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That time of year

January 16, 2022 in Life as we know it | Permalink

It is that time of year when I customarily release into the wild a couple of postings – one looking back to the year recently ended and the other looking forward to that just beginning. This is a device that I use to measure the accomplishments of the past twelve months against the aims that were set out in the equivalent missives of a year ago – before setting new targets for the year ahead.

In the light of all that has happened over the last two years (most of which has been completely without our control) I have decided to write but a single post this year. This reflects the fact that the pandemic has prevented us from doing many of the things that we would have like to have done, whilst also rendering pointless the pursuit of many flights of fancy in an era which promises to continue to be as uncertain as it has proved thus far.

Here was our basic wish-list from last January – with progress reports in red:

  • To get to see family and friends – face to face! – Well – we did manage some, but always with the now usual restrictions
  • To be able to entertain again – just a couple of (admittedly most pleasant) summer occasions in the garden
  • To dine out – again – just a couple of times and with the now customary precautions
  • To see some live theatre – nothing! – zilch! – zip!…
  • To enjoy some live music – one event only – Barney Bentall’s Cariboo Express in November
  • To attend a live sporting event (preferably Rugby!) – you are – as they say – having a laugh!
  • To be able to travel… anywhere – a fraught over-nighter in Kamloops and four nights in Vancouver!…

You might be able to detect the tone of disappointment in my words…

In addition – this time last year I mooted the idea of carrying out some major renovations to our basement. That idea – apart from some relatively minor upgrades (replacing the remaining windows – replacing the alarm system – purchasing a new TV) were killed off by the ridiculous hike in the costs of building materials caused by pandemic-related shortages.

“But what of 2022?” – I hear you cry. Well – let us start out with the same list as last year – and see if we can do any better this time around.

In addition:

  • It is our fervent wish that we get to travel to the UK during the coming summer. Whether or not this happens will depend entirely on the course that the pandemic takes on both sides of the pond over the coming months. We are not holding our collective breaths.
  • We will carry out some further domestic upgrades – air-conditioning to guard against future ‘heat domes’ – a new hot water system so that we can console ourselves with even longer baths when things don’t work out as we would wish.
  • Normalised work! The Girl would like to be able get back out into the wider world and to visit clients face to face again – not to mention paying a nostalgic visit to her office! I would like to teach students who can actually see my face as I do so.
  • More music! One positive over the last year is that I have been able to write more than enough new songs for the Chanteuse and I to put together another ‘album’. We are currently recording her vocals on these tracks and we are making good progress. Look for further pronouncements in the coming months.

In general – we both hope that 2022 at least starts to see a (safe) return to some sort of normal.

We wish the same for all gentle readers also…

 

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Back on the tracks

December 1, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Regular patrons of these marginalia will doubtless greet as old friends those posts that recur – in some form or another – on a regular basis. Into this distinguished category fall the annual November reports of our most recent outing on the Cariboo Express, courtesy of the engineer in chief – Barney Bentall.

We enjoy these evenings (in support of the Sidney Lions Foodbank) so much that we are quick to purchase tickets each year as soon as they become available. This we did as per usual last year (2020).

On that occasion, of course, the concert did not take place – for reasons that require no further elucidation. The dates were once postponed – and then postponed again. This was deeply sad but necessary. The run-in to Christmas just wasn’t the same without this jolly evening out, but we were not prepared to take any risks that might endanger our (or other people’s) health and well-being.

The final postponement of the event resulted in us being offered the chance to let the tickets spill over to become valid for this year’s equivalent pageant – and fortunately this time the precautions were deemed to be adequate (vaccine passports and photo IDs thoroughly checked) and we were able once again to gather at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney – well be-masked and well-behaved – for a most welcome live performance.

It really was quite moving to suddenly find oneself once again in the proximity of real live musicians and singers – and, of course, in a real audience. An object lesson – I think – in the need that we all (many of us anyway!) have to experience live performance… something else of which we clearly need a regular shot! A good evening was quite clearly had by all!

At this juncture we do not have anything much else of a similar nature in the calendar and – with new COVID variants looming – who knows how things will pan out or when we will next get to sit in a theatre watching a live show.

We are (said he through gritted teeth) determined to remain optimistic…

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Stephen Sondheim

November 27, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Stephen Sondheim

1930 – 2021

RIP

 

Sad news yesterday of the passing of the last of the four iconic creators of what is almost certainly the best musical ever conceived – West Side Story. Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents were all in their late thirties at the point at which the show was created in the late 1950s, whereas Sondheim was the baby of the quartet at just 26 years of age.

