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This lies just outside the scope of my mini-military hobby blog, I guess, so I thought I’d post a review here.

The Escape Line is an excellent book, telling the exciting story of ‘Dutch-Paris’, a clandestine group/line that ran from The Netherlands through Belgium and France to Switzerland and Spain, both sheltering and helping to escape Jews, downed Allied airmen, and others, such as young men fleeing conscription into German forced labour.

Johann or Jean Weidner (he chose to use the more French form of his name, being based in France) was a Seventh Day Adventist and textiles merchant who, along with his wife and an ever growing number of others, found himself drawn into a shady underworld, ostensibly at odds with his former standing as an upright law-abiding citizen, in order to help others and live in accordance with his own inner moral compass.

This well-written and researched book shines a light into this murky netherworld of underground but pacific resistance, which itself occurred during dark times. Finding funds, going on the lam, forging documents, crossing borders. There’s lot derring-do! Plenty of contemporary pictures and some useful maps help keep the whole thing both vivid and comprehensible. It’s very much a tale of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in extraordinary times.

A compelling page turner, set in Nazi-occupied Western Europe, the network and its stories spread their tentacles outwards from Weidner’s initial base in Lyons, France, to Switzerland and Spain, and up into Belgium and Holland. With characters such as couriers or hosts for fugitives ranging from young secretaries and mothers to elderly widows, and civilian passeurs, from French and Dutch clergy and businessmen to downed Allied airmen, Maquis resistance, Milice collaborators, the SS, SD, Gestapo and so on, it’s a very colourful cast.

It’s very interesting in respect of civil disobedience, and the potential conflict between individual conscience and the laws of the state. As Koreman says many times, most people during WWII in the occupied territories would rather look at the floor, so to speak, and try to just get through such troubled times without risking themselves.

In hindsight things at the tine of WWII can look simpler and more clear cut, in respect of an issue such as the persecution of Jews. But how can we apply such lessons as this story might impart for our own times? I have friends who are very active in helping refugees in the U.K. I have to confess I feel very conflicted about such issues as they are in the present.

I’ve got a huge stack of books to review, and was worried I’d find this a chore. But far from it. I was, rather appropriately, captivated, and felt compelled to continue. Indeed, it was hard to put down. I won’t go into any more detail here. Better that you read the book yourself.

It’s been a while since I posted here. Having got back into making regular posts on my mini-military blog and not having done too much in the home or garden beyond bits of maintenance tidying.

Yesterday I finally installed the first of the four or so fire-alarms we’ve had for some time now, in the guest/airbnb room. One down, three to go!

I’ve also had to prop up a couple of sections of fence, which are busted and sagging under the weight of some ivy. Didn’t want Storm Freya knocking them down! We need to do lots of work on our fence, as it’s very old and dilapidated. About 8-12 panels have either fallen down or are just about to. Some of these have subsequently been burned or dumped, leaving gaps.

Pine brackets for the curtain rail.

But another job has left Teresa breathing down my neck! She made a green velvet curtain for our back/kitchen door, a little while back, and has been on to me ever since about getting it up (fnarrr, fnarrr!).

Screw holes drilled all the way through.

I didn’t have a long enough bit for the top holes…

Starting a few days ago, I began work on some DIY wooden curtain support brackets, to my own design. Cutting the wood for these gave me the chance to use my recently acquired Kity 613 bandsaw for the first time.

She’s a good gal! But I need some new/finer blades. I only got one with the machine – a wide low tooth count one, best suited for deep/straight cutting – which I bought via Gumtree. I travelled up to Lincoln to buy the Kity, paying £300 (I managed to haggle the seller down from £400!). I had to take out the passenger seat in my little MX5 to fit the bandsaw in. Didn’t know if it’d work (transportation, that is)till I got there. But it did. Phew!

