I’ve long suspected that I would never have made hero (the past transitional conjunctive tense or whatever it is is appropriate here because at my age I doubt I’ll see many opportunities to prove my mettle), but these past few days in Rome have pretty much convinced me when it comes to cowards I am fully qualified to go for gold.
This bloody itching has continued non-stop and to be honest the last thing I wanted was to be more than 1,000 miles from home in a hotel which had allocated me a shower so tiny, if you bent over to pick up the soap, your arse was already in the room next door (though the rest of the room was fine, I’ll add, to be fair). It was – is – incessant and on top associated red blotches – or I hope they are associated or my GP will most certainly be working for his next pay rise when I see him on Friday – plus areas of dry skin which makes it seem as though I am wearing a hair shirt (though despite being brought up mainstream RC, I never have and I can’t conceive of how folk to it for pleasure) which make every movement unpleasant have pretty much ruined the trip.
Once here, of course, it seemed daft not to go and watch the Six Nations game at the Stadio Olympico, but I wasn’t really in the mood (though in the event several plastic beakers of Peroni did help). My flight – I am writing this an hour and a bit before take-off – isn’t until five minutes to ten (i.e. 21.55) and I had originally planned a trip down to Ostia, the old port of Rome, and have lunch there somewhere. Well, dear reader, I really wasn’t in the mood. All I did was to walk the ten minutes from my hotel to the Termini rail station, jump on the bus to Fiumicino airport and sit out the rest of the day, trying to keep as still as possible. I got here just after noon and it is now just before 9pm (21.00 for all you eurofreaks). Knowing that I had the best part of a day to kill, the first ten minutes dragged as no time has ever dragged before.
Once they were out of the way, I set about getting through the next twenty, then the next thirty. Each minute lasted a lifetime – well, actually a little longer. After an eternity that first hour was out of the way – 1pm, yippee, just under another nine hours to kill, sitting in an airport several thousands miles away from comfort. My mood was for most of that time foul, and it was then that I fully realised, although I have long suspected it, that I would make a completely shitty Arctic explorer, the kind of stout fellow, usually British, Norwegian and Italian who thrive on totally bloody discomfort. (Incidentally, given how cold it is up there and down there at both poles and given that they are swaddled like I don’t know what to keep our the cold, what exactly do they do if when they need a dump?)
Matters looked up a little once I was able to get onto the free airport wifi, free, that is, if you are prepared to give them five euros, and then courtesy of a useful browser plugin, watch the League Cup final between Manchester City and Liverpool. (It went to penalties and turned out to be quite a match after a boring first half).
After that, of course, it was down in the dumps again, and that is where you find me now. In fact the only reason I am writing this bollocks is to give me something to do to take my mind off it.
Sunday 28 February 2016
Saturday 27 February 2016
What makes a short break in Rome not the pleasure it should be? Sodding chronic hives. At least Italy might win today’s Six Nations match against Scotland
Rome
I’m here nominally for tomorrow’s Italy v Scotland Six Nations match at the Olympic Stadium, but actually the game, although I am looking forward to watching it – and hope that Italy beat Scotland – is pretty much just an excuse to do something different. Really, it was just an excuse to do something different, in this case to ‘have a weekend in Rome, although there is one not quite so small drawback, which I shall come to later. It kicked off 13 months ago when I was discussing the Six Nations with the landlord of the Brewers Arms (no apostrophe, I gather, so I don’t know how many of them there are) and talking about the price of Six Nations games tickets. He remarked that the prices for the lesser games, i.e. those featuring Italy and Scotland, who in most people’s univers must surely with the best will in the world qualify as lesser nations (each of them sets itself the task of not getting that seasons’ Wooden Spoon) would undoubtedly be cheaper, so there and then I decided to treat myself to a trip to Rome to watch Italy in one of its home games.
I looked up the prices of flights, hotels and tickets and they weren’t too bad. But I let it slide and by the time I got around to trying to book they had risen to such an extent that I really wasn’t prepared to cough up for something which was pretty close to a whim. But I resolved to keep an eye on the fixture dates for the 2016 Six Nations games and book as soon as possible. o last September I booked a flight, hotel for three nights and a ticket for a game. It was a toss up between Italy v England and Italy v Scotland, but as the latter game came later in the month, and I reckoned the weather would be that less colder, I opted for that one.
The drawback is that for the past six, seven, eight, if not nine weeks, I have been suffering from a curious affliction which consists of my upper torse itching everywhere like fuck. A tripe to my GP two months ago concluded with being given a large tub of cream to smear on my front and back whenever and a course of anti-histamines. That didn’t help at all. A second trip a few weeks later (and this time I consulted his locum, a Chinese GP called, I suppose nevitably, Dr Lee) concluded with being prescribed another tub of cream, a different brand. That hasn’t helped, either.
Two weeks ago I was at the surgery again and this time was told I shall have some blood tests. Meanwhile, the itching continues and continues and continues and it is not pleasant. Some nights I can’t get to sleep, and on other nights (as last night) I get to sleep, only to wake up and having to scratch myself mercilessly. And, of course, that doesn’t help. It doesn’t help that I am of the species home hypochondus, which means I always fear the worst.
Then, in the Daily Mail’s Good Health pages last week came across the case of a woman who had a similar itching problem and was eventually diagnosed, far too late to save her life, with liver cancer. It seems her minute bile ducts had become blocked with cancer and the bile, not having anywhere else to go, for some reason travels to just under the skin where it causes the itching. The upshot is that I am not quite enjoying my break as I might because I have got to the age where when things are amiss all I want to do is be ‘at home’. Well, I’m not, I’m in fucking Rome. But being the – reasonably cheerful sort – I am trying to make the best of it.
This morning just after ten I took off and headed for the Colloseum. I found it – it’s not easy to miss, being quite big – and then carried on with a view to walking to St Peter’s. However, my sense of direction rather let me down and I ended up walking pretty much in circles, or rather as Rome’s streets are pretty straight, though often at a diagonal, in squares. I like walking, but after about two and bit hours I got thirsty and spotted and ‘Irish pub’ – they are everywhere – so I stopped off. For a coke. I really didn’t feel like drinking (apparently another sign of liver cancer, as well as losing your appetite – check – but that is the last ‘joke’ I shall make about liver cancer in case Life takes me to task about it and says, right, sunshine.
. . .
