Splore, Backscattering

 Splore, Backscattering (Blue Matter)

The last time I listened to a 25-minute rock track it was circa 1973. How time flies. In the meantime, the 3 minutes or so it takes Miss Ross to implore her errant boyfriend to Stop! in the Name of Love has been enough. 

Splore is multi-instrumentalist, Nick Saloman, making full use of all his instruments and the studio, with Dave Palmer and guest friends. Instrumentation that includes Electric Dulcimer, Baby Sitar, Mellotron, Theremin and Harpsichord signposts us to the fact that it's Prog, Man. Il Pirata makes one wonder if this is what Tonto's Expanding Head Band would be doing by now if they had been any good.

While the effect gives the impression of abundance and plenty, it can also suggest excess. One wonders if some of it is necessary, and included because it's an available resource. Motown productions, even at their most expansive, remained economical while here it's in danger of getting mighty crowded.

Kevin John Rogers recites The Beaver with a sense of dark other-worldliness before the elegant Knot Garden has hints of Renaissance music. Saloman is a fine musician and the production job can be admired in its own right but the guests are welcome in breaking up the ongoing exhibition of technical prowess. Keyboard parts and studio effects make that which could have stuck at baroque or been pared down to classical into something rococo. 

Debbie Wiseman singing on You are the Light is classy and, for a pop fan like me, Louis Wiggett on Come Home Melody Moon is the absolute standout that I'm sure would have achieved high placings in the hit parade of 1967 had it been released then, a stylish retro piece that Tony Blackburn could play on Sounds of the Sixties if only it had arrived more than 55 years earlier.

Kevin is back on the title track, intoning jazz references in his evocative, attitudinal way before the full potential of the Saloman aesthetic is unleashed. It is to be admired, for sure, and is clearly brilliant at what it's doing while for me it was a bit like watching expert players play Bridge. I appreciate I'm witnessing something being done exceptionally well but not in a position to appreciate it. I wonder why it needs to be done while being impressed nonetheless.

I'm impressed that the audience for such music remained faithful to their creed and still provide a market for it after I came and went in fairly short order at an early enough age before acquiring an Al Green album and making my way from there. I'm impressed by the commitment and technique still being put into a genre that I'd thought was as long gone as skiffle but no genre is ever entirely over. I'll be playing Come Home Melody Moon plenty more times. I'll go back to Il Pirata and I'll listen to Kev's bits again but I'm not sure how many times I'll have 25 minutes to spare and think they will be best spent with the rest of Backscattering, brilliant title though it is. If anybody is going to fill in such of my time with their labyrynthine excursions, it'll be Bach.

Quiz Night

It was Quiz Night at Portsmouth Poetry Society this evening.  I was Bamber Gascoigne.

You can never tell how such things will go down but it went not badly at all. Answers another time.

Hidden Melodies 

Well-known songs disguised in the style of famous poets.

One point for the song, which are mostly nursery rhymes, and one point for the poet.

1.

They ascended the upward trail,

They did not mean to but they did, 

Then lost the contents of their pail. 

Such misadventure. Silly kids.

2.

An oval man sat on a fence  

Precariously 

And hit the ground 

injuriously

Not from jumping

But from falling.

3. 

Another year closer to death, 

The scavenger croaked, 

And gorged on a piece of cake. 

Let’s celebrate.

4.

If we had long enough, awkward lady, 

I’d ask about your horticulture, maybe, 

And in your demure, leisurely way 

You could at length describe how it looked gay, 

Blossoming with tintinnabulations 

Of pewter, conches and ranks of beauties.

5.

You and your royal routines 

- after you’ve defied the smoking ban 

And had your Corn Flakes,

It’s a String Quartet with your musical friends. 

Still, it keeps you happy, I suppose. 

What Forms of Poem are these,

6. 

Only seventeen 

Syllables, hardly enough 

To say very much

7.

 
One of these 

If you please 

Rhymed AABB 

Like this, you see

8. 

A poem that’s made of five lines 

That tries its best to make rhymes 

The first two end words, 

The fourth with the third, 

It must be like that every time.

