Bob and Laurel performing on the Bohemia Stage at the National Folk Festival in Canberra. Photo by Karina Red
Wow, can it really be three months since my last post? I did say I needed a break.
We’ve been immersed in music for the last few weeks – a road trip to Canberra for the National Folk Festival. We were invited to participate in a special concert to celebrate the Alistair Hulett award. Alistair was a well-known leftie songwriter who died in 2010. His family set up a trust to administer an award to encourage people to write songs of social justice award. The award has now ended, after 14 years and some 200 submissions by good songwriters, all adjudicated by incomparable judges.
Our entry was one of a record number in 2024, all of a very high standard, we were told. The awardee announced on Easter Sunday was Paddy McHugh for a brilliant song about Lismore’s floods called Hatchet in the Roof. I hope he gets it out there on music platforms real soon.
Meanwhile our producer Roger Ilott of Restless Music worked away on the spare demo we did to send in for the award late last year. It sounds pretty good and we think it encapsulates some (but not all) of the many social issues which tarnish our country. Have a listen on Bandcamp
.In the fullness of time I expect I’ll write an essay about the parlous state of affairs in the Middle East, Trump’s comeback, the end of Albanese’s honeymoon period.and other juicy topics.
We plan to shut down the Bobwords website by the end of April and migrate the blog archive to our music page, Goodwills Music. So any future blogs will arrive from thegoodwills,com.
.In the fullness of time I expect I’ll write an essay about the parlous state of affairs in the Middle East, Trump’s comeback, the end of Albanese’s honeymoon period.and other juicy topics.
We plan to shut down the Bobwords website by the end of April and migrate the blog archive to our music page, Goodwills Music. So any future blogs will arrive from thegoodwills,com. If you sometimes feel like reading a Friday on My Mind you’ll find nine years’ worth of weekly musiings on that website (once we close Bobwords.
I have been writing new songs and recording them at home but there are likely to be fewer fully produced efforts like Caring for the Dispossessed. We’ll hopefully be doing more gigs and tours this year, but I can’t tell you about them in case the festivals we applied for say no thanks.
I might add, if folk and alt-country music is your preference, great acts we saw at the NFF included Harry Manx, Monique Clare, Windborne, Josh Cunningham and Felicity Urquhart, John Craigie and our very own Spooky Men’s Chorale. Their leader Stephen Taberner was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at the festival.
While we are doing some digital (and actual) housework please note we are no longer using the PO Box in Warwick so if you have it on file please disregard.
As always, if you do not want to receive creative comment from the House of Goodwills, you can unsubscribe.
Given that a lot of my Facebook friends are musicians (and jazz musicians at that), you could get into an endless debate about who is or was the best. Moreover, one could have a lengthy dialogue about what is jazz and is it the same as blues?
It’s not hard to find lists of the top jazz singers of the 20th century. Pundits frequently put Louise Armstrong on top of the list, closely followed by Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole. Female jazz singer lists are usually topped by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone (Ed: what about Joni, eh?)
I cannot go past Nina Simone. Ironically, Nina was a precocious piano player who was told by the owner of the club where she was engaged that she had to sing as well. Whoever that person was (he wanted two for the price of one), unwittingly gave the world one of the best song interpreters of modern times.
A few of the songs Simone made famous (I Put a Spell on you, God bless the Child, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood) were rocked up and recycled in the 1960s and 1970s by bands like The Animals, the Alan Price Set, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Blood Sweat and Tears.
Technically speaking, you’d say Simone was a blues singer, much as you could argue the same for Billie Holiday (who wrote God Bless the Child) and Bessie Smith. Yet you will frequently find them lumped in with the jazz genre.
What brought this topic to mind was a gig our versatile choir has this morning at Warwick’s Jumpers and Jazz festival, a two-week extravaganza featuring live music, yarn-bombed trees, art exhibitions, car rallies and more.
Jazz bands and performers who sign up for Jumpers and Jazz cover a wide gamut of the genre. In the main street, where residents are offered free entertainment, the standard is always high. In 2021, we hosted Brisbane’s hot young gypsy jazz band, Cigany Weaver, most of them Conservatorium graduates and stunningly talented. I feel fortunate to know a few of these young musicians, but compared with their vast musical knowledge and technical expertise I am but a mere strummer.
The brand of original jazz Cigany Weaver play arguable belongs the Manouche genre. Each year there is an Oz Manouche festival in Brisbane. Gypsy jazz is of the style made famous by Django Reinhardt. (Ed: ex-Shadows guitarist and WA resident Hank B Marvin is a devotee of gypsy jazz and often attends this festival,)
A Manouche band typically sets up a solid tempo while the virtuoso instrumentalists in the band take solo turns. Improvisation is the key to this sometimes wild music. The soloists often take the song and its melody far away from its core and somehow (I don’t know how), the band eventually manages to pick up the tune again and play out the refrain.
For our part, East Street Singers, the acapella group we rehearse with on Thursday nights, are doing an eclectic mix – from Bill Bailey and Chattanooga Choo Choo to the Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields ballad, The Way You Look Tonight.
The song comes from a 1936 movie, Jazz Time, but in this innovative version from 1991, Steve Tyrell and orchestra interpreted the song as a soundtrack to a compilation video featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (singing) and dancing.
The Way you Look Tonight was originally performed by Astaire, someone I always knew of as a dancer, but he could also sing and play piano at the same time (although there is no record of him doing all three simultaneously).
Breaking this song down to four vocal parts is another exercise altogether. I do so admire the arrangers who took on these classic compositions by the old pros and re-invent them for an unaccompanied choir. In this case, William C Stickles arranged it for SATB (choir shorthand for Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass).
Stickles, a pianist, composer, arranger and teacher, died in 1971, aged 89. If you think about that for a moment, he’d have been in his 50s when The Way You Look Tonight was first published. US-educated, Stickles studied in Europe for seven years and worked with Isadore Braggiotti, a voice teacher in Florence, for five years. I gleaned this much from a 1971 obituary in the New York Times. Stickles was prolific and left a vast library of choral arrangements. He is best known for the choral arrangement of the Lord’s Prayer. In his twilight years he arranged many of the songs from West Side Story.
This of course is information of interest only to (a) those who are required to learn the arrangements and (b) people who like to trace things back to source. There is also giving credit where it is due.
You could say with some surety that many of today’s jazz singers, including Sinatra-influenced crooners Michael Buble, Harry Connick Jnr and Mark Tremonti, steeped themselves in the aural history of jazz. You can hear a lot of Frank’s phrasing in their voices and (if watching video), see it in the way they move. Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. When we were rehearsing jazz songs at choir a few weeks back, the name Ethel Merman came up. We were rehearsing Gershwin’s I got Rhythm, the song which made Ethel Merman a star. The alto to my right and I immediately began trying to imitate Ethel’s brassy, emphatic way of singing.
