Media – Page 3 – Seb Palmer

19 January 202322 January 2023

MUSiC: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi

Utterly gorgeous!

I had wanted to get this in time for the 2022 Yuletide season. But I didn’t. But, with gift voucher funds from Teresa and Patrick, I did finally get it after Xmas.

Speaking frankly, and especially as I’ve loved Guaraldi’s A Boy Named Charlie Brown for years now, I can’t believe it’s taken me over a half a century to get around to buying this. A truly terrific recording, this gets my occasional – and reserved for only the berry vest – six stars. It’s just utterly wonderful.

It’s one of those instances where less is more. Much, much more, in this case. Jazz is a musical style in which sometimes the tempos can be high, the vibe intense, and the notes hyper-abundant. This collection, however, belongs to a mellower more Chet Baker-esque jazz world. A musical universe of pretty melodies, and spare pared down playing. I love it!

And it’s not just Guaraldi’s own playing and composing that benefits from this approach. The sidemen here* are, for the most part (a little less so on one or two of the added bonus tracks at the end; we’ll get to them later), the essence of tastefully restrained.

‘Linus and Lucy’ is revisited on this recording, and is a case in point: the main theme is just piano – a beautifully rumbling train like piano – against very minimalist drumming, with the bass dropping out altogether. But the keys and drums duo sound is remarkably full. The bass appears when they go into the B-section, sometimes bossa, sometimes swing; but the vibe remains resolutely Spartan. Fantastic!

Apparently Guaraldi’s ’earthy’ style garnered him the nickname Dr Funk, on the local music scene of his native San Francisco, where he came to fame playing with Cal Tjader. And, whilst talking about learning more about this dude and his music, I’m definitely keen to find out if more of Guaraldi’s work, Schulz related or otherwise, is as good as the two Charlie Brown themed albums I now have. And to that end I intend to check out this NPR show on him:

One of Guaraldi’s drummers, Jerry Granelli, is either still going, or only recently passed. I remember watching him not long ago, online (YouTube, no doubt), including in a trio performing Guaraldi’s Peanuts stuff. It struck me that Granelli’s kit looked like an Ayotte, a Canadian drum brand of which I have a beautiful example.

Guaraldi himself passed away quite young, aged just 47. He was busy musically till the end, working on further Peanuts stuff, gigging, skiiing, and then boom… killed by a massive heart attack! Sad, really.

Back to the CD, and happier thoughts! The material is a mixture of trad Christmas stuff, from O Tannenbaum to Mel Tormé’s evergreen classic, The Christmas Song, with some Greensleeves, and a brief but beautiful Fur Elise, by Beethoven, as well as a good fistful of superb Guaraldi originals.

The liner notes to the CD are good, and talk about Guaraldi’s modest self-appraisal, and his desire to make pretty music, and be loved for it. Well, I agree with the liner notes author; you did it Vince, and we love ya!

A few pieces have vocals from a children’s choir, which just adds to the festive charm. The Choir of St Paul’s Episcopal Church do themselves and the music proud.

If you’re interested, you can read more on the Peanut’s Yuletide special here. Rather like the two page comic strip ad for the special itself, that Schulz produced (which finds Charlie Brown lamenting the commercialisation of the season), all this stuff, the music included, had a beautifully gentle and lightly wistful edge to it.

Utterly lovely! Can’t recommend it highly enough.

* Apparently Guaraldi wasn’t the best at keeping accurate records of who performed on his dates. Which has lead to some confusion over personnel credits.

17 January 202317 January 2023

BOOK REViEW: Waiting For Hitler, Midge Gillies

This was a fun and easy read.

Using several strands of private historical narrative – from ordinary British folk, such as two sisters in Norfolk, or Scots artillery man Frank O’Brien, and members of the Home Guard, etc, to resident ‘aliens’, such as Italian Decio Anzani, or the German Jewish Baruchs – Midge Gillies weaves a tapestry of warmly human firsthand accounts around the theme of ‘Waiting For Hitler’, or the invasion scare of 1940.

It was rather nice that there were quite a few stories relating to areas I know, mostly in East Anglia (and even London), such as Snettisham, and Hauxton. It turns out that Gillies is local – she lives in Ely! – so that might account for the unusual number of Anglian anecdotes!