Cryptic Poets, 

9. Peter Pan’s companion, manage

10. George and Louis’s sister and a cat’s noise

11. A cartoon bear and a stream

12. Fourth gospel author swindled

13. Old Testament priest and British currency

14. Two queens and a senior clergy person

15. King of Macedonia and a pontiff 

Poetry Arithmetic, 

 
16. Lines in a sonnet x lines in a couplet

17. Eliot’s Quartets divided by lines in a quatrain

18. Beats in a line of pentameter x A.A. Milne’s Now We Are…

19. The year Shakespeare died minus the number of sonnets he wrote

20. How many years the Poet Laureate currently serves plus how many years Portsmouth Poetry Society has been going.

Special Guest - Chris Martin

 The revival of the Top 6 and My Favourite Poem features continues and I'm honoured by having Chris Martin here.

A retired librarian, editor of the old, pocket-sized Poems from Portsmouth magazine and much else besides, it's going to take someone pretty good to beat him in next week's Portsmouth Poetry Society Quiz.

Top 6 Films

The Searchers (John Ford)

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)

The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)

On the Town (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen)

La Regle Du Jeu (Jean Renoir)

A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)

My Favourite Poem

The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins

This cathedral of a poem has a thrilling and illuminating rhythm running through its 35 stanzas, and is packed with memorable images which I at first thought of as cinematic but now consider visionary in both senses. It is an intensely religious work that can appeal to both those of faith and those of none, and rewards repeated reading or recitation. Its heft and majesty has been justly rendered by Alan Rickman. I'm sure if I memorised it in its entirety, I would be high, such is its power. My desert island poem.

 

The Wreck of the Deutschland 

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Thanks, Chris, and please, if anybody else would like to contribute a Top 6- of absolutely anything- or a few words on their favourite poem, do get in touch.

Racetrack Wiseguy

This is the time of year I, for one, wait for for most of it and these are the sort of days why. The big stables with the good horses are in-form and trying, taking each other on, and it's sport as interesting as it gets.

Mr. Henderson usually starts knocking in a few good winners by the end of November and today, with Act of Innocence, he impressively landed the Newbury race won by such horses as Jonbon and plenty of others that Act of Innocence might go on to be mentioned alongside. Confidence behind that and Impose Toi, who got there in the end, provide the ammunition for what is surely the race of the season thus far.

I've taken a view about tomorrow's Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle for quite some time and looked forward to a 'proper bet' never mind what condition the account is in. But it's easy to be bullish before one sees the state of play when the moment arrives. 

Constitution Hill was the horse of a generation, if not a lifetime, until one or two things went amiss. Illness didn't stop him re-appearing and winning but then he started tripping over things and then came disappointingly nowhere in Ireland. Market confidence tomorrow indicates that some big money thinks he's back to his best but my first instinct was to take him on.

Willie Mullins's Anzadam is also noticeably shorter than what he's achieved so far gives him any right to be and rumour has it that he's a machine although A.P. McCoy today was determinedly unimpressed. 

Harry Skelton has long been advertising what he thinks of The New Lion (Newcastle, 2.00) and that has been backed up in a couple of top class races. I'm not inclined to desert him until he's beaten but, in the light of the betting, I'm not going to re-mortgage the house to back him either. I'd only have my own overblown confidence to blame if the Irish or Henderson money got it right but equally so if I'd been right all along and missed out. So, we still stick to the plan and back it without going overboard because if there's one thing to be trusted, it's the plan.

I'll be out of the Menuhin Room in time to find a shop to watch it in. It's a bit too exciting not to see as it happens. 

Special Guest - Kevin Rogers

I'm always glad to revive the Top 6 and My Favourite Poem features here. Maybe I'll think about sending out some more invitations. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I am privileged to have here Kevin Rogers, the other half of 'the bad boys of Portsmouth Poetry', as I jocularly call us since I'm about as bad as Cliff Richard. But it's best he introduces himself,

Ageing punk rocker and sometimes poet. In the late 70s I was in the Von Trapp Family and later the ‘post punk’ Room 13. Like so many we were John Peel ‘superstars’ but ignored most everywhere else. I went to college in the 80s and then worked and brought up my family. I have recorded my first music in 40 odd years this year, a couple of my poems set to music and recorded on vintage instruments (60s and 70s guitars and synths), with the band Splore. It is released in October 2025. Splore, Backscattering (Blue Matter Records).  Bizarrely, I have had several poems published in various books about Tottenham Hotspur, bizarre because I am a Fulham supporter (a favour for a friend).

