Puta Madres

Peter Doherty & the Puta Madres

'Puta Madres' is presumably intended to be a bit shocking but I asked my Portuguese friend in the delicatessen who makes me a baguette once a week and he said it's pretty harmless these days. I hope Pete's not too disappointed to hear that. At most, it is no more than in an English tradition of thinking that swear words have shock value but the librarian of Hull University used to do it in his poems a long time ago and so it is looking a bit fogey by now.
It did occur to me to put Doherty at the end of another English tradition. In the same way that my dissertation on Andrew Marvell, 40 years ago, made use of a point that the poet came at the end of a tradition and re-cycled the pastoral, lyric and Metaphysical or Elizabethan conceits and hyperbole, Doherty is well versed in the punk, reggae and all the styles that came before but maybe that applies to lots of them. My knowledge of the NME is not what it was in 1973.

The Puta Madres might be more than T. Rex were without Marc Bolan, or Simply Red without Mick Hucknall, but whether it is them, Babyshambles or solo, it's always really a Doherty album. As were The Libertines except I suspect Carl Barat of being more than a session man.
And so, much more tuneful than the scratchy guitar sound affected by the Libertines Live, it is more insouciance, bleary-eyed vocals, exquisite guitar parts and world-weary poetry. I think it's meant to sound makeshift while being finely crafted, some of the songs emerge from murmurings that don't sound like Motown classics but, as well as his nifty guitar, his band have violin to make it sound a bit Country and Hammond organ to refer us back to the 60's.

Whether any of these songs turn out to be the masterpieces that Can't Stand Me Now, Don't Look Back into the Sun or Music When the Lights Go Out were is hard to say but after the epoch-making, there was plenty more to come, given that your average good idea for a band usually works out at two and a half albums.
If these songs sound like those that a Doherty songwriting machine would produce, with gorgeous moments but sudden changes, it could be worse. Anybody who is any more than a one-trick pony is any good and he's got at least two tricks. A more likely complaint is that the 11 tracks are short shrift these days, reminding those of us old enough of The Faces' lame excuse for an 'album', Ooh, La La, which was a very thin couple of singles augmented by a backing track and whatever else the boys hfound lying around. Not value for money, more putting out an album because an album needs to be put out.
But Pete remains the miracle of his generation to set against Keith Richard.

I could cite certain tracks, quote words (like I was working on the main line all my life long day) and comment more specifically but the message seems to be to make it look as if you're not trying that hard, so I won't either. Play people at their own game when you can. 
As far as I'm concerned, he's likely to be the last, the last of the English roses. Sometimes unintentionally, but not always, writers are writing about themselves.

Faber & Faber, The Untold Story

Toby Faber, Faber & Faber, the Untold Story (Faber & Faber)

A few decades ago, being published by Faber was for a poet like playing for Manchester United. Being added to their list now is not quite the same as signing for Manchester City.
To mark the 90th anniversary of the independent publisher, Toby, grandson of the original Geoffrey (of which there was only one), has collected letters and documents from the archive to tell its story up to the end of the 1980's.
The cover illustration might lead us to expect correspondance about poetry. Those of us who wonder why Philip Larkin doesn't warrant a place at the table will find him sneaking furtively away on the back cover. While we do hear from T.S. Eliot and about several other poetry names, it is a book that could be better categorized under Business Studies rather than Literature. The story of the publishing house is more about its crises and survival, internal politics and balance sheets but we should be grateful that Toby concentrates as much as he does on poets because their range was much wider than that. If it was the Nursing Mirror that underwrote the early years, the books were balanced by the rights to Cats while the poetry was, as is usual, more about cachet than cash.

Two of the more memorable stories involve poets' apparel. Eliot was a visitor to the Faber country retreat, Ty Glyn in Cardiganshire, but it's not a cardigan he's advised to bring,
Tell him clothes are of no importance. Flannels (gray) and a white pair if he plays tennis and a bathing suit, if hot.
Sadly, no photograph is included. Perhaps it wasn't hot.

In 1961, Charles Montieth has invited Thom Gunn to lunch at the Traveller's Club, who turns up in a fringed leather jacket and cowboy boots. He writes to the club,
I'm very sorry indeed that my guest's dress at luncheon yesterday should have caused complaints
...
I had no idea he would arrive so bizarrely attired. Since he was educated at Bedales and Trinity College, Cambridge, I took it for granted that he would be aware of the ordinary social conventions in matters such as this.
He had been living in California, you see.

