Kirsty McGee & The Hobopop Collective –The Deafening Sound of Stars

Kirsty McGee writes songs you seem to have heard before. You can often guess how the melody is going to land. She can be coolly formal, constructing songs that sound like forgotten pages from the Great American Songbook. This skill could become mechanical, but for the profound emotion Kirsty invests in these strangely familiar new-minted songs. 

She can be tender, passionate, gay and mordant by turn. You can tap your toe to the jaunty C&W opener, ‘Moving On’, and endorse its message of optimism, but don't be misled. Kirsty thrives on life’s ironies and paradoxes, but is motivated most by its possibilities. She is drawn to multitudinous America with its hopeful dreams and edgy burlesque, but are these just means of escape by a discontented provincial English lass? This transcendental urge aligns her spiritually, if not musically, to P.J. Harvey.

The Deafening Sound of Stars is an embarrassment of riches, with more lyrical depth than most. Try… “Someone said enchantment is a human right / Pretty soon you’re gonna get your fill” (‘Scorpion in a Mason Jar’). And what’s more she does it with jazz, or at least she has the good sense to surround herself with players who can do it with jazz. 

Each will have his or her favourites. Here are some of mine: ‘Copenhagen’, as bare and intimate as the scene it commemorates; ‘Second Tuesday’, a song bruised by grace; ‘Greedy Little Things’, which dismisses all those irksome annoyances of modern life with a shrug couched as a lullaby; ‘I Take You In My Arms’ is a wry acknowledgement of a failure of resistance whilst remaining undeceived (she will never reach a mass audience if she is this deflating about romance). The spare, economical production – with nicely judged embellishments like Nick Walters’ trumpet on the latter, or Clive Mellor’s harmonica on ‘Moving On’, or the collective ethereal tinkling of ‘The Deafening Sound of Stars’ (I suspect her musical saw is somewhere in the mix) – perfectly matches the intimacy of her aesthetic. 

The title track finally breaks open new channels of feeling and communication. This is the one where Kirsty's voyage of mind finds an answering trance-like response in the listener. That is, in any listener prepared to listen. Or is Kirsty being saved for a future time, when all creatures are this honest, sensitive and intelligent? 

kirstymcgee.com

Mark E. Smith - Memorial and Memorabilia

For me, Mark E. Smith is a greater loss than David Bowie. Let’s just say his chief virtue was that he dealt with the concrete, things which were really there, as opposed to fantasticalities. The prime merit of his work was its truth. He was free from any affectation or pretentiousness. You could happily go for a drink with Mark E. Smith in a way you could never with Bowie. I never did, but I can imagine the sparkling table talk. What made him an entertaining social companion was the same thing that made him a lyricist of genius: you never knew what he was going to say next. 

Example (from one of two lyrics I have in front of me): 

I meet my old friends there/ They queue up for cash there 

They are part Irish / They have no conscience 

And they get threatened by the Cracker Factory 

2 steps back (Cracker Factory – A place where you get into the ‘working routine’ again. = Re-habs

                                             for no hopes = Pre-fabs for Jobless Dopes) 

2 steps back in. 

Mark E. Smith could never have the appeal of Bowie because fantasy is always more palatable to the masses than truth. But fantasy is a juvenile pastime, and the condition of present-day pop culture attests to the deleterious results of arrested development. Whereas too much reality leads to grumpiness. Mark E. Smith balanced grumpiness and playfulness brilliantly, until they become two sides of the same coin. Most of his lyrics are reportage (never straight reportage), but his powers of observation are acute, and given an edge by a unique sensibility, which is working-class, caustic, subversive and absurdist. The Fall's music is punk of uncompromising truculence, yet open to esoteric experiments and surprise undercurrents (he was a fan of Northern Soul and Roy Wood’s Wizzard). As rooted in the moment as a snapshot, the music actually sounds better from the perspective of mid-life, as if the band’s listeners’ physical age caught up with the spiritual age of their hero. Smith's great achievement was to harness existential rancour to rock ’n’ roll, a juvenile art-form, with unlovely and paradoxically optimistic music.

I have come not to bury Mark E. Smith but to praise him, or at least exhume some of his ephemeral scraps. I’ve made a modest collection of Mark E. Smith memorabilia over the years. It started with some papers I found secreted into my second-hand copy of The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit, SFPS028, 1987). These included a cutting from NME, 14 Nov. 1987, with The Fall's UK Discography; a photocopy pic of Marc E. Smith next to a list of the line-up (Marc Riley era) in a handwritten scrawl (“yes 6 like dice”); a typed sheet of the words of ‘Two Steps Back’ and ‘Rebellious Jukebox’ (direct from the man, see below); a press release from 1978, which bears evidence of Mark E.’s unique prose style (“i.e. Who will crack first? Will it crack at all? Will you crack?”); and, as piece de resistance, a letter. It reads: 

[The Fall, Witch Trials typographic letterhead] 

May ‘79 

Dear Dave, 

Thanks for the present of your poetry & letter. The flow of your writing is Brill. All hail Joey. Stockport is a funny place, I’ve a lot of friends there. 

