Slide Through My Fingers

The great musical journey continues along with the reading, sometimes at the same time.

The music today has been Tame Impala, an Australian band that is at times channeling Pink Floyd and T-Rex at the same time. A truly psychedelic experience and nowhere near the list in the 1000 Recordings book but hey this is my journey.

So it’s Tame Impala and the self titled ep, it’s strange to call a CD an ep, as that was originally an extra play single  usually  four songs instead of two, in the 80’s they always seemed to be of the 12 inch variety and have pointlessly meandering remixes or extended versions, these are now what fills up the “deluxe” edition of any CD that gets the “deluxe” treatment.

Tame Impala-Lonerism was next which definitely has expanded on the sonic palette of the ep. Much more of a Flaming Lips feel to this one but definitely worth the listen.

The drive into work was accompanied by Crosby Stills and Nash, which really is a masterpiece, well the drive was only Suite: Judy Blue Eyes but I did hear the rest driving around.

Reading wise the science fiction continues, I have been reading Gavin Smith’s military science fiction novel Veteran. I am only about a third of the way into it but the characters are engaging and I have no idea were the story is going which for military science fiction is a good thing. A strange war in space being fought by modified humans who when they reach the end of usefulness are discarded by the government to live in squalor, and in the case of Jacob the main character knowing they can be brought back into service.

At the same time I continue with the Neil Young biography. Diversions and then information in equal measure.

Should have been a no-brainer, David Byrne and Brian Eno My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, two geniuses playing off each other. It’s universally acclaimed but just left me cold. I get the idea world music and electronica but for me it just does not work, it’s too difficult, too clever, too self conscious. I’m not sure what it is but I love both these artists and am a little saddened I did not get this. I can’t even say it was a brave attempt although there must be something there for so many to rave about it. Or maybe it’s a big joke and we have been convinced by the hype that we should like it.

Another hyped album though with Todd by Todd Rundgren, again it’s taken awhile but I finally took the plunge and it is a collection of quirky and inventive pop songs that are captivating as well as challenging.

More normal has been Neil Young’s Live at Massey Hall in 1971, this a great document of the early Neil Young, many songs from the first four albums performed solo. It is amazing that this album took so long to be released and makes you question what else is hiding out in the archives on the ranch. I’ve been avoiding Neil Young since beginning the book, mainly because I can become a little obsessed at times and did not want to be a total freak for a week.

Playing the whole album is difficult it seems. I have become so used to the constant change of sounds that it’s a little hard to stay  in the moment with an album. I hear moments that make me want to skip to another artist as my mind has been triggered, Playing CSN always reminds me of Yes, I think Anderson and co. must have been listening to the harmonies on the first CSN album when they recorded The Yes Album. The urge to search out Yes halfway through Lady of the Islands was almost overwhelming. I have always had the tendency to flit around often not even listening to the whole song. This has apparently got worse over the most recent years. This may be a useful discipline to practice, listening.

To finish the week off in the Jeep was Bongo Fury by Zappa and Beefheart. It’s amusing to me that once you own a Wrangler it’s no longer the car, or truck but the Jeep. Bongo Fury was particularly fun as I pulled into the bank that was having a Justin Bieber promotional event, I have no idea why. The look of confusion on the attendees face was worth going to the bank for, there was a moment of disgust at the strangeness of the rhythms and then Beefhearts voice took it over the edge.

Then there was Green on Reds No Free Lunch, haven’t heard them since the 90’s but some great memories of dancing in the dark at the Bierkeller on Mt. Pleasant in Liverpool. This was a fun place I almost remember seeing Big Audio Dynamite and many a Roy Haper gig here.

Saturday night was finished off with Michael Chapman’s Fully Qualified Survivor. This is a great folk-rock album although some would like to call it psych-folk whatever that means.

I just realized I could get really pretentious doing this, so I’m going to do my best not to. There are so many albums I have never gone near or been afraid of going near, so the library will get a work out for sure. There is also so much new music being produced that it could get confusing.

