100. ‘Landlocked’ by Jeff Hankins

Landlocked – Jeff Hankins – YouTube

On this 100th blog essay about songs of autobiographical significance, I hope I can be forgiven for doing something I haven’t done in the other 99, being a little bit self indulgent, and choosing to write about one of my own songs.

The opening line of the song is indeed very autobiographically literal : ‘I live a long way inland..’.  And yes, the song is from the early 1990s, the time when we lived further from the coast than we had ever lived, smack in the heart of the continent of South America.  OK, it’s not that we had lived exactly in a seaside resort back here in South Wales, but maybe on the edge of consciousness there’s that awareness that the Bristol channel opening out as it does into the Atlantic..  ain’t that far away. [Here’s a  parenthetical reference to another of my songs.  I am always delighted and sort of oddly taken by surprise every time I drive over the mountain from Merthyr to our village and find that, from the highest points of the road, on a clear day, I can indeed see the channel glinting in the distance and beyond it the hazy slopes of North Somerset hills.  That delight finds expression in my song ‘I see the sea’].  Was I feeling the lack of that proximity, while paradoxically savouring with relish the exotic differentness of our new Latin living experiences?  So it would seem, to some extent, from this song…

In that humid climate the late evening was of course the coolest time of the day, and quite often, once the kids had been showered, read to, put to bed, Sue was good enough to let me go for a wander through the streets of Ascunción, armed with a man-bag containing notebook, pen, bible, a novel, a cassette-playing Walkman (Bruce Cockburn, Laura Nyro, Juan Luis Guerra..). The lapacho-lined streets, the air itself, felt so alive and vibrant with new impressions that it was for me an extraordinarily creative time – whether I scribbled half poems in a cafe-bar, or reached for a guitar when I got back home…  I’m pretty sure that this song arose from just such an occasion as one of those late night walks, and (although this is not at all necessarily the mark of a song’s quality, and perhaps more often quite the opposite!) it was indeed one of those all too rare occasions when the lyrics came without too much agonizing, sort of ‘wrote itself’ as they say.(And no, I’m not suggesting spooky ‘automatic writing’  and certainly not ‘divine inspiration’!  I’m just saying it flowed nicely, thank you very much.)

Some years ago I got together with a few friends to record a handful of my songs in a more serious way than the makeshift methods I had previously employed.  I’ll always be indebted to MG particularly for the alchemy of his handling as we attempted to record ‘Jacob wrestling’ ‘Atlas’ and ‘Queen of Autumn’.  We worked hard on ‘Landlocked’ too, but somehow, failed to nail certain important stages of the process for recording this song, so no end product emerged.  The kind friend who allowed her house to be used as this recording studio was of course subjected to listening to each song for multiples of practices and retakes.  I remember distinctly her thoughtful engagement with this particular song and her saying to me ,with a smile, ‘It’s not really about the sea, is it?’

And of course, no, it’s not about the sea.  As with so many things that grab the imagination in ways that make you want to ‘tease something out’ through lines of poetry or songs, it’s –whether we are immediately aware of it or not – often some symbolic or metaphorical significance that has really arrested us.  Or me, anyway.  I have a handful of songs that seem to start off innocuously enough with wistful celebrations of something or other, only to become compositions where, if I find myself performing them, I have to make an apologetic preface of ‘sorry folks, another song about ‘mortality’, I think..’! ‘Landlocked’ isn’t  one of those mortality songs though, and I’m not going to do all the interpreting right now, because that might take some of the fun out of listening and exploring; but I will confess  – and probably it is pretty explicit, isn’t it – that it attests to an awareness of the deepest of longings having been ‘woken up’ in my own spirit…  if that doesn’t sound too pseudo mystical  and pretentious! 

In fact, I’ve just deleted a whole paragraph where I found myself ‘explaining’ the lyrics.. but I found that somehow in doing so I both insulted reader-intelligence, and‘literalised it’ to the point of dullness. Yes of course when I sing it it will always be most relevant to my own Jesus-focused experience, convictions and adventure, but that’s not to say that you dear listener will not discover other, extra,  different, distinct, personal resonances within these fairly simple images and paradoxes. I hope something in it will engage you.

I think part of the reason why I’ve chosen this particular song to write about as number 100 in my blog thing, is because I think of this song as if it is one of my children (like all our songs feel like our offspring don’t they?) but one who has been overlooked, considered a bit plain, perhaps. It’s not the most melodic of melodies – perhaps even a rather limited musical canvas too with an (overly?) simple repetitive picking style; it seems to be trying to reach in a quirkier way than most of my output, for a slightly downbeat jazzy vibe (?). And it will never be anyone’s favourite (anyone but me, I mean!), I think. Ah, but I love it, poor little 30 year old song from the subtropical days.. and  like the songsmith-dad to it that I am, I am both defensive of it and immensely proud of it!. And even here, back in Blighty, with the coast just half an hour down the A470, who’d have known, I still find some relevance in it! And still play it. For myself, generally 🙂

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99. GOLD IN THEM HILLS – Ron Sexsmith

I’ve been a fervent* Sexsmithian ever since I first heard the wonderful cover version of ‘Speaking with the Angel’ recorded by Cry Cry Cry, the supergroup that comprised Dar Williams, Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky (still a fabulous version, a fabulous album). So, as you do, I went out and found his first two albums freely available in all good music stores, and amazingly, around about the same time, I found out that he was visiting the UK and making an appearance at a Cardiff venue – the intimate Clwb Ifor Bach.  Reader, of course I went: and I was smitten by the songs – here was a guy who knew how to construct neat, melodic 3 ½ minute pop-folk songs that somehow avoided pop cliché and generally said something.

Plus, one had to admit, there was something rather endearing about the man himself: slightly puffier and  gawkier than your average rock star, a little bumbling and self effacing perhaps in the introductions, aware of his awkwardness, but ah, as he launched into each song, such surprising delicacy and control of delivery.

I saw him a year later in Cardiff too, somewhere down in the Bay, and here’s a little anecdote of sorts.  I got chatting during the interval to another bloke who was on its own – a solicitor, as it happened, who worked in the valleys, and whose musical tastes seemed similar to my own.  Part of Ron’s merchandise for the evening included an album he had recorded before launching his solo career: I bought it, of course, and my new solicitor friend also desperately wanted to buy it, but had brought no cash. I bought it for him, quite trusting his claim that he would repay me later.  We exchanged addresses and he did indeed repay me later with a bank note in the mail a few days later.  Since he also seemed quite a discerning listener, my new musical friend, I sent him, gratis,  a CD of some of my own songs.  I never heard from him again. 

Back to Ron. ‘Gold in them Hills’ comes I think from his fifth album (not counting that juvenilia one mentioned above), the production getting a little classier each time, and, blimey, the album containing two takes of this particular song, one of which featured Coldplay’s very own Chris Martin!

