Good Morning

Well, October is just a couple of days away.

Selling

So that Pirandello paperback I am selling for £45 on eBay and the Looking For Amerca textbook £30 with offers accepted on both. Wish me luck!

Sold three more items last night on eBay! A further £17 added to the bank.

A Wired Sunday

Some music that has been scrutinized by Wire -

MHYSA - Bb

The Philadelphia based artist’s latest music video explores escapism and empowerment in R&B aesthetics.

Ennio Morricone - The Thing (theme)

Vainio & Vigroux - Brume

Enjoy.

Early Music Treats

Some sounds from the real past - like 12th-century and beyond.

Ensemble Antequera - Cantiga de Santa Maria 1 : Des oge mais

Ensemble Antequera, Johannette Zomer, dir. Cantigas de Santa Maria - Eno nome de Maria.

Antequera takes the approach that the Cantigas de Santa Maria were composed mainly in the troubadour style. Their interpretation therefore reflects melodies that are mainly European (Provence and France) with some influences from Jewish and Arabic cultures present at the time at Alfonso X's court.


Bijan Chemirani - Liqa (feat. Henri Agnel)

Amina Alaoui, Ahmed Piro Orchestra - Ida Yahij

From the CD "Arabo-Andalusian Music of Marocco"


Ebjoy.

Classic 70's Soul and Funk

Well, these were the best soul and funk days -

Rose Royce - Car Wash

Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove

Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

Oh yeah. Dig it!

Enjoy

Three Slabs of Jazzy Funk and Funky Jazz

Jazzy is my name and Jazz-funk is the game. Or something like that...

Bob James - Westchester Lady

Another album I use to have on vinyl.

Donald Byrd - Flight Time

I had this on vinyl once. Classic jazz-funk.

Cymande - Brothers On The Slide

Another slab of funky groove that went down well at the Northern Lights in Brighton.


Good times!

Enjoy.

From That Music Meme

Some music from that music meme I did -

Gil Scott-Heron - The Bottle

Scott Walker - A Lover's Love

From the album The Drift.

Björk - Mouth Mantra

Low - Standby

Enjoy.

Book 82 - Shaun Bythell "Diary Of A Bookseller"

Shaun Bythell "Diary Of A Bookseller" (Profile Books)




These are the experiences of Shaun Bythell, a bookseller in Wigtown in beautiful Scotland, in diary format. The working days, the interesting customers (problematic or not), the co-workers, the struggle to support a second-hand bookshop (the second largest in the country) in the era of technology, everything that makes bookselling such a fascinating and exhausting profession is included in this book.
There were two things that won me over and kept me going. The experiences of the author- sometimes, they proved to be real adventures- while trying to find the most appropriate books for his shop and the stories of the people linked to them. Their deceased owners and the ones that stayed behind and had to part with the books. Some of them. The rest were cruel monsters but anyway. Another interesting part is the connection of the bookshop world with Amazon and the importance of the online market in general. It was sad to learn how a mere rating in a dubious platform could influence your overall effort despite all your hard effort. In our digitalized, fast-food era, online purchases are vital for the survival of any shop. On a lighter note, there were certain titles that were absolutely hilarious. Not one to judge but it definitely makes you wonder why people sometimes choose specific books. Do they buy them for the sake of research or have they organised their priorities wrong? These were the most amusing features of the book, in my opinion.

Shaun is very much a person who lives in his head and is comfortable (at least writing in his journal!) about his emotional as well as practical experiences as a bookseller. Harder to do than you might think. Even the most exasperating customer is, ultimately, forgiven with the shrug of a person who loves what he does and is willing to take the good and the bad. At one point he remarks that hard work as being a bookseller is (and he is convincing about that) he wouldn't want to be doing anything else, especially if it involves working for someone else. Some of the most fun are the descriptions of his eccentric employees (in particular Nicki of the winter ski suit and Foodie Fridays), going about the countryside to pick up books, the book festival preparations (how I would love to go!) and the bizarre books that people order. It is difficult to know what will happen to the physical book industry, new and used, but I suspect, like the movies, that physical books will persist side-by-side with other options and modalities.

Yes, this book did make me laugh out loud, and solely for that I highly recommend it.

Pentangle

Listening to quite a bit of Pentangle today and this track adorned just one side of an LP -

