R.I.P. David Lynch

David Lynch. Image: Adam Bordow/BW

It's hard to know what to say when someone of David Lynch's cultural stature passes away. Anything even half intelligent one might say about the facts of his career as a director, painter, musician (and transcendental meditation advocate, amongst other things) has already been covered by the time one can even begun to process the information. Others have almost as quickly filled countless megabytes and column-inches with reflections on the possible 'meanings' within the work, and wider significance within the cultural landscape. In the time it took me to get here, I've even read one semi-poetic discussion of the life-long (and life-shortening - as it transpired) smoking habit which almost seemed to define him as much as the work for some.

On reflection, perhaps the whole smoke thing is as good a signifier as any for an artist whose work was so saturated in the ineffable, and so resistant to being pinned down. It also speaks to his approach to life as an endlessly unfolding creative process. Lynch himself spoke of the 'Art Life', describing with relish how each creative gesture would blur seamlessly with his endless chains of coffee and cigarettes - each becoming the next in real time. Ultimately though, that's in danger of becoming yet more romanticised 'myth of the artist' stuff really. It feels like the only meaningful response at this stage is a more personal one, accompanied by some of the man's own unmediated words.

Image: Studio Canal/Les Films Alain Sarde/Asymmetrical Productions/

Babbo Inc/The Picture Factory/Bridgeman

When all else is said and done, Lynch's films and TV work (and let's face it - this is what will be remembered longest) have moved and stimulated me more than pretty much anything else achieved in those media. In my view, no one else has managed to blur the boundaries between moving images and dreams quite like Lynch. The logic at work within them is dream logic. This is why, just like the dreams we experience immediately prior to waking, they seem more vivid, more affecting, more divorced from convention, and more engaging of thought and feeling as sides of the same coin than any other cultural artefact I've encountered. It's why they resist traditional analysis so pleasingly. It's why even Lynch himself didn't always know what might happen - even as a mood or association emerged in real time on set. It's why, for those of us who relish questions and possible interpretations, far more than answers and definitive statements, Lynch is the go-to, par excellence. And I really don't care if he is the kind of film director 'someone like me' would like. I just do.

'Eraserhead', 'Twin Peaks', 'Lost Highway', 'Mulholland Drive' - these are works I can return to repeatedly, and never quite get to the end of. Certain scenes and images will remain indelibly stamped on my memory in perpetuity (I've mentioned more than a few on here before). The concluding credits may be rolling, but my response is slightly different each time, and I'm already anticipating the next time I can fail to '(ex/mans)plain it all away. Each work seems to mean so much, but I really don't want to know exactly what. In the process of not knowing, I may have been horrified, haunted, baffled, or felt like I'm falling in love. I may have gasped, laughed out loud or chuckled inwardly, confronted my own deepest fears, or just gazed longingly at the sheer formal elegance of Lynch's craft. I may have loved and despised humanity in equal measure. I may have gasped at the sheer audacity of it all (on a spectrum from the gleefully cheesy to the truly profound), and even, most surprisingly - meditated without irony on the existence/nature of good and evil). I'm not sure what else I could ask from an art experience, and I thank him for it.

Anyway, enough of me. Lynch really should get the final/not final words...

"If you get an idea that’s thrilling to you, put your attention on it and these other fish will swim into it. It’s like a bait. They’ll hook on to it and you’ll get more ideas. And you just pull them in."

"I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense."

"Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there’s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd. But I don’t just find humor in unhappiness – I find it extremely heroic the way people forge on despite the despair they often feel."

"In a way failure is a beautiful thing, because when the dust settles there’s nowhere to go but up, and it’s a freedom. You can’t lose more, but you can gain."

"A film or a painting – each thing is its own sort of language and it’s not right to try to say the same thing in words. The words are not there. The language of film, cinema, is the language it was put into, and the English language – it’s not going to translate. It’s going to lose."

"Certain things are just so beautiful to me, and I don’t know why. Certain things make so much sense, and it’s hard to explain."

All quotes: David Lynch.

Individual sources can be found in: Adrian Horton, 'A life in quotes: David Lynch', London, The Guardian, 17.01.25

R.I.P. Mark Stewart

 

Mark Stewart (Photo: Beezer Redland)

It was with great sadness that I learned of the recent passing of Mark Stewart - one of the godfathers (possibly THE Godfather) of what became known as 'The Bristol Sound.'

