Music

The Kinks’ Autumn Almanac (1967)

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When I look back at this blog’s cov­er­age of influ­en­tial British rock bands of the six­ties, I see that the “big three” of The Bea­t­les, The Rolling Stones and The Who have all had their moment in the spot­light. There’s anoth­er band of the time, though, that arguably deserves to be count­ed in a “big four” and that is the band formed in Muswell Hill in 1964 by Ray and Dave Davies, name­ly The Kinks.

Unlike the afore­men­tioned bands who unar­guably achieved the sta­tus of inter­na­tion­al leg­ends of rock, the Kinks nev­er ful­ly cap­i­talised on their oppor­tu­ni­ties and tal­ents. For exam­ple, although the band emerged dur­ing the great British rhythm and blues and Mersey­beat scenes and joined those bands spear­head­ing the so-called British Inva­sion of the Unit­ed States, the con­stant fight­ing between the Davies broth­ers (a pop-cul­tur­al fore­run­ner of the Gal­lagher broth­ers, if ever there was one) led to a tour­ing ban in 1965.

As well as the volatile rela­tion­ship between the broth­ers, the song-writ­ing style of Ray Davies some­times took the band away from the expect­ed com­mer­cial music their con­tem­po­raries were striv­ing for. He sim­ply had too much wit and intel­li­gence and eclec­ti­cism, draw­ing on British music hall, folk and coun­try music to inform some of his out­put. Take 1968’s The Kinks Are the Vil­lage Green Preser­va­tion Soci­ety album: released the same week as the Bea­t­les’ White album, it con­tained a col­lec­tion of char­ac­ter stud­ies and med­i­ta­tions on a dis­ap­pear­ing Eng­lish way of life, all bril­liant­ly observed. Sad­ly, in a com­mer­cial world dom­i­nat­ed by psy­che­delia and effects ped­als and the Sum­mer of Love, The Kinks had turned down the dis­tor­tion on Dave’s gui­tar, and the album sunk with­out a trace (despite it lat­er becom­ing estab­lished crit­i­cal­ly as an all-time clas­sic).

Despite such occa­sion­al com­mer­cial fail­ures, the band remain one of the most influ­en­tial bands of all time, and you only have to look at the songs to know why. You Real­ly Got Me and All Day and All of the Night basi­cal­ly intro­duced the idea of the three-chord riff; and did much to turn rock ‘n’ roll into rock. Glo­ri­ous­ly melod­ic, sto­ry­telling songs abound: Sun­ny After­noon, Water­loo Sun­set, Ded­i­cat­ed Fol­low­er of Fash­ion, David Watts, Come Danc­ing, Lola. A host of future pop stars cit­ed their influ­ence and held them in high esteem (just ask Damon Albarn or Paul Weller).

A per­son­al favourite of mine is Autumn Almanac, a charm­ing vignette of Baroque pop released in 1967; here’s a Top of the Pops appear­ance to appre­ci­ate, and the lyrics below to remind us of just how Eng­lish-pas­toral-roman­tic Ray Davies could get.

From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly cater­pil­lar
When the dawn begins to crack, it’s all part of my autumn almanac
Breeze blows leaves of a musty-coloured yel­low
So I sweep them in my sack, yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

Fri­day evenings, peo­ple get togeth­er
Hid­ing from the weath­er, tea and toast­ed
But­tered cur­rant buns, can’t com­pen­sate
For lack of sun because the summer’s all gone

La la la la, oh my poor rheumat­ic back
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

I like my foot­ball on a Sat­ur­day
Roast beef on Sun­days, all right
I go to Black­pool for my hol­i­days
Sit in the open sun­light

This is my street and I’m nev­er gonna to leave it
And I’m always gonna to stay here if I live to be nine­ty-nine
‘Cause all the peo­ple I meet, seem to come from my street
And I can’t get away because it’s call­ing me, come on home
Hear it call­ing me, come on home

La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa

The Kinks
Poetry

Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken (1916)

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One pos­i­tive con­se­quence of the lock­down has been, for me and sure­ly for many oth­ers, the re-dis­cov­ery of the ben­e­fits of walk­ing the trails near one’s home. Vir­tu­al­ly every day through­out this peri­od I have strode out and delved into the woods, walk­ing wher­ev­er the mood takes me and dis­cov­er­ing that the myr­i­ad of criss-cross­ing trails allow for a near-infi­nite choice of dif­fer­ent routes to take. Cou­pled with the coin­ci­dent good weath­er and the sea­son­al bloom­ing of the blue­bells, these jaunts have been a source of great plea­sure.

