Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

It looked bleak this morning when the CD player didn't work. It is customary to do the Times crossword of a Saturday morning to the accompaniment of something erudite. I began without music but had another look, grateful of the several years of good service from Sony but concerned that here was another item of bric a brac to dispose of and only the tinpot player upstairs until a new one arrives.

My practical expertise is nil. Things that don't work generally remain not working but I have heard of fuses. It was worth a try. It was a 3 amp that was required, not the 13 amp I first found. I suspect you blow the national grid or at least the neighbourhood if you use the wrong one. But then I, amazingly, found a 3 amp, put it in and Good Heavens, it came on, and the crossword was done to the soundtrack of further Bach cantatas. It's remarkable what can be achieved when one tries.

The Saturday Times crosswords, a few months ago, had been seeming to be getting just beyond me with a bit more internet help required than is respectable but I think that's six weeks in a row now all done and dusted with only the checking of answers I thought must be right. It's necessary to have a few interests so that one or two of them can be going well when others are failing.

Having set a new best ever rating at Bullet Chess, I switched to Classical and have, hopefully only temporarily, blown my 1800 standing there. 

Having got to within one more winner of restoring where I began the year on the turf, that went backwards, too. Then Corals asked for the ID I couldn't satisfy William Hill with last year and I thought, here we go, they've latched on to that sly way of effectively closing winning accounts. However, I've successfully taken a token amount out of them to represent a nominal profit for 2025 and I play on with the chicken feed that remains, but never officially losing.

So the crossword and electrical successes were welcome.

-- 

I'm up to vol. 44 of the Bach Cantatas by now, having jumped ahead to other genres, too, but I don't think I'm halfway. Of course, it's hard not to take gloriousness for granted. Paradise must be dull. 

This morning's programme began with BWV 140, Wachet Auf, which is famous and one wonders if it's better or just familiar or familiar because it's better. But then BWV 143 comes along with a very fine violin obbligato part representing another find that I might struggle to find again so vol.44 stays on the turntable for another turn or two. One needs to be John Eliot Gardiner to know your way round the Cantatas properly.

-- 

I don't think my basic Spotify access allows me to find my Spotify Age based on what I've played there but I'm not missing much. It's unlikely to be less than my real age but once one reaches a 'certain age', surely one is just 'adult'. Only someone limited to the likes of Bing Crosby or Bill Haley could be put in their 80's' a tendency towards 'classical' doesn't indicate old age and generations born after the 60's are known to enjoy the Beatles. If my favourite decade for music was the 1720's, it ought not to suggest that I'm over 300 years old.

A Spotify Age might only mean something if you're under 40, are Tim Westwood or had been John Peel.

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But Elvis Costello's book is a 'good read'. He comes across as every bit as edgy as his slick, sometimes attritional songwriting. But he's deeply immersed in his music, a lot of which he owes to his father, Ross, who sang and played trumpet in showbands and wherever he got a break. And, graduating from the post-punk vitality of his first albums, he soon moves in rarified company, not namedropping for namedropping's sake but those are the people he met- McCartney, Dylan, Tony Bennett.

For me, he's who he was to begin with and what came later were afterthoughts, like Robert Plant was Led Zeppelin and the forty years since no more than a search for something else to do. But I doubt if they see it like that.

Elvis uses time in a very non-linear way, sometimes being married to Diana Krall ahead of writing the songs for Get Happy but he's an assured, confident writer of a book, as he always was with a song. 

The most quotable line so far, two-thirds of the way through, is regarding Mink de Ville, who were,

led by Willy, an emaciated chap, who traded heavily in mythic street stories that I didn't quite buy. His girlfriend, Toots, looked like a bag of old clothes that had been abandoned when The Shangri-La's left town...

It's interesting to fit in the times I saw him in action with the impressively recalled narrative but, as I found with the Seamus Heaney letters, all the travel, the appearances, the meetings with other greats. It sounds exhausting and I'm entirely with Larkin- not for the first time- and other less publicly available types in not relishing or envying the pursuit of such a career.

The Year in Review

It's easy to nominate the Book of the Year for 2025. However few new books I read in a year, I'd do well to find one better than Andrew Graham-Dixon's Vermeer, A Life Lost and Found if I read them all. One can read lots of books on one's preferred subjects- Shakespeare biography, Handel, Shostakovich, Elizabeth Bishop, Larkin and find much the same material re-arranged in the cause of whatever angle the author adopts but Graham-Dixon genuinely seemed to be breaking new ground. It's hard to see Vermeer Studies going much further- at least for a long time - and so that accolade is easily decided.

