It’s an incredibly rare occasion that I’m aware of snooker events before they occur. As I become more of an ardent fan of the sport – a veritable green baize junkie? – perhaps this first will become more of a norm?
Anyway, whilst catching up on my FB news feed (Paul O’Grady has died, aged 67!), I learned that the next snooker World Championship ‘takes place from 15 April to 1 May at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.’
It seems, according to the article that informed me of this, that this year we’ll see an influx of geriatric male stars – Hendry, White and Doherty, specifically – and several female contestants.
Could be interesting. But I’m glad that for once I’m aware of the event before and not after it’s started (or, at best previously, whilst it’s on). In the meantime my quest for the classic matches of yesteryear continues.
I kind of fancy going really old school, and watching a ‘Hirricane’ Huggins match, or maybe even that Davis vs. Taylor black ball one… Hmmm!?
‘Oozing class’, ‘a marvellous match… a Crucible classic’, ‘one of the best matches we have ever seen’. So sayeth the pundits, of this match. And i’sooth, it’s all true. ‘Twas absolutely fab!
Trump opened up a blistering and dominant 12-5 lead, only to have Williams, ‘the Welsh potting machine’, come roaring back at him. Some sublime snooker from both of them took us to the brink.
At 16-15 in Williams’ favour, the humbly eccentric former boxer looked poised to deliver one of the greatest sporting comebacks ever. But Trump dug in, or went to the well as they say, and took it to 16-16.
A standing ovation prior to frame 33.
The decider was a terrific frame, by far the longest of the match, clocking in at about 45-50 minutes. Both players had chances. And in the end there was a long safety duel, as Williams tried to beat the ‘astronomical odds’; he needed three or four snookers (and he laid a good few more than that).
But in the end, Trump triumphed by potting the blue. What an epically exhausting but exhilarating match. One for the ages.
Anything pleasurable is a form of therapy right now. Model making and little toy soldiers are, on and off, areas of hobbying that I have enjoyed.
I have a ’mini-military’ blog called AQOS (link!). But I’ve kind of petered out posting on there. Partly ‘cause of tech and software issues, and partly just going completely off the boil on that front.
I’m thinking I might concentrate all my blogging in the one place, here. But I’m at a loss how to manage or incorporate the various strands.
Watching this terrific little series again. What fun! as Miranda’s mum liked to say. Saxondale really tickles my funny-bone. And laughter is great medicine when you’re wrestling with a St. Bernard’s sized black-eyed dog.
The ageing quite clever and quite articulate ex-roadie turned pest controller is a great creation. Struggling with anger issues, and having to deal with the excruciating Vicky (Morwena Banks) to get jobs.
He encounters a Top Gear presenter, his ex-roadie pal Deggsy, animal rights protestors who object to his pest control methods, and a plethora of other characters, from the occasional appearances of hapless shopping centre-salesmen (Tim Key), to regulars, like Vicky, Raymond, his girlfriend, Magz, and his anger management counsellor, Alistair (James Bachman).
Vicky, Raymond, and Tommy.
In a similar yet different way to Coogan’s sublime Alan Partridge, the whole attention to detail thing with Saxondale’s music-obsessed character is a real pleasure for those who, like me, share similar interests.
And, again, as with Partridge, we love him as much for his myriad foibles and failings, as for his ‘good qualities’ – be they his ‘Stang, ready wit, or ‘classic rock’ schtick – all the while squirming in embarrassment when he goes off on another misplaced tanned-genital rant.
The scenes with his daughter and her beau are great, as Saxondale battles with his responses – whether natural or conditioned – and piles mistaken assumptions on top of angry prejudices. And all the while Focus or Tull, and similar ‘70s sounds, pump up the irony of the disparity between an ageing rocker’s dreams and visions of himself, and the humdrum reality.
Vicky, perma-tanned denizen of a Stevenage industrial estate.
The rapport with Vicky, via whom he gets his pest control jobs, is truly and deeply and excruciatingly excellent. Indeed, all the relationships are really well observed, teetering between very broad humour, and finely nuanced observation.
There are just so many moments that resonate: the comfy old slippers, the lines of coke with Deggsy whilst lamenting the follies of the world, the inadvertent self-harm at the gym (and the hilarious drive home after), and the struggles with ageing.