Occa­sion­al­ly, I make out a quite faint trail, per­haps once used but for some rea­son now large­ly untrod­den and over­grown, and I take it, putting me in mind of that famous poem The Road Not Tak­en by the Amer­i­can Robert Frost, in which he says:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less trav­eled by

This idea of “The Road Not Tak­en” has tak­en off in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion and you can find its key lines on mugs, fridge mag­nets and in greet­ing cards, and it has an Eat-Pray-Love-style vibe about it. Of course, the first inter­pre­ta­tion a read­er is like­ly to leap to, read­ing the lines above, is one of indi­vid­u­al­ism and self-asser­tion (“I don’t go with the main­stream, me”), but actu­al­ly, when you read the poem, it’s not quite that sim­ple: the two ways “equal­ly lay / In leaves no step had trod­den black” and “the pass­ing there / Had worn them real­ly about the same”, which is to say, they’re inter­change­able. So it’s not real­ly about well-trod­den ver­sus untrod­den, or going with or against the crowd; it’s a sub­tler com­men­tary about ran­dom choic­es, about freewill ver­sus deter­min­ism. Like in the movie Slid­ing Doors, some split-sec­ond, this-way-or-that-way choic­es are bound to beget marked­ly dif­fer­ent con­se­quences, but you can nev­er know before­hand which is right. Such is life.

What­ev­er its inter­pre­ta­tion, its gen­e­sis actu­al­ly sprung from a sur­pris­ing­ly lit­er­al source. Frost spent the years 1912–1915 in Eng­land, where he befriend­ed Eng­lish-Welsh poet Edward Thomas who, when out walk­ing with Frost, would often regret not hav­ing tak­en a dif­fer­ent path and would sigh over what they might have seen and done. Frost liked to tease Thomas: “No mat­ter which road you take, you always sigh and wish you’d tak­en anoth­er!”.

So it’s iron­ic that Frost ini­tial­ly meant the poem to be some­what light-heart­ed when it turned out to be any­thing but. It’s the hall­mark of the true poet, though, to take an every­day expe­ri­ence and trans­form it into some­thing much more. Frost cer­tain­ly suc­ceeds in imbu­ing his short poem with an enig­mat­ic appeal. Here it is in full, and may the roads you choose in life’s jour­ney be the right ones!

Two roads diverged in a yel­low wood,
And sor­ry I could not trav­el both
And be one trav­el­er, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the under­growth;

Then took the oth­er, as just as fair,
And hav­ing per­haps the bet­ter claim,
Because it was grassy and want­ed wear;
Though as for that the pass­ing there
Had worn them real­ly about the same,

And both that morn­ing equal­ly lay
In leaves no step had trod­den black.
Oh, I kept the first for anoth­er day!
Yet know­ing how way leads on to way,
I doubt­ed if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Some­where ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less trav­eled by,
And that has made all the dif­fer­ence.

Robert Frost
Art

Théophile Steinlen’s Le Chat Noir Poster Art (1896)

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Le Chat Noir (you prob­a­bly don’t need that trans­lat­ing!) was a 19th cen­tu­ry night­club in the bohemi­an dis­trict of Mont­martre in Paris. It opened in 1881 at 84 Boule­vard de Roche­chouart by the impre­sario Rodolphe Salis, and closed, after a six­teen year glo­ry peri­od, in 1897, not long after Salis’ death. It is thought to be the first mod­ern cabaret: a night­club where the patrons sat at tables and drank alco­holic bev­er­ages whilst being enter­tained by a vari­ety show on stage and a mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

Le Chat Noir soon became pop­u­lar with poets, singers and musi­cians, since it offered an ide­al venue and oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice their acts in front of fel­low per­form­ers and guests. Famous men and women of an artis­tic bent began to patro­n­ise the club, includ­ing poet Paul Ver­laine, can-can dancer Jane Avril, com­posers Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, artists Paul Signac and Hen­ri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and many oth­ers from the move­ments of sym­bol­ism and the avant garde.