Just typing this as I take a tea-break, before drilling holes in my brackets, so as to mount them ‘pon de wall. I was going to buy a couple more blades for the Kity today, from Bedford Saw & Tool Co. But they make the blades to order, and didn’t have any in stock. They’re ordered now, at any rate. Just a question if collecting them when they let me know they’re ready.

I was able to drill the lower holes all the way through on my bench-top drill press. But the upper ones required drilling from both sides. I managed to get the first one perfectly aligned. But the second was ever so slightly off, and had to be drilled twice. But they both worked out fine when it came to installation.

Drilling locating holes for rawl-plugs and screws.

And she’s up!

Another angle.

Not having a narrow high tooth count blade on my Kity as yet, suitable for cutting tight curves, I had to break out the little old 10″ (chortle) bandsaw. That does have such a blade currently installed, allowing me to cut the curves on that. It struggled. But I cut near to the pencil line, and then used rasps and sandpaper to get a nicer smoother finish. I’m happy with the result.

I was considering a little bit of router-work ornamentation on the brackets. That’d give me a chance to try out my new router, which I’ve not actually used yet. But for some reason I’m a bit wary of doing so. Hmm!?

With the curtain in place.

From the lounge.

After another break I finally got it all in place, and the curtain up. I have to confess I was a little bit disappointed. I think that’s partly ’cause it should be painted gloss white. I might also plug the screw holes. I’m not going to bother routing any ornamentation on them, however. I might do so at some future point, or next time I make something similar.

Another thing is that Teresa hadn’t quite got the hang of consistent curtain manufacture yet. Sometimes the curtains are wide enough, i.e. contain enough material to have the right amount of ‘gather’, and look right. This curtain’s not really got quite enough material, width-wise.

The other more noticeable issue, with Teresa’s coitans: floppy tops! She’s taken to adding a strips of reinforcing material along the top edge, which is meant to stop this happening. And she’s done so here. But it’s still as limp as a drunken monk. I think she may need to locate the strip that the curtain hooks go through a bit higher as well?

So, there’s more to be done. I need to paint the brackets and the pole. And Teresa needs to do something about her floppy top.

Oh, and then there’s the small matter of inheriting a kitchen not to our tastes. I don’t like the style of it at all. I’ve already repainted the walls and some of the woodwork. I intend to gut the room entirely and rebuild all the cabinets, install a butler sink (which we already have), and so on… when time, funds and materials allow.

But for now, small modest changes.

I finally bowed to the inevitable, realising that my little bandsaw simply isn’t man enough to do the kind of work I need a bandsaw for.

So I started looking for something that’d better suit my needs. And afore long I lit upon the Kity 613 as a potential answer. They seem big enough – re height and depth of cut – very solidly built, and can be bought for about £250-300, which is as much (more, really!) as I could muster, max.

I followed one on eBay, which eventually sold for £260. But with the travel involved it’d have cost me in excess of £300. It also looked in very good condition. However, at the same time there was an even more pristine one listed on Preloved, complete with manual. Advertised at £400ovno, after some haggling I managed to persuade the seller to let me have it for £300.

Adding fuel costs to that – I had to drive to Lincoln and back (the eBay one was even further afield) – it probably set me back about £330 in all. Having only my MX5 with which to transport it, I decided I’d take the passenger seat out. That was relatively easy, thankfully. And it’s a good job I did. Even with the seat out it only just fit.

The seller and I removed the base, a sturdy two-part metal affair, which went into the boot (just!), along with the fence and manual, etc. The saw itself only just went in, leaned back at an angle and strapped in with bungees. Covered with a dust sheet it looked a bit like I had some sort of android under wraps in the passenger seat.

Clearing space for this full on bit of kit in the shed has meant moving a reclaimed table out. Not sure what’ll become of that? If it survives being outside for a while it might wind up in the art studio, if/when I get round to building that! Although I managed to transport the bandsaw from the lounge to the shed on my own, it’s both heavy and awkwardly shaped enough to mean I’m almost certainly going to need help getting it back up on to its base.

