Picture This

A friend was talking to me recently about ‘American Images’ – and asked what it was that first caused me to really become interested in the USA.

I can be surprisingly accurate about the event and the date. It was May 5th 1970. That was when news reached the UK of the shooting dead of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio the previous day during a demonstration against the expansion of the war in South East Asia into Cambodia*. If I’m being honest it was probably the word ‘Kent’ that initially caught my attention, living as I did then in the UK county of that name, but the reports and photos from that day shocked me then and have left a lasting impression upon me, especially Jeff Filo’s photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller. At 14, it was undoubtedly the event that politicized me, that started me asking questions.

The shootings in Ohio though have left far fewer scars on the American psyche than the event which provoked the demonstration in the first place. For many Americans, “Vietnam” a place inside their head to which, understandably, many would rather not go, and, sadly, from which many cannot escape. Because of the extensive media coverage, the unconscionable realities of conflict the nation had previously been able to ignore were suddenly splattered on television screens in living rooms across the country.

Perhaps the most iconic image is Nick Ut’s photo of 9-year-old Kim Phuc running down a road, her body aflame with napalm. It was a photograph that caused many to question what was being done in their name. The tide began to turn. If the US administration learnt one thing from the war in Vietnam, it was never again to carry out its foreign policy in the full glare of the media.

And what if that media has been around a century earlier? In the four years between the opening salvo of the Civil War at Fort Sumter on 12th April 1861and the surrender of Robert E Lee’s troops at Appomattox on the 9th April 1865, a staggering six hundred and twenty thousand men lost their lives. That’s more casualties than in all the other wars America has fought added together – including Vietnam and both World Wars.

The very last victim was a Northerner, Private John Jefferson Williams of the 34th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, shot through the temple at the Battle of Palmito Ranch – Williams was a blacksmith, only 18, but already with a wife and son. What makes his death all the more poignant is that the Battle of Palmito Ranch took place on 13th May 1865, a full month after the official end of the war. It was Private Williams’ misfortune that the battle in which he died was fought in the very south of Texas, a long, long way from Lee’s surrender in Virginia. News didn’t travel as fast in those days.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Th%E1%BB%8B_Kim_Ph%C3%BAc....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangeburg_massacre....

* Far less well documented is that ten days after the Kent State shootings, two students were killed in not dissimilar circumstances at the historically black Jackson State College (now Jackson State University).

Both of these incidents were pre-dated by events at South Carolina State Universityin Orangeburg on February 8th 1968, when local police fired into a crowd of young people who were protesting against segregation at a local bowling alley. Three protesters were killed and twenty-seven injured. This was the first incident of its kind on a US University Campus.

Currently listen to:
Crosby Stills Nash and Young - Ohio
Beach Boys – Student Demonstration Time
Pete Atkin – Driving Through Mythical America

Recording continues

The once-a-month weekend recording sessions for the Mermaid Kiss-American Images album continue at our favourite rural retreat.

We spent Saturday afternoon listening to, and discussing, the rough mixes – and as is often the case at this stage, we’re happier with some of the songs than we are with others. What works live (and we did road-test a number of the songs) doesn’t always translate to the studio (and vice versa of course). So, we set about re-arranging and trying out some new treatments for a number of the tracks – and suddenly it all felt a whole lot better. The songs we’d been struggling with seem to flow more easily and take on a new life. We all came away feeling a lot more positive.

In addition there’s a brand new piece to add to the album track list – a song called ‘Comes and Goes.’

Current listening includes: Dolly Varden-The Dumbest Magnets; UK-UK; Prefab Sprout-Steve McQueen.

Dreamland

When I was a child I had a recurring dream. I was being chased by something I could never see. Our house had a path down each side, one side was bright and sunny and had the windows from the dining room and kitchen overlooking it – the other pathway was shaded and ran between the windowless garages of our own house and our neighbours. It was there I was in most peril from the dream-monster. I often wonder why I ever considered going down the shady path when there was a perfectly sunny, safe route I could take – yet I periodically cast myself into the nightmare. Maybe it was simply a case of taking the path less traveled by.

As I grew older, I either stopped dreaming altogether or as the experts would no doubt tell me, I lost the ability to remember them on waking. That didn’t mean I slept like a baby (one of the most inappropriate similes ever concocted) – for there have been long hours in many nights when the reality of the world has kept me awake.