Hope contents suffice, would’ve been more but I’m a slow typer & no paper! Do you wear badges? 

Thanks for support & stimulation. 

Rays of affections 

R. Totale XVII Mark ESm. 

mes/mes 

(2 people at once) 

for the fall.

P.S. keep going and we will too.

To these I’ve added extra items which came my way courtesy of Ra Page, City Life (Manchester What’s-On) colleague and erstwhile City Life editor. One is a two page prose work (Ra was always soliciting short stories and would sometimes publish them as City Life supplements) called No Place Like It. It ends: 

"It's crap out there isn't it" Says JOE 

"Damn right it is" 

"Let's form a Party" sez FRANK. 

There there is a page of handwritten answers to typed questions headed OUT TO LUNCH WITH... CITY LIFE QUESTIONNAIRE. As follows: 

Name? SMITH, M.E. 

How often do you go out drinking? (and where?) 

3-4 times a week if flushed, which is rarely. I drink Holt’s bitter, not because it’s cheap, but because it’s the best beer in the world, bar none. I know because I’ve drank all the world’s beers. In the past on long tours I used to suffer ‘Holt’s Withdrawal’. 

How often do you eat out? (and when?) 

All the time if I’m away but in M/CR not so much as I used to, it’s too suffocating and pretentious now. Julio’s Terazzia was the best until it [illegible] on Coronation St and like K2 [?] (Walpoles). he’s the best [illegible] ever. The Prachee [?] at Heaton Park is spot on, too. 

Worst experience? (where) 

Vomiting all over a local T.V. executive in a crowded exclusive M/CR restaurant about a year ago, about Noon – but I think that had as much to do with him as with the place. I can’t stand eating with music/media types, they talk rot and are always surprised I know more about food etc. than they do. 

Do you cook at home much? 

Yes, my roast beef sandwiches have made both grown intellectuals and hoodlums weep with pleasure. 

What would improve Manchester's food and drink scene? 

It’s ridiculously expensive for what it is compared to virtually anywhere else – be it Rossendale or America, but that’s maybe rent etc. Also, in M/CR no bars seem to have heard of a clean, cold glass – most places’d get trashed if they were in Glasgow or someplace. And I’d argue it’s even harder now to get a decent drink after 11p.m. than it was in the early 80’s. 

This is accompanied by a handwritten note written on tatty, lined paper, torn off when the message ends: 

From M.E. SMITH 

PRESTWICH 

M/cr 

11 JUL. ‘99 

To: RA PAGE 

CITY LIFE 

M/CR 

Dear Ra: 

RE: FOOD ARTEFACT 

The Nepalese is actually called KAILIL on George St. Also the New Emperor is v. good too. 

Also, got cheque for a £100.00 – is this correct? My phone’s bust, so write me. 

All the best...   

Are You Strangely Silent or Silently Strange??? The Thor Letters

Here’s something which surfaced when I was deleting some old files to make some space on a cluttered hard drive. It arises from an exchange of emails – dated February, 2004 – with a friend, newly arrived in China, on the theme of the superhero comics of our youth. At one point another mutual pal pitches in, although a lot of his contribution sadly had to be excised on the grounds of decency. It picks up with Mick’s response to an observation that Flash is a rubbish superhero, and a confession…   

Mike, 

I would never admit to selling off my comic stash for an Emerson, Lake and Palmer LP…Even if it was true! Halcyon days! Full of hope and sunshine.. But hey, they are not over yet... No sirreeeeee!!!! 

Yes, I agree that Flash was a particularly crap superhero…I certainly wouldn't want my daughter to marry him. 

And Antman too, although he does for the Incredible Hulk in #26 of the Fantastic Four (‘Enter the Avengers’), and he did try to redeem himself by becoming GIANTMAN – but to no avail, size isn't everything… He kept getting dizzy spells every time he grew over nine foot... He was also called Henry Pym which sounds like a Junior Minister for Crap Super Heroes. Yes, a contender indeed. However, the biscuit is taken by none other than the Man from Mars, Johnner Jozz, who had a crap costume and had all of Superman’s powers, but as he came from a cold Planet his one weakness was heat!!! As soon as a bad guy lit up a Lucky Strike he got a dizzy spell and fainted… 

What about Crap Super Villains????? 

Yesterday we got the bus into town (10p flat rate any distance) and Cindy wanted to explore a large building before going to the supermarket. Actually she saw a throng of people outside a building and wanted to join a queue. Well, it was a massive bookshop with four floors, with just about everything, mostly in Chinese but with some interesting English sections too and an extensive video section as well. I bought Double Indemnity and The African Queen for 75p each.

But what really got me about this place was that it was absolutely packed to the gills with people actively devouring books. Literally. I saw a family of four all sat down with noses in their books: mom, dad and the kids in rapt attention. This appeared to be normal behaviour.People just stood there reading. I don't know if they had bought the books or not, but they were engrossed. The queues for the cashiers contained lines of thirty or forty people each with three or four books... It was wonderful to behold and I instantly started to warm to the Chinese people.

