Operation Tidy-Up

I don’t normally go on my summer holidays from Saturday to Saturday. I tend to take two weeks off and go from Wednesday to Wednesday, giving me plenty of time to have a rest before I go and tackle the washing, ironing and tidying after I come back. This year, due to a combination of my good fortune in obtaining a ticket for the John Wilson Orchestra’s (and a stellar cast’s) performance of ‘My Fair Lady’ at the Proms and an unfortunately-timed 50^th birthday, I was forced to take my annual break in Llandudno during the last full week of July, and so I returned home just after midnight on Saturday, i.e. 21 hours ago. I’m knackered, and it may take me until my next trip away at the end of August to sort everything out. What do you mean ‘it doesn’t take 14 hours to drive from North Wales to Glasgow’? I know that, but I had to stop off in Edinburgh on the way (OK, not exactly on the way).

My exploits away from home are being detailed (or will be detailed, when I get around to writing them up) in my other blogs, as is my taking in the match between Glasgow City Ladies FC and Forfar Farmington FC this afternoon. Earlier this year, I decided to have a blog devoted to my travels outside of Glasgow postal districts and, if you take a wee look, you can see that I have been hard at work keeping the world informed of my experiences (not), as I was being a little over-ambitious in thinking that I could do it all from my mobile phone! As well as this, I decided to start a footie blog following the recent upheaval in Scottish football, Now, I think it might be time for a concert blog. You can catch up with all the fun here:

True Adventures (travel blog)

Sent To The Stands (football blog)

Best Seat In The House (concert blog)

I bet you’re hoping that I’m going to shut this blog down. Well, you’re wrong. It’s sub-heading isn’t ‘Irreverent and irrelevant opinions on everything and nothing’ for, er, nothing. As I said, I’ve been on holiday. Sadly, both for me and for you, dear reader (s), I have missed the much-praised Olympic opening ceremony, as well as a great deal of the action, so far. I have missed that piece of slime, Tony Blair, trying to get back into politics and I have missed some super-rich, dodgy-dealing, Mormon arsehole coming over here and tell us we can’t run a piss-up in a brewery, amongst other things. However, it’s the summer, the silly season, and I’m sure I’ll have lots to tell you about before it's over. Don’t you worry your pretty, little head (s).

Plans are put in motion

As holidays go, this one could be better. Nearly two days before Friday the 13^th, my last day at work for a fortnight, I came down with a ‘flu-like illness’ and spent those two days as high as a kite on over-the-counter flu remedies and painkillers. By the time I got on the coach to London on the Friday night, I looked and felt like death (barely) warmed up, so you can imagine how the weekend went.

I arrived home just after 8am on the Monday. I had some breakfast followed by a soothing bath, then headed for bed. Apart from a rude awakening caused by the Radio 3 repeat of Prom 1, I had slept from 9am until just after 3pm. When I got out of bed, my head and feet aching from the weekends’ exertions, I staggered around for a while, gathering items for the washing machine. My recollection of the rest of the day is hazy, to say the least. I know I watched Coronation Street and tidied away some items from my case, but that is all.

I surprised myself on Tuesday morning by doing some of the ironing and some more of the tidying and by making a decision. I threw my camera in a bag and headed for the Falkirk Wheel. 

It’s some 25 minutes from home, and was opened in 2002, but this was my first visit. I wasn’t disappointed.

A boat trip on the last few metres of the Forth and Clyde Canal to where it joins the Union Canal, made possible by the world’s only rotating boat lift, was just the tonic for my ailing body, and gave me the impetus to head a few miles along the road to Bo’ness, for a trip on a steam train.

As promised, Wednesday brought rain, so it was just as well that I had not planned to do anything beyond shopping, banking and eating ice-cream in Nardini’s in Byres Road. With all tasks accomplished, I headed home to do absolutely nothing. I was feeling tired again, the bug having not left my system. I found it difficult to stay up, so I went to bed around 10.

Thursday was the most frustrating day of the week. The rain had stopped, and none was forecast for the rest of the day, but I was too tired to leave the house early. My head and limbs were sore and my nose had started to run. I went into town for a mad, two-hour dash round the shops, but came home immediately afterwards. I didn’t have the energy to do anything, so sat in my chair for few hours until common sense kicked in and I started to pack for my trip to Wales. When I went to bed, the job was only half done.

As if I didn’t have a list of jobs the length of my arm for Friday, I got out of bed for breakfast only to discover that everything in the (mercifully small) freezer had defrosted because the door wasn’t shutting properly. It took over two hours to clear up the mess and get myself ready to go out. That is, out to the shops to buy what I’d planned to buy and everything needed to replace what had been ruined. When I came back, I emptied the car somewhat frantically, before heading for the local driving range to take out my frustration on a hundred golf balls. I hadn’t swung a club for almost a year, so I was worse than normal. I seemed to get into the swing of things (every pun intended) near the end, so I may reactivate that particular hobby after the holidays.

My last port of call for the first half of the holiday was Clydebank, and the Titan Crane in the former John Brown’s shipyard. 

The crane has been a summer visitor attraction for five years but, yet again, this was only my first visit. The waterfront at Clydebank is undergoing a regeneration, with the College having moved to that part of town a few years back and new flats nearby, but there is still a lot of vacant ground, enough to suggest that the recession has halted, hopefully temporarily, plans to bring the area back to life. I had another thought, one much less positive: we seem to have given up. We’ve given up on ever being able to make anything ever again.

 

Tomorrow, I head for Llandudno for the tenth successive summer. I, too, have given up: given up on originality; given up on a sense of adventure; given up on hope for the future; given up on being able to live ever again.

