Spiny Norman

Earlier today I spotted this adorable little fellow snuffling around in my brother's back garden. I was fortunate to have a camera at hand: watching him ferret through the grass looking for breakfast made me feel incredibly happy on a cold and blustery May day.

Ten Influential Jazz Flautists

Renaissance man and newsreader, Ron Burgundy,  shows his dabbling skills on jazz flute

A few years ago I wrote a piece on the use of flute in popular music.  My focus was mostly on musicians playing classic rock and jazz-rock.  Although there are a few icons like Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull, there haven't been too many over the years.  I have always found this odd as the flute is a popular, accessible, expressive, instrument that is fairly straightforward to play (relative to, say, a violin or piano) and has a decent sound palette.

More recently I've been thinking about flautists in mainstream jazz. Again there are a few notables but not as many as you might think. Most are sax players extending their musical range.  Anyway I've cobbled together a Top Ten list of players who I think have been the most influential (not necessarily those with the best technique)  in developing the jazz flute soundscape over the decades. And before I get excoriated I must add the caveats that this list is highly subjective and there are bound to be omissions for which I apologize in advance!

1. Frank Wess

Frank was one of the pioneers of jazz flute.  He was classically trained and mostly played tenor sax but his flute work was a delight. Listen to this version of "The Midgets” when he was with Count Basie.  I love this song for its manic sense of fun.  It’s also one of the earliest jazz flute solos I know of…  Ed Jones on bass just rocks and Joe Newman is great (but then the whole Basie band was always superb).

2. Yusef Lateef

Dr Lateef is an American jazz musician and one of the first that made me sit up and take notice. His lyrical and tasteful improvisation was captivating.  I’ve been fortunate to see him perform several times  -he’s now in his 90s and still going strong although I don’t think he gigs very much these days. This is one of my all time favourite songs from his classic album "Eastern Sounds". 

3. Rhassan Roland Kirk

Possibly my all-time favourite jazz musician.  He was blind, very funny, and some say gimmicky (he would play three saxes simultaneously) but his talent was indisputable.  Again, I was lucky to see him in my youth, before he passed away, and he was certainly a phenomenal performer. His flute work influenced many, notably Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull who popularized the flute in rock music: Anderson's early recording included a rendition of   RRK's “Serenade to a Cuckoo”: here's the original. 

4. Eric Dolphy

Eric Dolphy is an interesting study as he moved away from bebop into hard bop and free jazz.  A very interesting musician who sadly died in his mid thirties.  He played all the usual reed instruments and odd ones like bass clarinet.  He was a very intense flautist and listening to him is de rigeur.

Try “Gazzeloni” off the Out to Lunch album. 

5. Herbie Mann

Not my favourite player in terms of technique and his trend towards commercialism detracted from his potential but he was capable of exceptional work as can be heard here with Bill Evans. Nevertheless he was a high profile flautist and his influence was enormous.

6. Jeremy Steig

I’ve discovered Mr Steig quite recently and have never seen him play. However, check out “So What” off the Flute Fever album (1963).  Steig was light years ahead of his time and  is the first flautist I know to use the overblowing technique: I've heard the technique attributed to the late, great (mostly saxman) Sahib Shihab but I haven’t found any evidence, one way or another, to support this claim.

7. Bud Shank

As well as its gut churning car chase, the  1968 classic “Bullitt” with Steve McQueen also features a fabulous piece of jazz flute music by an apparently anonymous band. The tune takes off at break-neck speed and has a real pyrotechnic quality. It took decades and the invention of the internet for me to find out more about the musicians. The band that appeared in the movie was real and called “Meridian West”: the flautist’s name was Julie Iger-Roseman. However, although they did play in the scene, they were probably later overdubbed by session musicians: in the case of the flute by the legendary Bud Shank. Mr Shank was an exceptional woodwind musician and I find it unfortunate that he is probably best known for his his highly commercial, saccharine, cover of California Dreamin. His work with  the LA Four was much more satisfying.  Incidentally, I understand Ms Iger-Roseman still plays flute at various locations on the central coast region of California but I'm unaware of any recordings. 