After a great deal more walking, I got back to my hotel, the Hotel Napoleon in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle II, and crashed. That was because the walking and the fact that I hadn’t been able to get to sleep until about 2am meant I was bloody tired. Tonight I had planned to find one of the many ‘British pubs’ to watch the Wales v France game, and took myself off to the nearest, the Druids’ Den in Piazza Esquilino, but when I got there it just wasn’t what I wanted, loads of Brits, many in kilts, standing shoulder to shoulder downing pints of Guinness and being very noisy. So it was back to the hotel, except on the way back I came across a small Roman bar up the square which was also showing the game. There I stopped, discovered Vecchia Romana brandy, and watch Wales beat the shit out of France. And I didn’t really notice the itching.
. . .
I am now sitting on the terrace on the sixth floor, the only spot where you can smoke. It is mild. The game tomorrow is at around 3pm. I’ve decided to get to the are early, have a lunch beforehand and get along to the stadium. Sunday, well, Sunday I must leave the hotel by whenever, but my flight isn’t until after 9pm, so I thought I might go to Ostia, the old Roman port, for a late lunch and make my way to Fiumicino airport a little later. Whether there is an direct transport from Ostia to the airport I don’t know, but as I shall have finished lunch by 3/4pm, there’s still plenty of time to cock things up, then salvage the day. Pip, pip.
Later
Had good night’s sleep – who wouldn’t after several glasses of what I had and despite the coffees – but this morning this sodding itching is back with a vengeance and really pissing me off. Does did a quick self-diagnosis on the net and it might be chronic hives. No real treatment except anti-histamines and cream. Doing that already.
The thing is that I’m not really enjoying these few days in Rome at all and am just counting the hours until I can get back to Britain and my usual home/work routine as it’s just a question of getting your head down and biting the bullet. Biting the bullet ain’t too easy when you are in a strange city with time on your hand. Oh, and although the hotel is fine, the shower is tiny, about two and a half feet by two and a half feet. Bend over to pick up the soap and you stick your arse through the Perspex doors.
I’m here nominally for tomorrow’s Italy v Scotland Six Nations match at the Olympic Stadium, but actually the game, although I am looking forward to watching it – and hope that Italy beat Scotland – is pretty much just an excuse to do something different. Really, it was just an excuse to do something different, in this case to ‘have a weekend in Rome, although there is one not quite so small drawback, which I shall come to later. It kicked off 13 months ago when I was discussing the Six Nations with the landlord of the Brewers Arms (no apostrophe, I gather, so I don’t know how many of them there are) and talking about the price of Six Nations games tickets. He remarked that the prices for the lesser games, i.e. those featuring Italy and Scotland, who in most people’s univers must surely with the best will in the world qualify as lesser nations (each of them sets itself the task of not getting that seasons’ Wooden Spoon) would undoubtedly be cheaper, so there and then I decided to treat myself to a trip to Rome to watch Italy in one of its home games.
I looked up the prices of flights, hotels and tickets and they weren’t too bad. But I let it slide and by the time I got around to trying to book they had risen to such an extent that I really wasn’t prepared to cough up for something which was pretty close to a whim. But I resolved to keep an eye on the fixture dates for the 2016 Six Nations games and book as soon as possible. o last September I booked a flight, hotel for three nights and a ticket for a game. It was a toss up between Italy v England and Italy v Scotland, but as the latter game came later in the month, and I reckoned the weather would be that less colder, I opted for that one.
The drawback is that for the past six, seven, eight, if not nine weeks, I have been suffering from a curious affliction which consists of my upper torse itching everywhere like fuck. A tripe to my GP two months ago concluded with being given a large tub of cream to smear on my front and back whenever and a course of anti-histamines. That didn’t help at all. A second trip a few weeks later (and this time I consulted his locum, a Chinese GP called, I suppose nevitably, Dr Lee) concluded with being prescribed another tub of cream, a different brand. That hasn’t helped, either.
Two weeks ago I was at the surgery again and this time was told I shall have some blood tests. Meanwhile, the itching continues and continues and continues and it is not pleasant. Some nights I can’t get to sleep, and on other nights (as last night) I get to sleep, only to wake up and having to scratch myself mercilessly. And, of course, that doesn’t help. It doesn’t help that I am of the species home hypochondus, which means I always fear the worst.
Then, in the Daily Mail’s Good Health pages last week came across the case of a woman who had a similar itching problem and was eventually diagnosed, far too late to save her life, with liver cancer. It seems her minute bile ducts had become blocked with cancer and the bile, not having anywhere else to go, for some reason travels to just under the skin where it causes the itching. The upshot is that I am not quite enjoying my break as I might because I have got to the age where when things are amiss all I want to do is be ‘at home’. Well, I’m not, I’m in fucking Rome. But being the – reasonably cheerful sort – I am trying to make the best of it.
This morning just after ten I took off and headed for the Colloseum. I found it – it’s not easy to miss, being quite big – and then carried on with a view to walking to St Peter’s. However, my sense of direction rather let me down and I ended up walking pretty much in circles, or rather as Rome’s streets are pretty straight, though often at a diagonal, in squares. I like walking, but after about two and bit hours I got thirsty and spotted and ‘Irish pub’ – they are everywhere – so I stopped off. For a coke. I really didn’t feel like drinking (apparently another sign of liver cancer, as well as losing your appetite – check – but that is the last ‘joke’ I shall make about liver cancer in case Life takes me to task about it and says, right, sunshine.
. . .
After a great deal more walking, I got back to my hotel, the Hotel Napoleon in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle II, and crashed. That was because the walking and the fact that I hadn’t been able to get to sleep until about 2am meant I was bloody tired. Tonight I had planned to find one of the many ‘British pubs’ to watch the Wales v France game, and took myself off to the nearest, the Druids’ Den in Piazza Esquilino, but when I got there it just wasn’t what I wanted, loads of Brits, many in kilts, standing shoulder to shoulder downing pints of Guinness and being very noisy. So it was back to the hotel, except on the way back I came across a small Roman bar up the square which was also showing the game. There I stopped, discovered Vecchia Romana brandy, and watch Wales beat the shit out of France. And I didn’t really notice the itching.
. . .
I am now sitting on the terrace on the sixth floor, the only spot where you can smoke. It is mild. The game tomorrow is at around 3pm. I’ve decided to get to the are early, have a lunch beforehand and get along to the stadium. Sunday, well, Sunday I must leave the hotel by whenever, but my flight isn’t until after 9pm, so I thought I might go to Ostia, the old Roman port, for a late lunch and make my way to Fiumicino airport a little later. Whether there is an direct transport from Ostia to the airport I don’t know, but as I shall have finished lunch by 3/4pm, there’s still plenty of time to cock things up, then salvage the day. Pip, pip.
Later
Had good night’s sleep – who wouldn’t after several glasses of what I had and despite the coffees – but this morning this sodding itching is back with a vengeance and really pissing me off. Does did a quick self-diagnosis on the net and it might be chronic hives. No real treatment except anti-histamines and cream. Doing that already.
