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

Openings – first lines of songs

In most creations with a time dimension (film, music, etc.), the opening is very important. This is particularly true of Short Form Video where the drop-off rates in the first minute on almost all platforms is very high (75%+). It’s all about grabbing attention and retaining interest. While it’s critical in this most modern of art forms, it’s pretty much as true of the positively ancient art of song writing.

Here are some favourites from a lively thread on our Facebook account…

God said to Abraham…

God said to Abraham “Kill me a son”

Abe said “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”

[Bob Dylan, Highway 61]

 

I don’t believe in an interventionist god

But I know, darling, that you do

[Nick Cave, Into My Arms]

 

Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine

[Patti Smith, Gloria]

 

I wanted to change the world

But I could not even change my underwear

[Sinead O’Connor, written by John Grant – Queen of Denmark]

 

Some of us live like princes; some of us live like queens;

Some of us live just like you and me and don’t know what it means…

To take our place in one world; to make our peace in one world; to make our love in one world…

[John Martyn, One World]

 

If you kissed the sun right out of the sky for me

If you told me all the lies I might deserve

If you lay right down and you died for me

I could not love you more

[John Martyn, Couldn’t Love You More] perhaps the greatest in his simplicity

 

You curl around me, like a fern in the spring.

[John Martyn, Go Down Easy]

 

I can hear her heart beat for a thousand miles

And the heavens open every time she smiles

And when I come to her that’s where I belong

Yet I’m running to her like a river’s song

[Van Morrison, Crazy Love]

 

I am a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm

[Iggy and the Stooges,  Search and Destroy]

 

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey

[Beck]

 

Jeremiah was a bullfrog

Was a good friend of mine

[Three Dog Night, Joy to the World]

 

I’ve been working on a cocktail called grounds for divorce.

[Elbow]

 

When me and Pam are hand in hand, we make a lovely pair.

But when we fight her awful spite is more than I can bear.

[Ian Dury, Pam’s Moods]

 

I guess I should’ve known

By the way you parked your car sideways

That it wouldn’t last

[Prince, Little Red Corvette]

 

Tumble out of bed stumble to the kitchen,

Pour myself a cup of ambition

[Dolly Parton, 9 to 5]

 

I may not always love you

But as long as there are stars above you

You never need to doubt it

[Beach Boys, God Only Knows] one of the most beautiful of songs

 

An old man turned 98…He won the lottery and died the next day

[Alanis Morissette, Ironic]

 

Son I am 30

I only went with your mother cos she’s dirty

[Happy Mondays, Kinky Afro]

 

I never thought it would happen

With me and the girl from Clapham

[squeeze, Up the Junction] a top rhyme

 

Abra Abra Cadabra

I wanna reach out and grab ya

[Steve Miller Band]

 

A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop, A-lop-bam-boom

[Little Richard, Tutti Frutti]

 

I did you wrong my heart went out to play

But in the game I lost you

What a price to pay, hey I’m crying

[Smokey Robinson, Ooh Ooh Baby]

 

Oh, my land is like a wild goose

Wanders all around everywhere

Trembles and it shakes till every tree’s loose

It rolls the meadows and it rolls the nails

[Gram Parsons, A Song for You]

 

Hey Charlie I’m pregnant and living on 9th Street

Right above a dirty bookstore off Euclid Avenue

And I stopped takin dope and I quit drinkin whiskey

And my old man plays the trombone and works out at the track

[Tom Waits, Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis]

 

It’s four in the morning, the end of December

I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better

New York is cold, but I like where I’m living

There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert

You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.

[Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat]

 

No regrets Coyote

We just come from such different sets of circumstance

I’m up all night in the studios

And you’re up early on your ranch

You’ll be brushing out a brood mare’s tail

While the sun is ascending

And I’ll just be getting home with my reel to reel

There’s no comprehending

Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes

And the lips you can get

And still feel so alone

And still feel related

Like stations in some relay

You’re not a hit and run driver

No no

Racing away

[Joni Mitchell, Coyote]

 

They’ve paved paradise and put up a parking lot

With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot

[Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi]

 

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand

Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain

He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook’s

Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein

[Warren Zevon, Werewolves of London]

 

I met her in a club down in old Soho

Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca Cola

C-O-L-A, Cola

[The Kinks, Lola]

 

I’ve been loving you a long time

Down all the years, down all the days

And I’ve cried for all your troubles

Smiled at your funny little ways.

[The Pogues, a Rainy Night in Soho]

 

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs

Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know

And the people that come and go

Stop and say hello.

[The Beatles, Penny Lane]

 

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in any way,

[The Beatles, Help!]

 

I can feel the earth begin to move

I hear my needle hit the groove

And spiral through another day

I hear my song begin to say

Kiss me where the sun don’t shine

The past was yours

But the future’s mine

You’re all out of time.

[The Stone Roses, She Bangs the Drums]

 

Well you tried it just for once, found it alright for kicks.

But now you’ve found out that it’s a habit that sticks.

[Buzzcocks, Orgasm Addict]

 

I’m a glum one, it’s explainable, I met someone unattainable

[Frank Sinatra, I Can’t Get Started]

 

Someone’s got it in for me they’re planting stories in the press.

[Bob Dylan, Idiot Wind]

 

Bless my cotton socks I’m in the news

[Teardrop Explodes, Reward]

 

Look out, mama, there’s a white boat coming up the river

With a big red beacon, and a flag, and a man on the rail

[Neil Young, Powderfinger]

 

Last week I attended a family affair,

and a few remarked upon my recent growth of facial hair

[Loudon Wainright III, Surviving Twin]

 

Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street

[Joe Jackson, Is she really going out with him?] 

 

Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard
But I say…
Oh Bondage! Up yours!

[X-Ray Spex, Oh Bondage! Up yours!]

 

Some people might say my life is in a rut
But I’m quite happy with what I got

[The Jam, Going Underground]

 

It’s a God-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling, “No”
And her daddy has told her to go

[David Bowie, Life on Mars?]

 

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy

[Nature Boy]

 

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to Heaven. 

[Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven]

 

If you are the dealer

I’m out of the game

If you are the healer it means

I’m broken and lame

[Leonard Cohen, You Want it Darker]

 

Me and Mrs. Jones

We got a thing, goin’ on

[Billy Paul, Me & Mrs Jones]

 

The screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves.

Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays.

[Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road]

 

I’ve got six things on my mind, you’re no longer one of them.

[Paddy McAloon, Desire As]

 

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free

[Nina Simone, I wish I knew how it would feel to be free]

 

Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of wealth and taste.

[Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil]

 

I am an antichrist

[Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK]

 

It’s been 7 hours and 15 days
Since you took your love away

[Nothing Compares 2U]

 

Hey ho, let’s go.

[Ramones, Blitzkrieg Bop]

 

It’s been 7 hours and 15 days
Since you took your love away

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

Sweet Little Mystery

First gig of the year was an absolute cracker – spine-tingling and uplifting. It was singer Sarah Jane Morris (think Preraphaelites meet Janis Joplin) at Ronnie Scott’s. She was singing songs by my favourite of favourites John Martyn. The venue is one of the best, still redolent of the 70s. You just sip cocktails (no two the same) and watch&listen from just feet away.

Jane Morris as Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1874)

The support act was Jonathan Gee Trio. As we share two-thirds of our name (my middle name is Jonathan) I felt compelled to go talk to the eponymous pianist after the set. He was delighted to meet on that basis. When I enquired whether Gee was all there was he explained it originated from Goldstein or similar, curtailed in the 30s. I said snap: Gewürtz.