And, come on, it’s a beautiful song.  A song I haven’t got tired of, especially since ‘rediscovering’ it as it came up randomly on a play list recently.

Mr Sexsmith often seems to construct songs around a hook that has perhaps the nature of a colloquial idiomatic phrase or aphorism.  Nothing wrong with that.  And you might think that that approach would lend itself to a certain triteness, but somehow he does generally manage to avoid it.  This song is a song about hope, optimism, a kind of encouragement to open-minded attentiveness to possibilities. ..  And already as I’m writing this,  I can imagine that, especially if you don’t know the song, my description is beginning to make it sound like something rather hackneyed like from an early Hollywood musical (‘forget your troubles come on get happy…etc’) chivvying us on to an always-look-on-the- bright-side joviality. But I don’t get that from the song – for one thing there’s something a little ponderous about the rhythmic accompaniment and the melody that steers it away from tweeness.  In its simple way it kind of argues for the transformative power of imagination, openness and even faith. “but if we’d only open our eyes/we’d see…  Though our troubles seem like mountains” ‘rainclouds’ can be ‘fountains’.  Fanciful optimism maybe, but the second verse continues in the same theme – that while life might slow us down, pull us down even, we might achieve renewed perspective of fresh potentials..” And if we get up off our knees/ Why then we’d see the forest for the trees/ And we’d see the new sun rising/ Over the hills and horizon”. Don’t lose heart- Give the day a chance to start’ he sings first time around (and repeats at the end), then also ‘Don’t lose faith – give the world a chance to say a word or two…’ And of course the repeated ‘Gold..’ cliché remains a neat and clever shorthand for the idea of as yet unencountered treasures… 

Massively overbearing motivational jargon we can do without, but I think of this as a more delicate and thoughtful encouragement to a hope-full outlook. 

Youll not be surprised, if you’ve read previous posts, that the ‘faith’ aspect of such sentiments resonates.  Sexsmith, it would appear from other songs, does have something of a churchy background and it’s not implausible that something of some early years theology (!) informs his lyrical outlook.

*OK,If I’m honest, something of my Sexsmithian devoutness wavered around about the eighth or ninth albums, and there was for me a bit of a sad feeling to the short TV documentary film that was made in conjunction with the recording of the ‘Long Player Late Bloomer’ album, where we saw Sexsmith employing a new ‘heavy rock credentials’ producer in a kind of desperate attempt to finally create a real ’Hit’ album.  His demeanour, and some of the personal difficulties which accompanied these efforts, gave the enterprise a melancholy at odds with most of the music.  Perhaps that’s just me.  But I hope Ronald Eldon Sexsmith has been able to take advantage of his own musical exhortations – ‘don’t lose heart/don’t lose faith/ there’s gold in them hills’. He’s still performing anyway, I see.

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98. CITY-CRAZY – Bridget St.John

Bridget St John -[02]- City-Crazy – YouTube

When I was  18 or19, thereabouts, I fell in love with Bridget St John for, oh, a few months or so.  I’ll tell it like I remember it.  I was young, impressionable, full of that kind of romanticism which only late teens can be full of.  Still with bits of A level Wordsworth in my head, springtime (of my life?) in my soul etc.  And my soul, I’m afraid, was an incorrigibly dippy, ‘sensitive’ one, far more Donovan and fairy tale gypsies and hawthorn blossoms than prog rock, heavy metal and sweaty electric guitar solos..  Let’s call a spade a spade : I was musically quite narrow, with distinctive blind spots. My loss, no doubt, but there you have it.

I was very struck with the voice when I first heard her on the radio – I do believe it was a Whispering Bob Harris radio programme: in my fuzzy memory I fancy I may even have ‘recorded’ the programme for some reason – unless I am blending memories, on the same list I can recall the Incredible String Band ‘Hedgehog Song’, Ralph McTell singing something from ‘You Well Meaning..’, and Judy Collins’s lovely ‘Albatross’ song.  Then this English girl –very English in fact, and how refreshing, oddly, to hear those home counties vowel sounds rather than someone trying to emulate a transatlantic twang.  The voice’s quality I’ve heard referred to recently as ‘cello-like’, which is not a bad description.  The song was the first track on her second album ‘Songs for the Gentle man’ and it was called ‘A Day away’.  Of course it struck a chord: I was a gentle man (!), and this girl sounded like some of the posh undergraduates I was meeting in my first year at Uni: I could imagine long flowing skirts, headscarves maybe, floral caftans etc.  In my defence, m’lud, for my rather easy and shallow smittenness, she came with good credentials:  whispering Bob said she sounded a lot like Nico (no idea who that was, then, but it sounded good) and he praised the  lush orchestration of Ron Geesin’s production (which now sounds to me both twee and overly ornate in its twiddly woodwind accompaniment) PLUS she had been signed on to John Peel’s very own record label (Dandelion) so she had to be something special, didn’t she.

‘Course, it wasn’t just the sound and the voice that struck a chord in this gentle undergraduate’s pathetic consciousness: there was the whole business of the pastoral romance, the nature-child, fantasy rural idyll business.  After all, that ‘Day Away’ song was just about that, wasn’t it, leaving behind the tired artificial drabness of ‘city life’ to escape to free and natural surroundings – the sea being the perfect example of freedom. [very funny, the allure of this idyll – it’s hardly as if I came from busy urban background! My own post-mining valley village nestled in a great deal of greenery!] And she evoked the lure of nature’s freedom with just the right set of conscious poeticism likely to appeal to this average English undergraduate – nice bits of personification (‘the winds scrawled her name through the stubble/as she ploughed through the pebbles to grab at the sea..’ etc, and of alliteration (‘ the wittering wind’, ‘slow city suburbs’)

So yes, dear reader, I bought the album, and a particularly loved the second track ‘City Crazy’ which lyrically was pretty much in exactly the same vein as the first song mentioned above, but with rather less orchestration I could work out the guitar and found that I could play it myself.  I was, I’m afraid, still a little hooked and entranced by the sentiments of the nature-child fantasy: it’s all here again, in simplistic pastel colours: city BAD (‘living in the city’s grip/I feel I lose control/as she reaches for my body/she is hoping for my soul…’ Hmm. And  there’s a ‘wilderness of buildings’ that ‘tie us to their chaos/and try to drag us down’.  Whereas country/seaside GOOD:’ I need to sleep on shingle/yes I wish to step on sand/to move in time to tides and winds/and things I understand’. What can I say?  I loved it, I sang it.  In that sense, I bought into its dream.  And it was a pretty one, however naive.

(And it was the age, wasn’t it?  It was the very same idyllic dream that Joni Mitchell both flirted with and addressed in her first album: songs like ‘Sisotowbell Lane’ and ‘The Dawntreader’ paint those ‘natural’ images with a sense of beauty and delight; but in ‘Song to a seagull’ she faces the fantasy  with a bold dose of realism rare for her generation of songwriters – ‘But sandcastles crumble, and hunger is human/ and humans are hungry for worlds they can’t share..’)