The thing is that I’m not really enjoying these few days in Rome at all and am just counting the hours until I can get back to Britain and my usual home/work routine as it’s just a question of getting your head down and biting the bullet. Biting the bullet ain’t too easy when you are in a strange city with time on your hand. Oh, and although the hotel is fine, the shower is tiny, about two and a half feet by two and a half feet. Bend over to pick up the soap and you stick your arse through the Perspex doors.
Friday 5 February 2016
Should we stay or should we go? Who knows and, to be frank, who cares? The way things are there might in time no longer be an EU to leave
My apologies to anyone who happens to come across this blog - or even makes a point of visiting it - and who is from South Korea, Australia, Ukraine, Canada, Vietnam, India or Brazil: this blog post will probably interest you even less than last year’s weather forecast. It’s about the European Union, you see. I mention those countries because according to the statistics (‘stats’) visitors from the countries listed have somehow or other washed up here in the past four weeks. They are, of course, perfectly welcome to carry on reading, or they might spend the time considering an issue of their own. Even those visitors from EU countries might find themselves stifling a yawn, as are most of us here in Britain.
Will we or won’t we? would seem to be the issue dividing the country if our homegrown media are anything to go by, leave the EU that is. The trouble is that no one has told the country which remains resolutely undivided. ‘Brexit’, the catchy phrase thought up by the scruffier members of the Press as a useful short term for ‘Britain resigning its EU membership’ - they tend to think in headlines, see - might well elicit a response from many if you directly ask them their opinion, but crucially you have to ask first: it’s not a conversation which will naturally arise. ‘Should Louis Van Gal get the boot from United?’, ‘What on earth is the Government thinking asking Google to cough up just £180 million in taxes?’ ‘That Julian Assange - is he really still stuck in the bloody embassy? Lord, what a wanker! Thought he had died’ - these are topics you might hear touched upon in the friendly banter down the Pig and Whistle of a Friday night. ‘Should we leave the EU or stay?’ rarely, if ever, gets a look-in.
That’s very odd, because if you read our newspaper and listen to our broadcast news, you would think there was no hotter topic. This state of affairs is causing both the We Must Stay In and We Must Get Out camps to tear their hair out. Both would like us to see the question of Britain’s continued membership as the defining question of the early 21st century and can’t understand why your ordinary Brit apparently doesn’t give a monkey’s either way (much as, it has to be said, your ordinary Brit doesn’t really give a monkey’s about most things).
Yes, there are voices decrying that ‘the country is being swamped by fucking immigrant benefit scrounging bastards because of the EU’, and yelling that ‘we can no longer let ourselves be ruled by fucking Brussels bureaucrats’; and there are other voices - notably a tad more ethereal - who insist
‘Britain’s destiny lies in Europe’ and ‘we must embrace the European ideal’. Both sides warn that leaving/staying in is absolutely vital for the future of Britain’s economy and staying in/leaving will have dire consequences. But at the end of the day it is all for naught: most of us just can’t get excited about the issue.
As it stands, our Prime Minister David Cameron has spent the past five years or so touring the capital cities of EU member states trying to drum up support for a ‘deal’ which would redefine Britain’s membership and persuade the majority of the country to vote to remain in the EU when the referendum is held (now said to be due in June). A day or two ago the terms of the ‘deal’ were announced. ‘Is that it, is that really it?’ the We Must Leave camp snorted in derision, ‘are these the only concession we’re going to get?’. Conversely: ‘Cameron’s done it! He’s won marvellous terms from the EU and there’s no question whatsoever that we can now stay in on our terms. It’s a tremendous achievement!’ (For some reason the We Must Say in gang are far more likely to use the word ‘tremendous’ than the We Must Leave side.)
All of this leaves the ordinary Jill and Joe bemused and baffled. So what was decided? they ask. Well, they can keep asking, for not only is no one going to tell them, but no one can tell them: whether you agree that Cameron has won the day is pretty much down to whether you want to agree or not. And in providing you with a rundown of the details of Cameron’s success/Cameron’s failure all commentators are doing his highlighting their own particular bias.
. . .
Until recently I was all in favour is Britain remaining a member provided the EU was sorted out, it dropped all this ‘ever closer union bollocks’ and it kept far better track of where its money was going (apparently the Italian Mafia has been doing exceptionally well from all the EU projects over the years, though it would be unfair to single out Italian crims as I understand Spanish, Portuguese and Balkan gangsters are no slouches either). Oh, and as a bonus I was hoping it might be persuaded to drop all the posturing that the EU was by far the best thing to happen to Europe since the Renaissance.
Well, that is not my position now, but nor have I gone over to the ‘we must leave’ camp. It’s just I think whether or not Britain stays or leaves is now pretty much irrelevant in that in about five years time there won’t really be much of a functioning EU left. That’s a big claim, I know, but suddenly it’s not looking at all rosy. And it all seem to start coming unstuck when the financial shit hit the fan in 2008.
For many years I used to organise a weekly five-a-side football game. I did so because I, who was the very definition of ‘crap player’, was thus always guaranteed a game as I always got in touch with myself to see whether I could come along. I always could. And organising that game taught me a lot about team playing, and by extension it taught me a lot about who can be relied on to pull their weight (e.g. actually turn up on time so) and who could not. The EU seems to be a similar test of character. The EU and belonging was all fine and dandy while the sun was shining and the EU built marvellous new roads, leisure centres, bridges and I don’t know what else in your country (usually at the expense of ‘net contributors’ - Germany is by far the largest, followed by France, Italy and the UK).
Then when the 2008 crisis erupted (can a crisis erupt?), it all slowly began going pear-shaped when Greece’s euro crisis was discussed. But even then the cracks could pretty much all be papered over - we got lots of rousing EU speeches and pious homilies that ‘there are rows in every family’, the implication being that when push came to shove the ‘EU family’ would once again pull together. Except it didn’t and doesn’t in the slightest look like ever doing so. But the real divisions showed themselves and national interest reared its ugly head again when migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan began pitching up on Europe’s southern border in search of a better life (and who can blame them?).
With quite frightening speed the EU fell into factions, broadly along the lines of the ‘old EU members’ and the ‘new EU members’, who just happened to all to be former Soviet bloc members. It is relevant that at least three of them - Poland, Hungary and Slovakia - have distinctly right-wing governments who don’t go in for all the liberal lovey-dovey crap and are apt to call a migrant, whether a genuine asylum seeker or not, a bloody nusiance. Of course I could well be proved wrong and the EU will gain even more strength from the ongoing euro crisis - don’t ever think that has yet been solved - and the migrant crisis. But I’m not holding my breath.
