Music - Sounds of my Life

 

“If music be the food of love, play on;”  from Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare.

“Music was my first love and it will be my last…”  John Miles.

Throughout my life music has always been there, in various forms, and always been important. I grew up with my mother’s radio, or maybe I should call it ‘the wireless’ and I think we listened to ‘The Light Programme’. I still have my mother’s records, the singles and LPs that we spent many hours singing and dancing to in my childhood and our pubs always had the sounds of the jukebox filtering upstairs, or someone belting out a tune on a piano. My love of piano music remains. I don’t play very much now as poor sight comes between me and the sheet music, but it’s nice to have the occasional plonk about when there’s no one to hear. A familiar song or piece of music can transport me to times past in a second and fill me with joy and remind me of how far I’ve come.

 I love lots of music, not just symphonic or progressive rock. Live music is the best but I won’t bore you with all of the concerts I’ve been to. Music soothes the soul, calms the spirit, or makes us want to dance, so what I might listen to depends on what suits at any given time. Rolling Stones, Oasis, The Smiths, Mozart, Chopin, Prokofiev (especially Troika), gospel choirs, Gregory Porter, Simply Red and many more are amongst my favourites. When they were living with us, I enjoyed listening to my son playing guitar or bass; and my daughter’s wonderful singing, both of them talented. They entertain their own families now.

If you know me personally, or through my blogs, you might have noticed me mention that the music of The Moody Blues is the main soundtrack to my life. This month I have had their album ‘December’ permanently on the CD player. The track ‘December Snow’ has a wonderful piano solo in the middle and I really wish I could play that myself. I’ve lost count of how many MBs concerts I’ve attended over the years, many tours, many cities, each one a breath-taking experience. Those days are gone, the band is depleted and I’m glad I was able to be there at the time. I look forward to seeing John Lodge again, on his solo tour next year.

Here’s an old poem of mine, an attempt at capturing the essence of a magical Moody Blues concert,

The Concert.

 

The lights are lowered, silence fills the arena

As the minstrels move through darkness on to the stage.

This is the moment, breathless anticipation,

Travelling eternity road has been an age.

 

Then a flute’s haunting melody rises above

Twin guitar riffs to take lead of the symphony.

Slow, bass drum, and applause reaches a crescendo,

Orchestral rock and voices singing harmony.

 

On the threshold of ecstasy, keeping the faith,

We’ve made this pilgrimage so many times before,

To be rewarded with autographs and handshakes

After waiting patiently outside the stage door.

 

PMW  2010

 

 Very best wishes for 2025. May your dreams come true.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Claims - What Did You Do, Radio 2?

I got a bit mad recently. Not red and raging, just a niggle that exploded and set me off looking for answers Victor Meldrew style.

It started off with Radio 2’s Pick of the Pops on Saturday afternoons. It fits just nicely between having lunch and watching the football – Blackpool FC on iFollow, home and away – and it is fun to guess what might be in the chosen Top Ten. I don’t claim to be a pop music buff but I grew up with a jukebox filtering through from the pub downstairs and a mum who liked her records so I was drip-fed the hits of the time. Over a few Saturdays, I grew disappointed that the ‘early hit-lists’ were from the ‘80s. I became more dismayed upon looking up pre-arranged schedules to discover only music charts from the ‘80s onwards were included. Anything after about 1985 is lost on me, unless it is something specific which attracted me. Horrified, I emailed BBC Radio 2, which claims to be the most listened to music radio station in the UK, politely asking if the chosen years were random or hand-picked and also making them aware that I am familiar with Sounds of the Seventies, Johnnie Walker and Sounds of the Sixties, Tony Blackburn, before they point me in that direction.

My email failed to warrant a reply, but, around that time someone had aired a complaint to Points of View along the same lines, and the reply from the Beeb explained that the BBC Radio 2 playlist covered forty years, from 1980. A similar announcement was made in the papers and said pre 1980 recordings would still be occasionally included, but would not be part of the main play-list. This was for everything, not just Pick of the Pops. Well, cheers, thanks for that. I switched from Radio 1 to Radio 2 for a reason, and now it seems they are one and the same. I’m not ready for Radio 3 all the time and Radio 4, though excellent, isn’t good for a morning sing in the shower.  I’m sure Zoe Ball is lovely, but I haven’t latched on to her taste in music.

I think I will have to explore Greatest Hits Radio, Absolute Radio or something similar for the bathroom radio. Wait a minute, Pick of the Pops on Saturday, 7th May, features 1969, yippee, lucky me. If anything can calm me down, the hits from '69 can.

My Haiku poem

Where is the music?
Where have all the good songs gone?
Eliminated.

Taken, just like that.
BBC Radio 2
Made the decision,

All pre ‘80s out,
Off the regular play-list.
Claims lack of int’rest.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading and if you're venturing into the outdoors, please take care, Pam x

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Windmills - Rhyming in my Mind

I was washing glasses in our pub, hidden away in the ‘still room’ on my regular Friday night and Saturday night stint during the busy Illuminations, singing along to the music that drifted in.

There was a song on the jukebox in the front bar, a haunting melody that forced me to listen and beautiful, poetic lyrics that reached out to me. Any meaning in those words was lost on me, but being an impressionable hippy-ish rock-chick in my mid-teens, I’m proud to say that I learnt it off by heart. It is still up there with my favourites, sung by Noel Harrison.

 

The Windmills of Your Mind

 

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.

 

Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.

 

Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?
Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind.

 

Songwriters: Marilyn Bergman / Michel Legrand / Alan Bergman

 

It was the theme song to The Thomas Crown Affair, a major film at that time, and I wonder if the lyrics might make more sense to me if I actually saw the film, or the more recent remake? It will be something else to do in my retirement.

There’s always fun to be found in doing new things. I’ve lived in Blackpool since 1965, a long time in South Shore, but never travelled on a train from Blackpool South until this year. That rail adventure with my friend took us to Lytham for lunch and a pleasant stroll along the front to the fabulous, white windmill which holds centre stage on the green. Another first. The closest I’d previously been to Lytham Windmill was the main road.

I found this poem,

 

The Windmill

 

 

Behold! a giant am I!
Aloft here in my tower,
With my granite jaws I devour
The maize, and the wheat, and the rye,
And grind them into flour.

I look down over the farms;
In the fields of grain I see
The harvest that is to be,
And I fling to the air my arms,
For I know it is all for me.

I hear the sound of flails
Far off, from the threshing-floors
In barns, with their open doors,
And the wind, the wind in my sails,
Louder and louder roars.

I stand here in my place,
With my foot on the rock below,
And whichever way it may blow,
I meet it face to face,
As a brave man meets his foe.

And while we wrestle and strive,
My master, the miller, stands
And feeds me with his hands;
For he knows who makes him thrive,
Who makes him lord of lands.

On Sundays I take my rest;
Church-going bells begin
Their low, melodious din;
I cross my arms on my breast,
And all is peace within. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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