Layer 422 . . . More Music, BBC4, Sister Rosetta, Hugh Masekela, Chess Records, Roots of Rock, Tests, Exams, Children Under Pressure, Education, the Oldham Verdict, Barack and Cuba

.
Three wonderful programmes, back to back on BBC4 last night -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xf8k7

The Godmother of Rock & Roll: Sister Rosetta Tharpe

During the 40s, 50s and 60s Sister Rosetta Tharpe played a highly significant role in the creation of rock & roll, inspiring musicians like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. She may not be a household name, but this flamboyant African-American gospel singing superstar, with her spectacular virtuosity on the newly-electrified guitar, was one of the most influential popular musicians of the 20th century.

In 2008 the state governor of Pennsylvania declared that henceforth January 11th will be Sister Rosetta Tharpe Day in recognition of her remarkable musical legacy.

 

.........................................

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s6bln

Hugh Masekela: Welcome to South Africa

South African musician Hugh Masekela celebrates his 70th birthday and reflects on his career in performance and interview, from first picking up a trumpet in the 50s through the apartheid years, exile and stardom in America, his return to South Africa on Nelson Mandela's release, and concluding with his vision of the future for his country.

The programme also features performances from his 70th birthday concert at the Barbican in London in December 2009, where he was joined by the London Symphony Orchestra, their Community Choir and guest South African singers.

......................................................

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vv0zz

Roll over Beethoven - The Chess Records Saga

Chicago's Chess Records was one of the greatest labels of the post-war era, ranking alongside other mighty independents like Atlantic, Stax and Sun. From 1950 till its demise at the end of the 60s, Chess released a myriad of electric blues, rock 'n' roll and soul classics that helped change the landscape of black and white popular music.

Chess was the label that gave the world such sonic adventurers as Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf and Etta James. In this documentary to mark the label's 60th anniversary, the likes of Jimmy Page, Mick Hucknall, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Paul Jones and Little Steven, as well as those attached to the label such as founder's son Marshall Chess, pay tribute to its extraordinary music and influence.

The film reveals how two Polish immigrants, Leonard and Phil Chess, forged friendships with black musicians in late 1940s Chicago, shrewdly building a speciality blues label into a huge independent worth millions by the end of the 1960s. Full of vivid period detail, it places the Chess story within a wider social and historical context - as well as being about some of the greatest music ever recorded, it is, inevitably, about race in America during these tumultuous times.

.................................................

The Tonight Programme (ITV)  - presenter: Julie Etchingham

http://www.itv.com/news/tonight/episodes/kidsunderpressure

Kids Under Pressure

We look behind the statistics that show a dramatic rise in the level of childhood depression over the course of a generation as Julie meets a young woman who has battled with the disease through her teenage years – and she hears from her mother about what it was like to support her daughter through such difficult times.

The programme investigates whether the current education system is adequately preparing children for the challenges they face in modern society and discovers how some schools are looking at new ways to improve pupils’ social and emotional skills, such as a revolutionary scheme involving children interacting with a baby in classes, as well as a ‘happiness class’ at one public school whose head teacher is critical of the emphasis on testing in mainstream education.

Do children have enough freedom nowadays? We meet the parents who have blocked off their own road to traffic to give their kids the chance for the kind of free independent play that was once commonplace. The programme also questions mental health issues and behavioural problems children are experiencing, as well as body image anxiety.

Are our children in crisis?

Why is there continuous testing in schools?

Are we raising a generation of troubled children?

Grounds for concern - Britain was ranked bottom in a UN survey of children's wellbeing in 21 countries around the world.

Are today's kids happy? A Mumsnet survey revealed that 1 in 4 parents think their  kids are less happy than they were at the same age. "A large majority of mums and dads are worried about the education system, the freedom for kids to play, and the pressure on kids to grow up too soon."

"Even David Cameron has said that happiness is an important indicator of child wellbeing." Well - duh! Genius.

The Mumsnet spokeswoman said, "We expect children to perform in ways that we didn't so aggressively before . . . competitive pressures now appear very early on in children's lives."

The programme talked about the devastating consequences of all this for a significant minority. There's been a 70% increase in children suffering from serious emotional problems since the 1970s. We're failing to protect the children who are most at risk.

10% of all adolescents have diagnosable mental health problems. 80,000 of our young people suffer from depression. Kids who were healthy, confident and outgoing become ill as a result of adult expections for them to achieve test and exam targets. "My emotions felt out of control, and I couldn't see a way forward. I thought my parents would be better off without me. I was causing them so much misery. I was desperate. Really desperate." So said one articulate and intelligent girl. "I decided that enough was enough and I tried to kill myself."

"I love walking the dog now. It gives you space to think. It's my way of de-stressing." This young woman is now 20 and still talks about anxiety and stress. This is an appalling situation. So many of our young people are burnt out, afraid of life, troubled every day, incapable of joy, incapable of embracing life.

"It's been hell," said Anabelle's mum. "The pressures on young people are so hard. Academically there's SO much pressure. Greater than there's ever been. They find it so difficult to cope."

Of course we were treated to a look at Wellington College's "happiness classes". "The focus is on helping a child develop meaning in their own lives," said Anthony Seldon, head of the college. "Also a sense of self worth and self esteem. An ability to face the trials and problems that will inevitably be part of anyone's life."