It was good while it lasted, I suppose, but I’ve long learned that the great thing about being a cynic is that you are rarely disappointed. As for Britain’s, by now rather sweet ‘should we leave or should we go’ (a bit like a virgin decided whether or not now is the time to give her all), it is becoming pretty damn irrelevant.
Will we or won’t we? would seem to be the issue dividing the country if our homegrown media are anything to go by, leave the EU that is. The trouble is that no one has told the country which remains resolutely undivided. ‘Brexit’, the catchy phrase thought up by the scruffier members of the Press as a useful short term for ‘Britain resigning its EU membership’ - they tend to think in headlines, see - might well elicit a response from many if you directly ask them their opinion, but crucially you have to ask first: it’s not a conversation which will naturally arise. ‘Should Louis Van Gal get the boot from United?’, ‘What on earth is the Government thinking asking Google to cough up just £180 million in taxes?’ ‘That Julian Assange - is he really still stuck in the bloody embassy? Lord, what a wanker! Thought he had died’ - these are topics you might hear touched upon in the friendly banter down the Pig and Whistle of a Friday night. ‘Should we leave the EU or stay?’ rarely, if ever, gets a look-in.
That’s very odd, because if you read our newspaper and listen to our broadcast news, you would think there was no hotter topic. This state of affairs is causing both the We Must Stay In and We Must Get Out camps to tear their hair out. Both would like us to see the question of Britain’s continued membership as the defining question of the early 21st century and can’t understand why your ordinary Brit apparently doesn’t give a monkey’s either way (much as, it has to be said, your ordinary Brit doesn’t really give a monkey’s about most things).
Yes, there are voices decrying that ‘the country is being swamped by fucking immigrant benefit scrounging bastards because of the EU’, and yelling that ‘we can no longer let ourselves be ruled by fucking Brussels bureaucrats’; and there are other voices - notably a tad more ethereal - who insist
‘Britain’s destiny lies in Europe’ and ‘we must embrace the European ideal’. Both sides warn that leaving/staying in is absolutely vital for the future of Britain’s economy and staying in/leaving will have dire consequences. But at the end of the day it is all for naught: most of us just can’t get excited about the issue.
As it stands, our Prime Minister David Cameron has spent the past five years or so touring the capital cities of EU member states trying to drum up support for a ‘deal’ which would redefine Britain’s membership and persuade the majority of the country to vote to remain in the EU when the referendum is held (now said to be due in June). A day or two ago the terms of the ‘deal’ were announced. ‘Is that it, is that really it?’ the We Must Leave camp snorted in derision, ‘are these the only concession we’re going to get?’. Conversely: ‘Cameron’s done it! He’s won marvellous terms from the EU and there’s no question whatsoever that we can now stay in on our terms. It’s a tremendous achievement!’ (For some reason the We Must Say in gang are far more likely to use the word ‘tremendous’ than the We Must Leave side.)
All of this leaves the ordinary Jill and Joe bemused and baffled. So what was decided? they ask. Well, they can keep asking, for not only is no one going to tell them, but no one can tell them: whether you agree that Cameron has won the day is pretty much down to whether you want to agree or not. And in providing you with a rundown of the details of Cameron’s success/Cameron’s failure all commentators are doing his highlighting their own particular bias.
. . .
Until recently I was all in favour is Britain remaining a member provided the EU was sorted out, it dropped all this ‘ever closer union bollocks’ and it kept far better track of where its money was going (apparently the Italian Mafia has been doing exceptionally well from all the EU projects over the years, though it would be unfair to single out Italian crims as I understand Spanish, Portuguese and Balkan gangsters are no slouches either). Oh, and as a bonus I was hoping it might be persuaded to drop all the posturing that the EU was by far the best thing to happen to Europe since the Renaissance.
Well, that is not my position now, but nor have I gone over to the ‘we must leave’ camp. It’s just I think whether or not Britain stays or leaves is now pretty much irrelevant in that in about five years time there won’t really be much of a functioning EU left. That’s a big claim, I know, but suddenly it’s not looking at all rosy. And it all seem to start coming unstuck when the financial shit hit the fan in 2008.
For many years I used to organise a weekly five-a-side football game. I did so because I, who was the very definition of ‘crap player’, was thus always guaranteed a game as I always got in touch with myself to see whether I could come along. I always could. And organising that game taught me a lot about team playing, and by extension it taught me a lot about who can be relied on to pull their weight (e.g. actually turn up on time so) and who could not. The EU seems to be a similar test of character. The EU and belonging was all fine and dandy while the sun was shining and the EU built marvellous new roads, leisure centres, bridges and I don’t know what else in your country (usually at the expense of ‘net contributors’ - Germany is by far the largest, followed by France, Italy and the UK).
Then when the 2008 crisis erupted (can a crisis erupt?), it all slowly began going pear-shaped when Greece’s euro crisis was discussed. But even then the cracks could pretty much all be papered over - we got lots of rousing EU speeches and pious homilies that ‘there are rows in every family’, the implication being that when push came to shove the ‘EU family’ would once again pull together. Except it didn’t and doesn’t in the slightest look like ever doing so. But the real divisions showed themselves and national interest reared its ugly head again when migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan began pitching up on Europe’s southern border in search of a better life (and who can blame them?).
With quite frightening speed the EU fell into factions, broadly along the lines of the ‘old EU members’ and the ‘new EU members’, who just happened to all to be former Soviet bloc members. It is relevant that at least three of them - Poland, Hungary and Slovakia - have distinctly right-wing governments who don’t go in for all the liberal lovey-dovey crap and are apt to call a migrant, whether a genuine asylum seeker or not, a bloody nusiance. Of course I could well be proved wrong and the EU will gain even more strength from the ongoing euro crisis - don’t ever think that has yet been solved - and the migrant crisis. But I’m not holding my breath.
It was good while it lasted, I suppose, but I’ve long learned that the great thing about being a cynic is that you are rarely disappointed. As for Britain’s, by now rather sweet ‘should we leave or should we go’ (a bit like a virgin decided whether or not now is the time to give her all), it is becoming pretty damn irrelevant.
Saturday 30 January 2016
All good things come in threes, and as this post is about harmony - well, roughly - here is a third collection of tracks you might like, all vaguely related
As I’ve said before, these soundfiles should play fine on your Mac using Safari, Chrome and Firefox, and on a Windows PC using Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. They don't seem to work on a Mac using Opera. I haven't tried them on Opera on a Windows machine cos I can't be buggered downloading and installing it. There are several other browsers out there - e.g. Maxthon for Mac - but at the moment is usually use an elderly Macbook running Snow Leopard and many of them demand a more up-to-date OS. But I feel I’ve done a my bit and if your browser doesn't play these tracks, it's up to you to sort it out. With the slightly longer last piece, give it a little time - not more than ten seconds, but a little time - to load.
