It only took 42 years

It was like being inside a huge breaking wave, with the ceiling rolling and curling above me and dark as dark except for the glints of light piercing the face of the breaker and the soft light flooding from behind.

That's what it seemed like.

I've waited almost 42 years for this moment and - after all this time - I'm standing with my back against the confessional and looking at Le Corbusiers Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp.

When I was still at Westlake Boys High during my University Entrance exam year, I'd get my pocket money on a Friday and head over to the bridge to the city to buy books.

I had 3 favourite hangouts - Bob Goodman's in Queen's Arcade (where Marbeck's is these days), a second-hand bookstore in a cellar in Victoria St East that smelled wonderful and has long disappeared and one in High Street that's probably a boutique or a shop for Korean tourists.

And that's where I bought Peter Blake's Le Corbusier - Architecture and Form on 30 July 1965. Pelican. 7/6

And that's where I first read about Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp

The roof - a veil - woooooshes away from the altar to the back of the building, counterpointed by the floor as it slopes down from the rear. And there's a fine line of light, running around the entire structure, where the roofline meets the supporting walls.

The crucifix is set high in the wall against a window, visible from both inside and from the outside altar - an open-air cathedral for 10,000 pilgrims.. The pulpit is raw concrete, suspended in space and accessible by concrete steps that look too fragile to even breath on.

The towers are light traps, there are baffles to reflect and diffuse the direct light, the windows are gems with handwritten phrases from pilgrim prayers: "marie brillante comme le soleil", "pleien de grace", "benie entre toute les femmes".

A twin-spouted rifle-barrel of a gargoyle sweeps water from the roof over the west facade into a basinbelow

The pews are 8 rows of concrete templates carrying simple wooden planks

Imagine walking around this masterpiece . slowly taking it in, letting the feeling build up - and then opening the door and ... kaboom!

That's why the only piece of music that fits - for me - is Zadok the Priest from Handel's Coronation Anthems.

Worth the wait?

Oh, yes.

Lost in translation

Mrs B is a qualified linguist, translator and interpreter ( I'm not too foul, either) and - over the years - we've invested quite a bit in translation management tools and kept up to speed on the free online services.

All of them can translate words and some of them - the good ones - can frequently translate simply structured text as well as a human translator. (But who writes simply structured text these days?)

Their big advantage is that they save keystrokes.

But there's still a need for translators who can provide interpretive translations - read and understand the source text, understand which target group the customer wants to address and deliver words that transport the message in a way that's understood.

"If they didn't hear it, you didn't say it"

So when Dubber over at New Music Strategies featured the Google Translation tool this week, I gave it the acid test.

Translate a text from English to something (German, in this case) and translate it back.

Do it to this rant and you get:

Why is it that rapid rain gets out, closed buyers into that droves?

Those is the only logical explanation for the fact that EACH PARTICULAR unfit slot was taken to all memory, I today visited.

That I do not need preferential parking. Already.

Or is it that usual putrid selfishly moving unfit parking - which I away best of times of pisses - connected through aquaphobic putrid strolls selfishly moving unfit parking strolls. Quite near the memory.

So it not bumsend to dissolve in the rain or which.?

Well, yes...
Back to the drawing board

But get your name on the list for Dubber's e-book, ‘The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online’.

It's packed with perceptive comments and ideas on the way that the music industry's going/gone and what you need to do to leverage it. Loads of commonsense stuff, too.

A job really well done.

(Even if he is dead wrong when it comes to re-intermediation and the economics of scarcity...)

And talking of linguistics - Dave Dobbyn has something to say on the matter:

Language [download] from Twist

The Small fucking Who

My very first real concert (apart from tagging along with Graham Horne and his band (Jim Partridge, Larry Elliot, Pete Calvert and Roger Hickson) to church socials and going to Surfside in Milford to see a guy called Dennis in a blue and white striped T-shirt sing rhythm and blues) was The Who and The Small Faces on 29 January 1968 at the Auckland Town Hall.
Paul Jones was supposedly there, too.
I honestly don't remember.

I'd wanted to see the Beatles in 1964 or 1965, but tickets cost £7 and in those (school) days I was getting maybe 10/- a week. And I was spending that on books and (once in a while) records.
Byrds, mostly.

But this was 1968 and I'd been working for a couple of years, had a Suzuki 150 (with the intakes modified to give it the "yooooowl" of the Yamaha YDS3 that I couldn't afford) and I was earning OK-ish money at Blows Travel and Customs Agency.

There were three Blows brothers - Keith, Ron and Bruce - who had a big chunk of the forwarding business in Auckland tied up.

Bruce was the rough diamond. Ran a bonded customs warehouse in downtown Auckland.