I finished the Neil Young book this afternoon. It was a great ride, repetitive at times although I cannot Imagine it being edited. A real attempt by Neil to settle some rumors and come to terms with some tough decisions and losses in his life.

Mind Gardens

It’s a world of sound bites, nothing is more apparent as we enter the week of the presidential debates starting. It was even a day when Bill O’Reilly said the word zinger. So as information gets more compressed to almost meaningless moments held separate from context or meaning I have to ask the question:

When was the last time you listened to the whole album?

Of course in the i-tunes world we can choose the playlist or let the genius button do it for us, We don’t have to appreciate the running order or track list, the artistry of compiling a whole  piece an experience if you like. Also there appear to be more greatest hits packages than ever before allowing us to only hear the songs that the compiler considers greatest. With artists that specialized in the long extended album this can get difficult and don’t mention the box set and what that has done to us. Then there is the extended, repackaged album with extras and extras on top of the extras. We have chopped, cut up, compressed compiled and boxed our way so far away from the listening experience it is hard to know if any one knows what the album used to mean.

Don’t get me wrong I love my i-pod with it’s playlists and random play function as much as the next person obsessed with technology. I was excited when technology allowed us to burn our own compilations on CD and the mp3 playlist in the car is a life saver at times. I have to admit though that I have gone away from listening to the album in order, the ebb and flow of the music as it unveils itself the way the artist compiled it, with no extras or outtakes. I don’t miss the crackle of old vinyl though but I do miss the album sleeves with their art work and folds and creases and information.

I miss music being a shared experience now we are all plugged into our ear buds and private worlds. We share playlists on spotify and social networking sites rather than passing around albums or inviting a friend over to hang out and listen. I remember when Blind by the Icicle Works was released gathering in a dingy smoky room to play the record. We played it three times that night trying to make sense of the various stylistic turns the band were making on every cut. We did the same when Dave bought Sheikh Yerbouti by Zappa, laughing at the coarse humor and wondering at the music, there was eight of us in the room talking laughing and arguing about the music. Last week I bought Tempest by Dylan, well I downloaded it, listened on ear buds and then told my son he should put it on his     i-pod. At no point have we played it together or talked about the music or lyrics.

This weekend I was in the library and found 1000 Recording You Should Listen to Before You Die by Tom Moon, he has a blog here:

http://www.1000recordings.com/

Looking at the book I thought about changing my listening habits. For a year I am only going to listen to whole albums. Maybe not the list in the book but albums I find important to me. I am going to rediscover old favorites, listen to new recordings and maybe even invite some friends over to listen along at times. I am going to play albums as I cook, drive and hang out.  I am going to limit the use of ear buds to walks, runs and mowing the lawn, I am going to share the music with the people I love and talk about it again, I may even keep a record at times here if I remember.

This weeks list so far:

John Adams-Harmonium

King Sunny Ade-Best of the classic years

Ryan Adams-Heartbreaker

Frank Zappa-One Size Fits All

Mumford and Sons-Babel

The Byrds-Younger Than Yesterday

Fela Kuti-Confusion-Gentleman

Crosby Stills and Nash-1st Album

Of Monsters and Men-My Head Is an Animal

I played some of these twice it was so much fun.

I also began Neil Young’s autobiography/memoir Waging Heavy Peace which is one of the most unusually written books I have ever read. It really is liking sitting down with Neil and having a conversation. In reality if there was one artist I would love to do this with it would be Neil Young, although I would undoubtedly be so tongue tied I would never ask a question never mind actually remembering any of it.

I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night

It’s that time of year, Cropredy. Well actually it’s after that time of year as Cropredy ended last weekend. I only really get homesick in August it seems and really only during the second weekend in August. There is the usual concerns and missing my parents throughout the year but missing the land of my birth only happens during that weekend when Fairport’s Cropredy Convention is happening, or as it used to be called the Annual Fairport Convention Reunion.

