Blog closed

I have decided to close my blog. It has become too self-indulgent. And as someone recently said to me 'boring'. So, the only reason to write it would be for myself - so I shall continue in written form. The second reason is that I have not kept to my promise of honouring the greatest diarist of all - 'Chips' Channon. He said 'what is the point of a discrete diary - one may as well have a discrete soul'. I have not revealed what has really been happening in my life over the last twelve months. The happy professional experiences have been balanced by unhappy personal experiences and it is to those which I now need to devote my time.

Snow in the Sud

10 minutes from the Mediterranean and we have thick snow. Izzy, my naughty youngest has never seen real snow before and is transfixed. Lily, nearly eight is now building an 'homme de neige'. I have a garden full of happy children - about eight at the moment because Lily is the social animal par excellence. 10 days ago I was in the 35 degree heat of Port Au Prince Haiti. What a change. Extremes are wonderful.

This morning I have had english TV installed. Anyone who has had to endure french TV - endless programmes of people talking in the studio - will understand my joy.

And from a persoanl point of view I made an early start on the new book and good progress is being made. This has to be written by January 20. 35,000 words to go. 1000 per day.

Santa Claus is coming to town

The first sighting of a cuckoo in March/April signifies the arrival of spring. And the christmas equivalent is the first playing of Phil Spector's 'Christmas Album' in December. Today, Lily and Isabelle and daddy got to work on the tree accompanied by The Ronettes, The Crystals, Darlene Love etc. Lily knows most of the words so we were able to sing along to the famed 'Wall of Sound'. Lovely.

I must remind myself not to email gripes to my publisher when I have had a couple of glasses of wine. I said what I wanted to say but probably not with the tact I should have.

Ed Doolan

So much has happened recently that I forgot to mention a recent appearance on the Ed Doolan show on BBC West Midlands. Ed is also known as 'Mr Birmingham' an institution in the Midlands rivalled locally only by Carl Chinn - although Ed is Australian. I was invited on to talk about Positive Thinking and was given fifteen minutes. The 15 minutes soon became one hour as we took lots of texts and a few calls on the subject. I, of course loved every minute of it. Ed himself has had a few problems with his heart and we had an interesting sidetrack on whether positive thinking can pull you through health problems. He believes it can - as do I - and gave the example of how he had a serious heart operation twenty years ago a week before Christmas and that what pulled him through was the desire to broadcast his traditional Christmas day show. He was duly wheeled into the studio on Christmas morning. What they hadn't told him was that there was standby ambulance outside throughout the whole show in case of any relapse. Of course, there wasn't.

He re-enforced my belief that we need to continually create 'why's' to live for.

I wanted to also say that I really like Birmingham and from a personal point of view getting close to a place by being on a radio show helps no end. Not a fashionable view perhaps but it is a transformed city.

Perfect pop

'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More' - The Walker Brothers.

Discuss

Bits and bobs

A joke apparently attributed to former UN Secretary General Perez De Cuellar. When asked how many people worked at The United Nations he replied 'about half of them'. I met the good half this week.

Does it annoy you when people insist on putting 'lol' on their emails, messages, blogs etc? I had to look this up tonight. It means 'laughing out loud'. If you have to put this sort of mindless stuff in what you write I think you probably need a personality transplant. Or a wider ranging vocabulary. Or both.

Tonight, as I checked back in to my hotel - The Ibo Lele in Petionville, Haiti - the lady in reception offered a 'massage', with eyes raised on the word 'massage'. I walked off and ten minutes later she was on the phone to my room. Non merci. Do I look that lonely? Or desperate? Or perhaps she was.

My final night in Haiti. 'When was the last time you did something for the first time?' For me this was a view of the world I had never seen before. Of course, the next time I come it won't quite be the same. First time experiences in life mean everything. From birth right up to death. Perhaps Darfur next? Or DR Congo? Or East Timor?

Haitian Bee Gees

An evening indoors avoiding various Haitian biting things. Having done lots of work, prepped for tomorrow etc. I treated myself to an hour of You Tubing. I got Frank Zappa in my head and spent an hour watching various live version of his Allman Brothers cover 'Whipping Post'. Marvellous. If you don't want to do the full hour but want to see Frank at his best head for the 1984 New York version. 7 minutes and a great vocal performance from Bobby Martin.

Last night I went with my hosts Berta and her partner Jongee to see a band described as Haitian Bee Gees. They sounded so awful at the gate that we didn't even venture in. A great piece of fish at a local restaurant instead. A quick drink after where I saw the largest cockroach I have ever seen. Red and winged.

First time in Haiti

Writer Ursula Le Guin said that it is not the end that matters as much as the journey to the end. I am enjoying the journey and I suspect that whenever I sit back and reflect on my life I will think that the last month of it has been special.

I started 3 weeks ago in Bosnia and what a place that was. I then made a number of speeches in the UK which seem to have opened up some life changing opportunities and then it was back in France for just a few days before the journey to Haiti where I am now. I am really in Africa although Haiti resides in the Caribbean.

Two high points already. I arrived from Miami via New York (‘Just a New York conversation rattling in my head’ – thanks to the Half Note) with American Airlines (is there a worse airline in the world?) and was regaled by a fantastic Haitian band employed to entertain new arrivals as they get off the plane and make their way to the terminal. They were great. I was whisked through customs by my ‘meeter and greeter’ when everyone else was getting a grilling and within ten minutes I was on my way to the UN compound.

The second high point was a conversation with Shqipe Hebibi, a Kosovar who is also a good friend of a friend of mine back in Kosovo, Arlind Bakraci. Shqipe has a story to tell. Shqipe was working in Afghanistan in 2005 when she and two others were abducted by Islamic fundamentalists on their way to lunch in a UN 4x4. Your chances of not surviving were, and still are, minimal. Shqipe said that everyone tells you that at moments like that you think your life will flash before you. What actually happens is that everything happens so quickly that you can’t compute what is going on. They were held for 27 days and became the lead news item around the world. Shqipe was very, very lucky. It seems that a wealthy Kosovar had made contact with the kidnappers and that the Moslem link together with money had eased her release as well as the release of her colleagues. As someone who is fascinated by the psychology of what happens in those situations I asked Shqipe how she now feels looking back. What she said really interested me because she says that she now tries hard not to forget anything that happened. So the 3 hostages talk about their experiences so they don’t forget. I had imagined that you would try to forget everything but for the three of them this clearly isn’t the case. They will be ‘there’ for the rest of their lives.

My hotel (Hotel Ibolele) is stuck in the side of a mountain overlooking Port au Prince – the higher position keeps the Malarial mosquitoes away – and while my room is one of the worst I have stayed in I have a twenty metre pool for my own use it seems. So every night I swim in the dark, in delicious heat and enjoy Cajan fish and Haitian rice. The mangoes here are stunning and the best fruit I have ever eaten in my life. I am eating 3 per day. Haiti is the world centre for Mangoes – over 150 varieties. So at breakfast I have a plate of mango and banana, fresh coffee, some bread and jam, a fruit juice made from fresh lemons and limes and I can see all of Port au Prince beneath me and for about 70 km. A warm breeze gently eases me into full work mode. I haven’t felt this well for 10 years.

In the midst of all this journeying Sam, my new Commissioning Editor has given me the go-ahead to write the next book. So December and January in France with my babies writing and reflecting on a marvellous passage in my life. And what is more I am booked out completely for February, March and April. I almost forgot to mention that I have just won a contract with the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Enjoy the peaks Doug.

I am sorry if this blog sounds overly smug and congratulatory but I write it partly for myself. I just want to remember the special times.

I am finding time for music and today it is The Dells and a great piece of Northern Soul ‘Wear it on our face’. But a mention too for Charles Mingus’ ‘Haitian Fight Song’.

Beauty

Has there been a more beautiful piece of music released in the 21st century than 'Olsen Olsen' by Sigur Ros off the 2000 album Agaetis Byrjun? Why haven't I got into this band before? I think I like to keep in touch with newness but I missed this group totally. They are fabulous. Surely the world's leading rockband? Any american bloggers reading this should get along to a screening of their new film 'Heima' in NYC on 19 November. I am sure there are other showings too.

Are they a throwback or something new? Well there are obvious influences but there is nothing like them. They even sing in an invented language.

Just say no

I have a fear of lack of activity. This means that when there is a lull I take on work and projects that I should not be involved in. As I look at my diary for the next 9 days I see I am doing loads of stuff I do not want to do. It is not New Year yet but I resolve to learn to say ‘no’. I could be with my children and writing my next book. Instead I am in places like Birmingham doing ‘stuff’ that doesn’t interest me. Fool, Doug. And why do I feel ill all the time? 67 flights this year must have something to do with it.

Musically I have two new albums to recommend. The Robert Plant/Alison Krauss newie is one of those rare occasions where one plus one equals three rather than the usual one and a half. A gem of a record. Does Marc Ribot now play guitar on every album released by anybody?

And I am venturing into the new Sigur Ros. It hasn’t had great reviews but I cannot understand why. It sounds great to me. I will report more fully after a few more listens.

Bosnia

Waiting in my hotel in Sarajevo for my car to take me to the airport gives me a few minutes to mention my trip to this special place. The high point - although high is the wrong word - was a trip to the famed Mostar. Those who followed the war in the early 90's will remember the name. Almost every building still pockmarked with bullet holes from the street fighting but a quite beautiful 'old town' - little shops, cafes and churches and what they call the new old bridge. The Serbs blew the first one up.

I stopped in a place called Jablanica for a coffee and a chance to look at the stunning snowy mountainous view. From there I could see the famous bridge that Tito blew up in 1943. My driver told me the story of how the Germans stood on one side of the river, Tito's partizans on the other. Tito blew the bridge up and the germans figuring that Tito could now not cross the river went back into the hinterland, safe they thought from Tito's band of brothers. Instead overnight Tito built a new temporary bridge, came round behind the germans and defeated them. It was turned into a film starring Richard Burton the name of which escapes me. The bombed bridge is still there rusting up the side of the river bank.

