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.

Happy Hippie Presents: Peace Will Come With Melanie Safka & Miley Cyrus.

Fairport Convention, Saving Grace, The Four Of Us. Bath Forum 2019

Saving Grace.

I had a great time in Bath on Saturday. This is what happened. I caught the 1.10 train which might have been a mistake. It was packed with rugby fans, Bath were at home to Newcastle. I had to stand all the way to Bath, but the journey is only 30 minutes. I had a couple of hours to kill so looked in a few shops and visited a couple of pubs once the rugby crowd had gone to the match. At 4.00 I met a friend back at the railway station. We went for a leisurely stroll to Walcot Street. When we got to number 72 I took Jane’s photo because this location is of interest to Van Morrison fans.

 Down The Road.

 It used to be Nasher’s Record Store and is featured on the cover of Van’s 2001 album Down The Road. We repaired to the Bell Inn. I thought we ought to go in there because I found out recently that Robert Plant helped save this pub from closure a few years ago. I thought there was a chance he might be in there. He wasn’t of course but I’m still glad we went in there because it’s a great pub, probably my favourite pub in Bath. The pizza was really nice as well.

Eventually it was time to make our way to The Forum. I have seen some great acts here over the last few years such as Van Morrison, Richard Thompson, Kate Rusby, Patti Smith and Madeleine Peyroux. Tonight’s concert was to be one of the greatest. In the foyer we met another friend John. At the merchandise stall I spotted Dave Pegg (Peggy). He was selling copies of his autobiography called Off The Pegg. I didn’t buy the book, but I might do so in the future because as well as being the bass player with Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull Peggy has recorded with the likes of Nick Drake and John Martyn and he was in a band with Robert Plant years before Robert Plant found fame and fortune with Led Zeppelin. I bet he has a great story to tell. He was kind enough to sign my ticket for me.

Then it was time to take our seats. The first band were called The Four Of Us which was a joke because they are a duo of two brothers Brendan & Declan Murphy from Newry in Northern Ireland. They played a short but enjoyable set and told some funny stories such as one about Butlin’s in Mosney which has the coldest outdoor swimming pool in the world. They have a recent album which has had great reviews called Sugar Island which you may like to check out.

The Four Of Us.

They then introduced Robert Plant’s new band who are called Saving Grace. As well as Robert the band has Suzi Dian on vocals. I don’t know where Robert found her, but she is great. Also, they had Tony Kelsey on guitar and mandolin, Matt Worley on banjo and guitar, and Oli Jefferson on drums. I don’t know all the songs they performed but I remember a great version of Nature Boy which was made famous by Nat King Cole. The song was written by eden ahbez (Lower case spelling is correct!) and if you look it up on Wikipedia the story of the song and it’s writer is very interesting. 

Saving Grace.

They also did two Everly Brothers songs Gone Gone Gone and Stick With Me Baby. The harmonising of Robert and Suzi was so nice you know they were meant to sing together. Another highlight was a Patti Griffin song called Ohio which Robert has previously recorded with Patti. My favourite song of the whole evening was their encore when the house lights were turned on and the whole band sang I Bid You Goodnight which I know from the album The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by the Incredible String Band. I knew Jane would be delighted to hear this because she is a huge fan of the ISB.

Fairport Convention

After the interval Robert introduced Fairport Convention. This is the third year in a row that I have seen Fairport on their annual winter tour. It is still the same band of Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg, Ric Sanders, Chris Leslie and Gerry Conway. I can’t remember a lot of their set either because I lost my pen and didn’t take notes. I know Ric Sanders is still telling the same jokes as last year. The opening number was called Shuffle & Go and they did a nice version of Jewel In The Crown. I enjoyed a song called My Love Is In America. A song I haven’t heard before was called Moondust And Solitude and was about Michael Collins the third man on the Apollo mission to the moon. That song was brilliant. Other songs I enjoyed from the days when Fairport were my favourite band were Walk Awhile from the Full House album and The Deserter from one of the best albums ever made which was Liege And Leif.

Sadly, we had to go before the end of Fairport’s set to catch our trains. I said cheerio to Jane and John and I hope we meet up again for another gig soon. I caught the 10.36 train back to Westbury and had time for a last pint in my local pub. What a wonderful night it had been.