I’m often asked, not unreasonably… Posted by Bill; Friday March 12th 2010
…for explanations of the titles to the tracks I’ve been associated with. Here are several of the less self-evident ones:
Up North: The melody was written very much with the UK’s northern colliery brass band tradition in mind. In the heyday of coal mining every colliery had its own brass band, several of which became world famous, and this tune could definitely be said to come from ‘Up North’ (the phrase is used in much the same way by southern Brits as ‘out West’ is used by East Coast Americans). Closest we had to a brass band doing it was the horn section on Earthworks Underground Orchestra. Fabulous.
No Truce with the Furies: Seehttp://www.in2greece.com/english/historymyth/mythology/names/furies.htm for a quick explanation of these persistent little guys. They haunted me at night. What had I done wrong? Anyway, there was no peace with the little critters. This is what I reckon one might look like:
Dewey–eyed, then Dancing: The muscular acoustic Earthworks 2 was much influenced by Joshua Redman’s group of the early 1990’s. Joshua laid down a much tougher direction for acoustic playing, after the sappy smooth-jazz thing in the 80s. Patrick Clahar and I both were fans anyway of Joshua’s father Dewey Redman, and met him at the Capetown Jazz Festival around the time this tune was written. The reflective and wistful–maybe even regretful, tearful (dewey-eyed)-opening of the song gradually dances it’s way to an optimistic outcome. So the music is first dewey-eyed, then dancing.
All Heaven Broke Loose: A prayer or meditation, really, revolving round very few notes, for those on the receiving end of the US-led ‘Operation Desert Storm’ invasion of Iraq in 1991, for whom all hell was about to break loose. The ‘All Heaven’ CD was recorded in almost exactly the same hundred hours it took to boot Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The background TV pictures during the sessions ensured that the event couldn’t go unremarked by us non-combatants with musical instruments in a studio in the woods in snowy central Germany.
Pilgrims’ Way:The Pilgrims' Way is the historic route supposed to have been taken by pilgrims from Winchester in Hampshire, England, to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. This name is somewhat misleading, as the route follows closely a pre-existing ancient trackway dated by archaeological finds to 500–450 BC, but probably in existence since the stone age, following the "natural causeway" east to west on the southern slopes of the North Downs. This is very much my stamping ground, and also Iain Ballamy’s –the writer of this beautiful elegaic tune:
Pilgrims' Way, Surrey UK
Sarah’s Still Life: I often think of slow music as paintings. If Low tide, Camber Sands, recorded with Michiel Borstlap, is a water-colour sketch of a well-known southern English beach, then ‘Sarah’s Still Life’ is an oil of an imagined Sarah, perhaps medieval, perhaps biblical. We don’t know whether Sarah is the artist painting a still life, or she just has a quiet life! A ‘still life’ has the play on words implying both the artist’s depiction of an inanimate object, and the subject doesn’t get out much! She’s definitely seated in the painting, tho’.
A Sahara of Snow must self-evidently blow both hot and cold, as indeed the music does.
Lands’ End is the far western tip of Cornwall and thus England, noted for it’s spectacular and majestic coastline. Dave Stewart’s composition is well titled,perfectly capturing the powerful and stately Atlantic rollers sweeping in to smash on the rocks hundred of feet below the cliff edge. A Progressive Fingal’s Cave?!
Land's End, Cornwall , UK
Never the Same Way Once is attributed to drummer Shelly Manne who was part-owner of the Los Angeles jazz club Shelly’s Manne-hole in the 1950s. Asked for his definition of a jazz musician, he suggested it was someone who ‘never played it the same way once’.
The Ballad of Vilcabamba: Vilcabamba was the last well-defended complex of buildings where the Incas retreated from the Spaniards. Constructed in 1539, the city was crushed by the Spanish army in 1572, signalling the end of the Inca resistance to Spanish rule. The Inca ruler Túpac Amaru was caught and killed by the conquistadors. The location and importance of this fabled ‘Lost City’ were forgotten until rediscovery in 1892. Towner uses a synth sound evocative of Peruvian pipes for the main melody.
