Why I voted Labour

Please don't splutter until you've heard me out.

In the first place, my vote had no chance of making any difference between 1984, when I came here, and 2010. Local demographics made this a rock-solid safe seat for Labour.

My first MP here was Roy Hattersley, and because it was safe, he made no local effort that I noticed. The only time I even heard his voice was in 1997 when he got his peerage and cruised the neighbourhood in a Tannoy car saying, in effect, "So long, and thanks for all the fish". Doubtless he did good work for his Party, possibly for the country, but I couldn't say he "represented" me.

He was succeeded by Labour's Roger Godsiff, who moved over when the then-safe Small Heath constituency was abolished. Again, he could count on most people's vote here, if not mine. So he stood and won in 1997, 2001 and 2005. In the latter year, he got a scare when George Galloway's Respect Party ran a fairly close second, and moved over to neighbouring Hall Green for GE 2010 when the boundaries were again redrawn. The Respect candidate pursued him but failed by a wider margin than before, and he's been comfortably returned a couple of times since.

Had I voted for Labour, I'd have got Labour; had I voted against Labour, I'd have got Labour.

What I actually did, in '97 and '05, was vote UKIP. For me it's always been about sovereignty, but of course if you are on Facebook you'll know that Ukippers are... [fill in long list of slurs]. Social media make me doubt the wisdom of a democratic system, to the extent that we have one [as Winston Churchill said, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."]

2001 was different: by then I was convinced that Tony Blair was dangerously mad, so I voted Conservative for the first time in my life - merely to send the tiniest squeak of a message, and I'm sure it went entirely unnoticed.

The reorganisation of constituencies for GE 2010 set the cat among the pigeons. For the first time ever, I had candidates doorstepping me. Only two - Labour and Liberal Democrat, but that's two more than in the previous 26 years. The Labour fellow was clearly not the sharpest knife in the box and when he asked me about key issues and I said Europe, he tried to tell me that we had voted to join the EU in 1975. When I corrected him (we had voted to remain in the EEC) his female minder smirked at her pet's ignorance.

The LibDem asked the same question, got the same answer and his expression changed - oh dear, I was one of those. [Later, when he was my MP, he replied to one of my emails to assert that Parliament was indeed sovereign. I still don't know whether he actually believed that.] In any case, UKIP got my worthless vote yet again.

During this fellow's tenure, I spent some 18 months trying to get him to ask a question at Prime Minister's Question Time. Now like Dicken's Mrs Jellyby,  he was full of enthusiasm for all sorts of worthy liberal causes, but a one-minute question? No. Perhaps it was the fact that I wanted to ask when the Government was going to make inflation-proofed savings certificates available again, having withdrawn them as almost the first act of the Conservative-LibDem Coalition; the question would have been a potentially embarrassing litmus test of the Government's attitude to small savers and its commitment to contain inflation. So instead I got two Treasury Minister letters, both of them full of irrelevant waffle.

So much for representing me.

2015: UKIP for me again, but Labour regained the seat, probably as the electorate turned away from the LibDems in disgust at their complicity in the Conservatives' locally unpopular policies.

But what I got this time was a feisty local lass who actually polled her constituents before this year's GE to get their views on Brexit and the Single Market (actually four markets, all more or less damaging to our interests, but that's another story) - and reported back.

Imagine: an MP who makes an effort! [And one who told Diane Abbott to eff off, and when asked what the latter's response had been, said... she'd effed off.]

So I voted for her, this time.

Now she's also not a fan of Jeremy Corbyn (see last link), though even Peter Hitchens can understand why people might have turned to JC despite the increasingly hysterical Press campaign against him:

"It struck me as I watched him that he was far more dangerous than the Tories thought he was. His absolute courtesy and refusal to make personal attacks appealed to many in my generation who remember a different and in some ways better Britain.

"His realisation that George Osborne’s supposed economic miracle was a sham, and that many have lost hope of getting steady, well-paid jobs or secure homes, appealed to the young. He may not have any actual answers to these questions, but he at least knew they were being asked. His absolute opposition to the repeated stupid wars of recent years also has a wide appeal, in many cases to conservative-minded people and Service families sick of the waste of good lives."

Too right, especially on the last. [And as for the terrorists' friend stuff - who brokered the Good Friday Agreement? Not Jezza.] If this has buried New Labour, well and good. Blair and his Goebbels (1) threw away a golden, once in a generation opportunity to reshape our economy in 1997, preferring instead to start fighting the next election the day after the last one. All hail bankers, Russian mobsters and White Van Man. And personally, they did so well for themselves out of doing good for others, did they not?

I've decided that flawed as democracy may be - and more than it need be, seeing the 2011 collusion between the two major parties to prevent electoral reform - we ought to make the most of it. First, by asserting our sovereignty in the face of the empire-building Eurocracy; and then, by choosing politicians who take an interest in their own constituents.

When you vote in a General Election...

- you don't decide the Party leader - we saw that most recently with Gordon Brown and Theresa May
- you don't decide on a legally binding manifesto - Mrs May is even now gutting hers in the light of the election results
- you're merely one of some 70,000 registered voters in any case (2)
- and thanks to the rejection of any form of proportionate or transferable vote, you can't even express a partial approval of a second choice from the list

Perhaps Britain's problems are now insoluble by anyone, but for now, I shall reward with my wretched little votette the candidate who tries hardest to listen.

To quote the great man again: 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.'

__________________________________________________
(1) Truly a nasty character:

"Alastair Campbell, himself a former journalist for the Daily Mirror and Today, earned a reputation as a fearsome handler of the Press when he became Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman. As a poacher-turned-gamekeeper, he knows the tricks of the journalists' trade, but his communication sources also yield him plenty of ammunition to keep the scribblers' heads down when he wants to; and the threat to Marr, via Campbell's blog, came swiftly:

""It was sad to see Marr, perhaps with an eye to a few Monday morning cuttings, feel that he had to raise blogosphere rumours about Gordon going blind, or being on heavy medication of some sort. I know it will give him the passing satisfaction of pats on the back from journos … But it was low stuff. I'm sure Andrew would agree that everyone has certain areas of their life that they'd prefer not to be asked about live on TV."

"That's how it works, and that's why people in Mr Marr's position need to tell the truth and shame the devil, for otherwise the devil will know how to build on the weakness."

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/private-life-public-life.html

(2) Though I note with unholy joy the upset in Kensington as a quango queen with a misplaced sense of entitlement lost her seat by 200 votes. "The only mention of Lady Borwick that crept into my Facebook feed during the weeks before the vote related to her campaigns in defence of the antique trade," says Josie Cox in today's The Independent.

SUNDAY MUSIC: The Jazz Singer Part 2, by Wiggia

As I said in Part One, the likes of Sinatra will not have a place here, not because they shouldn’t be but simply because they require a piece on their own and they have been covered in depth for what seems like forever. I could add little to the many excellent biographies on the likes of Sinatra, Bennett and Nat King Cole, or little to their music, which is available in bucket loads everywhere, rightly so.

What I wanted to do was in this second part was to showcase some less well-known artists and some from the current era. The last is difficult as jazz singing for males (as opposed to females) is almost a lost art. Why I know not, other than alternative forms probably pay a lot more.

We start with one or two not-so-new artists.

The late Jimmy Scott (1925 – 2014) is unusual for one special reason: “His unusual singing voice was due to Kallmann syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that limited his height to 4 feet 11 inches (150 cm) until the age of 37, when he grew by 8 inches (20 cm). The syndrome prevented him from reaching puberty and left him with a high voice.“

Scott became prominent as the lead singer with Lionel Hampton and had a top R&B hit with Hampton in 1950 with Everybody's Somebody's Fool - for which he received no credit ! His career faded in the late sixties and he returned to more mundane work for quite a long period.

