50 posts tagged “al stravinsky”
I know, you've got them all already, but you might like to own them twice...
This IAC player has all the tracks from my album 'The sentence that I serve' (that's a line from my song 'Fridge says', for the uninitiated). It, they, and several others can be purchased at IAC, CDBaby, iTunes... phew... even Woolworth's have several hidden in with their Pick 'n' Mix for a few lucky punters.
Thanks again
Al
Hi
I just remixed this. Big deal you say. Yeah, OK, in the grand scheme of things... tis nothing, a mere trifle...lasts 60 seconds so I'm not asking much.
Thanks for calling in.
Al
Soundclick have just offered me this - after all this time of uploading and pasting every song onto every site (I have the full set). Anyway, just click play and away you go... 55 of 'em I think. Something like that, anyway. Thanks again - Al
Hi again
I started work last September as a 'Learning Support Assistant' in a local high school. Yesterday, as the title suggests, I sat in on an English Literature mock exam, to check that the cheeky buggers didn't cheat and to help with any problems that might crop up. It was the first time I'd been asked to fill this role. The dreaded words were spoken: 'You have one hour and 45 minutes to complete the paper. Pick up your pens. You may begin!'
Most of the room of 13 boys and one girl did nothing, just sat twiddling, tapping, slouching, sneering, grinning inanely. The girl wrote manically and eventually four or five of the lads had a go... the rest did barely anything. It affected me. I could have cried. Not at them, for them.
I've been in class with some of them over the last five months and, shame on me, thought they were mainly a pain in the arse: disruptive, uncooperative, sometimes even violent. But yesterday I felt sorry for them. I could always see their behaviour was a front, a cover for their insecurity, but as they sat silently, uncomfortably alone, they looked painfully lost. It was very poignant. They are 16 years old and English is their first language, though they can barely read The Beano or write a note for the milkman. There is little doubt that, in their ignorance, their parents have failed them. The school has failed them too despite the wonderful staff's best efforts. And so has the system.
As I walked between the desks I picked up a redundant 'Anthology' and began to read Ben Johnson's 'On my first sonne'. It's a fantastic poem and, being the father of a seven year-old boy, it has touched me deeply. An idea spontaneously sprung into my mind and I wrote this when I got home, using some of the original's language and form. I compared the pause before the exam to the one before the Battle of the Somme. The ages of many of the boys in both scenarios would be similar. Their immediate fates would be different - no-one normally faces death in an exam room - but the hopelessness of the two situations was what tied them together. Both are a tragic waste of young life.
On
my first Somme
Fare well my boys, but how did we prepare thee
Without hope or sense to grasp the gravity?
Five years you were lent to us, the chance was brief
To engage you; now we daily share the bell’s relief.
Reluctant recruits! Soon the dreaded call will come:
‘Pick up your swords, the hour is marked – it has begun’.
Death’s face grins and sneers among the ordered rows,
Armed with feigned indifference to fend the blows
This day will rain. Now, truly, here doth lie
Ben Johnson’s best piece of poetry.
The greatest shame as I see them fall?
What I love they will never like at all.
Is life a series of bubbles? Or one big bubble with lots of smaller ones bouncing around inside? Each phase of your life is perhaps enclosed in the taut transparent skin in which it grew. All the materials for that phase that were there from the start are now used up; it's expanded as far as it can, and it's time to step outside and set it free.
I wrote songs for a while. I felt they had a purpose. Each one had a life of its own: a creative energy that forced it into being; emotion to give the inflation drive and direction; and an experience it was born to define. As it neared completion, the energy waned, raw materials expired, the bubble contracted a little as it sealed; then the story was told/the experience was exorcised/the emotion was expressed. Rainbows swirled on its surface as it floated before me exactly as I had imagined, yet beyond my expectations - it was complete.
Sitting here in my life's bubble, I see, herein, a floating 'songs bubble' full of little bubbles of its own. Each song is fragile, existing only as I made it; too delicate to touch, alter: too easy to spoil, destroy. No-one will cover them, few will play them. But for me who made them, there is a beauty hovering there which will always be a part of me and apart from me. I smile to hear the faint tinkling sounds within them as they float past, and, occasionally, I step through a membrane to relive a time and its soundtrack caught within.
I thought I was OK, but depression is lurking, ready to strike. I have a deep well of unhappiness that sinks right down to the core of me. Was it always, innately, there?. Or have experience and disappointment dug it for me? I put a lid on it most of the time, but almost everything I do reverberates around the damp and dripping walls down there in the dark, and the echoes colour my feelings and reactions on the surface.