The book report dated 1957 on A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond shows how easy it is to make a costly mistake by simply 'not getting it', not unlike the story of the fool who turned down The Beatles.
But Eliot makes a good point vis a vis Nightwood by Djuna Barnes,
There is someting an author does once (if at all) in his generation that he can't ever do again. We can go on writing stuff that nobody else would write, if you like, but 'The Waste Land' and 'Ulysses' remain historic points.

It was a shame for the business that an upturn in book buying during the war was no good to them because the Excess Profit Tax took anything over and above their previous profit level to pay for the war effort.
If we are short-changed on stories about Thom Gunn, we need to be grateful for slightly more from Larkin, most notably in support of Barbara Pym and 'ordinary sane novels about ordinary sane people doing ordinary sane things' as opposed to his litany of genres that he regards as 'rubbish'.

One can write about Faber without reference to their corporate cover design for poetry but one can also choose to mention it at every opportunity. It is intended, of course, to be an indicator of quality. It is what it is, I suppose, but perhaps they don't have the same genius capacity as Roddy Lumsden whose covers are worth five more great poems in every book.

So, while being grateful to Toby for collecting these documents together, which are worthwhile and of great interest if you like that sort of thing, there are better books of poets' letters to read if you want to read poets' letters.

All he's got to do is not blow it

...and he blows it.

Pavlos Carvalho in Chichester

Pavlos Carvalho, Bach Cello Suites 3 & 5, St. John's Chapel, Chichester, 16 June.

Pavlos Carvalho was welcomed back to the Chichester Festivities to continue his residency. Two years ago I saw (heard, really) him play nos. 1 & 5 so today's coupling of 3 & 5 wasn't quite seeing the same show twice. Not that I'd have minded.
No. 3 is where it all began for me with a recording from the radio in the mid 70's and the Bourree brings with it a certain frisson. It begins with what sounds to me like a re-make of the famous Prelude to no. 1, either the same notes in a different order or different notes in the same order. It is, as Pavlos explains, 'adventurous'. After the customary exegesis, which is like having complex ideas set out very clearly so that you can understand them, the left-hand has apparently more work to do than the right, bowing, hand but Pavlos doesn't make it look as difficult as it sounds in the onrush to the conclusion of the Gigue which is not far short of hectic.
No. 5 is more pensive and 'mature' with the unadorned minimalism of the Sarabande at its still centre. Arvo Part might not have been quite so avant garde after all with the likes of Fratres or Spiegel in Spiegel. Bach was doing something similar circa 1720 when it might have been avant garde but didn't need to be labelled as such.
Pavlos made the point that Bach is always fresh, with more to offer, whereas with some music you can feel that you've reached the bottom of a piece and can move on. He quoted one particular composer but he's not only that one it applies to, whose music is tremendous in its own way, and so we won't put a name to him here.
And that is the same reason he gave afterwards when I asked how many takes he was using in making his record of the suites. You could keep recording them forever but have to draw a line early on and go with what you've got.
As a bonus, he gave us the Prelude to. no. 1, that builds from its natural progression of notes to extrapolate like a natural thing to the controlled intensity of its climax. He's right. There is something about such pieces that means they never wear out.

It's hard to know how many versions of the same music one needs. I don't even have favourites like Isserlis or Natalie Clein,m, or Yo Yo Ma. Casals and Rostropovich suffice with Tortellier not having been updated from LP. I might have to keep a watchful eye for when Pavlos releases his set, though. Charming man completely devoted to his art. The symbiotic gratitude between audience and performer is exactly what it should be like.  

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

One thing one might miss when eventually passing up the opportunity to be paid good money for attending the office in favour of living off immoral earnings will be the joy of arriving home to a neat package and trying to remember which book or record it might be. The first challenge, though, is to not damage it as it gets wedged under the door or opened by orange knife.
Today's case in point is the Alban Berg Quartet's Complete Beethoven String Quartets. One must not live by Bach, Handel, Mozart and Buxtehude alone because I can entirely see why others put Beethoven in the same bracket. I gathered my own Complete Symphonies, taped from the wireless, on cassettes as a teenager but never played the Choral because I didn't trust the C120 tape it was on, which rather defeated the object but at least I knew I had it.
Op. 132 was on the radio the other week, from Wigmore Hall, and was entirely convincing in making its own case. CD's really are for nothing these days. I very nearly bought this no. 15 Quartet on a record by the Fitzwilliams, whose Shostakovich set is beyond all critique. But, not so fast. There was the Complete Quartets on 7 discs for, was it, £12.
Come off it, that's not fair. I almost wanted to insist on paying more.

