Alina Ibragimova

(Source: Daily Telegraph)

Paganini epitomises the stock romantic figure of the masterful, demonic fiddler, with an adoring sylph-like maiden at his feet. These days it’s those very sylphs who are making the imperious, seductive sounds. They don’t come more sylph-like or more masterful than Alina Ibragimova. Or more serious. Ibragimova hasn’t taken the easy route to stardom of playing crossover classics in a spangly gown.

Her repertoire is unflinchingly serious. Her recordings for Hyperion include two concertos by Roslavets, a brilliant Soviet modernist marginalised by Stalin, and music by the anti-Nazi German composer Hartmann. She is reluctant to do interviews and, up until recently, has refused to think about her image.

She has just played all six of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas in one go at the City of London Festival. How did they go?

“I think the first half was better,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “I was a bit tired in the second half.”

It’s these towering peaks of the violin repertoire she will be playing at the Manchester International Festival in a specially designed pavilion by architect Zaha Hadid, so I’m keen to know how she approaches them. Does she play them on a Baroque instrument?

“No, I play them on my usual instrument, but I play in a Baroque way, with very little vibrato. Also I use gut strings which gives more resonance.” This is one of those mysterious violinist’s phrases I’ve often heard before. What she does she mean, “more resonance”?

“It is using the natural resonance of the instrument and the room, you don’t really do it by vibrating your left hand … I don’t know how to explain,”she says with a shrug and dazzling smile. It’s the same reaction whenever she tries to explain something that to her seems blindingly obvious. “I like to use vibrato only when there is a special moment,” she adds.

Who has influenced her? “My teacher, Christian Tetzlaff. He has such a deep knowledge of how the counterpoint works in this music. I learn so much from him.”

Alina won a place at that famous breeding ground of musical genius, the Menuhin School in Surrey, where her best friend was Nicola Benedetti. “Yes, that was quite difficult,” she says coolly. “I didn’t have a word of English, and every morning we had this assembly when we had to be completely silent for several minutes for prayer. Nobody could explain the point of this to me – it was so completely weird.” She giggles and for a moment seems very young indeed.

But the next story reveals an inner steeliness. “For a while I got really nervous before playing: it was so bad that I used to get cold sweats and couldn’t play at all. But when I was 12, I realised this was silly, and I just decided I wasn’t going to be nervous any more.”

Just like that? “Well, at that age I was very determined,” she shrugs and gives that dazzling smile again. “I also decided I was going to play in a completely analytic way, no expressive slides, no vibrato, nothing. Fortunately this did not last long. Now I try to play in a balanced way, with maximum emotion but also with complete control.”

Cricket: A Complete Guide

(Taken from The Book of Knowledge, edited by Harold F.B. Wheeler)

The national summer game of the British race is cricket. In Great Britain and the colonies boys learn to play the game as soon as they can hold a bat; every school and college and university has cricket teams, and in England the counties are represented by teams, which take part each season in a championship tournament of two sections, the second section being for the minor counties.

Cricket is said to be a variation of stool ball, in which a ball was thrown at a stool defended by a “batsman”, who hit it away with his hand. Later a staff or club was used instead of the hand, and a stick fixed in the ground took the place of the stool. From this early form, the present game gradually developed.

The first recognized cricket club was Hambledon, which was founded in 1750, and remained in existence until 1791. In 1787 the Marylebone Cricket Club (M.C.C.) was established, with a ground in the centre of London. It acquired its present ground (Lord’s) at St John’s Wood in 1824, issued the first code of laws of the game, and became the ruling authority.

Today cricket clubs in the British Isles are numbered by the thousand. In addition to the county tournament, which represents what is called first-class cricket, there are many competitions for all classes of clubs playing whole or half-day matches, usually on Saturdays, and very many matches are also played where league points are not at stake.

A feature of first-class cricket are the representative games in which the pick of the amateur players oppose the best of the professional players, called Gentlemen versus Players; and the North versus South trial games. International matches are also played between England, Australia and South Africa, these countries visiting each other in turn.

The cricket field consists of a wide stretch of turf, in the middle of which are two “wickets” 22 yards apart and facing each other. A wicket consists of three “stumps” (round straight pieces of wood) of equal thickness, standing 27 inches upright out of the ground. The distance between the two outer stumps is 8 inches, the third being midway between. Lying loosely in grooves across the top of the stumps are two “bails”, each 4 inches long. A whitewashed “crease”, 8 feet 8 inches long, is drawn on the turf in line with the stumps, which are placed in the centre. This is called the “bowling crease”. A similar line called the “popping crease” is drawn 4 feet in front of the wicket, and parallel to the bowling crease.