I now have two bits of ‘vintage’ Kity gear, this 613 bandsaw, and the as yet to be got functioning planer/thicknesser. As the weather starts to improve, I hope to get into the workshop more, and get these tools working for me. I have sooo many projects in mind!

Another archival post this, with the actual project occurring in late march last year.

Having no available cash at the time of my dad’s birthday last year, I decided I’d make him a gift. I made him a set of rosewood dominos, all entirely handmade, individually, by  me. Far from perfect in conception or execution. But he loves them. That’s the main thing!

The set, with pop’s b’day card.

Another pic of the full set, this time sat atop the green velvet bag teresa made, for Pa to keep his dominos in. Along with the green ‘pips’ on the dominos – green is a favourite colour of both my father and myself – this gives an overall theme of… well, green!

Tumbled about a bit, as if removed from their bag.

And in the bag, ready to be gift-wrapped and delivered.

I have ideas about making further sets of dominos, and improving on both design and execution in the process. As a kid my favourite thing to do with dominos was making domino runs (is that what they’re called?), in which you line ’em all up, and knock ’em all down. These days you see folk doing this stuff on a huge scale. I never had more than a couple of packs at my disposal. Maybe that’ll change?

In the meantime, ‘hippo birdy’ Pops, and I’m glad you like my ‘umble gift!

Is this man the real Father Christmas of soul? Michael MacDonald delivers a stunningly soulful solo rendition of his stunningly soulful meisterpiece, What A Fool Believes.

Some while back, I think it would have been March, 2018, I decided that, as I had no money at the time, I’d make my dad a birthday present. I plumped for a set of dominos, made from dark rosewood.

This is obviously, therefore, an pother of my archival posts. Indeed, I thought I’d ałready posted about them here. And I’m doing so now in part because my sister, Uannah, asked to see them, and I realised I had nothingness online to direct her to.

Dad was really chuffed with them. They came in a nice little green velvet bag that Teresa kindly made. I was pleased with them, although they are rather rustic and irregular. I’d like to make another and better set soon, and have some ideas in how I can improve on uniformity, accuracy, and all around neatness.

Another archival post, this time a rosewood sewing box, for Teresa’s birthday (May), last year. I should’ve, and was intending to, make it twice as deep. But in the end time ran out, so I went with a shallower design.

I enjoyed lining it in green felt, and felt (boom-boom) that it was a successful project, albeit far from perfect. Teresa really likes it, and that’s the main thing. Plus I learn something new with every project.

I can sometimes be a bit of a grumpy old curmudgeon when it comes to contemporary music culture, mostly because what I hear in the mainstream seems like so much utterly vacuous drivel, by and large.

As an example, one of my young drum pupils has suggested a track, Rise, by Jonas Blue for his most recent project. This kind of contemporary pop is utterly devoid of any interest to me, simply being an assemblage of the most obvious and banal of clichés.  Fortunately my student wants to add a drum part to the ‘acoustic’ version of the single, so we’ll have the freedom to inject some honest humanity of our own into proceedings.

Of course there is a good deal of great music being made now, and YouTube is perhaps the best way I know of to discover much of it. It’s where I discovered the chief subject of this post.

Having said that, some music I really love has come to my notice via personal links: my uncle Terry introduced me to The Society of Strange and Unusual Instruments. And their latest recording, The Longest Night, is sublimely beautiful. I did a general post on the group here

Then there’s Resolution 88, the Herbie/Rhodes focussed project of Tom O’Grady, a local musician I’ve had the privilege to work with on occasion, whose music keeps alive and brings into the present a very rich tradition of superb jazz-funk-fusion. I’ll post more on these guys here soon. In the meantime, here’s a link to my Amazon UK review of their debut album.

