Of Death Chants, Lockdowns and Military Waltzes Part 4

I'm guessing there are a lot of people in a similar situation. Here I am on Day Fourteen of my second period of self-imposed isolation due to rampaging COVID-19; this also means thirty days or thereabouts in quarantine since my return from Venice. I am, of course, relieved that I have not developed any symptoms, but how can I know if I am a carrier without taking a proper test? Will I recognise a dry persistent cough? Probably, because I don't normally cough much. I've no idea what feeling hot on my front or back is meant to mean. I hope I never find out. I do feel very sad for those people who are worried about (or who have indeed lost) loved ones. To the best of my knowledge the worst thing that seems to have happened in my family is that one of my granddaughters has very sore hands from washing them so often and so thoroughly. Other friends have not fared so well. At least two have lost close friends or family members. Whatever has happened so far, I still see this experience as a warning shot across our bows. We have abused our world by poisoning it and decimating the variety of species, we continue to abuse each other over our differences and, a few nights ago our smirking prime minister delivered a message I imagine he never expected to deliver when he was metaphorically elbowing his way through the crowd to succeed Theresa May in Downing Street. Taken from the gov.uk website the message was:

“… the government is now (23 March 2020) introducing three new measures.

1. Requiring people to stay at home, except for very limited purposes
2. Closing non-essential shops and community spaces
3. Stopping all gatherings of more than two people in public

Every citizen must comply with these new measures. The relevant authorities, including the police, will be given the powers to enforce them – including through fines and dispersing gatherings.

These measures are effective immediately. The Government will look again at these measures in three weeks, and relax them if the evidence shows this is possible.” New legislation has been rushed through to reinforce this decree. Emergency law has a tendency to become fixed. We’ll have to see where this goes.

Such measures are, of course, unprecedented within the memories of most people I know. I've never taken to the term, “baby-boomer”, but I am of that age. Now, of course, baby-boomer has somehow become “boomer” - a term of abuse for the allegedly avaricious ageing generation that was born during the twenty years that followed World War II, somehow forgetting we were also a generation that fought for and won rights quite unknown before. For certain, there are many people in my generation who enjoyed comforts and social advantage never before experienced. I have been privileged to experience the National Health Service actually being free, before charges for prescriptions, dental treatment and optician checkups were introduced. I received a grant to attend college to train as a teacher. There was no expectation I would ever have to pay it back except the moral one to stay in the job long enough to make a contribution. With twenty-one years service I think I managed that. I was employed in the state education sector until my bosses saw fit to make my job redundant and had it not been for that event I would probably still be in education to this day. Strangely, within weeks of losing my job I was receiving phone calls and offers of work to compensate for the support that no longer existed to maintain the quality of music education in schools. Salaries in education for the frontline workforce were never generous, but we did take home a more modest income in return for the expectation that an occupational pension would be paid at a later time and based on the final salary we had worked up to during our careers. This was also true in health and social care, the civil service the emergency services, the justice system, the armed forces and even the established church and no doubt a number of other occupations that came mainly under the headings of "service".

Successive governments under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher and beyond, worked hard from 1979 onwards to begin the process of dismantling all the important advances that society had made in the post-war years. The police became an arm of state control rather than simply law-enforcement when Mrs Thatcher used them to battle one set of workers after another, stripping away hard-won rights. I don't know, though, that even she foresaw how far the whole process would be taken by the governments that followed hers although none went as far as she did when she declared “there is no such thing as society”. David Cameron did say that “we are all in this together”, but we knew straight away that he didn’t mean it. How could he? It didn't really matter what colour the flags of the post-Thatcher governments were, we were betrayed by all of them to some degree. I have seen this happen gradually over the last forty years. People can now be given on the spot fines for being out in public without being there for one of a very few specified reasons. We are teetering on the edge of martial law. The face of that edge bears the smirk of our present prime minister, Boris Johnson. 

