Saturday 17th March

Tough one this, for ages I could only think of the worst song Elton ever wrote “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ or ‘Saturday Night Fever’.  Thank goodness I remembered just in time the lovely Drifters song ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’.   The sixties were such a mixed-up time musically, there was of course straight Pop music with the Beatles, the Beach Boys, The Stones and the Who, but there were also the crooners, Matt Monroe, Kathy Kirby, Sinatra and Elvis singing ever more turgid stuff, to say nothing of Engelbert, our current Eurovision last hope, all belting out ballads, and there was still a bit of jazz around – the Temperance Seven and Acker Bilk.  From America – was coming the sounds of Bob Dylan and the new bands like the Byrds and The Doors, but also all that wonderful Soul music that had started with Stax and Atlantic and Aretha and Otis, and now was being dominated by Motown and Smokey Robinson, The Four Tops, The Supremes and of course The Drifters.

I always loved this song, and it’s spiritual brother Under the Boardwalk, which seemed to paint a picture of Urban America in the early sixties which to us culture starved Brits seemed exotic beyond our wildest dreams.  And of course the song is not about the movies at all, but about the girl one goes there with, and what we all knew went on when the lights went down; an invitation to illicit sex if ever there was one.  And it is another of those wonderful Soul classics of which there seemed a constant stream, and all such wonderful tunes, you just have to sing along with them.  So, even though one is snuggled up on the sofa with Puddy-Tat and a good book as soon as this song comes on it is always Saturday Night at the Movies.

Friday 16th March

This was a big and I think the only ever hit for the Easybeats in 1966, the year when everything in Music was accelerating at a pace, and each week saw great songs emerging.  The song and the sentiment capture perfectly the exuberance and excitement of the young as they struggle through the working week in eager anticipation of Friday, the start of the weekend.  Work in those days was seen as a real drag – all the fun, the action, the music, the drink and the sex would be happening on Friday night.  And it still does, for many of us.  Nightclubs and bars and lots of restaurants are busiest on a Friday night, as of course are A. and E. departments, and Police Stations.  For a few years I worked at Islington and after work a few of us would go to the pub next door for a couple of drinks.  The release, the relief of knowing there was no work tomorrow was wonderful; a lightheaded devil-may-care attitude seemed to come over us as soon as we were out of the office and laughing and happy we started the weekend in earnest.

I quite liked the song in the sixties, and became happily re-acquainted with it when Bowie in 1973 recorded it for his album of brilliant covers ‘Pin-Ups’ with the marvelous picture of him and ‘Twigs the wonder kid’ on the cover.  It is this even-better-than-the-original version I have always loved.  It really zings along and is just so infectious you cannot help singing “Monday morning feels so bad, every-one seems to nag me, Coming Tuesday I feel better, even my old man looks good.’

So come on let’s get through the week once more, the drudge of existence at work, the days fall like dominoes ‘cause I’ve got Friday on my mind.

Thursday 15th March

This was by one of my all-time musical loves, David Bowie.  Like a lot of Artists from the sixties and seventies David had a tough time in the Eighties and Nineties, trying various styles and production sounds as if trying on different clothes in an attempt to stay looking young.  Bowies essential genius rarely left him completely though, and after the awful and largely forgettable Earthling he came up with a much gentler and softer sound for the 1999 album ‘Hours’.   The songs were gentler too, and more melodic.  The first single was Thursdays Child, quite a simple and delicate little song, not at all what one normally expected from Bowie.  I think it bombed, or at least wasn’t the hit his record company might have been expecting.   It would seem from the prolonged silence since 2003 and ‘Reality’ that David may have all but given up recording songs, at least for the forsee-able future.  Maybe he has nothing new to say, or perhaps he doesn’t need the money so much nowadays, or possibly he realizes that his most creative days are long behind him and anything he does now will always be compared badly to the likes of Ziggy Stardust.  I suspect however that he just isn’t into music that much these days, he was notorious for writing songs just before going in to record them, so maybe he hasn’t lost the talent at all but just doesn’t feel the muse at the moment.  I don’t really mind; he has a huge back catalogue so there is no shortage of Bowie material out there, and who knows how long we may have to wait for anything new, if it ever comes.  The album ‘Hours’ though always did seem a bit out of order, as if it should have come way back in his career, maybe between The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory (my all-time most loved of his records).

