One to One: John & Yoko

Over the past 12 years of this blog, The Beatles have come by in one form or another. From these posts you may have gathered that I was too young for Beatlemania but without understanding any of that from 1966 onwards got to know enough of the songs to make me a fan, yet I was old enough to remember the final two years and the break up. All without understanding the true significance of the band, but then no one could predict how huge the band would become after the breakup. The band and its individual members are still of enough interest to produce whole films around them in a regular manner. In 2025 One to One: John & Yoko is another example.

In the early 1970s the couple left the U.K. and moved to a small apartment in Greenwich Village, leaving all the acquired riches behind. In their loft they apparently watched a lot of tv and that is what we did in the cinema as well. We watched (what is now the history of) 1972 unfold in front of our eyes, Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon, McGovern, riots, flower power with a vengeance, Attica State, demonstrations, commercials and snippets of sitcoms that I had all but forgotten about and what not.

In between the tv news the life of and around John and Yoko unfolds in a few ways. We hear telephone conversations, see or hear (radio) interviews and the couple's presence at rallies for one goal or another. Why were all these calls recorded?, I wondered. John explains it himself later in an interview. And in between that we see songs from the only full live show John Lennon played after The Beatles quit performing in 1966 or after The Beatles formally split. There was this show in Canada in 1969 afterall. Only one live show! What struck me in the very first live scene was the presence of the man. Here stood a great artist. Several songs came by, but what really struck me was the live rendition of 'Mother'. I could never listen to the song, but it immediately struck me here. Here was someone singing from the bottom of his heart and mind, from the very core of his existence. If the footage was mixed truthfully, the audience was totally quiet and in awe as well. Not in other songs, far, far from it.

In the movie we see the Lennon's getting sucked into all sorts of political activities. Being asked to do this, do come there, to perform for the x, y and z cause. We see how über hippie Jerry Rubin works his way into their life. Where was Abbie Hoffmann? He was mentioned but I do not think he was present. Lennon steps away at some point when violence becomes a topic. Over four years since 'Revolution' he stayed true to his lyrics from 'Hey Jude's' b-side. Besides he was threatened with deportation from the U.S.

As Sean Ono Lennon is executive producer of the movie, there is a strong focus on Yoko Ono, John Lennon's second wife, also. Remember me being too young and just old enough? I remember literally everybody hated Yoko at the time and years and years after. She was to blame for everything. What comes forward from the movie shows how deep this hate went and how it affected her person and life. What I certainly did not know at the time, was that she was a renowned artist already when meeting John for the first time. When visiting Frankfurt in 2013 on a business trip, when driving by tram to the hotel in one of the outskirts of the city, I passed a museum that had a Yoko Ono exhibition. (In the same year I travelled for business to Vienna, but did have time off there and visited a Linda McCartney photo exhibition in one of the Hundertwasser houses.) She was far more than just the disrupting wife of John. In hindsight we know that the four young men had to go their own way. The only what ifs that can be hinted at are, what if they had decided to come back together in 1972, 3 or 4 of if they would have gone back on the road just like The Rolling Stones did in 1969? We will never know.

We do know that the militant life of John Lennon in 1972 did not lead to his best music. Compare it to the renditions of 'Instant Karma' or 'Image' and yes, certainly 'Mother', in this movie and you know it was artistically and musically a near wasted year. This movie though puts it all in perspective, the stragglers, the profiteers, the convictions and the zeitgeist. All get their place. The only one coming close to telling John the truth is the often slighted manager Allen Klein. At least he tried, perhaps thinking about his purse while doing it, but still.

Finally, one of the highlights in my mind. The guy going through Bob Dylan's trash can, A.J. Weberman, is in full view and even becomes part of the Lennon coterie. Things sometimes get weirder in real life, than one can imagine. The live show was a benefit show for a children's care home by the way after the Lennon's were touched by a news reel on home.

This movie tells so many different stories. Having a more than average knowledge of the history of the time certainly helps. 

Wout de Natris - van der Borght 

A Complete Unknown, the movie

And finally the movie was released over here, after all the teasers coming from the U.S., the pictures, the snippets, how good Timothee Chabolet plays the young Dylan, everything but the music itself. Let me start there.

Dylan's first records are all in my collection but I find I do not play them that often, Dylan for me is foremost 'Desire', my first Dylan album, not my first single though, that was 'George Jackson'. I will always go back to 'Desire', and 'Blood On The Tracks' and a few albums released after 1976. Of course his "electric" albums are among my favourites as well. How can they not be? Although they were 20 years or so older when I bought them. In fact, I became a real Dylan fan thanks to the 'Biography' box set someone lent to me around 1985. From then on I back-pedalled.

And here is where A Complete Unknown took me by surprise. I knew and loved every single song played in the movie. If anything, the movie shows that enormous stream of consciousness that overtook Robert Zimmerman's whole essence and turned him into Bob Dylan. The change from an open young man enjoying the attention into an inner recluse, the dark sunglasses that come out everywhere, who does not really know who he is any more. Estranged from his past and leaving people by the wayside. If anything you see the disappointment, despair and even anger of them all. He has used them and steps into the new world that lays at his feet, on the road to do what he needs to do and time has proven him right. The most telling moment is his goodbye to the incapacitated Woody Guthrie, who understands as he refuses to take back his harmonica. If this happened does not matter. There is more that is not accurate, but that's fine, it's a movie.

The movie did not get a single one of the eight nominations at the "Oscars".  In a way, I can understand it. On the one hand the movie always made me feel an outsider. It made me watch without letting me in to the story, On the other, the movie is far too short. Pivotal moments are not even touched upon. By focusing on just a few persons, Pete Seeger, Suze Ratolo (here "Sylvie"), Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez, other important persons in the extremely fast development of Zimmerman becoming Dylan in the Greenwich Village folk scene are skipped. But not even Ratolo's influence on Dylan's political songs is touched upon really. Dave van Ronk? It is that I know roughly what he looked like, otherwise I would never have recognised him in the two short scenes he is in.

For a person who has read Clinton Heylin's 'Behind The Shades' and a few more books, there's too much knowledge to be satisfied by a two hour movie. A Complete Unknown should be a series and it would be even more interesting. What remains with me though, are two things. 1) The astonishing development of a young man who stuns the world, two times in this movie. Dylan morphs from a talented copycat folk musician, into a protest singer, "the voice of his generation", and if that was not enough into a rock hero. 2) The astonishing sense of betrayal felt not only by his fans, but also by all the people he left behind. Dylan not only saw the sign of the times but acted on it in time. Folk was marginal and would remain so. Pop and rock were the future. By jumping on the bandwagon he provided himself the freedom to do whatever he wanted to do in the future. Sure, also to be damned again, again at a point in time when he became too popular by his own estimation, by turning Christian in 1979. He ends, decades past these four years portrayed in the movie, as one of the most venerated artists of his time.

Who knows, maybe after his demise, we may find that he has left behind the documents that explain all of the mysteries that shroud the person(ae) Bob Dylan. The question is do we want to know? Or, are we better off with the mystery, with best guesses? For now, let's hope he still has a great album in him.