* * * 

Mick, 

The path from comics to records was smoothed by the likes of Roger Dean, and then there was that Neil Adams cover for Groundhogs. I won't mention the tank/armadillo on the cover of Tarkus by ELP, because the memory causes pain. [15 Record Covers For the Child Within, circa ’70-’73, off the top of my head…] 

Talking about crap superheroes, it's salutary to think that the greatest of them all, the Mighty Thor, started out as a very crap superhero indeed, with a completely rubbish origin story. A reprint brought it all back. Do you remember? The lame (in every sense) Dr Don Blake is holidaying in Norway when his rest is disturbed by a race of Stone Men invading from Saturn. It happens all the time. Fleeing from the beasties, Dr Blake takes refuge in a cave and comes across a cane which, on accidentally striking, turns him into Thor, the legendary Norse God of Thunder. 

In short, Stan Lee grafted an implausible origin story onto one of his hackneyed space invader plots. 

The exact relationship between Thor and Dr Blake was always a bit fuzzy. The first tale suggests that Thor is an alias of Dr Don Blake, as Batman is to Bruce Wayne, but a bit more reflection reveals glaring metaphysical holes. I remember puzzling over it as a kid. Did Thor exist before Don Blake struck the cane? If not, then how to explain all those Boyhood of Thor stories that were such nice extras in the comics? Where was Thor when Dr Blake was fulfilling his medical duties? Or, alternatively, where was Dr Blake when Thor was jousting in faraway Asgard? 

Anyway, Dr Blake, having served his role in the hospital romance subtext (dare he reveal his love to nurse Jane Baxter, now that he is immortal and omnipotent?) quickly becomes a shadowy figure and an embarrassment to his creator, and the revenant soon takes complete possession of his host.   

[Only the day before last, I was having lunch and noticed a woman on the next table so completely absorbed in her reading that she took about two desultory bites of her buttie in the time I took to finish my meal. Being nosey, I had to see what the book was. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, in fact. It gladdened the heart to see, and is much more rare in the UK than in China.] 

* * * 

Mike 

Checked out eBay and, well it’s just a frigging market BUT saw the cover of FF#25 (‘Hulk vs Thing’) and “all the Luminous Past came back tenderly”. Also blow me down, but wasn't old Dr Don just a figment of ODIN's imagination and DID NOT, repeat, DID NOT EXIST before being the conduit for Thor’s exile into Shame which throws up an even BIGGGER philosophical conundrum: what happened to all the lives that met and interfaced with Dr Don when he became The Mighty Thor [TMT]?! Later he also became doppelganged with a SIGURD but this seems to be after my time...

Oh Well, as Peter Green once said!!!!!!! 

A Bit Drunk and in love with our memories

* * * 

Mick, 

I’m working my way through Thor's adventures in the reprints in chronological order, and I'm not yet past The Crap Years. Stan Lee’s default position, it seems, was to bash alien invaders and, on a bad day, he wouldn’t even be bothered with the metaphor, he would just go bashing Commies directly. There's a doosie in Thor's second adventure, ‘Thor vs The Executioner’, when Dr Don Blake goes on a mercy mission to help victims of an epidemic in San Diablo (which closely resembles Cuba) and it’s leader, The Executioner (who closely resembles Castro) sends war-planes to sink the unarmed medical ship. For why? The answer is contained in a speech balloon coming from a war-plane. 'THE EXECUTIONER DOES NOT WANT THE PEASANTS TO BE CURED! HE WANTS THEM TO REMAIN ILL SO THEY WILL BE UNABLE TO OPPOSE US!' 

This crude propaganda comes from 1962. It wasn't until, oh, 1968 or so that Marvel developed a social conscience, reflecting the change in public mood and the wave of protests against Vietnam. I haven't got there yet.   

Talking of splendid sixties survivors, I saw Joan Baez last night. She was inspiring actually. Joan is a true star. She manned the barricades, sang to Martin Luther King and screwed Bob Dylan. In other words, she went a lot further than most were prepared to go. 

• • • 

Mike, 

I seem to remember that Loki was a puny sort of eternal God in the beginning, often hiding behind boulders and plotting. A right sneaky bastard, as I think we said at the time. Come to think of it, Thor underwent a course of steroids in the latter half of the 60s. Or was this when Jack Kirby became fully responsible for the flaxen haired wonder? I remember the Hulk vs Thor as if it were yesterday (or was it the Avengers?). The Hulk even lifted the Mighty Hammer off the floor!!! A feat no one but Thor was thought capable of. You can imagine the trouble we had with the pronunciation of Mijonnir [Mjolnir] or whatever the bloody thing is called. Yes, yes, I still have problems pronouncing and spelling it today. 

The FF underwent similar changes during the 60s. Notice the way the Thing changed appearance after about issue 9 and the personality of Ben Grimm was given a higher profile. Also the shedding or absence of side-kicks, a popular storyline in many earlier superhero mags. 

Remember the Action Comics’ ‘What If’ Superman stories? There was one where Superman was exposed to Red Kryptonite and split into two people, one in an all blue cozzy and the other in an all red one. This enabled him to cure the world’s problems and find a cure for cancer. It also enabled him to lawfully marry both Lois Lane and Lana Lang, famously rivals for the Man of Steel’s affection. At the end the editorial announced “This is just a fantasy story and did not really happen”!!!