The bat used in cricket is made of willow. Its length is limited to 38 inches. It has a handle 14 inches long, made of spliced cane, and a flat blade not more than 4¼ inches wide. Its weight usually varies between 2¼ and 2½ pounds. The ball is made with a core of cork, round which are wound layers of fine twine and thin cork shavings until the proper size is reached, when a cover of heavy red leather is sewed on. The ball must weigh not less than 5½ ounces nor more than 5¾ ounces. The match ball must also be not less than 9 inches nor more than 9¼ inches in circumference.

The game is played by two teams, each consisting of 11 men. The captains “toss” for innings, and the winning side has the choice of batting or fielding first. The batting side sends a player to each wicket. The batsman stands with his bat between the bowling crease and the popping crease. The “bowler” stands behind the bowling crease at one wicket and “bowls” at the other. The object of the bowler is to hit the opposite wicket with the “ball”, and the batman’s object is to protect his “wicket” by striking the ball out of the way or by letting it glance off his “bat” out into the “field”. The “fielders” are placed on both sides of the wickets. After the bowler has delivered six balls, the “umpire” calls “over”, and another bowler at the opposite wicket takes the ball and bowls at the other wicket.

“Runs” are scored when the batsman at one wicket strikes the ball and exchanges places with the other batsman, each exchange counting a run. On enclosed grounds, the most runs obtainable from one hit are six. A batsman is out (1) if the bowler breaks the wicket with the ball (“bowled”); (2) if the ball, after it is struck by a batsman, is caught by a fielder before it touches the ground (“caught”); (3) if a batsman gets outside the popping crease when striking at the ball, and the “wicket keeper” with the ball breaks the wicket (“stumped”); (4) if a batsman stops with his legs or body a ball which in the judgment of the umpire would have struck the wicket, providing it were pitched in a direct line with it (“leg before wicket”); (5) if a batsman breaks the wicket while batting (“hit wicket”); (6) if the wicket is broken by a fielder while the batsmen are trying to make a run (“run out”). In the last case, the batsman who is nearest to the broken wicket is out. The batsman may also be given out for obstructing the field, handling the ball, and hitting the ball twice with intent to score. He may, however, hit the ball twice to protect his wicket from being broken.

“Extra runs” are scored by the batting side if the bowler pitches the ball beyond the reach of the batsman (“wide”), or if the bowler delivers the ball from outside, or without one or both feet on or behind, the bowling crease, or if he jerks or throws it (“no ball”). Runs may also be scored if the wicket keeper fails to stop a ball, letting the batsmen exchange places (“bye”), or if the ball strikes a batsman’s leg and places are exchanged (“leg bye”).

Each team bats until 10 men are out. The first-class match consists of two innings for each team, and is limited to three days’ play. Most other matches are played as half-day or one day games, and consist of one or two innings as arranged.

In two-innings matches of three days’ duration the side that bats second may be compelled to bat again if their score falls short of their opponents’ by 150 runs or more; in two-day matches by 100 or more.

Special arrangements are made for the length of test matches or international matches. In England three days only are set apart, but in Australia play extends over five days if the match is not finished earlier. In South Africa four days are allowed.

(Taken from How to be Topp by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle)

There is only one thing in criket and that is the STRATE BAT. Keep yore bat strate boy and all will be all right in life as in criket. So headmasters say, but when my bat is strate i still get bowled is that an omen chiz. Aktually i usually prefer to have a slosh: i get bowled just the same but it is more satisfactory.

For the reason that it is extremely difficult to hit the ball with a STRATE BAT or not criket matches are a bit of a strane. When you are a new bug or a junior in the 3rd game it is all right becos then you can sit around the boundary and keep the score in a notebook. When you get tired with that which is about 3 minits you can begin to tuough up your frendes and neighbours who look so sweet and angelic in their clean white criket shirts hem-hem. This is super. You look up long enough to sa Good shot, grabber or Couldn’t hit a squashed tomato and then go back to the fray.

But it is a funy thing when you grow biger you always get into a criket team you canot avoid it chiz. Tremble tremble you arrive and see the pitch which is 2388 miles approx from the pavilion. Captain win toss and choose to bat chiz chiz chiz. Moan drone tremble tremble you sit with white face and with everybode’s knees knoking together it sound like a coconut shy. Wot is the pleasure of it eh i would like to kno. Give me a thumb-screw or slo fire every time.