A lot of what one reads here makes Dad’s Army look worryingly like documentary history, as opposed to loving satire. England, esp. after the ‘heroic’ debacle of Dunkirk, was not well prepared! And the way we treated ‘enemy aliens’ is revealed to be shockingly heavy-handed and unjust.

It’s hard to credit the impact an imminent Nazi invasion really must have had. Though this book does an admirable job of trying to convey the range of feelings, from ennui to all out panic, and from the unifying ‘we’re all in it together’ to the divisive paranoia around fifth columnists.

Perhaps because we know the feared invasion never came, even when one does read these accounts, it can all seem to partake of that ‘cosy rosy memories of WWII’ nostalgia Britain seems so obsesssed with!

Still, all told I found this an enjoyable and compelling read, and can definitely recommend it.

PS – Thanks, Chris, for gifting me this on my recent b’day. T’was a good read!

17 January 202322 January 2023

SNOOKER: Sullivan vs Williams, ‘23 Masters

I didn’t see half as much of the recent Masters Snooker tournament as I’d have liked. But I did catch a few matches. Some, like the Trump vs Bingham semi, were quite dull. Even excruciating at times!

I’d heard the pundits mention that this one, O’Sullivan vs Williams, was a good ‘un. So I thought I’d check it out. I wasn’t disappointed.

‘The best shot so far this afternoon’, quoth Dennis Taylor, as Ronnie pocketed the above pictured long red, clean as the proverbial whistle. This quarter final clash of two snooker Titans, both legends in their own lifetimes, lived up to its billing. Quite a rare thing, I find.

Williams, as funny a player as this face suggests.

Mark Williams is, as any Snooker fan will know, an oddball. Perhaps ironically, being one of the best ‘single shot’ snooker players ever makes him a formidable break builder. A lot of the time he favours floating the balls into the pockets, ‘dead weight’. And this slow measured approach means that sometimes you might forget how good his technique is.

The contrast with Ronnie’s more attacking and aggressive flair makes for a great pairing. And both are super canny, and can, as Hendry likes to observe, be as hard as granite in freezing other players out. Both have superlative Snooker brains, often seeing things others wouldn’t.

This match was great. Perhaps the best of the tournament? Ronnie looked unbeatable at the outset. But Williams turned the tables on him. Both showed how, sometimes, just one mistake can be super costly.

The match reached a final 11th frame decider, and – after a typically gonzo one-armed off the cushion shot (missed!) – Williams played the ‘best shot in this wonderful match’ (Taylor) – pictured above – which had Hendry frothing: ‘magnificent, absolutely magnificent!’

I love Snooker. I find it very relaxing. And I particularly enjoy a really great match, like this: two players playing at the top of their game. Williams finished with a total clearance. Fab!

12 January 202314 January 2023

MUSiC: The Youngbloods

The Youngbloods best known hit, Get Together, looks and sounds like a hippy anthem, in the rear view mirror of music history. And so it was. Although it had a more convoluted history than its light and happy vibes might suggest.

I’m not sure if it’s a false memory, or, indeed, what it is, but I have these dim and distant memories of a mixtape cassette a childhood friend made for me, purporting, in one lengthier segment, to be The Youngbloods jamming with Jimi Hendrix. Whatever it actually was, that was some great music.*

The same pal introduced me to early T Rex (Jewel) and Beefheart (Pachuco Cadaver!). So I feel I owe him a debt of gratitude. Thank’ee, Edwin, wherever ye may be now? I last saw him (Ed’) in Ely, looking a bit like a mental health casualty of war. I rather fancied his sister Eleanor, back in the day.

But back to the present. And presents – Amazon gift vouchers – are what allows me to indulge, as I have just done, in a musical gamble: I just ordered two ‘3-in-2’ sets, both by BGO. The first collects The Youngbloods, Earth Music (both ‘67), and Elephant Mountain (‘69), whilst the second gathers together Rock Festival (‘70), Ride The Wind and Good And Dusty (both ‘71).

The only official release album I won’t have will be 1972’s High On A Ridgetop. There are some other related recordings of interest, such as drummer Joe Bauer’s Moonset (1971), and something called Crab Tunes/Noggins! Which seems to basically be The Youngbloods, sans Young, and under a different name.**

I hope this first foray into what is, for me, basically uncharted territory, proves better than my recent Harry Partch experiment. I bought The Harry Partch Collection, Vol 1, and have listened to it a couple of times. I got it ‘cause Iggy Pop mentions getting stoned and listening to it with his Stooge bandmates, and I’ve kept ‘hearing about Harry’, in relation to Beefheart and Tom Waits. I found Partch’s music really doesn’t do it for me. The ideas are more interesting than the actual sounds, which, frankly, wind up irritating me.