Yes, Anthony. But PLEASE don't call them 'happiness classes'. That's just ammunition for your enemies. I do like it though when he goes on to say, "An excessive emphasis on testing is putting unneccessary pressure on our children. The whole school system is skewed towards the passing of these frankly pretty meaningless bits of paper. How sad when schools could move towards truly identifying and nurturing every single child's innate and unique gifts. Because if they're not drawn out when children are at school they'll remain dormant for the rest of their lives."

Two thirds of the parents who took part in the Mumsnet survey said there's too much testing in our schools. Sarah Teather, Minister for children and families, rather pathetically said the usual rubbish - schools and parents need feedback on how children are 'getting on', blah blah . . . As if she's never heard of continuous formative assessment for progress through clear learning targets. As if regular weekly and monthly feedback on coursework isn't far more useful than high-stakes exams.

She rather unexpectedly went on to say, "However, we do recognise that there's  a tendency in schools to teach to the tests, and that's the last thing we need. It's not good for children, and it's not good for teachers."

So why not get rid of  "these frankly pretty meaningless bits of paper" and ensure that proper systems for pupil progress tracking are put in place? Afraid that schools might 'cheat', minister? Well then - get rid of league tables as well. Do that, and there's really no point in cheating. And in any case groups of schools can organise their own verification and moderation procedures, which need cost very little in either time or money. Unlike our disgracefully wasteful exam systems.

The programme went on to consider children's needs to explore their own worlds, make their own discoveries, and just play together.
78% of parents say their children don't spend enough time playing outdoors.

Independent, non-structured activity is crucial for developing life skills, forming friendships, developing emotional intelligence, etc.

75% of parents say their working day is too long, leaving them too little time for their children.

Typical working mums and dads spend just 19 minutes a day 'looking after their kids'.

The programme also dealt with the pressure put on kids to look "attractive", "sexy", etc. And to buy and own all the 'right' gadgets and gizmos.

How do we "give children the tools they will need to tackle the challenges of growing up"?

There was mention of a "Roots of Empathy" programme on the Isle of Man - to help children to "strengthen their emotional ties to other people". The idea is to "reduce aggression and improve social skills". The children learn to "understand how other people feel - through being able to put themselves in other people's situations." Bringing babies into classrooms is an important part of this scheme.

"We're giving them the emotional literacy that will last a lifetime."

"We want them to be able to share their emotions so that we don't have so much aggression in society." Almost there. Empathy - emotions - feelings: we still have some sorting out to do.

"If our kids are happier and more considerate they'll be better able to face the challenges ahead."

Dr Tony Sewell of the charity Generating Genius appeared in the programme, talking about 'targeting the cleverest kids and preparing them for university'. Though it seems like an elitist programme, at least Sewell is advocating learning science through proper first-hand experience and experimentation. This, of course, should be available to all children.

The presenter summed up by saying, "It may now be a matter of political will to drive through the changes that could benefit ALL of our children."

MAY be a matter of political will? Let's just say the current generation of teachers and headteachers can barely even organise a boycott of KS2 SATs, so they're hardly going to drive through the major changes that are needed of their own accord. SATs have to go. Tracking systems for pupil progress in ALL areas of learning - academic, social, emotional, etc - have to be brought in. Pedagogy has to change to give all children the ability and the opportunity to learn through activity, experience and interaction. Pupils should be setting their own learning targets. All of the ideas of Paulo Freire, and of the New Learning Revolution need to be adopted. Other countries are already doing it. It's outrageous that Britain isn't.

.....................................

The Labour party still has to change

Despite the victory in Oldham, the next election won't fall into our lap. We must become the progressives' champion

by Ed Miliband

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/14/labour-oldham-progressives-champion

The first real electoral test for this Conservative-led government has revealed people's deep sense of unease about the direction in which our country is being led, and their anger at promises so solemnly made and yet so casually broken.

I believe that unease stems from misgivings shared right across Britain on the three arguments that will dominate the year ahead: the economy; the damage being done to the next generation; and the way we conduct politics. From the trebling of student debt, to capitulation on bankers' bonuses and a VAT rise squeezing working families, this government is showing it shares neither their values nor their hopes for the future.

............................................

Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection: Trouble for the Tories

David Cameron faces the anger of the Conservative right after the party lost more than half of their votes in the constituency

Editorial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/15/editorial-oldham-byelection-conservative-party

...................................................

This piece on Miliband is well worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/13/ed-miliband-new-labour

..................................................

This is brilliant. I was beginning to think this would never happen. Great timing Mr President - a brilliant challenge to the Tea Party mob, in the aftermath of Arizona.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/15/barack-obama-us-embargo-cuba

Barack Obama acts to ease US embargo on Cuba

President brings end to travel and finance bans in place since 1959 in move which will help his standing with American left

Barack Obama has eased America's long-standing embargo on Cuba, allowing many Americans to travel there for the first time and increasing the amounts that they can invest in the island.

Other changes announced by the president will allow all US international airports to accept flights to and from Cuba; at present, chartered flights are restricted to Miami and a handful of other airports. The moves represent an important step to rapprochement between the US and Cuba.

