A Lark Ascending

Just started: First 50 pages are fascinating.

It'll be the RAF training for next year's Olympics.

Good(e) to see the recognition. This is an excellent read:

Porquoi? It's a set of opinions and personal responses like everyone else's. Generally based on genuine enthusiasm, detailed knowledge and careful listening (and, thank the lord, far less stuffiness than 30 years ago). Balance what you read there against what you read elsewhere. Above all, trust your own ears.

Only know about this bit of history in passing. Fascinating story.

One of the (many) things that find me out of the current zeitgeist. So much contemporary TV keeps the pace going at an incredible speed, almost as if there's a fear that the audience will turn over if there's not an action packed climax or major personal confrontation every few minutes. Especially drives me nuts when they take a book you'd read over a couple of weeks and condense it into 90 minutes. One of the reasons why 'The Killing' was so good - moved at a snail's pace. I come from a more leisurely time. Into the last few episodes of Mad Men 4 at present. Not slow but gives time for the storylines to breathe. Proceeds at a trot.

I had OTC on order for several months a couple of years back and then it got cancelled by Amazon. But it's on iTunes - I took it from there (along with the Jack Johnson box). No complaints from me.

No JRR today - its slot taken over by men selling car insurance comparison websites.

Which Coleman Hawkins recording has a cleaner sweeping away in the background? Might not be audible. I know we've discussed it here. 'The Man I Love'?

Acker Bilk ?!? Hopefully it was 'Blue Acker' and 'Horn of Plenty' (both collaborations with Stan Tracey) and not 'Stranger On The Shore'. I like 'Stranger on the Shore'. One of my most treasured non-commercial tapes is a 45 minute jam between Jimi and Acker on that very tune. Apparently Jimi expressed a desire to move towards Trad just before he died. He was seen eyeing up banjos on Denmark Street.

Not sure if this is around on CD - I have it on LP:

A have a blackberry bush that won't bear fruit? Should I get an Apple?

You're sneaking another Keith Jarrett-bashing thread on us, Bill, aren't you?

Yes, I enjoyed that. Nothing much grabbed me in the rest of the programme apart from the Blakey/Hubbard.

Haven't watched these yet - but the Kate Atkinson Jackson Brodie novels are terrific. I read all four between Xmas and Easter. A bit larger than life, packed with impossible coincidences, but all handled with great humour and a sense of not taking themselves too seriously. I watched a new BBC4 documentary on Carlos Santana ('Angels and Demons'). Sensibly confined itself to the 60s/early 70s period (up to the McLaughlin project) with just the odd reference in the last 5 minutes to the MTV era and the 1999 comeback. And I've just begun series 4 of Madmen.

I'm constantly amazed at how many secondary school favourites still sound great 40 years on. They may not have the freshness they had when they were brand new and falling on a largely musically innocent ear - but in compensation there's an aura of nostalgia, an ability to summon up a particular time, place and group of people I knew then.

All the best, Shawn. Hope things work out for you soon. I've always enjoyed your rounded approach to music and will miss seeing those 70s rock albums that are part of my past appear in your posts.

I do like bees.

I think that is very true. My view of how Sibelius should sound has never got beyond Anthony Collins; or Mahler beyond Kubelik. Which is clearly nonsense because there have been scores of interpretations both before and since those. But in matters of timing in particular, I've got a mental imprint from those first heard recordings I find it hard to get past.

I think so. Used to be one there and in Sheffield. I think the Nottingham one survived the collapse a couple of years back. Though I tend to download most things these days. Tend to avoid venturing into the big city these days! I've become a country mouse since moving to Worksop 20 years back.

Interesting all-Brit programme with lots of things I know nothing about. Especially intrigued by Freddy Gardner — The Japanese Sandman. Sounded like a Bix/Trumbauer record. The Jon Hiseman programme prior was interesting too - though the Colosseum II track was everything that I grew to dislike about mid-70s jazz-prog rock. Here's a twiddly theme on a synth, now we'll play it again; and here's a different twiddly theme on a synth, now we'll play it again; and here's a third... Makes me visualise large capes and ice rinks! But I'll have to dig out the more jazzy-bluesy original Colosseum albums.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace Part 1. Very impressive. I'd never heard of Ayn Rand. The Joy of Easy Listening - a BBC4 documentary that reminds you of how music history gets written about with just as much airbrushing as Soviet history used to. My mental map of the 60s and 70s is dominated by the rock narrative. But watching this I was reminded of just how prevalent this all was at the time. As someone on the programme said, this was how it sounded in Worcester rather than Soho.

Now I really am offended!

I find it strange that denigrating performers who are clearly at the top of the tree (whatever your feelings about their particular interpretation) is seen as perfectly acceptable by those who want to cosy up to the 'Great Minds' of this board. Question the Great Minds themselves and the acolytes come pouring in. How dare you express a contrary interpretation to our heroes? I'm all for wide open discussion, but rendered with some degree of humility, a very clear awareness that all we do is express things from our own restricted perspective. It's the Olympian 'I'm bring the truth down from Arafat' line that I won't buy (apologies for the Classical/Biblical clash!). Sorry if that does not fit with the requirement to ooze sycophancy towards the Great Minds.

See those angels dancing!