I doubt that any government has ever been capable of pleasing everyone, but we have been witness to progressively smaller numbers of people taking a bigger slice of the pie. This, of course, is inevitably and by definition at the expense of the majority. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is greater than it has  ever been. Until very recently I was of the opinion that climate change, species depletion, hyper-industrialisation and the subsequent pollution that has resulted would be the causes of our demise as a viable species on the planet. We have certainly squandered the riches we accumulated and handed them over, along with increasing numbers of our rights to multi-national business interests. Somehow we have come to believe that we needed austerity to be able to pay back the banks after the knock-on effect of the madness of selling debt as a commodity that began with so-called "sub-prime mortgages" in the USA. This started the gambling affliction that infected bankers around the world. We were led to believe that the countries that had come together for a common good after the horror of war on a massive scale were moving towards the formation of a super-state that would control every aspect of our lives. For four decades we were subjected to propaganda that has resulted, rightly or wrongly, in the Disunited Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland pulling out of the European Union, a process that has been likened to attempting to remove the eggs from an omelette. I find it hard to embrace the irony of this happening just as the world, and Europe in particular, is itself embraced in the arms of a pandemic, a microscopic virus for which we have no cure, that is seeing people everywhere being subjected to emergency "lockdown" regulations. Just when we need cooperation and kindness on a global scale we are distancing ourselves from our friends and allies. We are out in a metaphorical desert and waiting for the circling vultures to land and pick off the remaining bits of scraggy flesh.

Within a period of days I, like many of my musician friends, have lost all the paid work I had in the diary for the foreseeable future. My diary is quite light, but so are my needs, but one friend saw the unravelling of several sold-out dates on a German tour. All the arrangements, the fine detail, the booking of musicians in the band along with the road and administrative staff and the merchandising operation that makes this sort of thing possible has had to be changed. I'm personally affected because I had booked four trains and an overnight hotel to travel from France to one of the gigs in Bavaria. Thankfully I hadn't yet got round to organising the other ten trains that would get me to my start point of the trip in France. It was to be a birthday present to myself.

So I have no income and no prospect of any. Fortunately I am not destitute and I have managed to live carefully enough for long enough to be able to survive for a while longer. However, the inadequate and overly complicated arrangements being made to compensate people in formal employment are going to prove a very difficult path for me to negotiate as a self-employed sole-trading musician. Being already outside the system it feels like I'm being buried.

It is March. The weather is all wrong. After the floods of winter we have had little rain for a while and I am sitting outdoors to write this. The Farmer tells me the UK will need to find 50,000,000 tonnes of wheat to make up the UK's shortfall later this year. The fields were too waterlogged to be able to plant winter crops. Winter wheat is best for bread flour. Those same fields are now  baked too hard to plant the usual spring seeds. We don't have any of the promised "easy" international trading arrangements in place after leaving the EU and we have a government that seems to have been paralysed and incapable of fulfilling its moral obligations to the people and the planet. 

I have no idea of how the end of the year is going to look. I don't understand how the new boy chancellor has managed to find the three-figure billion sum when last week we couldn't fund the nurses or the labourers who are leaving or being sent home after "we got our country back". I've been told the voluntary work I started this year for a local homelessness trust has to stop. Once my latest quarantine period shows me likely to be virus free I shall be allowed out for exercise for just a short period once a day, although I cannot meet up with any other people and I can only go out otherwise to shop for necessary items of food. I tried registering online for a supermarket delivery, but the website does not list most of the items I usually buy from its nearest branch and I would starve to death before I could get a slot either to "click-and-collect" or book and pay for a delivery to the farm. Of course that always assumes there is actually anything left on the shelves anyway after the pointed elbows of the shoving crowds, the beaks and claws of the vultures have stripped everything bare. I have seen footage of rampaging crowds smashing their way through stores in Mexico and Sicily.

I don’t think optimism comes easily to me, but I have also seen some extraordinary acts of kindness during this very strange and unsettled period. My near neighbours here on the farm (near being a relative concept) have variously brought and left food for me whilst I have been in isolation. They have checked whether I needed any provisions brought in, they have brought logs for the stove. The Farmer added some books to a box containing a delicious lentil stew and some vegan ciabatti made for me at the weekend by his partner. Even more touching than that he made sure the books were on subjects that he thought might interest me (Rebellion and Tom Waites as it happens). A friend who fears greatly for her two daughters (one a nurse and the other a hospital doctor) has offered spare rooms in her house to hospital staff who need somewhere to stay closer to their place of employment, while they are having to up the number of shifts they work. I was particularly moved by that gesture. A little further afield, a woman I know who runs an online zero waste eco-shop stepped up when she discovered that the scandalous national shortfall in personal protective equipment for health workers was being exploited by more unscrupulous vultures. A friend of hers could not get hold of surgical masks for work, but she did find one on e-Bay for £100! She had no choice, but to buy it. Eco Woman immediately set about finding normally-priced masks through a business contact and set up a crowd-funding campaign. Within twenty-three hours she had raised enough money for 2,600 masks which will go to hospital staff in her area. In the Czech Republic there has been a national effort to make masks for people who need them. Everyone will be aware of many small acts of kindness that have brought out some of the best in our society. Maybe strangest of all, Boris Johnson - in his self-isolation after experiencing apparently mild symptoms of the virus - has also distanced himself from Margaret Thatcher by declaring that there is such a thing as society after all.

