The Imagined Village - Empire and Love

Mr. Bsag recently saw The Imagined Village play in Birmingham. I was intensely jealous, because I couldn't join him due to a work commitment. However, he brought me back their latest album — Empire and Love — which I'm really enjoying. The Imagined Village are a kind of folk/world music collective, involving several talented musicians including Chris Wood, Eliza Carthy and Martin Carthy, along with parts of Chris Wood's 'Best Band in the World' (Barney Morse-Brown and Andy Gangadeen).

Here they tackle a wide range of songs, some traditional and some modern, but they manage to give each a unique and fresh feel, combining traditional English acoustic instruments with Indian sitars, tabla and dhol. I've listened to the album a lot recently, and I love all the tracks, but I'm particularly fond of 'Space Girl' (sung by Eliza Carthy) — a cautionary tale set to 1950s sci-fi sounds, and 'My Son John', sung by Martin Carthy. The latter is a traditional song about a young man losing his legs to a cannon ball, but they have very cleverly updated it to weave in references to Iraq and Afghanistan, and John getting a set of carbon fibre 'blades' to replace his legs. This works very well and reinforces the sad point that young men continue to lose life or limb while fighting other peoples' wars.

Chris Wood sings 'Scarborough Fair', rescuing it from folk cliché, and also leads on the lovely track 'Sweet Jane', accompanied by Indian instruments. However, the standout track for me is a cover of Slade's 'Cum on Feel the Noize'. A folk version of Cum on Feel the Noize? It seems like (and for all I know was) the outcome of a somewhat drunken bet to see who could come up with the most unlikely song to cover in a folk style. However, much like Apple products, it somehow Just Works™.

Martin Carthy sings the lead vocals, and the whole song is taken at a much slower tempo than usual. This makes it sound like a sad, regretful lament, rather than the roaring party track that Slade recorded. I was so struck by this complete change in tone that I started imagining the music video that might accompany it.

Scene: Interior. Night. We are in a very gloomy, down-at-heel, shabby pub: the kind of place where people go to drink and try to forget their troubles.

We focus on Martin Carthy, dressed and made up to look like someone down on his luck, oppressed by his life. He is staring into his pint disconsolately, then looks up and starts to sing:

You think I've got an evil mind I'll tell you honey
I don't know why
Don't know why

He could be addressing us, the viewer, or alternatively complaining to someone who isn't there. The pub is the kind where people tend to have conversations with invisible interlocutors, so it's not clear which it is. At any rate, his voice is querulous and indignant. He can't understand why he has been so misunderstood.

He sings a brief, quiet version of the chorus, in the manner of someone who knows he will never get wild, wild, wild again, or — for that matter — ever feel the noize.

Then the camera pulls out to reveal the other band members occupying the pub. All are seated at separate tables, nursing their drinks and not looking at one another. As the next chorus begins, they join in, quietly:

So come on feel the noise
Girls grab your boys
We'll get wild, wild, wild
We'll wild, wild, wild
Come on feel the noise
Girls rock your boys
We get wild, wild, wild
Til dawn

Every 'wild' is sung slowly on a sad, descending intonation, like a sigh or a dying breath.

Later, the barman picks up his sitar from behind the bar¹. There's an instrumental bridge, and everyone has that unfocussed look of people remembering their past glories and knowing that they have gone, never to return. No one smiles.

FIN.

Seriously, it's a cracking track, and has reversed my hatred of the Slade song, which is no small feat.

¹ Did I mention that there's a sitar? Well there is, and it rocks. \oo/ \oo/ ↑

Really beautiful walk to work today!

Give me heart and soul and error

I was watching an excellent Arena documentary the other day about Brian Eno. Eno is a fascinating person, and would most likely be at the top of the list if I ever got asked who I would invite to a dream dinner party. He is one of those rare and precious people who think quite deeply about both art and science, and manage to combine elements of both in new and interesting ways in their work.

There were lots of great bits in the documentary, including a flick through one or two of the hundreds of notebooks he has filled throughout his life. He said that he writes things down so that he can think about them properly (not necessarily to remember them later), and he had notes on everything from mundane reminders of dental appointments to elaborate pictorial representations of the events of a day.