The cabaret also pub­lished a week­ly mag­a­zine (also called Le Chat Noir), fea­tur­ing lit­er­ary writ­ings, poet­ry, polit­i­cal satire, and news from the cabaret and the local art scene. The icon­ic poster art, which most peo­ple will recog­nise (and a few may even have it in mag­net form on their fridge) was by Swiss Art Nou­veau artist and print­mak­er, Théophile Steinlen.

Yep, my fridge!

Steinlen was in his ear­ly twen­ties and still devel­op­ing his skills as a painter when he was encour­aged by fel­low Swiss artist François Bocion to move to the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty of Mont­martre. Once there, Steinlen was intro­duced to the crowd at Le Chat Noir, which led to com­mis­sions to do poster art for them and oth­er com­mer­cial enter­pris­es. Here’s a selec­tion of his poster art, start­ing with the famous La Tournée du Chat Noir (pro­duced for when Salis took his cabaret show on tour). All Stein­len’s posters have an endur­ing appeal, and I’d bet that all of them are famil­iar to you.

Théophile Steinlen

 

Literature

Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children (1906)

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In com­mon with many, I first dis­cov­ered Edith Nesbit’s The Rail­way Chil­dren via the pop­u­lar film ver­sion made in 1970 and broad­cast on TV on and off ever since. I can con­jure up many mov­ing images from that movie that remind me of the sev­en­ties: the two heav­i­ly-pet­ti­coat­ed girls and their short-trousered broth­er bound­ing down hills, flag­ging down trains with red, home­made flags ; the good-heart­ed and proud sta­tion mas­ter played by Bernard Crib­bins; the emo­tion­al reunion of Bob­bie with her father on a steam-cov­ered plat­form. The book ver­sion I didn’t read until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, read­ing it out loud to my daugh­ter over the course of sev­er­al evenings – and we both loved it.

You prob­a­bly know the sto­ry: it revolves around a fam­i­ly who move from Lon­don up to rur­al York­shire into a house near the rail­way sta­tion, after the father, who works at the For­eign Office, is impris­oned after being false­ly accused of spy­ing. The chil­dren befriend a chap they call the Old Gen­tle­man who reg­u­lar­ly takes the 9:15 train near their home; he is even­tu­al­ly able to help prove their father’s inno­cence, and the fam­i­ly is reunit­ed. The fam­i­ly also takes care of a Russ­ian exile, Mr Szczepan­sky, who came to Eng­land look­ing for his fam­i­ly and Jim, the grand­son of the Old Gen­tle­man, who suf­fers a bro­ken leg in a tun­nel.

The book was first seri­alised in The Lon­don Mag­a­zine dur­ing 1905 and then pub­lished in book form in the fol­low­ing year. It’s inter­est­ing to pick up on pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tions from news that was cur­rent at the time. The theme of an inno­cent man being false­ly impris­oned for espi­onage, but final­ly vin­di­cat­ed, may well have been influ­enced by the Drey­fus Affair, which had been a promi­nent news item a few years before the book was writ­ten. Nes­bit will have aligned her­self, no doubt, with Émile Zola’s famous open let­ter in sup­port of the wrong­ly-accused Alfred Drey­fus, J’Ac­cuse.

Nesbit’s own involve­ment in pol­i­tics also pro­vid­ed inspi­ra­tion. Nes­bit was a polit­i­cal activist and co-founder of the Fabi­an Soci­ety in 1894 (she even named her son Fabi­an). She was friends with two real-life Russ­ian dis­si­dents, Sergius Step­ni­ak and Peter Kropotkin, an amal­ga­ma­tion of whom Nes­bit prob­a­bly had in mind for her Mr Szczepan­sky.