Don was a bit more up market. He had the Auckland Customs Agency and imported virtually all the cars into Auckland. Drove a Reliant Scimitar and used to call us up when something interesting was on its way. Anything Ferrari. NSU Ro80. Lotus Elan.
In those days, you knew all interesting cars by sight. Auckland was a village. (People used to recognise my fake YDS3 "yooooowl".No kidding.
And Don did the import for the Formula One cars that came through for the Tasman series every January. Bruce McLaren, Jimmy Clark, Chris Amon, Piers Courage, Jochen Rindt, Jack Brabham, Denny Hulme. So we got free tickets and pit passes for the races, which was pretty cool.

And then was Keith, my boss. Keith was a real smoothy. Dressed in Italian suits, had an Italian wife and a really snotty daughter called Bonita who drove a Fiat 850 fastback He'd branched out into the travel business and employed all sorts of slick, if not greasy, sales people and dolly birds. The REAL dollybirds didn't normally last long before Italian wife had them sacked.
Sort of Robert Palmer Sneaking Sally through the alley "You'd better find something wrong with her. KEITH."
So we got the more flash sort of business in the forwarding field, with the tie-ins to the travel side of the business.

Like concert promoters.

Buy the travel arrangements from Keith and we'd do the customs bit.

The Who and The Small Faces turn up with tons of equipment, so you go out to the airport and clear the stuff (guitars, amps, mikes, pyrotechnics... PYROTECHNICS?) through Customs and pay a deposit that you get back when everything's re-exported after the concert.
And I got a couple of free tickets.

In between girlfriends at the time so I took my mate Martin Jones' ex-girlfriend Annette Bierman (trainee nurse, nod, nod, wink, wink) along and I recall thinking

"I've never seen anything like this and I want more"
(Well yes, about Annette as well, but about the concert.)

The sound was probably crap, there was probably much deafening screaming, but I was hooked.
Electric piano, organ, drum ticking time on the lead-in, guitar, drums, Steve Marriott grabs the mike stand and screams "C'mon" and they rip into "Tin Soldier"
And on and on

And then The 'Oo

They wrecked their guitars, of course, and it became immediately apparent what the pyrotechnics were for.
You put them inside the drum kit and flick the switch.
BOOOM. No more drum kit
And then they sauntered off stage to create more havoc.
(This is what things were like back then.Sort of as if Attila the Hun, Cossacks and 3 SS divisions had invaded the country within minutes of each other, if you believed the papers)

I walked out in a trance.

I kept saying "That was so great! Wow! That was phenomenal! Weren't they brilliant?" and Annette is going like "Well, they were good, but not THAT good to get so excited about it all" and I said "YES THEY WERE AND YES THEY ARE"

I think the intensity made her back off a bit.

So I go into work next day still buzzing and I'm telling Graeme Wahlers who ran the forwarding bit about how great it was and that they smashed their guitars and kicked over the amp stacks and blew up the drum kit and it was GREAT and he turned ashen pale.

Things dawned slowly.

We'd only get the deposit back if.... we...exported....everything...that....we'd....imported.......

Intact.

So it's out to the airport a day or so later and saying to the the Customs guy "Look, this neck belongs to this body and the rest is probably in that pile over there" and "Well, here's the BASS drum - what's left of it anyway, heh, heh - and the skin, well, the skin probably got thrown in the rubbish at the Town Hall. Big fucking bang, I tell yer. Clouds of smoke. I'm surprised there's ANYTHING left, to honest.

Took all day and we weren't missing much in the end. Drum skins. Pyrotechnics. Bits of guitar.

Got back to the office and someone asked how it went and Graeme - not your died-in-the-wool pop person - he was 40, for Christ's sake. Old - yelled 'The Small fucking Who and the fucking Faces. I never want to hear about them again", stormed into his office and slammed the door.

Didn't talk about the concert much for a few days and then only in whispers.

But this is probably what they played.

Can't explain
Happy Jack
Ithycoo Park
Tin Soldier (For sure...)
Whatcha gonna do about it
Summertime Blues
My Generation
All or nothing

Kermit Jagger

A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller.

He can see from her nameplate that the teller's name is Patricia Whack.

So he says, 'Ms Whack, I'd like to get a loan to buy a boat and go on a long holiday.'

Patti looks at the frog in disbelief and asks how much he wants to borrow.

The frog says, '$30,000.'

The teller asks his name and the frog says his name is Kermit Jagger and that it's OK, he knows the bank manager.

Patti explains that $30,000 is a substantial amount of money and that he will need some collateral to secure the loan. She asks if he has anything that he can use as collateral.

The frog says, `Sure, I have this,' and produces a tiny pink porcelain elephant, about 2 cm tall, bright pink and perfectly formed.

Very confused, Patti explains that she'll have to consult the manager and disappears into a back office.

She finds the manager and says, `There's a frog called Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you and wants to borrow $30,000. And he wants to use this as collateral.'

She holds up the tiny pink elephant and says, 'I mean, what the heck is this?'

So the manager looks back at her and says, `It's a knick-knack Patti Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man's a Rolling Stone.'

