Water Music in Gent

Grand pianos are rather expensive. You need to keep them safe, at the right temperature, at the right humidity, stable and also polished to a really high glossy standard. When in Gent the other weekend we came upon this strange boat with a remarkable cargo.

It was moored at a riverside restaurant, so we assumed it was for entertaining the dinner guests later that evening. We carried on walking down the narrow streets and lanes and were just crossing a bridge when we heard piano music being swept in our direction by the wind. No, it was not “Blowing in the Wind”, but some classical piece. So we looked upstream and saw this surprising scene.

A man was using his whole body weight in order to steer this, as it turned out to be, Bangladeshi wooden boat. A pianist was assisted by a helper to both keep the sheet music on the stand and to turn the pages at appropriate moments. A woman was sitting next to a man getting ready to jump ashore to moor the vessel.

The pianist was very good and a crowd was gathering on the river bank and on the bridge. Everybody seemed astonished, but all the faces lit up and people were smiling and chatting about this rare musical event.

The pianist kept on playing while the boat was being moored. But was the woman just decoration? No, all of a sudden she stood up and started singing.

I do not know who they were, why they were performing in this unusual way, and I did not recognise the music, but it was a nice surprise and very enjoyable. A grand piano and a soprano thrown in for good measure, not bad for a stroll in the old town of Gent. (I wonder how much the insurance was for this musical adventure?)

Eurovision Song Contest 2011–Duesseldorf

First of all I have to say something about the outing at Blogger for several days. I know my fellow Blogger bloggers have had strange stuff happening to their blogs. For me the odd thing was that I tried to put up a post from the Kappesfest in Rheindahlen, but it took forever before it came up with a message like “no can do”. Then I tried the shorter post I had prepared about the lily, since I thought the many photos in the other post were the problem. No luck there either. So I tried a few times, and all of a sudden the Lily post made it through. So I had to wait a couple of days before the Kappesfest post was finally up.

The oddest of all was that it then was displayed as posted on Tuesday, I guess it must have registered my early attempts somehow. Weird and wonderful world it is, isn’t it, the techie side of things.

Now to a quick proper post about this big European event, (or should that be non-event?,) The European Song Contest, which nobody but Eastern European countries seem to take seriously these days. We just came back from a meal in Duesseldorf where this event kicks off in exactly one minute.

We will be following it from the sofa, commenting on how ludicrous it all really is. Euro pop has earned a very dubious reputation, and there is a certain negative ring to it. However the city was full of life, in particular the old town, where all the revellers were roaming freely, even before it all had started.

As we walked down the central avenue, Koeningsalle, a cacophony of honking horns went slowly past us. German flags were abundant and some young women’s bottoms were precariously balancing on car door frames. I think it was a Ni**an promotion more than anything else.

Then there were thousands of flags everywhere, in people’s hands, on people’s heads, painted on people’s faces, and also in shop windows, like here. Notice how appropriately the Swedish flag sits between the British and the German ones!

No, I had better get downstairs and check it all out. I can hear Graham Norton’s voice on BBC now, which most likely will be the most entertaining aspect of the evening. His sarcasms and witty observations will do nicely for me.

16 October 1983

I came across an old rescued slide on my PC the other day, and took a good look at it, which naturally brought back many memories. But the picture is also a statement of the time and reveals something about life in those days, not only for me but perhaps also for others. It has a clear time stamp.

At a first glance it is obvious that I was interested in music, but also expressing myself in art (pencils and brushes). In the right box of LPs I spot a classical album (Baroque I think), and in the left it is definitely “Islands” by The Band.

The reel-to-reel tape recorder, the turntable and the TV in glorious teak absolutely dates the set-up. The newer cassette tape recorder indicates progress.

If you look on the extreme left you will see a strange object (looks like two) in grey wood hanging off the top. The missing bit in the middle is where the user of this object would put his or her neck. Guessed it yet? No, right. It should be carried horizontally on your shoulders. Now then? No, I will have to tell you then. It is a yoke. From the ends of it hang chains with a metal hook to hold for instance buckets with milk. This yoke came from some old relative who had passed away years ago, and sadly, I do not know where I have got it now. I think I have moved too many times in my life perhaps.