There simply weren't enough, or hardly any, new records I heard this year - or books of poetry, or novels- to constitute categories. In recent years it has been Event of the Year, rather than Poem or Poetry Collection, that has provided any internal debate and it has usually meant 'concert'. Now might be a good time to separate out 'concert' from 'event'. It's not obvious how one can compare an hour or so of live music performance with places, buildings or even any other days out and, mundane as it may seem, the arrival of the bus pass made for quite an occasion.

It was hard for the second half of the year to maintain the sublime standards set in the first half by Angelina Kopyrina's Prokofiev Sonata no. 7, gorgeously supported by Beethoven, the Petersfield Orchestra's vast, vibrant and voluble Shostakovich Symphony no. 10 and the Renaissance Choir's Allegri Miserere, starring Jenni Halliday, along with that of James MacMillan. They each fully satisfied the criteria of the visceral thrill that usually separates out the very greatest things from the good and very good. They would all be very worthy Concerts of the Year, making the deepest of impressions but, not for the first time, it's going to have to be the Renaissance Choir, for the Allegri Miserere. 

My visit back to Nottingham was hugely worthwhile and it's hard to know if the remains of my own long ago made more of an impression than that of others in Lincoln Cathedral and Lichfield where the Dr. Johnson Birthplace Museum was an added bonus. Some things from earlier in the year, looking through the diary, seem a very long time ago now which is another of those tricks of time but at least provides the illusion that one is getting good value from retirement. There's a few events that are only sitting in pubs with friends but I don't mean 'only' to put any doubt on their importance because they might easily be counted the most important. Neither can buying second-hand records in a charity shop, surely, count as an Event of the Year but when it's the Complete Works of Bach, it counts as a contender. It has to go down as a good year, even up to yesterday when I achieved a new personal best rating at Lichess, for Bullet, at 1843.

But coming at the time that it did with all its strangeness and vestigial familiarity, Nottingham has to be my Event of the Year. 

The future of the concert reviews is ever in doubt as 'the language burns out long before the music ever does' but I've been saying that for a long time, they haven't stopped yet and since 2026 begins with Cuarteto Casals in Wigmore Hall playing the lifelong favourite, Shos 3, I really ought to come back re-invigorated. I am forever in the debt of those artists that continue to make it all worthwhile.

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

 I hope The Woman in White wasn't the best book I'd never read. I'd hope to find a better one in due course. By all means it's a good one and one has to admire how it's organized with its multiple narrators and immense detail, the unambiguous delineation between goodies and baddies and the happy ending. But it's 'genre' not only in its shock-horror themes but how it becomes a detective story. While detective stories in real life aren't always conclusive, we are fairly confident that, in Maigret and Midsomer Murders, they will be. Not that it's out of the question that anything 'genre' can't be a masterpiece. Hamlet is such.

But Wilkie Collins was maybe a bit longer than required. At 600+ pages, you might think Elvis Costello is, too, except if he was just fulfilling a publisher's plan for a memoir he could have handed in 200+ and collected the advance. Don't start him talking, he could talk all night. He was always wordy but in a good way and you can pick up Unfaithful Music and put it down again as often as you like without having to keep the complex relationships of a novel in mind. It flips about between stories about his musician father, later career with Dylan and McCartney, childhood, This Year's Model, Liverpool and London. One can't lose the thread of a narrative when there is so little of one.

Almost too smart for his own good, there's never been as much for me in what Declan did after his first three or four albums as what he did in them. But, as per the word count of his memoir, he's a productive sort of artist and not given to frugality.

There's no big rush to finish that. I could start something else alongside it but remain in fear of Eugene Onegin and now also the Tractatus of Ludwig Wittgenstein, so I'll look at a few more chapters of The Best of Jazz by Humph before leaving it with my father at Christmas. Readily readable, Humph is an enlightening guide to this whole, old world I know so little about but can see how good it was from the evidence of the Larkin's Jazz CD's. 

 

I had some words ready here regarding Sean O'Brien's recent pamphlet - some say 'booklet'-À la Carte (New Walk) but I veered even further from the path of what might be called a 'review' than I usually do and it's not long to wait until The Bonfire Party, the more major collection, in January when I can, perhaps,

       perform repeats of all the stories

you've heard before in slightly different versions

except À la Carte resonated more than any new poems I've read for some years. Not that I read many new poems by now but it still would have done if I did.

It caught the feelings of the visit back to Nottingham and my own past like a variation on the 'objective correlative' and I found good use being made of a title I had in mind- 'The Past'- but found no words to put underneath it.

There are poets whose poems 'speak to you' - some would say - and others that don't. Sean's regularly do to me whereas Ocean Vuong's don't. It increasingly doesn't take a great deal to be my favourite living poet by now but, again, Sean O'Brien could still be that if lots of others were still alive.

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. Some of his early poems were published in Poetry (Chicago) and are on the Poetry Foundation website.

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.