These latter range from Saxondale’s quirky facial tics and odd snuffling noises, to his inability to hoist himself into a loft (as his young assistant Raymond does), the glasses scene with hooker, the need for Viagra, and limitations on sexual positions due to a body that’s gradually wearing out.
Another dimension to all this, besides the 70s rock thread, is the general cultural milieu, with Tommy quoting Zulu, and frequently harping on about everything from Isambard Kingdom Brunel to Barnes Wallis. A set of … eugh! tropes (spits and washes mouth out) that fit a certain demographic, to which I belong, like Cinders’ glass slippers.
It’s humour that cuts pretty close to the bone, for some of us viewers. And, I think, is all the funnier for it.
Tommy smoking a dolphin bong. Brilliant!
A fab scene from Tommy’s anger management group.
Several fab scenes from Tommy’s anger management group.
I love the scenes at the anger management group that Tommy attends, at the local library. His humour and sarcasm are tragicomic, and, as with much comedy (also very much so with Partridge) he says out loud what many might think, but either then think better of, or at least choose not to say out loud.
Teresa isn’t so keen. ‘It’s a boy’s thing’, she says. And maybe she’s right? Still, I love it!
We just finished what was probably one our quickest games of Scrabble a moment ago. And it marks a trio of triumphs for Teresa! Three times straight in a row, she’s beaten me.
We both love Scrabble, and mostly for the fun of finding the words, as opposed to winning or losing. Which makes it very relaxing and pleasurable.
That said, I think Teresa’s head has grown a bit since scoring her triple trouncing of yours truly.
Having yet another very rough episode of psychological weather. We were at my sister’s again this weekend. And for the first time my depression was so intense it confined me to the bedroom, and stopped me interacting much with family.
Fortunately Teresa was their to ‘carry the weight’. And dad, bless ‘im, also stepped in, bringing over lunch for everyone, and hanging with Sofi and Ali through a marathon game of (Spanish!) Monopoly!
Not the most exciting book cover!*
[* But a pretty amazing book, in terms of the actual content. Part of a series by i Fabre, of which I currently have three out of four.]
I’d taken a book on Picasso, an Airfix model (1/76 88mm gun and half-track!), and was mostly watching snooker, or sleeping/trying to sleep.
A 1967 tooling, marketed as a Vintage Classic!
Snooker is one of my chief therapies right now. It’s also something bordering, I suppose, on addiction or compulsion. I particularly love the longer games (19+ is a minimum, ideally, but 25-30+ frames? Even better!), like the semis and finals of the World Championship.
Over Friday and Saturday I watched the intense 2022 World Championship Final. O’Sullivan was beating Trump mercilessly, initially. Trump fought back. But ultimately, whilst it was a bit one-sided, with O’Sullivan dominant overall. Nevertheless, it was still a great match, and an interesting watch.
The end was pretty weird, esp’ so in our buttoned-up conservative British culture. When O’Sullivan clinched the deciding frame, equalling Stephen Hendry’s record of seven wins, he went over to Trump, locking him in a close embrace.
It was clear they were talking to each other, as well. It struck a lot of people, myself included, as rather awkward… almost sexual!? I think that’s a sign of how appallingly neutered our outward emotional lives are.
Remember is a track that’s always spoken to my heart’n’soul, if you know what I mean? I’m not entirely sure why. I guess I might think ‘bout that over the course of this post.
It’s the fifth track on Tide, Jobim’s sixth solo album, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary studio, and released on A&M in 1970.
Tide itself is interesting, to me at least, for numerous reasons. For example, it has only one of his most famous tracks, opening with The Girl From Ipanema. The remainder are all lesser known.
Right from the first time I heard this album, Remember was my favourite track. There are, I think, several reasons why. First of all it grooves hard, in my opinion. It even has a certain funkiness to it. Not in an obviously JB type way, perhaps. But, well…
The rhythm section – and this track is basically just rhythm section, with only a very light smattering of melody – is brilliant. Jobim is on various keys, including, quite unusually, electric (sounding like a Rhodes or Wurli’?). We’ll come back to his keys playing in a mo’, as it’s, ummm… key to the feel of the track.