When I arrived in Bristol in 1980, to study Fine Art at the city's Polytechnic, I would occasionally see posters for gigs by local band, The Pop Group. Their name was also dropped around college from time to time, in tones indicating they had already made something of an impact on the Post-Punk music scene, both locally and nationally.

As it happened, the kind of angular, punk/funk noise they pioneered was very much a prevailing sound in Bristol at the time - at least for those searching for something suitably left-field to fill the vacuum left by Punk's demise, but reluctant to settle for the lukewarm offerings of New Romanticism littering the charts (Kajagoogoo, anyone? - I didn't think so!). Nevertheless, even in a region that boasted a number of enthusiastic alt-funkateers, with varying degrees of 'edge', Mark Stewart's outfit stood out as something else again.

A (literally) larger-than-life front man - Stewart was a self-proclaimed visual and sonic collagist from an early age. His righteous anger and radical politics were matched only by his desire to glue together Punk,Funk, Free Jazz, Dub Reggae (in which Bristol was also rich) - and essentially anything noisy that didn't identify as standard Rock music - into something that might express his thoughts and opinions effectively. Their debut album, 'Y' [1.] was a blistering statement of intent - fusing all the above ingredients with Stewart's histrionic vocals - and tied together by Dennis Bovell's sympathetic dub-wise production. At its most extreme, the sound might easily become an unholy racket - but it is one one that always draws the listener in. Stewart's lyrics were often polemical, but the music's appeal is actually to the heart (and feet) as much as to the head. 'Y' is alienated, certainly - but never alienating, and it still has the power to both alarm and excite all these decades later.

I'm ashamed to admit that my own limited experience of the Pop Group playing live in their home town was on one of those confused, heavily intoxicated evenings, when I only discovered exactly what I had just witnessed by asking someone afterwards. To be honest, I don't even recall exactly where it was. In retrospect, it may be that they've come to symbolise some of the experiential turmoil (bafflement-even?) of that period in my autobiography! I do remember it being an inspiringly chaotic experience, and suspect it would have still been so - even had I been sober. The archives suggest that they often brought a similarly ramshackle aesthetic to live proceedings as another great M.S. - fronted act, The Fall.

That gig must have been towards the end of their relatively short existence, I imagine, as the first iteration of the band burned intensely, but fairly briefly - and disbanded in 1981. Despite that, theirs has proved to be a lasting and highly influential legacy. Indeed, one might regard Stewart and co.'s musical eclecticism, willingness to tap into culturally diverse musical energies on an equal footing, and sheer, unbridled commitment, as being key characteristics of much Bristol-based music in subsequent years. Without that example, would Massive Attack or Roni Size and his compatriots have been quite the phenomena they would become? And it's hard not to survey the city's continuing enthusiasm for clattering beats and cut-up sounds, its D.I.Y. attitude, and its deep Dub sensibilities, without also imagining Mark Stewart glowering approvingly from the shadows.

Ever the restless and energetic soul, Stewart continued to plough his own distinctive (and critically acclaimed) musical furrow down the years - and with little discernible sign of compromise. He would go on to be associated with the New Age Steppas, Mark Stewart and The Mafia, and Adrian Sherwood and his extended On-U Sound family, alongside many others, and also recorded several records under his solo imprint. In more recent times, he found room to resurrect The Pop Group for a second go-round, and also to release a fantastic Dub reworking of that seminal debut album (with Denis Bovell in even fuller effect) [2.]. I would personally contend that the latter record is as essential as its parent.

Anyone  keen to research Bristol's music scene, and to gain a greater understanding of Stewart's influence upon it, could do worse than read Phil Johnson's slim volume, 'Straight Outa Bristol' [3.]. One can only hope that the city will continue to generate crucial sounds on its own terms for many years to come. Nevertheless, it is certainly a little poorer for the passing of Mark Stewart. In fact - we all are.

