I’ve been looking for some new blogs to read.

I normally come across fresh ones because of some new interest or enthusiasm, but once in while it’s a good idea to dredge through the unexpected and the unpredictable. That’s where Google’s ‘random blog’ button comes in handy. (Well, it does if you don’t mind gleaning through mountains of kitten photos, Spanish politics, spam sites and the like, hoping against hope to find something worth reading).

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I found this blog: My Summer Vacation, which has the rather splendid URL of warwillchangeawoman.blogspot.com.

Go and read it. The author, Liz, is in the United States Air Force. And the thing that caught my eye was this, her most recent post:

My sister and I were talking the other day/week, and she turned to me and said “you know, there’s no soundtrack for Iraq like there was for Vietnam.”

Sittin’ on the docks of the bay. We gotta get outta this place. What’s goin’ on, Fortunate son?

All those songs resonate with Vietnam era vets…but what resonates with Iraq vets? Did Soulja Boy resonate with veterans like it did with UW students during the homecoming parade? What brings back that flood of memories for vets that brings back that flood of memories for others in our generation?

Luckily, the only military experience I ever endured was as a schoolboy Royal Navy cadet. The soundtrack to that was more Joy Division than jolly boating songs. But when I think of Vietnam, I think of Apocalypse Now and songs like The Doors’ The End, The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction and, of course, The Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre.

Liz goes on to point out that the reason that there’s no soundtrack to the Iraq War is because, these days, it’s much easier to get hold of music - which means our tastes are rather more divergent than they used to be.

She’s got a point. But for the rest of us, I’m sure the soundtrack to the war will come along in a few years - it’ll just come pre-packaged as part of a film. If someone makes a good one.

I could be wrong of course: are there songs that really capture the spirit of the war?

I kicked off my day by staying in bed, crumbling croissants, sipping coffee and absorbing the first few chapters of Patrick O’Brian’s brilliant Post Captain. I’d just got to the bit when Captain Aubrey decides to throw a ball for the local gentry when some fool started honking on the front door buzzer.

It was the postman delivering, as he sometimes does, a parcel.

“It’s a parcel for you,” said my wife, who’d answered the door.

“Ah yes,” said I, remembering what it would be. “It’s a CD of strip tease music. Glamourpuss said she’d send it in return for those French albums I sent her earlier in the week.”

So I opened the package and, inside, was a brand new copy of Take it Off! Strip Tease Classics. There aren’t many better ways to start the morning than to be given a CD adorned with a girl in a pretty blue dress; especially when that dress is a hologram that vanishes to reveal a rather dashing set of foundation garments.

“Oh look,” I said after unfolding the bits of paper that were also inside the jiffy bag. “Puss has sent a striptease routine as well.”

I handed my wife a sheet of A4 entitled filled with lots of instructions about snapping legs open, circling upper bodies and that sort of thing.

I was immediately reminded of my efforts to cook things out of Nigel Slater’s books, and could imagine the performance: “Oh, hang on. No, that’s not right. Oh, of course snap legs shut. Ok, did that seem right? Right, now it says ‘Slide something down each leg’. What does that ’something’ say? I’ve spilt egg on it.”

I didn’t get far with this train of thought, though, as it was broken by the sound of giggling next to me.

“What’s so funny?”

And sadly, that’s where I’ll have to bring the tale to a close, because to tell it would give Glamourpuss’s game away. You’ll just have to console yourself with the notion that good tales are also more tease than they are strip.

Neither do good striptease routines often involve cardigans.

I’ve been keeping the music separate, but I have been profoundly moved by this performance and I’d like to share it. Do please listen.

I spend far too much time browing YouTube for interesting music. In my defence, it’s one thing that can still be done when there’s a toddler fast asleep on your chest, or even in those lulls when you lose inspiration for your work. It’s also nice to share the best clips with friends, and have them send their own favourites back to you.

Last week, I decided it might be a good idea to share some of these things with a slightly wider audience. So I have: they’re here, complete with a few lines about each piece of music.

I know that if I’m to keep adding clips, I need to impose some sort of order. That’s why I’ve devoted each day of the week to a broad genre:

Monday. Classical music (in its broadest sense). My first and most enduring musical interest.
Tuesday. Nostalgia - the (often dreadful) stuff I used to listen to as a teenager.
Wednesday. World music. From Japan to Africa to the Balkans. Though I suspect a lot of French stuff will be appearing.
Thursday. Jazz and Blues.
Friday. Funny songs and other amusing bits of music.
Saturday. Film soundtracks.
Gloomy Sundays. Just that. Depressing music before the working week begins.

Anyway, take a look and do leave comments and suggestions. I’m always happy to be pointed in the direction of something new.

I love Jacques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas. I normally hate English versions of the song, such as Shirley Bassey’s and Dusty Springfield’s and (particularly) Terry Jacks’s.

Then I discovered this by Iranian singer Farhad. I only wish the sound was better and the clip complete, but he’s singing rather than mouthing the words:

I play the kind of music that suits the African man. That is dwelling on my culture to reach the rest of Africa. People call it Highlife, which I call in Igbo Oyolima; it is all about when you are relaxed and in the mood for enjoyment.