His career was kickstarted in ‘91 after singing at a funeral. In ‘92 his album All the Way was put forward for a Grammy award and several successful albums followed, some crossing into more popular areas. In his 65 year career he performed with many of the greats of the period: Parker, Marsalis, Sarah Vaughan, Mingus, Hampton, Bud Powell, Quincy Jones and more.

This is the best version available of his own composition “Holding Back the Years” (the live versions do not have the sound quality):



Andy Bey was allegedly Coltrane's favorite singer. Born in ‘39 he started out as a singer pianist and appeared on Connie Francis' television show Startime. At seventeen he started his own trio with his two sisters called, inevitably, Andy and the Bey Sisters, who toured Europe as a group  for 16 months. Later he did some good work with Horace Silver and Garry Bartz and Dee Dee Bridgewater, and won the best jazz vocalist for 2003, and his album American Song was forwarded for a Grammy in 2005.

A wide ranging baritone voice is put to good use here with Never Let Me Go from the American Song album. He always reminds me of being a male Sarah Vaughan or Abbey Lincoln, which can’t be bad:



Difficult to believe that Mark Murphy who died in ‘15 was 83; like so many, he seemed to us as we get older to be a contemporary - worrying !

Another from a musical family, he learned the piano at seven and joined his brother's jazz dance group as the singer. He majored at uni in music and drama and performed on campus. After moving to NY in ‘54 he did work where he could find it as an actor and singer. His debut album for Decca, Meet Mark Murphy, sold well and he then moved to LA recording for Capitol before returning to NY and Riverside Records. His best jazz albums, Rah! (1961) and his favourite album That's How I love the Blues (1963), were for that label.

Between ‘63 and ‘72 he lived in England, working mainly as an actor, though still singing in clubs and on radio. He returned to the States where he recorded an album a year for fourteen years. In the mid-eighties there was a change in direction as he started to record Brazilian-based music. He continued to work into his eighties.

Stolen Moments:



Of all the more contemporary singers Kurt Elling stands out as the one who has in a word cracked it. He started in a family with church music and learned to play several instruments, he sang in his college choir and toured with them and became interested in jazz after hearing Brubeck, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock and Ella Fitzgerald.

At the start in Chicago he had to work part time as a barman and other jobs to pay the bills. In ‘95 he put together a tape of nine songs that he sent to Blue Note records where his debut album Close Your Eyes was nominated for a Grammy. He did a total of six albums for Blue Note then signed for Concord in 2006 where he remains today.

Elling has been the jazz singer in modern times. His poll-winning and awards are up there with the best. His delivery, smooth sound and timing are unquestionably spot on, but for me there has always been something missing. Is it the fact almost every number he sings sounds the same: the same tempo, the same delivery? This number is his most acclaimed and here he sings with the Sydney Orchestra. It makes no difference that he is not with a small jazz group as it sounds the same, very accomplished, but judge for yourselves:



A couple of lesser-knowns to finish. Well known in jazz circles but in the wide world outside not so much, Kevin Mahogany: his Wiki entry is quite short so a link is better than retyping parts on here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mahogany

A big man with a voice near to Joe Williams' (an insider's favourite), here he is live in ‘91 singing My Foolish Heart/Green Dolphin Street with the Ray Brown Trio:



Sachal Vasandani is not a well-known name over here. Born in Chicago in ‘78 he studied at the University of Michigan where he studied jazz and classical music. Originally he sang with Wynton Marsalis. His first album Eyes Wide Open was a success and his second in ‘09 We Move received critical acclaim; he also composes.

No More Tears:



What strikes me from the last three, and it is a purely personal view, is that there is little excitement. It is all very polished, crafted and delivered in a fault free style; there is none of the range put out by the likes of Torme or Sinatra and others. It is almost monotone, and maybe that is why the male jazz singer at this moment in time is in hibernation. We await someone who will get the old mojo going; at the moment, that is not likely.

Yet again, a victory for the wacko voting system

Labour got 262 seats out of the 650 in Parliament, on the basis of 40% of votes cast nationally. 40% of 650 seats is 260, so the actual result is a fair approximation, this time.

But although the Conservatives polled 42.4%, which proportionally should have given them 276 seats, actually they got 318 = 42 bonus Members of Parliament! 

So now they're getting back into bed with Ulster Protestants to make a workable coalition. What effect that will have in Northern Irish politics, who knows.

The system doesn't even work within individual constituencies, as I discussed six years ago*. In the 2005 General Election, only 220 MPs out of 650 obtained a majority of votes cast by their constituents; in 2010, only 217.

I expect it will turn out to be a similar picture when the results of this fiasco become available.

No wonder the inhabitants of The Bubble hate plebiscites like the EU Referendum; they're so used to gaming the usual rotten setup.

* http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/voting-reform-av-first-past-post.html

FRIDAY MUSIC: Billy Cowie, by JD

Some years ago I bought a CD called "La Chanson Bien Douce" which featured the poetry of Paul Verlaine set to music by Billy Cowie and sung by Cathryn and Lucie Robson. It is a beautiful and haunting record but I know very little about the artists involved. I have found this web site for Billy Cowie- http://billycowie.com/ and not much else.

But I have also found a wonderful and quirky selection of his music and dance choreography, including two songs from the aforementioned CD.

"Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again."

William Shakespeare - The Tempest

SUNDAY MUSIC: The Jazz Singer

Al Jolson gives the title to this piece. Jolson and his climb from a child circus entertainer to the world's most popular entertainer is a story told on film and looked back upon in distaste today for performing in “blackface”, for those who believe he was in some way disrespectful of black people by some form of cultural appropriation; a label the progressives would love to and have hung on his memory, but they should read his life story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jolson to see how ridiculous their claims are.

Jolson was not a jazz singer in modern terms, yet was the man who recognised the format of singing what came into your head as opposed to that written down as "jazz", a new word in those early days: the development of the blues into other forms of music.

This the most famous of his performances is now remembered for all the wrong reasons but in it - and this was 1927 - you can hear the elements of early jazz singing:



Virtually all the early jazz singers came from a blues background or interpreted blues in their repertoire. Louis Armstrong is often quoted as a jazz singer, and he was, but much of his singing was a leftover from the Jolson days in many respects. As an addition to his trumpet, part of the “entertainment” and in many ways more gratuitous in performing as a very obvious black man to white audiences, it didn’t harm his career but in retrospect it can be a bit cringeworthy to watch the act.

Joe Williams is always associated with the Basie band and quite rightly so as it was a match made in heaven. He sang with other big bands before Basie. Born in the deep South, he was taken to Chicago at an early age and sang in a gospel group in churches before singing with his first bands including Lionel Hampton without great success personally.

In 1950 he was singing in a club when Basie heard him. Their association lasted from ‘54 through to ‘61 and this was the period when “Number One Son” as Basie called him sprang to national prominence. After Basie, with whom he remained good friends, he toured,  performed and recorded as a solo artist and with various musicians and bands. He also had a regular television appearances and was in two films with Basie, plus the Crosby Show and Sesame Street. He worked on a regular basis until his death in Las Vegas in 1999 at the age of 80.

Here, inevitably with Basie, he sings his most influential song, one that saw him inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in’92 as having significant influence in jazz: Everyday I have the Blues, at a Basie reunion in ‘81 at Carnegie Hall:



Before Joe Williams, Jimmy Rushing sang with Basie for thirteen years from ‘35 - ‘48 and was considered by many to be the best of all blues singers. Another from a musical family, he was unusual in that he attended college where he studied musical theory and then went to university.