Of Death Chants, Lockdowns and Military Waltzes Part 3

Finally I made it back to England last night after my unexpectedly long trip to the Venice Carnival. I nearly didn't make it and at no stage of the journey, until I sat on the last train home and we'd pulled out of Ely, was I completely confident that I was going to get back to the boat. The relief of making it by ten o'clock in the evening after twelve hours of travel was very real.

As I have already mentioned I was in two minds as to whether to stick to my original plans and come back a fortnight ago or whether to rebook my rail journeys - all five of them. Because the public were so worried about the publicity surrounding people who had been to Italy, it felt the responsible thing to do would be to isolate myself and rebook my journeys. What I didn't take into account was that there would be a domino stack of countries closing their borders and pretty much all their facilities and services. I guess it is not just the Brexit effect that can do that then! 

Having escaped Venice a week before the Italian borders were closed and everyone told to stay indoors I barely made it out of France before the same thing was due to happen. Schools in France had already been closed and P's brother sent us a warning text message on Monday afternoon that the notice had been issued. France was due to close at mid-day yesterday (Tuesday) and my train from Geneva to Paris was due to leave at 12.29 - half an hour after shutdown. I expected getting over the border into Switzerland to be easy enough if I left in plenty of time, but I had no certainty about what might happen next. I didn't know if I would be stopped from crossing back again on the Geneva to Paris train or whether any of my trains would be cancelled at the last minute.

The new Léman Express train into Switzerland operates about six trains an hour. I arrived at our local French station to be met by the usual posse of helpful functionaries asking what I was hoping to do. The booking desk was closed and shuttered and all the self-service ticket machines had been switched off. I explained I was trying to get to Genève and one uniformed SNCF employee told me, "depêchez-vous à voie F, monsieur". I dépêched for all I was worth, down the steps to the linking tunnel between the platforms lugging my heavy suitcase. As I was to find out at many points throughout the day, very few of the escalators or lifts were working and who wanted to be trapped in a lift with other people exhaling who-knows-what contagions anyway? Still less did I fancy poking at the buttons that had been pressed by who-knows-whom. Despite the rush I was beginning to form in my head more worries about travelling without a ticket. Fines for travelling without a valid ticket can be huge and I've seen people caught out. As I ran I was trying to work out how to say in French that I couldn't buy a ticket before the journey and was told to hurry to catch this train. I managed to board the train, albeit glowing hot and out of breath - really not a good look. Fellow travellers were obviously on the lookout for passengers displaying the symptoms of covid-19. I collapsed in a seat and not for the first time tried to work out if the plan was for this train to head across the border to Geneva. This wonderful new regional rail service has monitors viewable from almost every angle, which, of course, display destinations and the intermediate stops - just not all of them. The suspension points indicating that the story of the impending journey was not being told in full missed out "Genève". The audible announcement only listed the first couple of stops and the final destination which, although normal for this part of the world is always slightly alarming for the traveller more used to the rather more affirming British system of listing every single stop, the number of carriages and where to sit for when the train is divided as it inevitably is at Cambridge. The hurry had been a little pointless too. We missed three timetabled deadlines before the train actually left the station for Switzerland. This turned out to be a feature of the day as I was to see more cancelled train journeys than timetable slots being honoured. Also groundless was my anxiety about travelling sans billet on this occasion. There were no inspectors on this train and there are no automatic barriers in Geneva on the buses or the trains, but the fines are huge. 

