... YOU FEEL ALRIGHT WHEN YOU HEAR THAT MUSIC RING ...

Same train up to Birmingham as a fortnight ago for the Verdi Requiem, same place for a meal, same Concert Hall, but tonight it was music of a very different kind from one of the three best bands I know – Dire Straits.

THE BAND IN FULL FLOW

Click on any of the images to enlarge them

Well, nearly Dire Straits. Dire Straits was one of those bands which was really built around one person – Mark Knopfler. He is a rather introverted Geordie who, as well as writing some of my very favourite songs, is one of the best pop guitarist in the world. The band started in the late 70s with Sultans of Swing and gradually the songs, many of them reflecting Knopfler’s inward looking character (is that why I like them?) became more complex and longer pieces of work.

The band was in almost continuous change mode for most of its life, with members coming and going, especially going, with unusual rapidity. But Yer Man was always there, and a string of amazing albums came out in the 1980s. Love Over Gold, Communiqué, Making Movies and Brothers in Arms were iconic pieces of work which, for me at least, defined the music of that era. Long, laid back, somewhat melancholic, often autobiographical songs dressed up in the third person to hide, or at least act as a cover for Knopfler’s privacy. And here was pop music where the power of loud and soft, quiet and loud, sometimes even silence made you realise that it’s often the difference in sound levels and not the number of decibels which makes for the dramatic effect.

ALAN CLARK and CHRIS WHITE

The band became one of the biggest in the world, and toured relentlessly everywhere. I went to see them a couple of times, once at Wembley in 1985 and again in around 1993. I think he finally got fed up with it all a couple of years later, and it all dissolved around 1995. He moved onto other things with the Notting Hillbillies, writing Film music (Local Hero and The Princess Bride are both written by him) and playing with and writing for other musicians like Emmy-Lou Harris, Tina Turner, Bob Dylan and Chet Atkins.

His songs were often about very unusual subjects – the decline of American Industry (Telegraph Road), the sleazy, almost Mickey Spillane-like Private Investigations, the simple beauty of Romeo and Juliet, the bitter wistfulness of wars fought and friends lost (Brothers in Arms) and the glitzy pointlessness of consumer goods (Money for Nothing). These are great pop songs and the 10 minute long, slow, languid, looking back over your shoulder versions of Romeo and Juliet (far, far better than the bouncy 3 minute original) and the heartfelt Brothers In Arms are permanent members of my All-time Top 10. If they didn’t appear on the playlist tonight, then multiple murder was a real possibility.

The problem for bands like Dire Straits is one faced by all the bands I really liked in my life. They all wrote their own songs, and they are the only people who performed them. No other bands were daft enough to try a cover version or offer a different way of performing them. So, if you wanted to hear them live, you had to catch them when they were performing it on stage, or basically you were stuffed. It’s the same with the two other great bands in my life. With Pink Floyd, two of the original four members of the band are now dead. With Genesis, Phil Collins is not performing anymore, and Peter Gabriel is doing his own thing. With Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler today seems to have zero interest in the songs he wrote in that era. So, until tonight, I thought the opportunity to hear these bands live had effectively gone.

I went to the last Genesis tour in 2007, and I do not expect to hear them live again ever. Pink Floyd, given that they always performed in a very anonymous way, seem to have allowed a couple of very good Tribute bands to take over, one British and the other Australian replicating their music and to a significant degree their light show. Having seen both of them more than once, it’s fair to say that they fly the flag as well as it could possibly be done.

Last night was the first concert I’ve heard live of Dire Straits’ music for nearly 20 years. The problem was that Mark Knopfler, the centrepiece and focus of the band would not be there. In a similar way to Pink Floyd, the essence of Knopfler’s music is in the writing, and he was always a bit anonymous and somewhat reticent on stage. He collected some extremely good musicians around him, particularly towards the end and these are the guys who have reformed to take his music back on the road. Alan Clark and Chris White were the guys who were with the band in their heyday, and they were there last night to carry on the thread of continuity.

It’s not the real thing, and as long as the main man is not there, it never will be. But this is the real world, and you have to realise that if you want to hear this music again, there is only one option and this incarnation is it. So take it or leave it.

So there I was in Symphony Hall, waiting with a good deal of expectation and looking back to hear this music which is a real part of me and hoping to recapture a little bit of my long lost youth.

JON ALLEN -
a very good support act

The audience did not include that many young kids, but I suppose this was music which faded from the front line in the mid 80s. The ticket, in very small print, alluded to the “special guest”, who turned out to be a singer/songwriter with a slightly twenty years on Gerry Rafferty feel in some of his work - and that’s praise indeed in my book. His name was Jon Allen, and I have to say I didn’t envy him, wandering out on his own with just a guitar into the cavernous interior of Symphony Hall to warm up the audience for the main act. Like the people around me to whom I spoke, I liked his music a lot, and am heading off to Amazon.