When yore turn come the folowing things can happen:

(A) You loose your bat.
(B) You fante dead away.
(C) Yore trousis fall down.
(D) You trip over yore shoe laces.

Captain then come up to you and sa BLOCK EVERYTHING molesworth and do not slosh we need 6 to win. When he sa this all the things above happen all at once. They revive you with a buket of water and drive you out to the wiket. This is not as you guessed 2388 miles away it is 6000 now and they hav men with gats covering all the exits so you canot run away.

At the Wicket

Of course it is the fast blower you hav to face he is wating there at the other end of the pitch looking very ferce. Umpire is v. kind he can afford to be he hav not got to bat. He sa:

We are very pleased to see you do make yourself at home. Of course you would like guard what guard would you like us to give to?
Squeak.
Come agane?
Squeak squeak.
i will give you centre hold yore bat up strate to you a trifle now away agane. That is centre. Yore position is 120 miles NNE of beachy head you may come in and land. There are 5 balls to come. At the 5th pip it will be 4.20 precisely. Able Baker Out.

PLAY!

Fast blower retreat with the ball mutering and cursing. He stamp on the grass with his grate hary feet he beat his chest and give grate cry. Then with a trumpet of rage he charge towards you. Quake quake ground tremble birdseed fly in all directions if only you can run away but it is not done. Grit teeth close eyes. Ball hit yore pads and everyone go mad.

OWSATSIR OW WASIT EHOUT!

Umpire look for a long time he is bent double at last he lift one finger.

He is a difrent man now from the kindly old gentleman who made you feel at home. His voice is harsh.

Out. No arguments. Get cracking. Take that xpresion off yore face. On course at 20000 feet return to base. Out.

Distance back to pavilion is now 120000 miles and all the juniors sa ya boo sucks couldn’t hit a squashed tomato. It is no use saing you were not out by a mile team give you the treatment behind the pav just the same. There is only one consolation you can give it up when you grow up. Then you rustle the paper and sa Wot a shocking show by m.c.c. most deplorable a lot of rabbits ect. ect. Well, you kno how they go on. Enuff.

Take Your Partners

I’m not married and therefore can’t refer to my “wife”; equally, though, I’m averse to this “partner” business, which just sounds unbelievably pompous and ultra-PC. It tends to be used by homosexuals and lesbians, but there’s really no reason why it should. I use “other half” and sometimes “better half” as it’s the least offensive (to me) of several unsatisfactory alternatives.

So, why is it that the English language has so signally failed to come up with a suitable noun to describe a companion to whom you are not joined by the church and/or state?

The fact that one still thinks “probably gay” when one hears the word “partner” is to me just another reason why persons of heterosexual orientation should use it too. I have always struggled to label my current (six year) relationship with the word “partner”, which makes it sound like a business arrangement. “Girlfriend” sounds wrong when she’s considerably older than a girl, but I suppose it’ll do. Makes me think of “Girlfriend in a coma” though.

I avoid the word “partner” myself – too much linguistic echo of my shameful past working for a law firm. I still link the word “partner” with law, as some of my friends are now at the stage of “making partner” (which has nothing to do with having affairs, although it kind of sounds that way).

Some of my heterosexual married friends gamely continued using the word “partner” after becoming official because they found the words “husband” and (even more so) “wife” loaded with baggage and connotations they wanted to avoid. Most of them have succumbed though. I know a lesbian couple who refer to each other as “the wife” and refer to their civil ceremony/relationship as a wedding/marriage, but I know another who go well out of their way to avoid using any of those words.

A couple of weeks ago at work I had to fill in a “what do you want us to do if you drop dead while working with us” form (it had a snappier title than that, I think). I named my friend as the person to whom my salary should be paid. In the box labelled “State your relationship to this person”, I thought very carefully before typing “Owned by the same cat”.

Pop Tart News

“Opera singer” Katherine Jenkins opened the Ashes yesterday with a 20-minute rendition of Land of My Fathers.

Don’t say “Break a leg” to Joyce DiDonato

To those principals who cancel at the Royal Opera House at the drop of a hat … the current Il barbiere di Siviglia revival actually managed to cripple one of its principals and she still intends to continue with the run.

American mezzo Joyce DiDonato had her leg in plaster after sustaining a fractured fibia in an onstage mishap; she did this quite early on the first night, went on with the show (on crutches) and only once the opera was over did she report to A&E.

(Where is one’s fibia, exactly? I believe it’s another name for the fibula, i.e. lower leg and it may be an Americanism.)