[1.]:  'Y', The Pop Group, Radar, 1979

[2.]:  'Y In Dub', The Pop Group, Mute, 2022

[3.]:  'Straight Outa Bristol', Phil Johnson, London, Sceptre, 1997

R.I.P. Burt Bacharach

Plenty has already been (and will be) written about the recently deceased Burt Bacharach, and how his work represents the acme of popular songwriting. Suffice it to say, his career spanned multiple decades, and many of the most memorable melodies penned during my own lifetime  turn out to have been Bacharach (& David) compositions (even if I didn't know it at the time personally). Instead of adding to the forest of words surrounding his passing, it seems more fitting to just let the music be his true memorial...

To me, that represents a perfect example of a perfect tune, delivered perfectly. Although written for Dionne Warwick originally, I think it was Aretha who most best divined the profound depths of soul within the song.

The following seems to demonstrate how effortlessly Bacharach's writing transcended fashion, and the ever-shifting sands of genre, down the years. I sometimes wonder if much of the later classic Bristol/Trip-Hop sound, for which I still hold great affection - doesn't just boil down to that wandering piano riff. 

Walk on, Sir...

R.I.P Julee Cruise (The World Spins)

 

Sometimes, a certain piece of music, or the resonance of a particular performance, just stays with you through the years - regardless of how often you hear it, or how celebrated or overlooked the artist attached to it may have been. Clearly, Julee Cruise - who just passed at the tragically premature age of 65, was a talented artist, and one with her own (ethereally distinctive) voice. Nevertheless, she wasn't necessarily a household name (in recent years, at least). So I think it would be foolish not to admit that she wasn't largely ingrained in the psyche of many of us, through her associations with the film and TV director, David Lynch - and especially, as one of the angels presiding over the world of his 'Twin Peaks'.

That's hardly to diminish her legacy, however. Lynch has long been the master of embedding immaculately appropriate pieces of music within his film and TV work, in order to magnify their (often devastating) emotional impact. I think we might argue that Cruise's dreamlike and unworldly interpretations of songs like 'Falling' [1.], 'The World Spins' [2.], or 'Rocking Back Inside My Heart' [3.], are the absolute epitome of that. More than anything else, she seemed to capture perfectly a sense of the fragility of love, and the yearning for something pure within a  corrupt world, lying at the very heart of Lynch's small-town vision. As is the case for many other Lynch-casualties, a small part of me may never actually make it back from the Black Lodge. It's even less likely now - without Julee's pristine voice to guide us.

Those seeking a little more factual background regarding Julee Cruise's life and work can find it here. But for now, it seems far more appropriate to just let her music, and those truly timeless performances, speak for themselves...

[1.]: Julee Cruise, 'Falling', Lynch/Badalamenti, Warner Bros/WEA,1989 (From the Album, 'Falling Into The Night', and the Soundtrack to: Mark Frost/David Lynch, 'Twin Peaks' (Series 1), CBS, 1990.

[2.]: Julee Cruise, 'The World Spins', Lynch/Badalamenti, (From the Soundtrack to: Mark Frost/David Lynch, 'Twin Peaks' (Series 2), CBS, 1991.

[3.]: Julee Cruise, 'Rocking Back Inside My Heart', Lynch/Badalamenti, Warner Bros/WEA,1989 (From the Album, 'Falling Into The Night', and the Soundtrack to: Mark Frost/David Lynch, 'Twin Peaks' (Series 2), CBS, 1991

R.I.P. Little Richard

Little Richard: 1932 - 2020

My musical tastes have expanded in numerous directions, over the years.  But, like anyone of my vintage, the popular music I grew up with was pretty much all contextualised by the legacy of Rock & Roll.  When I first started to take serious notice, in the early to mid 1970s, we were still less than twenty years from that music's first flowering.  There was even a diluted revival of those early stylings occurring in the Pop charts (if only in the fashions worn on 'Top Of The Pops').  However, like any hybrid form, its recognisable components had been around somewhat longer.  The same might be said of one of its founding fathers, 'Little Richard' Penniman - who recently died, at the age of 87.