We also see ref­er­ences to the then-cur­rent Rus­so-Japan­ese War, in which Japan suc­cess­ful­ly halt­ed Tsar Nicholas II from tight­en­ing his grip on Manchuria and Korea, and Nes­bit has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sub­tly express her hos­tile opin­ions of Tsarist Rus­sia. I’m not sure if Nesbit’s oth­er books (she pub­lished around 60 books of children’s lit­er­a­ture, includ­ing the Psam­mead series and the Bastable series) sim­i­lar­ly reveal sub­tle polit­i­cal threads with­in them but you wouldn’t be sur­prised now, would you?

Here’s the clip from the film where Bob­bie (Jen­ny Agut­ter) spies her return­ing father amidst the steam on the plat­form and runs to him cry­ing “Dad­dy, my Dad­dy”. I well up every time.

Edith Nes­bit
Dance

Gene Kelly’s Dance Scene in Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

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2011’s mul­ti­ple award-win­ning movie, The Artist, was an homage to the Hol­ly­wood of the late 1920s dur­ing its dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion from silent movies to the “talkies”, and very good it was too. It wasn’t the first movie to find its inspi­ra­tion from that time, how­ev­er: 1952’s Sin­gin’ In The Rain, right­ly regard­ed as one of the great­est Hol­ly­wood musi­cals of all time, also tells the sto­ry of silent movie stars caught up in that tran­si­tion to a new era. It also hap­pened to con­tain one of the most famous dance sequences ever per­formed: Gene Kelly’s joy­ous rou­tine as a loved-up dream­er on a rain-soaked side­walk.

The sto­ry of the film’s mak­ing is an inter­est­ing one and on the sur­face may well have result­ed in a mish­mash of songs and ideas; the movie start­ed out as essen­tial­ly a van­i­ty project for MGM pro­duc­er Arthur Freed. Freed had spent the 1920s as a lyri­cist, writ­ing songs for talkies with Nacio Herb Brown. By the 1940s, he was head of his own MGM unit, and want­ed to cre­ate a musi­cal from his own back cat­a­logue (his song Sin­gin’ in the Rain had in fact already been used in the movie The Hol­ly­wood Revue of 1929). Bet­ty Com­den and Adolph Green were hired to write the screen­play and, real­is­ing that the songs were very much of their era, “it occurred to us that rather than try to use them in a sophis­ti­cat­ed, con­tem­po­rary story…they would bloom in some­thing that took place in the very peri­od in which they had been writ­ten”. The tran­si­tion from silent to sound thus pro­vid­ed the most appro­pri­ate — and as it turned out, per­fect – vehi­cle for Freed’s songs.

Don Lock­wood (Gene Kel­ly) and Lina Lam­ont (Jean Hagen) are a glam­ourous on-screen cou­ple who are also hyped by the stu­dio as hav­ing an off-screen romance, although in real­i­ty Don bare­ly tol­er­ates Lina and Lina only con­vinces her­self of the hype due to her own self-impor­tance. They are embark­ing on a new silent movie but their pro­duc­er realis­es late on that he has no choice but to con­vert it to a talk­ing pic­ture, due to the suc­cess of (real-life) movie The Jazz Singer. The pro­duc­tion is beset with dif­fi­cul­ties, of course, where­from much com­e­dy ensues, and Don falls for cho­rus girl Kathy Selden (Deb­bie Reynolds).

Gene Kelly’s famous umbrel­la-twirling dance scene took three days to film, and despite run­ning a 103°F fever for the whole peri­od, he achieved a piece of cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry. Mod­est as ever, he would attribute the number’s suc­cess to the crew, musi­cians, and com­posers. Upon the movie’s release in April 1952 audi­ences flocked to see it and, despite being large­ly ignored by the Oscars (unlike The Artist), it was a tri­umph. Get a load of Kel­ly’s charm and appeal in his famous scene here…

Poetry

William Wordsworth’s Daffodils (1807)

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The verges near where I live are sea­son­al­ly awash with daf­fodils, as no doubt are yours if you live vir­tu­al­ly any­where in the UK, so what bet­ter time to take a look at that clas­sic poem that reg­u­lar­ly makes its way into the nation’s favourite poem lists, name­ly William Wordsworth’s I Wan­dered Lone­ly as a Cloud (aka Daf­fodils)? I’m less cer­tain about nowa­days, but when I was young, this poem was the one that lit­er­al­ly every­one knew. If pushed to quote a line of poet­ry you could always fall back upon “I wan­dered lone­ly as a cloud” in the same way you might have said “To be or not to be” if pushed to quote Shake­speare.

