My vinyl fetish

I have grown to adore vinyl. I have grown to love its raw, full sound. It especially suits classical music. It feels so compressed when digitised. I inherited about forty or so classical records from my deceased Anglo-Chilean grand-uncle. My collection has grown considerably since. I scour charity shops for bargains.

I wrote a theatrical sketch recently called 'My Vinyl Fetish.' In the sketch, five surrogates of mine, and a woman (named 'Pussy'...) listen to seven of my records and discuss them. One of my fantasies is to stay up til the early hours of the morning, drink wine and listen to records with a group of people.

Below I will select a few corkers and offer brief comments. I didn't select any of the seven vinyls I wrote about in my sketch...

The collection, as seen from a distance...

This is an edition of Captain Beefheart's debut album Safe as Milk. It is retitled 'Dropout Boogie,' apparently because British distributors thought it'd more marketable/user-friendly as such.

Coltrane's Love Supreme. It is not at all controversial to say that this is quite likely the greatest jazz album ever made. It is a reissue. As such, it's digitised and it's not analogue.

Lovely packaging. These are recordings of Jelly Roll Morton at his prime (late 20s). New-Orleans/swing-inflected jazz is such a joy to listen to.

Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy. I believe that this edition is from the 60s! Sound-bites of verbal nonsense interspersed with Zappa's orchestra music.

This is a selection of Bach organ music. My lord, it sure is a treat to listen to this. It includes several of Bach's masterful toccatas and fugues.

Bach music for harpsichord, performed by George Malcolm. It includes 'Concerto in F major,' which is a particular favourite. 

Bach's violin concertos. Part of the canon and with good reason, too. I could have the second movement of the first concerto on repeat for hours.

I have all of Bartok's string quartets vinyl, performed by The Fine Arts Quartet. They're the cream of Bartok's music (and the cream of quartet repertoire, too). They're all exhilarating to hear and they chart the development of Bartok's career as a whole. My favourite is the 4th.

Bartok's 2nd and 3rd piano concertos. The piano parts are devilishly intricate. The pianist effectively must grow extra fingers to play them.

Beethoven's chamber music is so rich. Quite likely superior to the symphonies. These are sonatas for cello and piano.

Ach, just realised that I broke my own rules! I wrote about the 15th quartet in the sketch My Vinyl Fetish! This includes the 14th and 15th quartets. The former is one single movement, the latter a brilliantly crafted piece in A minor.

Blood and guts! This vinyl includes music by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. I must say that I have never taken to much of Schoenberg's stuff - his disciples' music I find more interesting. Webern's concise, muted and atonal miniatures are fascinating stuff. This is classed under 'B,' 'Berg' (generally because I have more vinyls by Berg than the other 2).

These are pieces for orchestra by Elliott Carter and Aaron Copland, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein did much to promote American serious music. I love Carter's piece - a scintillating atonal feast.

These are madrigals by Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo. A composer who anticipated the development of chromaticism by more than two centuries. He was an unpleasant character - I wrote a short story about him called 'Desperate Lives.' This is an issue from the 50s promoted by Aldous Huxley! (He wrote about listening to Gesualdo whilst taking mescalin in The Doors of Perception...) To think that I bought this for 49 p!

These are several works for piano, in different genres, by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. They are performed by Arthur Rubinstein. These pieces are delightful.

These are two choral pieces for orchestra by the contemporary German composer - Muses of Sicily and Moralities. It comes with Henze's own liner notes. This was a real find.

This is one of Liszt's literary programmatic pieces. It is based on Dante's Inferno. A real innovator as to what a symphony could do. (Like Beethoven in his day, he was regarded as a bit of a noise maker...)

Messiaen's colossal Turangalilla Symphony. There are lovely tone colours here. Messiaen includes several unusual instruments, including a theremin and a keyboard he himself built.

Debussy's and Ravel's string quartets performed by Julliard. I believe that this is an authoritative recording. I much prefer Ravel's chamber music to Debussy's (the converse is true for their orchestral music). 

Scarlatti's music for harpsichord. Baroque music at its best.

Schubert's string quartets are an emotional powerhouse. I have an awful lot of Schubert on vinyl - more than any other composer, I believe - but this is top of the pile. Schubert really broke the mould of the staid classicist forms - he pretty much wrote music just as he saw fit.

Sibelius' 4th symphony. I love the ominous first movement and the resolution of the motifs in the 3rd and 4th movements. It builds up and up and then whittles down.

Ah, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring! If some one you know is convinced that classical music is purple music for blue haired ladies, play him or her this! Classical music is wild and young! It's all the more apparent here.

These are a few pieces by Toru Takemitsu. Wonderful composer. Some of these pieces are more influenced by Oriental music, others draw more Western music.

This vinyl includes some of Edgard Varese's most important pieces. His is a truly exhilarating, oblique soundworld. Just imagine hearing Ionisation in the 20s!

Hugo Wolf was one of the greatest songwriters. Beautiful pieces. This lieder is drawn from Spanish poets - Lorca et. al.

I have quite a few vinyls which are anthologies of early music - Renaissance, early baroque. This is from Spanish medieval times, played in the - highly unusual - original instrumentation.

This is an antology of modern British piano music. I can't remember any of the composers, but certainly none of them are house-hold names. Some of the pieces here are fairly accessible, others are very harsh on the ear. They're all highly exciting, though.