If we think the idealism and sentimentality of Bridget St John’s second album is naive, it is 10 times more so on the first, for me redeemed only by the extraordinary beauty of its title track ‘Ask me no questions’. AND another thing to be said for Bridget St John – she got better and better: the third and fourth albums were packed with some joyous tunes, and what felt like more of a ‘range’.  By this time, I’d lost that first heady undergraduate dopey ‘smitten-ness’ and could just admire the music.  Rumour had it that she went to America.  She fell off one’s ‘musical radar’ for quite a while.  She produced a fifth album called ‘Take the Fifth’ (a more meaningful title given her new American setting) which also had some lovely tracks, one of which – with the help of a kind new friend on the Bridget StJohn  Facebook site I recently stumbled across – I’m learning to play.

So what about the early stuff? ‘City Crazy’ may not be part of my repertoire any longer?  Can we still listen to it and enjoy it?  Why not – it’s of its time.  I think we can, in moderation.

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97. FEELING GOOD – Nina Simone & GRACIAS A LA VIDA – Joan Baez

My last (but one, I suppose) teaching post, and my longest, was at a Roman Catholic comprehensive school.  Songs had a bit of a role there as much as in any secondary.  An excellent music department ensured that for special assemblies, presentation evenings etc.  the pupils were prepared and familiar with a range of appropriate worship songs. (One of my close colleagues abhorred the move towards ‘evangelical country and western’ in RC worship, and would have been much happier with a few tasteful 17th century Marian anthems!)   But I’m not thinking here about songs as used in our faith-school worship sessions – there were few really – teenagers simply do not sing together in that kind of setting – I’m thinking more about some of the ways we employed songs for other purposes, in other settings involving teaching and reflection.  And these two songs represent two incidents memorable to me for the way songs were used, in both cases, motivationally, you could say.

Every few years or so, all schools have to suffer a grand ‘Inspection’ of course, and all the stops are pulled out (is that a musical metaphor?  Pipe organ etc?) and everybody is on their best behaviour to put on a good show and to impress. Catholic schools have an extra dimension, of course, since some inspectors from church authorities will be looking to see (I presume?) that correct theology and appropriate ethical standards are promoted and maintained.  The ‘year group’ assembly (once a week) would be one way to demonstrate that, you might think.  Our head of the sixth form was a woman for whom I have enormous respect and affection, and I was never more proud of her than on the morning of her ‘showcase’ assembly opportunity during  inspection week.  While she might simply have gone for an easy option of choosing some smart kids to read out carefully articulated prayers, a little well practiced ‘psalm performance’ sung by a couple of more confident A level music students etc, what she actually did, once we were all seated and expectant, was to put on the recording of Nina Simone singing ‘Feeling Good’! It was perhaps unexpected, but the joy it elicited wasn’t merely because of the surprise quality – I’d defy anybody to listen to it even on a grey day, even in an educational establishment, and not to feel their spirits raised! Listen to it again and imagine how bravely almost-subversive it might have sounded in context! – that unaccompanied opening, the introduction of the sensuous beat and bass riffs, the almost-rallying call to freedom (!), the semi-anarchic scat singing! Perfect Catholic assembly.

I learnt something that day, or at least was reminded of it forcibly – that feel good music IS good theology in as far as it asserts the value of existence, the beauty and worth of life, and what on earth could be more important as a basis for any other spiritual, emotional or intellectual development?  But it’s more than just ‘a life-affirming lift’ because of its infectious jazziness, or Ms Simone’s seductive growl…  The whole thing in its simple but superb construction was an entirely appropriate choice to move the spirit forwards! Take, obviously, the refrain stirring us to consider life’s fresh possibilities and potential: ‘it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new-life..!’  In its delicious verses of rhyming  triplets, the song leads us to images of the natural world –birds, sun, breeze….  Fish, river, blossom….  Dragonfly, butterfly, stars, pine scent….  if we’re even half aware of this catalogue to whom the singer calls, with whom she identifies, we get some sense of that intoxication, but the point of the identification is not just that we’re fellow-creatures, but in the shared sense of ‘freedom is mine!’.  And by the time the song ends, we are totally with Nina – ‘And I’m feeling good!’  So thanks, Anne, for that memorable choice: your wisdom, taste and boldness, as ever!  [Quickly and almost incidentally – a Newley and Bricusse song?! Could we ever have guessed? They deserve more respect as songwriting partnership than hitherto accorded maybe!]

The other occasion is perhaps not dissimilar.  On Monday mornings before classes began, those who felt so inclined would gather for 20 minutes or so of prayer and reflection.  For quite a few of the years I was there, I was responsible for overseeing this slot, essentially just drawing up of rotas for whose turn it would be to lead which particular Monday reflection.  I like to think I was moderately creative, imaginative and varied when it was my turn to lead, though I was cautiously aware too  (perhaps as token ecumenical /protestant ?) of the need for my ‘choices’ to make some valid scriptural or spiritual point.  When it was the turn of my (dearly loved) head teacher Pete, he would often be far more adventurously imaginative, often bringing in unusual paintings, snippets from some piece of fiction and nonfiction he happened to be reading, but from it all he would generally weave something provocatively relevant to kickstart our prayers and our day.  On one memorable occasion he said ‘I’m just going to put this song on the CD player.  I’m not sure what it all means, but we probably know what the opening words of each verse mean, and we can get the gist!’ It was Joan Baez’s version of ‘Gracias a La Vida’ from the album of the same name. 

He was being modest about his linguistic ability, I’m sure, but there is a sense in which he was right: you just need to know for starters that each verse begins ‘Thank you to Life!’ (and even better if you know ‘que me ha dado tanto’ means ‘which has given me so much!’) and then you can just let the driving energy and the powerful vivacity of the song carry you along, if not with an equal sense of gratitude, then at least with that clear affirmation of the power of being alive which we got from ‘Feeling Good’!  And once again, you could say perhaps that this was indeed theology enough for a Monday morning, and if we could catch it, a perspective to set us up for the week, for life!

We didn’t analyse it, we didn’t need to.  But if we had…  there is even more in the detail to nourish our minds and hearts, I think.  Six verses, basically life gets thanked for the following: eyes to see it all; the wonderful variety of the earth’s sounds; words, language, communication [one of my favourite bits – ‘el sonido y el abecedario/Con las palabras que pienso y declaro’ – I too am still thankful for the alphabet of language!]; strength to travel, different locations and environments; one’s physical being; (and finally) the whole range of emotion and experience.  This sixth and final verse is the most powerful of all, expressing gratitude for sorrow as well as laughter, aware that these are “ los dos materials que forman mi canto” (the two fabrics that comprise her song) and aware too that one’s own song is connected with the songs of others, the song of life. Although ostensibly she addresses these thoughts to a lover (mi buen amado), there is the sense that she is encompassing all humanity in this common song.