There is a line in Il barbiere di Siviglia when Rosina complains of a pain in her ankle, isn’t there … probably caused by wearing those arse-over-tit-inducing contraptions worn by women like Dita Von Teese, in fact, Richard Morrison’s review, in the Times, starts, “I blame it on her silly pink high heels.”

What a girl though, she sang the role in a wheelchair for last night’s performance.

Apparently, there was little to fault DiDonato’s first (the world’s first) wheeled performance! The staging was modified slightly to enable her to perform from the flat area of the stage in front of the raised box that makes up the set. She zipped around with tremendous agility, leg in a bright pink plaster cast and a pale pink corsage on one wheel. The only bit that was incredibly surreal was the storm sequence in Act 2 when she’s supposed to charge around the room knocking over all the furniture in anger – they actually got her to instruct Berta to do it all for her (all, that is, except the bit where she kicks one of the footlights and makes it explode – she did that herself, with her good foot).

On a serious note, can I recommend that people with broken bones get treatment immediately even if they are international opera stars? A friend of mine from university died because he broke his leg while camping in Shetland and couldn’t get to a hospital until the next day by which time a blood clot had travelled from the break to his heart.

Birtwistle

I went to the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night for the double bill of new works by Harrison Birtwistle: Semper Dowland, semper dolens and The Corridor.

Semper Dowland, semper dolens: theatre of melancholy is essentially an arrangement/re-instrumentation of Dowland’s Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavanes (based in turn on his Lachrymae) interspersed with six other Dowland songs. Birtwistle’s instrumentation for the pavanes is five strings (violin, two violas, two cellos) plus alto flute/piccolo and bass clarinet. The songs are for tenor (Mark Padmore last night) with harp (i.e. rather than lute) accompaniment.

It’s a fascinating thing and I thought it worked very effectively indeed. I’ve heard the Dowland pavanes before but don’t know them anywhere near well enough to know how much Birtwistle was actually adding to the notes, as it were, and how much it was a matter of redistributing some of the lines of the original five part writing. My guess would be it was more the latter than the former but there was a lovely clarity about it all which was made all the more effective by having the players lined up in a straight row across the stage rather than in an instrumental “group”. For the interspersed songs, on the other hand, my guess was (but still very much a guess) that there was quite a bit of Birtwistle added to the harp part.

Mark Padmore sang not plainly exactly but there was certainly less overt “expression” than I seem to remember with others singing Dowland (fucking Sting), and next to no ornamentation. I rather liked it that way actually but (again, starting with the benefit of ignorance) I don’t know what current thinking is on performance practice in this repertoire, or indeed whether there was anything in Birtwistle’s instructions in his score about how the songs should be approached. There was one awkward moment towards the end of the fifth song (Come heavy sleep) when Mark Padmore seemed to develop a bit of a rasp in the higher part of his voice but, that apart, it all seemed pretty impeccable to me and all the more moving for being understated.

Oh, and there were two dancers as well, each an enviable and attractive example of their respective sexes, but I’m afraid I didn’t get much from what they were doing. That’s probably just me though.

Dudley Moore

Masterly parodies of Britten, Pears and Weill. There was a rumour that Britten hated it, the miserable sod, but that Pears was rather amused. This may be a modern myth, rather like the story that Britten walked out of the first performance of Punch and Judy by the young Harrison Birtwistle.

Handel’s Last Work: Jephtha

I think it’s fair to say that Jephtha is a human drama, not a religious work: indeed God does not come out of it at all well. Jephtha’s vow to sacrifice his daughter can stand as a metaphor for those times when, for example, your doctor tells you that you have terminal cancer. The question is how you cope with it, as Handel had to cope with his blindness which came on during the composition of Jephtha.

In that light Waft her Angels through the skies is a beautiful expression of that totally gratuitous serenity that can visit us briefly during bereavement or anxiety and (I so much hope) terminal illness. And the brief Forever blessed be His holy name is a wonderful expression of relief: Jephtha is still too traumatized by what he has been through to express ebullient joy.

How dark, O Lord, are Thy decrees,
All hid from mortal sight,
All our joys to sorrow turning,
And our triumphs into mourning,
As the night succeeds the day.
No certain bliss,
No solid peace,
We mortals know
On earth below,
Yet on this maxim still obey:
“Whatever is, is right.”

In the autograph score, at the end of this chorus Handel wrote “Reached here on 13 February, 1751, unable to go on owing to weakening of the sight of my left eye.”