But as to The Youngbloods, in a day or two I should have the discs. And I’m hoping to bask in what I anticipate being an eclectic hippy-era melange of folk, blues and whatever else they might serve up. The cats certainly look pretty cool:

Drummer Joe Bauer was intending to be a jazzer…

Multi-instrumentalist Lowell ‘Banana’ Levinger, and friend!

The early years group was a quartet: Young, Jerry Corbitt, Bauer and Banana.

* Every now and again I look into it, and usually I come up with naught. But just looking again now, I found a load of stuff with Hendrix playing with Lonnie Youngblood. That must be the Hendrix/Youngblood connection? But it’s not the music on my friend’s cassette!

** After a bit of digging I’ve discovered that Noggins was the nominal group, and Crab (Crap?) Tunes was the title of the album. The album artwork and personnel make it look intriguing and inviting. But apparently it is an appalling musical turd, and very deliberately so, as it was fulfilling a ‘contractual obligation’ to the band’s record label. But this doesn’t quite stack up with the chronology: their first three albums are with RCA, then Corbitt left. Their next four albums were for Warner. And the last of those, High On A Ridgetop, came after this. Weird!?

This, on the other hand, might be worth checking out.

5 January 20235 January 2023

MUSiC: Iron Maiden Go Postal!

Iron Maiden didn’t trouble my recent top five post. But back in my mid-teens I was listening to them a lot. And I still do, occasionally. Power Slave was my favourite album back then, with Piece of Mind coming next. I’m not so keen on their pre Nicko/Dickinson stuff, and I haven’t followed their later releases. By which I mean everything after Live After Death!

Still, though I’m not their biggest fan, it’s nice to see them being honoured by the Royal Mail. They have their beers as well. So they’ve really gotten into the bloodstream of the nation, and now the postal service as well!

Well done fellas! You’ve earned it. Read more about this here.

PS – Not that I give a sh*t for anything to do with royalty/monarchy. Butt… shouldn’t it be Charles’ head in profile on stamps now?

5 January 20235 January 2023

MUSiC: My All Time Top 5 Albums?

For sheer innocent sentimental sweet beauty, this is a corker!

Wow!? How hard is this!? It’s easier to pick my top few artists, Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits are no brainers. After that it gets tricky.

This one is etched into my being; melancholy beauty, at its most powerfully maudlin.

This all came about when I wanted to pick a ‘top five albums’ list, to illustrate a private posting on cataloguing my CD collection. it rapidly became clear that it was not going to easy!

J-Fusion at its slick funky glossy and melodic best.

If it were my current top five that’d be different. My most listened to CD right now, for example, is Casiopea’s debut. But I’m also listening to a lot of Sons of Champlin right now, and I’m not as sold on them as the other artists that I’m featuring in this post.

Intense, colourful, surreal, poetic, earthy. Amazing!

I know it might seem weird, but as a historic top five disc, Trout Mask Replica is definitely up there (with Lick My Decals Off in hot pursuit!). Not music I’d listen to all the time. And my honeymoons with these discs were many many moons ago. But I have an abiding love for them.

Slabs of sound, wafting through space and time, all floating atop Leibezeit’s incredible grooves.

Can’s Future Days also has a special place in my musical heart, closely pursued by Tago Mago!).

Memories of this on constant rotation are bittersweet.

And whilst I’m thinking in the longer term, like this, then I suppose Steely Dan and Donald Fagen figure large. Aja, Katy Lied and The Nightfly all being rave faves.

Apart from the Casiopea one, so far these are all song-based albums, of a broadly speaking Pop nature. If I were to pick some Rock albums, Thin Lizzy, Zep and Van Halen would be right up there (even Slayer, perhaps?).

… and this. Still In Love With You is Divine!!!

With Zep I was equally taken with all of I, II and III. I only got into IV later, and – as brilliant as it is – (Stairway alone is priceless, it didn’t have the same visceral impact the first three had.

And then there’s Jazz…

This was massive for me in my mid-teens. Still love it.