The Straits, for that was the band’s name, came onto the stage and I counted 8 of them. The keyboard player Alan Clark and Saxophonist Chris White were the old stagers of the original band, and the poor guy who was going to play the part of Mark Knopfler was Terence Reis. I bet he felt a bit nervous, as this was still at the very early part of their tour.

They played all the songs which Dire Straits made famous, and the sound was very faithful to the original. Terence Reis’s voice, to me, sounded more like Knopfler’s the longer the concert went on, and his guitar playing was very good. If I’m being ultra-picky, he couldn’t quite match Knopfler’s fabulously liquid quality of playing, which I have always thought the best I’ve ever heard. But that’s almost unfair, and in the end I thought he did an amazing job. The encore at the end, a very gentle, “close-in” version of Portobello Belle, to these ears at least, was better than the original.

 TERENCE REIS SINGS "PORTOBELLO BELLE"

All the signature sounds were there with Alan Clark’s almost classical piano playing and Chris White’s excellent sax playing bringing back some of the best musical memories of my life. In my mind, the water flowed back under all the bridges it had been passing under for nearly three decades. I was transported back to days when I was a lot younger, and for that I am very grateful to all the guys on stage for playing it. I know I will sound a bit like my grandfather when I say it, but they don’t write music like that anymore.

Was it perfect?

No, it wasn’t. The show had a slightly unfinished air about it. No-one in the band seemed to be “in charge”, so, at the beginning at least, it took on a slightly anonymous, unowned feel. It was almost as if Reis felt he ought to be stepping up and taking Mark Knopfler’s place, but only built up the confidence to start projecting himself forward a bit towards the end of the evening. They’re big shoes to fill, but he did a good job.

Chris White played excellently when he was involved, but, when he wasn’t, he looked quite unconnected and uninvolved, picking up and putting down his various instruments and almost wondering what to do. At one point he looked for all the world to me as if he was almost going to get his phone out and start checking on his e-mails and his Twitter stream. Alan Clark, who was directing operations musically, had the back of his head to the audience as often as his face, which was a shame, as he is a wonderful pianist and has a very expressive and watchable style of playing.

ALAN CLARK IN ACTION

The lighting also had a slightly unpolished feel to it in places. A couple of times, when, at least to me, it was really important that the pulsing of the lights exactly matched the beat of the music, they were either not on the beat or not pulsing at the right frequency. The individual spotlighting on the main soloists, particularly Chris White, could often have been more crisply focussed, as on a few occasions he was playing his solo beautifully - but in the dark.

Symphony Hall, as I keep banging on when I write about concerts there, has fabulous acoustics, and this was of great help to the band, although Reis’s guitar was occasionally a bit submerged in the background when, to me, it should have been a little more prominent and more clearly defined.

I also haven’t had my rant about people who think it’s OK to get up in the middle of a song, disturb everyone else in their row so they can go off to relieve themselves of some of the excess beer they’ve consumed. They’ve paid a tidy sum for their ticket, to hear some music that quite likely they won’t ever hear again, but nipping off to the loo is more important. Can’t they wait until the song finishes? Rude, inconsiderate bastards. And why, in heaven’s name, do the stewards allow them to come back without waiting for a lull in the proceedings? At least that would halve the irritation. I have to confess I wish I hadn’t left my Kalashnikov in the car again. Aaaaaah!

These are however, minor and trivial comments which do not begin to detract from the music. It was a really good evening, and the spirit of Dire Strait’s music shone through as I had hoped it would. I hope the band is a success and that they become the “tribute” band for this marvellous music. The music is so good that it needs to be kept in the public’s mind for a long time, and until this tour all happened, it was starting to disappear off the new music fan’s radar.

The guy next to me had his two young children there, both of whom were clearly under 10 years old, with the band folding up several years before either of them were born. “They’re a bit young for this sort of gig”, I said to him jokingly. “No”, he replied, “They’re here to listen to some of the best pop music ever.”

How right he was.

Tabs:

dire straits,
the straits,
jon allen

CBSO PLAYS VERDI's REQUIEM

If I’ve got any regular readers left after my somewhat sporadic and random postings of the last few months, they will have seen a theme within the posts developing about various concerts I’ve been to during the year. Earlier in 2011, I decided to go to a few more such events than I’d managed in previous years, and these occasions have tended to turn into short pieces here.

Two weeks ago I jumped on the train to Birmingham, had a decent supper in Carluccio’s in Brindley Place and rolled up at nearby Symphony Hall to hear the first concert in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s 2011/12 season. They had decided to go for broke and start with Verdi’s Requiem, one of the greatest pieces of religious music ever written.

WHAT A FABULOUS SIGHT - THE CBSO AND CHOIR
Click to Enlarge

I wrote a piece a while back about the various ways the major composers over the past five centuries had tacked the Requiem Mass. In classical music terms, it’s a bit like climbing Everest, with some composers following well-trodden routes and others carving out new ways to the summit. Between them all, they have written some of the most moving music the world has ever heard, and Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, first performed in 1874, is one of the very best.