Arriving in Switzerland at Gare Cornavin, the main station in Geneva, I had to transfer from platform 1 to platform 8, from where the majority of the long-haul trains through France leave. Before being allowed on to platform 8 one has to pass through a border control station complete with Swiss and French customs points . A few months ago somebody had the bright idea that passengers were no longer to be allowed through border security and customs more than thirty minutes before their train is due to leave. The holding area now is a single bench seat in a small and stuffy area separated from the main station shopping precinct by the inevitable sliding doors. Beyond border control there is a much larger seating space with public toilets. Swiss pragmatism? French bureaucracy? Who knows? The only people who care are the passengers who stand outside by the shops because there is no seating for them in the waiting zone. I don't care much for this arrangement at the best of times so yesterday, I sat outdoors on my suitcase on a paved area outside a café among the smokers and the beggars. It was a nice day and the air tasted much fresher - no hint of virus ... well not much, anyway part from a few people wearing an interesting variety of protective masks and a few others with scarves wrapped around their faces.

From here I had a view of the departure board for Voie 8. Of the five trains listed over the course of the following hour, four carried the dreaded "supprimé" label. Just one train was running, a TER service to Bellegarde. Mine wasn't yet listed; more anxiety.

Everything is listed in the main three languages in Switzerland.
The railway's Italian abbreviation summed the mood perfectly.

Eventually I went up on to the platform and didn't have to wait long for the train to pull in. I had a seat booked on the lower deck in carriage 16 of this double-decker train. I've learned my lesson about nausea-inducing travelling on the upper deck.  As it happened, there weren't many passengers at all, so the next three and a half hours looked to be bearable after all. That was a nice dream until we arrived at the first of two scheduled intermediate stops. At Bellegarde my compartment of about fifty seats filled. There was not enough seating for the luggage being carried. It spilled into the aisle and some people were forced to carry suitcases, but mostly rucksacks, right through the carriage. Before we pulled out of the station a woman started berating another passenger at a volume somewhere north of the threshold of pain. This went on for several minutes, with no apparent pause for an intake of breath despite the wonderfully polite older woman who nobly stood up and implored, "S'il vous plaît, madame, calmez vous." The anger was turned on her with a withering ferocity. A few anonymous jeers were offered by other (mostly male, all seated) voices, but the harangue continued until the agitante was all screamed out. Apart from that the journey was event free until, about an hour later the woman who had implored for quiet began to cough. The young man of student age sitting across the table from her looked all around him in, firstly concern, then helplessness, then mild terror. He wrapped his scarf around his face ... twice.

At the Gare de Lyon I found a different way of getting off the platform. A new gate had been opened to the subterranean Hall 3. Why hadn't I noticed this before considering all the times I have used this station? It saved a lot of walking. I recognised where I was and it was a very short walk from the RER platform for the connecting train to Paris Nord. I shall certainly look out for that next time, whenever that turns out to be. The RER was pulling in as I descended the steps to the platform and I didn't have to wait at all.

At the Gare du Nord I had to lug my suitcase up long flights of steps, since no escalators or lifts were operating, to a concourse that would eventually lead to the mainline station (les Grandes Lignes). As usual I stood to get my bearings. I have made so many wrong turns ascending from the Métro or RER at Paris Nord that I no longer know which is the right direction for the familiarity associated with all the wrong directions I have taken. I guess I looked like a newbie because I was approached by a man who wanted to offer help or so he said. He spoke a little English because, I gathered, he had a wife ... there may have been a connection. He showed me where to go and I was in very unfamiliar territory by the time he led me to some more ticket machines and told me I had to buy another ticket to be able get out into the mainline station. This journey had cost me enough extra money already and I was certainly not intending to buy unnecessary tickets. I've never had to buy them before. I am currently still slightly haunted by the fading memory of the hurt look on his face as I thanked him, but took no heed of his advice, rather walking away and trusting my past experience of getting to the upper levels of the main station. I managed that perfectly with no extra payment required although I did have to lug my suitcase up yet more stairs, a lot of stairs. The exit gates to the Métro had all been left open at Paris Nord. Weird, but not the first weird thing I'd experienced during the day.

