1970s

Sailor’s Tale

dream

A desert is not just a place; it’s also a time. The summer time in the northern hemisphere is often a desert for music lovers. In the summer not much is released and anything that does see the light of day is mostly old and often bedraggled: covers, remasters, demos, out-takes. But there is a little life in the desert. A cactus blooms here, a lizard suns itself on a rock over there. You have to look hard for it, of course. But it is there.

While wandering in the wilderness last week, hidden among the sparse brown shoots of desiccated emails, something caught my eye. Was that a scorpion scuttling across the parched earth? No, it was a link to a recent performance of Sailor’s Tale from a King Crimson concert held way down south, down Mexico way. Fortunately for the sailor it wasn’t situated out in the arid wastelands where only ships of the desert can sail, it was in the Teatro Metropolitan, Mexico City.

And fortunately for Crotchety Man it turned out to be a rousing rendition, an excellent recording and, best of all, a free download. A 30 second snippet is available from this page on the DGM Live website and the free download can be found by following the Purchase Show link. (I suspect you have to register with DGM Live to get it.)

King Crimson in Mexico City, July 2017

Sailor’s Tale was originally released as a track on the Islands album of 1971. It made an instant impact on me when I first heard it. Tang ti tang ti tang tang tang sang the cymbals, locking into a triple-time beat. Duum duum dum dum dum the bass responded, joining them in lockstep. Then came electronic sounds blurting out a slow melody with a buzzy organ pipe texture. The beat was irresistible, the tune urged us to hum along and the first minute promised something special, perhaps extraordinary, to come.

At around 1:30 the opening theme builds to a climax and a wild saxophone blares out like a half-strangled mother goose screaming at her goslings to stay away from the weir where the currents are strong and they have been forbidden to go. She scolds them for a full minute and, as she does so, we realise that some of that electronic buzz comes from Bob Fripp’s effect-laden guitar.

Once the goslings are safe the Sailor’s Tale settles back into an easy rhythm with the bass providing the sparse tune of deeper water. As we drift along another danger soon becomes apparent. A tone-deaf youth who has never touched a guitar is flailing at its loose strings. The water is getting faster. It rushes over the stones in the river bed. There are rapids ahead. Is this music or just the discordant noise of white water?

Soon we are spinning out of control, hurtling towards the waterfall. At 4:30 we plunge over the edge. We are falling. Falling. A mellotron sings as if to welcome us to heaven and, as we crash into the foaming surf at the bottom, the spotty youth jangles the guitar strings again as if to say, “I warned you”. It is the last thing we hear as the waters close over us and we lose consciousness.

The Sailor’s Tale must have been a tragedy.

Here’s a YouTube video of the track from the 1971 album. It has all the drama of my little story but it doesn’t quite have the sonic punch that modern recording techniques can achieve. If you can listen to the live version from the Mexico concert on 14th July 2017 it will reward your efforts.

Blowin’ Free

smoke ring

Crotchety Man was always small in stature. He came from small stock. Even his surname is thought to have come from the French for ‘low’. (The Norman Conqueror throws a long shadow in these parts.) Small he was, but not stunted – more pigmy than masai, more hobbit than dwarf, everything in proportion. Inside that small frame was a keen intellect and a determination not to be pushed around. There was just enough fire in his belly to avoid being picked on at school; there were softer targets for the bullies and practical jokers.

The little man could stand up for himself but he was socially inept. He was a nice kid who had no idea how to make friends. Did he feel inferior because he was physically small? That might have been part of it but there was a deeper flaw, too. To him people were a mystery. All around him boys and girls would chatter amongst themselves never saying anything important, never saying anything particularly interesting. Why would they do that? It made no sense. And yet, that’s what friends did.

The mystery was still unsolved by the time Crotchety Man, now officially an adult, went to university. For a guy who doesn’t know how to make friends being plunged into a whole new social environment is frightening. And Oxford colleges had their own peculiar slant on life. There was a new social etiquette to become familiar with. They called it ‘tradition’ but it was more a way of differentiating themselves from the less gifted, ordinary townsfolk going about their business in the city in which the college buildings were immersed like currants in a fruit cake. The distinction between ‘town’ and ‘gown’ was very real.

