A Lark Ascending

Snowdrops are out. Hints of spring in the air today.

I walked past Moores but it was early and not open. Have been there before. Like that bit about the lost souls of the Barbican. Maybe someone could commission Birtwistle to write an opera about them? I had a friend who stayed in the YMCA in one of those towers for a few months. Recall kipping on his floor (against regulations) at one point.

This one was in the main building on the ground level with the fountains outside. Maybe there's another shop. I find the geography of the Barbican utterly confusing. Never know which way to go back to the tube station. The music library looked well stocked, though the entrance to the library looked well hidden. I was trying to work out if it was a shop or a library - turned out to be the latter. You can see the delights on offer here: http://www.barbican.org.uk/visitor-information/shops Designer pencil case? iPhone cover?

Enjoyable Belgian thriller currently in the slot for those of us who are so pretentious we only watch things with subtitles. Disappointed that no-one has stopped off for chips with mayonnaise yet.

Had a couple of hours to kill early on Saturday morning in London so I wandered up Oxford Street to find HMV gone. Recalled some talk of it moving back to the site I remember it in on the south side of Oxford Street by Bond Street station. So I wandered up that way and there it was. After an initial 'Ooh, its 40 years ago!' feeling interest rapidly dropped. Not much different to the provincial shops. Had a brief root around in the opera Blu-rays. When you are charging double what you can get them for on Amazon your long term survival must be in doubt. Another sign of the times was the shop in the Barbican. I'm sure I remember a book shop there. Now it sells 'gifts' - mugs, paper products etc with just a few CDs from the LSO's own label and a handful of books. Market forces.

Handel "Eternal Source of Light Divine" I believe this is something of a lollipop cropping up on Handel vocal discs, baroque trumpet records, general classical favourite records and in it's setting in a birthday Ode for Queen Anne. I have it on a few discs but it stopped me in my tracks on this new one: The way the trumpet (cornet? HIP thingy?) and voice interweave just makes the world stand still.

That's why they invented downloading. The initial spark of desire, the gnawing need, the acquisition and the loss of interest - all over in a couple of hours.

Conductor, farmer, now a writer of very long books. He'll be doing his own cookery programme next. Really enjoyed the 2 hour doc he did on Bach around last Easter, from the same sources as this. Some nice context setting in the first 50 pages.

It will only get worse, unfortunately. The very significant grant it currently gets from The Foreign Office is due to finish in April, after which the total cost of the operation will fall onto the BBC licence payers. I'm very pessimistic about its future. So short-sighted. The blind obsession with market-driven models will see the World Service wither; yet could there be a better illustration of 'soft power'.

Yes, I had the same problem. I tend to come awake at 4.00-ish and have the radio on all night. If something catches my attention then I'm glued. You could just sense a dash of that 80s electro sound in some of those pieces but overall they seemed to be coming from somewhere else - folk musics and a more song based tradition like in Brazil or France. The World Service seems to have cut back its music programmes considerably of late but you still get gems like this.

Excellent BBC World Service programme about the music that inspired those who grew up under the Argentinian dictatorship. I knew the Brazil story of music and politics but this was totally new to me: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01s1qts

Other astounding photos from the last few weeks here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26170904

They were recording the new Tory election song for next year. 'Climb every mountain, ford every stream...'

Cloudless blue driving up the M1.

Probably just how I heard it. I knew little jazz c. 1975 but was immersed in the Canterbury thing, and a lot of the British jazz-rock of that time. 'Escalator Over The Hill' grabbed me by the throat. The overture made me very curious about the jazz I was reading about but had not heard. Charlie Haden was on several of those early Bley Albums as well as the Jarrett records I was starting to buy; and Wyatt did 'Song for Che' on an album as well as recording with Michael Mantler. Lots of connections. Remember seeing Bley in a short lived supergroup with Mick Taylor and Jack Bruce.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Channel_floods,_1607 I love those 17thC pamphlets.

Some more before and after here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26125648

Interesting - because it's the Weill-meets-free-jazz thing I love. Whereas I find her more conventional, American, post-70s music much less engaging. Personal taste, of course (related to the way I first heard the music - it clicked very easily into the whole Henry Cow/Wyatt etc world of the mid-70s).

Wonder when the first threat of a hosepipe ban will be this year.

Here's one with a difference: http://www.naturistfoundation.org/jazz_festival/ Wonder if Herbie Mann is on the bill?

Nigel on citizens' watch for illegal boat people sneaking in from southern Europe. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26133915

I was there too! Maybe we all were!

Poor indeed. I was looking forward to going back again after missing for 3 years when Loose Tubes were announced. But it's not worth the journey. Seems to be a lot of talk and cinema.

Do people still say that? I must dust off 'Hit that rhythm, daddy-o' and 'Play that thing'. One of those smilies denoting no harm intended.

As the floods hit the Tory heartlands. "Yes, send us the bills from your damaged yachts and we'll repay you from the next round of savage benefit cuts taken from those wasters up north.'