SJM = Janis meets African Earth Mother

Sarah Jane Morris played the following John Martyn songs – her approach is to find her own way of rendering songs that are meaningful to her, like JM she has a baritone voice which therefore suits these songs (although she has a 4 octave range):

• Couldn’t Love You More – an unbelievably brilliant and simple love song
• Head & Heart – an unbelievably brilliant and simple love song, the heart of JM’s genius
• Call Me
• Send Me One Line – from the film 84 Charing Cross Road, bit of a rarity
• Over the Hill
• Solid Air
• One World
• Sweet Little Mystery
• Glorious Fool – one of my favourites, apparently dedicated to another Ronnie – Ronnie Reagan
• May You Never

Among these there were several transcendent moments (which is all you can really ask from a concert), sometimes from the singing, sometimes from the playing, particularly Jason Rebello’s piano.

What it made me realise is that John Martyn was a genius (truly) at writing powerful love songs – not like a poet or a micro-novelist but an honest-to-goodness songwriter – simple, repetitive, rhythmic.

The band were top notch:

• Jason Rebello, piano – one night only, gave it his all
• Tim Cansfield, guitar
• Tony Rémy, guitar and co-creator of the John Martyn covers project, realised in an album called Sweet Little Mystery (2019)
• Henry Thomas, bass – his double-bass was bust (SJM told me after the set) and so he was playing electric, not his norm – but he played it with a remarkable soft fluidity which really stood out
• Martyn Barker, drums
• Dominic Miller, guitar – played with Sting for a long time, a very distinctive, individual style, subtle, spare

It’s not surprising that it took three guitarists to equal one John Martyn, a guitar great as well as one of the greatest songwriters.

After the gig I got to chat briefly to Sarah Jane Morris and Tony Remy, the cherry on the cake of a brilliant night. I told her that I shared a birthday with John and that he is the only person I didn’t know, not family nor friend, whose death I deeply mourned. The day he died the world was a lesser place.

The moment I stepped out of Ronnie’s into the Soho night air the world was a greater place.

A touch of the messiah about him

Jane Morris, posed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his garden in Chelsea, 1865 – albumen print by John R. Parsons ::  Jane Morris (1839-1914), wife of William Morris (1834-96), muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82)

 

Join Hands 11.11.1918-11.11.2018

In 1979 I went to see Siouxsie & The Banshees playing at Hammersmith Odeon – it remains one of the best gigs of my life. Just before the tour half the band had gone AWOL so new musicians had to be drafted in including Budgie on drums (formerly the token man in The Slits, one of my favourite drummers – Stewart Copeland considers him one of the most interesting drummers for his “very economical and offbeat” playing, that offbeat being what I most like about him) and John McGeoch on guitar (formerly of Magazine). That tour marked the release of the LP ‘Join Hands’. The hands joining are those of four bronze WW1 Tommies on the war memorial between Horseguards Parade and St James’s Park (the Guards Memorial) – I passed it regularly when I was working at Channel 4 and it always brought me back to that music and excitement. The LP opens with the tolling bells of a 2-minute track called Poppy Day.

In the same way that Punk (especially The Clash) introduced me to reggae, through this track it introduced me to the First World War poetry of John McCrae, a typical example of the less known poets who emerged in the Great War, the one-hit wonders and offbeats. McCrae was a high-ranking Canadian army doctor serving on the Western front. In Poppy Day the resonant bells give way to the distinctive driving guitar wailing of The Banshees and then just a few short lines, delivered in a distorted Siouxsie voice:

In Flanders fields
The poppies grow
Between the crosses
Row on row
That mark our place
We are the dead…

I don’t think McCrae is credited for the lyrics which are very close to the opening of his In Flanders Fields, in fact every word is derived from the poem:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Siouxsie & The Banshees filtered out the patriotic and the warmongering/cheerleading to open their record with the zombie or heroic or haunting dead, we don’t know which. What we do know, two years after the Silver Jubilee and the Pistols’ God Save the Queen (the Fascist regime), with rubbish piling up in the streets of strike-bound London, is that these dead were neither glorious nor patriotic in the establishment way.