At least the escalator up to the Eurostar check-in was operating, unlike the biometric gates for French Border Control. My passport is one containing the appropriate data and usually works. Yesterday it didn't. It is claustrophobic enough being hemmed in by closed gates ahead and behind, without waiting for what seems like forever for the gates in front to slide apart after the scanning process has finished, without said gates remaining firmly fermée and the written instruction to "report to the border police" being displayed. Rubber hoses? Latex gloves? Sometimes it is hard to remember that travelling by air is far, far worse and much more dehumanising. The lone border policeman scrutinised my features very slowly and for a very long time. I suppose he is trained to recognise faces that are hidden by bohemian beards that have sprouted since a passport photograph was taken. He seemed quite undecided about me, but eventually let me through. In contrast the UK border control machine round the corner had no difficulty recognising my features as belonging to a long lost son of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The gates slid open to let me through with only the most cursory examination of my irises.  After that it was the metal-detecting archways, scanners and x-ray machines. I pride myself on getting through these without having to spread-eagle for an officer to pat me up and down and I managed that bit. There was, though, a holdup in the queue to retrieve our belongings beyond the magic archway. I was dreading having to open my suitcase and start taking things out. I had packed it very carefully. It was very heavy, very full, though there were hardly any clothes. I'm sure they see a lot stranger items than a computer and a lot of artisanal vegan chocolate. I keep a full wardrobe of clothes at P's apartment although strictly speaking that should be several wardrobes and, apart from the shirts on hangers on a coat stand and a dress rail, my clothes are actually in cardboard boxes. I was relieved that I was not, this time, the cause of the delay. It was a man in front of me whose suitcase needed to be examined in closer detail. I wonder what he was carrying ...

The Eurostar departures lounge was almost deserted. There was one very unkempt man slumped over on a bench looking as though he had been there since the opening of the Channel Tunnel, but very few others. I have never seen this space with so few people in it. Owing to the virus situation none of the food outlets were open either, so I am glad I had salvaged some "breadlets" from P's freezer that morning. There wasn't long to wait until we were called to board the train for Sanponcra Antaernational and it was true, there was hardly anyone else in carriage number twelve. Naturally there was someone sitting in the aisle seat next to my allotted window seat - unbelieveable, or it would have been had this been anyone else's life story. There were plenty of other seats so I told the man there was no need to move. I would find somewhere else to sit. I am so pleased I did. Some time into the journey he began cough constantly and when I looked round he was wearing a surgical mask and looking distinctly sweaty. That was an uncharacteristically lucky escape. Under normal circumstances I would have been trapped up against the window with him in the adjoining seat sharing his germs with extreme generosity.

The train left Paris and arrived in London to time. The evidence of the nearly empty train spread out before me as I strolled along the platform normally tightly packed with passengers jostling to get past security before being allowed out into the Muggle-world of the St Pancras shopping mall. Somewhere close by a man was singing loudly to the accompaniment of one of the free pianos and all the shops, including the food outlets, were open. What a contrast with France. The same was true when I crossed the road to King's Cross for my final train home. The day had one more concern saved up for me. My one-month return rail ticket had expired the day before, so I had to buy another one.

I bought a box of Brazilian black beans and rice from Leon and sat at one of the outside tables to eat it (using the bamboo cutlery I carry with me everywhere) before heading to Platform 0 for the last train of the day home. Is there another railway station anywhere in the world that has a Platform Zero and a Platform Nine-and-three-quarters? There's something about the promises evoked at King's Cross I have liked since I was a child. If anything, it is even better these days.

So today, one day later, I am sitting outside in my outdoor shelter from the rain, next to the boat, typing up this account of my experiences yesterday watching the occasional passing swan, moorhen or kingfisher. I think it's time to go and light the fire.

St Pancras International at 6.30pm on the day France closed down.

Of Influential Albums 7 - Panorama de musique concrète by Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer

Some time in 1970 I went to St Albans Music Centre one day to buy some guitar strings. I was also on the lookout for some "electronic music". I already had one album of purely electronically generated sound, but I wanted to find something with a more organic feel to it. John Fahey's album , "Requia" had introduced me to "concrete music" so when I saw this album, even though I knew nothing about the composers or their music, I bought it. It was also a curious package and it stuck out further on my record shelf than all the other records. That bit made it annoying!

What a revelation. For a long time I could not or would not listen to Pierre Henry's dramatic cantata, "Le Voile d'Orphée" at night. It just was too emotional an experience. I've since purchased more of Henry's music. It continues to amaze. I shan't list the tracks. In that very 1950s way, they are listed on the front cover,

Of Influential Albums 6 - Anthems In Eden by Shirley And Dolly Collins

This album was pivotal in expanding my musical knowledge. I learned many of the songs and remember getting into trouble for singing "Nellie The Milkmaid" at a church "talent evening"! The "bishop" told me I ought to give up singing "worldly songs". He'd be horrified at some of the songs I've written since I hope ... like the evangelical pastor who rushed away in disgust and disbelief at a festival last year. That was okay, he wasn't invited to harass people the way he and his congregation did anyway.