Why is it.... -#1

....that torrential rain brings out disabled shoppers in droves?

That's the only logical explanation for the fact that EVERY SINGLE disabled slot was taken at ALL the stores I visited today.

Not that I need preferential parking. Yet.

Or is it that the usual lazy buggers selfishly grabbing disabled parking - which pisses me off at the best of times - are joined by aquaphobic lazy buggers selfishly grabbing disabled parking.

Right next to the store.

So they don't fucking dissolve in the rain, or what..?

I didn't meet David Gilmour the other day...

Or...The best record store in the Vaucluse.

I didn't meet David Gilmour the other day.
We were at the farmers' market in Coustellet and Mrs B says

"He looks like that aristocratic sounding singer".

I looked at this old farmer with a nose like a walnut, selling pairs of organic cucumbers tied together with rubber bands and I'm saying "George Melly? He doesn't really look like George Melly. He's not wearing an eye-patch for starters. And you've never even heard him, anyway.".

She: "No, the aristocratic sounding bloke who sings the song I don't like"

David Gilmour.

Best known to some people for his version of "Don't" at the Scotty Moore tribute concert. Which some people don't care for.
(To the rest of the world, of course, as a Pink Floyd.

Me: "He doesn't look a bit like David Gilmour"
She: "No, not him. Not the FARMER. He's your age, wearing a faded red t-shirt. He's gone now."

Rapid pursuit, but he's nowhere to be seen

She: "He was walking as if he was in a hurry"

I bet he was.
Probably peering over his shoulder.
Probably muttering "Oh fuck, not another bloody tourist encounter"

But it was David Gilmour.
I know it was David Gilmour, because the day before at the market in Apt, I found the best record store in the region. And it's not even a store.

It had everything.

Nick Drake.
Gram Parson's first band.
Tod Rungren
John Mayall's late 60s stuff from Laurel Canyon.
All of Patti Smith's early stuff.
Obscurer stuff, even.
And vinyl.

I know it was David Gilmour, because I bought 2 CDs .

One was Robert Wyatt's "Solar flares burn for you"
The other was "The Million Dollar Session", with Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.

I know it was David Gilmour because the first thing I heard when I woke up after the Dylan concert in Mannheim on April 30 was "Comfortably numb" at the Meltdown festival in 2001. Gilmour playing guitar, with Wyatt reading the lyrics.

And it was David Gilmour because his version of "Don't" at the Scotty Moore concert is impeccable.

(Albert Lee hooked me up to it. He mentioned once that he'd played the gig with Ron Wood "who wasn't drunk for a change. Actually, he probably was...". Bought the DVD and it's choice. Not only for David Gilmour.

And it all links in with the The Million Dollar Session.

Which was Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis fooling around in the Sun Studios, singing gospel and old-time songs in December 1956 at the Sun Studios with an open mike.
And a tape that got lost. And found.

So here's a nice little selection
George Melly with his aristocratic voice on "The Blues" DVD set, telling tall tales and talking - together with Chris Barber and Eric Burdon - about Sister Mary Tharpe (And his book's worth buying too)
Sister Mary Tharpe "Don't Take Everybody To Be Your Friend" from Bob's Theme Time Radio Hour
Elvis "Blue moon of Kentucky" from "The Complete 1950s Masters"
Jerry Lee Lewis "Rock and Roll" (with Jimmy Page) from "Last Man Standing"
Carl Perkins " Blue Suede Shoes" from "Crossroads:Southern Roots"
"Matchbox" - Carl Perkins again - by the Beatles from "Live at the BBC"
Johnny Cash "Four strong winds" from "American V: A Hundred Highways"
David Gilmour's "Don't" from "Scotty Moore - A tribute to the king" "
Comfortably numb" with Van Morrison and Pink Floyd
Robert Wyatt "Soup Song" from "Solar flares burn for you"

And I know for sure that it was David Gilmour, because Finn Mac Eoin, the Poet Laureate of Lacoste, told me he lives here.

Don't ask me (about my friend the professor) - #11

I have a friend who's a professor.

Ph.D. Teaches at a university.

A real professor.

As you might imagine, he's a pretty clued up guy.

There have been some lapses of concentration, though.

You risk getting beer that's a year past its best-by date if you're not careful.

And he once set a fondue alight.
Not the oil. The metal structure.

The painted metal structure.

We were pretty far into the evening, so we just sat there and looked at each other and watched the soot gather on the ceiling and when the pyrotechnics were over, he said "That was interesting" and carried on as if nothing had happened.

His Dad told me the family legend of how he once almost cooked the family cat, but I'm not allowed to mention that, so I shan't.

He's also a guest professor at the University of Dijon so he recommended a place to stay down there.
Keyed the address into the new nav system and off we went.

Got to the village, drove past quite a nice looking establishment, but the witch-in-the-box insisted that we had another 700 meters to go. "You have arrived at your destination", she said.
Look at the place.
It says " Number 20"
Look at the place again.