2012: Plans are put in motion to redevelop this life.

Milestones

I’m not inclined to say much when the weather’s like this. Apparently, we’re at the mercy of the six-mile high jet stream, and most of the UK has had the biblical rain to prove it. It’s been a funny old week and a bit here, and I really don’t function in unbearable heat and humidity; I’m tired, grumpy and forever having to un-stick my clothes from my skin. It’s just as well I live in, and very rarely leave, the west of Scotland, where this weather is uncharacteristic. It’s also just as well I’m not going out in Glasgow for some considerable time.

Saturday the 30^th of June saw my final concert of this season, though a summer jazz festival doesn’t really count as part of any season other than the summer festival one. For want of something to do to maintain my record of having attended something at every Glasgow Jazz Festival since its inception (actually, my memory is so bad that I can no longer be sure that this is true), I attended this year’s performance by the Strathclyde Youth Jazz Orchestra (SYJO), and this is what I mean when I say that my memory is so bad. I was writing this blog in my head as I sat in the Old Fruitmarket. Six days later, and that piece of journalistic magnificence has all but vanished from my Swiss-cheese brain. Lucky for me, and you, I took notes. Sadly, I’m having trouble reading them!

They opened with a version of Duke Ellington’s ‘Take the A Train’, spoiled by the lead trumpet, who, while note-perfect, struggled for the entire gig to keep in time with everyone else in the band. They followed this with a Dizzy Gillespie piece, ‘Tanga’, which was a new one on me, or was it? I’ve just been looking at a version of it on YouTube, and it’s possible that Dizzy and his United Nations orchestra (featuring a young Arturo Sandoval on trumpet) could have played this at their gig in Glasgow on July 7 1990 (the night the Three Tenors concert was taking place in Italy, prior to the World Cup). Who knows? Anyway, the trumpeter who was having so much trouble in the first number played flugel horn in this one, but there was no improvement. The tenor solo was good though, and this was a feature for Allan Glen, a former member of the band. He was one of many guests in the ensemble, conducted by Stewart Forbes, which consisted of four trumpets, six trombones, six saxophones, piano, bass and drums. This is the second incarnation of the band, which is now based at Strathclyde University. Previously, it was, I believe, funded by the old Strathclyde Regional Council, created for the first festival in 1987, and was for many years under the direction of Bobby Wishart.

Back to last Saturday. The first vocal feature of the day went to the sharp-dressed presenter of the Jazz House on BBC Radio Scotland, Stephen Duffy, and he gave us his rendition of guest trombonist Adrian Drover’s arrangement of ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’. Drover has been a fixture on the jazz scene in Scotland from his days with the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra, and had once been a member of Maynard Ferguson’s band. The second number was Duffy’s own arrangement which brought together Neal Hefti’s ‘Li’l Darlin’’ and the Gershwins’ ‘Our Love Is Here To Stay’. Duffy has a wonderful voice, and an understanding of, and empathy with, this music which is second to none for someone of his age. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that he seems to have been doing it forever. I saw him perform with Bill Fanning’s band in the Glasgow Society of Musicians when he was about 15 or 16 years old, and everyone was in awe of this precocious teenager who not only knew the songs and how to sing them, but had written big band arrangements to accompany them. That was back in the late 80s. He’s a young 41 now.
 

The band was back in the spotlight again in arrangement of Oliver Nelson’s ‘Stolen Moments’. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Nelson’s own arrangement, and this spoiled it somewhat for me. I seem to recall that my first exposure to this piece was a recording by pianist Ahmad Jamal, played on Humphrey Lyttelton’s much-missed Monday night show on Radio 2 and, lo, here it is on YouTube. Next up, Lee Morgan’s ‘The Sidewinder’, which I seem to recall was my highlight of the day. Time, once more, for vocals.

SYJO is about to start recruiting for next term, as Stewart Forbes said about a dozen times, and, every so often, it unearths some gems. Today was no exception. He introduced a young lady by the name of Deborah Bismanah (apologies for the spelling), who was singing with the band for the first time. If the song, ‘Georgia’, was somewhat unimaginative, the performance suggested that she might just go on to become a big star. If she has a fraction of the success and respect Stephen Duffy has had, she won’t have had too bad a career. Speaking of Mr. Duffy, he returned for his final spot; Nelson Riddle’s arrangement of ‘Don’t Be That Way’, which was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, and a Barry Forgie transcription (arranger unknown) of a song Tony Bennett recorded with the Buddy Rich band, ‘There’ll Be Some Changes Made’. Finally, the band returned to Duke Ellington, with an arrangement (again, unknown) of ‘Things Ain’t What They Used To Be’, and this was followed by ‘All Blues’ by Miles Davis. Stewart Forbes announced that they were out of time, and that was my Glasgow Jazz Festival over for another year. Somewhat disappointingly, they never played ‘Milestones’.

SYJO made their big debut in that first festival in 1987, and I’ve seen quite a few line-ups along the way. That was the year I saw Benny Carter, the man who made one of the first jazz LPs I ever bought, and, thanks to the festival, I’ve also seen Oscar Peterson, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Dizzy Gillespie, Phil Woods, Maynard Ferguson, Chic Corea, Nat Adderley, George Shearing, Stan Tracy, Gary Burton, Wynton Marsalis and, I suspect, a few others. I’ve missed dozens and dozens more. Almost all the legends of jazz in its many forms are no longer with us, but as long as there are people willing to play the music and people willing to put on gigs and people interested enough to go to those gigs, jazz will survive. To live in the hearts of those we leave behind is not to die.