But what really caught my attention was when he was talking about how he dislikes over-precise music. Music has become rather standardised and polished. For example, drummers now routinely record to a click track, so while their drumming sounds very precise, it doesn't necessarily sound 'right', and has a tendency to be have a bit of a cold, antiseptic feel. He said that he preferred a bit of surprise and variability in music — something that doesn't sound exactly the same every time it is performed.

For probably the first and only time in my life, I thought, "Brian, I was thinking just the same thing myself this morning." I had been listening to a band called Sym who play a variety of unusual instruments like the Swedish nyckelharpas (no, I've never heard of it before either) and the hurdy-gurdy. I love anything with a hurdy-gurdy in it, and I was wondering idly why I'm so fond of the sound it produces. It gradually dawned on me that I love it precisely because it never quite sounds the same twice. It's a gloriously 'dirty' sound, with scrapes and squeaks and buzzes and multiple harmonics, and I doubt that even skilled hurdy-gurdy players can play it with absolute consistency. All of these faults just make it sound more real and alive, and that makes it a joy to listen to.

You can take the same approach with electronic instruments by adding back the variability in various ways (like Eno's keyboard which plays a different sampled sound on each key), so the warm and fuzzy feel isn't necessarily restricted to acoustic, analogue instruments. But that feels a bit like cheating, somehow.

Crochet frenzy

For some reason that I still don't quite understand I got a yearning (or a yarning, hah!) to learn a practical craft over Christmas. I spend far too much time in front of a computer (mostly for work, but it spreads into the rest of my life) and while I love messing about on it, and I just wanted something creative to do with my hands that might help me relax away from the screen. Then I happened upon the Babette Blanket and it was love at first sight. It's a crochet pattern, and I haven't crocheted since I was about 6 years old (I think my Granny taught me), so I had to learn it again.

Learning something (anything) is one of my favourite things, so I bought a great beginner's book on Crochet, Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker¹, a couple of hooks and some yarn, and started practicing. It's quite tough trying to pick up a manual skill from written instructions and pictures, so there was a certain amount of unravelling and redoing before I understood how the stitches worked, how they look together and — the hardest part of crochet for me — where the heck you put your hook next.

I think it's safe to say that I'm addicted. I find the process both relaxing and absorbing at the same time, and you can produce something practical at the end of it. I can knit (very simple patterns, anyway), but I find that having a hook in one hand and the yarn in the other is much easier than trying to juggle two long needles and the yarn with only two hands.

I made a hat (a bobbleless, beanie type hat) in an afternoon, which astounded me. It was even the shape of a hat and fitted my head, which was inconceivable. I had some yarn left over in the same colours (soft grey and dark green, Rowan Cashsoft yarn I got half price in a sale), so I made a really long, narrow scarf. Both are lovely to wear — warm and very soft because of the cashmere in the yarn. I didn't quite keep the number of stitches straight for the scarf, so one end has a bit of a slope to it, but I'm going to maintain that it just gives it a wonky, handmade charm.

Next, I'm going to tackle the Babette blanket. I went with cheaper yarn than they specify in the pattern, and fewer colours, otherwise it would cost a fortune, but I'm having a wonderful time putting the colours combinations together. It's also a great project for little chunks of time, because each square (of which you need to produce billions) is quite quick to crochet, so you can finish one in 15 minutes or so in front of the TV of an evening. There are different sizes, and so many different colour combinations that I don't think I'll get bored with it.

In a few moments searching around on the web for more patterns (yes, I know, get away from the computer...), I stumbled across a blog called Attic24, and was blown away by the gorgeous colour combinations. Lucy has an incredible colour sense, and I feel really inspired to let rip with loads of wonderful shades. I can see that I'm going to be haunting the knitting shop a fair bit from now on, but first, I have a blanket to finish...

¹ Ignore the slightly naff title: it's a good book, written in a very clear, informative and witty way. It also has some great patterns for a variety of things that you can't imagine your Granny wearing. ↑

Should have listened to Edna

Walking songs

The recent snow has made cycling to work impossible. Some brave (or foolish) souls have been cycling along the main roads, but my route goes through parks and other open spaces where it's certain that very little gritting will have been done. I'm also a total coward when it comes to riding in icy conditions. I have a Weeble¹ like ability to stay upright — despite slipping — when on foot, but I crash to the ground on a bike at the first wobble on ice.