To say it didn't meet expectations would be an understatement..

But then again, it might be one of these infrequent lapses of concentration.

Rang some bells at the collection of hovels. No answer.

Thought we might have a look at the other place .
Just in case.

Number 20. The right road.
Lucky for him

He's also been known to get dressed up as a reindeer for a Xmas card, but that's even another story altogether.....

Here's some Professor Longhair, anyway.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans.mp3 by himself.
Her mind is gone.mp3 from David Lindley and Hani Nasser.

For the follically-challenged.

The Midweek Mixtape - 23 May 2007

Mix and Match #9

[Disclaimer #1: The mixes and the majority of the tracks from all of these mixtapes are the original C90s from the late 70's/early mid 80's. Vinyl to tape. Play a couple of hundred times. Tape to mp3. Snap, crackle, pop and hums are free of charge]

[Disclaimer #2: Meg from Nelson is helping out for a couple of weeks. To say that our musical tastes have few touch points would be an understatement. If you're surprised to find Barry Manilow, Andy Williams or Liberace here, don't look at me]


No Phil Collins. I think I was in remission.
Nice linkage here. I think so, anyway
Starts with Wolfgang Ambros and Dylans" Like a rolling stone" with an impenetrable Austrian accent. Great reading.
Then Bob with "Jokerman" - Mark Knopfler with delicacy counterpointing Mick Taylor's raunchy edge
Then Knopfler from "Local Hero" - one of the great "small" films
Then the Eagles with "All night long" from "Urban Cowboy". Played in Houston as did "Local Hero"
"Caravan" because Van the Man really would have played all night long " One more time"... kick"
Clapton was there on the night, too and I first heard "Badge" driving my bosses car to the airport through the Domain in Auckland
Trivia: George Harrison was at Eric's place and said ""Badge".That's an interesting title" and Eric said "No, George. It's says "Bridge" That's the bridge. But then again, why not...?"
True story.
Fizzles out there, but Meatloaf and Steinmann match.
And if you want more Zevon, there's a "Don't ask me (about WZ)" from last week

Allan Wia A Stan - Wolfgang Ambros from Das Beste Von Wolfgang Ambros
Jokerman - Bob Dylan from The Best Of Bob Dylan
Going Home: Theme Of The Local Hero - Mark Knopfler from Screenplaying
All night long - Eagles from Live
Caravan - Van Morrison from The Last Waltz (Disc 2) [Live]
Badge - Cream from The Best of Cream
Catch me I'm falling - Real Life from Heartland
I want a new drug - Huey Lewis & The News from Sports
Hot nite in Dallas - Moon Martin from Shots From A Cold Nightmare
Snakes on everything - Little Feat from Little Feat
New sensations - Lou Reed from New sensations
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan from Highway 61 Revisited
Razor's edge - Meatloaf from Midnight At The Lost And Found
Rock and roll dreams come through - Jim Steinmann from Bad for good
No surrender - Bruce Springsteen from Born in the U.S.A.
Six feet of snow - Little Feat from Down on the farm
The late show - Jackson Browne from Late for the sky
Kiss the bride - Elton John from Too low for zero
Desperados Under the Eaves - Warren Zevon from Warren Zevon
Me & Johnny - Rick Springfield from Living in Oz

Mix and Match 9.mp3 87.8MB 1:33:40 (Must have stretched the tape..)

Don't ask me (about Barry Manilow) - #9

The...what?...of Barry Manilow.mp3

- it can't be the Best of Barry Manilow - the superlative form of the adjective sets "good" as a prerequisite.. -

is one hour and seventeen minutes of genuinely terrifying industrial noise, a sort of aural equivalent of "Eraserhead".

Like David Lynch's film, it conveys a chilling, bleak, monochrome dystopia, full of blood-curdling shrieks and clangs although I seem to remember that the movie offered the odd moment of respite, an occasional touch of bizarre and malformed hope. whereas "The...what...of Barry Manilow" offers none at all.

If you haven't heard it and still wish to, set an evening aside, make sure you're not alone in the room (experiencing the song through headphones, incidentally, will almost certainly result in hospitalisation) and take the following day off work..

With acknowledgment to Nick Hornby


[Disclaimer: Meg from Nelson is helping out for a couple of weeks. To say that our musical tastes have few touch points would be an understatement. If you're surprised to find Barry Manilow, Andy Williams or Liberace here, don't look at me]

31 songs - The End

Röyksopp? The Avalanches? Soulwax?

All good stuff and if it hadn't been for Nick Hornby, I'd be richer financially and poorer musically.