I was slightly (though entirely unreasonably) shocked to learn that Sondheim was 91. Time really has flown! West Side Story has been with us for pretty much all of my life and – though I have not myself been involved in a production – I have been close to those who have on numerous occasions.

Sondheim is also, of course, renowned for many other groundbreaking productions in music theatre in addition to West Side Story (Company, Follies, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, A Little Night Music etc). Others far more qualified will write far better valedictions than can I; and I commend them to you.

Way back in the mid 1980s I saw Sondheim give a most erudite platform at the National Theatre in London, to accompany the National’s production of Sunday in the Park with George. If ever I find myself musing that his work tends to be rather too cerebral (and clever!) and not to carry a sufficiently direct emotional charge I remind myself that he also wrote the immortal ‘Send in the Clowns‘.

‘Nuff said. Respect!

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Nothing without work

October 24, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work”

Emile Zola

I am currently reading “The Gift”, by the estimable Lewis Hyde. I shall have more to say about the book once I have finished it, but already all manner of fascinating thoughts and notions have been triggered thereby.

Sadly, as befits my increasingly elderly status, I cannot now recall exactly how I came to the book in the first place, though I feel certain that it must have been referenced in something else that I was investigating. That is normally the way these things happen – to me in any case. I do know that I was greatly attracted by this quote from the foreword by Canadian icon – Margaret Atwood:

”[A] classic… If you want to write, paint, sing, compose, act or make films – read ‘The Gift’”

One motif from the book has already attracted my attention and formed itself into the outline of a song. I certainly did not set out with this in mind, but the muse – as we all surely know – works in wondrous and unexpected ways…

…as became all the more apparent late one night last week.

I find quite frequently that one of more elements of a new song will unfurl themselves relatively rapidly and without my having any real idea as to how this has happened. At this point I might well get stuck – with no idea how the piece will proceed from its temporary conclusion.

My normal procedure – with a view to jump-starting proceedings – is to play/sing repeatedly that which I have already written, in the hope that the next part of the composition will suddenly reveal itself to me by emerging organically from the elements that I already have. This sometimes has the desired effect but as often as not simply results in my straining way too hard for a result and ending up with nothing of any use.

Now I am a night owl. The Girl heads for bed reasonably early but I often get in a couple of hours work before I follow her. This I was doing the other night, in my search for a suitable chorus for the new track. I could feel that my efforts were going nowhere and – having an early start the following morning – I decided to call it a day.

I shut everything down in the studio – doused the lights and tip-toed upstairs in the dark. No sooner than I had emerged onto our main floor than the whole chorus arrived in my head – out of nowhere! Not only did I get the melody and the phrasing but also the harmonic progression and half of the words.

Now – how did that happen!

Of course – to ensure that my flash of inspiration was not lost to posterity I was obliged to scuttle back downstairs, to power everything up again and to rapidly commit this latest gift to my recording software – lest I should forget it again overnight…

What a wondrous thing is the creative process!

Thank you…!

 

 

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Dreaming and doing

September 6, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.”

Bono

Bono is not wrong, of course, and it is little short of a miracle that what – when I started writing and playing way back in the very early seventies – would once have required a lot of money on studio fees and equipment and such, can now be achieved with a simple electronic device to which a great many people have access.

That having been said, musicians (and other creatives) tend to be restless souls – always stretching themselves and grasping at some notion of perfection that is, by definition, well out of reach.

This is by way of admitting that the splendid new window was not all that was added to my little studio over the summer – and that the round of domestic improvements on which I commented in my last post also included some other tweaks inside the studio itself.

This is what it looked like when I first set it up:

…and this is what it looks like now:

Quite apart from there now being rather more ‘stuff’ in the room than there was before – and not to ignore the splendid new rug – there are now several more layers of acoustic treatment (bass traps and suchlike) in an attempt to contain some of the wilder room nodes and to achieve something like the flat response that makes for a good recording studio.

The main reason for these endeavours, of course, is to enable us to record the Chanteuse’s voice in all its glory in the best possible environment – now that we can finally work together in the same space again. We don’t have a vocal booth, but we do have a vocal ‘corner’:

This is what it looks like from the Chanteuse’s angle:

We don’t normally record her with multiple microphones but we were carrying out some comparative tests in our endless search for the perfect sound.