My hotel where I was staying in Capljina near the Dalmation coast was fabulous. Expecting the usual slightly run down affair I was amazed to be shown the best hotel room I have ever stayed in, anywhere. Being the guest speaker wins one certain advantages!

Today it is airport hopping day. Sarajevo to Montpellier via Vienna and Paris in half a day.

Wilde Travel

Does, as Wilde said, too much foreign travel dull the mind? I am about to find out. This week it is Bosnia followed by 10 days in Haiti punctuated only by a little public speaking in the UK. I will blog extensively on both Haiti and Bosnia on my return. I still maintain that the strangest people I have ever met (and I have been to some strange places) are the french.

I must bhowever mention my music of the week which is anything by Funkadelic. But particularly the 'Hardcore Jollies' album and 'Maggot Brain'. George Clinton still doesn't get the credit he should. He was, and is, completely mad (in the same way as Lee 'Scratch' Perry) but endearingly so. If I ever go mad I hope it is the same way as those guys.

Halloween

Why do we have this? I really don't remember ever being aware of halloween as a child or 'celebrating' it at all. And now it seems to be everywhere. Here in France it feels like the build-up to Christmas.

To me it's about evil. So I am being grumpy old dad at the moment. After explaining why I wasn't going to drive her the 1Km to school (pollution, dad's need for exercise), and now the denial of the existence of Halloween I think my eldest daughter is having her worst fears confirmed about the miserable 'old man' alone with his newspaper and music in the corner of the room.

The Onion

A while ago I blogged on the USB fridge that holds one can of coke. On the occasionally very funny website 'The Onion' I have just seen a spoof advert for the USB Toaster. Today's joke is clearly tomorrow's reality.

This posting allows me to direct you to another spoof piece on the site that had me in hysterics:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/use_of_n_word_may_end_porn_stars

I hope those of you who are not overly sensitive souls might enjoy it. Those prone to shock...enjoy being shocked.

Infidelity

A friend approached me the other day with a problem. About 12 months ago his wife embarked on an affair with another man which lasted about 6 months. The affair is out in the open which is fine. He and his wife haven't had sex since the end of the affair. They get on well even now and comfortably life in the same house with their children and provide a loving atmosphere. My friend does not want their relationship to end. He would probably not mind if his wife embarked on another affair. What is important to him is that his children have a happy, 2 parent home which they do at the moment.

His wife has just approached him about a resumption of a sexual relationship. He is not interested although in all other ways he feels close to his wife. By saying he doesn't want a sexual relationship any more he puts home stability at risk. By saying 'yes' he crosses a line he is not interested in crossing. What should he do?

BusinessBalls

There are a number of vogue ‘business speak’ speak words and phrases that really annoy me. As I earn around 50% of my income as a corporate trainer I get to hear them more than most. Here are a few of them:

1. ‘Best Practice’

This annoys me because I believe in the infinite creativity of people and the potential we have to do something effectively in ways that are unique to us as individuals. The words ‘Best Practice’ imply only one way. A surefire way to stifle initiative and innovation in employees. I notice that some organisations have even started to develop ‘Best Practice’ departments. Surely a recipe for ‘our way is the only way’ thinking. And corporate death as a result.

Government ministers (Ruth Kelly in particular) use this a lot because they think that by using it they signal that they have a handle on their ministerial portfolio and what success means in, for example, the health sector. Will a journalist one day ask her what ‘Best Practice’ means because it means nothing to me at all.

To be able to adapt to the situation you find yourself in to me is a priceless life and workplace trait and will be increasingly so in the future. ‘Best Practice’ is the antithesis of that.

2. ‘Competencies’

Is there a job ad that doesn’t include the word ‘competence’. As opposed to what – incompetence? Competence means base level ability to me. Is that what our organisations want to employ? Surely they want the excellent rather than the merely competent?

And things are getting worse. I see the increasing use of ‘competency matrices’. People get employed to develop this gibberish – usually in Human Resource Departments. What does this add to any organisation? It sucks the money out of investment in the future and sucks the life out of people as it drags them down to a base level of mere ‘competence’.

3. ‘Human Resource Development’

I have blogged on this one in the past. As my fellow blogger Arkangel (http://simplepleasures3.blogspot.com) has recently said, was there a more cold, calculating, inhuman phrase put together to refer to human beings?

4. ‘Singing From the Same Hymn Sheet’

Which means theirs not yours.

5. ‘No-brainer’

Usually said by those who have lost the ability to think at work i.e. lost their brain.


6. ‘Let’s Brainstorm this’

‘Let’s get all the ideas out on the table so that you feel better but in the end we’ll do it my way anyway’.

If I ever use any of the above in my books you have the right to turn me into a human resource (whatever that is). Actually I do use ‘Brainstorming’ in my new book on creativity but I take the position of the cynic on this one. We know that , for most of us, we do not get our best, most creative thoughts in this 'forced' environment. Most of us need time - get the problem on the back-burner - to come up with a creative solution.

Writing to ENO

I have an MP3 with 15 Brian Eno albums on it and I am trying to listen to all of them in one day while working. Today is book proposal day (1 down and 2 to go) and Eno is the perfect friend to the writer. As I write I am in the middle of Here Come The Warm Jets album. 'Baby's On Fire' is the current track and what a genius track it is. But is the guitarist Robert Fripp or the guy out of the Pink Fairies? Answers Please.

I had a night in London on Monday and stayed at fellow muso and wine fanatic Brian's house. The next morning we felt truly people of the world. He heading to the airport for a plane to Marrakech and me for a plane to Perpignan in France. Soon for me it will be Port-Au-Prince. What a thrill that is going to be. I can feel the butterfiles starting.

Out of jail, out on bail

Gil Scott-Heron was one of my first musical heroes. Ironically this most ascerbic of commentators on American society has, in the last 20 years been far bigger in the UK than the US. Gil has been in jail for the last two years. He skipped a probation order to appear on stage with Alicia keys (a sure sign that Gil had 'lost' it). But Gil is now out, recording a new LP and has just done his first post jail gig in New York. he will be doing his customary 7 nights at the Jazz Cafe no doubt. And he is recording a new LP. So in honour of his release here are the lyrics to his greatest (and much copied moment) 'The Revolution Will not be Televised'.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

ECM Records

I am 'playing' tonight. And I am playing with ECM records output. And I am listening to Qaws by Anouar Brahem, Jan Garbarek and Shaukat Hussein and I am thinking it is one of the most remarkable pieces of music I have ever heard - Garbarek's blistering quasi-arabic sax solo near the end is one of his finest moments and Brahem flies. ECM records was the label that took innovatory jazz to a new level and made Scandanavia the leader in jazz progression from the 1970's. It has retained that position to this day. George Russell, the great band leader thought the Scandanavians second only to Africans in their innate sense of rhythm.

Anouar Brahem is a Tunisian Oud player who has yet to produce a track that is anything less than interesting. For those that don't know him his album 'Thimar' with Dave Holland and John Surman is a useful entry point. But his greatest is 'Khomsa'. One of my five best albums of all time. His latest 'Le Voyage De Sahar' is fabulous too.

The Rugby World Cup

Rugby is proving itself. As are the French. And I believe we are witnessing one of the best sporting competitions ever held. There are two reasons for this. The first is the rise of the ‘smaller’ nations challenging and sometimes beating the ‘bigger’ ones. This has now made the sport ‘global’ rather than a manifestation of empire. We have crossed the bridge. The second is the amazing level of support. It is interesting to compare this world cup with the soccer one. In the early rounds of the soccer world cup you often get games played in almost empty stadia. But in the RWC even the minor games – USA v Tonga for example – have been attracting crowds of 30,000 plus. This would be unheard of in football. I was reminded of the 60,000 crowd who watched a world cup qualifier between Georgia and Russia a couple of years ago. The French deserve credit for their great support and I was thrilled for them that they reached the semi-final. I was at Lyon airport at 10.30 on Saturday night and was able to join hundreds of people huddled round two screens for the last 15 minutes of the match against NZ. A wonderful atmosphere.

And now, against all the odds, England are playing France in the semi-final. How did that happen?

The Life of a writer

You know when you have been selected to take a more diffcult path in life when your books are translated into Korean, Arabic and Albanian and not Spanish, Chinese or any other language with huge commercial potential. I look forward to the £4.97 royalty cheque (6 month period ending October 2007).

With 3 books planned I have been writing synopses. Actually I lie. I have been trying to write synopses whilst listening to huge amounts of music. As I haven't given musical recommendations recently this is what is currently 'tickling' me according to my itunes playlist:

Dave Douglas - Freak In
Astor Piazzola played by Gidon Kremer
Promise of a Fisherman - Santana
Gilles Peterson in Africa (Fela Kuti tracks)
J Dilla - Donuts
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
Five Stairsteps - Behind Curtains
Harold Budd and Brian Eno - Ambient 2
Chico Hamilton with Eric Dolphy - Ellington Suite
Airto - Seeds on the Ground
Zbiegnew Preisner - Kieslowski film soundtrack music

And that was just today...

Bliss was it...

...in that dawn to be alive.

I am going to see Pharaoh Sanders live at the Jazz Cafe.

And I cannot wait.

Feeling down

Getting bad feedback from a client is not nice. And reminds me not to take work that doesn't interest me for the sake of the money. I am nearly at the point where I can choose my work. Perhaps now is the time to be hyper-ethical and take only that which 'tickles' me.