Importantly for me though was that, not only did "Anthems In Eden" inform my growing interest in traditional English folk song, but it was probably how I was introduced to the music of David Munro and the Early Music Consort of London, who soon became a hero to me. It was after buying and listening over and over to "Anthems In Eden" that I found my old Dolmetsch descent recorder and started to tootle again for the first time since I left primary school some three years earlier. I used the recorder then occasionally in the bands I played in and I have used it even more occasionally since. I may have to put that right if I can get my chops up again. I do have some very nice recorders that really ought to be used more often.

Later, at college, I took up the recorder as my main instrument. I began as a non-reader, but put in a lot of work to get through all the grades. Unfortunately teachers I engaged often died soon after. I hope it wasn't the strain of having me as a pupil. Through my first recorder teacher at college, the wonderfully patient and encouraging Margaret Horton, I met the director of an early arts performance company that consisted of some thirty instrumental musicians, singers, dancers, actors, costume designers/makers and makers of historical instruments. The company recreated Tudor "court entertainments", usually in stately homes and other authentic settings and less authentic but prestigious concert halls as well as medieval performances that mostly happened in cathedrals. By the time I was 22 I had performed in the Purcell Room, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitehall Banqueting Hall and cathedrals up and down the land. I carried on singing, dancing and percussing with this company for many years. It was a wrench to have to give it up when I moved too far away to attend rehearsals regularly.

Some years after qualifying as a school teacher I found another recorder teacher, Dale Noble, who took me on and coached me through the practical element of taking my "letters". It would take me a very long time these days to work up the Sammartini Recorder Concerto or the Lennox Berkeley Recorder Sonata again, but that experience all began with this record. These days, of course, most of my available practice time is given over to Marshlander repertoire, although just occasionally I grab a recorder ... 😎

Original 1969 tracks

1- "A song-story" (A Beginning/ A Meeting/A Courtship/ A Denying/ A Forsaking/ A Dream/ A Leaving-taking/ An Awakening/ A New Beginning)

The songs are: "Searching for Lambs", "The Wedding Song", "The Blacksmith", "Our Captain Cried", "Lowlands", "Pleasant and Delightful", "Whitsun Dance", "The Staines Morris" All traditional apart from "Whitsun Dance" (words by A J Marshall)

2- "Rambleaway" (Traditional)

3- "Ca' the yowes" (Robert Burns)

4- "God Dog" (Robin Williamson)

5- "Bonny Cuckoo" (Traditional)

6- "Nellie the Milkmaid" (Traditional)

7- "Gathering Rushes in the Month of May" (Traditional)

8- "The Gower Wassail" (Traditional)

Of Influential Albums 5 - Oh Really!? by Mike Cooper

There may be some surprise that there is no traditional folk music album in my list, specially considering the importance of folk song and dance in my work. I decided to exclude any of these because I did not encounter them initially through recorded music, but rather inherited folk song and country dance as a child through participating at school. I learned many English folk songs from mouth to ear and we danced the country dances of England and occasionally other parts of the UK. We were still part of a continuity that had probably received a boost from the work of pioneers like Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Maud Karpeles earlier in the twentieth century. As I became interested in rock music I lost sight of the songs of my childhood. I had to rediscover my folk heritage through folk rock, beginning of course with Fairport Convention who were essentially a rock band that bridged the worlds of Bob Dylan and the singer-songwriters, back to English traditional music. I would guess that people like Billy Bragg, Jim Moray and Sam Lee may have introduced or reintroduced later generations to their own culture in the same way.

The same is not true of the blues. I encountered blues initially through the white British Blues explosion of the sixties through the music of the Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Cream, John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack and any number of electric blues bands, but it was not until I heard and bought Mike Cooper's first album, "Oh Really!?, that I found myself confronted with the raw acoustic sound of the country blues. Because of Mike Cooper I went back to looking up the names of the composers of the electric blues songs in my record collection, which led me to seek out and listen to old recordings of Son House, Robert Johnson and on the way discovering Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGee, Lightnin' Hopkins and any number of other performers. My learning journey was an analogue, pre-internet version of surfing the web. It was a revelation and it helped me put into perspective the electric music I already knew and loved. I guess it was probably through being woken up by Mike Cooper to this kind of sound that I was aware in time to be able to see Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee play live two or three times and Son House play during a final UK tour. Strangely, for an album I found so formative, all the songs on this album were credited Mike Cooper except the first two. I found that weird because Bessie Smith recorded Electric Chair Blues in 1927 and a song with the same title and similar melody and lyrics to "You're Gonna Be Sorry" was recorded by Mississippi Fred McDowell in 1959 ... Oh Really!?