So I'm starting to act like an unhappy person again - tetchy, cynical, short-tempered... at one time I could often blank it out/rise above it, but now it's a constant, though often still subtle, state. The soul-searching, re-appraisal, and mulling-over of old, mainly negative events take me only one way: down. My battered wooden-pail-on-a-rope dredges deeper with every clawing draw, bringing to the surface all manner of fragments of painful, broken, long-cast-away things. It's an up and down cycle that it would be better to stop, because thrown-away, buried, or drowned things should stay that way. But that's easier said than done, as those of you with wells of your own will know.
But visualising it thus - the classic well of a Grimm fairy tale - helps me to see the mechanical nature of the process: the casting down; the slow winding up; the fishing around in the murky container for another shard on which to cut myself; and down again... I can stop this at any stage. Think 'well'. Take the handle, turn the gears, release the coils, lower the bucket... stop. Put on the brake and leave it there; imagine it swinging, just out of sight, in the shadows - empty. An occasional drip leaves it at its apocheir and hangs in the dark, searching for any spark of light to fill it and give it life, before falling into the glassy treacle-black depths. Put on the lid. Walk away. Done.
Xmas is a sad
time (what are we celebrating exactly? He's not coming back now you silly buggers), and I wonder why all the world cannot see it for what it is. If you were
OK before, you may be totally depressed now... probably not... Sorry, either way. But (a problem shared and all that) you'll be pleased to know I feel much better.
Al x
Hi
It doesn't take a Shakespeare combined with a Mozart (imagine that on your band's CD case insert though: Written by Shakespeare/Mozart) to write a great song, but honestly, for one who: doesn't dance; go 'clubbing'; suffer from teenage relationship angst; is over 40 and is thus not fooled by a jaunty rhythm/well-executed loop/repeated expletive/juvenile chant as an excuse for song, there is very little in popular music culture to engage one's ears and brain. Is there a law that says adults must be exposed to teenage musical fare as a matter of course (pub/super-market/shopping precinct/advertising/lift)? Are we not allowed to grow out of it, in much the same way we left Baa Baa Black Sheep behind us? And why is it supposed that only someone of tender years has anything of value to expound? Why is popular music the only field where experience, skill and knowledge are seemingly not valued? Why are the incontinent ramblings/wailings of some drug-troubled young man or woman valued so highly? And why are they all pretty, doe-eyed, vulnerable little things; even the boys?
Because they sell? I think that's it: the more vulnerable/pretty/troubled the young person and hence the more internet/radio/tabloid/TV exposure they get, the more they sell. Sell, sell, bloody sell; to vulnerable, lovelorn, ostensibly troubled teenagers who have nothing better to do with their pocket-money and their time. The ability to sell is the only quality recognised these days it seems, mainly because the results (for the exploiters who filter what we receive) are so monetarily tangible. When sales numbers are the only criteria, the packaging is all we are left with; traditional concepts of quality and value are thrown in the land-fill instead.
What a bugger. And what a shame. And it gets worse, year on year... much like Xmas does. All packaging and glitter, with no meaning or substance. Maybe, as today roughly coincides with that time of year, that's what brought the subject to mind. Or is it just me? Yes, it probably is.
Anyway. All my vulnerability/prettiness/troubledom could be fitted onto this full-stop (.) with room for them to roam around for a long time before they as much as bumped into each other. So. This is my Xmas song; only it's an unpackaged, non profit-making, non-Xmas Xmas song. Christmas gets a mention, but that's all; it's not about Christmas at all. No Santas, reindeers, snowflakes, icicles; no stable, manger, baby Jesus; no 'goodwill to all mankind', no seraphs spaking, no shining throngs (only in Richard O'Brien's musical version of The Nativity it would be a 'shining thong'). Just me, me, me. Hope you enjoy it. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Al
...meanwhile, on Earth, things aren't quite going as planned...
God: "I know what to do! I'll send my amazing, meek, wise, brilliant, beloved son for them to berate, abuse and crucify. That'll show 'em who's boss!"