The lesson - don't try to deal with a subject like feedback skills in front of 100 hyper-analytical, introverted lawyers. I corpsed for the first time in five years. The last time was when I had 200 hundred housing workers for a day and I was asked to do a workshop on teambuilding. No-one told me they were going on strike the next day.

cosmorgasm

I was at Vienna airport on Saturday evening and, browsing through the magazines I saw this on the front of Cosmopolitan:

'THE BLENDED ORGASM'

So deep. So strong. How you can have one tonight.

Now, I have tried a few things in my time, but I had never thought of reaching for the magimix as a means of satisfying a woman. Perhaps this is where I have been going wrong.

Broken Dream

Almost a year ago, just after I began this blog I wrote about how ageing means settling into mediocrity for many and how Rod Stewart, who was superb for about 4 years - 1969 - 73 and has done nothing with any musical merit since continues to peddle trash and get paid for it. I don't blame him - I blame all of those people who buy the stuff. I say all this because I am just listening to 'In a Broken Dream' by Python Lee Jackson from 1972. Python Lee Jackson is Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck. And it is a fabulous piece of music.

A gun pointed at your head?

Dinner the other night with a Kosovar friend of mine who told me a little more about the Serbian threat in 1999. His neighbour then, a Serb, who he had known for a number of years, came up to him one evening, out of the blue and pointed a gun to his head and asked him what he done to his wife. He took my friend outside and my friend feared for his life. Suddenly this man's wife called out to him. She had been out all day.

A few weeks later my friend was at the Macedonian border trying to get across the border to escape the murderous Serbian army - as were a million others. Near the border he came across a Serbian soldier who again put a gun to his head and this time I think my friend thought his number was up. At the moment a large number of US planes under the guise of Nato flew overhead. My friend's life was spared as the soldier deemed it prudent to get away as fast as he could.

My friend bears no ill will towards the Serbs - he just thinks that there was a huge, collective brainwashing going on there. That doesn't stop him being passionate about Kosovar independence. We are now very close to this happening. Kosovo will be fine. The Americans are committed here for fifty years having built their biggest army base in central Europe in the middle of it. Kosovo is massively important to them and Clinton (and Blair) are gods for setting NATO troops against the Serbian army. It would be just about the only place that Bush could walk down the main street and be cheered.

There is a book waiting to be written about Kosovo that takes its history up to the moment of it's independence. I would quite like to be the person to write it.

Interesting Times

Strange things in the last few days:

Sitting opposite Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku as we waited for the plane to Pristina. Kosovo. It is strange to sit with someone who you know has killed.

Coming out of the train station in Vienna on arrival and seeing the great Joe Zawinul’s ‘Birdland’ jazz club opposite with a small but simple tribute to him. He died two weeks ago as I mentioned in a recent blog. Zawinul was a hero of mine.

On arrival at Pristina airport slowly realising that the person I was sharing the official car with is the person who approves my visits and agrees to the cheque being signed. He realised who I was before I realised who he was. Hence his line of questioning which it took me a while to fathom.

Reading the Daily Telegraph (through lack of any other option) and being surprised at the low level of debate and rational argument in such an esteemed paper. Many ‘news’ articles were actually opinion articles apparently designed to brainwash the gullible. Simon Heffer’s column just full of rant – advocating the immediate abolition of the UN. Really Simon? His column just seemed nasty. The letters page full of ‘The country going to the dogs’ and ‘rapidly becoming 3rd world’. What a miserable way to see your country. Especially as it is patently untrue. It is just different from the way they want it to be.

England making a reasonable impersonation of a rugby team last friday.

Being aware of my complete lack of sex drive at the moment. Good or bad? I remember the late George Melly saying that life became so much easier when he didn’t have to control a wild beast anymore. I don’t think I am at that stage yet but the lack of ‘desire’ is puzzling.

Sleeping solidly for 9 hours without waking up. For the first time for a while I had a spring in my step this morning.

Having my mother arrive in France with new boyfriend and thinking that I do not like her at all. I started to feel like my sister does about her and I started to feel a little guilty about that. It’s the first time I have ever felt no connection at all and I could not wait to get away and on the plane at Lyon. She is drinking very heavily and is clearly telling lies to a number of people, me included.

But despite some of the negativity above I feel positive at the moment although my hypochondriac tendency is coming out. Hence no alcohol for a few days.

Music of the day: Zakir Hussain – Making Music. Thanks to the Half Note blog in NYC (my favourite blog at the moment) for reminding me of the beauty of this album.

Travels

One of those perfect mornings. South of France, my youngest daughter's birthday, beautiful sunny morning and Pharoah Sanders newly acquired album album 'Elevation' for company.

Tomorrow it's off to Lyon to catch a flight to Vienna. I get six hours in Vienna for roaming before catching a flight onto Pristina, Kosovo where I will be for a week. I have been to Vienna a few times and while I like it, it's architectural perfection bores me after a time. I like my cities to have attendant grub and sleaze as well as museum-like architecture and Vienna is a bit too perfect for me. The kind of people who like Vienna are generally the kind of people I find a little too conservative.

Anyway, back to Pharoah Sanders. I am a bit of a completist but had never heard this album until I bought it London l;ast week. I like it because it does what Pharoah does best. Beautiful melody followed by chaos and musical blood-letting before a skillful return to melody. Cleansing, purifying music.

The year of the aerosol

A busy two weeks in the UK comes to an end. Last week it was Manchester all week and after 4 days in France it is off to Kosovo for a week.

I saw the strangest exhibition imaginable in Manchester at the Gmex. 'Aerosol 2007'. What a riveting exhibition that must have been. And being the Gmex it must have been a big one too. Are that many people interest in Aersols? I imagined the whole exhibition being populated by glue sniffers and aerosol inhalers working out where the best sniffing fix was likely to come from in the next few years. But I suspect it was packed with aerosol salesmen ('men' chosen deliberately) absorbed by the magical world of particulates, smell and canisters.

France for four days will be a challenge. My mum ran off with another man earlier this year and I get the dubious honour of meeting him as she has persuaded him to come to France and meet the son and grandchildren. I have no interest in meeting him yet at all. In fact I surprised my usually immoral self by saying that I would not allow them to share a bed in my house. So they are staying up the road. I didn't want to explain to my 7 year old how grandma could sleep with grandpa last year and with new bloke this year. My mother, for whom the skills of 'emotional intelligence' have not yet been absorbed doesn't understand my point.

Music of the day: I am being a dinosaur today and have dug out Lou Reed's 'Transformer'.

Georgia

Georgia, having been there 3 times recently is a place close to my heart. An intelligent passionate people with a troubled history. But last night they got closer to my heart still. They played Ireland in the rugby world cup and Ireland are one of the better sides in world rugby. It was a fantastic match and reminded me why rugby is so superior to football in terms of character and morality (and I must add, enjoyment too). No preening, falling over, being overpaid or verbal abuse of referees and opposition. It wasn't a question of whether Georgia could have won. They should have won and had they done so it would have been the most significant result ever in world rugby.

At the beginning of the year I was in Tbilisi and spent some time with one of the coaches close to the Georgian team. He told me how the game got started there (in the 1960's) by a french worker who started a team in his spare time. The Georgians took so quickly to it and it is fast becoming a national sport. Two years ago Georgia played Russia and 60,000 went to watch it. Most of the best Georgian players play in France which probably explains the great support they got from the crowd in Bordeaux last night.

In twenty years I think rugby will have become a global sport - there are signs that the US are starting to build a player base and the University of Berkeley have a very good team. The english, who invented the game may come to see the last ten years as the last time we had such in an exalted position in the sport. Our time may never come again. One thing is for sure. England would not have beaten Georgia last night.

Something to lean on...

I have been in London for a week and next week I will be in Manchester. Earning money of course but once in a city I am a child in a candy store. I am one of the few males who enjoys shopping and of course, London means the obligatory trip to HMV. I limited myself to two purchases. I have been overdoing the jazz recently and so I diversified with a reputedly classic album by Talk Talk (a while after they dropped the new romantic stuff) and Eddie Hazel's also supposedly classic solo album.

This morning I am nursing a modest hungover courtesy of one of the most original wines I have ever drunk - Amestoi - a basque white wine with a hint of fizz. Expensive but worth every penny. The drinking was done in anticipation of england putting up a decent performance against South Africa. Sadly they didn't. In fact it was close to the worse england performance I have seen and I saw a few bad ones in the eighties.

So today I am consoling myself with my new purchases. Both are brilliant. Hazel is a guitar genius whose 'Maggot Brain' on the Funkadelic album of the same name is often cited as one of the greatest. His mum insisted on it being played at his funeral - he died young.

'Spirit of Eden' is a bona-fide classic. I know where Sigur Ros come from now. I recommend it highly to all readers. They must have been listening to Miles, Sylvian and a bit of prog at the same time.

The giants of jazz

A giant of 20th century music died yesterday. Joe Zawinul of Weather Report, Miles great late sisties line-up, The Cannonball Adderley Band and the Zawinul Syndicate moved on. The brotherhood of jazz, so soon after the death of Max Roach loses another one of its greatest exponents. For those not in the know, Zawinul was the genius behind Miles Davis's 'In a Silent Way', the composer of the seminal 'Birdland' and to my mind, one of his greatest (and my favourite piece of his) 'Boogie-woogie Waltz' from 'Sweetnighter'. A true innovator and an endlessly fascinating innovator.

King Curtis

In my pantheon of male soul greats the list would include Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Bobby Womack and Curtis Mayfield. Marvin is first having produced the two greatest soul albums in history but behind him, and only just, comes Curtis Mayfield. I say this because I have just discovered some of the music that Curtis produced (but didn't perform himself)from the '60's and '70's. The Curtom Soul Compilations are great but I cannot recommend enough The Five Stairsteps - a wonderful, doo-wop inspired soul vocal group that Curtis put together in his spare time in the sixties. He had music dripping from every pore of his body then and produced brilliance almost at will.

