renaissance man
I’ve been really digging some Windham Hill releases recently. Mostly Michael Hedges. But also pianist George Winston and now Alex de Grassi. I’ve not checked out founder Alex Ackerman yet.
I love the whole aesthetic of the label: beautiful mostly instrumental music, and a really lovely album cover design style. I’d love to have some suggestions from anyone more familiar with this interesting label’s output.
Loving all this vintage Herbie that’s coming up on YouTube. This time Bremen, Germany, ‘74, with Mike Clarke rockin’ (or should that be ‘jazz-funkin’?) that ‘70s ‘tache & psychedelic print shirt!
Also from the same sessions:
We just got back home, from childminding duties at my sister’s. As we occasionally do, we stayed a second night. I was exhausted after an evening shift delivering for Amazon, and then sharing a bottle of wine with Teresa and Hannah.
Amazon were taking the piss royally yesterday, on two fronts: first I arrived a few minutes late (2-3, or thereabouts) for a midday shift. The crappy Flex app then proceed to load so slowly that by the time it was up and running I’d ‘missed your [my!] slot’!
So I returned later the same day, and did an evening sesh. I try not to do these, on account of it being harder and more stressful in the dark of winter evenings/nights. And herein was the second Amazon piss-take:
Actually this was a double-barrelled piss fest: first I had an order ‘to be delivered no later than 4pm’. Yet it was the second delivery of about eight or so, and I didn’t start collecting the items, never mind delivering them, until 4pm, when my shift officially commenced!
I told the recipient that I’d have bent the laws of physics to deliver to him by 4pm, if it lay within my powers. And, if he was unhappy – fortunately he was a jovial and understanding chap, and was absolutely fine – please take it up with Amazon, and don’t blame me!
But the real piss take the second, was the sheer distances they had me travelling. I started in Cambourne, then went to Royston, then Potton, then Sandy, then home. I reckon that the fuel costs of this run will prob’ have accounted for half my earnings.
But my main prompt for this post was returning to our frigidarium home. Our car was plenty warm en-route home. With two of us in the the confines of a little MX5, plus the car heating, we were very cosy. The house was 8°C, according to our wall mounted central-heating doodad (thermostat/controller?).
The pic atop this post is how I got myself up to brave a trip to our littlest room! Which used to be an outside privy, when the house was built. And today feels like it still is! I was worried my bowels would refuse to open, so damn chilly was it!
I’m now enjoying that most plebeian of pleasures, a pot noodle. Pornography for the palette, granted. But warm and flavoursome. It maketh me happy!
It’s really saddening to find ourselves in a state where Jonathan Pie and The Daily Mash are better and more reliable sources of news than any of the mainstream screen media.
I’m a staunch supporter of the BBC, as a ‘national good’, a publicly owned and run non-politically affiliated institution, there for the benefit of all in the UK, free from commercial exploitation.
Ever since its inception most Tories have disliked the BBC, and even as they continue to disassemble and co-opt it, from within, they still caricature it as a hotbed of leftist ne’erdowells. In actual fact it has been infiltrated and taken over by bean-counting place-serving yes-men/women, appointed by the Tories for so long now I’ve lost track.
It’s gotten to the point now that even so called news items are actually party political broadcasts for the Tory agenda. I heard a piece on the NHS ‘collaborating’ with private healthcare on BBC R4 the other day, and couldn’t believe how blatantly Tory it was.
Essentially it portrayed the private sector as coming to the rescue of the ailing NHS. No examination of why this has come to pass. Nor what it means for the future of the NHS, beyond the programmes’ blatantly biased message that public/private cooperation can only be good.
But coming to Pie’s latest rant; it’s a theme many on the left are slapping their faces at. When Starmer recently took Sunak to task over the economic meltdown the Tories have gotten us into, and in particular the role of Tory self-serving greed – in the latest form of Mone – in all of this, Rishi did exactly what Pie is talking about.