Here is "Mister Five by Five", with the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1958:



John Coltrane wanted to make this album, no hard be bop here, and choose Johnny Hartman to sing on this album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. It was the only vocal album Coltrane ever did, recorded as it would be at the time at the Rudi Van Gelder studio in 1963 it became an instant success and a jazz classic. Why Hartman never had a higher profile in music is a mystery; a voice like syrup, wonderful tone and diction, yet apart from this never really appreciated outside those who know better. A superb artist, Hartman till this time did not consider himself to be a jazz singer !

Clint Eastwood gave a more than nodding nudge to Hartman's quality when in ‘95 he included four tracks from Hartman's out of print album Once in Every Life in his film Bridges of Madison County.

This version of My One and Only Love is considered to be the definitive one:



Frank Sinatra is capable of filling several of these pieces with his own work and life. His qualities don’t need repeating, they were there for everyone to see for decades, so I am not including him here. He deserves a lot more space than a single number - and what number, era, backing band would you choose? - but one singer, a contemporary of Sinatra’s who although well known was never quite considered to be in that top drawer by the public, was Mel Torme, the “Velvet Fog”. Torme was a child prodigy performing for money at the age of four (!), was a drummer in his elementary school band and in the same period acted in three separate radio programs. At sixteen his first song that he wrote and was published, “Lament to Love”, was a hit for Harry James; at eighteen he made his film début in Frank Sinatra's first film and his second film at twenty-two, “Good News”, made him a teen idol. In ‘44 he formed the Mel - Tones, the first jazz-influenced singing group.

After the war he started a solo singing career around 1947, became involved in cool jazz and started recording jazz albums in earnest. He never really stopped either, singing, acting, arranging and writing books, one of which contained these words about Patti Andrews of Andrews Sisters fame:

"They had more hit records to their credit than you could count, and one of the main reasons for their popularity was Patty Andrews. She stood in the middle of her sisters, planted her feet apart, and belted out solos as well as singing the lead parts with zest and confidence. The kind of singing she did cannot be taught, it can't be studied in books, it can't be written down. Long experience as a singer and wide-open ears were her only teachers, and she learned her lessons well."

Another book was the biography of Buddy Rich, a friend after they met when Rich was in the Marines in ‘44. In total he wrote 250 songs. How he found time to do all this and then tour the world averaging 200 appearances a year is mind-blowing, but he did. A stroke halted his work in ‘96 and another killed him in ‘99 at the age of 73. I am biased, always have been, but he like Sinatra with his perfect diction has always been my favourite jazz singer.

Here he is with his old mate Buddy Rich performing Love for Sale. It includes two items I normally abhor: drum solos and scat singing; for these two real musical giants, I make an exception.



- and this lovely version of Stardust:



This I include for one obvious reason: not only to show the entertainer and virtuoso that Torme was but also to see another much better side of Dusty Springfield:



Lastly, with George Shearing at Newport in ‘89: “It Was Just One of Those Things”...



I have indulged myself with Torme just a bit but he should have a lot more. He belonged to that group of people who grew up having to learn all the aspects of show business as well as their music. All were great entertainers who seemingly could turn their hand to whatever was required. It was a golden age and as with so much, not likely to return.

Part 2 of The Jazz Singer will follow.

Friday Night Is Music Night: 50 Years Of Sergeant Pepper, by JD

50 years ago! It really doesn't seem like it but it is indeed 50 years since the release of "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The BBC are celebrating the occasion with a series of programmes on TV and radio.

The composer Howard Goodall will be presenting a documentary on the musical significance of this particular record. Writing in the Radio Times he explains why the Beatles' music is so innovative and, more importantly, why it is so good. But it’s these five tracks, he says, that raised the bar the highest:

Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite
She's Leaving Home
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Within You Without You
A Day In The Life

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-05-26/5-songs-on-sgt-pepper-that-changed-pop-forever

But this album didn't just come out of nowhere. They had been exploring new ideas and new sounds for a few years prior to 1967 and the evidence can be heard on some of their singles, notably Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane and in their two previous albums, Rubber Soul and Revolver.

For this selection I have taken three of Goodall's choices and added some others from those two earlier albums.















To fully understand the music and the culture of the sixties this book is essential; Revolution In The Head by Ian MacDonald - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolution-Head-Beatles-Records-Sixties/dp/1844138283

It is a popular misconception that the Beatles were somehow the 'leaders' of the societal upheaval and the revolutionary protests of the sixties but that is just not true.

They were not revolutionary, they were radical which is a different thing entirely. The purpose of a Revolution, any revolution, is to overthrow the existing social and political order and replace it with a new order, to start again from scratch and usually based on some ideal to create some sort of utopia. A radical, on the other hand, will wish to effect change within an existing system because that system is perceived to have become sclerotic in its functioning or the people have become indolent. A radical idea will breathe new life into an existing tradition and tradition is no more than accumulated wisdom.

the English Radical Tradition - http://www.historytoday.com/blog/2014/03/tony-benn-and-englands-radical-tradition

The four Beatles were traditionalists, they were conservative with a small 'c' as can be seen in the first video above where they bow to their audience at the end of the song.

And they were small 'c' conservative in their attitude to the idea of rewards for endeavour (the labourer is worthy of his hire ) which is why Harrison wrote the song Taxman to reflect the 95% that was taken from their earnings by the Government. It wasn't just the sharks of the music industry trying to fleece them, they realised that the Government, then as now, is the biggest shark.



Seeing the 'revolutionary' fervour and the desire of these 'revolutionaries' to 'smash the system' and the obvious anarchic mayhem that would result from such thinking, the Beatles' thoughts were crystallised back to their traditional and conservative roots. They recorded three versions of the song Revolution but the single released in 1968 (as a double A side with Hey Jude) was unequivocal in its condemnation of such upheaval with lyrics including:

"But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out"
"But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait"
"But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"

That couldn't be clearer and the record produced a furious reaction from the intelligentsia of the counter-culture. They accused the Beatles of betrayal! Of what, precisely? MacDonald in his book writes that the 'revolutionaries' all ended up with secure, well-paid jobs in advertising. It would be more accurate to say that the student protestors and the 'peace and love' hippies of the sixties grew up to become the 'greed is good' yuppies of the eighties. As Robert Anton Wilson wryly observed, "It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."



But the music endures. As I noted in a previous post (on art), in 100 years from now all the 'fussing and fighting' will be forgotten and the focus will be on the music because it is not politics which wins hearts and minds, it is art.

Vita brevis, ars longa.

Wine: a Tale of Change and Fashion, by Wiggia

Those of you who believe that wine is a product made by artisans who tend the grapes' every need and sit in the vineyards during the winter talking to the vines and then with love ferment and mature the wine in oak casks before bottling and hand labelling, should look at the above picture.

That is the manufacturing plant of E&J Gallo in Fresno, California, the world's biggest winery! No, it is not an oil refinery.

Wine has been evolving and changing since it was first made - in ancient Greece?*

The acceleration of change in the last twenty or thirty years has been of a different magnitude on all levels. The science employed in the making of wine has matched the new knowledge employed by the winemakers and their ability to overcome indifferent sites and soil as well as temperature changes, and to enhance even further the already good sites.

On top of this the proliferation of countries manufacturing wine, yes it is an industry, now cover ever more areas of the globe. Not only are old forgotten areas being revived but new ones are emerging. All this should bring joy to a wine lover's heart, yet there are caveats.