I know little about Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, other than the facts that he died this year and that I like his style.

A popular Nigerian musician, I discovered Osadebe on the Rough Guide to the Music of Nigeria and Ghana. He was extremely well dressed, invariably sporting a red hat and one of his many sets of fine, flowing robes. He was also quite fascinated to find that people used his music as a medicine, remarking that:

Generally, I am aware that people talk much about my prophecy. They also speak about how meaningful my music is and how they play it when they have one problem or the other. They say that after listening to it, they always feel relieved. All the records I did in America bear the inscription, Doctor of Hypertension. These are what I hear or see. To be frank, I do not know what I do to the listeners with my music. But I believe that my music is educative.

From the little I’ve heard, I must say the Chief’s music certainly does lift the spirits, as does his invariable habit of changing costume several times when filming his videos, and always making sure to appear against a backdrop of charming dancing girls.

Here he is in action. I’m sure you’ll agree, he’s a feast for the eye:

Ever since I discovered this album the other week, I have been nurturing a growing admiration for Josh Dolgin, better known as musical genius Socalled.

The video above is excellent, but here he is, speaking of miracles, mixing those magic moments together. What an artist.

“You play Bach your way, and I’ll play him his way”

Ah, Wanda Landowska! What’s to admire the most? Her pioneering mastery of the harpsichord? Her elegant dress sense? Her marvellous profile?

I can never decide, although ever since my enthusiasm for Bach’s Goldberg Variations led me to her recordings, I’ve been a devoted admirer.

Her life, though, was an inspiration. A Pole who later became a French citizen, she established the École de Musique Ancienne at Paris in 1925 and turned her home at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt into a vibrant centre for performing early music. Because she was Jewish, when the Nazis invaded France in 1940 she had to escape with her life companion Denise Restout to southern France, on to Lisbon and thence to the United States, arriving in New York in December 1941. Saint-Leu had been looted and she arrived in the USA with practically nothing, only to make history with her performance of the Goldbergs at New York Town Hall only two months later. It was the first time in the 20th century that the work had been publicly performed on the harpsichord - the instrument it was written for. It made her name, and she became a successful performer and teacher in her adopted home.

You can see (though not hear) Wanda performing in 1927 at Saint-Leu in this video, and if you persevere you can see her smiling, chatting and eating cake. A wonderful and rare glimpse into the life of one of the 20th century’s greatest - and most elegantly dressed - musicians.

You’ll be getting some prose out of me next week, quite possibly including an account of tomorrow’s walk up the canal from here up to Waltham Abbey.

In the meantime, continuing the ‘Musicians who look like Dictators’ series, which was kicked off with Pinochet lookalike Claudio Arrau, here’s Ibrahim Tatlises (known affectionately in his native Turkey as ‘Ibo’). I’ll leave it to you to decide which former dictator he looks like.

Purists may object that they can’t see what she’s wearing, but they needn’t: Francoise Hardy was always elegantly dressed. This just happens to be my favourite video of her, so that’s what you’re getting.

I’ve adored her music since I was a teenager. I used to have an album of hers which, on the front cover, depicted her sitting inside a straw-filled box in a stable. At least I hope I did, because that’s the sort of thing I don’t want to be caught imagining.

Mon ami la rose…

 
Jacques Brel: Ne me quitte pas

I would burn most of my music collection to save my recordings of this:

Arrau may bear more than a passing resemblence to Pinochet, but look at those hands.

No: I’m going to permit myself an exclamation mark.

Arrau may bear more than a passing resemblence to Pinochet, but look at those hands!

I’ve written much of my second dérive post, which will be shoved under your noses some time tomorrow. In the meantime, as I’m too exhausted to continue without writing like a particularly drivelly member of UIV ‘B’, here is a musical interlude that will appeal to both Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah fans and historians alike:

Today we witness a tendency towards absolute technical perfection devoid of any sensitivity or élan… We live in an era when, in order to please a public interested in the arts, those on the platform are too often the first to seek a compromise.

These are not the words of any present-day music critic, but those of an Hungarian pianist who died nearly sixty years ago. It’s a scathing criticism and one that, sadly, rings truer than ever in an age when classical music broadcasting is dominated by pan pipes and mood music.

The man lamenting an earlier era of musical “dumbing down” was the elegantly-dressed pianist Dinu Lipatti, who is pictured here with a less snappily-attired Clara Haskil, also a renowned musician.

Lipatti was an astonishing pianist, described by his record producer, Walter Legge, as having the “qualities of a saint”.

The spiritual goodness of his nature, his modesty, his gentleness, his will’s firm purpose, his nobility and loftiness of thought and action communicated themselves to all who met him, and to the remotest listeners in the halls where he played.

Lipatti was a man of single-minded passion. After he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 1947, he continued to perform, teach and record, despite the hideous effects of radiation treatment and - incredibly - injections of mustard gas. When his left arm swelled massively, he had to have his suit retailored.

