Returning to Iwerne Minster

I'm going to return to Clayesmore one more time - the A350 south from Shaftesbury, taking in those villages which almost sound like a great lost West Indies bowling attack, Compton Abbas*, Fontmell Magna, Sutton Waldron, then Iwerne Minster (bypassing the lesser known hamlets of Curtly Ambrose, Sheldon Cottrell and Ridley Jacobs).

*suppose that one’s more like a England-Pakistan trophy, eh, cricket fans.

A coach turning right, arriving at Clayesmore School, for the first time. The sights, the first time. The faces, the first time. For me, it’s been thirty years. That was the month Gorbachev was ousted.

Saw a fair few of the same faces last Wednesday, at Basil Moss’s memorial, in suits and ties, not singlets and questionable shorts.

Back in 1991, Basil’s was one of the first faces I saw, though as I recall, that August day, it was John Beastall’s turn to do the initial greeting and dormitory assignment.

The madness I’d entered! The interruptions! The disrespect!

On Wednesday, there were a lot of us with a slightly dazed expression saying “this is so weird”. 18 months of seeing the same 1 or 2 recognisable faces and no others every day, then suddenly 500 changed but recognisable faces, all at once.

 An inevitable consequence of the limitations of time and the conventions of adulthood is that we could all only talk to so many people and - in a way that didn’t necessarily happen on the house parties - people seemed to speak most to the people they knew well, their contemporaries and those they’d kept in touch with all the way through.

There were plenty of people I did talk to, so many others I didn’t but wished I had, even briefly.

I was struck, though, by the strange intimacy, altered but not destroyed. People, older people often, I hadn’t seen for the best part of a quarter of a century, almost entirely strangers now, except there remains … something … You, I remember a talk you gave where you could hear a pin drop, you, I remember a left-foot volley you struck, you, I remember a thoughtful word you offered at just the right time, you I remember when you had to pretend to be a bat in some preposterous late-night game and no one in the room could stop crying with laughter for five minutes.

Younger boys would hold older boys in a certain kind of disguised awe, awe perhaps at the example they were shown, at the kindness they were shown, one generation to the next, an example that begins with Bas, Tub and Gordon (or even further back, I suppose) and lives on.

On Wednesday, something a few us agreed upon was the simple fact that “it’s impossible to explain”. Even when we try, explaining the house parties to someone who wasn’t there just summons the ghost of a trace of a pale imitation of what they felt like at the time.

Best I can do, in terms of the memories it summons, is comparing it to something I hear in the music of Nick Drake – something in the mix of innocence and wisdom, in the still, safe, bucolic Englishness of it. There’s a 1985 Nick Drake compilation called ‘Heaven in a Wild Flower’, the title coming from William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ which begins …

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

That title is cited in a beautiful essay on Drake by Ian MacDonald called ‘Exiled from Heaven: The Unheard Message of Nick Drake’ in which the author describes the quasi-pantheistic vision within Drake’s songs.

Rereading sections of the essay, as I haven’t done for years, I’m struck by this sentence:

“Summer is Drake’s symbol of Blakeian innocence – an idyll of heaven on earth prior to meeting the world of experience.

Remind you of anything?

My favourite Nick Drake song is called ‘From the Morning’ which ends with the line “go play the game that you learnt from the morning” which is clearly an exhortation to play podex, if it’s anything …

Anyway, there was indeed something pantheistic in the way many of the CU officers who influenced me most described the sensation of faith on earth – God/heaven was something we might experience anywhere, anyhow.

Heaven … in a wild flower, in a sunset, in a kind word, in a moment of silence, in a conversation of shared confession, in a trumpet’s last post, in a perfectly played practical joke, in a boy pretending to be a bat.

I was struck, during the memorial service on Wednesday, by the natural emphasis on Basil’s faith, and how this was as close to faith as I’ve been in decades. Not in some revelatory way, just in the acceptance of what it was to Bas and so many other people with whom I was celebrating his life with.

For many years, I’ve rather lived by a line in a Rilo Kiley song which goes “the absence of God will give you comfort”. As with many non-believers, it’s not just that you do not believe in God, it’s that that fact is a strange source of strength to you. You feel it gives you a foot forward.

Thinking of Basil on Wednesday, without going so far as to renounce my apostasy, I felt the line between belief and unbelief disappear. I remembered what faith was and how profoundly and beautifully it could manifest itself in those summers.

The world was far away. Not out of sight, but far away. One thing I remembered is how news stories would kind of creep into the week. We weren’t watching TV or checking our phones. There’d be the odd radio, of course there were the papers. So, like I say, that first summer of 1991, I associate with the fall of the USSR, summers of 92 and 93 the abuse allegations against Woody Allen and then Michael Jackson, Easter 1994 was the death of Kurt Cobain. A backdrop of inescapable “reality”, yet we were in our own state of manic peace.

