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.