Lipatti’s last concert took place in Besançon in 1950, and is without doubt the concert for which time travel should be invented:

Lipatti was so weak he could barely walk to the piano. But once he began playing, he became transformed. Despite his youth, Lipatti poured into his performance a unique wisdom, a distillation of everything he had lived for. He knew that this would have to stand as his final statement as an artist and that there could be no afterthoughts or retakes. As fine as were his studio readings, he achieved a genuine transcendence at Besançon [Peter Gutman].

Elegant to the last. Listen to him.

*NB: an elegantly slender EDW this week as I am exhausted.

Well anyway, I thought my trunk would be there that night, because I had to start to work that very night. But instead of my trunk comin’, it was delayed for three or four days and I had to wear the same suit. Then they was sure that I didn’t have anything at all… they thought it was very strange because I had been a very good dresser, to come there with only one suit of clothes. Of course, after my trunks got there . . . Well I like to turn the town out — thought I was one of the movie stars, I had so many clothes.

Gambler, pool shark, vaudeville comedian, pimp and self-appointed “Inventor of Jazz”, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton (?1890 - 1941) was a man who liked to dress for the job in hand. When he was given work by his uncle (”My assignments were chambermaid, apprentice, shoeshiner, and note messenger to his different girls, plus excuses to his wife”), Morton was given a salary of 25¢ per week and a suit every New Year. The money was to his liking, but the clothes were not.

I believe it was agreed between both uncle and wife to cut down one of uncle’s suits. This was done, and the suit was presented to me, very much to my disapproval. The suit was tried but did not fit; the seat of the pants was much too large and they did not fit me anywhere. Uncle was a fat man weighing about 210 pounds. All the kids had new holiday clothes but me. I was so peeved at my uncle and his wife that I tried to kill their cat, Bricktop.

Next, when Morton began work as a pianist in a brothel at the age of fourteen, he not only told his God-fearing great-grandmother that he was working in a barrel factory, but he also spent his wages on a beautifully tailored suit. When the old woman found out how he had actually paid for it, he was kicked out of her house in Storyville, New Orleans, for good.

Indeed, if ever you wanted evidence that there’s nothing new in the hip-hop formulas of bling and bitches, pimps and hos, booze and bullets, a quick glance at Morton’s life would soon show you that today’s would-be gangstas are by comparison an insipid bunch. As his success as a jazz musician grew, he had diamonds embedded in his teeth and owned over 200 tailor-made suits. The nickname “Jelly Roll” itself is beautifully obscene. And some of the lyrics and tales from his Storyville days were so shocking that they weren’t released until the late 20th-century. They include howls of rage and filth like this, from his Murder Ballad:

I’ll cut your throat and drink your fuckin’ blood like wine,
Bitch, I’ll cut your fuckin’ throat, drink your blood like wine,
Because I want you know, he’s a man of mine.

And, most notoriously, his massively extended version (pun not intended, but I’ll keep it in anyway) of Make Me a Pallet on the Floor, a song about infidelity that was consummated on a pallet, thereby preventing a jealous husband checking his wife’s underwear or bedding for tell-tale stains and blood spots. The arrangement freed up a woman’s lover for this sort of thing:

I said, bitch, you got the best cunt I ever had,
I said, bitch, you got the best cunt I ever had,
I said, sweet bitch, baby, you got the best cunt I ever had,
Maybe it was that all I got was always bad.

I put that bitch right on the stump,
I set that bitch right on the stump, Lord, Lord, Lord,
I set my bitch, babe, right on the stump,
I screwed her ‘til her pussy stunk.

Still, it’s not hard to go off the rails, and when one considers that Morton’s godmother purportedly sold Jelly Roll’s soul to Satan as part of a voodoo ritual, it’s hard not to sympathise with his penchant for hot dames and snappy suits. And I’m sure all Elegantly Dressed Wednesday devotees will agree that a far more unforgivable episode in the musician’s life took place after he suspected a West Indian office boy of putting a curse on him: he visited a voodoo woman who told him to destroy all of his fine clothes.

I always had a lot of clothes and the stack I made in my backyard was way over the top of my head. I poured on the kerosene and struck a match. It like to broke my heart to watch my suits burn.

By the end of the 1930s, Morton was playing piano in a Washington dive bar and, in 1939, he was stabbed in a bar fight and suffered from a heart attack. His health deteriorated and, by 1941, he was dead.

Luckily, the year before Morton was stabbed, he recorded over eight hours of songs, reminiscences and comments in interviews by Alan Lomax for the American Library of Congress. The transcripts are amazing reading.

Elegantly dressed, yes, but can we say that clothes were the most important thing to a man of such broad interests? You decide: but I’ll leave you with one of his songs.

Baby, I need some money to get my suit out of pawn,
Baby, I need some money to get my suit out of pawn, babe,
Bitch, if you don’t give me some money to get my suit out of pawn,
You wish the day that you never, never was born, Lord, Lord.