Verdi’s main claim to fame is a staggering series of Operas, some of the best known ever written. His melodic writings have often transcended the relatively limited appeal of the original operas they came from and various sections from them have become iconic and popular shorter pieces known by many people who ordinarily would profess no knowledge or even liking for opera.

He wrote almost exclusively for the Operatic theatre, and there are at least 28 major melodramatic works to his name. On a visit to the city of Parma in Emilia-Romagna in late 2010, I went to the Opera House there, and they were in the middle of performing every single one of them, a different one on each day for 28 days without a break!

In the middle of this outpouring, he produced his Requiem, and you do not have to be any form of genius to recognise that it is as near as you will ever get to an Opera with a religious text to it. It is written for a vast orchestra, four soloists and a large double choir, and contained within its pages is some the loudest unamplified music ever written. The “Dies Irae” which is famous all over the world, is written to scare the living daylights out of you, so I’d got my new Hearing Aids tuned to 11 for the night to ensure that I got full sonic value from the evening’s performance.

I’d managed to get a fabulous seat, in the centre of the front row of the circle, and as I sat waiting expectantly the massive orchestra and choir of around 150 people were spread out completely filling the large stage in front of me. The place was totally packed out, and you could feel the expectation. Because of the large scale of performers needed, it is not a work that gets performed every day, and the CBSO is one of the world's “great” orchestras, so this was going to be a bit special.

The work has one of those fantastic openings, where the audience, as soon as the Conductor raises his baton, falls into complete silence. And I mean complete silence. There were over 2,000 people there, and you could have heard a pin drop. The expectation was incredible. After what seemed like an age of absolute nothingness, you gradually made out the sound of the strings playing the introduction of the Kyrie as softly as they possibly could, and I for one could feel the hairs on the back of my neck grabbing at me as this happened. Fantastic.

The second section after the Introit and Kyrie is the Dies Irae, and Andris Nelsons, the CBSO’s Latvian conductor blew the roof off the Hall with an incredible volume of sound. Good old Verdi. Even though it is such a well known piece of music now, when it’s played live with such immense forces, it does have an amazing effect on me.

The soloists were extremely good and the chorus was very together and responsive. It’s a piece with no intervals and lasts around 85-90 minutes, at the end of which I felt quite drained. Some people pooh-pooh it a bit as “just another opera” it but I think it is an extraordinarily affecting work, bizarrely as Verdi was an atheist. Yes, it wrings and tugs at your emotions, but what on earth is wrong with that. It’s supposed to do precisely that.

A very good night indeed.

I loved it.

Tabs:

cbso,
verdi requiem,
symphony hall

INDIA AND THE DRS SYSTEM

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ENGLAND v INDIA - SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?

A four match Test series of England v India means 20 solid days of cricket to watch, with every ball recorded in High Definition. Hence, with only 24 hours in a day, no Blog Posts over the last month – it’s as simple as that.

Before it all started, it was being hyped as a really juicy contest between the two best Test sides in the world, and everyone was looking forward to a massive contest between two almost equally gifted sides.

THE ENGLAND TEAM WARMING UP.  WHERE WERE THE INDIANS?

Oh, how wrong that all turned out to be. It’s all over now, and England didn’t just beat India, they utterly demolished them in a way no-one expected. Cricket is the sport where the conditions affect the way the game is played more than any other. The heat (or the cold), the humidity, the weather, the pitch, the outfield, the way the pitch changes over the 5 days of the match, the light, all make a massive impact. Playing on a damp, cloudy day at Headingley, and a blazingly hot day in the Sub Continent creates two different games, and learning how to come to terms with both sets of conditions is the mark of a top class player.

India playing at home is one thing, but India (or indeed any of the Indian Sub Continent teams) playing in England is a quite different proposition, and this factor did not seem to be given the importance it deserved. In times past India have come here and played brilliantly. Their batsmen are always among the best in the World, because batting in India is almost the most important part of their game. They usually bat a long way down the order, and patience, concentration and dedication are their long suits. They have often lacked real pace in their bowling, but their spinners have always been a real handful. Fielding has never been one of their strengths, and it is difficult to name a world class Indian fielder however far back one looks. They work on the basis that the batsmen will always score enough runs for their limited bowling and fielding not to be a problem, which, up until now is something they have usually done.

Only a couple of months ago, they have just beaten every other team in the world in the 50 Over ODI World Cup, and they came to England as No. 1 in the ICC World Test Rankings. India is the hub of world cricket, with more people playing and watching than anywhere else. Their top players are feted as Gods in a way we don’t even understand over here. Cricket there, is as close to a religion as a sport can get.

Just read down their batting order, and the spectre of immediately facing a score of 600 for 5 instantly swims into your mind. Gambhir, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Dhoni, Yuvraj – the list just goes on and on. Harbhajan, their off spinner has taken more wickets than any other bowler playing Test Cricket today, and Zaheer Khan is simply a magician with medium paced swing bowling. And Harbhajan, the bowler, batting at No. 8 has scored back to back centuries in the last couple of years.