Wordsworth was the man who helped to launch the Roman­tic move­ment in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture when, in 1798, he pub­lished Lyri­cal Bal­lads with Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge. As well as being a vol­ume of poems by the two men, the work includ­ed a pref­ace expound­ing the poets’ lit­er­ary the­o­ry and prin­ci­ples. They want­ed to make poet­ry acces­si­ble to the aver­age per­son by writ­ing verse in com­mon, every­day lan­guage and with com­mon, every­day sub­jects as the focus. This was against the grain, of course — how often do we find an artist, famous to us today, push­ing the bound­aries of con­ven­tion in their own time?

Although ini­tial­ly received mod­est­ly, Lyri­cal Bal­lads came to be seen as a mas­ter­piece and launched both poets into the pub­lic gaze, so when in 1807 Wordsworth pub­lished Poems, in Two Vol­umes, includ­ing Daf­fodils, he was already a well-known fig­ure in lit­er­ary cir­cles. Wordsworth had talked of poet­ry being “the spon­ta­neous over­flow of pow­er­ful feel­ings: it takes its ori­gin from emo­tion rec­ol­lect­ed in tran­quil­i­ty”, and Daf­fodils is the per­fect illus­tra­tion of what he meant ( For oft, when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pen­sive mood, They flash upon that inward eye, Which is the bliss of soli­tude…) .

It was inspired by Wordsworth and his sis­ter Dorothy hav­ing come across a long and strik­ing swathe of daf­fodils whilst out on a stroll around Ull­swa­ter in April 1802. Dorothy was a keen diarist who record­ed her own feel­ings about the daf­fodils, and this like­ly helped William frame his poem, and indeed, Wordsworth’s wife Mary also con­tributed a cou­ple of lines to the poem: it was a real fam­i­ly affair. If you want to remind your­self of the poem beyond its immor­tal open­ing line, here it is…

I wan­dered lone­ly as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of gold­en daf­fodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Flut­ter­ing and danc­ing in the breeze.

Con­tin­u­ous as the stars that shine
And twin­kle on the milky way,
They stretched in nev­er-end­ing line
Along the mar­gin of a bay:
Ten thou­sand saw I at a glance,
Toss­ing their heads in spright­ly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund com­pa­ny:
I gazed—and gazed—but lit­tle thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pen­sive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of soli­tude;
And then my heart with plea­sure fills,
And dances with the daf­fodils.

William Wordsworth
Music

Aram Khachaturian’s Adagio From Spartacus (1954)

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Khacha­turi­an! A great name, for a start, that I recall see­ing writ­ten on the back of one of those com­pi­la­tion albums of clas­si­cal music, owned by my par­ents. That album was actu­al­ly a great intro­duc­tion to the clas­sics; it’s where I first heard The Flight of the Bum­ble­bee, The Ride of the Valkyries, The Blue Danube, The Hall of the Moun­tain King, and, in the case of Khacha­turi­an, the fren­zied Sabre Dance.

Aram Khacha­turi­an was born in 1903 in Tblisi, Geor­gia, of Armen­ian extrac­tion (I think it was that patronymic suf­fix, -ian, com­mon to Armen­ian sur­names – such as Kar­dashi­an – that added a cer­tain some­thing). Fol­low­ing the Sovi­eti­za­tion of the Cau­ca­sus in 1921, Khacha­turi­an moved to Moscow, where he enrolled at the Gnessin Musi­cal Insti­tute and sub­se­quent­ly stud­ied at the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry. He wrote sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant con­cer­tos and sym­phonies, but he is best known for his bal­lets Gayane (from which comes the Sabre Dance) and Spar­ta­cus (from which comes the focus of this blog, the cap­ti­vat­ing Ada­gio of Spar­ta­cus and Phry­gia).

