Midnight Voices                      
The discussion forum for fans of Pete Atkin and Clive James,
their works and collaborators on stage, TV, disc and in print.

Web Digest week 31 (29.03.98, MV851 - 865) begins | index | prev | next |
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Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 18:59:26 -0800
From: m.powell<email address>
To: midnight.voices<email address>
Subject: MV851: Our Lady Lowness

Our Lady Lowness

I apologise for the non-topicality - I originally tried to post this
before Christmas, but it transmitted incompletely.  Since then, I've
been buried under a pile of exam papers, but am belatedly returning to
active life.

If this is a Thatcher reference, I'd say it results from prescience
rather than topical comment. 
TROS was recorded in September 1973, when Mrs T. was still in her very
early powder-blue suit and pussy-bow incarnation.   So I think it's just
as much of a happy coincidence as Bob Dylan's Maggie's Farm.

I've always read Our Lady Lowness as a personification of a cynical and
materialistic frame of mind, and a comment on the seductiveness of
thinking that way.  For me, there's also an echo of Swinburne's Dolores,
which I guess may still be a favourite with today's S&M fans:

"Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
Men touch them, and change in a trice
The lilies and langours of virtue
For the roses and raptures of vice;
Those lie where thy foot on the floor is
These crown and caress thee and chain
O splendid and sterile Dolores
Our Lady of Pain."		

(Sorry, no reference - this is from memory.  I've always thought that
'the roses and raptures of vice' had a splendidly rakish lip-smacking
quality - though no doubt Swinburne would have been terribly
disappointed if that was as far as it went.)

'Splendid and sterile' strikes a chord with 'her pampered brilliance
shed no light'.

Like Dolores, Our Lady Lowness appears as an anti-Madonna figure:  more
specifically as an inversion of the Madonna della Misericordia who,
instead of sheltering and nurturing all humanity under her cloak and
prompting her followers to do likewise, teaches her acolyte first to
reject the less fortunate and then to justify having done so. 
Fittingly, unlike Dolores' s seduction which is instant and sexual, hers
works more insidiously, being gradual, intellectual and financial.

Post-dated Mrs T. references abound elsewhere however - as in Deacon
Blue's This Changing Light, Simply Red's Wonderland and Tears for Fears'
Sowing The Seeds of Love.  (Yes, I do occasionally listen to someone
other than Pete!)

Mel Powell

==============================================================================
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 22:23:21 -0800
From: m.powell<email address>
To: midnight.voices<email address>
Subject: MV852: Care Charmer Sleep

MV 845:  Care Charmer Sleep

Thanks David for the source for 'giving local habitation to the air'. 
The other, and probably better known Shakespearean source for the same
song is Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?), which
concludes:

"Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."   (Cambridge
University Press edition, p 9)
	
Interesting not just for the obvious 'so long' source, but for
immortal/eternal lines to time.  

I think the title of Care Charmer Sleep may come from a sonnet by Samuel
Daniel (1562-1619), a little-known contemporary of Ben Jonson:

"Care-charmer Sleepe, sonne of the sable night,
Brother to death, in silent darkness borne:
Relieve my languish, and restore the light,
With darke forgetting of my cares returne.

It continues:

"Cease dreames, th'Images of day desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow:
Never let rising Sunne approve you liers,
To adde more griefe to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleepe, imbracing clowdes in vaine;
And never wake to feele the dayes disdayne."   

(anthologised by John Julius Norwich, Christmas Crackers, p 229).

What is interesting here is that Sleep is invoked to help Daniel forget
the harsh reality of consciousness; whilst the dreams within the sleep
lead him to imagine he possesses what he lacks in reality - and the
words 'desires/passions/imbracing' imply that what he lacks is love.

In the song, the relationship between sleep, dreamer and dream is more
complex and shifting.  The narrator is the sleep, the loved one the
dream, because she is seen as a part and function of his consciousness: 
the best bit in which the imagination is freed.

At the same time, she is herself Care Charmer Sleep, because the idea of
her performs the same function as Sleep in the poem:  it makes the
narrator forget the problems and pain of the daytime world. 

But there's a catch.  The process is pleasant, but potentially
dangerous, because they are real and will have to be faced.  Her beauty,
and his love, may be as ephemeral as the flame on a glass of Sambucca
set alight after a shared meal:  an image which is both prosaic (who
hasn't done that after an Italian meal with someone they wanted to
impress?)  and magical:  the 'refining fire' of passion touches the
commonplace.