So, what could possibly go wrong?

Good question, because in the end the answer for India was - Almost Everything. They were woefully unprepared, playing just one match to acclimatise themselves to the English conditions. Apart from one shining example, the incomparable Rahul Dravid, their batsmen were a disgrace. Their fielding was uniformly dreadful. Their captaincy was uninspired, and often simply wrong. Their bowling was, at best, innocuous, and their overall attitude made you wonder if most of them even wanted to be here at all.

It was so embarrassing that it makes you wonder, or at least it makes me wonder, if the Indians still have an appetite for Test Cricket. Nowhere in the world has the Twenty Over game taken such a hold as it has in India. Watch a Test Match in India, and the grounds are almost deserted, but watch the Indian Premier League 20 Over games, and there are grounds with capacities nearing 100,000, and they are all heaving with spectators.

The really great players in the Indian team – Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and possibly Sehwag are nearer to the end of their careers than the beginning, and the evidence of this tour is that the younger team members either have no appetite for the 5 day game, or, because of the emphasis on the short game, simply do not have the skills to play it. This could easily result in them turning against it. There’s nothing like failure to turn your face against the difficult version if, with a more limited skill set, you can get success, adulation and a very decent living playing the One Day Knockabout version.

People like Gambhir, Yuvraj, Raina and possibly even Dhoni need a lot of strength of character to go home to India set on improving their game to remedy their deficiencies, rather than putting it in the “too difficult” box. In truth, I fear that this drubbing could all too easily lead to a further slide down the slope of the disappearance of Test Cricket in the Indian Sub Continent.

If indeed they actually want to improve the situation, the Indian authorities, who are currently in a classical state of complete denial about it all, need to grasp this nettle firmly, and do so in the knowledge that grasping it is going to hurt. The Indian cricket temperament is not one of hard work and toil to perfect all aspects of their game. For many years now, they have relied on an abundance of a group of individual natural talents to shine through. Being good in one facet of the game used to get you through, but England have shown just how much that approach has been discredited. Every England player has at least two strings to their bow, and a few (Broad, Bresnan and Trott) have three.

Contrast the Indians. Look at Tendulkar, an utterly brilliant batsman, who is no more than a moderately good fielder. Look at Sehwag and Zaheer Khan, neither of whom who should have been anywhere near the team given their fitness levels, with fielding which is pretty mediocre. Look at the bowling attack when Zaheer Khan collapses after one match. There are no replacements available or even thought about, and this from the nation with the greatest number of players anywhere on the planet.

In England, when Tremlett picks up an injury, what happens. We get Bresnan as a replacement, and he is so good that Tremlett is now going to have a big job getting back into the side. Lose Jonathan Trott, a brilliant No.3, to injury and what happens? Ian Bell steps up to take his place and plays some of the most brilliant cricket you’ll ever see, scoring a phenomenal number of runs in the process. Now the selectors have a problem about what happens when Trott returns.

All of the above concentrates on India’s failings and makes no allowance for the class of the England team at the moment. Just as much as India’s failure, you need to applaud England’s ability. They can bat long and quickly. There have been 3 Double Hundreds (as well as a 175 and a 153) in six England Innings. They bowl relentlessly with no let up. You see off Anderson and Broad, and on comes Bresnan and Swann, building pressure continuously. When did that last happen in any series anywhere? The Australian 1990 side and the 1980 West Indians come to mind. The England players dominated the game for almost every session played, and simply didn’t allow India a look in. At the top level, that is what wins games.

None of this happens by accident, and it all started when England were humiliated in the Caribbean by being bowled out for 51. That was the turning point, and perhaps this 4-0 whitewash will do the same for India.

There’s some serious planning behind all this change in the England camp. A total commitment to all aspects of the game - batting, bowling and fielding. Everyone in the squad has to buy into the ethos. Samit Patel, quite possibly the best all-rounder in the country doesn’t get picked because he’s not prepared to go down the fitness route which Andy Flower and the other England managers demand – a message to all the others, I have no doubt.

Until a few years ago the bowlers could get away with the “rabbit” approach to batting. Now, even that’s all gone. In the last match England batted all the way down to No.11. Even James Anderson, the least good batsman in the team is OK for a few runs. Bresnan, who must be the best No.8 in the world right now, got a 50 and a 90. And when he’s out in comes Broad and Swann! And having that immense strength in depth gives the Upper Order batmen the confidence to play without the degree of fear they used to show. They can almost guarantee that the guys down the order can dig them out of a hole if the top Six get out cheaply, so they can play with a degree of freedom which allows them to express themselves.

Unfortunately, the vast disparity between the two sides became almost an embarrassment, and took away the huge pleasure one feels when two sides battle each other in a way which reduces your fingernails to the quick. It’s good to see your own side triumph, but the feeling in 2005 with the Ashes is far greater, simply because of the almost unbearable tension which built up in so many of those games.