I should be working but I could go on like this forever!!!

FLAME OFF!!!

Joan Baez… but didn't she turn Robert E Lee into a steamboat in her version of 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"?

Greetings Fantasy Lovers

Alstuglen writes:

Just got back to Blighty after a few days in Barcelona and was delighted when Glen opened her box (e-mail) to reveal some real cultural statements. Your correspondence is however getting rather bitchy lads - more Cowpen than Bullpen. Poor old Flash surely deserves an accolade or two for his dress sense alone. Even in his early yellow incarnation he cut a dashing (excuse the pun) figure. Once the man went into his overdrive with his new scarlet cossy his rivals looked positively dated. Not till years later did the sartorial supremacy get challenged by Daredevil (who else?), in my opinion the Oscar Wilde of S.Heroes! However I digress. 

Admittedly Flash didn’t have much else to recommend him and if it were not for my own elemental leanings towards being well heeled (Flash’s little wings were just perfect) I might join you in putting the old boy down. Zero charisma as DD (that’s Denis Docherty) might say. 

Auberaughn Parry, the Peter Wimsey of S. Hero worshippers. Flame On!!!

• • • 

Nothing like a trip down memory lane to get the gander up. Flash wasn't exactly my worst superhero but often you can rate a superhero by his adversaries, and I don't recall Flash having too many memorable villains. 

There have been many great superheroes of course, but there was one that nearly always stole the show as a guest and that was Hercules, a silver tongued Lothario of incredible proportions who always left Thor fuming with frustration and jealousy.

Can you remember the various effects of the Kryptonites? Green = death. Red = a temporary alteration of comic/cosmic reality. Gold = total PERMANENT loss of all powers. Thats all I can remember. 

OK gotta go. Flame OFF!!!!!!!

PS Good to have you on board old chap and glad you enjoyed the Barce, a wonderful place. Named after the Barca family from Carthage famous for Hamilcar and his son HANNIBAL..check out Salambo by Flaubert, nothing to do with Barcelona. It’s just a good read. I may be making this up but I hope I am not. My brother Macca and his good wife came to Qingdao last weekend and it was rather spiffing!!!!

OK got to teach.

Lovage Mick xxxx  

• • • 

Mick, 

I might revisit DC after my Marvel binge. I have a residual fondness for Superman. Although Marvel were always light years ahead, DC had a weirdness beyond the sweep of Marvel. Whereas the Marvel cosmology was always consistent, DC were all over the place. So it would announce intriguing plots on the cover, and invariably disappoint with implausible twists and clunking anti-climaxes. Yet there was more genuine eccentricity in DC, and their ineptitude is more charming than Marvel's slickness, if that isn't too heretical coming from a Thunder God worshipper. 

Yes, Hercules was fab. The characterisation was really developed by this time, and the contrast between Hercule’s Dionysian hedonism and Thor's uptight Puritanism was striking. It's the difference between the Mediterranean and Scandanavian sensibilities. I thought I had a giant-size reprint of the epic where Thor and Hercules fight to win Jane Foster, and Hercules signs a Hollywood contract, he thinks, but is really signing his soul away to Pluto, God of the Netherworld. Now that I have most of the original comics [from eBay] you can have the reprint if I can find it (I might have loaned it out to someone). 

But for all of Thor's earnest prissiness, he's the god for me. Indeed I might instigate a revival of Nordic Paganism here in Manchester. It’s less messy than the Inca option, and there’s something about thunder and rain which really chimes with Manchester. 

Flame ON!!!!!!

• • • 

Hi Mike, 

But hey you showed me the issue of the Thor and Hercules meeting in Scarborough when we were there.You said that you had discovered an old pile of comics and this was included. It is one the funniest issues ever. The difference between a Maurice Chevalier and Ingmar Bergman is apt. Maybe you left it at Al’s.

Yes you are spot on about DC and especially the wild lurid covers of Action Comics. One memorable one showing Superman in an arena sweating with fear as improbably proportioned beasts get ready to devour him. Then you noticed that the Sun was RED in which case, as everyone knew, Superman lost all his powers. There are whole stretches of the Universe that are off limits to him. Another "what if". 

It all got a bit out of hand… Superboy was OK, but Supergirl/Dog/Cat… I ask you!!!

One DC bright spot during the 60s ascendancy of Marvel was the Green Lantern who was very popular with some of my mates at the time. He sort of reminded me of Dr Strange. In the early 60s when just getting into comics I remember listening to the Beach Boys and Roy Orbison. Gosh we are OLD!!!!!

Flame OFF!!!!!!!

Mickxxxx

Hi Mike, 

It’s Friday, f*** work, this is the important stuff... 

Remember the early DC groupings of the Justice League of America... Mon El who fainted in the vicinity of LEAD plus a load of well, erm, pretty unmemorable so-called heroes (safety in numbers, my arse.) And wasn't there a group of Metal Men whom I rather enjoyed...Tin Man, Gold, Lead etc. They all had their Chemical symbols on their chests. Elastic Man was also a fore-runner of Dr Reed Richards, pre-cosmic rays. 

