geechie recollections (she moved through the fair)

recorded june 4th and 5th 1973 at intermedia sound boston, geechie recollections is the middle album in marion brown's afternoon of a georgia faun to sweet earth flying trilogy. all are about the state of georgia. 

horsemouth is still thinking about that interview between anne briggs and bert jansch.

the recording starts with anne briggs (AB) singing she moved through the fair

AB  - it reminds me of joe heaney actually, they used to sing that, the singer, he used to sing that, and it always reminds me of somali road where he stayed awhile with us in the 'trad' camp downstairs.

BJ (bert jansch) - the young tradition

AB - yeah that's right. in fact if I remember rightly, yourself and john renbourn...  you were the nouveau group upstairs, we were the traditional group downstairs... 

BJ - it always amazed me that the american bluesmen used to come to that flat, but they used to come to downstairs, they didn't come to upstairs...

AB - well you know, they came to downstairs particularly  to listen to joe heaney when he was there,  sorry seamus heaney, because there seemed to be some tremendous rapport between the traditional blues singers and the traditional irish singers.

you felt left out did you?

BJ - we felt like we were being shunned a bit... 

that horsemouth's life (if anxious) is at least peaceful (at the moment)

the period of conflict in horsemouth's house has ended (largely because sten has now got a girlfriend and work on the other side of town). nothing has improved (you dig) but nothing has gone seriously backward and, to be honest, horsemouth is no longer here that much and is not that bothered. 

elsewhere people are either enduring conflict in their home (or they have recently endured conflict in their home). but, of course, one conflict closes another one opens. people try and argue that there is less conflict in this type of property or that type of property but in reality  conflict is between people, the externalities have little impact upon it.

energy performance certificates are shit

there's a guardian article (based on a WHICH report) about the problems with EPCs (energy performance certificates). granted these are not the sharpest tools in the box but they are the ones the government has chosen. it's quick, it's fast, it's... er... not very accurate and reliable (but so what?).  in any event to progress further, to design measures that are going to work, you have to go deeper. 

horsemouth (procrastinator in chief) has failed to get done several things he thinks he needed to get done (but never mind). he heads back to the wilds reasonably satisfied with his visit and deferring tasks onto the next visit.

he needs to time his next visit so that he is around for the general election on the 4th of july. he has received a letter from parliament from his current MP. as a result of boundary changes he is is now to be bundled in with north __________ rather than south __________. those of you in the know will realise that this means he has the opportunity to vote for diane abbot. he will probably avail himself of this opportunity because, even though he is not a big fan,  there is a limited amount of 'left' to be had in this election and horsemouth has a chance to have some of it. 

'to be burned unread' (go your way my love)

'dearest max, my last request: everything I leave behind me... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others), sketches, and so on, to be burned unread' - franz kafka.

it is kafka's deathday 

indeed today is the centenary of franz kafka's death. it is to be followed by kafka month until his (re)birth on 3rd july. 

'kafka's last lover, dora diamant (later, dymant-lask), also ignored his wishes, secretly keeping 20 notebooks and 35 letters. these were confiscated by the gestapo in 1933, but scholars continue to search for them.'

yes myk was saying. horsemouth hadn't heard of her or of them. myk was saying she ended up living in bethnal green. 

bert jansch and anne briggs discuss the good old days

they are in a slightly false position they have been brought together to play 'their' songs but they never really played them together. the crucial moment is that bert starts playing anne briggs' songs - thereby importing the english traditional repertoire into the repertoire of the 'blues' musicians (the british fans of old american blues guitarists). when davy graham returns from morocco with dadgad tuning it can all begin. (this may be a revisionist history). 

anne briggs (AB) and bert jansch (BJ) discuss their time in the house in somali road.

AB- ... but, in a way, I mean, it was good times and it was a great sort of musical establishment, ah, but from the point of view of me working with you it was a bad thing in a way because it seems to sort of separate us and from  that point on I don't think we really did any more work together did we?

BJ -no we didn't 

AB - though we were actually living just one up above the other instead of across town... when we lived across town from each other there was no actual hassle to travel and play but we just ceased to do that... and the other thing was the input from all the other musicians around I thought it's very distracting...

good old days eh? no regrets

horsemouth has been working on go your way my love. he thinks he has found a way of doing it that doesn't involve sorting out the pesky fingerpicking (great though it is). his broad strategy is to play it as if it were being played by joy division and had been arranged by martin hannett.

horsemouth is leaning towards howard's interpretation of the lyrics, that the singer is angry (as well as sad) because the lover has gone away. he is backed up in this by anne saying that she 'wasn't seeing enough of someone' when she wrote it.

a book-box find 

john campbell: rediscovery of an arts and crafts architect (alan powers,alan crawford, ronald leask, the prince of wales's institute for architecture)

of particular interest to horsemouth were his planned modifications to the shepherdess walk holy trinity boys' and girls' club in hoxton in 1944. in the end this project was not completed. 'the intended youth club had been bombed to destruction...'

horsemouth guesses this would be near (if not the site of) the shepherdess walk mosaics. 