We look forward to sharing the results!

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Charlie Watts

August 25, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Charlie Watts
1941 – 2021
RIP

Charlie_Watts_Berlinale_2008.jpg: Siebbi derivative work: Miss-Sophie, Charlie Watts Berlinale 2008 cropped, CC BY 3.0

A less-happy side-effect of being gifted a moderately long life (and one of course with many years yet to run – one hopes!) is that as one ages one increasingly observes the passing not just of those who are close and loved, but also of major ‘public’ figures whose achievements and even whose simple existence has throughout the years touched the lives of so many. In this online journal I like to acknowledge those whose very passing, in my view, changes the world as we know it.

I was never the biggest Rolling Stones fan but I certainly acknowledge their genius within their field. At least two of their works are, as far as I am concerned, timeless classics: ‘Gimme Shelter‘ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What you Want‘.

I saw them once – at the old Wembley Stadium in London. Jagger was extraordinary but as a whole they somewhat underwhelmed. Even in that show, however, I couldn’t help but recognise the essential contribution that Charlie Watts made to the band’s sound. There are many technically gifted drummers in the world but there are few whose style is so distinctive that – even when maintaining a simple back-beat – they are instantly recognisable. Charlie Watts was numbered amongst that elite.

The many tributes already published make it clear that Watts was a thoroughly likeable, modest and self-effacing man who contrived to make it relatively unscathed through the mayhem that seemed to exemplify the Stones existence back in the latter part of the last century.

Can the Stones continue touring without Charlie Watts? Should they? Who knows – but he will be sadly missed by many…

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Back in business

August 17, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Whereas the Chanteuse and I were quite delighted last year to have discovered a method of remote working that enabled Anam Danu to record (in real time!) our second collection of songs – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – whilst safely ensconced within our own creative spaces, we knew at the time that it was unlikely to be an optimal solution – and certainly not in the longer term.

It is perhaps because we are both a little ‘old school’ (we like to work face to face – to hear properly and without any annoying delays what we are doing – to not be subject to random audio artifacts – to indulge in all of the essential non-verbal communication that is the norm for human interaction) that everything seemed a bit of a struggle. Using the Internet as a recording tool is indeed a splendid boon to which, of course, previous generations did not have access, but it is far from being perfect.

We were extremely happy that we got to make an album safely in the midst of a pandemic; we hope not to have to do so again.

The really good news is that as a result of recent relaxations in restrictions – thanks largely to the Canadian vaccination program – this last week we were able to start working together again for the first time in a year and a half – here in my studio. We are already well on our way to having a decent collection of new material and we are now able to start recording it in earnest.

I think a good sized ‘Hoorah!’ is in order…

Now – should any gentle readers wish to be kept in the loop with regard to the release of new material, navigate to the Anam Danu website and enter your email address in the box at the bottom of our contact page and you will be kept informed of the latest developments.

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Thank you…

May 4, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe Chanteuse and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those gentle readers of this journal who have listened to – have downloaded – or have even purchased (the old fashioned way) our album release of earlier this year – “Winter Blue and Evergreen”.

We are also most grateful to those who have let us know what they think of the music. We have received many kind compliments and thoughtful responses, which certainly makes our efforts feel well worthwhile.

Thank you…

Lest you think that we might be sitting back and indulging in a creative vacation (in lieu of the more conventional kind currently unavailable) please be assured that we are ‘buzzing away in the hive’. We have been busy writing and preparing new material. Since Christmas we have been working on a number of new tracks and will shortly have finished the composition and arrangement of seven new songs.

We are also preparing for the most important element of the process; the recording of the Chanteuse’s vocals. We would dearly love to be able to record face to face again rather than having to do so across the Internet, but reluctantly accept that that may not be possible in the short term. These later stages of the pandemic might just prove to be the most frustrating of all, until we have a clearer picture of how things will pan out.

Do please keep watching this space (or check in or sign up to our website) – for further information regarding the availability of our new creations.

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Under the radar

April 2, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/friis-236854/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=333574">Philip Friis</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=333574">Pixabay</a>Well now… I figure that I owe all good, gentle and most patient readers something like half of a story – and as I aim to be a man of my word…

No recaps! If you want to catch up click here to revisit the last post and thus glean all there is to know up to this point; I’m just going to plough straight on ahead.