Wout de Natris - van der Borght

The Last Waltz "live" (en Yorick van Norden). Caprera Bloemendaal, 3 September 2022

Photo: Wout de Natris

Last Saturday after the Elenne May living room more musical stuff happened of a very different nature. One person in the audience said they were going to a movie showing of The Last Waltz in Caprera, an open air theatre in Bloemendaal. It resulted in five persons moving from the Elenne May show to Bloemendaal, after a rushed dinner.

The Last Waltz is a famous music movie directed by Martin Scorsese in which the final show The Band gave at the Winterland in San Francisco in November 1976 is shown. It invited many friends and artists the members had worked with before. I saw the movie, I think, in 1978 or something like it in an almost empty movie theatre in Breda. Some of the people I saw I had never heard from. Muddy Waters? Ronnie Hawkins? Staple Singers? Joni Mitchell? Others I saw for real for the first time, as they were not on "regular" television music shows. As for going to live shows from a village near Breda? That's not so easy as it would be today. Neil Young, Bob Dylan, you did not see them as they did not score hits. I only knew them from photo's and record sleeves. The same went for The Band itself. I knew the few hitsingles and that was it.

Much, much later I bought the DVD, but this showing was different. For starters, there were no surprises any more and several of those featuring I have seen live since (multiple times). The film was on a big screen, played through a PA and obviously in a stellar quality of remixing, mastering and digital whatever. What made this huge difference, was that I, and with me many others, sort of forgot we were watching a movie. Each song got an applause that grew ever louder as people set away their surprise, perhaps shame of applauding for 45 year old movie. "Yeah"s were filling the air. Artists were greeted. In short, fun was had by all.

And this included The Band. The interaction between four of the five members, the somewhat weird and enigmatic Garth Hudson is somewhat apart from it all it seems, was huge. This was a band on a roll, a band having a great time and playing at its very, very best. With three great singers and one great songwriter. At the same time The Band accompanied each guest artist as if it never did anything different. All these types of music, played effortlessly it seemed. All blended in as well, with, of course, Dylan standing out there. Although in his second song everything became better fast.

"Neil!  Diamond!" my girlfriend shouts.

Let's not forget The Band's own songs. What fantastic songs they are! I tend to forget them sometimes, but hearing 'Cripple Creak', 'Ophelia' and the hits once again in this context was some sort of an eye, well, ear, opener. More than ever before I noticed how good these guys could sing (together) and how good their songs are still.

From the interviews it became clear, to me, there was only one The Band member who wanted to stop the madness of living a rock and roll life, Robbie Robertson. He was literally in fear of not getting out alive. Later it turned out that The Band had a darker side, although I still have not read its biography. One of these days. Those who had listened to The Last Waltz' interviews could have surmised that already and did not need a biography in the late 90s or something for that.

Three of the members are already no longer with us, Richard Manuel, suicide on the road with The Band mach II, Rick Danko, of too much living and Levon Helm, from cancer. In The Last Waltz you can see them in their full glory. The Band carried that name fully justified.

Haarlem singer-songwriter Yorick van Norden played a short set before the movie with two bandmembers. He is a very amiable person and has great observatory and oral gifts where music is concerned. Unfortunately, his music does not catch me. It is nice, but two things are missing, originality and that spark that brings songs alive for me. I hear many people speaking very favourable of him, so it's me who has an issue. I cannot make more of it than that. "Parachute Woman" anyone who was present?

Wout de Natris

Elvis

How is it to watch a movie on a rock and roll star I never was a fan of? Well, pretty good actually. The reviews I read were mixed, although the slightly negative one admittedly was rather elitist, perhaps because the reviewer appeared to be a fan of Elvis Presley and had wanted more out of the movie.

Elvis and me never really got it off. I wasn't around when he broke big, I was to young to appreciated what he did in the late 60s and did not really like most of his 70s hit singles at the time. The whole Las Vegas thing passed me by until years after his death. Elvis and me in a nutshell, to set the stage.

In 2022 Elvis Presley is still a phenomenon, albeit a fading one. A good reason to go and watch the movie and see for myself what impact the man had on music, and life in the U.S. in general.

Looking around me in the theatre that was nearly sold out on a Friday night, not sold out, I noticed how young the audience was. No Elvis fan of old in sight. They may be too old to go to a movie at night by now. Most weren't even closely born in 1977, the year Elvis died at the age of 42. So what could have attracted them? The director is not a hip young one. It is not as if Elvis' music is everywhere on the radio anymore. Hence, I doubt whether Elvis can do for Elvis Presley, what 'Bohemian Rhapsody' did for Queen and perhaps 'Rocketman' for Elton John.

What Baz Luhrmann, the director and co-scenarist, shows extremely well, is how music influenced Elvis. How he lived music and was possessed by it. By joining a jukejoint with a Southern baptist church in one setting, in the dirt poor, rural land of Mississippi, the whole of Elvis' musical career is caught within ten minutes. How he soaked up country blues and gospel and used both to work for himself in the first songs he recorded at Sun Records and RCA Victor. Luhrmann shows the excitement the young Elvis brought with him, the impact this had on girls (and women) and the outrage of the fathers who could see the reputation of their daughters shot to you know what. The conservative backlash it caused, the racism that was part of the outrage: "Negro music is corrupting the souls of our children". The excitement and ecstasy the younger Elvis had seen in the Southern church, he brought to the stage with him and caused a sexual arousing in the whole of the country. All this extrapolates into the intenseness of his Las Vegas shows, when he is finally released again by younger collaborators. Where nothing is withheld and the candle burns at both ends and fast. These bursts of energy are caught on film in a fantastic way. The way he is fixed up time and again by a doctor, brought Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb' to mind immediately. "It will keep you going through the show, come on it's time to go". All this comes across so good.

It is not the main story though. In the background is Elvis' relationship with Col. Tom Parker, his manager. The complexity of that relationship is shown in all its facets. The constant hints that Parker, who had never been a colonel, was not a Tom and not even a Parker but Breda, The Netherlands born Andreas van Kuijk and illegally in the U.S., was pressured into certain choices because he could be blackmailed, show a few things. Elvis had a lot to thank Parker for. He brought him where he was, co-made him into who he was. He also held him back tremendously. The army, the movies, not being able to perform outside of the U.S., because Parker had no passport and could not get one (or thought so). Then going back to the other side, Elvis was the only rock and roll star that did survive the 60s in a grand way and started to score hits, huge hits and to critical acclaim from the late 60s onwards. That may well be because Elvis was not competing with the British Invasion and returned at the right moment when the invasion was over and spent its energy. The world was ready for Elvis once again and never got him, because of Parker. He could have been so much bigger now, as in essence Elvis remained an American phenomenon and not a true global one. Can Elvis possibly be bigger? I think yes and that travelling had enriched his career and perhaps even made him see there was more to live for than Graceland and Las Vegas. Perhaps his self-view and appreciation would have changed for the positive.

All the hangers on and leeches living from his pocket, including his father, were not able to stop the candle from burning. They had no interest to do so. The only one who had, his wife Priscilla, had left the building by then. That is the other side of a giant money generator, no one has in interest in the well-being of the chicken with the golden eggs, i.e. Elvis Presley. Pills, drugs and the fabled peanutbutter sandwiches, that are not shown in the movie, culminated in a tremendously overweight, spent, 42 year old wreck. And then the scene changes from the actor to the real Elvis, singing the last song he sang live on stage, a caricature of the man he once was. When he starts singing 'Unchained Melody', the only thing left to do is to sit back in awe at the power of that voice. No, I'm not a fan but have come to appreciate some of his work more over the past 50 years and some songs are fantastic, with 'Suspicious Minds' as my favourite. Many of the rock and roll ones are still great fun to play with the band.

I was left with one question. The Elvis songs I remember from being a smal kid, were the ballads. 'Wooden Heart', 'Are You Lonesome Tonight?', 'Love Me Tender'. Except for an almost psychedelicly warped 'Are You Lonesome Tonight' they are not within earshot. Elvis is a movie about the excitement. There's no room for sentimentality there, until the end that is.

And Tom Hanks as Co. Tom Parker? An Academy Awards shimmers in the near future.

Wout de Natris

Get Back. The Beatles

In past six weeks I have been that fly on the proverbial wall in the studio of The Beatles while they were recording for what was to be a live album and practicing what was to be a full, surprise live show, somewhere in London. The band convened in a large studio hall at Twickenham on 2 January, the live show planned for circa 24 January. Assuming that most people reading this post will know enough of the outcome. No real live show but a rooftop concert, stopped by the police. The band breaking up for a short while. The music not seeing the light of day until 'Let It Be' was released in April 1970, finished by Phil Spector. The band convening later in 1969 for a final time to record 'Abbey Road' and breaking up officially in April 1970, in reality in the fall of 1969 when 'Come Together' and 'Abbey Road' were climbing the singles and albums charts around the world. Assuming you know all that, I'm just going to write some observations.

Sparks fly

The main observation is this: When Paul managed to get to John and get him out of passivity or the spell Yoko had on him or better his attention, that were the moments that sparks flew. When brilliance struck and things changed, immediately. Some were so clear on film to see and hear. And, yes, John should have left Yoko at home more often, but I never had the impression, not for one moment, that Yoko was present as the "ugly witch". She was just there, always. The other wives were not, and Patti all but invisible or she did not want to be in the movie.

This togetherness excluded George and Ringo totally. George sometimes is jealous and feels excluded and under-appreciated. Ringo just sits there behind his drumkit, totally passive, not doing anything, not saying anything. It's almost shocking to see. A fun moment is when he is sitting behind the piano playing the beginnings of  'Octopus' Garden' to George. The others are not there then. George helping Ringo with chords, making suggestions, growing the song, that did make it to an album.

Pride

The pride of jack-of-all-trades to The Beatles, Mel Evans when he gets to play on a Beatles song. He plays the anvil in 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' and is nearly bursting at the seams. Just this moment makes the movie worth its while.

He did everything for the Fab Four. Bringing snacks and drinks, buying ciggies (there's endless smoking in the movie), haul in an anvil, write down the lyrics, even making a suggestion at times and is simply present from beginning to end, just in case they need anything.

Chaos

For days on end there's just chaos. Not for one moment there is focus on that end goal: a live show. To the desperation of the director. What is it they want? He never gets that clear, not for a second. Even the rooftop show remained uncertain, even when everything was already up on roof. Get Back, if anything, shows the chaos of creation. The endless stops and starts, bursting into any song that comes to mind, spontaneous dancing, jams (including Yoko's screaming (and little Heather's copying of Yoko!)), all to stray away from a new song that is not there yet, that does not want to reveal it's true nature and form just yet.

Work ethic

The load of songs Paul comes up with or has ready for production. I was totally astonished when on one of the earlier days he starts to crank out one after the other on a piano, waiting for the others to arrive. All his songs were ready to go. George who goes home after a long day in the studio and returns with another brilliant song, all finished or close to it. It's John who seems to be mostly on hold. He just sits there, uninterested even, his mind not in it. It's Paul who mostly his dragging the others onwards, as is shown often in the movie, but that is common knowledge. This is in stark contrast with the fun they also have together and shows the moment when a hobby has become work and because of it is all but work.

Brilliance

To be present when lightning strikes in the studio. When all of a sudden that moment is found that makes a song work, that one riff or break. For 'Get Back' it was Paul with George and not John for once. This is worth watching all the endless chatter I also had to go through. It never bored me for a second though. This is as close one can get to a band. Just like David Mitchell got in his latest novel 'Utopia Avenue'. I just wished that they had filmed the recording of all the albums. When did 'Eleanor Rigby' move from a band song to an orchestra accompaniment? That sort of thing.

George leaving

I totally did not understand that one. There is a scene a few days before when you can see him siting totally turned into himself. Discontented, even angry. The days after they have fun and laugh and at lunchtime he decides to quit. Out of the blue for me, on the basis of the movie. I did not see that one coming, on that day. A few days later the band left Twickenham and moved to a room in their own Apple office. It was okay from then on or mostly. On the final day after the rooftop, George does say, "I'm going to take a break to make my own record. I have enough songs for my quorum for the next 10 Beatles albums". Several of the songs on 'All Things Must Pass' are The Beatles demo's from 1969. On 31 January he was not planning to leave The Beatles, just to record a solo album. The fact that they were discussing the future, met with Allen Klein at the end of the movie, shows no one was thinking about ending The Beatles in January 1969.

George Martin

I always thought Martin was not present here, as they did not want him or he did not want to produce the album. He was there on all days, watching over his four lads. Managing the recordings, making notes, bringing them back to the band when they've lost the bigger picture. And to make a suggestion at the right moment, pushing a song into a certain direction.

Brilliance 2

For all the uncertainty coming with the idea of having to play live and the endless distractions before finishing a song, the rooftop show went fantastic. There stood an incredibly tight five piece who knew exactly what it was doing. If there were doubts up to the final moments, they were all gone on that roof on 30 January 1969. The film clips are epic of course. Not just the performance but everything around it. The filling roofs, the streets, the poor PCs having to maintain order and order The Beatles to stop playing, the entourage on the roof, the filmcrew everywhere. And Billy Preston, who for a few weeks had become a full member of The Beatles and plays these brilliant Fender Rhodes parts. Including a large solo in 'Get Back'. Speaking of highlights in a career. The band was fantastic on that roof in Savile Row and basically ready to go back on the road. It may have saved the band, had they decided to go on tour in 1970 or 1971 after a year long break for solo records.

The movie

Peter Jackson did a marvellous job in recreating something that was originally dismal. I was, I think at the time, 16, when I saw 'Let It Be'. Far too young to appreciate the significance of what I was seeing at the time, but was what remained with me was all the negativity the movie showed and the emptiness of Twickenham. I never bothered to look at 'Let It Be' again since. In 2021/22 I did and was blown away. By the power of the setting, music and the restored images. Perhaps the Get Back storyline was manipulated somewhat to make it look better.

If so, this is how the world would like to remember The Beatles, as the best band in pop ever, deserving the mythical status it now has, while at the same time totally human. Not long from now there are no Beatles left in this world. The original fans are all in their sixties and seventies. So a few decades from now The Beatles have become like all great composers of the past: dead. The one big difference is that anyone coming after us can put on the records, watch clips, look at Get Back and see and hear the real thing. And that is the true power of Get Back.

Wout de Natris

George Kooymans, Christopher Plummer

Friday 5 February was a warm day for a winter. A day spent in a voluntary lockdown, with an afternoon stroll as usual by now. A day with a curfew from 21.00 hours onwards. A day chatted on Zoom with my son who lives in Oslo because he can due to the closed university for who knows how long and a day that I found 'The Little Black Book' filled with Oasis songs, lyrics and chords in a mini library along the strolling route of choice.

Friday 5 February was also the day that I woke up with my girlfriend telling me that George Kooymans is extremely ill and is not able to perform ever again and the day that Christopher Plummer died. What has that got to do with each other? you may ask. Let me tell you.

Kooymans plays in Golden Earring, a band I got to know as Golden Earrings and scored many a hit when I was very young. The first one I can truly remember is the band's first #1 hit 'Dong-Dong-Di-Ki-Di-Ki-Dong', that single the band did not want to be remembered of not much later. There are not many bands that can afford to ignore their number one hit single later on in their careers. Golden Earring(s) could, even when it went acoustic in the 90s, reviving its career.

Christopher Plummer played captain Von Trapp in 'The Sound Of Music', the first movie I remember seeing. Not just me, my mother, my aunt and even my grandmother was there in Rotterdam in the Cineac. I guess I'm the only one alive who can tell about it, perhaps my younger brother was there also. If so he probably can't remember. I'm not certain when we saw it, what I do know is that I have the single 'My Favourite Things' / 'Edelweiss'. And who leads the latter into the singing, staging the beginning of the flight to Switzerland? Christopher Plummer, the man who hated frivolities in the movie. Plummer died, aged 91. 'The Sound Of Music' was one of my very first, intense, musical experiences. A story and songs that made a tremendous impression on a 6 or 7 year old.

George Kooymans turns 74 this year and can't perform / play guitar any more because of ALS. There's not to be a self-chosen goodbye after 59 years of being in the band that conquered the world, due to the Covid pandemic. In any other circumstances it might have been possible to do.

I have heard 'Radar Love' played in three continents, from a carnival in Spokane to a pub in Mudgee. Together with 'Venus' the song is everywhere. Kooymans wrote so many extremely great songs. The list of hits of Golden Earring(s) is near endless. Several of the songs are beyond memorable. They are exemplary. I never gave a lot about the band for its albums, exceptions noted, but as a singles band they were so good. Check out any greatest hits albums and you'll find out why.

Christopher Plummer, as an actor, of course is a musical footnote in my life, George Kooymans has been an integral part of my life since 1968. Truly a deep, deep thank you to all four Earrings for all those songs and performances.

It turns out that due to Covid I saw one of his last performances with Vreemde Kostgangers on 5 March 2020, days before the country closed itself, when jokes could be made from the stage about a lockdown, while I was already half watching people around me whether they were coughing. No one takes that experience away from me.

Wo.

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The Horror. Get Well Soon

The Horror is an album that was lying around for weeks and somehow I had never gotten around to playing it. Most likely because there was a comment somewhere on dance or beats involved in the bio. The always friendly and gentle reminder about an album, just before release, let me to put it on any way. I haven't stopped listening since.

For your information, I still do not know what to make of The Horror. The title has little to do with the music, all that is in the lyrics. It is like stepping into a time machine. To the very faint memories I have of the kind of music my mother played on the small record player she had and I managed to break as a three year old. That is a very vivid memory. Not so much how I broke the plastic arm of the device, but certainly the effect: there was no more music in our home, for years on end.

So Get Well Soon dives into 40s and 50s pre-rock and roll pop and into film scores of the era. With singers like Frank Sinatra, but also Doris Day, Frankie Laine, Pat Boone. The narrative does not stop there of course. If Get Well Soon stepped into a time machine it took along all its knowledge of modern music and some of the equipment as well. It came back to 2018 with a mix of a modern interpretation of classical music, mixed with 50s hits and movie scores and all the modern effects since, it needed somewhere in between the levels of its music.

On The Horror the seriousness of the music of that time is captured excellently. The songs that I do know, as I never became a fan of older, i.e. pre-rock and roll, music all sound so solemn. They were not meant for joy it seems. Undoubtedly that is attributable to my (untrained) ears, but to this day I do not hear it compared to The Beatles' first hits.

There is one snag with The Horror. The album deserved a better singer. The singing captures the mood but is too uncertain and hesitating in several sections. And that is a shame. The music is intriguing and full of surprises. Whole orchestras can get involved, in ways that were not imaginable in the 40s and 50s. At the same time The Walker Brothers come to mind, if I leave out the wall of sound behind them, the solo work of Roger Waters and even a band from the here and now The LVE from Antwerp. (And once pointed to the music of Japan as an influence, I can't stop hearing David Sylvian's 'Red Guitar'.)

In some of the songs Get Well Soon reaches an immense level of under-cooled emotions in others it can sound totally detached from everything going on around it. Konstantin Gropper is Get Well Soon. A German producer and indiepop musician. And that leads me to my final reference John DeRosa's album 'Black Halo'. A (dance) producer who set loose another side of himself that led to highly bombastic music immersed with influences from long ago.

Get Well Soon is an aural adventure. Perhaps a bit too long for me to take it all in all at once. That may be, at the same time there is so much to enjoy here. Gropper manages to mix several eras in a highly successful way. Who knows, even my mother and aunts would have enjoyed parts of the album.

Wo.

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Supersonic. Oasis

Of course the documentary has been released quite some time ago. This weekend it was on the telly and I decided to give it a view, despite the negative reviews the film received mostly over here. So let me write just a few words.

Somehow Oasis never got as big over here in NL as it was in the U.K. It seems the destiny of most U.K. bands that are hyped beyond recognition by the British music press. Almost since The Beatles no band from the U.K. got as big for a number of years. Oasis never scored more than five hits over here, with three of them not crossing the number 30 spot out of 40. Only one top 10 hit. 'Wonderwall' reached to #9. That is all. (Now that says more about the Dutch charts, than anything else. I can't find a lot of decent songs in them for about 25 years. It's all dance, rap and what ever stuff, next to horrible Dutch language songs. But hey, the charts are for kids, right?)

The band came into my life with the first album at the time I heard 'Live Forever' for the first time. Immediately I went out to get the album. If Oasis had only released one song, the one opening 'Definitely Maybe', 'Rock And Roll Star', it would have made a lasting impression on the world. It's the kind of song that is not only great, it's a declaration of intent and victory march in one. It truly would have been enough. Just like the first song on their greatest heroes' first album, 'I Saw Here Standing There'. The kind of song that says it all.

Many great songs followed, of course, but the period highlighted in Supersonic, was the period. Not one thing that followed could live up to the expectations created here. The Knebworth event Supersonic opened and closed with said it all. After that (and just before I found) things started to fall apart.

Just like the 'Amy' movie I'm somewhat surprised how much tape there has been lying around, even from before the band broke. Having grown up in a family without camera's I'm used to having not much (and not placing much value on) film.

The film shows brilliantly the reason why there's no more Oasis. The one brother is at heart an ego-centric attention seeker, the other is perpetually jealous of the attention his baby brother is getting. Whenever for a second a camera is directed at Liam, Noel darts into view trying to be cuter, wittier, whatever and forever loses. Having all the talent was not enough. He had to have more than that and that spelled out disaster for the band, leaving everything and everybody by the wayside. The fire consumed nearly everyone involved. Band members and entourage alike.

One interesting fact remains though. Had it not been for Liam recognising his brother's talent for writing songs, no one would, most likely, ever have heard of either Gallagher. So who is indebted to whom, really?

Another interesting fact. Despite the fierce competition with that other U.K. band at the time, unless I've missed it, the name is not mentioned once in the whole movie. A bit strange if the goal is to show the sign of the times.

Fascinating boring stuff Supersonic is. And the legacy? If you're from the generation that grew up in the 90s, especially in the U.K., this will probably be your band forever. For me, it was a nice interlude before I moved on, forever thinking that The Beatles were better and hardly ever playing one song any more. Sometimes I even wonder what all the fuzz was about.

There are two new albums out instead of one. Let's see if they are worthwhile reviewing over the coming weeks.

Wo.

A Scanner Darkly, Original Soundtrack by Graham Reynolds

Recently a few movie scores were dropped into my digital mailbox. Now I have never been one for soundtracks. Usually music passes me by during a movie, being focused on the pictures and text in front of me. Some pieces of soundtrack are inescapable, like the weird music by Angelo Badalamenti for 'Twin Peaks' and Ennio Morricone's music in 'Once Upon A Time In The West'. Other moments are when "real" songs come by and recognition kicks in. So the number of soundtracks in my collection is one by Bill Wyman, only because he was a Rolling Stone at the time and the one I already mentioned. That may be it, one or two musicals excluded.

Now A Scanner Darkly. What does this music mean without the picture? Nothing. So the music has to stand its own ground. Also nothing in the music I'm hearing leads me to the thought that I ought to go and see it. I strongly doubt it even will make cinema's here.

Let me change my tack here. I just found that the film is from 2006, so no, I haven't seen it or heard of it. The film was produced by Richard Linklater and featured Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. among others. It sounds like a movie for sci-fi and drug aficionados.

Graham Reynolds is a revered musician, who plays jazz in a trio, but also is the composer of symphonies and operas. This is not surprising hearing this soundtrack. Very different sounds, compositions and moods come by. From a string composition to combinations of instruments like violins with xylophone as a lead instrument. Modern soundscapes come by with 'Twin Peaks' like lead guitars and mystery in all the way the music is treated with effects. As if time goes backwards instead. The twangy surf guitar followed by a saxophone will be underneath a funny part, without much text.

The fact that I have listened to this soundtrack a few times shows that it is listenable as a independent piece. Then I am ignoring my need to have melodies to sing along to, the kind of interactions with songs that step up and kick me in the face. On this soundtrack nearly all is in the background, subdued, as it can not take too much away from what is happening on the screen. The moment I start listening to music in a theatre, something has gone wrong horribly with the movie. So many of the compositions on this album just go by. The others that are somewhat louder undoubtedly will be a sequence under a chase or something rather exciting. Others are just sounds. Meant to be subjected to pictures and don't really have a right as an existence on their own.

So, do sountracks and I go together? No, not really. It was fun to try it out for once and A Scanner Darkly has its moments, but I'm simply a song man.

Wo.

Jake's Death or the Outlaws and Angels soundtrack

Jake's death

• Did you hear Jake got overrun by a train?
• No shit, what the fuck happened.
• He was listening to the Outlaws and Angels soundtrack.
• So what?
• Didn't here it coming, mistook the train for the soundtrack 

OMK

You can listen to why things went so horribly wrong here:

https://open.spotify.com/album/6QjaBF0M20AYPR6D54TNWX

Eight Days A Week. The Beatles

My girlfriend has a golden rule when at the movies: "Always watch the little letters". There were a few that could not wait to get out of the theatre when the small letters started showing the hundreds upon hundreds of people who work on a movie. I was amazed that for each interview with the talking heads that documentaries carry, took at least 20 people to get on film. In each and every city where they were filmed and recorded. The next batch missed the band's banter on its 1963 Christmas record for the members of the fanclub. The sound heard over the little letters. And even more missed the annex glued to Ron Howard's documentary movie on the live years of The Beatles: the full Shea Stadium film. All 30 minutes. That was how long a show took those days. Compare that to what Paul McCartney does in recent years.

I have missed the live years of the Beatles, although I was around in the year they went to Hamburg for the first time. Tucked away safely in my crib and was in third grade when they played the, now famous, roof top concert, that seemed like the end of this film. John's voice saying something like: "that's rather a nice ending, isn't it"?, seemed to wrap it all up. For me that was the reason to go to this documentary, as it focuses on the live music and less on the impact of the band's music overall on the teenagers and society in general, as that part of the story is well documented. When a commentator somewhere along Eight Days A week stated: "This is something like we've never seen before", it had already changed for me. The impact was so much larger than I even imagined. In a certain scene I saw the most inner instincts of a girl standing behind a fence during a show. Had a Beatle come within her sight, she would have killed instantly and taken a piece, whatever part, home with her to keep forever. The sight on the girl's face, now a grandmother, is downright frightening.

This was what the band went through every single day. Until it was worn out in each and every way but creatively. The bubble didn't burst, the band just walked out and closed the door in 1966 to go on and produce its finest, most creative songs before it all ended. The rooftop tells it all. George looks extremely doubtful, John starts to have a good time, like Paul and Ringo already have, and then that one second when a camera glimpses Yoko Ono, sitting on the roof, sullen, perhaps even angry looking, bored. There and then is the end of the band in plain view for perhaps two seconds. In my mind that was the defining moment. The Beatles should have gone touring in 1970 and do what the Rolling Stones did, grow ever higher and better. But oh those few people in those other roofs!

That was the final episode. All before is the famous story, often told and viewed once again or in part for the first time for me. How a band grew from a pop/beat band to the most important band in history and the greatest writers of songs ever. Up with the very, very great. The screaming girls never stop amazing. Mass hysteria. The pace of the band. It's relentless! The sum-up by Ringo of an average Beatles day is so telling. But like Paul said, it brought focus. The need for the next hit, kept them on their toes and brought out the best in them. Every moment counted and the results show. The string of hits is still amazing.