Though popularised by Joan Baez, the song was written by Violetta Parra.  When Sue and I were learning Spanish (sort of) in Seville, our Spanish teacher Joanne told us that if we made it to Chile we must look out for some music by Violetta Parra.  Why we couldn’t have looked out for her music in other Latin countries, I don’t know, but she was sort of right: I found nothing by Parra from the cassette –vendors on Asuncion streets, but plenty from similar vendors on the streets of Santiago.  There is a greater rawness, even melancholy, about her style and work, more than I’d imagined, but the glory of this astounding original composition of hers shines through with a compelling authenticity.  ‘course…  I still go back more regularly to the Baez version, for after all she was the one who has made it kind of ‘accessible’ for all of us gringos.

So thank you God for these songs!  Thank you (for) Life!  It’s a new dawn, a new day, a new life.  And generally, by the way, most of the time, I’m feeling good! 

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96. FOR GOOD – (from ‘Wicked’) Stephen Schwartz

No, I’m not going to apologise for this one, even though I recognise that some of you will already be throwing up your hands in horror at  what you see as a dippy sentimentalised show tune. ‘But let me say, before we part..’ that I think that in this song, Schwartz has written a brilliant ‘Goodbye/mutual appreciation’ song.  Since of course it was written for a specific  musical, it is especially appropriate to be sung between two witches, one of whom is feisty, ambitious and green, the other of which plays (equally ambitiously?) to her dumb blonde stereotype.  Despite it all, within it all, amazingly I still think there is something of truth and beauty in the song.

A few years ago, an old friend of mine turned 60.  I’d kind of lost touch, if truth be told, but here’s where we bless Facebook. His wife contacted me and asked if I would jot a few words about my friend to be compiled along with others’ contributions for his birthday.  I made reference to the fact that the sentiments within this song seemed somehow appropriate.  In our early twenties we had shared a house together, and although there was much fun, it was not always easy because our personalities were quite different: at the end of the two years, though, I’d like to think (I can only hope that he agrees!) that we had learned something from each other’s different approaches – even in our expressions of worship, and in the way we tried to live lives of service and faith.  I still believe, I hope, that something of his earnest zeal and boldness stays with me, even now. ‘Which one of you is Elphaba?’ asked his wife, after reading my contribution.

I’m not sure whether the Christian faith entirely endorses the kind of determinism proposed at the beginning of the song : ‘I’ve heard it said/That people come into our lives for a reason/bringing something we must learn/And we are led to those who help us most to grow/If we let them/And they help us in return…’  Hmm. Like Glinda, I’m inclined to say ‘Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true/But [thinking of a whole lifetime of friends who have left some kind of influence] I know I’m who I am today/Because I knew you’...  And ain’t that the truth,  dear reader? – in some cases more than in others, obviously,  so many we have met and journeyed with along the way have helped to mark and mould who we are today.

If you’re familiar with this song, you will know that the two girls singing it to each other employ a bunch of similes to try to express the way that they feel mutually affected and influenced by each other’s presence in their lives – I think the similes sound better than they mean, if that makes sense – perhaps because they are images of natural objects (‘like a comet  pulled from orbit’..’ like a stream that meets a boulder’..’like a seed dropped by a skybird..’ – well, you get the idea) we naturally respond warmly to them , though I’m not sure they necessarily bear close analysis.  But the one image that I do rather like is ‘You’ll be with me, like a handprint on my heart’. Ah, call me an old softie, I don’t care; it gets me.

I can tell you when I first became aware of ‘Wicked’, I was returning up the M4, from London, having visited our elder daughter Mary who was spending a year doing some church and community work on a virtually voluntary  basis.  It choked me to leave her in a tiny bedroom at her digs, so you could say that I was in that vulnerable position, and the right frame of mind to be susceptible to the songs’ whimsy and expressions of sentimentality.  Driving back I listened to Elaine Paige’s Radio Two ‘Musicals’ programme. (you might think, knowing me,  that I would be a regular listener, but in actual fact this incident was one of only a small handful of occasions that I have ever heard the programme).  Elaine mentioned a show that was taking Broadway by storm, and played three of the songs – ‘Wonderful’ I thought was okay, ‘Popular’ I thought was incredibly clever, and ‘For Good’…  You know, I can’t entirely remember, but I suspect it made me cry.

Back at home, I checked out as much about the musical as I could on the Internet; I was lucky enough that I still had one child left at home young enough to share some of my enthusiasms.  Sure enough, looking at relevant you tube clips, she got hooked, along with me, and so when ‘Wicked’ eventually transferred to London we planned our outing together!  That involved: drive to Cardiff very early Saturday morning; ‘Megabus’ to London Victoria; matinee performance at the New Victoria Theatre; return journey and home in the early hours.  Because the show was still relatively unknown, it had been easy to get tickets, and yes Idina Menzel  (now  Elsa-tised for life .!) was playing Elphaba.  We were not disappointed, this 52 year old man and his 8 year old daughter.

One last word about the song: there’s some clever word play about ‘good’ right throughout the musical eg. phrases like ‘Thank goodness’ and ‘goodness knows’ acquire layers of meaning; for in some measure the musical, and the novel of the ‘Oz prequel events’ on which the musical is (loosely?) based, are attempting to examine and question facile perceptions of goodness and evil [eg. In the Wizard’s song he sings ‘There are very few at ease/with moral ambiguities..’! Nice rhyme!] . And so that ‘good’ wordplay is particularly relevant in this song, I suppose, playing on the dual idea of ‘for good’ meaning ‘with permanent effect’ and ‘ with obviously beneficial results’. Clever.  The youtube clip to grab, to enjoy the song freshly, is perhaps not necessarily one where they’re dressed in their contrasting witchy garb, but a rehearsal moment when Kristin Chenowith and Idina Menzel are still learning and rehearsing the song, to just piano accompaniment, taking notes about where to breathe etc.; and so it’s the clip I’ve linked above. I found it oddly moving in that setting, and could appreciate it as just a lovely song  – about friendship.

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95. YOU DON’T KNOW – Helen Shapiro

It was 1961, and I had just had my eight birthday. This year, our family holiday was not going to be at a resort where there was an NUM or TUC conference which Dad was expected to attend, but for some reason the parents had chosen to rent a holiday cottage in Cornwall, a coastal village called Porthtowan. There was me and my brother and I remember that sister Sue came with us (though I’m thinking she would have left school by then), but not Sister Judy who was working that summer.