“Whatever is, is right” is taken from Pope’s Essay on Man, and (unless I’m making this up, but I’m sure I’m not) was introduced into the text of Jephtha by Handel. It’s an extraordinary chorus, the way the line from Pope is hammered out.

Lily Allen & Charles Saatchi

Lily Allen has long professed her love of art and older men. And it seems she chose to combine the two when she joined avid art collector Charles Saatchi at Scott’s in Mayfair yesterday. Lily Allen took her seat next to Saatchi, 66, at the table he usually shares with his wife the Queen of Gastroporn Nigella Lawson, 49.

Quite what Nigella thinks of Charles’s dinner date with Lily remains to be seen.

Earlier this year Lily enjoyed a brief affair with 45 year-old art dealer Jay Jopling, who is the estranged husband of artist Sam Taylor-Wood.

She said at the time: “I think I like much older men. I hang out with much older people, I go for dinners at posh places and talk about art. I’m meeting more interesting people.”

Lily is a budding art collector and was thought to be seeking the counsel of the more experienced Saatchi. The two were joined by friends as they enjoyed some red wine and a deep conversation. Later the 24-year-old singer appeared to need a helping hand as she left the restaurant tottering in her Christian Louboutin heels.

Heather Sweet a.k.a. Dita Von Teese

To dye for: Katherine Jenkins celebrates her 29th birthday at Wimbledon with a blonder ’do

This is from the Daily Mail, the finest source of pop tart news.

Since Katherine Jenkins first leaped to fame five years ago, the opera singer has been growing blonder every year. Spotted in the royal box at Wimbledon on Tuesday, it appeared the Welsh soprano had reached the limits of her dye habit with a platinum blonde style.

Fresh from celebrating her 29th birthday on Monday, the singer stood out from the crowd at Centre Court with her bright locks, which she had dyed on Friday. Just in time for the hottest weather of the year, Katherine looked summery with her newly-dyed hair and white summer dress.

Tennis fan Katherine and her mother travelled to Wimbledon to check out the women’s Quarter Finals between American Serena Williams and Belarusian Victoria Azarenka.

Writing on her Twitter micro-blogging page from Wimbledon, Katherine enthused: “We’ve just been given a glass of champagne. How civilised. Watching the tennis in the royal box at centre court with my mum. Just been watching Serena Williams – awesome! Having afternoon tea now. Wow, it’ a scorcher. It’s too hot on centre court, so now we’re sitting on the terrace watching Laura Robson.”

Although born a brunette, Katherine has been dyeing her hair blonde since she was working as a music teacher seven years ago. When she signed her first recording contract in 2004, the fresh-faced 23-year-old was strawberry blonde. As her fame progressed, Katherine has tried various shades of blonde from ash blonde in 2005 until a lighter golden blonde last year.

But as she marks the last birthday of her 20s, Katherine looks determined to hold on to her youthful looks by dyeing a shade lighter.

Perhaps her bid to crack the United States is behind the lighter colour. After conquering Europe and signing a £6 million record deal with Warner Music last year, Katherine has set her sights on conquering the United States. Last month, Katherine wowed Americans when she took to the stage at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino in Las Vegas. She said in a recent interview: “Every artist wants to do well in America. It’s a challenge. Not many crack it.”

Ahead of Wimbledon on Tuesday, Katherine marked her actual birthday with a day at Regent’s Park before dinner at the Big Easy restaurant in the King’s Road, Chelsea.

Prima Donna by Rufus Wainwright

Without doubt, the highlight of the second Manchester International Festival will be the world premiere of Rufus Wainwright’s “opera” Prima Donna.

In a recent interview on BBC Radio 2 with overpaid smutty schoolboy wanker Jonathan Ross, the drop dead gorgeous son of Loudon Wainwright III revealed that he is growing a beard, because he and his “boyfriend” will be coming to the first performance dressed as Verdi and Puccini respectively. Oh, how deliciously camp!

I too will be attending this major cultural event at Manchester’s Palace Theatre with my young friend Melissa. We will each have a brown paper bag full of ripe tomatoes. We haven’t yet decided whether to eat them noisily throughout or hurl them at the stage.

The sooner this intensely dull little lisping queer returns to whining his own dismal songs the better. Then we can all go back to ignoring him (and the rest of his fucked up family). He admitted he could do with the money and even told Ross “Opera isn’t worth zip.”

Thanks, Rufus. I’ll bin my own anti-war opera based on John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance that I’ve been working on for the last five years and write some piss poor songs instead.