I watched a fantastic programme on BBC2 a few years ago (I note that BBC2 have given up on this sort of programme). It featured Curtis just after he had been rendered quadraplegic by collapsed rigging on a stage while performing. Curtis was teaching himself to sing again and to play the guitar and through amazing effort he did it. But we all doubted if he could ever re-create anything near in quality to that which he had done before. The world is full of once great musicians who keep on churning out albums that are worthy but dull efforts (Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and many others). But Curtis suddenly came out with 'New World Order',a beautiful album that stood up superbly against his other work. Sheer force of will had got him back. He died within a year of its release. I sensed that he had decided that the time to go would be after he had taught himself to sing again and produced an album that said to the world that he had made it back. A great guy.

What adds excitement?

I love the phrase 'When was the last time you did something for the first time'. It is my personal mantra. I believe that it is critical to say this to yourself regularly after the age of 40 otherwise life just becomes a unmemorable downhill slide. Life passes more quickly as you get older because you have less memorable first time experiences. We all have different interpretations of new experiences. For some it might be hobbies or new sports. For me it is musical discovery (well-chronicled in this blog) and going to new places. I don't mean by that Spanish beach resorts. I mean immersion in something very different one's own frame of reference. In the last couple of years I have been to Kosovo, Macedonia and Georgia. This year I am going to Kosovo again, Haiti (in November) and Hungary (for Christmas). Haiti in particular will be a real first time experience and one that not many will be able to share. I hope to be going to India (and taking my children with me) in February next year. Marvellous. The next six months will be special.

Music of the day: If I could only remember my name - David Crosby. A recent discovery for me. Is it his best work? Clearly many think so.

Racisme?

I speak a little french but had a real challenge with the father of one of my daughter's friends yesterday. My daughter had been away for the day and he came to drop her back home. He talked almost non-stop for twenty minutes and, as men do, we got onto sport and the french national football team. I couldn't work out whether he was saying that it was appalling that the french team that won the world cup was predominantly African and therefore not french (the racist Jean Marie Le-Pen position) or whether he was taking the liberal view and suggesting that national boundaries matter less with the free movement of people. His french was so fast I was only picking up one word in four. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was taking the 'inclusive' position. I fear however, that I was wrong in this assumption. The Languedoc is the beating heart of racism in France.

School

My almost three year old started school today. She cried her eyes out when I dropped her. It took 40 years of experience to prevent myself doing the same. When I went to pick her up at lunchtime she was having a great time. The fickleness of youth! I was at Boarding school for ten years from the age of eight and I remember crying after my parents dropped me for the first time - Sompting Abbotts School near Worthing if anyone is interested. Only half an hour later I wondered why I had cried and was eating a vast meal and mucking about with new friends. I must confess that while I absolutely loved being at school I couldn't contemplate sending my children away as boarders.

Great English Accents

Does anyone,in the history of film, have a worse english accent than Dick Van Dyke in the film 'Mary Poppins'?

I have endured this film 3 times today because my overtired daughters were struggling to do anything else after their Lyon exertions. We had a lovely 3 days. Lyon is a great city (why do I live in the country - I love cities, London of course the best)and not over-burdened with tourism. It reminded me that I currently reside in a culture, excitement and pleasure-free environment - the Languedoc. No wonder France, and this part in particular has an alarmingly high rate of anti-depressant absorption. It is plain and the people narrow. When I go to places like Lyon I remember why I like cities. Next week it will be London for a fortnight. I may do little. But I always have the choice to do that or the opposite. Cities give me freedom of choice.

Music of the day - Gismonti/Vasconcelos - 'Duas Vozes'

I forgot to mention that my 2 year old was so energised by the visual stimulation of a city that she thought nothing of climbing the 500 steps - 'tout seul' - up to Fourviere to reach the fabulous Basilica - 'Notre Dame'.

Summertime...

and the living is...well you know the rest.

So easy is fact that I had time to follow up my ten best jazz gigs (I counted eleven of them) with ten jazz albums which to my mind are really underrated and in some cases almost unknown. At least three of them (Dolphy/Little, Lateef and Szabo) are right up there in my twenty or so favourites. As is the DDonald Byrd. So, have you heard any of these?

(last blog until next weekend I am off to Lyon for a few days and for the first time in two years I am planning to go two consecutive days without turning on a computer).

Next Album – Sonny Rollins

Form 1973. Totally unknown and to my mind one of his best. This is happy like most Rollins albums. It was probably ignored because everyone was listening to Herbie and Miles and jazz-fusion in 1972. I love George Cables’ keyboard playing too on this.

Fancy Free – Donald Byrd

This is a classic album. Beautiful playing – particularly on the title track from Byrd and Frank Foster more usually associated with the Basie band and showing a completely different side of himself here. Donald Byrd is a great musician who lost credibility in jazz circles when he took the money route with The Blackbyrds. This album was him at his creative best.

High Contrast – Gabor Szabo

I would take this on a desert island with me – it is one of my favourite albums. This is also one of the most bizarre collaborations in musical history. Gabor Szabo (Hungarian gyspy) and Bobby Womack (Amercian soul legend). Bobby only plays guitar. This album features the original version of Breezin’ made famous five years later by George Benson. The original, as is usually the case, is far superior. A mention too for the drumming of the always excellent Jim Keltner.

Live at the Five Spot – Eric Dolphy

I just love the feel of this live double CD. Mal Waldron on piano stands out as of course does the genius of Dolphy. When I listen to him I wonder what he would have gone on to create had he lived. He was dead a year or two later. (‘Last Date’ recorded in Holland is worth buying too with a terrific version of ‘Miss Ann’ – called last date because it was for Dolphy).

Free Form – Joe Harriot

Britain’s first jazz genius laid this down in 1961 and it is up there with the work of Coltrane around that time. Groundbreaking and powerful it was of course virtually ignored in the UK. The Penguin Guide To Jazz recently acknowledged its classic status by awarding it the 5 stars only given to very few albums (Kind of Blue, Love Supreme etc). It is that good.

Take Twelve – Lee Morgan

Sidewinder is the most famous. But I like this. A formula blue note jazz album perhaps but ‘A Waltz for Fran’ is beautiful and Second’s Best and the title track great jazz blasts. One to go for when you are not sure what to put on or have been listening to the jazz classics too much.


Eastern Sounds – Yusuf Lateef

A great album from 1957 from a great guy with YL showing the range of musical instruments he can play. This was the album that reconnected me to jazz around 1990 after a lull. It has a lovely feel and understatement in the playing. This is just ‘cool’, sparse and it sounds so evocative of the late 1950’s. YL is one of the very few who sounds convincing playing jazz on the flute too (along with Dolphy of course).


Far Cry – Eric Dolphy with Booker Little

This is an album of pure genius played by two of them. It features both Dolphy just as he was becoming THE great multi-instrumentalist of the time and the trumpter Booker Little who died aged 23. I have loved this from the moment I bought it when I was about 22 and really getting into jazz. Every track is great with the opener featuring the little played bass clarinet and a magnificent “Tenderly’ featuring wonderful solo alto sax from the man himself. This is a straight jazz album just before Dolphy announced his freeform credentials with ‘Out to Lunch’ and others. For a time (perhaps two years) I think he was the best.

The backing musicians are Jaki Byard, Ron Cater and Roy Haynes. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Sweetnighter – Weather Report.

Everyone knows Black Market and Heavy Weather but this is the one for me. Boogie Woogie Waltz is like nothing I have ever heard and shows what a great rhythmic keyboard player Joe Zawinul was. No wonder he was in Adderley’s band for so long. Intelligent fusion when the idiom was being abused and jazz becoming unrecognisable. That had a good side but I don’t really think that black American jazz music has ever recovered. The Scandinavians now rule the jazz world.


The Black Messiah – Cannonball Adderley

I have put this in because I haven’t heard it for 20 years! I want to hear it again and I cannot find it. I remember it was live and I think featured a young George Duke on keyboards. I just remember listening to this a few times at my friend Robin’s when we were about 18 and it was great. Robin of course ‘lost’ the album.


I must add that today, despite all the jazz pontification I have been enjoying Dusty Springfield's 'Dusty in Memphis'. The only white woman who could ever sing soul. Anyone disagree?

Ten great jazz gigs

I thought it might be fun to include my ten favourite jazz gigs. In no particular order (apart from the first):

Pharaoh Sanders – Dingwalls 1993

I think I have said enough about this in previous blogs. The best musical experience of my life.


Miles Davis – Royal Festival Hall 1991

The gig wasn’t that great. But it was him. And he mattered. And he was dead six weeks later.


John Etheridge – The Bass Clef, 1991

I was one of the four in the audience for this! A cold bleak Sunday night. He turned it into a play, improv session for us and we chatted with him between pieces. His playing was remarkable. I have seen him play live many times (and he is second only to John McLaughlin among British guitarists in my opinion) and this was the best. And what a pro for doing the gig with his full band. I left the gig to find my bike had been nicked.


Pat Metheney – Hammersmith Odeon, 1992

I surprise myself by including this but he had his full band (about 12 of them) and he was fabulous. A bit bland for me on record but live he is right on the spot. The show stopper was ‘Are you going with me’. And we were.


Talvin Singh – Barbican 1999

TS played with Sun Ra when he was 16 and is a musical master from the east end of London. He left jazz years ago and probably got off after this gig. It was the Mercury Music Prize celebratory gig and included Bill Laswell playing the loudest bass I have ever heard, Sakamoto on keyboards and the underrated Cleveland Watkiss on vocals plus various Indian percussion maestros. This was him at his best with a great band.


John Surman – Purcell Room 1996

A solo concert from a musical genius. Highly pastoral and a gig laced with anecdote, Thomas Hardy references and of course brilliant multi-instrumentation. I remember someone coughed and he said ‘count yourself lucky you’re not at a Keith Jarrett concert’ (Jarrett is known for admonishing audience members who cough, play with sweet wrappers etc.)


