I heard today that Dave Laing passed away earlier this week. He was a great pal, and the greatest mentor. Just yesterday I was making a plan to email him for lunch, so he could catch up with another mutual friend. His book on punk, One Chord Wonders, is right there on the table- I've been using it as a source, yet again. He was editing my book on women sound engineers and producers, too.
It's almost impossible to describe what fun Dave was. He had an instinct for the devil's skeleton beneath harmless-looking skin and was never shocked by tales of skullduggery. He was the best disliker you could imagine (although he liked more people than you could imagine). If you described an act of wrongdoing, his lip would curl and he would look into the middle distance; his distaste was palpable. He loved a little bit of gossip (although he couldn't possibly comment). He was immensely kind and patient and honest. He was completely un-racist and un-sexist and trustworthy. He supervised my PhD and countless others, wrote and researched all sorts of music industry material, and provided invisible and unstinting support for a huge range of people who were involved in all sorts of different musical endeavours. He was modest, though, to a fault.
It was great to visit him and his partner in Hastings last year, at his airy house right on top of the cliffs that looked out over the downs and the sea. Hastings suited him: you could imagine him becoming quite Agatha Christie later on in his life.
Alas, he did not get there; I do know that he knew how much his friends and colleagues loved and respected him, because we all made sure that we saw him regularly to stock up on whatever it was he had: what I've described, I suppose. He was an absolute gem of a man. Goodbye, Dave X
Lily came from the cheap flower stall in Stratford Market last year, and thrived on the office windowsill for six months, until the summer holidays meant that a move to the back yard had to take place.
Now in a clay pot instead of a plastic one, Lily grew and flowered in late summer.
I brought the pine tree in from the yard to be a Christmas Tree and noticed that Lily was in flower, in late December; Lily now perches on the kitchen windowsill, and doesn't appear to have noticed the sub-zero temperatures this week. This is an inspiration and should be a model of resilience to all of us in 2019. If Lily can do it, we bloody well can!
(Stop Press: Barnet FC did it already! Good on yer!)
Genius! Even tops their list of lost property at the Buddhist Centre song. This actually kept me awake all night a few days ago. Every time I was about to drop off, the riff faded up jangling from my unconscious mind and another drink came into my head....
A pint of Woodpecker: The Double Deckers
A Party Four: Jackanor (y)
Amontillado: El Dorado
A can of Tizer: The Equaliser
A pint of Stout: Beadle's About
They missed out 'Milk from the fridge: Mary Mungo and Midge', Mark's line, which was a terrible pity. I invaded the song, perhaps, with Harvey's Bristol Cream: Camberwick Green but I'm happy for that to be replaced with the milk one, which after all is a healthier option.
Film by Jane Barnes Little known fact: 'Beadle's About' used to be known as 'Beadle's a B*stard' in our household. Can't think why.
How terribly ironic after a year of insomnia and exhaustion, to have mastered the act of not only going to sleep, but more importantly, oversleeping... just at the point of returning to work!
Streams of people with cold, cross, January faces were flooding off the tube this evening. By the time I'd got to Camden, I almost turned back and accepted a winter night's fate of TV and central heating (didn't have that till I was 38 years old, and I've never stopped appreciating it!).
There was a swarm of delivery mopeds at the back of Café Oto: it's a secret meeting place where Deliveroos can play Techno to each other and swoop about in small circles in their black shiny bike gear to emphasise their Bro conversations; a tiny secret community.
Round the corner, the caff was warm inside; people queued up at the bar politely.
Ginger beer spilled into my Christmas purse, and it's only January.
Without any fuss, the London Sacred Harp singers took to their chairs, four sides of a square. A bearded chap welcomed us and explained that they are a singing community, not a choir, so they are not used to singing to an audience. He asked us not to clap until the end of the first half.
Almost like a game of tag, a name was announced, and after that another name. Each time, a different member of the group got up, cited a number from the Sacred Harp hymnal, and a male group member sang the notes of the separate parts so that everyone could pitch. Every tune ran round once with a Fa-Sol-La-Mi version, followed by a couple of verses with words. Some people conducted with their arms, others concentrated hard on their books.
With close on forty people's voices, this was an incredible sound: loud, crisp, tightly within the beat (I got how they pitched, but how did they pulse?), harsh in places (that's the sound; untrained voices singing open throated at maximum volume), and so generous-spirited that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. This is a multi-faith and no-faith group of people who sing their hearts out acapella, without any technology is sight; this is the music we will hear at the end of the world. I definitely never thought I'd hear it in Hackney: it originated in England in the 18th Century and made its way to brush arbor meetings in the Deep South of the USA, but apparently it's making a renaissance. Contemporary shape note singing is about singing for the sake of singing. It's a bit like an igloo: everything is targeted towards warming the middle, not outwards to the audience, although we didn't feel excluded in any way. Gradually, you could identify different singing voices in the mix, and you could see that some of the people leading some of the songs were extremely talented musicians.
After the break (and some very enthusiastic applause) we were given song sheets and told how to interpret the notes, and we too took part in the singing community.
What a lovely evening, and what a great way to start the year off.
This is from Youtube: it's another rare gig they did at the Union Chapel in 2017. You'll get an idea of the sound, which I've only heard on ancient recordings before:
Well, despite the fact that my car appears to be trying to kill me in a dramatic fashion and has attempted this at least twice, and my poncy watch has developed its own notions of timekeeping that don't match up with the rotation of the earth, and despite the looming doom-laden Brexit horror, I am not miserable. This is a complete mystery to me but I'm not complaining about it.
The Christmas leftovers have lasted until today (Brussels sprouts and Pannetone, a thrilling combination!), and for some reason I slept for nine hours yesterday, followed by a very pleasant two hour chat with Enid Williams from Girlschool on the house phone that normally only rings when the dentist's assistant dials the wrong number, and the digestion of the BBC documentary about Bros, After the Screaming Stops, which everyone seems to be talking about.
It's such a brilliant documentary: so tenderly filmed and so brave.
What a miracle that Luke and Matt Goss survived intact, after the shafting they got from the music industry. Some people have been mocking them for saying silly things but they are just ordinary blokes in an extraordinary situation; some people have said they are damaged but they are not, particularly.
Their sibling rivalry is laid bare but anyone with a brother or sister or two would recognise the spats, the grimaces, the failed attempts at manipulation and the competition between siblings.
What was really touching was the sequence where they talked about sharing a dart between them; they had no dart board but just used to throw it up in the air, with obvious consequences.
Grandad mended the hole in Matt's ribs, and they went out and continued to play.
I remembered a dream from five years ago where I sang backing vocals for them at Wembley.
I was a mermaid in the dream, which is just as likely as singing backing vocals for Bros!