We took trains for the journey, of course, and it was quite an eventful one for me. At one particular stop or change of trains – Bristol, maybe? – I managed to get my hand trapped in a train door as it was being slammed shut. Or just one finger, I think. I was a bit of a whinger and a crybaby at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. My ravaged finger defined the rest of the journey for both me and my poor longsuffering family, though at the same time I was intrigued and fascinated to have a finger totally flattened and devoid of nail.

I remember little about the cottage except that it was on a hill; it may have been a bit primitive because I remember Sue crying a bit in the night about having to stay there, or maybe it was about having to share a bedroom with Allan and myself. But during the day she was her usual bright and cheerful self. She made friends easily, and I recall that she made a friend of a neighbouring holiday maker of the same age (18?) called Linda. I have a memory of Linda coming to our cottage, and she and my sister getting themselves ready to go down in the evening to the local cafe. This involved (and here my memory particularly vivid – I imagine my eight year old self open mouthed with wonder at the bizarreness, as I still am, of the way ladies often choose to clothe themselves) putting on hooped petticoats under their dresses, for that ‘flared’ look, I presume, in dancing whatever dances one danced in 1961.

I think that the cafe was probably the only communal building that there was in Porthtowan (apart from maybe a kiosk or two at the side of the beach to sell ice creams and holiday paraphernalia) so I think we probably all went down there, every night. They had a jukebox. Did I know about jukeboxes before then? I don’t know… but I do know that I was endlessly fascinated by this one and the up to date singles it was playing. There were bits of Elvis I suppose, and I certainly remember hearing ‘Hello Mary Lou, goodbye heart’ (Ricky Nelson?) but the song that really got to me(and I bet you wondered if we were ever going to get there) was sung by a deep voiced woman, with a mournful sound from the very start – series of doleful ‘woe woe woes’ – who knows, perhaps I felt it befitted my tragic finger episode. Oh and I was a sucker for those ubiquitous syrupy strings that pop production used back then, which to my infant sensibility added to that tuneful dolorousness. And this song seemed to be played more than any other that week. How did the teens dance to it, I wonder?

So it was that Helen Shapiro’s ‘You Don’t Know’ became sort of the internal soundtrack of my holiday. (if we ignore a slight detour into Rogers and Hammerstein – Mam and Dad took us to the cinema in Redruth to see the garishly colourful cinemascope musical ‘South Pacific’ so that we came back singing stuff like ‘I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair’ and giggling about the fact that somebody had been called ‘Bloody Mary’). How far an eight year old processes song lyrics I’ve still no idea: was I at all aware that this little miserable pop ballad was about someone who had dared not reveal their love for fear of it being rejected? Probably not. but I know that the delicious sadness of the sound stayed with me, and as soon as we returned home, I asked Mam and Dad if they would buy me the record of one of their Saturday shopping trips. What can I say? I was the spoiled youngest kid: they always obliged.

Before we leave this little episode, some more about Helen Shapiro. I may have fixated on her more than I realized, because I remember being taken to see a film called ‘It’s Trad Dad’ – a loose story linking together several music performances -where Helen Shapiro and Craig Douglas were the ‘protagonists’ who introduced the different turns. In this sad confessional I will reveal another vivid memory: me standing in a primary school playground suddenly realizing that the best thing in the world I could imagine owning would be a machine that allowed me to watch ‘it’s Trad Dad’ over and over again. (NB belatedly, I have my wish).

Helen Shapiro, you may be aware, started her career very young – wasn’t she 15 or something when she recorded ‘walking back to happiness?’ Since those pop career days, somewhere in the seventies I think, her life took an interesting turn, and one which for me, you won’t be surprised to learn, I rejoice: she found Jesus! Having been brought up in the Jewish faith, she considered herself now ‘a completed Jew’ or ‘a Messianic Jew’ and from what little recent googling I’ve done, it would appear she continues to work and perform within that context and with that sense of mission. While for me, in the mixture of musical memories which is my head, she’ll always be that girl of the deliciously doleful woe-woes (and forever linked with hooped petticoats), I’m glad that she found a love that she wasn’t afraid to reveal or ‘give away’. No longer the ‘one way love affair’ that breaks the heart. Quite the opposite.

[Autobiographical postscript: in the mid 1970s I went back to Porthtowan on my own for a few days, and camped there. I found ‘Heather Cottage’ again (done up nicely); there was a cafe there but no juke-box just slot machines; there were some surfers on the beach. It was a rather miserable few days, and I think my tent leaked. I may have sung a couple of verses of ‘You Don’t Know’; if I didn’t I should have]

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94. PEACEFUL – Georgie Fame

You have to forgive me if I keep on making the same disclaimer again and again in this series of essays: that I am in no way trying to list ‘100 top tunes’ from the history of song, but rather am sharing my six decade plus autobiography in this rather piecemeal form, where songs have not only intersected with my life in its various stages, but in some ways (some of them at least) have come to ‘represent’ those stages in my memory. I suspect I’m not unique in this: most of us have a sort of soundtrack to our lives!

This choice maybe interweaves a couple of strands. I don’t know, let’s see. The actual memory is a significant occasion I have alluded to in at least one other of these essays, as far as I can remember: summer 1969, when I was given the opportunity of a three week ‘summer school’ (a taster of university life) at Balliol College, Oxford. Significant in lots of ways – eg the Moon landing took place while I was there; I also had my 16th birthday there – my sister Judy came to visit me while I was there and gave me my birthday present –my first guitar (which I had a kind of hinted at/possibly requested… in the hope that I could learn to play stuff like ‘Mother Nature’s Son’ and ‘I will’ from the Beatles’ White album) . It was interesting: and if I were given to regrets, which I’m not, generally, I might wistfully feel that perhaps I could have responded to the strong hints that those who attended the summer school would be favourably looked upon if they were to apply to Oxford as their university of choice. To be honest , reader, even after this experience, it really never seemed a realistic option for me. I didn’t feel clever enough; Swansea Uni was appropriate and fine.’

Back to the summer school and the song. I was a fairly timid sort of 15/16 year old – very young for my years, physically and emotionally, and not really particularly adventurous. I can’t remember feeling especially homesick or disorientated, but I’m guessing that I might have been a bit more hesitant and withdrawn than some of the other boys who had been chosen for this taster experience. But I like to think I was also fairly alert and open to stuff: I certainly soaked up all the new literature choices they threw at us – Hemingway, Kafka, Evelyn Waugh…hey, and they even took us to Stratford on Avon (my first time, folks!) to see ‘The Winter’s Tale’ with the young actress Judi Dench (interesting voice, I thought) playing the role of Perdita. So yes, I was a bit of a sponge. Perhaps we all are at that age.

I had a transistor radio in my room of course; in those days I don’t remember life without a transistor radio, especially since Radio 1 had been invented. It was the background to mornings and nights. On one particular morning, when I rose ready to join the other guys in the refectory (‘refectory!’ –another new word!), I heard this song on the radio. I know I’ve spoken before about the power of particularly good ‘morning songs’ – but this one was indeed for me, on that occasion, one of those that suddenly puts a zing of completely unexpected optimism into your day, like a shaft of sunlight taking you unawares and lifting the spirit beyond imagining: so much so that the memory has stayed with me for, as you can see, a good half century!