8. Hubert Laws

I posted a clip of Hubert and his band onsite here quite recently. A truly meticulous and excellent player.  At his best with interpretations of Stravinsky rather than bebop/hard bop.

9. Barbara Thompson

Barbara is a stalwart on the British jazz scene and her primary band, “Paraphernalia”, has been around  forever.  I’ve seen her play on numerous occasions.  More rock influenced than say the chamber jazz of female peers such as Ali Ryerson. Sadly she is now fighting a battle with Parkinson’s disease but is still playing. Check out this clip (flute starts at about 4 mins).

10. Everybody I've Neglected to Mention
This could be a long list  but among those who deserve at least a hat tip are Buddy Collette,  Jerome Richardson, Harold McNair, Joe Farrell and Dave Valentin. Melissa Keeling looks like a promising up-and-comer with a refreshing original spin.

Into the Valley of Death Rode the Six Hundred

Perhaps it's a little overly dramatic to cite Tennyson's poem here but my reason for this piece of theatre is that I needed to say something about the number "six hundred".  According to Blogger, this is my 600th post since starting this web log lark almost nine years ago.  This statistic may not be particularly impressive by the standards of those who write for a living but at least I'm still here which is more than I can say for most of the personal blogs that started around the same time as me.  Like the luckier Lancers of the gallant Light Brigade, I've more or less survived the barrage of chainshot, grapeshot and other artillery fire of day-to-day life and kept going.  So onward to the next 600 posts  -the problem is that the flak is still incoming and I haven't caught a glimpse of the cannons yet...!

Outside My Comfort Zone (Again)

Only five days to go. The prospect of some formal education is incredibly exciting! Daunting too. I mean to have the Gary Burton as my Professor (you know, the legendary dude who did all the groovy vibes stuff with Chick Corea and has won zillions of Grammys and things) is about as cool as it gets.

Now let's check the check list:

• Flute re-padded and in good working order √

• Back-up plastic flute ready √

• Guitar(s) (for reference) tuned and ready √

• Keyboard (again for reference) functional √

• Audacity recording program working (and I think I know how to use it) √

• iPad app with all known scales and chords √

• Metronome(s) ready √

• Talented friends at hand who are real musicians and I can call if I need to cheat help √

• Sunglasses √ (this is jazz, remember  -if you can't play it at least try to look cool!)

• Familiarity with 50s/60s jazz patois √  e.g. "Check out the cat with the groovy horn, man, he's far out"

• Theoretical knowledge √  (I can lurch through major and minor [harmonic and melodic], chromatic, minor pentatonic, blues and bebop scales, arpeggios; I know what the modes are and can count most time signatures).

• Ability.....the critical issue is can I improvise any better than when I was 21 and didn't know any of this theory stuff?  Doubtful!

I'll keep you posted...!

Richie Havens

Bugger! Now we've lost two Woodstock alumni in about as many weeks.  I was fortunate to see this legend at the Plumpton Whitsun Festival, Sussex, England in May of 1970 where he performed this song.

RIP, Mr Havens

Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam!

For the past two weeks the comments sections of the posts on this site have been bombarded with spam. Ostensibly (almost) legitimate comments inviting me or others to click on a link to the sender's site. Don't ask me where they go  -I haven't looked for fear of being mugged or catching a nasty infection. Oddly they've been distributed randomly throughout the comments sections of all 600 odd posts I've made since 2004 (wow, doesn't time fly!?).  Well I've deleted them all and added one of those wretched "Captcha" word recognition thingys that are supposed to defeat spam-bots. We'll see if it works. In the meantime apologies to all for the inconvenience  -sadly I think this is just modern living.

Have a Heart

Congratulations to former Bellevue, WA, residents Ann and Nancy Wilson for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I love having famous neighbors! Back in the day, their band, Heart, jumped out of the punk and perfectly-produced-Bee-Gees era music and proved that ladies could rock just as hard as the men. In the clip below they show that they are just about the only band in existence that can cover this perennial classic in a respectful, convincing and joyous manner without embarrassing themselves or the song's composers.  Jimmy Page is clearly diggin' it and Robert Plant is (amazingly) moved to tears. Well done girls!