Eberhard Weber – Queen Elizabeth Hall 1997

One of ECM’s greatest did a solo bass show and I must admit I wondered if the bass could sustain a 2 hour slot. If I had shut my eyes I would have imagined there were five musicians on the stage and I could have listened to him for two hours more. A great musician and a great, humourous guy.


John Scofield – Monkey’s, Brentwood, Essex 1990

I blogged on this the other day. A muscular, tight performance from a great, great trio. I remember I had just bought his acclaimed ‘Time on my hands’ album and didn’t rate it at all (I still don’t) but this gig was another world entirely.


Jan Garbarek – Royal Festival Hall 1994

The first time I saw him and the only time I have cried at a concert. The music was magisterial and very beautiful. And what a band – Bruninghaus, Weber and Marilyn Mazur


Sonny Rollins – Theatre Royal 1995

This was just one of the happiest shows I have been to. He was in full calypso mode with an excellent Bob Cranshaw on bass. He was around 65 then and his lung power was something else. I still think his ignored ‘Next Album’ is one of the best straight jazz albums I have heard.



Gil Scot-Heron – Jazz Café 1991

This blew me away completely. Gil still had it together then before the drugs got hold of him. He is currently a crack addict, HIV positive and in jail. He was poignant, assertive and had a fabulous band with Gil himself playing lovely chords on the Fender-Rhodes. I spent the evening calling for him to play ‘Beginnings’ – one of my favourite Gil tunes. He didn’t of course but I still loved every second of this.

Other great ones – Arild Anderson, Vinicius Cantuaria, Shakti, Egberto Gismonti, Terje Rydal. The Rydal got very, very close to being included. Anouar Brahem – my current musical hero – probably would have been in there but I was, to my shame a little too drunk at his concert and didn’t enjoy it to the full – a shame really because he had Dave Holland and John Surman in his trio. Anyway I shall be seeing him live in Montpellier next month playing his new (and absolutely brilliant album) ‘Le Voyage De Sahar’.

People who I haven’t seen and would like to: Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard (sadly his chops have gone), Charlie Mariano.

And of course there are many whom I would have loved to have seen but will not now do so! Dolphy (dead just before I was born), Coltrane (dead just after I was born), Clifford Brown, Freddie Webster (whom Miles thought one of the best), Albert Ayler, Art Pepper. I would really liked to have seen Collin Walcott and Don Cherry together as well. I would like to have seen Britain’s very own Joe Harriot around 1961 to see if he was as good as everyone says. Certainly “free-form’ from 1961 is right up there with the best of American modern jazz from that era. We didn’t know what we had!

It’s perhaps not fair to include the missable ones but Miroslav Vitous trying to do a duet acoustic bass concert with his brother at the Jazz Café when there was an MTV party going on inside takes some beating. I still love him for ‘New York City’ his 1976 disco piece though. Where did that come from?

Perhaps a blog soon on other great non-jazz gigs. Nacao Zumbi (great, great, great), John Martyn, Santana. I really enjoyed The Gotan Project too at Somerset House in 2003.

Great french service

My car broke down on the A9 outside Narbonne, Southern France yesterday. I take back all I have ever said about French service. My mobile had simultaneously decided not to work, I had my three and seven year old with me and I was feeling both gormless and helpless. A ‘patrouille’ vehicle arrived quickly and unprompted and arrange for me, the car and daughters to be towed into Narbonne from whence a taxi was booked (not an easy thing to do in France on a Sunday) which took me and the babies the 100km home. All done in about two hours. I didn’t even have to speak a word of French. Why can’t the French make everything else about French living as easy as this?

The ‘Takk’ album is still the one being played almost continuously and the track ‘Svo Hljott’ is a remarkable piece of music. This is a truly fabulous album. I only hope I am not playing it to the point where I will never be able to listen to it again. There is so much great new music around at the moment and I seem to be discovering most of it simultaneously. That said I have also been enjoying a 50’s doo-wop compilation and particularly The Flamingos ‘I only have eyes for you’. A friend of mine Mike, who is in his fifties and lived (and survived) the music supported excess of the late sixties and early seventies and can tell you about some of the most obscure music ever reckons this is the best age for music since 1967-73. I agree with him. I was unfortunate to be in my teens in the early ‘80’s – the direst time for popular music since about 1957 (Jazz of course, comes under a separate heading). I had an argument about this with someone the other week who thought the early ‘80’s were the best. I asked for evidence. The answer? Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Human League…you get the drift. No wonder I drink too much…

Miles

I fell to sleep today - during the day. A real old man's sleep. I lay on the sofa, put the wonderful Sigur Ros 'Takk' album on and the next thing I knew it was the last track and I was coming round. It's funny, I felt like I had heard the whole album but I was not conscious of doing so. The undermind at work...

Inspired by reading an excellent musically orientated blog from NYC I thought about Miles Davis today. I remembered seeing him live at the Royal Festival Hall six weeks before he died. The night he actually died I had been to the theatre and I put the radio on when I got home and heard the news. Obviously I had to have a drink to arguably the 20th century's most important musician (well to me anyway) but the only drink I could find was a very old bottle of creme de menthe. It must be the only time in my life when there was nothing alcoholic and tempting. Still I drank the CDM and listened to (from memory) 'walkin''. I don't really know why I chose that album. It was never a favourite but perhaps a desire to listen to something of his that was not totally familiar made me go for that one. I was buying a Miles album a week at that time and maybe I had overdone it.

There are some Miles albums that are criminally underrated. I love 'Jack Johnson' and particularly the Herbie H stuff on it and also 'Starpeople' from the eighties which featured John Scofield. I saw Scofield a few times live (it was two gigs a week in the very early '90's) and once at the tiny 'Monkey club' in Essex he was phenomenal. Monkey's was almost like a private jazz club and I remember a few weeks before the gig the owner took to the mic and said 'look, we've got a chance of getting JS here but because it's a small club we can only get a few people in. If we all pay (£30?) each we can get him'. And he did. He was amazing (with I think Adam Nussbaum with him) and there was less than 150 of us cramped into a tiny club. Cramped, loud (and my partner in crime Mike, very stoned) but a seminal moment in my musical life. I am sad in a way at all the gigs I miss. Next week for instance Britain's very own John Etheridge (one of the world's great guitar players) plays with Arild Anderson (one of the very first ECM pioneers) and John Marshall (Soft Machine and many others) at the Pizaa Express in Soho. But I cannot be there.

While I write this I am listening to the Sigur Ros album again. It is stunning. And it continues to be my album of the day.

Happy Birthday

This blog is at risk of being turned over solely to music and if I read my first blog in November 2006 it was meant to be about thinking positively with one permitted daily grip.

Anyway it is music time again and yesterday I went to Montpellier and spent my birthday present from my sister Nikki. The absolute gem among the acquisitions was the album 'Takk' by Sigur Ros. I knew of this album when it came out two years ago but I just hadn't got round to buying it. What a waste of two years of listening pleasure. This is the best new album I have heard in that time. Totally original, anthemic and just beautiful. Caroline is away for a few days and Lily my eldest was having dinner at a friends. So there I was with my almost 3 year old Izzy having dinner to the sound of Sigur Ros when she said 'I like this music daddy'. I gave her a big kiss and took a large celebratory swig of the lovely St Chinian I bought today. She is even either going to learn to love it even more or grow sick of it.

One album I bought was the lesser known 'Presence' by Led Zep. Not a great album but 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' is a contender for their greatest track.

It is lull time. 3 visits to Kosovo before the end of the year, a manic hotel to hotel month in the UK in September plus I hope the commencement of a contract in Frankfurt around October time. Christmas is likely to be spent in Hungary. I wonder where else I will get to this year? And the new book comes out in November. Just as I thought the last one was my worst I believe that this one is the one I am most proud of. I now seem to be falling out with my Commissioning Editor during the writing of each book as I have with this one. Either she is getting sick of it or she treats it as par for the course. I suppose she must be used to dealing with Writer's Ego.

Language

Interviewer: ‘If you could have someone alive or dead for lunch who would you chose’.

Interviewee: ‘The one that’s alive’.

Sometimes we don’t quite say what we mean. Of course, apart from the question that was intended and the way it was heard there could be a 3rd interpretation – you could infer from the question that you were going to be eating the person. Interesting. Who would you eat if you were forced into cannibalism?

Does this show the flexibility of the English language? I read that there are now 5 times as many words in English as there are in French probably because English is now spoken in so many different cultures and they all put their own spin on it whereas French is now spoken as a first language by about 100 million people. I for one will be very interested to see how global Spanish will be when it becomes the majority first language in the US – 25 years time is the prediction. Will it become the 2nd studied language after English in European schools. I think it likely that German and French will both be pushed back. The Germans are secure enough in their own identity to not let it worry them. The French are terrified of the decline in use of their language perhaps again demonstrating the well publisized fear they have of the alck of ‘France’ in the world. I constantly try not be negative about France in my blogs (and fail miserably) but I, after 4 years of living here see little evidence of a culture that is anything but self-absorbent rather than outward looking. That to me makes it dull.

Roast bunny

A lovely quote in yesterday’s Sunday Times made in pre-revolutionary France by a society lady – ‘Of all the men I never loved, my husband was the one I liked the most’. I wonder how many other women might say the same thing. Plenty I should think – in fact I know a few.

Another quote and one closer to my own life from Thomas Keneally on Desert Island Discs recently ‘What makes me write is fear…the fear that I cannot write’. Why does this resonate? Because I have just finished my new book last night. Out in November. This is number five with a 6th and 7th to follow shortly. The target is ten and then I may stop. Thankfully they do earn me money so this isn’t quite self-indulgence. But the fear is what drives you to write. Plus the incentive of the 2nd and 3rd cheques for the advance.