Ethel was known for her distinctive, powerful voice, and leading roles in musical comedy stage performances. So far as I know, no-one has managed to carve a career out of trying to sound like Ethel. She had a loud voice and excellent enunciation. You will hear it in your head if you think about Anything Goes, Hello Dolly and There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954). An old school singer from Queens, New Jersey, Ethel forged a career on the stage, in an era where in musical comedy you had to be heard at the back of the theatre. Ethel tried to imitate vocal styles of stars of the times (Sophie Tucker, Fanny Bryce), but found it hard to disguise her inimitable voice.
If you didn’t know, TNBLSB was in the musical Annie Get Your Gun and was a massive hit, primarily because it is reprised four times during the show (“let’s go on with the show”). In the songwriting world, we call this kind of song an ‘earworm’. Sorry about that.
Further reading: Just as I formed the idea for today’s blog I found one from two years ago which delved into the history of the 5/4 time signature (‘Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to
Problems that upset you, oh’).* Despite the esoteric topic, it is quite entertaining!
I did say last week I’d be serving up items from the FOMM archives while I’m away, but could not resist this post by Lyn Nuttall, curator of the website Pop Archives (Where did they get that song?).
The other day some bloke tweeted, “Anyone remember Dionne Warwick?”
Dionne Warwick answered, “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
When I wrote about a Top 20 hit by Sydney singer Jennifer Ryall I said that she was “lost to history”. I hadn’t been able to find out much about her, and there was nothing after the mid-1970s.
Jennifer Ryall finally emailed to tell me she wasn’t lost, and her own history turned out to be rich and varied. In the following days she gave me a lot of information, full of interest, which I used to write up a decent account of her career.
I now avoid suggesting that people are lost, or that they disappeared or vanished, just because they haven’t released any music for a while.
It’s a trap that fans can easily fall into. When a performer we know only through their media persona stops performing, there is a sense that they have literally disappeared.
We might even sympathise with them for their downfall, even if we have no idea what they are doing these days. However fulfilling their life away from the music (or film or TV) business might be, their absence suggests that they no longer do anything. They exist for us on the public stage and when they’ve gone it’s as if they don’t exist.
The jazz trumpeter, composer and bandleader Red Perksey migrated to Sydney via France in 1951. He soon established himself on radio and records, and in live gigs, and he became Musical Director for a Sydney record company.
Red and his orchestra had a hit with (A Little Boy Called) Smiley from the film Smiley Gets A Gun (1958), and they backed Vic Sabrino on his version of Rock Around The Clock (1955), a record some call as the first Australian rock’n’roll record. He was clearly a bright and likeable personality who pops up here and there in the newspaper archives.
Red Perksey 1950s (photo)
In 1958 Red was photographed joshing around poolside at a deejays’ convention, and he was giving lunchtime concerts at a Sydney music store. Then there is nothing. No more listings in the radio guides, no more gigs advertised, no more affectionate write-ups. He disappeared?
I had written what I believe is the definitive biographical sketch of Red Perksey. He was born Siegbert Perlstein in Berlin in 1921, of Jewish German-Polish background. I traced his progress from Berlin in the 30s, to Palestine in the mid-40s and Paris in the late 40s. He and his wife Zizi came to Australia by refugee ship in the early 50s, and were later naturalised here. The only later date I had was his death, in 1995, but from 1958 until then, nothing.
Eventually, someone emails. A niece, probably his only surviving relative, emailed from Paris with some answers.
To Australian audiences, to the Sydney newspapers, and (retrospectively) to this archival forager, Red Perksey had disappeared.
Meanwhile, a couple known as Bert and Anne were living in a remote French village where Bert painted, sculpted and made furniture. Bert was also a musician, and sometimes he joined in with local groups.
To us, they had disappeared; in France, Red Perksey and his wife were in plain view to their fellow villagers.
I guess my point is, there are more places in this world than the public stage.
ends
(Lyn later emailed me to explain how he tracked Red down).
“At the French National Library (BnF) I found song copyrights from 1950, which helped place Red in France and active at that time.
“I got a lead from a French book of pseudonyms at the Internet Archive that gave me his real name. Then he was easy to find at the Israeli national archives. They had had facsimiles of loads of documents to do with him and his wife when they applied for Palestinian citizenship in the 40s, including passport photos, dates of birth etc. A Jewish refugee agency had passenger lists from refugee ships going out to Australia.
And there they both were!”
Postscript by Bob
While I greatly admire Lyn’s dogged pursuit of facts supposedly lost in the dross of pop culture, I probably spoiled it for him with my obscure comment on his blog.
I asked did he know that the Ron Sexsmith wrote a song called ‘Disappearing Act?” This of course had nothing to do with Lyn’s blog other than his headline. Then again, Ron is a brilliant and prolific artist who rarely makes headlines and for a time there (between 2008 and 2011) he too seemed to disappear.
I was never so happy to learn in 2011 that his career was being revived by Canadian heavy metal producer Bob Rock, resulting in Long Player Late Bloomer, Ron’s first album since 2008. A strange coupling but it worked!
I recall Ron Sexsmith appearing at The Zoo, a daggy Fortitude Valley music club, in 2008. Tickets were $45 and the show was just Ron, his baby face and an acoustic guitar. Not a minder or a roadie to be seen.
Happy to report the award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter is this month releasing his 18th album – The Vivien Line. I have no idea what it will be like, but given songs from his back catalogue like Disappearing Act, Gold in Them Hills, Cheap Hotel, Fallen, Whatever it Takes and Secret Heart, I’ll be ordering one. Still not ringing a bell? Ron’s songs have been covered by famous singers including Rod Stewart, k.d Laing, Nick Lowe, Michael Buble and Emmylou Harris. Coldplay’s Chris Martin recorded a duet with Ron of Gold in Them Hills as a bonus track for the 2002 album Cobblestone Runway. That’s the same album featuring Disappearing Act and one of Ron’s best.
Image: A selection from the B’s. How many of these do you have?
While my friends in New Zealand were still at school, I was making apprentice wages, spending almost all of it on records. Our small town didn’t have a record store as such, but the local department store stocked the latest pop records. At the time, LPs were pressed at a factory in Wellington owned by His Master’s Voice (HMV). My copy of ‘Please Please Me’ (The Beatles), for example, was issued by Parlophone in Mono. It still plays OK but it sounds thin compared to the sophisticated sounds of Pink Floyd or the Moody Blues.
New Zealand’s music fans had the jump on most other countries when the latest Beatles album became a ‘must have now’ item. The masters were shipped to Wellington and the presses were set to work. Other countries usually had to wait for a shipment of imported records.
‘Please Please Me’ was rushed out by Parlophone in March 1963 (I was 14), so maybe I bought it with money from my paper run. Parlophone was eager to cash in on the title track, the group’s first No 1 hit in the UK.
Roll forward to 2023 and my LP collection is stacked neatly in two cupboards, very rarely played. I have a good quality record player hooked up to my stereo with a pre-amp, so I’m not sure why they don’t get more of a playing. Ah yes, it’s the getting up and flipping the record over to the six or seven tracks on side two.