I really like the record though, and of his later albums it is by far my favourite; and when thinking of songs with days of the week in them there really was no other choice but ‘Thursday’s Child.’

Wednesday 14th March

I can’t really remember the song that well, but it was also the title of Simon and Garfunkel’s debut album; which was an acoustic folk album made up largely of Paul’s early songs.  It practically bombed on first release but then famously a DJ jazzed up the song ‘Sounds of Silence’ and it became a big hit and the album took off too.  It is really a lovely album, innocent and yet knowing at the same time.  I always loved the cover too, which has our duo sandwiched between speeding subway trains.  According to Art they had to reject many photo’s because of the rude graffiti on the subway walls.  But look closely and they do look quite out of place, Art is even wearing a tie, a definite no-no for any aspiring folkie back then.  Because the album had bombed, Paul came to England to try his luck on the folkie circuit here and recorded an album of his songs ‘The Paul Simon Songbook’; the songs on this little gem being plundered over the next two years as Simon and Garfunkel had to keep coming up with new material.  What none of us realized at the time was that Paul was the real creative genius, writing the songs and playing guitar.  Art was the voice, or part of the voice, part of the lovely harmonies they created.  I can remember in I think it was 1971, when Paul released his solo album ‘Paul Simon’; everyone was amazed at how good it was.  We were all expecting it to be only half as good as a Simon and Garfunkel album, but in fact it was just as good, even if going off in a quite different direction.  The rest is history, and Paul is still recording, and though his albums now are less exciting they are still pretty good.  And it all started with Wednesday morning 3 A.M. a really unassuming little album, but a gem too.

Tuesday 13th March

And now we have the Moody Blues, who started out like many early sixties bands literally playing the Blues.  They had a brilliant early hit ‘Go Now’ which I have always loved.  And after a couple of personnel changes they seemed to change direction, with Justin Hayward joining the band in 1966; they recorded with an orchestral backing, and their brilliant concept album ‘Days of Future Passed’ had the track Tuesday Afternoon on it, as well as the more famous ‘Nights in White Satin’.

They tried to repeat this formula with a few other albums such as ‘On the Threshold of a Dream’ and ‘To our Children’s Children’  but never made anything nearly as good as ‘Days’ again.  They had a tough time in the early seventies, but had a pretty loyal following.  They split in the mid seventies and reformed a few years later and have carried on making the occasional album and playing their hits for the ever-loyal fans.

Enough of the Moody Blues, as I had quite early on.  But the song Tuesday Afternoon has remained in my head far longer than it should have done.  It always lifts my spirits, because funnily enough Tuesday Afternoon is more often than not a bit depressing.  Too far from either weekend, and at school it was always double Chemistry, with all those wretched symbols and Atomic numbers to remember; Hydrogen was one I think and Oxygen eight, and that is all I can remember from those hundreds of Chemistry lessons.  If only I could have had an MP3 player in those days to just plug myself in and drift away with the Moodies on another Tuesday Afternoon.