But today’s post is all about ze Vunderful Vurld of Vulf. Vulfpeck are an American group, the dynamo of which is Jack Stratton, a very charismatic character. The core of the group appear to be a development of a former music school quartet, comprising Stratton (multi-instrumentalist and renaissance-cyberman), Joe Dart (bass), Theo Katzmann (multi-instrumentalist/vocals), and Woody Goss (keys).

Around this core there’s a colourful cast of collaborators, and the Vulf channel on YouTube covers a lot of territory, centred around music, but ranging into comedy, auto-didactic eclecticism, and all sorts. As well as a distinct central focus on funky soulful music, there’s a fantastic design and production aesthetic, which affects both music and visual production. The Vurld of Vulf is really something special.

I find it all terrifically joyful and inspiring. It’s making me aware that I really ought to bring all my creative endeavours out into the open. For example, I’ve always had a thang for typography, and designed a family of fonts many moons ago, some of which I actually turned into workable computer typefaces using Fontographer, for use in my design, illustration and music projects.

Vulf have their own signature font, which I believe you can buy via their website. I think I’ll dust off my fonts, and bring them up to date and share them. But I really want to create another one, suitable for use in the broadest of contexts – most of my previous font design was for more ‘graphic’ type characters, and not so well suited to ‘body text’ – and I’ve long had a yen to try my hand at a variant of Carolingian Miniscule script. Sebolingian, perhaps? Or maybe… Sebolingus?

Vulf have also developed their own compressor, with some help from another former college buddy. Both the font and compressor can be bought via links on their website. I’m planning to get back into recording and producing my own music, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be buying this compressor at some point, as it looks and sounds terrific.

Jack Stratton can be observed doing all sorts of stuff besides music. And he seems to have some alter-egos, such as ‘Mushy’, for some of his prolific output. Amongst the many things he’s put out are several ‘Holy Trinities’, which are ‘the three best’ of such and such. These latter, produced, I think, by the guy who helped develop their compressor, are musical, but are about, say, the three greatest tambourine players (as shown above), for example. They are superbly put together, massively enjoyable, and I find myself entirely in agreement with senor Stratton.

Many of the musical references these chaps are drawing from chime with my own. Dean Town, a live video of which is included above, is an homage to Weather Report’s Teen Town, a longstanding favourite track of mine [1]. And it’s interesting to see which legendary figures Stratton cites, such as Fonce Mizzell, or who they collaborate with, live and in the studio, such as David Walker, James Gadson, Bernard Purdie, and Mike McDonald. When I saw that they performed What A Fool Believes, with MacDonald, I was blown away.

Woody Goss’ face above says it all.

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NOTES:

[1] I have long loved Teen Town. Since discovering Weather Report in my early/mid teens (how appropriate!), and enjoying learning a lot from drumming along to their stuff, I’ve always had a few favourites from their extensive and varied catalogue. From very early on Teen Town was amongst my tip-top favourites. Unlike much Weather Report, it’s a small intricately wrought little nugget. And it’s largely performed by its composer, Jaco Pastorius, with his drums and bass being the key dominant elements. Alex Acura drums (brilliantly) on the rest of the album. But Jaco himself plays the traps on this number, and sounds as if he’s done it in two passes: one’s a relatively simple cyclic groove, dominated by the hi-hat (or, as Vulfpeck have it in Dean Town, ‘sock cymbal’), whilst the other is a very funkily syncopated duet between an open boomy bass drum, and a super-tight, super-dry snare. These drum parts reveal Pastorius to be an incredibly talented drummer. Manolo Badrena, Wayne Shorter, and (possibly?) Joe Zawinul contribute parts that are extremely and unusually minimal. The result is a highly wrought gem of a piece. Vulfpeck’s homage recycles the ‘sock cymbal’ element, and also features bass as the lead instrument, but is also very different in some respects, primarily in the simplicity and linear straightforwardness – or lack of complex syncopation (such a feature of the Pastorius number) – of the drum part.