This is why the lines:

"So slight a thing
In no-one's mind
Should ever reign supreme"

are so significant. The narrator knows that his love should not be
foremost in his consciousness, and paradoxically, his acknowledgement
raises the stakes because it makes us aware of the opportunity cost of
love.   The rational man exchanges his clear, detached view for the
partial perspective of the lover:  the fact that he has sufficient
self-knowledge to be aware of what he is doing emphasises the value of
the objectivity he is setting aside, and therefore of the strength of
the passion which is causing it.  "I'm in deep" is a masterly
understatement of what's going on at this point.  

The same idea crops up again in The Double Agent, where the moral
problems of love as temporary release from the consciousness of a flawed
and violent reality are further explored.  Again there are resonances
with the opening lines of the poem.  

"Your manifest perfections never cease
To keep the day-long terrors out of mind
They are the lights
The darkness hides behind."

Interestingly, another modern re-working of the themes of the Daniel
poem is Alison Moyet's Where Hides Sleep - which makes an appearance as
a favourite song of Joel Court's in The Remake.

Mel Powell

==============================================================================
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:12:43 GMT
From: <email address> (Dr Jeremy Walton. Tel: <phone number>)
To: midnight.voices<email address>
Subject: MV853 Re: MV849; MV848: Seventh Album

Hi Cary,

>> On a different subject, I saw mentioned on the cover of a Clive 
>> James book that there is a collection of Clive's poetry. Does anyone 
>> know if this is still available .... does anyone have it? 

This is "Other Passports", published by Picador (still in print, as far
as I know) and containing a mixture of short poems and his verse letters
(one of which is to PA, see http://www.rwt.co.uk/poem1.htm) It's a nice
collection, and worth getting hold of.  There was also a collection of
his longer "dramatic epic" poems, which I think stayed in hardback
(maybe it's out of print by now).

>> If so, is 
>> Clive's style when writing poetry the same as song lyrics? I wonder 
>> if any of the poems started life as lyrics, or vice versa. I guess 
>> that opens up the argument again of whether the lyrics can exist on 
>> their own as poems.

Good question, although I'd be more extreme, and put it the other way
round.  I've come to believe that CJ can *only ever* write poems; the
stuff that make it into song are just those that have been set to music. 
That PA manages to pull it off so often is a testament to his stunning
ability (matched only, of course, by that of his collaborator).  Take a
look at "Other Passports" and you'll see some examples that could yet
be used in song.

I believe this because (as I've said before) of the unconventional
structure (in a traditional pop song sense) of the songs - particularly
the early ones (the AAAAA... of  "Beware of the Beautiful Stranger",
"Girl on the train", "Pearl Driller", "Practical Man", etc), which makes
them more like poems and less like lyrics.  To be fair, this is somewhat
relaxed in later songs - perhaps the earlier ones really were originally
converted from poems, while a more conscious effort to "write a song"
was involved as time went on.

The other reason which has gradually occurred to me over the past few
months is the sheer quality of the writing - can words so good be
anything other than poetry (and surely more than song lyrics, which are
usually just there to give you something to focus on in the music)?  How
many others have found themselves browsing the lyric database for
relaxation, refreshment and inspiration?

Cheers,

Jeremy

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| Jeremy Walton                                             <email address>|
| The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd, Oxford, UK       Tel: <phone number> |
|                                                      Fax:   <fax number> |
| IRIS Explorer Center URL:          http://www.nag.co.uk/Welcome_IEC.html |
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From: Dave Jones <email address>
To: 'Midnight Voices' <email address>
Subject: MV854: Clive's CV
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 08:55:12 -0500

It occurred to me a day or two ago that, for all Clive's
comments about the songs being his best creative
work, I didn't remember ever seeing them listed in
the mini-biog's that appear in his books. Sure enough,
in the three Picadors I have right now, there is no
mention of them (though it's obvious that Picador
like to concentrate on what the author has also
published with them).

About the same time the library computer called
me at home (I kid you not) to say that the entire
local stock of Jamesian works (two, count 'em, two)
had been delivered to my branch and was ready for
pickup.  Thus I came to have copies of "The Man from
Japan" and "First Reactions : Critical Essays".  The
latter is a distillation for Merkans of "Visions before 
Midnight" et al, including some of Clive's lit crit.
Anyway, there on the inside back dust cover of "First
Reactions", it is in fact mentioned that Clive wrote
song lyrics, and not only that, they were recorded
(but it didn't say by whom).

I then proceeded to experience the classic 
symptoms of the James Syndrome, namely
spasms of suppressed laughter.  The TV columns
have lost none of their power over the years, even
when the subjects are but distant memories. Thus
Clive on the pre-nuptial Princess Anne interview:
"it was a relief when an embarassing point was
dropped so that a fatuous one could be taken up".