The thing about Marvel heroes was that they had an originality of character and depth rarely matched by DC. For instance Reed Richards and Dr Doom, his arch enemy, had a shared history which explained his bitter wickedness. Peter Parker was an adolescent who had to look after his aged aunt and reflected all the insecurity and arrogance that only the young possess.

The reader usually identified or at least recognised this while reading a cracking good story. The characters also evolved in personality and looks/physique just as we did through our teens. Further, Marvel did something that DC couldn't manage, and that was to get in tune with the Times. Christ!! Thor had long blonde hair and could have been in the Lovin' Spoonful, or more aptly The Pretty Things!!! Captain America used to suffer prolonged bouts of self doubt usually after a ragging by anti-War demonstrators….”Maybe they are right!!!! Maybe it's my values that are at fault.!!!" It also became manically self referencing – "See #17 FF”, which of course you just had to get and know about. In addition they came up with good snazzy catch phrases,"Nuff Said" and "Flame On!!!" Also genuinely good Super Villains – Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, Submariner etc. Some like the Hulk and Namor straddled the fence between good and evil. And... they came along in the 60s, when we were looking for something new, and accepted just about anything no matter what its failings...

OK OK I guess I ought to do some work....

Nuff Said....Flame Off!!!!

Mickxxx 

Jerry Dammers' Spatial AKA Orchestra

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, Tuesday 30 March 

The stage looks like the set of Blade-Runner Meets The Mummy. The lights atop the keyboards change colour, presumably to signal to passing aliens, as in Close Encounters. Electronic noises reverberate and a man in a sun mask intones, "It's after the end of the world…" It made a very arresting opening for Spatial AKA Orchestra, Jerry Dammers'  Sun Ra tribute band, even if the acoustics came from planet Saturn. 

What do the Specials mainman and space-age visionary have in common? For Sun Ra, showmanship and science fiction sweetened his inherent radicalism. Similarly, Dammers is out there, yet entertaining. His crack team of UK jazz musicians, dressed in masks and costumes, proceed to raise consciousness with a big, bouncy ska version of Gnossiene by Eric Satie. 

Even so, Tubular Bells comes as a surprise (The Exorcist associations suit the sf/horror ambience, I suppose). Roger Beaujolais carries the theme on vibes and Zoe Rahman contributes a piano solo at warp-speed. The Batman Theme is grafted onto I'm Gonna Unmask the Batman (fabulous baritone solo by Terry Edwards), whilst Man at C&A and Nuclear War, linked by subject-matter, are fused, fission-style. Exotica rears its head during Jungle Madness, with Francine Luce impersonating jungle beasts with avant-garde singing techniques.  

Ghost Town becomes Ghost Planet. The recession is cosmic: now the entire planet is redundant! A rap about the African origin of UFOs nicely combines Sun Ra's twin obsessions. Far from being Dammers' folly, Spatial AKA is probably the summation of the Two-Tone aesthetic. ("It's bad enough with another race…" - John Cooper Clarke.) 

During Space Is The Place, the musicians parade off-stage and reconvene in the auditorium, still honking and chanting. Magic! The evening compared favourably to Sun Ra's  visitation to Hackney Empire in 1990. 

Obsessions With... Sun Ra

The Strange Celestial Road to Wigan Pier

The following article appeared in City Life 155, July 1990. The interview took place, as described, in Liverpool, June 1990. I remember I was crouched at the feet of Sun Ra, just like any young acolyte. As Sun Ra explained the mysteries of the universe and the secret of life, I was thinking, "I don't believe what I'm hearing! I hope the tape machine is picking this up." In the event, my tape machine wasn't picking it up. Not a word. I'm indebted to the woman from the BBC for giving me a tape she made of the interview. However, she stopped recording after a quarter of an hour, so the mysteries of the universe and the secret of life remain hidden.

Sun Ra was expressing his doubts about the Messianic role thrust upon him. "If I were just supposed to talk to one nation and one community, that would be alright, but it's about nations, it's about worlds, it's about governments, it's about religions. Everything would have to change and that's a big job. If you're going to change five billion people, it's quite a job. But that's what I have to do."

I was kneeling at his feet, like any awe-struck disciple, and Sun Ra was gently intoning the secrets of creation and life. We were backstage at the Bluecoat in Liverpool on the first date of a British tour which includes a stop-over at the Wigan Jazz Festival. Anxious promoters flapped and made signs for us to leave (we were a photographer from City Life, a woman from the BBC and a man with an armful of freshly signed Sun Ra LPs). We stayed put. It would have been rude to interrupt Sun in full flow as he described his cosmic mission on Earth.

"There are forces other than God and Satan in control of this planet, and they have been in control for a long time. I had to search and find out who they are. I was just talking about God and Satan, I wasn't talking out the Third Thing, but I felt there was something else that wasn't in books and never revealed itself, so I had to search and look. I felt intuitively that there was something else that this planet knows nothing about and I kept searching and looking and probing. Then I went to Turkey, Istanbul, about a month ago. After I'd played a concert there, the Third Thing sent me some literature and acknowledged they've been in control of this planet a long time. These messages is a book called The Book of Information."