Little Richard was the most exotic of those pioneering Rock & Rollers (of whom, I guess - only Jerry Lee Lewis now remains).  And, for me, he was always the most striking.  I've plenty of time for the early work of both Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee, and will still cheerfully hang around for Elvis' 'Jailhouse Rock', or 'Hound Dog', should they crop up.  Nevertheless, Richard's stuff seems to contain a greater edge of genuine hysteria - carrying it just a little further than the others, to my mind.  And, ultimately - isn't that what Rock & Roll was always supposed to be about?  As a cultural form, its ludicrous extremes always seemed self-justifying.  Previous musics had  sought to liberate the Id, to loosen the hips and feet, or to prioritise the groin over the head - it's true.  But, it feels like this was about doing all that with an even  glossier, almost cartoonish abandon.  The artifice of it all seemed integral.  Even more than all the other sleazy predators, macho brooders and redneck hell-raisers - Little Richard really seemed to get that.

The difference, of course, stems from his sexuality.  As if expressing the oppressed Black perspective to White audiences in still-segregated America wasn't enough - here was a patently gay man doing it, with nothing more than heavy make-up, an exuberant pompadour, and a swishy suit, for protection.  Richard preferred to label himself 'Pan-sexual', it seems.  Certainly, he must have grown up in the knowledge  that to be both Gay and Black, in the 1940s, was to almost invite a lynching, amongst certain denizens of his native Georgia.  But no one can have been in any real doubt - can they?  Alienated from his family - he'd been fourteen-year-old drag act before Rock & Roll took off, and the lyrics of many of his songs suggested a degree of sexual ambiguity, at best.  Tutti Frutti', even began life as a celebration of anal sex, by all accounts.  When Richard whooped and hollered, and, above all - screamed, it was a voicing of the outrage felt by someone fighting society's prejudice on two fronts.  Like generations of Gay entertainers, before and after, he took the fear and anger, and transmuted them into exuberant performance art.  The lyrics may have been superficially upbeat, but the right to party is often code for the right to be accepted and heard also.

Famously, Little Richard's real moment was over, almost as soon as it began.  Having released all of his most memorable records between 1955 and late 1957 - he retreated into the Pentecostal Christianity to which he was originally raised.  Whether or not his ministry  was a sincere act of penitence for the life he'd lived - only he could say.  Either way, it would certainly suggest an understandable degree of psychological conflict.  When he returned to performance, in 1962 - it was largely as a Gospel singer.  He revisited secular Rock & Roll in 1964 - but who of us can really name a memorably rockin' Little Richard composition after '57 (apart from possibly, 'Bama Lama Bama Loo')?

His star would wax and wane over the following years - and incorporated the almost requisite substance-abuse and routine personal tragedy of the Rock & Roller, before he returned to active evangelism in 1977.  A year or two later, I was busily absorbing the implications of Bob Dylan's back catalogue - just around the time he too announced an alarming right-turn into Born-Again Christianity.  Disappointing though this may have been, it was also intriguing to learn that Dylan's own evangelising was often done on a double bill - with none other than Little Richard.  And the debt that American popular music (particularly Black music) pays to religion, must be acknowledged, of course.  His early songwriting was as knowing as all Hell, but the manner of its delivery was only a step away from what would have been commonplace in the church services of Richard's youth.

  

Ultimately, what really matters is that 'Long Tall Sally', 'Lucille' , and all those other early classic cuts still sound as fresh and urgent as they did a lifetime ago.  And, as others have pointed out: without Little Richard - would we have ever had James Brown and Jimi Hendrix, or McCartney's vocal stylings and Jagger's camp strut, or Elton John's piano-bound theatrics, or Bowie's androgynous shape-shifting and Prince's actual, and seemingly voracious, pan-sexuality - at least in the form in which we now recognise them?  And, with reference to the above - let's not forget that Bob Dylan's earliest-known, teenage recording, was a ham-fisted tribute to the man himself.

With the passing of Little Richard - it feels like a certain era might also have come to a close.  Certainly, the World will be a drabber place without him.



    
           

R.I.P. Andrew Weatherall

Andrew Weatherall, 1963 - 2020

And so, we lose another of the greats - far too early.  It is with sorrow I must mark the passing of DJ, musician, producer, and all-round Dance Music eccentric, Andrew Weatherall, who recently  died from a pulmonary embolism, at the age of 56 (56 - for crying out loud!).

