Spectre vs Rector Part 2

The jury has finally returned from to deliberating the second verdict of Phil Spector after a 10-2 guilty verdict last year. California law requires a unanimous verdict for murder. And this time they were certain - guilty in the first degree, carrying a sentenced of 18 years to life.

It was good to see he dressed appropriately this time. His return to the Ronnie Wood wig - leaving the yellow Judy Dench bob and Annita Dobson fright-wig behind - imbued the occasion with a fittingly sombre tone. One presumes the red kerchief in his jacket pocket was a tribute to the splatter of Larna Clarkson's blood on his vestibule floor.

There were surprisingly few puns that could be generated from all this. The best the BBC came up with was "A spect-acular fall." Weak. Not even

In other pop news, Nadja Benaissa, a singer from the German Popstars prefabbed girl group No Angels has been arrested moments before a solo gig on suspicion of infecting three people with HIV.
Girls Aloud.... jog on.

1. The Soft Machine
As Long As He Lies Perfectly Still 2:32
Volume 2, 1969, Probe/ABC

A tribute to former bandmate Kevin Ayers.

2. Love Song With Flute (Mono) 4:11
Caravan
Caravan, 1969, Verve

In glorious mono. Another offshoot of The Wilde Flowers is Caravan, which included bass player Richard Sinclair.

3. 5 And 20 Schoolgirls 4:19
Daevid Allen
Majick Brother
Actuel, 1969

This is the third branch of the Wilde Flowers. Australian guitarist and singer Daevid Allen first met Robert Wyatt from the Soft Machine when he was lodging in Wyatt’s parents’ house near Canterbury. After a bried tenure in the Soft Machine, Allen went on to form Gong in Paris when he was refused re-entry into the UK after a tour in Europe.


4. The Song Of McGuillicudie The Pusillanimous 5:07
Egg
Egg, 1970, Deram

Egg included in its early incarnation the guitarist Steve Hillage, who played with Gong and Kahn.

5. Girl On A Swing 2:49
Kevin Ayers
Joy Of A Toy, 1970, Harvest/EMI

From his 1970 debut record Joy of a Tory.

6. Elastic Rock 4:06
Nucleus
Elastic Rock

Band members later became part of the Soft Machine

Roy Babbington and John Marshall from Nucleus went on to play in late-period Soft Machine. The band also featured at one stage Andy Summers who, as we know, formed The Police.

7. O Caroline 5:04
Matching Mole
Matching Mole, CBS

Robert Wyatt has an amazing skill to extract love songs from the obliquest of situations. This is O Caroline. After Robert Wyatt left Soft Machine, or was fired, due to musical differences, he started a new project Matching Mole, which is a pun from the French translation of Soft Machine, Machine Mole. Matching Mole included former Caravan member Dave Sinclair.

8. This Is What Happen 5:02
The Keith Tippet Group
Dedicated To You, But You Weren't Listening

9. Stranded 5:56
Khan
Space Shanty, Decca, 1972
Legend of a Mind, 2002, Decca

I first heard this on the fantastic Decca Deram Nova compilation I picked up in a record shop in Brighton for a few pounds.

10. Bittern Storm Over Ulm 2:19
Henry Cow
Unrest

Unrelated to Canterbury rock geographically but whose members collaborated with Canterbury groups and artists.

11. Underdub 4:03
Hatfield and the North
The Rotter’s Club, 1975, Virgin

12. Terran 3:49
Art Bears
Hopes And Fears

Art Bears were formed from the ashes of Henry Cow, with singer Dagmar Krause and avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith.

13. Norrgarden Nyvla 2:58
Fred Frith
Gravity

Acik Week 1 - Folk Revival

Jackson C Frank
“Blues Run The Game”
JACKSON C FRANK , Columbia/Castle,1965

Jackson C Frank first came to England from America in 1965. This song was produced by Paul Simon.

Vashti Bunyan
“Some things Just Stick In Your Mind”
SINGLE, Decca, 1965

Written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. It took Vashti another 35 years to achieve commercial success after decades in seclusion when her best known seminal folk record JUST ANOTHER DIAMOND DAY, was rediscovered. Although this song not exactly a folk tune, it’s still a great and one of my favouritesby her.

John Renbourn
“The Earl Of Salisbury”
SIR JOHN A LOT OF MERRIE ENGLAND, Warner Bothers, 1968

A beautiful, medieval song,

Bert Jansch
“Pretty Polly”
JACK ORION, Transatlantic, 1966

Most traditional folk songs are about two things – sex and death. There are many great versions of this tune but this is my favourite.

Shirley Collins and Davey Graham
“Reynardine”
FOLK ROOTS, NEW ROUTES, Decca,1964

A Victorian ballad about a werewolf who kidnaps young maidens then, presumably, has his wicked way with them and kills them. It’s sung by Shirley Collins who, along with Anne Briggs and Martin Carthy, is pivotal to the early English folk revival in the 1950s and 60s. And together with Alan Lomax she recorded an amazing collection of Southern American folk music.