The fashion in wine styles and the promotion of the next big thing grape-wise has meant in many cases whole areas being ploughed up and replanted to serve that fad. As wine is not produced overnight, and the vines take several years before becoming productive, you are taking a big chance jumping ship for another, and if you don’t move you could be stuck with an oversupply of the wrong wine.

Nowhere is fashion in wine and its downsides more clearly emphasized than in Jerez. The bulk sherry market has collapsed and grape growers are grubbing up vines and planting more profitable crops. Sherry has been struggling for years as has port, even aggressive advertising and assurances it is on the “up” have failed to stop the slide. The only good thing about all this at the moment is that high quality sherries and even vintage port have never been cheaper for those left still drinking them; even in Madeira much of the land growing vines has been lost as the demand dropped. All this is part of a cyclical pattern of drinking tastes and fashion.

None of this applies to those perennial top end regions such as Bordeaux or Burgundy, where demand at this moment in time exceeds supply and the prices correspond with that shortage.

What prompted this piece was an article written for the NYT by Bianca Bosker, a sommelier who in the piece debunks the snobbery against bulk wines and the fads in other areas like the current trendy “natural” wines - along with "bio dynamic" and "organic", these are the buzz words in the wine trade at the moment. "Organic" in its reference to wine is interesting as these days most wines outside of big brands are as near organic as you can get anyway, so no big deal with that on the label; "bio dynamic" is the picking and planting according to the position of stars or moon or something and while quite a few top class wines now claim to be bio dynamic would you really know and could you tell the difference? I think not; and "natural": well, if you plant, cultivate, pick and process the grape, that part is pretty natural by definition.The link to Bianca Bosker's piece is here, it’s a good read, if slightly indulgent:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/sunday/ignore-the-snobs-drink-the-cheap-delicious-wine.html?_r=0

Producing wine is at its most basic agriculture, it’s an agricultural product and all agriculture is governed by the same rules as to site, soil and climate. Even the technical side has infiltrated into growing the humble spud. It is only when the wine maker puts his own stamp and expertise into the product that the differences emerge and for that you need good fruit and a lot of faith.

But this is about the fads and fancies of everyday drinking. Few can afford cru class wines for daily consumption if at all; most will remain financially out of reach whatever our status in life. No, this is about that go-to bottle on the supermarket shelf, the one that may have been transported here in a boat and a giant plastic bag for reasons of finance, as it is cheaper to bottle here than transport in bottle with the added weight - read the link for all the technical “food” expertise that is now put into wine, quite legally. For the big brands, it is no different from being hi jacked in the street to say which is your favourite burger from a choice of six: the favourite goes on the market. There is absolutely no point in the big brands putting out a wine designed by experts and loved by experts if the public doesn’t love it. It is food sampling for the masses.

What the “expert” says about this is usually derogatory and sometimes they are right, but they miss the point: these wines are for the masses, us, and there is absolutely nothing wrong in that.

The problem with that approach is that eventually, as with buying a car, so much research has gone into supplying the “right” product that a uniformity starts to emerge, and where this has become more noticeable than anywhere else, probably, is with Australian wines that are available here. Australia almost single-handedly dragged the everyday wine out of the plonk era and replaced that awful French,  Spanish and Italian bottom end rubbish with a reliable drinkable product, and for that alone we should be eternally grateful.

In my view the problem that Australia now has, having grabbed a large chunk of the world's wine market and especially supermarket wines, is lack of variety, not just in grapes but in what you drink from the bottle. Their industry has been built on the great god Shiraz, 27% of the wine land is planted with the grape, and very well built too, but it is these very wines that now fail to inspire as they universally conspire to be user-friendly and to a large degree, as with so many of the big brands, they are  indistinguishable from one another other than on price. You have to pay an awful lot more now if you want something better. Yes, they do grow Cabernet and other grapes, but Shiraz is what they built their reputation on and that is what the public remember and expect from them. It is changing, but slowly.

The same with New Zealand: having conquered the Sauvignon Blanc world and now attempting to do the same with Pinot Noir they have little to fall back on as other countries muscle in on their patch and some very successfully. So far sales are holding up, yet for how long? as South Africa starts to up its game with other wines besides Chenin Blanc and is making a very good job of it. South America is really making an impact, with Chile’s big wineries making inroads into the bulk market; and Argentina is very well placed, having sold well in the USA with Malbec and now doing the same here and having many fine smaller wineries; and even at this relatively early stage in its wine evolution, Chile is diversifying in the planting of grape varieties. All this of course bodes well for the consumer in the long run, if you are interested in wine; if you are not, it makes no difference.

You will not be pouring your purchase down the sink in disgust as so much was years ago, or you shouldn’t be, so much has the quality of production changed, and as you open another bottle of Wolf Blass Cabernet you will enjoy it as you did the last time. After all, as a "yoof" I consumed indecent amounts of Watney's Red Barrel; that seemed perfectly OK at the time for getting blotto on, no need for a hand-crafted micro brewery beer for that purpose.

In some ways the fashion in wine is interesting. Who could predict the fall from grace in the mass market of Chardonnay, the great white grape of Burgundy? Who could have foreseen the emergence of Pinot Grigio?

And why, when Sauvignon Blanc offered a still better alternative at the same price, why the rise of rosé, when if you were blind you would never know you were drinking one? The colour, almost certainly - another success for fashion and the world of marketing, and as in other arenas such as fashion clothing itself there is nothing wrong with that. In today's world, somebody who has never purchased a bottle of wine in their life can now pick up at a decent price something they will probably enjoy and then return for another. Those wines of old would have had the opposite effect.

The majority of those buyers will never venture far from their chosen bottle. Does it matter? Not a jot, as long as they are happy; and the big brands intend to keep them happy. What I think is irrelevant, and when at your next "barby" the host pours you a fifth or six glass of the red he insists has a slightly mineral taste on the tongue and there is just a hint of herby medicinal after-taste, you can smile and just be thankful it is drinkable and you don’t really care if it was fermented in an upside down yurt. It really doesn’t matter.

More weasel piss, anyone ?

____________________________________________________
*Or Georgia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wine (Ed.)

Sunday Music: the Hammond Organ, by Wiggia

The one thing that can be said about the Hammond Organ is its fall from grace was as quick as its rise. During the sixties several musicians formed groups including this keyboard instrument and Jimmy Smith in particular sold an awful lot of albums for Blue Note during that period.

He wasn’t the first and he wasn’t the only one to front a group using it, but he was the biggest star and the one name that endured in the time since. In modern parlance the Hammond Organ is a Marmite instrument, you like it or don’t and there are few people in between. On a purely personal basis I found it to be wearing for an album of it, but certain numbers can and do come across well, and of course it is out of the mainstream of jazz whilst a mainstay of prog rock, gospel, R&B etc.

Hammond organs were first manufactured in 1935 and the company went out of business in ‘85, so its reign was relatively short though Suzuki Musical Instruments took over the name and are still supplying to various groups in rock and blues and for churches. In jazz it appears infrequently as a backing instrument but rarely now as a lead. And of course the Hammond was an electronic forerunner to the plethora of electronic keyboards used today mainly in rock, though even there digitally produced sounds are taking over.

Jimmy Smith started playing the Hammond in the fifties though the first to start playing jazz on the instrument was one Ethel Smith, but Fats Waller was the prime mover and Count Basie also used it for a period.

If you Google jazz organists quite a list appears but few specialised and few became famous. Besides Smith the obvious candidates were Wild Bill Davis, Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff, Johnny “Hammond” Smith, and Richard “Groove” Holmes, Larry Young and some minor players or occasional ones.

