David Green

David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I publish booklets of my own poems, or did. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become. It keeps me out of more trouble than it gets me into. I hope you find at least some of it worthwhile.

Tuesday 29 March 2022

Vermeer's Hat and other stories

I didn't expect Vermeer's Hat to tell us much about Vermeer's life because I understood that precious little was known about it but I thought it might say what is known and also something about the paintings.And so it does, up to a point, but the much bigger point is to lead out from a selection of the paintings to the wider world of the C17th that is so often hinted at from the quiet interiors he is known for.
Thus, Timothy Brook takes us in search of the North-West Passage, on pirate ships to the Americas, sets out the history of porcelain, tobacco, silver and such commodities in a survey of trade, cratsmanship, slavery, horror, shipwrecks that make one's bookish life seem unspeakably mundane in comparison. 
The Dutch were in competition with their rival superpower, Spain, for the benefits of commerce, or whatever they could get, from China which they knew about and eventually found.
A bit like Ian Bostridge's tremendous book, Schubert's Winter Journey, it extends in all directions from its starting point and is 'educational' in the best sense of the word, which means 'opening up all kinds of subjects one might have known nothing of'.
But it also leads to what it might have sold itself as in the first place, a biography of the artist, Vermeer: A View of Delft by Anthony Bailey, which might not be the original biography but which might similarly do more than tell however much can be retrieved or guessed at of the life story.

 

Portsmouth Baroque Choir - Duruflé and Jongen

I am very happy to see the alliance between DGBooks and Music in Portsmouth continuing in such cordial fashion and some of my words being among the first new ones at the newly refurbished website there, Portsmouth Baroque Choir review

Coming next, Portsmouth Choral Union's Haydn Seven Last Words from the Cross.

Wednesday 23 March 2022

Peter Doherty and Frédéric Lo at Tonic, Southsea

 Peter Doherty and Frédéric Lo, Tonic, Southsea, Mar 23

I was very much indebted to my nephew for knowing that Peter Doherty was playing only a 35-minute walk from my house. Two shows, at 5pm and 7pm, in an ‘intimate’ venue that does good work for ‘mental health’. Heaven knows, we might all need some of that from time to time so I booked myself in for the first show, thinking it would be the more genteel for one of my advancing years.
Damien Morris here, www.theguardian.com, was less than impressed by the album, possibly missing the point that much of Doherty's insouciance involves a baby-ish shambles which may or may not be part of the desired effect. One might think the Libertines shows pay the bills for Peter these days while he indulges himself with other projects, including making Margate a new epicentre for bohemian types with Tracey Emin. With his appreciation of English pop culture and pop music, The Epidemiologist is not the sort of title we expected of a single from Slade in the 1970’s but it’s pretty, almost movingly gentle in its self-referential way. But Uncle Nod was never reduced to quite such intricate self-examination as, 
The best laid plans can oft go to fockery 
Run down B&B's can turn into luxury 
A wish that is wasted still can be granted 
Hope that is doped still can be planted 
I search and I search 
I lurch headlong into atrocities 
With an exponential known only to epidemiologists,
 
which, if anything, is trying too hard. But, until recently, being English meant being European, too, with not only Chaucer and the sonnet having their roots in Italy but Philip Larkin knowing more about French Lit than he was prepared to let on.  So, not only is Peter's latest comrade French but so are some of the references in the songs.
'Intimate' means a sold-out capacity of 120 which Peter said was like his first ever gig at school. Keen to get in with it rather than late or not even present, as he once might have been, they did a couple of songs not from the set while more people were expected to show up but I'm not sure they did. It can be hard to tell with such studied casualness whether it's part of the act or not but then they basically played the album, I think, with guitar and keyboards and Peter simply on microphone. Thus they began with the only two current pop tracks (for some years) I'm familiar with, the title track, The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime and the single quoted above, Fred putting in the donkey work for the most part but the keyboard the basis of The Epidemiologist. It is more of what we expect these days, gentle, a bit nostalgic and also a bit knowingly so. You Can’t Keep It From Me Forever and Keeping Me On File were the most immediate and likely to remain among the more memorable for being perfectly good pop songs. It's cute to end quietly and, with Fred taking over on the keyboard, Far From The Madding Crowd, with yet more classic Eng Lit reference, was a gorgeous finish, a long, long way from anything traceable to the 1976/77 revolution and it's only a pity The Carpenters couldn't have covered it.
You can't believe what you read in the papers from young journalists, not even in The Guardian. What does he know. I've looked him up. He was writing about Bad Boy Chiller Crew a month ago ( ! ). For the faintly boho, mainly middle-aged select few at Tonic, Peter probably couldn't have but didn't anyway do anything wrong. It was almost as low-key as a poetry reading compared to the manufactured riots of Libertines appearances.
I thought, having declined The Magnetic Fields later this year, that my pop gig days were surely over. I was grateful to have this brought to my attention because it was great. I thought it was all over. I think it must be now. 


Monday 21 March 2022

Pick of the Pops - September 1971

It's the things that happen during the writing of a poem that can make it worthwhile rather than just the first impetus to write it. I suspect it's the same with most projects. With A Perfect Day of Pop Radio, the playlist that would be the template for my pop music book, the brainwave was to have  Pick of the Pops in its customary R2 slot at 1pm and give over the two hours to September 1971, the greatest chart there ever was.
Following that with Sounds of the 70's at 3pm will admittedly make the afternoon a 70's ghetto but, in the words of Rod Stewart & the Faces as purloined by David Hepworth, there will be Never a Dull Moment which there won't be for me all day.
Several of these records are already on the list for the 70's show or others which frees up space in those places for more and I might even relax the rule about only one record per act in the day because those names involved are special ones.
So, played in reverse order of this chart which I don't think is any official BBC chart but is taken from Every Hit. com, an asterisk indicates we might not quite have time to play that one but otherwise, it's astonishing how good the hit parade was in those days or, being at the age when everything seemed great, maybe it's Post Ergo Propter Hoc, as it were. 
 

1

Diana Ross   

 I'm Still Waiting

2

The Tams

 Hey Girl Don't Bother Me


3

The New Seekers

 Never Ending Song Of Love


4

Dawn

 What Are You Doing Sunday


5

The Pioneers

 Let Your Yeah Be Yeah


6

Family

 In My Own Time


7

Buffy Sainte-Marie

 Soldier Blue


8

Carole King

 It's Too Late / I Feel The Earth Move


9

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood

 Did You Ever


10

 Curved Air

 Back Street Luv


11

 George Harrison

 Bangla Desh


12

 T Rex

 Get It On


13

 The Supremes

 Nathan Jones


14

 Atomic Rooster

 Devil's Answer


15

 Curtis Mayfield

 Move On Up


16

 New World

 Tom-Tom Turnaround


17

 Gilbert O'Sullivan

 We Will


18

 Hot Chocolate

 I Believe (In Love)


19

 The Who

 Won't Get Fooled Again


20

 James Taylor

 You've Got A Friend


21

 Middle Of The Road

 Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep


22

 Elvis Presley

Heartbreak Hotel / Hound Dog


23

 St Cecilia

Leap Up And Down (Wave Your Knickers In The Air)


24

 Rod Stewart

Maggie May / Reason To Believe


25

 *Daniel Boone

Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast


26

 *Ken Dodd

When Love Comes Round Again


27

 Slade

Get Down And Get With It


28

 Marmalade

Cousin Norman


29

 Shirley Bassey

For All We Know


30

 The Sweet

Co-Co