20 albums in 20 days After the Gold Rush by Neil Young

I was nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to FaceBook. I've been a little distracted. The album covers should be posted without explanation or comment. The album covers should have had a significant impact on my life. Although the FaceBook challenge excluded explanations or comments, that's actually not the case for my blog. This seems a really suitable place to make a comment or two.

I have already posted on this blog how I first heard about this album. Click here to read about that experience. But here's a memory I have about listening to Neil Young.

In 2004 I was in hospital for about 9 months. It was a really traumatic and difficult time. Healing and recovery was slow. After 4 months of treatment that eventually ended with life-changing surgery, I was moved into a large empty 8 bed bay on another ward. The acute phase of my stay had ended. I was now on that long, slow road to recovery and healing. 
I enjoyed being alone in that bay, but missed terribly my working life at college, my church fellowship and my home life with my wife, Katy, and my two 10-year-old children,  Iona and Arran. Family and friends from various strands of my life came to visit often. This was an incredibly positive, stimulating and comforting time.
One time my sister Debra came to visit. She bought with her a CD of music she thought I'd like. This was old music I hadn't heard in decades. One CD was Harvest by Neil Young. Click here for a link to YouTube to hear the full album.
I remember sitting up in the hospital bed. I was engaged and animated. I was really pleased to see her and happy to play the CD she'd bought with her. She didn't tell me what it was. She knew I'd know it.
Then she pressed the play button and I heard the first heartbeat drum strikes and guitar plucks. 
I felt I'd been punched. Those first notes of 'Out on the Weekend' hit me like pain that melted into a feeling of loss. It spread out through me. I hadn't played that album in 25 years. It was such a familiar sound pattern. Maybe I'd been dreaming that record in my sleep. The music was in me. It was part of me. It hit me like a punch. It passed through my head. The waves of sound overwhelmed me. I fell back against the pillow, my eyes blinded with tears. I covered them. I wanted to be alone at this moment. To savour the closed graves of memory suddenly springing open wide. 

My bedroom in Walton Drive. The box room at the front of the house looking out at the road and straight down to the two Kodak chimneys at the bottom of Harrow View. A narrow single bed that fitted half the width of the room and filled the whole length of the room to the window.
Opposite the bed, a wardrobe, its doors open up into the space between wardrobe and bed. Next to the wardrobe, when we first moved in in 1969, there was a short chest of draws. 

I have an early memory of bonfire nights. I think mum and dad bought a box of fireworks every year. They weren't particularly great boxes. There was at least one rocket, a Catherine wheel and a Roman Candle. A few sparklers. Lighting the fireworks never lasted very long. So I'd retreat to my room and look out the window. From there I watched the neighbourhood fireworks. Sometimes just rockets and other times more spectacular displays. Because our house was on the slope of a hill, we were a little raised up. We really did have a view of Harrow, especially from my bedroom. 
But after a few years, I got rid of the chest of draws and we replaced it with a wooden table. Maybe three feet long. I put all my records under that table. On the tabletop, I eventually moved the family record player. It became mine.
When I came back from school, after dinner in the evenings, for long stretches of the weekends and long summer holidays, this room was mine and music dominated a lot of the time I spent in that room.

I remember going to a Rick Wakeman concert probably in 1975. Click here for a post about how I first heard the album, 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth.'

The concert launched Wakeman's new album, 'The Myths and Legends of King Arther and the Knights of the Round Table.' That was not a good album in my opinion. But I think he also played, 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth,' - now that was a good album. I took a close friend. She stayed the night. We lay awkwardly on that single bed for hours listening to The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Wakeman for most of the night. 

Or did I buy tickets for us to see Mike Oldfield play, Tubular Bells? I did see both at Wembley Arena. 

I remember a bunch of people - friends? - all cramming into that box room. There were two or three couples sprawled out on that bed. I climbed onto the wardrobe and played 'The Dark Side of the Moon and Echoes from the album Meddle. They stayed till really late. That happened a few times. We drank beer,- or was it just coke - smoked Players Number 6 and ate crisps. 
Those people seemed older than me. I don't know why they came. I lived miles away from where they lived. Perhaps they wanted to be out of the rain. Perhaps it was only a box room but it was mine, it was private. We welcomed people into our house. Or maybe it was the dope they'd bought. Or was it mine?

I remember bringing my close friend - the one I'd gone to see Rick Wakeman with - into that bedroom. She bought a friend of hers. They were disco queens. I think their school, Salvatorian College used to run weekly or termly discos. And I imagined they reigned over those nights. They were beautiful, sexy, heavily made up and full of glitter. They were totally out of my league. They sat on the bed. I played them Echoes. The friend kicked the table. The album scratched.

I remember....

Cassini Approaches Saturn

Here are three short films from the Cassini space mission that ended in September 2017. I believe the films are made from actual photographs. No CGI or 3 D modelling was used in the making of the films. I'm just overwhelmed by the quality of the films and of course the subject of the Cassini space mission. I'd been following the mission soon after Cassini - Huygens went into orbit around Saturn in 2004.