You will not be surprised to hear that the Crotchety student felt very much a cultural outsider for the four years he studied biochemistry at Keble College. When details of the 1972¹ College Ball were announced he was both excited and terrified. Oxford college balls were, and still are, grand affairs. Keble was founded in 1870 and, because college balls were not held every year, there had not yet been one to celebrate the centenary. The coming ball was going to put that right and it would be especially grand.

The little Crotchety man read the details in horror. One night in June the college would be swarming with men in dinner jackets and black ties and women in ball gowns and jewellery, all drinking, joking and having fun right outside my room overlooking the quad. It would be impossible to ignore and hell to sit through. The solution, of course, was for Cinderella to go to the ball. But the tickets were priced far beyond the empty pockets of a lad subsisting on a student grant. Besides, big boisterous occasions like that were well beyond his meagre social skills, those in his small circle of acquaintances declined to go and, worst of all, he had no lady friend to take. How would you feel as a little man on his own in the midst of all that merriment? It was a recipe for complete humiliation.

argus

1972 was the year that Wishbone Ash released their most successful album, Argus, and were at the peak of their career. How the Keble Summer Ball organisers managed to book the Ash to headline the event I will never know, but they did. “Poor little Crotchety will go to the ball”, he thought to himself. But the problems seemed insurmountable and soon all the tickets were sold.

Those few students who had rooms in college but were not going to the ball presented an obvious problem for the authorities. To ensure there were no gatecrashers the students were required to remain in their rooms for the duration of the festivities. It felt like house arrest … with added mental torture in the form of distant loud rock music filtered through walls and doorways so that it boomed unmusically and fought with the dissonant sounds of the baying mob on the lawns below. This must have been how General Noriega felt when U.S. forces bombarded his last refuge with loud music in December 1989. Noriega surrendered after a few weeks; Crotchety Man only had to suffer for one night.

Wishbone Ash, circa 2009

In spite of all this Crotchety Man bears no malice towards Wishbone Ash. The band has undergone many changes of personnel since 1972 but they are still going. I dare say the current line-up is effectively a tribute band for the heady days of the early seventies but that’s not necessarily a bad thing and I shall probably go and see them when they come to The Flowerpot in Derby this November. In the meantime I shall remember fondly the twin lead guitars, vocal harmonies and fluid bass lines of one of the best rock bands around in my student days.

The Wishbone Ash brand of rock was both melodious and thoughtful, as if blending a little folk and a smidgen of progressive into good old fashioned guitar-based rock. For my Track of the Week I give you Blowin’ Free from the Argus album of 1972. Here’s a live version from, I think, 2009.

Notes

I think it was 1972. It couldn’t have been earlier because I was at Keble from autumn 1971 to summer 1975. It might have been later but that seems unlikely.

Making Plans for Nigel

Picture of Redcar steel works. Looking along the coast from Redcar beach, towards the steelworks and South Gare at mouth of the River Tees. The steelworks at Redcar has the largest blast furnace in Europe and dominates this stretch of coastline.

Looking along the coast from Redcar beach towards the steelworks at the mouth of the River Tees.

At the end of the seventies Crotchety Man was writing software for the new ironworks being built for British Steel at Redcar on the north east coast of England. The music charts were a strange mix of pop and punk, either anodyne mush or raw, abrasive sounds that grated like a pumice stone rubbed over tender skin. There was almost nothing of any interest to the Man in those pre-crotchety days. Occasionally, though, a ray of light would slice through the dark sound clouds bringing hope for a sonically brighter future. One of those bright flashes was XTC’s Making Plans for Nigel.

XTC were known as a punk band but their music was too melodic and too intelligent to sit comfortably with the snarling, sneering, spiky-haired hooligans at the core of the punk community. When they came to my attention in the early eighties they seemed to be the harbingers of a new style of music, a style that was more mature and less angry than punk but whose final shape was still uncertain. They were an intermediate form in the evolutionary tree, neither ancestral punk nor one of the new wave species that were shortly to replace them. Taking my cue from Wikipedia I’ve tagged them ‘art punk’.