Rather than address the blatant theivery of the super rich, at a time when the nation was and still is supposedly ‘all in it together’, this City millionaire instead tries to steer the conversation towards blaming those sections of the ‘lower orders’ who are having the temerity to strike, in pursuit of such outrageous demands as living wages and job security.
And let’s not forget that Toryism has always campaigned for the erosion of workers’ rights. That’s why we’ve seen a thermonuclear mushrooming of ‘zero hours’ contracts. That’s what Brexit was always really about. Removing that pesky EU red tape, aka deregulation, has always been about taking away rights and powers from those lower down the food chain in order to benefit those further up it, making it easier for them to skim off the cream.
As Mick Lynch is constantly saying, to anyone who’ll listen, these rich greedy fuckers are getting wealthier by parasitically exploiting all of us. And yet, because they have vast wealth, they brazenly use it to manufacture a ‘divide and rule’ scenario, in which the middle and working classes blame each other, and especially those at the bottom of the pile – from those fleeing poverty, persecution, war, etc, to those who actually serve us day in day out (teachers, posties, rail workers, nurses) – it’s literally fucking insane!
As The Daily Mash have noted, we’re drifting dangerously close to outright fascism. A right wing one party state, run by a wealthy clique whose rapine self-interest is gradually being set in legal stone.
Two World Wars and the sacrifices of rivers of blood, mostly the blood of the cannon-fodder workers, saw the demise of the Victorian and Edwardian era of aristocracy, and – in response to those collective sacrifices – the setting up of many national and international forms of governance.
The NHS and the EU/NATO, etc, were all born out of those bouts of unprecedented blood-letting that occurred really quite recently. And we’re seeing it all carved up, flogged off and destroyed by greedy capitalists whose self-interest and short-termism are totally unsuited to a world in which we face so many human-made (and other) threats to our collective existence.
Nuclear proliferation and war, chemical and biological (never mind ordinary) weapons, pollution, climate change, mass extinctions for which we are the chief cause, all these require strong and morally directed governance. Not rapine neo-liberal capitalism.
It’s grim out there right now. And I’m not talking about the winter weather.
With the recent passing of Dino Danelli, and the icy frosted fingers of winter gripping us in their cold embrace, Death is in the air!
That made me think of the amazing talent of Michael Hedges. The above-linked YouTube video is a 1998 docu-bio, featuring interview footage, and music from a 1996 concert.
Right between this concert performance, and the release of the Artist Profile doc’ dedicated to him, Hedges died in an auto accident. It was 1997, and Hedges was only 43. What a loss to the world of art and music! Thank goodness for his recorded legacy.
I nearly called him ‘the incomparable’, but was then going to follow that up be saying ‘like a collision between Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and, er… Well, anyway, comparisons, or at least influences, can be heard. But his remains a now widely imitated style, that is, at its core, his unique extension of guitar-based music.
Hearing his soulful rendition of Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower, channelled through Hendrix’s reading, and played in a Joni-esque wide and deep tuning, is really something. And then there’s all his original instrumental stuff.
I’m out doing some Amazon deliveries for a few hours later today, to top up my meagre teaching earnings. I shall be digging Aerial Boundaries and Breakfast In The Field. Even the album titles (and cover art, etc) are fab. And then there’s the music!
This is an interesting video. It’s great to hear a fantastic drummer telling it, from his perspective, like it is.
It reminds me of a video in which George Harrison says he could be quite a good guitarist if he could be bothered to practice!
Although I am a drum teacher, more broadly speaking – as a musician/artist – I wouldn’t necessarily advice that anyone to do as I do, or, for that matter, as Ian Paice does.
Unlike Paice, I haven’t had a stellar career recording and performing with one of the worlds’ most successful rock bands.
What I do have in common with him, however, is noticing that when I have periods of frequent live musical activity – rehearsals, recordings, and especially gigs – my playing develops quite naturally/organically.
