A Lark Ascending

Area 2: Left of the patio door. Top: Various contemporary/avanty US things. Second shelf: Up to 1945-ish (and some Aussie jazz and Norwegian/Finnish folk music!) Third shelf: Miles, Coltrane, Mingus etc Fourth shelf: ECMs and similar Fifth shelf: Singers and Swedish folk Sixth shelf: Piano, guitar and Euro jazz that's not ECMish.

My God, you lot are a tidy bunch! Area 1: Right of the patio door. Top shelf: Latin Second shelf: US rock Third shelf: UK rock Fourth shelf: UK jazz Fifth shelf: Blue Notes, sax and trumpet US jazz Bottom shelf: Various boxed sets. Small bookcase - Country, bluegrass, blues.

One of the most powerful concerts I ever attended was a performance of "A Child of our Time" on the day in the late-80s when the apartheid regime in South Africa introduced draconian reporting restrictions to hide their attempts at repression in the townships. The piece seemed so immediate! I still recall the tears coming to my eyes as the choir sang 'Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh to let my people go!' In fact it gives me the shivers just thinking of it. I heard the War Requiem in Coventry Cathedral on the 25th anniversary of its first performance there. Another deeply moving experience. 'Gerontius' was the first big choral piece I heard way back in 1976 at the Festival Hall. When the choir hit 'Praise to the Holiest in the Heights'....whow!!!! There's a long amateur choral tradition in England going back to the 19thC and beyond. A great deal of the English choral repetoire comes out of that. Another goody is Schoenberg's 'Gurrelieder'. Pre-atonal and serialism it sounds like an overcurdled Richard Strauss!

Great disc(s). I too like it the best of the live releases.

I'm not big on choral music - choirs tend to sing in plummy accents over here, sounding like they all come from Eton - but some pieces do grab me. I think Janacek's 'Glagolitic Mass' is my favourite (it's hard to sound like you come from Eton when you sing in Glagolitic). Stravinsky's 'Symphony of Psalms' is nice and spikey as you'd expect. Lots of good choral Britten. The 'Spring Symphony' is a beauty for this time of year. And the 'War Requiem', of course, is very well known and very powerful. Holst's 'The Hymn of Jesus' is a marvellous piece, again with odd musical references. There are some beautiful recordings of his smaller scale stuff. His 'Choral Symphony' has glorious passages but always seems overlong to me and I've never really taken to his 'Choral Fantasia'. I love Elgar's 'Dream of Gerontius'...a bit heavy on the Catholic mysticism but fabulous music.

I don't know that one, ubu. It's a more recent Westbrook. To my mind Westbrook has not been so compelling in the last 15 years though I did enjoy the recent "Chanson Irresponsable" when it was on the radio. Perhaps not one to jump at. I really like the solo piano disc. Westbrook is no virtuoso - arrangers piano, I think they call it - but the pieces on that disc really do reveal a very distinct set of characteristics. Very romantic in places which is not normal with Westbrook. Just go out of your way to find 'The Cortege'. Desert island music!

Strange that 'Mind Gardens' should be considered pretentious nonsense whilst the excesses of the free-jazz avant-garde are treated with reverence. Crosby was listening to that stuff and 'Mind Gardens' strikes me as his rather clumsy attempt to do something similar - not another pretty, jangly tune but something angular, discordant, obtuse. Yes, the lyrics are nonsense but then so are the lyrics of 'I am the Walrus'. OK, he (and the Byrds in general) didn't have anything close to the instrumental abilities to pull off that sort of thing convincingly. Here's a man attempting to do what pop and rock stars are constantly accused of failing to do. At the height of pop success he takes chances. OK, the resulting piece of music is nothing very great but I just wonder. What is the difference between trying to be creative and challenging and just being pretentious. I'd suggest the difference lies in how posterity has placed you - if you've become a myth your every musical squiggle becomes an attempt to push the musical envelope; if you've become a laughing stock then that squiggle becomes pretension. 'Mind Gardens' is not a track I'd ever feel the desire to play on its own or put on a compilation. But in the context of the album it has its place.

No you didn't. You can see the sticky back plastic! They were obviously made next door in the Blue Peter studio. Sorry, non-Brits won't have a clue what I'm talking about (as usual!).

Another sign from the past: performed by: Demis Roussos (bass, vocals) Lucas Sideras (drums, vocals) Silver Koulouris (guitars) Vangelis Papathanassiou (multi-instrumentalist) Now here's real evil:

I knew it was a mistake to post that picture!!!! It never did Bing Crosby any harm. Why in Britain you can even become heir to the throne with such appendages!!!! I led a blues-less youth. When I started listening to music attentively c.1969 the UK was awash with endless blues-rock group...normally heavy handed ones who took their example from Cream's more excessive moments. I was much happier with prog-rock, folk-rock, jazz-rock...anything without the blues in it. Clapton just stood for all I disliked. Then I caught jazz and from there I sort of came backward into the blues. And the Layla album was one of the discs that woke me up. So I've got a pretty driftless blues collection - lots of good things from all over (picked up the 1928 Mississippi John Hurt sessions only last week). But I don't really have an overall handle on it. I accept that Clapton may be well down the pecking order for those to whom pecking orders matter. But over the years I've found lots of stuff by him that I really enjoy...and lots that I don't care for (he should have done time for 'Wonderful Tonight'!). This one sounds like I might like it. Had a look online for some references to that Paul Geremia record and I very much like the look of it. I've never even heard of him! Many thanks for the recommendation.