I once played my grandmother a recording of Son House singing, "Pearline" and asked her if she listened to, or liked, "the blues" when she was younger. "Blues? Is that what you call it now? We used to call it jazz," was her response. I'm so glad I asked. Her reply was a simple statement, but with it she accidentally opened another world to me.

1. Death Letter (Son House)

2. Bad Luck Blues (Blind Boy Fuller)

3. Maggie Campbell (Mike Cooper)

4. Leadhearted Blues (Mike Cooper)

5. Four Ways (Mike Cooper)

6. Poor Little Annie (Mike Cooper)

7. Tadpole Blues (Mike Cooper)

8. Divinity Blues (Mike Cooper)

9. You're Gonna Be Sorry (Mike Cooper)

10. Electric Chair (Mike Cooper)

11. Crow Jane (Mike Cooper)

12. Paper Rag (Mike Cooper)

13. Saturday Blues (Mike Cooper)

Of Influential Albums 4 - The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death by John Fahey

To my great regret I never saw John Fahey play live. I have several John Fahey albums, many of which I bought in the early 1970s. By 1975 I think I had nine of his albums. My friend, Simon J (who now presents "Simon J's Jazz Mash", weekly on Scotland's Radio 242)   also had nine John Fahey records, but he had a completely different nine.  Every so often I buy another John Fahey recording, but sadly he died in 2001 at the age of just 61. He also wrote and published books and he painted. Some of the books gave the impression of being autobiographical, but, being John Fahey, one could never be sure! His writing throws liberal doses of fiction among the facts and it is hard to tell which is which. He did write a definitive biography and study of the music of Charlie Patton, which earned him his master's degree. He was also responsible for tracking down and recording long-lost blues musician, Bukka White. John Fahey was a complete enigma. Despite considerable popularity among 60s alternative types, he despised the whole hippie culture. It was a connection that must have been hard to shake off because, like many, I first came across his music on John Peel's Perfumed Garden broadcasts from the pirate ship Radio London and his music was also played on the distinctly underground station, Radio Geronimo.

John Fahey mostly made his living buying and selling blues and old time records before he grew in demand as a performing musician. A few years ago I was able to find and buy his first album, which he released on his own label in 1959. It was a shock to realise how much better he became as a guitarist after that album. He sometimes described his style of playing as American Primitive, but that didn't tell the whole story. Listening to John Fahey one can hear a massive range of influences. It was through John Fahey that I first encountered Musique Concrète as well as the music of Charles Ives. Early on he was given the nickname, "Blind Joe Death" by fellow blues fans. The fictional Blind Joe Death featured on some of his early releases, including this record. 

My Uncle George loaned me a Zenith cello guitar in 1969 (now back in my possession fifty years later) and, every Wednesday night, my father drove me over to Luton to chug through pop songs from sheet music with two other guitarists and the bass player whom he knew through his church connections.  That was how I started to play guitar - the first song I chugged through was Procul Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". We also played lots of early Beatles songs. One of our little group, D, became a very close friend and we are still friends to this day. D worked hard on his guitar playing and was soon far ahead of the rest of us. He was teaching himself fingerpicking technique through listening to Davy (or sometimes Davey) Graham, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn records. John Fahey became my guitar tutor of choice. "The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death" was the first John Fahey record I bought and I realised that I had a good enough ear to begin to pick up what he was playing on many of the tracks. I learned to play "Brenda's Blues" at first. Then I managed to pick up passably recognisable versions of "Beautiful Linda Getchell", "Tell Her to Come Back Home" , "101 Is a Hard Road to Travel", "How Green Was My Valley", "Old Southern Medley", "Come Back Baby", and "Poor Boy". My proudest achievement, though, was working out how to get my fingers to pick in 3/4 time and being able to play Fahey's version of "Bicycle Built for Two". I never really got into the multiple tunings except for managing to play the tunes that required a bottleneck. I suppose I was still working on being able to play these tunes as well as some of the others (particularly from later albums "The Yellow Princess" and "Requia") when I really should have been studying for my 'O' levels. I achieved somewhat modest results with my 'O' level exams. Guitar felt more important. I'm still learning and trying to improve after fifty years. Incidentally, D was responsible for my earliest performances in folk clubs when we wrote and played for a while as a duo. We were also best men at each other's weddings. He's still married and lives in the USA.

