No reason.

 "No wise man ever wished to be younger." - Jonathan Swift

My incapacities have been fairly selective: I can't drive or do anything that requires close up focussing plus I fall over if I'm not careful, but other than that I can get about OK. And so I have been able to partake of some of the cultural activities opening up, albeit to be immediately closed back down again. Firstly, there was a recital by a baroque violinist. In fact, now I think about it, that was the day I got carted off to hospital, although it would be most unfair to blame her.

Once I had got myself together again it was the turn of what is now known as the Leeds Playhouse, which has been having a festival of performances for works with not many performers. First up was Poulenc's short opera for single soprano, 'La Voix Humaine'. I've seen this a couple of times before and I still wonder a bit what it's meant to represent. Is she really living through what we see or is it the condensed reminiscences of an unhappy period in her life on which she is looking back? I believe that Cocteau's play, on which this based, was more explicit, especially about the ending, but I've never seen it so that doesn't really help.

I'm also a bit ambivalent about the second piece, Beckett's 'Krapp's Last Tape', which likewise dates from the end of the 1950s. Krapp is a sad, shabby, bald man in his sixties who sits all alone at home on his birthday looking back on his life and wondering how it had ended in loneliness and failure. So, no parallels with your bloggist there then, except perhaps for needing to cut down on the bananas. I think it was about getting old and realising that being young was better, but frankly am open to alternative suggestions if you have them. 

Lastly, but not least, I saw the brass and percussion sections of the Orchestra of Opera North perform a programme of works which might have been - but wasn't - labelled as a tribute to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. They opened with Copeland's 'Fanfare for the Common Man' and closed with a selection from Mussorgsky's 'Pictures from an Exhibition'. It was like reliving my youth, except without all the aggravation of health, ambition and hair. I enjoyed it immensely, but shall not be rushing off to buy a copy of 'Brain Salad Surgery'.

It's the 200th anniversary. Others will write about it better and Shelley's poem will be reproduced widely so I thought I'd mark it with some obscure, but I think rather fine, prog rock:




And some Melvyn Bragg:

I have a had a range of responses to my posting of the Heimatdamisch video. It was pointed out that the correct term is not Oompah, but rather Oberkrainer; there was a request to know what I was smoking because that particular reader wanted some too; and there were a number of enquiries as to whether I had access to any more videos featuring Conny Kreitmeier, Bavaria's answer to Elkie Brooks. Well, indeed I do.

The audio quality in the first isn't up to much, and frankly nor is the music, especially by the end. But it does show Fraulein Kreitmeier's talents to good advantage.




As does this:




I'm not sure this final one shows anyone in a positive light, despite the admirably odd time signatures and weird chords which would normally be very much to your bloggist's taste. I have no idea what she is wailing about and include it merely so we can all admire the guitarist's barnet.

Having declared my love for early seventies blues/rock, I need to admit to also being partial to a bit of prog rock from the same era. Reflecting this I have been to see Curved Air. There was a chap there with a t-shirt that he had obviously bought at the Allman/Betts gig the previous evening and when I spoke to him about it he said that the two concerts back to back was like being in 1975 for the weekend; ain't that the truth. They weren't playing at the Brudenell, but at a venue entirely new to me. The address which I was given was 'behind Tesco' which seemed rather unpromising, and I don't know whether I was relieved or disappointed to find that it wasn't the sort of dive that I would actively have sought out forty years ago. In fact, as a further sign of old age, I particularly liked how comfortable the seats were.




We have all changed over the years of course - even Epictetus is beginning to go a bit thin on top - and Sonja Kristina is no exception. Ever since the episode with Elkie Brooks' greatest fan I have been wary of appearing to disrespect performers of a certain demographic, and believe me I am not doing so here. Admittedly Kristina's stage moves these day are limited to waving her arms about in what could best be described as an esoteric blend of tai chi, the hand jive and a mime artist pretending to be a painter and decorator - she gave the ceiling several coats - but the voice is still there. The rest of the band - there were six including her - weren't the original members, but they were good and they looked the part. I was especially pleased to see one figure stood off to the side surrounded by banks of keyboards, including a synthesiser, and looking like Elrond; every prog band should have one.



The current line up apparently recorded an album a few years ago and they played a few tracks from that, which I rather enjoyed. They weren't melodically very inventive, but they had the ridiculous lyrics, abrupt changes of key and tempo and completely spurious virtuoso instrumental flourishes that the audience had come to see. They did play the old stuff of course, including amongst others, 'Melinda (More or Less)' - a favourite of mine - and 'Vivaldi' - sadly without the cannons. I heard Tom Robinson (the 'Glad to be Gay' one, not the racist jailbird one) say recently that two good songs were both necessary and sufficient for a band to have a long career. As if to prove his point Curved Air have two belters. They finished the first set with 'It Happened Today' and the second set with 'Back Street Luv' and we all went away happy.

Mentioning the inhabitants of Planet Gong yesterday made me realise that I had unaccountably never posted any of their music on the blog. I only saw them once - in Freshers Week; god only knows who thought that was a good idea - and was too drunk to remember anything much about it. According to the Guardian they were not just silly, but 'could groove like mothers', so here they are. For the record the opening to this video is eerily similar to the way in which we commence an evening's gaming in the legendary wargames room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach.



Don't you think the lead singer looks as if he's throwing dice? I'm going to suggest that we get hats like that for conventions. It would be one up on those chaps who wear mess uniforms while refighting the Zulu war, and instead of drinking red wine like them we could drop acid. Just a thought.

