Last Saturday, I finally got to see my musical hero John Martyn at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm.
In my experience, out of every ten people, about nine have never heard of John Martyn and one thinks he’s just about the best thing ever. I don’t think I’ve never met anyone who knows his music who doesn’t think he’s pretty great. If you haven’t already, please acquaint yourself with his music at the first opportunity. As long as you have working ears and a human soul, you will probably like it.
In fact, never mind that. Listen to him right now, playing on TV in about 1973:
…See?
The years haven’t treated him so well — he’s lost a leg, his voice is now probably huskier and certainly more slurred than Tom Waits — but his singing voice is still achingly beautiful, and even despite some rather ill-advised and unfortunate saxophone-playing, the concert was almost unthinkably good.
Although I would have been happy just seeing John Martyn, the support act — John Smith — was a total bonus. I’d actually been quite wanting to see him since I came across his website last year, but was unprepared for the extent of his greatness. He played the whole set unaccompanied — just him and an acoustic guitar on a stage that seemed several sizes too large — but he was great, and his final song, Winter, was just surpassingly brilliant, and essentially unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Today I found a video (below) of him on YouTube, and I watched it over and over until I had to leave the house. I can’t help but feel that he is a potential John Martyn of the future. Anyway, I’m planning to see him play at a smaller venue this coming Sunday, and hopefully get a copy of his CD too, so we shall see…
And a good riddance to 2006 — a year which as far as I’m concerned outstayed its welcome by about three months. I’m quite looking forward to 2007, if only because I just drank a nice cup of good, strong coffee.
My resolutions for this year are to reduce my carbon footprint, be sparing with my use of exclamation marks, and eat more cake.
Well, good luck. I hope you find 2007 acceptable to your taste.
Last week I got the first roll of film from my new/old medium-format camera developed. I quite liked some of the results. Next roll I’m going to be more careful about getting the exposure right…
From top to bottom: (1) Cows drinking from a trough near Ashbourne, Derbyshire (taken at Peter’s stag weekend); (2) A field near Ashbourne, Derbyshire; (3) Eerie clay heads in Derby; (4) The British Library Reading Room, British Museum, London.
Last month I spent a Sunday afternoon wandering through the vast, crumbling interior of Battersea Power Station. Over the 20 years or so since it was shut down, this colossal structure on the bank of the Thames, has slowly sunk into dereliction as one hare-brained multi-million pound redevelopment scheme after another has run out of money and steam.
The building is usually closed to the public, but was opened for a month as the venue for an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art — which was an exciting prospect, because not only was this a very rare opportunity to see this huge, crumbling landmark from the inside, but also because it sounded likely to be the closest approximation of Beijing’s amazing Dashanzi Art District — communist-era East-German-built factories turned art galleries — available outside actual Beijing.
In the event, though, the setting utterly dwarfed the art. As I wandered through, my attention was almost entirely on the power station itself — its epic scale and the extent of its dereliction — and the art seemed bland, small, and for the most part frankly mediocre against its awesome, cathedral-like setting.
