If I could take one thing with me (apart from certain people and, of course , guacamole!), it would surely be music.
My good friend the Bartzman could provide the perfect soundtrack : enough songs to last infinity ( well, nearly).
As an atheist, all this is pure fantasy.
One of my greatest regrets is not learning a musical instrument while I was in school.
In Primary the whole year group were divided up between 'recorders' and 'harmonicas' and ironically ( because I do play a bit of blues harmonica when drunk enough) I was chosen for the recorder.
I really enjoyed playing in our mass ensembles, singing in school productions and carol concerts and especially round the piano in music lessons, which concentrated on folk songs.
Today - with schools being exam factories - music , together with drama and art, is peripheral. A tragic state of affairs in a 'gwlad o chantorion'/ a nation of singers.
In Grammar School I joined the choir and, till my voice broke, was a bit of an Aled Jones ( without the recording contract!). Once I'd become a shaving baritone I re-joined and loved the school's annual carol-singing door-to-door.
At Uni I found the choir intimidating and soon gave up. Everyone sat down with a manuscript and I couldn't read music. We ploughed through Brahms' 'Requiem' very mechanically.
It wasn't till I picked up my friend Scouse Pete's 'gob-iron' and blew away till I could bend notes that I wanted to make music again.
I never went to a music lesson outside school. When I was only six my mother suggested the piano and I emphatically refused. She never pursued it.
My wife used to teach piano so maybe when she retires she'll teach me.....though my stubby hands do not auger well.
My passion for music has always been a restless search for the fresh, exciting, different.
It can be like discovering a new territory and then saying to anyone who'll pay attention - 'Hey, you gotta listen to this! It's something else!'
It doesn't always work.
Some have dismissed Tom Waits as a growler and Future of the Left as dogmatically political just because of their name.
So it was interesting to read an interview with my latest enthusiasm , Julia Holter from California who, like John Cale before her, had to move away from her formal training as a pianist and into the freer form of singer-songwriter.
Though she's obviously a highly talented pianist and keyboard-player this is never uppermost in her songs in the way Cale's viola is part of so much Velvet Underground.
I have to admit that I was wary of Holter at first.
In articles, she tended to be associated with fellow quirky Californian Joanna Newsome, and though I do like the harp-playing of the latter, I find her vocals rather annoying and her lyrics often pretentious.
I can't speak with authority about Holter's previous, more experimental , albums, but her latest one 'Have Me In Your Wilderness' is exceptional. It struck me as much as Cohen's first album and Sufjan's 'Illinoise'.
Her music combines jazz, classical, folk and some rock influences without deliberation and , in that way, reminds me of my other album of last year 'Everyone Was A Bird' by Grasscut.
She cites Robert Wyatt as an influence and , like Wyatt, her songs never follow conventions: there are few choruses, rhymes and she uses the spoken word tellingly at times.
Though many songs appear lyrical, this is misleading.
Holter insists her songs tell stories from a variety of viewpoints and - in an age of relentlessly confessional singer-songwriters - this is so beguiling.
Yet unlike most by Peter Gabriel and Randy Newman ( two others who use many persona) she is intimate and mysterious.
Swirling around in my head at present is her curious song 'Betsy on the Roof' with the nearest she gets to a chorus and the line 'Uh-oh, she said, uh-oh' sung in Kate Bushy-fashion.
Things are left unexplained in this song and that is what's poetic about her lyrics.
It draws you in, sets a scene, suggests characters, yet never ends in resolution.
Is Betsy a cat, woman in a dream, or a girl on the edge of madness?
Holter can vary moods radically, for instance between the jaunty wit of 'Everytime Boots' and brooding darkness of 'Night Song' (closest she gets to Cohen).
She shows how music is evolving in an intriguing manner. Of course, classically-trained musicians have transformed themselves before into rock and singer-songwriters ; Cymru's own Cale the prime example.
Yet. when you look at the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Grasscut it seems as if folk, electronica, jazz, classical and rock are gradually matamorphosing into an new art-form which is no longer a fusion but a 'place' beyond boundaries.
Much as I love poetry and novels, there are very few I'd return to again and again as I do with albums like this one, a sound country with rivers of strings, wind's percussion and voice somewhere out to sea.
I wrote this poem after listening to Holter's 'Have You In My Wilderness'.......
TO THE SOUND COUNTRY
When I leave
take me to the sound country,
a boat burning
in the middle of the sea.
Washed up on the shore ;
let the woman
stranded on the island
find what's left of me.
Let her make music,
though berries and water are scarce,
drumming wood with bones,
curious xylophone teeth.
Let the wind sing ashes
strewn along the sand
and she in harmony,
as gulls swoop and pick.
Let her voice know fire
and raise up smoke
to warm her nights
till the sun startles her awake.