Pentangle
“Light Flight”
BASKET OF LIGHT, Transatlantic 1969

The BBC used this next song as the theme to the first drama it broadcast in colour.

Fairport Convention
“Fotheringay”
WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAYS, Island, 1969

Here’s another song about death, this time that of Mary Queen of Scots who was beheaded by her sister, Queen Elizabeth the first.

Nick Drake
“River man”
FIVE LEAVES LEFT, Island, 1969

This song was produced by Joe Boyd, who also worked with VASHTI BUNYAN and the INCREDIBLE STRING BAND.

Round Table
“Scarborough Fair”
SPINNING WHEEL, Jay Boy,1969

Studio session bands are put together for no particular reason other than to make weird records that disappear without a trace. This song features band leader, the late David Munrow from the EARLY MUSIC CONSORT playing the lead crumhorn.


The Incredible String Band
“The Hedgehog Song”
THE 5000 SPIRITS OR THE LAYERS OF THE ONION, Elektra, 1967

This next song was chosen by the Arch Bishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams as one of his favourite records of all time.

Jan Dukes De Grey
“Texas”
SORCERERS, Nova, 1969

Acid folk from JAN DUKES DE GREY from their first record in 1969.

Mellow Candle
“Heaven Heath”
SWADDLING SONGS, Deram, 1972

Moving further into experimental folk from very young Irish group,

Richard Thompson
“Vincent Black Lightening 1952”
RUMOUR AND SIGH, Capitol, 2001

A peerless performer and songwriter who I had the pleasure of seeing a few years ago combines my two favourite things in this song – guitars and motorcycles, and being a folk tune, love and death.
Guaranteed to make me weep every time I hear it.

Steeleye Span
“All Around My Hat”
ALL AROUND MY HAT, Crysalis, 1975

Produced by Mike Batt of The Wombles and Katie Melua fame, here’s is a good fun mix of glam rock and traditional folk, which reached No. 5 on the UK charts in 1975.

Life's not fair

The first few weeks of 2008 have been testing. This week particularly. Wranglings with our idiotic and greedy landlord Korhan Gumus and his enforcer, the managing agent Sefa Aykac, reached a head when our water was turned of in a deliberate attempt to get us out. This comes after a series of threats and abuse.

Korhan has failed to increase rent in accordance with regulations since Ayla moved in. It's now laughably small and even if it had been raised with inflation it would still be modest. On the couple of occasions he has attempted to increase the rent it has been by a huge amount. The last time was via a lawyer and he wanted it quadrupled or we had a month to vacate. We also pay a large service charge to the managing agent for the maintenance of common areas and water.

It turns out the water bill has never been paid by either Sefa or Korhan accruing a debt of 2000YTL. When the water company arrived to cut off the water, Sefa deliberately pointed them to our stopcock and meter. They clamped the taps, cutting off water to only our flat meaning we had to pay the whole debt to have it put back on. It was only after Ayla turned on the water-works at the waterworks office after two hours arguing that they advised we smash the clamps off. But they're still coming round to cut off the whole building if all the tenants can't find the whole 2000.

What is not fair is that they landlord and his agent can act in such a gross and shabby way, that we should suffer because of their greed - where has all the service money gone from 4 flats?- and that they have got away and we have had to pay the bill twice.

But all this is nothing compared to the truly terrible and upsetting news I received from home concerning a dear friend. Recently he was diagnosed with terminal cancer after a few months of what doctors thought was a trapped nerve.

PKK Party conference season

The annual new year's eve amateur drinking competition in Taksim Square has been canceled to show support for the Turkish soldiers bombing PKK rebel camps in northern Iraq. Why should Istanbulus have a good time when the boys are blowing villages up to keep them safe.

The increased security alert may have resulted from the arrest of a suspected suicide bomber who was apprehended as he got on the Istanbul metro and may have contributed to the cancellation too. He was tailed for three weeks after coming over the border from Iraq and nabbed in the nick of time with a back pack full of explosives.

Having helped police with their inquiries he mentioned in passing that there were 800 PKK rebels who had received suicide-bomber training with 100 or so of them primed and ready to go.

A conservative estimate has PKK membership at roughly 3500. So that's about 25% of the party ready to blow themselves up, leaving the organization seriously depleted. I would have liked to have been at he party's annual conference when that motion was tabled.

"Brothers and sisters, we now come to motion 34 on the agenda; suicide bombing. We appreciate that this policy will expedite the Turkish army's goal for them, render our armed struggle impotent, and alienate our grass roots support, but we really think this is the only way forward."

"All those in favour say 'Banzai!'"

When You Want Quality Acting, Only Simon Johns Delivers on Time and on Budget

The winter is drawing in, and it's as crappy and grey as the Old Country, even more so since the apartments are so tall they block out the sunlight. I didn't move here for weather like this. I moved here for cheap liquor and fatty food. But the saving grace is the daily doses of odd things to see and do.

