Seb Palmer

26 April 202526 April 2025

HOME & GARDEN: Green Room in Bloom!

This year is the first time either of our Wisterias have come into full bloom. The one out front is struggling a bit. Needs fresh soil/compost/nutrients, I guess?

The one out back – actually two plants – has really come on this year.

And some other bits of beauty in the garden…

26 April 2025

DAN’S FUNERAL/WAKE

Well… Dan’s funeral and wake took place yesterday, Friday, 25th April.

I took just two pictures: the one above, of a photo that was in one of the ‘Dan’s Life’ photo’ albums; and the one below, of Amy and Carmelle starting to boogie to the live music at Dan’s wake.

I wish I’d taken loads of pics of all the old friends we met and caught up with. But we were too busy meeting and catching up with them!

23 April 2025

MUSiC: Night Glider, ‘Groove’ Holmes, 1973

One of a three-fer set of CDs that arrived some while back, comprising: Night Glider, New Groove and American Pie, all on the Groove Merchant label (reissued on CD, in Japan, 2018-19).

Real ‘grits n’ gravy’ type soul jazz. A style that I simply adore. Joyful, sometimes quite rambunctious, but always dripping with, well… soul.

And do they groove!? Hell, yeah. Never was a player more aptly named! It may seem odd that there should be organ, electric piano and guitar. But these guys never get in each other’s way.

It’s quite a full and saturated sound. The congas and bongos added to the drums, and the three chordal instruments, as well as a horn duo… Boy does it ever have energy!

Track list
Night Glider (Ott) 5:20
Fly Jack (Ott) 3:34
It’s Going To Take Some Time (King/Stern) 4:30
Pure Sugar Cane (Holmes) 4:59
Go Away Little Girl (Goffin/King) 5:32
One Mint Julep (Toombs) 4:55
Young & Foolish (Hague/Horwitt) 4:22

Personnel:
‘Groove’ Holmes - organ
Seldon Powell - tenor horn
Garnett Brown - ‘bone 
Horace Ott - electric piano
Lloyd Davis - electric guitar
Paul Martinez - bass
Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie - drums
Kwasi Jayourba - congas & bongos

23 April 202525 April 2025

MEDiA/FiLM: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, 1963

The film starts with what very quickly feels like an interminable theme song, over a black screen. And then launches into a long Saul Bass directed animated sequence…

The Bass bit is poss my favourite part of the entire film?

It’s a ‘comedy epic’, of sorts. It’s unarguably epic, length-wise. It even has an Intermission! Comic? Well, I did laugh occasionally. But it’s more shouty than funny.

Madcap? Yes. Chaotic? Yep. Fun or relaxing? Erm… I’d have to say no, neither.

Like the title song, it’s an ordeal. How long can they keep this up? Especially when the plot-driving McGuffin is so quintessentially American, in the worst way: it’s about money, and it’s so insubstantial as to not really exist at all.

In that respect the film lives up to its title. It’s zany, and screwball. It’s a demolition derby. And it’s entirely pointless. Worse still, it might well give you a migraine, with all the shouting.

I don’t suppose – given the ‘stellar’ comedy cast – there were auditions. Had there been, one imagines they would’ve simply been shouting matches. With a bit of grimacing and gurning thrown in.

23 April 2025

ART/MEDiA: Nap Crossing Alps, David

This famous and iconic image has spawned countless copies/homages. You can see some of these by clicking this link.

23 April 202523 April 2025

MEDiA/HiSTORY: Winstanley, 1975

I finally got around to watching this, with Patrick, yesterday. Thanks, Hannah, for gifting it.

It’s beautifully filmed, in black and white (like the other superb and unusual Brownlow & Mollo film It Happened Here).

Blah…

NOTES:

Winstanley, from his pamphlet:

“Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease…?”

As usual, with a film like this, when you start looking into it, you uncover other interesting stuff. Also, I found this blog, The Celluloid Wicker Man, which is fascinating.

It’s worth noting that for some folk, there has actually been a second ECW, much more recently, with events such as The Battle of The Beanfield and The Battle of Orgreave echoing how society or the state brutally suppresses dissent.

23 April 2025

BOOKS/HiSTORY: Napoleon’s Marshals, Chandler (Ed?)