And I hadn't bought a Patti Smith album at that stage. And I wouldn't have discovered "Hey Joe" with her Patti Hearst monologue

"You know what your Daddy said, Patty? He said... he said... he said...Sixty days ago ago she was such a lovely child. And here she is with a gun in her hand"



26. Needle In A Haystack - The Velvelettes - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
27. Let´s Straighten It Out - O.V. Wright - The Complete O.V. Wright On Hi Records, Volume 1: In The Studio (Disc 1)
28. Röyksopp's Night Out - Röyksopp - Melody A.M.
29. Frontier Psychiatrist - The Avalanches - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
30. Push It Like A Dog (Soulwax Remix) - The Stooges Vs Salt N' Pepa - As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 1
31. Pissing in a River - The Patti Smith Group - Radio Ethiopia

And this is the end, my friend.

If you haven't bought the book yet - bollocks.

The Midweek Mixtape - 16 May 2007

Mix & Match #8

[Disclaimer #1: The mixes and the majority of the tracks from all of these mixtapes are the originals from the late 70's/early mid 80's. Vinyl to tape. Play a couple of hundred times. Tape to mp3. Snap, crackle, pop and hums are free of charge]

[Disclaimer #2: Meg from Nelson is helping out for a couple of weeks. To say that our musical tastes have few touch points would be an understatement. If you're surprised to find Barry Manilow, Andy Williams or Liberace here, don't look at me]

An explanation or 2 needed here (and a mea culpa for yet another Phil Collins. Fuck me sideways. What was I thinking back then)

Bap is a band from Cologne and they write and sing in the local dialect (which I understand mostly and speak pitifully badly). Legendary status and hugely influential in the early 80s.

Jupp ("Joseph") is pure brilliance.

Tells the story of a tramp who meets up with his mates under the Severin's Gate (Severinstor - Fringspooz - see what I mean about dialect..) with a flagon of cheap Italian wine and his worldly possessions in a plastic bag and tells tall tales.

Balancing on the Equator, knife fights that cost him his thumb, the thousands of women, playing cards with two yeti in Kathmandu, gold fever, dancing the twist with a cobra, a checkered zebra, Lola, the blond fairy from Beijing....
And then someone asks him about Stalingrad

"Wo litt dann Stalingraad ? En welchem Land es dat?" (Stalingrad? Where's that? Which country's Stalingrad in?)
Stalingraad pack hä nie, irgendwie. (Stalingrad left its mark. He's never recovered)

Goosebump stuff. There were hurt vets before Vietnam. For sure. Just no TV.

"Ahn 'ner Leitplank" - Ode to a crash barrier - is a glance out of a car window passing a car crash. Pathos heaped on a mite thickly.

But the rest is beaut...
Waterloo Sunset does 'Ooh lala ooweeoo" to perfection
Bob Seger - still doing it well - for the thundering bass drum as he rolls away
Page 43 for the ease of it all. And Lee Sklar's bass
Joe Walsh. Subtle as a brick and delicate with it. Not here, necessarily...
Skip "Somebody's Baby. Please. Although it's for a Cameron Crowe movie, so it squeezes by. Just.
The Loner still frightens me with its intensity
As primal screams go, Won't get fooled again is in a class by itself.
Andrew Gold belongs in last week's suck-without-a-trace M&M, actually.
Dr John doesn't

And I've seen 7 of these acts live.
Not bad, eh.



Really wanted you - Emitt Rhodes from Mirror
Walk away Rene - Ricky Lee Jones from Girl at her volcano
It don't matter to me - Phil Collins from Hello, I Must Be Going
Jupp - Bap from für usszeschnigge
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks from Boots Rock Collection
Roll me away - Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band from The distance
Page 43 - Crosby & Nash from David Crosby & Graham Nash
Bright Side Of The Road - Van Morrison from The Best Of Rock Legends
I can play that rock & roll - Joe Walsh from You Bought It You Name It
Steppin' out - Joe Jackson from Night and day
Nashville cats - Lovin' Spoonful from The Lovin' Spoonful
Somebody's baby - Jackson Browne from Best
The sea refuses no river - Pete Townshend from All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes
The loner - Neil Young from Neil Young
It's a mistake - Men at work from Cargo
Looking For The Next Best Thing - Warren Zevon from The Envoy
Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who from The Best Rock Album In The World
Ahn 'ner Leitplank - Bap from vun drinne noh drusse
Hope you feel good - Andrew Gold from What's wrong with this picture
Such a night - Dr John from The Last Waltz

Mix and Match 8.mp3 82.4MB 1:27:55

Don't ask me (about Warren Zevon) - #8

Please do, actually.

I bought the eponymous album in 1976 at Virgin's first (biggish) store at Marble Arch on the basis of a pretty good review in Rolling Stone (that one of the the Lufthansa crew who lived in my apartment block brought back for me.)

Took it back to Peter Wroe's flat, dropped the needle and that was it - hooked for life.

The first album has just about everyone of note in the LA session scene of the mid-1970s, plus a few more - Browne, Lindley, Wachtel, Buckingham-Nicks, half the Eagles, Phil Everly, Bonnie Raitt, Rosemary Butler, Carl Wilson.

