A Lark Ascending

It never occurred to me to take photos of the shops I regular visited - would have seemed like bus spotting! But I wish I had now! Quite fun looking on Google Earth to see what is there now. Here are a couple of random ones from the net: Not so much Sputnik as CSE Woodwork project!

You don't know the half of it! There is a genuine scandal, if only the wider world was interested, in how kids in state schools have been moved to supposedly 'vocational' courses with little rigour. It's been possible to do an all coursework ICT qualification that delivers 5 GCSEs! All the stories in the papers about schools that have overnight gone from 27% A-Cs to 78% A-Cs lie there. But when you run a system of data and targets then institutions do whatever it takes to hit those targets. There is a place for these new courses - they can provide motivation for kids who can't cope for whatever reason with the intensity of more academic learning. But I suspect we've had half-a-decade of kids in the state sector who have coasted through courses that have not really challenged them. But the school tables look good!

When I first started teaching 'clever kids' studied 19thC political or 20thC Modern World; the less able did 18th/19thC socio-economic history (your Turnip Townsends etc). God knows where that idea came from - I've always found spinning jennys and turnpike roads dull as ditchwater. The most common GCSE syllabus today is the 20th Modern World. We do the other popular one called the School's History Project - currently History of Medicine, a local study (mining) and a depth study on Weimar and Nazi Germany. But we ran the newer course parallel for the last few years doing a local study (mining again), heritage marketing (how is history 'sold' with reference to Sherwood Forest) and international terrorism alongside the Saxons to Normans. Major upheavals are ahead. I'm envisaging the history curriculum to revert to a grammar/public school of the 1950s approach - knowing the key facts and dates of Britain's rise to greatness (and a pox upon developing historical skills)! Fortunately we've been through such silliness before - history teachers tend to be left of centre as a bunch and know how to subvert! To be fair, at least the current government recognises the position of history. It's vanished, along with modern languages, in many state schools - too hard compared with the newer vocational courses and therefore not helping in the league table scramble. A lot of schools are suddenly finding they need to get it back on the curriculum to fit the new performance indicators and they have no staff to teach it!

I've been teaching a GCSE course for the past 5 years where one of the 4 units is called Raiders and Invaders (400-1100 AD roughly). So those kids have done the 'Dark Ages' quite intensively. Sadly the course didn't fit the new governments criteria so it's being scrapped. Fully expecting to be teaching Castlereagh, Canning and Palmerston within 3 years! Interesting when you're grown up but can't hold a candle to Vikings when you're 15! I think you'll find Hastings gets done quite widely in Year 7. It's a good topic to study causation - was William a military genius or was he just lucky (or Harold unlucky)?

Sorry, Bill. My cultural heritage!

Thanks, Aggie. People on this board come from all over and I love seeing photos of where they live or the landscapes they cherish. Some great ones over the years from the States, Japan etc. I remember some remarkable ones from southern Russia from a poster who seems to have vanished.

I imagine there were quite a few of us doing this! I recall getting very excited in the late 90s - around the corner from Bond St. HMV, up one of the side streets going north, was a pastie shop! They're all over the south-west and southern Midlands now but at that time it was amazing. Didn't last long!

I spend no more on music than I used to - but I get much more for it! What is more, I listen to more music (some would say 'hear' rather than 'listen'!!!!). Half of Saturday used to be spent travelling to and from record shops and then browsing. Now I'm at home with the music playing. And the wonder of the iPod means I can also be listening in dead time - travelling, waiting etc. Nostalgia's nice; but I'm happy to be here and now! (Having said all that, back in the good old days I didn't waste hours typing comments onto an internet board!!!!)

I'm sure that for professionals or people with proper photography skills the good ones come up with far fewer shots and in a much broader range of contexts. I hardly touch the controls on my camera. Actually one thing that frustrates me is depth of field. I had a Pentax camera years ago using film and you could see the effect of changing the dial on depth of field. The Olympus I use doesn't seem to do this. I find it hard to work out looking at the screen if I've achieved what I want or not. Added to which I can never remember whether wide depth of field comes from a high fstop or a low (I can't tell left from right either!).

