Music – Page 2 – John Vincent

Glasto 2

The weekend music city in the land of the summer people has had a vintage year. Normally, west country fields are covered in lush green grass. One of the most rugged plants on the planet. With the blue sky, overhead sun, and hundreds of thousands of feet, the green of Worthy Farm hides in the hedgerows. The land has browned in the heat. Music filled the air. Sound was everywhere. Now, thousands of revellers belong to a family of festival goers who want to do the whole thing over again, and again.

Yes, I know there’s a lot that’s mainstream. It’s probably an anathema to anyone under the age of 20. Looking at the audiences, a man over-60, like me, wouldn’t have felt out of place. Especially watching The Pretenders[1] Saturday night session. Which was excellent, by the way.

Watching the festival from afar, BBC Music has excelled with its coverage of this mega outdoor event. They curated material from the thousands of acts, catering for a good selection of tastes. Rick Astley and indie band Blossoms performing songs from The Smiths was a sight to see. The “Never Gonna Give You Up” 80s star crossed over to do a bang up job. Astley playing drums while thundering out the AC/DC anthem “Highway to Hell” – don’t tell me there’s nothing weird about Glastonbury.

What we got to see was a snap. New artists took to stages across the site. Some tried, some failed, some won and others are better for the exposure. Viewers of the box, like me, got only a small a window on the Glastonbury world.

On my last visit to Glastonbury, a couple of months ago, I sat in a tea shop with my mum. The town is an amalgam of the ancient and modern. The counterculture of the shops selling healing crystals mixes with the Abbey[2] and cake shops. I was remembering it as a child going to Glastonbury cattle market[3] with my granddad. It was to sell pigs, hobnob with local farmers and do a bit of shopping. He had a small box trailer which he towed up and down the Somerset hills on-behind a lovingly polished Mk III Humber Sceptre[4]. The heady blend of mystical traditions and local history makes Glastonbury a unique place. Its landmarks stand out picture postcard.

Last night, Elton John played a magical set. In perfect weather, in a perfect setting he pulled out all the stops. Had he awakened from his long slumber, King Arthur would have been dancing. Elton’s performance was legendary.

Elton gives a steping stone to new artists. Lifting up the next generation adds to his huge legacy. Songs that span the decades rang out over the hills. On my small screen, in the living room those fields looked like the best place to be for any festival goer this year. Glastonbury festival’s status as a foremost event in British culture is sealed.

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/chrissie-hynde-pretenders-new-album-1029689/

[2] https://www.glastonburyabbey.com/

[3] https://www.glastonburyantiquarians.org/site/index.php?page_id=175

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Sceptre

Glasto

Standing in a field in Somerset. I did a lot of that in my youth, but I’ve only been to the Glastonbury Festival[1] once. That was in the early 1980s. Elvis Costello was headlining. That much I remember. That and an image of Glastonbury Tor[2] off in the distance with a dark and stormy sky overhead. It wasn’t the greatest night of my life, but it was a fun weekend. At the time, I was living in Bristol and the trek back to the city was a real pain.

There’s a symbiosis. Some local people objected to the imposition of tens of thousands of people descending on them every year. Other local people made a healthy income from the annual pilgrimage to Glastonbury.

I wouldn’t say that a field full of cows in Pilton is particularly mystical, but Glastonbury certainly has an air of the unusual. I recently drove through part of the Somerset Levels[3], it’s an expanse of drained wetlands. It’s farming country but rich in wildlife[4]. It has an ancient past. Sheltering in the marshes had an advantage for early humans. At later times, the marshes became an impenetrable defence from raiding invaders.

Glastonbury Festival maybe a mix of social conscience and pleasure-seeking but the early history of that area was more monks, churches, peat, and escape routes for Anglo-Saxon. Places like Burrow Mump were islands. A perfect place to watch a sunset/sunrise. This calm and quiet place is a million miles from the frantic hedonism of Glastonbury Festival.

The festival’s growth was topic of conversation in my family. Two of my great uncles farmed close to the village of Pilton. They were an age that looked upon hippies dancing naked in the rain as funny, confusing and downright weird. For the most part they smiled about the whole event when they talked about it. Being business orientated they assumed that there was good money to be made entertaining all these strange folk from London.

Out for the experience of their lives there were years when all revellers were met with was a crowded and isolated muddy field. Tales of people falling into the pits dug for toilets were enough to freak even the most hardened party goer.