I started going to Cropredy in 1982, it was a time before the internet and the easy passing of information, you had to discover this type of event because you new someone who went, read the back of an album cover, was at a gig or you had to look out for posters in the right record store. So I’m not sure if it was a conversation in the the Swan on Wood Street in Liverpool, a poster in Probe records or the back of some obscure album or being told at a gig by Peggy and Swarb, but in 1982 I bought a ticket for the annual reunion in Cropredy. It looked like a village fete ticket or raffle ticket. I immediately felt a part of something new and different.

I never went to Cropredy to attend a festival, there were so many other options for that, I went as a Fairport fan. I never even paid attention to who might be playing, as long as Fairport were on on Saturday night I didn’t care. Of course for the ten years I consistently went I saw a lot of great music and Fairport changed my musical taste by me absorbing all that folk and other things. Fairport were an outlier in my musical tastes at the time, the folkiest I got was Neil Young, I detested Dylan and would run from a fiddle unless Swarb was wielding it. For a strange reason, to some, I never considered them a folk band and never have. Even now I think of them more as a rock band than a folk band and it was always Cropredy were they rocked the best if not the hardest. The band members constantly say Cropredy is not a folk festival but this falls on deaf ears.

Since leaving the country in 1995 I have managed to attend three Cropredy’s all for the same reason to see Fairport Convention. Two were major reunion years in ’97 and 2007 and then 2010. We were hoping to come this year but finances got in the way. I will be there next year, it has become a coming of age thing with my boy’s, they get to 18 and we take them to Cropredy, to see Fairport Convention, I know, but it’s a fan thing. Hopefully my twelve year old will get this experience in 6 years.

Dipping in and out of the festival the way I do there are a few things I don’t get any more. The whole fringe idea, great for the local businesses etc. but it all seems a bit unnecessary to me, hanging at the bar all day is confusing too. It’s nice to meet people but I go to see the music and what is happening on the stage, it’s fun to see friends and acquaintances but it is the bi-product of the festival not the reason.

Then there is the idea that a festival needs to be an event beyond the music, I guess when I started going there were so many free festivals around to meet that need and now that experience has to be to rolled into a musical event. It’s astonishing the number of adults using a festival as an excuse to act badly. I remember feeling excited that Cropredy was about one band and the music and creating a community around that rather than the other festival communities at the time, that were created around behavior or an ideology that was not fully understood by those engaged in it. It’s not a spiritual experience for me but a musical one although spirituality community and music are all connected so maybe I’m full of it.

Fairport never touring my part of the world anymore makes it much more about the opportunity to see the band than a festival experience. Although I did get a very nice mention from the stage in Crosby a couple of years ago but was too embarrassed to acknowledge it. I also find myself paralyzed by nerves at the idea of meeting all those people I only know from the internet. So hide away with my little group of friends and family.

I have always expected Cropredy to die when the band stopped. There does not seem any need to keep it going beyond the existence of the band. I guess if they stopped touring and took it back to it’s roots it would be fun but how viable would that be financially at the end of the day. Of course considering the number of children of band members that appeared at this years festival maybe there is a future.

I’m not bothered by Cropredy ending or fading away, all things do that in the end. I miss lots of things about my youthful Cropredy going experience but don’t think I could do it that way again.  Three people in a two man tent may be pushing it and the lack of a change of clothes might be too much for those around me.

So as I got all nostalgic again this year for that field in Oxfordshire by the banks of the Cherwell my family had to put up with long wistful silences and me mumbling the words to Meet On The Ledge at what would be approximately midnight on Saturday. Next year we will be at Cropredy again and I’m sure it will be as memorable as all the others and a wonderful coming of age for Chris.

Social Alliance

Passing time reading books is one of the pleasures of my life. I have a hard time sitting still so it can be a challenge just to sit down, the one thing that can make it happen is the re-reading of an old favorite. I never had this difficulty earlier in life, easily finding time to read, now I have to make time and too often that time is at the end of the day when I am tired and not at my best to pay attention to the  book as well as I should.