.

Layer 84 Music, Politics, Neil Young and Laughter.

.
In the mornin' when you rise . . .

Are you thinkin' of telephones, and managers,
And where you got to be at noon?
You are living a reality I left years ago
It quite nearly killed me.
In the long run it will make you cry.
Make you crazy and old before your time.

So said Stephen Stills in ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’, in 1970, giving an impression of someone who’s well sorted, tuned in, turned on, dropped out and living a different reality. No more Affluenza for Mr Laid Back L.A. - Christ, he even had time to cry:

And the difference between me and you
I won't argue right or wrong,
But I have time to cry, my baby
You don't have to cry,
I said cry my baby, you don't have to cry
I said cry my baby, you don't have to cry

In reality this new wave of migrant songsters and sophisticates who moved into L.A., mostly in and around Laurel Canyon, were as obsessed with fame, recognition, happiness, ego gratification, status, money, power and acclaim as anyone else - which isn’t to say that CSNY and the other bands and singer/songwriters didn’t turn out some excellent music from time to time, because they certainly did.

They just weren’t as good as they thought they were, in most cases, and many of them certainly lost their muse, their focus and their inspiration (the counterculture!) in a haze of excess, idleness, hedonism, angst, petty squabbling, and, of course, the heavy use of narcotics, especially coke.

The collective values of the Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock generation had initially generated a sense of unbridled optimism, but the shooting of students at Ohio State and the murder that took place at the Stones’ Altamont concert created a sense of deep foreboding. Concerts were supposed to be fun. College campuses were supposed to be places of peace, love and protest.

The Manson murders in L.A. pretty much shook the rock fraternity to its core, and if such horrors were what drugs and madness could do to people who considered themselves part of an enlightened movement to change the world for the better, what hope was there after all?

Besides which, the brilliant Joni Mitchell was writing songs for her wonderful Blue album that spoke of her own jealousy and greed - so if even the gifted and somewhat saintly Joni could acknowledge these destructive emotions, then where did that leave the rest of them?

Pretty much with the Eagles, ‘country rock’, cowboy fantasies and songs of escapism that demonstrated a complete disengagement from politics. At that point The Eagles were the ultimate corporate rock band, and the L.A. scene had gone from hippie utopianism to the corporatisation of rock in the name of massive profits for all concerned, including legions of smart managers and lawyers.

The increasing use of heroin and speed, as well as shitloads of coke, coincided with increases in greed, anger and cynicism - a far cry from the days of Californian love and peace in low-rent communes. Increasingly there were security guards amongst the hangers-on, and even the clubs where the bands hung out became exclusive to the celebrities and high rollers.

Those who were there at the time recall the rise in self-centred craziness, and the darkness of mounting despair and alienation. The ‘emotional landscape’ had turned very bleak indeed.

Friday night’s repeated BBC4 documentary, HOTEL CALIFORNIA: LA FROM THE BYRDS TO THE EAGLES (Chris Wilson, 2007) offered a decent enough run through the history of the music business in LA, but made some strange omissions in its erratic little journey, such as no mention of The Doors or Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, who were LA-based megastars and surely impossible to ignore. Maybe Mr Wilson couldn’t get hold of any decent archive film of them.

BBC4’s mammoth evening of music on Friday was pretty engrossing, and a pure joy for not having your head invaded by a single bloody irritating advertisement. BBC4 itself is a pretty interesting phenomenon.

"There are lots of different ways of being intelligent or serious. There are things that are easily recognisable as television with a serious purpose, such as The Proms or world cinema. But other things are just as valuable. Last week we ran a fantastic programme called Hotel California which featured music from The Byrds to The Eagles. It was about music but it was also about culture, social history, politics, the feeling of the time. Our audience adored that."

So said the channel’s controller, Janice Hadlow, in an interview in the Indy last year: Welcome To The Sanctuary.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bbc4--welcome-to-the-sanctuary-433125.html

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

“There’s a big difference between knowing what’s going on and physically doing something to change it.” - Graham Nash

The main focus of Friday evening on BBC4 was, of course, Neil Young, and what emerged from the hour-long documentary, ‘Don’t Be Denied’, was that NY was always a serious and committed musician, who didn’t give a shit about his image, or cashing in on fame by relentlessly recycling his back catalogue. He was even prepared to alienate audiences by following his muse and performing the music that was currently filling him with passion, even if they were turned off by it and clamored for the ‘hits’. He insisted on speaking of meaningful things. In order to sing something he always needed to feel it. He didn’t give a damn whether his records were commercial or not.

It was Neil Young, of course, who wrote ‘Ohio’ for CSNY in response to the National Guard killing the students - magnificently accusatory and polemical, and how many other artists can claim they made any kind of effort to “speak out against the madness”?

His sense of engagement (and enragement) with what’s happening in the real world burns as brightly today as it did back in the days of the Vietnam protests, as has resulted in him setting up a website, a sort of anti-CNN, anti-Fox news/magazine site, called Living With War Today - LWW.

http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/index.html

On the site read the following article and prepare to be scared, very scared:
MY HOLIDAY WITH JOHN McCAIN

As you read it Mr Young will serenade you with ‘Let’s Impeach The President’.
Alternatively you can enjoy the video version:

http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/letsimpeach_wm.html

The Restless Consumer has been around for some time and is a fantastic song, and is set to a brilliant video at:

http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/therestlessconsumer_wm.html
where you can also download it for free.