We have had a lot of domestic rabbits in the garden from the house opposite us – fine by me as they keep the grass down. Anyway my eldest Lily (7) has befriended a ten year old girl in the opposite house and last night she was invited over for dinner. Rabbit on the menu. Life in rural France. Was it Flopsy, Mopsy or Cotton Tail I wonder?

Album of the day – Le Pas Du Chat Noir: Anouar Brahem.

Pharoah Sanders

Great music and great musicians are often only appreciated when they are gone. Thankfully Pharoah Sanders is very much with us but I read an interview today where he said he doesn’t get enough work. ‘I’d like to work more’ he said ‘but nobody calls me’. I would pay Pharoah Sanders 5 grand to come and do a personal appearance in my lounge tonight. And I know 5 friends who would pay their share of the cut.

One of jazz music’s greatest ever saxophonists can’t get enough work. A man whose ‘sheets of sound’ graced John Coltrane’s ‘Ascension’, whose late sixties albums produced a whole new idiom of what we might call spiritual jazz and whose album ‘Journey to the One’ to me is the signing off point for a fabulous era of black American music. ‘You’ve Got to Have Freedom’ being just a joyous dance anthem.

I have seen Pharoah live a few times. The first time was at Dingwalls in Camden. For the first hour I stood right at the back and couldn’t really see or hear properly. I then popped to the loo and had to pass near the stage. I and Mike, John and Caroline who were with me (Arkangel did you leave this one?) were never further than 3m away from the stage for the next three hours. He was mesmerising, magnificent. He played for ever and you sensed he was absolutely at the top of his game. He just did not want to stop. It was the closest thing I will ever see to his mentor Coltrane. Pianist William Henderson and Steven Neil on bass were at their best too.

At about 1am he had to wind up. 500 of us sweating and drunk on atmosphere stood silent when he clanged a huge gong. One of the most surreal moments in my life was absolute silence in a heaving jazz club for around 3 minutes when for 4 hours before the place was a musical party. Someone coughed and he clanged his gong again. We laughed and obediently fell silent. Marvellous. I feel a few tears at the memory of it.

I still have the review of the gig from the Independent. ‘In Dingwalls last night all heaven broke loose…’. Sometimes I wonder if reviewers ever go to concerts. This reviewer was most definitely there.

And this man can’t get enough work!

Service in France

Your handy guide to french customer service:

For 'after sales service' : **** off

For 'before sales service': 'Count yourself lucky I'm lowering myself to serve you'

Most recent french service experience:

I had a meal served to me the other day with broken glass in it. They bought me a replacement and still charged me.

A day before that I had called wanadoo to say my internet wasn't functioning properly they suggested I went to the local branch of france telecom to get a replacement filter. When I told them that I had already tried 4 different filters they suggested I still went to the shop to get a 5th and that it might work. I don't think so. I sorted out the problem myself in the end.

Have the french got it right and the Brits and Americans are just very unchilled about customer service? Or am I right to be sick of being continually ripped off and treated like a nonentity with a wallet. The first day we arrived in France nearly four years ago a local said to us: 'Welcome to the land of the rip-off'. We laughed. I don't mind paying a lot of money for things that work. I do mind when the interest in me disappears at the moment the cheque is banked.

Madlib

This morning I was up at 7am and I immediately began to write. 700 words by 8.30am when my eldest daughter poked her head around the door. When I do this I always say I must do this every day – an early start is the key to a day of productivity. It was a stunning morning – already 22 degrees and the sky was that Mediterranean blue that is to deep you can almost slice it. It seems we now have two weeks of this. Two weeks of writing and swimming to look forward to. I am sorry to gloat about this – particularly because UK readers are ‘swimming’ for other reasons. France for 8 months of the year is not a place I care for at all. But for 4 glorious months in the summer it becomes another country.

I am 22,000 words into my next book. 13,000 to go and the usual worries about non-completion, writing garbage etc. And the worries were justified when my first batch of copy was pulled apart by publisher and editor – justifiably so. A critical sharpening up of my mental faculties took place over the weekend and I hope I am now writing my best book yet. A thin dividing line between dross and excellence.

Anyway – to continue my musical theme of the last blog. Musically one thing always leads to another with me when I make a new discovery. Looking up more about J Dilla I discovered the name Madlib (and what a great name to). So I downloaded his album ‘Expressions’ with hip-hop vocalist Dudley Perkins. Pure class – particularly the middle 3 or 4 tracks. I didn’t know music like this existed. I have always known that hip-hop extends into the world of highly intelligent music (such as Spearhead/Michael Franti) but I didn’t really know where it lived. So, I imagine (and hope) there will be more recommendations to come.

J Dilla

I suppose one of the things about being forty is that you give up trying to be cutting edge – if I ever was. So new things hit you about a year after they were new things. Bouncing a few emails with my good friend Carlos (erstwhile flatmate of the Chemical Brothers at University) he must have remembered that I loved DJ Shadow’s album ‘Endtroducing’ album from 1996. I felt cutting edge then – I must have been one of the first to own it and recommended it to about fifty people all of whom loved it too.

Anyway in classic ‘if you like this then you’ll love this’ mode he suggested a listen to J Dilla’s ‘Donuts’ album released last year 3 days after his death from a rare blood disorder. I ploughed through 30 second bites of each track on itunes (each track lasts around 1 minute 30) and then downloaded it. The man knows his soul. Buy it now.

I suppose one of the other things about being forty is that you learn to look after things that you have paid for. What I mean by that is that you paid outright for rather than on credit card, loan etc. So recently I bought a swimming pool which I am now cherishing like my first born. Hell I am even making people wash their feet before they get in it. 5000 euros. It is the luxury item of my life and I shake at the thought of the money I spent on it. But 3 swims a day and the almost instant lightening of my usually angst ridden state suggest that a 5000 euro investment equates to five extra years of life.

Particularly useful when trying to write books in post 30 degree southern French heat.

Album of the day is ‘Donuts’.

Swimming

I have recorded few really good days over the last six months - for the most part there haven’t been many of them. Stuck in airports, endless delayed flights, lack of sleep and the demands of clients have made the last couple of months at least less than thrilling. And I guess, as I look at my volume of blogs, the declining number perhaps indicates a lack of recent stimulation . I haven’t been able to think of anything I wanted to say.

But today has been good. I started with a couple of thousand words of the new book (’Brilliant Idea’), and followed it with some insightful research. All the productivity meant I felt less than guilty about heading down to our local lake this afternoon for an extended swim with my seven year old daughter. Nothing is as tedious I suppose as reading about other people’s children, particularly if you have none yourself. But this afternoon was blissful. The perfect temperature – around 35 degrees – deep blue sky, clean water and a rare opportunity to have some time with Lily. Younger daughter was at the crèche. We swam to the opposite side of the lake (Le Barrage at Vailhan in The Herault), then around an Island in the middle of the lake and then we went in for a final swim out to the middle of the lake. There is nothing like the hot sun on your face when immersed in cold water. You feel all the toxins escaping from your body by the second.

And those lovely words a father loves to hear – ‘this is really good daddy, just you and me’, that tells you that she will treasure the rare but lovely 3 hours we had.

A curious thing happened this morning. On the spur of the moment I bought a series of Mozart piano concertos (21-25) played by Ashkenazy at HMV Oxford Street last week and listened to them all this morning while I worked. I have posted little about music recently but today I recommend them as an aid to creative writing. I like some classical music (although I cannot stand the tweeness and ham acting in opera) but I surprised myself with the pleasure I got from these. I balanced it with Roni Size’s ‘New Forms’ on the drive back from the swimming!

Weights and Measures

In my quest for complete scientific knowledge I have inadvertently discovered a new system for weighing things that I believe will revolutionise business everywhere. Indeed I think it will create a measurement system that guarantees extra profit for all commercial enterprises that use it.

It is called the ‘ryankilo’ and is already in use by celebrated money-making machine and part time airline Ryanair. A ryankilo is equivalent to 1.1 metric kilos. This is how it works. If you take a bag on a British Airways flight and it weighs 15.6 kilos you will find that the exact same bag with the exact same contents will weigh 16.8 kilos with Ryanair. With a hold limit of 15 kilos per person (which in effect means up to 16 kilos) Ryanair is able to charge you for the extra kilo. In my lifelong search to find the perfect route to money-making even I could make money out of that. And so could you.

Just imagine what this will do for shops. A 10% saving for the seller on anything you buy that needs weighing – Woolies ‘pick n’ mix for example.

There is one place where it won’t work though. The dieting industry.

What are Human Resources?

Thought for the day:

I have always thought that only a Human Resources department could come up with the phrase ‘human resource’. Let’s make machines out of people! It’s the way human resource department insists on things like ‘competency matrices’ that gets to me. And then they wonder why they end up recruiting the merely competent rather than the potentially great. The frame of reference is so narrow. For example, look at any recruitment ad now and you see an identikit formula for recruitment – good team player, ability to work under pressure etc. ‘Good team player’ is such a wide and meaningless phrase and even if we could agree what this meant would we want everyone in the team to share these characteristics? Surely teams are meant to have a wide diversity of souls, brains, emotions, and perspectives.

In the words of the great management guru Tom Peters – ‘I have met many human beings before but I have never met a human resource’. And I bet he hopes he never will…

I hear people can now get degrees in Human Resource Management. I just do not see where human resources add value to any business and that must be the criteria for the existence of any department. The best definition I ever heard of organisational effectiveness was a raison d’etre that seeks to ‘cut out systems and procedures that don’t add value in the eyes of the customer’. I need a lot of convincing that HR adds any value at all. They have even swallowed up training departments and this has been disastrous for training in organisations in the UK. The genesis of HR was the old payroll department. Isn’t it about time they reverted to that?

