Happiness is a Warm Gun

Did everyone get Mr Lennon’s play on words when this track appeared on the ‘White Album’?

Cataloguing new books I came across an intriguing title by Richard Layard ‘Happiness’.

He states: ‘today most of us are richer, healthier, and have better homes, cars, food and holidays than ever before. But we are no happier than we were fifty years ago. What is going on?’

This certainly echoes my own beliefs. These thoughts have been with me since my sojourns into the Far East in the early 70s, where Buddhist concepts about the transitive nature of happiness/sadness & joy/sorrow often occupied a piece of my fertile mind.

Without getting too deep: how many times have you truly been happy in this life? How long did this feeling last?

Turning this around: how many times have you been so sad? How long did this moment last?

Free Your Mind

And your ass will follow. What with my younger son going to see James Brown in Glasgow & that informative documentary on George Clinton last night, we sure are having a funkee good time @ our house.

That was until I foolishly decided to take a week’s holiday & ended up with a debilitating cold/flu.

Keeping on that 70s funk theme, I am listening to Donny Hathaway singing ‘The Ghetto’ live as I write this. I must admit I was totally engrossed in the Motown sound when I was growing up & only came to the real deal later in life.

Its only a couple of years since I first obtained Funkadelic’s first album. It is so good. In fact most of the early albums are excellent. He did lose the place(some would say big style!). Last night’s documentary went a long way in explaining why this happened.

For me on a personal level, I think his biggest mistake was marrying Hilary, although she could be the next president of the USA, maybe that was the Mothership Connection.

Keeping the Memory Alive


You know some people think that as long as your offspring can still remember you living then you are still alive.

I can still remember what great pleasure this man gave to the world & how he improved my life.

I was astonished to learn that he had been one of the earliest teachers at Summerhill School. I mention this as I was fascinated with that method of teaching when I was young & in my prime & at odds with my own teachers.

He has always surprised me & even coming across his book of poetry in a prison library, where he ends each chapter with the number of miles from Glasgow, brought a smile to me even in the most trying times.

Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2006 Scotsman Publications Ltd.


INSTAL 06 *** THE ARCHES, GLASGOW


THE introduction to this year's programme brochure for Instal, Glasgow's annual weekend showcase of experimental and underground music, insists that "it's not a festival with anything to do with connoisseurship or elitism". For the uninitiated, however, the reality is rather different. To begin with, any remotely conventional understanding of "music" - defined in my dictionary as "the art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) to produce beauty of form, harmony and expression of emotion" - needs to be checked at the door.

This, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Anything calling itself "experimental" or "underground" is intrinsically at odds with convention, while quibbles about musicality are also sidestepped by the alternative term "noise art". There's plenty of scope for challenge, too, in the phrase "beauty of form", which in turn is arguably no prerequisite for "expression of emotion". Whatever you choose to call it, the sector of sonic creation and performance that Instal inhabits is a broad if uniformly unorthodox church, ranging from the outer reaches of free jazz to esoteric electro-acoustic experimentation, extremities of death-metal rock, and aurally-based conceptual art. It is evidently also highly debatable territory, with even apparently basic terms like "new" and "experimental" being open to question, given the 50-year history of such practice, traceable back to Cage and Stockhausen.

Be all that as it may, this year's sixth Instal programme couldn't be faulted for its diversity. Even in the field of free improvisation, for instance, approaches varied from the wild sax/drums duelling of US twosome Steve Baczkowski and Ravi Padmanabha to the rarefied, obliquely evocative dialogue between Japan's Kiyoharu Kuwayama on cello and Rina Kijima on violin. The violin, this time in digitally modified form, also featured in Tony Conrad's pairing with Keiki Haino, the latter switching between guitar, synthesiser and extraordinary multi-octave vocals. The deafening sonic stramash that ensued certainly scored high for visceral force, the violence of its assault offset by moments of undeniable grandeur. Kuwayama, meanwhile, also delivered a solo performance entitled Lethe, in which he applied blocks of dry ice to heated stainless steel surfaces, amplifying the vibrations created. This last piece exemplified a difficulty shared by several Instal acts, also including Lee Paterson's micro-manipulations of assorted objects on a tabletop and Tetsuya Umeda's customised rotary fans.

Even where the work seemed conceptually interesting - in Kuwayama's case, translating the physical opposition between extreme heat and cold into sound - the actual results often proved unenlightening, or tedious, or both. Elsewhere, Arrington de Dionyso's "shamanic" outpourings, via voice and bass clarinet, combined Asian throat-singing and human beat-box techniques to no obvious additional advantage. It must be said that a majority in the audience seemed already au fait with the "noise art" scene, and gave every appearance of enjoying themselves immensely.

For the interested newcomer, however, the aforementioned programme brochure offered precious little help in terms of history, context, theoretical background or clues as to the artists' intended purpose, with the result that much of the fare on offer elicited nothing but frustrated bafflement. Source Citation: "Reviews: INSTAL 06." The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland) (Oct 17, 2006): 30.


I avoided it this year as I thought it was a trifle tame & uninspiring........................