So – ‘Go West’ were recording in Gary, Dave and Rod’s studio, with Gary producing and Dave doing the synth programming and keyboard work. This was the early 80s, the era of synth-pop, the which had come about because of the advent of such seminal keyboards as the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, the Roland Jupiter 8, the Yamaha DX7, the Korg M1 (of which I still have one which sits next to me as I write) and the ground-breaking Fairlight – so Dave’s particular talents were suddenly much in demand.

Gary and Dave worked on demo versions of two ‘Go West’ tracks – “Call Me” and “We Close Our Eyes” – which so impressed the record companies to which they were submitted that there was virtually a bidding war to sign the duo. ‘Go West’ became – for a while – pretty big in Europe (if not in North America) and toured there and as far afield as Japan. Needing augmentation for touring and recording they took on Gary and Dave as ‘permanent’ members. I remember Dave sending me a postcard from Japan when they were touring there.

As with many such genres synth-pop slowly faded from musical fashionability and ‘Go West’ faded with it – though the various constituent members are still working as far as I can tell (as would seem to be the case with many 80s bands).

Now – you may ask – why do I bring this all up right now? The answer is that – as mentioned before – the pandemic and associated lock-downs has led to a certain introspection and backward-looking – a certain affectionate wallowing in nostalgia, if you like. Long story, short – having lost touch with Dave at some point in the mid-80s I recently spent some time on the InterWebNet trying to find out what happened him. As is often the way in such circumstances I discovered some things that I had not previously known.

The band that Gary, Dave and Rob had formed back in the early 80s was called ‘Radar’. At the point at which they were swept up in the whole ‘Go West’ circus they were approaching the end of recording their own first album which was to have been titled “Lost in the Atlantic“. With everything else that was happening to them at the time that work was put on the back burner – and subsequently the album was never released…

…until now! This very year – just over a month ago – it finally came out in a limited release on a specialist label – Escape Music. You can read all about it here – and should you be an enthusiast for mid-80s synth-pop you might just care to give it a listen.

On a personal note it seems to me a somewhat strange synchronicity that – having lost touch with Dave at around the time this music was being created – I should next think to track him down (virtually!) at the point that it was finally released nearly four decades later.

Funny old world – ain’t it?

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What goes around – 2

March 29, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

As promised in my last but one post – an anecdote with a strong element of nostalgia… for me at any rate.

Back in the day (promising start – though we need not concern ourselves as to exactly which day) I played in a variety of bands in and around London in the UK. My very first band – in which all concerned cut their teeth as musicians – stayed together for around eight years, which really is pretty good going first time out. Amongst our other achievements we became connected to a Young People’s theatre company for whom we were invited to write a musical… and then another… and another… By the end of the 70s we had played our part in the creation of three musicals – two of which had been taken to the Edinburgh Fringe.

By that time the band had reached the point at which it was clearly time to go our separate ways. As a farewell ‘tour’ we managed to land a week of gig bookings back in Edinburgh at the Fringe Club and a night Upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s in London. This was to be our swan-song.

Now, at that point there were two brothers in the band who both played keyboards, but who were – for reasons I do not now recall – unable to make the trip north. We decided to do that which bands in the UK were wont to do in such situations – we advertised in the Melody Maker for someone to fill in. The ad was answered by a keen young chap who will for the purposes of this piece go by the name ‘Dave’ (for that was his name!). He was young (about seventeen I think) and precociously talented. He was also a really nice guy.

He duly came to Edinburgh with us – played Ronnie Scott’s with us – was appropriately sad when everything came to an end and we resolved to stay in touch – the which for a while we duly did.

Now Dave had left school by this point and was looking for somewhere to work. As it happened I was a regular gawker (and occasional customer) at my local music shop in Surrey and one day I saw advertised there the position of keyboard salesman. I drew this to Dave’s attention; he applied and got the job.

The guitar salesman at the store was a chap called Gary. He was somewhat older than Dave and had ambitions in both production and to play in a band. He and Dave and a vocalist/bassist called Rod quickly started working together. They built themselves a small studio (a lot more difficult in those less technical days) and set about writing and recording. They attracted some interest and soon gained a publishing contract.

At about this time various other local bands started to avail themselves both of the studio and of Gary’s production talents. One of these outfits was a duo that went by the name ‘Go West’.

Now – this story is clearly going to make for quite a long post, so I think it best to split it here and to finish it off in what I promise will definitely be the very next post…

See you then…

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