I was thinking about the last but one post and how I discovered new music, and more to the point, new music I liked when I remembered how I came across The Boswell Sisters. The were huge in their time, the Thirties, and it’s fair to say that although spotting their success, many other ‘sisters’ (and I don’t doubt ‘brothers’) formed themselves, but The Boswell Sisters - Vet, Connie (later Connee because, apparently it was easier and faster to write as an autograph) and Martha - stood out.
They were musicians in their own right. Vet played they banjo, Connie (who had to perform and sing sitting down, often in a wheelchair) played the sax and Martha the piano. And all this after a straightforward classical music eduation. But they were born and grew up in New Orleans, and soon
came to hear blues and then jazz, and were smitten by it.
I mention them because of how I came across them. Donald Fagen, of Steely Dan, grew up in New Jersey to parents Jerry, an accountant, and Elinor, a ‘homemaker’ (I think ‘homemaker’ is the modern term I am obliged to use). But before she married and had a family, Elinor had worked as a singer in hotels in the Catskills, and Fagen - Donald, that is - remembers as he was growing up in the Fifties his mother singing Boswell Sisters songs around the house. So I checked them out and immediately liked them a lot.
I can’t say I have a deep knowledge of the Thirties popular music scene, but I should imagine The Boswell Sisters (left) stood out because their arrangements were quite complex. I don’t know whether they played their respective instruments one stage - I doubt it - but their harmony singing is great, and I have always loved harmony singing. So here’s a track, a well-known song covered by many, but for me they give it something special.
The Boswell Sisters/I’m Gonna To Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter
Fagen, it has to be said has what might be described as a ‘singular’ voice. It isn’t one of your common or garden pop or jazz voices by any means. (Other singers I like with ‘singular’ voices are Bob Dylan and The Kinks’s Ray Davies.) But Fagen can sing and sing well, and obviously inherited his mother’s talent. More to the point of this blog is his performance of Maxine, a song on The Nightfly, and one of my all-time favourite songs.
I haven’t yet come across a cover except Justin Morell’s instrumental version, but I doubt few can come close to singing it as sublimely as Fagen. The reason it is included here is because of his breathtaking harmonising with himself. I had read somewhere that he sang all the parts on Maxine, but I double-checked and sure enough although other singers add background vocals on other tracks on The Nightfly, only he is credited on Maxine.
I once bought The Nightfly songbook and tried to teach myself the song on guitar, but I never got further than the first 16 bars. It’s got some great chords, but as usual I give up - I’m an awful weak giver-upper - and then mislaid the songbook. About 20 years later (i.e. in the last few years) I decided to try again, but as I couldn’t find mysongbook I thought I would buy another. Some hope: on Amazon you’ll have to shell out at least £201 for a used copy (though very good - what a relief) and if you want a new one it’ll cost you at least £402. So, do you know what, I decided against it and still hope to find my own copy. Here’s Maxine:
Donald Fagen/Maxine
I know The Eagles are regarded as uncool by some - some few idiots, I should say - but more fool them. They might not write complex tunes like Steely Dan (who famously put them down in their song their song Everything You Did on their album The Royal Scam, but even though I like their music a great deal those two cool Noo Yorkers Fagen and Becker can slightly get up my noise as can quite a few of the Noo York ‘art’ scene, who seem perpetually to carry on a great love affair with themselves - David Byrne and Talking Heads to exactly nothing for me. Maybe I’ve got cloth ears. And maybe not), but - what a digression, eh - The Eagles did what they did bloody well and I still many of their songs. But then that’s me, uncool. And in their first incarnation they harmonised superbly. Seven Bridges Road was a standard at their concerts:
The Eagles/Seven Bridges Road
Before I come on to Take 6, a black soul, jazz, gospel a cappella group (though they don’t sing this one below a cappella), here’s a bit of harmonising you might also like (if you like harmonising). I could have chosen anything from Palestrina and Victoria, but I have chosen this piece by England’s very own William Byrd, merely because he was the most recent of these three I came across. This is the Gloria from his Mass for Five Voices:
William Byrd/Gloria from Mass for five voices
Then there’s Take 6. I can’t for the life of me remember how I came across them, but I am very glad I did. This one, Grandma’s Hands, has been covered by loads of singers, some well, some not so well, but - racism alert - I really think it’s only fair that black singers should sing it. With anyone else it seems to become, as I pointed out a few days ago, just another song in their repertoire. But when Take 6 sing it is seems to grow.
Take 6/Grandma’s Hands
Finally, here’s a piece which has got nothing to do with harmony. An hour or two ago (it’s Saturday night and I am off to work in London tomorrow morning and thought I might have a shave now to have just a few more minutes of a lie-in) I was listening in the bathroom to Lullaby Of Leaves by sax player Illinois Jacquette. (I posted two guitar version of the song in my last post). And them, because my iPhone was on ‘songs’, next up came this: the first movement of Alban Berg’s Lulu Suite. And while listening to it, it suddenly struck me just how much, in some ways, jazz and more recent - good - classical music have in common. I mean, were you told this was a jazz piece and didn’t know any better, you would most probably accept it as such. It’s 14 minutes long, so have that shit first, but then spend 14 minutes listening to a rather beautiful piece. I think if you like jazz, you’ll probably like this.
Alban Berg/Lulu-Suite: I. Rondo: Andante Und Hymne
PS If this kind of music sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because a great many German and Austrian composers, not all of them Jewish, fled Germany and Austria and headed for the US when the Nazis came to power and some found work in the Hollywood film studios. There is some great music in those Thirties and Forties films, especially in film noir like Double Indemndity and Build My Gallows High which is partially ignored because it is just ‘the soundtrack’.
I was thinking about the last but one post and how I discovered new music, and more to the point, new music I liked when I remembered how I came across The Boswell Sisters. The were huge in their time, the Thirties, and it’s fair to say that although spotting their success, many other ‘sisters’ (and I don’t doubt ‘brothers’) formed themselves, but The Boswell Sisters - Vet, Connie (later Connee because, apparently it was easier and faster to write as an autograph) and Martha - stood out.
They were musicians in their own right. Vet played they banjo, Connie (who had to perform and sing sitting down, often in a wheelchair) played the sax and Martha the piano. And all this after a straightforward classical music eduation. But they were born and grew up in New Orleans, and soon
I can’t say I have a deep knowledge of the Thirties popular music scene, but I should imagine The Boswell Sisters (left) stood out because their arrangements were quite complex. I don’t know whether they played their respective instruments one stage - I doubt it - but their harmony singing is great, and I have always loved harmony singing. So here’s a track, a well-known song covered by many, but for me they give it something special.
