struck by the proportion of Chinese and South-East Asian students in the packed room – a sign of the times. In 2016 I was teaching on an MA course at the Royal College of Art, set up by designer Neville Brody (of ‘The Face’ fame) – I had helped him shape its curriculum. Of the 18 students in the room, one was British – most of the others were European, a couple from South-East Asia. My point is about the mix and the absence of young Brits (rather than the presence of students from abroad).

Brian Eno in Roxy Music

In February 2017 I went to an event in Cecil Sharp House, Camden Town at which Brian Eno was interviewed by Tanya Byron (with whom I worked on ‘Bedtime Live‘ [Channel 4]). He talked a lot about his teacher at Ipswich Art School, Tom Phillips (a signed print of whose is sitting on this desk, just behind my screen, a present from my mum – we went to collect it from Tom’s house together). His teachers there had a formative role in his development as a musician. There’s a good account of their relationship here.

Today I was reflecting again on the vital contribution of Art Schools to British music, not least in the punk and post-punk era in which I was a teenager.

malcolm mclaren & vivienne westwood

What those schools represented among other things was a space for experimentation, to figure out what you want to do with your life and art, to come across & play with ideas. No nine grand a year debt hanging over your head. They were also a place for people who didn’t fit the mainstream tertiary education system – or rather it failed to fit them.

Paul Simonon of The Clash [photo by Sheila Rock]

This is the first of a two-part article on the subject – I want to round off this introductory part with a (kick-off rather than comprehensive) list of musicians who went to art schools around the UK to give a sense of the enormous impact of these places on music across the globe:

• John Mayall – Regional College of Art (Manchester), 1955-1959
• Charlie Watts – Harrow Art School, 1956-1960
• John Lennon – Liverpool College of Art, 1957-1960
• Keith Richards – Sidcup Art School, 1959-1962
• Jimmy Page – Sutton Art College, 1960-1964
• John Cale – Goldsmiths, 1960-1963
• Viv Stanshall – Central St Martins, 1961-1962
• Ronnie Wood – Ealing Art College, 1961-1964
• Eric Clapton – Kingston Art College, 1961-1962
• Pete Townshend – Ealing Art College, 1961-1964
• Ray Davies – Hornsey College of Art, 1962-1963
• Cat Stevens – Hammersmith School of Art
• Syd Barrett – Camberwell College of Art, 1964-1966
• Roger Waters – Regent Street Polytechnic, 1962-65 [architecture]
• Nick Mason – Regent Street Polytechnic, 1962-65 [architecture]
• Rick Wright – Regent Street Polytechnic, 1962-65 [architecture]
• Bryan Ferry – Newcastle College of Art, 1964-1968
• Brian Eno – Ipswich Art School, 1964-1966 & Winchester College of Art, 1966-1969
• Malcolm McLaren – St Martin’s & Chiswick Polytechnic & Croydon College of Art & Harrow Art College & Goldsmiths College, 1963-1971
• Ian Dury – Royal College of Art, 1964-1967
• Freddie Mercury – Ealing College of Art, 1966-1969
• Joe Strummer – Central St Martins, 1970-1971
• Adam Ant – Hornsey College of Art, 1972-1975
• Jerry Dammers – Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry, 1972-1975
• Mick Jones – Hammersmith School of Art, 1973-1974
• Paul Simonon – Byam Shaw (London), 1975-1976
• Marc Almond – Leeds Polytechnic (Leeds Beckett University), 1976-1979
• David Ball of Soft Cell – Leeds Polytechnic (Leeds Beckett University), 1976-1979
• Andy Gill of Gang Of Four – Leeds University
• Jon King of Gang Of Four – Leeds University
• Sade – Central St Martins, 1977-1980
• Jarvis Cocker – Central St Martins, 1988-1991
• Graham Coxon – Goldsmiths, 1988-1989
• Damon Albarn – Goldsmiths
• Alex James – Goldsmiths
• Justine Frischmann of Elastica – Central St Martins
• PJ Harvey – Yeovil Art College, 1990-1991
• Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian – Stow College (Glasgow Kelvin College) 1995-
• Stuart David of Belle and Sebastian – Stow College (Glasgow Kelvin College) 1995-
• Fran Healy of Travis – Glasgow School of Art
• Corinne Bailey Rae – Leeds University
• Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine – Camberwell, 2006-2007
• Paloma Faith – Central St Martins

Damon Albarn of Blur by Julian Opie

If you know other British musicians who came out of art school, please add them in the comments below.

Best Music of 2019

Just taking a moment to record for posterity/reference the highlights of 2019’s music from a London point of view in the form of the playlist of Robert Elms’ annual New Year’s Eve episode of his Radio London show before it drops off BBC Sounds (Audio on Demand app) in a couple of weeks. (The bolding is my recommendations.)