Here is an explanation of what can be seen on the video from the APOD website. What would it look like to approach Saturn in a spaceship? One doesn't have to just imagine -- the Cassini spacecraft did just this in 2004, recording thousands of images along the way, and hundreds of thousands more since entering orbit. Some of Cassini's early images have been digitally tweaked, cropped, and compiled into the featured inspiring video which is part of a larger developing IMAX movie project named In Saturn's Rings. In the concluding sequence, Saturn looms increasingly large on approach as cloudy Titan swoops below. With Saturn whirling around in the background, Cassini is next depicted flying over Mimas, with large Herschel Crater clearly visible. Saturn's majestic rings then take over the show as Cassini crosses Saturn's thin ring plane. Dark shadows of the ring appear on Saturn itself. Finally, the enigmatic ice-geyser moon Enceladus appears in the distance and then is approached just as the video clip ends. After more than a decade of exploration and discovery, the Cassini spacecraft ran low on fuel in 2017 was directed to enter Saturn's atmosphere, where it surely melted.

Click here for a link to the APOD website post

Psalm 53 in Aramaic

A friend posted this on Facebook. I thought I'd share it around.

Enjoy

John Prine, One of America's Greatest Song Writer's, Dead at 73

Click here for a link to an obituary of John Prine published in Rolling Stone magazine. 

Hello in There by John Prine

Goodbye John Prine

Thank you

Angel from Montgomery by John Prine. Played by Passenger, Stu Larsen and The Once

20 albums in 20 days Meeting by the River by Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt

I was nominated by a friend to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. The album covers should be of albums that have had an impact on my life. No comments or explanations were expected on Facebook. However, this blog does seem a suitable place to post explanations and comments on those albums.

The problem is, this album did not appear on that list. On reflection, I think it probably does qualify for a place on that list of 20 albums. Though I'd find it hard to remove one of the 20 I've already posted. So I include this album cover as a plus one.

Sometimes music comes out of the blue. The radio was on in the dining room at Cowden Rectory in Kent. It was Easter 1993. I was just walking past when I heard one of the pieces from this album. Whatever my destination was it suddenly changed. I went into the room and closed the door and just stood there and listened. When it finished I listened out for the name of the album and the artist. I had the CD in my hands within the week.
It is an extraordinary collaboration. Cooder and Bhatt had met just half an hour before the recording. It was totally unplanned and unrehearsed. Completely improvised. 
I don't know really what grabbed my attention. Perhaps it was a sound so completely at odds in that setting. That fusion of East and West was so different from the traditional Church of England songs played at Easter. . Cooder's slide guitar plucking out the blues and Bhatt's homemade instrument flooded the Rectory dining room with reminiscent to classical Indian raga. I fell into this music and played the CD over and over. 
Click here to hear Ganges Delta Blues, probably my favourite track.

About a year later - Stephen - a colleague and friend - and actually the guy who nominated me to post the 20 album covers in 20 days; told me about Ry Cooder's collaboration with Ali Farka Toure. I've written about that a bit, here.

One thing I found so fascinating about the album Talking Timbuktu is my growing interest in the Blues. I didn't really know anything much about the blues. I still don't really. But when I hear it something inside me seems to melt. It seems to fit into a rhythm that suits something inside of me. I can't really explain it. Here's a performance of Amandrai, from the album. Click here for the performance.

I loved all of this music and was intrigued by the Malian traditional instruments and its rhythms. It connected with something I'd realised about modern western music. The roots of our music can be traced back to Malian and West African traditional music. 

In fact, I remember hearing on the radio or reading somewhere that jazz is a fusion of West African traditional music - brought to the US through the slave trade and Eastern European music, brought to the US by Jewish refugees. Klezmer. 

Then in 1997, I heard about another collaboration. The Buena Vista Social Club. I bought it the moment I heard about it. I played it so much. My father would have loved this music. And I loved the albums that came out of this one, especially those by the singer, Ibrahim Ferrer and pianist, Reuben Gonzalez.

20 albums in 20 Days Kaira by Toumani Diabate

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. But I've been a little distracted lately. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. No explanations or commentaries are expected on Facebook. However, in these difficult times, writing something about these albums seems a fun thing to do. A suitable distraction. And this blog seems a suitable place to write a comment or two about them.

If you hover your cursor over the artists named here, you'll find links to the songs on YouTube.

Friends came to visit me when I was a patient at Northwick Park Hospital. It was a long time ago. They bought this record with them. I loved Kaira from the start. I've been playing it since then. Probably 1979 or 80. This album was my introduction to what became, World Music. There was something so hypnotic in this music. At first, it carried me away, out of that hospital bed to another land. But later at home, the album became part of my summer music. I remember playing it driving through Richmond Park in glorious sunlight. I remember the sun shining through trees. Branches, blown by soft and warm southerly breezes. I remember driving south through France, on a family holiday, our car windows open, and the heat and the music flooding in. 

