Darren Cooper's diary of The Gentle Art of Perception
Early on it sounded like Void were just going through the motions. After the beer break their spirits seem to raise. The sound clicked. Higs drums, once the glue that was all that held this band together, just blended into the tight arrangements like a glove.
I still find them a bit static, heads down concentrating on the music but what do I know I never perform on stage. Later Rich Wilkinson, my passing contact on Cowes music, would venture that "They weren't very good." Perhaps he caught the early stuff.
Rich was twelve when the Chicago Transit Authority blew the front rows away at the 1970 Afton Festival. Had I any Zepplin or Stones stuff he wondered? Nope. As much as I admired Page and Plant's West Coast taste in music (Kaliedoscope, Love, Spirit) I found much of their own stuff a little hard to take. I like my Stones good and greasy in a pub rather than at home on the stereo.
The point of this diatribe is to draw attention to the wisdom of one Graham MacFarlane who says:
"Television is just a mirror. We stare into the silver screen and see ourselves and the world around us. The image reflected just compounds our own perceptions. That process is just repeated in an eternal circle. The viewer is a knowing accomplice."
So I have no Zepplin (sorry can't resist a stab at a Brummie accent complete with a soiled Donnington head band) or Stones in my collection and Rich Wilkinson is not leaping off the bar listening to Void. Then maybe we're just too old.
The music that lifted me out of my tree on Friday night came via the Palmer's Forge stereo. Vic King and I took our usual 'fools on the midnight bus' ride as Newport emptied of teenagers bound for Chillerton and Chale. There is but one more place in the Universe that is as souless and black as Newport Bus Station at night. That's the platforms at Birmingham New Street station. A scuffed fag end and crumpled beer can dump. Perhaps they should be twinned?
What stops me suggesting we bulldoze the lot is that this is another Isle of Wight Rock landmark. Here one night in August, 1968 San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane gathered for a picture aside a Southern Vectis bus. In answer to the question my record collection is stuffed full of the Airplane. Crown of Creation still knocks all the Gallagher bros pretence arse up.
The stars above Niton tonight were sweet. Perfect setting. Vic, perched over his record deck turning volume controls skywards, fiddled with press buttons and set the controls for the heart of Niton. Vaguely Sunny Promotions commander in chief fetched the coco and left me to cradle my head through Jake 'Shabby' Rodriques solitary vices.
This is the one that Mixmag February 1998 missed in their nothing happens on the Isle of Wight piece. An ambient, surreal folk masterpiece that shook our peninsula. Stand out track, the one that is still reeling around my head is the sublime We Went For Supper where Jake praises an after gig get together at Nick and Margarets in the company of Isle of Wight Rock hero John Rufus Grimshaw. A man who likes his whiskey straight and his guitars unplugged.
Follow that with a song by Waterbug artist Susan McDermott who had a voice like a cathedral filled choir. Then stick on Patty Griffin's Living With Ghosts. Last year I had but one hint of Patty Griffin's talent which Vic, bless the Niton mud on his boots, has expanded into the full album. She's just a guitar and a voice but that's about as relevant as describing Van Gogh as a painter with a brush. She paints pictures in song as hewn with raw power as the old Dutch master himself. Awesome as we say in Texas.
So it was the small hours before I buried myself under Granny King's patchwork quilt on the sofa and after eight before Vic pulled back the curtains to let the Niton sun into Palmer's Forge. This morning we have a long session ahead of us. One to curl the toes and set the memories going. We begin taping a nine album foray through the country tinged songs of ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith.
The purpose behind this three hour plus session is to provide a girl from the North Country with a taste of Nesmith. Anne lives in an area close to Vaguely Sunny hearts, New Hampshire. That's in America if you were wondering. Anne and I have been in regular contact on music for a while. She will be going along to see Islander Adam Kirk in March when he plays a couple of gigs near her at the start of Joan Baez's American tour.
So we started with Mike Nesmith's orchestral scoring for Shorty Rogers band (that's West Coast Cool if you were wondering) Nine Times Blue then followed it with the man's country stuff which included a killer version of Michael Murphy's Texas Morning. Turner had forgotten the Nesmith sampler he got from HMV for seven quid, which on later inspection basically knicked our set list but we had the vinyl in the right order.