Until the mid 2000s I used to try and get to London twice a year to tour the record shops for all those albums you never saw in the provinces. I'd probably spend £200 on a visit. I had a route that started at Bond St. HMV, along to the Oxford Street Borders, then the big HMV, along to Virgin at Tottenham CR and the other Borders, then down to Rays (Shaftesbury Ave when I started, latter day in Foyles), then to Tower at Piccadilly C and then perhaps an amble up Berwick Street (I think...the one with all the record shops and a market) and back to Oxford Street. Having written down a list of discs seen and relative prices I'd go back to the shops with the cheaper copies and purchase. I last did this seriously around 2005 - I visited London for a concert around 2009 and started the tour but found the shops either gone or much depleted and gave up pretty quickly. Bad news: the record shops have largely gone. Good news: I can get anything I want and more via the internet either as physical CD or download. I loved those trips (and the weekly trip to local record shops) but they are now very much things of the past. (I did a bit of record shopping in Watford in 1972-6. Used to stay with relatives in Northwood sometimes in my late teens).

I love this band. A very, very individual take on jazz. Probably too serene for some. I'd strongly recommend these two discs that set Azimuth in the context of a Canadian big band. Largely revisiting tunes on the trio albums but giving a different context. If you know Kenny Wheeler's big band records you'll know what to expect: I read somewhere recently that Norman Winstone is 70 this year! Hard to credit - she still sounds light as a feather.

Yes, I wondered about that after typing it and started to think maybe I went down. So what was up? I must have bought a few things there but the only one I can remember is Hatfield and the North's 'The Rotter's Club' in 1975. I can't believe how many mobile phone shops you find even in very small towns. How many mobile phones do people buy a week? But where did the Treaty of Westphalia position in the charts? not very high. #1648 with a bullet and after 30 years of trying But the Lutherans and Calvinists did agree to an amicable split after years of musical differences.

I'd put the last photo as 1969 or so. 'Magical Mystery Tour' LP - I'm not sure when that came out but it was not an official UK release. Canned Heat, Fresh Cream, The give-away is the 'Sugar, Sugar' LP - the single was a '69 hit. Why do I remember this stuff yet forget the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia almost instantly! Great photos. A few years back they'd have looked really old fashioned but you can really see the 'space age' décor in the first few. Very Sputnik! I remember those stairs too from the mid-70s. Jazz was up there if I remember correctly.

Well, if it's a stark choice between having the music unavailable (or most of it only intermittently available as in the 70s) or the current multiple format availability, then I too think the current situation is preferable. But it's not necessarily that stark.

Interesting to also compare Ornette Coleman, a figure of comparable musical/historical significance to Davis and Coltrane. One superb box of the Atlantics for the committed enthusiast. Most (I'm not sure about all) the key discs available individually from that era. One or two single disc compilations, perhaps. But then Coleman is never going to be a 'brand' outside the jazz world. And even there he's far from having universal appeal.

In my experience many people who have little or no experience of jazz have heard of Miles Davis - he's a visual icon as well as a musical one. Coltrane may loom large amongst those familiar with jazz and was a name those of us outside the jazz world had heard of 40 years ago but I don't think he's nearly as well known today. Miles Davis is a 'brand' that clearly can be resold to a wide audience in many different ways (no intention to disparage the music or musical achievement of the man there). Has anyone thought of making a chocolate ball confectionery with the Davis brand? Works wonders in Salzburg.

It's more of a general mild irritation with this sort of thing happening industry wide than something specific to this release. An increasing focus of what is often the same material re-emerging in boutique sets. But if the market is there... But to be fair to Sony, they are alongside releasing some unfamiliar live material (the Bootleg series)at a very reasonable price. And things have deteriorated how exactly? In no way at all. It has never been easier to acquire the music that interests you, never been cheaper to take a chance on the unfamiliar.

I assume this is an album of Louis' 10 favourite expletives.

Ah yes, Hooked on Classics ... Which is probably just an ancestor to this LP: To be fair, one of my favorite LPs from my Dad's collection was some kind of reworked Scarlatti session -- not quite rock but certainly not an accurate period piece. It had these two serving wenches on the cover. It looked a fair bit like this "Love Scarlatti" LP but it was some other album. Wonder if I'll ever track that down. I have a feeling 'Hooked on Classics' was early 80s. This was the stuff that caught on in the early 70s: The Walter Carlos album was around that time too. I think the 'Classics with a Beat' album was a budget label cash-in on the brief craze. I recall James Last did some of this too. I spent some time in Germany in the early to mid-70s and he was huge then.