It’s interesting that today, the ICC have announced a “World” Test Eleven, selected by the Great and the Good from the Cricketing world. It’s all based on individual’s performance from August 2010 – August 2011. In the Eleven, there are 5 England players – Cook, Trott, Swann, Anderson and Broad. From India, the ex No1 Test Team, there is one player – Sachin Tendulkar. I even think they’ve got that wrong. Rahul Dravid should have been there. But the main point is that only one of the eleven players comes from India, which does tend to make you wonder about the robustness of the ranking system which left India as No.1 Test side until a few days ago.

The other 5 players in the team come from two countries, South Africa and Sri Lanka. Sangakkara is chosen as captain, and the other four places belong to Hashim Amla, Dale Steyn, AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis. The fascinating thing about selecting such a World Team is – Who do they play? Mars away or Jupiter at Headingley?

All of which makes for a mouth watering Test series in 2012, when the South Africans visit England. Are we looking forward to that?

What do you think?

test cricket,
england v india,
cricket
npower tests

THIS IS REALLY QUITE FASCINATING ......

If you haven't seen this, as I hadn't before today, you can spend quite a few enjoyable minutes just planning some seriously surreal virtual journeys around London. Leonardo da Vinci to Leonard Rossiter is only three stops, while Richelieu to Bernard Manning, perhaps understandably, is almost all the way across the city.

I've no idea who thought it all up, but they've got a mind that's weirder than mine by at least an Order of Magnitude! 

Mornington Crescent, eat your heart out.

To retain the detail, it is a big file, but just click on it to enlarge it

THE LONDON UNDERGROUND AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!

ROGER WATER'S "THE WALL" IN BIRMINGHAM

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece entitled “We don’t need no Education ….”. This was me reminiscing about my Schooldays 50 years ago, having been set thinking by a book I’d just read about a teacher's life in a modern Secondary School.

THE START OF IT ALL - 20,000 PEOPLE WATCHING

The name of the post was nicked from one of the grand Set Pieces of Rock Music -  Roger Water’s “The Wall”. This epic piece of music, a Rock Opera if you wish, was first performed around 1980, and for reasons I can’t now recall, I managed to miss seeing it first time round. My love affair with the music of Pink Floyd has continued unabated ever since that time, but for 30 years now the “Seen That, Done That” box for "The Wall" has remained unticked. Unfortunately, because of the massive scale of its conception, and also I suspect because Mr Waters did not want to get involved again, it had only been performed a total of 31 times, so there had been precious few opportunities to catch up on it.

So, a year ago, when I saw that Roger Waters had decided to take it out on tour again, I jumped at the chance of a ticket. The man is not far off 70 years old now, and I suspected that this would be the last time he would ever undertake such a venture.

The crowds heading towards the Birmingham NIA were enormous that evening, and there was a palpable air of excitement as a full house of 20,000 waited expectantly. The rumour was that they’d spent £37 million putting it all together, and with the Floyd’s unrivalled reputation for spectacular lightshows, massive Gerald Scarfe designed puppets and totally over the top production values, I wondered what lay in store for us.

The NIA is a very big arena, about 300 feet across, and a partially built wall stretched completely from one side to the other, so perhaps there was a clue there as to what was about to happen. I must admit that I don’t think that “The Wall” is the greatest thing Roger Waters ever wrote, mainly because it seemed to me to be a bit too self-indulgent and “Rich Rock Star sprays Angst everywhere” but that doesn’t stop me thinking it has some fantastic songs in it.

It was Roger Water’s baby almost entirely, and the whole thing was written when he was getting really wound up about his own personal alienation and feeling for a need to withdraw from the pressures that the fame he/the Band had created. The story goes back to his childhood, starting when his father was killed at Anzio in Italy in 1942. His sense of abandonment seems to be then blamed sequentially on his father’s death, his mother, his teachers, his wives, his fellow Pink Floyd members, and seemingly almost everyone except himself. Each of these becomes a “Brick in the Wall”. You could argue that the storyline is a bit thin, but then you should look at some of the libretti of the classical operas, and any argument about this one pales into insignificance.

Some of the songs, in truth, are a bit run of the mill, but there are a few absolute gems in it. The great songs in it (and they are great) – Run Like Hell, Hey You, Another Brick in the Wall, and the incomparable Comfortably Numb, stand out, in my view, as Rock Genius. It’s probably something which will niggle Mr Waters but three of those four songs have Dave Gilmour’s name alongside him in the writing credits. Given the subsequent multi-year spat between both of them which brought their collaboration to a permanent, shuddering halt, there’s a real message there for both of them.

Before it started, I wondered whether he would have changed the way it was presented, given that 30 years had passed since its first performance. Perhaps, as a 68 year old, his feeling of personal persecution which he obviously felt very keenly in the early 80s, may have changed.