The Boswell Sisters/I’m Gonna To Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter
Fagen, it has to be said has what might be described as a ‘singular’ voice. It isn’t one of your common or garden pop or jazz voices by any means. (Other singers I like with ‘singular’ voices are Bob Dylan and The Kinks’s Ray Davies.) But Fagen can sing and sing well, and obviously inherited his mother’s talent. More to the point of this blog is his performance of Maxine, a song on The Nightfly, and one of my all-time favourite songs.
I haven’t yet come across a cover except Justin Morell’s instrumental version, but I doubt few can come close to singing it as sublimely as Fagen. The reason it is included here is because of his breathtaking harmonising with himself. I had read somewhere that he sang all the parts on Maxine, but I double-checked and sure enough although other singers add background vocals on other tracks on The Nightfly, only he is credited on Maxine.
I once bought The Nightfly songbook and tried to teach myself the song on guitar, but I never got further than the first 16 bars. It’s got some great chords, but as usual I give up - I’m an awful weak giver-upper - and then mislaid the songbook. About 20 years later (i.e. in the last few years) I decided to try again, but as I couldn’t find mysongbook I thought I would buy another. Some hope: on Amazon you’ll have to shell out at least £201 for a used copy (though very good - what a relief) and if you want a new one it’ll cost you at least £402. So, do you know what, I decided against it and still hope to find my own copy. Here’s Maxine:
Donald Fagen/Maxine
I know The Eagles are regarded as uncool by some - some few idiots, I should say - but more fool them. They might not write complex tunes like Steely Dan (who famously put them down in their song their song Everything You Did on their album The Royal Scam, but even though I like their music a great deal those two cool Noo Yorkers Fagen and Becker can slightly get up my noise as can quite a few of the Noo York ‘art’ scene, who seem perpetually to carry on a great love affair with themselves - David Byrne and Talking Heads to exactly nothing for me. Maybe I’ve got cloth ears. And maybe not), but - what a digression, eh - The Eagles did what they did bloody well and I still many of their songs. But then that’s me, uncool. And in their first incarnation they harmonised superbly. Seven Bridges Road was a standard at their concerts:
The Eagles/Seven Bridges Road
Before I come on to Take 6, a black soul, jazz, gospel a cappella group (though they don’t sing this one below a cappella), here’s a bit of harmonising you might also like (if you like harmonising). I could have chosen anything from Palestrina and Victoria, but I have chosen this piece by England’s very own William Byrd, merely because he was the most recent of these three I came across. This is the Gloria from his Mass for Five Voices:
William Byrd/Gloria from Mass for five voices
Then there’s Take 6. I can’t for the life of me remember how I came across them, but I am very glad I did. This one, Grandma’s Hands, has been covered by loads of singers, some well, some not so well, but - racism alert - I really think it’s only fair that black singers should sing it. With anyone else it seems to become, as I pointed out a few days ago, just another song in their repertoire. But when Take 6 sing it is seems to grow.
Take 6/Grandma’s Hands
Finally, here’s a piece which has got nothing to do with harmony. An hour or two ago (it’s Saturday night and I am off to work in London tomorrow morning and thought I might have a shave now to have just a few more minutes of a lie-in) I was listening in the bathroom to Lullaby Of Leaves by sax player Illinois Jacquette. (I posted two guitar version of the song in my last post). And them, because my iPhone was on ‘songs’, next up came this: the first movement of Alban Berg’s Lulu Suite. And while listening to it, it suddenly struck me just how much, in some ways, jazz and more recent - good - classical music have in common. I mean, were you told this was a jazz piece and didn’t know any better, you would most probably accept it as such. It’s 14 minutes long, so have that shit first, but then spend 14 minutes listening to a rather beautiful piece. I think if you like jazz, you’ll probably like this.
Alban Berg/Lulu-Suite: I. Rondo: Andante Und Hymne
PS If this kind of music sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because a great many German and Austrian composers, not all of them Jewish, fled Germany and Austria and headed for the US when the Nazis came to power and some found work in the Hollywood film studios. There is some great music in those Thirties and Forties films, especially in film noir like Double Indemndity and Build My Gallows High which is partially ignored because it is just ‘the soundtrack’.
Thursday 28 January 2016
A bit more jazz for those who like that kind of thing. And those who don’t are banned from this blog for a week.
These soundfiles should play fine on your Mac using Safari, Chrome and Firefox, and on a Windows PC using Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. They don't seem to work on a Mac using Opera. I haven't tried them on Opera on a Windows machine cos I can't be buggered downloading and installing it. There are several other browsers out there - e.g. Maxthon for Mac - but at the moment is usually use an elderly Macbook running Snow Leopard and many of them demand a more up-to-date OS. But I feel I’ve done a my bit and if your browser doesn't play these tracks, it's up to you to sort it out. Chin, chin.
I was looking at my most recent post, the one before this one, correcting one or two of the literals which always slip in (me being the conscientious sort eventually, though apparently not immediately) and it occurred to me that the selection of jazz musicians and their tracks I had posted might seem to some a little top-heavy with the jazz equivalent of what some classical musicians describe as ‘squeaky-gate music’. Well, at least to some. And for those ‘some’ it is perhaps not as ‘accessible’ as it might be. (I once knew a double-bass player with the BBC Wales Symphony Orchestra and that’s when I first heard the phrase ’squeaky-gate music’.)
By the way, when I use the word ‘accessible’, I mean it pretty much as close to an insult as you can get without exactly being insulting. Des O’Connor (for real oldies), Adele, Florence and the Sodding Machine and all the other shite they play on BBC Radio 1 and 2 is ‘accessible’, as is the classical excerpts played on Classical FM. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like some kind of stuck-up, snobby prick, but I have to say that - with some very notable exceptions, quite a few actually, for me ‘accessibility’ is in inverse proportion to ‘interest’.
The exceptions, of course, are for me some of the ‘accessible’ black music, lovers’ rock, soul and related genre. To many ears, Alexander O’Neal and Freddie Jackson, say (and I shall include tracks below, just for the craic, so you can see what I mean) is, or can, be pretty bloody ‘accessible’ in my sense of the word and trashy to the point of despair, but I have to say I love them and stuff like that. And I haven’t yet chosen which track to post here but I shall make sure it makes my point. For example, Freddie Jackson does a version of Me And Mrs Jones which I like even better than the original hit by Billy Paul, but I shan’t be choosing that one.)
So here are a few more jazz tracks which I have on iTunes by way of contrast.