Of Milkmaids & Architects

I know I really should get out more. I had the opportunity last night to go & see Martha Tilston & the Woods @ Oran Mor. This was my first visit to the Glasgow venue. I am old enough to remember it as a church. We used to live just across the road below the Grosvenor Hotel, when we were first married.

I recognised the support act from Milngavie Folk Club, The Metronomes & I was deeply impressed that first time I saw them & last night although plagued by dodgy sound engineering, they were even better. Watch out for this duo.

Martha Tilston I had never heard, although I knew her dad Steve’s work. Incidently he played Glasgow a couple of nights previously (why didn’t Martha mention this?). The stage was all decked out like a forest glade with mock fires, leaves…..etc & there was leafy & weird visuals. I was expecting some kind of Finnish psychedelic folk or some of the new American backwoods folk like Cul De Sac, Joanna Newsome, Vetiver…..etc.

However, I did not expect such a great performance. Her hirsute companions could have been the band straight from their Woodstock log cabin.

Outasight!

Mad Dog

As the late John Balance of Coil was singing @ 4.30 a.m. in our house ‘the only thing to fear is fear itself’.

I knew the recent documentary on ‘Suicide dogs’ @ Overtoun House bridge was coming on tv ages ago. We were all looking forward to a close detailed study of the urban myth. I have friend & family connections to the actual house, that is situated in the Kilpatrick Hills just above Milton (no not that one!).

My wife, best friend & twin cousins were all born there & I have been shown around the interior with its beautiful ceilings & ornate angels & other marvellous artistic works. It is a place of calm & beauty. My sister in law was not convinced of this, as we attended an Xmas service a few years ago & she was suspicious of the foxes, owls & other night creatures howling in the mist.

Anyway back to the story: since the 1950s, 50+ dogs have felt some kind of urge to leap off of this bridge to their death. My own cousin can verify this, although his own ‘wonderdog’ survived to tell the tale. Thus I knew the story was true although I was not aware that there was so many canine casualities.

Various tests were carried out to try & explain this phenomena during the programme, the most reasonable one being the presence of a large number of mink in the area & their heavy scent may have sparked off this impulse.

We relayed this story to the happy highlanders & now they have some way to threaten ‘Jura’ truly a mad dog among mad dogs.

One factor not mentioned in the documentary, that covered signals from the Faslane naval base…etc..was the presence of the Milton cat & dog home at the foot of the hill.

For myself I can live quite happily with the unexplained, the irrational. In fact, I much prefer alternative realities to the rather dull rational explanations.

Writing this I am longing to hear an old album that I am sure I would enjoy again from Joe Cocker ‘Mad Dogs & Englishmen’.

Black Swan

One of the Happy Highlanders thought my review of Bobby D’s new album was a bit harsh. Maybe it will grow on me. I will re-listen as soon as I get the time. I have just come off a back-to-back exposure to John Renbourn’s ‘9 Maidens’ & ‘Lady & the Unicorn’. I have recently seen John Renbourn live & I would have had the opportunity & I should have asked him about something that has puzzled me since I first encountered his solo albums. Why when he had discovered this beautiful medieval English sound did he stop making those terrific albums & make these pseudo Americano albums. A format that is more suited to other artists!


As usual Happy Highlander No 1 is on the same wavelength as he appeared yesterday with Bert Jansch’s new album ‘Black Swan’. On first playing I was deeply impressed by this cd. I am of course a sucker for Beth Orton’s vocals & she is all over this cd.

I mentioned earlier that I was re-discovering the Pentangle sound. I was drawing comparison with much of the new freaky folk from the US & Finland. Also this new breed of outsiders owes a lot to the Incredible String Band who are undergoing a new lease of life both in Aviemore & Clydebank.

Finally, this is not the correct forum to mention this, so I am not going to make any reference to Celtic’s return to their glorious form of old in the European theatre & their total annihilation of the quality opposition, that used to be the mighty Benfica.

All Things Must Pass

Listening to ‘Wonderwall’ finally after all these years of searching. No not that one ya ninny! Can you say ‘very freaky’ on this blog. Memories of Dec 73 on Colva Beach, Goa come flooding back. ‘All Things Must Pass’ was playing every day from a grass hut nearby. Somebody spoke & I drifted into a dream.

Paradise on earth, but with buying some of life’s little luxuries, I took my daily expenses up through the 5p per day ceiling. My extravagance knows no bounds.

Strange that this is the only piece of music that I can recall from that time. As a constant companion amid the squalor & the hunger & the real poverty, It was an ideal mantra for life in India.

Maximum Collateral Damage

Imagine the situation. You are still wet behind the ears & you desperately want to be part of the scene................'the swinging 60s' & all things groovy & then someone sticks this lp on the decks & its as if you had totally forgotten to breath, you get swept up in a mad mental maelstorm...........lifted up & cast aside.............you know that bit in movies now, where the director uses fast editing & movement becomes so fast & furious & erratic. This was the efect of listening to this album the first time. Now that I have listened to it so many times the impact has lessened slightly, but it is still for my money the best live album in the world ever. Ladies & gentlemen, I give you the MC5.