Seb Palmer

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.

 

 

 

We like to Celebrate Burns’ Night wi’ a Haggis and a wee dram o’ whusky. Teresa cooked the haggis, mashed ‘taters, etc. I bought the whisky.

Address To A Haggis

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
‘Bethankit’ hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.

Ye Pow’rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis.

And for those who don’t speak Highlander, here’s a translation:

Good luck to you and your honest, plump face,
Great chieftain of the sausage race!
Above them all you take your place,
Stomach, tripe, or intestines:
Well are you worthy of a grace
As long as my arm.

The groaning trencher there you fill,
Your buttocks like a distant hill,
Your pin would help to mend a mill
In time of need,
While through your pores the dews distill
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour wipe,
And cut you up with ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like any ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm steaming, rich!

Then spoon for spoon, the stretch and strive:
Devil take the hindmost, on they drive,
Till all their well swollen bellies by-and-by
Are bent like drums;
Then old head of the table, most like to burst,
‘The grace!’ hums.

Is there that over his French ragout,
Or olio that would sicken a sow,
Or fricassee would make her vomit
With perfect disgust,
Looks down with sneering, scornful view
On such a dinner?

Poor devil! see him over his trash,
As feeble as a withered rush,
His thin legs a good whip-lash,
His fist a nut;
Through bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit.

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his ample fist a blade,
He’ll make it whistle;
And legs, and arms, and heads will cut off
Like the heads of thistles.

You powers, who make mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill of fare,
Old Scotland wants no watery stuff,
That splashes in small wooden dishes;
But if you wish her grateful prayer,
Give her [Scotland] a Haggis!

We had a great meal, and enjoyed listening to a Naxos CD of various Burns poems. The whisky was nice, but it knocked Teresa out for the count. She was asleep on the couch almost straightaway after the dinner!

This morning I drove over to Cottenham, and collected two chandelier style light fittings. More Freecycle freebies!

Ok, they’re not 100% to our tastes. But they’re light years (wah-wah-waah) better than what we inherited from the previous owner of our property.

And what’s more, there are two identical fittings, which suits our open-plan lounge/dining room areas poifeckly. Now we have a more unified look – and prettier, to boot – throughout.

Installing these fittings is both easy and a right pain in the arse. In principle it’s a cinch. But the working over your heard, arms upraised and neck crooked… and it being fiddly getting the wires connected/stowed, and the whole thing attached to the ceiling. Well, it didn’t take long. But I wouldn’t say it was fun.

Still, I’m happy with the end result. It also has the pleasing effect of giving more light. Our long through lounge can be quite gloomy. Especially now, in the deep, dark depths o’ winter.

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The second set of lights proved to be much harder. I was working on it, off and on, all afternoon and into the evening. For one thing the wiring is more complex, as it also feeds the kitchen annex lights. Sorting it out so it would stow in the ceiling rose was a real arse-ache.

The little metal bracket that one fixes onto the ceiling, and on to which the light fitting then attaches, was missing from this second set. I tried fashioning my own, and I tried using another from a different place in the lounge (where we have two redundant wall lamp fittings).

Sadly neither of these worked. There’s a joist visible through the gap where the wires come through, so I screwed through the plasterboard and directly in to that.

At this juncture, rather annoyingly – quite apart from only having three bulbs left for this set of lights, and only one of those working – the kitchen lights stopped working. I must’ve somehow broken a link somewhere in a circuit. Hmm!? What to do? Might have to get an electrician in to have a look/sort it out.

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Okay, popped out to Boyes early today, and bought a set of five LED ‘candle’ bulbs. Installed ’em, and presto! All working. But the kitchen lights are still non-functional. So… roll up the sleeves, take the g’damn light fitting down again, and investigate. There must be a break in the circuitry somewhere.

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And relax… I finally rewired and remounted the whole shebang, really taking care over the wiring, and now everything’s working as it should. Thank goodness! Didn’t even have to call in a sparky. Total cost of installing these two five-light chandeliers? £13 for the bulbs. Not bad!

Some years back I bought Teresa a set of early Hitchcock movies, and The Skin Game is, I think, my personal favourite of the x films in the set.

In many ways it’s very dated, from the stagey feel and some of the rather old school acting styles, to the class war plot of upstart industrialist vs. old country gentry. But it’s also very universal, in its themes of conflict, shame and revenge.