rhythmaning | (no subject)

W, courtesy of

chickenfeet2003…

W is for…

Walking; and Walkin’. The first is an almost obsessive activity: I love walking – I love walking in cities, exploring back lanes and alleys, wider thoroughfares and avenues; and I love walking in the country – mountains, particularly – it always seems a shame to be on the flat when one could be climbing higher – though walking on beaches, and along cliffs (height without climbing – now, that is neat). I love walking, and go out of my way to walk rather than use other forms of transport – hence I hardly ever drive in town (except when I am ferrying things around; like my wife’s paintings).

The second is a tune by Richard Carpenter – not the guy that made Assault on Precinct Thirteen (well, I assume that it isn’t, because that Carpenter isn’t that old, but hey, that is a great idea), but a tunesmith. Walkin’ became a jazz standard when Miles Davis recorded in 1954; I have at least three different versions by Davis (two live; one with Coltrane in Sweden, a classic recorded the day before my birth; and another on the Carnegie Hall concert of 1964, where the band were so pissed off when Davis told them that they weren’t getting paid since it was a charity gig that they played everything at more or less double tempo, racing to get to the end so they could go for a drink).
Water: and sometimes that is all that is needed.
The Waterboys: a band; I was going to write “rock band”, or “pop band”, but neither of those epithets fits; they (or more closely, he – since the Waterboys are more or less Mike Scott, with an ever changing array of others) have strong folk leanings, though when I first got to know their music, it was big music – big production rock with a great depth. Indeed, “Big Music” was a track on the first record of theirs that I bought – the wonderfully named “In a Pagan Place”. Then they released “This is the Sea”, a much harder sounding record – more guitar-based than before; it spawned the hit single “The Whole of the Moon”. I didn’t buy the follow up, “Fishermen’s Blues”, released in 1986, fearing a further slide to hard rock. Instead, I heard it a couple of years later when I was staying with a friend in Ullapool; we stayed up one night drinking a bottle of Grouse, and played and replayed this wonderful record. It was a much folkier recording, a synthesis of Irish folk and Scottish rock that is wonderful. The Waterboys are essential music for driving around the Highlands, particularly far up north: it just fits perfectly. They have just released a double, twentieth anniversary of “Fishermen’s Blues”, which I may just have to buy.
Bobby Watson: more jazz. I first saw Bobby Watson play when he was with the Jazz Messengers (the line up that featured an eighteen year old Wynton Marsalis) in a gig at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm; my father had taken me, back in 1982. I later caught up with him at the Edinburgh Festival – I went with Donna, I think – it must have been the summer of 1984 or ’85; and several times since. Watson is an alto player and composer; he formed part of the 29th Street Saxophone Quartet. I have a few of his records; on “Post Motown Bop” (and that is a great title!), there is a gorgeous, rich tune called In Case You Missed It - intricate riffing leading into a great bit of swing, and a lovely alto solo. Magic.
West CoastScotland, that is, particularly. There is something that happens as one heads west – the land becomes wilder, the mountains more rugged, the light more beautiful. Maybe it is something to do with the sea, the Atlantic rollers coming a thousand miles to the shore (say, the beach at Machrahanish); or the rainfall, on a par with the wet tropics (it makes it a haven for ferns); or the wide, empty skies. Either way, the west coast from Campbeltown to Cape Wrath is just wonderful. The further north one goes, the more empty the land is; the mountains rise straight from the sea, the peaks become more jagged and barren; and the whole is just life affirming.
Whining cats: our cats, in particular. They don’t whine all the time of course, but when they do, it is really, really irritating. Especially in the middle of the night – since we don’t allow them in the bedroom (largely to protect an array of plants which our distinctly carnivorous cats seemed to take pleasure in eating – and regurgitating, natch), they sit outside the bedroom in the early hours and whine incessantly, or so it seems. The female has a very light, not-quite-there miaow, whilst her much larger brother has a deep throated catawaul. And then, during the day, the whine to be let out of the flat onto the stairs; once there, they sit on the doormat for a few minutes before coming back inside – but they make such a racket when they want out. It is usually very successful: in order to shut them up, they generally get precisely what they want.
Whisky. It took a while for me to get into whisky. The first time I drank it was the last time for five years – a friend of mine had a half bottle of duty free, and we drank it; it was really the first killer hangover I ever had – I was only seventeen. I had a summer job at the time, and my colleagues (and my parents) were most amused at my distress. It wasn’t until I moved to Edinburgh, working that first summer on the Fringe, that I got into whisky: in my shared flat – we were all working in the same venue – it had been decided (a fairly democratic vote, as far as I recall) that we should stock up on whisky, since it didn’t need any mixers – we didn’t have to worry about running out of tonic or coke or whatever: all it needed – if anything – was a bit of water. And since it was there, I drank it. And liked it.

