A Lark Ascending

I was in Sheffield on Saturday around 7.00 - I usually have no problem parking near the centre at that time but it was mad. I put it down to Xmas parties! Listened to the CD last night...it really is one of his strongest pieces.

David Bowie's Blackstar album: 'An unexpected left turn that deepens the mystery' I'm no Bowie fan though I've come to enjoy some of his music over the years. Just want it known that I saw the Jazz Revival coming first.

I had my standard half yearly No 2 on top, No 1 at the sides for £4 in central Worksop (right up there on Main Street where all the action is) a while back. Usually I have to pay an exorbitant £6. I'm always amazed by the prices women regularly pay...a trip to the hairdressers for the price of a complete CD set of The Ring (I assume the treatment lasts as long as the cycle).

Sorry to hear that, sidewinder. I did something similar at a concert by the Full English in Sheffield a couple of years back. Left leaving work too late, forgetting traffic and then arriving with ten minutes to spare at an unfamiliar venue and could not find a place to park. After 30 mins I gave up and went home. Had a similar experience in Cambridge on Monday - thought I'd given myself plenty of time to cross Cambridge and then got snarled in the evening rush hour, not quite sure which road to take. I was lucky and made it with ten minutes to spare (I'd planned on an hour!).

I clicked anonymous for name but left amount visible. Although nothing shows on the main screen if you click 'view donations' name comes up to see. (I tried signing out...still there) It's useful to see amount towards target and even how much individuals are donating. Don't see the need for the names.

Peter Brotzmann doing 'Away in a Manger' or 'Little Donkey'

Daffodils come early! One of many sightings over the last few weeks. These were spotted near Luccombe, Somerset by Rachel Finlayson on 12 December. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/35102687 I keep spotting trees that look ready to bud. There are going to be tears!

Thanks - might try it. Maybe he's like one of those luvvy actors. Brilliant when on stage, insufferable when talking about himself to the media. Thanks. Might try him. I'm not necessarily hung up on a 'man of the people' approach (after all, Orwell was very middle-middle class). I just don't care for the whole 'art/aesthetic' thing....always seems like a creation of the elite in order to differentiate themselves from 'the masses'. 'The World of Yesterday' was definitely the wrong book for me to read!

I'd like to hear Evan Parker doing 'Angels from the Realms of Glory' with circular breathing on the 'Glo_ow_ow_ree_aaah_aaah_aah...' bit.

No, I've never read his novels (not likely to now!). One of the areas of history/culture I'm particularly interested in is the early 20thC and in particular the Late Romantic/Early Modern world (musically speaking) so I came across the name there. The idea of a book about the world before Nazism and how it fell apart appealed. He just struck me as very much of the spoiled upper middle classes, wanting for nothing and utterly convinced of his own finer feelings (much of the book had me squirming, he seemed so caught up in his own superior taste). I'm afraid George Orwell (writing at about the same time though from a different perspective) describes a world I find much more believable. Zweig seemed stuck in a bubble of privilege until the world collapsed around him...and even then he could afford to escape the worst of it. Twice! He just rubbed up against all my prejudices. Poor little rich boy.

Grateful Dead streaming series planned by Amazon

Enjoyed my reading this autumn but these two tried my patience. Finished this after three months. Reads like one of us stringing our posts together, evaluating on a whim and personal prejudice, suddenly going off at tangents (several pages on type sets!). Laboriously tries to draw connections between long forgotten songs with throw-away lyrics. I ended the book no wiser as to how or if LSD explains the music of the mid to late 60s. Made for a nice bedtime read for 20 minutes at a time but the time could have been better spent. The most irritating book I've read since that sociology book by an undergraduate on British jazz a few years back. Zweig had a rough time in his last 15 years culminating in suicide (though his wealth meant it was not nearly as rough as others who fled or tried to flee Austria/Germany). The sections about the collapse of order after World War I and then from the late 20s are the best parts. Particular interesting section about the state of Austria when he settled in Salzburg after World War I. But I'm afraid I found the vanity of the man insufferable. Very much the preening aesthete, priding himself on his exquisite taste (not only does he collect monographs of the 'masters' but then whittles them down so he has a collection of their finest pieces), the famous people he fawns around, the high regard everyone has for his writing (he goes to New York and the most memorable thing he sees is his own book on display in a shop). Towards the end he explains what a shrinking violet he is and how he hates verbose prose, preferring writing that moves the action along...and then spends four pages labouring the point. His travels, rather than opening his eyes to other nations just have him reducing the people of the countries he visits to stereotype. The ordinary folk of France and Russia are condescendingly referred to as 'simple people'; and the wives of his preferred 'artists' and 'intellectuals' seem to exist to keep house while their husbands accomplish their 'work'. And how a self-proclaimed 'intellectual' can come out with a line about his 'beloved city of the lagoons'....!!!!!! If Niles Crane ever wrote his autobiography it would read like this. I constantly visualised Zweig brushing a chair with his handkerchief before sitting down.

Episode 1 from 1890s Ziegfeld up to Showboat (1927). I saw bits of this many years ago - it was on daytime TV which my parents had on all the time. Was taken by it but couldn't watch it uninterrupted. Found a very cheap version so sat down to watch the first episode on the back of seeing Showboat last night locally. Very enjoyable bit of social history.

