Diversions! by Barry Booth.

I have been listening to a most enjoyable album today. It is called Diversions! By Barry Booth. If you haven’t heard of this album or singer, don’t worry because I hadn’t either until four nights ago. What happened was this. I was listening to BBC Radio 6Music, it was the day that Terry Jones of Monty Python fame died. The presenter Gideon Coe said he was going to play a song as a tribute to Terry. It was a song he wrote in 1968 with Barry Booth called Henry Smith Addresses A Butterfly. It aroused my interest, I thought it was great. When the song ended Gideon said it was from an album by Barry Booth which was a lost classic album.

I wanted to hear more, so I looked on the internet and found that it had been re-issued in 2002 on CD. I ordered myself a copy and it arrived today.

I have played it twice now and think it is wonderful. It is so rare there isn’t even a Wikipedia entry for this hidden treasure, so I’ll just give you a bit of background information from the sleeve notes.

Barry Booth attended the Royal Academy of Music where he studied composition and the piano. Then he became a music arranger on pop music tours including a stint as Roy Orbison’s piano player. By chance he met Michael Palin and Terry Jones who had just left Oxford University and were writing for TV programmes. Booth asked them if they would be interested in writing some lyrics, which he put to music, hoping to sell the songs to pop acts. 

They made a demo which found its way to the producer Tony Hatch who had also written some of the biggest songs of the day, such as Downtown by Petula Clark. He loved what he heard and insisted they make an album. Barry Booth had no intentions of recording the songs himself, but Hatch loved his voice. It was released in April 1968 and disappeared without trace. That was probably because it was never performed live and there was so much else going on in swinging London at the time it was quickly forgotten. Jones & Palin shortly after found fame and fortune with Monty Python and Barry went back to being a busy jobbing musician. His singing voice was never recorded again.

You can find most of the songs on YouTube. I shared the opening track He’s Very Good With His Hands to this blog page to give you an idea of the album. That song reminds me a bit of The Beatles during the Penny Lane period. The orchestration on the songs is excellent, very baroque in places. Vera Lamonte which is a poignant song about a female acrobat reminds me slightly of the wry songs of Jake Thackrey if you have heard of him. The King’s Thing has echoes of Anthony Newley or mid 60’s Bowie. The lyrics are very clever and witty, which is what you expect from Palin & Jones. The humour is shown in such songs as The Hottest Day Of The Year where Henry Watkins takes all his clothes off in a park to the cheers of bystanders. The Concise History Of Harry Shoes is a sad & funny song about a man with very poor taste. Henri Dupont has a nice accordion accompaniment. I won’t go through every song, but they are all great. I recommend you discover this album for yourself. I’m very glad I did.

He's Very Good With His Hands

A Quiet Sunday.

I was having a quick look through my Jimmy Webb book today and found out something quite interesting. You know how in the lyrics of McArthur Park where it says, ‘Someone left the cake out in the rain’, well, apparently that comes from a quote by the poet W.H. Auden when he was describing his own face. He said it looked like a wedding cake that had been left out in the rain. I thought it was quite interesting anyway.

It was sunny today, but cold. I ventured out into the garden and found my viburnum next to the shed had some white flowers on it which was encouraging. I thought I ought to go for a walk and set off in the direction of the White Horse, but I didn’t get very far. I didn’t fancy the walk uphill. In the end I just went to the supermarket and came home again. I read the first 40 pages of my Krishnamurti book. Van Morrison said that he saw K once in San Francisco. I looked that up and discovered that it was probably in March 1973 when K spoke at the Masonic Hall.

This evening I watched another episode of the Christine Keeler story and the snooker final and that was my Sunday. I’ll try and have a more interesting day tomorrow.

The Cake & The Rain.

Good morning world, it is Saturday! I’m listening to the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I had a nice day yesterday. I caught the bus over to Warminster at 11.00 and looked in all the charity shops for second-hand books for my shop. It was slim pickings I’m afraid. I am getting very choosy about what I buy these days. The very last shop of all was Dr Barnardo’s and I found a nice hardback copy of The Cake & The Rain which is a memoir by the songwriter Jimmy Webb. I might get a few quid for that hopefully. Then I met S when she got off her bus. We went to Lidl and I carried her shopping to Wetherspoons, or as we call it, Spoons. I ordered a bottle of chardonnay and we retired to a corner where I asked her to take my photo for publicity purposes (See photo). We whiled away an enjoyable hour or so, drinking and chatting. It was the first time I had been out for a few days. Eventually it was time to catch the bus home again.

