Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Going Places
This is one of the records I bought last summer when Jack and I went on a bit of a cheap vinyl binge. We discovered (Ok, I’m fairly sure Jack knew it existed long before I did, and certainly patronised it before I did) a shop called Plastic Wax in Bristol that sells second-hand CDs, tapes, DVDs etc. But the joy of joys has to be found in the vinyl section, which ranges all the way from Jesus-Christ-you-know-about-labels-and-types-and-makes-and-everything section to the eight for a pound section. We chose the eight for a pound section and delighted ourselves with amusing album covers, silly names and sheer out-and-out wanky artwork. Many good things have been found this way. We ran into Chris Heppell was we went to the pub for a gloat over our greedily-collected crap, and he went straight over himself to find similar things. Then that night they both came over and we drank much wine and listened to as much as we could.

Therese had this album in the house when I was growing up. The second side opens with a song called Walk Don’t Run, which her school orchestra used to play. Chris (brother) and I played it on guitar and trumpet for our one-and-only-so-far gig at the Folk House in Bristol.

It’s quite a silly record already. Silly but very good. I grew up with two trumpeters/brass players (since they both play cornet too and I’m pretty damn sure Therese teaches tenor horn as well) so I can appreciate a good tone from all the players. It’s that very frantic and determinedly Technicolor Bacharach-style cha-cha-cha feel from the very beginning.

Everything is very neat in this world, phrases are tied together, instruments are tightly wired. Even the cheers and whoops have been organised. The first side’s over very quickly, what’s that all about?

Then Walk Don’t run. I have to fight the urge to want to play it again and again even before the second theme has appeared. I was going to start organising my Social Work folder into different sections of critical thinking; anti-oppressive practice etc, but as soon as I lowered the needle onto the second side I had to rush over and start typing about this song.

That’s the problem with no skips no shuffles, you have to ration the enjoyment, no more greedily playing a song over and over and over again as I am guilty of doing with a number of things. However it’s that methodology that’s led me here…I’ve never listened to about half of my music collection if I’m honest, and doesn’t the lack of repetition make glory more glorious?

I was talking about vinyl with Kez in the pub I work in last night. She’s a reggae fan and told me that she prefers vinyl, and will only buy vinyl, even if she likes the music and it’s available on CD. That kind of purism, though admirable and admittedly related to my current project, is a bit weird, no?

The last piece on the album is that Zorba’s dance thing, used so well in many a gangster movie and family wedding. The introduction is so bizarre, stripped away hihat and bass drum opening, so different from the rest of the album, if I had the technology I’d thinking long and hard about using it for something. There must be some way. What is it about the slow and inevitable speeding up of this piece that is comic? Why is that a comic musical technique? Growing frenzy…I remember swimming at Easton pool ages ago now…there was a mother and baby group in the little pool and each mother was dangling a child (each one resplendent in armbands) in the water, all going round and round in a circle while the pool assistant sang “The Wheels on the bus”. The penultimate verse to this undisputed classic is sung very slowly, with the final verse increasing in speed. The mother’s actions reacted to the speed of the song, and as each child was wobbled around in the water faster and faster, they all laughed and gurgled etc exactly as you’d expect them to. Is it something like that? A physical notion of going faster and faster as music does, and if so, why is it comic? A weird juxtaposition of suddenly speed when there was none before? Humour and music are funny things.