And then, quite suddenly, about 6 months ago – I began dreaming again. Surreal doesn’t begin to express some of what’s been happening lately. Often as it was when I was a child, these are first-person dreams and at least now I can have a stab at working out what might lay behind them.
But also I’ve been having dreams in which I appear to be an interloper – as if I’ve stumbled into the theatre of someone else’s sub-conscience. They are vivid, scenic – and very, very real. And although bizarre, they have a narrative which makes sense – at least within itself, though like most dreams, they have no real ending. (The monster never caught me – but I’m sure somewhere, it’s still trying). And weirdly, I am able to recall them in a way I could never remember maths or history when I was at school.
So, I’ll just lie down on this nice, comfy couch and relate one very recent example.

A small boat is bobbing up and down in a vast, otherwise empty, sea. Initially, the view is so distant that the craft is merely a speck – then, in a film-like manner, we slowly zoom in (helicopter-like)to find three women in the boat. It’s as if they’ve been waiting so that they can begin.

ESME: It is the seventeeth day of October in the year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and fifty four. My name is Esmerelda Waterhouse and I am governess to -

LETTY: Letitia Constantia Adorata DeHaugh -

ESME: And her friend -

EVE: Eveline Mary Harrison.

ESME: Letitia's father, had, until one week since, been representing Queen and country as a Diplomat, running some far-flung jewel of the Empire, being about as far from England as it is possible to be while still clinging to surface of the Earth....

LETTY: She means the Southern Hemisphere -

ESME: A position for which he was eminently well-suited being -

LETTY: A despot -

EVE: A tyrant -

ESME: A calling which he deployed no less in his domestic arrangements than he did in his professional career. But his posting came to an end and he was recalled to London. So together with his entourage...

EVE: She means us.

ESME: We were bound for home upon a ship named 'The Althea'.

EVE: Unfortunately -

ESME: The shipping agent to which Letitia's father had charged the task of finding a suitable passage for his -

LETTY: Entourage

ESME: Had -

EVE: With native wit -

ESME: Revenged himself upon the Empire by placing the -

ALL: Entourage -

ESME: Upon the most appalling vessel afloat. The crew -

LETTY: Though male -

EVE: Showed not the slightest aspiration to be gentlemen. And the Captain!

LETTY: One Digby Fellowes -

EVE: Was in a permanent state of intoxication, unable to distinguish his prow from his aft.

LETTY: So naturally, my father, being of that nature, assumed control of the ship -

ESME: In the name of Queen and Country -

ESME: A manoeuvre which did nothing to endear him to either Captain or crew. And a mere five days into the voyage there was an... an....

EVE: Unfortunate incident.

LETTY: My father was keel-hauled and then hanged from the.... the….

EVE: Crosspiece thingy -

LETTY: The crosspiece thingy on one of the masts.

ESME: The yardarm. Everybody cheered.

LETTY: Including me.

EVE: It was the first exciting thing that had happened since we embarked. There are very few diversions at sea.

ESME: To celebrate, the crew, with the full connivance of -

LETTY: Indeed, the active participation of -

ESME: Captain Digby Fellowes -

EVE: Broke open the rum ration and drank it in its entirety,

LETTY: Then promptly fell asleep.

ESME: It came to my mind that, alone on a ship with a drunken crew -

LETTY: That did not aspire to gentlemen -

ESME: The modest virtue of my charges -

LETTY: Was likely to be in some jeopardy.

ESME: So I did the first reckless thing I have ever done in my whole life

EVE: She bid us gather together as many of our belongings as came readily to hand together with whatever food and drinking water we could muster -

LETTY: And we loaded it, and ourselves, into a small dingy.

EVE: It was only at this point, however, that -

ESME: I realized I had no notion whatsoever of the art of rowing -

LETTY: And as a consequence we circumnavigated 'The Althea' twice -

ESME: Before I gained adequate control of the craft to put a healthy distance betwixt ourselves and 'The Althea.'

LETTY: For two days and nights we drifted

EVE: The sea rose, the sea fell; rose and fell under the unforgiving sun

LETTY: Lulling us into an unnatural state

EVE: Neither awake nor asleep.

ESME: It was only our parasols that saved us.


I hope you weren’t expecting a punch line – though, “it was only our parasols that saved us” isn’t bad as dreams go.

It was so real that I was tempted to type the names into a search engine and see if the events, or something similar, actually happened. But you know what? I decided I’d rather wait, keep my fingers crossed, and hope there’s a part two, for it occurs to me that this could merely be a prologue.

These dreams are bizarre and meaningful-less in a “Twin Peaks” sort of way - they come in 3D 360 degree panorama, vivid Technicolor® and with full surround-sound. You can feel the heat. They fascinate me, exhaust me emotionally and sometimes leave me haunted and uneasy. They are also a lot cheaper than DVDs.
And best of all, they’ll be endless entertainment for me in my padded cell.