Weatherall's work has been an important part of my own consciousness since I first became engaged by the layered productions, polyrhythms, repetitive beats, and overall sonic experimentation of 'Dance Music', back at the turn of the 1990s.  He seemed to have been there, as one of that scene's pillars of wisdom, from very early on, coming through the Punk and Post-Punk years as a youth, before involving himself in the new emerging forms in the best way possible - as an enthusiastic record collector.

If an element of vaguely punk-ish contrarianism hung about everything Weatherall would go on to do, his real guiding principle was the impulse to dismantle and fearlessly experiment with sounds that came from the great Jamaican Dub producers.  For many, that was first encountered via his reinvention, as a producer, on Primal Scream's 'Screamadelica' Album, in 1992.  It was a record that, I recall, seemed to get played everywhere that year.  It also  turned an under-achieving Indie guitar band into the epitome of what might happen when sullen white boys discover MDMA, stop just staring at the floor (or their guitar frets), and dare to dance.

With all due respect to 'The Scream', that album sits in Weatherall's discography, far more comfortably than in theirs, and kick-started a fruitful career as the go-to, cutting edge producer/remixer of the day.  Nonetheless, it's to Weatherall's credit that he eschewed the course of easy wealth and fame for diminishing returns that might have resulted - just as he would decline the equally available option of becoming an increasingly predictable 'superstar DJ'.  Instead, he went on to chart a far less orthodox, and far more creative, zig-zag path through Dub, House, Techno, and even a bizarre kind of Rockabilly/Dance hybrid thang (in which he even, gasp - sang!).  Above all, everything he turned his hand to, seemed to be done for the best of reasons, namely - that it interested him at the time, despite what anybody else thought.

As a result, exploring the best of his deeper cuts can lead to a slightly arduous search for deleted gems and over-priced rarities, albeit one that consistently repays the effort.  For what it's worth, my own personal favourites would be the two albums, 'Haunted Dancehall' (the pinnacle of his work with The Sabres of Paradise), and 'Stockwell Steppas' (with Keith Tenniswood, as Two Lone Swordsmen).  The first is a loosely conceptual, and often eerie, melange of sounds and references that other producers might only dream of.  It's also a perfect example of that rare beast - a great Dance album that actually hangs together as such.  The second is a wonderfully dry, endlessly satisfying, collision of Dub,Techno and  Deep House, that has rarely been far from my CD player - both at home and in the car, for decades now.

Search those two out, if nothing else - to know why Andrew Weatherall will be missed by everyone in the know, and why so many called him 'The Guv'nor'.  Trust me - you'll wish you'd heard them sooner.

R.I.P. Robert Ryman

Robert Ryman, 1930 - 2019

Whilst it grieves me to post two obituaries, back-to-back - it would be remiss not to mark the passing of the painter, Robert Ryman, a few days ago.  He was 88, and had seemingly ploughed one of the most enduringly single-minded furrows in the whole of Modern Art.

Robert Ryman, 'Classico 5', Oil On Paper, 1968

Ryman was one of those go-to figures, to whom I've repeatedly turned as an exemplar of a particular attitude to painting over the years, despite having only ever seen one significant exhibition of his works (on paper - I think), at London's Shoulder Of Mutton Gallery, some years ago.  All too often my acquaintanceship with them has only been in reproduction - making any direct encounter a cause of some excitement.  And when I turned to the keyboard to write this, I realised I knew very little of the man himself, or his life - despite the fact his paintings have always loomed vividly in my imagination.  

Robert Ryman, 'Director', Oil On GRP, 1983

I think this may be, in part, because a somewhat pristine sense of the hermetic seems to cling to his oeuvre - something possibly magnified by its appearing to have arrived almost fully-formed, back in the mid 1950s.  The work seems to stand less for the man, than simply for itself.  Indeed, its conceptual rootedness in the idea of how one might define or specify an artefact that might be labelled 'a painting', makes any sense of autobiography or personal expression pretty much irrelevant.  Some might find that alienating - but I've always found it strangely thrilling.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, perhaps.  Ryman was, of course, primarily known as 'that guy who just paints white paintings' (not technically true - his first significant piece was  orange).  That he should have compiled such an extensive and unfailingly elegant catalogue of monochrome ('no-chrome'?) abstract pieces, over more than sixty years - without ever exhausting the potential of such a seemingly simplistic formula, feels little short of miraculous.

