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'.