I looked full in Sun Ra's face for a sign that this was a put-on. The orange goatee suggested some sartorial whimsy, but the expression above it was resolutely deadpan. "They got in there the cure for cancer; they got the cause of death. They describe it very vividly. Then they got other things about health and about people, how they have to raise their cosmic consciousness."

When Sun Ra talks like this, it's wise to maintain a respectful expression. Nervous titters earn stern looks from members of the Arkestra, some of whom had changed into their Egyptian stage costumes, and who were sitting around listening intently. Sun Ra is a prophet and a mystic; you scoff at your peril.

"It's parallel to what I've been saying all along without knowing what I was saying. It fits. I hit upon the truth. And because I hit upon it. they sent me the literature as if saying, 'You were right about the Third Thing. We are the Third Thing. We sent the Bible. We sent the Koran. We sent Jesus. We sent Mohammed. We sent Moses. We sent all of that in order to test the people out as far as their intelligence and purity is concerned. We sent contradictions in those sacred books and we got some in this one too, because we want to test people. Because they got to use their intuition and pick the truth that is good for their survival."

The woman from the BBC made an attempt to get the conversation onto a more prosaic level. "You started off in Chicago in the thirties and were part of the big band scene there. Where do you see your jazz roots coming from? Big band jazz? Swing?"

In thirties Chicago, Sun Ra, then known as plain Herman Blount, worked as an arranger with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. He began leading his own bands a dead later and, from the outset, would dress his musicians in Ancient Egyptian costumes and often have them double on exotic, percussive African instruments. They wee known as the Arkestra, or sometimes the Myth Science Arkestra, or the Astro Infinity Arkestra, or even the Astro SOlar Infinity Arkestra.

Sun Ra's interest in things cosmological pre-dated the hippies by several decades. The Arkestra lived as a community under a regime of no drink, no drugs and no loose women. Their leader would call them at all hours to rehearse. When, perhaps at three in morning, some of them would remonstrate, Sun Ra would tell them that all humanity is in restricted limitation, that the Creator had everyone in jail for a life sentence, but they were in the Sun Ra jail, the best jail in the world.

This intense experience inspired dedication from the musicians. Saxophonists Marshall Allen and John Gilmore have each been in the Arkestra for upwards of thirty years. Gilmore is acknowledged as being a pivotal influence on John Coltrane's musical development. I identified as the thin, middle-aged, nay elderly, man on the other side of the room. He threw me a gentle smile as we departed and played like an angel (I mean demon) throughout the concert. Meanwhile, Sun Ra was not to be deflected from the process of self-revelation a by straight-forward, matter-of-fact questioning.

"Well I haven't really presented myself to this planet yet. I got all kinds of music that they've never heard. we've been rehearsing maybe about 45 years. I've never played anything we rehearsed. Not ever. So then I got all kinds of music that's perfectly suitable for the year 2000, and forever really, infinity. But it's not on records. It hasn't been played out there because is would convince people that definite, I'm real, and I wouldn't try and do that because who wants to be a leader on this planet? Leaders are an endangered species. I would say that only anybody worse than a fool would want to be a leader in any capacity."

The woman from the BBC gamely persevered. "Do you think that Chicago is the home of jazz?"

"No, no. Alabama is. Not New Orleans. Not Chicago. Alabama! Lionel Hampton came from there. Nat King Cole came from there. Big Mama Thornton came from there. The focus of jazz is Birmingham, Alabama."

Ah ah! Sun Ra has momentarily let his guard slip. Although he claims to come from Saturn, most authorities give his birth-place as Birmingham, Alabama. They can't agree on the exact date, but five years on wither side of 1914 seems to be the consensus.

"When I leave Europe this time, I'm going straight to Birmingham, Alabama, and I'm playing for schoolchildren. They bus them in from all the grades to hear this band, and that hasn't been done by any other state. So they realise I'm doing something of value to the children. In Alabama, the teenagers and sub-teenagers from, uh, seven years old to twelve, they used to just a basic type of music. I mean a type that has nothing to say, that is mostly not even worth a handful of dust. They'll never know unless they're exposed to something better." He shakes his head ruefully. "They'll never know."

Sun Ra and his Arkestra provide an avant-garde experience you can bring the kids to. For this tour, he even offers a wild version of Pink Elephants on Parade. Members of the Arkestra dance and everybody sings ditties about sunrise on the Nile and space travel. "Outer space is the place," the musicians chant as they parade up and down. A cry of "Rocket No. 9 take off for planet Jupiter" bypasses the grown-up self and speaks directly to the child within.

The sound is exultant and happy. The austerity of the free-form Heliocentric Worlds has largely been abandoned. It seems as if Sun Ra's career has come full-circle. The Arkestra play a string of big band numbers that wouldn't be out of place in the Fletcher Henderson book, performed as near orthodox as Sun Ra is capable of getting. This new accessibility will certainly be an aid to his mission to reach five billion people. There's no doubt that Sun Ra provides the best show in town.