But then again, unlike Paice, I’m someone who does actually positively revel in practice. Indeed, over time I’ve evolved away from the ‘just jamming’ model (what I call ‘free play’ in my teaching), as favoured by Ian, towards focussed technique-based work.
I think ideally one ought to have a see-sawing motion of balance between such free play and technical development. Both ought to inform and improve each other.
Interestingly, one of Paicey’s favourite hobbyhorse points concerns the single-stroke roll. And that in turn reminds me of a video in which Grayson Nekrutman seeks to emulate Buddy Rich’s lightning speed singles (amongst other things!)
Ian Paice believes, and I can totally see and understand why, that everything else in drumming flows from this single simple yet limitlessly challenging technique or rudiment.
Anyway, let’s treasure, celebrate and learn from Ian whilst we still have him around. What a legend!
Damn, another one off to the great Jam Sesh in The Sky!
Dino Danelli is referred to, in a quote on his wiki page, as ‘one of the great unappreciated rock drummers in history.’
He’s someone I’ve been meaning to check out for years. I have a fair bit by The Rascals in my mp3 collection. But I haven’t listened to it a great deal.
I was always a bit surprised that they were lauded by the funky soul brigade. I recall reading about them in Wax Poetics, and thinking they looked a bit off that mag’s usual musical map.
I think that’s quite possibly largely due to their last release, 1972’s The Island Of Real. Although they had streaks of blue-eyed soul running through a fair bit of their music.
The first album I got by them was the unusual Freedom Suite. Alleged by some (allmusic.com for example) to be ‘the beginning of the end’ for the band, I’m sure I read somewhere that some of the group’s contributions to this disc were replaced by session players?
One of their biggest hits – a number one in the US for 5 weeks in ‘68 – was People Got To Be Free, the groups’ comment on the murders of Martin Luther King and Bob Kennedy.
To finish this post, here’s Boom, Danelli’s drum solo feature from the Freedom Suite album:
Having had to postpone my Wednesday teaching to today (Thursday), I had to cancel it altogether. On account of the car still being a frozen block of ice!
However, the sun was out today. And despite the temperature remaining zero or below, it meant I could more easily defrost the car.
Not only had the Arctic conditions drained my battery. They had also meant that the door locks weren’t working as the should. Somehow the electrics for the door locks were going mental, or just seizing up altogether. Squirting WD40 into the locks seemed to ease them a bit.
Around midday I decided to try to start the car again. I’d defrosted it, partly with the sun’s help, and the locks were now responding to my keys (at one point the locks had been so seized up I couldn’t even insert my keys!).
And, lo! The car didst start!! We drove to Halfords, where I’d bought this battery (prob’ about three years ago?), and they tested it. Somewhat to our surprise they told me it was fine. Fine!? Oh well… saves us some more unwelcome expenditure. I just hope tomorrow she’ll start up on, as it’s fookin’ freezing again!
Aaargh! For the second time in about one week, my MX5’s battery appears to have died/drained.
First time it happened I was in the middle of nowhere. Luckily for me there were a few houses about a 1/4 mile away, and I was at a scenic spot where folk walk their dogs or just stop to look at the riverbank.
A local chap tried to help me start with jump leads. To no avail. So I enlisted the help an older guy sat in his Merc’, no doubt relaxing, and we all three push-started my little motor. Since which time she’s been running fine.
And then this morning, at about 7am, getting ready to take Teresa to work – on account of the train strikes (which I wholeheartedly support; up the workers, and boo-sucks to our crypto-fascist Tory state), nada… totally dead!
Tried to jump start via cables again, with two neighbours pitching in. But no luck! After a bit of anguished searching, we located a small battery charger I got via Amazon Vine.
The manual for the charger (a Noco Genius 1!) says it’ll take 9 hours – trickle charging, I guess? – to recharge a 12V battery, such as our MX5 has.
So, it’s no work, as we’re stranded at home. And instead I’m going to do lots of practice pad stuff. Finger and hand technique: fast finger rolls, open-close, push-pull, Moeller, etc.