Five (and some extra) Questions

[rhythmaning]

Another five questions, this time from pashazade...

1. Why jazz?
   
   I'm not sure what it is you are asking here.
   
   Why jazz?
   
   Why not?
   
   I assume you mean "why do you like jazz?" - not an easy question to answer. I also like a lot of classical music - and I can talk for ages about obscure rock bands from the 1970s. So it might just be that I like music.
   
   Jazz has always been a part of my life: my father was a jazz fan, and I grew up listening to jazz - which I didn't really like. I was taken to the occasional concert - the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1972 (I was awestruck - I can remember Paul Gonsalves standing in a spotlight, playing frenetic tenor sax: it made a huge impression), the Brotherhood of Breath in 1974 in the courtyard at the V&A, a August evening which got very cold and I didn't enjoy at all - a shame since now I think they were an incredible band - but rock was my thing. Still, my father played a lot of records - we used to fight over the right to the record player (there is probably a whole post about my father and record players...) - my mother didn't get a look in. A couple of summers we holidayed in Nice, where we went to the Nice Jazz Festival (cue "Jazz... Nice..." jokes) - where I saw Art Blakey play five nights in a row, the Count Basie Orchestra, the Dave Brubeck Band, Cab Calloway (not my scene) - and, most important of all, perhaps, Charles Mingus. (My father had done publicity on Mingus' "autobiography" (it is apparently mostly fiction); whether Mingus recognised my father or not, he spent twenty minutes focusing on him and haranguing "whitey" - I hated Mingus, too! Now - well, I think the guy was a genius. Disturbed, perhaps, but a genius none the less. [Other jazz geniuses: Ellington, Miles, Coltrane, Monk... It is a long list.])
   
   But back then, jazz wasn't really my thing. Then I went off to university, and I soon realised that I didn't have any jazz records. I had been so used to hearing jazz the whole time - it just being there - I realised it was part of me whether I liked it or not. So I went to Garon Records in the Covered Market and bought one. I hadn't a clue what to buy, but I recognised the name Miles Davis and - quite fortuitously - I bought the coolest jazz record possible, the Miles Davis (attributed but disputed) Birth of the Cool. When my father asked what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for some jazz records, and I received
   
   • Miles Davis - Workin' and Steamin', a "twofer" reissue of the classic Miles quintet - if you imagine a jazz band, it is probably this band that you imagine
     
   • Duke Ellington Live at Antibes (I think!) - two volumes, pretty standard Duke, though not a classic by any means - there was a great tune called La Plus Belle Africaine
     
   • Mingus Ah Um - a quite stunning record
     
   • Gillespie/Parker/Mingus/Powell/Roach - The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever (also released as Live At Massey Hall and The Quintet of the Year) - another remarkable record - a pick up date that just happened to get recorded (Dizzy Gillespie came off stage and said, "Damn! I wish we'd recorded that!", to which Mingus replied, "I did!") - classic bebop; though the sides of Bud Powell in a trio with Mingus and Roach are unsung and sublime, too
     
   • Benny Goodman - Live at Carnegie Hall: not my thing - not then, not now
   
   (It is interesting that this list is somewhat off kilter: I doubt these albums - aside from Mingus Ah Um and the Dizzy & Bird - aren't really the foundations of a collection: most people would have got Kind of Blue, for instance.)
   
   Jazz was also good for seducing women. (I needed all the help I could get...)
   
   Although I had jazz records and went to more jazz gigs, it didn't really, REALLY click until, about five years later, I bought another jazz record. I had already started listening to free-ish jazz, and I had a record by Archie Shepp called A Poem for Malcolm. It made no sense whatsoever. None. Then I bought a reissue of A Love Supreme. It is fair to say that this record changed my life - at least how I listened to music. It was as if a light had been switched on - after hearing it, the Shepp record made sense (though it remains unlistenable - free jazz is frankly a live experience, and it doesn't work very well on record), Thelonious Monk finally made sense.
   