Top 6 underrated pop songs/performers

Death, Politicians in my eyes.

What Jimi Hendrix might have done if he had lived. Combination of Hendrix/funk and punk rock. They looked great, too, black punks in leather.

David Ackles, American Gothic.

I’ve always loved Ackles. Critics might say they are ‘showtunes’, if so, he is Sondheim not Lloyd Webber. Totally transforms this song about perversion and poverty with the last line, 'They suffer least those who suffer what they choose’.

Atomic Rooster, Winter

That sweet spot where melancholy meets clinical depression. OK, they had hit records ‘Tomorrow Night’ and ‘Devil's Answer’ but this is their first incarnation with Carl Palmer and Nick Graham. Vincent Crane has been a ‘hero’ since The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, a tortured genius - don’t play it if you are feeling low. Vincent committed suicide after many stays in psychiatric hospitals.

The Saints, Messin’ with the Kid.

That sneer in Chris Bailey’s voice makes Lydon sound like Richard Burton. Don’t leave early the guitar glissando at the end is something to behold. Best Punk band of all time?

Beacon Street Union, The Clown died in Marvin Gardens

Boston’s finest. Vintage psychedelia underscored by the funeral march on Hammond organ. Esoteric lyrics and the voice of an angel.

Wire, A Serious of Snakes.

 Wire was the first gig I took my wife to. One of those rare groups whose second phase of their career was as good as the first. Lyrically perfect; ‘You tulip, you pea brained earwig’ is an insult I still use today.

-- 

My Favorite Poem

 I would say Gregory Corso’s, The Last Gangster. Corso is the most authentic of the Beats and the imagery of rusting guns in arthritic hands is beautifully crafted. That sense of waiting for that moment that never comes is universal. Surely if you are the last gangster, you are safe, but maybe yesterday’s sins are always with us?

 What a glorious Early Music Show today. Featuring the Early Opera Company for who, on the evidence of this programme 'early opera' means Handel. Perhaps they will do some Monteverdi another day. I will have to return to the Handel opera section of the shelves. He can't possibly be only my fourth favourite composer. Beethoven's elbowed his way back to prominence in recent years. Bach is surely unassailable and ring-fenced at no. 1, isn't he, and so my original favourite, the composer of The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and all such things would miss out. Never mind feeling sorry for those who finish fourth in the Olympic Games but four into three won't go. I'm lucky if that's the most concerning thing I have to worry about.

--

Reports of Bob Harris's illness has led me back to Sounds of the 70's in recent weeks. He still appears to think the 70's mainly happened in California and Nashville but at least this week he began with Curtis Mayfield and the Jacksons and ended with Thelma Houston. A comprehensive survey of the 70's should be the agenda and so I'm not necessarily complaining about the very worst record ever, Music by John Miles, or the hideous thing by 10cc. I even quite enjoyed the Genesis.

Hearing a few things well off the limits of my playlist, like Voodoo Chile and something by the Band was like a glimpse of the vast genre of 'rock' music that I drifted away from decades ago. All those old 'heads' in denim or some more flamboyant attire purveying their guitar skills and outré philosophies. It's impressive what a colossal body of work all those bands left behind but maybe the glimpse of the mountain is best left at that because I'm sure if I was left with a pile of Doobie Brothers albums I would capitulate very quickly, not unlike the way that Donald Trump solves wars.

--

At halfway, The Woman in White is doing very well. It is genuinely gripping, and a bit of a psychological thriller, as Marian and Laura scheme clandestinely to uncover the secret of Sir Perceval and his friend, Count Fosco, while not much better than being kept hostages by them, not least because Laura is married to Sir Perceval.

Alongside Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, George Eliot, Hardy and plenty more, one can see how feminist readings of the Victorian novel are standard issue. Men are grotesque, women their idealized, innocent victims - we are betting without Becky Sharp here- and it's obvious whose side we are one. 