I shall mention one final object before I let you enlarge the picture, should you so wish, my son’s first pair of shoes. On the day the photo was taken we celebrated his tenth birthday (a few days too late).

If you did not find it interesting to look at my old shelves, I will give you (in particular youngish readers) one piece of advice anyway; take photographs of your flats and houses as you go through life. I can guarantee that you will enjoy looking at them later in life. It can be rewarding, not just for insurance purposes!

PLEASE Click to enlarge!

Ride My Pony

Some of my long-standing readers might remember that I played in a band in my youth. Originally there were five of us, but when this picture was taken one member had left. We, the remaining four, tried to re-launch ourselves and went on a photo session all over town for promotional purposes. So we had lots of photos with us posing in front of interesting old doorways, derelict buildings and all sorts of backgrounds typical of the time.

As we were moving between locations we came across this Ford Mustang, a sixties icon among cool cars if there ever was one (sorry Mini fans!), so naturally we did not want to miss the opportunity, but had to snap a shot in front of the car we could only dream of. To be honest, I would not really want to have one, because it was a bit of a poser's car to be blunt.

I was nineteen at the time and can be seen in white on the left. A few years later I could afford an old Ford Cortina, having saved some of my earnings from taxi driving when I was at university. It wasn't until the following year that I had the opportunity to sit in the back of a Ford Mustang; that was when I visited my sister in Washington DC and had to be her chaperon when she did not know how to handle this guy who had asked her out on a picnic or something. Only time in my life I rode a Mustang!

Have you guessed yet which year this might be? Judging by the glasses I and the bearded one are wearing, it could have been today. That goes for the way we dressed as well, I might add. Fashion recycled you know. The year was 1967, when some of my readers were hardly born.

I still wear glasses; as I am typing this I have the same ring which my parents gave me when I graduated from school, and I am very nearly as slim as in the picture. Then I am quite a lot wiser of course!

River Music in Cologne

We have just come back from Cologne where we strolled along the river bank just like a thousand other people on this sunny afternoon taking in the atmosphere. Oh no, don't start thinking about the old Kinks hit from the sixties, if you are old enough to remember or know, but it was one music scene after the other. Within a few hundred meters we came across these four, it has to be said, rather good groups/artist, all playing different kinds of music. We stopped and listened to a few numbers from everyone, tapping our feet with a smile on our faces most of the time.

Why do these guys make me think of ZZ Top?

This gentleman played some lovely light classics.

After that we were treated to both Bamboleiro and Guantanamera.

The fourth outfit was a group of young jazz/blues musicians with the lead guitarist earning special praise.

Then I spotted this example of the dangers of long-term parking. Not much for the poor owner to collect! Maybe she (I think) could find some consolation in the nearby chocolate museum as advertised.

First Blogger Anniversary

Exactly a year ago I posted for the first time to this blog. Although I had registered the blog in September 2005, it lay dormant and almost forgotten out in the blogosphere all that time.

In this first year I have got to know online blogger friends, exchanged ideas, opinions and information. Sometimes I feel guilty about the time I spend in the blogosphere, but then again, I honestly am a very moderate user of this parallel universe. Some people must be spending most of their time there, judging by the number of posts they produce. You know who you are! ;-) However it genuinely is a great way of getting to know other parts of the world, looking into other people’s lives through this online keyhole and also to share some of your own life with relatives, friends and the accidental visitor.

To celebrate this I give you this YouTube clip (my sister emailed it to me) with a 4-year-old drummer! I have tried to look for evidence it is a fake, that it is not this little kid playing, but I have not been able to. Look at his face how the drumming is reflected there. Sound and picture seem to be in synch, and it seems to be a proper, home-made video, without any sophistication. See what you think. Is it genuine?

Spring Feelings

The sun is shining, birds are singing and snowdrops fill the flower beds, all of which makes me feel hopeful again after a gloomy winter. This picture makes an excellent desktop background! (Feel free to copy it.)

This cheered me up so much I went on YouTube to listen to some music. Quite by coincidence I stumbled upon these female trombonists playing “Stars and Stripes”. Aren't they good? Fantastic!