   A Love Supreme is one of the most famous records ever - not just jazz records. I believe that it is the pinnacle of musical achievement - it is up there with Beethoven, Mahler, Shostakovich: it is an astounding work. Not all Coltrane ranks so highly, though an awful lot does. Just about every note he played he been issued, and there are large numbers of interminable live sets - similarly unlistenable. But A Love Supreme is astounding. Thirty years (ish) on from first hearing it, it stills sounds immensely powerful.
   
   If you were really asking "what is it about jazz?" - well, equally hard to answer, and I don't think it is exclusive to jazz. There is something about live improvisation, though - something raw and exciting: composing on the fly (albeit from some known scales or tune) can be exciting, exhilarating to listen to. Jazz really is live music. It can also be very contemplative, and more directly emotional than classical music.
   
   
2. How long was the interval between fostering Talisker and adopting him? Do you think that it's changed you?
   
   I think a day or a little more, and I am not: though I picked him up on May 2, and I took my first photos on May 5, so I guess max three days.. He was very subdued when he first arrived. star_tourmaline is largely to blame, since she insisted that I let Talisker sleep on the bed, when frankly he is cutest.
   
   I don't think owning a cat has changed me, though it has changed what I do - I no longer have the freedom to decide to go away at a moment's notice; some planning is required.
   
   
3. Where does your attachment to Edinburgh come from?
   
   I am not sure any of your questions have actual answers...
   
   At an intellectual level, Edinburgh has all the advantages of London without the disadvantages: it has lots of culture (even outside the Festival), albeit much less than London, and it is much easier to manage seeing the culture: theatre and concert halls are more accessible. You can walk everywhere. You don't have to take the tube. You can get in a car and be amongst mountains in an hour. As a city it is just manageable
   
   It has an amazing light.
   
   It has space and grace.
   
   But there is an emotional thing, too: it just feels like home.
   
   It must be my Scottish blood.¹
   
   
4. What did you do your doctorate in? Why? (I've been meaning to ask you this for about two years, but I always forget.)
   
   The broad answer is botany/ecology. The narrow answer is "Polymorphism of Cyanogenesis in Bracken (Pteridium aqulinum [L.] Kuhn)", but I doubt that helps you any more.
   
   Bracken, along with many other plants (most famously clover), produces cyanide when damaged: fronds contain a glycoside called prunasin and a glycosidase, and when the fronds are crushed (as when, perhaps, something eats them; or when I mashed them up), the prunasin and the glycosidase react together to release cyanide and and an aldehyde. (Fact: both the cyanide and the aldehyde smell of marzipan - almonds do something very similar with a glycoside called amygdalin. But for both residual compounds to smell the same is, well, a strange coincidence.) That is cyanogenesis.
   
   Some bracken plants release cyanide and some don't. That is polymorphism. Of course, defining a bracken plant is not easy. The bulk of the plant is underground: what we see as bracken are just the fronds - the leaves, if you will - growing up. Most stands of bracken are probably single plants; but as the bits underground die back and decay, individual plants becomes a bit of a misnomer: instead, a mix of more-or-less identical genetic clones. But frankly to look at it one would have no idea. (An aside. All multicellular organisms contain a mixture of cells with slightly - marginally - different genetic make-up: there are mutations going on the whole time. In animals, they die out unless they occur in the sexual organs. A quirk of plant biology - at least compared to most animal reproductive biology - is that since the reproductive parts of a plant are the growing points of branches - or in bracken, the fronds: in plants, mutations in any branch can be passed to the next generation.)
   
   I spent three years doing a lot of field work and lab based experiments on what caused cyanogenesis and the polymorphism. It turned out the polymorphism wasn't really genetic: clones of the same plant could be cyanogenetic or acyanogenetic, depending on environmental factors: when nitrogen is plentiful, bracken produces a lot of cyanide.
   
   
5. Do you read poetry? If so, whose poetry do you really love? Why?
   
   No. It doesn't make sense to me. I see poetry on the page and I wonder why they haven't written it as prose.
   
   It makes much more sense when I hear poetry being read.




¹I have not a drop of Scottish blood in me. English, Irish, French, Jewish, Egyptian... But no Scottish. Although I do sometimes have Scotch in my blood...