Usually when I can't ride to work for whatever reason, I take the train, but I decided (for reasons of economy and fitness) to try walking at least one way to work this past week. The plan was to walk the 4.8 miles to work² in the morning, and then catch the train back again. It isn't a huge distance, and it ended up taking me an hour and 10 minutes at a brisk pace, even negotiating the snowy pavements. I had to get up earlier, but it was really pleasant getting into a good walking rhythm, watching dawn break, and having the route mostly to myself for the first part at least.

On Friday afternoon, there were signalling problems at Birmingham New Street, and consequently much of the local network was thrown into disarray. Mr. Bsag called me to say that there were cancellations noted for at least the next hour, so I decided that I might as well walk home too.

I had been quite cold in the office during the day, and the chill persisted despite the exercise, so half way home I felt rather weary. I was listening to my iPhone on shuffle, and just at that moment, the track Ma' Africa by Ulali and the Mahotella Queens (from the album '1 Giant Leap') came on. As soon as it started, I felt instantly warmed, thinking about hot, African landscapes, and within a few minutes I was almost bounding up the hill, a spring in my step, admiring the way that the setting sun was washing the snow with pink and smoky grey.

If the snow continues, I can see I'll have to put Ma' Africa on repeat, particularly when travelling home.

¹ Thank you low centre of gravity! ↑

² A different route to the one I cycle, which is longer, but more cycle-friendly. ↑

Almost wild

One of the things I really like about cats is that they retain a lot of the independence and behavioural traits of their wild ancestors. I realise that this is often cited by people who don't like cats as one of the things they dislike most about them, but it would be a dull world if we all liked the same things. Having a couple of cats in the house seems as wondrous to me as having a couple of small leopards wandering around in my living room.

I was reminded of this very strongly a few nights ago, when — in the middle of the night — Bella strolled up the bed to drape herself along my torso ¹. As I was lying on my back, she was actually higher than my head, and I could see her looking down at me in the dark, with her nose a few centimetres from my chin. She was purring loudly, and half-closed her eyes in evident bliss. There's nothing quite as relaxing and cosy on a cold winter night as having a warm, purring cat sleeping on your chest, so I closed my eyes too. After a minute or two, I felt her paw gently pat my cheek, claws retracted, but still faintly perceptible on my skin.

It was a classic domestic cat move: 'I could rip your throat out, but I won't because you're quite comfy and you give me food. And you can be quite amusing sometimes.' Despite being in a rather vulnerable position, her restraint actually made me trust her more than ever, and revel in the delicate path that cats tread between wildness and domesticity.

The truth, of course, is that cats own their humans rather than the reverse (and there is evidence that they domesticated themselves), but I think that it does humans no harm at all to be put in our place by another species every now and again.

¹ She usually sleeps at the bottom of the bed, gradually shifting over the course of the night to sleep on my feet. ↑

The campaign against pink

I was reading The Guardian a while before Christmas, and came across an interesting article about a campaign called Pink Stinks, started by two sisters (Emma and Abi Moore). They were sick of the lack of choice of clothes (everything pink and sparkly) and toys for girls, and the fact that toys which should be gender neutral (like globes) were being marketed towards girls by being manufactured in pink. The kinds of toys and activities marketed towards girls also seemed designed to restrict them to 'feminine' roles. Those of you who have read this blog for a while will know my hatred of pink gadgets marketed at women, so this campaign struck a chord with me.

The article had a wonderful advert for Lego from the 1970s, which features a smiling girl (wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans, as it happens), proudly holding out a wonderful, wild Lego construction. What I like about the picture (apart from the lack of pink) is that it is genuinely gender-neutral — you could substitute a picture of a boy, and it would have exactly the same message. I also like the fact that the Lego construction doesn't look like anything in the real world, but is the joyous result of seeing what happens when you put loads of Lego bricks together, quite unlike the restrictive Lego sets you get now which have lots of shaped, specific pieces so that you can only make a house, or whatever it is.