The band were inspired not only by the chaos and crapitude of the late 70s Home Front but also by conflict witnessed on their suburban Kent TVs, particularly in Iran. (Plus ça change).

The LP cover was extracted from this shot – L to R Steve Severin (bass), John McKay (guitar), Siouxsie Sioux (vocals), Kenny Morris (drums) – before McKay and Morris went AWOL

Banshee stalwart, bassist Steven Severin in the wake of watching the two minutes of silence in memory of the war dead on TV on Sunday 12th November 1978 explained about Poppy Day: “We wanted to write a song that would fittingly fill that gap”. On the inner sleeve of the record (which sits still in the room just below me, alongside its vinyl sisters The Scream, Kaleidoscope, Juju and A Kiss in the Dreamhouse) beside the lyrics of the song is specified (with echoes of John Cage): “2 minutes of silence”.

So here we are on Sunday 11th November 2018, 40 years after Severin watched that broadcast, 100 years after the world watched that bloodbath, that futile wiping out of a generation, and we are still all struggling to join hands. The irony of The Banshees brooding in the studio while recording this masterpiece of an LP and splitting up in its aftermath is as nothing to the irony that we mark this centenary at a time when the world’s international institutions are being deliberately dismantled, Europe re-fracturing and the zombie voices of patriotism, nationalism and fascism wailing more discordantly than John McKay’s guitar. We are the Dead. We are turning in our graves row on row between the poppies.

Reinforcements arrive: L to R John McGeoch (guitar), Budgie (drums), Siouxsie & Steve – Paris (1980) where 70 world leaders are arriving this morning to mark the centenary of the Armistice including Macron (accordion), Merkel (tuba), Trump (mouth organ) and Putin (triangle)

 

Something Is Happening

Highway 61 Revisited photo session (New York 1965)

Just listened to a music podcast called ‘Is It Rolling, Bob? (talking Dylan)’ in which two actor blokes (Kerry Shale and Lucas Hare) talk to a journo bloke (David Hepworth) about a song & dance man, Bob Dylan.

It is a lot better than ‘Stalking Time for the Moon Boys’ in which two TV blokes (David Baddiel and Tim Hincks) talk to various other blokes and each other about a song & dance man, David Bowie. But it’s still not great. Entertaining enough if you’re keen on your Dylan.

One interesting fact I picked up was that Dylan named himself not after Welsh poet D. Thomas (which I’d believed) but after Marshall Dillon in some TV cowboy show (‘Gunsmoke’). Dylan as lifelong cowboy makes a lot of sense.

A question they asked David was how did you first come across Dylan. Got me thinking.

As a six year-old, just allowed to go by myself across one road to the newsagent (Eric & Mavis’s or perhaps it was the previous incarnation), I bought myself a fold-out poster magazine. I got it home expecting it to fold out to reveal a hippy rabbit (Dylan of ‘Magic Roundabout’ fame). Instead it was an unprepossessing bearded bloke with a guitar. A disappointing first encounter.

When I first fell under Dylan’s spell was having one of those Moments listening to ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’. I’d heard bits & pieces of Dylan during my childhood, listened to him a bit at uni through friends who were advocates (but I still had my Punk head on). But it was listening to this track on ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ when the light went on. It was the Surrealism of the lyrics that really grabbed me – I’m not really a lyrics man but the words made their impact, above all the non-rational, dream-like nature of them. I was in.

This moment lead directly to my ending up with a son called Dylan (who looks at times a little like the Big Man of this vintage).

You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard but you don’t understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You raise up your head and you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says, “It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?” and somebody else says, “Well, what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God, am I here all alone?”
But something is happening and you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Sometimes it’s really good not to know what it is – just let it sink in and brew up.

List of Lists

I’ve been thinking about updating some of the lists that punctuate this blog (usually around Christmas when I’ve got a bit of time on my hands and am in a playful as well as reflective mood) so I’ve gathered a few here by way of preparation…

Best Songs

Best LPs

Best Song Lines

Magical Musical Moments

Inheritance Tracks

Best British Films

Blasts from the Pasts (musicians)

Bowie

Doing the Box 1 (singles)

4 Tracks really worth a listen

I’m thinking of doing next a Best Movies list and revisting Best Songs.