There might be plenty to complain about regarding the price of 'top' sports events, like Premier football, test matches - and is it really £90 for a day at Gloroius Goodwood - or Covent Garden or Ed Sheeran. Don't go, then. But the Proms, Monday lunchtime at Wigmore, or Tuesday at Chichester are worth it and if one wants to go to a big race meeting, one just waits for Corals to offer a day out to your turf mate and a guest and make sure you're his guest.

But what is worth it is the BBC.
Much meaner than the move to ask over-75's to pay the licence fee had been George Osborne's sly move to not abolish it but make it funded by the BBC themselves rather than him. Why not abolish benefits and tell Tesco that they have to give food to the disadvantaged.
Radio 3 is worth £150 a year on its own so the telly, the rest of the radio and the website is free. I was relieved that R3 was not on the list I heard of things that might have to go but that doesn't mean it won't occur to a Boris government that Classic FM plays enough Elgar so that'll do.
Radio 5 was mentioned and, frankly, without Danny Baker, it is only a fraction of what it was so those who want to listen to the same football chat every week can go to Talksport, who I understand do little else.
It was never a penalty. Our club needs a new left back, midfielder and a striker who scores 20 goals a season. The ref was a disgrace. The chairman/manager has got to go. We might get into the play-offs if we can stop conceding 3 goals every time.
There you are, that's next season sorted.

But the worst thing is how it is assumed everything can be paid for. Like 40% or more going to University; the NHS keeping people alive to extraordinary ages which only costs them more on ever more restrictive resources; Civil Service pay rises (not justified and I work there so I know), police and now the elderly's right to watch Strictly Come Dancing.
But it's the same every week so if you've seen it once you've seen them all.
--
But it's free here so tune in next week to hear about Faber & Faber, the Untold Story by Toby Faber. Now that it's arrived I can see the answer to the doubt I had about it before - why Philip Larkin was missing from the group portrait on the cover featuring its most famous names. He is sneaking furtively away on the back cover.
Very clever.
--
And, for those who have been riveted by news of my recent high-flying internet chess career.
Reader, I nailed it.
The 15-minute rating has been raised to 1925, which makes me almost worthy of breathing air on the same continent as Magnus Carlsen. I nurtured a rating of 1923 for 10-minute games alongside it for a few days, sitting in my tent like Achilles. For a few days I maintained that in the upper 1800's until the inevitable collapse occured.
I saw recently the self-evident idea that a great poet has to be recognized as such by every succeeding generation or else they lose their place and soon aren't great any more.
Class is forever but form, I'm afraid, is only temporary. So that story is over. Mission was accomplished but it will be a long time before I can again slip the surly bonds of mediocrity to touch the face of competence. I will be like the West Indies when I saw them v. Hampshire.
It was a low-key morning. Viv Richards had a lie-in and came out after half an hour or so to replace the substitute fielder. Hants must have thought it was going okay at 120-2, with Courtney and Curtley languid in the outfield. But then one wicket went down, then another and after some adventurous slogging by the fast bowler, they were all out for 220.
I'll mooch about in the 1700's and wait for the next rush of inspiration.

The Beethoven is sensational. Six more discs to try later. Stuff worth having is not too expensive.
     

Daisy Dunn- In the Shadow of Vesuvius

Daisy Dunn, In the Shadow of Vesuvius (William Collins)

I was expecting another poet as Daisy Dunn's follow up to Catullus. While Pliny the Younger fancied himself as such, it is not what he is primarily remembered for. Even if one had expected a Pliny, one would have thought the Elder was the more likely but he left writing about the world and not about himself whereas the Younger left letters. Thus, in the same way as we see Socrates through Plato, or Dr. Johnson through Boswell, we see Pliny the Elder through the writing of his nephew. While Daisy's book is 'A Life of Pliny', by which she means the Younger, it is not what one usually gets from a chronological biography. It gradually shifts attention from the Elder to the Younger but, more than being about them (which it is), it provides a wide-ranging survey of Roman life, culture, politics and - most captivatingly- thought.

