… much for me to descend into the pit of darkness and despair, and here I am again after hauling myself out yesterday.
That’s right – someone has sent me a soundtrack of the final Lindisfarne concert at Newcastle upon Tyne City Hall in 2003. “Here – play with this” – all 2 hours and 21 minutes of it.
So in a short while I’ll have a message – “can you do a 57-minute concert for me, with a 3-minute commentary in German?”. My German isn’t what it ought to be unfortunately but I’ll do my best. After all, I do owe someone a few favours, especially as rather a large amount of concert soundtracks have appeared in this way.
However, I have another idea for my purposes. Many of Lindisfarne’s songs were written by “Jimmy” Alan Hull, alas no longer with us, and many others were written by Rod Clements. Now if I were to go through the soundtrack and pick out the songs from each of the two, I might be able to make up a couple of concerts, one for each musician, and play it on their birthday or something.
But Lindisfarne …
If ever there were two groups that shaped my teenage years between 1970 and 1972, it would be Jethro Tull and Lindisfarne. Jethro Tull’s BENEFIT, STAND UP,AQUALUNG, THICK AS A BRICK and A PASSION PLAY have been on my playlist since they first came out, and witll always be there.
But then again, so will Lindisfarne’s NICELY OUT OF TUNE
These were the groups that were played non-stop by my friends and me during that period but Lindisfarne were special. There was quite a big Lindisfarne fan club at my school and one of them follows this blog from the Shetland Islands (hello, Robert).
At Christmas 1971 I actually saw Lindisfarne. They played at a private members’ club in Crewe and I remember it very well, and for several reasons too.
Firstly, this was the occasion when Ray Jackson did his harmonica solo in the middle of WE CAN SWING TOGETHER, which usually lasted about 10-12 minutes.
However at “Up The Junction” in Crewe that night it went on, and on, and on, and was probably about 25 minutes long.
The story was that the rest of the band nipped out and went across the road to “The Barrel” for a quick pint. While they were out there, it was 23:00 and being a private members’ club, no-one was allowed in after that time, so the door was locked. The rest of the group was thus locked outside and they were banging on the door for 10 minutes trying to catch the attention of someone to let them back in.
The second reason was that I was 17 and my girlfriend at the time was … errr … not quite 14. Ordinarily, being under the age of 18 we wouldn’t be allowed in but my elder sister and her husband were both members and had cards of admission, and they weren’t photo-ids in those days of course.
Anyway, to cut a long story short … "thank God" – ed … my girlfriend hadn’t ever drunk alcohol before, as I found out far too late to do any good. And it’s no use, you can’t take it out once it’s gone in.
Taking a girl of … errr … not quite 14 home steaming drunk a long way after her curfew time did not go down at all well with her parents as you can imagine and so as far as that relationship went, that was regrettably that.
Funnily enough, whenever I went out with a girl during that kind of period, something always went wrong and incited the ire of a set of parents. I never seemed to have any luck in that respect.
But as you can see, Lindisfarne has a special place in my heart and brings back quite a lot of memories from the period 1970-72 when I was finding my feet as a young proto-adult. It certainly did today.
Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, when the alarm went off this morning I was reminiscing about my stag night before my wedding. And I’ve no idea why because it wasn’t anything earth-shattering.
In fact, all that happened was that a group of friends (yes, I did have friends in those days) and I went on a tour of the decent pubs in Crewe (I used to drink in those days) and finished up in an Indian restaurant on Nantwich Road for a curry after kicking-out time at the pubs.
There were a few pubs in Crewe that were what I call decent – an old-world type of atmosphere and served proper beer.
iI’s 31 years since I left the UK so of course I can’t remember many of them now but we had the Horseshoe up in Coppenhall and the Crown in Earle Street that served Robinsons’s beer, the Lion and Swan in West Street that served Boddington’s and the Express in Mill Street that served real Tetley’s.
However the Express was a pub where you had to be careful. It was a pub frequented by a certain type of person and a friend of mine had an uncomfortable 5 minutes in there when he went to pick up a passenger when he was driving a taxi for me.
It reminded me of the time that I was in Berlin with a coach on my way to Moscow. I decided to go for a walk that evening and one of the passengers decided to accompany me – a young Canadian guy.
At one moment we went into a bar for a beer and after a couple of minutes the guy with me asked “what do you notice about the customers here?”
“Well” I replied, “there are plenty of couples in here but I don’t see any women at all”.
And so in the best traditions of the News of the Screws, we “made our excuses and left”.
The Crown was another pub that I only visited on rare occasions even though it was one of the best pubs in the town.
That was because there were some customers in there who used my taxis. They were always in there every evening and there was something not quite right about what was going on with them, their friend and their children. And they were the clingy type.
There were a couple of other pubs in Crewe too that were worth a visit but I can’t remember them now. It was all such a long time ago.