The Day of the Triffids is the book I think I have read the most over the years, more than Lord of the Rings and more than any Heinlein although Tunnel In The Sky must come close. I have owned nine different copies and they have either fallen apart or been given away to other deserving owners. The book grabbed my attention from the start and has all 20 times I have been on the journey with Bill and Josella. From the age of about 12 I began every summer holiday with reading it, it was how I knew summer was here in a way, I also began every spring with Meddle by Pink Floyd and ended the Summer with Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull, so as you can see I was a child of traditions. Every year I wondered what life would be like without all the clutter of society, of course it would be a safe life so I could catch up on the reading and listening to all those things I’d missed.

Day of the Triffids and The Death of Grass by John Christopher are the best examples of what Brian Aldiss called the “cosey catastrophe” were life was dramatically changed but the survivors were able to have enough left over from the past to continue to live comfortably. There is little violence in Day of the Triffids  that is motivated by greed apart form the group in Brighton and the red haired thug who later joins them. It is really a book about ideas on how society would need to respond to adversity to survive. The Death of Grass has much more violence, ending in the ultimate betrayal in a sense in order to survive. This betrayal was repeated in Darin Bradley’s Noise which is a more modern take on the collapse and a good example of the direction this genre has taken.

Gone are the contemplative arguments on the need for leisure time and multiple wives, no longer do character’s agonize over taking what they need in the face of collapse and predatory plants are replaced by zombies lurking in the dark corners of the garden. It is probably a case of genre stories reflecting the society they are written in. Post-war England of ration cards and reasonable behavior and doing what is necessary no longer exists. The world Wyndham and Christopher wrote about in the 50’s  has changed to a much more dark world.

Zelazny saw this in Damnation Alley in 67 with his character Hell Tanner having to kill or be killed to survive in the post-nuclear wasteland. Cormac McCarthy’s the Road is a bleak novel of everything gone and predation being the only way of surviving and constant movement being the only way of staying safe. All these books emphasize the individual or the small group/family unit rather than an attempt to rebuild we have survival as the goal. This is similar to Earth Abides when Ish realizes all he can do for his descendants is give them the necessary skills to feed themselves and in the long run their ancestors will rebuild. Martin does have hope in Earth Abides but it is the long view.

I still remember those Summers of laying on the grass and hoping for the end of the world so I could read all those books and not have to go back to school in six weeks. Having read more images of collapse now as an adult I don’t necessarily think I want to be around without a bunker, enough food and plenty of heavy duty weaponry so I can be safe and read.

This last few weeks reading has been:

Day of The Triffids-John Wyndham

Who Fears of Death-Nnedi Okorafor

Deathworld 1,2  and 3- Harry Hasrrison

Inverted World-Christopher Priest still in progress.

All these books are stories of humanity attempting to overcome the challenges of it’s world, whether  that is man made, natural or the adversity of a belligerent indigenous wild life and population. It’s been a couple of weeks of armchair survivalism.

Song of the Swords

Michael Moorcock has been part of my reading life since my early teens. Yes he can be a difficult author because  he has produced so many words. Some of those words are definitely in the pulp category and others in the literature category. He has at times been called anarchist, iconoclast and sometimes just plain weird, however when given the opportunity to write a Dr. Who novel he jumped at it. Moorcock has an appreciation for the fantasy genre but does not pander to the perceived greats. He has been critical of Tolkien and Lewis although he can appreciate their achievements even though in the fantasy world criticism of Tolkien is tantamount to heresy. Moorcock writes what he wants to read it seems which is what all good authors do, sometimes that is a rip roaring adventure that has more in common with Douglas Fairbanks or Burroughs than anything else, other times it is a reflection on the rock’n’roll world of the 70’s and 80’s and then it can be an homage to London of the blitz and beyond.

Moorcock is not just an author, he has made records, wrote screenplays, published New Worlds, was an editor and was entrenched in the counter-culture. He recorded with one of the most uncompromising bands of the 70’s, Hawkwind. He was part of the Ladbroke Grove scene that spawned much of the stranger side of pop culture of the 70’s and influenced punk. His association with Hawkwind is such they released three albums connected to the Eternal Champion. He has also written lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult which is not as cool but they are their best songs.