But these 20 albums are far from OOP. You can buy them as individual albums. As at least two huge box sets. Many are available in those 3 in a sleeve sets. Sony has plenty of other music which is not in print. Quite. I suspect it's going to be most attractive to someone well on the slippery slope to becoming a jazz obsessive who does not yet have many of these discs. I've not read this but suspect the Sony marketing strategies would fit within its thesis: And it's not just 'pop' that is addicted to its own past. I have to put my hand up to listening mainly to music produced somewhere between 1000 AD and 1976!

Well, there's certainly that, but I do think these "bricks" are a huge step up from the Reader's Digest like LPs back in the day that merely collected the most famous movements or arias. These collections still appear occasionally, but have mostly been crowded out by these sets with complete symphonies and/or orchestral works. Oh, they are still there. Amazon is full of this sort of thing: The cover keeps changing while the same pieces - usually advert or TV theme linked - stay much the same. I don't really have a problem with these. Most people only every buy a few recordings. They like the tunes and so want a copy to play every now and then. The nightmare I recall from 'back in the day' (early/mid 70s) was: ('Classics with a Beat'...I'm sure there were loads of these (a version of Mozart 40 made the singles charts) but can't find many covers on Google. Clearly a cultural phenomena that has been soundly excised from history). At least we've not had a 'classics with a techno-beat' fad...though I do recall hearing a version of the Barber Adagio with a drum machine thumping out the beat.

Oh, I'm far from suggesting people follow the same path I did. It would be impossible - most of the catalogue was OOP then. Much had to be acquired on imports on rare visits to London. Very different today when, in the case of a huge icon like Miles Davis, nearly everything (and more) is available. I'm all for encouraging as wide a body of people as possible to hear this music. But something like ESP, for example, is out there for around a fiver. A pretty inexpensive way to dip your toe in the water. I know exactly what you mean about established jazz fans protecting their interests from late-comers! Being from the class of '76, coming in on the back of jazz-rock, I've encountered that from older jazz fans on more than one occasion!

The biggest box I own is the Ellington RCA set - there I was dealing with music, much of which couldn't be obtained any other way at the time. It was also music I knew I'd enjoy and explore for decades to come. Most of the boxes I have are of music unavailable elsewhere - a dozen or so Mosaics, various collections of live or unreleased material by musicians I really like. Or sets that give a broad survey of music I know I don't want to explore all the way. The classical doorsteps have no appeal at all. I'm guilty of buying (downloading these days) several discs at once of a current craze; but generally, I like the one at a time approach. There's something of a 'One-Stop-Shop-To-Being-Cultured' about these 'complete Mozart' things.

The only problem is that it amounts to resources being focussed on recordings that are readily available (in this case in a fair few formats). I can only assume from a business point of view selling the same thing multiple ways works and brings in the profits. I know its naive to expect it but I'd just prefer Sony to use those resources to get issued OOP music from its catalogue...or, dare I suggest it, focus on encouraging new music (I know, silly idea)! I'm pretty dubious about great blocks of music being good entry points, anyway. Having come to this music over many years, disc by disc, I'm not convinced a novice buying this will have anything like the same pleasure of gradual exploration and unfolding. I wonder how many of these boxes (The complete Bach Cantatas etc) sit on shelves with most discs unplayed. But this is all about commerce. Personally...and I know its not a popular option...I'd go for doing what labels like Chandos or Hyperion do in the classical world. Everything they have ever released is there to download (and most is physically available). So you can slowly explore it disc by disc. They've done a few blockbuster sets (a huge Liszt one recently on Hyperion) but I imagine for most listeners slowly moving through the music that interests you is going to be the most rewarding approach. Yes, you can buy the box and explore it slowly yourself. But I just have a hunch that a lot of these things get bought because 'it will be cheaper this way' and then sit on shelves. I know I've a few by people I though I might like and then lost interest in.