In the article, Emma and Abi said that they were amazed at the level of criticism they had received. People seem to think that girls are genetically pre-disposed to love pink, and that to say that there's something wrong with everything for girls being made in pink is somehow denying girls' human rights. Well, when I was a kid, girls liked lots of different colours. Some liked pink, it's true, but we all wore lots of different colours ¹. I also think that girls played with a greater variety of toys. I was a real tomboy (I'm sure that surprises no-one), and although I did have a few dolls, I also played with Lego, Meccano, my brother's toy cars and planes, and I made tree-houses and go-carts. I find it a bit creepy that some people seem to think that it's perfectly normal for little girls to be obsessed with only one colour.

Of course it's true that boys and girls are different and that there are some differences in what they like, but should we decide for them what kinds of things they should like, based on their gender alone? Should we restrict the kinds of activities and roles that girls (or boys, for that matter) are supposed to enjoy? Apart from anything else, it's fairly obvious that toy manufacturers are trying make more money by getting parents to buy the same tat twice over (if they have sons and daughters), by making them buy it in both pink and blue.

¹ In fact, it being the 1970s when I grew up, we wore some revolting colour combinations: mustard and purple, anyone? ↑

Simon’s Cat - Hot spot

I love the Simon's Cat cartoons. This one reminds me so much of both of ours, including the cunning ploy to distract the owner while mischief is made

Posted via email from bsag's posterous

Trying out posting to ExpressionEngine from Posterous

So, I'm going to try out posting to ExpressionEngine using Posterous. It should work using the MetaWeblog API, but it looks as if you need to follow this tip on the ExpressionEngine forums to use an RSD file.

If you see anything at all on the blog, it will have worked!

Posted via email from bsag's posterous

Post-Christmas pre-New Year round up

I meant to post just before Christmas to wish everyone a good holiday, I really did. It's just that I was so exhausted from a very busy period at work that I just flopped as soon as my holiday started, and did practically nothing. Doing nothing has done me the world of good though, and I feel much revived. So much so, that I took the big step of upgrading ExpressionEngine (which runs my blog) to the beta version of 2.0.

As it often is with these things, it didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped. For some reason, one of the templates (which are kept in the database itself by default with ExpressionEngine) got truncated, so I had to delve into the backup of the database to find the original. Thank goodness for backups! I've also got a slightly odd installation because I have all the ExpressionEngine files in a subdirectory, but then fiddle with the URLs so that the directory doesn't appear in the permalinks. So I had to try to remember what the heck I had fiddled with last time to get it to work properly. Anyway, it all seems to be working now, and the new control panel is a great improvement. There are huge architectural changes under the bonnet (it now uses the CodeIgniter framework), but until I have time to delve around a bit more, the control panel is the only visible thing which has changed. I'm sorry if the feed has suddenly updated with lots of old articles. I've been converting all of the articles from their mixture of Markdown, HTML and Textile format to be HTML (partly because the Markdown plugin hasn't yet been updated for version 2.0). I've worked back to articles originally published in 2004, but haven't quite had the energy to do the final two years, since nobody probably looks at them now anyway.

As I said, apart from some intensive tinkering, I've done very little: a bit of baking, a lot of reading and a fair bit of film/TV viewing, and that's it. I did sit down and watch Hamlet on the TV — all 3+ hours of it. I've seen quite a few of Shakespeare's plays at one time or another at the theatre, but for some reason I've never seen Hamlet. I don't think I'll be posting any spoilers if I tell you that it's not the cheeriest of the Bard's productions. Almost everyone dies, or is miserable, or goes mad, or — for the most unfortunate characters — suffers all three.

The thing that surprised me most was that it was all so familiar, despite the fact that I've never seen it before. I don't just mean the "To be, or not to be" speech or the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" one, or even, "Alas poor Yorick". So many of the incidental phrases have become an embedded part of the English language, that it almost feels as if Shakespeare is dealing in clichés, but of course it was Shakespeare who created the clichés. There was "to the manner born¹", "hoist with his own petard", "brevity is the soul of wit", and so on. It's pretty impressive that the words of one man, writing plays in the 16th Century, are still in such common usage in the 21st Century.