The big change between my teenage consumption of music and now is that, for the most part, we listened to music in one room. We would typically lie on the floor (parents were out, obviously), and crank up the volume. There may have been alcohol.
By comparison, today’s music listener can stream an endless Spotify playlist from their phone to a Bluetooth speaker at home or in the car (or through earbuds). It might be inferior quality, but it’s easy.
What set me off on this tangent was reading about the imminent closure of the Sanity record chain. Our town has one of their outlets. I didn’t shop there often but bought a few CDs – Kasey Chambers, Troy Casser-Daley. Now, as stocks starts to dwindle, I’m having a look for bargains. They sell DVDs too.
Sanity is closing all 50 stores as leases expire and moving to an online business model. Sanity is not the first retail chain to retire from shopping centres, where so many retailers have found that the foot traffic doesn’t always translate to turnover to offset higher rents.
This is not an isolated development, with a couple of Brisbane record stores closing their doors and Melbourne’s iconic Basement Discs set to do the same. Co-owner Suzanne Bennett told The Age that the impact of Covid and a drop in foot traffic reduced revenue. The CBD store was established for 28 years and famous for its in-store performances by musicians including The Teskey Brothers, Paul Kelly, Billy Bragg and Justin Townes Earle. This is not to say Basement Discs is going out of business. Suzanne and partner Rod Jacobs will continue to operate online and have a dream of opening another shop in the suburbs.
As I discovered, after chatting online with former colleague Noel Mengel, there are still some funky record stores around in Brisbane. But the independents have mostly moved to the suburbs to find cheaper rents.
Noel, who was chief music writer at The Courier-Mail for 15 years, said that most shopping centres had an independent record store. In recent years most have closed or moved to the suburbs.
“Every shopping centre had one, usually as well as Sanity or HMV, for example Sounds at Chermside, Brookside Music Centre and Toombul Music. Rockaway Records is a groovy store still going at Carindale Shopping Centre. It used to be near the Paddington shops before that.
“There are lots of Indie record stores now in Brisbane, but rents are too high in shopping centres. The independents include Sonic Sherpa at Stones Corner, Stash Records at Camp Hill, Dutch Vinyl in Paddington and Jet Black Cat in West End. So that niche market, import vinyl thing is going OK.
“But those shops really used to add something to the shopping centres.”
Rockaway, established in 1992, is one of the last indie stores in Brisbane shopping centres. Long-established Rocking Horse Records and Record Exchange continue to trade in the CBD.
As music production formats and distribution began to change, famous record stores like Harlequin and Skinny’s disappeared. Even with Sanity moving out, there are still big retail chains in shopping centres like JB Hi Fi that sell CDs and vinyl albums.
We old school music listeners grew up browsing record stores, from the days of vinyl in the 1960s, through the transition to cassettes (1970s) and CDs (the 1990s) and into the brave new world of downloading and streaming music. This arguably began with Apple Itunes in 2001, although the original Napster found a way in 1999 for users to share music through peer-to-peer file sharing.
Although it was shut down in 2002 after a plethora of legal actions, you may be aware that Napster re-emerged later under new owners and is now a legitimate alternative to Spotify.
The best and most popular physical record stores are those that specialise in rare and second-hand vinyl. They are not always easy to find, as they need to find a shop in the suburbs where rents are viable.
Long-time reader Franky’s Dad (aka Lyn Nuttall) is someone who has a history of browsing in such shops. These days though he confesses to preferring streaming services like Spotify.
“Platforms like this are made for me. They seem to have every track in the universe. They don’t of course, but lately my bowerbird approach is served by YouTube, where numerous collectors seem to have posted their entire collections.
“These days I can find even the most obscure or lost tracks from the 50s and 60s”.
Lyn, who hosts the website poparchives began collecting vinyl 45s via mail order in the 1980s & 1990s, mostly through record auctioneers – “I think I paid the rent of one bloke in Sydney.” “I do miss combing through the racks for the physical object. Even at the time I used to say that half the pleasure was the hunt and the item in your hand after you’d paid for it.”
Noel Mengel, now a freelance journalist who also plays in his own band, The Trams, says Brisbane is well served by independent, suburban record stores.
As the figures below show, there has been rapid growth in demand for vinyl records. Noel welcomed the recent addition of a vinyl pressing factory in Brisbane as there were previously huge delays for those pressing vinyl.
“The community radio station 4ZZZ does a great job playing Queensland music and the independent stores sell their records.”
Figures from ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) show that vinyl album sales ($28.51 million) outsold CD albums ($23.90 million) for calendar year 2021. Vinyl sales have increased steadily since 2012 (then just $1.85 million) compared to CD sales in that year ($193.49 million).
All of which reminds me I promised my niece I would bring some of my old jazz records when we visit NZ next month. She and her husband only listen to vinyl. I reckon they are on to something.
Bob’s annual playlist of Christmas songs and a few things you never knew about the 12 Days of Christmas Take care on the roads, dear readers.
Photo by Laurel Wilson
We did a drive-by of Warwick’s Christmas lights last Saturday night. It would melt the Grinchiest heart. By that I mean even if you are deeply cynical about the nativity story, Santa, Elf on a Shelf and rampant consumerism, Christmas lights are a joy. Not at all energy-conserving but joyous without a doubt
She Who Took Pictures in the Dark (SWTPITD) came up with a couple of good ones. I drove and the passengers navigated, which was ‘interesting’
We had just finished two weeks of carol performances with East Street Singers. We are having a break from choir until January, so cruising the Christmas lights hotspots was the next best thing.
Lavish displays of Christmas lights cost multiple thousands, not to mention the additional burden on the household energy bill. The comparison website finder.com.au did a survey on Christmas spending which did not mention Christmas lights at all. Nevertheless, those surveyed said they were planning to spend around $1,361 on food, alcohol, presents, eating out and travel.
Two-thirds of Australians (72%), however, are slashing their spending, mindful of the impact of inflation and what the New Year may bring.
About 38% of respondents said they would start buying food and presents early to help control their spending. One quarter went shopping for bargains on Black Friday,(the US version of Boxing Day sales) with 25% implementing a gift-giving limit.
Almost a quarter of the 1,054 survey respondents said they would have to go into debt to cover their Christmas costs (up from 23% in 2021).
Inflation rose 6.9% in the year to October 2022 and there appears to be no signs of it easing. Inflationary pressures, particularly the steep rise in fuel and energy prices, prompted the Reserve Bank of Australia to raise the cash rate by 3.00% in 2022 (it’s now 3.10%). What this might mean for people with huge mortgages in 2023 is anyone’s guess.
Long-term FOMM followers will know I usually trot out a Christmas song playlist and this year is no exception. But I am swayed this year to include songs with a sentimental or even reverent message. This offsets the somewhat cynical tone of my contribution, ‘Christmas in Australia’ which can be found here.
Our five Christmas carol performances this month included a mix of traditional songs, a few which are rarely heard and that jolly old tune about figgy pudding and not going until we get some.
Number one on the 12-song FOMM Christmas playlist is the Sussex Carol with its clever counterpoint section where the men vocalise in a different time signature while the women sing the verse (then vice versa). ‘The Sussex Carol’ is performed by the choir of St Martin’s in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.
The Sussex Carol brings to mind the wry observation in Tim Minchin’s timeless ‘White Wine in the Sun’ (number 2).
I get freaked out by churches
Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords
But the lyrics are dodgy.
Minchin released this song in 2012 as a tribute to his baby daughter. He released this 2022 live version, all the more poignant because his child has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Minchin donates proceeds from this song over the Christmas period to Aspect (Autism Spectrum Australia). This is a touching, live rendition, just Tim and piano.
‘Once in Royal David’s City’ (3), is performed in folk style by The Seekers. This is a happy, lapsed-Methodist memory. I was given a harmonica in a Christmas stocking (I was 8) and was playing that carol by lunchtime. Later I found Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.
Next is the much-loved ‘How to Make Gravy’ (4) by Paul Kelly. Note for guitarists: Paul plays a guitar tuned to an open D. In ordinary tuning you need to span three or four frets to make those chords. Just saying.
‘O Holy Night’(5) is a classic Christian carol, favoured by sopranos who can hit the high note (A flat). My trusty editor Laurel Wilson is well capable of executing (ie singing, as opposed to ‘murdering’ Ed.) this song. Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Kate Miller-Heidke are among those who have recorded Adolphe Adam’s composition, based on a French poem. This version is by the honourable Luciano Pavarotti.
‘The Christians and the Pagans’ (6) takes me back a bit – Dar Williams singing about cousin Amber (and her friend), turning up unexpectedly for a traditional family lunch.
The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch,
Til Timmy turned to Amber and said, “Is it true that you’re a witch?”
His Mom jumped up and said, “The pies are burning, ” and she hit the kitchen,
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, “It’s true, your cousin’s not a Christian, ”
“But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share,
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere.“
Song 7 was recommended by the convenors of U3A Warwick’s Music Show; indigenous man Mitch Tambo singing ‘Silent Night’ in language. I shared this with my niece in New Zealand who is a big Marlon Williams fan. Mitch’s voice is equally impressive.
‘Carol of the Bells’(8) is an old Ukrainian folk tune. This version is from the soundtrack of the 1990 hit movie Home Alone.
As we think about Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and other countries which need peaceful thoughts, here is John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Happy Christmas/War is Over’ (9).
Macca is broadcasting his last Australia all Over for 2022 on Sunday so it’s a fair bet he’ll include ‘Carol of the Birds’. (10).
This delightful Australian song with authentic Down Under imagery is from the album Bucko and Champs (Colin Buchanan and Greg Champion).
I mentioned to my niece’s witty 15-year-old last month that I’d not heard the Mariah Carey Christmas song reportedly played to death at this time of year. He replied, “Oh yes, that’s the song you hear in shopping centres, giving their poor workers PTSD.”
I’m sparing you Mariah’s vocal gymnastics on ‘All I want for Christmas is You’ in favour of a traditional Irish folk song. This recording of the ‘Wexford Carol’ (11) features Alison Krauss, better known for collaborations with bluegrass band Union Station and duets with husband Robert Plant (Raising Sand). Here she is joined by master cellist YoYo Ma and an ensemble of class musicians.
Finally, the ‘Twelve Days Of Christmas’, an annoyingly repetitive song which in 1984 gave birth to a quirky set of economic indicators. The Christmas Price Index and the True Cost of Christmas measure the nominal and cumulative values of the gifts given by the True Love. In 2021, the commodity price index assessed the nominal value at $41,205 and the cumulative value at $179,454. An example is the four calling birds (they use canaries), which are mentioned nine times. Canaries go for around $300 in the US so the cumulative value of the gift from Ms True Love is $10,700. You follow?
Not that this would have occurred to Bing Crosby when he recorded the song with the Andrews Sisters in 1949. Bing’s been dead for 45 years but regardless has 25 million Spotify followers. Now that’s what I’d call a commodity.
Image: Technology exists to convert a cassette to MP3 – have we had a copyright ruling on that?
This week I decided to reflect on the many ways we can listen to music in this digital age. We’ve come a long way since the first recording etched on to a wax cylinder in 1860. In just 50 years, the mainstream way of listening to music has moved from vinyl LPs to cassettes to CDs and now to online streaming. It’s been quite an evolution.
This FOMM was inspired by a frustrating search for an album by Californian bluegrass singer AJ Lee and her band, Blue Summit. I was introduced to AJ at U3A Warwick’s Music Show, where presenters curate a list of YouTube clips and provide background on the tracks. This particular song was performed by the Brothers Comatose and AJ Lee, a splendid interpretation of Neil Young’s Harvest Moon.
On Monday I started packing for a week away in the caravan, part of it at the best music festival in Queensland, Neurum Creek Festival. This one has been running for 16 years at the Neurum Creek Bush Retreat, which is about 12 kms from Woodford. In preparing and packing, I decided to see if I could load new music on my Ipod, which is no longer supported by Apple. The problem is that as I now longer use ITunes, the music player I use can’t ‘talk’ to the Ipod. Mr Shiraz sent me a link to a piece of software that will mimic ITunes so you can ‘sync’ your music collection with an Ipod, a portable music player invented by Apple in 2001. Since Apple stopped supporting Ipods, many users have opted to put them in a drawer and move on. One alternative is to buy a cheap mobile phone, add a large storage card and use it as a personal music player.
I could tell how far CDs had dropped in popularity when looking to buy AJ Lee’s 2021 album, I’ll Come Back. I decided not to download it on Spotify, as the artists are paid a trifling amount when we listen to their music on that platform.
Subsequent searches found the album on streaming services, which was not what I wanted. I went direct to AJ Lee’s website and the only option was to purchase a physical CD and wait however many weeks or months it takes to arrive from the US. Then I tried Bandcamp (where you will find our music). Success, the album was there. I duly downloaded the album and now can listen to it on my computer, my phone and, once I get around to it, burn a CD for my ‘new’ 5-CD changer.
The CD player failed some months ago and I eventually established that the model was obsolete and a replacement laser could not be found. I opted for a refurbished model from a seller on Ebay. It’s a quality Sony deck and, so far, is working perfectly.
Before I went into hospital for a procedure in late August, I spent a day (dusting) and alphabetising our CD collection (450-plus). I told She Who Loves Order in her Life I had done this ‘so if I cark it, at least you’ll know the CDs are in A-Z and not filed according to ‘mood’.
As audiophiles will tell you, CD music is superior to cassette but inferior to vinyl, because the digital sound is compressed.