I knew of Georgie Fame, of course; he’d had a well deserved top 10 hit with ‘Yeah Yeah’; and there was a warm huskiness to his voice, and a slightly unorthodox jazziness (not that I could have identified ‘jazz’ as such, then, I suppose!) to his style that I found pleasing. But I wouldn’t have said that I was a fan who hung upon his every release! It was just – and isn’t this often the way it happens, people? – the serendipitous convergence of a particular context and a particular sound, and it was beautiful! I probably didn’t even catch all the lyrics properly (just as well maybe!), just got a sense of that ‘morning’ newness. Some of the lyrics sound odd to me now : ‘I’ll wake the sun up/ By giving him a fresh air/ Full of the wind cup’. Hmmm..eh? But of course, good linear lyrical sense doesn’t matter when a song grabs you impressionistically! The second verse – addressing ‘evening’ this time, becomes even more quirkily enigmatic. Still, the chorus held out for us an ideal we could all identify with – peace, man! That longing to find a place, a time, a context free of obligations and demands – ‘it’s oh, so peaceful here/no one bending over my shoulder/ Nobody whispering in my ear’. Perhaps, who knows, this chimed with a new unfamiliar independence I was experiencing on this three week holiday?

It’s a song by one Kenny Rankin – and you can catch his own performance of it on youTube, and it is truly lovely, even the guitar work – but I cling of course to this first encounter with this song and I do think that Georgie Fame brings a different robust vibrancy to it. His distinctive voice, and his jazz style and proficiency have perhaps never received the popular acclaim they deserved. I was pleased when I found out that Blossom Dearie – whom I love, and who wouldn’t – had written a song of appreciation for him – ‘Sweet Georgie Fame’. Oh, how chuffed would you be if Blossom had written you a song?

So there you go. One fifty year old memory. One young man away from home, on the verge of sixteen-ness and guitar-ownership. One ‘morning song’ to be savoured among – who could have seen it then – a Chelsea Morning lifetime of them. A boy who became the man who found the 45rpm single of the same about 30 years later, to put on his living room Rockola jukebox. And a listener who has come to value ‘Peace’/ ‘Shalom’ to an extent even further, fuller than he did with the stirrings generated from this little old song half a century ago…

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93. ONLY A DREAM IN RIO – James Taylor

In the months leading up to our departure, before flying off first off to a month or so of language study in Seville –and then on to our new home, jobs and lives in Paraguay, many things must have buoyed up the vision and expectation.
The adrenalin of preparation, a sense of vocation too, must have kept us afloat and focused. There were letters, literature, stories, visits from those who already lived on the continent. We attended an orientation conference for the organisation through which we were being employed; we even had a brief home visit from a language tutor –more of that in a moment. And we were of course particularly alert to all things latino, helping to form preparatory impressions of the culture and climate into which we would enter. I found myself quite arrested by the Jack Lemmon/ Sissy Spacek film ‘Missing’…and in my final days of full time teaching in 1980s Britain, for classes in literary response, I chose to read and discuss, with impressionable 15 year olds, James Watson’s ‘Talking in Whispers’about life in Chile under Pinochet.
Even musically. I found an LP, for instance, in a Bargoed charity shop, by ‘Los Paraguayos Reales’. When our language teacher Joanna came to stay for a couple of days she helped me to pick out (and understand) the lyrics for some good rousing campfire songs – ‘El Rancho Grande’ especially, and even ‘La Bamba’. (she also disabused me of the misconception that I was listening to ‘the real Paraguayans’ – “it means ‘the royal Paraguayans’ “she said). And then there was also Sting and his wonderful song about the wives of ‘los desaparecidos’ –and their profoundly eloquent silent dance of protest ‘Ellas danzan solas’. Listening to this reminded us that we were entering a continent struggling with human rights abuses on a massive scale. It was sobering, and yet, if I’m honest, a little blood-quickening also.

And then there was this James Taylor song which are often seemed to be on in the car, on a ‘Best Of James Taylor’ cassette that I must have acquired from somewhere or other. And yes, okay, it was about Brazil, and so yes, okay, the unfamiliar language on it was Portuguese and not the Spanish we were trying to learn. But the feeling of the song evoked something of the buzz of the continent we were about to enter, if that makes sense.
It’s odd, isn’t it, that this archetypal 1970s singer songwriter with his easy, relaxed, fairly affluent Martha’s Vineyard picking style crooning moderately introspective songs about love, loss and sunshine, should be so good at – and so interested in –evoking Latin rhythms and conjuring hot, sultry Latin atmospheres. He did it, relatively early on, with his song ‘Mexico’; and he has even done it, again, more recently on his 2015 album, on a track called ‘Snowtime’ where he describes hearing Latin music seeping from a club in snowy Toronto – and drawing him in. It’s a great, happy track.

So too, ‘Only A Dream In Rio’ which from start to finish excites. It certainly excited me back in 1989, in that time of preparation. It fed my anticipation, I think, hungry as I was for the otherness of the different culture – so that even the Portuguese lines felt like a spur to my eagerness. I loved all the accumulated ‘more than…’ lines, which somehow hinted indeed that the continent was more than the enumerated sum of its parts . ‘But it’s more than the shining eyes/ More than the steaming green/More than the hidden hills/More than the concrete Christ/ More than a distant land over a shining sea/More than a hungry child…’
Ah, that concrete Christ: Cristo Redentor, it’s phenomenal.
We hit Rio only as an overnight stop, sometime within the next five years, so, even though we didn’t get to visit Cristo Redentor itself, we bought, in the airport shops, wooden souvenirs of the famous and exciting Christ figure which looks over the city! The song’s engendered vision – the ‘ more than a dream..’ did not disappoint (ie the otherness and excitement of living in South America was entirely as stimulating and energising as the song had hinted at..) : and the song still gets to me in a big way. So yes, synthesise the above: we knew we were entering a continent where injustices and inequalities were even more raw and painful than in our own – they were, and I won’t minimize that. We were also about to be embraced by a culture which had a vibrancy which could not have been more of a contrast with British understatement and restraint. An adventure was about to begin…

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92. BLESS THOU THE LORD/ PSALM 23/RAIN SONG – Betty Pulkingham

https://youtube/q7FXgnuO8kY

I had been thinking for a while that this series of essays would not be complete if I did not acknowledge the part that Betty Pulkingham’s compositions had played in my life. And I am prompted to do it finally since that great lady passed on to Glory earlier this year. To my mind, Betty Jane Pulkingham has been a significant figure in the history of Christian hymnody, her output spanning the second half of the 20th century into the beginning of the 21st.