You can also catch it on U-Tube:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IEA7wcxjJvw

Includes great images of a silent, smiling Dick Cheney. Pure evil.

Sample lyric:

Don't need no ad machine
Telling me what I need
Don't need no Madison Avenue War
Don't need no more boxes I can see
Covered in flags but I can't see them on TV

Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies

The restless consumer flies
Around the world each day
With such an appetite for taste and grace

People from around the world
Need someone to listen
We're starving and dying from our disease
We need your medicine
How do you pay for war
And leave us dyin' ?
When you could do so much more
You're not even tryin'.

Read the rest here:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/therestlessconsumer.html

It’s hard to imagine anyone feeling more passionate or trying to do more than NY has been doing to combat what the White House has been up to these many years.

Here’s a short video of Neil and the band laying down the track in the studio:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LWI1Wzu-7NE

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

To try to raise some anti-war feeling in the USA in 2006 Neil decided to reform CSNY and take the band out on the road, literally in buses, to perform across the nation. The documentary of the tour, CSNY Déjà Vu, was also screened on Friday, and was pretty arresting stuff.

Was is naivety on the part of the band or was it deliberately provocative to sell tickets to their concerts without advertising the fact that the evening would effectively be an anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Republican rally? Maybe the Republican-voting punters were just too stupid to realise that the whole point of the tour was to rally people against the ‘war on terror’.

There were some stunning shots of Bushites going into a state of total melt-down when the band launched into songs like Let’s Impeach The President. Those good old boys, and their good ladies, wanted to inflict some terrible violence on the band members, but were mostly reduced to yelling, raising the finger, and walking out, ranting and raving. Said one young woman to the camera, following a volley of expletives from her partner, “It was a little political”. Y’all.

But as someone else wrote in a review, “What a rarity - a concert that sent you home thinking, feeling and rocking.”

Here’s the trailer:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GBxrCY980f4&NR=1
http://www.csny-dejavu.com/

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

There’s one of the best-ever covers on Private Eye this week - a real classic:
CORFU! WHAT A STINKER!

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php?showme=1222&

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

Joy and laughter seem to me to be the vital ingredients for a life well lived, and of spiritual intelligence, and though they’re not always on tap, they ought to be accessible at frequent intervals. The question is, what gives joy, what raises our spirits, what produces laughter?

This has been quite a week for Russell Brand, and true to form his column in the sport section of The Guardian yesterday was brilliant. On the surface, not a word about what’s been happening to him personally, even though he begins with this paragraph,

“What a palaver! In a season that I'd already judged to be utterly barmy we have seen another week so hysterical and incomprehensible that I'm beginning to wonder if our country is in the grips of a cosmic fever.”

He then writes about crazy things happening in the world of football, and he concludes,

“In these rare displays, these athletic requiems, the player and the game issue an elation that I've struggled to find in a cathedral or a Caravaggio, so we endure the drab, rain-spattered Sundays, the financial indiscretions, the scandals and the heartbreak because instinctively we know that within this sport there is the potential for grace and redemption and incredible beauty. No matter how insane things become or how far from the truth we are led by histrionics and lies, the truly, objectively beautiful remains untainted.”

By some wonderful coincidence the second series of “Russell Brand’s Ponderland” began on Channel 4 last Thursday, and predictably there were critics who sneered at it and pronounced it unfunny. Like the Guardian’s, for example,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/oct/31/russell-brand-channel4

(check out the variety of readers’ comments at the end of the article, including a pathetic response to these responses by the author of the piece.)

This first episode had him pondering the subject of pets, and he showed a series of clips of total nutters who did things like keep a lion in a garage, dye doves in primary colours, put up with regular assaults from their ‘pet’ dogs and ponies, and at the other extreme have sex with their pets.

This kind of thing is priceless, and had me in tears of laughter. Try to catch it on the C4 website.
Other subjects coming up in series 2 are families, education and class.

If you could do with a quick chuckle or two then try these clips from series 1:

http://www.channel4.com/video/russell-brands-ponderland/

And on Google Video, the whole of the programme on science:

http://www.channel4.com/video/russell-brands-ponderland/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/nov/01/russell-brand This week’s column.
.

Layer 51 Child of our Time; A Revolution in Childhood, and Blue Remembered Hills.

.
Hats off to our blessed BBC again. Last night’s schedule on BBC4 was a brilliant piece of programming. Thank goodness the state of childhood in contemporary Britain is coming under more and more scrutiny.

I was too late getting back from the funeral gathering in Ruislip to watch the 8.00pm programme, Child of our Time, but will catch up with it on BBCi later this evening, or tomorrow. And how great is that? - being able to catch up with great programmes on the Internet, any time you like. (Virgin TV also has it on Catch Up)

A Revolution in Childhood was 90 minutes of discussion by a panel of experts about the preceding programme, and about whether childhood in Britain really is ‘in crisis’.