I’ve been wanting to go to the Bovington Tank Museum for some time, to see the Tiger collection. It’s a shame they don’t have a SturmTiger, but they have a Tiger I, two Tiger IIs, a JadTiger and an Elefant.

I’ve posted a photo report on the Elefant on my mini-military blog, here.

I’ll be posting more stuff there about the other Tigers, etc. But here a few pics of stuff I particularly dug.

There are two Tiger II tanks, one with a Porsche turret, and one with the Henschel turret, that became the chosen production variant. It was Porsche’s rejected King Tiger hulls that formed the basis of the Ferdinand/Elefant Tank-hunter.

Another Tank-hunter, by name as well as fighting role, was the awesome JagdTiger. Above you can see what a huge beast it was. This tank looks pristine inside, and you can see into both the engine bay and fighting compartment.

Below is the Henschel King Tiger, or Tiger II, also in zimmerit anti-magnetic mine paste. The paint job is the mid/late-war three colour ‘ambush’ scheme, and the markings are very nice.

All that is there to stand in for the SturmTiger is a mortar barrel. Below is a picture taken looking down said barrel, with a torch illuminating the rifled interior. Impressive! (Can’t help hearing the James Bond theme tune when I see this!)

The five Tigers on display are truly amazing. I’m sooo glad I made the effort to see them all. I’ll go again later in the year, I think. But I had to go today to catch the Elefant before it’s shipped back Stateside… tomorrow!

One of the reasons I had to see the Elefant is ’cause I’ve been making models of them. I’ve built two so far, and I’m working on a third. Seeing the real thing is both inspiring, and useful for gathering reference.

I love the tank museum!

A while back, whilst researching one of my music writing projects, I exchanged several emails with Chris Dedrick (now sadly no longer with us) of The Free Design, in which we briefly discussed the Jungian idea of synchronicity, amongst other things.

Like Gordon Sumner, Dedrick was very positive about the idea of synchronicity. And so am I, today at least. It certainly felt like a big old dose of serendipitous synchronicity when, shopping in Sainsbury’s, I decided to look at the magazine section, something I almost never, ever do.

OnIy yesterday I had been listening to a two CD compilation of four John Sebastian albums. I look at the magazine racks, and there’s Joni Mitchell, one of my all time musical heroines, smiling down at me. And whose name is that next to hers? John Sebastian.

Sometime soon I’ll  get into Sebastian, so to speak. But today it’s all about Joni. Sadly the free CD on the cover of this Mojo is not Joni Mitchell’s music, but ’15 songs inspired by the genius of Joni Mitchell’. Past experience teaches that this will be – my apologies to the artists concerned – deeply disappointing.

I don’t think any of the free CDs I’ve ever got from a music mag like this, Mojo, Uncut, or whatever, have been any good. A real shame, and a real missed opportunity this. What would’ve been far better would have been a collection of rare and unsual Joni recordings, of which there are plenty. But I guess that would have been a lot harder to arrange.

I’ve been meaning to move some posts over here from my ‘sounds from the funky goat’ music blog (now in stasis/limbo… i.e. pretty much defunkt!), including several Joni album posts. But on seeing this I’ve decided to start with a read and review of Mojo’s 22 page Joni special.

There’s a six-page 2004 interview, by Robert Hilburn (really three pages plus lots of pics and large-text captions), a piece with Norman Seeff and some of his Joni pics, and a series of chronological pieces by Victoria Segal, David Cavanagh, MoJo editor John Mulvey and Mat Snow, which range from covering her early days right up to the post-aneurysm wheelchair-bound present.

I guess Joni’s a tough gig for any journo, like other artists I love such as Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart or even, more recently, Lewis Taylor. And I found most of this writing not too great, focussing largely on the more obvious stuff [1], with very little new info’, for a long-time intense Joni junkie like me.

There’s a bit too much over-reverence for Blue. It is a great album by great artist at the peak of her powers, but I find it, taken as a whole, almost too cloyingly intense. And as a total listening experience I prefer most of her other albums from debut Song To A Seagull through to Hejira, after which they remain brilliant, but are more patchy.

