mercy, mercy, mercy

This posting is not strictly about jazz. It’s a cry of despair. Music is becoming far too intrusive into my life and I don’t know what to do about it.

Everywhere I go, I’m bombarded by music. I love my jazz (and often listen to other genres of music) but I would like to be able to listen to it when I want, not when some faceless cynical misanthrope in a seriously misguided marketing department feels I should.

For example, we lunched with friends at the Unthank Arms in Norwich. It’s an excellent pub serving good food. I was slightly disappointed with the range of real ales (meaning they didn’t have Abbot) but the Wherry was in good shape. In spite of the average age of the clientele being somewhere between middle-age and the catafalque, we were assaulted by pumping heavy metal rock, inappropriate for a pub at 10pm on a Friday night, never-mind 1.45 on a Thursday afternoon. Of course, the girls behind the bar were very pretty, but were only recently through puberty; obviously they chose the only music they know. Where’s the landlord’s guiding hand? My impression of the pub was severely tarnished. I’ll not return.

After lunch, we moved on to Dunelm, a vast household and fabrics warehouse on the inner ring road. Mrs Dodman wanted fabric for the cushions she’s making for our new house (subject to contract). As we waited to be served, we found ourselves standing beneath a loudspeaker set into the ceiling. It blasted a scattergun of Radio Dunelm at us so we could scarcely hear what the very helpful shop assistant was telling us. Background music I can just about tolerate, but this was virtually inside me. Why so damnably loud? Hasn’t somebody told management that the military use such techniques as a form of torture to weaken the resolve of the Taliban? And it works.

The problem is becoming endemic; it’s a plague. Few shops and pubs are without blaring perambulatory accompaniment, especially larger chain stores. It’s a greater threat to my health than swine flue, blue-tongue disease and e-coli all rolled into one. If I find a blissfully quiet shop, a car will pull up outside with its 5000 amp multi-woofer pounding until my eardrums are aching in sympathy with the welding holding the car together. What is wrong with a little silence occasionally? Will we all suddenly die of boredom if the music stops for just one minute?

Let’s start a campaign to abolish piped music once and for all. As part of the lobby, everybody over the age of sixty could drive around with car windows open playing Coltrane’s “Love Supreme” at full volume. That’ll get the bastards running for cover. And let’s see if we can force a change in attitude before the shops all start playing those excruciating Christmas tracks.

i know that you know

Although you’re probably no more interested than I was, I thought I should report that the painfully young candidate won the North Norwich by-election on Thursday. She was the one who kept saying “you know” during the hustings.

She pronounces the words “you know” without any hint of a question mark at the end - you know, when the final word is given an upward lilt, as in “You know?” Rather she uses the phrase as an imperial command, as if to hint that I’m being perverse in affecting not to know, but she knows that I do know. I feel as if I’m being reprimanded, as in “You damned well do know!”

She’s one of Cameron’s bitches. I suspect she’s full of good ideas. Someone ought to tell her that throughout history new ideas have been responsible for all the world’s ills. We humans should take our lead from nature. Animals don’t have new ideas. They simply get on with life, evolving slowly without ambition or schemes other than to live beyond the next crepuscular curtain fall. But I have a feeling that a whole charnel-house of new ideas is about to drop into our lives. Sometimes I’m relieved to be old.

I wanted to ask a question of this newest and youngest MP. Why do programmers at the BBC treat their listeners with such contempt? Yesterday I tuned in at the regular time for Jazz Record Requests, only to hear some distant and tuneless organ grinding away like background tracks to a Gothic Hammer House of Horror film. Apparently, the BBC decided to delay my jazz (yes – MY jazz) in favour of a live (another parenthesis – I’m not sure live is the correct word) recital from the Albert Hall. What is this curious obsession the BBC has with live broadcasts? Why must my music be delayed to make way for something which sounds a damned sight better on record anyway? I had to miss the first ¾ of Geoffrey Smith’s programme because I had other things to do.

Already I can sense somebody saying you can listen to the programme on the internet. But that’s fine if you have a high-powered 48 gigabit fibre-optic super-fast Virgin internet connection less than 100 yards from a telephone exchange. I don’t. I have an old-fashioned dial-up system giving me about 0.25kb a minute. It would take me about 2 weeks to listen to an hour’s worth of jazz albums through my computer.

I wanted to ask the new MP whether she would take my plaint to parliament and raise the issue in the House. But I think she’s probably too busy being clear about things and assuring us she’s entirely transparent. She’s undoubtedly fully occupied formulating youthful new ideas that are brimming to be released into the atmosphere as soon as the holidays are over. God help us all. You know?

monk, bunk and vice versa

For yesterday’s supper I cooked a chicken marinade of garlic, whole-grain mustard and soy sauce, dished up with potatoes and runner beans. As an aperitif, I quaffed lightly of Art Pepper and to accompany the meal I served a classic fine 1947 Monk. I avoid writing the latter’s forename because I don’t know how to spell it. Some experts cite Thelonious and others Thelonius and they’re pretty well evenly split. But then I’m grateful for the fact that the pianist is one of the small band of famous who manage with purely a surname, like Beiderbecke, Roach and Ellington.

Digestion was not aided by a later night cap – a TV programme about the Norwich North by-election taking place this week. What a depressingly young and inexperienced bunch of candidates, most of whom look to my ageing eyes as if they should still be practising their seven times table. They talk in clichés, as if they’re reciting from an issued reader. They were all “clear and transparent” which in reality means they are obfuscating the truth. Each and every one followed the party line while claming to be an independent spirit. We watched them with a creeping feeling of doom, Mrs Dodman and I. One says “you know” all the time as if the short phrase automatically implies axiom. They are all ardent and sincere; each and everyone will put aside ambition to work tirelessly on behalf of the local community. Yet we all know the elected candidate will eventually be just another expendable grinning yapping avaricious head on the Hydra of politics.

Not one mentioned jazz, at least before I dozed off. For twenty-five years I’ve voted independent, putting my cross against any candidate professing to enjoy a good foot-tapping clarinet solo. I figure that anyone appreciating jazz should be given a chance. The rest are too worn out from the exhausting requirement of keeping up party appearances. I know that’s a non-sequitur, but I had a late night.