That's what happens when Jackson Browne takes you under his wing. And gets you invited along to an music industry party to play a few ditties.

And you're playing "Poor poor pitiful me" and singing

I met this girl at the Rainbow Bar,
She asked me if I'd beat her
I took her back to the Hyatt House
I don't want to talk about it....

and then you go

"HUT!"

Jackson Browne said "And every motherfucker and near-motherfucker in the room stopped, turned and looked"

So - for the few souls on the planet who haven't a clue what I'm talking about - here's a pretty good mix

You'll find lines like

"Don't the sun look angry through the trees
don't the trees look like crucified thieves"

and

"You looked like something death brought with him in his suitcase"

and

"And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing
Until I pay my bill"

Significant chucks of the first album - the stuff above, "Carmelita", "Join me in LA" with Bonnie Raitt and Rosemary Butler, "Lawyers, guns and money" and "Johnny strikes up the band" from "Exitable Boy" , "For my next trick I'll' need a volunteer" from a BBCsession, "Don't let us get sick" off the new "Preludes" album, David Lindley and Hani Naser "Play it all night long" live in Tokyo, the wonderful "Poor poor pitiful me" acoustically live in Australia with a touch of "Waltzing Matilda" for good measure, "Stand in the fire" live at the Roxy and "Studebaker" sung by his son Jordan from "Enjoy every sandwich"


[Disclaimer: Meg from Nelson is helping out for a couple of weeks. To say that our musical tastes have few touch points would be an understatement. If you're surprised to find Barry Manilow, Andy Williams or Liberace here, don't look at me]

31 songs - Part 5

Not sure about "Puff the Magic Dragon"...

Ian Dury can't put a foot wrong, as far as I'm concerned.
And it's tragic that he's only really known for "Hit me with for rhythm stick" and "Sex and drugs and rock'n'roll."

Billericay Dickie is as good as anything ever written about leg-overs.
And "There ain't half been some clever bastards" sank without trace

Summer, Buddy Holly, the working folly
Good golly Miss Molly and boats
Hammersmith Palais, the Bolshoi Ballet
Jump back in the alley and nanny goats

18-wheeler Scammels, Domenecker camels
All other mammals plus equal votes
Seeing Piccadilly, Fanny Smith and Willy
Being rather silly, and porridge oats

A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it
You're welcome, we can spare it - yellow socks
Too short to be haughty, too nutty to be naughty
Going on 40 - no electric shocks

The juice of the carrot, the smile of the parrot
A little drop of claret - anything that rocks
Elvis and Scotty, days when I ain't spotty,
Sitting on the potty - curing smallpox

Health service glasses
Gigolos and brasses
round or skinny bottoms

Take your mum to paris
lighting up the chalice
wee willy harris

Bantu Stephen Biko, listening to Rico
Harpo, Groucho, Chico

Cheddar cheese and pickle, the Vincent motorsickle
Slap and tickle
Woody Allen, Dali, Dimitri and Pasquale
balabalabala and Volare

Something nice to study, phoning up a buddy
Being in my nuddy
Saying hokey-dokey, singalonga Smokey
Coming out of chokey

John Coltrane's soprano, Adi Celentano
Bonar Colleano

Hornby finds - in contrast to "Reasons to be thankful" - in "Calvary Cross" an "older England, full of dark satanic peasants and howling winds and pigs' bladders and what have you"
I think he likes Ian Dury's England better...

And he was over 40 before he heard Lindley's "hymnal, soulful guitar solo" and the breathtakingly sombre beauty" of "Late for the sky".
More fool him.

Mark Mulcahy represents not the music, but the discovery process.
Record store owners who point you in a direction you might not ventured, wine merchants who give you a bottle of muscadet (Muscadet? Fuck off!) to try and you find you like it.

Or the folks on my blogroll who excite me virtually every day with new finds.

Buy the book, visit their blogs.

21. Puff The Magic Dragon - Gregory Isaacs - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
22. Reasons To Be Cheerful, Pt. 3 - Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
23. The Calvary Cross - Richard & Linda Thompson - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
24. Late For The Sky - Jackson Browne - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
25. Hey Self Defeater - Mark Mulcahy - Nick Hornby/31 Songs

The Midweek Mixtape - 9 May 2007

Mix & Match #7

[Disclaimer: The mixes and the majority of the tracks from all of these mixtapes are the originals from the late 70's/early mid 80's. Vinyl to tape. Play a couple of hundred times. Tape to mp3. Snap, crackle, pop and hums are free of charge]


Not a significant duff-ness factor here.

I bought a music magazine in Wellington in January 1967 on the way to RNZAF Wigram and the 47 Air Crew training course. I read about how Brian Wilson had multitracked this and that and layered sound on sound on sound to make "Vibrations" and I was hooked. S

tuff like that probably crowded out important things (like navigation and airman skills), so that they decided they didn't have enough aircraft to entrust me with one ( lot of water around New Zealand...) and I should perhaps look for a different career track.

Some stuff here is obscurely good. Great even.
Karla Bonoff rode in on the tailcoats of the LA music mafia and got devoured by the machine - "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." (Hunter S. Thompson)
Sniff 'n' the tears, Marc Benno, Greg Copeland. Sunk without a trace.

I remember buying "Night moves" at a record store near the station in Frankfurt (v. dodgy part of town back then) and the guy said sneeringly "It's just the same old stuff".
And I said" Yeah, but does it so WELL". And I'll stand by that.

It's probably uncool to like Burton Cummings, but he deserves to be here for his Guess Who stuff.

Only know Robert Palmer in a silk suit with open-mouthed dollies swaying in the background? Listen to him with Feat and bits of the Meters.

And isn't "Too drunk to remember" the perfect anthem to good times..?
Is for me.


Good vibrations - Beach Boys from 20 Golden Greats
Personally - Karla Bonoff from Wild heart of the young
Gold - Sniff 'n' the Tears from Ride blue divide
Front page news - Little Feat from Down on the farm
Walk out in the rain - Eric Clapton from Backless
What kind of love is this - Amazing Rhythm Aces from How The Hell Do You Spell Rhyhthm?
The Fuse - Jackson Browne from The Pretender
Quarter of a man - David Lindley from El Rayo-X
Lost in Austin - Marc Benno from Lost in Austin
Dance dance dance - Steve Miller Band from Fly like an eagle
My own way to rock - Burton Cummings from My own way to rock
Starting place - Greg Copeland from Revenge will come
Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd from Rediscover The 70's (You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet)
Lawyers guns and money - Warren Zevon from Excitable Boy
Ship of fools - Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band from Night moves
No Woman No Cry (Live) - Bob Marley & The Wailers from One Love
Stand and fight - James Taylor from Dad loves his work
Couldn't get it right - Climax Blues Band from Gold Plated
Too drunk to remember - Carlene Carter from Musical Shapes
Sneaking Sally Through The Alley - Robert Palmer from Best Of The Test (Disc 2)
Someone To Lay Down Beside Me - Linda Ronstadt from Hasten down the wind

Mix & Match 7.mp3 82.4 MB 1:27:54

Don't ask me (about Waltzing Matilda) #7

Waypoints are sets of coordinates that identify a point in physical space.

In the aviation world, they're sometimes defined as intersections between two VOR radials, or in terms of specific distances and headings towards or away from a radio beacon

Look at an aeronautical chart and you'll see random combinations of 5 letters.
Those are your waypoints.

They're mostly constructed so that they can be pronounced like real words, but are normally pretty mundane.
Some aren't.

Close to Seattle, you've got
ITAWT
ITAWA
PUDDY
TAATT

Australia's goes one better, though.

Donate $100 to your favourite aviation charity and you can name a waypoint,.
And it's all official.

And there are some beauts.

SOSIJ SIZZL - close to Sydney.

LEAKY, BOATS, SINNK, DRAIN and PLUGG - not far out of Brisbane.

But the best by far is from Perth

WONSA
JOLLY
SWAGY
CAMBS
BUIYA
BILLA
BONGG
UNDER
SHADE
COOLA
EBARR
TREES

Who ever names these things is in need of serious help...

But here's Tom Waits, Rod Stewart, June Tabor, Concordis and someone else to provide you with the lyrics and some cool music.

And Warren Zevon slips in a hint of WM on "Poor poor pitiful me" from a live Aussie concert on "Learning to flinch"

31 songs - Part 4

This set is why I like Nick Hornby.

OK, they're 5 songs that would grace anyone's mixtape.

But there's more.

He writes about context.

"It's what happens when people are deified. The eighteenth-century British scholar Edmond Malone calculated that Shakespeare "borrowed" two-thirds - 4,144 out of 6,033 lines - from other sources for Henry VI, Parts I,II and III, And , though Henry VI is a minor play, the point is that this stuff was out there, in the world, and Shakespeare inhaled it. What he exhaled was mostly genius, of course, but it was not genius that came out of the blue; it had a context."

Now, buy the bloody book and find out what comes next. And if Ben Folds Five works within a context. Or if there is a context in pop music in the 90s.

And I was sorely tempted to substitute "Caravan" from "The Last Waltz" for the studio version. Later, maybe.....


16. Smoke - Ben Folds Five - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
17. A Minor Incident - Badly Drawn Boy - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
18. Glorybound - Bible - Nick Hornby/31 Songs
19. Caravan - Van Morrison - Moondance
20. So I'll Run - Butch Hancock & Marce Lacouture - Yella Rose

Over under sideways down

My mate, Martin McWilliam, is a bit of a talent.

He's a ceramic artist, based up close to Bremen.
Gets invited all over the world to exhibit his trompe l'oeil pieces and they really are quite exquisite.

