A Lark Ascending

Caught with a lighter on Brighton Pier? Or even Wigan!

Whilst driving around on holiday I chanced on a broadcast of the last ten of the 'Vingt regards sur l'Enfant Jesus' and was smitten - I'd always expected something arid and forbidding. Led me into something of a Messiaen-fest over recent days. I read this at virtually one sitting: A relatively short (240 pages) bio that gives you the context and chronology of the music. Light on musical analysis (a plus for me as I usually don't understand it!). Recommended to anyone who is interested in Messiaen but doesn't already have a deep knowledge. I've popped some of his shorter pieces (that get can lost in couplings with larger works) on the ipod - really enjoying hearing things like 'L'ascencion', 'Oiseaux exotique', 'Couleurs de la citie celeste' and two organ pieces - 'Lw Banquet Celeste' and 'Apparition de L'Eglise Eternelle' in their own right.

Two beautiful new solo piano records: Reminds me of Jarrett c. 'Facing You', before he got too god-bothering. Highly melodic tunes with a folksy edge to them.

Just played it for the first time - absolutely marvellous. I know it will be a regular as I'm driving the interstate highways from Wiltshire to Cornwall. Well done Jim, Joe and Randy. And thank you for the music (as some Swedes once said).

After refusing to even consider an ipod for the last few years (for no other reason than its trendiness) I got to a state last week where my Archos 20GB finally filled up. Looking around Archos seemed to only offer something more expensive clearly designed mainly for showing films. So I bit the bullet and bought an 80GB ipod - well, what a revelation. So much simpler to load than the Archos (which had some bizarre ways of storing tracks even within the same album!). Having spent the last few days loading up I today experimented with the shuffle...what a great facility. I just had to make sure I excluded all the classical stuff first...a 20 minute Mahler movement doesn't quite work next to Hank Williams, The Hollies and Sonny Rollins! And I've also got one of those gizmos that allow you to play it through your car stereo via a free radio frequency. 5 years ago I took off on holiday with a large box of CDs. Now I've got oodles more in the palm of my hand. What amazing days we live in. When I consider the crappy record player that I started out with in 1970 where I had to sellotape a coin to the cartridge to stop it skipping!

All my vinyl -purchased from 1970 until the late 80s - is now in the loft, apart from things I don't have on CD in one form or another. I went through a phase in the early 80s when I hardly touched my rock collection. But I then found I got just as much enjoyment from those records as from anything I acquired subsequently in the jazz/classical/folk fields. So much of it has been bought again on CD in the last 25 years or so (along with music from that era I never owned or even knew). Whatever simplicities much of that music might have is more the compensated for by the nostalgic charge the tracks contain. I recall my parents telling me at the time that I would grow out of my early 70s collection. Doesn't seem to have happened (probably says more about me than the music but...).

You've clearly never been to Weston-super-mare!

Just rattled through the door here in the UK.

Like others, I fell for George Coleman's sound on the 'My Funny Valentine' Miles album when I first heard it in the late 70s. Since then I've picked up a fair few of his solo discs, having a particular fondness for 'Amsterdam after Dark.' I think he came over to the UK nearly every year during the 80s/90s - I got to see him just the once quite late on. Here's a good 1990s club date from Ronnie's: British rhythm section plus a guest appearance by Peter King. It also exists in a twofer with and 1979 date from Ronnie's ('Playing Changes'). Both are on e-music. There was another recording from Ronnies from the late 70s that appeared on the brief Ronnie Scott house label. For some reason that never got to CD: From http://www.georgecoleman.com/discography_frame.html I assume that lies in the same attic as Ronnie Scott's own 'Serious Gold'.

Quite. As it is indifferent to thousands of other things. I don't see why it should be otherwise. Metheny is falling into the time honoured trap of the middle-aged of believing that only he can see what is of value, that the world as a whole has lost the plot. Last-Roman-as-the barbarians-swarm-across-the-Rhine Syndrome. At a meeting over the weekend I was reminded of this thread (and many others on bulletin boards) whilst reading the comments of one Alvarus, a ninth-century cleric in Córdoba, who grumbled about the way that young Christian men could barely write decent Latin, yet were besotted by Arabic poetry. The era he was living in is now regarded as one of the jewels of medieval culture.

Just noticed this on Dusty Groove: http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=fx9...p;ref=index.php

Same here from 5ish to 6. Then a golden evening!!!!

With a twist.