"The Man from Japan" shows that Clive certainly
knows the Japanese well.  It's a bit short on
direct dialogue, though - is this a feature of his
novels, or just his chosen style for this one ?  

Dave Jones
Happy that Spring has finally sprung in Rochester NY.

==============================================================================
From: Dave Jones <email address>
To: 'Midnight Voices' <email address>
Subject: MV855 RE: MV844: Show title : A belated tuppenceworth
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:09:41 -0500

"The Men who walked toward the Music".

Suitably obscure, meaningful and hard to fit on
the poster, I think....

Dave Jones
Dancing in the Dark in Rochester NY.

==============================================================================
From: IChippett <email address>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:45:36 EST
To: midnight.voices<email address>
Subject: MV856 Re : MV851: Our Lady Lowness

One minor point arising from this song is that CJ writes:

                "It's not for need of board or bed 
                 Or wanting of a crust of bread
                 That brings a gentleman to bed...."

I quote from memory but I have always wondered how this rhyming of "bed" with
"bed" slipped past the Bard. Like Our Lady, he was always most meticulous
about these things. Maybe we could have a competition to find a better rhyme.
First prize, say, a free air trip to Buxton from, for example (I'm just
thinking aloud) Paris for an all-expenses paid weekend in September including
front row seat for the show  8-)))

Ian C

==============================================================================
From: NNorman<email address>
To: midnight.voices<email address>
Subject: MV857 RE:  Show title : 
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 08:28:57 +0100


How about
----------
"The Men who walked back toward the Music".


Neil Norman

==============================================================================
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 14:31:35 +0100
To: midnight.voices<email address>
From: Roy Brown <email address>
Subject: MV858 Re: MV857; Show title :

In article <email address>,
Midnight Voices <email address> writes
>From: NNorman<email address>
>To: midnight.voices<email address>
>Subject: RE:  Show title : 
>Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 08:28:57 +0100
>
>
>How about
>----------
>"The Men who walked back toward the Music".
>
>
>Neil Norman

And how could I have missed
'For your Instruction and Delight' ?

BTW, add to the list of Pete-affinities the name of Leon Rosselson.
More overtly political, but sharing the delight in a lyric, the complex
guitar work, and the slightly clipped delivery. And a leavening of funny
songs among the serious......

I know we're not supposed to mention a certain cartoon character, but
did you see the recent episode where Homer goofs off church?
The N-person came to Homer's door with a *guitar* round his neck, and
sang! Spooky......

-- 
Roy Brown               Phone : <phone number>     Fax : <fax number>
Affirm Ltd              Email : <email address>
                        'Have nothing on your systems that you do not    
<postal address>         know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.' 

==============================================================================
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 00:02:42 +0100
To: Midnight Voices <email address>
From: S J Birkill <email address>
Subject: MV859: Dr Rock

Barry Holley has transcribed the interview Pete gave by telephone last
December to BBC Radio York. I quote his message, including the transcript,
in full below.

[What was the difficulty you experienced Barry in mailing to the MV
address? -- we've been a little short of posts recently but I'm not aware
of any problem -- Steve]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve,

I had no luck sending this to the midnight voices address but I hope you
get this on your address.

Pete was good enough to do a phone interview on the Dr Rock Show on BBC
Radio York on Saturday 6th December 1997. This goes out for two hours at
noon. The Show has a rock n roll emphasis but the good doctor (Charles
White, biographer of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and renowned
Scarborough based chiropodist of Irish descent), like many of us, just
loves good music. Tracks are interspersed with anecdotes and very
lighthearted banter so don't expect heavy analytical insights from the
following - but I hope it will be of interest at least for the record).