Major Drag, Huh?

Man’s capacity to subject fellow members of his species to inhumane acts appears to be limitless.  In my relatively long lifetime which has been spent in almost equal measure in the UK and the USA I have witnessed a bloody and pointless war fought in SE Asia; a less protracted but vicious conflict in the islands of the South Atlantic that could have been avoided completely with just a little planning (in the style of “the fastest sword is the one that is never drawn”); a bitter internecine struggle, fought asymmetrically over 30 years in Ireland and the British Isles; six full-tilt wars in the middle east; and two superpowers with mind boggling arsenals of high-tech weapons and who each failed to learn the lessons of history regarding the fate of previous superpowers in the same location, brought to a humiliating standstill in the mountains of Afghanistan. Yesterday, breakfast television news was speculating whether a pudgy oligarch with a heinous haircut on the Choson Pando peninsula, would test fire a rocket with possible ICBM capabilities.

That was the situation until lunchtime. Then the report of the bombs in Boston broke and the old familiar pattern began.  There were a few harrowing video clips, news anchors went into overdrive analyzing minutiae in prosaic if not asinine detail and a string of allegedly expert talking heads were paraded across the screen. Déjà vu all over again!  Sadly I feel that in my dotage I’ve become resigned to the horror of these events. Terrorism has touched (or just missed me) on several occasions. In 1974, two pubs in my hometown of Guildford were blown up with loss of life and huge numbers of injuries. I heard the car bombs that killed a renowned Professor of Hematology at a British medical school (1975) where I was later to work as well as the politician Airey Neave (1979).  I saw and heard ambulance dispatches to the Hyde and Regents Park explosions of 1982 where cavalry horses and colorfully uniformed troopers were mown down by nail bombs in scenes of unspeakable carnage. In 1993 I watched a movie in a cinema in Charing Cross Road, London, only to learn a day or so later that a bomb that had failed to detonate was found under one of the seats and had been placed there several weeks previously. In 1996 the blast from a ten-ton truck bomb at Canary Wharf, London, nearly knocked in the windows of my flat two miles away across the Thames. Then came 9/11 and my cousin Robert, working for the investment bank, Cantor Fitzgerald, was tragically lost in the World Trade Center.

I have more examples but I’ve made my point and the list is long enough. The values of my generation in its youthful prime were of optimism and agreeable co-existence. “Give peace a chance” and “Make love not war” were common mantras but sadly dismissed as naïve and unworkable by our successors. Maybe they were but it was nice to be optimistic. Unfortunately my attempts over the years at conflict resolution have been only partially successful. Indeed I’ve had some spectacular, almost hilarious, failures and sadly I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how illogical or painful this behaviour may be, the human race thrives on conflict.  While this trait is certainly species-threatening, it remains to be seen whether it will cause an extinction event. Hopefully not but I’m not taking any bets. Indeed I’m reminded of the movie Terminator 2 and the conversation between the young John Connor (Edward Furlong) and his time-travelling Terminator bodyguard (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in which they discuss the fate of the human race:

John Connor: We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.
The Terminator: It's in your nature to destroy yourselves.
John Connor: Yeah. Major drag, huh?

Precisely!

Musical Postcards: Stephanie Porter

Here's another video clip of Seattle-area musicians. Earlier tonight I stumbled across this excellent combo: Stephanie Porter and her band. Absolutely superb!  Seattle is replete with talent  -the only place I know where you can pop into a neighborhood eatery for a bowl of soup and find musicians of this calibre just playing for fun.

All the usual caveats about photography with a telephone camera -it's dark and the lighting sub-optimal (my apologies to the band members who are nearly invisible). Noises from the bar and audience chatterings intrude on occasions but are bearable. The video was taken with Ms Porter's permission. 