Celeste

The recorded music and live sessions from his show played by Robert Elms on 31/12/19.

1. Bob James Trio
 – Ain’t Misbehavin’
2. Hiss Golden Messenger – 
I Need A Teacher
3. 
Jack Savoretti
 – Catapult (Radio London Session, 15 Jan 2019)
4. Monkey House
 – 10,000 Hours [shades of Steely Dan – in a pleasing way]
5. Danny Toeman – 
She’s Got Something About Her (Radio London Session, 8 Aug 2019)








 [shades of 70s soul – in a groovy way]
6. Emily King – 
Look At Me Now
7. 
HAIM
 – Summer Girl
8. Celeste
 – Lately (Radio London Session, 4 Apr 2019)
9. Nick Lowe
 – Love Starvation [can still teach the young’uns a thing or two]
10. Natty Rebel
 – Copper And Lead [fresh roots reggae]
11. 
Jo Harman – 
Cloudy (Radio London Session, 1 Mar 2019)
12. Michael Kiwanuka
 – You Ain’t The Problem [contender for LP of the year]
13. Ralph McTell
 – West 4th Street & Jones (Radio London Session, 27 Nov 2019) [lovely reflection on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – a cover I own the original contact sheet from by photographer Don Hunstein]
14. Paul Weller
 – You Do Something To Me (Live At Royal Festival Hall, 2018) [just a great song]
15. Kat Eaton – 
Barricade
16. Monks Road Social
 – If It Was All Down To Me
17. Bruce Springsteen
 – There Goes My Miracle [his singing is impeccable on this]
18. Kelly Finnigan
 – I Called You Back Baby [shades of Aretha – in a funky way]
19. 
Khruangbin & Leon Bridges – 
Texas Sun
20. 
The Divine Comedy – 
Norma And Norman (Radio London Session, 7 Jun 2019)








 [quirkiness at its best]
21. Teskey Brothers
 – Pain And Misery (Radio London Session, 11 Feb 2019)








 [shades of Otis – in a surprising way]
22. 
The James L’Estraunge Orchestra – 
Closer [shades of Aztec Camera – a lone Scot in his bedroom making an astonishingly big sound, playing everything himself]
23. Durand Jones & the Indications
 – Morning In America [shades of Gil-Scott Heron – in a respectful way]
24. Greentea Peng
 – Risin’ (Radio London Session, 24 Oct 2019)
25. 
Gabriella Cilmi
 – Ruins
26. 
Lissie
 – Dreams
27. The Delines
 – Eddie & Polly (Radio London Session, 4 Nov 2019)
28. Roseanne Reid
 – Amy [offspring on a Proclaimer]
29. The Brand New Heavies & N’Dea Davenport
 – These Walls
30. Maisie Peters – 
Favourite Ex (Radio London Session, 2 Aug 2019)
31. 
Leif Vollebekk
 – The Way That You Feel
32. Richard Hawley
 – My Little Treasures
33. 
Judi Jackson
 – Better In The Fall (Radio London Session, 20 Mar 2019)
34. Geraint Watkins
 – Heaven Only Knows
35. Ady Suleiman
 – Strange Roses (Radio London Session, 7 Mar 2019)
36. Jamie Cullum
 – Drink (Radio London Session, 10 Jun 2019)
37. Yola
 – Faraway Look

    The original programme [3 hours] is here  but will disappear at the end of January 2020.

Greentea Peng
 – more proof that young music is alive & kicking in London

Best of 2019

 

The scene of the year

Film:

Joker

Mid90s

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Rolling Thunder Review

Booksmart

Last year: Vice, Cold War

 

Foreign-Language Film:

Parasite

Last year: The Square 

 

Documentary:

Rolling Thunder Review

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love; Knock Down the House; Apollo 11

 

Male Lead:

Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

Sunny Suljic (Mid 90s)

Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell)

Taron Egerton as Reggie Dwight/Elton John in Rocketman; Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Michael B. Jordan (Just Mercy)

Last year: Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody

 

Female Lead:

Elizabeth Debicki (Virginia, Vita & Virginia)

Beanie Feldstein (Molly, Booksmart)

Gemma Arterton (Vita, Vita & Virginia)

Last year: Joanna Kulig – Cold War

 

Male Support:

Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin in Joker

Al Pacino – The Irishman

Olan Prenatt as Fuckshit in Mid90s; Lucas Hedges as Ian in Mid90s; Stephen Merchant as Deertz in Jojo Rabbit; Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Na-Kel Smith as Ray in Mid90s

Last year: Terry Notary (The Square)

 

Female Support:

Kaitlyn Dever as Amy in Booksmart

Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Laura Rose in Motherless Brooklyn; Scarlett Johansson as Rosie in Jojo Rabbit