It had. There was now a wider overlay of an anti-war attitude, where instead of a purely personal take on it all, it had now become a musical and visual tirade against all the conflicts and wars which had disfigured the world over the last few decades.

ISOLATION  - ROGER WATER'S STYLE

THE WALL IS COMPLETE

The Wall, as it was progressively built up across the huge arena, gradually became a massive video screen showing sound-bites and photographs of soldiers killed in action, tortured, as well as some who had returned home to the obvious pleasure of their loved ones. I found much of that very moving.

SOME OF THE ANTI-WAR IMAGERY BEHIND ROGER WATERS

The overall impact of it from a performance viewpoint was overwhelming. The scale of it all was simply extraordinary. The way it had been put together from a technical viewpoint was incredible, with the full force of modern photo-wizardry and animation being given full rein. The images were presented in an amazingly effective way, and the way the wall was used as a continuously changing backdrop to the action was immensely well done. The sound was something like I’d expect to feel in Beirut in the middle of the war there. It was physical in its effect on you. Overall, the lights and the imagery, the aeroplanes flying over the audience, the huge 40 foot Pig, the equally large 40 feet high Scarfe puppets and the grotesque cartoon effects projected onto the wall were quite incredible. I can’t remember anything personally which compared to it, and I came out of the concert in a complete daze. A total sensory overload.

THE WALL AS A 300 FEET WIDE VIDEO SCREEN

COMFORTABLY NUMB

So there you are. One of the great “Set Pieces” of modern Rock Music. Yes, you could be a bit negative and whinge about bits of it, but quite frankly I thought it was a triumph. Just watching the people coming out, and catching snatches of their conversation as they walked along or stood on the railway station platform waiting for their train home, you got a real feeling that they’d all been quite overwhelmed by the whole evening, and that they’d go home telling their families that they’d all missed something unrepeatable.

I know that was how I felt.

Tabs:

the wall,
roger waters,
pink floyd

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES

De HAVILLAND COMET

Note - Double click on the individual pictures to enlarge

them in a new window

My journey into the world of British Industry started in 1964 when 12 of us started hammering and filing lumps of metal in the Apprentice Training School of the British Aircraft Corporation (now BAe) in Weybridge Surrey.

Today, 47 years on, we have a reunion once a year to chew over how we all are, what we’ve been doing, what we can’t do anymore and generally look happily backwards over a decent meal and a not inconsiderable number of drinks. We discuss our bodies and our minds to compare notes as to those parts we can’t see anymore, what’s not working as well as it used to, what has become atrophied and those bits which may have finally fallen off completely. All in all, given such a morbid agenda, it's probably a surprise that it’s actually an event we all look forward to.

This year’s bash was held in Bedford, with the intention of eating and drinking our way through Friday evening (and significantly into early Saturday morning for a couple of the hardier and less wussy members) and then spending Saturday at some vaguely Aeronautical event. This year, we went to the Shuttleworth Collection in a delightful village called Old Warden in rural Bedfordshire. This looked like a pretty decent Museum of old aeroplanes, and the plan there was that the day would finish with a flying display on the airfield next to the museum.

Waking up early on Saturday, the view out of my bedroom window was seriously unpromising. Wind and rain lashing down. The prospect of standing out in the middle of an open field in such weather was not one I even began to relish. But, optimism is all, and we finally set off in a rather shambolic convoy to Old Warden.

Our arrival was met with an encouraging improvement in the weather, and we spent a good few hours wandering around the eight or so hangars which housed the collection. I had been born in Bedford, even going to School with the son of the man who ran the collection in the Sixties, so I had been there before, but I was not expecting what I saw today. The collection had been significantly added to and was now huge, totalling around 100 aeroplanes, most of which were either in flying condition, or were being restored to a condition where they would be able to fly in the future.

They were really beautiful to look at, most of them from the 1920s, 30s and 40s. There was a decent section of really ancient and historic planes, and one of the prize exhibits was the oldest aeroplane in the world which was still flying – a 1909 Bleriot. A seriously important piece of history out here in the middle of nowhere.

THE OLDEST AEROPLANE IN THE WORLD STILL FLYING

Even the lunch there was a step up from what is normally on offer in such places, and I had a slice of Pear Charlotte which was absolutely scrummy. By mid afternoon, the weather had really started to clear up, and the clouds turned into those lovely white, fluffy jobs which enhance anyone’s outdoor picture taking. We all progressively took off the various layers of protective clothing we’d come in, and in the late afternoon sun, albeit with a bit too much wind, the flying display got under way.

For two hours or so, about 20 of the Collection’s planes took off, buzzed around, and did a few aerobatics and stunts like cutting ribbons held across the runway in front of us. It was absolutely delightful. The result of the wind was that a few of the older aeroplanes were unable to fly because they were in danger of turning over on the ground, but if there’s a better place to see the foundation of this country’s place in the development of the Aeroplane, then I don’t know where it is.