The Nesmith material ended with the LA cocktail tan of Rio which might have fitted the fandango we found ourselves at later. With three sides of Nesmith in the can we passed onto Tom Rush's Merrimack County. Some blokes drill over the road screwed the finest moments of Tom Rush. The buzzing and current pulled and sucked at the soul of Gypsy Boy, Wind On The Water and Roll Away The Grey. So it was back to the soundboard once the guy went for his dinner.
Vic fixed coffee and fired as ever by music found some Van Morrison with the Chieftens and then some footage of one Christy Moore who sounds and looks more like John Wroath than JW does. Between finding the start of a TV programme on Shane McGowan we had bland on bland Zoe Ball interviewing Sir Simon Rattle. All that squeaky clean tosh kinda misses me by miles particularly after listening to the beautiful orchestration behind Wind On The Water.
Christy Moore looked like the soul brother of another Vaguely Sunny hero, one Pete Byrne. In fact we might be able to use Pete to do all the pre-gig interviews to boost the gig. One Guinness quaffing Irishman is pretty much like another.
Thankfully Vic got the start of Christy Moore doing Shane McGowan's Ashling. I wish that guy had played the Rose and Crown. Perhaps he did every time Wroath downed a Guinness and sang his soul out in that place. Finally Vic put on Jake Rodriques We Went For Supper. My head was still singing it all the way up to Blackgang on the bus and through the old streets of Newport.
If mentioning Sir Simon Rattle and Christy Moore seems to be slipping off the point let me take a sentence to explain. From Vaguely Sunny's sold out Fairport Convention gig what next? Research into HMV's best seller list suggests that Christy Moore would be an odds on favourite for our next gig. On the strength of Ashling I'd travel an ocean to see him but then I'd also give a lottery win away to still be at the Rose and Crown on a Friday night when John Wroath and Duncan Jones played.
Where is all this leading. Where indeed. All things lead to the Quay Arts Centre. Propped up with lottery money it has blown something approaching the value of Robert Stigwood's wine cellar on a little lunchtime gathering for the folks from tuxedo junction.
The whole point of this exercise was to throw open the Michael West Gallery's doors and celebrate the 'art' of a lady called Lulu Quinn. Ms Quinn, judged from the expensive looking brochure art has fallen foul of the wicked tonques of the "Have I Got News For You" team who gave her a fair mauling. I didn't see it but I guess it must have been one of Merton's up at the throat 'Emperor's New Clothes' classics.
Let me be honest I had an invite. I thought it was just to a showing of some Isle of Wight films which would include Darren Cooper's New York meets the Isle of Wight piece. Vic never told me it was a full blown bar mitzvah. So we were suitably dressed in jeans and old coats like a couple of Mew Langton draymen. Turner went one better. He turned up in his stone washed Grateful Dead t-shirt.
I also have to confess I managed to quaff a glass of champagne on ice and four king size prawns before a galley slave full of waiters from Fawlty Towers descended to clear the buffet.
Vic and I didn't take full advantage of the lavish spread. As soon as Vic spotted the caramel squares downstairs he wasn't going to rush headlong up into a gaggle of sophisticated chat for anyone. Instead we spotted another pair of Isle of Wight Rock heroes, Gill and Pete Hogman. So we sat swopping tales with Gill and Pete over lunch in the congenial surroundings downstairs.
Too much for a short article like this but perhaps the new Island TV might consider them as an antidote to the menopaused meanderings of shag piled presenters that inhabit the airwaves of daytime TV. Pete and Gill's tip on how to watch TV in the garden in the summer months was a classic. "Just put a cardboard box around it," advised Gill. "There we were watching the tennis in the garden," drawled Pete in that London accent of his, "I changed channels and there's Odetta and Joan Baez singing this wonderful blues. I'm thinking 'And I've been watching the tennis and missing this . . .'."
Pete further added to our library of blues knowledge (Having met and played with the greats himself including Little Walter Jacobs), by noting that Little Walter's main influence was that Choo Choo Cha Boogie man Louis Jordan (that's stonking songs, jazz with an r'n'b inspired beat if you were wondering). Pete shook his head and inimated Mr. Joe Average's opinion of Little Walter. "He's pretty good with that maff organ ain't he?" Solid stuff.