Its jazz base has always been a black one; the black churches did and still do use the instrument, hence the sales of organ jazz have historically been to the black population. It never really took hold with white jazz lovers.

This is Fats in ‘42 playing the Jitterbug Waltz. He had played an earlier pre Hammond organ as far back as the mid twenties but this is an early Hammond recording.


One of Richard “Groove” Holmes' efforts from ‘66 “Living Soul”:


Of the top protagonists Shirley Scott outlasted them all. This, The Blues Ain’t Nothin But Some Pain from her ‘64 Great Scott album was the first time she had sung on record and she wrote this number and words the day before the recording date. For me she is up there with the best, in fact I prefer most of her music even over Jimmy Smith, somehow she makes the organ sit well with other instruments, few do. She was an admirer of Jimmy Smith but in many ways she surpassed him. She died in 2002 having recorded and performed till ‘92 .

Her health began to fail after using the now banned diet drug combination "Fen-phen", which she began taking in 1995. By 1997 she had developed primary pulmonary hypertension as a result of the drugs, and was permanently bed-ridden. She sued the manufacturer and the prescribing doctor, and was awarded a settlement of 8 million dollars in 2000.


This ‘61 rendition of “It Don’t Mean a Thing” from the album Satin Doll recorded by Rudy Van Gelder is as good as it gets from Shirley:


This live number from the Antibes Jazz Festival in ‘64 has “Brother” Jack McDuff leading his own group and the film shows in part the dexterity required to play any organ with its multiple keyboards. McDuff is in the Jimmy Smith mould as you will hear later.


Larry Young has featured with me before and this is from the same ‘65 album Unity. He probably gets his organ nearer to modern jazz than anyone else and this album was voted one of the best in its period. The stellar lineup with Young was Woody Shaw trumpet Joe Henderson tenor and Elvin Jones drums; to me this is the best Hammond album full stop and the about the only one I keep playing after all these years.

Moontrane:


Jimmy Smith has to be here, such a big star for Blue Note in the sixties with those tremendous album covers they did then. He was in all ways very distinctive and very much the showman live.

The Sermon, the title track from the album of the same name is one of his big hits. In ‘64 Jimmy was a big star and for this reason there is some live footage of him in action:


Born in 1925 or 28, there is some dispute over this for reasons I have yet to fathom. He like so many when it came to putting bread on the table joined his father in a song and dance routine in clubs at the age of six, then self taught to play the piano, and at nine won a boogie-woogie contest on that instrument. In ‘48 - ‘49 he went to musical colleges, he began to play the organ then and joined some R&B bands playing piano. He never really left R&B as later in his career he went from hard bop to mainstream jazz funk and jazz fusion.

Smith's popularity dipped along with many others in the jazz fraternity in the 70s but he had a big revival starting in the eighties and toured to much popular acclaim. He then moved with his wife Lola to Arizona in 2004 where soon after she died of cancer. He was found dead of natural causes not long after in 2005 shortly after agreeing to go on tour again.

His pure jazz days (?) were in the 50s and 60s in those Blue Note years; in the 70s Smith opened a supper club in North Hollywood and here he recorded “The 1972 album Root Down, considered a seminal influence on later generations of funk and hip-hop musicians, was recorded live at the club.”


and finish with this from ‘97, Stormy Monday with Kenny Burrel on guitar:


Marmite ?

Friday Night Music: Will Shade's Memphis Jug Band, by JD

Will Shade's Memphis Jug Band

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Shade

That is a really remarkable story and in a way they were the hip-hop or rap stars of the twenties singing about the same things - drugs, cheating spouse, violence, going to jail, brutal cops etc etc

They were also way ahead of their time! Remember Lonnie Donegan and his song "Have a drink on me"? That was adapted from "Cocaine Habit Blues" which I have included here.

Also included here is "Kansas City" which was eventually recorded by just about every blues singer in the US as well as by the future luminaries of the British R&B music scene.

Will Shade helped bring a lot of artists to the mobile recording equipment that was being used by Victor records. One of them was Gus Cannon with a song called "Walk right in!" which, if you recall, was an inescapable record in the early sixties. Shade played on the record also.

It was a very interesting time in the history of American music!














Something different, I'm sure you will agree!

When old is new and new is old

source

An interesting post from Aeon by Nick Romeo draws parallels between Plato's ideas and modern behavioural psychology and economics.

In his essay ‘On Being Modern-Minded’ (1950), Bertrand Russell describes a particularly seductive illusion about history and intellectual progress. Because every age tends to exaggerate its uniqueness and imagine itself as a culmination of progress, continuities with previous historical periods are easily overlooked: ‘new catchwords hide from us the thoughts and feelings of our ancestors, even when they differed little from our own.’

Behavioural economics is one of the major intellectual developments of the past 50 years. The work of the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in particular is justly celebrated for identifying and analysing many of the core biases in human cognition. Russell’s insight, in fact, bears a strong resemblance to what Kahneman calls the availability bias. Because the catchwords and achievements of contemporary culture are most readily called to mind – most available – they tend to dominate our assessments. The fact that Russell’s articulation of this idea is much less familiar than Kahneman’s is itself a confirmation of Russell’s point.

Changes in language and social emphasis tend to obscure the lessons of history, so much so that even common sense has to be relearned under the endless pressure of events. If it ever is relearned of course. There are reasons to doubt that. Romeo continues -

But the richest precedent for behavioural economics is in the works of ancient Greek philosophers. Almost 2,500 years before the current vogue for behavioural economics, Plato was identifying and seeking to understand the predictable irrationalities of the human mind. He did not verify them with the techniques of modern experimental psychology, but many of his insights are remarkably similar to the descriptions of the cognitive biases found by Kahneman and Tversky. Seminal papers in behavioural economics are highly cited everywhere from business and medical schools to the social sciences and the corporate world. But the earlier explorations of the same phenomenon by Greek philosophy are rarely appreciated. Noticing this continuity is both an interesting point of intellectual history and a potentially useful resource: Plato not only identified various specific weaknesses in human cognition, he also offered powerful proposals for how to overcome these biases and improve our reasoning and behaviour.

The whole essay is well worth reading. For example, the paragraph below impinges on a particularly corrosive modern problem where we seem to be losing sight of the personal element in ethical behaviour, where we pay attention to what our minds are doing or not doing when we go with the flow.

It’s rare that contemporary discussions of cognitive biases flow directly into conversations on ethics, pleasure and pain, and the best way to live one’s life. But ancient philosophy did not compartmentalise what are now cloistered academic fields. Plato understood that susceptibility to distorted reasoning was a matter of ethics as well as psychology. This does not mean anything as simple as ‘bad people are more vulnerable to cognitive biases’. But consider his diagnosis of misanthropy and other sampling errors, which stem from ‘the too great confidence of inexperience’. In the Apology, Socrates claims to be wiser than other men only because he knows that which he does not know. When Kahneman writes that we are ‘blind to our blindness’, he is reviving the Socratic idea that wisdom consists in seeing one’s blindness: knowing what you do not know.

Sunday Music: Oliver Nelson, by Wiggia

Although Oliver Nelson had a short life and his pure jazz period - or at least his most productive - was equally short, he left a very impressive legacy to the world of jazz during that time.

Born June 4, 1932 in St. Louis, Oliver Nelson came from a musical family: His brother played saxophone with Cootie Williams in the Forties, and his sister was a singer-pianist. Nelson himself began piano studies at age six and saxophone at eleven. In the late ‘40’s he played in various territory bands and then spent 1950-51 with Louis Jordan’s big band. After two years in a Marine Corps ensemble, he returned to St. Louis to study composition and theory at both Washington and Lincoln universities.