DR: Welcome to the humble Dr.Rock Show
PA: Thank you very much. Hi.
DR: A great pleasure to have you. And we're enjoying your music immensely.
PA: Even after all these years.
DR: Well it still stands up. Obviously the collaboration with that great
articulate critic and author of our times who seemed to tap into the vein
of modern culture with great experience, wisdom and satire - he helped out
a bit did he ? 
PA: Well it was a very collaborative kind of relationship. He wrote the
words and I wrote the music for the most part - although I did write the
words and the music for that last one. I can't stand to listen to it these
days because I'm always worried I'm going to forget the words. He wrote
nearly all the words for the things that we did. It was....working together
with someone like that you think of things you would never come up with if
you were working on your own.
DR: How did you encounter the great man ?
PA: We met at university - boring old story. I was singing some songs I had
written myself. He heard the songs and decided I needed someone else to
write the words for me.
DR: What was he like in those days ? Had he that barbed wire wit at that
stage ?
PA: He was and remains an extremely funny person. He was a bit older than
the rest of us. He was doing a postgraduate degree and he'd just been
bumming around for a few years -  as he recounts in his autobiography. He
got back on the tracks by taking a postgraduate degree. He knew a lot more
than a lot of us did about a lot of things.  
DR: I did have the pleasure of meeting the great man at a book launch in
London. I found him very very pleasant and very amusing. What about your
good self ? You like the old Dobros and steel guitars and the bluesmen.
PA: Like everybody I just grew up with the pop music in the sixties. I just
wanted to be part of that to some extent. There was never any point in
doing what everybody else was doing. One of the things that Clive and I had
in common was the thought that songs could in the wake of Dylan and the
Beatles could be about anything you wanted them to be about. They didn't
have to be about moon and June stuff. We really enjoyed writing songs about
different kinds of things, telling different kinds of stories. 
DR: Was that the period when Clive was appearing as a film critic on TV ? 
PA: It overlapped with that and also overlapped with the time that he was
writing his TV column  for The Observer. 
DR: Brilliant column. Now we've got an afficionado of yours here, Barry
Holley, 
not to be confused with Buddy Holly - although Barry has had his photograph
taken recently with the Crickets. He is a man of substance.
PA: Does he wear the glasses ?
DR: He does and he's a man of great perception. And he would like to have a
little word with you.
PA: Sure.
BH: Hi Pete. Thanks very much for coming on the show. The new CD on See for
Miles - we've played several tracks and I think it's a wonderful
compilation. I just hope they go ahead and release all the others on CD.
PA: That would be great.. It's great to have it on CD I must say. I'll just
be pleased if it does well enough for them to put the others out as well.
BH: I understand that when you did some gigs with Clive James Clive would
let his hair down - if that's the appropriate expression at the end and
actually do an Elvis number. Is that right ?
PA: Indeed. We did six albums together in the seventies and the last one
was an album of jokey things and parodies and what have you. Clive and I
went on tour together - mainly round universities and theatres and we wrote
some special songs to do together. Because Clive doesn't really sing. His
range is ever so slightly narrower than Ringo Starr's..... If the show went
well he could occasionally be persuaded as a second or third encore to give
the audience the benefit of his version of 'That's alright Mama'. He had
them rolling in the aisles and crawling to the exits. 
DR: Can I ask you about your work with Julie Covington ? I just adore her
voice and I thought her version of 'Don't Cry for me Argentina' was the
best one of all. 
PA: She has an absolutely amazingly thrilling voice. Her voice is difficult
to record - good as it sounds on record. I think if you ever get the chance
to hear her live - people's jaws drop - she just sounds amazing. 
DR: She should have gone on to greater things. She is one singer I would
like to see up there among the rest of the so called divas. 
PA: She around at university at the same time as Clive and me. Because she
was a wonderful singer even then that was an incentive to write some girls'
songs... and she recorded several of them on her first Columbia LP which
came out before mine did. 
DR: Well I can see that doesn't remain with the turkeys - you soar with the
eagles even when you were at Cambridge University. Thank you so much for
coming on Pete and we will be played another track from your CD. Thanks for
your excellence in your music.
PA: You're a man of fine discrimination and taste. Thank you very much.
DR: My humility prevents me from any further comments.
BH: Can I just quickly add Pete that if you're coming to the north of
England and gigging we'd love to see you. 
PA: Well I'm performing a lot more these days than I have for a long time
and I'd love to come back to York. I have very good memories of gigs in York. 
DR: You'll be welcome on the Dr Rock Show any time - thanks a million.
PA: Thanks a lot.
(The tracks featured on the show were 'Beware of the Beautiful Stranger',
'The Master of the Revels' and 'The Original Original Honky Tonk Night
Train Blues')

Best wishes,
Barry Holley.

==============================================================================
From: Elphinking <email address>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 03:36:16 EST
To: midnight.voices<email address>
Subject: MV860 Re: MV859: Dr Rock

I've always wanted to know - is Pete actively on-line and therefore reading
all this too, or does Steve simply digest it down for him?

==============================================================================
From: Dave Jones <email address>
To: 'Midnight Voices' <email address>
Subject: MV861 RE: MV859: Dr Rock
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 08:41:51 -0500

>BH: Can I just quickly add Pete that if you're coming to the north of
>England and gigging we'd love to see you. 
>PA: Well I'm performing a lot more these days than I have for a long time
>and I'd love to come back to York. I have very good memories of gigs in York.