other interesting buildings campbell designed were 3 houses at chapel point, mevagissey in cornwall (near st. austell) and very good they look too. and a house subsequently lived in by dirk bogarde.

it is horsemouth's last day in the seaside towns for a bit.  tomorrow he's back off to the green. 

jacken elswyth/ alula down (a saturday afternoon in camden)

it's the saturday afternoon/ evening, horsemouth is back from an afternoon in camden watching jacken elswyth (ably backed by alula down). it was a good gig in the greennote (a tiny little venue where he has seen jacken and alastair roberts before with myk). 

after coffee, a blog and then tea and toast horsemouth travelled over to camden road railway station. he waited for howard to arrive eyeing the conveniently placed  falafel wrap stand hungrily.  

only then did he discover (by means of a phone call) that howard had arrived an hour earlier and was up at the ice house (a large wetherspoons on the canal). horsemouth dutifully made his way up to the ice house (opposite camden lock for future reference) battling his way through the crowds of solvent consumers. 

howard was hidden in a corner with a pint and a copy of joan didion's where I was from having been there since midday. (he's not getting on with it. horsemouth thinks it is one of joan's duller books)

horsemouth was keen to get to the venue early and get a seat (he remembered how small it was) and so they dived down the backstreets, onto camden parkway and, just  before camden parkway ran out, they found the venue. 

the only tune horsemouth knew from before was poor boys long way from home (a john fahey stadard - but also mississippi john hurt, r.l. burnside, barbecue bob, blind blake, robert pete williams, booker white etc. ). the rest of it was tracks off the new jacken elswyth album (backed by alula down), many of the tracks having had their start in improvisations. 

ladies and gentlemen, this may have been your only opportunity to see these tracks performed live. 

horsemouth said hi, but he was a little shy so he said little more. 

he chatted a little with another banjo player (in the queue for the gents) and then back in his seat with anna and her boyfriend up from bristol - she had played flute as a child and had a lap steel guitar in a cupboard somewhere (horsemouth, the ever helpful, recommended daddad tuning, a volume pedal (for getting those country swells) and buying a shruti box with a foot pedal operator (like the one jacken had)). 

horsemouth had a pint and a bottle of ipa all told, howard had had a pint by the time horsemouth got there and had two bottles of ipa  (and another smaller one) in the venue. horsemouth has been a little bruised by beer of late and so was glad, in a way, to stop early (at a sensible level of befuddlement). 

and so horsemouth finds himself home early (and reasonably sober). 

---------------------------------------------------------

it's the morning (a beautiful morning). his mum has just been on the phone - the router was flashing (horsemouth has recommended turning it off and he'll deal with it when he gets back). he's got a phonecall with his brother at 6pm and a phonecall with his mum at 8pm. 

it's the anniversary of various half-term mixing and recording sessions with musicians of bremen 

one from six years ago (for volume four, covers, everything is going to be alright etc.) and one from 2 years ago (for the demos over on soundcloud). 

horsemouth will go out for a wander in a bit. 

it is the morning it is june

 so when horsemouth wakes up in the morning it is june. 

we enter the brightest part of the year (the three or so weeks on either side of the summer solstice). then we enter the summer june-july-august (and even september can be decent). the summer is supposed to be something of a wash out (50 days of rain etc. or maybe not). we shall see. soon enough it will be rent rise day. 

'then came the night of the first falling star...' - h.g. wells, war of the worlds chapter 2. june is the month of the action in war of the worlds. sometime after the 16th. horsemouth very much enjoyed rereading it (and not just because he could often hear the voice of jeff wayne's musical war of the worlds  in his head while he was reading it. he likes the collapse of the uk, the fall of london, the refugees fleeing, the concreteness of the locations. it is altogether a more concrete than the opening chapters of after london (wild england) by richard jefferies. 

it is proposed in, in michael moorcock's before armageddon (and its sister volume england invaded) that wells lifted this from the battle of dorking (by g.t. chesney). horsemouth has just dug these slim paperbacks out of the stacks (from his highest bookshelf if anyone is interested).

it is not just gaza where one can see this in the modern world but sudan too (as horsemouth observed on the evening news) and before that yemen.  

in a bit horsemouth goes to meet howard in camden to the album launch of jacken elswyth's at fargrounds. (it should be good). what they will do after that he does not know. (never mind that they have to arrange the meeting up and finding the venue etc.)

6 years ago the musicians of bremen volume 3 CDs arrived (horsemouth still has a few in case anyone is interested). 

books, films, gigs, events may 2024

books 

- down and out in paris and london (george orwell)

- the world turned upside down (christopher hill) start

- welsh border country (maxwell fraser) dips

- the unicorn (iris murdoch)

-  le cimetière marin (paul valéry and translations)

- munch's graphic works in j.p. hodin's 'edvard munch' (world of art series)

- notes on sentences (luke skrebowski) in versuch no.1 ed. gil leung

- introduction to pierre  clastres' 'chronicle of the guyaki indians' by the translator paul auster

- hamburg/ liverpool comparison in the white review, no.12 and 'wild resistance' LRB blog on adorno and 'radio waves' on ernst schoen, all owen hatherley.