Spar­ta­cus fol­lows the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the famous glad­i­a­tor-gen­er­al, Spar­ta­cus, the leader of the slave upris­ing against the Romans in 73 BC (which actu­al­ly hap­pened, inci­den­tal­ly, and was exhaus­tive­ly chron­i­cled by Plutarch, but that – as I so often have to say – is anoth­er sto­ry!).

The Roman con­sul Cras­sus has returned to Rome from his lat­est con­quests in a tri­umphal pro­ces­sion. Among his cap­tives are the Thra­cian king Spar­ta­cus and his wife Phry­gia. To enter­tain Cras­sus and his cronies, Spar­ta­cus is sent into the glad­i­a­to­r­i­al ring and is forced to kill a close friend. Hor­ri­fied at his deed, Spar­ta­cus incites his fel­low cap­tives to rebel­lion, and ends up free­ing the slave women, includ­ing Phry­gia. The Ada­gio marks their cel­e­bra­tion.

It open with a del­i­cate syn­co­pat­ed rhythm from the strings, and a series of trills on the flute. A slow ascend­ing scale is played by the cel­los, and the oboe eas­es the music into the famous ‘love theme’ for the first time. It’s tremen­dous stuff and read­ers of a cer­tain age will almost cer­tain­ly remem­ber its use as the theme music to the TV pro­gramme, The Onedin Line.

Below, I present a ver­sion of the bal­let per­formed by Anna Nikuli­na and Mikhail Lobukhin of the Bol­shoi Bal­let. In addi­tion, below that, I have cho­sen anoth­er ver­sion: a piano-only ren­der­ing of the music, and I include it because it is just too exquis­ite to omit. The pianist is Matthew Cameron, who, as well as being a vir­tu­oso con­cert pianist, appears to be good-look­ing and, accord­ing to his web­site, col­lects antique his­toric swords, with a col­lec­tion dat­ing back to the 9th cen­tu­ry. Hat tip!

Aram Khacha­turi­an
Art

Sir Henry Raeburn’s The Skating Minister (1790)

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Sev­er­al times, in a for­mer job role, I had occa­sion to trav­el by train to Edinburgh’s Waver­ley Sta­tion and from thence to our site in Liv­ingston, where I would do my thing, stay overnight, and make the return jour­ney home the next day. Although usu­al­ly the booked train tick­ets allowed lit­tle room for extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, there was one occa­sion on which I man­aged to engi­neer a cou­ple of spare hours to vis­it Edinburgh’s Nation­al Gallery. It’s a five-minute walk from Waver­ley Sta­tion, past the Wal­ter Scott mon­u­ment and along Princes Street Gar­dens, and it is well worth the effort.

One of the more unusu­al of its col­lec­tion is Hen­ry Raeburn’s The Skat­ing Min­is­ter. Paint­ed around 1790, it depicts the Rev­erend Robert Walk­er, min­is­ter at Edinburgh’s Canon­gate Kirk, skat­ing on Dud­dingston Loch. It was prac­ti­cal­ly unknown until 1949 (when it was acquired), but has since become some­thing of an icon of Scot­tish cul­ture, paint­ed as it was dur­ing the Scot­tish Enlight­en­ment. It is today rare for Dud­dingston Loch to be suf­fi­cient­ly frozen for skat­ing, but in the Lit­tle Ice Age that encom­passed the 18th cen­tu­ry, the loch was the favourite meet­ing place of the Edin­burgh Skat­ing Club, of whom Robert Walk­er was a promi­nent mem­ber.