If these young women practise a lot, they might become as versatile and virtuoso as Nils Landgren, a Swedish jazz trombonist, who plays “Ack Värmeland Du Sköna”, a beautiful folk song many Swedes would like to call their national anthem. He improvises and even manages to slip into “Smoke On The Water” at one stage, but just wait until you see how he treats his instrument. I nearly fell off my chair laughing. Check him out!

Old Vinyl

When we bought the house in Normandy we got it lock, stock and barrel, i.e. not only the house itself but also everything from large furniture down to spare light bulbs and bottle openers. Included was a hi-fi system with an old Aiwa record player. For young people, that is a stone-age device for reproducing sound, ok? In my parents' days records that rotated at 78 turns per minute was all the rave. But they were quite fragile and broke easily when dropped on the floor. So about half a century ago the Vinyl, made from some oil-based substance, was invented. These modern discs were more flexible and less fragile. However they were easily scratched and were worn down slowly but steadily and sounded in the end like you were frying bacon, but without the enticing smell. They also rotated more slowly than the old 'stone biccies', as we say in Swedish, at 33, or more exactly, at 33 1/3 turns per minute.

When I left Sweden in 1987 I also left behind my rather large record collection, of which my son now is the custodian. So in France we now had a record player but no records to play on it. Pas de problème, we went to a second hand shop in Mayenne and found some old records, mostly classical, but also Supertramp's 'Breakfast in America', which the French local radio stations still love to play. They seem to play only music they don't have to pay for, and in doing so, give the impression they are a couple of decades behind in musical taste. Not a day goes by without Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart' for instance. But that's another issue.

For my grand-daughter's future understanding of history (sounds rather grand and pompous, but never mind) I decided to document the bygone days of the Vinyl. I took some snaps and a video of one of Mozart's most famous piano pieces, 'Rondo Alla Turca', being played, to immortalise this ancient technology.

This is the record sleeve demonstrating, in my opinion, an astonishing lack of taste in design.


This is the record itself with some vital information about the recording.


This is the so called stylus, through which the sound is miraculously transferred ultimately to the speakers.


Here is the video to prove it actually does work. Press the button and enjoy!

Meme

Since I have not been a blogger, or a blog reader for that matter, for very long, I was a bit puzzled when Haddock left a comment on my blog, saying I had been tagged. Well, I understood roughly what that meant, but meme? What the heck was that? I went on whatis.com to find out and then I had a look at Haddock’s blog. After that I had the whole picture.

I don’t ‘know’ many other bloggers yet so I will have to see how many I dare invite to take part. I feel a bit uncomfortable approaching ‘strangers’. What will they think? How pc is that? What about blogosphere etiquette? Throw caution to the wind? Well, I have put up a proper photo of myself in my profile now, so why not be bold and harass a few people in the kindest possible way?

Rules: Each person posts the rules before their list, then they list 8 things about themselves. At the end of the post, that person tags and links to 8 other people; then visits those people’s sites and comments, letting them know that they have been tagged, and to come read the post, so they know what they have to do.

1. Inspired by CanadianSwiss I will reveal what I wear in bed – ear plugs! It’s a habit from the days when we lived under the Heathrow fly path. Now it keeps out early birdsong, snoring (yes, I snore too) and noisy neighbours.

2. As a little boy in Sweden in 1958 I managed to get the autographs of the whole Brazilian World Champions football team, including Pelé, Garrincha, Didi, Vava etc. My father, whose favourite foreign language was Portuguese, interpreted for them on a couple of occasions, so I had easy access. Sadly, later in life I lost the autograph book with all the valuable signatures. Sentimental value, but also real money value. What would they have fetched on eBay, I wonder? A fortune I guess!

3. I saved somebody’s life on Hammersmith Bridge once, or at least I thought so. I was walking across the bridge when I saw a man standing on the outside with his arms behind him, clutching the railing. His briefcase and coat were behind him on the bridge. He was a big chap and the Thames was rushing out towards the sea far below. Without thinking about my own safety, I instinctively hurried up to him, grabbed him under his arms, held hard and said something like ‘What are you doing?’ All of a sudden the place was swarming with police, first-aid people, camera crews etc. They had all been hiding in little wooden hides, which I presumed had something to do with the forthcoming Oxford-Cambridge boat race. They were filming for a recruitment ad campaign for the Special Constabulary to see how people reacted in different scenarios. So, did I save somebody’s life? In a way I did, I suppose.