If art historical labels are required, I guess he belongs with the Minimalists. Rather delightfully - I now learn, he supplemented the early years of his career by working as a gallery attendant at MOMA, in New York, alongside those other noted exponents of the genre, Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin and Al Held.  But, whilst Ryman certainly shared a superficial aesthetic with such artists, there's perhaps also something a little too deliciously painterly about the work for it to fit into a strictly orthodox interpretation of Minimalism.  There's often a residue of the earlier Abstract Expressionism that first caught his eye on his move north.  In fact there are certain respects in which Ryman seems to bridge those two American art moments - perhaps just as Jasper Johns bridges Ab. Ex. and Pop with a similar visual elegance and philosophical detachment.  Either way, It seems Ryman's real agenda was simply to investigate what constitutes a painting - by stripping it back to its simplest essential components, then trying to find out in how many different ways they might be deployed without repetition.

Robert Ryman, 'Wing', Date & Medium Unknown

For Ryman, that might involve brushing his paint smoothly and uniformly over a variety of substrates, from canvas - to aluminium - to plastic; or squeezing it directly from the tube - to form wiggling worm-casts of whiteness; or building puddled impastos and snowy crusts of pigment; or exploring the potential of white to veil, mask, or not-quite obliterate another underlying colour.  Or, indeed - pretty much any other way you might be able to imagine deploying an endless variety of white pigments onto a flat plane.  White, it seems to me, was the obvious choice, not just to encapsulate the fetish of blank/blanc nullity, or to signify anti-emotion - but also because (as Newton proved) it contains all other colours.  It that sense, I suppose white paint might be said to represent all paint.

Robert Ryman, 'Untitled', Oil On Linen, 1965

Robert Ryman, 'Attendant', Medium Unknown, 1984

Robert Ryman, 'Untitled', Graphite & Pastel On Plexiglass & Steel, 1976

The by-product, is also that it allows painter and viewer alike, to luxuriate in the myriad ways in which a painted surface might absorb, reflect, modulate, energise, or otherwise interact with the ambient light it encounters, and in the most unencumbered way imaginable.  The subtle incidents of shadow on one of Ryman's refined and highly nuanced surfaces, thus become some of the most paradoxically breathtaking events in painting of any age.  Should all of that really be insufficient to hold your attention, he also went on to explore the physical construction of the painting/object too - either by leaving exposed portions of the raw substrate; deliberately drawing attention to the wall attachments; or simply asking whether a painting might not just as easily be presented horizontally, as flush to the wall.  I mean, really - what's not to enjoy?  Who really needs all that distracting extraneous meaning?

Robert Ryman, 'Checklist', Pastel, Conte Crayon & Charcoal On Paper, 1961

Robert Ryman, 'Record', Medium Unknown, 1983

Ultimately though, this is an obituary, and basic respect requires at least some fleshing out of the man himself - I suppose.  Robert Ryman was born in Nashville, in 1930, and moved to New York in 1952 - after a short stint in the military during the Korean war.  Interestingly, he initially set out to be a Jazz musician, and had studied under pianist Lennie Tristano, before committing himself to painting instead.  He married the art critic, Lucy Lippard in 1961, and later - the artist, Merrill Wagner.  Mostly, though, he was a painter - pure and simple.  He also claimed that the real purpose of painting was to give pleasure.  I can think of no better testament or ambition.

         

R.I.P, Jeremy Hardy

Jeremy Hardy, 1961 - 2019

In bullshit times like these, we really can't afford to be losing such comforting voices of sanity as the comedian, Jeremy Hardy's.  Tragically, that's exactly what was recently announced - with his passing, at the age of 57, as the result of cancer.

That age is a bit of a wake up call for those of us of a similar vintage - I'll confess.  Far more poignant is the loss of a sharp wit, keen intelligence, and above all - compassionate voice, in an era when knuckle-dragging idiocy, routine brutality, and political cynicism are so much in vogue.  As Hardy's fellow comedians (and others) have paid tribute to him, words like, 'humility', 'generosity', self-effacement, and  'commitment' (both to his craft - and to the causes he espoused), have abounded.  Most importantly (and doubly so - for a performer so easily pigeon-holed as a 'Left Wing Comedian'), Hardy was properly funny.  There were numerous occasions, especially in recent years - when I'd splutter with spontaneous glee, as he went off on yet another off-the-cuff, but erudite, exposition of social injustice or human folly.