If child-like qualities of joy and innocence are apparent in the music, Sun Ra in conversation sometimes seems as hurt and puzzled as a true innocent. "As a child I knew I was from somewhere else, and I was very happy about where I came from. There were no wars and everybody was beautiful and I thought everybody else on the planet was like that. I found out they weren't. I was very shocked. That made me feel bad. Then I realised they weren't supposed to be condemned. But I was disappointed really. Nobody had told me they were bad people."

When the young Herman Blount was coming up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the twenties, the state was still segregated and Jim Crow laws were rigorously enforced. It's possible that the mysticism Sun Ra cultivates is one sensitive man's response to an unjust and backward society. His homilies about brotherly love, however wayward, are sincerely urgent imprecations.

"It's all about feeling. It's not about how much you know. What you know is what you've been brainwashed to accept. It's about how unlimited you are to reach out toward the impossible. You have to let the real you speak now. You can't survive by what you learned at school, and you can't survive by religion. This is the end of an age and it's something else happening. You've got to deal with infinity and man and woman hasn't been trained to deal with infinity. There are some things that are eternal. There is something called immortality and they can be part of that. They weren't created to die.

"They're just dying because the desire has been implanted in their minds that they have to die. But it's not real. It's futility and frustration. It's negativity at its worst, and they need now to learn something else. They need to be part of something else that's greater than they are. Then they will have the reality of at last having a real view of themselves. That's what I'm talking about.

"But then it has to be demonstrated. Musicians have to demonstrate it. Artists have to demonstrate that I am me, and I'm being me, and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. And then other people will also say, 'Oh yes, I can be what I'm supposed to be too. Even though I may not be an artist, I'm just as important in the Universe as an artist. If I just make myself beautiful then I can be a credit to the Creator. God being righteous, I just can be beautiful and sincere'. And if they sincere, that's all that's needed. It's hard to find a sincere person."

Obsessions With... Spirogyra

Here's to Spirogyra, the great lost hope of English music. They blazed a trail that no one could follow, even if the declamatory style of Johnny Rotten has a precedent in the scabrous glee of Martin Cockerham. No one since has written songs so expansive that they strive to include everybody and everything in whole wide world.

Tempted by the natural science name (and with a doff of the cap to Incredible String Band), their songs could be described as multicellular: great spiralling, sprawling entities that leave a trail of green goo on the carpet. Though some, like the beautiful Spiggly, are simple, single-celled creations (that's enough of the natural science metaphor).

The band first emerged in Bolton in 1967, as a duo of Martin Cockerham and Mark Francis. The classic line-up came together two years later, when Cockerham, Barbara Gaskin, Steve Borrill and Julian Cusack were fellow students at the University of Kent in Canterbury. There was always something of the clever student about Martin Cockerham. His was the authentic voice of idealistic youth, circa 1970; disheveled, disaffected but not yet jaded, trying to understand the world in earnest seriousness, and answering humbuggery with fierce scorn. The mix of vulnerability and arrogance is a particular feature of adolescence.

And then there is that youthful tendency to over-reach intellectually, on the basis that the sum total of the world's knowledge is a useful starting point for an exploration of one's own self. Is this a weakness? I love him for name-checking Marshall McLuhan and for creating a frame of reference that evidently includes Samuel Beckett as well as Bob Dylan (surely there's a touch of Beckett about Cogwheels, Crutches & Cyanide).

Martin Cockerham was the creative force behind Spirogyra. He still is, although the ego has been sublimated into a personal form of Buddhism. And, because the world is changing and impermanent, he also answers to the name Mahaaksha Das, and his group is sometimes known as The Original Spirogyra, and sometimes Gyram. For solo work, Cockerham has been known to adopt the nom-de-guerre Faery King.

But when he was young and scuffling, and still trying to make sense of it all, his preoccupations, fears and visions fired Spirogyra. There was another voice in the band: Barbara Gaskin provided a feminine counterpoint. She was angelic and sweet, where he was dark and sneering. Cockerham the songwriter gave his most plaintive melodies and most tender insights to Gaskin. She is the good angel to his tormented Raskolnikov. If Cockerham rants, then Gaskin replies with sweetness and reason.

The dramatic potential of the chemistry is realised as early as the first verse of track one of Spirogyra's debut album. The Future Won't Be Long, from St Radigunds, opens with Cockerham harshly asking, 'What was life like in the olden days?' The question is immediately softened by a more soothing voice, intoning 'long ago, ago, ago, before the war'. The contrast of tone is entirely appropriate for a bittersweet song about redemptive love and arbitrary slaughter.

The Duke of Beaufoot might describe a scene from an old-fashioned morality play. A poor woman, used and abandoned by her rich lover, begs to be admitted to his grand mansion (possibly castle). Cockerham claims that the band are not rooted in traditional folk, but the scenario is familiar from Lord Gregory (Child Ballad 76), a very ancient folk song.*

Cockerham, the class warrior, registers his resentment and rage in withering sarcasm - "He's very noble and his lineage is pure, but you, you're a whore…" - but Gaskin, more affectionate and forgiving, leaves the way open to reconciliation (it's obvious that if he does let her in, she'll be in real trouble). Spirogyra songs often have multiple viewpoints, and, in this case, a shifting timescale. What begins as a critique of the ruling order, complete with tally-ho huntsman's horns and whooping and dogs, moves onto explore issues such as love, and remembrance, and responsibility, in contemporary times.