Vinyl music played on top line analogue systems always sounds better than both CDs and the alternative (playing or streaming MP3 quality tracks). The cassette, with its annoying hiss and tendency to become snarled in the player, is a long last.
Audio cassettes were invented by a Dutch company (Philips) and adopted by mainstream America in the mid-60s. My memory of cassettes is that people would borrow someone else’s tape and dub a cassette to play in the car. This practice was and still is illegal, even if retailers happily sold boxes of blank cassettes and high-end twin cassette decks on which one could dub to a blank tape. (The last piece of music technology I actually understood. Ed.)
Most of us have a couple of shoeboxes in the cupboard full of cassettes – legitimate ones bought in music stores, or bootleg copies. The difficulty now is that, for most people, their means of playing cassettes has evaporated. My tape deck worked for about 20 years. One deck stopped working and then the sound quality became so poor we decided to switch to another medium.
I did a straw poll among people of my vintage to establish how they listen to music (if they listen to music at all). Most said they no longer had a CD player (it either died or they found the business of swapping them over tedious). Most late model cars no longer come with a CD player, so that accelerated the decline in popularity.
Some people opt for a WIFI speaker through which they can stream music from YouTube or Spotify. How this works is you turn the gadget on and say in a loud, clear voice: “OK Google, play The Goodwills.” There is a pause, a whirring sound and a disembodied voice says: “OK, playing DJ Goodwill.”
Others turn on their smart TV and then search for music videos on YouTube. Depending on your cinema surround sound system (if you have one), the sound quality is OK. The database of video clips is apparently bottomless, but the quality is uneven.
According to Gizmodo’s history of the compact disc, the first commercial CDs were available in Australia in late 1982 (about 150 titles). This was a few years before we moved to Brisbane and bought a Technics stereo system for around $1,500 (it was on sale). We started a CD collection then and even today, I prefer a CD to any other format.
What is hard to stomach is knowing I paid $25 to $30 each and sometimes more for an imported disc. Today you can go to a charity shop and buy CDs for coins. It’s not about money, though. Our CD collection is special in that at least 100 CDs were given to us either as a gift or as a swap (one of ours for one of theirs) by musicians we know.
The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said streaming accounted for 86% of $565.8 million music sales in Australia in 2021. Over the same period, physical music sales dropped from $100.5 million to $56.1 million. Vinyl albums led the way at $29.7 million, compared with $24.9 million for CD albums.
A Roy Morgan research report in 2020 said 12.7 million Australians were using a streaming service. Spotify is the clear market leader with 8m customers, almost double what it was in 2017. YouTube Music is next with 4.4m users in Australia.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) concurs, saying 61% of Australians used a streaming service in June 2020, up from 48% in 2019. As you’d expect, 88% of the 18-34 age group used music streaming services. Surprisingly (well, I’m surprised), the biggest growth in online music streaming was the 55-64 cohort (from 47% to 59%), 65-75 (30% to 44%) and the over-70s (17% to 26%).
I confess I’m part of that trend, although this weekend it’s all about live music, coffee and a CD shop – the way it should be.
The Morrison government’s $200m RISE grants scheme for the arts helped many arts organisations and individuals revive their careers after the Covid hiatius. According to the Opposition, there’s still $20 million in the fund not yet distributed.
The Brisbane Philharmonic strings with Emily Granger (harp) and Jonathan Henderson (flute). Photo by John Connolly.
In the aftermath of ‘Albo’s first 100 days,’ it could be constructive to talk about one good thing the previous Federal government did – creating the RISE scheme for the Arts.
The $200 million RISE (Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand) grants scheme was designed to arrest the declining financial health of arts organisations and creative individuals. The Covid-19 stimulus program was welcomed by the arts community as organisations large and small shared in the bounty.
We were witness to the fruits of one such grant application by the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra. The BPO has been touring regional towns with its newly acquired Salzedo concert harp. This $75,000 instrument looks and sounds gorgeous. The BPO toured a string quintet with two soloists – Emily Granger (harp) and Jonathan Henderson (flute). This ensemble played for 110 people at Warwick Town Hall last Saturday. Apart from the interesting and varied programme (Ralph Vaughan Williams, Mozart, Schoenberg, Faure), this was an occasion for ‘show and tell’.
Audience members were invited to come up to the stage after the concert and inspect the concert harp close up. BPO director John Connolly told the audience the custom-made concert harp used up a lot of the grant the orchestra received last year. He briefly explained the complexity of the instrument, built from maple and spruce and invited the audience to come up and inspect it after the concert.
The BPO’s application brief was to acquire this instrument and then take it on tour to places where people have probably never seen a concert harp. On this tour, the ensemble played at Pomona, Maryborough, Warwick, Toowoomba and Brisbane.
The RISE Fund was established to support the arts and entertainment sector to re-activate after two years of Covid disruption. The program offered arts and entertainment sector organisations assistance in the presentation of cultural and creative projects. The funding of activities and events was aimed at rebuilding confidence amongst investors, producers and consumers (hate that word.Ed).
The first RISE grants were issued in December 2020 in support of artists and organisations affected by COVID-19. The aim was to fund the delivery and presentation of activities across all art forms to audiences across Australia. Projects aimed at audiences in outer metropolitan, regional and remote areas were taken into account, as were projects that involved tours and use of local regional services and support acts.
The grant scheme provided $200 million over 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 to assist the financial viability of arts organisations. Among the first grants awarded was $1 million to the Byron Bay Blues Festival and $1.46 million to Woodfordia for its smaller-scale Bushtime festival.
Queensland grant recipients included Kate Miller-Heidke and her husband and musical partner Keir Nuttall. The pair, known for ‘Muriel’s Wedding – the Musical’, received a $200,000 grant to produce a new musical, Bananaland. QMusic, the umbrella organisation that represents musicians in Queensland, was another grant recipient.The Granite Belt Art and Craft Trail received $80,000 to help present a three-day showcase of artists and artisans around the region. Some grant awards have attracted criticism, however (see footnote).
In what one might term its ‘death throes’, the Morrison government allocated a further $20 million to the scheme in March this year. Just this week Opposition Shadow spokesman for the Arts Paul Fletcher took aim at Arts Minister Tony Burke for failing to distribute the last batch of funds. I reached out to Mr Burke’s office to ask (a) has the money had been allocated and (b) did this Labor government intend to extend or supplement the scheme.
Citizen journalists don’t often get a response to approaches like this. We make do with public statements, published details of grant schemes and quoting other publications. In this instance, given there was no response from Mr Burke’s office, we’ll let the Opposition have a free kick.
Fletcher took the chance to turn Albo’s headline into ‘100 days of lost opportunities for the Arts’.
“Since the election, Minister for the Arts Tony Burke has repeatedly failed to confirm $20 million in funding from the last round of the (RISE) program,” Mr Fletcher said in a statement.
“The RISE fund helped to create over 213,000 job opportunities across Australia by assisting the arts and entertainment sector re-establish itself post-pandemic,” he added.