Hardy himself, claimed to be less a political extremist, and more a Left-leaning liberal in an era when everyone else had moved so alarmingly to the Right.  In such a context any engaged but essentially wooly, middle-class 'luvvie' (as he would knowingly characterise himself), might resemble a raving Trot.  It was of course, a delicious irony that he ultimately found his most faithful audience as a stalwart of that bastion of hard-line Marxist orthodoxy -
BBC Radio 4.  Perhaps that's really why his death feels so much like losing one of 'our' own.  For, cosy, complacent, and even stuffy, as that channel can often seem - it also remains an intellectual refuge for anyone who values humanitarianism, literacy, informed discussion, reasoned debate, unashamed specialist expertise, and a well-honed sentence or two.  I struggle to think of anyone with income and living conditions as modest as my own, as any kind of 'elite'.  Nevertheless, if a taste for any of the values detailed above must label me as part of some despised metropolitan, liberal, self-interest group - bring it on. Either way, Jeremy Hardy seemed to fit right into that kind of milieu, from the start.

In his case, that facility with language, both written and spoken, came from Stand-Up - a form of comedy to which he remained dedicated throughout his career.  I witnessed him in action, some time back in the late 90s, and also within the last couple of years - when it was gratifying to witness that his powers appeared undimmed over the intervening years.  He was still the same amiable, if bemused cove, in whose ramblings were buried the keenest political barbs and (perhaps more importantly) empathetic reflections on the human condition.  Even as I write this, I realise that a similarly rambling, laconic and tangential manner of speech, and an habitual apology for being older than I really am - are both traits I share with Jeremy.  Of course, I haven't been clever enough to parley that all into a long and successful comedy career, or indeed, to also walk the walk in some troubled region, like Palestine - as he also did.

We'll always have cherished memories of Jeremy Hardy on venerable Radio 4 panel shows, gloriously massacring 'One Song To The Tune Of Another' or confounding fellow performers and audience members alike - with yet another increasingly bonkers political 'analysis'.  But it's tragic to think there'll be no more of that inspired lunacy - and he'll be greatly missed.

Addendum:

On the day Jeremy Hardy's death was announced, I also scraped a copy of the pernicious pro-Brexshit propaganda rag, 'Wetherspoonnews'  off my doormat.  The fact that thrusting such a misleading and cynically manipulative abomination through an innocent citizen's letterbox is now deemed acceptable, is perhaps indicative of what Jeremy Hardy meant about everyone else moving so depressingly to the Right.  It is, of course, the populist impulse to present ever-hardening political extremism as 'The Voice Of The People', which has got us to the point where we now teeter - and may indeed soon deliver us to an even worse place.

Lessons from history and self-fulfilling prophesies are habitually ignored, but what feels alarmingly new - is the conflation of commercial advertising with a more political variety of misinformation.  What form of cynical hubris, makes the owner of some resolutely lowest-common-denominator piss-hole chain, feel suitably qualified to herd the sheep in this manner?. You'd think poisoning livers and clogging arteries would be profitable enough, without messing with our minds too.  Bar room philosophy is one thing, but 'Spoons-fed prejudice and bigotry feel like something else, altogether.  Actually, I'm tempted to wonder if this might not be life exacting some bizarre revenge, by imitating the pub-based Art of another thoughtful comedian, Al Murray.  'This S(c)eptic Isle', indeed.

My initial reaction was of course to lob the offending article into the recycling - where it belongs (I no longer have cat-litter trays to line, sadly).  However, as ever - Art stayed my hand.  Such material naturally contains the seeds of its own satire, and the creative activity it may stimulate is ultimately more satisfying than despair or blank annoyance.  Famously, 'they' hate being laughed at - and so, it goes on the ever-growing pile of stuff ripe for re-writing or detournment.

     

R.I.P. Aretha Franklin, 1942 -2018

Aretha Franklin.

I won’t pretend to have a shelf full of Aretha Franklin records.  In fact, I don’t think I currently own a single one in physical form (not that current methods of music consumption would preclude me playing her several times a day, if so inclined – obviously).  Nevertheless, I, and many others, would argue that, with her recent sad passing, we lost one of the great voices (some would say – the greatest) of the recording era.