After university he moved in ‘58 to NY and it was here he made a name for himself. After a couple of stints playing in bands he started recording in his own name, but it was the recording in ‘61 that pushed him to the top of the jazz tree with the release of on Impulse of “The Blues and the Abstract Truth”. Not only was the album a big success with its all-star line-up of Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans, Roy Haynes, Paul Chambers and Freddie Hubbard and himself (and was the only time Evans played with him) but it also had the Rudi Van Gelder studio behind it. It was a breakthrough for Nelson and he never looked back.

As an arranger who wrote, conducted and scored for numerous bands and artists he also managed to play brilliantly on alto and tenor sax. During this period to ‘67 he recorded several albums in his own name and under the umbrella of big ensembles. ‘67 saw him move to LA where he was in big demand in the film and TV business and scored wrote arranged for endless films and TV series including Ironside, The Six Million Dollar Man, Columbo and others, plus in the film genre Death of a Gunfighter, Zig Zag being among them and arranged for the music in Alfie and Last Tango in Paris. He also arranged and produced albums for pop stars such as Nancy Wilson, James Brown, the Temptations, and Diana Ross.

During this later period he still found time to appear with his big band and smaller groups, wrote some symphonic pieces and was very engaged in jazz education. All of this led to a very hectic lifestyle and he died suddenly in 1978 of a heart attack aged just 43. It was suggested by some at the time that stress and work load contributed to his demise; a sad loss for a very talented man and musician.

That early period was quite something as the year before Blues and the Abstract Truth album, he had recorded with Eric Dolphy “Screaming the Blues” on Prestige and that was the first of his albums I purchased. Also in ‘61 Eric Dolphy was launched as a solo artist on “Straight Ahead”, another Nelson classic.

Up until his ‘67 move to LA he recorded regularly but after the move much less so as the other side in films and TV took most of his time though a few interesting works emerged.

Here is the title track from Screaming the Blues.

Oliver Nelson: tenor and alto saxophones; Richard Williams: trumpet; Eric Dolphy: alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Richard Wyands: piano; George Duvivier: bass; Roy Haynes: drums:



Stolen Moments from the Blues and the Abstract Truth album is a jazz standard and this album is one of the standout ones alongside Kind of Blue from that period. Everybody who likes modern jazz should have this.



In 1970 he was in Berlin with a big band playing this, Black Brown and Beautiful and soloing on alto, probably his most distinctive instrument.



This is from the Sound Pieces album of ‘66. The album has a variety of group set ups and is to all intents a compilation, but this track has Nelson playing soprano sax - I know JD likes this instrument ! The sound Nelson gets here is extremely pure, a sort of strained sound without that nerve-screeching that can be too much, a unique sound on this instrument and up there with Coltrane as one of the finest proponents of the soprano.

Patterns:



As I said earlier Eric Dolphy was launched to a wider public with this Nelson album Straight Ahead. What the album also shows is that Nelson was never afraid to use different combinations of instruments on the same track, similar in a way to Roland Kirk, Oliver Nelson (alto & tenor saxophones, clarinet); Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute); Richard Wyands (piano); George Duvivier (bass); Roy Haynes (drums), all recorded inevitably at the Rudi Van Gelder studio in 1961.

Straight Ahead, the title track:



This track is from that so fruitful early sixties period, a superb big band in which plays arranges and everything else. The track is “Message” from the album Afro / American Sketches ‘61. It is remarkable that a musician so young, only 29 when this was recorded, should have such a varied body of work already behind him; difficult to think of anyone else who had the same at that age.



And finally from his album Full Nelson ‘63, a big band ensemble containing the likes of Clark Terry, Joe Newman trumpet, Phil Woods and Al Cohn among the saxes and Jim Hall guitar, all arranged and conducted by Nelson and also playing tenor and alto.

You Love but Once:

Assange: balanced reporting, from the Daily Mail

Composition challenge

Read the first article, by "Julian Robinson" here, and complete either of the following tasks:

(a) rewrite it in the style and mindset of the "Daily Mail Reporter" who covered Aung's release here
(b) report Aung's release, with the style and mindset of "Julian Robinson"'s piece about Assange

Note:
Allegedly, "Julian Robinson" is a real person, as evidenced here, and not simply a cover for a CIA black propaganda unit.
______________________________________________________________________________

........

Local Government - incompetent or simply mendacious? By Wiggia

Wiggia describes the frustrations of getting even the simplest things done, in what is supposed to be a democracy:

In line with the rubbish we are all being harangued with from the political parties pre-election, I have been doing a bit of haranguing myself with the local and now it seems the City Council.

I am not alone in this but in the beginning, before the local elections two years ago, I was a lone voice either because of voter apathy, something in a vocal sense that is more prevalent here than in countries the other side of the channel or I had been the only one to spot an announcement in the Lib Dem election leaflet that was not quite right - this is amazingly. at the moment, Lib Dem country.

As with all local election leaflets there is normally a picture of the incumbent councillor standing and pointing at various achievements he has made for the area, usually a covered bus shelter, a resurfaced woodland walk for all and similar.

But what caught my eye was the fact that a traffic calming measure was to be put in place on our road.

Our road has become a bit of a rat run during rush hour and holiday traffic times. It is nearly a mile long and the current traffic calming (put in by people with a total lack of brain) does not work; and as it is never policed, an increasing minority totally ignores it.

The road that was through what was originally a village is very narrow in parts, with some houses on the road and no pavements one side for stretches. This causes several problems whether motoring or on foot.

Back to the leaflet: what was strange about this welcome announcement was the fact that nobody knew anything about what was planned and there had been no consultation at all with the residents, plus the leaflet gave no details as to what the traffic calming would consist of.

As I am at a time in life when you have the time and inclination to want to know more about such things I emailed the local councillor who returned the favour, saying perhaps it would be better if we spoke face to face, I agreed and a pleasant lady came round and described the state of play She would not be standing here as she had moved to another ward - that word became more relevant as the story unfolded.

What she explained was that they had indeed had council meetings and that average speed cameras were the preferred solution. All well and good, I said, as long as they are sited correctly, for reasons I explained. This point was not something that had been discussed in detail but I was assured it would be. It was also revealed where the money had come for this project in these austere times: not from the council but a store project up the road that had offered money for this and another project in what can only be described as a sweetener for planning. My, and I thought only Italian councils asked for money in these situations!

Still, the money was in the bank, or rather the council’s coffers, and sort of ring-fenced for this project, we were told. I say we, as by this time some interest had stirred in the road and it was full throttle into consultations and the arrival of these cameras in that September. Things were not obviously going to plan as nothing was heard in any shape or form after that meeting and by September the cameras were a distant figment of the imagination. Undeterred I got back in the swing of things and fired off emails to my local councillor, the newly elected one, whose first reply was that she knew little or nothing about the matter. Another email reminding her it was a highlight of the leaflet that got her elected changed the tone somewhat and waffle followed.

I changed tack and went for the chief councillor or whatever they call themselves. I was by then at peak peeve and his anodyne reply got short thrift: I accused him and his party of lying to the electorate as what was said in the party leaflet was not an aspiration a la manifesto but a done deal. I copied in the local MP.

My email must have touched a nerve, as it was relayed to all and sundry at all levels and departments and received replies from all, showing how disjointed local government is, as all had different versions as to why nothing had happened, but I was assured it would! I kept all the emails for future reference and it was as well I did, as despite prodding with a sharp stick still nothing happened or was discussed.