The most memorable contribution was about the ‘commodification’ of childhood by parents, teachers, and society as a whole. And we all know this is true: many children are deprived of experiences that adults regard as merely ‘play’ or a ‘waste of time’, and only allowed experiences that adults regard as ‘investments’ with a clear ‘pay off’ in terms of their contribution to measureable achievement or attainment.

The most memorable statistic concerned the numbers of children who are allowed to play outside the home or the garden these days. Hardly any. And virtually none are allowed to venture beyond their own street. In other words, children have no freedom. They’re deprived of a human right. All in the name of their own safety and well-being. And who’s to say this is wrong?

Does it matter? Of course it bloody matters.

I recall the freedom and fun of my own childhood. I went to school on foot, on my own. I went to the shops on my own. I walked to and from the shops through a corner of the local woods that adjoined the estate, that were full of bluebells in the Spring.

We roamed freely throughout the estate, and sometimes beyond, especially when we reached the stage of having bikes. There were various parks, playgrounds and open spaces, and we used them all, from breakfast to tea time. We played cowboys and Indians with guns and bows and arrows, in and out of the shrubberies, across the open plains, and all around the great lakes - or ponds, as our parents called them. It was brilliant.

We didn’t go to music tuition, or have music tutors come to our homes. We didn’t have tutors coming to our homes for extra maths and English. We didn’t go to swimming classes, judo, dance, drama, or after-school playgroups.

We didn’t have computers or multi-channel colour TVs in our bedrooms (or our homes).

Yes folks, we were deprived. Except . . .

We had freedom, and fun, and we were allowed to play, just play, unsupervised. We had our human rights. We had our imaginations, and our freedom to create - dens, hideouts, go-carts, tents, ‘track’ bikes.

The unsupervised bit was important, as the programme highlighted. These days adults - parents and teachers alike - assume they need to be more or less constantly in attendance on children, ready to butt in and intervene at the first sign of disharmony, and at great cost to the emerging social and emotional intelligence of the children.

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

A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896

Into my heart on air that kills

Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Blue Remembered Hills is a unique TV drama written by Dennis Potter, the blessed Dennis Potter, in 1979. Adult actors dress up in shorts, knee length socks, tank tops, snake buckle belts and braces and play the roles of children, playing and freely roaming in the fields and woods of rural Shropshire. I remember well watching it when it was first broadcast - the sheer audacity of this innovative drama, and its incredible insight into the world of children with all its cruelty, naivety, hilarity and pathos.

Well done BBC for thinking to broadcast it again near the end of this evening about childhood.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/housman.html
http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/potter/bluehill.htm

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

The final programme of the evening was a rendition of Shostakovich’s Symphony #10 featuring Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. (Shostakovich - crazy name, crazy guy.)

It seems a quarter of a million children are currently learning to play a musical instrument in Venezuela, thanks to The System.

Young children are given a musical instrument of their choice, and allowed to play around with it, get to know it, and experiment with getting sounds out of it. If they like the instrument and want to keep it, and if they’re keen to learn how to play it, then they’re given free tuition.

As soon as a child attains some level of proficiency then they’re encouraged to share what they can do with absolute beginners. Skills are cascaded from peer to peer.

If they don’t like their instrument and can’t make progress with it then they can chop it in for a different one. And so on. Brilliant.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/15/MNGS4N006J1.DTL&feed=rss.education

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

There’s a guy who works with inner-city kids in a part of South London where there’s an epidemic of gangs and stabbings, who teaches them to play brass instruments from about the age of 8. Lets call him Fred. As soon as the kids can play a few notes they become part of a brass band. The band is funded by a charity, and the lessons are free.

Fred says that his life was changed forever the day someone gave him a trumpet and he discovered he could play notes on it as well as all the kids who were academically successful. In fact he could play better then the ‘bright’ kids.

Hugh Massakela tells the same story, only his was set in South Africa, and the guy who gave him the trumpet was Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, of anti-apartheid fame.

http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/solidarity/huddlebio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Masekela


We’re still working towards equal opportunities in our country. We’re still feeling the effects of the abolition of free music lessons in most State schools. We no longer consider there’s time for learning to play instruments during the school day in most of our test-oriented, target-chasing State schools. Learning to play an instrument is either an optional extra, or just not an option at all.

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

Recently a good friend of mine told me about an encounter she’d had with a very large, very tall young man in a school playground where she was collecting her child at the end of the day.

The young man politely introduced himself as someone she had had the misfortune to try to teach at a time in his young life when he was pretty much unteachable. Many’s the day she was almost reduced to tears of despair.

This guy was desperate to be a footballer, but unfortunately he was not very good at it. He went through secondary school making himself and other people very unhappy, because he couldn’t take what the school was offering, and the school couldn’t give him what he needed.

But there came a day when someone invited him on to a basketball court, put a ball in his hands, and he suddenly discovered he could dribble, pass and shoot better then anyone else. Bingo.

He got better and better, keener and keener, and grew and grew in confidence and self esteem. He soon applied for and was given a scholarship to learn how to be a basketball player in an American university. He’s now studying for a degree, and doing well with a whole range of subjects.

He apologised to my friend for the hard times he’d given her. She apologised to him for the way in which the education system had let him down for so many years, and very nearly condemned him to a lifetime of failure.

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

Not all of the BBC’s brilliant output is serious, educational and informative.

