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The Lounge Lizards, Live '79-'81

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“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”

Jim Jarmusch, The Golden Rules of Filming

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Also ... 

David Murray Octet, Dark Star : The music of The Grateful Dead

String Quartets by Penderecki & Lutoslawski (Royal String Quartet) 

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The new Sherlock episode was obligatory viewing for myself & the Cumberbitch of a younger Wafflette. However ... decent as it was there's that nagging feeling developing into a more tangible wince that ... well ... it's lost the plot.

Thankfully, there was no grating Graham Norton Moriarty or the irritating 'and-then-I-woke-up-and-it-was-all-a-dream' type of reframing (although the last five minutes seemed to promise that). The problem lies in the increasing Soap Operatics - as if we bloody cared about Watson and his family! No, really, not interesting. God knows why Mark Gatiss has decided to foreground this aspect of the story - pressure from the BBC to make it more 'audience friendly'? A lack of confidence in spinning true suspense & criminal deviousness? The scathing put downs from Sherlock drying up?

Frankly it's all becoming a bit maudlin - ironically, the very tendency that would prompt a dismissive "dreary, dreary" riposte from Holmes.

Over lunch we agreed that the first series was head and shoulders better. Why? A case per episode. Just like the books. Sufficient sparring between Sherlock, Watson and the police plus the occasional and truly disquieting appearance of Mycroft. Wonderful. (Actually, the younger Wafflette admitted that she was beginning to think Mycroft was starting to eclipse Holmes ... Gatiss consciously or not upstaging his star. Oh dear ...)

In report writing mode as I am, let's give this Sherlock Holmes a B minus/ C plus? With a stern recommendation to go back to basics.

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Notebook collage

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"Time is not just years and dates, but weeks and seasons. Time is a pack of cards, to be shuffled by skill and chance, or gathered into suits through complex games, built up or down black on red in endless sets of patience, or of solitaire, with care perhaps not to get the ace of spades ... covered up so that you can't get him out, or a gambling game, no trumps, somebody winning and somebody losing, or else laid out in mysterious formulae from which some Madame Sesostris foretells the future, reads character, digs out the vital spots ..." ('Timing the Thunder', A ZBC of Ezra Pound, Christine Brooke-Rose)

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Steve Lacy 'Only Monk' on the stereo.

Thinking 2017 is the year my friend Eric didn't live to see. & I've only just discovered Ray DiPalma died a week or so into December. Kind of strange that while thinking of a way to assemble a text for Eric I dug out DiPalma's Obedient Laughter (although I'm not entirely sure why).

A List of Books I've Been Reading During 2016 ...

... & Which You Might Find Interesting, Too ...

1. Deep Listening, Pauline Oliveros
2. Commotion of the Birds, John Ashbery
3. My Private Property, Mary Ruefle
4. A ZBC of Ezra Pound, Christine Brooke-Rose
5. The Book of Beginnings, Francois Julien
6. Taction, I. Kyuyoh
7. The Unknown Craftsman, Soetsu Yanagi
8. A Picture Is Always A Book, Robert Seydel
9. Modern Music & After, Paul Griffiths
10. Archeophonics, Peter Gizzi
11. Selected Poems, Keith Waldrop
12. tout droit vers la fin en sifflotant, ARPAIS du bois

For more on the Black Ice CD & the thinking behind the project ...

https://youtu.be/QQX-5L9Mkgk

Ear Food : Ten Highlights of 2016 ...

(in no particular order)

1. Discovering Tord Gustavson's music
2. Julian Bream playing Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland
3. My appreciation of J.S. Bach piqued, reawakened, transformed, affirmed ... through the playing of Anna Gourari, Til Fellner & Igor Levit
4. Discovering Gyorgy Kurtag
5. That Saturday in Antwerp & hearing Barbara Hannigan's voice for the first time & all that opened up ... Abrahamsen ... the Satie collaboration with Reinbert de Leeuw ... etc.
6. Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Beethoven
7. Thomas Ades - Aracadiana in particular
8. Mette Henriette & Anna Thorvaldsdottir - very different but somehow linked in my brain
9. Finally getting Pierre Boulez - Le Marteau sans Maitre is the one!
10. Anything & everything by the Belcea Quartet (& actually getting off my arse & being there at Flagey the other evening)

& one (two) more ... acknowledging that Frank Zappa & Keith Jarrett still cut the mustard (Chicago '78 & A Multitude of Angels respectively)

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A playlist to bring 2016 to a close & ease into 2017 ...

Black Ice, Wolfert Brederode Trio

Voice of Chunk, The Lounge Lizards

Ed Blackwell box set (including Old and New Dreams)

Vespers, Rachmaninoff

Clues 22 & 16 Down caught my eye in today's Guardian cryptic crossword ...

Tycoon requiring a wig, lacking leadership: a word of caution about this arse (6,5)

Nice one.

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A Merry Christmas 

& 

A Happy New Year 

to the 

Faithful 

(i.e. those still reading) 

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Belcea Quartet Twentieth Birthday Concert at Flagey - more or less up the road from us.

On the programme: 

Schubert - String Quartet no. 10

Penderecki - String Quartet no. 2

then, after the interval ...

Penderecki - String Quartet no. 4 (its Belgian premiere with Krzysztof in attendance)

Schubert - String Quartet no. 14 'Death and the Maiden'

Gorgeous stuff. 

End of year in anticipation of New Year Resolution: do this more often. 

Supposedly Musique 3 recorded it. I'll let you know as & when it is broadcast. 

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One definition of "inconsolable" is that sense of wanting to share an enthusiasm with someone who is no longer there. 

To my knowledge, Eric would never have managed to hear this new box set from Keith Jarrett. More's the pity. So to fill his absence, I type these words on the chance someone else will coincide. 

So far I have only listened to the first disc - 'Modena' - which is divided into two parts plus a short encore of 'Danny Boy'. To my ears, this is some of Jarrett's finest solo piano playing. Where last year's Creation left me cold, this new release compels repeated plays even within the same day. 

I'm only too aware of how Jarrett can be his own worst enemy: pretentious liner notes, uneven albums, tantrums on stage. However, when you hear music of this quality you're prepared to forgive him. 

This is special.