When I got home, I found the postman had left a card saying there was a parcel waiting for me at number 17. I was delighted to find that it is a nice hardback book published in 1995 in the USA, Krishnamurti 100 Years by Evelyne Blau. It was published to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of K’s birth in 1895. I immediately looked in the index, as you do, and found there was a whole page devoted to Van Morrison who as you know was influenced by K. I’m going to enjoy reading this book before I sell it on.

Anyway, the weather forecast for the weekend is quite good. I might go out for a long walk tomorrow. If I do, I’ll tell you all about it. Enjoy the weekend.

We Are The World

I sold another book today, a nice hardback copy of Specimen Days by Walt Whitman published in 1979. I’ll post it tomorrow when I go to Warminster to see my friend. I’m not going out today, it is too rainy and windy. I’m quite happy indoors, alone but not lonely. I have my books and my music to occupy me, and there are plenty of household chores to do if I feel so inclined. I had another listen to Mariee Sioux earlier and I’m listening to What a Beautiful Place by Catherine Howe at the moment. What a nice album it is. I am a sucker for female singers.

I just put two books in my shop. Firstly, a limited signed edition of Sleep, Pale Sister by Joanne Harris. If you haven’t heard of her you might have seen the film of Chocolat which is her most famous book. The other book for my shop is The Voice Is All, The Lonely Victory Of Jack Kerouac by Joyce Johnson. It is a memoir by Joyce of the days when she was Jack’s girlfriend. I haven’t read it unfortunately. The number of books I mean to read is growing by the day. I ought to set time aside every day for reading.

Last year I read a page of Krishnamurti every day. I have finished that book now and have ordered another one. I’ll tell you about that when it arrives. Last night on youtube I watched a speech he made to the United Nations in 1985. You can find it if you have a spare hour on your hands. It made a lot of sense to me. Afterwards, there was a question and answer session and he was asked by a man in the audience, “How can one person changing their life change the whole world?” and K replied, “Try it and you will find out”, which I thought was a really good answer. 

After the disappointments of Brexit, the UK election, Trump, climate change, Syria etc I have just about given up on politics. It is political ideologies, organised religions and greedy corporations that are destroying the world. We are all individually responsible for helping to create this mess. The world will only get better when each individual person gets their own house in order, and that is what I intend to do. I'll start today by tidying this place up a bit. See you tomorrow.

Year Of The Monkey.

Storm Brendan had abated, and the sun was shining. It was nice to get outdoors and feel the beat of the street. I had sold a book overnight, A Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut, so I parcelled that up and took it to the post office.

When I got home, I replaced that book with my signed copy of Year Of The Monkey by Patti Smith. I only acquired it recently. Hopefully I might get the chance to read it before someone buys it. I think Patti is great, I’m looking forward to seeing her in Bath in May. I’ll write a full review of that when it happens. I can’t think of anything else to add today. I’m listening to BBC 6Music at the moment. They are playing Health Fanatic by John Cooper Clarke. I’m seeing him soon as well, so there is lots to look forward to. I think more rain is forecast for tomorrow, so it might be another day indoors. See you tomorrow.

Faces In The Rocks by Mariee Sioux.

It was a wild and windy Tuesday morning. The weather forecast was grim as well. “I won’t be venturing out on a day like this”, I thought to myself.  I knew there were plenty of jobs I could do indoors to pass the time, but I couldn’t get motivated to bother. Suddenly, I was shaken from my reverie by a knock on the door.

It was the post lady with a small package which contained a CD I had ordered a few nights ago. It is called Faces In The Rocks by Mariee Sioux. I had stumbled across her on youtube and liked what I heard. It is her first studio album, released in 2007. I am on my second listen now and I must say it is a very nice album indeed. I would describe it as psychedelic folk music. There is very much a native American influence. Mariee plays acoustic guitar and sings but she is accompanied by a female native American flautist called Gentle Thunder who plays native flutes, buffalo drum, cymbals, rainstick and bass drum. Her father Gary Sobonya plays mandolin. There is also a bass player and a cellist.

If you like music by the likes of Nick Drake or Vashti Bunyan I think you would enjoy this album. Mariee Sioux also reminds me a little of Linda Perhacs, especially in the pure vocal harmonies. It is very atmospheric, haunting and ethereal. There are only eight songs but it lasts fifty minutes. It is too early for me to choose a favourite song (possibly Bundles) because they all sound great. The whole album has a consistency of mood which has created a nice vibe in my house today. I am quite surprised that I hadn’t heard of Mariee Sioux before, but I am pleased that I have discovered this wonderful album. I have added a video of the opening track Wizard Flurry Home to my blog page to give you an idea of what the album sounds like.