“In recognising arts and entertainment as one of our hardest hit sectors during the pandemic, the Coalition Government extended the RISE program as part of the 2022-23 Budget.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony (Albo) Albanese spent much of the week explaining what he and his government had achieved in its first 100 days. A lot of what was said had been said before – diplomatic forays into the Pacific, the mercy dash to Ukraine, the Quad meeting, mending fences with France and all that. There was the commitment to reducing the impact of climate change, and, if you did not know, the quiet scrapping of the cashless debit card previously imposed on some welfare recipients.
As the Canberra Times pointed out, the first 100 days was not without its challenges. The incoming Labor government was met by a perfect storm – rising interest rates together with high inflation and the subsequent higher prices at the petrol pump and supermarket checkout. Mr Albanese is already flagging budget measures in October to tackle soaring energy prices.
All up, it seems ‘Albo’ is still enjoying a honeymoon, although some of the Opposition’s gainsaying is gaining traction. I’m fairly sure that allowing ex-basketball giant Shaq O’Neill to make a surprise visit to the PM was what young people would call a ‘fail’. The story was that Shaq, a black man from the US, was lending his support to Albo’s campaign for recognition of indigenous Australians. Shaq is these days maybe better known for betting ads than his time with the LA Lakers. Besides, he made the PM look small, and we can’t have that.
It will indeed be interesting to see what kind of funding Albo and his team direct to the arts and entertainment sector. It would be great if organisations like the BPO or talented individuals like Keir and Kate could depend on more of the same. Covid-19 has not gone away and there are still many challenges facing those providing live entertainment.
Anyway, we thought the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra’s travelling concert at $20 concession was the bargain of the year. The BPO’s grant application proposed just such a concert series. The aim was a regional tour built around the acquisition of a new Concert Harp. The $102,000 grant was released in July last year. It shows how long it can take for an arts group to plan for and execute a tour like this. As with most arts presentations, the door take was clearly not going to cover tour costs, not to mention wages.
The BPO is Brisbane’s leading community orchestra with up to 200 musicians a year performing a variety of orchestral music. It is sustained by donations, sponsorship and grants.
We looked around Warwick’s beautiful town hall, built in 1887, and were astonished by how many faces we recognised. We’ve only been here two years or so, but somehow seem to have gravitated to the side of town that loves a bit of culture. I hear the famous Birralee children’s choir is coming here later this month. You might have even read it here first.
Today’s FOMM is brought to you by the letter P for patronage. There should be more of it.
Image: Left hander signing a document: athree23, pixabay.com
Last week, Friday the 13th, I intended to write about International Left Handers’ Day. Apparently it’s been a thing since 1976 – a clever way of making people aware of this difference, at least once a year.
Clearly the organisers of International Left Handers’ Day do not suffer from Triskaidekaphobia, a fear of Friday the 13th.
Phobias are an irrational fear of one or more of hundreds of strange things that induce panic attacks in some people. So you may not be surprised to learn that Sinistrophobia is a fear of left handed people (or objects close to the phobic person’s left hand).
I was made aware of International Left Handers’ Day by my friend and musical collaborator, Silas Palmer. In posting links to social media pages about Left Handedness, he revealed that three of the four members of Melbourne band The Royal High Jinx (he plays drums, keys, accordion and fiddle), are lefties in the literal sense. That is a clear statistical anomaly, as the norm is 10% of the population.
So what does it all mean to the 90% of us who use the right hand for most tasks requiring dexterity?
Well, it could be that you share an abode with a partner or other who is left-handed or have children who turned out that way.
I tried teaching She Who Is Also Left Handed to play guitar but it did my head in. Even now, I just can’t handle watching her chopping up onions or meat with the knife in her left hand. (You’d freak out more if I tried doing it with my right hand. Ed)
There’s been a lot of research into the science and psychology of handedness. Recently, a team at Oxford University found for the first time the role played by DNA. Scientists found the first genetic instructions hard-wired into human DNA seem to be heavily involved in the structure and function of the brain – particularly the parts involved in language. Left-handed people may have better verbal skills as a result.
The research published in Brain magazine concludes that being left-handed (or port-sided), has often led to a raw deal.
“In many cultures being left handed is seen as being unlucky or malicious and that is reflected in language,” said Prof Dominic Furniss, a hand surgeon and author on the report.
“What this study shows is that being left-handed is just a consequence of the developmental biology of the brain, it has nothing to do with luck or maliciousness.” (Despite the word ‘sinister’, which is derived from the Latin for left-handed. Ed)
If you grew up in the 1950s, the education system was not at all in favour of left-handed children. As the teaching of writing became widespread, teachers encouraged right-handedness by (mild examples), tying the left arm behind the back and knuckle-raps for writing with the ‘wrong’ hand. Those that persisted with their left hand were left to cope in a world designed for right handers.
Psychologist Chris McManus has suggested that the Industrial Revolution encouraged this, due to the right-handed design of the machinery in mills and factories
McManus, in his book Right Hand, Left Hand, finds an account from a school near Falkirk, Scotland, in 1880, noting that “eight children had come to school left-handed”. The phrase “had come” implies that they were not allowed to remain so.
With the decline of attempts to convert children, the numbers of left-handers has risen sharply over the course of the 20th century.
Some estimates put it as high as 18% and, as we will see, there are statistical anomalies.
Songwriter and film score composer Dory Previn wrote the definitive song about left-handedness.
The lyrics of Left Hand Lost (from the 1972 album, Mary C Brown and the Hollywood Sign), are infused with Catholic references linking the left hand to evil deeds (as in finding work for idle hands).
Previn, who wrote a good half dozen albums full of self-reflecting songs about mystical kings and iguanas, lemon haired ladies and waking up slow, starts this one with a liturgical chant.
The real attraction to this topic was a chance to name-check a few famous guitarists who have mastered the art of playing ‘Molly Dooker’ (1940s Australian slang).
Most of us would know about Paul McCartney, but there’s also a long list of players (living and dead) including Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Annie Lennox, Tommy Iommi (Black Sabbath), David Bowie and Sting. Down under lefties are represented by singer songwriters Eric Bogle and Courtney Barnett, Dick Dale (Bombora), Beeb Birtles (Little River Band), Oscar Dawson (Holy Holy), WA slide guitarist Dave Hole, Kevin Curran (Hail Mary) and Kate Miller-Heidke Band guitarist Keir Nuttall.
Keir plays a 21-year-old Guild Jumbo acoustic that has been customised to suit a left hander.
“It sometimes requires the addition of wooden braces inside the body to compensate for the additional stress from reversing the string order (as well as the nut and bridge),” he explained.
“All of my electric guitars are made left handed. But you often pay more, as the good ones are snapped up by collectors, so the prices are driven up.”
Keir says he started off self-taught so it was too late to switch by the time he realised that it is expensive and frustrating being a lefty.
In an effort to join in on jams at parties, he learned the basic shapes playing a ‘normal’ guitar upside down.