Songlines #7: Soul to Squeeze

Songlines is a project I’ve been doing for some years (in fact, decades!), recording the answer to the question

“What song or piece of music means the most to you and why?”

from all kinds of people. I am now expanding it to video as well as audio – way back when it started on one of these:

No. 7 is a very moving contribution from Morgan.

The Song: Soul to Squeeze

The Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers

The Reason:

The Song Performed:

And here are the previous Songlines on Simple Pleasures part 4 (these are just a small selection of the Songlines to date)

1 Hammertime

2 Dayenu

3 She Moved through the Fair

4 Rain Street

5 The Blues

6 Born to Run

 

4 for 66 (Happy Birthday David Bowie)

 

One Bowie

Two Bowie

 

To mark that special Londoner David Bowie’s 66th birthday today and the release of his new single Where Are We Now? here are four of his best ever songs:

1. Unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed (Space Oddity) – the height of his hippy phase and I’m a sucker for the blues harp
2. Life on Mars? (Hunky Dory) – from intimate to epic in the space 3’52”
3. Station to Station (Station to Station) – a journey and a half of electronic, stereoscopic, systematic, hydromatic, goodbuzzin’, cooltalkin’, highwalkin’, fastlivin’, evergivin’ self-dramatisation
4. Aladdin Sane (Aladdin Sane) – more madness, this time with crazy plinking, the perfect soundtrack to teenage chaos

Three Bowie

And now a line or two from each:

1. It must strain you to look down so far from your father’s house
   And I know what a louse like me in his house could do for you
   
2. Sailors fighting in the dance hall
   Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
   It’s the freakiest show
3. The return of the Thin White Duke
   Throwing darts
   In lovers’ eyes
4. Clutches of sad remains
   Waits for Aladdin Sane

My last Bowie adventure is here at Heddonism

Four. Four Bowies make a bunch – and so do many more.

Bitter Crop

The night before last the New York jazz club of the 30s and 40s Cafe Society was recreated in London at the Purcell Room on the South Bank for one night only. The club was set up in 1938 as an alternative to the largely segregated, mob-run nightclubs then on offer. Behind it was Barney Josephson, the New Jersey-born son of Jewish immigrants from Latvia. His declared ambition was to create ”a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front”. His socialist tendencies are well captured in the club’s motto: The wrong place for the Right people.

Cafe Society was opened in 1938 by Billie Holiday and it was there within the year that she unleashed upon the world Strange Fruit, a song like no other. Picking up on my earlier post about great song lines, Shelter from the Storm, there is one line in this poem turned song that ranks among the all-time great song lines:

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

If you ever wanted to illustrate irony… that word “gallant” kills off a view of the Confederacy in one mighty blow. When Holiday first heard the lyrics her one question was: what does ‘pastoral’ mean? Which is ironic in itself in that her whole being understood what Strange Fruit meant which is why she made the song so much her own.

With the same irony that has Danny Boy being composed by an English lawyer, it was actually written by a white man, a Jewish school teacher called Abel Meeropol – pen name Lewis Allan, after two children he lost in their infancy. Meeropol’s motivation was simple: “I wrote Strange Fruit because I hate lynching and I hate injustice and I hate the people who perpetuate it.”

Here’s the poem he brought to Holiday and Josephson at Cafe Society, already set to music, already performed in obscure left-wing circles, ripe for the magic of a singer who could perform it from her soul and evolve it into something uniquely powerful.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,

And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Holiday delivered this body blow to audiences throughout her career – here’s one later take on it (the instability of the picture seems to suit the song, as if it can’t fully be retained by the technology):

 

Update 19.xi.11

Barney Josephson didn’t seem to have his own Wikipedia entry so I’ve just made him one