The most interesting stuff here comes mostly from Joni herself, not surprisingly. I particularly like a quote from the Hilburn interview: ‘I believe a total unwillingness to cooperate is necessary to be an artist’. She actually clarifies this afterwards, and it seems to me that the word compromise could equally well (or better?) be substituted for cooperate.

Her critical stance on the modern music industry also rings true, as when she alleges that she overheard some music biz type saying that what was wanted nowadays was not talent, but ‘a certain look and a willingness to cooperate’. I think her choice of the word cooperate in her aforementioned quote was in reaction to this statement.

There are also a number of ‘Joni on Joni’ inserts, peppered throughout, in which Mitchell reflects on her ouevre. Again, these are more interesting by and large than the understandable but less insightful rhapsodies about her recorded work from the various journalists. But even then, they don’t offer as much insight as I hoped they might.

In relation to this, it seems to me that one of the common failures of interaction and understanding between artists and journalists is in how to interface, and specifically what approach to take. I have hoped that being both artist and writer myself that I might be better able to bridge such a gap. But on several occasions, for example when interviewing Brazilian singer Joyce some years ago, I was disappointed to discover this wasn’t necessarily so!

What I – and I imagine most readers of such stuff as this – really want is for the artist to simply open up, and talk about themselves and their lives, not necessarily their work. Although that is of course of interest. The notion that we want literal explanations of, let’s say, a particular lyric, whilst true on some levels, is also overly simplistic. The best writing on music is actually simply a form of cultural history. And that requires detail on context.

One little snippet of this does come to light here, when Joni explains, almost apologetically, how she came to write the lyrics for Amelia, on Hejira. Clearly she’s a bit worried about ‘unweaving the rainbow’, or demistyfying the creative process. Personally this doesn’t bother me at all, and is in fact encouraging for fellow aspiring artists.

But what’s more fascinating is to read about the overall context of this era, with Joni travelling across the U.S. How that relates to the melancholy and sense of wanderlust that’s so palpable on that album is even more interesting than the naked nuts and bolts of a songs particular genesis.

It’s interesting to have the Norman Seeff stuff, both photographic and textual. I tried to get Seeff to talk to me about the photos he took of obscure instrumental group The Earth Disciples, many years ago, but got nowhere. I’d love to have his book The Joni Mitchell Sessions. But judging from the info on it in MoJo it’s going to be a super-expensive limited edition thing. Hey-ho (and see below!).

Still, at the end of the day, it’s great to see Joni being remembered and celebrated. I guess, in fairness to the artists on the free CD, I ought to take a listen to it. I’ll save that for tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll go to bed with Joni… For The Roses, I think. A woman of heart and mind indeed.

* These pics aren’t in Mojo’s Joni feature.

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NOTES:

[1] David Cavanagh kind of pissed me off by describing Barangrill as having ‘fuzzy emotional blankness’… eh? It’s one of the best tracks on a totally brilliant album. But hey, it’s all so subjective with music. Each to their own, I guess. I see jazz singer Mark Murphy is in my corner though, witness his superb cover of the song on his Mark Murphy II album.

[2] It’s interesting to note that Beefheart retired from music to concentrate on painting. Joni managed to pursue both in parallel, to some degree, although she also went the same way in the end.

Having just read a few Amazon UK reviews of Seeff’s Joni book, I feel disinclined to get it. For a book with a RRP of £75, even heavily discounted to closer to £45, it gets a slating: for bad design/layout – key pictures that disappear into the spine, for example – and minimal textual value. Also, I find that photographic stuff around ‘pop stars’ can often burst the bubble of my admiration for them, revealing them as preening narcissists, often looking pretty foolish. I’m not a fan of fashion magazines, and a lot of ‘pop photography’ steers too close to that whole arena of vacuity.