Monday 12th March

That was a song by the Mama’s and the Papas, just one of the many great bands to emerge from California in the mid sixties.  Whether it was inspired by the Beatles success both here and in America, or whether it was happening anyway, it is a lovely co-incidence, that just as things started to go off the boil a bit here in England, these American bands just kept coming; The Nashville Teens, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and of course The Mamas and the Papas.  There were two men and two women John and Michelle Phillips, Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot, the famous Mama Cass.  John and Michelle were married and were always doey-eyed at each other, but the real star of the band was Mama Cass, and it is her I remember mostly because , so unusually for then, and even more so for now, she was a large woman, but sexy with it too.  And why not indeed.  My favourite song of theirs was ‘California Dreamin’ but ‘Monday Monday’ was pretty good too.   The only other song I really remember of theirs was ‘This is dedicated to the one I love’ which got to number one.  I think they went a bit too commercial after this and never really capitalized on their unique sound, and split up around 1968 or 69.   The song Monday Monday – so good to me, was the sort of thing you found yourself singing on the way to school, even though Monday was the end of the weekend and the beginning of another awful week of school.  At that time there was just so much great music happening that we thought it would never stop.  I don’t think that a band like the Mamas and the Papas would even get a look-in today, the whole business is too controlled, but at that fortunate time there was a collision of an awful lot of talented youngsters, and a very open-minded record business that was willing to take a chance on all sorts of music, often the stranger and less like anything else the better.  And even now, sometimes I still get up on a Monday and it is that song in my head, rather than the possibly much more appropriate ‘I don’t like Mondays.’

Sunday 11th March

Now why should that singular fact stick in my mind, when I struggle to remember so many others.  I was just starting to see him in 1972 when it was his birthday.  He was always quite proud of the fact that it was also Harold Wilson’s birthday.  Crikeys; that shows how old we both must be now.  Harold Wilson; and Ted Heath was Prime Minister then too.  What a long time ago that seems now, and what different times too.  It seems to me, politics addict that I have always been, that politics was much more about something in those days, of more importance.  I can remember the arguments about big things like Union power, the Coal industry and Nationalisation of the Steel industry, which now incidentally has been privatized again and is owned by some Indians, and is about a tenth of the size it used to be.  (As are almost all our industries.)  Where do you think all the clothes and shoes and televisions used to be made, before everything came from China?  And the world and we too, Adrian and I, were so much more innocent then too.  We knew very little about anything, but of course we thought at the time that we knew so much.  Maybe this is true of every new generation.  The young of today look over their shoulder at us and wonder how on earth we managed without 3G mobiles and i-pads, and computers and Facebook.  Come to think of it how did anyone manage before Facebook.  And in forty years time the young will look back at this generation and wonder at their naievety, as they handle with ease some technology we haven’t even thought of yet.  And who then will remember the nineteen-seventies, and the political struggles and the music and how on earth we managed to survive it all.   And who will remember Adrian’s birthday then when he is over one hundred.  Hahaha

Saturday 10th March

I seem to be listening to older voices all the time lately.  It isn’t that I am deliberately choosing older singers like Judy Collins or Leonard Cohen, or rejecting younger ones like Florence Welch or Adele, who are both quite splendid in their way, but I just seem to have taken a particular liking to the older gentler and less harsh tones of mature singers.  Several of my all-time favourite singers seem to be having a quiet renaissance of late, even if like Carly Simon they are mostly re-recording their early hits with a softer production, a quieter reflective backing allowing the voice that was once strident and powerful but is now hushed and lower in range to become more expressive, letting the words come out effortlessly and mellowing into my tired ears too.   And if you don’t have to try so hard to hear the voice over those noisy seventies and eighties productions the meaning comes through clearer now I find.  Or is it that I am just getting older myself, and prefer not to be reminded of my passing youth by hearing the belting tones of a Rihanna or Katey Perry.  I don’t think so, I have always loved those distinctive voices which may be slightly flawed, but are instantly recognizable – Paul Simon, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Joan Armatrading and Joni Mitchell, (to name but a few) as soon as they start singing you know it is them, no-one else sounds anything like them.  But I find such a lot of the singers who came after just melt into one another and I cannot tell a Madonna from a Janet Jackson, or Take That from Westlife.  Technically superb they may well be, but they don’t strike a sympathetic note in my ears.  I can remember when one of the boy bands – it might have been Boyzone, recorded their version of Cat Stevens’, as he was then, brilliant song ‘Father and Son’.  It was a big hit, but I kept hearing it and couldn’t believe how dumbed down it sounded.  Whereas Cat had used two distinctively different voices for his duet with himself, the older father weary and placating the exasperation and impatience of the youth, this version was just sung straight out, as if the conflict between the generations wasn’t even there.  But maybe that is just the distance between the younger generation and ours, because when I succeeded in playing the original to some younger listeners they didn’t get it at all, preferring the smooth blandness they knew to the original interpretation.    Anyway, the good thing is that there are more than enough older singers still recording for me to enjoy – the new Springsteen, ‘Wrecking Ball’ is arriving from Amazon soon, and I have yet to unwrap and play ‘Kisses on the Bottom’ from Paul – Joan Armatrading is releasing a new album soon, and we know it won’t be long before Neil Young does the same.  So leave me here soaking up the almost whispered words of Leonard’s ‘Old Ideas’ and I’ll tell you when I am ready to hear some new younger voices.