And confusing for The Beatles in a very specific U.S. sense. What album is the song we're playing on? They undoubtedly knew for the U.K. version of the albums, but for the U.S. ones? It seems like they didn't. The Beatles VI? Even I have never heard of it. 'Yesterday and Today'? I had never heard of it, until literally this week. If you like what you heard in Eight Days A Week, then '1966. The Year The decade Broke' by Jon Savage is a book of interest. A whole section of the book was told here in the movie by Savage. The photo shoot with dolls and meat, the pressure on the band, the segregation in Jackson and the influence The Beatles had on that discussion, the album burnings. etc. It's all in there and a lot more not on The Beatles. So did Savage add that to Eight Days a Week or was he put on a story? Interesting. It's these parts to the story of The Beatles that I thought highly interesting. But when all is said and done, it's about camaraderie. Four young lads from Liverpool who took on the world together. Their humour, talent, friendship and one for all, all for one attitude that got them through the stress and madness around them.

In a movie theatre in the middle of the day with mostly pensioners, baby boomers, I had a great time. Eight Days A Week gave me piece of something that I never could have been at and experience now in full. For The Beatles it is too bad that they are not able to play now. That we need The Analogues to show how it could have sounded like. The Beatles remain the originals though and always will be.

Paul and Ringo are still here, in their 70s. As the film dedications show a lot of the core team isn't any more. Soon to be a memory, soon to be beyond a memory. The music and the films will always be there for future generations to muse about. Also live it just didn't get much better than this. I somehow tend to forget how good this band is, because of all the other stuff going on musically, but there are always little moments like these that make me realise that when all is said and done there's only one band that matters and that is the one that entered my life first, as a very young boy, The Beatles.

Wo.

Kairos, June 2016 by .No on Concertzender

In June Concertzender broadcasted another Kairos show made by .No, Wo.'s partner in this thing called WoNo Magazine. About once a month Wo. listens to .No's selection of music in which often he is more than not exposed to music he has never heard before and most likely would never have been exposed to. In fact he even listens to contributions that he hardly recognises as music in the way he understands it. This leads to thoughts, musings, associations, recollections and even small stories he shares with the followers of this blog.

"Kairos, a meditation to present day music", is the familiar, somewhat odd introduction to the show, I notice. Present day? Some compositions are ages old, although the recordings are modern or several decades old at most. Later I discovered we do go back this month to a recording made in the late 1950s.

The show starts with Lyenn and his album 'Slow Healer', an album that was reviewed this spring on this blog, a post that triggered hearing the music on Kairos. The many layered composition is about trying to find. The phrase "show me the way" is repeated over and over.

When an organ note holds on for a few seconds I realise we are in for the change. The note comes through Lyenn's last notes and moves into 'By And By' from the Dutch band Luik. Another album that I'd say could only have been released on Snowstar Records. More atmosphere than music and still extremely beautiful. Despite that there is a full band setting, live one ought to be able to hear a pin drop in the audience. Otherwise there would be nothing left. The delicate guitar solo notes worm itself through the organ/harmonium, drums and bass. Luik is close to I Am Oak in everything, but just a tat more down to earth as far as this floating music can be thus.

'Chanson Exotique?' That reminds me of a movie I once saw in New York City that I forgot the name of, but something like Exotica. I remember the desolation, no scenes. Something with a lapdance club? I seem to want to put Jeff Bridges in there, but have no way of knowing any more and there's no need to look it up. The dark sounding violin with the harp playing deeper notes exhumes some of this atmosphere. It is music that touches me on this afternoon when I feel I have not slept enough, feel a bit lazy and tired, without it hampering me. I find this is the right music to listen to.

The high singing that follows is no surprise after what I heard just before. It lands in the place opened by Larissa Groeneveld's cello, so not a violin, sorry. The music sounds like it could have been made for a Hollywood movie of the 40s or 50s and even early Disney movies. The singing is more classical though. So what am I listening to? 'Sea Slumber Song' sung by Janet Baker with the London Symphony Orchestra behind her. I hate this sort of singing, usually, but not at this moment, although there comes a point in which I hope Baker does not outstay her welcome.

Lyenn returns with a second song, 'In Reveries'. Although we switch from classical to singer-somgwriter pop (dreampop?), for lack of a better description, the mood remains intact. Fredrick Lyenn Jacques sings high, with an acoustic guitar and a lot of atmosphere behind him in the form of an occasional bass note and the room he's in. Until more instruments move in. A banjo, strings and the song fleshes out to what brings the late St. Thomas to mind, the Norwegian singer who took his own life some years ago.

The switch to Ravel is a small one. By then I have found the common theme for this month. It is in the music. These are all people when making their music forget that when the sky drops upon us, we finally all will wear blue hats. 'Adagio assai uit Piano Concerto in g' is so melancholy, so soft spoken, so beautiful that it completely takes me by surprise. This piece of music could have been in any movie as well as be part of all sorts of interludes in rock records. This does not change when the Philharmonia Orchestra joins pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Ekseption did something like this in its adaptation of Bach's 'Air'? Marillion, Yes? My guess is almost that they heard this music. The soft violins under any romance scene in old black and white movies? Here you have the source. It is the piano that is off sorts every once in a while, almost disharmonious, before being reigned in again or tames the orchestra. Yes, I'm pleasantly surprised here.

Although today is a bit of a autumny day, the Indian summer in general is working out well. It's a bit strange to hear a song on snow on oranges, if I translate the French right. This choir miniature by Maurice Ohana is sung by female voices only. A piano takes over and again it has this melancholy, meditative quality that is all over this Kairos. Back to the Rothko Chapel and Eric Satie's 'Gnossienne No. 3' played by Sarah Rothenberg. The soft notes are played delicately, even when the pressure on the keys is a bit harder. The choir was only a short relief from the piano. The door that was opened by the cello and harp is still wide open.

Peter Broderick composition 'What Was Found' is far more modern. The delayed, I think guitar, sound is mixed in with strings after a soft introduction. The composition has a touch of sumptuousness around it, as if there's more than I can hear. The music stops for the poem by Willem Wilmink. No mixing this month.

Taylor Deupree produces some quaint sounds after which Matthew Bourne plays his piano in 'The Greenskeeper' from his album 'Montauk Variations'. The notes are so sparse that it is impossible to hide. Each notes reverberates for a long time filling the space available in a lazy lingering fashion.

Lyenn's third contribution, 'Vaguely Lit' takes over and fits so well. The pace is so slow that there is only one way to listen to this music: total surrender. Nothing else will let it reach the listener. You listen or not, there's no alternative. And that is what almost all other compositions have in common this month. There's no way in between. Once you are listening, there's nothing else for a whole hour. Again I am caught by the quiet desperation and resignation of Lyenn's songs.

A composition by Henrik Gorecky is next. There is a bell that I recognise from Pärt, but not as upfront and it goes away. The title is 'Tranquillo', another description that could fits this month's Kairos. This is the first composition that does not really touch me, if I leave out Deupree. Yes, it is tranquillo alright, but there is also something disturbing (my late Sunday afternoon reverie) in the music. Especially when we move into the composition. Compared to all that went before, the violins get me out of my listening mood like nails on the blackboard. Shudders down my spine. Something not quite right is going on here, so I leave it alone for Lyenn's final contribution to this Kairos, 'Keep It Still'.