Then there’s Ron Carter on bass, Joao Palma on drums, and Everaldo Ferreira on congas. Airto Moreira is credited on percussion for the album as a whole, but I don’t hear him on this number. Carter is an absolute jazz giant, of course. Most famous for his stint in the Hancock/Shorter/Williams Miles quintet. And Moreira successfully crossed over Stateside, getting into the jazz and studio scenes.
A young Joao Palma.
João Palma was a legend in Brazil, and was still playing until he passed away, quite recently. Ferreira might still be playing (I found him – or at least a conguero of the same name – playing some street music on YouTube!). But they’re less known to music lovers outside Brazil, except perhaps the odd devotee.
As a unit they drive the pretty brisk and quite harmonically dense music along with a deft lightness of touch that is simultaneously energetic and laid back. A staple of the ‘samba jazz’ feel, but quite a feat, as you would know if you’ve tried it.
Now we come to Jobim’s playing. It’s totally in the Goldilocks zone. For me at least. Neither too much, nor too little. Just the absolutely perfect balance. And the various sections fall into a few different categories.
What I mean by that is that, after a ten bar intro, with an inverted pedal – a frequent Jobim ploy, the melody atop the chords staying on just one or two notes, as the chords shift underneath – we get very similar 12 bar cycles, all progressing with very similar harmonic/melodic logic, and yet all subtly different.
As a drummer, primarily, and almost entirely self-taught, with little to no academic grounding in music theory whatsoever, I’m probably going to embarrass myself now, by not knowing the correct terminology. But maybe someone in the know will read this and enlighten me?
So, as noted, we start with a 10 bar intro, the top note hanging on a B throughout, as the chords move about underneath. This type of section recurs throughout the piece, including immediately after the first iteration, but in a longer 12 bar form, and with a differing (but from this point on very similar) set of chords anchoring it. Sometimes the top note is the same B as the intro, at other times it’s a lower F.
My workings, from piano to guitar.
These sections are predominantly chordal, and very, very rhythmic. The chord voicings are quite ‘dense’. Easier to achieve on a keyboard than on a guitar (Jobim played both beautifully, oh, and flute!). But on this number it’s all keys and no guitar. Part of my fascination for Remember lies in my desire to do it on guitar! Very minimal and subtle use is made of notes occasionally moving slightly out of sync with the main ‘blocked’ chords.
Then there are the melody sections. Apart from the intro and bridge or middle-eight these follow the very similar sets of chords that form most of the piece. Again, these are 12 bars long. But then there’s the quite chirpy middle-eight (or 16, if we’re being exact), an eight bar section that’s repeated with slightly differing first and second time endings. These are the most song-like parts of this piece.
Unlike many of Jobim’s best known tunes, like Ipanema, Desafinado, One Note Samba, etc, but actually quite typical within his greater body of work, almost every iteration of any given section is very deliberately and very specifically voiced, all slightly differently, albeit very closely linked and always resolving to the same final G6 chord.
I do want to learn to play this number on keys at some point. But my first port of call is the guitar. It’s what I know best, after drums. Plus I think a guitar version could be a nice and different take on what is very much a keyboard piece.
I got the score from an absolutely superb Tom centred website, which has most of not all of his music really well written out for piano. Turning the piano chords into guitar versions that keep the feel of the original is, at least for me, a real challenge. Working from the chord names I start by using an online tool like jguitar.com’s chord finder/creator.
I also frequently use ASD, Amazing Slow Downer, a great software tool, to help me clarify what I’m hearing. With this pretty pacey tune, it was absolutely essential! Certain segments came together relatively quickly and easily, such as the 10-bar intro and the 12-bar sequence that immediately follows it. But others were – and indeed still are – a real mother!
The melody lead parts were the easiest, as working from the beautifully accurate piano chords quickly lead me to appropriate guitar chords. As and when I come to record a version of Remember, I will be incorporating the melody, most likely as a separate voice. But for the ‘fixed note’ sections – or inverted pedal parts (the notes are atop the chords!) – the fairly stationary ‘melody’ is integral to the chords.
As already noted, some of these came together very quickly, others, in particular iteration #(?), or bars ??-??, were extremely challenging. This comes out of the fact that densely voiced chords, easy on keys, can be near impossible on guitar, depending on exactly which notes are concerned.