I'm off to track down a copy of 'Live in Sherwood Forest'.

And so to the opera. Taking Camille at his word I won't try to describe the music of his opera 'The Yellow Princess' - although I liked it - but I must say something about the story. When I arrived the young lady on the door confided to me as she took my ticket that "it's very odd". She did not lie.

In one sense it's a straightforward plot: a Dutch girl named Lena is in love with a Dutch boy named Kornelis; Kornelis for his part loves a picture of a fictional Japanese princess named Ming, as you do. Lena realises that the object of her affections is a bit of a dick and stomps off in disgust. Kornelis decides the only thing for it is to take some mind-altering drugs, resulting in a hallucinogenic trip. Lena reappears, at which point he declares his love for her. She's not stupid and after pointing out that, being off with the fairies, he is confusing her with the imaginary Ming she stomps off for a second time. He sings a lot of nonsense including some stuff about a gong (probably not the French prog rock band, although in many ways it would be fitting if it were), and then threatens to kill himself while reflectively stroking his hipster beard (*). At this point the audience are all nodding in agreement that this would definitely be for the best, when blow me but Lena reappears and proves that she is actually stupid after all by saying she'll have him despite everything and they walk off hand in hand. Operas usually end badly for the soprano, and I'd say this one doesn't buck the trend.

The music was nice though.



(*) It's possible that the beard is just in this production and didn't form part of the composer's vision.

I have been to see some prog rock. Heavy, guitar based prog rock rather than synthesisers, mellotrons and silvery capes, but prog rock nonetheless: long, strangely structured songs whose pompous lyrics were intoned not particularly melodically against a background of unnecessarily complex time signatures. I loved it; it was just like the old days.

The specific culprit was Martin Barre, long time guitarist in Jethro Tull, which band's catalogue was drawn on extensively. In addition they played a number of songs from Barre's solo recordings; plus a Beatles double in, perhaps surprisingly, 'Eleanor Rigby' and Abbey Road's indisputably prog track 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)'; and also the least bluesy cover of Robert Johnson's Crossroads that I think I've ever heard. They were, as my companion for the evening observed, a remarkably tight band and did what they did extremely well, which probably wasn't unrelated to the fact that they seemed to be having a blast.

Highlight of the evening was the final encore, Aqualung. Here's the Tull doing it complete with Barre's famous guitar solo:



And here's some poetry from Lennon and McCartney:

I have been to see KT Tunstall, and it was, well, it was OK; which is to say that I was a bit disappointed that I didn't enjoy it more. I hope that makes sense. She has an engaging stage presence, plays a mean guitar and was wearing a pair of shiny trousers that looked as if they had been sprayed on, but somehow it all fell a bit flat. She has abandoned playing with a band, instead using a loop pedal arrangement to accompany herself taking what she does away from folk/blues into folktronica or techno-folk or something similarly made up. Other than one or two highlights - notably 'Black Horse and the Cherry Tree' - it didn't really float my boat.

Less hi-tech and all the better for it were Coope, Boyes and Simpson. A male acapella trio they are definitely within the folk tradition despite writing much of their own material, often political in nature. They have become associated in the last few years with songs about the Great War and did a selection of such material, including a couple of self-penned numbers about Major Valentine Fleming of the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars. Fleming was in many ways the epitome of the sort of person they - and your bloggist - dislike on principle (Eton and Oxford, Conservative MP etc), but there is no denying his bravery, which ultimately was to cost him his life. Apparently he and his fellow officers tried hard to ensure that those one hundred years on would have strongly mixed feelings about them despite their heroism, by transporting their horses and hounds to northern France and spending their time when not in the trenches by hunting; there is no record of whether or not they hunted for monkeys. Fleming, whose son was of course the creator of James Bond, was born on the banks of the Tay and another of the songs the threesome sang, written by Michael Marra, was about an imagined trip by Frida Kahlo to Dundee. Other, perhaps more likely, subjects varied from the refugee crisis to the return of fascists to political power (a song which reminded me, and probably only me, musically of 'Yours Is No Disgrace') via a lament for Kurt Cobain. A mention must also be made of a song about the environment, which concluded with the refrain 'one million plastic bottles' sung to the tune of 'ten green bottles', but which thankfully they didn't sing to a conclusion.

I have recently been to concerts by a couple of bands and/or artists that I haven't seen for decades. And now I can add Steeleye Span to that list. The previous and only gig of theirs that I saw was in December 1974 at Leeds Town Hall and now the second was in the City Varieties. The t-shirts on sale proclaimed this to be their 45th anniversary tour so I seem to have missed a good chunk of their career.

Ms Prior

I now rather wish that I'd had caught up with them during that time because it was a very good show, notable - in my untutored and amateur view - for very high standards of musicianship. Admittedly Maddy Prior now moves around the stage in a somewhat more stately fashion than she did before her MBE, but her voice is still excellent especially on what for me was the highlight, a cracking version of 'Thomas the Rhymer'.


They played a large selection of tracks from 'Wintersmith', last year's album based on one of Terry Pratchet's novels. Whilst Ashley Hutchings may have founded the band to be more traditional than Fairport Convention they have always seemed to me to be at the rock end of Folk Rock and much of this new material, especially the title track, rather reminded me of Jethro Tull; and all the better for that. In a further nod to Prog Rock their current line-up contains a genuine multi-instrumentalist in Pete Zorn.

Hold that shaft tight

They don't eschew their folk roots however. Not only do they perform 'Blackjack Davey', but one of the songs had a lyrical reference to the blacksmith holding his hammer in his hand; when in doubt stick a cliche in.