¹ I was convinced that this was "to the Manor born" until Wikipedia put me right. Penelope Keith has a lot to answer for. ↑

ExpressionEngine 2.0

I've just upgraded to ExpressionEngine 2.0, a process which was not without it its glitches. I think I've got them sorted out now, though I seem to be having trouble with the feed still. Let me know if you notice that anything is broken. I've still got to sort out the Twitter Timeline in the sidebar, but apart from that, things should be OK.

Soap

Victorian Farm is back for a short run of Christmas specials, which I'm pretty happy about. The episodes are as interesting as ever (for example, I now know the origin of the phrase 'grinding to a halt'), but one thing really made me laugh. A few days before, I had caught a bit of Kirstie Allsopp's Homemade Christmas, where she was making soap. Soap making at home basically involves water, caustic soda and a fat, and caustic soda is pretty nasty stuff, as the name suggests. Consequently, they took great precautions when mixing the ingredients, wearing long rubber gloves and safety specs. The end result looked lovely: little dainty soaps scented with herbs and essential oils and decorated with rosebuds.

Soap making on the Victorian farm was a rather different matter. Ruth heated the water in her huge washing copper, adding a large chunk of rather old and manky looking fatty meat to provide the fat required: no airy fairy coconut oil there. She then added the caustic soda carefully, but without either rubber gloves or safety specs for the sake of authenticity — health and safety be damned! And was the end result a dainty rose-scented block? In a word, no. Rather than leaving the soap to cure and dry for 6 weeks to remove all traces of caustic soda, she scooped a bit out immediately and showed that it was ideal for scrubbing out chamber pots. Let no-one say that the average Victorian lived a glamourous life.

The Climber

Public transport in the UK has countless failings, but if you are looking for a silver lining to the big, grey cloud of its many inadequacies, it might be that they provide a reason to bond with your fellow travellers. Sometimes that bonding just involves rolling your eyes at your neighbour in a wordless "Buses, eh? What can you do...", but at other times, it turns into something a bit deeper. A distinct dearth of buses last Friday resulted in Mr. Bsag and I talking to a gentleman I'll call The Climber¹.

After the Chris Wood gig last week, we had a couple of transport choices. Moseley is in an awkward transport location relative to hour house, so we could either take a bus into the city then get the train out, or we could get a different bus to a main road and then catch a second bus. Arriving at the bus stop for the first option, we read the live bus departure ticker with a sinking heart: 20 minutes to the next bus. Never mind, we thought, there's always Plan B, and walked a short distance to the stop for the other bus. As we looked at the departure ticker there in disbelief, a tall, slim man sitting on a wall by the stop said, "I wouldn't look at that, if I were you. It will just depress you." He was right: the next bus was due in 25 minutes. Progressing reluctantly to Plan C, we told him we'd walk to the main road, a distance of about a mile. He then asked if we'd mind if he walked some of the way with us, since he was heading in our general direction, but wasn't sure of the route. We were quite happy to have company, and so, we made the acquaintance of The Climber.

He was an enthusiastic, bouncy sort of chap — like a half-grown puppy — and as he loped along beside us in the dark and drizzle, he started to tell us about his interests. It turned out that he had been climbing for four hours that evening, on an indoor climbing wall, working out by doing 50 pull-ups, 50 sit-ups and 100 press-ups. Clearly we were in the presence of some kind of Iron Man.

Now, Mr. Bsag always claims that he is shy, but he invariably chats happily away to perfect strangers, while I go all shy and just listen. So as we walked and Mr. B. and The Climber (TC) chatted, more and more details emerged of TC's energetic exploits. We heard about his epic peak-climbing weekends (also involving gargantuan bacon and egg consumption) and his competitive downhill biking (1 mile downhill in 1 minute, which means speeds greater than 60 mph, of course). As the walk progressed, and Mr. B. asked speculatively about other outdoor activities, stories about show jumping and even tall ship racing emerged. I was captivated, silently daring Mr. B to ask him if he'd crossed Antarctica, or raced Formula 1 cars, or gone into space.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing TC of telling tall tales. He seemed very genuine and talked in great technical detail about everything he'd done, but it just seemed amazing to be walking in the rain to a bus stop with such an athlete. I remembered something that Chris Wood had said earlier in the evening (paraphrasing slightly): "All of my stories are true, but some are truer than others."