I have written several posts in this blog focused on songs which represented, and traced their lineage back to, the extraordinary renewal of faith, spiritual vitality and worship which took place beginning in the early sixties in Houston, Texas, centred around the Episcopalian ‘Church Of The Redeemer’ and the community lifestyle which developed from that renewal, characterised by a dynamic focus on loving, serving relationships and a remarkable sense of freshness and creativity. Learning of that renewal, reading of it, meeting people involved in it, getting brief tastes of the communities that evolved from it, hearing and experiencing some of the musical ‘output’ from it, has been – even if it seems to be ‘at a remove’- a life-changing experience.

Betty Pulkingham’s place in all that, and most especially in the development of ‘worship life’ which has benefitted so many Christians throughout the church, was seminal. Her husband Graham was of course the priest and pastor who was the figurehead of the renewal that took place in the church, helping to nurture a vibrant community along biblical guidelines, fostering an atmosphere of committed Christian devotion, attentiveness and expectation among the many who began to gather into extended family households to share lives of godly service and caring. True and heartfelt worship was key to that common life and Betty was key in that calling.

Given her scholarly classical training and her highly accomplished musicianship, she could so easily have given herself to the pursuit of traditional ‘ classical church music’ excellence, trained an impressive Episcopalian choir to do a series of fancy anthems, and we might never have heard of her. Her scope became at the same time more humble and yet broader and more far-reaching, her legacy far more extraordinary! Oh she wrote some hymns, songs, what you will, and I have chosen a couple here… well, more about them in a moment. She could even compose intricate, multi-part anthems for trained choirs (we have a few wonderful examples in the recorded output), but she learnt early on, under God’s gracious tutelage, I’m sure she would have said, that music also needed to come from the simplicity of ordinary people, and from the heart, and so despite her musicianship, a surprising number of her compositions are indeed simple, unadorned expressions of praise. Perhaps this is why I have chosen the first of these two songs, taken from the very first album which the church/community released, primarily from the music group which helped to run their coffeehouse ministry, ‘The Way In’. The song ‘Bless Thou The Lord’ is a modest, almost artless, setting of some of the verses from Psalm 103 in a folk idiom, using the opening verse as a refrain. (The song’s verses, incidentally, are sung on the recording by Pat Allen, more about whom in blog essay no.37). The jaunty rhythm, the plinky-plunk banjo accompaniment, are a long way from a choral evensong hymn, yet there is quiet authentic praise in it, I feel.

So, she composed, yes, but what she composed is just one part of her legacy. Her encouragement to a whole community of eager and creative worshippers gathered at the Church of the Redeemer, then the Community of Celebration, is another. While she trained and led worshipping groups and choirs to achieve sensitivity and tightness in their harmonies and balances, it is interesting to see –from the records – that she was in no way just promoting her own songs, but a whole host of talented songwriters emerges under her encouragement, to produce –often in collaborations –a body of work which, when it was disseminated through vinyl discs and song books, helped to invigorate many a church choir, music group, and individual worshipper!

Her choral settings for Eucharistic liturgy form a major part of her legacy. Even this week, in our church we used the ‘Jesus Lamb of God’ chant in our worship, from Betty’s ‘King of Glory’ setting (to be found on the ‘Celebrate the Feast’ recording). The first of these we ever heard was the Melchizedek Mass setting, to be found on the ‘God’s People Give Thanks’ LP. And it seemed then, mid-1970s, like a little piece of heaven. [Actually – anecdote alert: heard this recording on an unlabelled cassette tape handed to me by a friend of my then girlfriend. She claimed she’d recorded it herself on a hand-held recorder, from a church she’d visited in the States. She later proved to be spectacularly mendacious, this girl. But I kept the tape, and later discovered the album]. Another great setting is the ‘El Shaddai’ setting on the ‘Let Our Praise to You Be as Incense’ LP, one of my favourite Fisherfolk albums. Later still (1990?) on the ‘Freedom is Coming’ recording we hear the ambitious ‘Freedom Mass’ setting which used adaptations of black South African songs and rhythms..! Apart from their warm singability, the evident sensitive correspondence between text and melody, these (the first three) settings are remarkable for encouraging accompaniment between traditional church organ AND ‘folk instruments ’(in particular the strummed acoustic guitar) together – instead or their more common frosty competitiveness! They all have something of an anointing, these mass settings, and are deserving of a longevity in their effective church use.

When a sizeable group of people from the Houston church, including Graham and Betty, settled in the UK for a decade or so, the Community of Celebration was named and established; and Betty also set about making these songs (and many others – including old chestnuts from a variety of traditions – that had proved useful in worship) accessible to the church more widely. Initially with Jeanne Harper, wife of Canon Michael Harper, and with the blessings of Hodder and Stoughton publishers, she set about compiling a songbook which quickly became a staple in the Uk church – ‘Sounds of Living Water’ (still a go-to, for me), followed up a few years later by ‘Fresh Sounds’ and later still, with Mimi Farra as co-compiler this time ‘Cry Hosanna’. These three treasures do not gather dust on my shelves, and for these alone I am more than grateful to Betty Jane. In the US, other Celebration hymnals have been published, I believe.

In compositions (as in her eucharist settings) she often brought new life into the old and perhaps-too-familiar. Just like with my good friend Graham Oakes, her new tunes to old hymns helped us to rediscover the potency and beauty of their lyrical content – ‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed’ and ‘Lo He Comes’ come to mind, especially. Her folksy driving adaptation of the familiar ‘Christ the Lord is Risen today’ is given an added sense of liveliness in her transformation of it as ‘Hallelujah Today!’ But she especially had a prayerfully deft touch in her adaptation of psalms (as in the earlier Psalm 103 song we mentioned). Later in her ‘career’ she put together a whole book of psalm settings (‘Celebrate the Church Year with Psalms and Canticles’) which once again breathed new life into our beloved psaltery, and this time the settings were for congregations who wished to chant/sing the ‘complete’ psalms, instead of singing selective and adapted song-versions. I have vivid memories of the summer when I acquired the cassette tape which accompanied this book, the Fisherfolk with customary clarity and brightness presenting a representative selection of these psalm settings: it was 1989, the cassette lived all summer in my car cassette player – I can recall driving the kids to the beach singing along at the top of my voice to several of the psalms (poor kids). I’ve chosen ‘Psalm 23’ here, because I love the way that Betty has chosen to use the gospel verse from John chapter 10 (where Jesus identifies himself as the good shepherd who ‘lays down his life for the sheep’) as the refrain in between the familiar much loved psalm verses. It brings a new breadth to the psalm, linking it with our Saviour’s tender shepherding of us.