I could go on like this. Should I go with Caravanserai, or Welcome, for Santana? With Herbie, is it Fat Albert, Headhunters or… Coltrane’s Love Supreme is up there, as is Davis’ Kind Of Blue (or back in my late teens, ESP).

And what about Brazil? Jobim, Joyce, Marcos Valle… and on it goes!

I got lost in the deserts with this one!

This ought to be a guilty pleasure. But I have no shame!

I’m finishing with one that really isn’t anywhere near the top. But to be fair to Slayer and the album, I’ve listened to it tons. Rather like true crime and serial killers – the kind of dark subjects with which Slayer themselves were obsessed – I find it hypnotically compelling. If Van Halen’s 1984 is a ‘guilty pleasure’, this is a ‘dirty secret’!

Anyway, I can only conclude that picking a top five favourite albums is pretty near impossible! I mean, The Beatles Rubber Soul, a biggie for me around 16-18, did t even get a mention til right here at the very end!

4 January 20234 January 2023

ArT: More Gene Deitch…

The Cat… Gene’s buff, a speccy nerd obsessed with jazz!

How I feel sometimes when transcribing drum parts!

The neighbours disapprove of The Cat’s listening habits.

Non Jazz stuff…

Not sure what he’s up to here. But look at all that fab gear!

Myeah… back to his primary love, good ol’ Jazz Music!

I love this pic; bassist looks after his bull fiddle in the rain.

Ok, so I’m featuring this one *again*… but I just love it!

If anyone’s interested, I found this, a page with an interesting selection of record changer magazines for sale, featuring the cover art of Deitch and others.

2 January 20232 January 2023

MEDiA: Gene Deitch, RIP

What has come to be known more recently as ‘crate digging’.

Oh no! I just posted about cataloguing my CD collection on FB. I thought I’d illustrate that post with an image by Gene Deitch, whose character The Cat was an avid record collecting jazz buff.

Deitch did some amusingly prophetic cartoons.

In finding an apt image, I discovered that Gene passed, aged 95, in 2020. I have a nice book, Cat On A Hot Thin Groove, about his illustrations for Record Changer magazine.

He also created characters like Nudnik, as well as animating such famous cartoons as Tom and Jerry and Popeye, and doing all sorts of other artistic/illustrative work. I’ve peppered this post with a few images by him I either love for their visual artistry, or their comic wit, or, frequently, both.

I got the image at the top of this post from an excellent obit’ from the NY Times, which you can read in full here.

Deitch in his Prague home/studio, in later life.

I pinched this for an Xmas card one year.

Bold abstraction meets jazzy figuration.

His *Record Changer* covers alone would be a great legacy.

I’ve not watched Munro (1960) – see below – yet, but as soon as time allows, I’ll be doing so (tomorrow, perhaps?*) * aka later today!

I find Deitch’s art, by which I’m mainly referring to his Record Changer and jazz related cartoons, design and illustration work, really inspiring. His mainstream animation stuff I’m much less familiar with or aware of.

But, rather madly, I’ve discovered that Deitch was also involved with one of the earliest screen adaptations of Tolkien’s writings. I love Tolkien, and I was really quite surprised to find yet another point of connection here with Gene Deitch!

As with Munro, I’ve yet to watch this Hobbit based animation. I glanced at a minute or so of it, whilst drafting this post. It seems quite a loose adaptation! But I look forward to watching it in full.

1 January 20238 February 2023

Protected: CD COLLECTION – SUMMARY & NOTES

1 January 20231 January 2023

MUSiC: Nirvana, Herbie Mann & Bill Evans, 1962

I love this album!

It’s on my Xmas/birthday wish list (here, if anyone’s interested*). I think I discovered it during a brief stint when, in my mid to late teens, I worked briefly at the Cambridge Central Library, in what was then (pre Grand Arcade) Lion Yard

Around that time I was using the library’s music collection – CDs were starting to replace vinyl (I even had a back room job at the library, helping facilitate this change-over) – to edumacate myself further, particularly re jazz.

Thanks to their esoteric selection I discovered this and numerous other great recordings, such as as Alice and John Coltrane’s Infinity.

The only reason this is four and a half and not five stars is the poor audio quality. I’m amazed that all this time later, nobody’s done a decent remaster. This is top drawer music, totally meriting a good sympathetic sonic clean-up!

* Password protected, to keep it private! I can email the password to anyone wanting to see it…