First up is this one by pianist Bill Evans and the guitar player Jim Hall. Evans had a heroin habit (and was a few years ago featured on Radio 3’s Composer Of The Week just to show the world that they aren’t necessarily a gang of old farts). Jim Hall didn’t have a heroin habit (though you often get the impression being addicted to smack was pretty much de rigeur for some jazz folk. Chet Baker (below) was another.
All Across The City/Bill Evans and Jim Hall
Then there’s Herbie Hancock’s take on Leon Russell’s Song For You (very beautiful and, in his version very simple). Christine Aguilera sings - bloody well - and until then I, who had not heard a lot by her, thought she was simply some pop diva. I was wrong. I have previously posted about the song Song For You and the different versions of it, some of which are too awful for words, notably ones by The Carpenters and Whitney Houston - crass beyond belief - and some which are good, though for my money Leon Russell’s own version is best, with Herbie Hancock coming, in his own way, a close second.
Song For You/Herbie Hancock with Christine Aguilera
I have about nine different versions of Autumn Leaves, from this one by Chet Baker to a very good one by Eric Clapton and, to my mind a pretty awful version by Bob Dylan. Not everything he does turns to gold. But it is a great song and one which I can play on guitar quite jazzily (it’s basically only six chords, although you can - and I do - and oddly enough the same chords can be used for Helen Reddy’s Angie Baby, which is awful, and I do a mad, disturbed jazzy version. Disturbed? You’ll understand if you know the song and the story it tells.).
Autumn Leaves/Chet Baker
I am not black (and never have been - nice white middle-class chappie, me) but every time I hear Billie Holiday’s version of Strange Fruit, I get a chill up and down my spine. For me this is a unique recording, and at the risk of sounding unbelievably pretentious it’s a song white folk sing at their peril. I have another version by Sharon Robinson (who co-wrote Everybody Knows) which is half-decent, but I have also had the misfortune to have heard renderings of it which make the song just another in the singer’s repertoire. (Just looked the song up on Spotify and see that Nina Simone sings a version, which is good, and Annie Lennox, everyone’s favourite singing feminist, which is, predictably, just another song in her repertoire. White honkies: stay away. Leave this one for black performers who will know a lot better than you might ever what they are singing about.)
I could go on, but I don’t want to sound mad or pretentious or right-on or anything like that. All I’ll say is (and for me the revelation only came after reading Howard Zinn’s account of black life in America in his A People’s History Of The United States) that in recent and not so recent history no one has been more shat upon and fucked up like blacks in white cultures and Jews in every culture. So, you white singers: sing Strange Fruit at your peril. I doubt you will come anywhere more than a million miles close to conveying what it meant to Billie Holiday.
Strange Fruit/Billie Holliday
I got into Steely Dan years ago in a big way and although I think in their most recent CDs they don’t quite have the fire of their early stuff up to Gaucho, though the tunes are still as good, Donald Fagen’s first solo CD, Nightfly, is that rarest of rare things perfect from beginning to end. And Maxine was one of the best tracks from it. Somehow I came across Justin Morell, the guitar-playing son of another jazz guitar player, John Morell (isn’t Google great, eh, makes you sound knowledgable). He had produced a great CD called The Music Of Steely Dan and this is his band’s take on Maxine. Mind there’s a lot more to Morell than this and he is worth checking out.
Maxine/Justine Morell
Stella By Starlight is pretty much a jazz standard and this is Joe Pass’s version. As a rule I don’t like to much fiddle-faddling (like sodding Chopin) in my music and far prefer clean guitar lines, but Pass is my exception and I don’t know why. Well, I do: he makes it all seem so breathtakingly simple. The same is true of Earl Hines who comes after Pass with Stormy Weather, another jazz standard.
Stella By Starlight/Joe Pass
Stormy Weather/Earl Hines
I didn’t get to hear much by Gerry Mulligan until quite recently, although I had often heard the name and, for some reason had assumed he was a Brit. He’s not. He also had a heroin habit. Here he plays The Cat Walk with someone called Ben Webster. I could google Ben Webster, then pretend I knew, but I can’t be arsed.
The Cat Walk/Gerry Mulligan & Ben Webster
Dizzy Gillespie is another jazz name even folk who don’t follow jazz will probably have heard. Usually folk play A Night In Tunisia, but in an odd way that has become so well-known it’s getting close to a jazz cliche. So here you can listen to Trumpet Blues.
Trumpet Blues/Dizzy Gillespie
Then come two version of Lullaby Of Leaves, which is a tune which sounds very familiar and seem to have heard for ever, but which I couldn’t have named for the life of me until very recently. The first is by Billy Bauer, who (thank you Wikipedia) spent most of his career as a sideman and seems to have released only on CD of his own. But I like his playing a lot. Then after that there’s Grant Green’s version, which is just as good. I love his really clean and unfettered guitar lines. The guy playing Hammond organ on Grant Green’s recording is a guy called Baby Face Willette (thanks Wiki) and I can only say I wish I had been called that. I think the ‘Willette’ is important. Baby Face Powell doesn’t quite do it, does it.
Lullaby Of Leaves/Billy Bauer
Lullaby Of Leaves/Grant Green
That’s enough jazz for one day, but posting these here has got my appetite up, and there’s lot more where these came from, Lennie Tristano, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessell, Swedish singer Lisa Ekdahl when she does jazz (apparently most of her career was a straightforward pop artist in Sweden), Art Farmer, Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Harry James, Roy Eldridge, loads and loads and loads and fuck Michael Jackson (but not Prince. He can be sublime and often has been, although not quite as often as he seems to think).
But, the big but: my Achilles heel which I mentioned above - the schlock I like. Here are two great examples of superb schlock, especially the first Good Morning Heartache.
Good Morning Heartache/Freddie Jackson
followed by Innocent.
Innocent/Alexander O’Neal
I was looking at my most recent post, the one before this one, correcting one or two of the literals which always slip in (me being the conscientious sort eventually, though apparently not immediately) and it occurred to me that the selection of jazz musicians and their tracks I had posted might seem to some a little top-heavy with the jazz equivalent of what some classical musicians describe as ‘squeaky-gate music’. Well, at least to some. And for those ‘some’ it is perhaps not as ‘accessible’ as it might be. (I once knew a double-bass player with the BBC Wales Symphony Orchestra and that’s when I first heard the phrase ’squeaky-gate music’.)
By the way, when I use the word ‘accessible’, I mean it pretty much as close to an insult as you can get without exactly being insulting. Des O’Connor (for real oldies), Adele, Florence and the Sodding Machine and all the other shite they play on BBC Radio 1 and 2 is ‘accessible’, as is the classical excerpts played on Classical FM. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like some kind of stuck-up, snobby prick, but I have to say that - with some very notable exceptions, quite a few actually, for me ‘accessibility’ is in inverse proportion to ‘interest’.
