Good Friday

Good Friday is perhaps the best day of the year, it dawned on me this morning. It's possibly the quietest day with its sense of decorum and seriousness that other religiose days have all but lost by now.
I marked it by playing all five versions of Francois Couperin's Lecons de Tenebres that I have on disc with an interval filled by Osvaldo Golijov's Tenebrae which re-makes it.
Some versions are more operatic than others, Alfred Deller inevitably a bit dated while all are sensual as is the French way but James Bowman and Michael Chance are surely still in a class of their own for their clean, concise performance with the viola da gamba sufficiently well up in the mix to take a prominent part. It's not quite a case of nothing ever equalling the first version one heard because that was Jordi Savall in the film Tous les Matins du Monde but Bowman/Chance was the version I bought for a complete account and it probably is still the best CD in the house.
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The ongoing story of the emergence of The Perfect Book has reached the stage of examining a sample copy. I'm re-doing it slightly to make the print a bit bigger, as bigger as space will allow without re-editing the whole thing.
The cover is great, quite possibly the highlight of the book but certainly the poems suddenly don't look quite as good when you realize they will appear in public like that so there has been further amendment in places while the opportunity to continue to edit remains.

But with a brief sample of Mama Told Me on the Jess Davies Band Facebook page sounding convincingly 'country' with slide guitar added, we can but anticipate May 4th with some hopes.

Portsmouth Poetry Society will be meeting at the Buckland Community Centre, Malins Raod from next Weds onwards and John Dean and I will have copies of our respective new books there on Weds 18th for anyone in the area who would like to come and see.