Nick Drake documentaries
Knowing that I’m a fan, David tipped me off to a documentary about Nick Drake on Radio 2 that aired on Saturday night. Everyone must be going Nick Drake-crazy at the moment, because this was immediately followed by another documentary on BBC4. Of the two, I preferred the TV version, if only because it didn’t have Brad Pitt telling us that he was Brad Pitt every five minutes, and mis-pronouncing ‘Stratford-upon-Avon’1.
I didn’t know a lot about Nick’s life, so it was fascinating to hear interviews with his family and the musicians who worked with him. On the radio documentary, they featured Norah Jones singing one of his songs, ‘Day is Done’, and then we heard Nick’s own version. All I can say is that it totally vindicated the musicians’ opinion of him, and demonstrated just what a talented performer he was; Norah’s version sounded utterly bland and forgettable, whereas his was mesmerising and fresh.
I had no idea that his motherâMollyâwas also a singer-songwriter. In the TV documentary, his sister Gabrielle played an old home recording of Molly singing one of her compositions. The family resemblance in musical style was spookyâyou could hear future echoes of her son in her voice and delivery, like noticing the line of a jaw or similar eyes. It goes without saying that it’s a tragedy he didn’t live to see the popularity of his own music. His sister talked rather movingly about the many letters she gets from fans, who say that his music has helped them through extremely difficult periods of their life. She said that these would have meant more to Nick than anything else.
1 stratford upon avon. Ugh.
XeTeX allows you to use Unicode encoded text files, so that accents, curly quotes, mdashes and exotic characters like ⢠can just be entered as they are without any extra markup. You can use other language scripts without any troubleâI marvelled at typeset Hindi in the screenshots on the site. It allows you to access Apple’s ATSUI system, so that you can use the lovely ligatures and swirly decorations available with fonts like Zapfino, as well as text shadowing and coloured text or backgrounds. All that decoration doesn’t necessarily make for good typesetting, but it’s nice to have the choice. Including image files is also pleasantly simple, and it seems to be able to cope with the native Mac OS X image formats like PNG and JPG.
If you’re familiar with TeX, it’s certainly worth a look. There isn’t any documentation as such, but if you look at the sample files available on the download page, you can get a reasonable grasp of the basic features. I might be able to save you some of the frustration I experienced by telling you that not all of the fonts on the system support all of the features. For example, I found by experimentation that you can only specify a colour for a font if it supports the more advanced features of ATSUI. An approximate way of finding these fonts is to look at the font palette in Cocoa applications. Select the font you are interested in, then click the gear icon at the bottom of the palette and select ‘Typography…’. If the window says ‘No typographic features in this font’, you won’t be able to access features like coloured text, though you can still use the basic font in your text.
1
Glad you remembered -- I forgot all about it! Thank goodness for Listen Again.
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gosh, now I´m not sure I know the "correct" way of pronouncing Stratford-upon-Avon, honestly. Having learned to read phonetically and subsequently "mispronounced" things like Worcestershire sauce and Thames maybe I shouldn`t talk about Shakespeare untill I get the correct pronounciation from a britt, right?
by john @ 26/05/2004 6:06 am • Permalink •
2
strAtfd upon AYvon.
Where the A in Stratford is like the A in Apple and the A in Avon is like they AY in dAY.
And you don't pronounce the "ford" fully, it's more a "fd", like the "pud" in pudding but with an f not a p.
Hope that helped
by Matthew @ 26/05/2004 9:05 am • Permalink •
3
Never having heard of Nick Drake before, I'll go take a look at his work, especially as I bought a Norah Jones CD the other month and, quite frankly, didn't particularly like it.
by Laika @ 26/05/2004 5:06 pm • Permalink •
4
The thing that struck me (while listening to the Radio 2 documentary) was just how young he was.
Dead at 26, and convinced he was a failure.
by Paul @ 27/05/2004 7:05 am • Permalink •
5
David: Heh
I did consider reminding you that you had reminded me, but I though, "Nah, he'll have remembered..."
John: I don't think I would have been so irritated by his mis-pronunciation if I hadn't heard a piece about the making of the documentary, in which much was made of Brad Pitt's insistence on getting the pronunciation right. As Matthew said, the stress is on the first rather than the last syllable, the 'ford' isn't fully pronounced. In fact, many place suffixes aren't fully pronounced, and don't have stress placed on them. For example, Balham and Kingston are pronounced more like 'BALum' and 'KINGStun'. North American speakers often make the mistake of placing equal stress on both syllables and pronouncing phonetically. I have a much-treasured comedy record by Peter Sellers, in which he does a spoof American radio documentary about Balham. He booms out (in an American accent) "BAL-HAM - gateway to the South" at the start of the record.
Matthew: Spot on! (see my comment above)
Laika: I don't know anyone who hasn't like his music once introduced to it, so go for it.
Paul: I knowâit's so sad.
by bsag @ 27/05/2004 3:06 pm • Permalink •
6
I remember a line from Balham gateway to the South where they are talking about local industries (toothbrush making I think), and they are saying the process is done manually, or once a year. I have used this joke many times, and how my friends laugh when I do.
by Keith @ 27/05/2004 6:06 pm • Permalink •
7
I just watched <cite>The Good Girl</cite> and noticed most of the soundtrack is made up of snippets of Nick Drake songs.
And the best place name for over-pronouncing has to be Loughborough [Luffbruh], or as one Australian called it: Loogabarooga.
by David @ 28/05/2004 12:05 am • Permalink •
8
Hello, I live in Balham and heard much about this infamous sketch but have not heard it.
Does anyone know where I can get a copy or even better a MP3 of it?
James
by James @ 06/06/2004 5:07 pm • Permalink •
9
Keith: I love that line, as well as the one about the Queen saying a couple of words to her: pause "I did not understand either of them."
David: Hehe.
James: My Dad only has it on vinyl, but I found a listing of it here, but I don't think it's free, if that's what you were after
. While you're on that page, 'Auntie Rotter', 'Trumpet Vounteer' and 'Party Political Speech' are on the same album, and are all fantastic.
by bsag @ 07/06/2004 6:06 pm • Permalink •
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