It be glowerin'. A wettin' be a-comin'.

A variation on 'let them eat cake': http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/01/royal.wine/

After bemoaning the lack of rain here yesterday morning I went and filled the ponds and put the washing out. Worked a treat! The heavens opened in a wonderful downpour that instantly filled two water butts! Beautiful summer's evening followed.

I think you must be hogging all the rain in the west, MG. We're getting the glowering clouds and lots of wind but very little rain. My larger pond is well down. We had a good drenching around Whit week, a pathetic bit of drizzle last week and a reasonable splashing last Thursday (but not enough to fill the pond back up), but that's it! I'm thinking of organising a school trip to Worksop - that always guarantees rain!

Good luck, papsrus, with the quitting. I've never smoked - don't know if it was fear of my father finding out or just a natural inclination to avoid doing things that made you hip. I did quit chocolate cold turkey seven years back (you only have to try chocolate cold turkey once and you'll never eat chocolate or turkey again!). I'm always saddened when I see wonderful kids I teach or have taught out and about 'with a fag on'. Part of the rituals of growing up for many, I know, but if only we could persuade them otherwise. The lure of the image of casually puffing the cigarette seems to overcome all the science we can throw at them.

I've never considered Zep to be heavy metal, but other than that I totally agree with your post. To me there is a vast difference between hard rock & heavy metal. I'm using the term very loosely. At the time blues-rock was very much the norm in UK rock at least. What caught my ear were the acoustic contrasts and - increasingly - the folky side. I had a very brief flirtation with 'hard rock' c.1970 but quickly moved off to the folkier, jazzier, more classically influenced stuff. But I always kept a liking for LZ, because there was that light and shade. I suspect from this distance it might be hard to hear past the thunderous heavy rock.

Led Zeppelin did a bit more than rework Willie Dixon. Just as Charlie Parker did a bit more than rework Jerome Kern or George Gershwin; and as Vaughan Williams did a bit more than rework Tudor church music and English folk song. I suspect if I heard them now for the first time I'd have absolutely no interest. But at the time they were a sound to behear; and I retain an affection for them, even if I generally find heavy metal more than a bit plodding.

Well, maybe its just that the virtuosity that you seek is not so much lacking as less projected. The great player stepping up into the spotlight for a solo (with or without a bow!) ceased to be acceptable from the late 70s; but that does not mean that there's not some virtuosic playing going on in support of the overall music. There's perhaps less overt grandstanding (except, perhaps in metal). I was a big King Crimson fan in the early to mid-70s. When I listened to the Discipline band in the early 80s I just didn't get it. Fripp seemed to have stopped playing. And it was interesting that later on he even cut out what I thought of as one of the great Fripp moments, the short solo on Matte Kudasai. Much much later (late 90s) I tried again and the Discipline era made sense and I could hear that despite the lack of up front soloing there was a lot going on in the textures. If the surface interested me I'm sure I could find plenty of virtuosity in contemporary playing. We all have to learn that each of us can only ever see a small part of the whole. It's a grave mistake to assume that the parts we can't see are not of value.

In terms of what I like to listen to, I sympathise. I was never a huge Capton fan though I like some of his music; but I do like long, well played solos. Young and Stills sparing on 'Four Way Street' still thrill me. But I think you miss a vital point. Long solos were written out of rock by punk. Although a lot of what was condemned then has returned (many rock musicians who started in punk became stadium fillers), the long solo remains a big no-no. I may not like that; you may not like that. But it's how things are. Rock music is now judged by other standards. Rock music hasn't gone wrong; it's just changed. ************ Something else to float - and I'm open to being corrected on this. It's my impression (and I'm talking gut-reaction here) that rock in the 60s to 70s drew from a wide range of influences outside of rock - blues, jazz, folk, even classical. And that sort of rock, although it might not have made much of an impact on the singles charts, had healthy album sales. In the last twenty years or so rock seems to have largely drawn from other rock, earlier rock. That's certainly the impression I get from the more popluar rock music I half-hear. Maybe things are different in the indie sphere. As I say, more exploratory thoughts than a statement of fact. And not an attempt to judge relative quality - though it might explain why I find little of nourishment in it.

I wouldn't make the same choices but I'm with you in spirit. Those of us who obsess on music worry far too much that what we like must also be 'important' or 'significant'.

"Sabbath rool; Tull are crap."* *inscription found on a wall fragment from an excavation of an early 1970s site.