For whom Gurecki's bell tolls I may never find out, but I do not particularly care, I have to say. Strange sounds come out of my speakers over which Lyenn's voice comes out. Like a trip to the ghost house at the fair as a child. Anticipating the scare around the next corner was almost scarier than the skeleton or fake spider webs themselves. That is what Lyenn's doing here. No longer a normal song more the sublimation of Mark Linkous' 'Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot'.

Nils Frahm again closes a Kairos with an excerpt from one of his songs. No urge to singing along this time though. 'I Would Like To Think' is all his own, but take care and listen up, as it is over before you know it.

There is one comment left. Why does .No praise himself in the introduction to this Kairos on the Concertzender's website, when it obviously ought to go to

Wo.?,

although I am sure he meant well.

You can listen to the June 2016 Kairos here:

http://www.concertzender.nl/player/?mode=rod&prid=339303

This is the full list:

00:15 Frederic Lyenn Jacques. Show me the way.
Album ‘Slow Healer’ vanLyenn. V2 Records Benelux
03:58 Lukas Dikker. By and by.
Album ‘Owl’ van Luik. Snowstar Records)
09:30 Hidayat Inayat Khan. Chanson Exotique, lento.
Larissa Groeneveld, cello; Gwyneth Wentink, harp.
Album: Chanson Exotique (STEMRA 200692).
13:30 Edward Elgar. Sea Slumber-Song uit Sea Pictures Op. 37.
Janet Baker, alt; London Symphony Orchestra; dirigent: Sir John Barbirolli.
EMI Classics 3 67918 2.
18:29 Frederic Lyenn Jacques. In Reveries.
Album ‘Slow Healer’ van Lyenn. V2 Records Benelux.
22:24 Maurice Ravel. Adagio assai uit Piano Concerto in g.
Arturo benedetti Michelangeli, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra; dirigent: Ettore Gracis.
Philips Classics 456 901-2.
31:37 Maurice Ohana. Neige sur les orangers.
Calliope, Choer de femmes; Dirigent: Régine Théodoresco.
Album ‘Métissages’. Calliope Cal 9406.
32:46 Erik Satie. Gnossienne No. 3.
Sarah Rothenberg, piano.
Van album ‘Rothko Chapel’. ECM NEW SERIES 2378 4811796.
36:03 Peter Broderick. What was found.
Van album ‘Music for Confluence’.
Erased Tapes Records Ltd. ERATP036CD
38:20 Taylor Deupree. Rusted oak (fragment).
Van album ‘Shaols’. 12K1060.
40:25 Matthew Bourne. The Greenskeeper.
Album: Montauk Variations. BAY 77CDP (LC 12877).
43:14 Frederic Lyenn Jacques. Vaguely lit.
Album ‘Slow Healer’ van Lyenn. V2 Records Benelux.
46:58 Henryk Gorecki. Tranquillo uit Kleines Requiem 1993.
Schönberg Ensemble olv. Reinbert de Leeuw.
Philips 442 553-2 55:32
Frederic Lyenn Jacques. Keep it still.
Album ‘Slow Healer’ van Lyenn. V2 Records Benelux
58:43 Nils Frahm I would like to Think (fragment).
Van album ‘The Bells’. Erased Tapes Records ERATP021CD
gedicht: Willem Wilmink

Amy, the movie

Let me fall right in with the door. I never liked a single song by Amy Winehouse, hated her voice, felt sorry for the way she looked and lived out her life and thought her thoroughly unattractive. So, now I have that of my liver and started a review in a negative way I never ever have before, let me turn my thoughts to Amy, the movie. I had never expected to go there, but when a friend said, that this was his choice, I decided to go along any way. It wasn't my first and probably not even my last choice. Why go there?

I found out a few things during the documentary film. One of them that Amy Winehouse had beautiful eyes. The Nefertiti kind of eyes or Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. Something like that. The more important part I found out about, was that Amy Winehouse had talent. Arguably more than was good for her. I had no idea. It is not that my appreciation for her music or voice has altered, I did find that this was her all the way and everything and everybody profited of that talent, taking a little bit until there was no resistance left.

This movie had the same effect on me as Oliver Stone's 'The Doors'. When is someone going to tell the lead person to stop and behave normal for a while. That they do not have to die. Nobody did so for Jim Morrison, no one did for Amy Winehouse. If either of the two would have listened to anyone, I don't know. Too many people depend on the money that comes in in huge buckets. From management, to touring directors, band members, the faulty husband and dear father himself.

There is loads of film with Amy on it. Film from before she broke big and became broken, including a famous, prophetic line: "I don't think I could handle it", about becoming a star, let alone a huge one. The director must have cheered when he found that tape. It is so clear that nothing can ever prepare a person for that change from private to totally public figure.

For the rest loads of hideous films of paparazzi following her every drunken, drugged and sober steps. After a movie like this it is time that professional restraining orders are put out on anyone in this business. Stalking seems a minor affair compared to what was going on unhampered in any way. Life is hell when it becomes as bad as this. Or the snippets of talkshow hosts, who were so proud to have the new rising star on their respective shows first and start cracking jokes, the ultimate cheap ones, about someone they would have killed for to have on the show would she have managed to step out of the quagmire of her depressions and write a new album. So incredibly low that they ought to be very much ashamed of themselves.

The spineless mother, "I was never able to stop her" and the father on his own trip to fame, giving some extra pushes into the deep end. The tour manager who became manager overall. Where were their loyalties?

Of course this is the effect the director wants us to undergo. In that Amy is a manipulative movie. Everyone is bad. Let's not forget that Amy simply lacked character to deal with it and make that third record and be the best jazz singer ever. That is sort of easy to forget in this movie. Most other artist do deal with it. All but Cliff Richard will have done some dumb things and in the end grew up. Even Keith Richards is a law abiding granddad in 2015, isn't he? Amy unfortunately did not live long enough "to learn how to live" as Tony Bennett formulated it and I'm sorry for her talent. Herself I'm not too certain about. All in this section is written on reflection, not my first impulse. That one was different.

As I said, I never had anything with Amy Winehouse, but this movie made me feel angry. A young woman, with more talent in her little toe than all around her, destroyed. By herself, that most, but with a lot of help. Especially from that little man of a husband, the hanger-on who is still alive. That made me feel angry alright.

In other words Amy is an intriguing movie that touched me and made me feel angry. It is hard to explain, but that is what it did. For those who liked the music of Amy Winehouse, there is loads of it to enjoy in the movie. It sounds good as well in the cinema. Another good feature is that there are no talking heads. Everyone interviewed was not filmed. That makes room for all the other pieces of film from Amy's life and makes Amy so much more impressive. A film to watch this one is. Despite the music.

Wo.

The best part (EP). Paul McDonald & Nikki Reed

You can listen to 'All I'm asking' here.

Another gift from Noisetrade.com. In the past days I've played this album several times and each time liking it more. On The best part there is absolutely nothing exciting going on, there's not one road travelled that has not been travelled before and still this EP is a winner.