Public indifference? I remember taking my copy of St Radigunds to play in a classroom at school, and it was taken off in favour of repeated plays of (this places it in time)… The Witch Queen of New Orleans by Redbone.



Old Boot Wine, the successor to St Radigunds, was the sound of 1972. You can hear the power-cuts. Literally, as the last note of World's Eyes isn't allowed to fade, but terminates in a power failure cut-out. It's so 1972 that there's a reference to Tory Home-Secretary Reginald Maudling in Disraeli's Problem, about the Northern Ireland Troubles ("Maudling, you fool…"). Cigarettes are much in evidence in the back cover shots.

In 1972 I was 13, and so when Martin Cockerham sang "I'm 21, but boy I do feel old", on Wings of Thunder, I remember feeling mild bewilderment: but 21 is old! Old Boot Wine helped me navigate my way through puberty. One song, Runaway, tackled the pains of growing up head-on. "Wonder if I'm a queer…" sang the singer, who certainly wasn't Cockerham. I've always presumed it was Mark Francis, who rejoined the band for Old Boot Wine, although the song, like Disraeli's Problem, was written by Steve Borrill. Anyway, at that age, anxious to clutch onto anything to make sense of the grown-up world, Spirogyra songs were lessons in politics, love and philosophy.

A confession: I thought that if I played Spirogyra loud enough, thereby proclaiming my sensitivity, I might even get a girl! Alright, not at the time, because that was patently ridiculous, but perhaps at some time in the hazy future, envisaging myself in a bedsit with thin walls in some unknown town (London? Canterbury, perhaps?). There is a tender embarrassment about recollecting the romantic dreams of childhood. In middle age, one learns to be indulgent about the callow dunderhead you once were. Alright, and I imagined myself drifting off into eternity to the cello accompaniment of Grandad, a song about lonely old age. Old Boot Wine had most of life's key phases covered.

Perhaps in anticipation of Cockerham's Buddhist-proscribed views on impermanence, from St Radigunds on, each album contain a valedictory ode to times passed and loves lost. These are invariably gorgeous, evocative and affecting: We Were A Happy Crew, a break-up song full of rapturous affection; again, A Canterbury Tale, from Old Boot Wine, is an ode to the resilience of friendship, replete with images of pilgrims and sea and candles, and is the plainest statement of Cockerham's golden rule - not be scared. Spiggly, in contrast to the monumentalism of much of Bells. Boots and Shambles, is a perfect miniature of a song: a haiku of love, aglow with bittersweet nostalgia.

Bells, Boots & Shambles is the one. It has a special tone - social alienation confused with transcendence. This combination is often responsible for flares of brilliance, but is very dangerous, and not at all sustainable. And so it was with Bells, Boots & Shambles, the last sighting of Spirogyra for several decades.

The first thing that impresses is its orchestration. The arrangements, by Dolly Collins, have an ambitious sweep to match the questing, spiritual nature of the subject matter. This is deceptive. The broad spectrum of sound is achieved by economic means, with a single cello, whistle and trumpet suggesting the diverse timbres of a full orchestra. Officially reduced to a two-piece of Cockerham and Gaskin, they were surrounded by all their old playmates in the studio, notably Dave Mattacks on drums. Steve Ashley played whistle, and, an outstanding contribution, Henry Lowther added a trumpet which was variously martial, magisterial and elegiac.

(What better place to discover this most undervalued of British jazz musicians? Lowther's own Child Song, recorded three years earlier, is a pinnacle of Jazz Britannia: transplanting Miles to a kind of English pastoralism with his poised, elegant, lyrical trumpet. Alas, I was too much of a dunderhead to latch onto him at the time, and my conversion didn't come until many more years.)

Bells, Boots & Shambles has no precedent in art-rock or folk. Indeed, it is so singular that, decades after the event, a new term had to be coined to describe it: Acid Folk. Oh, if only Polydor had poured a fraction of the profits from their success with, say, Slade (Coz I Luv You was roughly contemporary, and doing great business), to promote and disseminate Bells, Boots & Shambles. As it was, they dressed it in a nondescript cover (Mart and Babs in a bilious shade of green), signally failed to get it into the shops and deleted it altogether a couple of months afterwards.

Which is the best Spirogyra album? St Radigunds is the most fresh, Old Boot Wine is the most accessible, and Bells, Boots & Shambles is the best realised. In other words, all three are essential. Luckily for those without unlimited funds, the trio have been collected, in their entirety, on a 2CD set, A Canterbury Tale: The Spirogyra Anthology, with added single-only releases and unreleased cuts. The informative sleeve-notes, by David Wells, allude to "halcyon, far-off days". Amen to that.

*The definitive reading of Lord Gregory probably comes from Elizabeth Cronin, as heard on The Folk Songs of Britain Vol.4: The Child Ballads 1 (Topic, 1969)

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Dyverse Values: Spirogyra - St Radigunds