German Choreographer Dies

Can one person sum up the life and death of the greatest ever dancer and choreographer? Possibly throw in some Greek mythology? Mention Nijinsky and Nureyev?

I think the last word on Michael Jackson must go to Germaine Greer, who continues to grind out her half-baked pieces for the Guardian, apparently unaware that the whole world is laughing at her and all the other dotty old feminists who have nothing to say to an entire generation of young women who simply want to get drunk and laid, and are therefore as confused as men were thirty years ago. Is there no subject this horrid old Sheila does not feel qualified to comment on? I just picture her performing fellatio on a bemused Clive James in Cambridge half a century ago.

To return to a matter of genuine cultural significance …

The wonderful dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch died yesterday of cancer, aged 68. She was diagnosed only five days ago. Perhaps the best way to go. Charlotte Higgins pays tribute to her: “We have lost dance’s most visionary, influential figure, who redrew the map of the theatre arts.” Thank you, Charlotte.

I’m shocked and saddened. Once, I was driven nearly five hours in Germany (ten round trip) just to see her at the Wuppertal Dance Theatre. It was excellent.

I saw her Rite of Spring at Sadler’s Wells, last year I think it was. I’d always rated the Kenneth MacMillan version highly, but this seemed to be in a different league.

R.I.P. Pina Bausch 27.7.1940 – 30.6.2009

Dimitri’s, Deansgate, Manchester

The finest place to eat out in the summer in Manchester, in fact in England, is Dimitri’s Tapas Bar. I get the feeling that Beth Ditto might enjoy it, and it would certainly take her mind off the insane claims that she is responsible for global obesity.

I’ve just spent the last couple of hours there. I tried to go for a drink at the Great John Street Hotel, which used to be the Granada TV bar, but they’re still cleaning up after Take That.

Only two days until the Manchester International Festival (the world’s first international festival of original, new work and special events) kicks off with Kraftwerk and Steve Reich ’n’ Roll and Bang on a Can!

Rufus Wainwright’s “opera” Prima Donna!

A procession down Deansgate if the gas mains are repaired in time!

Some dead willow trees stuck in concrete!

Beth Ditto Feeds Obesity Epidemic

As usual, the Daily Mail carries the top story of the day:

Chubby celebrities are stoking the obesity crisis by proving it is possible to be fat and famous, doctors have warned. Michael McMahon, an obesity expert and surgeon, said that super-skinny stars have long been blamed for fuelling anorexia and the reverse is true too.

The high profile of larger stars such as TV presenter Eamonn Holmes, comedian Johnny Vegas and singer Beth Ditto has shown that being plump is no barrier to success. James Corden and Ruth Jones, of award-winning sitcom Gavin and Stacey, are also of generous proportions.

Professor McMahon, of the Nuffield Health private healthcare chain, said: “The increasing profile of larger celebrities means that being overweight is now perceived as being ‘normal’ in the eyes of the public. We talk about the dangers of skinny media images but the problem actually swings both ways.”

I think it’s worth pointing out that McMahon works for a hospital where he performs gastric band surgery and thus makes money out of designating people as obese.

When Prog Rock Ruled the Earth

This long, repetitive, rambling post is rather like a prog rock album inspired by sitting sweating in a car park at Glastonbury for two hours, and then remembering that I don’t even have a car. I managed not to contract swine flu. But I may still die from heat-related conditions back in Manchester.

I hated prog rock as it eventually came to manifest itself, being at heart a blues man and hating the pretensions. To me, it seemed to grow out of an adolescent pride in “bands that can really play their instruments”, which often seemed to mean a bit of cod Bach and twenty minute drum solos. However, I do have a bit of an awful fascination with it, as I do with, say, Amy “Tattooed Reptile” Winehouse. Wouldn’t “Tattooed Reptile” be a great name for a PR band?

Like any genre definitions, PR can be a surprisingly slippery beast. To me it seemed to involve bands that favoured keyboards over guitars as the predominant solo instrument and lengthy songs with minimal vocals, singing obscure lyrics which didn’t have anything to do with love, hard times or social comment. In popular memory, PR seems to be associated with the triumvirate of Yes, Genesis and Emerson Lake & Palmer and the joke figures of Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson. But there were several offshoots from this mainstream. There was King Crimson and in that kind of area there were such as Egg, Hatfield and the North, Henry Cow (it was years before I got the presumed name check for Henry Cowell). Maybe these were the most interesting if the least immediately accessible. There were some who came from a jazzier angle rather than a classical background, Caravan spring to mind. Some retain a cult following of sorts like Van der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant, while others drew big crowds in their day but are now largely forgotten

There were dinosaur rock bands that pre-dated PR and had an influence on it but couldn’t really be blamed. Cream, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were more responsible for heavy metal. Pink Floyd and Soft Machine were bigger PR influences without ever being PR bands themselves. Jethro Tull, Procol Harum … PR-like, maybe, but not hard core.

