….all the great bands.

I saw a t shirt recently with this message on the front; “I may be old but at least I got to see all the great bands”. The last live concert I saw was Richard Thompson playing at The Empire in Belfast last year (dear reader, you can read about that in the post ‘The Empire Roars Back’). This set me thinking about the bands and musicians I have seen in concert. I cannot remember the first rock concert I went to but I think it must have been The Purple Gang at Stockport College sometime in the 1970’s. From what I remember it was a fairly exotic experience but it was immediate and, well, rock and roll!! (sort of…..!).

Then came Led Zeppelin (twice!), how loud was that, and then through the seventies Steely Dan (around ’74), Ry Cooder’s Chicken Skin Revue playing a superb set to a half empty Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Then there was Neil Young on his infamous Tonight’s the Night tour, I remember his lassitude being completely eclipsed by the energy and power of some young Turks called The Eagles! Little Feat’s bluesy funk (let’s hear it for Lowell George!!) supported by the soul power of Tower of Power (I remember the horn section walking up the aisle of the hall!). Then there was 10cc playing ‘Un Nuit en Paris’ and bringing the house down. I even saw several concerts by Cliff Richard, less impressed by his moves (which hadn’t changed since Move It!) but captivated by the quality of his band at the time. There was Santana, once supported by Earth, Wind and Fire, then again performing music from the ‘Welcome’ album in front of a huge mirror. There was the master of ambiguities Bob Dylan whom I saw twice, first at an aerodrome somewhere (around the time of the ‘Street Legal’ album) then in the Manchester Arena. He was impressive even at some distance! I have travelled to see Bruce Cockburn in London and the North East and, having missed the proverbial last bus home, walked from Ardwick Green mostly as far as home after a superb Al Jarreau concert I just could not leave. And, somehow loose in time Bruce Springsteen and the E Streeters in a marathon three hours or so at the Manchester Apollo…….!

In the early days concerts were fabulously loose affairs. Constant tinkering with microphones and amps meant that the time on a ticket was a joke. But lately concerts are altogether slicker, starting on time and ending with the obligatory encores (count ’em!). They were also slightly bohemian things in those days, with suspicious substances filling the air and a crowd seven deep at the bar. But I remember them with affection, even the ones that weren’t that good or didn’t match up to expectations. I had a ticket to see Van Morrison and The Caledonia Soul Orchestra at the time of the album ‘It’s Too Late to Stop Now’ but he was poorly and it was cancelled. I saw him some years later and it was a bit of an off night! And by the time I saw The Crusaders although I enjoyed the concert I was disappointed that Larry Carlton was no longer with them.

Great bands? Well I would like to think so, and even in these days when I can ‘cast concert footage to my TV from my ‘phone (o, brave new world!!) there is still nothing like actually being there. What a time to be alive!!

Letting go and moving on. A reflection and three songs.

Photo by Cosmin Paduraru on Pexels.com

I guess that posts which deal with personal things should come with a health warning – maybe this is written to set down a marker in a continuing journey, nevertheless here goes.

I have always believed that however you try to describe what we call ‘the human condition’ you have to reckon with one thing; that people are inevitable caught in tension between a retreating past, the present moment and the unknown future. Although some maintain that the present is all we really have and that there is a sacramental value in the ‘now’ (the German mystic Meister Eckhart suggested that “people who live in God live in the eternal now”). Far be it for me to disagree with the Meister but, like all people I still feel the pull of the past and the desire to ‘tidy’ it up in some way. But there are things that cannot be tidied up, issues that cannot be resolved, things which simply have to be let go. Indeed, failure to let go of some things can be deeply injurious to mental and physical health. Consider two witnesses from literature; Miss Havisham from ‘Great Expectations’ and Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s hysterical barn-burner ‘Wuthering Heights’. Both characters are trapped in a past, Miss Havisham, in the midst of her decaying wedding cake, one shoe off and one on, remains exactly where she was on the day she was jilted by the adventurer Compeyson. Heathcliff (surely one of the most malevolent characters in literature?) is trapped by his violent love for Catherine and his equally violent hatred for just about everyone around him. Even though both of these people are trapped by past events they still exercise a malevolent influence of people in their present experience, to their detriment and eventual decline.

