dimanche 12 février 2006

Simply good (Sandra McCracken)* The gospel in her Missouri upbringing strikes the ear as clearly as the Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash influences to which Sandra McCracken lays claim herself. Now a Nashville-based folk singer, she's intimate without going deep into the confessional. Some of her songs express a faith that reminds me of Hem (Eveningland) and their -- angelic -- vocalist Sally Ellyson. They come with the same confidence and without preaching to anyone. 'Best Laid Plans', a CD that took a specialist store some time to unearth, also features fine duets with her husband Derek Webb. She's like a friend many people would want to make music with, nobody out of the ordinary but a pleasure to hear. Michaela M. Forbes suggests on Sandra McCracken's site that this record may not be the best introduction to her, but also says "'Age After Age' is one of the best-written songs I have heard in years". This closing track is outstanding. The whole is an album suited to a mood to be told stories by somebody else with a gift for doing so in a strong, tuneful voice. Her third album, out in 2004, largely takes a break from winged angels, but she's followed it with a collection of hymns called 'The Builder and the Architect'. Sandra sounds like she looks: what I occasionally mention when it happens. She could be one of those attractive, friendly strangers with whom it's easy and fun to strike up a chat in the Métro, usually about the book she's reading or whatever's in the instrument case. She's engaging and skilled with a guitar and what Sandra does with Peter Sarstedt's famous 'Where do You Go To (My Lovely?)' is a delight. There's emotional stress in some of her own lyrics -- the failed love in 'Plenty' -- and what's as close to an expression of her religion as she goes on this album in: "Turn all my rags to white, turn all my words to rhyme Turn all the sorrow to shining faces Make all my dreams satisfied, make all the broken things right Make all the dead come alive" ('Last Goodbye'). Such longings are expressed in humanist values that don't make a heavy load of the torment, fear and hope some see in a crucifix. In 'Age after Age', Sandra takes in America's Founding Fathers, Martin Luther King and -- you realise -- the courage instead of the politics of people in their response to the horror of the "9/11" attacks. When you want somebody around who's simply good, generous and gentle on the ear, Ms McCracken is that kind of woman. _________ *Reinstated and revised after log synch failure of Feb 10. 5:10:55 PM  link   your views? [] Body music (ii): notions about motions and emotions* One day at work, when our man called on a dodgy line from a "sweltering hotel room" in Nigeria's oil delta swamps where he was "dripping with sweat" and wondering if I had got his story by satphone, I reassured him, but had to know: "What are you wearing?" Our correspondent claimed to be clad the way I would be in similar circumstances, once alone behind closed doors. A muggy Paris is not conducive to clothes, let alone Africa. Before leaving that night, I said sorry to everybody for "my particularly vile mood and outbursts around stress time -- I mean, sched time." That's when we tell the world what horrible main news stories to expect about itself next. It was my turn to be reassured. "Didn't notice," said the desk chief. "Was there any difference from usual?" What's this got to do with music? Nothing but energy levels and body talk, the way we're all aware of own emotional and physical stresses and how music helps even when it simply enters our ears via an iPod or other portable player. I've got records with various "relaxation techniques". A couple get shelved in stores as "new age" or "ambient", one is a wildlife and jazz combo -- a strange but effective notion -- and the others are oriental. Some people scorn the meditation method and one aimed at chakras, our "energy centres" -- until they try them. Some Hindu traditions about our personal energy make increasing sense to me. To pursue the sexuality and music theme, obviously I got randy during those years of abstinence from a love life. Maybe some people switch off desire, but never me; it was tough going. Some cultures are less swift than others to dismiss solitary sexual pleasure -- or relief -- as "sinful", but old oriental texts, particularly Hindu ones, hold that this and making love have very different effects on our physical energy, as well as what happens in our minds and souls. In the West, some medical people make no distinction. Others differ. My body tells me it's true once you are aware of what is happening in the chakra at your loins. Music does not sublimate our sex drive like some activities do, but it can very strongly express it. The blues and jazz were not considered the work of the devil in some southern US gospel communities for nothing. One journalist colleague asked if I'm into jazz, like he is, though he feels its high point was located firmly between 1960 and 1965, citing the Miles Davis and John Coltrane of those years and Paris clubs are not what they were. "Before it was too constrained," he said. "Then it got too free for me." "What about Alice Coltrane? Doing 'Translinear Light'? Yummy." "She's not her husband." She isn't. Still, I'm lending him a few jazz women and men, though when I've tried one or two of the light and breezy ones myself in recent weeks, they've simply not suited my prevailing mood without having a deeper radiance. They will be back in the spring. Alice Coltrane's Indian connection in the music made with her son Ravi is patent. It may still be strange on some ears, hearing "jazz fusion" revisited, but once used to this it's a very sensuous sound, body music that also works at a spiritual level. The same thing in other hands is stronger still. Evidently there are aspects of "relaxation" music and bodily expression and exercise that have little to do with our sex lives, but that was no Pandora's box of trials and torments I opened when writing of the love-making and music parallels. To illustrate my point, some video examples would help, but one guy's erotica and musical art may be your notion of pornography. For now, so you might follow my drift, the Indian erotico-spiritual connection got a mention in a fun fantasy passage at the end of a mish-mash entry last February ('Evangelism, technically speaking'). iMixes that turn me on are ones crafted about relationships, life situations and even seasonal savours as the year turns. People compiling those for the iTMS are working like Indian classical musicians for whom pieces -- like ragas -- are to be played and heard at specific times or in particular circumstances, according to customs that hold them appropriate. In a note, US contemporary composer Gunther Schuller, whom I discovered because of what he called "the third stream" of jazz and classical music in the 1950s†, describes part of a orchestral piece premiered in 1996 and called 'An Arc Ascending' thus: "...we can hear the quiet sustained sounds of a cold resting earth -- with occasional low subterranean rumblings; rising in Part Two to the life-giving, undulating, scurrying stirrings of spring..." (G. Schirmer Inc., publishers). People who say "listen to your body" are wise. What's interesting is the physical aspect of listening with an iPod, one to be researched a little more, now they're no longer just a young people's thing either but routinely cross "generation gaps" and many are finding out there's more to it than a purely aural experience. It's not the same as a concert or hi-fi at home, but music heard just with earphones does stuff to our brains that's still surprising scientists. This is about feedback, brain circuitry and what the mind does to the body rather than stimuli going the other way: how one sense can turn on others. It's probably best not to know just what fellow travellers are really doing in some of their listening. Perhaps it's also safest not to feel such entries coming on when I ask impertinent questions of mates stuck in sultry African hotel rooms. ________ *Reinstated and revised after log synch failure of Feb 10. †Illustrated musically on 'The Birth of the Third Stream' (1996). 4:44:57 PM  link   your views? [] Learning Lisa: globally Gerrard* My introduction to Lisa Gerrard came before I'd been 'Into The Labyrinth (DCD Within)' or knew much about Dead Can Dance. I didn't put a name to the voice until the credits rolled when 'Gladiator' first came out and Lisa and Hans Zimmer won awards for the music in 2001 (photo from The Hollywood Reporter). Everyone who has borrowed my DVD of the film finds it superb, which I didn't expect given their varied tastes, but Ridley Scott and the cast give the drama Shakespearean proportions, well caught in the score. To get to know Gerrard I'm gazing into 'The Mirror Pool' (1995), which comes as close to the "classical music" some would like among these voices of women as I've ventured. Lisa Gerrard (home) is a musical world in herself, which is is to be explored slowly. Like her site, it's an achievement in progress and I could hear no better occasion to approach such a career than during a spell "outside time". 'The Mirror Pool' is isn't the album I expected since people who recommended it to me only hinted at its breadth of vision and choice of styles. It's a good place to dive into the domain of a legendary siren. For inspiration, Lisa travels through time with the same ease she shows in the geography of sound. Her sources are everywhere. _________ *Reinstated and revised after log synch failure of Feb 10. 4:23:26 PM  link   your views? [] Behold a mystery What happened? Where did the girls go? Any answers inscribed on a grain of rice and mailed to me are likely to make your guesses as good as mine. The vanishing act began when I wished to tell you a story on Friday. People say: "There's got to be a technical explanation." I don't doubt there is, but it escapes me. I sniffed trouble after part of the software used for this log warmed up by informing me it was fetching "four new parts". Once it had, both the programmes I use to tell you about women stopped working except to say: "Connection refused." Intercontinental communications wizardry isn't my strong point. Details of how I tried to make sense of the arcane technology of Radio Userland software are too boring to relate. My definitions of the abbreviation "synch" may be less so. "Synch" means two things. The first is about what goes on between such things as iPods and computers or web sites and the far-flung servers where what's on those sites gets stored. On Friday evening, this log still included the stories I've written since January 9. But when I got to my Mac on Saturday, they'd disappeared. Something went wrong with that kind of synchronization which the software makes happen at midnight, if the machine and me are still awake. Pure coincidence Far more intriguing, though, is the other sort of synch. Again, I skip details, but by the time I'd been though my backups until one of them "took" and got the whole mechanics working properly, it left the Blues here and what remained of a blue note in The Orchard. And then I was back on more familiar terrain: synchronicity. Regular readers will know that since last July, it's become ever more important to me to be attentive to what some people call "meaningful coincidences", even if I can't explain them. When they're not happening, particularly regarding music, paying heed to my intuitions and feeling in tune with natural cycles, I feel lost. Then I turn to some of my friends and people like Kathryn Petro who don't find these things bizarre but also talk and write about them. The latter did last month in a piece on 'A Mindful Life' called 'The Artist's Way: Week Three'. That's stuff I usually keep strictly to The Orchard, but since the "blog behind the log" was also affected by my technical misadventure, it shook me up enough to put it here for once. I've had to update 'Borrowed blues and other cryptic phenomena" to salvage the comments it evoked, but find Lee's remark more apposite than any technical bid to explain the loss of so many women. She's quite right: "February is brutal." This settled to my satisfaction, I still hadn't drunk my first cup of coffee when one of my favourite people said she had no idea "where Friday vanished" for her. Apart from half an hour in a swimming pool, she'd also spent ages on a vain attempt to persuade recalcitrant technology to do what it usually does without protest when she's working. Then, before the phone link went dead on us, she had time to add: "It's a beautiful day and I'm in a horrible mood." She was right as well. Yesterday the weather was gorgeous and when we had a connection back, I told her once she was less busy, I'd try to call to ensure she was no longer in a horrible mood or cheer her up if she was. My sunny Saturday was then swallowed up, however, in a series of such dismal episodes and encounters I gave up on the notion of lifting anybody else's dark clouds because I felt bound to make a bad job of it. A bit of a puzzle This is where the hat comes into the story I wanted to tell two days ago, along with a picture of some fabric art called 'Full Moon with River' by Yvette of Louisiana, who puts her creations on show at Ûrth Faces. Tomorrow night brings a full moon, the river I write about is a musical one, and the face underneath that hat belongs to one of the most remarkable women to put in a first appearance on the log a few months back. When I saw her name on the cover of 'Crossroads' (Fr) Béatrice and François, the friendly couple who bought up my local newsagent's shop at the turn of the year, were surprised the magazine was still on the shelf because it was December's issue. But I knew why it hadn't been returned yet. It was waiting for me to bring it out of hiding and discover a rare interview about a newly released album I ordered on sight. If I'm very lucky, a full moon week, a stream of sound and as earthly a name as a musician could have will get their act together in the next two or three days and land up on my desk. Those should be clues enough. Resurrection symphony In the meantime, others are crying out for reinstatement. That's where I take my hat off to Gilles Turnbull, whose article about 'Tweaking iTunes' at the MacDev Center gave me an idea I mentioned before losing a month's worth of entries. I don't know if you can do the same with a Windows PC, but this highly scaled-down snapshot shows part of the outcome of asking my Mac to make a .pdf file of the iTunes library instead of a print-out. In a note added to Gilles' article, I wrote in more detail how a bit of thought about what Gilles wrote gave me the means I've been seeking for a long time to make a searchable database combining the music in my library with what I write about women. It's proving a long job. I made a start with every article that was written here this year before most of them disappeared. In that database, my own searches bring up both the entries and the music at the same time. I'm glad I did that much because now I can begin to put the musicians back. This will take a while since there's no point in just restoring the lot without removing references that are no longer timely, but all is not lost. 3:00:48 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.