Last year: Amy Adams(Vice)

 

Director:

Todd Phillips (Joker)

Jonah Hill (Mid 90s)

Last year: Adam McKay (Vice)

 

Writer:

Todd Phillips & Scott Silver – Joker

Jonah Hill (Mid 90s)

Taika Waititi – Jo Jo Rabbit

Last year: Adam McKay (Vice)

 

Editing:

tbc

Last year: Vice

 

Cinematography:

Roger Deakins – 1917

Last year: Lukasz Zal (Cold War)

 

Film Music:

Rolling Thunder Review

Last year: Bohemian Rhapsody / Cold War

 

Single/Song:

Lately – Celeste

Last year: I Want You (Sam Reid & Claudia Jolly – The Girl from the North Country)

 

Album:

Ghosteen – Nick Cave

Kiwanuka – Michael Kiwanuka; Western Stars – Bruce Springsteen

Last year: The Girl from the North Country (London cast)

 

Gig:

Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets (Roundhouse)

Kamasi Washington (Brixton Academy)

Patti Smith (Westminster Central Hall)

The Midnight Special – Abbey Road anniversary (Jazz Cafe)

Abdullah Ibrahim (Cadogan Hall)

Proms: Jonny Greenwood (Albert Hall)

Last year: David Byrne – Hammersmith Odeon

 

Play:

A Taste of Honey (Trafalgar Studios)

Last year: Girl from the North Country [2nd viewing]

 

Art Exhibition:

Van Gogh in Britain (Tate B)

Preraphaelite Sisters (NPG)

Tate St Ives

Last year: Picasso: 1932 (Tate Modern)

 

Book:

A Woman of No Importance – Sonia Purnell

The Order of the Day – Eric Vuillard

The Cut-out Girl – Bart Van Es

The Quiet American, To Have & Have Not, The Catcher in the Rye, The Drowning Pool

Last year: The Leithen Stories – John Buchan

 

TV:

After Life (Netflix)

The Boys (Amazon), The Crown – S3 (Amazon)

Last year: Mrs Wilson

 

Podcast:

13 Minutes to the Moon

The Tip-Off

Sport:

England beating the All-Blacks at the Rugby World Cup, Japan

 

Dance:

The Red Shoes (Sadlers Wells)

 

Event:

150th anniversary of Girton College (including event at Trinity, Dublin)

50th anniversary of Moon Landing/Apollo 11

Mythos: The Gods – Stephen Fry

 

Dearly departed:

• Emily Hartridge (who I made Oh Shit I’m 30! with)
• Judith Kerr (with whom I was on Woman’s Hour)
• Leon Kossoff
• D.A. Pennebaker
• Clive James
• Jonathan Miller (who I walk with in Aldeburgh while he was having a cheeky fag)
• Albert Finney
• Gordon Banks (his Esso medal hangs on my wall along with his 1970 World Cup team mates)
• Peter Fonda
• Ginger Baker
• Doris Day
• Dr John
• Mark Hollis (who I have a vague memory of meeting briefly at Solus, my first job)
• Agnès Varda
• Mary Warnock (Mistress of Girton in my era)
• Jeremy Hardy (he contributed to my Omagh project at Channel 4)
• Terry O’Neill

Performance of the year

 

Best of 2018 and links to earlier Bests Of

All Souls’ Day

Patti Smith by Robert Mapplethorpe (1975)

Today is the day the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946. Today is the day the guitarist Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith of the MC5 died, a quarter of a century ago. Today is the day Patti Smith’s grandchild was born. Patti was married to Fred, and was best-friends with Robert.

Coincidences is one of the things I write often about on this blog. It feels like there’s a pattern in the coincidences of these dates. It’s the kind of thing that makes me think of myself as a pantheist.

Two days ago, on All Souls’ Day, I went to see Patti Smith at the Central Hall Westminster aka Methodist Central Hall, a two-thousand seat domed venue near the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey (and Channel 4) which served as venue for a number of key Suffragette events around 1914. It is also the building where the first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place (in 1946). Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Churchill have all spoken there.

On Saturday evening Patti Smith spoke about her work and life and read from her new memoir ‘Year of the Monkey’. She also performed six songs with her bandmate Tony Shanahan.

1 Wing

I was a wing in heaven blue
soared over the ocean
soared over Spain
and I was free
needed nobody
it was beautiful
it was beautiful

After the UN General Assembly used the hall on 10th January 1946 with 51 nations attending it repaid the venue by paying for it to be painted light blue – perhaps heaven blue.

The song comes from ‘Gone Again’, Patti’s 6th studio album, which was released in the wake of various losses in her life – Fred, Robert, her brother Todd and her pianist Richard Sohl among them. All Sohl’s Day.