Others will have already written loads about her life, her work, and (still painfully apposite, it seems) her relevance to the American Civil Rights movement.  Instead of trotting out any more of the usual clichés, I’ll just refer to my favourite performance of Aretha’s, and possibly even one of the greatest recordings of the human voice, in any context.

It speaks volumes about the persuasiveness of Franklin’s voice that ‘I Say A Little Prayer’ wasn’t even written for her.  Written by Bacharach and David, with a lyric referring obliquely to the Vietnam War - it was originally recorded for Dionne Warwick.  And yet who now remembers that version?  Incredibly, Aretha’s miraculous cover was recorded almost by accident, and only released as an intended B-side.  Nowadays, I still hear it several times a year, without even trying, and it just never wears out.

Aretha’s version of the song isn’t the most ambitious production you’ll ever hear, or the most histrionic piece of Soul singing – but is actually all the better for that.  It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece of control, and of emotion expressed with a perfect degree of nuance and instinctive judgment.  Aretha even lets the backing singers take do the lion’s share of the work in the chorus, meaning that when she releases the true soaring potential of her own voice in the song’s latter stages - it’s all the more memorable.  If I could only save one snippet of recorded music for posterity – the last minute and a half of ‘I Say A Little Prayer’ might just be it.

For what I assume are either copyright or compatibility reasons, YouTube makes the single version of 'I say A Little Prayer' unavailable to embed here.  Luckily, It's not exactly difficult to access from a variety of sources, should you need a reminder.  However, in passing,  I was able to borrow this live performance of Aretha singing the song.  It demonstrates the more spectacular potential of her voice, and whilst being more obviously showy - is still one of those genuine hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck moments.  Above all, it demonstrates how, even when 'giving it a bit more’, she could still make it all just seem so effortless.

Unlike Aretha, I don’t really have a religious bone in my body (in the accepted sense, at least).  However, without being able to necessarily define it, I do recognise something you might want to call ‘Soul’, when I hear it.  Aretha Franklin had it to burn.

R.I.P. Keith The Cat

Sad to report, Keith, the second of my two cats - took his last trip to the Vet’s, the other day.  His ‘brother’ [1.], Dudley met his demise under the wheels of a car a few years ago, but Keith had soldiered on deep into his seventeenth year - remaining affectionate and entertaining until the end.

Thankfully, he’d enjoyed robust health, and an active life for nearly all of that time, and it was only during the last few months that a rapidly expanding list of ailments, and the suspicion of ‘Feline Dementia’ [2.], made his continuing existence untenable.

As I mentioned when Dudley died, I have a pretty soft spot where animals are concerned, and taking Keith in turned out to be one of the harder tasks I’ve faced in recent years.  Objectively, there’s no doubt it was kinder than letting him linger on in pain and misery, not least because he was no longer able to feed or groom himself – but it still felt like some kind of betrayal, nonetheless.

The reality is that animals, could they speak, would probably prove to be far more pragmatic in matters of life and death, than we are. The sense that they appear to live far more in the moment than humans, may also inure them to the mental implications of such existential episodes, I suspect.

In the event, I now realise that those seventeen and a half years of Keith’s small, furry existence, also represent a significant portion of my own – and one in which there have been plenty of difficult times alongside the uplifting ones.  Keith had been on my knee, at my elbow, or curled up at the end of the bed, for much of that time.  In that respect, there’s an inevitable sense of emotional stock-taking wrapped-up in one little cat’s passing, and perhaps a bit more subsequent processing to do than I might have expected.

In passing, I should extend big thanks to my friend Lorel, for being Keith’s primary care giver during the latter portion of his life.  Although I still spent time with him regularly, he lived at her house in Nottingham in recent years - it being a much softer, cat-friendly environment than I could provide.  I know she’ll mourn him as deeply as I do.

Luckily, I have loads of great memories of Keith (and indeed, Dudley).  Mostly, he was just my little mate - and I’ll miss him loads.

[1.]:  Possibly a slight spin put on things by the RSPCA to move two Rescue Centre inmates on at once?  Either way - I have no regrets.

[2.]:  Who knew that was a thing?