Friday 9th March

Sorry to bang on about Foreign Affairs two days running.  I had planned to write about something far more personal today but the pointless deaths of six soldiers yesterday has provoked me to say the unsayable.  I have always been a pacifist, but also a realist – in some circumstances it may be justified to go to war to kill people in order to save a larger loss of life later, though you can never be sure, of course.  After 9/11 when Tony Blair stood shoulder to shoulder with George Bush it all seemed so much clearer.  There was little doubt that Al Quaeda had training camps in Afghanistan and in order to protect the West and to prevent further atrocities we had a duty to clear the dreaded Taliban government out, and install a democratic government instead.  And that is where the real problem lies, it is easy to analyse the problem, to diagnose the sickness, but far harder to understand the cure, what will work to make the world better.   And why is democracy, or our version of it, the cure-all for all of mankind.  Just look at our own history and the long struggle to achieve even this limited sort of democracy.  How can we just go in, all guns blazing and simply impose it on others?  But we do, and despite the evidence that it has failed, and quite spectacularly, we will carry on I am sure.  So what exactly are we fighting for in Afghanistan?  In all truth we are fighting to save face now, the experiment has failed; there is a sort of democracy in place, but the Government is as corrupt as ever, and the dreaded Taliban is in control of much of the country, and is probably trusted by a large proportion of the population. It has been eleven years of suffering and death and at huge cost for almost nothing at all.  That is to take nothing away from the bravery of the soldiers of all nations who have taken part in the futility; they along with the battered and bombed and surely sick-and-tired-of-it-all Afghans themselves are the innocent ones.

It is almost sacrilege to admit defeat, and all our politicians have to stand shoulder to shoulder in their resolution to ‘get the job done’.  But the job is really to escape, to get out with as much of our tattered reputation intact as possible.  It is just very sad that we cannot be honest and admit our failure, if only to stop another six families from losing their sons and fathers.

Thursday 8th March

And each day on the news more and more horror stories are emerging out of Syria, the latest Bete-Noir, in what at times seems a never ending story.   Is it really getting worse, or is it that the news media are realizing that Syria is at last newsworthy.  After months when the uprising was being largely unreported, or reported with less prominence than today the ratchet seems to have been applied, whether by news editors, or responding to voices off from politicians is unclear.  What worries me is that the language being used is so similar to the build up to both Iraq and Libya that I fear we may be sleepwalking into another conflict.  Not that the cause of the rebels is not a just one, as were those in Libya and maybe in Iraq too, but is it being used as some sort of a convenient fig-leaf for a neo-con regime change agenda.  We have been here before, and maybe this is the new diplomacy so cleverly used by the IRA in Ulster, a combination of the ballot box and the bullet, because there is no doubt that someone, possibly us, is organizing and arming the rebel movement.   I am no apologist for Saddam Hussein or Gadhafi, both quite unpleasant and ruthless dictators in their use of power, but both actually quite good at ensuring that ordinary Libyans and Iraqis were well educated and had hospitals and some would argue a better life than many of their neighbours that we cosied up to, and are still our best friends, such as Saudi Arabia.  But maybe the Syrians didn’t buy enough of our aeroplanes and tanks for our liking.  Let us just hope that however the Syrian drama ends, it ends quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible.