The Rest is Noise (6)--Descent into the Maelstrom

It’s been leading up to this, the past several months, as we have tracked the descent of the twentieth century into its mid-century madness through the course of its music. Andrew Ross’s book is quite clever in this—but it seeks to illuminate the music of the century through its intellectual and social history. The focus at the events at the South Bank’s The Rest is Noise festival, however, seems to have gone off into the opposite direction—seeking to illuminate the intellectual and social history of that most complex of centuries through its music. This has been reinforced by the sheer amount of talking—mostly brilliant—that has characterized the weekend sessions. You could spend entire weekends just listening to talks and not attending any concerts, and you’d still come away inspired. But the music is the point, isn’t it?

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Unsolicited museum review: Ice Age Art, at the British Museum

The British Museum’s astonishing exhibit, Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Human Mind, is one of the best shows they’ve had since we’ve been in London. It’s a collection of carvings from the dawn of modern history in Europe, mostly on mammoth or reindeer ivory. The carvings are of a variety of objects—women, mostly, but also animals, and, more recently, abstract designs and even what appear to be maps. The list of superlatives becomes almost boring—the earliest puppet; the oldest known ceramic figure; the earliest known female figure; the earliest known animal carving. Ranging through the show is an astonishing experience. I find myself running out of superlatives to describe the experience.

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Wheatless in Hampstdead

According to an article in yesterday’s Independent, the weather in Britain, especially England, has been so lousy that Britain is set to go from a wheat exporter to a wheat importer for the first time in a decade. The culprit here, if there is only one, appears to be the long spell of cold weather we have had this winter, on top of what can only be called a terrible year of weather. First we had a severe drought in the Spring, and then the rains came thundering down, so then we had a lot of flooding, pretty much all over the country. Then this ridiculously cold and long winter. So grain harvests have been ruined. Actually, not just grain harvests—the folks at Riverford Farms out in Devon, who supply us with our vegetables, have had a pretty bad winter for vegetables, on top of a pretty bad year last year. Of course, this is nothing compared with the wheat problem that Egypt faces. But still, it's indicative of a pretty unfavorable trend.
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Happy Birthday to the Tube

After a year in which the celebrations never seemed to end—the Queen’s Jubilee, the Olympics, and lord knows what I’ve already forgotten—the celebrations have barely paused for breath in the new year. Because 2013, it turns out, is the 150th birthday of the London Underground—The Tube. This is a big deal. Residents in larger cities with underground mass transit systems will appreciate this—it is frankly impossible to think that London, or New York, or Tokyo, the world’s three major cities, could function, let alone support the number of residents they support, without an underground transit system. And, as in so many other things, it was invented, and perfected, in England, right here in London. And it still works.

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Lamenting Lowlands

Here are my program notes for last Thursday's concert by the good old Orlando Chamber Choir. I have done only minimal editing--enjoy!

The need to provide rituals at ceremonies for the dead appears to be one of the oldest characteristics of recorded human history—there is considerable archeological evidence that rituals of some sort accompany burials as far back as the neolithic period, 6,000 years ago. And the playing of music as part of these rituals is a practice nearly as old as recorded history. Musical instruments of some sort show up in the early graves of any number of prehistoric sites, with the earliest being dated to 42,000 years ago. It’s a practice that spans cultures as well—from Asia to Africa to the mid-east to Europe and the Western Hemisphere. As far as we can tell, music has been an integral part of death ceremonies for tens of thousands of years, perhaps longer. Roman funerals had both instrumental music and funeral songs as part of the ceremony. Some of these ceremonies are livelier than others, to be sure—jazz funerals in New Orleans are not likely to be confused with a funeral mass at Saint Peter’s.

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Unsolicited book review: Spillover, by David Quammen

This is a damn scary book. Quammen is perhaps our best science writer, and his subjects in the past have ranged widely, from island biogeography to large predators to whatever he fancies in his excellent collections of essays. And this time he’s picked something topical, timely and thoroughly terrifying. It’s zoonosis—the phenomenon of diseases that are directly transferable from animals to humans. You know, AIDS, Marberg, Ebola, SARS, and a bunch you’ve probably never heard of. Oh, and the massive influenza following the first World War that killed more people than the war did. These are all zoonosis, and a spillover has occurred with each one—that moment when the virus (which it usually is) jumps from one species to another. And Quammen has written a page-turner about them. To say that it’s wonderfully written almost seems out of place, but it is.
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RT at the BBC

BBC Radio 4 has this neat show--Master Tapes-- where they bring in some artist to discuss one of their important albums. It’s a Q&A for the interviewer, John Wilson, and the audience to find out what makes artists tick in some manner, and to discuss why they do what they do in the way they do it. It’s a cool idea, and this past year they’ve had Suzanne Vega discussing Solitude Standing, Ray Davies discussing Muswell Hillbillies, Paul Weller discussing The Gift (The Jam’s final album), Billy Bragg discussing Talking with the Taxman about Poetry, and (my favorite) The Zombies discussing Odyssey and Oracle (one of the many, many seminal albums of 1969.) And last night they had Richard Thompson discussing Rumour and Sigh, from 1991.
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