Romantic Love

I saw two people last week. One I guess in their mid fifties (male) whom I know well and one slightly younger and female who I know less well. They have been together for more than fifteen years. I have been thinking a lot about romantic love recently and when I saw these two together I realsied what it was. They touched each comfortably though not explicitly and I could feel the charge that existed between them. Never was the two magnets metaphor more appropriate. They were very comfortable commenting on each others vulnerabilities in the most direct ways but were able to divorce their own egos from the critisising. You have to be very sure of each other to do that. And yet, even though this certainty existed, I felt that they still reserved a part of their reactions to each other as one does when you are in the early stages of a relationship. In other words even though they were fifteen years into a relationship they still found each others words interesting and worthy of their time. I enjoyed observing them.

And as I observed them I wondered how many who are in long term relationships or marriage manage to remain romantically in love with their partners in the way they did in the first year of two of their relationship. Do you listen to your partner? do always have time for them first? Do you still get a little thrill if you are away for a day or two and then come back? Is criticism fun and playful rather than biting and nasty? And do you at least get the feeling that occassionally at least you want to take them to bed and have three or four hours of rampant nookie? That is to say that you still find them physically attractive.

Is there anything more important than this? Than real romantic love?

USB

I had an enjoyable drink with some IT wonks here in Kosovo last night - my last night. A really international group - Kosovars, Romanians, Canadians, Turks, Thais. We talked about the takeover of the computer as a communication tool but also as an energy source and more than that as the central hub in our home. The clinching moment in the discussion came when one of the group informed everyone that he got an email today advertising the first USB Fridge. You plug it into your USB and off you go. It holds one can of coke but it cannot be long before we run household fridges, cookers, microwaves (I am proud to say I have never owned one of these) and so on. One of the key household devices - music systems - are being utilised more and more in this way and the next logical step will be to power the home through this central source.

With Bill Gates announcing yesterday that a key Microsoft development in the next year or two is the removal of traditional computer interaction devices such as the mouse and the keyboard where does the imagination take you? Using voice and touch to communicate with the hub (what we currently call a computer) to direct all activities in the home. Billing through one source that monitors everything in your domestic environment.

New Realities in Kosovo

I am sitting here in my hotel room in Pristina, Kosovo at 9.30 after dinner with my good Kosovar friend Arlind and listening to the beautiful sound of the last call to prayer at the mosques dotted around the capital. It is almost like a competition. The Imans ‘sing’ at call to prayer time and at this moment I can hear the sounds of around 6 Imans all singing in a kind of competitive symmetry.

Tonight we debated the future of Kosovo. I bemoaned the fact that billions of dollars have been spent on creating stability with it seems little thought given to the fact that what gives most people stability is a job and money in their pocket. With unemployment running at 70% and with a rapidly declining inward financial contribution from Kosovars working in Germany and Switzerland it is extremely difficult to see where economic growth will come from. Nation status will make it more attractive to foreign investors and that will create jobs but not enough to make changes. I fear that too much money has been spent on job creation opportunities for Europeans with too many educational certificates who can theorise and pontificate but who lack the real Can Do mentality to do the things that really matter. This is a great place to test out whether all of that theoretical stuff you learnt between the ages of 18 and 26 mean much and I guess that many learn that these theories do not apply in places that are very different to your frame of reference. The frame of reference that is universal is a job, money in your pocket, the possibility of being entrepreneurial if you are so inclined and the wherewithal to make business work. Western values mean so much more if you can afford to have them. And to pay for them.

Europe has too many people who stayed in further education with nowhere meaningful to go and they end up working for international agencies funded by American and EU money and achieving little because they have been shielded from the real world. I am increasingly angry and frustrated by this. We have too many overly qualified people in Europe and we seem to think, in the UK at least, that 50% of our young people getting degrees is a good thing thing. I think it crazy. Where do they go? Ultimately states have to create work for them because this never-ending educational circus kills off the Can do, Will do mentality. Many of us need an element of real-world struggle to define and shape our lives. Formal education does not provide this.

Mark Higson

In 1991 I worked with a guy called Mark Higson for around 18 months. In the 1980’s Mark was in charge of the Iraqi desk at the foreign office and was in a unique position to see the reality of what went on in the Arms to Iraq scandal in which ministers such as Alan Clarke and William Waldegrave were complicit. Mark resigned on principle at the corruption he felt was taking place. He became the chief witness in the Scott Inquiry into the sale of arms to Iraq. He quickly became almost unemployable and started to drink heavily. He lost his marriage and regular contact with his children in the early 1990’s.

In what was must have been a very strange experience for him he came to work for us selling the training films we had made over the phone and became a team leader very quickly. But he was also drinking and empty vodka bottles were found in the cistern toilets. Eventually a senior manager asked him to leave. We had all known about his background. I remember coming back late from a meeting and he was being interviewed live by Channel 4 news outside our offices while the scandal was unfolding in the public eye.

I kept in touch with Mark for a while afterwards and the last time I saw him we went to a rugby match together – in 1993 I should think. I read an excellent John Sweeney book on the crisis in which Mark was clearly the primary source of information.

Mark went to live in Birmingham, living in fear of being followed by the secret services which he undoubtedly was being for a least a while. I remember him saying ‘there are more than two of us watching this game of rugby’. He ended up living in a bedsit in Birmingham on social security and he couldn’t get a job. He died in 2000 aged 40 having had, it is assumed, a seizure and cracking his head as he fell. A Cambridge high flyer, a successful early career, a happy marriage all gone in a few years.

I say all of this for several reasons.

I knew quite a bit about Mark (and the arms to Iraq realities) but didn’t know what had happened to him after 1994 (we chatted on the phone then). Thanks to Steven Jacobi’s excellent play on radio 4 about Mark recently I was able to know what became of him. Steven Jacobi was his oldest friend and closest friend. I contacted him after the broadcast and he hopes to lengthen the play and take it to the stage.

A key point here – and totally relevant to the continuing carnage in Iraq – is that we made Saddam Hussein the man he became through supporting him in the Iran-Iraq war and keeping him supplied with arms. If he ever had WMD’s, and the evidence suggests that while they had gone by 2003 he had them (or was developing them) prior to this we can all guess where he might have got them from. Decisions made 20-25 years ago are being played out in real events now. Mark didn’t live to see the current fiasco. I wonder what he might have made of it.

The final point is that Mark was a lovely, honourable man working in a ghastly, dishonourable environment. He made an appalling career choice which killed him. A highly intelligent man he could have done many things more in keeping with his personality. Mark’s story tells us the dangers of trying to be something you aren’t or are unsuited to being. A horribly sad end to the life of such a warm, friendly guy.

Chirac/Blair

This month has seen the departing of a European political dinosaur (Chirac) and the almost simultaneous departing of someone who was rapidly becoming one.

Chirac embodied for me all of the things that are going wrong with France. An adherence to old sixties Gaulist politics and a complete unwillingness - or more likely fear - to embrace the realities of the new world. Ironically many french business people were treating him as irrelevant and getting on with the job of reaching out into the real economic world. Carrefour for example is the world's second biggest supermarket chain and France has four of the biggest energy companies in the world. What france lacks is any sense of personal dynamism. As a country it seems to have no discernable charisma.

Sarkozy has made lots of positive noises and, had I had the vote there he would have got mine. He has energy and ideas. The left wing press has dubbed him some sort of neo-con or Thatcherite figure and he is neither of those things. What he has I think is a willingness to take the flak for the pain which France will now have for the next 5-7 years as it gets itself out of its moribund state.

Tony Blair goes in a few weeks (why not now?). I sense that in thirty years time history may reflect kindly on him but of course, at the moment he is defined by Iraq and the unending carnage there. What Britain has had over the last fifteen are two excellent Chancellors - Kenneth Clarke and Gordon Brown - and I think much of its economic strength has come from their strong stewardship rather than Blair excellence. I do not see Brown as a Prime Minister though.

Gordon Brown has big problems now due the dreadful lack of talent in the cabinet. Mowlam, Dewar and Cook all dead. Imaginative thinkers such as Frank Field newtered and bruisers such as John Reid opting for a 'rest'. I find Ministers such as Ruth Kelly and David Milliband (a potential 'leader' - surely not)so uninspiring and I cannot escape the feeling that they are out of their depth.

Tubby Custard

The things we do for the love of our children. I was in the UK for a couple of days and in the search for increasingly creative ways of getting the approval of my children I came across the idea of making ‘tubby’ custard – the bright pink concoction so loved by La La and Po in particular. The ingredients are simple – cochineal and custard and a saucepan. As with the non tubby version cook slowly and add only the smallest amount of colouring. My advice to wannabee tubby custard makers is to go for Bird’s powder - which has the drawback that you actually have to make the custard, as opposed to superior pre-made Ambrosia. The reason is that Ambrosia is a brighter yellow and you run the risk of the bright yellow and pink turning it into orange custard. Or rather radioactive looking custard.

Satisfied children. On the next cookery slot I will be advising on the making of tubby toast. Or perhaps not.

Music of the day: Mellow Yellow – Donovan

Brazil

I believe that Brazilians are the most naturally musical people on the earth and I first started to love their music in 1989 when I bought 2 David Byrne compilations ‘Brasil Classics 1 and 2’. I thought it time that I did a recommendation of ten great brazilian albums that I believe that anyone who wants a ‘rounded’ collection should have. Brazilian music has been described as the perfect combination of ‘happy sadness’ and to my mind all of the different emotions in between. It is often melancholic but never depressing and in one incarnation the world’s best party music too. I hope you might explore one or two of the selections on this list. If you want to ‘ease’ yourself in then I do recommend the David Byrne collections.