Certain rumours emerged that did nothing to dispel that sinking feeling that all my efforts were in vain. I gave up as other events more important to me came and went; until a couple of months ago, when a manager on the highways division of the council who lives a few doors away said it was all going to happen in a few months. “False dawn, false dawn!” should have been the cry, as still not peep was heard.

Then the city council elections were held and the, you guessed it, LibDems sent out another detailed leaflet that had the usual “We did this and we have got the traffic calming going in soon” story again. Again this was worded as a done deal. At last the cry went up, and again hopes were dashed as others questioned what was going on and the same councillor who had been championing his cause pre-election backpedaled, blaming everyone else for the delay and the fact that various people in City Hall were not in favour of the scheme and the PCC was to have a meeting with the town council about it as the traffic people were in favour of putting new versions of the failed system back.

I queried both the lie that the Lib Dems had again printed and what on earth the PCC was to do with the scheme and what would he know about it anyway, having been in the job five minutes and not being vaguely local (he comes originally from Canada)! He sits on a fat salary and has been totally invisible since day one in the job. Of course in true political fashion none of my points were answered and more BS was proffered up. I have, and it’s unusual for me, lost interest to a degree.

All this has shown is that all the multi layers we have for government at all levels are way over the top as regards satisfying needs. Most could be swept away and yet they are added to with PCCs and Mayors, all with attendant offices paid for by the taxpayer. The vast majority really couldn’t run a whelk stall and like the NHS the waste has to be seen to be believed.

My only hope is the council meeting (date yet to be announced) is one I can attend to give vent to my anger and distaste for all of them who waste and lie and thieve from the public purse. If the Lib Dems were a private company you could sue for the lies they printed yet somehow it is all OK. I have seen several similar cases like this with different councils where I have lived over the years but never got directly involved.

“Angry of Tunbridge Wells” doesn’t even start to cover it.

Friday Night Is Music Night: Herschel Bars, by JD

He wasn't just a man of science you know!

 William Herschel - Music(ian) of the spheres http://www.lablit.com/article/550

"Granny farms" - A Modest Proposal, by JD

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39038927

Reading Wiggia's excellent post - http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/granny-farms.html - he has highlighted the fact that the current system of care for the elderly is far from satisfactory. It is an important subject not least because we are all going to need looking after at some stage.

It is difficult to find how we have arrived at having approximately 11,000 care homes in the UK.. The Wiki entry is a bit vague on the origins of what is now the care home 'business' But it seems to have expanded very rapidly during the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursing_home_care

That boom in the number of care homes during the eighties attracted some of the more dubious 'entrpreneurs' who saw a money-making opportunity. I can say that with some confidence by retelling the tale I told Wiggia and which he refers to in his text:

About 30 years ago (or more) I knew an Englishman running a bar in Spain and he used to talk occasionally about selling up and moving back to England to invest in what he called Granny Farms: the care home business. He disappeared and when I asked where he was I was told he had done just that; gone home to open a care home. But it was the term Granny Farm that gave a clue to his thinking. There was no charitable or other noble ideal involved, it was a business opportunity. It was just at the beginning of that point in history which saw the emergence of the 'yuppies' and 'greed is good' culture so it is hardly surprising that many care homes are less than ideal.

There are maybe half a dozen care homes in my local area; I haven't been in any of them (yet!) and I don't like the idea of having to move into one. 'Death by bingo' is not my idea of a healthy retirement. From what I have heard it seems that at least two of the homes are rather unpleasant places run with that 'granny farm' mentality. One of them is run by people who seem motivated simply by profit. Another one is currently building an extension. And from the outside it looks as though they are just more poky bedsits.

There is also a care home opposite the Working Men's Club and that one would have been my choice if necessary. Maybe not now, because one of the carers there died a few years ago. I knew her reasonably well and she was good at her job and actually did care about the people she looked after. And here we come to another important factor. It all depends on the people who work in these places. If it is 'just a job' then it is not going to be a nice place to live.

That is something which is not even mentioned when politicians start devising 'solutions' to the problems of old age and care. They look at it as a financial or management problem that can be 'solved' given sufficient money. An earlier post on Broad Oak about throwing money at a problem applies also to the problems of looking after the Oldies:

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/you-can-throw-money-at-problem-but-you.html

After reading that post it is even more obvious that a radical solution is needed to help improve life for the elderly but radical thinking, or indeed any kind of thinking, is not a skill one finds among politicians or bureaucrats.

In fact this problem has been a long time coming in that there has been such a fragmentation in our society including the dissolution of families. Fifty or sixty years ago such a crisis was unthinkable.

From what I know this is not a crisis in other countries, certainly not in Italy or France or Spain. They still regard family as the focal point of life.

Wiggia sent me some links to how the Italians deal with things. What comes out of those links is that the family side is in trouble because of the low birth rate so the state is having to step in but in a different way to here.

The other thing that was interesting was that Italian care homes are in the centres of towns or cities rather than on the fringes. So with the Mediterranean style of living, sitting outdoors at cafe tables, there is much less chance of Oldies feeling isolated. Among other things, the weather in the UK is against us for a similar idea to work here.

Meanwhile in Spain there are some who just refuse to grow old! -

"Francisco Nunez, 112, is from Bienvenida, Badajoz, southern Spain. Nunez lives with his octogenarian daughter. He says he doesn't like the pensioners' daycare center because it's full of old people."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4076740/How-live-100-9-oldies-Spain-s-hub-centenarians-tips-staying-young-fresh-healthy.html

But what underlies the stories from Italy and Spain is that both countries still have strong family bonds and communities. That is still the case to a large extent where I live but I don't know about the rest of the country.

I propose my own radical solution which you can dismiss as silly if you wish but........

Many years ago my mother would watch people passing the window and she knew which of them were on their way to the local British Legion for their Sunday 'liquid lunch' and, at closing time, they would make the weary journey homewards. (This was in the days of restricted opening hours.) And then in the evening the same faces would again pass the window for their second visit to the Legion.

My mother would often say "The Legion should build some bedrooms for them so they can sleep it off and save all that walking back and forth!"

Now that is more than just a throwaway joke because there is a precedent of sorts. The famous and exclusive Gentlemen's Clubs in London such as the Carlton Club, the Army & Navy Club, the Royal Automobile Club and others do in fact have bedrooms for their members who may wish to stay overnight. If it is good enough for the upper echelons of society, surely it is an idea to be copied by the 'lower orders'.

There are three Clubs close to where I live: the Working Men's Club, the British Legion and the Conservative Club. All three are thriving whereas the pubs are dying on their feet like pubs up and down the country. One of the reasons is that the Clubs belong to the members and are non-profit organisations. Any profits accrue to and are spent for the benefit of the members.

It is a logical step for the Clubs, as existing 'hubs' of communal life, to follow the example of those London clubs and offer the same facilities. It is a further logical and small step to provide for the elderly members a permanent residence within their premises. And it would be another logical and small step to develop that into a combination of care home and Club.

Most of the facilities are in place already in the form of a concert room (now called grandly the 'functions room') and quieter lounges away from the bar area. Many of these clubs already provide food so it would not be too much of a stretch to expand the kitchens. And the Clubs already provide things which would be appreciated by oldies: our Conservative Club currently organises coach trips to the races, the Working Men's Club currently has dancing most nights of the week (how times change!) - that's proper dancing by the way, not the nightclub style of jiving and twisting the night away - the Legion already hosts an Over 60s club and has done for many years. I fact my granny was chairman of that club for the last 20 years of her life.

