Monday Long Song

I was very sad to hear of Danny Thompson's passing a couple of weeks back, at the age of 86. Unless you've tried particularly hard to avoid him, it's difficult to imagine that you don't have something or other in your collection featuring this extraordinary double bassist, whose career goes back as far as the early 1960s. I was fortunate enough to see him play with Richard Thompson on a number of occasions, with whom he also recorded, but he's also all over records by the likes of John Martyn, Nick Drake, Talk Talk, Tim Buckley, Kate Bush, The Incredible String Band and, of course, Pentangle, amongst numerous others. His first appearance in my own record collection occurred as far back 1972, when I picked up Rod Stewart's marvellous 'Every Picture Tells a Story' LP and he popped up again in 1974 on T.Rex's 'Zinc Alloy & the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow'. These days I have any number of records featuring Danny's talents sitting of my shelves, including a couple by fellow Pentangler Bert Jansch. Chief among them is 1978's 'Avocet', an instrumental paean to a selection of  various sea and wading birds. The title track is just sublime.

Bert Jansch - Avocet

Monday Long Song

For a period during the 1970s, Sweet were second only in my pop affections to the mighty T.Rex. The band's run of Chinnichap hit singles and the string of self-written hard rock nuggets tucked away on the flipsides, were chewed over and eagerly devoured by me and my music loving pals back in the day. One old school chum and I managed to see Sweet at The Rainbow twice in their 1973 glam pomp, their final UK show with the classic line-up at Hammersmith Odeon in 1978, plus a three piece Sweet show at The Lyceum in 1981, the last concert I ever attended with that particular old mucker as life gradually drew us in separate directions. About 10 years ago, 30 years after losing contact altogether, my pal and I reconnected, thanks to the miracle of the internet. We exchange Christmas cards, birthday greetings and the occasional email, but in spite of living less than 40 miles from each other, we've yet to actually meet up again.

Had he lived beyond his tragically short 51 years, Sweet's lead singer Brian Connolly would have turned 80 yesterday.

Sweet - Healer 

Monday Long Song

A new, all singing all dancing, 50th anniversary super-deluxe reissue of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis arrives this week, even though, in just over a month, the album will actually turn 51 years of age. At this stage of the game, the significant anniversaries pile up at an alarming rate I can tell you. My copy of the LP was one of a select group to survive the punk rock record collection purge of the late 1970s and indeed I subsequently purchased it twice more on CD, in original and remastered configurations. The CDs have left the building now (as indeed they all will eventually), but my original 51 year old LP with the Charisma mad hatter label, a half a century's worth of accumulated surface noise and slightly ring worn sleeve will see me through this life, that's for sure. 

As I listen to the album while typing these words, the memories of of old loves, half forgotten friends and high school high jinks echo down the years. Isn't it miraculous that music can do that?

Genesis - In the Cage

Friday Photo(s) #69

My gaff is in Suffolk, though only just. The River Waveney flows about 100 yards from my front door and this ancient waterway defines the county's boundary with Norfolk. Across the footbridge that spans the river is a substantial green space, protected in perpetuity for the town, even though, technically, it sits just outside the town. I use the meadow regularly as either a cut through, a brief circular walk or a place to stop and recalibrate while watching the river flow. To quote Courtney Barnett, sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit.

A vantage point just before the footbridge offers the opportunity of an uninterrupted view along a stretch of the river and it's one I seldom turn down. Here's that view in spring, summer and winter. It never gets old.

Brian Eno - By This River

Monday Long Song

Mal Waldron's 'Candy Girl' has been on my look-out-for list for a very long time, though, with original copies changing hands for silly money, I'd long since stopped holding my breath for an affordable one to appear within grabbing distance. Waldron released upwards of 100 albums under his own name between 1957 and 2002, almost exclusively as a jazz pianist. 1975's 'Candy Girl', however, finds him exiled in Europe, playing electric keyboards backed by the funktastic Lafayette Afro Rock Band, whose music would later be sampled by the hip-hop generation and beyond. I'm indebted to the fine folk at Strut Records for dusting off this obscure treasure of an LP and allowing me to finally cross it off the list.

Mal Waldron - Red Match Box

Monday Long Song

The jazz-fusion sweet spot runs from 1969 to 1975, a period where electricity pushed and prodded its way ever further into the previously exclusively acoustic instrumental palate. Miles Davis didn't even regard his seminal 1969 LP 'In a Silent Way' (which effectively kick started the movement) as a part of the jazz genre at all, referring to it instead as '...directions in music...'. Les McCann's 'Invitation to Openness' falls bang in the middle of that sweet spot, being recorded in the summer of 1971 and released the following year. 'The Lovers' takes up the whole of side one and is an eastern infused, ethereal masterpiece. Yusef Lateef and Alphonse Mouzon are probably the prominent names from the jazz world on the LP, but who's providing the guitar hook that threads its way through the tune? It's David Spinozza, whose other credits include Paul McCartney's 'Ram', John Lennon's 'Mind Games' and Don McLean's 'American Pie'.

Les McCann - The Lovers

Monday Long Song

I've featured the work of American guitarist Jeff Parker in this slot before (here). He's one of those musicians who clearly just loves to play and has appeared on 230 albums since 1993, as a sideman, a leader and a band member, most notably as part of Tortoise. Parker's 2016 LP 'The New Breed' is about to get the full reissue treatment via International Anthem's IA11 series. It's a woozy, retro sounding record, that takes this elderly listener back to the glory days of DJ Cam, Req, DJ Krush and similar Mo' Wax-era beatmakers.

Jeff Parker - Executive Life