Pentangle -Jack Orion

Jack Orion was as good a fiddler
As ever fiddled on a string
He could make young women mad
To the tune his fiddle would sing
He could fiddle the fish out of salt water
Or water from a marble stone
Or milk from out of a maiden's breast
Though baby she'd got none
He's taken his fiddle into his hand
He's fiddled and he's sung
And oft he's fiddled unto the King
Who never thought it long
And he sat fiddling in the castle hall
He's played them all so sound asleep
All but for the young princess
And for love she stayed awake
And first he played at a slow grave tune
And then a gay one flew
And many's the sigh and loving word
That passed between the two
Come to my bower, sweet Jack Orion
When all men are at rest
As I am a lady true to my word
Thou shalt be a welcome guest
He's lapped his fiddle in a cloth of green
A glad man, Lord, was he
Then he's run off to his own house
Says, Tom come hither unto me
When day has dawned and the cocks have crown
And flapped their wings so wide
I am bidden to that lady's door
To stretch out by her side
Lie down in your bed, dear master
And sleep as long as you may
I'll keep good watch and awaken you
Three hours before 'tis day
But the rose up that worthless lad
His master's clothes did don
A collar he's cast about his neck
He seemed the gentleman
Well he didn't take that lady gay
To bolster nor to bed
But down upon the bower floor
He quickly had her laid
And he neither kissed her when he came
Nor when from her he did go
And in and out of her window
The moon like a coal did glow
Ragged are your stockings love
Stubbley is your cheek and chin
And tangled is that yellow hair
That I saw yester' 'een
The stockings belong to my boy Tom
They're the first come to my hand
The wind is tangled my yellow hair
As I rode o'er the land
Tom took his fiddle into his hand
So saucy there he sang
Then he's off back to his master's house
As fast as he could run
Wake up, wake up my good master
I fear 'tis almost dawn
Wake up, wake up the cock has crowed
'Tis time that you were gone
The quickly rose up Jack Orion
Put on his cloak and shoon
And cast a collar about his neck
He was a lord's true son
And when he came to the lady's bower
He lightly rattled the pin
The lady was true to her word
She rose and let him in
Oh whether have you left with me
Your bracelet or your glove?
Or are you returned back again
To know more of my love?
Jack Orion swore a bloody oath
By oak and ash and bitter thorn
Saying, lady I never was in your house
Since the day that I was born
Oh then it was your young footpage
That has so cruelly beguiled me
And woe that the blood of the ruffian lad
Should spring in my body
Then she pulled forth a little sharp knife
That hung down at her knee
O'er her white feet the red blood ran
Or ever a hand could stay
And dead she lay on her bower floor
At the dawning of the day
Jack Orion ran to his own house
Saying, Tom my boy come here to me
Come hither now and I'll pay your fee
And well paid you shall be
If I had killed a man tonight
Tom I would tell it thee
But if I have taken no life tonight
Tom thou hast taken three
Then he pulled out his bright brown sword
And dried it on his sleeve
And he smote off that vile lad's head
And asked for no man's leave
He set the sword's point to his breast
The pommel to a stone
Through the falseness of that lying lad
These three lives were all gone


A traditional folk song of bloody deeds. 

Book 83 - Sam Wasson "Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M"

Sam Wasson "Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M: Audrey Hepburn And The Making Of Breakfast At Tiffany's" (Aurum)




I loved Audrey Hepburn In those classic movies she did. By the end, I found that everyone who knew her loved her - so no startling revelations here. Indeed, the author didn't set out to insult anyone: according to the subtitle, his intent is to position Audrey and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" as precursors to the "modern woman", although it's not clear who that woman is.

Audrey herself professed to put children and family far before her career and testimony from her son Sean and Robert Wolders, her longtime spousal equivalent until the end of her life, supports this. Apart from the flashy career she fell into and ultimately abandoned, Audrey was a firm traditionalist. Perhaps it was her character, Holly Golightly, the author had in mind?

The idea for the book surely came from Wasson's other book, "A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards", the director of "Breakfast". He is the most fleshed-out character in this book, partly because of Wasson's access to him and his friends. He managed a happy, sometimes whacky set that presaged the zaniness of his Inspector Clouseau movies.

Most of the others involved in "Breakfast" have died: the two lead actors, the writer, one of the producers and the composer of the haunting title song, "Moon River" - Henry Mancini. The notes at the back cite lengthy input from Richard Shepherd, a producer, supporting actress Patricia Neal, and Hepburn's family. The remaining sources are magazine interviews with the principals and biographies of Truman Capote, Edith Head and others. So far so good until Wasson attempts to put words in his protagonists' heads as he does with Hepburn. Here she - supposedly - is as she waits in a car to begin the first scene in front of Tiffany's at 5 A.M.:

"What she had to do now was to forget that she wasn't anyone's first choice, and that Capote was dissatisfied (some said), and that no one seemed to know how much Holly was, well, whatever she was ... She had to forget about her fights with Mel (Ferrer, her husband) whom she missed as much as she was glad to be without. It wasn't something Audrey had put words to. Was it really true love? Or was it grown-up love, the kind they don't make movies about?"

This seems to be a monumental presumption. One of the magazine sources Wasson uses elsewhere in the book is "Photoplay", a popular movie rag of the 1950s and 60s and this pulpy item certainly reads the same way.

Truman Capote's Holly Golightly was based on his mother and some of his "swans", the New York socialites he palled around with. She was a dreamy-eyed girl who partied hard and supported herself by sleeping with men for money. In hiring Hepburn, the producers hoped to win over the production code people, and by blurring the reality of how Holly made a living, the movie manages to leave unsaid that she is, essentially, a hooker. The casting of everyone's favourite good girl helped sell that idea.

If Wasson's theory is that Holly (not Hepburn) signalled the "dawn of the modern woman", he also conveniently ignores the whole prostitute thing and apparently bases this on the fact that Holly lived alone and made her own way in the world. That girl is the one that Helen Gurley Brown celebrated in 1962 with "Sex and the Single Girl" and sassy as she was, Helen wasn't recommending prostitution for her career-minded readers.

In the end, it's enjoyable for the light-as-a-feather gossipy story it really is: part fact, part made-up stuff posing as fact. The author's attempts to make it some sort of comment on the dawn of something serious was off-putting and a little insulting to the reader's intelligence. Ignore the ridiculous subtitle: this is a story of how an entertaining movie was made, and some of the drama that went into hoodwinking the public as to what it was really about.

Just Wondering

Do you keep a glass of water by your bed at night?

If you have pets join you at night, where do they sleep?

Do you keep a flashlight by your bed?

Good Night