Sir Hen­ry Rae­burn was Edinburgh’s own, too. Born in Stock­bridge, a for­mer vil­lage now part of Edin­burgh, he was respon­si­ble for some thou­sand por­traits of Scotland’s great and good. He was dis­in­clined to leave his native land and, as a result, his renown in Scot­land is not matched in Eng­land where the names of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gains­bor­ough dom­i­nate the por­trai­ture of the peri­od. But in the Scot­tish Nation­al Gallery, he is far from for­got­ten, and his Skat­ing Min­is­ter will remain a firm favourite there for years to come.

 
Poetry

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s A Psalm Of Life (1838)

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The poet Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low (1807–1882) is prob­a­bly best known over here in the UK for his Song of Hiawatha (which I for one remem­ber doing at school), but also in his native US for his com­mem­o­ra­tive poem about that icon­ic event of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, Paul Revere’s Ride. He also com­posed the epic poem Evan­ge­line, about that shame­ful episode in British his­to­ry known as the Great Upheaval, or the Expul­sion of the Aca­di­ans, dur­ing the French and Indi­an War of 1754–1763. This was the forced depor­ta­tion by the British of thou­sands of the large­ly civil­ian pop­u­la­tions from the Cana­di­an Mar­itime provinces to oth­er colonies (includ­ing Span­ish Louisiana where the Aca­di­ans would become “Cajuns”, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry).

In addi­tion to the lengthy sto­ry­telling poet­ry, how­ev­er, there is also a short and sim­ple poem for which Longfel­low is cel­e­brat­ed, the inspi­ra­tional A Psalm of Life. First pub­lished in 1838 in the New York mag­a­zine The Knicker­bock­er, it is a sub­tle glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of life and its pos­si­bil­i­ties. As with Max Ehrmann’s Desider­a­ta and Rud­yard Kipling’s If, the poem is didac­tic in tone: an invo­ca­tion to mankind to fol­low the right path and think pos­i­tive­ly about life.

Its sub­ti­tle is What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist, which cre­ates some con­text: it is a psalm in response to a psalm. It is an objec­tion to the idea, gleaned by the nar­ra­tor from lis­ten­ing to some bib­li­cal teach­ing, that this human life is not impor­tant; that we are made of dust and will even­tu­al­ly return to dust. No! he says — life is real, it’s seri­ous, and this is not a drill…your body may return to dust but you have a soul so don’t squan­der your time here by wor­ry­ing about death. As the sev­enth stan­za says, we can make our lives sub­lime, and, depart­ing, leave behind us foot­prints on the sands of time…

I can’t do oth­er than endorse that thought! Now, read on…

Tell me not, in mourn­ful num­bers,
Life is but an emp­ty dream!
For the soul is dead that slum­bers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spo­ken of the soul.

Not enjoy­ment, and not sor­row,
Is our des­tined end or way;
But to act, that each to-mor­row
Find us far­ther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleet­ing,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muf­fled drums, are beat­ing
Funer­al march­es to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of bat­tle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, dri­ven cat­tle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleas­ant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the liv­ing Present!
Heart with­in, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sub­lime,
And, depart­ing, leave behind us
Foot­prints on the sands of time;

Foot­prints, that per­haps anoth­er,
Sail­ing o’er life’s solemn main,
A for­lorn and ship­wrecked broth­er,
See­ing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achiev­ing, still pur­su­ing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low
Music

Steely Dan’s Kid Charlemagne (1976)

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Wal­ter Beck­er and Don­ald Fagen met in a cof­fee shop at New York State’s Bard Col­lege in 1967, dis­cov­ered that they had sim­i­lar tastes and opin­ions about music, and soon start­ed writ­ing songs togeth­er. After a stint ped­dling songs in Manhattan’s famous Brill Build­ing, the duo moved to Los Ange­les to try their luck on the west coast. Real­is­ing their songs were too com­plex for oth­er record­ing artists, they formed Steely Dan, and with pro­duc­er Gary Katz, would go on to pro­duce sev­en fab­u­lous albums of sophis­ti­cat­ed jazz rock between 1972 and 1980.

