A Lark Ascending

Thanks for the alert. Will listen to that on the iPlayer at some point next week.

Looks like we'll be better off sticking with 'conservative' (!!!).

Not really. I tend to think of traditional as sticking very firmly to all the approaches of a past style - might be a New Orleans band or a hard bop group that chooses to play completely within the style. I'm thinking more of musicians who might choose to perform with a traditional harmonic framework yet still assemble the parts very differently. Someone like Malcolm Arnold worked with the 'traditional' harmonic approaches and structures (symphony, concerto, sonata etc) yet produced music that is very much of the mid-to-late 20thC and unlike anyone else's. He might have used the same building blocks but put them together in a unique way. Musicians of that type tend to get the word 'conservative' used as a negative because they don't care for (or don't care to use) more radical departures from the norm. Groundbreakers they may not be; but I think 'conservative' undervalues the distinctiveness of what they do.

Ho! Ho!

And 'Third' still needs a better remastering. I read a while back that Steven Wilson (the Porcupine Tree chap who has done a great job on King Crimson) had it in his sights. I'm comfortable with all the others from 1-7 but Third still sounds muggy to these ears. I know it lies in the source but with modern technology and a chap in charge with a passion for the music...

'Conservative' tends to have negative connotations (especially in Britain...can't wait for next week!). Music that does not embrace the relentless striving into the future, the breaking up of convention is often dismissed or marginalised (by critics) as 'conservative'. Now I'm all for forging into the future and challenging preconceptions but there have always been musicians not that interested in making a new world but able to speak with very individual voices in the language of the existing or even a previous world. I'm thinking of this after reading an article yesterday about the British composer David Matthews. Matthews writes in a tonal language a million miles away from much avant garde classical music, yet it's music that is unique and (to me) very engaging. It's not easy listening either, though it can be very atmospheric. Another example: listening through the Henze box in recent weeks, a lot of the music there could be termed 'conservative' compared with his peers - but the term doesn't even begin to prepare you for his quite unique way with music. So, can anyone think of a less value-laden term than conservative to describe music or musicians of great imagination who choose not to storm the frontiers but work overtly within an existing tradition?

Wish they'd kept it in print. Finding a reasonably priced copy is now mission impossible. This location recording by the Ratledge/Wyatt/Hopper/Dean lineup, done in Norway, is pretty interesting. Released by Reel as a 2CD with bonus CD-ROM including essays. Hopefully, in time, the Kindle (or something similar) will help to keep things of minority interest like this in print. I don't have a Kindle but at the point when a book like this that I can only read that way appears, then I'll spring. I've been listening through the live SM live discs recently - will put the one you mention next. Recall enjoying it when it came out but don't have a particular memory (there were so many coming out around that time!). These two are very good: Both by what I think of as the 'classic' line up (with Lyn Dobson on the first).

Lots of discussion here about Soft Machine and the scene around them: Soft Machine (along with King Crimson) were one of my principal routes into jazz (and into more abstract music in general). 1 + 2 are quirky psychedelic pop/rock - to some people the classic era, though I only heard them in retrospect around '73 so I favour the next era. 3, 4, 5 are my favourites - they were contemporary when I was first listening. Much more 'serious' with increasingly strong left-field jazz influences (Elton Dean seemed to push them that way) but also an influence from classical minimalism. Although they were bracketed as 'jazz-rock' they sounded completely different to the US version (Ian Carr's Nucleus always sounded as if they had more in common with Miles and Weather Report than SM). 6 + 7 when Jenkins replaces Dean enjoyable too though I'd say the minimalism grows whilst the freer tendencies diminish. I only know the music after that vaguely - always seemed too influenced by American fusion of the time for me (maybe I'd like it more now as I've come to enjoy Weather Report). I'd also recommend the two double CDs on Hux of BBC broadcasts across the whole of that period. The first one is particularly excellent with a version of Wyatt's vocal tour-de-force 'The Moon in June' with words altered to reflect the BBC studio he was in at the time. There are also a whole host of excellent sounding live recordings of the band at various points in those years on Cuneiform, Hux etc. All worth picking up as the tunes get reassembled in different ways, you get added musicians and there is real jamming. As for Karl Jenkins, well his music has never been my cup of tea and doesn't really relate to the SM of the 70s - has more in common with Enya to these ears! If you want a line of development to follow, pick up on Wyatt and Elton Dean, both of whom produced a long catalogue of constantly inventive recordings, Dean in the heart of the UK free-ish scene. Hugh Hopper has done some interesting things too. The other band I'd recommend is Henry Cow - just a little younger than the Soft Machine but if anything more radical in their experimentation. There's a run of six main albums, a huge, rich live box and then endless solo projects to wallow in. There's also a very good book on SM:

My favourite Beatles cover isn't jazz at all but a version by the great Irish band De Danann - starts as a sentimental ballad, becomes a roaring set of reels and fades from the 'la-la-la la-la-la-la's (on mandolin, I think!) into a bodhran solo. Only equalled by their Handel adaptation - 'The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba in Galway.'