The fact that the topography of the guitar neck forces one to relocate certain notes to differently pitched positions really alters the sound and feel, and even the ‘width’ or ‘depth’, of the chords. Tricky!
Anyway, I’ve created a chord sheet – actually still a work in progress – for Remember. And the bulk of it is, I’m happy to say, quite satisfactory to me. There is one troublesome segment, already alluded to above. And I’m still working hard to complete that in a satisfactory manner.
And then there’s actually playing it on guitar competently. That also is very much a work in progress! The original is a brisk 183bpm, or thereabouts. If I do get around to doing a guitar based recording – and I very much hope I will – I might opt to take the pace down a little, perhaps even as far as 170-5? We shall see!
One issue is that pesky progression that’s harder than the others – oh, and the middle 8/16 – as both have one or two chord progressions that require left-hand ninja skills I’m going to need to acquire!
My goal is a version on which I play all instruments, poss even a flute doing the melody. Certainly drums, congas, bass, guitar, poss a little keys. But as my flute skills haven’t got a far as making a reliable clean note, I will prob have to either sing the melody, or get someone in to do that icing on the cake bit!
I’ve described myself to some folk, over the years, as a misanthrope. I’ve always done so out of a vague notion of what that means. So I decided to look it up today.
I find that the Wikipedia entry on Misanthropy resonates with me in many, albeit not all, particulars.
One typically assumes that most folk would view misanthropy with scorn and disdain, as it’s not an obviously positive or helpful outlook. And that’s the kind of view of the outlook or philosophy portrayed by the Brueghel painting above.
One of the chief areas in which I might not be a misanthrope is in relation to sex; apparently many misanthropes are antinatalist. Well, I can see that humanity is somewhat overstocked, which appears to adversely effecting the planet and everything in it (inc. ironically, humanity itself!).
But like nice wine, sex – whether for reproduction or just plain fun – is one of our few solaces. So I’m all for lots of it, whether it produces offspring or not. Though I feel compelled to confess that the misanthrope in me does wish that there were a lot less humans on the planet.
And now, having read most of the Wikipedia entry on Misanthropy? I actually feel more not less inclined to self identify in that manner.
PS – The inscription at the bottom of Brueghel’s painting reads (acc. to Wikipedia):
Om dat de werelt is soe ongetru, Daer om gha ic in den ru
‘Because the world is perfidious, I am going into mourning’
Brueghel’s painting suggests this makes the misanthrope a fool. He’s having his purse pinched by a figure representing vanity, and is blindly walking into some ‘caltrops’ (little spiky things humans invented, with which to hurt each other, lame horses with, etc. *). Meanwhile a shepherd in the background contrasts with the misanthrope by humbly going about his business.
It’s funny how long some things take to happen. I’ve been listening to Sting sing the line ‘James Brown on the TAMI show’ since my early or mid-teens, and I’ve been seriously into James Brown himself, or more accurately his musical legacy, for three decades or more.
And yet only now have I actually tried to check out exactly what is ‘James Brown on the TAMI show’? And, thanks to YouTube and the interweb, I finally found out.
I’m only in to the second tune at the time of posting this. And whilst I love JB and his Famous Flames, the squealing ‘Beatle-mania’ type audience response is messin’ with my noggin!
The weather right now, as I’m typing this post, is cold, windy, and raining. Perfectly reflecting my spirits.
Or is it?
It was sunny 30 minutes ago. And, perhaps rather astonishingly, it’s going that way again. The rain has stopped. But the dripping continues. And the visible part of the sky, from where I’m laying down, is a clean pure brilliant blue. I imagine there’s a beautiful rainbow to be seen somewhere. Wish I could see it!
That little passing cloudburst reminded me of the Donald Fagen Sunken Condos track/lyric, The Weather In My Head.
I guess I ought to take solace in how quickly that little cold wet blast lasted? So now the Dear Prudence lyric seems more apt: ‘The sun is out, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful, and so are you…’. Much better!
But that said, although my mood is fluctuating a lot. The dark clouds in my mind seem to hang about much longer than those that are currently scudding through the skies.