Same here, Pete, even if you did nearly get Langwith College's licence
revoked (a surfeit of encores resulting in the concert running well past
the official cutoff - not that we were complaining !).

Thanks to Barry for the transcript: the interview clearly showed both the perils
and the advantages of the association with Clive - it's a big foot in the door, but
the conversation does tend to gravitate away from Pete's music to Clive's
writing.  The tracks played were the usual ones - I guess they're the choice on
the grounds of accessibility and shortness.  I'd give anything to hear that 
someone gave DTMA or Thief an airing. Pete, you gotta do some demo tapes
of the unreleased stuff. Canoe must not die!

Dave Jones
Out a whole degree in Rochester NY.

==============================================================================
From: Dave Jones <email address>
To: 'Midnight Voices' <email address>
Subject: MV862 RE: MV850: The MOJO Playlist
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 08:57:12 -0500

Steve, can you expand on that for us across the pond ? Is your
Mojo any relation to the one at mojomag.com ?

Dave Jones
Getting it working in Rochester NY.

-----Original Message-----
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 21:31:24 +0000
To: Midnight Voices <email address>
From: S J Birkill <email address>
Subject: The MOJO Playlist

Y'all who bought Mojo (April) with Pete's interview might care to check out
page 152. A letter, fax or e-mail could help give another strong
endorsement to the re-issue process ...

==============================================================================
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 18:18:16 +0100
To: Midnight Voices <email address>
From: S J Birkill <email address>
Subject: MV863 Re: MV862; MV850: The MOJO Playlist

>
>Steve, can you expand on that for us across the pond ? Is your
>Mojo any relation to the one at mojomag.com ?
>
>Dave Jones
>Getting it working in Rochester NY.

Hello Dave,

Hmmm, there does seem to be an American Mojo Magazine with an on-line
presence. But I was referring to the UK monthly "MOJO - The Music Magazine"
from EMAP Consumer Magazines, which targets expressly the, well, more
mature rock music fan.

The MOJO Playlist is a top ten of albums compiled from readers' current
listening favourites. Each record cited is accompanied by brief quotations
from 2 or 3 letters supporting it.

The April selection is:
	Air - Moon Safari
	Whiskeytown - Strangers Almanac
	Cornershop - When I Was Born For The 7th Time
	Led Zeppelin - The BBC Sessions
	Bob Dylan - Time Out Of Mind
	Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis
	John Barry - Themeology
	The Charlatans - Melting Pot
	Black Jazz Chronicles - Future Ju Ju
	The High Llamas - Cold & Bouncy

The "Help shape the next MOJO playlist" box reads:

Send us a list of your five current favourite plays with a short
description of their charms. Old albums are only eligible if they have
recently been reissued. Fax us on 0171 312 8296, e-mail mojo@ecm.emap.com
or write to: The MOJO Interactive Playlist, MOJO, Mappin House, 4 Winsley
Street, London W1N 7AR

-- Steve

==============================================================================
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 18:18:59 +0100
To: Midnight Voices <email address>
From: S J Birkill <email address>
Subject: MV864 Re: MV861; MV859: Dr Rock

>
>I've always wanted to know - is Pete actively on-line and therefore reading
>all this too, or does Steve simply digest it down for him?
>

Hi Rob,

In fact Pete is himself a Voice -- he's on the circulation list just like
you and I. It's just that he chooses (so far) to speak via yours truly, and
not to advertise too widely his e-mail address, lest he get more mail than
he can handle.

Clive too sees some of our posts, but indirectly via the occasional faxed
digest.

-- Steve

==============================================================================
From: Cary <email address>
To: Midnight Voices <email address>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 19:29:02 +0000
Subject: MV865: CJ request

On Friday 13th March (MV 790) Steve asked,
"Any suggestions/requests re content on the CJ side?"

and on Friday 3rd April (MV 859 ) Barry transcribed,
"BH: I understand that when you did some gigs with Clive
James Clive would let his hair down - if that's the
appropriate expression at the end and actually do an Elvis
number. Is that right ? "

and later on 3rd April Cary put two and two together (again)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~        
ROCK FOLLIES - The Classic 1970's TV Drama starring 
Julie Covington, Charlotte Cornwell and Rula Lenska. 
Online at:-  http://members.xoom.com/Follies
Pictures,sounds and much more (unofficial site)
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Regards - Cary (like Mary with a 'C' for cat)

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