Around 420 years ago, a guy you may have heard of called William Shakespeare opened his new play ‘Twelfth Night’ with the words ‘if music be the food of love, play on’. As is often the case with ‘The Bard’, the literal meaning of the words is not clear but the imagery really ‘strikes a …
A rough guide to music vocabulary and expressions Read More »
‘ ‘If music be the food of love, play on’, wrote Shakespeare in his comedy play Twelfth Night. Like a lot of the Bard’s quotes, I tend not to take it too literally but rather revel in the words themselves and allow the poetry to work its magic on my imagination. This is also true …
This is not going to be an exhaustive look at Nick Drake but a general chronology of his short life, with some analysis of his music and lyrics and thoughts on what may have caused the dramatic downward spiral of 3-4 years that turned a relatively happy young man with enormous talent, good looks and …
Being born in England in 1975, (don’t worry, you’re not getting the full life story!), it was impossible not to know who The Beatles were as I was growing up, even if my knowledge of them didn’t extend much past the song ‘Yellow Submarine’ at that point. Just before my world changed in around 1988, …
Introduction to ‘Glass Onion: Conversations On John Lennon’ (first draft) Read More »
(written in 2015) I’ve recently had the good fortune to become part of the musical community of Madrid and to encounter a group of fun, interesting and creative people. Like me, they appear to be curious, sensitive, restless and occasionally troubled souls, searching for the elusive and using performance as a way to simultaneously attempt …
Creativity, Communal Experience and Mental Health Read More »
First, the facts as they are known John Lennon was born in 1940 and died in 1980, 2 months after his 40th birthday. It’s fair to say that he packed a lot of living into his half-a-lifetime, and it’s also universally acknowledged that his death in New York on Monday December 8th 1980 came as …
The Rather Strange Last Day In The Life of John Lennon Read More »
The Beatles are the pop/rock group and phenomenon that has been a major part of my life and my psyche for over 30 years since the day in about 1988 when a boy in his early teens brought up on mainly commercial 1980s music suddenly encountered music that was largely new to his ears but …
A couple of years ago, I recorded a discussion called ‘Truth Comedy’ with Julian Charles for his excellent alternative media website/podcast ‘The Mind Renewed’, in which we explored how comedy can be used to reveal inner and outer truths, using various reference points such as Bill Hicks, Andy Kaufman and the films ‘Being There’ and …
Blue Suede Truth: A Cursory Guide To Inner And Outer Truth Read More »