Big, big pieces. And only 10 cm deep.

When I saw him a month or so ago in Höhr-Grenzhausen at an exhibition, he had some new work that involved displaying the front and the back of the piece on one plane.

We got talking about how he was going to start running out of ideas in about 6 years - back/front, front/back, left/right, right/left, top/bottom. bottom/top.

Retire. Nothing else to do.

But here's a song that'll give him ideas for at least 10 more years of productive and profitable work..

My commision will be reasonable.....

The Yardbirds - Over under sideways down

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Cars and girls are easy come by in this day and age,
Laughing, joking, drinking, smoking,
Till I've spent my wage.
When I was young people spoke of immorality,
All the things they said were wrong,
Are what I want to be.

(Hey)
Over under sideways down,
(Hey)
Backwards forwards square and round.
(Hey)
Over under sideways down,
(Hey)
Backwards forwards square and round.
When will it end, when will it end,
When will it end, when will it end.

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
I find comment 'bout my looks irrelativity,
Think I'll go and have some fun,
'Cos it's all for free.
I'm not searching for a reason to enjoy myself,
Seems it's better done,
Than argued with somebody else.

(Hey)
Over under sideways down,
(Hey)
Backwards forwards square and round.
(Hey)
Over under sideways down,
(Hey)
Backwards forwards square and round.
When will it end, when will it end,
When will it end, when will it end.

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Over under sideways down...

Can't find the mp3 for this one.

Ian Dury'll have to do, then.

He probably says it best, anyway....

Nobel Laureate 2057

Lauritz Weil.

Remember the name and mark your diary.

Simon and Sophie came round the other day and Lauritz (3) tagged along too.

He's as bright as a button. Tells you all about megapixels and studying insects through a microscope and setting fire to paper with a magnifying glass.

And then he asks" Who's the boss of Germany?"

And says " Angela Merkel"

And his parents do a "don't ask us" look and say "He hangs out with the big guys and just seems to sponge it up..."

Yeah, right.

His Bobness in Mannheim - 30 April 2007

Go to bed with the melody of "Like a Rolling Stone" still in your head from the concert in the SAP Arena in Mannheim last and wake up to Dave Gilmour and Robert Wyatt singing "Comfortably numb" at the Meltdown Festival in 2001.

24 hours of concert films on 3Sat.

And the sun's shining

And today's a holiday.

We must be in heaven, man!!

Bit worried last night, though

"Cat's in the well" was just a wall of dull, muddy sound and I thought "Fuck, he we go again. Ice hockey stadium. Same as Clapton in Cologne last year"

Quick as flash, they had it sorted and we had almost 2 hours (started right on the button at 7:30) of stuff that you just know that no-one will hear in that form ever again - bits of "Pinball Wizard" dropped into "Stuck inside of Mobile", "Nettie Moore" sounds like "Blackbird" re-mixed.

And - as usual - recognition of "Blowing in the wind" only kicks in at the chorus.

Mentioned that to Hans-Willi, my journalist mate across the road after a concert in Frankfurt a couple of years back and he said
"We'll, it's obvious (innit, Brian) - you accessed Dylan through his lyrics, he hooked us on the melodies. Change the melody and he loses his (40+ ) German audience until we pick up a lyric we recognise."

And - being a predominantly 40+ German audience, the fucking Metro(G)nomes kick in as soon as he goes into 4/4.

Which is thankfully rarely.

Here's the playlist with a couple of alternate takes, bootleg cuts, unexpected artists and a cracker at the end - Wolfgang Ambros does "Like a Rolling Stone" in Austrian.

Clap along in 4/4 if you feel like it.

Cat's In The Well - Bob Dylan from Under The Red Sky
It Ain't Me, Babe - Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash from The Essential Johnny Cash
Watching The River Flow (Don't have it. If someone would care to help out, I'd be well pleased)
Don't think twice, it's alright - Elvis Presley from Elvis
To Ramona - Bob Dylan from Another Side Of Bob Dylan
Rollin' And Tumblin' - Bob Dylan from Modern Times
Spirit On The Water - Bob Dylan from Modern Times
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again [Alternate Take] - Bob Dylan from No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7)
When The Deal Goes Down - Bob Dylan from Modern Times
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum - Bob Dylan from Love & Theft
My back pages - Byrds from Younger than yesterday
Tangled Up In Blue - Bob Dylan And His Band from Live At The Phoenix, March 20, 2004
Nettie Moore - Bob Dylan from Modern Times
Highway 61 Revisited [Alternate Take] - Bob Dylan from No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7)
Blowin' In The Wind - Joan Baez from Forrest Gump

Encore

Thunder On The Mountain - Bob Dylan from Modern Times
Allan wia a Stein - Wolfgang Ambros from Das Beste Von Wolfgang Ambros

Plus Al Kooper as a bonus. Sort of a "thank you" for the organ riff.

Am I Wrong - Al Kooper from Black Coffee