Brasil 2mil: Various

The Belgium label ‘Ziriguiboom’ has been responsible for some of the key Brazilian releases in the last 6-7 years and this is a great compilation (from 1999) that shows where Brazilain music was, and has proved to be heading. It gives homage to the great Brazilians of the past as well as the future but the music is undoubtedly ‘now’. The standout tracks come from Chico Science, Vinicius Cantuaria (great live) and a sensational finish from Arakatuba.


Radio Sa.mba: Nacao Zumbi

I saw Nacao Zumbi live in 2003 and I (plus two friends) appeared to be the only non-Brazilians there. This is one of the best concerts I have ever been to. Nacao Zumbi are a Brazilian rock band with enough samba influences to create a sound like no other. Their guitarist, Jackson Bandeira, is to my mind one of the best guitarists out there and a track such as ‘Na Balada Do Rio Salgado’ shows exactly what he can do – you can imagine this piece being used in a contemporary spaghetti western. I choose this album just ahead of one of their others ‘CSNZ” performed with the great singer Chico Science – who died young around 2000. Both albums are great and intelligent examples of music we shut our minds off from in the west because they don’t sing in English. Or rather, the singer ‘Pixel 3000’ doesn’t.


Quarteto Novo: Quarteto Novo

Perhaps one of the most important jazz albums ever made, let alone Brazilian albums. The fabulous debut album which introduced Airto Moreira and Hermeto Pascoal to the world. These are two of the world’s great musicians and we hear them here at their absolute best. This music is sharp, clever, rhythmic and superbly played. The tightness and intricacies involved in the music showcase genius but also a band who had honed themselves perfectly – and of course owe much to the brilliant arrangements of Hermeto Pascoal. Great tracks include Misturada and Ponteio (actually a bonus track) which have become staples of many Brazilian compilations.


Seeds on the Ground: Airto Moreira

Possible his last really ground breaking work. That is not to say he did some great stuff afterwards but probably not much that really sounded like nothing done before. He made this close to the time when he appeared with Miles Davis at The Isle of Wight festival and he provided a great description of walking on stage and being confronted by a seething mass of 400,000 people waiting to hear Miles and band play. Particularly when his live gigs prior to that were more akin to 250 in a jazz club.

Airto came out of the great ‘Quarteto Novo’ with Hermeto Pascoal (who adds his brilliance to this) and he married the singer Flora Purim who also appears on this album. Every track is great, some are experimental and ever changing such as O Galho da Roseir and ‘Papo Furado’ just ‘burns’ superbly in the way only late 60’s music can. Ron Carter plays great bass too. Perhaps one of the most important things about this record is that it is one of the last statements of pure 1960’s Brazilian jazz before the sound became diluted by US jazz-fusion and US recording techniques.


Cantiga De Longe: Edu Lobo

Edu Lobo is one of the most important musicians of the post 1965 period but this is a little different from his usual orchestrated, highly arranged pieces. This album, which features Hermeto Pascoal once again is simple but stunningly played and several of the tracks – ‘Zanzibar’ for example – have become staples in western music.

This is rare indeed but it has appeared on CD and I was lucky to pick up a copy about 10 years ago. If you see it, buy it and you will not regret it. This album, along with the Quarteto Novo one formed the heartbeat of the unique Brazilian jazz sound in 1967.


San Paulo Confessions: Suba

Suba is actually Serbian (Mitar Subotic) and he won a 3 month UNICEF music scholarship to Rio and stayed. This is an absolutely breakthrough album from year 2000 that fused classic Brazilian sounds (Chico Buarque samples for example) with electronics and newer beats. But this music is undeniably Brazilian. The album introduced us to the voices of Bebel Gilberto and Cibelle and Suba was closely involved with BG’s ‘Tanto Tempo’ – reputedly the biggest selling world music album of the last ten years. A great dance album too with not a weak track. Suba was killed trying to save the master tapes for his follow up album in a studio fire. He helped kick start a renaissance in 21st century brazilian music when it had lost it’s way in the 1990’s. Being an outsider undoubtedly helped. Many great musicians pooled together to produce ‘Tributo’ in honour of him after his death.


Africa Brasil: Jorge Ben

The composer who wrote classics such as Mas Que Nada is in my opinion the best Brazilian singer-songwriter there has been. The great Caetano Veloso himself has sad that Jorge Ben is incapable of writing a bad song. This album could justify inclusion for the sensational ‘Unbarabauma’ alone – written in homage to Brazilian football but all the tracks on the superbly rhythmic album are top class. I do recommend a four CD compilation of his music which traces his career from Chove Chuva in 1963 up to 1975 and including 5 tracks from Africa-Brasil. Money well spent if you want to hear some of the best in Brazilian music from that era.

Cru: Seu Jorge

If you have seen City of God or Life Aquatic you will know the actor and singer Seu Jorge. This is his best album from 2004. It goes back to the languid cool sound of the late 1960’s but is unquestionably modern. Great tracks include Tive Razao, Bem Querer and Una Mujer. He doesn’t have the best voice in the world (as those who have heard his album of Bowie covers will know) but his music is highly charismatic and cool.


Milton Nascimento: Clube Da Esquina

Possibly THE giant of Brazilian music and certainly one of Brazil’s greatest musicians. The best of America such as Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter play with him regularly and they would be doing that if he couldn’t live in that company. A great vocalist and quality musician this album features the cream of Brazilian musicianship such as Lo Borges (who is co-credited) as well as Deodata, Beto Guedes and Toninho Horta on guitar. It’s hard to pick a standout they are all so strong but this album is probably for those who want musicianship first and standout ‘tunes’ second.


Brazuca Matraca:Wagner Pa

Friend and colleague of the superb Mano Chao, Wagner Pa is Brazilian but has chosen to make his home in Catalonia. This a marvellous modern album made with top class musicians with Wagner Pa producing a stellar vocal performance – particularly on the opening track where he raps in a way I have never heard before. Like Chao he can sing in a number of languages and does so, all to great effect. This gets better and better every time I listen to it and I prefer it to Clandestino.

Re-assigning Knowledge

‘The Play’ – (American) football

It is 1981 and the University of Berkeley are playing Stanford in the final of the College Bowl. 100,000 baying supporters are either hysterical or stunned when Stanford kick a field goal to take a 21-18 lead with 4 seconds to go. Some of the Stanford players are already celebrating and the Stanford marching band is already in the ‘end zone’ playing celebratory victory music as Stanford wind down the formalities with a kick-off. In normal circumstances Berkeley will try to run the ball back at Stanford with almost no-hope of achieving anything.

But these are not normal circumstances. When under pressure we can display the most remarkable creative resourcefulness. It turns out that many of the Berkeley team double up as the Berkeley rugby team. So what can they do, that might surprise Stanford? They play rugby. With brilliant ball-handling they score a touchdown with no seconds remaining, the scorer … almost decapitating the Stanford marching band’s tuba player in the process. The crowd have only just begun to compute what has happened in their collective brains, the commentators cannot speak and the Stanford players are immobile. One of the greatest sporting moments anywhere, ever has just been witnessed.

Lesson – a critical element in idea generation is to learn to apply some knowledge and/or expertise from one area to another, related or entirely unrelated area. Rugby and (American) football are related. What about strawberries and customer service?

But there is a second lesson here. Never take success for granted.

Thanks to Stuart Moran (formerly of Berkeley) for showing me the YouTube on this one night in Ohrid, Macedonia last year.

Play at Work

My fellow blogger Arkangel has started a good thread on the value of play at work to which I am making extensive contributions and rather than write it all here I recommend connecting to his blog at the address below:

http://aarkangel.wordpress.com/2007/05/02/webworld/#comment-825

I will however add one quote from my 'Positive Thinking, Positive Action' book:

Not many of us will say on our death-bed "I wish had spent more time at the office. But we might say 'I wish I had had more fun while I was there'.

Only you can do something about that.

Whistle Test

I stayed for 2 nights at my friend Brian’s and as well as the usual over-indulgences we watched a couple of DVDs. The first was the Borat film. I cried with laughter – particularly the dinner party scene – and I have not done that for a very long time. The Fast Show Christmas special from about a decade ago was probably the last time.

On Monday night we indulged, as two ageing rockers in the Old Grey Whistle Test DVD and I enjoyed this as much as Borat but in a very different way. I’d forgotten how great The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were as live performers. Clem Clemson was a magnificent guitar player and a showman. Also featured were Tim Buckley (a magical ‘Dolphins’ recently well covered by the Soul Bossa Trio) – if he had lived where would his career have taken him? An intense sexually charged performer. John Martyn, Bill Withers, Emmylou Harris and Curtis Mayfield represented the singer songwriter genre and all were excellent. I surprised myself by thoroughly enjoying a great Lynard Skynard performance and Jan Akkerman and Focus were also terrific. I have a good Akkerman album called Tabernacle where he plays the lute and it illustrates what diverse and talented musicians these were. The low point was Elton John and it re-enforced my view that although he wrote a couple of classic singles his legacy does not go beyond that.

This truly was the age of supercharged live performances. I do not hark back to a golden age of music however. Times have changed. What I do think is that each generation has a musical style which defines it and in that early seventies era it was great rock music and its subsidiaries. Rock music is now a creatively dead music form but other genres have come along to replace it. Not better or worse. Just different. To illustrate the point, in a future blog I will list some great 21st century albums that I believe enhance any collection.

A different topic. I blogged recently on Sarko and Sego and I am pleased to see that they made it through to the 2nd round. France will have a choice between two fairly distinct sets of policies. What interests me is that commentators are saying that the 85% turnout is a sign of political maturity. You could easily say that this is a sign of its political immaturity. A huge number of people in France clearly believe that France’s decline will be reverted by politicians rather than by themselves and a shift in their own attitudes. For all the ‘new dawn’ rhetoric in 1997 when Tony Blair got elected in the UK only 60% of the electorate voted. The rest of us continued to take responsibility for our own lives.

Song of the Day: ‘Dolphins’ – Tim Buckley