I’ve been thinking about the house parties a lot lately. I expect a lot of people have. For most of us, they’re long gone. We can recherche all we like, but we’ll never retrouve le temps perdu. Sometimes I’ll drink a cup of tea that tastes like Clayesmore tea, sometimes if I hear the word “concentration”, I’ll mutter “feel the rhythm, feel the rhythm”, sometimes I’ll, if castigating myself, call myself “McHoggy”, the nickname I was given in just about my first ever house party football match, never to shake off.

It remains. It’s impossible to explain. The words we use … fellowship, friendship, fun … in the end, love.

There’s another song I’m rather fond of, by Joanna Newsom, called ‘Time, as a Symptom’ which goes

Love is not a symptom of time, time is just a symptom of love

which, when I think about it all, sums it up pretty nicely.

And to finish, a couple of memories of Basil I've carried recently. Firstly, when Stephen and I were at Bas's house preparing for the 1996 Summer House Party and I sat on and broke Basil's glasses. I'm not saying being completely laidback about a clumsy teenager breaking your glass is the ultimate sign of a saintly temperament, but, still, I don't know many others who'd have responded with such equanimity.

The other is a more universal, yet indelible, memory - Basil playing trumpet on the bow of a boat on the Broads. I think, as I went on the Boat Trip a year late as I needed to go to university when my year group went, I'd been told that this was something I was going to see. It was a low, rainy evening, I remember the reeds, how they seemed to spread the sound. I was listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley, so in my head Bas was playing something like 'Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye' or 'Hallelujah', though, of course he wasn't ...

Basil knew how to choreograph our memories, of course. There was so much that was design, so much that might have felt like routine, but never did. Every second felt like a moment.

B86: 500 Other Songs

Needless to say, returning to Rolling Stone's list of the Greatest 500 Songs of All Time, I responded my making my own list of 500 Songs.

I don't have an enormous problem with the Rolling Stone list - solid methodology, asking lots of people, understanding of its own place in the world, and, in Respect, they happened, by accident or design, to come up with quite an interesting, timely, Number 1.

Still, it's, in terms of my personal taste, a really boring list. Most of the songs are just "there", they're not deep cuts or left turns. I wouldn't choose to listen to all that many of them. Some of this is explained by the fact that the voters are probably well versed in this kind of exercise and voted tactically - so What's Going On is Number 6, but Inner City Blues and Mercy Mercy Me are nowhere to be seen. Fine.

So, yeah, I've made my own list. It's just a list, it took about an hour, not several days. It's not really an attempt to say "500 Greatest Other Songs" or anything, it's just 500 other songs that aren't on the Rolling Stone list.

It's a combination of songs which I was probably a bit surprised weren't in the 500, like they were the right kind of thing, but maybe they were in the Top 700,  a significantly greater emphasis on British music, other songs by major artists which are better than the obvious ones which are on the list, there are genuine great indie songs which really ought to be there, and there are some songs which are just songs I thought would make the playlist more fun.

There's no order, just 500 songs.

https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/500-songs/pl.u-e90k9IpkGAY

B85: My, like, opinions

OK, for want of a better idea, I'm going to condense some of my most strongly held "opinions" on music, the things I might, if "parties" still existed, find myself forcefully saying at such an event and then stutteringly attempting to back up. Apologies if you've heard any of them from me before ...

1. Debbie Harry is the Greatest Rock Star of All Time, actually. To me, that's a truth hiding in plain sight. No one else did quite what she did. The bravest, truest, coolest, most contained, most diffident, most glorious. Everything you need in rock'n'roll exists within Blondie's brief supremacy and really, though there were great co-writers, great covers, a great producer, it was all her, really.

2. Kanye West is really just Morrissey to the power of six, and at the moment he's Morrissey in the late 90s. There'll probably be something which sounds really good again soon, and people will forgive and forget what a poison he is, but then it will quickly emerge again.

3. There was a point around the turn of the century when the Super Furry Animals were right there, if that's what the UK wanted, to be a mainstream chart-topping national treasure. But that's not what the UK wanted, and that says everything about everything. I truly believe (kind of, maybe not really) that if that had happend, a different and better chain of events would have been set in motion.

4. I've said this one before, but Otis Redding's death was the most signifcant death in the history of rock'n'roll.

5. To me, Waxahatchee's 'Saint Cloud' is the modern 'Blue'. Invidious as it is to compare any and every album by a woman to Blue, this, for me, is the one that stands next to it. It doesn't sound like Blue, but it's shaped like, and feels like, 'Blue'. It's dark and then joyous, and then both at the same time. It's also perfect. Definitely the best album of the last five years for me.

6. I love music journalism, reviews, rankings, scores and all and I take it for what it is. I switched a decade ago from NME being my main regular source to Pitchfork. The moment that really crystallized the whole thing as silly bollocks was Drake's 'Hold On We're Going Home' being named Pitchfork's Number 1 song of the Year for 2013. I'd not heard the song when I read their paean of praise to it. When I listened I kept waiting for a different song, or any song, to start. 