So after taking the blood pressure I went for all of my medication – 15 tablets of it and then back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. One of my dreams about dreaming, a really long, involved one with about 8 or 9 different phases in it, part of which involved a school. I’d come to the attention of the local newspaper and in collaboration with the local radio station they wanted to broadcast it with me reading it, explaining it as I went along and could copy it into the newspaper. But of course, how do you explain dreams? How do you interpret them as you go along? Regardless of what Freud and these other people said, there’s absolutely no connection at all between the dreams and anything in particular so it was totally impossible, but they were insisting so I went to read it but I couldn’t remember what had happened, I couldn’t remember what went on and I couldn’t remember what I was going through at that particular time when I dreamt it. They were still harping on about this flaming dream and I was totally lost and submerged in all kinds of problems associated with trying to repeat it and interpret it.
And I’m impressed that I can come out with all of that during a dream when I’m asleep.
Later on I read somewhere in some kind of paper that there was going to be a dance at the school on Friday evening next week starting at 16:00 to celebrate the death of the headmaster Mr. Morris. I knew nothing about this and no-one had said anything so I didn’t know what was happening. Usually someone would mention something about a school dance to me because of obtaining all the PA equipment, disco deck etc but nothing had been said. So on the way back to class after lunch I was with my classmate who now lives in Munich. He had his satchel draped over his shoulder but not actually fastened but extremely casual and pale grey trousers instead of dark grey ones. I went and found one of the teachers whom I know organised a lot of events for the school and asked her when she was going to let me know about the dance on Friday week. She gave a very non-committal answer and someone else shouted at my friend to go and organise himself and dress properly, put his satchel on etc. Anyway, not knowing what to do I left and thought that the simplest thing to do of course is to force their hand. I went into my form room and quite a lot of my form-mates were there and I just announced “by the way, there will be a school dance a week on Friday” and gave them all the details as far as I could. I asked them if they could spread the word around their classes this afternoon. I thought that that is going to be the easiest way to deal with this situation – to take charge of it straight away anyway rather than leaving it until the last minute.
That latter dream was another one of those comfortable, warm dreams that I have occasionally that sound so real. No girl involved in it this time though, which is always a shame.
For the rest of the morning I’ve been doing something that I haven’t done since before I went to Canada at the end of September last year, and that is that I’ve been playing the 5-string fretless bass.
It’s complicated to play because it’s quite heavy, so I can’t play it standing up, and with it being a standard scale bass rather than a short-scale bass like my Gibson EB3 or the Fender in Canada, everything gets in the way, my arms and fingers aren’t long enough and of course my finger fall into different places because of the extra length and width, and there are no frets to guide me.
The 5th string is actually lower than the low E. It’s a low B but I had plans to take off the B string, move the others down one and add a low E guitar string to the top and tune it as I would the lower 5 strings on a 6-string guitar.
Back 20 or so years ago I played (briefly) with a female acoustic folk guitarist and so if there was a solo to play, I had to play it on the bass. And quite often, I would run out of frets so a bass with an additional upper string would have been perfect for that.
So on the bass I’ve been working through my running list and also trying to work my way through the bass lines for THE BARRICADES OF HEAVEN – including the organ riff – and Jethro Tull’s CROSS EYED MARY.
But imagine trying to play “Cross-Eyed Mary” in today’s PC sanitised world. That’s a song that, along with songs like Ted Nugent’s JAILBAIT, Grand Funk Railroad’s SHE GOTTA MOVE ME and Led Zeppelin’s SICK AGAIN, has been consigned to the dustbin of history and we aren’t allowed to mention them any more.
It all reminds me of the book-burning of the 1930s or the smashing up of alcohol in the USA in the 1920s by the Temperance movement.
Seeing as we were talking about Lindisfarne just now … "well, one of us was" – ed … there are plenty of their numbers on my playlist too and I enjoy playing them and singing along. We did a few with the aforementioned young lady acoustic guitar.
Of course, we have to have NO TIME TO LOSE
"Had more than my share of people giving advice
on the way that my life it should be
But look at the country man it’s looking so nice
it’s feeling so good to be free
No time, no time to lose"
Yes, that’s a verse that really strikes a chord with me. “Been there, done that” you might say.
So this afternoon I’ve been playing around with a Lindisfarne concert trying to make some kind of sense of it – a running order or set list would be a good idea for a start – and then I’ve been out gallivanting.
Yes, me socialising! One of my neighbours, the President of the Residents’ Committee, invited me for a chat and to my own surprise I was there for almost 2.5 hours chatting. That’s not like me at all, is it?
Back here I had chips (some were sweet potato too) vegan salad and one of those breadcrumbed soya fillets that I like. And it was delicious as usual.
Now that I’ve finished everything, I’ll dictate the radio notes ready for tomorrow when I’ll edit them and assemble the programme
But there’s a lot to do tomorrow. I’ve run out of pizza dough so I’ll have to make some more. There’s some bread to make too and also that bread-and-butter pudding so I’m going to be busy.
There won’t be much time to play the bass so I might have a go at that tonight. Walls of solid granite 1.2 metres thick have their advantages when it comes to soundproofing.
So I’d better clear off if I want to play the bass "I have no one to call my friend
The road I travel has no end
And so I turn my face up to the sun
And walk on down the road to kingdom come"
Yes, I’m certainly heading that way – sooner rather than later if I don’t cheer myself up.