It begins with a bang, the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, and the Elder's assiduous devotion to his studies bringing about his demise. Daisy doesn't specify what we were told at school that his fanaticism about time spent reading meant that he had a slave read to him while he was in the bath but his dedication to reading, investigation and the writing of his Natural History was both the making of him and his undoing. His nephew both sustained and benefitted from his legacy.

Sleep was a waste of time, and was equated with death,
Vita vigilia est ('to be alive is to be awake').

While one can have a great deal of sympathy for the Stoicism of the Younger that included environmental concerns, vegetarianism and the avoidance of Christmas (the festival of Saturnalia), we don't have to take all our bearings from the Pliny's and the Elder's work ethic and the Younger's objections to horse racing is taking their worthiness too far. They can't be the only ones who have ever taken themselves a little bit too seriously.

While Daisy's Catullus book made a case that I'm sure we all wanted to believe for having found the likeness of her subject in a fresco, she is more circumspect in evaluating the chances of a skull reputed to be that of Pliny the Elder being really him. Character is better assessed in such vignettes as the Younger's admiration for a lifelike, unidealized bronze sculpture of an old man in all its realism rather than the tendency of collectors to feign knowledge of art but not understand it.

The Younger's career is established in the bleak, tyrannical reign of Domitian. He attends the Court of One Hundred but does well to escape the murderous attentions of the Emperor who, most chilling among all his crimes, oversaw the burying alive of a Vestal Virgin accused of infidelity.

Having inherited his uncle's villa at Comum, the Younger establishes an idyllic country estate, trading in wine and crops and conveniently identifying his property for posterity by having the bricks embossed with his initials which seems slightly at odds with his generally pre-Puritan values. Having begun with such vivid drama, the book seems to have moved into a gentle coda of luxury and enjoyment for its own sake.
He is promoted, though, by the more enlightened Trajan who trusts him with the governorship of Bithynia on the Black Sea. He regularly writes home to the empoeror for advice until becoming more confident in making his own decisions. However, he needs guidance on dealing with Christians and is surprised by Trajan's (relatively) liberal line.

Insights into Roman science might make it seem imaginatively quaint - the Moon must be bigger than the Earth or else there wouldn't be total eclipses; if pregnant women eat salt, their children will be born without fingernails- but at least they didn't invent plastic, the internal combustion engine or golf.

It is not only classicists who write good prose but it can't do any harm to be disciplined enough to translate Latin's rigorous grammar and thus habitually write fine English. Good writing is most often that which one doesn't notice and bad writing draws attention to itself by its flaws. But one can also notice exceptionally good prose and, time and again, one appreciates Daisy Dunn's tremendous grasp of her subject and the way she expresses it, not only in the compendium of quotes, references and stories she assembles from the ancient world but in the way the words are put together.

The book ends sooner than you might be thinking because roughly a quarter of it is the Endnotes and Index. I didn't refer to them very often but when I looked for Endnote 35 on page 299 it wasn't there, and neither was 32. Never trust a proofreader or a first edition. But if that miniscule point is the only fault I can find, this is a wonderful book with potentially much wider appeal than to those of us who like to play at being scholarly. If one wasn't so stoic that one doubted the validity of prizes, one would nominate it for all those it qualifies for.  

Better Red than Dead

Recent shock revelations show that the candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party took more drugs than the Grateful Dead.
One of any number of double standards that might be found among the stories is how it is thought it might damage Michael Gove's campaign but not Boris Johnson's.
Both of them accepted last time that they were unfit for office as a result of their sinister maneouverings and stood down while Andrea Leadsom's crass belief in motherhood as a qualification let her down, too, so what has changed since then.

While they are very ready to set the record straight and (some of them) say how much they regret their terrible mistakes - forgetting that Churchill 'won the war' on intoxicants like brandy and cigars - and that it was all a long time ago, there is little evidence to suggest that some of them - and certainly not Boris- ever stopped.
Confusion, gibbering, incoherence. I thought they were tell-tale signs.