War Stories: The Whispering Death

Wow! And it's near Cremona, too. I have a connection. Now I must get to see it. The Bristol Beaufighter is one of my favourite WW2 aircraft.  Despite being somewhat eclipsed by the sexier and faster DeHavilland Mosquito, the Beaufighter was a very capable aircraft. It was heavily armed and bristled with no fewer than 10 cannon and machine guns. In addition it could be fitted with rockets, torpedoes and bombs. It's large fuselage easily accommodated radar and the Beau excelled as a night fighter. It was also formidable in ground attack and anti-shipping roles.  Oh, and the name "Whispering Death" was apparently coined by the Japanese and is attributed to the aircraft's quiet Hercules engines that made use of sleeve valves instead of the more commonplace (and noisy) poppet valves. Oh Lord, I'm such a geek!

PS Seeing one of these aircraft in its physical form has been a bucket list item for quite some time. If the Italian site is not accessible there is always this one in Greece.

Buccal Up

As well as serving as a reminder that these spectacular collapses of Antarctic ice are telling us that Global Warming is real and species-threatening, a more personal and current metaphor for the phenomenon is that of my dental status. On Friday, while snacking on some roasted almonds, a seemingly gigantic piece of rear molar slid gracefully away from the rest of the tooth (the meso-lingual surface of tooth #19, to be precise). An emergency trip to the dentist today confirmed that a crown will be needed so in a couple of days I will be subjected to two hours of fun-filled numbness while the old stump is re-shaped and a temporary crown fitted. Apparently they have a large movie library for patient distraction purposes. I enquired whether they had Marathon Man (they didn't) -I wonder if they have Pulp Fiction or perhaps The Thomas Crown Affair...?

Gone Home: Alvin Lee

The last few months haven't been kind to musicians in the rock, jazz and pop arenas. If it wasn't bad enough with Jon Lord (Deep Purple), Lee Dorman (Iron Butterfly; -ok, ok but I loved "In a Gadda da Vida"), Dave Brubeck, Kevin Ayres (Soft Machine) all playing their last codas, Alvin Lee has now checked out. A terrible shock and a shame as I was hoping to catch him at one of his European gigs in the not too distant future. He was surely one of the first guitar shredders and arguably the most exciting guitarist at Woodstock. I'm sure he came close to melting his Gibson 335 on occasions. Here he is, appropriately enough, going home...RIP, Mr Lee.

Driving Stage ZR14: Rallye Monte Carlo Historique 2013

Want to know what driving a full historic rally regularity stage is like...? Here's a dashcam view of most of the ZR14 stage (Utelle to La Tour sur Tinee). It's a straight run (no junctions) on the D32 -an improbably narrow, winding, goat trail of road, with an appalling surface and strewn with large rocks that have fallen from the mountainside. To make matters worse there's no guard rail and the drop off the side is one of those "your clothes will go out of fashion before you hit the bottom" deals. A few things to remember (i) the camera lens is very wide angle so in reality the road is much narrower than it appears in this clip ad (ii) we are not racing but driving as a time-speed-distance regularity; that is to say we are trying to maintain a precise average speed (in this case I believe it was 47.7 KPH) and (iii) the cars we overtake are running below the average speed (an indication of the stage's difficulty)and we have caught them up. As you can see, at least one car, a large Mercedes, has gone off into the rock wall and bizarrely we encounter a broken down camper van. The RMCH is definitely not a wine and cheese party. And don't you love the way the Mini just flies by those Porsches...!

The team would like to say a big "thank you" to Justin Jeffrey at Mini Spares UK for generous sponsorship as well as participating as a member of our service team.

Sound Byte

In case any of you gentle readers happened to to be curious about what it sounds like to be inside a Mini Cooper S prepared for historic rallying, try dropping a fork down your sink waste disposal unit, mic up to a decent sized PA system and turn on. The decibel meter on my iPad registered 90dB at 4000 rpm. I didn't try on a stage (no time) when the revs were pushing 8000rpm. The use of an intercom with good noise cancelling headphones is highly recommended. And before you ask, this short clip was taken on a transit road section between stages and we weren't speeding. Honestly!

Weather in France

Not much here for the casual reader, I'm afraid. This page was constructed mainly for the use of members of the Mad Dog Rally team so they could get an instant take of the weather at a number os strategic points on the route of the imminent 16ème Rallye Monte Carlo Historique. Members of Team GB, a motley collection of seven cars (which includes Bill Richards and me) are also most welcome to browse around here. Clicking on a specific town will link to the French Meterological Office ("Meteo") and the four day forecast will pop up. I'll post something of more general interest soon...