A few more random thoughts … overwhelmingly male fan base … a very British thing, can’t think of any Americans really though there were the Germans like Can and Amon Duul II … with people like Bill Bruford moving to the jazz field how close were bands like the Mahavishnu Orchestra to PR? Hawkwind? Perhaps not.

I was certainly one of those who came to see PR in all its manifestations as absolutely horrible, and indeed some of my earliest practical musical experiences involved playing in teenage punk rock bands in 1977-78.

More recently I thought it might be fun to see if I could reconnect myself with the way I felt about early 1970s music at the time (before agreeing with everyone in the late 1970s that it was made by and for boring old farts).

I never liked Genesis and Jethro Tull for a start, and I still don’t. (I think Jethro Tull just about comes under the PR heading.) For me it was more a matter of Yes, Mahavishnu Orchestra and King Crimson, and I’m almost embarrassed to say that when I did get around to re-acquainting myself with their music (in the past few months) I still liked all of them, for reasons I can probably articulate a little better now than I could as a teenager, though those reasons in some ways haven’t changed much. I haven’t got enough time or energy just at the moment to go into much detail (indeed I might have a moan or rant brewing on what’s brought that situation about, mostly the dreadful decline of Glastonbury), but in the music of Yes for example (and basically I mean the three albums Close to the Edge, Tales from Topographic Oceans and Relayer, from the short period 1973-74, I still find the intricacy of the melodic/rhythmic counterpoint highly attractive – the default texture would be for the harmony and a rhythmical basis to be outlined by three-part vocals, leaving guitar, keyboards and often also bass guitar free for linear intertwining and complex metrical/syncopated relationships with the drumming. Jazz was quite a strong influence on a lot of this music too, which shows in the roll call of the guest musicians on King Crimson’s first few albums, which comprised many of the most innovative jazz musicians around in the UK at the time, including for example percussionist Jamie Muir who also played in the Music Improvisation Company with Derek Bailey and Evan Parker.

I wonder why the most successful PR acts were virtually all British?

Anyway, what the fuck is prog rock? There are two ways of answering that. The obvious answer is that it was an attempt to progress beyond the rock music of the time (mid-1960s). Rock music was only ten years old, but during that time it had never wavered from the formula of an amplified, blues-based melody with a strong back beat. At some point in the mid-1960s, people (mainly in England) began to experiment with subverting the form.

The second answer is that it is music that is characterized by complex time signatures, impenetrable lyrics, unconventional modes and scales, 20-minute songs, and so on. By historical accident, PR has come to have an identifiable sound, which was defined by its early exponents. This is useful if you want to define a genre, because new bands can come along, ape Pink Floyd, Yes and Genesis, and be comfortably placed in the PR genre. They sound like what we know PR is supposed to sound like.

But there is a fundamental incompatibility between these two definitions. If a new band sounds like the PR of a generation ago, how are they in fact “progressive”?

So let’s go back a generation and see how “progressive” bands apparently arrived at this consensus of the direction in which they “progressed”.

If you look in the history books, there is a good chance that they will tell you that The Beatles started progressive rock with Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). This is actually untrue. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band certainly contains elements that would eventually become identified with PR: elaborate arrangements, acoustic and ethnic instruments, a “concept” tying the songs together (although the concept behind Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was abandoned during the writing process and only survives in two songs) and electronic experimentation (McCartney claimed to be influenced by Stockhausen). In all this, the album could be said to be a blueprint for progressive rock. A kind of proto-prog. Oh man, this is horsehit.

Keep going …

Except, The Beatles were beaten to it. The recording of Pink Floyd at the UFO Club in 1966 includes a 20-minute version of Interstellar Overdrive that had progressed far beyond The Beatles’ experimentation, a year before Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. And if you want to find the earliest recorded album of PR, I would submit that Freak Out by the Mothers of Invention (1966) might be the starting point.

Regardless of “who thought of it first”, it seems that several groups and individuals in 1966 (and possibly earlier) were starting to look for new things to do in music, although I don’t think the term “progressive rock” was coined at that time. By 1967, the “underground” music scene was dominated by bands whose music we would now call “prog rock”.

Enough.

Steve Reich Rocks

“So I thought, why not really write a rock piece? I’m over 70 now, but most of the rockers seem to be over 60, so I’m qualified by age.”

(Steve Reich was born in New York in 1936. His father was a lawyer and his mother a singer and lyricist. His parents divorced after only a year of marriage and his mother returned to her native Los Angeles. They were awarded joint custody, so every six months Reich would travel by train across the country with a nanny.)

An interview with Steve Reich in today’s Guardian:

It took Steve Reich some time to appreciate that the near riot provoked by a performance of his work Four Organs at Carnegie Hall in 1973 was, on balance, good for his career. Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had programmed the work for a Sunday afternoon subscription concert, which guaranteed attendance by “the most conservative audience of old ladies and romantic music lovers”, Reich recalls. It soon dawned on the crowd that this apparently unchanging music really wasn’t going to change. “It’s very complicated to play,” Reich explains. “The players have to count to stick together. Even though it was amplified, Michael had to scream ‘one, two, three, four’ at us because there was so much noise from the audience. There was some clapping, but mostly people were stamping on the floor and booing.” The New Yorker music writer Alex Ross has described it as “the last great musical scandal of the 20th century”. Reich says: “With hindsight, I realised Michael had been totally provocative and had set me up like a pair of loaded dice. I was as white as a sheet, and all he kept saying was ‘this is history’. But he was right, and of course it’s been played since and people seem to like it. Time makes things that were once outrageous, if not into standard warhorses, then at least standard parts of the repertoire.”

During a performance of Reich’s Desert Music was the only time I’ve ever walked out of a concert. I was really bored. Aside from that I can almost always find something to interest me in a Reich piece, but really I think that since Music for 18 Musicians (1976) most of it has been Reich lite – permutating and repackaging his limited repertoire of ideas into crowd-pleasing timespans and settings. He did come up with one new idea subsequently – the melodic fragments based on recorded speech which occurs for the first time in Different Trains – but in my (I suppose I should say not particularly humble) opinion he’s never managed to do anything very imaginative with it.

Take That @ Old Trafford

Going towards company headquarters to wake the officers I saw a man lying on his face in a machine-gun shelter. I stopped and said: “Stand-to, there!” I flashed my torch on him and saw that one of his feet was bare. The machine-gunner beside him said: “No good talking to him, sir.” I asked: “What’s wrong? Why has he taken his boot and sock off?” “Look for yourself, sir!” I shook the sleeper by the arm and noticed suddenly the hole in the back of his head. He had taken off the boot and sock to pull the trigger of his rifle with one toe; the muzzle was in his mouth.
(Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That)

Tonight I’m on the balcony of my young friend Melissa’s apartment in Salford Quays, with a sufficiency of wine and cigarettes, and we are soon to be regaled by the noise of the band Take That, a troupe of thirty-something men who pretend they are still boys, performing just over the Manchester Ship Canal at Old Trafford (Lancashire County Cricket Club). All their lives they have known nothing but money and parties. They are happy with what they have.

Melissa on these occasions grows philosophical. We may compare Take That and what they have been through and how much they are admired to 21-year-old Lieutenant Robert Graves and what he went through and how much he is admired.

American Singer Dies, Internet Collapses, Twitter Cliché Meltdown

Michael Jackson is on the right.

When it was announced that Michael Jackson had died, the internet ground to a halt as millions desperately tried to confirm whether his farewell tour would still take place.

Peter Andre said he was “totally shocked”, John Mayer said he was “dazed”. Demi Moore was “greatly saddened”.

Actress Brooke Shields, a longtime friend of Jackson, said in a statement: “My heart is overcome with sadness for the devastating loss of my true friend Michael.”

Quincy Jones, who collaborated with Jackson on three of his best-selling albums, Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, said in a statement: “I am absolutely devastated.”

Elizabeth Taylor said she was “too devastated by the passing of her dear friend Michael Jackson to issue a statement at this time” but promised one later.

Twitter confirmed that 22% (over 650 million) of all tweets worldwide expressed surprise and shock that Elizabeth Taylor was still alive.

Uri Geller: “Shocked and devastated.”
Celine Dion: “I am shocked. I am overwhelmed by this tragedy.”

R.I.P. Michael Jackson 26.8.1958 – 25.6.2009

Dita Von Teese Tweets: Blackberry

Taking care of the day’s errands, Dita Von Teese was spotted dropping by her local cell phone dealer in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Later on Twitter, she said:

“Why does my new Blackberry come with five John Mayer ringtones, and not one of them tells me that my body is a wonderland?”