4. My own life was definitely saved 30 years ago when I was a passenger in a car crash. What saved me? My good habit of always putting on my seatbelt, even before it was made compulsory. Despite the trouble of lifting up three pairs of skis to fasten the belt, I stuck to my routine. It was quite useful when the car hit a lorry sideways in the fog. Every morning for many years after that, I said to myself ‘It’s good to be alive.’ It certainly is!

5. A life that wasn’t spared was that of a pheasant on the M25, the London Outer Circular. I was doing ca 85 mph and the dumb bird smashed up my front. I pulled over, walked back to try to recover my lost number plate and was severely told off by motorway police who had spotted me.

6. In the sixties I played in a band in southern Sweden. On a number of occasions we were the first support act to famous British bands. We ‘played with’ all of them except the Beatles and the Stones. Everything was so much simpler and small-scale in those days. I felt rather insignificant standing next to John Entwhistle of the Who tuning my bass guitar. We were becomingly embarrassed the time we played (from our regular repertoire) some Spencer Davis numbers, which they repeated an hour later on the same stage. Dooooh!

7. I still feel guilty sometimes for once having prevented a female colleague of mine from getting Paul McCartney’s autograph and photo. We were having an after-work drink in the Sun Inn in Barnes, London, when we spotted Paul having a chat with a friend. My colleague had the camera, paper and pen, but I convinced her to leave him alone. Even worse, a few years later a friend of mine gave me a birthday present, a demo single with a personal dedication from Sir Paul. I feel not a little rotten about that.

8. Five years ago I had a pituitary adenoma, a tumour/growth, which killed off my pituitary gland. So all hormone production was wiped out. Before I was completely diagnosed and got the proper medication sorted out (ca 2 months), I experienced something which is normally the domain of women, namely hot flushes. So, menopausal women everywhere, you have my full sympathy. I know what it is like!

I have tagged the following bloggers for this meme: TBA ASAP

Sing-a-phone

My granddaughter will surely go into the music business when she gets older. She cannot stand still when there's music playing and she loves to sing. They practise that a lot in Kindergarten. She can sing the melody and she gets the vowels of the words right most of the time, so much so that I recognise songs that I have never heard her sing before. Our phone conversations, which mostly consist of words like 'play', 'pyjamas', 'eat', 'sleep', rather than sentences, are greatly improved by her singing down the line. We are on speakerphone (Lautsprecher) to everone's delight, and it is such a heart-warming moment. Moment, well, she never stops! She just keeps on singing, one song after another. Then she has the habit of applauding herself, which you can see in the picture, using the portable house phone and a 'play phone'. What might the future hold?

Now then..

At last sitting down with a cup of tea and Amy Winehouse coming out of the PC speakers. Yes, I know she is not exactly a role model for budding singers but blimey can that woman sing! She seems to have a strong self-destructive streak the way she lives her life, but how can such a young artist first record "Frank", a jazzy masterpiece, and then several years later "Back to Black", a gem of soul and R&B? I only hope she manages to record a few more albums before she kills herself with 'pills 'n needles'! Oops, that was a bit crass, wasn't it?

Anyway, I have now developed (slightly pretentious) my blog further. It is the usual thing with computer software, you need to spend time to get to know it, as all bloggers know all too well I guess. Since I have so many national loyalties I thought it would be a good idea with some flags to liven it up a little. Maybe they will feel like a nuisance later on, but they fly only softly and gently, so maybe not. Then there is the issue of Links; I could initially only think of two obvious ones since I quite like football. Oh, by the way, the rainbow is from the French countryside, as are the two previous, rural photos.

Oh, one more thing, I am now listening to a singer from Cape Verde whom I stumbled upon on the iTunes website. She is called Mayra Andrade, sings in Portuguese, wonderful music which is a mix of African, Brazilian, Portuguese..... music, relaxed, fascinating and sensual. I do not understand much of the lyrics but I just listen to the sounds of the language, her voice and the music itself. Truly caressing sound waves!