The News Quiz on Radio 4 this evening was back to its very best, like it was in the Linda Smith day. The blessed Linda Smith, dearly departed, far too young.

Have I Got News For You this evening was also superb - incredibly funny. Some of it trenchant satire, lots of it lightning-fast wit and word-play. Fabulous.

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

Bo Diddley died this week. The blessed Bo Diddley, instigator of chugging, hollering rhythm and blues, inspiration to hundreds of singers and guitarists, including the Animals, who did a whole song about him on a mid-sixties album, a track called The Story of Bo Diddley. RIP, dear Bo.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-diddley3-2008jun03,0,5485671.story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhuEV17YZes

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=e4654e1b-ea07-41f5-ab79-a9cf1f74a438

The blessed John Peel was back on BBC TV this evening as presenter of Rock Family Trees, just his voice - his unique voice, his dry wit and his deadpan delivery. I miss him so much. Someone else who made a major contribution to the culture of the nation and the enjoyment of millions. Someone who was loved by those millions, who died far too young.

A wonderful late-night BBC4 programme to end the day - an hour of the blessed Mark Lawson talking to Alexei Sayle - enfant terrible and pioneer of ‘alternative’ comedy. I love his new relaxed intellectual “Marxist Father Christmas with a foul mouth” looks and persona - “I just think we should make the world a better place”. Amen to that.

He’s someone else who says, “God bless the BBC”.
And he still maintains that it’s all about “Satisfaction with yer werk”, and not popularity as such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Sayle

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

And finally . . .

More synchronicity. Yesterday I cleared a batch of old tax discs out of the holder in my car. About seven years’ worth. This evening’s ‘guest publication’ on Have I Got News was Velologist Magazine. Velology is the collection and categorisation of expired tax discs. People pay money to have them in their collection. Weird.

Having recently mentioned Parade magazine in a blog I then discovered that people pay up to £40 a pop for old copies of this terrible little mag. Weird. Wonder what a tax disc is worth.

Layer 45 Voices, Time and the Floyd

.
This is a double blog, as I won’t have time to write one tomorrow.

Wonderful Radio 4 today featured a writer, a novelist, I’ve never heard of - Kate Mosse. The interviewer mentioned that Kate has created a very good website, on which she has a whole section of advice for writers.

http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/intro.asp

He website also has very interesting interactive section, like a blog, where she shares what she’s doing as a writer whilst she’s actually working on a novel - the idea being that she gets feedback from a certain section of her readership as she’s writing her next novel, which affects the way she’s writing it.

This is pretty much what I’ve been saying to friends about my enthusiasm for blogging - if everyone comments on everyone else’s blog it really helps to generate new ideas, helps to refine your previous writing, etc. The interactivity is crucial.

I guess in years gone by when people had no telephones, let alone email, if they wanted to share their thoughts and their lives with good friends then they pretty much had to write letters - lots of them. These days we can just publish blogs - letting the whole world know what we’re thinking and doing, or just letting a select readership have access to our journals, and giving them a means of instantly feeding back.

I have several good friends who are good writers, though most of them have yet to officially publish anything. Some of them annoy the living daylights out of me because they are so talented and such good writers, and yet they make little or no time in their busy lives for blogging or writing a journal, or whatever.

They all recognise that the process of putting their thoughts into writing is incredibly enriching, like a meditation. And yet they don’t have the drive or the energy to do it, at least not regularly. Or maybe they don’t think it’s worth the effort, or maybe they have misgivings about sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings, and don’t see the point of keeping a journal that’s pretty much for their eyes only.

I’m now fascinated by the thought that the thing we might miss the most about somebody we don’t see frequently is their voice - meaning their unique perception, their take on the world, their way of expressing themselves, their sense of humour, their original thinking, and so on.

And the more I think about this the more I feel angry that our schools don’t recognise that this is the most important thing we can do for children - to help them realise that they have an individual voice, an individual take on the world, a unique perception, which they need to recognise and learn how to express to the full.

It’s all very well learning to enjoy the individual voices of great writers, through reading them as often as possible. But children usually take in an implicit message that only the voices of published writers are interesting and important and valid - i.e. their own voice is extremely unimportant and invalid. In fact they don’t even understand the concept of having an individual voice.

I remember coming across Harold Rosen’s efforts to address this issue back in the seventies, through his work as a secondary school teacher and researcher. And subsequently his son Michael’s continuation of this work, especially in books like Did I Hear You Write?

I remember my own time as a teacher, returning from a day’s outing with my class, and hearing them ask the dreaded question, “Do we have to write about it?” Well no, they didn’t. It took me only a few minutes to scribe on the board their recollections of the actual events of the day. What was the point of 25 - 30 children all writing a useless list of “We did this, and we did that; we went there, and we saw this, and we had our packed lunch . . . “

All that I asked of them, in return for a brilliant day visiting exciting new places, was to write down their individual impressions of their experiences. What was interesting? What was exciting? Funny? Scary? Puzzling? And then, having written their individual thoughts and feelings, their responses and their conclusions, they loved listening to one another read out their pieces. Lots of appreciation and laughter. Which then inspired another burst of writing - “Oh yes! I’d forgotten about that! That’s what I thought as well! I need to write about that!”