Rock Bottom

Rock Bottom is my favourite record of all time. So, I feel indebted to write about it. I heard it when I was a dreamy 15-year-old. I decided then that it was my favourite record and I still have not rescinded that claim! At the time I was fed up with my formal education and had little motivation to do anything. The only thing I really felt motivated about was listening to music. Wyatt's lugubrious undulating tones, his whiskery voice and his formless structures made an irrevocable impression on me. Wyatt himself is an avowed 'dreamer' and seems to have determined never to have grown out of this state of mind.

At the time Rock Bottom was made, Wyatt's world had turned on its head. He had been the drummer of the prog-rock/jazz fusion group Soft Machine. A very free-spirited character, he was always prone to volatile experiences. He was fired from the group and dabbled in other jazz fusion projects. Around 1974 he started to contemplate recording songs for a solo project. He met 'the love of his life' Alfreda Benge. They were spending a sojourn in Venice when Wyatt, after imbibing a toxic cocktail of alcohol and drugs, jumped out of the third floor of a building. He paralysed himself.

Robert Wyatt and Alfreda Benge

He has since jokingly called this experience 'a good career move.' After being hospitalised, and awakening from a comatose state, he tinkered on the keyboard and wrote lyrics. The songs he wrote were influenced by his partner Alfreda, their experiences with their coterie in Venice and Wyatt resuming his life post-accident. The songs he wrote for this album spelled out the trajectory of his later career. It was a stripped down sound borne out of Wyatt's £40 keyboard. The songs are usually built from basic minor keys. A touch of instrumentalisation from guest musicians is added. There is some tribal drumming. And the most endearing touch of all: Wyatt's whiskery voice and idiosyncratic lyrics. 

The tones from Wyatt's keyboard have a lugubrious quality (in a positive sense) and they have the quality of awakening from a dream. The music was also borne out of his experiences in Venice and there is also a nautical feel to the album. As such, it is somewhat reminiscent of the impressionistic music by Debussy and Ravel. The songs certainly remind me of Debussy's pan-tonal orchestral textures from La Mer. There are also abrasive sounds derived from free jazz. The album was borne out of Wyatt   hitting 'rock bottom' and his later recovery. 

In 'Sea Song' Wyatt reminisces about long nights in venice with Alfreda. He whimsically muses how when she's drunk, she's 'quite all right.' He goes on about 'how your lunacy fits neatly with my own.' He plays lovely sustained tones on his keyboard. When one hears the record, one feels as though one is in a trance, a kind of stupor. There are jazzy major chords at the end of the song and Wyatt scat-sings alongside the music. In 'A Last Straw,' Wyatt sings as to how plunges 'into the water we'll go head over heel' and becomes a sea creature. Water and dreams are synonymous in that both have are a transient and have a sense of profundity. 

'Little Red Riding Hood' is a colossal track, with an overlay of trumpets either played in real time or reverb. Wyatt rambles on with some decidedly non-sensical lyrics. The next two tracks are especially stimulating - Alfib/Alfie. There are the same undulating tones from Wyatt's keys, which pulsate endlessly. There are brash tones added from a bass clarinet. Wyatt sings utter nonsense ('Nit nit not, folly bololey') The song gains some urgency and seagues into 'Alfie.' A saxophone squawks dissonantly. The song ends with menacing clusters from Wyatt's keyboard whilst Alfreda Benge tries to instil some sense of normalcy into the proceedings ('I'm not your dinner, you soppy old custard. (...) I'm not your dinner, you soppy old custard.')

In the final track, 'Little Red Robin Hit the Road,' Wyatt returns to England to lead a peaceful existence with his wife. There is a sense of renewal and rebirth. He talks about 'dead moles lie inside their hole,' a reference to his finished career as a jazz drummer and his defunct group Matching Mole. Fred Frith appears playing some quaint passages on the viola. Ivor Cutler recites some brilliant abstract lyrics. The album ends on a note of wilful lunacy, exaltation and optimism. So, there is some light in the tunnel after emerging from 'rock bottom.'     

I have been thinking about my fondness for this record recently. I just finished my BA at University of Kent. This is where the Canterbury scene took place, where Wyatt and Soft Machine were its members. In my second year I lived in Herne Bay, by the coast. Every Friday I would take the day off to go for fish and chips and coffee at the adjacent town Whistable. In this town, full of quaint little shops, there is a vinyl store named Rock Bottom! Wyatt used to frequent the area to visit the cafés, like me!

Poignantly, in my graduation ceremony, Wyatt was given an honourary doctorate. Sadly, this took place in a ceremony the day after mine when I left Canterbury. (In my ceremony it was Harry Hill that received an honourary docorate...) I felt frustrated by this. Out of all the graduates, there is no doubt that out of I am his biggest fan. It is likely that no-one in the ceremony would have heard of him. I toyed with the idea of staying in Canterbury for another day. If I had stayed, I would have seen a guy in a weelchair and I would have been shy and reluctant to approach him. I would have said one of those platitudes like 'Geesh, I really love your music.' Still, it would have really been nice to let him know just how important his music had been during my difficult formative years in which I had also hit 'rock bottom.' I recovered, graduated with a First Class degree and very nearly met one my musical idols!