Most, if not all, of the current residents in care homes will be members of one or other of the Clubs anyway and I feel sure they would be very keen on such an idea. And there is the joke among local gossips - "Oh So-And-So, you would think he lived in the Club!"

It could become a reality.

Feel free to tell me why it wouldn't or couldn't or shouldn't work.

P.S. There is a long tradition of self-help and self-improvement in this country from the Rochdale Pioneers through the Yorkshire brass bands to Northumberland's Pitmen Painters. The problems of care of the elderly will not be solved by the 'higher busibodies' in Whitehall and Westminster, 'top down' solutions rarely work. It has to come from the people who will be the ultimate beneficiaries of any new ideas.
=======================================================================

Some links to give an idea of how the Oldies fare elsewhere -

http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-italy-elderly-care
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/5970/italy_the_badante_immigration_and_the_elderly
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-07-07-aging-italy_n.htm
http://www.retirement-village-spain.com/
https://www.inforesidencias.com/centros/buscador/residencias/madrid

More NHS abuse

Having seen what happens when the healthcare and insurance rackets are given a free hand (see Paddington's overview here), I remain in favour of a system where medical treatment is free (or at least, affordable by everyone) at the point of delivery.

But there needs to be some way of getting people to treat the National Health Service  responsibly.

My dentist in the Seventies was an old hand who remembered the introduction of the NHS in 1948. At last common people could have free expert help with their dental and optical (anybody else remember the tell-tale NHS blue plastic spectacle frames?) problems.

One man came to him requiring dentures. The dentist took casts and sent them to the manufacturing lab. Then came the second appointment, to check with the patient that the plates fitted well.

The man was delighted: "These are the best of the lot!"

"What do you mean?"

The man held up a bag of "choppers", garnered from visiting every dentist in the area.

After all, it was a free service.

What rules should we have? What should be included in the offer, as of right, and what not?

Don't try this at home (NSFW: adult content)

While the ransomware business continues to afflict the NHS, an informant tells me of another way Europe's biggest employer is being needlessly inconvenienced: kinky eroticism.

A man comes in with not one, but two large carrots driven serially into his rectum by his wife, puncturing his colon and requiring a partial colostomy. The vegetables are surgically removed and, as per protocol, returned to their owner.

Another arrives with a similar difficulty, explaining that he has "fallen on the lavatory brush". Good thing it wasn't Carmen Miranda's hat.

Women can be that stupid, too: one presents herself at the hospital with a whole apple in her back passage - so deep that staff can't remove it without a major operation (the patient finally manages to expel it herself, somehow). The fruit is a variety called Pink Lady.

Turning to the front bottom: a young man from the Eastern Med turns up with a nasty infection because he has injected his penis with Vaseline to enlarge the head. Apparently this is not an unknown practice back home.

The biggest challenge of all for doctors and nurses is preserving a professional straight face.

Sunday Music: More Big Bands, by Wiggia

The sheer explosion in popularity of the big bands lead to a huge number of outfits performing during the thirties and forties. Many of the earlier twenties bands faded away as the swing era came in but many of the thirties bands stayed the course, even managing to survive in the rock era.

Many of those that stayed the course changed styles, changed personnel and instrument line-ups, and some changed the whole direction of their music. Ellington is the best known and probably the most revered of all the bands and his music evolved continuously over decades. He also almost certainly did more work as a soloist and with other musicians than any other bandleader, as did Kenton who as seen and heard in the previous piece pushed the boundaries as far as anyone; Basie less so, yet stayed at the top right to the end such was his popularity.

Here I am simply going to put up some pieces from a selection of bands in various styles to illustrate that variation and how they changed.

This early Ellington rendition of “Mood Indigo” shows Ellington had a piano style even then that traversed the ages and yet had Russell Procope on clarinet soloing, an instrument that diminished in usage as a front liner soon afterwards.



Filmed version of the above(embedding disabled): https://youtu.be/GohBkHaHap8

By 1943 Ellington had written this but it was not well received at the time, so he shortened the suites into six parts, one of which is here, and when re-released in ‘58 it became a classic, from Black Brown and Beige:



Kenton made his name with a huge swinging style and a run of popular numbers such as Artistry in Rhytmn and the Peanut Vendor and this from ‘62 “Malaguena” with its Latin theme and sumptuous brass section:



City of Glass I featured in the last piece but Kenton pushed the boundaries of big band music in other numbers and albums. This is a live ‘68 video of Kenton just back from a serious illness with Intermission Riff, big bands don’t get much better than this:



and then in ‘72 for contrast, “Here’s that Rainy Day”:



Kenton's Innovation Orchestra of 1950 was putting out some numbers that were advanced for the time and his delving into Latin American music predated the Bossa Nova period, plus albums like MacArthur Park added to his broad based output.

Always a slightly underrated outfit Terry Gibbs had various bands, this is his ‘Dream Band’, not underrated himself by anyone with knowledge of music; a long and successful career. "Don’t be that Way":



A very current big band the Amazing Keystone Big Band with Quincy Jones as arranger shows the big bands have not entirely disappeared, here in a Latin vein playing “Manteca” in 2014:



A classic number “A Child is Born” here played by the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, featuring Thad as arranger and playing flugelhorn. This was the resident band at the Village Vanguard NYC during the seventies, not as well known over here as they should be:



This is interesting. Oliver Nelson, musician-composer-arranger is one of my favourite jazz artists who went on to various strands of music with huge success. Here he is with a big band Jazz Interactions Orchestra the album Jazzhattan Suite and the number “Complex City” released in ‘68. To my mind the whole album is based on Kenton's “City of Glass” and has the same lush brass section - this also was not a complete success but an attempt, again in my view, to succeed where Kenton failed ? The similarities are too obvious.

Oliver Nelson will figure in more depth my next piece.

Declining by degrees

US professor "Paddington" writes: 

About 20 years ago, our political leaders finally became aware that the well-paid industrial jobs were becoming much more technical, and fewer in number. They looked at the famous statistic that college graduates earn more over a lifetime than non-college-graduates, confused correlation with causation, and pressured the education system to increase the number and percentage of graduates, and the quality of them.

The last is impossible, but it was quite easy to increase the number and percentage of graduates, simply by watering the coursework down.

However, there are disciplines where actual mastery matters, including Nursing and Engineering.

I contend that it is only a matter of time before we separate 'real' degrees from the others.

This leaves the question of how to designate the other degrees. Since B.S. is already taken, I would suggest B.E. (Bachelor's of Equality), B.F. (Bachelor's of Feelgood), or B.N.P. (Bachelor's of Nothing in Particular).

Friday Night Is Music Night: Willie Nelson, by JD

Last month was Willie Nelson's 84th birthday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson

He wrote his first song at the age of seven and started performong at the age of 10 according to Wiki which is why he seems to have been around forever. He is still writing songs and performing. His latest album, released earlier this year, is called "God's Problem Child " Two of the songs are included here including a very whimsical "Still Not Dead" which he wrote in response to internet rumours that he had died in 2015!

He has been a prolific songwriter as can be seen from this list- http://songwritershalloffame.org/songs/detailed/C133

Starting out in Nashville as a clean cut 'all American boy' writing and peforming, his most well known song is 'Crazy' which Patsy Cline turned into a huge hit. Willie then left Nashville and went home to Texas where he grew his hair long and became an 'outlaw' heading off in a different musical direction in a very successful partnership with Waylon Jennings.

He also developed a very distinctive sound and style on his very battered old acoustic guitar explained in a short video here and along the way he has recorded with artists as diverse as Julio Iglesias and Ray Charles.

On with the music!..................