Northern Lights

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

discord and rhyme and court and spark and ollie olsen

I don't have a lot of time tonight and I only want to say a couple of things, one is trivial and the other is not trivial, so it seems trivialising of one to put it with the other, but also, a blog is just a diary of things that happen, isn't it.

So for the last few days I have been listening to this podcast Discord and Rhyme's long discussion of Court and Spark. It's not necessarily my favourite JM album (possibly Hejira is or maybe, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter - but tbh I could listen to any one of those three with no wincing at any time, so....). The weird thing about listening to people prognosticate about Court and Spark for me is that that album is so ubiquitous - I reckon I first heard it 45 years ago if not more and I know it very, very intimately, to the degree that I can't really critically judge it - if anything, it shaped me. There are lines in there that taught me about ways of thinking (no, I'm not going to quote anything, that would look soft) every bit as much as anything I read in a book by George Orwell. Who I was probably also reading voraciously when I was ten, how ridiculous.

The D&R peeps are a bit hard to get a handle on but there are a lot of them and they come together in different configurations to discuss LPs. They generally have a ridiculous affection for prog particularly, get this, the Moody Blues (!!!) and other trash like Yes or, I don't know, Pink Floyd. But they do have some insights. In this case though the most amazing bit for me was the naysayer of the gang, who clearly did not like the album at all, was very new to it, and kept saying that he couldn't retain any of the songs in his head after he heard them. I mean, I'm able to summon this music up in my head any moment of the day, so that is of course bizarre to me, but of course it's not wrong, it's just hard to imagine. So, I suppose the weird part for me is to try and think of there being people who never heard C&S from a young age and then all through their lives, and yet who otherwise present as rational souls with an understanding of the human world (ok, ok I'm overstating it). (The real revelation for me is how much C&S has meant to me most of my life).

The other thing, which the above potentially trivialises though not intentionally, is that Ollie Olsen died today. It's a real shame, not unexpected though, he was apparently in a bad way for some time. I had a great fondness for Ollie though I only met him once. That was a pleasant interaction though. He was a very important figure in my life in many ways and, of course, produced some incredible music. Not much more to say.

flook 16 october 1954

...and, rather bizarrely, this is the point at which Flook stopped running in US / Canadian newspapers. I wonder if there's any way to find out why the run ended. I mean of course there's no point in making a big announcement about a cancellation - it'll only get people upset - but this is a really strange place to end...