NB – Archival notes…

Napoleon’s Marshals – Ed. Chandler

XLV – Boney: ‘Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die everyday’. Perhaps one of the many reasons so many are fascinated with all things Boney is the contrast between his imposition of his will on the world, and our/their own abject submission to the compromises of life!?

XLIX – NB (Nap Bon) ‘in his earlier years was a supreme realist as well as an egotistical opportunist’.

NB – ‘It is with baubles that men are lead’. Sadly so often true!

NB – ‘If I wanted a man enough I would kiss his arse’!

LVIII – Augereau on NB: ‘sacrificed millions … to his cruel ambition’. Bernadotte: ‘that rogue, that scourge of the world who must be killed’!

Stendhal: ‘posterity will never appreciate what dull Jesuits those heroes of N’s bulletins really were’!

LIX – Excellent Van Loon quote re Boney’s charm (whole paragraph is worth quoting), but this’ll do for a pithy extract: ‘N was the greatest of actors and the whole European continent was his stage’. The single para from which this is extracted is arguably a better and more honest judgement on NB (inc. ‘I am telling you that the Emperor Napoleon was a most contemptible person’) than Paul Johnson’s entire windy diatribe.

23 April 202525 April 2025

MEDiA: The Civil War, Ken Burns, et al.

NB – Another ancient/archival entry! I’ll be doing a fair few of these; moving stuff off my iPhone(s), and on to the blog.

We in the UK can be a bit sniffy about our cousins across the pond over some issues, and decent TV documentaries would be a case in point. I recall seeing a British film-maker, I forgot who now, recalling with great exasperation the total disinterest in factual TV in the US, let alone in in-depth historical series, when he was attempting to raise finds for a factual programme. However, we’re dealing here with America’s own domestic history, and no doubt that helped the Burns brothers get their film made.

I never saw the original set, so can’t judge if this remastered version is a marked improvement or not. But I can certainly say that it’s a terrifically engaging and rewarding study. At the time of writing we’re two-thirds of the way thought the nine-episode series (there are 6 discs: five for the series, and a sixth with bonus materials). The episodes vary in lengths, ranging from about an hour, to over an hour and a half. So that’s about 10 hours in all.

There are a number of very good aspects to the series: much use is made of actors voicing the words of the protagonists, and this is done very well (with such luminaries as Garrison Keillor, Kurt Vonnegut, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Irons and even Derek Jacobi amongst the ‘voice talent’) – and there’s much that is poignant or witty, and sometimes both; this was one of the first major wars to be heavily photographed, and the images are incredible, both evoking an era that’s almost Napoleonic, and yet becomes almost contemporary via these amazing images; good use is made of attractive maps throughout the series; there are some very eloquent and interesting talking heads, with ACW buff Shelby Foote stealing the show with his erudite but avuncular mix of knowledge and southern charm.

The use of music and landscape in the series is extremely good, to the point that it is mesmerisingly seductive, which makes for very enjoyable viewing but might perhaps also sit somewhat oddly with the very macabre nature of the subject. Another clever ploy is that not only is there great reliance on first hand accounts, but they also ‘follow’ the fortunes of key players, and these range from the famous Titans, like Lincoln, Davis and generals like Grant and Lee, to the likes of mere cannon-fodder, such as Sam Watkins (Confederate) and Elijah Hunt Rhodes (Union).

There are numerous points where, if you’re anything like me, you might well be moved to tears, as when Sullivan Ballou writes to his wife not long before the first battle of Bull Run, or when you hear some of the stirring words spoken on the topic of the emancipation slaves. I might come back to this review and amend it once we finish the series, but so far, so very, very, very good indeed.

NOTES

Disc 1 – The Cause:

‘That which is not just is not law’ ‘I am in earnest, I will not equivocate… I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard’ – William Lloyd Garrison

Ep. 6

From The Wilderness to Cold Harbour (1)

We walked in the shadow of death (2)

Fifty thousand dead (3), men fall like leaves (4)

Cross the Chickahominy, on to Petersburg (5)

I begin to see it, you will succeed (6)

1 – narrative

2 – ?