Years later I enjoyed the collaboration between Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Toure in the album In the Heart of the Moon. It's a fantastic album.

I'd first heard the music of Ali Farka Toure through listening to Ali Farka Toure's collaboration with Ry Cooder in the album Talking Timbuktu. Click here for a link to a post that refers to that discovery.  

The whole album Talking Timbuktu is fabulous but scroll down to 21:45 to hear an amazing blues duel between Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate. 

Here's a link to a performance of Savane, the title song from the album of the same name. Ali Farka Toure plays live with a band. There's so much pleasure and joy in this performance.

Quite separately from this album, but now interested in the music of Mali, I'd begun to buy compilation CDs as a way of discovering other music from Mali. Somehow I stumbled across the World Music Network and their Rough Guides of World Music series. I bought an album. African Blues and discovered two names that still captivate me. 

Firstly there's Oumou Sangare. I listened to the album again and again. And her song and her voice, right at the end of the CD just knocked me out. The song Saa Magni comes in layers. At first, a fiddle then hard plucked guitar strings or is it a Cora? It introduces a melody and sets up the rhythm. And then a chorus of women's voices. All of this lays there waiting for that extraordinary moment when her voice breaks through and seems to change the world. Forever. Here are two recordings. Click here for the recording I heard on that CD. Heard it for years before I took proper notice of her and bought an album of hers. Click here to watch Oumou Sangare perform the song live. It comes in at 8:30. But really the two songs are stunning.

Secondly, Boubacar Traore. His voice on this song is completely mesmerizing. Click here to hear this extraordinary voice. A voice of the desert. Gouged from sun and sand. Lost to the wind. Bursts into the air with no one listening. Yet hangs there. Waiting. Hope. It captivated me for years before I decided to track it down and discovered him and bought a couple albums. 

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

This review contains spoilers.

Mostly set inside the corrupt, brutal dictatorship of Gilead we read the testimonies of three characters. Aunt Lydia - the one narrator that links us to the earlier novel, The Handmaid's Tale. She is probably the most powerful woman in Gilead. She has the ear of one of the founding Commanders of this oppressive state. She also is the head of Ardua Hall, the training centre, archive and home for the Aunts of Gilead. She is the source. Highly placed in Gilead, she is waiting patiently for her moment to expose the corruption and injustice of the regime and bring it down. Destroy it.

She waits for Baby Nicole to return to Gilead. She will pass on to her the files, evidence of the appalling crimes committed in the State.

The second narrator is the daughter of a highly placed Commander and his wife. Her name is Agnus. However,  - her mother - Tabatha is dead and the Commander wants another child. His new wife - Paula - wants Agnus - out of the way. Out. Married off. But she's terrified of marriage - especially to this founding Commander Judd. He's presented as a sexually depraved. She pleads with the Aunts to enrol her as an Aunt in Ardua Hall. This seems to be the only legitimate channel for women who don't want to be married in Gilead. 
The third narrator is Baby Nicole. She is smuggled out of Gilead by her natural mother - a handmaid - before she could be taken to become the child of a Commander and wife. I think it's possible that Baby Nicole's handmaid mother is Offred the narrator of The Handmaid's Tale. Baby Nicole has lived the first 15 or so years of her life as Jade in Canada. She's cared for by her adopted parents - members of a terrorist organization - Mayday, committed to the destruction of Gilead.
Gilead wants Baby Nicole back. She's become a symbol of Gilead. They send spies into Canada - Pearl Girls to try and find her. Gilead gets close. They kill Jade's adopted parents. 
Jade's told by other members of May Day that she has an important mission. She must return to Gilead - undercover - to meet the source. The source will give her files to smuggle back to Canada and there publicise and expose Gilead's crimes to the world.

And this is what she does.

So it's been 35 years since The Handmaid's Tale was published. I think what worked well for me in that novel was the simplicity of the narrative and the plot - and very little of that. What worked was the restricted nature of Offred's world view. The wider world is hinted at and inferred by Offred's narrative and rarely made explicit. Gilead and its corrupt and rigid power structure based on gender and class is presented in all its unsettling and disturbing reality.
In The Testaments Atwood broadens out our vision of Gilead. She pulls back the curtain a little further. So we get a clearer and more closely focused picture of Gilead. This is both satisfying and also frustrating. Satisfying, because we want to know more about the workings of this oppressive regime. And the novel delivers this for us. Frustrating, because we want our imaginations to wander through this dangerous and threatening world. Atwood treads a difficult path between these two poles. I think on the whole she's got it right. But only just.
Like The Handmaid's Tale, the prequel is similar in that the plot is slow developing. It's the presentation of Gilead and the development of character and relationships that dominates the novel. But then in the last fifth of the novel, the plot suddenly takes off, with Jade travelling back into Gilead, meeting Agnus and the source at Ardua Hall. She discovers that Agnus and Jade are sisters, and then finally returning to Canada with the evidence that will destroy Gilead.