Antraigues sur Volane
Burzet
Clelles
Die
Digne-les-Bains
La Bollène-Vésubie
La Chapelle-En-Vercors
Lantosque
Nice
Puget-Theniers
Saint-Agreve
Saint-Jean-En-Royans
Sospel
Tournon-sur-Rhone
Utelle
Valence

Shedding Some Light on the Matter: An Illuminating Evolution

When I first started rallying at the beginning of the new millennium, the Mini was fitted with two, period correct, 7" Lucas Flamethrower spotlights. These very quickly revealed themselves to be little better then useless when the going got tough and the term "candlepower" was never more apt. Subsequently I added two more Lucas 5 1/2" fog lights which also proved to be minimally effective. I then had the Flamethrowers (an optimistic term if ever there was one) rebuilt with modern reflectors and high output bulbs. In addition the Mini's headlights were replaced with quartz iodine units. This was a small improvement but we still weren't getting anywhere near enough light on the road, especially with Bill's (who was now in the pilot's seat) aggressive driving style on twisty mountain stages. So then we added a set of four classic 180cm Cibié Oscars. This was a lot better and night stages were becoming less scary. But the lighting evolution continued and for the subsequent rally we substituted the two center lamps for 220cm Super Oscars. Now I was beginning to feel that we were no longer outgunned by some of our competitors who seemed to have military-grade anti-aircraft searchlights bolted to their vehicles. But there is an old saying about the Monte, "You can never have enough light on the road". Too true! So for the 2013 event we have four 220cm Super Oscar spotlights with long distance beams and two 180cm Oscars with foglight reflectors to give us side scatter illumination which is particularly useful for 180° hairpins turns. Oddly we have never found a light which is any use in fog; maybe one year we'll fit radar for that...!

That Time of Year Again

Well it appears to be that time of year again when we engage in ritual combat with Porsches, Alfa Romeos, Jaguars and other automotive iron on the Rallye Monte Carlo Historique. It's come around very fast. I'm now madly making pace notes and doing a million things before I fly out to to fettle and calibrate the car next week. This time the "off" is from Monte Carlo on Monday 28th January and finishes at the same place in the early hours of Saturday 2nd February. A good place to spectate is the Quai Albert, MC, at the start of the Turini night loop on the afternoon of Friday 1st February or a little later at the top of the Col de Turini itself. Please come and watch if you are anywhere near the south of France or come and say hello after the finish. I won't bore you with more details now as everything will get published in the motoring press anyway (thanks Jeff)but in the meantime here are a few nice action snaps of the MiniSpares-Mad Dog Rally Team on the 2012 event.

Oh and you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter, too.

Musical Postcards: Hubert Laws

For some reason I didn't get around to posting this clip I captured last summer at Bake's Place in Bellevue, Washington. It features veteran flautist, Hubert Laws and members of his band joining up with the Lary Barilleau Latin Collective and taking off on a fantastic jam together. Rob Mullins dominates the piano in rare fashion. I can't remember when I last saw such a spontaneous and exciting session. Bravo!

Musical Postcards: The Blooming Heather...

No, this is nothing to do with Francis McPeake's wistful folksong about bonnie Scotland so if you came here looking for stuff about wild mountain thyme and so forth you're going to be sorely disappointed. This is another vignette in my local musicians series and features the terrific Heather Sullivan and an assortment of talented friends tearing it up at the Pogacha bar in Issaquah, Washington. Jackson Rice's trumpet solo is simply outrageous! Rock on, guys!

Musical Postcards: Pearl Django

Collecting video clips of local musicians seems to have become an inadvertent hobby. Sometime ago, while wandering around a local shopping mall in Bellevue, Washington, I chanced across this delightful nugget of  gypsy jazz.  In this clip, Seattle-based Pearl Django perform the Reinhardt/Grapelli classic, "Djangology".  If this doesn't make you tap your feet, there is no hope. Excellent! Usual excuses about image quality with a mobile phone...