“When I taught guitar I would encourage my students to learn right handed to spare themselves the pain. Guitar is about the co–ordination between both hands, so I believe it doesn’t matter whether your dominant hand is fretting or picking.”
This could be a good time to explain that some left handers (like the aforementioned Dick Dale and the late indigenous singer, Gurrumul), learned to play a conventionally strung guitar upside down.
The website https://leftyfretz.com/ is devoted to left handed guitars and how to play them. But the webmaster has also compiled an impressive collection of left-handed trivia. Like, did we know five of the last nine US presidents (not Trump) were left handed? Mensa, the elite organisation of people with high IQs, claims 20% of its members are lefties.
From this exhaustive list of left handed celebrities, I plucked just two Aussies (Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman). Did you know that 40% of the world’s best tennis players are southpaws (US baseball term)? Rafael Nadal was a right-handed player but taught himself to play leftie to give him an advantage (which it clearly does). Former tennis great turned commentator John McEnroe is also a Portsider.
I noted Simpsons creator Matt Groenig on one of these lists. This may explain why at least four of the characters (Marge Simpson, Bart Simpson, Ned Flanders and Mr Burns) are corrie dukit as they say in some parts of Scotland,
Specialist stores like Ned’s Leftorium do exist. The website www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk operated a shop in London’s west end from the mid-1960s. Management quit the retail space in 1996 and has been operating a home-based internet business ever since. Just in case you were wondering, some of the product lines that do very well include can openers, scissors, spiral notebooks and pens (the latter have curved nibs so the writer can see what’s being written without putting the heel of the hand on still-wet ink).
If you’d like an insight into left handedness, try writing today’s headline with your opposite hand; that is, righties try with the left and vice versa. A fun game for any old Friday afternoon.
Photo of sax player by Konstantin Aal www.unsplash.com
Warwick’s annual Jumpers and Jazz festival took me back to a day at the dentist in Maleny. I was lying prone, mouth jammed with all sorts of stuff. Soft, melodic saxophone music drifted down from the ceiling (with the poster of the Blue Mountains).
“Than Gltz?” I garbled.
Roger removed the suction hose “What’s that now?”
“Is that Stan Getz?”
“No, but good guess,” he said, replacing the suction hose.
“What’s your best guess?”
“Chrli Prker,” I choked out.
“No, not Charlie Parker – it’s Paul Desmond.”
“Ach, Dve bubck!” I replied and the conversation went on like that.
People who know I write songs often take a stab at my influences – is it Paul Kelly, Loudon Wainwright, Joni? Well, yes, but my first musical interest as a teenager (15) was jazz. Somewhere (probably in a box in the garage), are six Dave Brubeck quartet LPs. I have promised to will all such albums to my jazz-mad niece.
After I emerged from a childhood of listening to my parents’ records (classical, Scottish, opera) I discovered jazz.
First was pianist Phineas Newborn Jnr, who was famous for playing entire pieces with just the left hand. Then came the Modern Jazz Quartet, Brubeck, Oscar Peterson and so on. Then I discovered blues. But before I could truly get immersed in waking up one morning (with an awful aching head..Ed), along came the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Dave Brubeck and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond pioneered jazz in unconventional timings, headlined of course by the remarkable Take Five (1959). Despite the dire misgivings of his record company’s sales force at the time, Brubeck insisted it be released and was rewarded with an unlikely No 1 hit. In 1961, singer Carmen McRae also sang a version of Paul Desmond’s composition on the album Take Five Live. Ah, you didn’t know it had words, did you?
Take Five is a nod to the unconventional tempo of 5/4 (five beats to the measure), which means your drummer has to be masterful). Brubeck was interviewed in 1995 by Paul Zollo in his 730-page book, Songwriters on Songwriting. My well-thumbed copy reveals Brubeck telling Zollo how the record company’s sales people tried to cut Take Five off at the knees. They said it would not work because it wasn’t in 4/4 and people couldn’t dance to it. Moreover, they baulked at Brubeck’s album Time Out because it was all original tunes in odd time signatures.
“So I was breaking a whole bunch of rules. And then the album turned out to be the strongest selling album in years. So they were wrong!” he told Zollo.
“It’s still the most played jazz tune, maybe in the world.”
A few film makers agreed.Take Five was also used in movies including Mighty Aphrodite and Pleasantville.
Brubeck and Desmond may have pioneered 5/4 in popular music, but others picked up on it, namely film composer Lalo Schifrin. His thematic introduction to Mission Impossible is impossible, once heard, to remove from the ear. There are many others. Musician Dylan Ryche curated a Spotify playist of 48 songs in 5/4 dubbed – ‘Why not?’
Here you will find songs by Taylor Swift, Sting, Glenn Hansard, Jethro Tull, Radiohead, Sky, Blind Faith, Primus and that Andrew Lloyd Webber earworm from Jesus Christ Superstar, ‘Everything’s Alright’.
I’m not convinced that listening to multiple songs in 5/4 counts as entertainment, but the playlist shows that imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.
My personal favourite 5/4 composition is multi instrumentalist and beatboxer Mal Webb’s re-creation of Geoff Mack’s Australian country standard, ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’. This required him to find 67 Australian place names with five syllables, in itself a giant task. You may have bumped in to Mal leading workshops or impromptu brass bands when we used to have big music festivals.
So last week when I was out walking along Warwick’s main street, I could hear Blue Rondo a la Turk (Brubeck), streaming out of speakers attached to street light poles.
Warwick’s Jumper and Jazz festival kicked off last Wednesday with volunteers dressing street trees in the ‘yarn bombing’ style. The statue of one-time Queensland Premier T.J Byrnes in the town’s main intersection was dressed in a multi-coloured shawl and beanie. A stage was erected in front of the town hall and jazz performers started doing their soundchecks. Jazz, as you’d know, don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
But musicians should never really be boxed in to any one genre. Just as rock bands relish the solos (lead guitar, drums, bass), so too jazz musicians will cheerfully improvise for 20 minutes or more.
If you have never heard of Miles Davis, have a listen on Spotify – you will be astonished. I have two Miles Davis albums, the 1959 album Kind of Blue, which contained the aforementioned So What – a classic modal jazz tune. In 1970 or so I bought the double LP, Bitches Brew which runs for 94 minutes but contains only six tracks. It is not easy listening (but it’s yours eventually, dear niece!)
Meanwhile, close to the wood stove
I’ve been trying to avoid using the word ‘meanwhile’ when I want to move on to something else. So this time I will say, in due course, we (the acapella choir, East Street Singers), contributed to the jazz festival. Jumpers and Jazz was not held in 2020 so this year it’s been a case of blowing the dust off the songbooks which contain tunes you’d all know – Bill Bailey, Chatanooga Choo Choo, Five Foot Two and so on. There are some pretty melodies in there by real composers (as opposed to self-taught songwriters). They include The Way You Look Tonight, Moon River and Blue Moon. Some of us have been on a steep learning curve for today’s shopping centre gig, but we have a really good teacher, Jill Hulme, who also arranged some of the songs.