The exceptions, of course, are for me some of the ‘accessible’ black music, lovers’ rock, soul and related genre. To many ears, Alexander O’Neal and Freddie Jackson, say (and I shall include tracks below, just for the craic, so you can see what I mean) is, or can, be pretty bloody ‘accessible’ in my sense of the word and trashy to the point of despair, but I have to say I love them and stuff like that. And I haven’t yet chosen which track to post here but I shall make sure it makes my point. For example, Freddie Jackson does a version of Me And Mrs Jones which I like even better than the original hit by Billy Paul, but I shan’t be choosing that one.)
So here are a few more jazz tracks which I have on iTunes by way of contrast.
First up is this one by pianist Bill Evans and the guitar player Jim Hall. Evans had a heroin habit (and was a few years ago featured on Radio 3’s Composer Of The Week just to show the world that they aren’t necessarily a gang of old farts). Jim Hall didn’t have a heroin habit (though you often get the impression being addicted to smack was pretty much de rigeur for some jazz folk. Chet Baker (below) was another.
All Across The City/Bill Evans and Jim Hall
Then there’s Herbie Hancock’s take on Leon Russell’s Song For You (very beautiful and, in his version very simple). Christine Aguilera sings - bloody well - and until then I, who had not heard a lot by her, thought she was simply some pop diva. I was wrong. I have previously posted about the song Song For You and the different versions of it, some of which are too awful for words, notably ones by The Carpenters and Whitney Houston - crass beyond belief - and some which are good, though for my money Leon Russell’s own version is best, with Herbie Hancock coming, in his own way, a close second.
Song For You/Herbie Hancock with Christine Aguilera
I have about nine different versions of Autumn Leaves, from this one by Chet Baker to a very good one by Eric Clapton and, to my mind a pretty awful version by Bob Dylan. Not everything he does turns to gold. But it is a great song and one which I can play on guitar quite jazzily (it’s basically only six chords, although you can - and I do - and oddly enough the same chords can be used for Helen Reddy’s Angie Baby, which is awful, and I do a mad, disturbed jazzy version. Disturbed? You’ll understand if you know the song and the story it tells.).
Autumn Leaves/Chet Baker
I am not black (and never have been - nice white middle-class chappie, me) but every time I hear Billie Holiday’s version of Strange Fruit, I get a chill up and down my spine. For me this is a unique recording, and at the risk of sounding unbelievably pretentious it’s a song white folk sing at their peril. I have another version by Sharon Robinson (who co-wrote Everybody Knows) which is half-decent, but I have also had the misfortune to have heard renderings of it which make the song just another in the singer’s repertoire. (Just looked the song up on Spotify and see that Nina Simone sings a version, which is good, and Annie Lennox, everyone’s favourite singing feminist, which is, predictably, just another song in her repertoire. White honkies: stay away. Leave this one for black performers who will know a lot better than you might ever what they are singing about.)
I could go on, but I don’t want to sound mad or pretentious or right-on or anything like that. All I’ll say is (and for me the revelation only came after reading Howard Zinn’s account of black life in America in his A People’s History Of The United States) that in recent and not so recent history no one has been more shat upon and fucked up like blacks in white cultures and Jews in every culture. So, you white singers: sing Strange Fruit at your peril. I doubt you will come anywhere more than a million miles close to conveying what it meant to Billie Holiday.
Strange Fruit/Billie Holliday
I got into Steely Dan years ago in a big way and although I think in their most recent CDs they don’t quite have the fire of their early stuff up to Gaucho, though the tunes are still as good, Donald Fagen’s first solo CD, Nightfly, is that rarest of rare things perfect from beginning to end. And Maxine was one of the best tracks from it. Somehow I came across Justin Morell, the guitar-playing son of another jazz guitar player, John Morell (isn’t Google great, eh, makes you sound knowledgable). He had produced a great CD called The Music Of Steely Dan and this is his band’s take on Maxine. Mind there’s a lot more to Morell than this and he is worth checking out.
Maxine/Justine Morell
Stella By Starlight is pretty much a jazz standard and this is Joe Pass’s version. As a rule I don’t like to much fiddle-faddling (like sodding Chopin) in my music and far prefer clean guitar lines, but Pass is my exception and I don’t know why. Well, I do: he makes it all seem so breathtakingly simple. The same is true of Earl Hines who comes after Pass with Stormy Weather, another jazz standard.
Stella By Starlight/Joe Pass
Stormy Weather/Earl Hines
I didn’t get to hear much by Gerry Mulligan until quite recently, although I had often heard the name and, for some reason had assumed he was a Brit. He’s not. He also had a heroin habit. Here he plays The Cat Walk with someone called Ben Webster. I could google Ben Webster, then pretend I knew, but I can’t be arsed.
The Cat Walk/Gerry Mulligan & Ben Webster
Dizzy Gillespie is another jazz name even folk who don’t follow jazz will probably have heard. Usually folk play A Night In Tunisia, but in an odd way that has become so well-known it’s getting close to a jazz cliche. So here you can listen to Trumpet Blues.
Trumpet Blues/Dizzy Gillespie
Then come two version of Lullaby Of Leaves, which is a tune which sounds very familiar and seem to have heard for ever, but which I couldn’t have named for the life of me until very recently. The first is by Billy Bauer, who (thank you Wikipedia) spent most of his career as a sideman and seems to have released only on CD of his own. But I like his playing a lot. Then after that there’s Grant Green’s version, which is just as good. I love his really clean and unfettered guitar lines. The guy playing Hammond organ on Grant Green’s recording is a guy called Baby Face Willette (thanks Wiki) and I can only say I wish I had been called that. I think the ‘Willette’ is important. Baby Face Powell doesn’t quite do it, does it.
Lullaby Of Leaves/Billy Bauer
Lullaby Of Leaves/Grant Green
That’s enough jazz for one day, but posting these here has got my appetite up, and there’s lot more where these came from, Lennie Tristano, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessell, Swedish singer Lisa Ekdahl when she does jazz (apparently most of her career was a straightforward pop artist in Sweden), Art Farmer, Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Harry James, Roy Eldridge, loads and loads and loads and fuck Michael Jackson (but not Prince. He can be sublime and often has been, although not quite as often as he seems to think).
But, the big but: my Achilles heel which I mentioned above - the schlock I like. Here are two great examples of superb schlock, especially the first Good Morning Heartache.
Good Morning Heartache/Freddie Jackson
followed by Innocent.
Innocent/Alexander O’Neal
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