So, if there are things that must be let go, how do you do it? Personally I have found it takes a lot of discipline not to dwell on the past, and an equal amount of discipline to learn from the past as I move forwards. I have found that making at least some effort to learn from the past liberates it as a resource for a continuing journey. Life moves onward as each day succeeds the last and maturity demands both a learning and a letting go. As ever with me, songs have helped in this process – ‘Don’t Look Back’ by John Lee Hooker, ‘I Can Let Go Now’ by Michael MacDonald and ‘Crossroads’ by Don McLean. Hooker’s song is delivered with his signature incantatory style suggesting that looking back and living in the past should be exchanged for “liv(ing) on in the future”. The song recognises that  the old days are gone (“Darlin’ those days are gone”). Michael  MacDonald’s song comes from his first solo recording released in 1980, the singer has been “tossed high by love”, so high that he “almost never came down”, and the song reflects on the way that “memories cling”, to “keep you there/ ’till you no longer care”. Don McLean’s song ‘Crossroads’ is, in my opinion, the finest song on his ‘American Pie’ album, there is a real sense of healing (“lay your hands upon me now”), as the journey continues, and although all the lyrics (and the performance) are well worth paying attention to, the last verse finds the singer resolving to move forwards and to embrace the ambiguities of the journey, wherever it may lead;

“So there’s no need for turning back 
‘Cause all roads lead to where we stand. 
And I believe we’ll walk them all 
No matter what we may have planned.”

The lessons of the past are always there to be learned, as long as memory allows, but the past has gone, summoning it up can be comforting as only nostalgia can be, but it can also be very dangerous for the life of a country and an individual. The sacramental nature of the present moment must never be underestimated and as for the future…..well maybe there is a sense that the way we have lived in the past and how we live now may shape our possible futures. In a regular questionnaire in a political magazine interviewees are asked “are we doomed”, the answers vary as you would imagine. I remind myself that although the myth of Pandora’s Box has a lot to teach us, hope was the thing that remained. In the myth it remained stuck in the box, ever present and worth holding on to wherever the journey takes me.

(Apart from John Lee Hooker’s original version of ‘Don’t Look Back’, Van Morrison recorded it with Them. Michael MacDonald’s song has been covered by lots of people but my favourite version (apart from the original) is on Liane Carroll’s album ‘Up and Down’ from 2011. Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ is a masterpiece, ’nuff said!) 

Another favourite place….

I watched a documentary about Iceland the other day – the film came to a climax with a massive volcanic eruption along the tectonic plates that are slowly pulling the island apart. The sheer power of the white hot magma bursting from the earth reminded me of my own time in Iceland, but it also reminded me of this place. I first visited the Giant’s Causeway a long time ago and it is hard not to be moved by its splendour and power. Most of the time it is very crowded – in fact on most days it feels like the whole world is there wandering over the basalt columns and, of course, recording it all on their I Pads!

Folklore and quarrelling giants aside this place reminds me of the power and beauty of creation. This photograph tried to capture the sinuous dance of cooling stone as the boiling heat left the column and the earth settled down. The Causeway is positively frozen compared to the dynamism of the Icelandic landscape but it still carries with it a sense of the awesome forces that are held in check but the crust of the earth. Whenever we visit the Causeway these days we always refer to Dr. Samuel Johnston, the essayist and travel who stood there on the 12th October 1779, and when asked said that the Causeway was “worth seeing, but not worth going to see”. Whatever you think of the good doctor’s pronouncement, let me commend this place to you, it is just one amazing place on a coastline full of amazing places!!

Small is the new big?

I came across an interesting word the other day; ‘philomicron’ which means ‘a lover of small things’. I have written before in these pages about the importance of small things – in music, a small ensemble (a trio or even a single soloist) can make just as powerful an impact as a large orchestra or what the radio presenter Geoffrey Smith used to talk about in jazz terms as ‘a shouting big band’. In the world of nature small everyday processes are often worth paying close attention to – not for nothing does the bible entreat us “Go to the ant, you lazybones, consider its ways and be wise” (Proverbs 6; 6). This is a useful corrective to a world that seems to be obsessed with the big idea, almost to the exclusion of the thousands of small acts of  kindness and service that fill the mundane everyday. Add to that the countless small pleasures that accrue; a walk in the woods on an autumn day, or through the snow in the back garden under a brilliant clear blue sky. The discovery of a new word, or the thought that although the ‘big beasts’ of the political world may bluster and stamp their way through good sense on any continent, it is the small and forgotten humanity that we share that might just make a difference. In ‘The Lord of the Rings’ although the mighty councils of the wise set the opposition to evil in train, it is the hobbits, too small to be included in Treebeard’s great lexicon of living things that make the difference and change the world for the best.

I wanted to find an aphorism to end this post, and I came across two, one is from G.K. Chesterton who wrote; “One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak”. And the second is from the singer Patti Smith; “You can’t change the world; you can’t fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn the water off when you’re brushing your teeth. You can do the small things”.

(The Chesterton quote is from his book ‘The Innocence of Father Brown’, I cannot trace the Patti Smith quote but I borrowed them both from ‘Brainy Quote’).