In Jane Austen, as it says in a poem, the main interest revolves around a heroine who either,

gets married, or doesn't, or dies, (my little joke) but in Middlemarch, The Mayor of Casterbridge and here, they've got married and that's the problem.

There are some fine passages in among the deepening tension. For example, of Count Fosco,

I have always maintained that the popular notion of connecting excessive grossness of size and excessive good-humour as inseparable allies, was equivalent to declaring, either that no amiable people get fat, or that the accidental addition of so many pounds of flesh has a directly favourable influence over the disposition of the person on whose body they accumulate. etc, etc. Brilliantly set out, citing Henry VIII as evidence against, and it's great to have the time and space for such diversions.   

Unless it throws all its early achievement away in its later stages, this might have been one of the best books I hadn't read but it's far too soon to be calling that because endings can be hard to do. I think beginnings are in some way easier, not least for not  being troubled by thoughts of 'the moral of the story' if stories need to have 'morals'.  

Retirement Diary

 Five years or more ago there were a couple of pieces here entitled Retirement Diary. I don't think it was ever intended to be a permanent or ongoing series but it seemed a fitting title at the time. The cessation of full-time paid work seems to me more of a 'coming of age' than 18, 21 or any other age were. It's as significant as one's first or last day at school, one's first at work, perhaps the beginning and end of significant relationships, moving from one place to another or even buying one's first record.

When still in paid employment I would see people who had graduated to the leisured  classes and would often ask how long it had been since and they'd say things like, 'five years', and I'd think, Five Years, as if it indicated something akin to an eternity in paradise. And, of course, as long as one has enough to do, it's a vast improvement and it's not long before one is saying you don't understand how you ever had time to go to work.

But it is one of those tricks that time plays on us that we are caught up in it while the rate at which it disappears accelerates. I've had a sort of flexible structure that is like a half rhyme with routine in that the diary of concerts, walks and other events isn't fixed week by week but regular things recur in a time signature more appropriate to modern jazz than the 4/4 of a pop record. 

Today has been spent reading The Woman in White to the accompaniment of Alina Ibragimova playing the Brahms Violin Sonatas, returning to the bookmakers most of the small amount I relieved them of yesterday and now attending to this need I have to use words irrespective of if anybody wants to read them.

It's been writing that has accounted for most of what I might think of s 'achievements' in the last five years, which it was ever meant to be. I'm glad in a way not to have been a journalist - which is possibly what I should have been- and had to produce words to a deadline. I like doing it but, like anything one likes doing, I like doing it primarily to please myself. There have been times when I've thought I should have produced more, and better, but one can only produce that which the ideas for present themselves. 

Thus, writing about local music events has become a staple diet, a few essays appeared in print, the final edition from David Green (Books) collected the handful of poems from the last six and a half years and there's been the flow of casual thoughts here, for better or worse. It could have been worse.

Before I finished at work, one of the great last four managers I'd had asked what I intended to do, travel? Oh, dear, no. Not very far. Stay in the same place, having chosen it almost by default. But even when one's life is one big holiday, there are places one feels like going to while no longer wanting to complicate matters by going to other countries. Thus, Durham Cathedral with a supporting cast of Lindisfarne, Newcastle and Alnwick last year and Nottingham, with Lincoln and Lichfield earlier this year, were great successes within my limited ambition.

One can find oneself wondering if it should have been better but I'm convinced it could easily have turned out far worse. For the most part, so far so good, I got lucky. The way we live measures our own nature, as it says in Mr. Bleaney, and I don't think I wanted to be Rod Stewart and couldn't have carried it off. I don't know how much more there ever was to want and if, having got it, it would have delivered any of its promised satisfaction. I suspect that a life spent mostly concerned with books, music, art and the like is 'secondhand' but I'd rather read about the Wars of the Roses, Soviet Russia or James Joyce, perhaps, than be there at the time.

There are still people of my age and older, for reasons of their own, attending the office each week, undergoing the latest half-baked business initiatives focussed on improvement. I won't ever entirely escape them because they sometimes come back to me in the mildest of panic attacks but as much as the pleasures of taking part in sport are over for good by now, so are the horrors of them.