Those who’ve heard Earthworks Dig? might want to know that a Corroboree is a ceremonial meeting of Australian Aboriginals – after which, we suspect, there’s bit of a party. Iain Ballamy plays didgeridoo on the track, as you might expect. The ‘clay pot’ sound of the electronic drums on Silent Pool remind me of stones plopping in a still pond and the circles that radiate outwards. Silent Pool is a local pond, steeped, like Pilgrim’s Way, in history:
Silent Pool, Shere, Surrey UK
The Temple of the Winds is evocative of the rushing air of the harmonised tenor-saxophone on the track, played by Ballamy. Sample and Hold is an electronic term used in early synthesis, and probably employed through Dave Stewart’s synth on the track of the same name on Feels Good To Me. Dancing on Frith Street references the London address of Ronnie Scott’s, the city’s most famous jazz club, much frequented by Earthworkers past and present. And so it goes on…!
Martin Geoffroy - 2/22/2010 6:39:06 PM was at Montreal Spectrum in 1984 when King Crimson recorded the live CD Absent Lovers. I’m not sure that you were witnessing musical history, Martin, but like others, and me, we never quite forgot where we were at Crimson concerts. The other irony for me was that Robert broke the band up the following day! I often said you never quite knew with Crimson whether you’d have a job at breakfast the following morning, and the morning following that Spectrum gig, I didn’t!
wm.j.pemberton - 2/20/2010 3:10:14 PM: Thanks for the comments about the book and the endearing story about the Crimson song played at the Royals Stadium in Kansas City. Uproar and mayhem. Maybe Nugent liked it too - you never know!
Dale - 2/15/2010 5:28:56 AM: You got a personal answer on this, which I hope was of some help.
Tony Foley - 2/15/2010 2:02:51 AM : Thanks for the various book recommendations – I do have a soft spot for the British scene post-war but pre-motorways, so the George Melly book sounds pretty much up my street.
Matt Johnson - 1/31/2010 11:58:17 AM: says “Your book is opening my eyes to a brutally honest look at a vocation I always wanted for myself, but am now finding that perhaps I am better off in obscurity. I create my music for its own sake, and I can, after reading about your journey, appreciate that the often shady and creativity-stifling influence of the "industry" is not for everyone”. Agreed! I don’t think anyone who has an option would volunteer for the music business, but the point about a vocation, a calling, is precisely that you can’t ‘want it for yourself’, you can’t avoid it. If you can avoid it, avoid it! If you can sleep at night without doing it, don’t do it!
Jon Godfrey - 1/31/2010 10:08:07 AM writes to ask if Summerfold, either alone or with assistance from Discipline Global Mobile, could release the ProjeKct One concerts on CD? And Jon recommends Keith Jarrett's new release, 'Testament'Jon, the ProjeKct One material would fall under the auspices of Robert Fripp and DGM – that’s not my patch. Just noticed Cameron Devlin’s in depth reply to you Cameron Devlin - 2/7/2010 6:50:08 PM. Thanks, Cameron. Cameron, whom I know quite well, is very good on detail…
Jesse - 1/27/2010 5:54:30 PM asks: How much influence did Dave Stewart have in terms of harmonization/voicings of the chords and changes? Did you present a basic template, leaving the minutiae to him, or did you present definite outlines of the music?
Dave had a big hand in lots of ways. Generally I had prepared most of it, but the material needed more or less help harmonically, developmentally, or melodically. Sometimes that help extended to him becoming a co-writer – Sample and Hold, If you Can’t Stand the Heat, Springtime in Siberia. I usually had the top lines, and he repaired and improved harmony and / or bass parts. Slower tunes – Travels with myself, Forever Until Sunday – I was probably OK on my own. He’s all over the three albums we wrote together, and is credited as such.The compositions would have been infinitely poorer without him.
Jim Cumbie - 1/27/2010 1:18:13 PM asks about Chris Botti, the smooth jazz trumpet star, and how come he joined Tony Levin and I in B.L.U.E. I didn’t know Chris – Tony told me about him -and this was back in 1997, some time before Chris’ star was on the way up. We both knew that like many guys he can play any music he wants, and he has the most beautiful tone. One day he plays rough, next day he plays smooth. So? Musicians tend to be surprised how narrow the field the customer expects us to operate in. It is true, however , that for commercial success, which I believe has befallen Chris in no small way, you have to plough one furrow, and one only, for a very long time. Which is, among other reasons, why I wasn’t very good at it!
Kevin Morrissey - 1/20/2010 4:23:34 PM – many of you, including Kevin, have written to thank various organisations for hosting recent speaking events. In Kevin’s case, he commends DrumWright, the Ascot UK drumstore, for its charitable work. I agree.
Mr. S - 1/17/2010 6:47:06 AM: ain’t that the truth!
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