Today’s version of the festival is an outdoor experience, but it’s been sanitised to the Nth degree. Pilton’s lush green pastures host a small city. Partygoers would be more likely to be run over by a media camera crew than a tractor or traveller’s bus. The cows are hidden away.

The BBC are playing a selecton of past performances. There’s real gold in these clips BBC iPlayer – Glastonbury – Episode 1

Glastonbury’s annual muisc gathering is over the 50-year mark. There’s no reason why this huge festival shouldn’t go on and on. Michael Eavis has a legacy to be proud of.

POST: The size of it is not so easy to get a grip of Glastonbury Webcam – Events – BBC

[1] https://glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/

[2] https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/somerset/glastonbury-tor

[3] https://www.visitsomerset.co.uk/discover-somerset/inspiration/natural-beauty/somerset-levels-moors

[4] https://www.somersetwildlife.org/create-living-landscapes/levels-moors

Vinyl

Vinyl records gave us a whole langauage.

When I think about playing music a couple of sketches come to mind. One is the Not The Nine O’clock News sketch about a HiFi Shop[1]. It’s jargon loaded customer service that’s now moved on-line whereas then it was a face-to-face experience. The term Audiophile doesn’t seem to have become Digitalphile. No not Digital File. Maybe it should for those who impatiently mock anyone wrestling with a poorly designed App.

The other is Flanders and Swann and their Song of Reproduction (1957)[2]. Again, the joke is a superb mockery of the non-technically minded when faced with the modern fashion of the time. This obsession with getting better and better sound reproduction hasn’t gone away. My tinkering with amps and speakers in the 1970s may have led to my interest in electronics.

The above are comic stories of the era of Polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Better known simply as Vinyl when talking about to the way we played music for several decades. Collecting vinyl records is making a big resurgence. I’ve been hit by the bug.

Pick it up for £1 in a charity shop. Play it. It’s perfect. Well, not in every case but there are some surprises when playing 50-year-old disks. Some former owners cherished and cared for their collections. 45 RPM may not mean a lot to the streaming generation. That said, there are not so many popular objects that are a half a century old that you can simply play as if they were new.

I’m playing the 1972 hit “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel.

Vinyl records gave us a whole langauage. The phonograph, disk jockey, jukebox and hit parade are becoming as unfamiliar as a conversation in a Victorian salon. The inconvenience of having to get-up and place a disk on a turntable is part of the experience. It’s a task that isn’t matched by swiping a small glass screen.

Yes, vinyl disks get scratched, warped, and cracked. That makes them ephemeral and more akin to a living artifact. A stream of digital “1” and “0” never ages. There’s something sterile about that.

Strangely the 6-inch disk shaped the way popular music was made as much as how it was played. Having to fit everything into a 2- or 3-minutes slot focused song writers, musicians, and producers to go the extra mile.

I’m now in 1967 and playing “Autumn Almanac” by The Kinks[3].

A number of these plastic artifacts may end up being one of the rare items playable in a 1000 years’ time. I wonder what those in 3023 will make of these primitive tactile objects. They may value them greatly.

[1] https://youtu.be/HoPXQ9fotZM

[2] https://youtu.be/EL5SzTSMxLU?list=RDEL5SzTSMxLU

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Almanac

What Town?

It’s a confusing film. I enjoyed it in a strange way. This is one of many times fiction has wrestled with the idea of parallel universes. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” gets crazy[1] and has some absurdly funny moments. Embracing all possibilities, however unlikely is a lot of fun. Childlike fun.

Life’s branches – it’s easy enough to grasp if there are a not many to think about. Lifelong “what ifs” are familiar territory. What if, I’d taken a different path? What if, I’d met this person instead of that person? What if that accident had been more, or less severe? It’s so human to play with imagination and different scenarios. What’s difficult to grasp is the notion that there might be an infinite number of different branches in and infinite numbers of universes.

When large numbers of possibilities arise, it can be the source of anxiety. Me being on the stoic side, I shrug my shoulders and carry on. Don’t get me wrong, thinking about lost opportunities or idiotic mistakes stirs-up more than a few feelings. Living in synchronisation with reality means choosing to focus on changing the things that can be changed and choosing not to bash one’s head against a wall. The key words being to choose.

This is the time of year when future students are looking at future possibilities. Walking past the gates of the local college, a group of school leavers could be seen eyeing up the building. That one first major step at 16 years. Up and down the county, universities are hosting potential students. Trying to answer all their questions. That step, at 18-years is one of the biggest those lucky enough to make, get to make. This town, or city, or that out-of-town campus.

I wonder what I’d be doing now if I’d gone to Bath university or Brunell in Uxbridge? How did I make those choices? Well, there was the factor of sponsorship so there was no way that the chance to study art, politics or philosophy would come up. My search was for a sandwich course to be able to mix study and work. My chosen trade was electrical and electronic design. That fascination with how stuff works continues to this day.

At 18 years, I had little grasp of the fact that university, or polytechnic as it was, was far more than technical study and the usual bundle of exams. The 4-years I had going backwards and forwards between the west country and Coventry was a mammoth transformation.

Although, I had no particular leaning towards aviation there was moments when aircraft and aeronautics came into the mix. On my journeys north to the midlands, I’d often stop at a lay-by at the end of the runway of RAF Kemble and watch the Red Arrow practice[2].

Coventry in the early 1980s was the home of GEC. That being the case there was a telecommunications bias in some of what we were taught. That suited me fine. Let’s face it, in that period we lived in an analogue world with a strong technological push to adopt the early generations of digital systems. Although electro-mechanical telephone exchange production had finished[3] much of the installed equipment in the country was still a mass of relays.

Coventry between 1978 and 1982 was the place to be. It was rough and ready. It was suffering the onslaught of Thatcher’s march to destroy the past and transplant the new. The pace of change left oceans of people behind. Culturally the pressure of that grim social revolution liberated a generation of music and rebellion that we look back on as magic.

As if by magic, and I didn’t plan this, BBC Radio 4 is playing “Ghost Town” by The Specials[4]. Yes, that was a defining soundtrack to influential moments in my life.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6710474/

[2] https://the-buccaneer-aviation-group.com/history-of-cotswold-airport/

[3] http://www.telephoneworks.co.uk/history/gec_telecomms.htm

[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n1h5

Eurovision

Eccentricity, excess and exuberance. That’s entertainment. Eurovision is a big mark on the calendar. Each year it’s getting bigger. It has songs and it has a contest and much more besides.

This year’s coverage is a bit OTT. Now, I like the occasional bacon and eggs for breakfast, but I don’t want it for lunch and dinner too. And for supper I’d like anything but bacon and eggs. Media’s May menu is a video age version of Monty Python’s Spam sketch. That’s how I’m getting to feel about the wall-to-wall coverage. Yes, you can have too much of a good thing.

That’s what’s special about Eurovision. It comes but once a year in a blaze of musical colour and preposterous lyrics. Then it’s gone only to rise like a phoenix in the year to come.

This scribbling is no criticism of the massive stage set and inventive use of every form of graphical illusion. Even some music. Liverpool is proving to be a number one venue for this extravaganza. The stage set and the mastery of its technical complexities are outstanding.

Please, no more Beatles illusions. We get it.

Earlier this evening, BBC Radio 4 gave us proof that Artificial intelligence (AI) has a way to go. It’s attempts at writing funny jokes are beyond a joke. With that in mind, maybe the writers of the hosts scripts for the semi-finals were using AI. I’d cringe even if I didn’t hide behind the sofa. I know British humour doesn’t always translate well but it’s better if it’s aimed at real humans.

Musicality is all well and good, it’s the weirdness that makes an act stand out. Staging a whole song around Edgar Allan Poe[1] is mind bending. Well, you might say, why not? I wish Austria well with their catchy use of Poe, Poe, and more Poe.

Australia is not in Europe. Who said that? It doesn’t matter. They are 100% welcome. Especially when they bring a regular rock rampage to the stage. Their efforts are not going to win. That much doesn’t matter. Their stadium rock show number is still going to do well.

I not sure why but my soft spot goes to Belgium. That guy has got a star quality that shines bright. Is he a contemporary version of Boy George? Not sure. Then there’s Cyprus. At the other end of the scale, he’s auditioning to be a Greek God. Thunder and lightning. Very Very Exciting (to quote Queen).

Sweden has the drama. It’s a mega blast that dominates the arena. She could be the winner.

Saturday evening should be a memorable triumph. Let’s hope it is for the sake of unity and good fun.

POST: Liverpool is twinned with Cologne in Germany. I’ve always found that a good match. Two major cities with a strong sense of their identity and place in the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe

R.I.P. Terry Hall

Term started in September 1978. My first resting place in Coventry was in Priory Hall[1], overlooking the tarmac and the infamous ring road. We were up on an elevated 4^th floor. That was the part of the building that spanned the road that led to the Cathedral. It was slabs of grey concrete arranged as Lego blocks in the 1960s. As student accommodation it was bashed and battered but cheap and warm. Sitting at the heart of the city compensated for the fumes that wafted up from the bus station. It was a good way to start my undergraduate life in an industrial Midlands city.

Little remained of medieval Coventry, except paintings. The bombing of WWII reshaped everything in the city centre. Post-war rebuilding embraced the modern with architecture we now find brutal. Strangely for me, 26 years later I moved to a German city that suffered the same fate; Cologne.

I’m writing this to remember sitting on the floor in Lanchester Polytechnic Students Union, beer in hand, listening to the bands that stamped their identity on the city and far beyond. Despite the economic depression, or because of it, there was an unending stream of bands trying get noticed. The Union was a venue where there was always an audience to be found.

Amongst them was The Specials. Although, for me the band that sticks in my mind at that venue was the early version of UB40[2]. “One in Ten” captured so much of what was happening outside the doors the Union building. The mood of the song resonates now as much as it ever did.

My engineering sandwich course meant that I came and went from Coventry between 1978 and 1982. I couldn’t have chosen a better time for live music. Yes, the city was suffering a devastating economic downturn. The Government of the time appeared happy to let great British industrial names to go to the wall. Pubs and clubs were buzzing and Two Tone[3] was invented.

So, thank you Terry Hall. His performances captured what The Specials were about. At the time, I had no idea that what was happening in the Student Union Hall would be enduring but that’s the way it turned out. The brilliant music and lyrics sum up so much that they will last for ever.

We lived in a concrete jungle. The song “Ghost Town[4]” by The Specials is beyond iconic. It’s a lament about the passing of good times. It’s about the wreckage left by an uncaring Government. It’s about a lost sense of direction. It’s a song for today too. We see this pent-up frustration coming back. “The people getting angry”. It’s not the scourge of unemployment this time. It’s the trap of low paid employment without hope.

[1] https://manchesterhistory.net/architecture/1960/prioryhall.html

[2] https://youtu.be/usYgf8cVfvU

[3] https://www.thespecials.com/gallery

[4] https://youtu.be/RZ2oXzrnti4

In praise of the BBC Proms

I’ve only done three, so far this year. That’s two in the arena and one in the gallery. The Royal Albert Hall is the place to go for the BBC Proms[1]. I’m an amateur. I stand at the Proms. This is my 4^th year.

I say, I’m an amateur because the guy I was standing next to, a couple of evenings ago, has been Promming since 1967. It seems to be a bug that once it’s bitten you escape becomes impossible. Promming tickets are released on-line on the morning of the day of a concert.

Music has a power that transforms this Victorian citadel of culture into a centre of magical experience. It’s as if the world ceases to exits and all there is becomes engulfed in that wraparound auditorium. As if it were the centre of the universe. It’s the impact of the soundscape, the people, and the building that produces a mysterious combination. It’s a unique mix.

Live performance has a transformative effect. Post-COVID it’s one of those experiences that was most missed during the pandemic. It’s so evident how dull and grey the world becomes without it.

Acoustically the hall is flawed. Nevertheless, wherever I’m standing, or occasionally seated, there’s a special feeling as oceans of sound flood over the audience. Yes, there are superior concert halls. I was lucky to live within walking distance of the Koelner Philharmonie[2] when in Germany.

The Royal Albert Hall is in a league of its own. It has a heritage and creates an atmosphere that is unmatched both for the things that work and those that don’t. Yes, you need a bank loan to buy a beer and the wiring looks as if its 150 years old.

I’m not musically knowledgeable, or did my education point me in that direction. Our dishevelled music teacher desperately tried to interest my cohort of 1970s kids, but he was pushing a rock uphill the whole way. He knew his unfashionable message, dusty texts and scent of smoke and alcohol were way out of sync with his students. Discipline wasn’t his speciality either.

In fact, I discovered a lot in the school music room by it was nothing to do with music, or its history. Ironically, at the time, music was a huge part of our lives as T-Rex, Bowie, The Who, Slade, glam rock, and disco hit their peak. If I could advise my younger self, it would be to say; learn an instrument. Anyone would do. It really doesn’t matter which one. It really doesn’t matter how well. A skill acquired as a teenager carries throughout life.

By the way, I’d recommend the tour of the hall[3].

[1] https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-2022/

[2] https://www.koelner-philharmonie.de/en/

[3] https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/tours-and-exhibitions/royal-albert-hall-tour/