Well, there is a song there. A creepy song. There are lots of the major pop acts I don't really like, or like occasionally, but, usually, in some sense, I get it. Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Frank Ocean, Nicki Minaj, Adele, Ed Sheeran even, whoever, I get it. Drake ... I don't get it. Not one tiny bit of it.

7. Joanna Newsom is on a different level to everyone else this century, which is not a criticism of anyone else. But she's not only in a different column to other major acclaime artists, be it St Vincent, Sufjan Stevens, Kanye West, Beyonce, Janelle Monae, she's just higher up. What she did over her 2nd, 3rd and 4th albums was just a higher level of song. I really think that.

I'll add some more sizzling opinions as and when I think of them ...

B84: The BEST Music!!

Couple of musiccy prizes/list lately which I shall pass brief judgement on.

Mercury Prize - I never have too much of a problem with the Mercury Prize - it generally seems quite an honourable institution which brings some decent albums to attention, and who cares who wins really, it's usually the wrong thing, but not that wrong.

This year's the first time in ages, even though I hardly ever actually agree with the winner, that I really felt it was a bad call.

Like, this year, I don't think there was really a stand-out album, of the ones I've listened to, but the Arlo Parks album Collapsed Into Sunbeams was the most hyped, the most mainstream probably, and, for me, the most disappointing.

She may make a great album in the future, but it really seemed the least deserving and least necessary this year. 

The Laura Mvula album is an album I much prefer and this was her third nomination and she got dropped by her record label by e-mail and that would have just been a much more satisfying, pleasing result.

The Ghetts album, Conflict of Interest, has been far more acclaimed and is much more of a grand statement.

or Mogwai. That would have been cool too. Or Sault, or Black Country, New Road. The Arlo Parks win is a real so what. Is Dido the great influence on music in 2021 now?

And Rolling Stone updated its top 500 songs of all time this week. Don't have too much to say about it really. I didn't mind their top 500 albums from a few months ago. 500 Songs is just more impossible not to seem wildly wrong or conservative. The new orthodoxy is turning out to be as strong as the old orthodoxy, I suppose. 

Respect was Number 1, which took me by surprise a bit, which i guess is a neat trick. I kind of forget Respect exists, it's such a cultural behemoth, I would never choose to listen to it, just because I never don't hear it. I mean, it's a great song. Can't complain, really,

Then Fight the Power, which is kind of cool. The other one in the top 10 that took me aback was Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. It's just never crossed my mind that that's a really really great song, and it's been around for 45 years, so why the sudden surge? Who knows ...

When I did my own 1001 songs list, 8 years ago or whatever, I was trying to be Rolling Stoney, or, at least, combine pitchfork and nme and rolling stone and everything else and just give a really orthodox list. Inevitably my own taste came through in patches, but there's a lot of the same stuff, so i can't really object.

I mean, there's no Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Joanna Newsom, Blur, Sleater-Kinney, SFA, National, Walkmen etc etc there's no sense of the stuff i really love but so be it. 

But the only entry I genuinely bridled at was Heavy Metal Drummer as the only Wilco song, at, like, 420. Just so paltry. Such a minor Wilco song, just the poppy song from their greatest album, but, just seeing it there seemed a bit of an insult really. 

It made me think I want to make a playlist of 500 songs that aren't on the list, but that's probably a bit pointless, as it's not like it would be mega-alternative.

B83: Four deaths

 There were four deaths recently which I found notable in different ways.

Firstly, two men of the 60s, Charlie Watts and Ted Dexter. Both have an Ealing link.

The Rolling Stones, as is well known, formed at the Ealing Club, opposite Ealing Broadway Station. That's where Jagger and Richards first saw Charlie Watts, inter alia, play.

Charlie Watts, even since I first learnt about rock'n'roll in the late 80s, has always been a significant, emblematic figure. More than anyone else, he was held up as the other side of the myth, just that actually rock'n'roll contains and needs plenty of people who are perfectly sensible, who are just good at something and get on with it, that the drummer is the most important person in a great band. 

As for Ted Dexter, he lived just up from Ealing Broadway, on Woodville Gardens, which touches on Ealing Cricket Club. A couple of times I saw him there. Dexter was pretty well known in the late 80s/early 90s, as the much-maligned head honcho of English cricket. Lord Ted was used rather disparagingly. So the truth that he was one of the very finest post-war English batsmen was rather underplayed, as was the extent he was one of cricket's great innovators.

Quite significant figures in the post-war British culture that I love.

And then there's Sarah Harding and Michael K Williams, significant figures in early 20th century culture. Both deaths more poignant. 

Girls Aloud, certainly the best British pop band this century, absolutely changed how we think about pop music, the sound, the look, the style, all of it. And, you could see how Harding was the one that brought the "rock'n'roll" element, that aspect that one over more hesitant critics.

And Michael K Williams, whose Omar Little is, as everyone is saying, one of the great TV characters of all time, the X factor that lifted The Wire to a different place. He's also excellent in Boardwalk Empire, and several other things.

I haven't anything else to add really. I haven't blogged for a while, and I just thought I'd mark these four notable deaths/