3 – narrative

4 – Mary Chesnut

5 – narrative

6 – Lincoln

23 April 2025

BOOKS/MEDiA/MUSiC: Notes On Dark Side Of The Moon, John Harris

NB – I don’t know when I read this, or wrote what follows. But these are notes I made on this book, many (dark sided) moons ago…

10 – JH says that RW, like DG, ‘is destined to toil in the slipstream of the music he created in the 1970s.’ This puts me in mind a little of something Grayson Perry said in his a Reith lectures, re shock of the new, originality, etc. Perhaps find that quote, and work it in re theme of ‘slipstream’?

11 – DG on success of DSOTM: ‘you hit that strange impasse where you’re really not certain of anything any more. It’s so fantastic, but at the same time, you start thinking, “what on earth do we do now?”‘

21 – ‘the thrilling sense of possibility’ in light of success of Beatles & Stones (& ‘thawing of social strictures’ etc, on p. 22).

22 – ‘a slow-building cultural upsurge’ ‘new emphasis on the freeing of the individual’ etc., ‘multi-coloured hedonism’ & so on. ‘The aim of the alternative culture was … to break down barriers…’ Richard Neville (Ed. Of Oz).

23 – RN ‘There was something incredibly oppressed about the mass of grey people… With a bit of sexuality and exciting music and flowers … somehow the direction of society could be altered.’

25 – NM re flower-power era: ‘I never really thought it was a good way of designing one’s future.’

31 – interesting stuff re R D Laing & his Politics Of Experience, etc., re schizophrenia as ‘rational desire to opt out of impossible circumstances.’

32 – ‘underlying all this [Laing] was the belief that society so squashed individual potential that mental dislocation was inevitable.’ Laing: ‘The ordinary person is a shrivelled desiccated fragment of what a person can be.’ PJ ‘Is the madman speaking truth?’

55 – pink Floyd in 1969: ‘in fairness, there was a lot of such poorly realised, loose-ended stuff around in 1969. It was also the year that John Lennon and Yoko and they released the unlistenable life with the lions and wedding album… albums that sought, in their own ill-advised way, to test both their audiences expectations and the limits of musical orthodoxy.’ ‘Even their most quixotic music tended to be received with the generosity of spirit and different times would probably have denied them.’

[try and find Aaron Copland quote about skilled listening: where did I see that? Think I saw it on a Mosaic records email]

Musical roots for pieces from Dark side of the Moon go back as far as Zabriskie Point soundtrack e.g. Rick Wright’s ‘violent sequence’ music, which later formed the basis of ‘us and them’

60 – ‘I’m caught up in the whole pop business machinery’ RW

85-6 – Brit tour ‘commenced on 20 January 1972’ … ‘shows were often accorded the quiet respect that greets classical recitals.’ ‘The human bedrock of all this were crowds of music obsessed young men… atmosphere of hushed reverence.’

87 – re 1st dates: ‘A number of accounts … [inc. Nick Mason’s autobiog Inside Out ] … 17 February… [but actually] 20 January in Brighton.’ This 1st unveiling foundered on tech difficulties, so DSOTM ‘suite’ was 1st premiered the next night (‘along the coast in Portsmouth’).

88 – There’s a bootleg recording of the Brighton gig, and Harris dissects it, in relation to the final recording. V interesting! Clearly an evolving work in progress: ‘a great deal of what we now know as TDSOTM was in place, but it was still some distance from full realisation.’

One interesting reflection on all this is that Floyd were publicly developing their art: although they had a massive (9 ton!) lighting rig and a massive quadrophonic PA, the heart of the enterprise, the music itself, was work in progress. It all depends on what bands and audiences want: sometimes both can enjoy the excitement of risk and new territory being explored and annexed; at others both band and audience are reassured by familiarity, certainty and mastery. Either way, it can be interesting to contrast the edgier artsier approach with the more ‘showbiz’ idea of an exact and polished performance

Author: Seb Palmer

HOME & GARDEN: Green Room in Bloom!

DAN’S FUNERAL/WAKE

POETRY

MUSiC: Night Glider, ‘Groove’ Holmes, 1973

MEDiA/FiLM: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, 1963

ART/MEDiA: Nap Crossing Alps, David

MEDiA/HiSTORY: Winstanley, 1975

BOOKS/HiSTORY: Napoleon’s Marshals, Chandler (Ed?)

MEDiA: The Civil War, Ken Burns, et al.

BOOKS/MEDiA/MUSiC: Notes On Dark Side Of The Moon, John Harris