When Valentine's Day Is Over

If, on February 14th, anyone mentions to you that they think St Valentine’s Day should be banned, that it’s a purely commercial exercise and those who succumb to its lure are morons in extremis, you don’t need to be a shrink to know that he or she failed to receive a card in the morning mail. It’s guaranteed to give anyone the blues. If someone had had the foresight to send Capone a nice card and box of his favourite Havanas on the morning of 14th February 1929, then the whole ghastly misunderstanding later in the day at the warehouse on North Clark Street in Chicago might have been avoided.

As a desperately shy teenager it was certainly the day I least looked forward to in the year. Whilst even the most unlikely of my schoolmates received a couple of cards inscribed in shaky anonymous handwriting, I was bereft of such comfort year upon year.

An unreconstructed romantic, I never sent more than a single card, and for three consecutive years I sent one to the same girl, a girl who I doubt even knew of my existence.

There were certain boys at my school who adopted a more wholesale approach, sending out up to twenty cards on the theory that they wouldn’t want anyone to be disappointed. They even got the juniors in school to write them so that they retained that sense of anonymity, before scrawling their signature across the bottom of each. I would no more have signed my single card than I would have eaten my own hand. But each year those same boys received a postbag of lustful missives. I don’t think I envied them their success as much as I envied them their confidence.

By seventeen, I had fought my shyness to a degree, largely by hiding behind a guitar and letting other people sing my incipient songs while I stood as far back on the stage as is allowable while still being considered a part of the band. But someone must have noticed. On the February 14th of my 18th year, I received a card. It was a verse of love poetry, and a message saying… well actually, on reflection, it was more complimentary about my music than it was about me, but at the time it was the single most precious gift I had ever received. To this day I have no idea who sent that card, but the truth is, I owe her. It made me feel a whole lot better about myself and about my music. It gave me some kind of belief.

Of course, in retrospect, the angst and the tears or joy teenagers experience over those cards received or not received, however real at the time, seems so misplaced. Anyone is capable of a grand gesture on one specific day of the year; it’s what happens between those two people on the other 364 days that is the true measure of love.

First Recording Session For 'American Images'

This weekend saw my band, Mermaid Kiss, travelling to Hinton Barn in Northamptonshire where we began the recording of our fourth CD, the working title of which is American Images.

Our previous three discs have all been recorded here in Kington at The Goat Shed, the studio of our ex-keyboard player and mixing and mastering supremo, Andy Garman, but in the two years since we finished Etarlis, the band has grown to a six-piece and the geographical centre has migrated eastward, hence the need to find a new recording venue for the new album.

As with our earlier recordings though, we wanted to keep it 'in house' and as Evelyn now works for the BBC at Maida Vale studios in London, she (legitimately) borrowed some hardware for the weekend and in addition to singing lead vocals, she also set up the temporary studio and acted as producer and sound engineer! Andy will however still be mixing and mastering the album back at The Goat Shed.

The recording went pretty smoothly. we played through the material during Saturday morning and over lunchtime, then recorded from about 3pm till after midnight, starting again at 9.30 on Sunday morning and winding up at 4pm, a little earlier than we'd intended as the weather had closed in and it was snowing heavily.

We got four tracks in the can - or the computer as it is these days. The Scissored Ground, The Promised Land, Ghost Rider and She Fades Away. Anyone who saw us live last year will have heard the latter two songs, though the addition of drums (a big welcome to Steve White) and some rearranging in the intervening period has resulted in the material progressing since then.

The next sessions will be over the weekend of 14th/15th March. Weather permitting :-)

John Martyn

Just arrrived home to the hear about the death of John Martyn. Although I knew he'd had health issues in recent years - it came as a real shock when I heard it on the radio news. I saw him play on numerous occasions in the late 70's and early 80's and one of the great things about seeing him gig was the way he constantly reinterpreted his songs - always prepared to try new arrangements and styles - you rarely got the same thing twice. He also provided one of my all time classic live memories when I heard him and his band play a song called 'I Am John Wayne' for the first time at Canterbury Odeon. An immense piece of music, incrediably powerful (folk it definitely wasn't - more in the mould of Zep's Kashmir!!) The whole audience was utterly mesmerised. It was only when it finished that I realised that I, and many others, had actually been holding our breath. Absolute magic. (A somewhat toned-down studio version later appeared on the 'Piece By Piece' album). Whilst he was never a darling of the music press, he was held in tremendous respect by other musicians. Eric Clapton descibed him as being "So far ahead of everything, it's almost inconceivable." Recognition came late - a lifetime achievement award at last years BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards - which considering he hadn't made anything that could vaguely be called a folk album for at least 35 years must have amused him greatly. He also received an OBE in this years New Years Honours List. His legacy is an extensive body of work from 40 years of making and recording music, including 1973's 'Solid Air' - generally acknowledged as one of the finest albums ever made.