Upstairs Pete Turner took the opportunity to bone a leading councillor on booking Paul Weller for Ryde Ice Rink. Such news has already spread as far afield as the Cowes Hydrofoil jetty where one Rich Wilkinson would ditch his Zepplin albums for a ticket. And I dare say Mick Cooch would be cancelling his next trip to the Middle East if that one came off. Personally I'd stump up the money just to see Russ Byrne go fetch the fish and chips with Paul Weller again.
So maybe it will come off but not with council money. Just watch this space. The council hardly needs any more bad publicity. This week's County Press reports that the Grant brothers of County Hall, Jeff Manners and Jock Wilson are blowing a gaping hole through another European jolly planned for fellow councillors.
It's the kind of issue that only strengthens my original misgivings about electing the slick heeled into power. The 'you elected us and now we will get on and do what we like' brigade pervades from the Millenium domed craniums of Downing Street right down to local councils. Such stuff is pretty much reflected too in the art world. The Lulu Quinn extravaganza only serves to highlight this.
The excellent actress Harriet Walter currently mirroring the way of modern life in a BBC suburbia sitcom for the chattering classes, a bit like an upmarket Birds of A Feather was one of the celeb's invited today. No doubt the sight of the actress had the pulses of the menopaused racing. She did mine. And I'm out the other side of my menopause. But what has she to do with the Isle of Wight?
Why blow so much money on the food and relegate the work of Island film makers to a sideshow viewed on tiny TVs with crap sound systems. Why go to all this expense and not have enough money for a good pianist? The poor old bloke in the crumpled suit sounded like he left his music behind. Perhaps I am being cruel because I would have preferred Jake Rodriques and is travelling accordian. A few good candidates here today as the organ grinder's monkey.
All that aside let me thank those concerned for my four prawns and glass of champagne. Let me also recommend anyone to go see the films on view at the Quay Arts Centre. Our resident Newport council worker Vic King is out to lunch all next week to see the lot particularly one by Sandown School filmed around the South Wight.
This was the real reason we turned up this afternoon to see the Darren Cooper film. (See Darren's diary piece it is clearer than all this old tosh) That's why a full monty of Isle of Wight music assembled in a tiny ante-room. Dave Pontin in his blue serge suit and broques. Chiz with his Norman Wisdom hat peak backwards. Void. The Ferret and Miss Polecat and the rest of the cast for The Gentle Art of Perception.
It is at times like these that I get the impression that Woody Allen's Sleeper was a visionary depiction of the future. Here we are at this trendy fandango full of Diane Keeton arty types. All sterile white rooms and precise behaviour. We come like Woody Allen's jazz score and cynical wit to desoil the proceedings. All gathered around the orgasmatron in the centre of the room, ok TV.
The Darren Cooper film pits a couple of nine to five lives against that of Chiz who prefers to play music in pubs rather than wear a suit to work every nine to five day. The film, just twenty five minutes in length, is a treasure house for those who get a kick from Island music.
Cooper compares the lot of Islanders with their counterparts in New York. A trick that councillors have been pulling for years excpet in more exotic places. It works because Darren uses a Void track, Funky Song to fit the New York skyline which it does superbly. Void themselves struggled to get a proper view of the set from the back which nearly led me to suggest that they sit down in a half circle at the base of the set, but I don't think they would have appreciated the joke.
We struggled in these surroundings to hear the film properly but aside from catching the lead singer with the Spin Doctors busking in a New York Street to advertise his role in a Broadway production of Faust it was the Jone's section that was for me.
I always wondered where the boys plundered that piano from that they used for the Gurnard Pines gig back in December. The film captures Chiz, Russ and Graham McFarlane, aka The Ferret hauling said instrument out of the Crispin in Newport High Street and onto the back of a flat bed truck. Then they haul it off and push it into the Pines ballroom. The out takes of rehearsals and the final boot jumping bass propelled rock of the Jones' at full stretch is gloriously captured.
Russ looking out like a vision from Red Dwarf from under his spiky red hair. Chiz being Chiz and well, McFarlane being McFarlane poking his fingers into the rock'n'roll pie in grand Jerry Lee Lewis style.
Void get some footage at the end of the film complete with a song. The versions here sound damn good against the footage. Darren Cooper's next project is a Void video which is the kind of community based idea that is worth developing. I reckon the cost of the food left over from the bash alone would pay for it to be done.