2 Beneath the Southern Cross

Oh
To be
Not anyone
Gone
This maze of being
Skin
Oh
To cry
Not any cry
So mournful that
The dove just laughs
The steadfast gasps

This song is from the same LP – it features Jeff Buckley on backing vocals. Tony Shanahan played bass on the record. ‘Gone Again’ came out in the summer of 1996 – Jeff died in the summer of the following year. All Souls’ Day.

3  My Blakean Year

In my Blakean year
I was so disposed
Toward a mission yet unclear
Advancing pole by pole
Fortune breathed into my ear
Mouthed a simple ode
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road

I’m not sure which year was Patti’s Blakean one – it might have been 2004. That was the year ‘Trampin’ ‘ came out, her 9th studio album. I am sure that her Year of the Monkey was 2016 – a trying year for many of us – Brexit, Trump, illness in the family, it was one you celebrated reaching the end of. The day after this gig I broke out this T-shirt from 2017 to mark the memory:

on the floordrobe

Blake is a big presence in Patti’s life, as he was in Allen Ginsberg’s. I met Patti Smith briefly once not far from Blake’s grave in Bunhill – it was after a concert she gave at St Luke’s church/concert hall in Old Street. We talked about Rimbaud and his time living in London. Rimbaud is another big literary figure in her life. In the wake of the All Souls gig I went for a walk yesterday with the member of my family who had been unwell in 2016 and we passed the house where Rimbaud lived for a couple of months with Verlaine.

8 Royal College Street, Camden Town

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.

Chanson d’automne (Paysages tristes – Poèmes saturniens) – Paul Verlaine (1866)

[Autumn song from Sad Landscapes]

4 After The Goldrush by Neil Young

Neil & Patti

This song appears on ‘Banga’, Patti’s 11th studio album from 2012. It was co-produced by Patti, Tony Shanahan and others. Both her children with Fred – son Jackson and daughter Jesse – played on it.

Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armor comin’
Sayin’ something about a queen
There were peasants singin’ and drummers drummin’
And the archer split the tree
There was a fanfare blowin’ to the sun
That was floating on the breeze
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the 1970s
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the 1970s

A timely anthem for the climate emergency. She changed the lyrics towards the end to:

Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the 21st Century.

5 Because the Night

Patti & Bruce (1977)

This song was co-written by Patti & Bruce Springsteen, fellow New Jerseyites. Patti said at the gig that it is about Fred. It was on ‘Easter’, her 3rd studio album, the first one I bought, after having picked up a single ‘Hey Joe’ / ‘Piss Factory’ out of intrigue at the cover and the B-side title. Inside the ‘Easter’ vinyl sleeve is a photograph of Rimbaud, a First Communion portrait with his father Frédéric.

Take me now, baby, here as I am
Pull me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed

Come on now try and understand
The way I feel when I’m in your hands
Take my hand come undercover
They can’t hurt you now
Can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now

6 Pissing in the River

1974 debut single

Two years after her debut single (Piss Factory) came another piss song (Pissing in a River).

Pissing in a river, watching it rise
Tattoo fingers shy away from me
Voices voices mesmerize
Voices voices beckoning sea
Come come come come back come back
Come back come back come back

It appeared on her second studio LP, 1976’s ‘Radio Ethiopia’, which followed her ground-breaking, landmark debut ‘Horses’. ‘Horses’ features a classic photo by Mapplethorpe on the cover:

1975 debut LP

Patti got most into her stride performing this song, which is perfect for All Souls’ Day

Come come come come back come back
Come back come back come back

She spoke most movingly about working with her friend Sam Shepherd on his final publication. He passed on in 2016. As did her friend record producer Sandy Pearlman who produced Blue Oyster Cult and The Clash’s ‘Give ‘Em Enough Rope’ among others. I remember walking through the snow on New Year’s Day down to Loppylugs in Edgware to buy that record in the days when you had a delicious wait for things.

I always associate in my head BOC’s ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ and ‘Because the Night’ – I’ve no idea why, they were released two years apart (1976 and 1978). Patti didn’t talk about Pearlman although he was one of the key losses behind ‘Year of the Monkey’. But she spoke at length about Shepherd and made it clear that he didn’t really fear the reaper – he got to the end of his book with Patti’s help – he could no longer hold a pen or type on a keyboard, or play his Gibson in the corner of the room where they worked together on his Kentucky ranch – so she had to capture his voice and ten days after finishing he went to the big farm in the sky. One thing that really struck me about what she recounted about Sam was that they had written together back in the early days in New York so it was familiar to do it again at the end of his time in Kentucky. They had always been able to write side by side on their own things, alone and together at the same time. I love being alone but together – for example, in the house when all the family are sleeping like this weekend just passed, all souls as one.

Soul music: Patti & Tony at Central Hall