During my second stint on the Redcar site posters appeared around the town advertising an XTC concert at the Coatham Bowl, the only music venue east of the big industrial town of Middlesbrough. From there you could see the gasometers and blast furnace of the ironworks across the curve of a small bay, much as it looks in the photo above. We passed close by the Bowl every day on our daily drive from our digs to the site offices where we worked and frequented the pubs a stone’s throw away in the sleepy seaside town of Redcar. This small, out of the way venue didn’t usually attract big name bands and tickets were always very reasonably priced. As concert halls go it couldn’t have been more convenient or better value for money.

I considered getting a ticket for the XTC concert for several days. I’d only heard a couple of their songs, which I liked, but they were supposed to be a punk band, which wouldn’t have been to my taste. And they might attract those snarling, sneering, spiky-haired hooligans I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago. Then, one day, I stopped and read one of the posters properly. The concert had been ten days ago!

band

Ever since then I’ve wondered what I missed. Yesterday I finally decided to do something about it. Doing the usual superficial online research threw up some interesting connections, but let’s get the basics out of the way first. The original members of the band were Andy Partridge (guitar, vocals), Colin Moulding (bass, vocals), Terry Chambers (drums) and Barry Andrews (keyboards). Partridge wrote about two thirds of the songs and Moulding provided the rest.

XTC was formed in 1976, signed to Virgin in 1977 and put out two albums (White Music, Go 2) before Barry Andrews left to join Robert Fripp’s League of Gentlemen in 1979¹. Andrews was replaced by guitarist Dave Gregory and the band’s material moved from punk-influenced glam rock towards a more traditional rock format. XTC’s third album, Drums and Wires, was recorded in 1979 using the services of Steve Lillywhite and Hugh Padgham, the producer and engineer for Genesis and Peter Gabriel’s solo work². It was this album that spawned the single, Making Plans for Nigel, which reached number 17 on the UK pop chart.

The song grabs your attention immediately with phased drums, a pulsing bass riff and guitar chords that seem to poke a punkish sneer at conventional society. When the vocals come in there is heavy irony in the words.

We’re only making plans for Nigel.
We only want what’s best for him.

That first line says it all. Nigel’s parents have his life mapped out: a steady job, marriage to a nice girl, a house in the suburbs not far from them, two lovely children for their grandparents to dote on. And when anyone asks whether their boy might have other ideas they dismiss the question with “we’re only making plans”. Nigel doesn’t have to take his parents’ advice but, of course, they know best and they would be so upset if he didn’t want their help.

He has a future in British Steel.
…
If young Nigel says he’s happy,
He must be happy,
He must be happy,
He must be happy in his work.

The Redcar software project was huge. It must have run for 5 or 6 years; I personally spent a total of three years there in two stints. At its peak there were nearly thirty programmers on site, mostly young, all male and all a long way from home. During that period four of our team married local girls and there were two near misses³. One of my friends left the software company to join British Steel, get married and settle in Middlesbrough.

As it turned out, a career in British Steel wouldn’t have been the well-paid comfortable job that Nigel’s parents had in mind. In the seventies the British Steel Corporation was state owned and running at a loss to provide employment in depressed areas of Britain. In 1988 the corporation was privatised and underwent radical restructuring resulting in the loss of many thousands of jobs. Although the steel industry became much more efficient market forces continued to exert severe pressure on the company and that led to a long series of site closures. The Redcar site was shut down in 2015.

Don’t tell Nigel, but a declining industry is not a happy place to be.

Notes and Miscellanies

That’s interesting connection number 1.
And that’s number 2.
I was myself one of those near misses.
For another anecdote from my Redcar days see this post.
There’s an amusing piece about the name Nigel in this Guardian article.

SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

Doctor Who

12 Doctors

The First Doctor has been characterised as a crotchety old man but he was so much more, displaying childish delight, great charm, enormous warmth and a wonderful sense of mischief during his many adventures through time and space.

– A quote from the BBC website

It seems my secret identity has been revealed. Yes, Crotchety Man is The Doctor and he returned to his Earthly home, Cardiff (Caerdydd), last week for a few days. Well, when I say ‘returned’ it’s actually the first time I’ve been to Cardiff but, because time isn’t linear, I was able to see lots of artefacts from my future visits. It’s always nice to see a little of your own future – it’s one of the perks of being a Time Lord.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Back home in the Tardis it struck me that the best TV programs always have good theme tunes and the time had come to feature the Doctor Who theme on my music blog. But that presented a dilemma. Many versions of the track have been recorded and used in the TV broadcasts – Spotify has at least 5. There’s the original 1963 version, composed by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire using analogue electronics and tape recorders. Then there are versions from 1967, 1980, 1986 and 1987 just from the album Doctor Who – The 50th Anniversary Collection (Original Television Soundtrack). The Internet also mentions later arrangements by Murray Gold from 2005, 2007 and 2010. Then there have been a number of cover versions, including one by Pink Floyd¹, apparently.

Do I need to say anything about the tune itself? Its first incarnation was, of course, one of the very first successful examples of electronic music. It pulses and whoops like a time machine spinning out of control, cascading through the universe as it heads for an unknown, but inevitably perilous, destination. In the eighties the tune was given a digital synthesiser makeover that to my (admittedly alien) mind sounds mechanical and colourless. Its regenerations in the 21st century introduced orchestral sounds, while keeping the electronic swoosh as the little blue police box rips through time and space.

The primordial life force of the original had returned but I was still unsure whether to select the analogue electronica of the first series or the orchestral grandeur of the post-millennium runs. The solution, when it came to me, was simple.

While swirling absentmindedly across the fabric of space/time the Tardis stalled on a video that stitches together some 16 different versions of the Doctor Who theme dating from 1963 to the present day. I don’t need to choose; you can have them all. Here they are – over 37 minutes of a short composition that originally ran for 2:21, with details of the composer/arranger and dates of the TV episodes that used it. A bit repetitive for the average music lover, perhaps, but a treasure for Whovians across the galaxies.

Notes

I can only find a 33 second YouTube clip to verify that. It’s from a live show; as far as I know Pink Floyd never released it.
There are some photos from the Cardiff trip here.

Moroccan Roll

khobz

Brand X are back. And how!

Here’s a splendid live version of Malaga Virgen from their 1977 album Moroccan Roll. This was recorded just a few months ago on the band’s reunion tour of the US.

If that performance doesn’t leave you panting with excitement and aghast with admiration I’ll … I’ll … errm … I’ll eat a Moroccan Roll and post the video on YouTube to prove it.

Strangely, although Brand X has been mentioned a few times in these pages before, so far none of their music has been featured here. To right that unforgivable wrong I’m making Moroccan Roll my Album of the Month.

According to AllMusic and Spotify, which quote identical biographies, Brand X was formed in 1975 by Phil Collins (the drummer with Genesis) and John Goodsall (the guitarist with Atomic Rooster) as a side project. The other members of the original band were keyboard player Robin Lumley and bassist Percy Jones. That line-up released their debut album, Unorthodox Behaviour, in 1976 and, after adding Morris Pert on percussion, followed it with Moroccan Roll a year later. Those first two albums are still, arguably, their best.

Judging by the album and track titles those guys must have had a lot of fun. Here’s the track listing for Moroccan Roll:

Sun In The Night
Why Should I Lend You Mine (When You’ve Broken Yours Off Already) …
… Maybe I’ll Lend You Mine After All
Hate Zone
Collapsar
Disco Suicide
Orbits
Malaga Virgen
Macrocosm

Of course, you can’t judge a piece of music by its title any more than you can judge an album by its cover art. And that’s probably just as well because the cover for the CD re-issue of Moroccan Roll has the kind of glaring spelling error that once prompted journalists on other newspapers to re-title The Guardian “The Grauniad”. The most northwestern country of Africa is spelt with one ‘r’ and two ‘c’s, not as the CD artwork has it, “Morrocan Roll”. I suppose that might be deliberate, a way to emphasise the pun – “more rock and roll” does have two ‘r’s and one ‘c’ – but I’ve not seen that justification offered and the correct spelling has been used in everything else I have read.

Anyone at all familiar with Brand X will know that they are no rock ‘n roll band. They were among the pioneers of the jazz/rock fusion genre, the first blacksmiths heating jazz licks almost to melting point and hammering out a new type of horseshoe on an anvil of solid rock.