Side one

1. "Beautiful Linda Getchell" (Fahey, L. Mayne Smith) – 1:50
2. "Orinda-Moraga" – 3:55
3. "I Am the Resurrection" – 3:00
4. "On the Sunny Side of the Ocean" – 3:00
5. "Tell Her to Come Back Home" (Fahey, Uncle Dave Macon) – 2:45
6. "My Station Will Be Changed After Awhile [sic]" – 2:02
7. "101 Is a Hard Road to Travel" (Fahey, Macon) – 2:17

Side two

1. "How Green Was My Valley" – 2:15
2. "Bicycle Built for Two" – 1:10 (arrangement of the 1892 song, "Daisy Bell")
3. "The Death of the Clayton Peacock" – 2:52
4. "Brenda's Blues" – 1:45
5. "Old Southern Medley" (Fahey, Stephen Foster, Charlie Patton, Daniel Decatur Emmett) – 6:08
6. "Come Back Baby" – 2:15
7. "Poor Boy" (Fahey, Bukka White) – 2:25
8. "Saint Patrick's Hymn" (based on "Saint Patrick's Breastplate") – 0:55

😎Someone out there might recognise that I plagiarised the title of my essays on this year's Venice adventures from John Fahey's second album "Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes" recorded in 1963 ...

Of Influential Albums 3 - Folkjokeopus by Roy Harper

"Folkjokeopus" was Roy Harper's third album. It is pretty much a given that there would be a Roy Harper album in this list. I had not heard of him before I saw him live at the Royal Festival Hall in 1968 supporting Tyrannosaurus Rex (as were David Bowie and Stefan Grossman). After that I saw him many times over the next few years. His guitar style was different from that of most of the other acoustic musicians I followed. Some of this was, I believe, influenced by playing the oud during time spent in Morocco. I suspect Davy Graham may have also been an influence. He used open tunings and played extended improvisatory passages, particularly when playing live. "One For All" on this album is a great example of that. His song introductions were often quite extensive and rambling, which I liked too, although I understand if there were people in the audience who became impatient to hear the music! He engaged with the audience. His songs plotted a course that had been set by Bob Dylan. His lyrics often expressed an antipathy to authority, which of course was very attractive to a thirteen year old rebel. He sang with his native NW English accent and neither tried to emulate the American accent of so many singers at the time nor the bleating of the traditionalists. I loved the way he was able to slip into his falsetto voice, ("She's The One"). He was angry and it showed. He railed against authority, he sang about sex, he drove a coach and horses through stupidity.

I love "Folkjokeopus", still listen to it and it is the one that has so far probably had the biggest influence on my work. The first album of his that I had bought was the preceding one, "Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith", and having encountered him live as a soloist I wasn't keen on the orchestrations on that album. This one is less densely textured. Where other musicians were employed it was more a band format than an orchestral one. I taught myself to play some of the songs on "Folkjokeopus" and set about the monumental task of learning the eighteen-minute epic, "McGoohan's Blues". I can't claim that I understood it, but the song touched me somewhere at a very deep level. I never was able to commit it to memory. I saw Roy Harper play in London a few months ago. He was well into his seventies, but his voice was still amazingly strong and I was very impressed that he only forgot one verse of "McGoohan's Blues" - quite an achievement! I aspire to be able to create something of similar depth and quality. Some of the chord sequences used on "Folkjokeopus" found their way into some of my teenage attempts to write songs. I guess many an aspiring songwriter is a plagiarist in their early attempts.

I spent many happy hours reading the tiny writing on the graffiti style back of the sleeve. Apart from "McGoohan's Blues" my favourite songs on this album included "She's The One", "The Composer of Life", "One For All" and "Exercising Some Control". I wish I'd remembered that Clem Cattini played drums on "Folkjokeopus". I met Clem a few months ago and we had the opportunity for quite a long discussion about some of the work he'd done. Had I remembered I would have talked to him about this album for sure.

Side one 1. "Sgt. Sunshine" 3:04 2. "She's the One" 6:55 3. "In the Time of Water" 2:16 4. "Composer of Life" 2:26 5. "One for All" 8:11 Side two 6. "Exercising Some Control" 2:50 7. "McGoohan's Blues" 17:55 8. "Manana" 4:20