Angry Candy.

Automat (1927) by Edward Hopper

I went to the bank on Thursday to pay some bills and found it had closed. It was the last bank in the town, so at the moment we have no bank and no post office. What sort of a town is that? What is the world coming to? Yesterday, Friday afternoon I decided to catch the bus over to Trowbridge to pay my bills. At the bus stop there was a  lady waiting, so I thought there must be a bus due. I stood against the wall and waited and waited, finally after about 20 minutes a bus arrived. “At last”, said the  lady. “Is it late?”, I asked. “No”, she replied, “I  got here too early”. It was then I noticed how nice she was. She had a lovely northern accent and a nice smile. I should have chatted to her and said something like “What’s a bonnie lass like you doing down here in the West Country?”, but I didn’t, I just got on the bus.

Later, on leaving the bank, I noticed that diagonally opposite across the road was a charity shop that I hadn’t seen before called Mercy In Action so I had to have a look in there. I didn’t find any books, but they had cd’s for £1.00 each. I bought one called Live From Glastonbury. I am listening to it now and it has some fabulous tracks on it and gives me a frisson of excitement that Glastonbury 2019 is now only 115 days away. I also bought an album by James Hunter called The Hard Way. I discovered James Hunter through his association with Van Morrison and I actually saw him on The Park Stage at Glastonbury several years ago. He and his band are brilliant live. The third one I bought was a 2cd compilation called Anthology Of English Folk which has lots of my favourites on it such as Richard Thompson, Anne Briggs, Nic Jones, Bert Lloyd and many more.

After that, there was no stopping me. I went in every charity shop in Trowbridge. Scope, British Heart Foundation, Julian House, Blue Cross and Oxfam were all slim pickings. I didn’t find anything else till I got to Dorothy House. I spotted a cd called Blues And Politics. It looked interesting and had a picture of Charles Mingus on the front, so I assumed it was by him but when I got home I realised it was by the Mingus Big Band recorded in 1999. Charles Mingus died in 1979. The Big Band is managed by his widow Sue Mingus. The album is ok but it is a bit too busy for me, I always think that less is more. That’s why I think The Way Young Lovers Do is my least favourite track on Astral Weeks because there is too much going on.

On my way to my last port of call I glanced in a café window and saw a familiar face. It was the lady from the bus stop. She smiled at me through the window. It was like a scene from an Edward Hopper painting. In the last shop CLIC I found a book called Angry Candy by Harlan Ellison, I have heard of him but never read him. The book is a USA first edition from 1988 so I hope it might be worth a few quid. After that there was nothing else to keep me in Trowbridge. I caught the bus home again and that’s what filled out my Friday afternoon. Some new music arrived in the post today, but I will tell you about that tomorrow.

Music For Zen Meditation

I asked the boy beneath the pines

He said "The Master's gone alone

Herb-picking somewhere on the mount

cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown".

It is Thursday morning, the last day of February and the weather has returned to what you would expect at this time of year. I am listening to an album called Music For Zen Meditation And Other Joys by Tony Scott. It was recorded in Tokyo in 1964. It is amazing that it is 55 years old because it sounds so modern, yet at the same time so timeless. Tony Scott plays clarinet accompanied by Japanese table harp and bamboo flute. I have put one track called The Murmuring Of The Mountain Stream below if you would like to hear it. I love this music because it instills a feeling of calm in the listener. Don't think though that it is just one of those new-age relaxation albums.  This is music of pure class. Krishnamurti liked music and said that what is important is the silence between the notes. I think this is what Van Morrison meant in Hymns To The Silence. Music like this is so pure it makes some other music sound just like a trivial noise to distract people from thinking for themselves. I highly recommend this album.

Tony Scott - The murmuring sound of mountain stream 1964

Morrissey - Everyday Is Like Sunday (Official Music Video)

The Radiant Radish.

eden ahbez & Brian Wilson.

Hello, it’s Sunday morning and the sun is shining again. I’m going to do some seed planting and garden tidying later. At the moment I am having a cup of tea and listening to the Beach Boys album from 1967 called Smiley Smile. It is an album that was salvaged from the recording of the abandoned Smile project of Brian Wilson. Smiley Smile was a flop by Beach Boy standards when it was first released but it is now regarded by many including me as a minor masterpiece. I’ll tell you why I was reminded of it today.

Last week at the fabulous Robert Plant concert that we went to in Bath, Robert sang a song called Nature Boy. It was one of the highlights of the evening for me. Robert said that there was an interesting story about the writer of the song. 

eden Ahbez & Nat King Cole.

I had heard the song before, it was a big hit in 1948 for Nat King Cole and has been recorded by many other great singers as well, including Frank Sinatra & Ella Fitzgerald. I have been reading about the writer of the song who called himself eden ahbez. (He didn’t use capital letters because he thought only the words God and Infinity should be capitalised). He was born in 1908 and died in 1995 and his lifestyle in California was influential in the hippie movement. He was known to friends simply as ahbe. Living a bucolic life from at least the 1940s, he wore sandals and shoulder-length hair and beard, and white robes. He camped out below the first L in the Hollywood Sign above Los Angeles and studied Oriental mysticism. He slept outdoors with his family and ate vegetables, fruits, and nuts. He claimed to live on three dollars per week. He could be described as a proto-hippy and was decades ahead of his time. 

eden ahbez & his family.

I always thought that the hippies grew out of the Beatniks and were a 60’s phenomenon, but in fact they can be traced back to Germany in the 19^th century. eden ahbez was influenced by the Lebensreform ("life reform”) movement of the late 19th-century and early 20th-century Germany and Switzerland that propagated a back-to-nature lifestyle, emphasizing among others health food/raw food/organic food, nudism, sexual liberation, alternative medicine, and religious reform and at the same time abstention from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and vaccines. The subject of Nature Boy was one of his best friends who was known as Gypsy Boots. Gypsy Boots (August 19, 1915 – August 8, 2004), born Robert Bootzin, who was an American fitness pioneer, actor and writer. He is credited with laying the foundation for the acceptance by mainstream America of "alternative" lifestyles such as yoga and health food. His books Barefeet and Good Things to Eat and the memoir The Gypsy in Me gained him a cult following.

So, what has this got to do with Brian Wilson and Smiley Smile? Well, when I was looking up eden ahbez I came across a photo of him with Brian Wilson. As a fan of Brian’s since 1964 I was delighted to see this photo. It was taken when eden ahbez attended the sessions for Smile. “What was he doing there?”, I asked myself. I wondered if he might have influenced Brian in some way. There is a song on Smiley Smile called Vegetables. You can hear it below if you want. It is a very simple, charming and unpretentious song. When eden ahbez first arrived in California in 1941 he began playing piano in the Eutropheon, a small health food store and raw food restaurant on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Brian Wilson became obsessed with health foods himself around the time of the Smile recordings (coincidence?) and opened a health food shop in West Hollywood. called The Radiant Radish. It closed after about two years because Brian had no business sense. While it was open though he could often be seen in there dressed in his bath-robe looking at all the various products.

Anyway, I don’t know if eden ahbez influenced Brian or not, but I have enjoyed reading about him and his lifestyle and especially enjoyed listening to Smiley Smile on this sunny Sunday morning. Now for the garden! See you later.

Vegetables.