My good friend the Bartzman could provide the perfect soundtrack : enough songs to last infinity ( well, nearly).
As an atheist, all this is pure fantasy.
One of my greatest regrets is not learning a musical instrument while I was in school.
In Primary the whole year group were divided up between 'recorders' and 'harmonicas' and ironically ( because I do play a bit of blues harmonica when drunk enough) I was chosen for the recorder.
I really enjoyed playing in our mass ensembles, singing in school productions and carol concerts and especially round the piano in music lessons, which concentrated on folk songs.
Today - with schools being exam factories - music , together with drama and art, is peripheral. A tragic state of affairs in a 'gwlad o chantorion'/ a nation of singers.
In Grammar School I joined the choir and, till my voice broke, was a bit of an Aled Jones ( without the recording contract!). Once I'd become a shaving baritone I re-joined and loved the school's annual carol-singing door-to-door.
At Uni I found the choir intimidating and soon gave up. Everyone sat down with a manuscript and I couldn't read music. We ploughed through Brahms' 'Requiem' very mechanically.
It wasn't till I picked up my friend Scouse Pete's 'gob-iron' and blew away till I could bend notes that I wanted to make music again.
I never went to a music lesson outside school. When I was only six my mother suggested the piano and I emphatically refused. She never pursued it.
My wife used to teach piano so maybe when she retires she'll teach me.....though my stubby hands do not auger well.
My passion for music has always been a restless search for the fresh, exciting, different.
It can be like discovering a new territory and then saying to anyone who'll pay attention - 'Hey, you gotta listen to this! It's something else!'
It doesn't always work.
Some have dismissed Tom Waits as a growler and Future of the Left as dogmatically political just because of their name.
So it was interesting to read an interview with my latest enthusiasm , Julia Holter from California who, like John Cale before her, had to move away from her formal training as a pianist and into the freer form of singer-songwriter.
Though she's obviously a highly talented pianist and keyboard-player this is never uppermost in her songs in the way Cale's viola is part of so much Velvet Underground.
I have to admit that I was wary of Holter at first.
In articles, she tended to be associated with fellow quirky Californian Joanna Newsome, and though I do like the harp-playing of the latter, I find her vocals rather annoying and her lyrics often pretentious.
I can't speak with authority about Holter's previous, more experimental , albums, but her latest one 'Have Me In Your Wilderness' is exceptional. It struck me as much as Cohen's first album and Sufjan's 'Illinoise'.
Her music combines jazz, classical, folk and some rock influences without deliberation and , in that way, reminds me of my other album of last year 'Everyone Was A Bird' by Grasscut.
She cites Robert Wyatt as an influence and , like Wyatt, her songs never follow conventions: there are few choruses, rhymes and she uses the spoken word tellingly at times.
Though many songs appear lyrical, this is misleading.
Holter insists her songs tell stories from a variety of viewpoints and - in an age of relentlessly confessional singer-songwriters - this is so beguiling.
Yet unlike most by Peter Gabriel and Randy Newman ( two others who use many persona) she is intimate and mysterious.
Swirling around in my head at present is her curious song 'Betsy on the Roof' with the nearest she gets to a chorus and the line 'Uh-oh, she said, uh-oh' sung in Kate Bushy-fashion.
Things are left unexplained in this song and that is what's poetic about her lyrics.
It draws you in, sets a scene, suggests characters, yet never ends in resolution.
Is Betsy a cat, woman in a dream, or a girl on the edge of madness?
Holter can vary moods radically, for instance between the jaunty wit of 'Everytime Boots' and brooding darkness of 'Night Song' (closest she gets to Cohen).
She shows how music is evolving in an intriguing manner. Of course, classically-trained musicians have transformed themselves before into rock and singer-songwriters ; Cymru's own Cale the prime example.
Yet. when you look at the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Grasscut it seems as if folk, electronica, jazz, classical and rock are gradually matamorphosing into an new art-form which is no longer a fusion but a 'place' beyond boundaries.
Much as I love poetry and novels, there are very few I'd return to again and again as I do with albums like this one, a sound country with rivers of strings, wind's percussion and voice somewhere out to sea.
I wrote this poem after listening to Holter's 'Have You In My Wilderness'.......
TO THE SOUND COUNTRY
When I leave
take me to the sound country,
a boat burning
in the middle of the sea.
Washed up on the shore ;
let the woman
stranded on the island
find what's left of me.
Let her make music,
though berries and water are scarce,
drumming wood with bones,
curious xylophone teeth.
Let the wind sing ashes
strewn along the sand
and she in harmony,
as gulls swoop and pick.
Let her voice know fire
and raise up smoke
to warm her nights
till the sun startles her awake.
RSS Feed