Their quest for per­fec­tion is leg­endary, and the duo’s shared aes­thet­ic meant that Steely Dan would soon enough became less “band” and more Beck­er and Fagen backed by a series of ses­sion musi­cians. They would audi­tion musi­cian after musi­cian and com­mis­sion take after take in a fas­tid­i­ous search for just the right sound, just the right style, to com­ple­ment their vision. But boy, did it pay off, as they got to har­ness the tal­ents of such leg­ends as gui­tarist Lar­ry Carl­ton, bass play­er Chuck Rainey, and drum­mer Bernard Pur­die, not to men­tion one Michael McDon­ald of Doo­bie Broth­ers fame on back­ing vocals.

Their well-craft­ed songs were large­ly crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess­es and many would become radio sta­ples: Reel­in’ In The Years, Do It Again, Rik­ki Don’t Lose That Num­ber, Hait­ian Divorce, Peg. For me, one song in par­tic­u­lar sums up not only the genius of the music but Fagen’s won­der­ful sto­ry­telling abil­i­ty: Kid Charle­magne, the lead sin­gle from 1976’s The Roy­al Scam album. The song tells the sto­ry of the rise and down­fall of counter-cul­ture fig­ure­head Owsley Stan­ley (nick­named “Bear”), the Grate­ful Dead audio engi­neer and self-pro­claimed “King of Acid”. Bear’s clan­des­tine lab­o­ra­to­ry was respon­si­ble for sup­ply­ing the major­i­ty of the bur­geon­ing Cal­i­forn­ian LSD scene of the six­ties, and in him, Fagen found the per­fect char­ac­ter to weave a typ­i­cal­ly noir sto­ry around.

Take a look at the lyrics; they are full of deft touch­es. Fagen describes one of Bear’s par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful LSD for­mu­la­tions: “Just by chance you crossed the dia­mond with the pearl”. And on Bear’s ded­i­ca­tion to his craft: “On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene, but yours was kitchen clean”. And when things start to unrav­el (Bear was inevitably bust­ed of course), we can sense the para­noia: “Clean this mess up else we’ll all end up in jail, those test tubes and the scale, just get it all out of here”. And when the brown stuff is about to hit the fan, the cli­mac­tic ques­tion-response “Is there gas in the car? Yes, there’s gas in the car”. At this point I’m not only engaged with the sto­ry, I’m pos­i­tive­ly will­ing them to get the hell out of there!

Fagen’s lyrics over­lay a musi­cal pack­age that boasts a won­der­ful funk back­beat cour­tesy of Rainey and Pur­die, razor sharp rhythms and melodies from Beck­er and Fagen them­selves and from jazz pianists Paul Grif­fin and Don Grol­nick, and an astound­ing gui­tar solo (and out­ro) from Lar­ry Carl­ton. It is musi­cal alche­my of the high­est order.

Here’s the best live ver­sion I can find, in which the duo seem to have exer­cised the same rigour with this set of musi­cians as they did mak­ing the album!

While the music played you worked by can­dle­light
Those San Fran­cis­co nights
Were the best in town
Just by chance you crossed the dia­mond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That’s when you turned the world around

Did you feel like Jesus
Did you real­ize
That you were a cham­pi­on in their eyes

On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But yours was kitchen clean
Every­one stopped to stare at your tech­ni­col­or motor home
Every A‑Frame had your num­ber on the wall
You must have had it all
You’d go to LA on a dare
And you’d go it alone

Could you live for­ev­er
Could you see the day
Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away
Get along, get along Kid Charle­magne
Get along Kid Charle­magne

Now your patrons have all left you in the red
Your low rent friends are dead
This life can be very strange
All those day­glow freaks who used to paint the face
They’ve joined the human race
Some things will nev­er change

Son you were mis­tak­en
You are obso­lete
Look at all the white men on the street
Get along, get along Kid Charle­magne
Get along Kid Charle­magne

Clean this mess up else we’ll all end up in jail
Those test tubes and the scale
Just get them all out of here
Is there gas in the car
Yes, there’s gas in the car
I think the peo­ple down the hall
Know who you are

Care­ful what you car­ry
’Cause the man is wise
You are still an out­law in their eyes
Get along, get along Kid Charle­magne
Get along Kid Charle­magne

Wal­ter Beck­er and Don­ald Fagen

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