Tuesday's grip-and-grin on board the HMS Exeter ended in a cold terrace bar, severely drunk after many cans of Her Majesty's John Smiths. The Consulate invited us to help a shipful of seamen weigh anchor after their manoeuvres with Turkish tars in the Mediterranean. The last landlubbers standing, Mrs Johns and I were cordially invited to go ashore with three servicemen. Drunk and wrapped in my peacoat, I bade farewell to our matelots in their shirt sleeves and left them to go to the karaoke bar to sing shanties and pitch woo.

Keeping with the theme, on Wednesday I spent a few hours dressed as World War One sergeant in the new Turkish historical soap opera Karayilan, roughly translated as Blackadder. (Mondays at 8pm on ATV, for local fans.) A friend of a friend working on the set called to say the show needed a honky, and, as we all know, there is none more honky than I.

I thought they needed me to stand around in a muddy field shooting withering glances at the natives. I got the distinct impression something else was intended when the production staff referred to me as "Simon Bey", the very formal and polite address in Turkish. I was ushered away from the rest of the extras, given my own dressing room, sent to hair and costume in a warm Portakabin. Stripped of my sideburns and dressed in an obviously inauthentic uniform with a plastic helmet and puttees made of old curtains, a piece of paper was thrust into my hands with pidgin English on it. "Your dialog, Simon Bey", the extra wrangler said. "You can fuck off if you think I'm saying anything", I thought.

But I did. I acted, I mugged, I considered correcting the grammar. And my suggestion that an Edwardian soldier wouldn't have said "meat head" fell on deaf ears. A troupe of local farm folk was shipped in to play the oppressed masses (oppressed by me, by the way). When these extras weren't cooing over the star of the show, they went to great lengths to tell me how pleased they were to meet me. They knew a star when they saw one, even if I did look like Martin Cloons with a healing herpes scab. My star quality was slightly diminished, however, when they saw me shoveling my payment of rice and peas into my gaping maw.

Watch it here.

The producer called me a few days later to ask if I would do a voice-over for the show. "Para var mi?", I asked. "Para yok." "Simon yok!" (You get the idea: No money, no acty). My career as a thesp came to an abrupt end, cut short by greed. Yet I now have a new and in-depth understanding of The Craft: It's fucking easy! I am a ham, but with minimal instruction I know I could play a monocle-popping toff, a sneering Brit baddie or a shivering junkie in any low-budget soap throughout the length and breadth of Europe. (You can run Simon Callow, but you can't hide.) As long as the carbs are forthcoming, I can act all day long. Problem var mi? Problem yok!

What do we want? Hair gel! When do we want it? Now!

Mrs Johns is off to the Southeast for a few days to report on the escalation of Turkish/Kurdish (Turdish?) violence. Hopefully she won't be killed in an ambush. Or contract the shits, as we did last time we were there. Either would suck. I am looking at three days of sitting around the flat in my underpants drinking beer and watching war films in sympathy.

Turkey is gripped by a nationalist fervour after the PKK, the Kurdish separatist group, killed a dozen soldiers and kidnapped a few more. Today, like many days, there was a demonstration on Istiklal, this time by a metalworkers' union. They all had their union truckers' caps on and were milling about in front of Galatasaray high school up, confident that by waving very, very large Turkish flags the P.K.K. will lay down its arms and descend the hills into captivity.

A permit is required before a demonstration can be mounted on Istiklal. This gives the police ample time to take men away from real police work, like hurtling up and down Istiklal on mopeds blipping their sirens and telling taxis to get out of the way, to mass their riot ranks in preparation.

The other day the Communists held a modest rally of about 50 people outside their HQ on Istiklal. There were four coaches of fully armed riot police at both ends of the street, a water cannon, and, of course, an assortment of vintage small arms, at a ratio of four police to one demonstrator. Protesting mothers groups, farmers, and students get the same overwhelming police presence. Despite the British police's armour, if you pick up a dustbin lid and a stick the playing field is a bit more level. Not that I'd fancy my chances, especially if I was Brazilian.

The (nationalist) metalworkers' demo had no such police presence and presumably no permit. But this didn't seem to bother the law. They weren't demonstrating for equal pay or better conditions. They were showing the terrorists, 1500km away up on a mountain, precisely who has the moral high ground.

The riot brigades consist of twenty-year-olds who look and behave like other Turkish twenty-year-old men - smoking, walking arm-in-arm, and pawing at each other in a way that would raise eyebrows anywhere else - except they are dripping in Kevlar instead of sultan's slippers and polyester suits. Their gel-caked hair and slouching make them they look like a gang of, well, heavily armed gay men, by Brighton standards anyway. Until, of course, they mace you or beat the soles of your feet.

A few years ago, Istanbul's finest was ordered to refrain from using excessive force to meet European Union human-rights criteria. They are said to have implemented a work-to-rule to protest the ban on traditional methods for extracting information, and Istanbul was promptly hit by a petty-crime wave. That's political incorrectness gone mad!