De HAVILLAND TIGER MOTH

Because the planes were not as fast as those of today, they spent far more time in front of the crowd than a jet doing 500mph or so. One of them could only just fly faster than the wind, so in one direction, it almost hovered in front of you as it passed, and as it climbed it looked almost as if it was ascending like a balloon.

The light was perfect for such an event, with a deep blue sky, lovely cloud formations and occasionally a long raking sun picking out the planes very dramatically under a darker grey background. Wonderful conditions for photography. With little or no commercialism there, the overall atmosphere was like going back 30 or 40 years. Totally professional with everyone seeming to know exactly what they wee doing, and yet the feel was of a very slick and well run County Show. 

Very highly recommended.

They put on displays throughout the year, the next one being on 7th August. Their website is here -

http://www.shuttleworth.org/tickets/event-details.asp?ID=111.

Here are a few more of the pictures I took of the planes on display.

PERCIVAL PROVOST

GENERAL HANGAR VIEW

GLOSTER GLADIATOR

PROPELLOR AND RADIAL ENGINE

HAWKER SEA HURRICANE

MILES WHITNEY STRAIGHT

HAWKER HIND

HURRICANE PLAN VIEW

CHIPMUNK CUTTING RIBBONS 

Tabs:

shuttleworth collection,
old warden,
aeroplanes

NOW THIS IS A DASHBOARD!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah .....

But where are the Cup Holders??

http://360vr.com/2011/06/22-discovery-flight-deck-opf_6236/index.html

THE SCHOOL REPORT - 1960s STYLE

It’s July, and my daughter has just read out my youngest Grandson’s first School Report.

Cue immensely proud Grandfather, Stage Left.

Coincidentally, yesterday I was rummaging around in my garage for some errant piece of paper, and I came across a small bundle of documents, contained within which were a couple of blue bound books emblazoned with the Bedford School Crest – my School Reports.

Ye Gods. Was I really ever 4 feet 10½ inches and 6 stones 8 lbs. Units and measures of a bygone age, which I even had to translate and explain to my children. Gone for ever it would seem are the days of the Rod, the Pole and the Perch.

But, just read the reports. The style is of another age. They were all written between around 1957 and 1964, and encapsulated the ways and the mores of that era. Now what follows may all end up sounding like a blend of “Outraged of Tunbridge Wells” and “They don’t know they’re born”, but the extracts are a clear example of how it was done by the Men in Gowns of Bedford School at that time.

The modern idiom of only praising the positives, and writing any withering criticism in a way that makes it look like a complement was something only invented much, much later. At that time, the schoolmaster wrote his report with a degree of individuality, saying exactly what he wanted to say, with an occasional wry piece of wit, and also the odd sardonic or even sarcastic jab at the poor recipient. You sensed that the School Report offered a rare opportunity to the teacher who often seemed to possess a barely suppressed desire to be a writer of some renown. Here, through the medium of the School Report, they could release a few of their choicer phrases onto the Great Unwashed. The current vogue for Political Correctness, and the construction of School Reports to parents from a Multi-Choice selection of bland, pre-determined and often meaningless sound-bites was most definitely a thing of the future.

The end result of all this was formally handed out at the end of each term in a sealed envelope to be taken home for review by one’s parents. Even 45 years after the event, the possibility that the Report may not have actually arrived home in the same envelope in which it was handed to me at school should probably remain shrouded in mystery. But as they say, Forewarned is Forearmed.

The school authorities however, on whom (to quote the late, great Henry Longhurst who attended the School for two terms in 1915) there were no flies at all, demanded that each term’s school report had to be signed and dated by the scholar’s guardian. This was presumably to confirm that they had read, learned and inwardly digested its contents, however indigestible they might have been. I’m not sure however if the idea that a parent’s signature could conceivably be forged had crossed the minds of the purer intellects which ran the school, a possibility which is now thankfully lost in the sands of time.

Just to show that, as one gets older, one develops a modicum of humility, as well as the ability to laugh at oneself, here are a couple of pages from my own reports. Schoolmasters then, like doctors seemed to revel in a writing style only just this side of incomprehensible, so there is a translation below.

You may possibly gather that English was not one of my “star” subject.

Aged 11 years 9 months –

English - Good competent work. He can express himself clearly and shows interest, though I have yet to persuade him of the importance of the paragraph.

Rugger (note NOT Rugby!) – Not very outstanding, but quite useful. (Author’s Note. I was almost blind, and played without my specs. It was not much more than a 50/50 chance that I even played towards the correct goal-line. So I took this comment as a glowing tribute!)

Aged 12 years 8 months –

English – Much more effort was forthcoming in the last two fortnights after a miserable start but he finds advanced work very hard. His paragraphs have improved, but comprehension and paraphrase show him to lack perception.

Aged 13 years 1 month –

English - There is no hint of anything profound coming from his pen yet, but he has tried extremely hard to master the art of writing with fair success. Comprehension continues to show his limitations.