Love this one...almost a landscape!: A large flock of greater white-fronted geese, fly in the puszta or Hungarian steppe of Hortobagy, Hungary. The birds, native to Russia, Greenland and North America, are regular guests of the Carpathian Basin in winter Photograph: Zsolt Czegledi/AP Would make a great jigsaw! Also: Trees emerge as fog clears up in Lushan Mountains in Jiujiang, China. Photograph: Hu Guolin/Barcroft Media http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2015/dec/11/the-week-in-wildlife-in-pictures

Another musical: At the Sheffield Crucible theatre - first time I've been in the main theatre since the early 90s when I saw the Westbrook Orchestra there. I usually end up in the smaller room where they do jazz/folk things. Delightful production. Only vaguely knew the story but the songs were almost all familiar. Ecstatic audience from right across the age range.

As you probably know Fairport began playing West Coast (California, not Cornwall!) music - covers of Airplane, Dead, Elektra stuff etc. They'd do long jams on things like 'East-West' (no recorded evidence) and 'Reno Nevada' (tracks have appeared). 'A Sailor's Life' was their experiment to try this on a traditional English folk song (although it was probably Irish, Scottish or even Appalachian! Most were!). Not a lot around of that type. Most folk music tends to be short without much jamming even in the folk rock variety...unless it's a 175 verse Child ballad when the instruments tend to colour or embroider a little. The things that come to mind in the more jammy area: Fairport: Sloth This became the staple for solo display. The original is on their 'Full House' album of 1970 after Denny left with Thompson afire in the two solo bits: There's also a brilliant version on 'Fairport Live Convention' from 1974 when Denny had rejoined. Dave Swarbrick using his electric effects on fiddle to the max, a fine bass solo and then, best of all, one of the most carefully constructed guitar solos on a rock record I know from Jerry Donahue. Fairport: Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman Wasn't released initially but turned up on compilations and is now on the 'Full House' reissue. Blistering soloing from Thompson. The Albion Band: The Gresford Disaster This might sound like a dirge for the first two minutes (it is about a mining disaster!) but then a wonderful instrumental section kicks in - treated fiddle and then guitar. Sandy Denny's 'John the Gun' and a lot of Richard Thompson's later music might also fit the bill - he's fond of sticking in hurdy-gurdies and crumhorns in unlikely places, even when the music is a long way from folk. ************************************* Always sad this area was not mined more. Improvisation in the jazz sense has never been a big thing in British folk music and after 1976 it got a dirty name.

According to this month's fRoots Totnes is twinned with Narnia! I listened to those Bridget St John records on Spotify earlier in the year - remember her as a regular on the Peel show (no conflict of interest there, then). There's still a charm to those records. The reason she stayed in my mind since the early 70s was her 'harmony' vocal on 'The Oyster and the Flying Fish' on the second Kevin Ayers record, a great favourite over the years. ******************************* I was listening to disc 1 of Dust on the Nettles last night and this track jumped out again: Seemed to be from a bunch of students at Radley College in Oxfordshire in 1971. They sound like character's from Jonathan Coe's 'The Rotter's Club'. Very much of its time but quite lovely.

Purple rool, Sabbath are crap.

I'm not sure which Denny box you mean - there are several. If it is the 19CD behemoth (which I don't know) then 'A Sailor's Life' comes up a couple of tracks after 'Si Tu Dois Partir'. Plain singing of a folk song with no beat, instruments embroidering around; then the beat kicks in and the song part rises to a climax followed by an extended instrumental jam hitting another peak, finally ebbing away to just cymbals. Ring any bells? Check here: If it's that one you're talking about, it's the song that (arguably) launched folk rock. There's not a lot in that vein but I can recommend a few things. You puzzled me with the Weather Report reference. WR were usually pretty 'funky' and English folk rock was rarely funky (apart from when they did covers and then they could be like Uncle Bob 'getting down' at the wedding!). I suspect you meant the spacier side of the early WR records.

What was the track?

I've added what seems to be a compilation album by McDonald to my Spotify playlist (the folk one). I remember the cover vaguely from the time. At the very least I can play spot the Tippett/Thompson! Another one who I've never listened to who has enjoyed a comeback is Vashti Bunyan...the name always sounded a bit brown rice and sandals (though god knows why that should put me off as my record collection is awash with indigestible grains and dodgy footwear).

Only know the Watersons and Briggs there. Pentangle are a band I had to learn to like and still find Jacqui McShee's voice a bit of a strain (not to mention Bert!)...too high! But there's some very good music there. Glad you enjoyed The Unthanks. Utterly unique and still unspoiled despite the grand nature of some of their arrangements. I listened to that Lynched record this afternoon - Cold Old Fire. It's excellent...not a trace of Celtic mist anywhere. Reminds me in places of the Dubliners or the very early Christy Moore records. Really strong accents, rough and ready (but expert) instrumentation, a mixture of serious and jokey almost music hall songs. And then on some of the tracks they drift off into these lengthy, almost minimalist instrumental arrangements, quite unlike anything I've heard on an Irish folk record. Shot to the top of my list of bands to catch live...they were everywhere in the summer.

It flooded the middle of Worksop in 2009 - up the main road to about half a mile from me. Nothing like that at any time in the 24 years I've lived here. But then it has only heavily snowed once. I expected to spend three months of each year snowed in this far north!

Passed the time but a pretty standard plot with redemptive ending. Chock-a-block with famous names but they seemed to be playing to stereotype - Grand Dame Maggie, motor-mouth Billy etc. Third thing I've seen Tom Courtney in recently and he's played the irritable elderly man every time (if they decide to make a film of my life he'll be a shoe-in [the tantrum because of a misfiled CD should be a classic]). What a Performance! Pioneers of Popular Entertainment (BBC4) (Episode 2 - early 20thC) Very enjoyable again. People I know like George Formby, Gracie Fields and Sir Harry Lauder; but I was quite unaware of the intriguing cross-dressing Vesta Tilley.