The Jazzwise site mentions that John Mayer of Indo-Jazz Fusions fame has died. A car accident. Very sad. Guardian obituary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story...1168372,00.html

Oh, it could go either way. And the odds are not in his favour. And yet...there's been a fair few 'return from the grave' successes by these old rockers. He's on home ground with this. I'm mindful to give it a go. Not expecting a revelation...but it might just be fun. One to keep an ear to the radio for.

Just make sure he sticks to painting. Don't trust him with a blow-torch.

Heard a track off this forthcoming release which sounded good - 'If I had Possession Over Judgement Day'. 1. When You Got A Good Friend 2. Little Queen Of Spades 3. They're Red Hot 4. Me And The Devil Blues 5. Traveling Riverside Blues 6. Last Fair Deal Gone Down 7. Stop Breakin' Down Blues 8. Milkcow's Calf Blues 9. Kind Hearted Woman Blues 10. Come On In My Kitchen 11. If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day 12. Love In Vain 13. 32-20 Blues 14. Hell Hound On My Trail Personnel: Eric Clapton (vocals, guitar); Andy Fairweather Low, Doyle Bramhall II (guitar); Jerry Portnoy (harmonica); Billy Preston (keyboards); Nathan East (bass); Steve Gadd (drums) I know this will be anathema to some. But I've always enjoyed Clapton when doing his bluesy thing. Potentially his best recording since 'From The Cradle'.

Could be leakage from the 60s rock group thread: "I am the god of hell fire..."

Well, I recall a big article in Mojo a few issues back to rehabilitate him. I'd hardly say he's there all the time. My experience of reading about Crosby has been largely derogatory articles. Partly a result of the general reaction against CSN&Y from the mid-70s from which only Young came out unscathed; partly because he just was so distant from the post-punk sensibility...the archetypal hippy that everyone loved to hate in the 80s; and partly because he comes across as not a very nice person in his heyday - spoilt, arrogant, pushy. Regardless of all of that I think you can trace a line from The Byrds and through the several versions of CSN&Y and find a totally distinct way of writing songs. And it lies in those chords. It was only recently that I became aware of just how keen he'd been on jazz which might explain alot. The tracks that jump out on the very so-so CS&N album of the mid 70s are Crosby's. And the generally hopeless American Dream has an absolute sparkler in Crosby's 'Compass'. I've not heard any of his music beyond that. He's not a consistent talent - he can't produce the gems like Young could, again and again. His extra-curricular activities resulted in lots of dross along the way where he clearly was not paying attention. But when he was focussed - 'Renaissance Fair', 'Everybody's been Burned', 'Deja Vu', 'Laughing, 'In My Dreams', 'Compass' - then I'd say he has the distinctiveness of Joni Mitchell. He was no virtuoso - in fact I doubt if I could point to a single track and say 'That's Crosby's guitar.' But he seemed to have an ear for, an interest in unusual progressions. I'm not making a claim for him as 'the best Byrd'. That would be silly. But he's the one whose music has constantly touched me over the years. Possibly because I knew his music well before I really got to know the Byrds properly.

Oh, Yes. The Byrds have had an impact on a wide range of English pop and rock. They somehow took that technicolour sound of the Beatles records and took it somewhere else. There's more 'lift' on the Byrds records and the country/bluegrass element just makes it all so distinctive. For me Crosby is the unsung hero. Clark, McGuinn, Parsons, Hillman all get frequent critical applause. Crosby is still potrayed as a silly stoned hippy, a spoilt rich boy who lacked the talents of his peers. Yet I love the strange chords he used in his songs both in the Byrds and later in CSN&Y. It all culminated in 'If I Could Only Remember My Name', one of my favourite solo albums. Due for a sonic upgrade fairly soon I believe. We're nearly 40 years down the line from the great Byrds tracks and they still thrill me. Regular Saturday night music.

A more recent photo:

The box was a god buy before the reissues. After that, well...

No, it's patchy after Sweetheart. But up to then I just find it so life-enhancing. Some of my favourite music.

The recent thread on 60s pop/rock groups had me playing "Younger than Yesterday" again. Inspired by the Beatles? Undoubtedly. But what they did with that, linking it with any number of US musics. And Crosby's jazz sensibility. Still underappreciated! I remember hearing 'Mr Tambourine Man' in the mid 60s on the radio, 'Chesnut Mare' much much later. But the 80s opened this music to me. Reading how much it inspired the likes of Fairport Convention drew me right in. Some of the moist affecting music of the latter half of thev 20thC. Let's hear it for The Byrds! (Sorry...in my enthusiasm I spelt 'hear' wrong in the title. But then the Byrds spelt their name wrong too!)

Thanks, Claude. I recall hearing a track off Lookout Farm back in early 1978 but have never tracked down the album. I very much like Beirach's recent violin/bass/piano recordings based round Bartok and Monteverdi; and some late 90s Liebman discs.

Can anyone comment on 'Drum Ode', a Liebman disc with Beirach that ECM has reissued?

Yes, I think that Liebman/Beirach looks excellent. And maybe it will finally jog ECM into releasing the 'Lookout Farm' album.

Kind of Blue still sounds perfect to me. Silent Way and My Funny Valentine are my runners up.