Aged 13 years 5 months –

English – He has not found it easy to write convincingly, although he has tried hard. He must try to expand his vocabulary, and be a little more realistic.

Geography – Sound knowledge. Appears interested. (Author’s Note - Appears?)

Mmmm.

Without wanting to blow my own trumpet above a sotto voce, my position in the School Year was 4^th out of 86 boys, so I can’t imagine what the poor soul who came 82^nd must have been faced with when Pater opened the envelope at the end of term. It would be interesting to find out.

I assumed that the above extracts were the ways of a peculiarly “Bedford” approach to these things, but this would seem not to be the case. A while back, I came across a little book, cleverly entitled “Could do Better” (by Catherine Hurley) which captured some School Reports from the Great and the Good. To my slightly warped sense of Humour, they seemed very funny and left me with a feeling that I wasn’t the only one in the world to be have been slightly singed by the Schoolmaster’s delicately acid wit. Try these for size.

Richard Briers (The Good Life) - "It would seem that Briers thinks he is running the school and not me. If this attitude persists, one of us will have to leave,"

Dame Judi Dench (National Treasure) - "Judi would be a very good pupil if she lived in this world."

Peter Ustinov – (Wit, and general Good Egg) - "great originality which must be curbed at all costs"

Sir Michael Heseltine (Tarzan) – “rebellious, objectionable, idle, imbecilic, inefficient, antagonising, untidy, lunatic, albino, conceited, inflated, impertinent, underhand, lazy and smug”. (Author’s note – Come on, get off the fence and tell us what you really think!)

Alan Coren (Journalist and Broadcaster) – “Coren's grasp of elementary dynamics is truly astonishing. Had he lived in an earlier eon, I have little doubt but that the wheel would now be square and the principle of the lever just one more of man's impossible dreams.”

Sir Norman Wisdom (Actor) – “The boy is every inch a fool but luckily for him he's not very tall.” 

Stephen Fry - "He has glaring faults and they have certainly glared at us this term."

So, make of that lot what you will. It’s probably just a sign of the times, but something tells me that it will not be quite so entertaining to read a collection of such extracts in 2050. Unless of course, the spirit of such teachers lives on in some schools today. Who knows?

I’ve shown you mine, so now you show me yours! 

A GARDEN IS A LOVESOME THING, GOD WOT

Words from a long time ago, written by Thomas Edward Brown. 

A week ago, I'd made plans to buy a ticket and drive down to Goodwood in Sussex for this weekend's "Festival of Speed". As these things go, it's probably the best event of its type in the World. But, what with one thing and another, I didn't get round to it.

Over the last couple of days, we've had pretty good weather up here in Shropshire, and my thoughts have randomly wandered off on the "Wish I was there" track. For anyone keen on motor cars, Goodwood in the warm weather is a real magnet. But this morning I got up, took our dog Milly out for a walk, and then sat on the deck eating my breakfast in a very leisurely way. Orange Juice, Scrambled Eggs and Coffee. There was not a breath of wind, the sun was warm, with not a single cloud in the sky and I looked out onto the garden pictured below - 

I have to say that, by the end of the second cup of coffee, the idea of getting up at 4am, driving 200 miles down to Sussex and fighting my way around somewhere even as nice as Goodwood with about 200,000 other people had lost a fair amount of its allure. I ended up pottering around all morning, and then spent the afternoon at the Grandchildrens' local School fete with all of the family, wanging wellies, eating waffles and sitting on the grass in the sunshine doing very little, just soaking up a lovely couple of hours. 

Back home onto the deck, nothing much changed. I ended up sitting, no actually it was lounging, under the gazebo reading a book with a glass of wine. All of which was followed by an alfresco meal in the warm evening sunshine of Plaice, Seared Scallops, Roast Tomatoes, Cauliflower Cheese and some crisp Asparagus. Oh, and another glass of wine. The sun had by now moved around, lighting the garden up from a different direction. It was still warm, with no wind and the sky was a brilliant blue. 

I thought that if I'd shot off to Goodwood this morning, I'd now probably be sitting in a traffic jam on the M25, wishing I was at home doing exactly what I was actually doing. Perhaps it's a sign of getting old, but I can't think of a much better way to have spent a Sunday than the way I'd ended up spending it. Sometimes the simple things are the best. 

Goodwood will have to wait until next year.

AN ARTIST IN THE FAMILY

My wife is a very good water colour painter. She has been  developing her skills in this difficult art very steadily over the last four years or so, to the point where she is now very accomplished in what she does. 

A couple of months ago, a magazine contacted her and asked her if she wanted to submit a few pictures with a view to having one of them published on the front cover of the July issue. 

Here it is.

As you can see her style is very open, loose and free, and she uses the colours in a way which blend together in a way which I really love. The colours mix on the paper and not in the palette, which gives them a real vibrancy and life. The one below is of Yours Truly painted in the Autumn last year.