¹ I wouldn't use his real name even if I knew it, but we never actually found out what it was. ↑

Chris Wood gig

Last night, Mr. Bsag and I went to see Chris Wood play the All Services Club in Moseley. We had been looking forward to the gig for ages, as we are both big fans, but because of various other circumstances, we were exhausted after a very hard and busy week, and wondered if we were going to be in the right mood to appreciate it. We needn't have worried: it was fantastic, and the warmest, most intimate and spellbinding gig I've ever been to.

The All Services Club is a funny venue. The decor is a two or three decades out of date, and the main room contains a tiny stage of the kind that looks as if it is more used to hosting small children wearing tea-towels on their heads and pretending to be shepherds than world-renowned folk musicians. However, the tiny venue gave the event a very intimate feel. Since there is no stage entrance, Chris and the band had to wander through the audience to mount the stage. Near the end of the show, he was talking about encores, and how the accepted procedure is:

1. Band sing 'last song'
2. Audience applauds
3. Band goes off stage
4. Audience applauds
5. Band comes back on stage
6. Band plays encore

Given the stage, step 3 was impossible because there was nowhere to go (he put it a bit more strongly than that, to a lot of laughter), so they would just play two more numbers and end. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I adore Chris Wood's voice, and I love his style of guitar playing. When he sings, I hang on his every word like an utter fangirl. It helps that he is a consummate storyteller. Telling stories is a very old craft (and one of the original functions of folk songs, of course), but it's difficult to do well. He pulls you in to the story from the start, so that you can't wait to hear what happens next. There are emotional highs and lows, twists and turns and unexpected and beautiful turns of phrase that make you laugh or make tears come to your eyes, so that you have to pretend you've got a bit of dust in them.

On this tour (and on the new album, 'Handmade Life'), he was playing with a fantastic band comprising Robert Jarvis on trombone, Barney Morse Brown on cello and Andy Gangadeen on drums. They were terrific, and enhanced and complemented his sound, without overwhelming the words in any way. Robert also did an uncanny impression of a Merlin-engined Spitfire on the trombone (during the song 'Spitfires'), which made plane-mad Mr. Bsag¹ go a bit misty-eyed.

They played many of the songs off the new album (which we bought — and got signed! — at the gig), as well as a scattering of older favourites. Sometimes that can be disappointing if you haven't heard the new material yet: artists are understandably keen for you to hear what they have just been working on, but audiences like to hear what they already know and love. But in this case, it was wonderful. His songs are stories, and it was a priviledge to hear them for the first time live, rather than recorded². 'Hollow Point' was a great example of the thrill of hearing these things for the first time (though I'm sure that the experience will deepen with repeated listens). It starts off describing a beautiful summer day ("Awake, arise, you drowsy sleeper"), and sounds like a traditional folk song about pastoral pleasures with some sinister undertones. But then we find out that the person in question is getting on a bus. Gradually, it you realise that it's the story of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station in 2005. It's a lament for him, and the feeling of doom, sorrow and inescapable fate is incredibly powerful.

I also loved 'Turtle Soup' — a song about Darwin's time on The Beagle. The tune is a great, sea-shanty-like thing, but the lyrics are very evocative too. There are a couple of lines at the end ("'Cause the church may shout but Darwin roars/At the age of twenty three") that made me covertly raise my fist in a Darwin Power salute (Biologists in da house! Reprazent!) and mutter an exultant "yes!" under my breath.

There were lighter moments too. Chris described 'My Darling's Downsized' as a love song for old gits, but that's fine by me. It's a lovely, warm song about the pleasures of cooking rock cakes and watching your potatoes chit on the allotment, and contained a lot of lines that made me laugh:

I light the touch paper but I don't retire
Because my love for her cannot be overstated
It's deep and it's not final salary related

As Chris said between numbers, folk singers have always sung because they felt that something need to be said. He upholds this tradition by championing the cause of people who are little-known, quiet, everyday heroes, from history to the present time — just don't get him started on David Starkey or Henry VIII. He also comments on the social and political situation, so there are quite a few tracks on the album about the credit crunch. He's certainly a man worth listening to, and I felt very lucky to be able to do just that yesterday.

¹Well, OK — me too. ↑

²Doubly so, because only those going to the gigs have access to the album until it is on general release when the tour ends. ↑

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