Brand X, 1977 – Pert, Collins, Goodsall, Lumley, Jones

Moroccan Roll is as good an example of that craft as any but it’s not all hammer and sweat. Sun In The Night, for example, is a laid back, world music song, the only one on the album that has words. Unfortunately for English speakers those words are in a language from the Indian sub-continent. Wikipedia says it’s Sanskrit; Google Translate thinks it’s Hindi and provides an English ‘translation’ identical to the incomprehensible original. This site is more informative but it still reads like a typical Eastern mantra, more mystical than enlightening. But no matter, it’s a good tune and John Goodsall’s sitar whisks us away to India, enveloping us in the spirits of Shiva and Vishnu.

The next two tracks are both credited to Phil Collins. Why Should I Lend You Mine picks up the beat for a while and we enter the heart of jazz fusion territory. The listener’s attention flicks between the instruments as they inject their individual contribution to the piece: five parts, each of them and none of them foremost. That is the hallmark of great bands. Then the beat dies away and we find ourselves cradled gently in the arms of the gods once again. This time, though, it is the gods of the Western traditions that comfort and protect us. Almost as soon as Why Should I Lend You Mine has faded away Maybe I’ll Lend You Mine After All filters through cotton wool earplugs to form a fitting coda to the previous track.

After that good deed of altruistic lending there’s a complete change of mood. A short drum solo takes us into John Goodsall’s Hate Zone. The synthesiser wails, the guitar rants, the bass grumbles irritably and the drums are definitely asking for trouble. Our gang of football hooligans has come face to face with the opposition. Both sides are throwing insults and violence is brewing. But soon the simmering hatred burns itself out, the crowds dissipate and everyone goes home fairly quietly. We should have thumped them (both on and off the pitch), but this blood-chilling music more than makes up for the disappointing draw.

Next up it’s Robin Lumley’s turn in the composer’s chair. Collapsar is an ethereal keyboard and electronics interlude that neatly rounds off side 1 of the vinyl release. When we flip the disc we are greeted with rippling piano sounds underpinning a soft fusion track that shows Brand X at their very best. This one even has some vocals picking out a simple tune with La La syllables. (Actually, it sounds more like Na Na, but La La reads better. :-)) Why it’s called Disco Suicide I can’t imagine; it’s no dance track and it has a joie de vivre that is the complete opposite of suicidal despair. Perhaps that’s the point – to play it in a disco might well lead to the DJ’s predictable murder on the dance floor.

Deep into side 2 we come to Percy Jones’ personal contribution. In Orbits Percy flies us around the fingerboard of his fretless bass in a solo demonstration of his unparalleled flair and technique. And as an encore he uses all his talents in his own composition, the Malaga Virgen that we met in the video at the start of this post. (“Malaga Virgen”, by the way, is a Spanish dessert wine.)

The album finishes with the third of John Goodsall’s pieces. Called Macrocosm, it’s another whole band celebration of the fusion genre – intricate, uplifting, a showcase for the individual skills of the musicians and a fine example of an ensemble that is more than the sum of its parts.

I should mention the part that Morris Pert plays on Moroccan Roll and I can do no better than to quote Wikipedia, which says:

percussion and a vast number of bits and things that he hit while the tape was running, including: The QE2, Idi Amin, and undiscovered parts of Scotland

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

And, finally, here are a couple of quotes from the two founding members of Brand X that are currently on their Reunion Tour:

John Goodsall: “It’s a better version now. We’re all a lot more experienced – a lot more skilled… And that goes for every one of us.”

Percy Jones: “This music takes us back to a certain space – which was really cool. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel that feeling again – and yet here it is!”

They really are back. And better than ever.

Acknowledgements

The photos in the slideshow are taken from an excellent review of the show at the Iridium in New York City on 3rd January 2017.

Jessica

We started the year in quiet contemplation here on the Crotchety Man blog but now it’s time to shake off the torpor of the holiday season and get moving. And, you know, nothing says “let’s get this show on the road” better than Jessica by The Allman Brothers Band.

Jessica is an instrumental from the Brothers and Sisters album released in 1973. It was written mostly by Dickey Betts, the lead guitarist. He had the germ of an idea but was unable to develop it until his baby daughter, Jessica, came in and started bouncing to the music. Taking his cue from little Jessica’s antics Betts nailed the carefree rhythm and playful tune that makes this track so irresistible. It needed a bit more work before it could be performed and recorded, though, and that led to a certain amount of controversy and bitterness.

The story goes that Betts invited session guitarist Les Dudek over for dinner and they played the unfinished song together. While Betts was checking on the steaks Dudek came up with a bridge that Betts felt was exactly the right missing piece to complete the song. The whole band then worked on the track in the studio. In the final arrangement Dudek played acoustic rhythm guitar which provides a nice intro but is largely overshadowed by Greg Allman’s organ and session musician Chuck Leavell’s electric piano, not to mention Dickey Betts’ wonderful lead guitar.

Dudek, who felt he had written an essential part of the song and had worked out guitar harmonies with Betts, was somewhat miffed. What rankled him the most was that he wasn’t credited as a co-writer but, as he was only drafted in as a session musician, there was nothing he could do about that. As spats among rock musicians go this was a minor tremor compared with some of the more earth-shaking bust-ups we read about from time to time but it clearly left Dudek quite resentful.

The Allman Brothers Band ca. 1971

Jessica is the finest example of Southern Rock known to Crotchety Man. It marries the boundless energy of a toddler with the clean-living country air of the Georgian farmstead where it was written. And it bounces along like a seven month old baby grooving to her daddy’s guitar, which is, of course, exactly what Dickey Betts was trying to achieve. The Allman Brothers Band made plenty of really good records but, for me, Jessica is far and away the best thing they ever did.

In the UK, at least, Jessica is familiar to millions of motoring enthusiasts as the theme from the BBC TV programme Top Gear. Until fairly recently the programme was hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May who entertained viewers with silly stunts and amusing reviews of the latest cars. Jeremy Clarkson, especially, could be dismissive or downright insulting in his comments. (There are several pages dedicated to Jeremy Clarkson quotes on the Internet.)

I didn’t watch Top Gear but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if, after the theme tune and a few words of introduction, Clarkson used to call out to his co-presenters, “let’s get this show on the road”. And I’m sure little Jessica Betts would gurgle her whole-hearted approval.

Peace of Mind

Let’s start 2017 with a sweet, gentle instrumental – something to soothe away the excesses of the New Year’s Eve party and ease the conflict and bitterness that was the hallmark of the year just gone. This is a track called Peace of Mind from the Natural Elements album by Shakti.

Shakti was an east-west fusion band that combined John McLaughlin’s jazz-influenced guitar with elements of Indian music supplied by Lakshminarayana Shankar (viola, violin, vocals), Zakir Hussain (bongos, dholak, percussion, tabla, timbales, triangle, vocals), Vikku Vinayakram (ghatam, kanjeera, percussion, vocals) and Ramnad Raghavan (mridangam). If, like me, you’ve never heard of many of those instruments there’s a glossary at the end of this post. For now, though, you can just lump the ones you don’t know under the general heading of ‘percussion’.

Peace of Mind sounds very familiar to those of us brought up on western classical and popular music. There is none of the wailing sitar, quarter tones or chanting voices that characterise the traditional music of the Indian sub-continent. Instead we have a contemplative acoustic guitar reminiscent of John Williams and a violin that slips and slides through a simple, haunting melody. Nothing I know says “peace be with you” as eloquently as this and nothing reaches across cultural divides more successfully.

yoga

If 2017 is going to be better than the anno horibilis of the last 12 months we will need something like Peace of Mind in our lives to provide an antidote to the selfish isolationism that is taking Britain out of the EU and has elected Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. We will need peace and forgiveness to stop the wars caused by religious fundamentalism and to heal the physical and psychological wounds they will leave behind. We will need men (and women) of peace, men who reach out to others across the globe, spiritual men like Mahavishnu John McLaughlin.

I’ve been on this Earth too long to believe the world’s ills can be solved in a single year but there is always the hope that things will get better. Here’s to a more rational, more peaceful, more humane society in 2017.

Glossary

dholak – a two-headed hand drum
ghatam – a large, narrow-mouthed earthenware water pot used as a percussion instrument
kanjeera – an Indian version of the tambourine
mridangam – another two-headed drum
tabla – a pair of small hand drums
timbales – shallow single-headed drums with a metal casing played with sticks