They soon learnt that what’s important in the process of learning is not so much recording the facts as recording their individual take on the facts, which is as true for a science experiment or the discovery of a new maths concept, as it is for a geography or history or art or geology field trip.

Being able to examine and reflect on our own unique and individual thoughts is a vital part of living and learning - about ourselves and about life in general.

It’s a waste of time being an individual human being unless we enjoy our individual humanity, and the individuality of others. Unfortunately our school system doesn’t care for developing children as individuals, and certainly not as individual writers, and it claims it has no time to do so, as it rushes each day to cover the ‘curriculum’ and prepare for tests.

A cracked record? Moi?

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

Time and the Floyd.

Last night was Pink Floyd night on BBC4. A whole evening of brilliant TV, and music, and without a single advert. Pure magic.

The story of the Floyd is a fascinating one. There are so many elements that make their story so unusual. They were a unique band to begin with, thanks to Syd Barrett. I hadn’t fully appreciated what a strange, wonderful, courageous, charismatic and brilliant human being he was in those early days, before he lost his mind. I hadn’t realized either how much his talented peers had loved him, and how much they had missed him, both personally and musically, after he’d gone off with the fairies.

His whole spirit was unique, iconoclastic, anarchistic. And the band therefore didn’t give a damn about fashion and trends and commercialism. Sure, they wanted recognition and appreciation, but not as individual egos. It was all about the music, and what they had to say about life, the universe and everything.

I remember well their early days - the incredible live shows they performed just after “Arnold Layne” - coming into the mod haven of Coventry Locarno on the back of their chart hit, and playing unbelievable spaced out music that was nothing like Arnold Layne and nothing like anything anyone had ever heard; playing in semi darkness, with a liquid light show projected over the entire stage.

The audience wasn’t stoned, as such, but it sure felt that way. I guess people either loved it or hated it. Either you got it or you didn’t. I guess quite a few of my mod mates might have been unhappy that it wasn’t an evening of Arnold Layne type ditties, and headed off to the bar. I didn’t really notice anyone else. I was too wrapped up in the music and the performance. These guys were the house band of the incomparably trendy and freaky UFO Club, for chrissakes. Not that I’d ever smoked a joint, let alone taken LSD.

Arnold Layne, though untypical, was itself a great song. I still have a pristine 45 rpm copy of it. Such wry humour, such a strange thing to write a song about. Someone’s strange hobby. Collecting clothes. Moon shine, washing line. A see-through mirror. "He dug it". Lyrics and a tune you could never forget.

http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/p/pink_floyd/arnold_layne.html

That was the beginning of a lifelong fascination and appreciation, right through to my current enjoyment of David Gilmour’s ‘On An Island’, and his band’s brilliant performances of ‘High Hopes’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’ on the DVD. Nobody else plays and sings like that. The Floyd completely stole the show when they invited Roger Waters back to perform at Live8 in Hyde Park in 2005. Which would have happened with or without Waters.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/06/30/bmfloyd30.xml

Their very early stuff, though immature and relatively amateurish, on account of them being non-musicians (apart from Rick Wright), was totally original, totally off the wall. They maintain, perhaps a little tongue in cheek, that they weren't good enough as musicians to copy or imitate what other bands were doing, so they didn't. Following Syd's example they weren’t afraid to experiment, and improvise, and jam. Their gigs were all about improvisation and jamming. Nobody had ever seen or heard anything like it. And this was before Dave Gilmour joined the band.

By the time I saw them in Manchester in 1969, at a college gig, they were on their way to becoming megastars, and Gilmour was a well-established member. The light show was projected all along one side of the hall by now, as well as all over the stage area. They had well and truly mastered their instruments, and the stage was filled with their gear - a huge drum kit, amps, speaker units, even kettle drums and a gong.

Their catalogue of tracks by now included Astronomy Domine; Careful With That Axe, Eugene; Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun; and A Saucerful of Secrets. All of which are immortalized on the great live album recorded at that Manchester College of Commerce gig in June 1969 - Ummagumma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ummagumma

Coincidentally I was also at the first ever live performance of Floyd's Atom Heart Mother at the legendary Bath Festival in Shepton Mallet in 1970, but that’s another story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Festival_of_Blues_and_Progressive_Music_1970

I also remember standing in the amphitheatre in Pompeii in the mid ‘80s and picturing the Floyd playing there, performing the amazing track Echoes from their album ‘Meddle‘, in Live At Pompeii. They showed clips from that last night on the TV, including shots of them strolling around the rim of Vesuvius, which is indeed an amazing experience. Awesome!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd:_Live_at_Pompeii

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2hFZ8KnsSo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sein6WnbY0

You can get a flavour of the film from the comment on the youtube video, posted by StripeyElephant - "Holy fuck this is the best thing I've ever seen."