For a teenager growing up in the early 80’s he was a role model, if authors are allowed to be role models. Instead of wasting away in my room feeling sorry for myself listening to Joy Division as many of my contemporaries were I was losing myself in the sensory overload of Michael Moorcock and his cohorts. Instead of wondering how the world got so dreary and drab I was wondering how Moorcock possibly came up with those crazy worlds. For awhile I was convinced he had better drugs than other writers, I cast him as an Hunter S. Thompson for science fiction but then discovered he was not drug crazed he just thought up those crazy ideas, they did not come to him in some shamanic  drug fueled vision. At a time when excess seemed the order of the day Moorcock for me signified the idea of being a creative person without having to blow your mind. His ideas are crazier than Dick’s but come from his mind without the clouded view that addiction brings. Now his characters were willing to throw themselves into the party wholeheartedly imbibing and ingesting at a rate that would make Keith Richards have to take a step back in wonder, but you always got the feeling Moorcock was observing this world than engaging in it. This however may be the English way.

Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse and his various incarnations of the Eternal Champion have been constant companions. They have invaded my waking life and at times my dreams. After all who would not want to be Jerry Cornelius, he was well dressed sophisticated, witty and as likely to seduce you as blow you up.  For a period in my late teens I was either reading Moorcock or listening to Hawkwind, sometimes I would be doing both at the same time. To this day I cannot imagine reading a Cornelius story without The Hall Of The Mountain Grill  of Warrior on the Edge of Time thundering away in the background.

Moorcock has specialized it seems in the sympathetic anti-hero. Jerry Cornelius, Elric, Oswald Bastable, Corum , Hawkmoon and all the others are uncomfortable with their situation. They want to live their own lives but are chosen by Chaos or Law depending on what is out of balance to stand in for the rest of us. Their role is to return the balance not necessarily do what we from our perspective would consider the right thing. Right, wrong, morality and ethics are secondary to the balance in Moorcock’s multiverse. There are villains but sometimes they become uncomfortable allies. This is what makes Moorcock’s fiction attractive, there is only one rule and that is that the multiverse seeks balance. He does provide respite in the form of Tanelorn but that can be fleeting for the champion as he is called from his life to fight again. I think it is significant Moorcock chose the word Champion rather than hero to describe his characters. The Champion is a stand in for the king, village, city or world. He represents everyone and his sacrifice is required to appease fate. A hero swoops in to save the day, champions are chosen often against their own will and forced to at times to be representative for the choser.

This weekend as I rummaged through the Book Bin in Corvallis, Robert’s Books in Lincoln City and then on to Powell’s downtown Portland I realized that I am still a collector of Moorcock, for a few months I have been happy with just words on my Nook but when it comes to Moorcock I want the actual physical books. This is not easily done in the USA, Moorcock is not the popular author here that he is in Europe. He has never had a successful movie made out of his work, he has never written a truly popular fantasy, the Elric series is probably his best known cycle of stories but it is a little too ambiguous at times for readers. His idea that Chaos and Law need to be in balance and are neither good nor evil is an idea that audiences find hard to comprehend in a society were the comic book hero fighting for right is so popular. This is especially true when Chaos is seen as being the creative side of the equation.

So now I have finally admitted I collect Moorcock. I looked and I have several duplicate books because oftentimes they have funky new covers. It’s not about the first edition or hardcover over paperback it’s about discovering a new cover or maybe even a little nostalgia for those heady days of the eighties when those Mayflower editions seemed to be so enticing in Philip Son and Nephew in Liverpool all nicely lined up on the bookshop shelves.

For the time being there is only the couple of shelves of Moorcock but I can see that growing. Especially as there are six more sitting on the fireplace waiting to be added.

It really is becoming an obsession to own the books especially the White Wolf  publications of the Eternal Champion series although as with most things that are desirable they oftentimes go for silly money.  It is also good to have a reason to browse bookstore shelves again after the admitted convenience of buying the e-book. So maybe at the end of the day there is a place left in the world for bookstores if only to feed the addiction of the collector.