The Sixteen - An Enduring Voice

The Sixteen, An Enduring Voice (Coro)

Marking the 40th anniversary of The Sixteen, this latest release compares and contrasts British choral music from the Renaissance and contemporary composers but begins with a plainsong Salve Regina as if to demonstrate how much better it is when composers do something with it.
Robert Wylkynson, the Eton man, leads the Renaissance side with his Salve Regina, 14 minutes that are not quite as intricate as his Jesus Autem Transiens or as compelling as the Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis that was to follow some decades later. It does, nonetheless, aspire to the condition of either as a 9-part motet that generates restrained intensity.
James MacMillan, for the contemporary side, provides O virgo prudentissima that comjures, as much as his religious music does, a harsh universe in need of salvation from his deity. It has become a stranger and more unsettling place, more in need of deliverance, than ever it was, possibly because that God seems ever more remote. MacMillan's solo soprano part will be one of several reasons to return to this record, that repays re-playing exponentially.
But those two larger-scale works aren't necessarily the clear-cut highlights. Gabriel Jackson's Ave Maria pre-empts MacMillan's soprano line, and uses two, to compelling effect, dispelling all the worries one can't help having when a composer is annotated as 'born 1962'.
Robert Fayrfax's Eternae laudis lilium is a further helping of the endless balm that the choral music of his age provided. I noticed, when leaving it playing in another room, that it doesn't serve as background music, which you might think it would. It starts to sound irrelevant and lightweight at a distance whereas it benefits from our attention, as it should.
Once we are beyond the pedestrian observances of the first track, the whole album is as good as any of its genre if we bet without the small handful of sublime masterpieces in the canon and I should know because reviews sell these records to me as easily as labels sell cool fashion to young people.
Having had some short cameos by John Tavener earlier, it's not obvious why Song for Athene is listed as a 'bonus track' but it's the encore, isn't it, having been saved for the purpose in the same way that Lou Reed kept Perfect Day for his second encore when I saw him.
But whereas Lou's song might have become jaded by familiarity, or possibly not even being that good, that won't happen to Tavener's gradual unloading of dirge and wonder. If there are still great works being written, and surely there must be because it wouldn't just stop, it is a recent example. Just because Bach isn't knocking out a new cantata every week these days, we don't give up hope completely.
One wouldn't want to listen to this music all the time and one wonders if Harry Christophers, or Peter Philips of The Tallis Scholars, don't sometimes look forward to getting home to put on their Mud, Slade or Gilbert O'Sullivan albums but we owe them a debt for doing what they do because one needs this just as must as Tiger Feet.
I hope this isn't the best new disc I buy all year but it wouldn't be a bad thing if that's how it turns out. 

Move Over, Darling

 Much too belately, I realized I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago. I was the first to admit my surprise that Doris Day had still been alive but I do obituaries here when necessary, it's just that the qualifications required are entirely my decision and decided by how moved by the death I am. You have to be quite good to get in.

I gazed, on and off, at a picture of Alex Higgins from the newspaper all evening, I grieved over Gregory Isaacs and, no matter what I said, I knew I couldn't do justice to Basil D'Oliveira. With Seamus Heaney and David Bowie, I thought it fit to mark their passing but said that others would find better things to say than me. If I can contribute something personal, that's what I'll add.

But Move Over, Darling was my first favourite pop record. That might be fair to say, pre-Beatles, pre-Monkees, pre Silence is Golden, and a long way pre-T. Rex. I had no idea who Doris Day was or that she'd become quite so iconic. It doesn't even seem to be regarded as her greatest hit but what do they know who can't summon sufficient langour and prefer The Deadwood Stage.

Move Over, Darling first appeared, just about, in About Larkin before being included in The Perfect Book. It is under the protocols of acknowledging such credits that I allow myself permission to put my own poem here,

Move Over, Darling

The Light Programme was safe and sound,

the wireless set warmed-up behind

those dark outposts of Europe strewn

across its dial from Hilversum

to Reykjavik. What went on there

was hard to say. But one lady

especially used to promise

me everything although I knew

nothing about her, not even

her name. She might have been a nurse,

or sounded like a nurse might sound,

although I wasn’t ill for all

I knew and was too innocent

for fetishes. I moved over,

like she said, only too pleased to,

because I knew she must be right.

I know that if I wait for her

she’ll come and sing to me again

in private and only I’ll know

it’s me she means but we can’t kiss

while beyond us the neighbourhood

stretches into its map of roads

under a shameless summer sky

where there are stars we cannot see.