I could never, not even as a small child, connect the beatific Christmas baby to the tortured and broken young man of Easter. There is no celebration for me: a child born, loved and raised, with one sole divine purpose: to be sacrificed, in order to somehow free humanity from the 'sin' that was programmed into us by his supposedly unearthly 'father' - some faulty, vengeful, often petty, sometimes glorious, omnipotent deity? Come now, Western man, is this the best we can do for Sunday morning entertainment? I see a wonderful, brilliant, brave, insightful, ultimately tragic man, betrayed by a civilisation which, even now, is unable to accept the simple words that he spake: 'Be excellent to each other'. (Now, you zealots: turn the other cheek.)
My version counter-balances the decadence and debauchery of this tragic season by featuring just Fender Rhodes, a bell, and a vocal.
Verse 1
Away in a manger no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus lays down his sweet head.
The stars in the bright sky look down where he lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.
Verse 2
The cattle are lowing the baby awakes,
He'll be raising the dead with the noise that he makes.
Strangers come and go all through the long winter's night;
Joseph gather up your family, slip away before light.
Middle8
Take the gold, ditch the frankincense,
Take the donkey, leave the myrrh.
Close your ears to all this mystical nonsense,
To archangels, prophecies and heavenly choir.
Take the boy and keep him safe
From misguided men and gods alike;
What sick mind could take this pure and perfect child
And turn him into a sacrifice?
Verse 3
You will watch him with wonder, he will learn, he will grow,
But the lessons he'll teach us we already know.
Mothers crying for dead children since the world was begun,
So Mary, whisper these words to your beautiful son -
Verse 4
'In 30 short years you'll be nailed to a tree,
And although you will suffer no reason there'll be;
Two millennia in the future things will still be as bad,
So grow old, be a carpenter just like your dad.'
Tacet final verse
(You're not like me, O Father, and I'll tell you why:
Sit there safely in heav'n, send your sole son to die.
So this is the best plan your great mind can make:
Crucify this poor boy to make good your mistake?)
So he never existed... not really, as a real person. He made himself up one day in 1969 and lived a dual existence: half of him surviving on dead-end jobs, the other half believing that one day he would write at least one song that the world would remember. Now half of him is dead, and, as with all conjoined twins (without major surgery), that sentences both of them. It would be sad if it wasn't so pathetic. Fairy-tales always end this way... well not always, rarely... and this was rarely a fairy-tale; so there the similarities end: the ending was neither sad nor happy - it just... was.
The enigmatic and tragic Jackson C Frank was a hero of his... now he emulates that frail and failed soul. Maybe in 40 years people will still say 'Al who?', much as they do today. That would be both a great epitaph, and a fitting legacy.
Above - the last crackling, hissing recording found among his meagre belongings; below - his blog as he inexplicably and hurriedly left it: hot meal still on the table; knife and fork still in place and at the ready; the drink untouched in the paper cup...
It strikes me that a person's success as an original artist, in any genre, is directly proportional to how good they are at
I like this song. It's exactly the sort of thing I would buy. And so it should be, because it's all me, and why would I write something I don't like? It took me 51 years, both to recognise my preferences and needs, and to be able, just in this instance, to fill them.
But maybe pride comes before a falling apart...
Chorus1
I'm falling apart, coming unsewn,
Unstitched, unhinged, to bits;
It takes all of my strength and time
To keep body and mind together.
Tag
I'm in pieces,
I'm in pieces,
I'm in pieces.
Verse 1
You drive me to the edge
And you push me through the pain,
'Til the grating teeth of grinding gears
Of a love that should have lasted years
Finally give in:
Ok, you win, you win!
Old panels and parts for broken hearts
As I turn to scrap again... oh oh oh
Chorus2
I'm falling apart, coming unsewn,
Unstitched, unhinged, to bits;
It takes all of my strength and time
To keep body and mind together.
I'm falling apart, flaking like rust
Into dust, brush up all the bits;
It's taking all my strength and time
To keep body and mind together -
Hope I have the strength this time
To keep body and mind together...
Tag
I'm in pieces,
I'm in pieces,
I'm in pieces...
Verse 2
You burn me with your eyes
And you cut me with your tongue,
Undo me with your lies
And you break me up for fun
As you beat me with his name;
I see the world in shades of grey.
My hands are numb, my lips are dumb
And my tears wash me away... oh oh oh
Chorus3
I'm falling apart, coming unsewn,
Unstitched, unhinged, to bits;
It takes all of my strength and time
To keep body and mind together.
Hope I have the strength this time
To keep body and mind together...
Tag
I'm in pieces,
I'm in pieces,
I'm in pieces...