Paul McDonald and Nikki Reed are man and wife since 2011. This EP is their first collaborative effort on record. McDonald was a part of the 2010 edition of 'American Idol'. The music on The best part is anything but what I associate with a show like that. The best part is modest, all music and no show. The songs are all in a melancholy mood, aimed to impress the listener, but only from the background. With the exception of 'Now that I've found you (version 2)', that has a more country flavour, the songs don't call out loud for your attention. And even the exception is only by comparison.

To me The best part is best listened to when I'm in a relaxed mood, music in the background. It was in this form that this EP called out for my attention. Something in the back of my head signalled in that there was something interesting going on in the background. Paying more attention this turned out to be true. Hence this review.

Whether Paul McDonald's voice is enjoyed by me for a whole album and solo, I can't say yet. It is sort of high and sounds strained. The combination with Nikki Reed's angelic voice does wonders. The beauty and the beast is a too easy found platitude, but it's true. Their voices work well together in an atmospheric song like 'Goodbye', but also in a "real" song like the title track. The three examples given so far are an example of the diversity of this album. Just five songs, but the differences in the approach makes them stick out, where as a prevailing mood they would not. In other words: well done!

Despite the fact that there may not be a lot of new things going on on The best part, the EP is worthwhile to pick up if you are interested in alt.americana. The tandem McDonald-Reed works well on record. (And yes, Nikki Reed is the same as in all those movies.)

Wo.

Country Joe McDonald at Woodstock: History being made

Yesterday I viewed or listened to a lot of circa 1960 hits that presented itself on You Tube after I had clicked on the Dutch 1965 superhit 'Sophietje' by Johnny Lion. I had sat on a terrace overlooking the river IJ in Amsterdam and came home with 'Sophietje' in my head as the song goes "On an Amsterdam terrace". The song is with me for as long as I know, maybe for longer than I can remember, that it has always been sort of there since 1965. Clicking and clicking, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, Brian Hyland, The Four Seasons, Dion & the Belmonts, Del Shannon (My girlfriend: "I know all of these songs"!), etc. Until Woodstock came up and I listened to 'White rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane and then clicked on Country Joe McDonald. Despite the fact that I've seen the footage before on film somewhere in the late 70s and later several times on DVD, the song never before had so much impact. The performance stood out for me. But let me take you back first.

My teenage friend Frits' dad and mine were both merchant marine officers. Frits' dad brought home Taiwanese pressings of LPs (as mine would not much later). One of these albums was Woodstock. So in 1972 and onwards, we were listening to the official soundtrack album for whole days in a row. From Ritchie Havens all the way to Jimi Hendrix. With the exception of Paul Butterfield's Bluesband and to a lesser extent Santana and Joan Baez, I dug it. I dug it enough for a lifetime worth. The fantastic versions of Ten Years After's 'I'm going home' or Joe Cocker's 'With a little help from my friends'. Arlo Guthrie's beautiful 'Coming into Los Angeles'. the nutty madness of Sha Na Na, 'Volunteers' that spat of the vinyl: "This is morning maniac music, believe me ... It's a new dawn!". And the only available version, as far as I'm aware, of Neil Young's great song 'Sea of madness'.

In between this all is this anti-Vietnam protest done by one man with one guitar: 'I-feel-like-I'm-fixin'-to-die-rag' or 'The fish cheer'. One guy taking on the whole of the US establishment, government and military complex. First on this spot, then on record, on film and now on the internet forever and ever. If you look at the footage, you'll notice a few things. First the audacity to start "the fish cheer", "Give me an F, a U, a C, a K: "What's that spell?" and the audience answering, summing up. So much for the "fish" cheer. We see a man with long hair, bound in by a bandanna, a moustache, earring in his right ear and wearing army sergeant fatigues with a blue coloured scarf on his left sleeve, armed with an acoustic guitar. "A hippie". The footage shows the audience and Country Joe alternating. What amazed me is the impact of the song on those present. From amazement on the faces of people in the audience. 'Am I hearing what I'm hearing'? The singing along. Many people knew the song beforehand. Remember that almost all guys present at Woodstock, bands as well as audience, were at the draft age and could be sent to Vietnam any time soon. And then the most beautiful thing happens of all.

The camera angle changes. First it shows Country Joe's back and then goes up and zooms out ever so slowly to the audience, showing ever more people getting up to stand and sing, where everyone was sitting and listening before. An audience so large that it goes up the hill in Max Yasgur's cow field and perhaps disappears behind it. And all get up to sing and cheer with one man and one guitar. Yes, music can have a profound impact on people, but does it ever have it at this magnitude these days? After finishing the song, Country Joe McDonald stands up from his stool, waves with his guitar to the audience and walks backstage where someone approaches him, embraces and kisses him on the cheek. This guy realised that history had been made that evening.

For the first time it dawned on me what impact this performance had on the people present. Probably because it was isolated from the rest of the Woodstock movie. This way it touched me directly.

Listening to 'I-feel-like-I'm-fixin'-to-die-rag' yesterday made me realise that I only know two Country Joe (and the Fish) songs, both on Woodstock and never ever have heard another one. ('Rock and soul music' obviously being the other one.) One of it's albums was re-released recently. I intend to review it on this blog soon. What will it sound like?

Wo.

You can watch Country Joe McDonald at Woodstock here.

Stereophonic Distractions

There are these moments that while watching a movie, you suddenly

realize you are watching actors doing their job. During the opening

scenes of Killing them Softly there is a shot that I associated with

an improvisation during the rehearsal; artificial mucking about with a

prop. That sort of association is distracting.

Talking about association.

Killing them Softly stars the late James Gandolfini. When I heard he

passed away I watched a few Soprano episodes. In one of the scenes

Tony Soprano is fooling around with his goomah and Tony's tattoo

shows. From that moment on I miss a few minutes of dialogue because my

mind ponders off. Does Gandolfini have a tattoo? How do they apply the

tattoo to Tony's character if Gandolfini doesn't have one, sticker,

paint? How do the producers assure tattoo continuity? Which other

actors have prominent tattoos? Doesn't Sean Connery have a tattoo as

well? And suddenly my head is filled with a John Barry composition

instead of Alabama 3's "Woke up this Morning".

This sort of distraction happens more often when watching movies than

when listening to music. But it does happen occasionally.

The other day I was listening to "When in Doubt: Vamp" on my

headphones. That tune features a drum track that covers all the toms

from high to low, from left to right using the most extreme

stereophonic measures possible.

What the hell; from left to right? That is like I am sitting behind my

own drumkit, not like I am standing in the audience. How is that with

other recordings? What is the recording convention? Is this a

headphone artifact? Which other tunes do feature that stereophonic

effect? And before I recovered from the associative stream of thoughts

the next tune on the album had started: a slick cover of the

Parliament's "Up for the down stroke". I had completely missed a Maceo

Parker solo.

Excellent funk never the less, that 1977 album by Fred Wesley and the Horny

Horns. Take a listen here.

OMK