- the war of the worlds, h.g. wells, started.

- guardian article on the playing of 'once upon a time in shaolin' and 'franz kafka exemplary employee'

- the present age (soren kierkegaard)

-  the velvet revolution of claude debussy, alex ross, the new yorker, october 22nd, 2018.

- introduction to 'the turn of the screw and other stories' (henry james) by t.j.lustig

- the garden of time (j.g.ballard)

films

- the usual novara media, outlaw bookseller, bookpilled/ thrift a life as and when

- clip don, moki and eagle-eye cherry 1973 at jazz jamboree in poland

- the architect (and yachtsman)  who moved to douarnenez 

- R4 debussy: composer of the week 

- LRB podcast 'in the shadow of silicon valley', rebecca solnit and 

edmund gordon and thomas jones 'on j.g. ballard'

gigs

minny pops, triple negative, evan parker and bill nace, the renaissance music festival in  crystal palace ( killercorp (tagline the most dangerous band in ipswich), concrete age, die|kur etc.)

events

jonnie and denise's welcome back to hackney party, the gigs mentioned above, wanders with TG, meeting of the communal endeavour on zoom. election of officers. before that a practice round pete's, practices round howard's and up plashet park. tea and cake with TG and myk.  

the doctors, he went to the chemists, death of dennis thompson the drummer of the MC5, the last man standing. death of paul auster.

today a quiet day in

horsemouth has had his coffee. 

he has had a shower. 

he has listened to a discussion about the writings of j.g. ballard. 

he'd probably better get on and blog. 

yesterday a loafing around the house kind of day. except in the evening when horsemouth walked down to  stepney green to meet up with andrew minty and anthony. roughly a 3 mile walk using the victoria park route. he arrived early and so hung around outside andy's block until the time was correct (is this strange behaviour?). 

they then wandered down to the local wetherspoons...

ok ok you know horsemouth has moaned on about the 'spoons and, post-brexit and the lockdown firing of staff, called for its boycott. but really, when all is said and done, he's just a hypocrite (and now you have proof).  there they met anthony (who was sat outside talking to sion) and a little while later max arrived. 

horsemouth remembers two (real) topics of conversation (doubtless more will return to him as the day progresses).

one was wyndham lewis (BLASTer and vorticist, sometime fascist - though to be fair he did later repudiate this), the other the incipient juridico-legal state of sir keir (given their professed lack of carrot labour in government may need to make some use of the stick).  

horsemouth has read a little of lewis's the human age trilogy and a biography of him named after one of his magazines the enemy (jeffrey meyers, 1980). he hasn't read this stuff for a long time, he doesn't know if he still has it. 

minty and sion had to bail early (good to see you both). anthony, max and horsemouth carried on to the bitter end (closing time at the wetherspoons).  everybody was on good form and it was a pleasant drink. 

thereafter horsemouth wandered back home (another 3 miles) - this time using the mare street route. he got a pizza (if he'd held out a little longer he could have got a falafel wrap). 

horsemouth thinks he has come to the end of the drinking bit of his holiday (phew). 

yesterday (during his sitting around and recovering) horsemouth read and enjoyed the first chapter of war of the worlds (chapter one: the eve of the war). the chronology doesn't seem tight enough to assign a particular date to the landing of the aliens but the locations are tightly drawn and can be visited.

today a quiet day in (maybe a gentle restorative wander round the local streets). in the evening a rehearsal with pete. saturday afternoon jacken elswyth's album launch in camden. 

drawing water from the well...

so horsemouth is back from his visit to howard. it is a cold, greyish, morning and horsemouth is recovering. 

they started work at 11. 

horsemouth took over the laramie tuned dadgad, the better to play go your way my love. horsemouth had taken a look at the fingerpicking tablature but soon he got frustrated with this and bodged a semi-strummed version so that he could practice singing it.  

his plan was to get howard to sing it and to leave himself to play it. this worked well. horsemouth recommended listening to the anne briggs version (but howard was resistant). looking at the anne briggs/ bert jansch version there is more for horsemouth to learn. 

then, picking up one of howard's guitars they worked on pastures of plenty. on this one horsemouth plans to sing with howard with howard playing most of the guitar and horsemouth just adding a few notes here and there. horsemouth is singing ok on it (he thinks). 

he then tried to persuade howard that the lobster quadrille by lewis carroll could be sung (or perhaps intoned) ontop of will you, won't you by howard. 

they did some work on on broadbury down (soon to be re-titled the hanged man) mostly round adding melodica instead of organ as on the album version. they also did a little work on blindspot (a neglectd track from the album volume four). 

so after all this they went down the pub.

but it was shut because it was only 3pm and didn't open until 4pm. so they went to the other pub (and that was shut too). so they went and got a falafel (and then back to the first pub).  there they sat out in the back garden listening to music on howard's portable speaker.  

horsemouth's plan was to be sensible and do another 2 for howard/ one and a half for horsemouth session but he got carried away and they may have ended up on four or five.  

thence back to his subterranean lair and some careful recovery. horsemouth took care to eat and to down some paracetamol. 

tonight a catch up with minty (and possibly anthony).