Not so much a track as a bizarre radio sequence on the BBC World Service heard on two nights in succession emerging from semi-sleep. Strange, ethereal music that I could not place but knew from somewhere, then an announcer introducing a clip of Joyce DiDonato at this year's Proms singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone' with the audience joining in in full voice. Had the chills going down my spine on both occasions. Watched "Carousel" last night to see if the preceding ethereal music was part of the score but nothing there. So I played it back on the BBC iPlayer and it turned out to be the dying moments of Mahler 9. Inspired programming.

Love these songs.

Very sad. Helped give a very distinctive sound to the second version of Henry Cow - don't think I'd heard bassoon solos before her. Also played an important role in Mike Westbrook's bands in the 80s.

1 Come Together 4:51 2 Something 8:46 3 Maxwell's Silver Hammer 3:34 4 Oh! Darling 4:31 5 Octopus's Garden 4:17 6 I Want You (She's So Heavy) 7:57 7 Here Comes The Sun 6:24 8 Because 10:00 9 You Never Give Me Your Money 7:08 10 Sun King 2:28 11 Mean Mr. Mustard 2:06 12 Polythene Pam 1:50 13 She Came In Through The Bathroom Window 2:39 14 Golden Slumbers 3:55 15 Carry That Weight 1:20 16 The End 1:55 Alto Saxophone, Clarinet – Peter Whyman* Baritone Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Alan Wakeman Drums – Peter Fairclough Guitar – Brian Godding Piano, Arranged By [Arrangend By] – Mike Westbrook Tuba – Andy Grappy Vocals, Horn [Tenor], Piccolo Flute – Kate Westbrook Vocals, Trumpet – Phil Minton 1989

I've enjoyed his music in recent years. From what I can gather, a much revered figured. R.I.P.

She met him downtown, apparently. Gave him some advice on where not to sleep.

One for those who missed these two last time round (from: http://www.colin-harper.com/news/)

The original LP release of Afro-Blue Impressions was my second Coltrane - played it endlessly over 1977-8. I got the Live Trane set as downloads a few years back. Good to play a disc every now and then but there's a concision to the 2 LP set that really works. I've never been bothered by the sound of the 2 LP - it varies more between dates on the box.

Noticed a letter from author Colin Harper in Jazzwise yesterday. Harper wrote a superb bio of Bert Jansch ('Dazzling Stranger') that did more than tell his tale but set it in the context of his hinterland. Hopefully he can pull off the same here (preferably without comments on McLaughlin's relationship to the instabilities of late capitalism!). Some details here: http://www.colin-harper.com/news/. Due in 2014 I believe (Edit: Feb or March).

You have a treat ahead of you with the décor of the Millennium Hall Polish Centre in Sheffield!

The finest Oliver: ...give or take the odd massacre of the Irish, execution of pesky Levellers etc....

London bus scenario. No sign of you up this way for years and then you're in Sheffield twice before Xmas. Looking forward to the Moholo Qt.

Another interesting one: From Amazon: By chance there was a drama about 'The Ypres Times' on the TV last week - the start of the deluge of WWI programmes we can expect over the next few years. I've also picked these up off my ridiculously cheap e-music account from this month's allocation: (OK, the last one is Anglo-American).

I think I know what you mean by 'devices'. Classical music (and jazz) is normally lauded for its originality over pop music yet there's an awful lot of employment of stock gestures (that vary and get added to over time). I think that when I first tried to listen to classical back in the early 70s I was put off because it was those frequently recurring gestures that I heard (I still have no time for the grand ending to a last movement that was so common in the 19thC and survived well into the 20thC). You hear Sibelius 'devices' in a lot in British music in the 20s and 30s. And on first hearing baroque music can sound like an almost mathematical use of a stock vocabulary (of course it's not). But as with jazz, what keeps you listening is when those borrowed 'devices' are handled in a distinctive way. I'll give that clip a watch later on. Here's another - Malcolm Arnold sending up some of the hackneyed phrases commonly used in classical music in his 'A Grand, Grand Overture'. The whole thing is wonderfully daft (including obbligato parts for vacuum cleaners, a floor polisher and rifles) but listen to how he ends it from around 6 minutes). http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=e5343nfOnkk

Nielsen's big thing was 'progressive tonality' - where symphonies traditionally start at the tonic, go on a journey and come back to the tonic, he starts in one key and then sets out to end somewhere else. I love the Third - but then that's locked into my mindset. I find it the most 'pastoral' of the six - especially the point where the voices flood in. I'm a sucker for pastoral. 4 + 5 have much more of feel of conflict - an almost dialectical crashing of opposing forces bringing a new world into being. I've been trying to read Robert Simpson's book on Nielsen's symphonies - a bit heavy on the 'flyshit' for me but I'll persevere!

Strange how differently we relate to music. I've been listening to Nielsen since the late 70's and love 2-4. But 1 and 6 still have me flumoxed. Interesting how a completely different listening experience carries you into 6 straight away.