My own favourite part of it is the middle section, where the camera tracks slowly around huge menacing black stacks of speakers - studying an unbroken black wall of speaker units, with protruding horn units looking like military grenade launchers, about to lob sonic bombs around the deserted amphitheatre. Roger Waters' bass thunders and throbs its incessant pulse

Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum

followed and accompanied by Gilmour's howling, wailing, pleading guitar; soaring and wrenching your spirit, demanding you go with it to some otherworldly place in his emotional universe, accompanied by Rick Wright's vibrating rotating wail of electronic organ and Dave Mason's precision drumming and splashing smashing cymbals. I still find electrifying the moment when Gilmour first cuts into the bass drone with the nastiest bluesiest most jagged chord imaginable, whipped into some previously unknown sonic dimension by his incredible mass of electronic gadgets and effects.

(There may be little point playing this video unless you're able to pump it through a good sub-woofer setup or some good headphones)

You may like to know that, according to an old book of mine about guitar players, Gilmour used to use (pre digital and Midi) an effects board consisting of a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, an MXR Phase 100, a Dynacomp noise gate, a Uni-Vibe, a Pete Cornish Custom Fuzz, a Jim Dunlop Cry Baby, and three sweep pedals. "This new state of the art board had sophisticated revolutionary switching capabilities - each effect could be individually by-passed or configured in any sequence, and there were three outputs for various amps." On the other hand, this may be too much information.

The centrepiece of last night’s broadcast was a documentary about the making of Dark Side of the Moon, which is now seen as their magnum opus, and which they are quite rightly extraordinarily proud of.

It was so interesting to find out that it was made in the Abbey Road studios, pre-computers and digital recording, and the sonic effects were all done on an early sequencer and using tape loops set up on banks of reel to reel tape players. Of course! And of course nobody else had ever tried to work in this way. Nobody else was so experimental and innovative.

Roger Waters’ lyrics might now be viewed as typically ‘angry young mannish’ (as he does himself), but he was able to encapsulate perfectly in words what so many of us were feeling in the aftermath of post-60’s disillusionment - feeling about materialism, about the rat race, about the lack of sanity in the world, about militarism, about mortality, about religion, and about ‘hanging on in quiet desperation’. Lyrics that were not wordy, lyrics that were economical and evocative and precise.

The programme told the story of how Clare Torry came to perform her incredible improvised wordless vocal over Rick Wright's brilliant ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’. They described how their old mate Dick Parry was invited to play his wonderful sax pieces on ‘Us and Them’ and ‘Money’. They also told the story of how the strange rambling voices and the manic laughter were specially recorded for the album.

I first heard Dark Side of the Moon lying beside a log fire in a darkened room in the house of a VSO teacher in Northern Nigeria in 1973. In the context of the time, and having just a week ago emerged from the Heart of Darkness, so to speak - from the jungles and rivers of Zaire and Central Africa - it was an unforgettable and mind-blowing experience.

Just listening to some new music on some good quality hi-fi would in itself have been mind blowing after all the time I'd been without it, after all those weeks of traveling across the Serengeti, through the mountains of Rwanda, and along the mud roads of the central African rainy season. Coming into contact with the Dark Side in those circumstances was a breathtaking sonic culture shock and mind-fuck of the first magnitude.

Dave Gilmour says in the documentary that he only wishes that he’d been able to have the experience of hearing the album for the first time, from start to finish, completely ‘out of the blue’. Well Dave, I can tell you, listening to it in its entirety in the stoned darkness of an African evening in front of a flickering log fire was spine-tinglingly overwhelming and incredible. And for that, many thanks.

It says something for the quality of the documentary and the strange brilliance of the band and their music that even my son, no lover of rock or the sixties or psychedelia, sat with me and watched it all through, even though he was dog tired after a double shift at work. There’s hope for him yet! He’s a wonderful young man, but has a lot to learn about music, which, by the way, he seems to have stopped listening to. He’s reached a hiatus. The day he plays and enjoys one of my precious vinyl albums on my turntable I’ll know he’s getting fully on message and fully on track.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398868/

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Having just re-listened to 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene', I'm still amazed by the insane power of Roger Waters' diabolical screaming, and recall vividly the effect of it during live shows. Thrilling, scary and and somehow liberating. I didn't realise at the time that you were allowed to be so full-on crazy and anarchic in public - so utterly emotionally over the top. If you were standing close to the stage it was as disturbing and disorienting as witnessing The Who smashing their instruments.

Sure, it was wild and anarchic and pointless and childish, perhaps. But then isn't this what art is supposed to be about, at least some of the time? Delving into our innermost darkest thoughts and feelings, and expressing them, in words, images, colour, movement and sound. As I say, a kind of liberation.

It's interesting that Michelangelo Antonioni was so determined to have this track in 'Zabriski Point', and I well remember what a controversial movie that was when it was first released.

And going back to Romeo and Juliet (see Layer 31) there an interesting image in Romeo's response to being told "From Verona thou art banished" -

"There is no world without Verona walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence banished is banish'd from the world,
And world's exile is death; then 'banished'
Is death misterm'd. Calling death 'banished,'
Thou cutt'st my head off with a golden axe,
And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.

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

One final thought, Let Pink Floyd be an inspiration to all fledgling musicians and writers - don't be put off your desire to be creative and expressive by a lack of technical training and know-how. Don't worry about not being able to do what others can do. Do your own thing, create in your own way using whatever skills and abilities you have, and enjoy whatever you do. Be original and then you can't be judged by conventional standards. Start a new genre of your own perhaps. And the more you do it the better you'll become.
.