Since I am paying homage to her more generally, here, and not just commenting on a couple of songs, let me also recommend her own prose writings, if you can get them. The first book she wrote was ‘Mustard Seeds’ (called something else in the US?), a wonderful series of personal anecdotes of her own (and inevitably the family’s and community’s) faith-fuelled journey, and how she perceived the Lord’s surprises and grace-encounters along the way. The second, ‘Sing To God a Simple Song’ explores more reflectively the lessons she has learnt (and was willing to share) about using music in church contexts. Her third and final book was her autobiography ‘This Is My Story, This Is My Song’ which was just a delight to read. Oh, and when we’re thinking of songbooks, she produced a book of a choral anthem pieces (including the wonderful ‘For Ye Shall Go Out With Joy’ sung at our wedding by a choir of loving friends) AND a book of descants, which every serious choirleader should try to track down.

I only ever met her once –she and her husband were away on my two visits to the Cumbrae community –and this was at a Fisherfolk day (or was it called a Celebration Day?) held, if I remember rightly, in a school hall somewhere in Brighton or Bournemouth (?). It was in my pre-driving days so I caught the train (with you, Caris, if you’re reading). Betty Pulkingham was the key speaker of the day’s events and not surprisingly I hung onto her every word. These are the things I remember: one, her endearingly southern twang; two, her reminder that worship was creating an environment in which God would ‘just feel at home’; three, she quoted from Evelyn Underhill. I had never heard the name before, so you could say Betty Pulkingham introduced me to Ms Underhill, whose works I love, and for that alone I am supremely grateful.

There’s more, I’m sure. I haven’t even mentioned the children’s songs she wrote, several of which feature on the 1972 album ‘Hey Kids, do you love Jesus’. Ok maybe the style and delivery date it somewhat, but the songs retain a value. I’m adding ‘Rain Song’ (from that album) to the youtube clip to accompany this piece – it’s a song that has a beautiful childlike delicacy, and yet still says something important about the refreshing and empowering work of God’s Spirit. Also we get to hear Betty’s own voice here!… Like I said, there must be so much more that could be said: those who’ve lived with her, worked with her, worshipped, played and sung with her, lived through house moves and community changes with her, laughed and cried through celebrations and crises, with have more to remember and share , and no doubt have been doing so in recent months. As for me, from my remote distance as lurking ‘enthusiast/admirer/student’, I can only say how my little life has been touched by her music. And as I consider her recent passing, I’m pleased to think that the songs she’s singing now, of course, are richer and fuller than ever.

by Categories: Christian, gospel, hymn, WorshipTags: , , , , , , 8 Comments

91. THE WORLD IS A CIRCLE – Bacharach/David (from ‘Lost Horizon’)

 

Not only do I famously love great Hollywood musicals but I think it is true to say but I also have a perverse fondness for bad Hollywood musicals, many of which lurk in the back of my sometimes unexpectedly retentive brain to surface at odd moments.  Last week for example, deciding that my granddaughter Dotty would be usefully entertained with a few light hearted youtube clips of lively, colourful,  musical numbers, suddenly this song came to mind, and from thence, to the screen on my phone.  Her nearly-two-year-old eyes might initially have shown some incredulity, but soon we were jigging and rocking to its silliness.  O how we danced.

‘Lost Horizon’ was not John Gielgud’s finest moment, but there you go, just goes to show all those luvvies are in it for the money.  The musical version is an adaptation of an earlier Hollywood film, from a book presumably about some people whose plane crashes and discover Shangri La out there in the Himalayas or Nepal or vague oriental-land.  The musical adaptation is clumsy to say the least, not just because the first half an hour tries to stay true to the drama of the original flight.  Which doesn’t fit well with a film of jolly show tunes and technicolour escapism.  I saw this film in the Maxime Cinema, Blackwoood, when it was first released.  Who did I go with? (Was it you, Barrie and Jan?) We probably chuckled quite a bit.  Still, even then I had some respect, I think, for Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s ability to craft a catchy song, and although I didn’t think it would win any prizes, this one was probably the catchiest of the bunch.

If you want to see a really clumsy clip from the film, see what they do with ‘Living Together, Growing Together’: a cringeworthy musical movie moment, if ever there was one.  But this clip is almost as funny, and educationalists in particular need to pay attention!  Because what we have here is John Gielgud in his smartest most authoritative outfit showing Peter Finch some of the progressive wonders of this alternative society, a bit like a head of a Montessori school showing a prospective parent some of the wonderful creative and free thinking activities their offspring will enjoy.  So we see a wonderful smiling Liv Ullman, for yes it is she, not drilling her assorted flock on their times tables, and certainly not reinforcing binary ways of interpreting their world, but leading them out from their (open-sided, anyway) ‘classroom’ to do some good old dancing and singing and larking about (while perhaps inadvertently introducing some ideas about relativity.).  There’s a touch of the Julie Andrews, too, leading a trail of joyously singing Von Trapps up a hillside with spectacular views , and why not . Yes Liv Ullmann, a million miles from her serious Nordic beginnings; she must have taken to this role though, because a few years later, Vic and I saw her perform in another musical version of a previously non music drama ‘I Remember Mama’.  This we saw on Broadway in our U.S. Greyhound bus holiday.

The children end the song session by rolling down the hill, ending up, if I remember rightly, at the feet of Finch and Gielgud (who promises him he’ll get a chance to meet the alluring school teacher for himself, in days to come!).  I think health and safety should have been involved, with some risk assessment of all that rolling.

I remember someone, some years ago now, choosing this very song as one of their eight ‘desert island discs’ (shouldn’t be so too hard to trace, if I could be bothered; I recall another of the choices was the prologue song from Sondheim’s ‘Sweeney Todd’) and they waxed lyrical –catch my irony –about the melodic construction of the song.  I couldn’t be as eloquent, since I am a words man, as you know.  And about the words, I’d probably say they do not bear too much analytical scrutiny : the ‘world as circle’ metaphor is probably about as profound and probing a piece of Zen philosophy as Elton John’s ‘Circle Of Life’. In this case ‘the world is a circle without a beginning/and nobody knows where the circle ends/everything depends on where you are in the circle….’ etc.  Hmmm.The verses seemed to be comforting assurances for the small, the weak, the slow etc – and a reminder not to compare yourself, or if you do, compare yourself to somebody even smaller, weaker, or slower. Nice idea.   (‘And just because they say you’re slow,/That doesn’t mean that you’re slow, you know./And even if you’re never first,/Compared to someone who’s last,/They’re sure to think you are fast.’) Bobby Van (who?) in flares, joins in some of the lines.

If you’ve got this far, you may already be thinking: this is all a bit sad for a 66 year old to be occupying himself on such ephemera.  You’re probably right. Does it deserve a place in these 100  song-essays? Dotty and I think so: let’s hear it for the endearing bad musical, and the tunefully well-intentioned songs they contained,that can still raise a smile on a cold day.

 

by Categories: 1970s, MusicalsTags: , , , Leave a comment