My whisky habit was fuelled by being a student in Edinburgh; we used to sit in the pub and drink half-and-halfs (half pint of beer with a double – a half gill – of whisky). During this time, I generally drank blends – Grouse became my favourite, though allegedly it has some of the lowest malt whisky content of any blend.

I moved onto more sophisticated tastes when I started working, and I got to travel a lot – and hence able to pick up malt at duty free prices as I passé through whatever airport it was that day. I tried a lot of different malts – Macallan and Talisker becoming my preferred tipple.

(At around this time I was given membership of the Scottish Malt Whisky Society; this was the early nineties, and they didn’t have anywhere in London, I was rarely in Edinburgh, I wasn’t around for the postman to leave the packages, and I could buy cheap whisky at the airport; so my membership lapsed, and it was many years after I moved back to Edinburgh that I finally became a member again – the SMWS rooms have quickly become a preferred haunt.)

Whisky is, for me, intrinsically tied up with the Scottish landscape. The first time I went to Betty Hill – back in 1983 – I got out of the car at the pub I was staying and sniffed the air; it smelt like something, something I liked, but I couldn’t place it. Later, as I sat in the pub listening to a piper practice outside – he was walking around and around the building, in the wind – I realised that the smell was peat: the pub was burning peat on the fire; and whisky takes on the smell of peat from the malt.

I still like Macallan and Talisker, but more and more I opt for the pungent peaty Islay whiskes – Laphroig, Ardbeg, Bowmore and others that become more and more unpronounceable. (I think this is really why the SMWS use numbers instead of distillery names: it is so much easier to say “a number 10, please” than “a dram of Bunnahabhain, please” – especially after you’ve had a couple of shots already.

Incidentally – whisky and chocolate – a great match. In fact, I have now learnt that whisky goes with more or less any food. Mmmm.
Wine: so there may be a pattern emerging. But I do like wine. Lots of different wines; and the way they go with food. I particularly like red wine: I can remember the first time I had a bottle of good wine – and I must have tasted much better wine many times before (and bad wine many, many more times) – but the first time I bought a bottle of wine and thought, hang on, there is something to this, this is good: the first time wine really made sense. It was a bottle of Chateau Thieuley – Entre des Mers. I can’t remember if it was red or white – or rather, as I remember it, it was red, but when I have seen the Chateau since, it has usually been white. I think the vintage must have been 1982; I was working in York. And it was very good, I thought.

I still buy a fair amount of claret; indeed, I probably buy it faster than I drink it (inasmuch as I don’t drink high quality wine every day; indeed, I don’t drink wine every day, believing that it is healthy to give my liver a rest every so often, so I try not to drink alcohol on at least two days a week). But I have branched out a lot – firstly into Australia (lots of good wine out there), then Italy (spreading out from Tuscany), and elsewhere in to the New World, too – on holiday in New Zealand a few years back, the red wines were a revelation – and now exploring other regions of France, too.

And then when you add food into the mix as well – well, heaven.
Women: yeah, well, does anything more need to be said? Although I don’t just mean physically (though there is that). But aside from a few close male friends, the people I really care out about are women. (And have noticed how women follow whisky and wine? Yeah, I thought so.)
George Wylie – the Why?s man. A Scottish artist, George Wylie plays with artistic ideas. He made a paper boat – big, it was, sufficient to support him – and sailed it down the Clyde as a statement about the decline of shipbuilding; he made a full size locomotive out of straw, which he suspended from a disused crane in a shipyard and later set alight (I think that was a steel-making, that one); and he made a whole series of model trains, stretched , in honour of Giacommetti. Whenever I see his work, it makes me laugh, and it makes me think. Both of which are important to me.

Heh, it's not that impressive really...this was before the Waterboys reformed a few years ago and he was unemployed with lots of time on his hands. He lives in Sligo, which is where I studied and everyone knows pretty much everyone else. We were short a violin and our first violin asked him if he fancied a foray into chamber music. He did and we had lots of fun until I finished college. He's a lovely guy, and completely unimpressed by his own (relative) fame!

And how dare Madness be crap? That must've been an anti climax :(

It was before they were Madness - they were at school with me, in my year. And they weren't very good. (Though I think the opinion was shared.)