The various Jumpers and Jazz activities, including live music, art exhibitions, tree jumpers tours, sheep dog trials, car rallies and steam train excursions, have drawn a lot of visitors to the town. Because we are outside the Greater Brisbane Covid zone we feel less constrained in crowds, although quite a few people are wearing masks.
While spending this week committing jazz songs to memory, I realised how seldom I use unconventional timing in my own songs.
Most are in 4/4, some in 3/4 (waltz time), 2/4 (think bluegrass) and occasionally 6/8 which is like a speeded up waltz.
Our bush band occasionally required me to to play jigs in 9/8 (Rocky Road to Dublin, Blue Rondo a la Turk), but in the main I avoid tricky timings.
I should have said it is not a new concept – classical composers like Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and Mr Bach have been confounding conductors since the 19th century with various tempo changes. Celtic and eastern European musicians also relish dance tunes in odd time signatures.
So here’s one you all know – Pink Floyd’s Money (from Dark Side of the Moon). Now you can impress your friends by saying (learnedly) “that’s in 7/4, you know?”
Which reminds me of the time a musician friend posted a meme on Facebook, as a response to people complaining about the (Covid) times we live in.
“These are not difficult times”, it said “ 5/4,5/8 6/8,7/8 9/8,11/8 and 13/8…these are difficult times.”
Image: Lucky hand-held shot on the Warwick Christmas lights tour.
It’s Christmas Day so I’m posting this early and directing you to whatever device you listen to when playing a Spotify playlist.
If you do not have an account for this music streaming app, it is free to join up.
I have curated this in the true Christian spirit of peace and goodwill to all people (and dogs), with the inclusion of a few modern songs which have become known for their festive topicality.
I had the idea to do this while seated in the front row of St Mark’s cathedral in Warwick, as our choir waited to perform..“Ah, hard pews,’ I groaned to my fellow tenor as we rose to sing, “That takes me back.”
“What’s your background then?” he replied and I only had time to say “Methodist” before we queued up in the vestry for our first number, Ring Christmas Bells.
I have sat on many a hard church pew for many an hour. Our parents believed we should all attend ‘kirk’ as a family every week. Mum played the church organ, so it was a given that we’d end up knowing all the words of all the songs.
The traditional Christmas ones stay with you, even if in later years if you are one of those who once did and now no longer do.
I don’t mind listening to or singing Christmas music, but I detest being force-fed through the speakers in shopping malls and other public places.
Typically, whoever chooses the playlists for these locations goes with the hackneyed, inappropriate Northern hemisphere ones, or songs that embellish the commercial Christmas myth of Santa as we are all streamed into stores to buy gifts that in truth we rarely want or need.
I will put The Grinch back in his box now and proceed to the playlist, which you can listen to while sweating over a Christmas stove, peeling prawns or sitting with your feet up having a coldie.
1/ I’d never heard The First Noel sung to the tune of Pachelbel’s Canon. Our choir, East Street Singers, obviously knew it, and after two weeks’ rehearsal, so did I. If you’ve never heard it before, there is a 12-bar instrumental before the singing begins. The First Noel is a Cornish song from the early 1800s, lyrics inspired by Luke, Chapter 2.
2/ Ring Christmas Bells, sung by Dublin’s gay and lesbian choir. They sing it a good deal faster than we did, as we slow-marched into the cathedral, carrying candles.
3/ Next up is Mary Did You Know? by Mark Lowry and Buddy Green. We sing the arrangement by Fred Bock, unlike acapella group Pentatonix, who usually make up their own.
4/ Then come The Civil Wars with a sensitive rendition of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. Sadly, this duo broke up after recording two sublime albums of originals.
5/ Let’s jump into some contemporary songs of the Christmas season and the emotions it stirs up. The late John Lennon, killed outside his home in New York on December 8, 1980, starts Happy Xmas/War is Over with: ‘And so it is Christmas and what have we done?’ He rolls the traditional song into a refrain: ‘War is over, if you want it’, sung by 35 children of the Harlem Community Choir (who would all be between 50 and 60 years old today).
6/ I’ve previously included Joni Mitchell’s plaintive River in Christmas playlists. Feeling sad at a supposedly happy time, she wishes she had a river to skate away on, introducing and closing the song with Jingle Bells in a minor key.
7/ Following on from that is Paul Kelly’s recipe for gravy, instructions dictated to his brother while he (the writer) languishes in jail.
8/ Macca, host of Australia all Over, prompted me to include the Beach Boys’ ‘Little Saint Nick’ when he aired its cheerful harmonies and danceable tune last Sunday.
9/ I remember being introduced to the songs of Taylor Swift by a couple of young teenage girls who sang one after the other at a karaoke night. This is Swift’s ‘Christmas Must be Something More’ with lyrics worth a second listen.
10/ Switching back to carols, here’s an Australian one (The Silver Stars) intepreted by the stellar vocal group, Ideas of North.
11-13/ Did I warn you this was an eclectic list? Now we have Harry Belafonte with Mary’s Boy Child, followed by Paul Robeson (Ode to Joy – including a verse in German), and Wassail Song, performed by the Choir of Magdalene College. 14/ Closing out the celestial segment, Enya sings the timeless carol Silent Night in Gaelic.
15/ Changing the mood, Norah Jones sings pleadingly ‘It’s Not Christmas until you Come Home’. 16/ KT Tunstall pursues the theme with ‘Lonely This Christmas’.
17/ For the Parrotheads out there, Jimmy Buffett brings a little laconic escapism (and steel drums) in ‘Christmas Island’. No doubt in my mind Jimmy was not referencing our own Pacific gulag, where we lock up refugees and bill the tax payer.
18/ Canadian songwriter Dar Williams intended her 1996 song,The Christians and the Pagans, as a ‘humorous respite from tortured holiday gatherings’. The theme was controversial in its day,a Solstice-celebrating lesbian couple joining their devout family for Christmas.
“The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch, Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, ‘Is it true that you’re a witch?’ ”
As Slate reviewer Karen Tucker observes, although Williams said it was intended as witty social comment, the song nevertheless “evokes rumination on fractured families and societal ills in listeners, some of whom drill deeply into the psychology of the lyric”.
19/ The penultimate song is also an Australian carol, ‘Carol of the Birds’, sometimes called Orana, sung here by the Sir Peter Chanel Choir.
20/ And to take us out, Coldplay’s Christmas Lights is a reminder to cut the guide out of the free newspaper and go for a drive this evening.
She Who Bought Solar Christmas Lights From The Big Green Shed And Strung Them Along The Fence is joining in this enterprise, in a small way.One has to make a gesture in this town, where there are some truly splendid, even lavish displays.
The best way to appreciate this playlist is to play it in the car while taking the (grand) kids around to see the neighbourhood Christmas lights.