I guess I am on my art for people bike again. Railing against the sheer hypocrisy of paying some Northern 'artist' to come up with that coloured upside down ice cream cone that insults our intelligence every time we pass the rusting tin edifice of St. Mary's Hospital. Another goof brained carbunkle devised by an architect who probably grew up with ovaltine and the Wizard of Oz for supper.
Given the power over art's budgets I would have stuck the massive sum into a local junior school. I reckon that children would have come up with more a more imaginative solution as well as putting the money where it belongs in the community not in to varnish some Northern pied-a-terre. Kind of Bill Graham build a community from its base approach.
So excuse me if I poke fun at Lulu's coming to town. I have not seen her work Tidal which this chicken vol-au-vent and all the trimmings bash was for. Maybe I should not judge it from this lovely piece of gobble-de-gook in the programme:
"Transition from one state to another, in this case from a disused warehouse to the new Quay Arts, is also part of the physical environment of Tidal. But while its literal references to the boats, the quay and the tides which surround it are evident, the themes of this installation are perhaps also more universal. With precise visual imagination and sophisticated use of technology, Lulu Quinn evokes the recurrent rhythms of nature - cycles of the moon, flow of the tides, movements of the body - within a tide of change."or even better
"At any point in the gallery, the viewer may see the tides coming and going, crerating a certain tension that builds up in energy and power as sounds of roaring water mixed with mechanical noise echo the motions of the tide. The paradox of such an interactive environment is that the viewer both animates the space and is animated by it. Unlike a traditional sculpture, we are involved in a time-based experience which is set in motion by our own movements around the work. The usual boundaries between the artist as activator and the viewer as passive recipient are dissolved. The repeated ebb and flow of water holds our fascination, apparently random and yet controlled, we are compelled, we are compelled to stand and gaze."
Personally I get religion every time I hear John Coltrane play his saxophone. I get the power of the sea every time I wander along Compton with a Robyn Hitchcock song in my head. As much as I like to see art I am suspicious of what that MacFarlane chap has labelled 'the chancers'.
I once went to this exhibition in Chicago which was a mixture of jive and masterpieces. The jive, for me, consisted of rooms with flashing lights and suspended boats and piles of bricks (What is it with artists and piles of bricks?). Amongst the masterpieces were a figurehead of the Pink Panther entangled around a busty vision of desire, a downtrodden fisherman's camera shots of his industrially polluted village seen through water filled oil drums and a Magritte with two fish sat on a rock. The sharpest comment of the whole exhibition, however, was left to the wit who provided a pile of very expensive plain paper printed with a black frame. The accompanying notice invited the public to 'Make their own art . . .'
So I shot the breeze looking over Newport Quay with the Ferret and Miss Polecat. The Ferret and I chilled out in the magical afternoon light of the muddy ebb and flow of the old Quay, with gentle squawking from overhead gulls and the odd trout from the Thames floating by, so mesmerised in examining our own being that we missed the sensory pulse of Lulu's show.
Actually we did none of this. We discussed the connection between Lenny Bruce and Jack Parnell over a beer, how Jonathon 'Vespa crash helmet' Miller blew his middle class credentials with Bruce. Miss Polecat volunteered that she fell asleep all through the middle of John Sayles Lone Star. Sacrilege. Chiz took to Gypsy Jazz's balkan knees up and made a lot more sense than Lulu's brochure did. He was cheaper too.
So Vic 'Traffic section' King and I let the afternoon steam to a close listening to Donal O'Riain's eloquent violin, Paul Armfield's double bass lines and John Mansell's jazz flavoured chord work. Gypsy Jazz they are. A dash of Hungarian in the goolash, a Balkan campfire swing tempered by O'Riain's Irish roots and a healthy respect for Django Rheinhardt and Stephane Grappelli.
By that time most of the Diane Keeton set had evaporated and the downstairs cafe was filled with a sound that was breath taking. Acoustic music at its very best. Star of the show was Paul and Gina Armfield's six month old Alice whose engaging giggle and smiles communicated more to me this afternoon than the show Lulu brought to town.
Mike Plumbley
This ambient and pretentious rant combines a stab at a stream of sub-consciousness raising text which was inspired by an afternoon at the Quay Arts Centre where instant kharma kind of got to me. Chiaow.
Darren Cooper's diary of The Gentle Art of Perception